Emotions - The new oil for Data Analytics

They say a picture speaks a thousand words and and these words speak of the emotions in the same. I guess most human emotions spring from desires. The stronger the desire, the stronger would be the emotions. Emotions find expression through our speech and body language. A popular research has shown that only 7% of human communication is actually based on the actual words we say. As for the rest, 38% comes from tone of voice and the remaining 55% comes from body language.

Now demystifying this unsaid 93% can make a hell lot of difference to any marketer esp in a country like India wherein we are generally high on emotions

With the image and video recognition capabilities maturing fast in the Artifical Intelligence (#AI )and Machine Learning (#ML) world, marketers are now suddenly staring at exciting opportunities esp in the area of customer acquisition and loyalty retention. The chances of success in the marketplace are going to exponentially improve as AI technologies are now increasingly understanding the customer intent and emotions.

For example consider a journey of a typical retail customer of #BigBazaar or #Walmart or an #IKEA store. Observe her emotional journey

Its full of emotions expressed either in the digital or non digital channels. Indian retailing brands like #Future Retail, #Pantaloons, #Trent, etc have done pretty well till date by just understanding the pulse of the country by operating in the 7% space on stated customer needs. Sadly, that local differentiator can be soon neutralized by digital technologies like Image and video recognition api's offering by Machine Learning/Artifical Intelligence platforms like #Watson, #Google Cloud, #AWS #Azzure etc

New entrants like IKEA, Walmart and Amazon are focusing on the 93% which mines the emotions in the unsaid form. They want to literally "Mind read" or understand the intent of the customer by mining the emotions. Digital technologies like tonality detection, image recognition, video disintegration, IOT, and prescriptive analytics are now creating a new world of possibilities.

A digital capability like image recognition or video analytics can just be disruptive. Walmart or IKEA can mine customer movements within the store. A customers walking in a store or mall display a range of emotions while interacting with the store managers or the merchandise. A raised eyebrow would go up to express doubt and a genuine smile can be recognized when it creates the crow feet like crinkles at the tip of her eyes. This seen in the context of a discount being offered or in the way the merchandise is placed or priced can give a whole new meaning.

In every interaction, the customer through whatever emotions knowingly or unknowingly tries to give a message to his marketers. The technology can now pick these streams of messages on a real time basis and feed to a cognitive backend engine which will churn out an insight for taking the next best action towards winning the customer. (I would have loved it of the storage racks moved automatically to serve the customers exactly the product running in your mind :)... may be in the future Or may be the customer just walked around the store, felt products and winked at the ones she liked for the same to be delivered home.) Imagine the disruptions video analytics can bring once it matures as a technology in terms of analytics.

As technologists we need to prepare our organizations for the future wherein the systems become humane. Systems need to be built to be cognizant of the underlying intent/emotion throughout the customer life cycle.

CAN WE DESIGN OUR SYSTEMS CONSIDERING ONE SIMPLE PRINCIPLE

===========================================================

"COGNITIVE FIRST"

============================================================

As always, would like you to continue the chain of thoughts through your comments.

Ciao

deepak.bhosale@gmail.com