The Omni-Channel Lab’s annual summit took place in Rothenberge to review the Lab’s achievements of the last year and define the next steps for exchanging knowledge and potential collaboration with members of partner universities.
Writing the future of customer service
During the last 12 months, the Lab has focused on digital and data-driven innovation, from systems that enable automated monitoring on social media channels across brands and industries, to ever-more realistic chatbots and accurate recommender engines.
And we will be further exploring the potential of quantitative methods and cognitive science, including how the application of smart algorithms, such as recommender engines, can boost sales while also enhancing the customer experience.
Advances in artificial intelligence and digital communications are presenting new opportunities to deliver personalised and meaningful interactions with customers, and doing this consistently. However, they can also present new challenges as customer behaviours rapidly change and expectations continue to rise.
The partnerships created by the Lab will continue to help us to address such challenges and better realise new opportunities in the short and long-term.
Facing challenges together
One of the strongest aspects of the Lab, and which was clearly evident at the summit, is the partnership between the world of academia and private sector. This brings together the very best theoretical and practical experiences to fuel innovation, which can be implemented in the real world.
This collaborative approach to sharing data and knowledge steers us towards new ideas that are relevant to engaging and servicing the needs of customers in an omni-channel world. It’s helping us to create prototypes, concepts, algorithms and overall solutions that meet both the challenges of businesses and customers.
The participants reflected the academic/industrial aims of the Lab and included members of the ‘core team’ - Karsten Kraume (CIO/CSO Arvato CRM), Prof. Jörg Becker, Prof. Gottfried Vossen and Prof. Heike Trautmann, Klaus Voormanns and Jiaqing Zhong from Arvato, and three PhD candidates (Matthias Carnein, Markus Heuchert and Leschek Homann) – plus external attendees including, Prof. Daniel Beverungen from the University of Paderborn, Prof. Stefan Stieglitz from the University of Duisburg/ Essen, Dr. Michael Emmerich from the University of Leiden, Dr. Christian Grimme and Dr. Mike Preuss from the University of Münster, and Thorsten Hanisch, Oliver Geisser and Uwe Uhr from Arvato CRM.