A session at IBM Amplify 2017 covered challenges of omni-channel customer engagement in the digital era and how cognitive capabilities like IBM Watson can help deliver a seamless experience.
Some of the challenges in creating a seamless omni-channel experience include:

• Data
• Lack of insights
• Organizational silos
• No single view of the customer across channels

Data is the competitive advantage – data you possess + data outside your firewall + data that’s coming.
Today, many business users are having to use multiple tools. Learning and training is excessive.
Cognitive capabilities increase customer engagement:

• Delivers personalization
• Finds the right product
• Predicts customer needs
• Differentiates your brand
  • Informing with cognitive search

Shared insights orchestrate and recommend the right business action to take, depending on the business function. All of them play a role in servicing the customer.
Insights and examples of cognitive functions from a session demo:
Sleekfit 3.0 fitness watches – IBM Journey Designer, part of the IBM Marketing Cloud
Goal: Deliver the right experience to the customer.
Drive in-store purchases for larger-transaction customers.
Search: Watson can create suggested tags, rather than manual metadata.
Intelligent sequencing: move the watch to the top spot.
Unpredictable delays: Watson Supply Chain notification for a snow storm in the region of supplier.
Sudden drop in revenue: Watson order optimizer – make sure customers are happy while waiting on additional supply.
Anomaly detection: Watson Commerce Insights, i.e., the category manager gets a notification that there’s a drop in revenue for a product. Watson shows that there is a 13% drop in views, 10% drop in competitors’ price. Watson takes it to the next step. Competitor Rule creation to take action.
Checkout: button for in-store consultation. The store representative has the Watson Customer Engagement app. He or she sees information on Cassie, the customer profile for up-selling. Contact information, wish list, recommendations, promotions.