The Future of Work Expo News Roundup

Artificial intelligence, automation, machine learning, and natural language processing are popping up more and more these days in discussions about business communications, customer service, marketing, and sales. That’s why TMC (News - Alert) is launching The Future of Work Expo, a new event will explore how AI, ML, and NLP are challenging and improving efforts and experiences in these realms.

New developments in these arenas are happening at a fast and furious pace. To give you just a small sampling of what we’re seeing on these fronts, here’s a quick rundown of some of this week’s news.

Tableau Software on Tuesday introduced a conversational digital assistant called Ask Data. The solution employs natural language processing so people can ask questions as they normally would and get quick reults.

“Customers can simply type a question such as ‘What were my sales this month?’ and Tableau will return an interactive visualization with no need to learn data dimensions, measures, or any data structure,” the company explains. “Ask Data uses sophisticated algorithms that are driven by an understanding of the person’s intent, not keywords, which helps Tableau understand a person’s question, anticipate needs, and allow for smart visualization selection.”

Also this week, Pramata announced the Fall 2018 Release of its B2B platform, which helps businesses eliminate revenue leakage. This commercial relationship platform spots billing errors and missed contract renewal, and cross-sell, and upsell opportunities.

New with this release is the Voyager user experience. It enables billing, finance, and sales team members to “connect the commercial relationship dots between contracted agreements and actual billing and sales activities….”

Meanwhile, Genesys (News - Alert) has released survey results suggesting that customers want access to digital customer service channels, but think dealing with a person is best and always want the ability to interface with a human when desired or necessary. The company adds that consumers perceive the best customer service happens when a human is involved (75 percent), yet 76 percent want the option of digital support channels.

“It’s clear from the research findings that businesses need to strike the right balance when deploying digital channels, automation, and artificial intelligence in customer experience,” says Genesys CMO Merijn te Booij (News - Alert). “We think it also means it’s safe to say that the role of humans in customer service isn’t going away any time soon – unless a business is willing to sacrifice customer satisfaction. However, we do believe AI will continue to change the way humans work and how consumers get service for the better.”