CXNext

During our CXNext Event in Boston I had the chance to sit down with Mariya Yao, CTO at Metamaven and Founder of TOPBOTS.

She had just given an excellent presentation, so I wanted to invite her onto the AI:IRL podcast to talk a little bit more about AI.

In this episode, Mariya talks about what executives need to know to begin tackling machine learning.

When a company rolls out self-service capabilities, they have to be deliberate.

Keeping use cases narrow is the way to go at first. It's something that Patrick Quinlan, Senior Manager for Self-Service and Analytics at Citrix, has found out firsthand.

In this one, Patrick shares how Citrix has rolled out a chatbot on their site—but also how KCS (Knowledge-Centered Support) is just as important as their customer-facing tech.

One of the primary ways any SMB can impact their online presence is by leveraging the power of SEO.

On this episode of AI:In Real Life, we interviewed Rich Fong, CEO of Bliss Drive. Bliss Drive has a simple mission with a challenging task: Help businesses increase sales and leads by delivering incredible SEO results.

We asked Rich for his top 5 SEO insights for SMBs. We wanted the most return for the least amount of effort.

Here's what he said.

There was a time when all the transactions of companies and their buyers were episodic.

That time is past.

With the proliferation of so many digital touchpoints, you no longer have to wait in line to speak to someone from a company.

You can get instantaneous feedback from social media, WhatsApp, etc. It's a challenge for companies to rise to that expected level of service.

How can you do it? Listen in to hear Paddy Srinivasan, SVP Products and General Manager at LogMeIn, tell you.

Also, be sure to check out CXNext, an upcoming event demystifying AI and machine learning.

The pharmaceutical industry is a lot like Texas. Everything is bigger there.

Development costs are in the billions of dollars. Drug trials can last as long as a decade because they can't find enough patients.

On the most recent AI:IRL podcast, I spoke with Amitabh P. Mishra, President and Global CTO at Emcure Pharma Group, about how AI is changing his business and other industries as well.

Mishra believes that artificial intelligence has the potential to facilitate every stage of the clinical trials process from matching eligible patients with studies to the data collection processes.

When the cost of drug development has increased a few hundred fold, how do find a way to cut expenses and time?

AI to the rescue, according to Crystal Black, Director of Marketing Programs for Saama Technologies.

The tonnage of data is mind-boggling:

• Patient monitoring devices produce over 86,000 readings per day.
• By 2025, 70% of clinical trial participants will be using wearable technology, creating even more data.
• There are 2 billion data points in a typical phase two trial that runs for six months with a hundred patients. That equals 200 billion data points.

To learn how AI will help cut through all this data, listen to the podcast.

Which is a better therapist, an AI app or a human?

According to two recent studies, an app is just as good and in some cases better than a human therapist.

The app is called Woebot, a friendly AI powered chatbot that delivers cognitive behavioral therapy at scale to make such therapy much more accessible.

In our latest AI:IRL podcast, we spoke with Woebot CEO and Co-Founder Alison Darcy, a clinical research psychologist out of Stanford University about why the app works so well.

Woebot solves the issue of accessibility in three ways.  

• By being an app, it is always in your pocket and always available, it lowers the barrier to entry. You can get help the moment you need it.
• Unlike a human, Woebot can scale to serve many more people 24/7 for a few pennies worth of additional server space.
• It reduces stigma. The app moves people toward the idea that everybody has mental health and everybody must tend to it regularly. Think of it less as therapy, and more like the very popular meditation and brain-training apps.

What can conducting a symphony orchestra teach you about AI?

Plenty, according to Lukáš Kovař�k, symphony orchestra conductor and CEO & Founder of the AI consulting firm Bohemian AI. Kovař�k was a guest at our latest AI: IRL podcast.

AI hype is everywhere. For Kovař�k the problem is baked into the name itself.

You don't often hear someone in any industry begging for the creation of a standards board to give needed transparency, but that's what Kovař�k believes will help educate the marketplace.

He wishes for truth in labeling that would let AI customers know exactly what they're buying with industry standards that everyone agreed were tested and independent.

People can't tell the difference between real AI and fake AI. They need to have marketing that's grounded in reality.

In the final chapter of our three-part deep dive into improving your company's customer engagement maturity model, we look at the customer engagement maturity level tactics you can deploy right now.

This week we conclude our conversation with Ross Haskell and Amber Gregorio from LogMeIn's Bold360 team about the Customer Engagement Maturity (CEM) Model Assessment they developed with Forrester Consulting.  

You can find the amazing results of their research in their report Build Competitive Advantage Through Customer Engagement and AI on the Bold360 website.

Deploying AI was the number one difference for those who saw the largest ROI.  

AI is not going to replace people, but what it can do is it can help you to offload some of the more mundane tasks so that your people can do the really high value stuff. Things that require empathy, understanding persuasion maybe in a selling kind of environment.

How would you like a tactical advantage for your company that allows you to outpace your competition by an ever-widening margin, year after year?

A recent two-year survey of 450 companies revealed that the higher a company's customer engagement maturity model, the faster it outpaces its competition across key metrics, with the gap increasing year after year.

This week we spoke with Ross Haskell, Lead Evangelist for Bold360 at LogMeIn, and Amber Gregorio, Senior Product Marketing Manager at LogMeIn, about a model they've developed with Forrester Consulting to help companies understand where they are in the customer experience spectrum.

One of the silver bullets that helps improve companies at all levels of customer maturity is deploying AI into their customer workflows.

Technologies like AI help a business become more efficient. Those companies that have already piloted and implemented AI are accelerating at a much faster pace than those that have not.

Unfortunately, the data confirms that those setbacks compound over time. So it's important for those firms that haven't started thinking about incorporating AI, to get on board now.