From Reactive to Predictive

Historically, customer service reacted to problems as they arose. AI flips this previous script. By analyzing behavioral data, sentiment, and purchase patterns, AI can predict issues before they occur and proactively deliver solutions. Imagine your service team reaching out to fix a problem before you even notice it—this is becoming reality.

Personalization at Scale

Consumers crave experiences tailored to their preferences, but scaling personalization for millions of customers was once impossible. AI-driven recommendation engines, natural language processing, and dynamic content tools now make it seamless. AI doesn’t just know a customer’s name—it understands their intent, context, and journey stage in real time.

Seamless Omnichannel Interactions

Modern customers expect fluid transitions between chat, voice, email, and social platforms. AI-powered systems unify these touchpoints, ensuring context is never lost. Whether it’s a chatbot on your website or a voice assistant on your app, AI ensures the experience is consistent and connected.

Emotion Recognition & Sentiment Analysis

Beyond words, AI can read voice, verbatim, video and adapt to pace, and even facial expressions in video interactions. This means service agents can respond with empathy guided by real-time emotional cues—blending technology with human touch.

Continuous Improvement

AI systems learn from every interaction. They optimize scripts, refine FAQs, and adjust recommendations without manual intervention. This creates a feedback loop where CX is constantly improving, not just maintained.

So, what does this mean to management teams?

AI is turning Customer Experience from a cost center into a competitive advantage. Businesses that embrace AI-driven CX will be faster, more personal, and more predictive—delivering the kind of frictionless, anticipatory service customers didn’t even know they wanted. Those who wait will be stuck playing catch-up in a world where the best experience often wins the customer. The main challenge will be mapping CX metrics to business value – whoever focusses on these synergies will dominate future markets.

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Forrester predicts that more than half of large B2B purchases (everything above $1 million) will soon be made through digital self-service channels. Buyers will increasingly value a smooth, autonomous buying experience.

B2B-Buyer increasingly expect the same seamless, personalized, and self-directed experiences they encounter as consumers. (Forrester)

Gartner backs this trend with clear figures: by 2025, around 80% of all B2B sales interactions will take place through digital channels — making in-person sales conversations the exception. At the same time, a shift towards data-based decision-making is underway: about 60% of sales organizations will rely on data-driven rather than experience-based selling by 2025.

By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. (Gartner)

Technological drivers such as hyper-automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are merging processes, tools, data, and analytics into an integrated sales model. This makes sales less dependent on gut feeling and more reliant on precise, data-backed insights.

So, what does this mean for the sales management?

The future of sales is digital, automated, and data-oriented. Companies that want to succeed in this new environment must understand the latest trends in sales technology and rethink their sales models and strategy. The management teams need to shift towards smart, adaptive and personalizable systems that meet buyers where they are and empower decisions with intelligent technology. Only then companies will be able to make the shift from a seller-centric to a customer- and technology-centric sales approach be achieved, ensuring sustainable success.

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Consumers who want to reach out to brands and resellers for help, are fast in using social media accounts of brands. A quick direct message here, a public tweet there, or simply writing a review on the brand’s account site. Social media is becoming the contact point if companies want happy customers. Especially, when competitors are also on the same social network, the messaging and speed of reaction on engagement is essential for business impact and lead generation.

The study by Boston Global that asked 554 consumers makes clear why consumers follow and unfollow brands. or which content is relevant for them. In terms of content, there are two main reason why Instagram is relevant to consumers: a) to get to know more about products and b) to find information about their main hobbies. The conclusion is that the content of brands need to stick to the main business topics in order to stay relevant and drive business impact.

Furthermore, the study shows that social media helps customer service. Although a direct mail to the company or brand is the first choice, when there is a product question. The second way of approaching a brand on product problems is a direct message on the company page. Active and fast feedback of brands is essential in this case. It retains consumer loyalty, or regains customers that have made a negative product experience. Consumers unfollow brands predominantly as of irrelevant content, too high posting frequency and getting no feedback on direct messages on company pages.

And if you still think, social media is not important for your brand, then you better think twice. The study shows that especially Gen Z and Gen Y want to interact with brands on their social media accounts. Thus, dedicating serious resources to social media activities and leveraging the brand reputation on social platforms becomes an essential driver of business impact. Responding to consumers on social networks is appreciation and should not be underestimated for b2b and b2c companies.

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There is much hope and many questions around air mobility of the future. Whether drones will be all around us in 2050? Well, for sure logistic and service drones will change the world massively, but won’t taxi drones will have many challenges to succeed?

Many people in the innovation space around me wonder, if passenger drones become a transportation vehicle for the normal crowd, or if they will still remain a service for the well-off people who can afford it. Still, the race for urban air mobility is on.

Airbus has just recently presented their first VTOL. Volocopter announced a collaboration with Frankfurt airport to provide electric air traffic service. And Ehang has already been announced as China’s first pilot company to develop passenger drone programs. There is even rumors about Porsche getting in the game. And maybe, passenger drones are only one flying taxi service of the future, when Lilium Jet enters the market.

No wonder that many players are entering market for urban air mobility – it looks financially very attractive.

According to a global forecast by Research and Markets it was estimated to be USD 5.3 billion in 2018 and meant to come in at over USD 15 billion by 2030.

While some challenges for futuristic air transportation seems to be obvious, finding appropriate price modeling, availability of electric power, capability of batteries and reach, the fast loading time of batteries, and so on. The above mentioned collaboration between Volocopter and Frankfurt airport shows also the big need for infrastructure, air regulation, platform solutions, and the provider’s business model will make the difference how likely taxi drone services will be available and affordable for everyone. And maybe UBER Elevate already has the ultimate monetization model based on their car taxi business.

But one development in urban air traffic will become interesting from my perspective in the future: the trust of the passengers in the new flying objects. How will the public accept the urban air traffic service (Airbus has some answers)? What will happen to them, when a passenger drone falls from the sky one day? Will they stay on the ground for much longer than a crashed air plane series, because they are a new technology – or shorter, as only one to three people will be affected?

And how will people accept the noise above their heads in “smart cities” in the future. Will there be a ban for night flights as well? To inspire you a bit more, the Aerospace Industry Association has created some interesting futuristic vision of how transportation might look like in 2050. Watch it and have a think about it.

Vision 2050: The Way to What's Next from Aerospace Industries Association on Vimeo.

And afterwards, maybe you want to read some challenging background view of a futuristic world by reading and discussing my perspective on the “Brave Smart World” ahead of us.

Whether all this will happen in 2050 or sooner, we will see…

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Deloitte conducted a worldwide study with 2000 C level managers, in order to understand personas handling the digital transformation better than others. The study found interesting insights in the opportunities and challenges attached to the development of the industry 4.0. It shows that those CXO decision makers who unify various characteristics in their position. Industry 4.0 leaders clearly define their spectrum and will be more efficient than other decision makers. What does this mean in details?

Compared to previous studies, CXOs have gained a deeper understanding of the challenges alongside the Industry 4.0 changes. In general, they know how to tackle those challenges better. Deloitte wanted to analyze which CXOs make the biggest progress in their development towards an Industry 4.0 company. Furthermore, they analyzed how these leaders differ from the rest of their peers.

Four successful personas

The Deloitte study identifies four topic fields which will drive CXOs to more success in the adoption of industry 4.0 strategy: Social Supers, Data-driven Decisives, Disruption Drivers und Talent Champions. In relation to other leaders, it means that Industry 4.0 leaders do the following:
– invest more in disruptive technologies
– put more emphasis on ethical aspects
– base their decisions more on data-based outcome
– train their employees more on the future workplace of tomorrow.

Now, figure out yourself which personal ingredients you have got as a leader for industry 4.0 adoption…

Deloitte 2019_Infographic_Final

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The survey is conducted by the Forsa Institut on behalf of the “Deutschland – Land der Ideen” (“Germany – Land of Ideas”) initiative and come to the conclusion that the significant majority is extremely open minded towards new mobility concepts and innovations like flying taxis or unmanned drones for short distances. But the other outcome is typically german as well. Personal vehicles are still very popular and an inextricable part of daily life for significant majority of the survey participants. But approximately one third of those questioned would forgo possession of a personal car and instead opt to use car-sharing services.

All detailed results of the survey will be published within the scope of the Deutscher Mobilitätspreis (German Mobility Prize). This year, prizes are being awarded for digital solutions aimed at increasing the overall level of sustainability for transport and logistics. Recipients of the ten awards will be announced at the beginning of August 2018.

So which trend we will observe over the next few years? Would you replace your personal car with a shared one from a sharing service? 

Source title picture: https://pixabay.com/de/auto-fahrzeug-zukunft-future-2651594/

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Top 3 recommendations when producing video

There are for sure thousands other helpful hints for people when thinking about the use of videos. But in this case I want to share and underline the following three from Richard Gutjahr because they are the base for everything coming from this point on when you are a producer of video content. Today all of us have a camera with us and by that we are able to produce video content where ever we are. Back in the days this was a problem of quality but with the more and more advanced mobile devices this is not longer a valid point to not produce videos on the road.

Never zoom

Maybe a simple and banal point but the benefit of this hint comes for me when thinking a little bit more about it. Did you use the zoom in your videos?

Use sound

Sound should be part of each video because the real message would not be transferred otherwise. Especially when you produce interviews like this one in the following video it simply doesn’t make sense to produce it without sound. In addition to the sound aspect Richard also recommends to invest some amount of money in a good sound solution like good microphones to improve a video by using sound instead of reduce the overall quality by having a bad sound.

Just do it!

For me the most important point but this applies not only to the production of videos. It is a recommendation for more or less everything in this exciting time in which we live. You can replace video in this case with social collaboration, digitalization and may other business areas either people or companies are dealing with these days. Just do it! Whatever challenge you are facing, do it!

Source title picture: https://pixabay.com/de/youtube-iphone-smartphone-mobil-2617510/

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Some weeks ago we had the pleasure to speak at the famous Camp Nou Stadion where the FC Barcelona host the micro-conference in cooperation  with Allianz. Both parties discussed questions with the audience like ‘how technology can help improve the future of health’ or ‘how can we benefit from the data we collected to improve actual processes’.

I think an insurance company needs to think about innovation in an broader sense in terms of technology, in terms of sensors and in terms of data. If we can co-create and if we can partner with these kind of companies we will have new technologies, new services, new innovations which will also drive the brand of Allianz which is a very much trusted brand. I am quite sure that innovation is gonna be a big driver for the future in terms of the healthcare industry and in general.

Martin Meyer-Gossner, CEO and Founder The Strategy Web.

We would be very happy to get your opinion in this context. So please feel free to leave a comment to this post or visit us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. 

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Elon Musk, Founder and CEO of Tesla (https://www.flickr.com/photos/heisenbergmedia)

These pods would ideally be better than subways and shuttles because they can reach speeds up to 125 mph and would leave you closer to your destination thanks to thousands of small stations. People are voicing concerns about safety, travel time, and cost of this system, but some see it as the future of mass transit.

Quote: https://mashable.com/2018/03/13/elon-musk-urban-loop/#gTVfZ5ur_Zq2

What do you think? Could this be a valid vision for the future of travel?

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Based on the same ASES-concept mentioned in the article Innovations within the automotive industry Daimler is working on the same topics but in another sequence (at least for the abbreviation). The industrial acronym for the four most important areas of the future automotive industry is called ACES. At Mercedes Benz it is called CASE which stands for Connectivity, Autonomous driving, Sharing and Electrification. Wilko Stark, VP Strategy at Daimler and Head of CASE demonstrated some of the most valuable reasons why it os so important for Mercedes Benz to attend the South by Southwest (SXSW) 2018 in Austin. “The SXSW it is all about connectivity and technology. This is also something we want to push forward within our CASE business unit at Mercedes Benz.”

What is your opinion? These kind of cars will be on our streets very soon? 

More information about the Concept EQ:
http://mb4.me/concepteq

Source title picture: https://www.mercedes-benz.com/de/mercedes-benz/next/e-mobilitaet/concept-eq-mobilitaet-neu-gedacht/

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