Are We Humanizing or Dehumanizing the Digital Experience?

• Read original article here

Maybe you can relate to this. My dog senses when I’m dealing with a poorly designed chatbot or automated phone system. Even before the four-letter words come out, she senses my frustration and strolls out to the next room.

For all the good will engendered by a great digital experience, a bad customer or employee experience can stamp a black mark on any organization’s brand.

In business’s drive to digital transformation and efficiency, humanizing the digital experience is vital. We want technology that understands us as people, what we say, what we need, and when we need it. The experience isn’t a thing itself, but it comprises any number of technologies: chatbots, robotic process automation, voice applications, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and easy internet access.

In this Quick Study, you can see how InformationWeek writers have been tracking the overall digital experience and some of the core components that shape that experience.

How We’re Doing on Humanizing the Digital Experience

A lot of time, effort, and money has been spent on humanizing the digital experience. So how are we doing so far? Well, it’s kind of a mixed bag. Here’s a look at some of the shiniest and dullest examples along the way.

As the pandemic drove more transactions and work online, the enterprise CIO's role expanded to be more focused on business, customers, and employee culture. At least three-quarters of CIOs say their role has expanded with new responsibilities but also greater influence on leadership decisions within their organizations.

CIOs and CFOs must forge strong partnerships to execute powerful digital transformation strategies and achieve larger organizational goals.

7 Tech Trends that will Change the Fintech Industry in 2022

The world of finance drastically changed when the pandemic finally unlocked the true value of fintech. This year, financial companies are dealing with growing adoption of digital banking, voice technologies, RPA and blockchain.

Why Customer Experience is the Driver for Modern Commerce Architecture

Since the pandemic, enterprises have upped their digital transformation strategies. To remain competitive today, businesses must adopt a customer-focused architecture that offers flexibility and agility.

What Some Customers and Employees Hate About Chatbots

Want to talk to a human? You're not alone. The fundamental problem with chatbots is language. Users are frustrated when chatbots don't understand them.

Human-Robot Teams: The Next IT Management Challenge

Productivity can skyrocket when people and robots work together, yet so can human frustration and fury. Managers face the task of building an environment where trust, harmony and efficiency enable that productivity.

The digitalization process has focused on digitalizing information. Business processes have changed, too -- but often with organizations not getting the impact that they thought they would. Do employees have the digital skills they need?

How AI Will Shape the Post-Pandemic Office Experience

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will permeate the enterprise as organizations prepare for the hybrid future of work, unlocking new levels of productivity but also presenting new challenges for employers.

Smoothing Out the Edges for Remote Digital Worker Experience

IT teams are facing a new normal with the shift to remote work. Here are some key steps they may not be considering (but should) to improve the digital experience.

Enabling Your Workforce for the Digital Workplace

Building the digital workplace helps increase agility and resilience, but there are distinct steps to implementing it effectively and updating the company culture, especially on an accelerated timeline.

Your employees may view automation as a threat rather than an asset. How can you shift their perspective and empower them to use automation to their own benefit?

ChatOps is on the Verge of a Breakthrough for the Everyday Employee

ChatOps adoption is rising across the enterprise, revolutionizing how organizations connect people, bots, and tools. Is there a way to democratize ChatOps so it can be used by the broader workforce and improve the employee experience?

Conversational AI: How It Works and Where It's Headed

The next person you speak with may not be a person at all. Welcome to the uncanny valley of conversational AI. It raises the possibility of chatbots designed to support complex tasks, such as organizing a daily schedule or pinpointing a fault lurking inside a complex mechanical device.

How Enterprises are Evolving Their NLP

Natural language processing is the subset of AI that powers voice bots and text-based analytics. Here's how it's evolving in the enterprise.

Bridging from Now to the Pure Digital Future

Enterprises embarking on a digital transformation need to consider augmenting traditional or legacy systems that continue to do the job, rather than ripping and replacing them.

Customers flocked to digital channels and faced life-changing events in 2020. Here's how enterprise companies are changing their CRM practices for a new normal.

We’ve experienced an explosion of tech investment, but productivity has not kept pace with this level of investment. Human-centered transformation is the reorientation of the organization to recognize and unlock the inherent value in its people, according to Forrester analysts.

The metaverse has arrived. Here's what CIOs need to know about it -- from business use cases, to risks, to vendor offerings from companies such as Microsoft, Nvidia, and Facebook.

Into the Metaverse: A Game-Changing Year for UI and UX

The pandemic has changed the way we work and how we interact with digital tools, challenging old assumptions, and even upending traditional business models.

Welcome to the metaverse, where virtual reality gets down to work. Your enterprise will never be the same. The metaverse's building blocks are already in place, providing the foundation for an entirely new enterprise landscape that focuses on how people interact and where they work.

How Execs Are Investing Now in the Metaverse’s Future

People are excited for the metaverse, but like any innovation, it’s going to take time and an immense amount of effort to make a fully immersive multi-platform digital world a reality.