Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

10 Reasons Why Your Customers are Being Difficult

As customers, do we need a corporation to satisfy our emotional needs to earn our loyalty? Nine years ago, this conversation of dealing with difficult customers was top of mind. It was at about the same time digital marketing moved more squarely into the business of making things personal (with mixed results.) But something else was also happening at the same time — wider adoption of social media across professions and industries. People talked, brands that established a presence in social media early had a tremendous advantage of accessing for the first time raw qualitative data in context and learn... Read more →

Who can You Trust?

“What if trust, like energy, cannot be destroyed and instead just changes form?” [Rachel Botsman] Trust is on the decline, and we need to rebuild it. We keep hearing this repeated everywhere. From social networks to boardrooms, people say organizations and institutions should focus on trust. But, philosopher Onora O'Neill says we don't really understand what we're suggesting. There's a claim many people believe about the great decline of trust. Therefore the aim is to have more, which means the task is to rebuild trust. Baronessa O'Neill flips the question, showing how the three most common ideas about trust are... Read more →

Bars and Signal Strength

You're at the airport, twenty minutes before boarding and notice the WiFi bar icon is full — this is great news, you can send that presentation to your boss or client before the meeting, just in time for them to review it as you get there. One last piece of information you need is within reach on your browser... you log on, attach and hit send, and start your search. Ten minutes later you're halfway to nowhere and realize the bars might be high, but the signal is just not there. This is a scenario we've experienced often enough at... Read more →

Brain Rules: 12 Things we Know on How the Brain Works

Our brains are amazing organs — they allow us to infer information, get us to safety, solve problems, and imagine things. Some of these feats help save our lives, others merely assist in saving our face. We do dumb things, too, but we have something that only humans have — symbolic reasoning. While there's a lot we still don't know about the three-pound gray matter that sits as the body's command center in its armor, the hard skull, we do know a few things that can help us make better use of it. But before reading further, let's all take... Read more →

In 1999 David Bowie Predicted the Impact of the Internet

In an interview with Jeremy Paxman of the BBC that took place in 1999, David Bowie predicted the impact of the Internet on society with new ways of expression, art, and communication. Google was just a few months old, and YouTube, Facebook or Twitter were not even an idea (arrived several years later.) In the segment below you Bowie is talking about how the role of music has shifted from one of creating the excitement for rebellion to a more niche and fragmented role of quasi-co-creation with different communities. He says the Internet would take up the job of becoming... Read more →

The Next Social Network

“Love without conversation is impossible.” [Mortimer Adler] Before social networks we had forums and then blogs. In both cases, communities formed around topics and themes, shared interested kept people engaged to help each other. It wasn't the same as in person conversation, but it gave us something we did not have before — scale. We still have successful forums and communities, including Reddit, GitHub, and increasingly niche groups that gather behind paid subscriptions. Some of these groups are self-moderated, some have one or more moderators or community managers. Specialized networks like LinkedIn are useful for writing about business and since... Read more →