Showing posts with label Robots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robots. Show all posts

Thursday, March 29, 2018

A Customer Experience Solution For YOUR Brand?


Social media is not a customer experience solution.

Opinion: Not now, not ever … get over it..



We’ve all been there, both in-store or on the phone, where the customer experience is so poor that you want to end your relationship with the brand instantaneously—right then and there.

How many times have we all had to endure long checkout lines or long holds with call centers because our online order was incorrect or our coupon expired? Probably too many.

From insurance and airline travel to healthcare and cable, examples of a broken customer experience can be found in every industry. In fact, for every one customer experience complaint received, it’s possible there are as many as 26 unhappy customers who are staying silent.

But I’m not keeping quiet. I work too hard for the money I pay to companies, and I have a strong disdain for complacency.



So, what can brands do to fix the customer experience and prevent customers from going to a competitor?

The answer is probably much simpler than you think: Take the intimacy, connectivity and conversational experience from the in-person/offline world and inject it into the digital world.

Becoming a conversational brand and communicating through real-time, secure messaging is a major way that brands can win over frustrated customers.

Some brands attempt this with social media, and Twitter is one example of how interactions with brands help consumers feel somewhat connected. This connection is the start of an improved customer experience, an important “bridge” through which to share humorous content or be ushered along to resolve a transaction issue. From Wendy’s to Moon Pie, UPS, Drake’s, Amazon, Lincoln Center, Geico, Solera Holdings and more, these brands are making customers a bit happier by opening up a channel for communication that is direct, albeit totally unsecure.



In a world where consumers are the great disruptors, demanding instant gratification experiences like those provided by on-demand economy stalwarts like Uber and Netflix, brands need to take heed.

Conversations between brands and consumers—giving a sense of 24/7/365 connectivity like we feel with our friends and family—are transformative. They allow for the consolidation of once disparate channels to all be merged into a single conversational interface that makes things personal. Consumers love it. Brands need it. I am all about it.

Shifting the burden of “always-on,” always available messaging by the brand to people working for the brand is not the best idea, though. People make mistakes, they fall asleep and they often don’t really care enough (again, my complacency syndrome).

The solution to this problem is found somewhere buried in the over-hyped acronym: AI (or artificial intelligence). AI as a valuable customer experience solution should be used to develop automation for both outbound and reactive messaging to customers.



Automation of myriad tasks like tracking packages, paying bills, having questions answered, sending promotions and tracking loyalty is essential for an “on-demand” experience, and with persistent messaging in place, it brings immense return on investment and dramatic NPS (Net Promoter Score) improvement.

Highly secure and private, AI-backed conversational experiences will revolutionize customer service. They will enable brands to start developing real relationships with their customers. They will make brands available anywhere, anytime, on customers’ terms. In order for this to happen, the entire customer experience industry needs to bypass social media and go straight into messaging.

When a customer connects to Uber or Netflix on their phone, they do so through a secure and direct messaging pipe that bypasses many third parties and data pirates like Cambridge Analytica. This is essential for a future-proof on-demand customer experience strategy.



Often overlooked, something as simple as a highly secure message platform capable of transactions and content disseminations is imperative. Note to reader: This cannot be achieved through person-to-person social media platforms like Facebook or KiK. Through bad design, transacting in a compliance-based environment and sharing photos of your dog licking a popsicle cannot be achieved. Period.

A well-known brand that I have been impressed by with its on-demand customer experience plans is Lincoln Center. It started a multi-phased rollout of automation, using secure messaging and AI to keep customers appraised of all that is Lincoln Center wonderful. Over time, this will extend to messaging out promotions, video teasers, audio recordings and ticket purchasing—all on the same single messaging platform that is a totally private network between Lincoln Center and a human being, anywhere, anytime.

It’s exactly from where I believe true customer experience excellence is born: Take the intimacy, connectivity and conversational experience from the offline world and inject it into the digital world.



We hear of AI every day. We hear about chat bots every minute. It’s all really designed to confuse you.

My advice: Have a flexible, long-term vision for customer engagement. Find a problem—a simple problem—and start there. Then, install a messaging pipe and use automation through AI to resolve that problem. And last, invite your customers to use this new conversational interface. You’ll see costs reduce and NPS improve instantaneously. Then, find the next problem and repeat.

It’s really that simple. At least 30 Fortune 500 companies I know of are proof of this. Welcome to the robotic revolution: Are you on board?

Guest Authored By Zvi Moshkoviz. Zvi is chief marketing officer of intelligent automation provider Pypestream. Follow Zvi on Twitter.





"Have a flexible, long-term vision for customer engagement. Find a problem—a simple problem—and start there.

Then, install a messaging pipe and use automation through AI to resolve that problem. And last, invite your customers to use this new conversational interface.

You’ll see costs reduce and NPS improve instantaneously.

Then, find the next problem and repeat.."


    • Post Crafted By:
      Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
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    Location: Loveland, CO 80538, USA

    Thursday, March 15, 2018

    Robots Fix YOUR Social Media Reputation?


    This AI Platform Helps Jobseekers Fix Their Social Media Reputation

    Employers are using AI to scour social media to eliminate applicants for open jobs. Now you too can use AI to buff up your online presence..



    Most people know that posting a booze-soaked selfie on a public social media feed is ill-advised, especially if they are planning to ever look for a job.

    But did you know that cracking a joke about calling in sick can also hurt your chances of landing a sought-after position?

    That's because AI is at work in many employers' recruiting efforts. "People don't realize that screening algorithms don't have a sense of humor," says Patrick Ambron, CEO of BrandYourself, a reputation management software firm. "What this means is that jokes about skipping work to watch Netflix could get flagged as potentially harmful."

    The number of employers using social media to screen candidates is at an all-time high, according to a CareerBuilder survey of 2,380 hiring and human resource managers. Seventy percent of employers use social media to screen candidates, up from 11% in 2006. More than half (54%) said they wouldn't hire someone based on what they saw on the candidate's social feeds.



    Some companies are even outsourcing the scouring of candidates' online presence, like Los Angeles-based Fama Technologies, which offers an AI software tool that helps them screen out undesirable applicants.

    In a report for CNBC, Fama CEO and cofounder Ben Mones were less interested in uncovering recreational alcohol use and the like, rather they want to make sure they're not hiring bullies or bigots. "Employers are looking for folks who don't think that misogynistic comment is wrong," he said.

    Candid posts that use vulgar or insensitive language are clear red flags. In addition, slang usage and unprofessional "funny" posts have been frequently flagged as troubling for hiring managers," Ambron concurs.



    Using AI To Make You Your Best (Online) Self

    While algorithms can be humorless when it comes to reading status updates, BrandYourself's AI claims it uses the same no-nonsense approach to ferreting out problematic content.

    Ambron contends that its software goes deep (in some cases up to 10 years) into search engine results, social media posts, images and video content that you posted or were tagged in, and then gives the candidate recommendations of negative content to remove. For an annual fee of $99, says Ambron, the software will continue to monitor your social platforms and online presence, and alert you if anything new shows up that needs your attention.

    Among the problematic content, CareerBuilder identified the most common deal breakers, including provocative or inappropriate photographs, videos, or information, drinking or using drugs, posting discriminatory comments related to race, gender, religion, and bad-mouthing their previous company or fellow employee.



    Does it ever really go away? Ambron says that depends on what kind of offending information it is.

    "If it's simply a poorly judged social media post, you can hopefully delete it right away, which minimizes the chances of it being flagged during an employment screening," he explains. Employers don't have access to deleted tweets or FB status updates unless they had a legal subpoena or if someone took a screenshot.

    "If it's something in Google that hasn't been deleted, they can still find it," he says, "but it's much less likely and will have a smaller impact on the impression you make." Still he cautions that a negative Google result that someone else wrote about you to harm you such as a review, news article, or a slanderous post or image, could take months to bury with more accurate, positive information.

    "The idea is that if there's negative information out there about you (like an ex bashing you online), you want to surround it with more accurate information that better represents your personality, professionalism, and overall brand," he explains. This strategy takes both time and maintenance, Ambron admits.



    For instance, a Google search for a former high-level Disney, AOL, and AG Interactive executive who is a pioneer in the VR world used to yield multiple results for a singer-songwriter by the same name before any of his own work showed up. Populating a website, LinkedIn profile, Twitter, and Medium accounts with regular, quality content about his expertise changed the game. Now a search has him as the first result on the first page.

    The same CareerBuilder survey found that 44% of employers found social content that supported making a hire. Among the primary reasons were that their experience and expertise shone through social and that they presented great communication skills and creativity. An older survey from CareerBuilder emphasizes the importance of such soft skills. Among 2,600 hiring managers and HR professionals, 71% said they valued emotional intelligence over IQ overall.

    Guest Authored By Lydia Dishman. Lydia is a reporter writing about the intersection of tech, leadership, and innovation. She is a regular contributor to Fast Company and has written for CBS Moneywatch, Fortune, The Guardian, Popular Science, and the New York Times, among others. Follow Lydia on Twitter.





    "In a tight job market..

    Jobseekers who demonstrate a sterling online presence by communicating professionally, showcasing their expertise, and interacting with a variety of people on social media will be more in demand than ever.." -LydiaDishman

      • Authored by:
        Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
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      Sunday, February 4, 2018

      The Social Media Fembots Are Among Us?


      MTV’s “TRL” recently welcomed Poppy, a rising star with hologram-perfect skin, an avant-garde Japanese schoolgirl wardrobe and a voice like Betty Boop’s on benzos..



      For much of the show, she perched silently on the couch and methodically stacked candies on a glass table. A longhaired handler called Titanic Sinclair accompanied her, explaining, “I’m just making sure she doesn’t malfunction.” Poppy proved a tough interview. Asked what she thought of the Grammys, which had aired the night before, she chirped: “Um, I don’t really remember them.” Then she changed into a costume that made her look like a beautiful egg yolk and performed “Bleach Blonde Baby,” a song about how she was born with full makeup and a mani-pedi.

      Poppy is — to sum up her project most simply — an android-themed pop star. She first appeared on YouTube in 2014, in a video where she eats cotton candy while an overdubbed soundtrack plays oddly pleasant eating sounds. When she speaks, Poppy exhibits the limited range of a chat bot, the oddly formal vocabulary of a digital assistant (she says “New York New York” and “YouTube dot com”) and the late-capitalist tics of an online influencer. In “Hey YouTube,” she repeats vlogger greetings — “What’s up, guys?” and “Hey YouTube!” — until they lose their meaning. In “I am empowered,” she purrs, “I feel empowered when I create high-quality content on the internet” over and over again.



      The fembot has long been a pop culture fixation, but now feminized tech is all around us. Digital helpmeets like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are fitted with nonthreatening feminine voices and programmed to respond to sexist comments with cutesy repartee. (If you tell Siri to make you a sandwich, she replies: “I can’t. I have no condiments.”) Creepy techno-Pygmalion stories — like the one about the guy who 3-D-printed his own Scarlett Johansson bot on his patio — captivate the online news landscape. With the help of machine learning, a community of Redditors are creating highly realistic fake porn that melds famous actresses’ faces onto porn performers’ bodies. Twitter lit up with crazed sex-robot memes last month after images of a new sex doll styled as an Instagram model (swollen lips, thick thighs and an athleisure-lingerie uniform) went viral.

      And, of course, we can conjure the illusion of intimacy with famous women as we scroll through their Instagram profiles and consume their Snapchat feeds, dispensing or withholding likes. Projects like Poppy poke at the cyborg nature of online fame itself, where female bodies are mapped onto the social platforms they inhabit — constantly resized, customized and upgraded to please their followers.



      Poppy’s YouTube videos have been viewed more than 257 million times, and now her persona is permeating the culture: She’s logged a “Today” show appearance, a Times Square billboard, a Comedy Central Snapchat series and a Sanrio sponsorship. She’s now in the midst of an American concert tour and starring in a web series pilot, “I’m Poppy,” on YouTube’s paid subscription tier, YouTube Red.




      The commentary of Poppy is not exactly subtle, but the performance of the woman behind her — the 23-year-old Moriah Pereira — is eerily fascinating. (Titanic Sinclair, her creator-handler-director figure, is played by the 30-year-old Corey Mixter.) Poppy’s voice has the soothing affect of an A.S.M.R. video, those recordings of rustles and whispers capable of evoking tingling sensations on the back of your neck. The way she pauses and freezes between statements — as if she’s downloading a new dialogue program and recalibrating her expression to fit it — is uncanny.

      If Poppy is a person who acts like a robot, Lil Miquela is a C.G.I. creation posing as a human being. She’s a computer-animated Instagram model edited into real backgrounds, posed with real people and dressed in real streetwear that you can buy, too. Her look — enormous matte lips, thick eyebrows, a dusting of freckles on her Barbie-smooth skin — is an exaggerated version of the beauty standard that’s swept the platform, making its most-followed women look oddly similar and a little bit unreal. Now she has her own side hustle, too, a series of clubby singles featuring her heavily Auto-Tuned voice. Miquela draws out tensions about the authenticity of social media performance; sometimes she filters her face through stylized anime beauty apps, layering artifice on artifice. She doesn’t say much, but in a rare phone interview posted on YouTube, a woman calling herself Miquela parried a question about her fakeness with a provocation: “Can you name one person on Instagram who does not digitally edit their photos?”



      Fembots are being designed to look more like internet stars, but perhaps internet stars are being designed to look like fembots, too. Take Kylie Jenner, who now ranks among Instagram’s most popular users — she recently topped 100 million followers — and who holds great sway over the platform’s aesthetic, which she molds through example but also via sales of her wildly popular Kylie Cosmetics line. Clicking through an image gallery of Ms. Jenner’s changing looks over time — watching her lips balloon with fillers, her skin tone deepen, her eyes pop open and her facial features chisel — gives the sensation of a model’s upgrading. A fan of wigs, Ms. Jenner changes her hair color so frequently (often into shades of neon or sorbet) that it recalls the ease of a Photoshop click and the appeal of an endlessly customizable object. It’s so typical for Ms. Jenner to appear on Instagram with her phone in the shot that she begins to evoke the image of a cyborg, device permanently attached to her hand.

      Then there’s Ms. Jenner’s affect: blank. She posts video clips of repetitive motions that loop over and over again — freshly manicured fingers stroking a piece of fur, a glittery eyelid half-opening — giving her an animatronic vibe. In a 2015 feature for Interview magazine, Chris Wallace, then the senior editor, described Ms. Jenner as “almost sex-doll sanguine.” On the cover, she appeared clad in latex fetish gear, posed in a wooden shipping container or tucked under a man’s arm, staring into the middle distance.



      Though the field of artificial intelligence is bent on creating robots that seem realistic — ones that can pass the Turing test by persuasively mimicking human beings in conversation — the subfield of fembot creation seems more fixated on creating something physically perfect but mentally deficient. In the online magazine Real Life, Janna Avner smartly noted that the fembot creator “turns the limitations of bot technology into a kind of strength.” The failure of artificial intelligence to actually match human intelligence is a feature, not a bug. The sex robot memes on Twitter play off the moment when the doll becomes sentient, when she begins criticizing her owner or asking about their relationship status, at which point he lunges for the reset button or unplugs her.

      The idealized digital women of film and television — “Her,” “Ex Machina,” and “Westworld” — become nightmares when they acquire minds of their own. But our cyborg internet stars are suspended on the web without a redemption narrative. Followers of Poppy, Lil Miquela and Kylie Jenner can be consumed by the mysteries of their origin stories. Who is the architect of Poppy’s satirical project? Is Lil Miquela based on a mysterious real woman’s photographs, or was she materialized out of nothing? Which plastic surgery procedures has Ms. Jenner had? What filters does she use?



      In the pilot for “I’m Poppy,” a Hollywood figure asks: “Where did she come from? Who is she with?” The answers elude him, but when he hears she has 50 million followers, he decides: “She’s perfect.” The follower count justifies the star’s existence, and their interactions animate and regenerate the star’s persona.

      On her reality series, E!’s “Life of Kylie,” Ms. Jenner has said that her followers drive her pressure to post more and better selfies to Instagram and that she’ll delete images that don’t instantly please, turning her own image into a site of crowd curation. It’s as if her fans themselves are molding her to their specifications.

      Guest Authored By Amanda Hess. Amanda is a David Carr Fellow at The New York Times. She writes about internet culture for the Arts section and contributes regularly for the New York Times Magazine. Before she joined The Times in 2016, she wrote for such publications as Slate, the Washington City Paper, ESPN the Magazine, Elle, and Pacific Standard, where her feature on the online harassment of women won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest. She was raised in Wisconsin, Nevada, Washington and Arizona. Follow Amanda on Twitter.





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      This is a must-attend for any marketing professional looking for practical takeaways to help address a spectrum of social media marketing challenges.."

        • Authored by:
          Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBr@nd.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, CO  where I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
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        Location: Loveland, CO 80538, USA
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