The Balance Sheet of Ability!

One of the kids got up with a pain in her ear  this morning. So, Papa dear rushed with her to the ENT. Well, the darling kid had a talk with Papa and composed and carried herself with absolute co-operation with the doctor. Papa was surprised. Kid talk with Mumma on "Mumma - <<KidName> did not cry at the doctor". That's a proud moment!

But that's not what I am writing about. While waiting our turn with the doctor, I saw a very interesting quote framed in the doctor's waiting room:

ABILITY

without

DEPENDABILITY, FLEXIBILITY and RESPONSIBILITY

is a

LIABILITY

:-) That was a Eureka moment! Wow! So, aptly put. (While writing this, I found that this is quoted in Shiv Khera's You Can Win. Kudos). That's what so many of us miss out on. Each of us has great skill-set. But no one could have put it better. 

In fact, if I coud add to it, Dependability, Flexibility and Responsibility, even with lesser Ability is still an Asset. In the many years that I have worked, I know of some gem of people who might not have the best of Ability, but their Dependability, Flexibility and sense of Responsibility has been exemplary, and they have been Assets wherever they have been! 

Well done to them! If there's something that I would like to inherit as my strengths and leave behind as a legacy, then those are definitely the above three traits that make an asset! 

Theorem & Corollary

The Practicality of Implementing #ChatBots

It's been three weeks since my last post about #ReadyFor2020 and how bots are there to change the future. It's also been close to three weeks since the launch of Phonon's Chatbot Trixie!

Have been asked many questions through my sales process. I thought it best to jot down some of my thoughts. 

Response Time: We've had a close to 90% positive response rate (usually within seconds) to tweets for flight status received on those #hashtags. Usually quicker than a 20 minute average response time and approximately 50% response time from manual #hashtag tracking. (Reminder to self: get a quantitative analysis done). And that's great. We've had some excellent likes and appreciations too.

Predictive Responses: While our information is sourced from public sources, our Bot tweeted the updates about Delhi airport delays in the last two weeks accurately. Here's a tweet from the drone incidence delays.  

Tweeting About Delays at Delhi Airport

The Bot is Supposed to Transact and Not Converse: This is a death of many technology implementations. We go for the overkill. How often does a customer make general conversation with a call center employee? But why do line managers often want Bots to be super-humans.Many discussions I have had have had the product owners ask the bot the toughest, most convoluted question they can. Nope, that's not how it works! That's probably something your top performers do. Your bot is supposed to reduce the work of bottom-performers so that you can afford better top-performers.

The best implementation strategy in bots is to focus on transactions and compromise on some more false negatives to have zero false positives. So, if in doubt, ask the bot to STFU and get a human to intervene. :-) 

Here's an example of how our bot STFU when it was asked a question beyond it's capability. We tracked #jetInstant and there was a counter question to which our bot kept quiet.

Keep quiet when you don't understand it

Bots reduce human errors and ambiguity. Here's an example of how our bot made a reply unambiguous and more importantly accurate. A flight 9W-856, was LKO/DEL/PNQ. The manual reply made a wee bit of a mess! It gave the departure time of the flight at LKO as the status at DEL. Luckily DEL departure was after the LKO departure. And compare that with the response of the bot!

Accuracy is Paramount

 In a nutshell - #ChatBots are the future. But be clever. Don't use them for #Chatting. Use them for #Transacting.

#ReadyFor2020 - Automation Will Be the Next Big Thing! Decrypting Artificial Intelligence

For all the debate around it, we all remember the infamous (sic) statement attributed in the 1940s to Thomas J Watson Jr., the then head of affairs at IBM. It is said that he said, "there world market for computers is five". Maybe it was related to just a particular type of machines or whatever it may be. In the early years of the Internet, Newsweek carried an article suggesting, Internet being, wait a moment, Baloney! 

Todays, there is a very interesting debate between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg about the threat of Artificial Intelligence or AI. These are people who have been key contributors to the growth of the Millenial Development. And there's no way I can take away an iota of credit away from this discussion. It's very engaging! And I am keenly following this.

Having said that, threat of Artificial Intelligence or not, the reality is written on the wall. Artificial Intelligence is the future. Automation will be the next big thing. And let's not be scared, typists went out of jobs when the personal computer came. But what about the new opportunities that computing and the connected internet created for our economy and humanity in general. 

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning or Automation, whatever we may call these, are probably the next big inflection in our world. And let's warm up to it. I again feel that many industry pundits or analysts are talking about chat-bots being a $1B market in the next 3-4 years are probably being way too (I would add many more Os to the too) conservative. 

Let's just think, even if AI automated 30% (grossly conservative by my estimates) of calls or emails being received by call centers. We are talking of 30% of a $400B or $120B global market by 2022. That's a huge chunk. So let's be prepared for it. 

On a personal fron, Phonon developed Click-to-Call™ in the period 2008-2010. Click-to-Call as a services is a defacto standard in the customer service industry today. Lifecycle for technology is short and getting ever compressed. We've got to be #ReadyFor2020! And Phonon's working towards Phonon 2.0 at a feverish pace. 

We've got some interesting products lined up and watch-out for some announcements later this week! In the meantime, here's a video with a sneak preview for what's in store.