Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

How Scaling Customer Care is Good Marketing

Mass personalization in customer care works only if your name is “mass.” As customers we typically contact a company when all other options are exhausted and only when the issue is painful/difficult enough for us to tackle on our own. When we take that step, we likely did not have the exact problem or question the last customer had. If we did, this may mean: the issue is temporary -- like an outage, a system-wide clitch, weather-related delay -- in that case, this means there is no emergency communication mechanism in place to get the word out or the message... Read more →

Infinite Hows, Decisions, and Making it Online

Making Sense: This week I have taken a deeper look at finding better tools to make decisions when confronted with complexity, an issue that has become more common in business. The Infinite Hows. O'Reilly Radar: The issue with the Five Whys is that it’s tunnel-visioned into a linear and simplistic explanation of how work gets done and events transpire. This narrowing can be incredibly problematic. In the best case, it can lead an organization to think they’re improving on something (or preventing future occurrences of events) when they’re not. In the worst case, it can re-affirm a faulty worldview of... Read more →

What Makes a CMO Powerful

“CMOs are more likely in firms where there is a strong emphasis on innovation and differentiation (requiring deep customer insights to be effective), and in firms where marketing assets (such as corporate brand) have high value. We conclude that CEOs appoint CMOs when they recognize the centrality of these to strategy formulation.” [via] Forrester is predicting# CMO tenure will reach 60 months or five years in 2015. +++ Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effect on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at... Read more →

Getting in Early, Inventing How it's Done

[via] Brian Eno, artist and musician I've been a long time fan of Brian Eno's ability to articulate the creative process and to express character through art. In this short video, he puts forth several interesting concepts (emphasis mine): sometimes you listen to things and think “I've had only one idea in my life, and I've been doing it in a hundred different ways ever since” everything good proceeds from enthusiasm; the sense of “I really want to know how this turns out” will drive you through many many nights of no results, whereas the feeling of “I ought to... Read more →

Want a More Effective Content Strategy? Listen Better

Don't google it from Gezondheid en Wetenschap on Vimeo. How long does it take you, on average, to answer a client's question with a point of view? How quickly fo you take over a conversation? A time equivalent to a tweet? That fast? So certain? There is value in experience and a body of work, and in being responsive; however, we all practice in our respective domains, we do not know them. Think about it, we say doctors practice medicine, and they are responsible for the direction a treatment takes. Would you rather they blurt out a long list of... Read more →

Concept of Identity is Shifting

In tech, the concept if identity is defined by the ability to manage individuals as part of a system, for example a corporate network. Identity is one of the three primary domains to master for organizations, along with information and relationships. More recently, we have also discussed identity and the Internet. When Google announced it had dropped the real name restrictions it placed upon users of its Google+ social network, I went back to my notes on the online ID model. While developers may think about authentication, professionals about representation and reputation, by and large most everyone thinks about how... Read more →

Why we Lie, How to Tell, and More

Making Sense: This is something that has fascinated me ever since my business mentor recommended the book featured here. The Language of Lying: Animated Primer on How to Detect Deception. Brain Pickings: When you combine the science of recognizing deception with the art of looking, listening, you exempt yourself from collaborating in a lie. You start up that path of being just a little bit more explicit, because you signal to everyone around you, you say, “Hey, my world, our world, it’s going to be an honest one. My world is going to be one where truth is strengthened and... Read more →

Time-Lapse Video as a Storytelling Tool

Le temps d'un Paris - Timelapse from Elcondor Film on Vimeo. 'Le Temps D'un Paris', Beautiful Time-Lapse Video of the City of Light After Sundown [via] +++ Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effect on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here. Read more →

Good Conversations are to Thinking...

Good conversations are to thinking what prototyping is to product design @faris @benkunz — Valeria Maltoni (@ConversationAge) November 6, 2014 Saving it here for future reference. +++ Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effect on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here. Read more →

Why Quest Creates Happiness

In The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life, Chris Guillebeau examines how going after something in a methodical way enriches our lives. Quests are long term pursuits, they are goal-oriented, and require diligent commitment to complete: One of the key themes of quests is that they must be measurable. They must have an end goal—you have to be able to say, “This is what I’m working toward and I’ll complete it when x happens.” Documenting the steps along the way provides tremendous momentum, since you can see how far they’ve come and how... Read more →