Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

We are Moving too Fast to be Thinking "Business as Usual"

[1983 Apple Keynote: The 1984 Ad Introduction YouTube 6:41] It's an expression you've probably come across, business as usual. The other side of the no comment coin. It says volumes without saying much. Especially when communications about how the business is keeping its promises are rare and the organization is not inhabiting its vision. People want to understand how things will change, given that circumstances are constantly evolving the context. Making sense of what is going on helps learn and process information in a way that supports culture -- where focus, alignment, and all those good things happen. It can... Read more →

Amazon Accounts for one in four eCommerce Purchases in the U.S.

Ask any online retailer and marketer in charge of eCommerce and they will likely tell you they aspire to be like Amazon. The giant online retailer sits atop the retail food chain, swallowing categories from celery to web services, and everything in between. Based on a new research# by digital business intelligence firm L2, the report inaugurates a methodology that will be leveraged for the L2 Amazon Quotient, a score of a brand’s competence on the platform. Walmart pales in comparison -- and they are gearing up to model the more successful features and functionality of Amazon's platform. Recommendations, personalization,... Read more →

A Culture of Social Collaboration

The type may be too small to read; here's a link to the live post (2,014 pluses and 1,785 comments). This is a good example of reverse-engineering a conversation while tapping into a shared experience. Imagine the potential of such a dialogue were it built upon a different proposition than a telemarketer trying to extract something on behalf of a business/brand from a person. A culture of social collaboration is where the Web experience is moving to, with the help of semantic and contextual information. It remains firmly human because it includes one very important element, which smart automation doesn't,... Read more →

Storytelling Edition

[via The Big Picture] Making Sense: Science For Its New Shows, Amazon Adds Art to Its Data. The New Yor Times: The creators also said that despite their employer’s algorithm-driven image, they were going with their creative gut. [...] “I am sure they are mining all kinds of data, but my job is to be a good storyteller.” Computer Programmed to write its own fables. The Guardian: Margaret Sarlej, at the University of New South Wales, has devised the Moral Storytelling System, which generates simple stories with one of six morals identified in Aesop's fables: retribution, greed, pride, realistic expectations,... Read more →

21 Quotes to Inspire Better Customer Experiences

The biggest impact of social, beyond it being a currency that affects behavior, is the ability for customers to interact with the people who represent brands and businesses directly. People in our networks and even strangers have become believable sources with reviews and suggestions. Smart businesses are also opening their digital doors, so to speak, and they are taking a hard look at how they organize experiences from site navigation down to how they handle response in social to. As we're approaching the final summer stretch in many parts of Europe and we are heading towards Labor Day in the... Read more →

What will your Verse be?

This is a line from the movie Dead Poets Society#; a movie that popularized one of my favorite Horace quotes: Carpe Diem. An easier-to-say-than-do mantra; among the more aspirational pursuits for many. Robin Williams was an extraordinary actor for our contemporry times -- he could improvise any combination of lines, styles, delivery, and emotional range on the spot. It redefines real time and defies it with its timelessness. Because deep down, we all wish we had that fluency. Many of us would, I suspect. I met his inimitable style as the genie in Aladin and bought the movie on the... Read more →

Performance is Much More than Optimization

Measuring Performance Of Social Media Communications from Valeria Maltoni Because the end of a flat couple of years is likely a cliff without innovation. I put together the slides you see above almost five years ago, documenting the early successes by the brands that were ahead of the pack and specifically to demonstrate that you can move the needle through communications. In the years that followed I became more interested in how social data and insights actually help inform product decisions and provide precious feedback to improve the customer experience at critical decision points when not throughout the buying process/user... Read more →

Leading the Customer Experience

Thanks to smartphones and tablets, people have access to more choices through the use of search and social networks, wherever they happen to be physically. This ability to research and ask – whether at home or at the time of consideration and purchase, has created higher expectations of the product and service they select. Increasingly, excelling at delivering a coherent experience across multiple devices is crucial to customer acquisition and retention, especially for organizations with complex products or many service offerings across several delivery platforms. Customer experience is a major component of the brand. Marketing owns it, and now requires... Read more →

What's Next in Technology, Business; How the Web Connects the Two

Making Sense: What is Next in Technology IBM Builds A Scalable Computer Chip Inspired By The Human Brain. Forbes: Each core of the chip is modeled on a simplified version of the brain’s neural architecture. The core contains 256 “neurons” (processors), 256 “axons” (memory) and 64,000 “synapses” (communications between neurons and axons). [...] What gives the SynAPSE an advantage in pattern recognition is that, unlike a traditional computer, which crunches data sequentially, its brain-inspired architecture allows for more parallel processing. Building a better web: the internet need not be doomed. The Guardian: Leadbeater's message is not to think the internet... Read more →

Connecting with the Next Generation

I am an avid learner and reader. At some point and for years, I was reading between 120 and 150 books a year, mostly fiction. Because I wanted to filter in a diverse roster of styles and levels of experience, I used to pick 3-5 books at a time at the local library. Since it was a few years before apps became a good way to track things, I made notes on an old phone agenda to record what I was reading organized by author's surname. In some letters I ran out of space quickly (which gave me the added... Read more →