“When we combine AI, IoT and Blockchain, you get a very powerful solution; and I see these being jointly implemented a lot more in a near future.“
Dreamforce is one of the foremost technology and innovation conferences in North America. With more than 120,000 registrations last year from 83 different countries and more than 15 million online viewers from around the globe, it’s easy to see why tech companies have had November 6-9 etched out on their calendars all year. Me included!
As we edge closer to the start date, I am excited to announce that this year, off the back of announcing a significant partnership with Salesforce, I have the privilege of taking the stage on behalf of Avaya as one of Salesforce’s premier-partners to evaluate the role that Digital Technology is playing today, and the role it is poised to play tomorrow.
Digital Technology has had an impressive impact on areas such as data security, self-service, facial recognition, digital identity and fraud protection. A future of automation and contextually relevant insights is here; and it’s being shaped by technologies such as Artificial intelligence, IoT, sophisticated, pervasive and real-time analytics and blockchain architectures. These technologies will create massive business opportunities while dramatically evolving the future of customer and citizen experiences as we know it.
Don’t believe me? Let me show you a day-in-the-life example of how AI, IoT and blockchain technologies are rapidly converging and providing tremendous value to both businesses and consumers.
AI, IoT, Blockchain – what role do they play?
In a world where we are constantly looking to deliver better experiences while driving higher levels of efficiencies for businesses, automation reigns supreme. With that in mind, it’s little wonder why Artificial Intelligence (AI) – with its ability to learn, adapt and personalize automatically – has become one of the latest and greatest buzzwords in technology.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technology buzzword that’s somewhat lost a bit of its buzz; for the most part, consumers and business now understand and even expect the role it plays in connecting and streamlining our everyday business and consumer devices. As this expectation of connectivity grows, discussions have ramped up around the role IoT will continue to play in bringing real-time analytics outputs to automated frameworks (which AI is part of) and its ability to trigger sophisticated workflows to personalize and customize experiences.
So, we understand and appreciate the role these two important technologies play in increasing efficiencies and personalization in business and everyday life – but what about Blockchain?
With the growth in connected, automated, personalized services, our needs around storing and accessing increased volumes of personal information have also grown; and with it, our requirements for a much stronger security architecture than we have seen in the past with centralized models.
Blockchain, being a distributed architecture using cryptography and a concept of “write a record once,” provides enormous value to some of the use cases required as part of digital transformations.
Therefore, when we combine AI, IoT and Blockchain, you get a very powerful solution; and I see these being jointly implemented a lot more in a near future. Here’s how these technologies may all come together in your life…
A-day-in-the-life – how AI, IoT and digital currency using Blockchain come together
Imagine you need to go on a business trip in the next few weeks to Europe and you are looking for the best airfare and hotel. You can easily use various web tools, or you can use a personal assistant, to help you find the best options available to you at the best price.
A few days later, after researching multiple options, you receive a notification from your personal digital assistant of a great deal on your smart watch, so you choose to accept it. Rather than using a typical credit card to secure the deal, you use your company’s bitcoins (digital currency) to make the reservation.
A week later, as you are getting ready to board the plane, an announcement comes over the PA system; unfortunately the flight has been delayed due to mechanical problems which will cause you to miss your connecting flight. Frustrated at this, you Tweet about your experience. The airline has implemented an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution which monitors social media and automatically reaches out to you via SMS, allowing you to quickly speak to an agent.
Before we move on with the day, let’s take a moment to consider that as a customer of the airline, you have now gone through at least four or five channels to connect to their service before even boarding the flight. Easy to see the importance of a strong omnichannel strategy when you consider this!
Now to continue with the day: the AI platform which interacted with you via Twitter has also leveraged sentiment analysis to detect the tone of your Tweet and determine you are very unhappy with your experience. The system then leverages another omnichannel connection to relay this contextual information to the agent who will be assisting you.
Understanding the context of the situation and your frustrations, the airline provides you an upgrade to first class for your connecting flight. It also notifies the hotel connected to your booking of your delayed arrival, which has your digital identity (Facial) stored in your profile, all secured/encrypted through the Blockchain architecture implemented by both the hotel and the airline.
As you arrive at the hotel, facial recognition analytics (via Video Surveillance) recognizes you walking into the hotel lobby and immediately notifies the manager on duty to welcome you and provide you with a suite upgrade.
This is just one example where AI, IoT, Digital currency and Identity Management using Blockchain all come together to transform the customer experience and build stronger loyalty.
Above all else, what this example shows is how much the world of customer service has changed; where it used to be human-to-human as a first interaction, now more often, it is a human-to-machine/AI interaction, well before you or someone in your business personally becomes involved. Customers use multiple channels to connect to your services – and more importantly to talk about your product or service. You can’t be everywhere – but you can make it seem like you are by leveraging these technologies to strengthen your omnichannel strategy and ultimately the overall customer experience, giving you a competitive advantage in an increasingly technologically integrated world.