Bocconi and Amplifon Join Forces to Innovate the Customer Experience Through Artificial Intelligence

THE AMPLIFON CHAIR IN CUSTOMER SCIENCE WAS ANNOUNCED AND ENTRUSTED TO GAIA RUBERA. ITS GOAL: TO BUILD A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE FOR CONSUMERS USING TEXTUAL ANALYSIS, COMPUTER VISION AND AUDIO ANALYTICS TECHNIQUES. AT THE CUTTING EDGE OF OMNICHANNEL MARKETING

Amplifon and Bocconi University signed an agreement to establish the Amplifon Chair in Customer Science, a professorship born from the collaboration between the global leader of the hearing care retail market and Bocconi University. The aim is to deepen the understanding of customers, their journey and their loyalty through the most advanced tools of computer science and artificial intelligence.
 
The Chair, which will be inaugurated with the academic year 2021-2022, has been entrusted to Gaia Rubera, a scholar who worked at Michigan State University and the University of Southern California before returning to Italy and to Bocconi, where she is director of the Department of Marketing and responsible of the Innovation and Marketing Analytics, Deep Learning for Computer Vision, and Social Media Marketing courses.
 
The activity of the Chair includes an intense program of research and initiatives that will engage students in educational challenges that will put them in direct contact with business.
 
The research program of the Amplifon Chair in Customer Science aims to develop a deeper understanding of the customer, through the use of artificial intelligence techniques. “Developments in computer science,” explains Professor Rubera, “make it possible to transform into data the conversations that the customer has with the company through the most diverse channels: a post on Twitter, a picture on Instagram or a call to a call center. Artificial intelligence techniques allow us to understand how the consumer will respond to various company actions and, then, to define marketing actions which create value both for the company and for the customer.”
 
If the most advanced tools for this purpose a decade ago were textual analysis to interpret texts posted on social networks, and in recent years computer vision to analyze images, the new frontier that Prof. Rubera intends to explore is audio analytics. The latter allow, for example, to identify and correlate with the customer's response non-verbal features of the behavior of a call center operator, such as talking speed, tone or the use of sighs and pauses.
 
“We are grateful to Amplifon,” says Bocconi's Rector, Gianmario Verona, “which allows us to intensify our activities in advanced fields such as the impact on marketing of computer science and artificial intelligence.  Bocconi has invested a great deal in this area in recent years, first by hiring young academic talents such as Gaia Rubera, then by developing new and advanced academic programs, like the BSc in Economics, Management and Computer Science, the BSc in Mathematical and Computing Sciences for Artificial Intelligence and the MSc in Data Science and Business Analytics.”
 
“We are very proud to be able to start this journey with Bocconi University,” comments Enrico Vita, CEO of Amplifon. “The in-depth knowledge of our customers, their needs and their purchasing experience are a value of crucial importance for our development strategies. To this end, as Amplifon, we believe it is fundamental to leverage the talents of the future and we are very excited to be able to do so together with an excellent global Italian institution, in a logic of long-term collaboration, as a testimony to the Group's commitment and attention to the younger generations and their education,” concludes Enrico Vita.

by Fabio Todesco