Customer Journey Optimisation is now a Key Battleground

On a US trip last week it was great to catch up with Sabio’s North American partners in the International Communications Alliance (ICA), particularly following the news of Sabio’s acquisition of DatapointEurope – one of the Alliance’s founding partners.

We also met with Avaya, where there was a lot of interest in Sabio’s acquisition news and our expanded international capability. Avaya’s new Oceana contact centre platform really does look impressive and is set to take the market by storm later this year. It’s good to see our long standing partner Avaya moving quickly towards becoming a truly software-led provider of open, agile, SaaS based solutions.

In this week’s SabioSense we’re highlighting how optimising the customer journey is now the key battleground, whether it’s Amazon’s Prime Day incentives to drive sales of its Echo voice-controlled device (Echo was the No.1 selling item on Prime Day), the increased use of chatbots to drive engagement, or new AI-enabled processes to circumvent Google Search. The challenge, of course, comes when you have to work out exactly which balance of these and other technologies will work best for your own company’s nuanced mix of customers when it comes to enabling Customer Journeys.

This week’s round-up features stories from Mashable, Forbes, Chainstore Age and TheNextWeb:

• Preparing for the End of Search? – At Sabio we’re regularly talking to customers about how Google search is busy disrupting customer journeys. However Google itself is also vulnerable, and this Mashable article examines the moves Google is taking to protect itself against AI-powered bots that work to predict your requests before you even type them in or say them.
• Transforming Customer Experience with AI and Chatbots – Forbes article detailing four ways that AI and chatbots are impacting customer engagement – 24/7 availability; no waiting; personalisation and the ability to build and evolve customer relationships.
• Adoption of Voice-Controlled Devices Continues to Rise – According to new research, 24% of US consumers now own a voice-controlled device, and nearly one in five have made a voice purchase through Amazon Echo or other voice-controlled devices in the past year.
• AI + Smartphones = Seeing AI – Microsoft’s new iOS Seeing AI app shows just powerful today’ AI-enabled smartphone apps can be. Seeing AI is described as a ‘talking camera for the blind’ – just point the iPhone at anything and the app will tell you what it sees with its voice. A potentially life-changing app, and a clear indicator of the power of today’s machine learning capabilities.