Hotel Workers Fret Over a New Rival: Alexa at the Front Desk

Super interesting look into the response to new tech roll out that may affect service jobs. Specifically, how unions are responding--not trying to block it entirely, but instead to be involved in deployment, in some case with 6 months warning to given them “time to understand the effects.” At Reply, we do a lot of work with Hotels but our experience has been different than what’s described in this article--at The Cosmopolitan, for instance, staff adore Rose. They’re proud of her. Maybe hospitality Teamsters should use Elon Musk as a cautionary tale in contract negotiations?

Fresh Out of Y Combinator, Leena AI Scores $2M Seed Round

Well, someone was going to do it! A little late to the Chatbot party, but here is Leena AI to botify HR. Makes a ton of sense, HR is often understaffed with high turnover. All part of a greater trend in verticalization across the Chatbot industry.  Go get ‘em guys!

How Brands are Using RCS to Interact with Customers

Wow. While RCS is definitely still in early days, these results really speak for themselves. Things like Subways seeing a “144% increase in redemption rate compared to the same promotion using SMS.” That’s significant. We also appreciate and commend Google’s transparency and support of the developer/partner ecosystem involved in bringing this roll out to life. 👍

Google, You Auto-Complete Me

As this is a Friday issue of CBW, we leave you with this incredibly thought-provoking piece. With insights from experts including Tech Ethicist,  David Polgar, take some time this weekend to read this and ponder, as he does: “A lot of this predictive analytics is getting at the heart of whether or not we have free will: Do I choose my next step, or does Google? And if it can predict my next step, then what does that say about me?”