As people become more used to talking to their consumer devices, will they also expect to talk to their business systems? Business intelligence vendor Qlik is betting they will, with its acquisition of conversational analytics tool CrunchBot and its parent Crunch Data. Users will be able to pose natural language questions within Qlik’s own products, within tools like Slack and Skype, and, yes, by asking Amazon Alexa.

I can’t decide if a report that most consumers find chatbots annoying qualifies as obvious because, well, they are, or as non-obvious because most retail executives think chatbots make customers happy. Either way, this report funded by Oracle NetSuite documents dangerous gap between what customers want (a simple, streamlined experience) and what companies are delivering (lots of annoying interactions). Worth a look.

Salesforce’s Dreamforce mega-conference is next week and the company’s publicity elves are already working overtime.  In the first of what are sure to be daily announcements this week, the company announced 100+ industry-specific prompts, data models, and AI capabilities across its fifteen industry clouds.  It also launched an AI Use Case Library to house its industry-specific AI offerings.