***
The world has already changed, the transformation has already begun. We ourselves, by our own will, become devices for reading instructions from a computer and smartphone. We think that we know how to do it right, but increasingly we turn to the search for an answer on the Internet. And we do as someone wrote on the other side of the screen, blindly trusting him if he guessed right. A person does not think critically if his desire is satisfied. Critical thinking slides to zero. We are ready to plunge headlong into what inspires confidence and reveals our even hidden desires. But there, on the other side of the screen, is no longer a man, but a program. That is the trick. The corporate program guesses the desires of consumers and gains their loyalty. I guessed that one step remained before the creation of desires. And the person will be completely driven by the machine. I guessed, but so far did not attach much importance to this. While there was a result that we liked.
And I began to understand why large corporations eat small ones. Not only because they can accumulate large funds for their purchase. They have big data about the behavior of their customers, which are nowhere to buy. And so they have the ability to manipulate the opinions of customers. Just revealing features that influence the selection on large statistics.
Procurement and Price Automation
When a month later we screwed up scoring on the site, recommendatory search and creation of banners, I made a presentation showing the effectiveness to the board of directors. How many operations we have canceled, how many additional sales we have made with newsletters and banners. The general was noticeably pleased. But he only succinctly said that we continue in the same spirit. Later, they ran to me from the staff to sign a new amount in my contract. She was one and a half times taller. And in marketing, they were discussing very lively who would be doing what now.
We decided to mark the team and dumped everything together in a bar. Max congratulated us and himself on Skype. He did not like such parties. In the evening he wrote: “It's time to take up purchases. The most cesspool. Be ready".
“Where do we start,” I wrote to Max in the morning.
- From inventory. I already looked at the statistics and sent you. Merchants do not guess stocks at all, use a primitive approximation function. The error is such that they overload the warehouse by 15%, then you have to sell it to zero. And the goods in demand are often not enough, zeros are formed on the remainder. I will not even consider how much margin flies so as not to be upset.
- How are we going to guess purchases?
- There are statistics for a couple of years, although they guessed to keep it. I’ll start Raptor, feed him all the features that you can collect. And we will check on the current sales data.
- What data should be collected?
- Yes, any that can influence or simply correlate with sales. Weather forecast, exchange rates, increase in prices by suppliers, supply disruptions, everything you can find in statistics. Buy chocolate for analysts and get everything from them.
- What are the forecasts?
- If we do everything correctly, then the error in the formation of inventory for the period will not exceed an average of 2-3 pieces.
- It sounds fantastic.
- You said the same when you started doing marketing. By the way, client analysis will be needed here, one of the features will be a generalized basket of clients.
- What does it mean?
- Dependence of procurement on the joint sale of goods. You cannot buy 10 pieces of product A without buying 4 pieces of product B if they are sold together in 40% of cases. Is this clear?
- Cool.
- We’ll fix it in a month and a couple of weeks for setting up. And you need to please the sales director that now his fighters will not steer purchases soon.
It seemed just after such an enchanting presentation of the results of the implementation of the marketing module. But after the first conversation with the procurement director, I realized that it would be difficult. Merchants just do not give up purchases to the car. Always and everywhere, what and how much to buy was decided by the manager. This was his unique competence. Instead, we proposed simply completing the procurement system’s tasks. To negotiate and conclude contracts. The procurement director had one argument: “If the system is wrong, who will answer? Who should I ask? From your system? So I can at least blame Ivanov or Sidorov. The counterargument that the check gave an error was much less than what the merchants do, it was not convincing. “Everything works on toy data, but anything can happen in battle,” the director retorted. I went upset, but did not say anything to Max yet. It was necessary to think it over.
“There is a problem in the system,” he received a message from Max at six in the morning.
- What happened?
- We analyzed the sales of purchases that people made. They are crooked, and sales are crooked too. The system is poorly guessing sales.
- And what to do? Where do we get the data that we need to purchase? We have nothing but sales, which businessmen are looking at.
- Why do managers decide what customers need? Let the customers decide what they need. We will simply analyze their requests on our website.
- This is unexpected, but true! And how do we compare what they were looking for with what to buy? Requests are not always clear.
- It's simple, they do not find with us, but they are found in search engines. And we will search for the result of what is in online stores. There will be errors, but on big data it will smooth out.
- Brilliant.
- Thanks I know. We will set as a correction function to the retraining of the procurement model. It’s a long time to wait for the businessmen to buy, sell and it will fall into the model.
Rumors that we are doing a procurement system have spread rapidly. Some businessmen even stopped saying hello, but some came up and wondered what she would be able to do and how we were going to introduce her. I felt that the clouds were gathering, and I was ready to go to the general one before switching the inventory management to our trained model. But Max suggested first to refine the system.
- We need an automatic system for setting and changing prices. Without systematic and uniform pricing, the procurement model fools and goes astray. Prices must be promptly changed to a competitor so as not to lose margin. Merchants here and mess.
- I agree, but it will be difficult ...
- You need to write price parsing on competitors' websites. Only how to compare with our positions? I don’t want to include hands here.
- We have positions with manufacturers 'articles, they are on competitors' websites.
- Exactly. Then make it easy, take care of the list of competitors for each category. And I’ll think about the admin area, in which we will introduce the rules for changing prices. How much to change with different demand and margins from the purchase of goods. It will be necessary to incite the Raptor.
- Well, the prices are still changing by the managers themselves when they manage to see the prices of competitors, or when the supplier changes them. I'm not sure that I will be able to persuade to give this to the system.
- Yes, they do not change anything, I looked, only increase, and then rarely. No one changes anything quickly. It looks like there is no time for merchants to look at prices. And it is unrealistic to keep track of the matrix of thousands of products, multiplied by a dozen competitors. Need a system.
- Do ready-made such systems exist?
- Find something suitable. You prepare a report on the transfer of pricing to the machine, I will give you statistics and an approximation of what will result from the automation of the operational change in prices for competitors.
- It will be harder to do than with marketing, I have already spoken with the procurement director. He is against it so far, only as a hint.
- The system has 20% of prices that no one has changed for 2-3 years. And most likely they are selling them by minus. This is not enough?
- I'm afraid not. These are people, you understand. We are depriving them of power over procurement, they will seek arguments to overthrow our forecasting system. They simply wouldn’t buy what she was offering.
- Well, let's make it easier. She will recommend it, and after a quarter we’ll calculate the difference how much the system recommended and how much the merchant bought. And we will see how much the company lost on this. Just don’t talk about the calculations to the directors, let it be a convincing surprise. In the meantime, let's get down to the next system.
It was a compromise. I agreed with the procurement director that the system would be recommended to merchants, but they would decide. Together we held a meeting with the general, where we presented the implementation plan. I only insisted that we conduct a performance assessment in a quarter. A month has passed.
- As long as they decide there with procurements, I will make fully automatic procurements - procurement requests will go through the API immediately to suppliers. Nothing for businessmen to do here.
- Wait, but not all the same it is possible to automate, the same work with the supplier, this is bargaining, human qualities are needed, the ability to communicate, to negotiate.
- Myths are all invented by people for themselves. And people with their negotiations, sympathies and other non-systemic features only spoil everything, make noise in the system. There are prices on the market, you must take the lowest price from a trusted supplier. Everything else is fantasy. We make a closed procurement exchange for accredited suppliers. The system will set lots, suppliers will compete, who is cheaper, the system will control the final price, expelling swindlers from the exchange. Everything. Merchants will only have accreditation. Although I’ll think about it.
- Well, there are other factors there, the history of relations, bonuses from the supplier.
- History - only for history, there is a market and price at the time of purchase. And no more history. This is all an excuse for raising prices. And bonuses must be taken into account, smeared on the price of the purchased item. These are all marketing tricks for people, but not for the system. The system will take into account the bonus in the bid price.
“You want to take the last from businessmen.”
- We have all taken away from marketers, why should we leave something to businessmen?
Three months passed, Max finished doing parsing and the procurement system. I took statistics on the markup for purchases of businessmen and calculated the margin if purchases were made on the recommendation of our system. Even without pricing, the losses were in the hundreds of millions. I sent a report to the general. There was a small earthquake in the office. The purchasing director and his deputy walked down the corridor red and angry, like the players of a losing football team. Merchants were exempted from purchases from the first of the next month. They could make purchases only for specific projects, as well as find suppliers of a new product that we discovered that customers did not find on the site. I again assembled the team at the bar, there was something to note.
Sitting at the bar, he exchanged jokes on Skype with Max. He also drank and eagerly joked back.
- How do you manage to write so much code? Others take months to do so. You write at most for one. Tell me honestly, do you keep a whole bunch of coders for interest?
“None of the advanced ones write the code themselves, baby.” Only juniors do this. I only think of architecture. And the most free code is full on github and in other places. It is written so much that it will last for many years. Why write, you need to be able to read the code and tweak it so that it works, despite the curvature of its unfortunate creator, who in despair posted it on the net. And connect via API to the common system as a microservice. I sometimes add an interface between microservices. And no gang.
Mashob in personnel search
According to our plans, it was the turn of the staff. It was the most non-computerized service in the company. And the staff needed to be strengthened before taking on sales managers. That was our plan.
- Well, where do we start automating personnel? - I started on Monday morning skype with Max before the sprint.
- Let's start with the selection of staff. Are they still looking for a resume themselves, through a keyword search on a hunter?
- Yes, but how else? They search for a long time, but find.
- There is an API. We’ll do the admin panel - I’ve listed the parameters of the desired candidate through a comma and wait for the resume. And you can put it on a constant search - as soon as a new resume with such qualities appears, it will immediately go to the personnel manager. Speed, speed decides everything. The first called - the first invited.
- It's right. I also heard that they are looking for tests of those who are inclined to such work and will be delayed. Actual for sales managers.
- No tests, Raptor to train on the resume and data from the social networks of those who are delayed and not delayed, a simple model, we will pass the resume received from the hunter through it with an additional pull-up of data from candidates on the social network.
- Let's search by psychotype, but we have an algorithm for determining the psychotype on social networks.
- What for?
- We have a psychotype of decision-makers. We will attach for compatibility. The likelihood of a deal will increase.
“Well, you see, and you have cool ideas, and you complained,” Max snapped unexpectedly, but inoffensively.
“We’ll also make him a system of the first dialer and invitation somehow,” I added to finally confirm my class.
In contrast to the history of procurement in the personnel department, our system was received with a bang. They still have a lot of work left, the first job interview and verification of documents and the signing of contracts, no system could not take from them yet. This is the work of people with people. The system was made quickly, since the hunter had a good API. We were ready to proceed with the most difficult thing - sales. But Max suddenly changed his mind.
Eyes in stock
- Before automating salespeople, everything else needs to work like a clock. We need to do logistics. They also mess on the timing and accuracy of assembly orders. You can’t replace them with automatic assembly yet, we will help them others.
- How can we help? I can’t imagine yet, there is continuous physical labor, it is not automated by programs. Let's start making robots?
- You have a good mood today. No, not robots, but eyes. Let's make two systems. The first is a mobile application for determining from a photo a product code that came from a supplier. Will immediately show the storage location in the warehouse. Accelerate the reception of goods. The second is the system for recognizing the movement of the storekeeper during the assembly of the order. Tracker with recognition of the goods collected in the basket. They are unlikely to like it, but they will stop hanging around the corner.
- We do not have specialists in machine vision.
- No, order on the side, with pre-trained product recognition systems. There are such, read somewhere, you will find. In the meantime, I will be engaged in a monitoring system.
- Monitoring of what? You did not tell.
- It is necessary to control all processes, not just logisticians.
- Why such total control?
- In the customer analysis, we add a chain with a survey on the satisfaction of those who received the order. We will immediately identify when customers have problems.
- This is a good idea, there are a lot of complaints in the contact center. But why monitoring?
- To combine customer problem information with process failure information. This will immediately identify where the cause of the failure in working with clients. And promptly eliminate. Fewer customers will have time to suffer, more sales and profits.
- Who will eliminate these failures?
- Operational management, but why are they still needed? The task of people is to influence people. Failures in 99% of cases are associated with the work of people. A couple of warehouse workers fell ill and did not go to work - customers did not receive orders. The manager must quickly transfer people to another site. Or put a longer processing time in the system so as not to deceive customers. That's all.
In the first month, the implementation of the warehouse program increased the speed of assembly orders by a quarter. It turns out that everyone knew, but could not catch the warehouse on the fact that they hack. But not everyone was happy with the process monitoring system. The statistics became clear who performs how many operations. The difference between individual managers was at times. Just someone worked, and someone worked sometimes. I myself did not expect this and at first did not even believe it. After providing comparative statistics for the office, several waves of earthquakes swept through. Some leaders in the planning meeting looked at me as a fierce enemy. But no one tried to openly oppose the project.
Sales without sellers
Finally, we were ready to automate the most important link - sales managers. It was the most untouchable caste. It was possible to slow down marketing and criticize purchases, but sales were always separate - they brought revenue. There was no automation in sales. There was a task book in which orders were written to customer managers. It was a manager’s activity diary, which they formally filled out on Fridays for the whole week. It was impossible to verify whether the manager was at the client in the office or only noted that he was at the meeting. Neither mail nor calls were recorded. As the good-natured leaders of some sales offices said, the manager goes to meetings 10-15 times a month. The rest of the time they are sitting on the phone in the office. And it processes incoming orders, although there is a contact center for this. Everything was like in a classic crisis - everyone knows that nothing is working as it should in theory, but no one dares to change something. The tops cannot, the lower classes do not want. And now we had to break into this conservative system with our automatic sales management system. The sales director was much sterner than the purchasing director. And I was even afraid to talk to him without a general. But it was necessary to take on a key link in the sales chain. But first it was necessary to discuss with Max.
- Where do we begin to disband sales? I began Monday morning.
- With accounting and control. Salespeople are the only ones who are not subject to the system.
- It sounds harsh, but what exactly are we going to do? I have no idea how to control the sales managers in the fields.
- We will make a mobile application, which they will be required to include in working hours. With geolocation and tracking customer addresses from scheduled meetings.
- If the meeting was and the geolocation showed the meeting, will the meeting task be automatically counted?
- No, the microphone will still work and negotiations will be deciphered in a cloud. If all the keywords from the task were sounded and the interlocutors were recognized in the conversation, then the task will be recognized. Also, the office premises and signs will be recognized from the camera. The manager will be required to photograph the venue.
- Cool, but this is total control, not everyone will agree and can protest
- And let it be better if they leave, we are ready for a massive recruitment of personnel. New ones will come and take such a system for granted.
“But eavesdropping is somehow, well, in general, I wouldn’t turn it on myself.”
“You just didn't listen.”The application manager will be prompted by the correct sales script, product recommendations, answers to objections, help immediately on customer issues, all this in the application and automatically from the recognized text during the conversation. For this they will include. They do not know how to sell, so they do not go to the client. And with the application of confidence will increase.
- How do you imagine it?
- Put the phone in front of you and peek into it during a conversation. Yes, even with the client. Widgets such as “Remember to include in the order” will appear on the phone. Either "91% of our customers receive orders on time" in response to an objection, or "Customer X may be interested in service." It all depends on how to submit it to the manager, how it is useful to him. Many do not meet, because they do not know how to talk with a client, such an assistant will help them. The system will do the whole sale for them. And the percentage of them. Fears must be overcome by enlightenment. Not I said.
- I don’t know, let's try. I’m so afraid of the sales director, and you still offer such a thing.
- This is not all, the tasks in the application, as we planned, will come from client analysis. What to sell, how to persuade. But the application will also transfer meeting data back. And the system will look at the bottom line in sales. If it is - offset, if not - write. And the system itself will offer to change the manager, fire or change his clients.
- You want my death. How am I selling this to a sales director?
- Go to the general, let him talk to him. He believes you after what we have done, and the sales director - to the general. This is the case when you need to.
- Okay I will try. When do you think we can do it?
- This is a standard application, a month and will be ready with all integrations.
A month later, we presented the application at a sales web conference. I made a presentation specifically from the sales office, where I gathered local managers. There was a deathly silence, and not a single question. From Monday after the presentation, they should have started to include applications in working hours. We monitored inclusions. This was done only by a third of managers. We gave a signal to sales managers. And again they began to wait. Nothing has changed, but a week later they began to receive signals from the field that all managers were leaving. In fact, 20 percent quit. It was a failure. All the sales people rebelled against me. They were supported by vindictive purchases. For the first time I did not know what to do. It was impossible to listen to Max and introduce a rigidly complete control system. It was necessary gradually and with a long period of testing. Addictions.
- In vain, I listened to you, with the sales still had to be somehow different. The project failed, a third of the managers quit. They can fire me.
- Wait, and who raised the hype?
- Sales, of course, they were left without managers, the staff will not find so much quickly, we will lose customers during this time. This is a demarche, a third of managers left at once in all regions.
- And who told you that we’ll lose customers? Are you sure?
“Well, it cannot be that people leave, but sales remain.”
- I do not see any loss in sales. Two weeks have already passed.Customers keep buying. Through the site, through the contact center, through the office. Managers are gone, but not clients.
- Are you sure? This is at least strange. Sales people are sure that “everything is lost, boss” (c).
- They are sure that they now have no one to manage, but for the rest look at the numbers and not at the screams. In general, I think everything went perfectly. They left, unlike marketers.
- Are you kidding me? They can fire me and break the contract with you.
- See for yourself, we made a system to reduce costs and staff. Those who received a salary, but did not really increase sales, quit themselves. This is a victory, not a failure. Go to the general and show figures of reduction of payroll expenses by 30% for the same sales. We did everything right.
“But sales in anger have already been reported to the general.”
- Sales are angry because we have exposed the truth about the work of some managers. I see that a third of managers, on the contrary, are actively using the application, and this correlates with the growth of their sales. Take the numbers and go to the general. The numbers will win.
I checked the numbers again after three days. That's right, sales are going according to plan, nothing has fallen. I sent the numbers first to the sales director. He suggested discussing. The conversation went quietly, but promised to check everything. And if so, then he will stop the recruitment of managers. The statistics were convincing, and he understood the reaction of the general. A third of his subordinates did nothing. Rather, in my version, they were engaged in processing incoming orders, which the contact center handled after they were dismissed. I sent the statistics to the general. A month later, all the deputy directors for sales were removed. And sales began to grow, because new managers began to go to customers. With a convenient assistant in the palm of your hand.
After this story, I began to feel like a Spartan who left the battlefield barely alive, but won. Warrior Corporation. Only the enemy was not outside, but inside. Inside us. Our habits are our enemy.
Voice Sales Assistant
The contact center was next in turn, which by that time was already sewing up from calls. But I did not understand how to automate the voice.
- The contact center after our sales operation asks for help. They do not cope. This is the last point of automation. But this is live communication. Here we, as logisticians, are unlikely to help, we need people.
- Haha people, let's automate everything. We will do a voice bot. The network is full of dialog bots and voice acting. Easy project.
“Are you sure this is possible?” Have you heard the recording of a conversation with a client? This is trash! Not only that, only interjections, but also no logic, a bunch of unnecessary words, lack of punctuation marks. And abbreviations that no Google can recognize. I already thought about it, read conference materials, some slogans, nothing real.
“Why are you complicating the task?”
- In terms of?
“Why do you need to recognize all these extra words if you know in advance what the client wants.” He wants a product, we have all the names and synonyms of goods laid out on shelves by businessmen (at least thanks to them for that). Add here a few more syntactic constructions from generative grammar with which he can express this desire. Everything else is not necessary to recognize. The dictionary of goods is limited, the dialogue frame is also understandable and can be described. Put markers of avoiding the sales frame on other topics, where your bots, or the operator, if not at all in the subject of conversation, that's all. The client will adapt to the rest if he wants to buy. And Raptor will also train the system on successful and unsuccessful precedents. Naturally, all our advisory features from client analysis will help the bot. We know by phone who is calling.
“Are you sure this will be enough?” Something is too simple, corporations are struggling with a problem, and you offer such a simple, it would seem, solution.
- I already told you that the same people work in the corporation as I do, only he doesn’t understand or want to simplify his task, because he is paid for the time, and not for the solution. The rest of the people in the corporation are useless plankton that only reports. The solution is simple, because I'm too lazy to do something complicated. If this is enough to solve, why complicate it?
- And what about abbreviations?
- They are easy to calculate and create a dictionary - they are all written in capsule. Minute affair.
“Damn, I didn’t even think about it, although it seems obvious.”
- But in general, even mossy migrant workers communicate in social networks. We will get two solutions in one, and by voice over the phone, since you have so many telephone retrogrades, and a bot in the messenger. You have a connection with messengers. And I’ll take care of the engine.
The ability to create a contact center voice operator seemed fantastic. If it weren’t for Max, I would just grin back. Many have already tried to create sales bots, but they all turned out very boilerplate. I almost said so, and out. Adapting to them is unrealistic, because it is unclear what patterns the creator laid down. And no one will remember them either, if they are not equal to the natural. And the natural ones were very arbitrary and noisy. I was not sure of Max's decision either.
- You know, I read a lot about bots, they have a problem with templates. People constantly fall out of them, and the dialogue ends. No matter how you tune to the keywords and patterns in DialogFlow, even their machob does not help build successful dialogs with the randomness of people. Are you sure we can do it?
“You look at those who don’t succeed all the time and become infected with pessimism from them.” Of course, it is useful to know what you have already tried so as not to repeat. But I remind you that I have a powerful beast who himself will learn universal patterns. And people themselves will help him in this.
- How will you find precedents in such a noise? I watched the transcripts of the dialogs.
- Why do I need raw data? In case of deviation from the template, when the bot does not know the continuation, I will switch to people. This seems to be called deviation control.
- And what this will give, so 80% of the dialogs may fall out of the template.
- At first, probably, it will be so. You still do not understand how we will achieve the result, on the contrary, 80% with the bot?
- I don’t even get close.
- I will write conversations switched to operators, parse the chains of their frames and feed the Raptor along with the result achieved by the people in the conversation. Where further education is successful, we include in the model and reduce the number of switching to people according to these conversation templates. So, until there is an outright trash, let it remain in public. This is a couple of people for the whole company.
- Can a raptor do anything?
- Not a Raptor, but a universal way of adapting to a process by building its model. That is the power. What was needed was not only feedback, back propagation of the error, but also motivation - reinforced learning. And it worked like a living system. Only their evolution is slower. And they don’t have such a god helping their evolution as me. I was the first to ride such a universal mechanism in business, not in games. That's all.
“You will not die of modesty, but it sounds really amazing.”
I decided to present this functionality in a special way. Just turn on the bot and offer the general something to buy by voice. And then a few numbers. This time there was not even a center of resistance, because the contact center leadership was subordinate to the marketing director, and he was already an adherent of the project. And the employees themselves were tired of such boring work and were glad to work only with deviations and complaints. The presentation went off with a bang, except for the fact that the general failed to buy. The general effect, as he said - he just turned out to be an unconventional client and quickly fell to the operator. But the marketing director succeeded, and everyone was delighted. The prize was guaranteed to everyone. But we ourselves were pleased with the result. We went to celebrate at the bar according to an already established tradition. With the permission of the general, I prepared an article in vc.ru,since it was an achievement. Nothing of the kind has been possible yet. The bot quickly progressed and retrained templates. I even had a kind of devastation in my soul. We have almost completed the project. There were no longer grandiose tasks, although there was a lot of work to hone and retrain. All that remained was the analytics project, which had to be done online with alerts for deviations. It was simple, though not fast.
To be continued ...
(c) Alexander Khomyakov, alexander.xom@gmail.com