IBM Lab unveils new innovations to help c-suite leaders

BANGALORE, INDIA: IBM has unveiled a set of new innovations from its Customer Experience Lab dedicated to helping business leaders gain deeper insights into individual customers and transform the way customers experience their products, services and brands through the use of mobile, cloud and advanced analytics technologies.

The adoption of social and mobile technologies is growing, enabling companies and their customers to interact in new ways. Companies have a chance to gain new insights about their customers through the data produced by these interactions, and use this to shape their offerings around the wants and needs of an individual.

To help its clients successfully, IBM has established the Lab to invent new ways for them to provide best-in-class customer experiences across their many channels.

The Lab was launched in March, 2013, and IBM Research scientists and business consultants have worked together with more than 100 clients from across the world to co-create a variety of technologies and services to transform the front office, revolutionizing how companies interact and engage with customers.

Today, the world is moving into a new age of digital customers, which leaves an organization to look for new ways to reach out to its target audience. Organizations are reassessing how to drive brand loyalty and accelerate business growth by moving toward cultivating and creating new value from personalized customer relationships.

"Customers across the world are using innumerable channels, from social networks to online product review sites, to express their individual experience with products and services. This is fueling an explosion of data and driving a radical shift in how companies must engage with their customers to thrive and stay competitive." said Ramesh Gopinath, director, IBM Research-India.

"The innovations we are developing with clients in the Lab are enabling companies to transform their front office with speed and at scale, reshaping strategy, operations and offerings to attract, retain and exceed the expectations of an increasingly powerful customer."

Three technologies introduced

To help address the challenges and to help organizations capture and act on deeper customer insights, the Lab has introduced three new technologies that focus on driving innovation in social, mobile as well as big data and analytics technology.

These technologies, which are Edge Analytics, Vibes and Social Media Event Tracker Tool (SMETT), build on the work the team has completed around the Watson Engagement Advisor.

Edge Analytics connects people with contextual information. The tool cross-references the user's location with the user's activity to provide useful insights into the user's behaviour. Based on this, the system sends relevant promotions by email and mobile alerts to the user.

IndusInd Bank in India has embedded IBM edge analytics with its customer channels like internet banking, ATM, phone banking and more. This technology helps the bank better understand its own customers as well as helps it in reaching out to non-customers.

Vibes is an enterprise software solution that helps CMOs target consumers and communities that care about and participate in their industry. Interaction on social networks are cross-referenced with the purchase history of an individual in order to determine the areas of interest. Several telecommunications providers in India are currently piloting Vibes to identify the right set of candidates for promoting specific products.

Retailers are turning to SMETT to find out what people think about their products as it leverages natural language processing, text mining technology and advanced analytics to comb through millions of public social network messages to derive meaningful insights. The tool's ability to quickly derive insight about numerous related topics in any language could help a retailer find out why a product is popular or improve its online customer service.

A dedicated team of researchers and consultants will work with clients on customer insights, customer engagement, and employee engagement through the use of mobile, social, cloud and analytics technologies. The Lab brings together skills across disciplines including service science, industries research, security and privacy, cognitive computing, systems management and many more.