An introductory exploration of predictive recommendations powered by machine learning and other AI technologies.

1. HOW CAN A.I. MAKE
BUSINESS MORE
HUMAN?

2. PREDICTIVE PERSONALIZATION
● It’s ready for prime time
● It’s a gateway application
● It’s makes business more human
● It’s changing everything
● It’s the new standard
● It’s easier to use than you think
● Q&A
O
U
R
JO
U
R
N
EY

3. ABOUT ME

4. STARTUPS & ENTERPRISE
chris.mohritz@10xeffect.com
● Lead a startup accelerator for web/mobile
● Also run corporate innovation events & consulting
● Using A.I. (machine learning) in business since 2009
A
B
O
U
T

5. Philosopher
MY PERSPECTIVE
Sherpa
vs.
Learn & lead by doing. Learn & lead from theory.
A
B
O
U
T

6. IT’S READY FOR PRIME TIME

7. And what better way to demonstrate that it’s ready for
prime time, than to show it live...
PS — this is an open source application written by yours truly

8. The app provides a list of items that
‘may be of interest’ because they are
related to the primary item
The app also provides a list of items
that ‘may be of interest’ because they
are often bought/consumed at the
same time as the primary item
The primary item
These could be TV
shows, videos,
physical products,
blog posts
...pretty much
anything
gigaom.com/2017/02/08/building-a-recommendation-engine-using-microsoft-azure

9. Recommendations
Build
FBT Build
Model Application
Training
Catalog
Training
Usage
HOW IT WORKS
Related item
recommendations
Recommendations API
Frequently bought together
recommendations
Note: You can make different types of
predictions from the same dataset/model

10. ID NAME CATEGORY FEATURE #1 FEATURE #2 FEATURE #3
2005018 Clara Callan book Author=Richard Bruce Wright Publisher=HarperFlamingo Canada Year=2001
2255081 Spadework book Author=Timothy Findley Publisher=HarperFlamingo Canada Year=2001
2257203 Restraint of Beasts book Author=Magnus Mills Publisher=Harpercollins Uk Year=0
2558122 Angelas Ashes book Author=Frank Mccourt Publisher=Harpercollins Australia Year=0
6480764 Lost Girls book Author=Andrew Pyper Publisher=Harperperennial Year=0
6485200 The Piano Man's Daughter book Author=Timothy Findley Publisher=Britnell Book Wholesalers Year=1999
6485936 Dust book Author=Arthur G. Slade Publisher=HarperCollins Publishers Year=2001
6512062 Trials of Tiffany Trott book Author=Isabel Wolff Publisher=Harper Collins Publishers Year=1998
6514480 FUTON FEVER book Author=Dawn Anderson Publisher=HarperCollins Publishers Year=2000
6543545 The bookshop book Author=Penelope Fitzgerald Publisher=Flamingo Year=1989
6546684 Postcards book Author=E Annie Proulx Publisher=Flamingo Year=0
6547834 Miss Smillas Feeling for Snow book Author=Peter Hoeg Publisher=Flamingo Year=0
6550576 Red Leaves book Author=Paullina Simons Publisher=Flamingo Year=0
6550649 Cocaine Nights book Author=J G Ballard Publisher=Flamingo Year=0
20198906 Joshua book Author=Joseph F Girzone Publisher=Macmillan Year=1987
TRAINING DATA
USER ID ITEM ID
85526 2005018
210926 2005018
116866 2005018
177458 2005018
8 2005018
123629 2005018
219008 2005018
41385 2005018
96054 2005018
11400 2005018
11676 2005018
263325 2005018
67544 2005018
200273 2005018
274004 2251760
It’s that simple!
Catalog file. Usage file.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19m--YY2qVPM1r23KLZ9Q9zP2u4i1OoJdZkCNDbTOoNk/edit
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bpgBwp_KP6aYBFjeRqMxx6kzEkHeRRv7IeCQvQhKVsY/edit

11. PLAN PLAN LIMITS PRICE
Free 10,000 calls / mo Free
S1 Standard 100,000 calls / mo
$75 / mo
(overage at $0.75 / 1000 calls)
S2 Standard 1,000,000 calls / mo
$500 / mo
(overage at $0.75 / 1000 calls)
S3 Standard
10,000,000 calls / mo
(overage at $0.75 per 1K calls)
$2,500 / mo
(overage at $0.75 / 1000 calls)
S4 Standard 50,000,000 calls/mo
$5,000 / mo
(overage at $0.75 / 1000 calls)
PRICING

12. WHERE IS THE A.I.?
In the application’s ability to…
● ‘Understand’ what a specific customer likes &
dislikes
● To predict what other items a customer may like
As compared to ...
● Having people review past actions and generate
manual recommendations, or
● Only personalizing at the group level
Remember: A.I. is subjective

13. It’s here. It works. And it has a quick R.O.I.
IT’S READY FOR PRIME TIME
R
EC
A
P

14. IT’S A GATEWAY APPLICATION

15. If you’re looking for a place to begin your A.I. journey,
this is a good starting point...

16. ONE OF THE QUICKEST R.O.I.’s
Improving customer experience at the
marketing and sales level.
Marketing Support Product Admin
Innovatio
n
Quickest R.O.I.
Suggested implementation path

17. PEOPLE LIKE PERSONALIZATION
● 59% of consumers who have experienced personalization
believe it has a noticeable influence on purchasing
● 67% of consumers who have experienced personalization
are highly in favor of personalized coupons
● 69% of consumers believe a brand's consistency across
channels affects their loyalty
infosys.com/newsroom/press-releases/Documents/genome-research-report.pdf

18. AND THEY’RE HAPPY TO SHARE
Source: salesforce.com/form/service-cloud/state-of-connected-customer.jsp

19. TREATED LIKE PEOPLE, NOT
NUMBERS
“Modern customers want to feel
a real human connection with
brands and want technology to
enhance this connection, not to
replace sales and service reps.”
salesforce.com/form/service-cloud/state-of-connected-customer.jsp

20. FAMILIARITY AT EVERY
TOUCHPOINT
“When a local grocer or
bookstore owner remembers a
customer’s name, it means
something — it makes that
person want to come back.”
salesforce.com/form/service-cloud/state-of-connected-customer.jsp

21. AND PROVEN BENEFITS
ibm.com/watson/advantage-reports/market-report.html
600 decision makers worldwide, actively engaged in or planning A.I.-related initiatives

22. IT’S A GATEWAY APPLICATION
This application provides an easy entry point with
proven results and R.O.I.
Not to mention an open source application to
kickstart your project. And a ton of how-to guides to
keep things moving.
R
EC
A
P

23. IT MAKES BUSINESS
MORE ‘HUMAN’

24. WHAT MAKES US ‘HUMAN?’
Empathy.
The ability to understand and
share the feelings of another.

25. HOW DO WE SHOW EMPATHY?
When communicating with others, we uniquely tailor
how we speak with them.
We demonstrate that we appreciate their unique
wants, desires, circumstances, etc.
In effect, we personalize the experience they
have with us.

26. RELATIONSHIPS 101
And how do we build strong relationships?
Listen to what they say,
Take the time to understand who they are, and
Find ways to make their life better.

27. IT’S A QUESTION OF SCALE
Building deep meaningful relationships
takes a lot of work.
As human beings, we can only build great
relationships with a handful of people.
But A.I. can amplify that effort so you can build great
relationships with millions.

28. FOR EXAMPLE...
Pick one of your customers.
Read every piece of content they’ve ever put out — every
blog post, tweet, facebook update, Instagram image, etc.
How well do you know them now? Pretty darn well — you
understand them and can share their feelings.
That’s empathy.
And how well do you think you could market to them now?

29. A.I. is an amplifier.
It allows you build empathy at a scale and depth that is
simply beyond human capabilities.
● Model the habits, likes, dislikes and values of your
customers, then
● Predict the behavior of those customers and
personalize their communications accordingly
NOW SCALE THAT UP

30. Computers can dig deeper and personalize at a scale
that’s simply beyond human capacity.
This allows A.I.-powered brands to build deeper
relationships — with more customers — than was
previously possible.
MAKING BUSINESS MORE HUMAN
R
EC
A
P

31. IT’S CHANGING EVERYTHING

32. A PARADIGM SHIFT
PredictOptimize
vs.React to signals
Start with guesses
Foresee behaviors
Start with models
Up to now, businesses have focused on “optimizing”
their interactions. With A.I., we can now shift to
“predicting.”

33. Behavior
Prediction
Interest
Tracking
PREDICTIVE PERSONALIZATION
Pages & content they’ve visited
Emails they’ve opened/clicked
Resources they’ve used/downloaded
Products they’ve viewed/wishlisted/bought
Searches they’ve made
Blog
Store
Find patterns Determine what they want to
see/do/buy next (and when)
Days/time they’re active App
Search
Devices they’ve used (& geo location)
Email
Social
• Recommended posts
• Recommended products
• Delivery day/time
• Dynamic content
• Related posts
• Sales offers
• Related products
• Cross/up sell
• Dynamic pricing
• Dynamic content
• Sales offers
• Functionality
• Query suggestions
• Results ranking
• Sales offers
• Content curation
• Delivery day/time
• Retweet/reshare
Tribe
• Recommended topics
• Topic curation
• Member introductions
Your
customer
A.I.

34. CHANGING EVERYTHING
No longer is business constrained to ‘after-the-fact’
reactions. You can now predict what your customers
will want next before they even know it themselves.
And you have the ability to leverage that type of
prediction across any interaction you have with them.
Welcome to the era of ‘predictive.’
R
EC
A
P

35. IT’S THE NEW STANDARD

36. “Customer
experience is the
new battlefield.”
~ Gartner, 2015
accenture.com/us-en/insight-artificial-intelligence-ui
EXPERIENCE ABOVE ALL

37. Customer expectations rise universally.
You aren’t just competing against your direct
competitors.
You’re competing against the experiences your
customers get from any of the other brands they use.
AND...

38. PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS
Amazon has gotten very
good at delivering
ultra-precise
recommendations,
uniquely personalized for
each customer.
And now those customers
expect the same treatment
wherever they shop.

39. CONTENT RECOMMENDATIONS
Same with
YouTube…
Why should I
have to search
when YouTube
does such a good
job of presenting
the stuff I like.

40. If your customers have a remarkable support
experience with any brand they interact with...that
remarkable experience immediately becomes the
benchmark against which they judge all other brands.
And there are plenty of brands out there already using
predictive personalization systems.
IT’S THE NEW STANDARD
R
EC
A
P

41. IT’S EASIER THAN YOU THINK

42. START WITH COMMERCIAL APIs
Commercial Platform, Their Training Data
Commercial Platform, Your Training Data
In-House Platform, Your Training Data
A.I. M
aturity
← No training data required!

43. NOTHING NEW HERE
Most of the major cloud providers
have purpose-built A.I.-powered APIs.
Many have a free tier.
And they work exactly like
every other API you’re already using.

44. R
ESO
U
R
C
ESLOTS OF COMMERCIAL OPTIONS
Jumping back to our demo above, here are some
alternative commercial APIs…
● Amazon Machine Learning
● Oracle Cloud
● Google Cloud Prediction API

45. Start with a pre-trained cloud API (no training data
required). Maybe even an open source app.
Most cloud providers offer a free tier. So start thinking
about the different ways to use A.I. to personalize your
customer recommendations.
Then just start testing and see what you can do.
IT’S EASIER THAN YOU THINK
R
EC
A
P

46. NEXT STEPS

47. HOW-TO GUIDES
● Building Voice-Enabled Products With Amazon Alexa
● Cognitive Customer Engagement Using IBM Watson
● Harnessing Visual Data Using Google Cloud
● Building a Recommendation Engine Using Microsoft Azure
● Predicting Marketing Campaign Response Using Amazon Machine Learning
● Unleashing A.I.-Powered Conversation With IBM Watson
● Get into the Mind of Your Customer Using Google’s Sentiment Analysis Tools
● Discover Your Customers’ Deepest Feelings Using Microsoft Facial Recognition
● Give Your Products the Power of Speech Using Amazon Polly
● Computers Are Opening Their Eyes — and They’re Already Better at Seeing Than We Are
● How to Predict When You’re Going to Lose a Subscriber
● The Future of Business is a Digital Spokesperson — Let’s Build a Preview Using Microsoft’s Bot
Framework
R
ESO
U
R
C
ES

48. THAT’S ALL FOLKS!
2 A.I. Technologies that will have the greatest impact
● Computer Speech — 12:00-12:45 pm
● Computer Vision — 1:00-1:45 pm
2 A.I. Applications with the quickest R.O.I.
● Customer Engagement — 2:00-2:45 pm
● Personalization — 3:00-3:45 pm

49. JOURNEY’S END
● Predictive personalization is ready for prime time
● It’s a gateway application
● It’s makes business more human
● It’s changing everything
● It’s the new standard
● It’s easier to use than you think
R
EC
A
P

50. QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?
chris.mohritz@10xeffect.com
C
O
N
TA
C
T

51. THANK YOU