IBM Watson At Your Service: New Watson Breakthrough Transforms How Brands Engage Today’s Connected Consumers

Ushering in a new era of cognitive computing systems, IBM today unveiled the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor

Delivered From the Cloud and Into the Hands of Mobile Consumers, Watson Provides Faster, Personalized Service For Smarter Commerce Top Brands Tap Watson’s Ability to Crunch Big Data and Provide Fast, Personalized Advice for Empowered Consumers

Ushering in a new era of cognitive computing systems, IBM today unveiled the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, a technology breakthrough that allows brands to crunch big data in record time to transform the way they engage clients in key functions such as customer service, marketing and sales.

Now businesses can better serve consumers with a cognitive computing assistant that learns, adapts and understands a company’s data quickly and easily, enabling users to have IBM Watson at work quickly, while increasing its knowledge and value over time.

Two years after its triumph on Jeopardy!, the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor is a first of a kind system designed to help customer-facing personnel assist consumers with deeper insights more quickly than previously possible. Delivered through cloud-delivered services and online chat sessions, IBM Watson will empower a brand’s customer service agents to provide fast, data-driven answers, or sit directly in the hands of consumers via mobile device. In one simple click, the solution’s “Ask Watson” feature will quickly help address customers’ questions, offer feedback to guide their purchase decisions, and troubleshoot their problems.

Leading brands from a variety of industries are exploring how the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor can help them engage with their customers, including ANZ, Celcom, IHS, Nielsen and Royal Bank of Canada.

“We envision Watson to serve as cognitive assistant, adept and quick at making sense of Big Data, that can empower our regional bank advisors to better serve our two million wealth management clients across the region,” said Joyce Phillips, CEO Global Wealth and Group Managing Director, Marketing, Innovation and Digital, ANZ Banking Group. “We are pleased to explore with IBM how Watson can enable smarter, faster financial recommendations – yielding a customer experience that is simple, personalized and steeped in data-informed insights.”

“Around the globe and across platforms, Nielsen provides insights into what consumers watch and buy—helping marketers engage with their customers in the smartest possible way,” said Randall Beard, Global Head, Advertiser Solutions for Nielsen. “Our work with IBM’s Watson is the latest from the Nielsen Innovation Lab, founded to advance research in advertising effectiveness. Watson’s unique capacity to uncover insights from Big Data by simply posing a question in natural language is incredibly powerful. Using Watson, we will explore the ways we can help agencies and their client brands more effectively engage with consumers across devices and improve the impact of their advertising and media plans.”

Part of IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative, the newest capabilities of IBM Watson are a natural fit for customer engagement, based on its ability to understand the nuances of human language, process questions akin to the way people think, and quickly cull through vast amounts of big data for relevant, evidence-based responses to its human users’ needs.

The rise of the digital consumer has spawned a range of online, mobile and social media commerce trends that require businesses to deepen their interactions with customers and transform the way they provide marketing, sales and service. Consumers expect brands to know them individually, deliver personalized interactions and self service options. Business leaders — such as chief marketing officers, customer experience leaders and heads of sales — must transform the way they interact with consumers to build brand loyalty and improve customer service.

The key to success: IBM Watson, via cognitive computing intellect, can proactively engage with a business’ customers, and continuously learn from interactions, anytime and anywhere, providing fast, more accurate and personalized interactions.

The IBM Watson Engagement Advisor will help companies make their interactions count by knowing, delivering and learning what each customer wants – in the context of their preferences and actions – sometimes before even the customer knows it themselves. Consider these findings:

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