Meeting customer expectations will soon require AI investments

Customers are becoming "impatient narcissists," according to Rick Davidson, president and CEO of the consultancy Cimphoni. "They want what they want, and they want it now," he said during this presentation on cognitive computing for the enterprise at the recent Fusion CEO-CIO Symposium in Madison, Wis. Today's technology-connected customers care about wait times, ease of use and responsiveness. The deeper the technology is integrated into their lives, the more they'll expect from the companies they do business with, Davidson warned. CIOs should begin to consider the machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) investments they'll likely have to make to meet evolving customer expectations.