There’s some chatter in the gurusphere that voice devices will replace smart phones as the primary personal electronic device. Color me skeptical but we do have this item that self-service customer care vendor Zappix has made its interactive voice response tools available on Amazon Alexa. It makes sense: Alexa already hears you curse when something doesn’t work, so she might as well offer to help.
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.
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.