Now is the time to be preparing to take a leading role in the future ICT landscape, and to be identifying the strategic and organizational transformation processes needed to get there.

Do you know Anna? Last week I had a chat with her. She is a likable young woman who wears a blue and yellow polo shirt. I asked her for the fastest way to get to IKEA. Anna answered by giving me a sketch showing the route to the IKEA store in Cologne. Anna appears in a pop-up window when you go to the IKEA home page. She looks a little bit like an avatar, but there is nothing technological about her; in fact, she has a friendly smile which makes a very human impression on you. Anna is a Lingubot. You can communicate with her by typing questions into a text window, and she answers in complete sentences. This is impressive indeed, and evidently substantially better service than the listing of links such as provided by a search engine on the Internet. When I asked about the least expensive rug, Anna automatically opened the IKEA page with the relevant products. Not “one click” – “zero click as a service”! Cool! Of course, having had a small taste of her abilities, you get curious about exactly what Anna can do, just how “intelligent” she really is.

I put Anna to a genuine test and ask her a personal question: “Anna, how old are you?” What I expect is a pop-up reporting a system error, telling me the question is not allowed, or possibly to be forwarded to an IKEA page on which the word “old” appears in a product description. Anna’s reply: “I‘m 29, but age is not really important to me.” Well, well – hats off! “And what is your last name?” “You can just call me Anna, that’s what all of my friends call me.” I have to admit: Anna is really pretty smart. (More about Anna and other innovations in customer service can be found in the Detecon study “Customer Service of the Future”.)

Shoppers in 2032 will look back and say that Anna was a precursor to the smart agents which by that time will dominate interaction and transaction on the Internet. Just imagine that Anna is able to recognize faces and voices and can also answer in her own voice. Suppose that her knowledge is not limited to IKEA, but extended to other companies who are networked by the Internet – or, more precisely: by ICT. Imagine that a smart agent is able to access the product and warehouse inventories of these companies. Anna would then be able to coordinate the ­entire furnishing of a room, not just the rug, and include services such as transport and installation as well. But only, of course, if the consumers want this in 2032. This vision may raise some eyebrows, but what do today’s generation of digital natives think about it?

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