CallMiner, the leading provider of speech and customer interaction analytics, today announced that African Bank has selected the CallMiner Eureka platform to better extract and operationalise insights from voice-based customer interactions. "With CallMiner, we will be able to create an even stronger customer experience by analyzing what our customers need, how they feel, and what we need to do, to deliver exceptional value and service," "African Bank is fast becoming a pioneering data-driven South African organization and our partnership with CallMiner is another part of our journey to make our organisation synonymous with data excellence and to enhance our digital transformation. At the core of our data strategy are our customers – to create an inclusive, personalised banking experience for them and we believe CallMiner provides another tool to bring us one step closer to achieving this." CallMiner Eureka leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyse every customer interaction, across all channels, to automatically uncover actionable insights and intelligence that organisations can use to improve business decisions. African Bank will start analysing voice interactions through its three contact centres initially.

Whilst UK business executives are increasingly interested in investing in AI, with over 80% thinking AI would add value now and in the future, 4 in 5 respondents recognise that there is a lack of knowledge in their organisations when it comes to understanding different AI technologies. This is a key finding from the latest research conducted by Odigo and Davies Hickman Partners with a UK sample of 205 business executives across different sectors in 2020. Odigo, a Capgemini brand formerly known as Prosodie-Capgemini, helps large organisations connect with individuals through world-class, cloud-based contact centre solutions. Its cutting-edge, proprietary technologies enable a seamless, efficient, omnichannel experience for its customers and a satisfying, engaging experience for service agents. Odigo serves more than 400,000 agents and business users globally.

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)? In simple terms, IoT refers to connected devices that work over the internet. But it's increasingly being known for devices that we interact with like Google Home and Amazon Echo (Alexa). IoT is disrupting existing markets and creating new ones by increasing efficiency and reducing costs. IoT is nothing new but the number of devices and people using them has grown tremendously in recent years.

For years it's been accepted that a bad IVR interaction can damage the overall customer experience. So why are some organisations now in danger of repeating the same mistakes when it comes to deploying the latest AI-powered chatbot solutions? The sheer volume of invitations currently landing in my inbox for seminars promoting the shift to conversational AI indicates that there's an accelerating move towards the world of bots – but what's actually happening at the CX coalface? The reality is that things are quite confused – particularly with regard to who's actually responsible for driving the success of today's major chatbot projects. The CX team is keen to get their chatbot initiatives underway, and launching them is relatively straightforward as there are plenty of available bot frameworks for IT to get started with.