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The FODcast
In the FODcast (The Future of #DigitalCommerce) we explore the real career stories of the people who have made it to the very top of the sector and those who are working at the cutting edge of innovation and change right now. Listeners to the podcast gain insight into the journeys industry leaders have taken to be where they are today, the challenges they are facing now and their aims for the future.
The FODcast
The Art of Haggling Meets AI: Rosie Bailey on Transforming Digital Commerce
What better way to start the new year than by exploring the trends shaping the future of e-commerce? In our first podcast episode of 2025, we’re joined by Rosie Bailey, Co-Founder and CEO of Nibble, to discuss how AI and innovative strategies are transforming the digital commerce landscape.
Rosie shares how Nibble’s negotiation platform is revolutionising online shopping by reintroducing the art of haggling, creating personalised and engaging customer experiences that foster loyalty and deliver tangible financial benefits.
💡 What’s in this episode?
- The role of generative AI in closing data gaps and tailoring customer interactions
- How intelligent automation helps businesses avoid over-discounting while boosting conversions
- Tips for navigating chaotic sales periods like Black Friday without compromising brand identity
🎙️ Rosie also offers a forward-looking perspective on how AI could redefine business negotiations, reducing inefficiencies and creating seamless interactions.
Packed with practical advice and fascinating insights, this episode sets the tone for an exciting year in digital commerce.
Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.
Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/
Welcome to the latest series of the Podcast, where we bring you the latest insights into the future of digital commerce. In Season 6, we continue to interview some of the most respected professionals in the industry as we broaden the topics to cover what it takes to build a business within e-commerce, navigating through business change, as well as the future of technology within digital commerce. As we continue our journey to have one of the best podcasts within commerce, we ask you to like and share within your network if you enjoy our content. Hello and welcome back to the podcast the Future of All Things Digital Commerce. I'm looking forward to today's conversation as I welcome Rosie Bailey, co-founder of Nibble. Now, many of you may not have heard of Nibble. However, in my opinion, the product is genius and I'm sure it's one we will see integrated into many well-known brands moving forward On that note. Welcome Rosie.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much for joining me. As I said, I really think the product's cool, so I'm looking forward to talking a little bit about Nibble, but also a lot more about customer loyalty, discounts, promotions and exactly where Nibble sits in the market. So, before we start, do you want to tell your audience a little bit more?
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. So we've built Nibble over the last couple of years and it is a negotiation platform, and negotiation is something that strikes fear into the heart of many people, particularly like people in British culture, I think but we see it as a really really vital tool in relationship building. So, just to make it really straightforward, we put the widget the nibble negotiation widget on your website and that means that, at your option, a chatbot pops up and says I can see you're interested in this item, shall we agree a deal on it. And a chat window opens. That looks no different to say a whatsapp and you can then say I'm interested, but I'll only buy it for 20 pounds. And the chatbot haggles with you to find a deal and if you agree a deal, you can add it to the cart at the new price. And the point is is it replaces a blanket promotion, it replaces a 15 off discount voucher or a markdown, and it's much more fun, much more on brand and much more engaging to that I would.
Speaker 1:I would certainly agree, having had a little play a bit myself. Um, it's one of those ideas as well, I think is when you see it implemented, it's like why have we not thought of this sooner?
Speaker 2:um, it's really cool to be fair negotiations been around for eons and in fact, fixed price retail is quite a new invention. If you sort of think about it that way, we've had fixed prices in supermarkets and in online commerce, but actually before commerce was quite so well organized maybe 150 years ago it would have been totally normal to walk into a local shop and say, oh, could we, could we do a deal if I'm buying double the amount of material to make my dress or something like that?
Speaker 1:and I guess I mean that does still happen in across across the world and and it happens often in the uk, I guess you go to market stalls and traders and what have you then? I mean you do that all the time. I guess it's just become the norm that we shop in retail outlets where actually there is a price and you don't haggle. I wonder if you could.
Speaker 2:I wonder if you could, Can you imagine in the queue for the supermarket Just before you go? Apocryphal stories say you can, but actually I think we negotiate in more scenarios than we think about it. Obviously, when I say negotiate, you think about buying a car or getting a promotion, but actually we see a lot of people in like skilled parts of the gig economy negotiating to get a large number of, let's say, valuers or real estate agents to come and value 100 properties at once for a bank. Or you might see people in procurement departments for very big companies negotiating long-term contracts. So it maybe happens more times than we remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think you could be right. I guess there's a lot, of, a lot of aspects of our daily life where we do negotiate and I know, uh, later on in in the conversation today we're going to be talking about negotiating and how you can actually use that to improve your customer experience, which I'm looking forward to. I think what would be, um, a really good starting point is is just to talk about the birth of Nibble and where the product idea came from.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. So. My business partner, jamie. He was actually in Turkey, where half his family is, and he's very into his sneakers and he saw a pair of sneakers he liked and he negotiated with a man in Istanbul and the really crucial thing he observed, he said the price works for me, the price works for the seller. We got there very fast, about a minute. But we also both had a smile on our face and I think it's that crucial aspect, that human-centric aspect, that kind of gave birth to the idea, you know, that we can do this on e-commerce as long as we make it fast and human friendly. And to that end, we now work with a professor of negotiation at London Business School to make sure that everything we put into the chatbot is sort of academically robust. There's loads of research on this. And what should you do if somebody threatens you with a final offer or threatens to walk away?
Speaker 1:You, there are, um, well-established ways of doing a play that playbooks, if you like and I guess, going back to what we're saying around, negotiating and what have you I guess turkey's very, very well known for, uh, for your haggling, and you're negotiating and uh, probably more more established, there, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah, definitely. And uh, I mean, it was only a few months back. I was there myself and, yeah, he's sucked into those conversations all the time because you know that there's a bit of discount to be had. So, uh, yeah, why do we not bring that forward into the uk as well?
Speaker 2:do you know? It's really funny actually for next time you're on holiday. Um, there's a passage in chris voss is this famous author who's written a book called Never Split the Difference, which anyone who likes negotiating has probably read as a bit of a kind of bestseller. It's actually now proven that you're more likely to help someone change their mind if they're in a positive and optimistic and friendly mood than if they feel too businesslike and too on the back foot. It's quite interesting that you know actually being happy is a really, really important component to being able to be persuasive.
Speaker 1:And I guess it neutralizes the other person as well, as they don't have their backup because you're not coming in like hard and demanding. Um, there's, there's a lot of uh, scientifically backed evidence around things, like you said. I've also read the Chris Voss book. Um, it was recommended to me uh, a couple of years ago and I think we bought five or six copies for the whole office at the time, so it was a good one.
Speaker 2:It's good, it's easy to read as well. Right, lots of stories and you think, oh, I can remember that story and next time I, because I think the other tough thing like, believe it or not, I'm not crazy about negotiating myself. I have to do it now. Right, because of course it's part of the brand. But you know, when we're sort of, you know we did a fundra, a fundraise, you know, and you have to negotiate. That it's not something I want to. It is something you have to prepare for and you have to remind yourself that when you are in those situations you feel a bit under pressure. The more prep work and the more thinking you've thought about it, the easier it is to reset yourself and go, ok, breathe.
Speaker 1:Actually, no one's trying to be mean, you know, we're just trying to find the best mutual outcome and then you can reset and then keep driving forward for what you think is a win-win definitely look, we have those conversations every week with with clients when it comes to recruiting for them and and the fees right, there's a constant negotiation for for us to get the best deal possible and for the client to get the best deal possible. Obviously, we're looking to get as much as little. So, uh, yeah, I know exactly where you're coming from there. Um, so look, so we're looking at the nibble product then and, um, it's kind of gapping the market. The rise in ai has been well documented over the last couple of years and we're seeing lots of different use cases, uh, at the minute, from personalization to merchandising and what have you. But what are your thoughts really on these areas and the rise of AI within commerce?
Speaker 2:So, firstly, we started Nivel before ChatGPT, right. So we've been going since before sort of large language models or that aspect of AI and certainly I think we've both benefited and had some challenge from that, right, because I think the benefit is everybody's now looking, and I do think that's wise. A lot of people say, oh gosh, you've got a hammer and you're looking for a nail. But the world is moving so fast now that I think some aspect of horizon scanning and seeing what's the art of the possible is really important, because otherwise you might miss a place to be imaginative and see where it fits into your business, into our business I'm just not sure where, and I know that sounds a little frustrating and a little bit ill thought through, but actually, as a way of searching for opportunities, I think it makes sense and I'm seeing a lot of that, as long as you don't then pursue something just for the sake of it, right. You then need to identify a problem.
Speaker 2:I think I've seen quite a few development teams embrace it. I think in the development side you get a cultural of expectation, so things like drafting code, getting help to draft initial drafts of code, or there's a Paul Wilkinson at Deliveroo talks about this a lot. But he has a lovely case study where Deliveroo drivers are supposed to fill in certain details when they make a delivery and sometimes they don't fill in every box and actually they're using generative AI. They're using something like a chat GPT to fill in the empty boxes and they know it's not 100% accurate. But actually if the box says what's the dimensions of a six pack of Coca-Cola, it's probably sufficiently accurate that it is better than an empty box in that data. But when they're using that data to then further optimize. But the difference is, is for something like nibble, where it's talking to your customers, sufficiently accurate isn't good enough?
Speaker 2:you've got to know it's never going to be rude, it's never going to give away a deal, it's not going to be rude, it's never going to give away a deal, it's not allowed to give away. So there's different places where it's useful. So I'd say lots of talk, lots of small use cases where it's making the current process more effective or more efficient, but I don't think I've seen significant changes in business processes. And that's where I think the big I used to work in finance, right. So I think that's where I think the big I used to work in finance right. So I think that's where the big financial returns will come from is when people say we don't need to do this this way anymore because we can reinvent the whole process. And if you think about it 20 years ago or maybe I've got my dates wrong you you wouldn't have thought about outsourcing a call center to another country, whereas now that's completely normal. And it's those kind of big business changes that we're going to need to see to see the big returns okay, okay.
Speaker 1:So if, if you were to put your your mystic meghat on right now, what, what parts of business do you think we might see um make those fundamental changes in the the short to midterm?
Speaker 2:I think anything that's got a big workforce sales worksforces and customer service workforces they will make big changes, particularly in sales, I think. But you know, nibble is very close to that. So perhaps I'm talking about what I can see, but you're now talking about. So if you see what Microsoft and Salesforce are announcing, they're talking about what I can see, but you're now talking about. So if you see what Microsoft and Salesforce are announcing, they're talking about agents a lot, and I hesitate because these big tech giants they invent buzzwords so they can look like they've invented something right. So forgive me for jumping on one of their buzzwords, but I'm normally very skeptical about these.
Speaker 2:But agents, I think that makes a lot of sense and I think the way you can think about that is if you've used any automation in your business.
Speaker 2:So let's say you've got some sort of email automation right, like some sort of send a lapsed customer a reminder email and if they haven't replied within five days, send them a voucher code, special offer, something like that.
Speaker 2:Perhaps you've got a flow in your email marketing that does that. What you can do as an agent is sort of kind of the same, but it's got better understanding at each step, hasn't it? So instead of just sending the same flow to everybody and, if they reply, sending them another standard email to everybody and, if they reply, sending them another standard email, they can actually start to read the reply and further make the email precisely what that customer needs to see, rather than just approximately what the customer before you. When you did the automation, you had to think about every scenario and then only automate for the situation that you could identify and make sure that it didn't blast that customer at something inappropriate, whereas now, actually, it could probably tweak each of those stages much more effectively because it's got a sense of understanding at each of those stages that it didn't have before got yeah, okay, that that is interesting, and even the fact you mentioned the, the salesforce agent itself, because, uh, last week I hadn't heard of the Salesforce agent.
Speaker 1:This week it's come up in at least four different conversations. So, as you said, buzzword is starting to filter its way through the market.
Speaker 2:And, interestingly enough, I think both them and Microsoft and probably others I'm certainly not an expert the way they're approaching it is they're starting to sort of make that like open right. So they're saying here's the framework, but why don't you go and build an agent on this framework? And so for businesses like us, where we have a very niche expertise, we're really, really, really good at negotiations, but we're not trying to pretend that we're good at the whole flow of what's required in, let's say, a sales cadence. Um, and so then you get to the stage when people like them can help us knit in to their expectations, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, okay. So when we, when we look at um, when nibble, we're looking at how we can as a as a cost, as a customer to nibble, how they can improve their sales process with their customers with, I guess, the intention of removing mass discounts and promotions over the course of a year yeah, totally, totally and so you you might have.
Speaker 2:You might be at the moment planning your promotional campaigns for the year and you know you're going to discount around January sales and you know you're going to discount around Black Friday. But your other discounts are probably a little bit more responsive. You know, like, let's say, you've got too much inventory or you want to do a particular launch of a new product, and so those are the ones you're planning. Those are the ones you're planning. And we had one client who used Nibble and their average discounts were in the region of 18% sort of 15% customer sign up, 20% like weekend flash sale celebrating, let's say, valentine's Day or something and when Nibble agreed an average discount of 9%, they just looked at that and said that's half our average discount. Perhaps we're over-discounting and you've just got this much better sort of understanding of what do you need to do to make the sales to hit your targets, rather than just giving the sort of what I would call the lowest common denominator.
Speaker 1:That's a bit mathematical, but but that's what happens, right? If I look at the emails I receive, the vast majority of them are 10%, 15%, 20% off and, as as a customer, I'm loving that because I'm like great, I know there's certain businesses, um, that will send those out every month or what have you, and I will wait till I get that email come through and then I'll go and buy whatever I want to buy. Uh, unfortunately, I'm also quite a big returner. I hate to admit it and I know that's not great, but hey, that's just the the downsides of me buying products from from companies that, uh, their sizes aren't, uh, all that consistent.
Speaker 2:I think everyone can take responsibility for that right right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, but I've always felt there's a better way in which brands can discount, because I might be getting 20% off, but I would probably still have bought those products at 15% off. So whilst I'm benefiting here, the brand is losing out, and if you multiply that by x amount of thousand of customers, that's a lot of revenue for that brand. So when I at the start of the conversation, when I said I think this product is genius, I mean I really do, because it can kind of give the best of both worlds the customer can get a point in which they're happy and the brand can get to a point in which is also happy, and still better off than just doing a blanket discount of, say, 15, 20 percent and you don't need to do a sort of slash and burn.
Speaker 2:And I mean the dream, the absolute dream, is it's completely win-win. So the loyal customer exchanges some form of their loyalty to get a better deal. The early adopter, the influencer, the, you know, and and it really goes both ways so that the customer can make a difference right, they can say stuff to ways so that the customer can make a difference. Right, they can say stuff to nibble that says, actually I'm a higher value customer, I deserve a better deal. And then the, the stock can be managed a much more kind of flexible way through the cycle and you have much, much less left over at the end of the season that you need to kind of really deep discount to clear. And so the idea is, then you can work on a much more responsive model and try not to have these sort of big sales at the end and wasted, wasted inventory, right so why is it you um?
Speaker 1:you don't believe brands.
Speaker 2:Think strategically about discounting I think they do at the beginning of the year. But then I think you know you have financial targets, you might have debt repayments to make or you might have sales targets to deliver on. I also suspect that many brands think in sales terms and they don't think so much in profits terms. The profits are sort of looked after at the C-suite level by the finance director and so on and so forth, but the people with the KPIs a lot of it's conversion focused um and it's a simplicity is how you drive your business, isn't it? But as, at the end of the day, um, I think if you can think about them both at the same time, you can think on a profit basis. We talk to a lot of sort of digital trading directors. Um, and bigger brands have this. It's a sort of version of um stock management and and it's a bit more all-encompassing. But some of the smaller brands they're still, you know, they're just trying to make the sales right yeah, well, it wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 1:We had uh sam from talent one in on on the podcast and, um, I can't remember exactly what was discussed, but it was the uh the. The end result of the conversation was this like the, the teams in the marketing room, and it's like what do we do? And so I don't know, let's hit the discount button, let's give them 10 off, let's get some more traffic to our website and let's make some more sales. And it does. It does seem like for, at least from an external point of view, which, for mine, that is just what happens. You get to midway through the month and it's like cool, the discount, the discount codes start coming through yeah, and particularly people with significant liabilities.
Speaker 2:Right, like everybody's got payroll, but some people have debt and some people have big rent bills and you can see that coming down. You've got to, you've got to hit your targets.
Speaker 1:So it's all very well saying let's be strategic, but sometimes you need to be tactical yeah, and I guess there's a best of both worlds as well, right, so so okay, do you um, do you see any uh brands doing the whole promotions um and and discounting well in the market at the minute?
Speaker 2:I think I've seen we've got one of our clients, so this sounds a little bit self-serving, but I do really like the approach. And they're in consumer electronics and it's really cutthroat in consumer electronics and we all know as buyers of washing machines and hair dryers and mobile phones, you know like you do you price check. They're big purchases for you, and so what they do is they put what they would call their best foot forward on the on the high volume sellers, right so on google shopping and on microsoft, being it's listed at the most competitive price that they can afford. And then there's no further discounts, right, so that might be the entry level flat screen TV. And then what they do is they put deals and discounts on the trade up and it's just a little bit of nibble discount in that case, but it could be an advertised discount on the really premium flat screen TV.
Speaker 2:So you came to the website because there was, there was a very affordable, very great deal on the entry level one. But then, once you're there, you then dream about having the slightly better one and that's where you get your discount. And I think that's really powerful because you you've come. It's. It follows that emotional journey where you're dreaming about treating yourself to something slightly better than what you came to the website for, and they say let's make your dream come true, but without necessarily trashing their brand by advertising it too heavily at the beginning.
Speaker 1:Okay, and you're right, that is a very emotional journey. Um, I actually got suckered into one of those myself recently, and I've been looking for a fitness watch for a while, and I mean I was always going to get an apple watch. Um, however, I had a code come through for a watch on I can't remember if it was h samuel beaver brooks, one of the two and when I went on the website, there was another watch that was pushed in front of me which was more than what I wanted, but the discount on it was was large, and I was like, well, for an extra 70 quid I can get this watch. And then I was like, well, why don't I just do that?
Speaker 2:So I ended up spending.
Speaker 1:I spent more than I wanted, I got more than I needed, but I mean I've actually used some of those features, so it's actually worked out quite well. So that journey does work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really does, and it's what a really excellent store associate would be doing for you if you went into a physical store, right? So it's exactly the same journey. It's just working out how you can do that online but make it very human centric. You know, not some sort of rough pop up or you know really, really sort of crass signposting.
Speaker 1:You know you really got to meet somebody where they're thinking about it for it to be super powerful yeah, and I also guess that's easy when you're looking at certain products like maybe, high-end electronics or or watches or etc. As compared to, maybe, fashion retail, where it's much harder to upsell on a t-shirt, right I think so, I think so okay.
Speaker 1:so, um, retailers, obviously um struggled a lot across the year, year with peaks and troughs in sales. We've touched upon Black Friday, which is actually not that long from now as to where we're recording. You've got the January sales and you've only got some kind of spring sales as well Outside of the obvious.
Speaker 2:What other benefits do you believe retailers can have when they have a more consistent process and strategy when it comes to promotions? I have to be honest, I really don't like Black Friday, and this is partly. This is a lot for me as a consumer and less to do with me in my business, but it it really makes you like it's funny. My business partner said to me on Monday he said I said how was your weekend? He said the drill broke, so I can't put up a picture I was planning to put up and I'm like tell me more. And he's like well, I can't buy a drill. It's like the first week in November and like every company is going to have massive discounts and all the best brands of electric drills. I'm going to have to delay even putting that picture up for like two or three weeks. And it was only half in jest, to be perfectly honest, right, and and we're all kind of, we've all become kind of slaves to this process.
Speaker 2:And then when you get inside the logistics of one of the e-com players that they've taken on extra staff, their scaling of their, their, their service systems is huge. Their customer service team have got. I even spoke to one of my clients who said oh, and she worked in um in the email marketing part of the company is beauty company and she had drafted the I'm sorry your order is delay, I'm sorry your website is down, I am sorry that we are out of stock of your item and and she had. She had an example of 25 customer service. Apologies that they were already pre-drafted and pre-scripted and all ready to go.
Speaker 2:All because if that happened on black friday they'd need to be proactive and keeping customers happy, and all of these problems just get bigger and bigger and bigger if you squidge all of your traffic into one section yep um, and just give you one other story just because it's interesting.
Speaker 2:I met somebody who makes furniture for luxury yachts quite a niche market.
Speaker 2:It's a great market.
Speaker 2:Very niche, yeah, very niche, right, like small beds, small sofas, curved sofas, you know, cushions that are in a very specific shape that no doubt come to a point or something.
Speaker 2:And they tried doing Black Friday and they said all it did is squish their order for sales into two days and they literally compared doing Black Friday to not doing Black Friday and they made the same amount of sales at the same average discounts, but just without the logistics headache of dealing with them all over one weekend. So I do think you have to decide what's right for your brand. It is a brilliant opportunity to capture lots of new leads, new traffic, but if you do it in such a different way to how you behave the rest of the year, you'll catch a traffic that is different from the rest of your traffic and may well be the kind of shopper that only comes back next year at Black Friday and you have to work out whether that's valuable to your business or not, which it may be if it's a high ticket, intermittent purchase, like a bed or a mattress or a sofa, but it may not be if it's a repeat purchase, like fashion or beauty, and I think it feels like a bandwagon everyone needs to be part of.
Speaker 2:But I think you can do it in a much more considered and brand on brand way.
Speaker 1:Well, with the last couple of years, we've seen a rise in brands advertise that they're not getting involved in black friday, haven't we? And that seems to do equally as well for them.
Speaker 2:Um, you've got the sustainability focus, and amongst other areas as well, but you touched upon, sorry, karen and if you can do that with capturing contact details, then you can just use it at a different time of the year, can't you definitely?
Speaker 1:yeah, definitely, and I mean, you mentioned so many really interesting points then, and I definitely agree.
Speaker 1:As soon as you get anywhere near november, you start to question do you need to buy this item now? Because there, you, there is a very, very good chance that it's going to be cheaper in three or four weeks, um, and we just do it naturally so. But then I guess that's why we've also seen brands start their black friday sale in october, uh, which we've already spoken about offline, because, uh, they're trying to avoid that peak of traffic from, sort of towards the end of the month. So it is, it is I get why they do it, but, um, it is interesting though, um, but also we've seen the, the technology that powers these websites now, and whether you can handle that volume of traffic and the amount of websites that crash now versus five years ago is completely different. Um, so it's, it's, it's interesting, and I'm I'm really interested where this, where this goes as well, because can it continue to get bigger?
Speaker 1:We've already seen Black Friday in October. At what point does it become Q4, black Q4? Do you know what I mean? And it's like, okay, now that's just getting a bit silly.
Speaker 2:And I think the way that bigger companies can approach it is quite different from how the smaller companies can approach it. So some of these really big companies like I famously linkedin like was commenting on curries who have started really early, but they're not the only ones.
Speaker 1:I think john lewis has got some out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dyson have, yeah boots, they all have yeah but I think what's interesting is these really big brands.
Speaker 2:They can have supplier supported, very specific campaigns right.
Speaker 2:So week one can be, you know, toothbrushes supported by Oral-B, and so they will have been negotiating those deals all year and they will be very smart, you know, and they will still be making good margins on them Because they're powerful and they're talking to all the powerful brands.
Speaker 2:I think it's much, much harder for a small independent to know where to put yourself, because if you don't advertise any deals and discounts at all, you look like you're not participating in this event and this opportunity and your regular buyer will say, look, I like buying from you, but I can see all of these opportunities on Amazon and other places. So I think you have to sort of try and find some messaging that kind of shows that you're not obstructing it. But then, equally, you need to apply those same financial rules to whatever offers you make. You know, don't don't believe that those guys are making no margin at all. They've thought about this really, really carefully and so if you just match them, price for price or discount for discount, you may find that you really struggle. And I think that's that's the hard bit is, if you're a smaller brand to know how to navigate.
Speaker 1:That I'm not saying it's easy yeah, well, that goes back to the strategic element, doesn't it? And looking at okay, what, what? At what point do we want to start prepping for it? Um, how many? How many units do we need? How much can we negotiate with our suppliers to get those units?
Speaker 2:to then pass that on to the customer special black friday stock, as it were. That is slightly different.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, yeah, and there's, there will be a million and one things that I haven't thought about as a consumer as well. So so, yeah, um, okay, so let's go back to negotiation. I know it's something that, um, uh, you believe strongly. Um is able to improve customer experience when done correctly we've already touched upon just having a smile on your face at the start of the negotiation have a really positive impact. Um, what, what? Why is this?
Speaker 2:let's talk about negotiation, because a lot of people don't necessarily like it yes, and we've done surveys actually in several different contexts and consistently uh, you ask, do you like negotiating? And in most areas I get a 50 50 response. Um, I will admit I've asked that question in america and in the uk. Um, so in these cultures where I think negotiation isn't seen every day, I suspect I would have a different result in south america or dubai or india. So you get this 50 50 response. So half the team go. Yeah, I couldn't get myself a really great deal.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty good at this I'm actually surprised it's 50 50, to be honest with you.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah and half the team go. I'd rather a fixed price, even if I have to overpay, just because the embarrassment of even asking is just too much to take. And then they negotiate with Nibble and you say how do you feel about that? And 85 percent preferred that experience to a face to face negotiation. So the first thing I conclude is that a chatbot negotiation is more pleasant and less scary than a face-to-face negotiation. And actually it's funny enough.
Speaker 2:Chatbots are used in other situations where you feel the same, like an embarrassing health problem. It's proven that you'll be more willing to to give your details to a robo doctor than than your, your your sort of family gps, face to face. So it's something where if somebody's feeling confident, then they're much, much more willing to do it. In our case it's a chatbot helps them feel confident because there's no loss of face if it doesn't go well. But the the other way that you can be confident is you can do your work, you can do your preparation and you can think about well, what are all the things that they want, what are all the things they might ask for, what are all the things they might ask for, what are my responses to all their normal asks. And then that forces you to think both what do I want? And let's not under ask, you know, let's don't, don't ask for half the halfway point as your first offer, because all that will do is guarantee you get less than half. And and so you do all the work on what you want, what you need, what you value. But you also do the same amount of work trying to anticipate what they need, what they value, what they want, and that, for many people, should give you a lot of confidence to go into that conversation. And I mean it happens to us all the time. You know you.
Speaker 2:Somebody comes to you and says I'd like a big discount on the nibble fees, and and I say, hopefully mostly look, we're always happy to talk and we do think about that kind of thing if you're a large volume customer. So what volumes are we talking about and what volumes are? And I had this conversation with a customer in in the Middle East actually, who was very tiny, was saying to my business partner look, we could give it to him for free because it wouldn't cost us very much. But it's the sort of principle of it. It's like, why is he asking for like $3 off? Do you know what I mean? And actually we got to the stage and he said oh, what you don't know about my business is this is just a very small part of a very large business and I'm planning to grow a huge amount. And I said that's fantastic, because now I've learned that I can tell you that when you do grow that amount, I am totally delighted to have a conversation with you about long-term commitments and long-term discounts. And, of course, now we both walk away from that conversation ambitious for his business's growth and that's just a nice place to be.
Speaker 2:That's relationship building, and so I think I see so many situations, but I am looking for it. It is my business, right, I am now. Now I'm alive to it. I see so many situations where a negotiation, or even a failed negotiation, is just a chance to understand what each party wants and plan for the next time that you might have that negotiation. And it could even happen in recruitment. You know where somebody says, oh well, I really value being able to do hybrid working and the company says, well, actually we've got a four and a half or five day a week policy in the office, but at least you each know about what you value, and if you ever have an opportunity to revisit that conversation, you know what each other's are going to be asking for yeah, yeah, I definitely.
Speaker 1:I know, if we're being honest, that there's probably far more failed negotiations in life than there are successful negotiations, and I still take the bins out sometimes.
Speaker 1:So you've lost that one, then um, however, it's um, as you said, if you handle that negotiation well, then it's gonna. It will leave a good experience for the other, the uh, the other party and um, you both know where you're going to pick up that conversation from again in the future. Um, so that, so that makes sense. Go, just go back to why people are scared of negotiating. I find that really interesting because, as you said, the survey that you did was in the UK and the US maybe, where there isn't as much negotiation as in other areas of the world, and that's only going to get worse, though right, because as we're not negotiating more, our children won't be negotiating more and their children will be negotiating even less. So do you maybe see a world where there is very little negotiating? I mean, that probably sounds quite extreme now, but that's possibly where it's going to go to.
Speaker 2:I was at a B2B e-commerce event yesterday and somebody said there's a throwaway comment. Look, everybody in procurement departments now is between the ages of 20 and 35. And the last thing they want to do is speak to a sales agent and the very last thing they want to do is negotiate face to face. And they didn't even know I was in the room. It was just a complete throwaway comment.
Speaker 2:And you're sort of sitting there thinking, I do think, the rise of digital environments where you can be making friends. Do you know what I mean? Messaging on instagram, playing a mass participation computer game, and and these are lovely ways to meet people, especially with no boundaries of geography, right like you can make friends with anyone in a different country, and so on, so forth. And I know lots of people who've made really powerful connections through social media and so on, so forth. But at the end of the day, what's different about it is you control your environment so much more.
Speaker 2:If you don't want to take a phone call, you can see the name recognition on your mobile phone and you cannot take the phone call. And if you don't want to look at everybody's beautiful holiday pictures, you just don't log into Instagram. You know, and negotiation is like one of these things. You just you definitely don't have control over right. Like the other person has strong views too, you have strong views and you don't know what they're going to say next, and I think that unpredictability scares people, and it's something that we're coming across less and less in day-to-day life I'm often asked will we have ai to ai negotiations?
Speaker 1:okay, well, and what do you say to that? Got no idea. I mean, if we look at where this conversation's gone, then you'd probably say yes, yes, I think there will be some.
Speaker 2:I think big businesses will have ai to ai conversations.
Speaker 2:The place where we play a lot is where a really big business wants to have a conversation with an individual or a very small business, either because an enterprise is selling to a small family-owned business, or because a person is trying to buy off a really big company, or because, um, a small farmer is trying to sell supplies into a massive supermarket chain.
Speaker 2:Do you see what I mean? So these are brokering, those ones I, I think, will be slow to automate both sides, because I think in that conversation, the little guy, as it were, won't have the same resources to develop their own ai agent as the big guy, and they have a small number of high value transactions. Even somebody shopping online, you have a small value of transactions that mean a lot to you, and so the idea of automating that or giving that to someone else is counter to most people's values, whereas from the big guy's point of view, from the enterprise perspective, they're having thousands or hundreds of thousands of these conversations, and so automating is necessary, not just desirable, but necessary and that goes back to kind of what you said at the start the conversation around completely changing the business processes and actually doing ai to ai sales negotiation is completely changing that sales process for both businesses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a theory there's something called pareto maximum, which is about the idea that a win-win negotiation both grows the pie as well as divides the pie, because by learning each other's needs and expectations you can actually find a solution that generates more value overall for both parties. So there's can actually find a solution that generates more value overall for both parties. So there's a there's a sense that, okay, all right, a computer to computer negotiation would probably grow the pie more effectively than two humans who probably let their emotional and their biases get in the way. Um, but yeah, I don't think it'll. I don't think it'll help us not do the washing up.
Speaker 1:No, I think that's very true. Yeah, I'm not sure AI to AI negotiation between two partners would do that well.
Speaker 2:Or me getting my children to get their coats on before they go to school, or something like that. That's it.
Speaker 1:That's it. Although it would certainly remove the emotional element attached to it is normally quite high yeah, alexa will now tell you yeah rosie, you have lost this negotiation. You are doing the school run this morning. You'd almost get told you've lost a negotiation. You didn't know you even entered yeah, exactly oh, that could be quite fun actually.
Speaker 1:Oh, I have these conversations and I mean that sounds right now, that sounds like very wayward, but in 10 years time, I mean, who knows where we're going to be? And yeah, I mean maybe that's happening, who knows? Maybe not quite to that extent, but yeah, maybe that's 20 years down the line, so, ok. So what does the future for for discounting and and what does the future for nibble look like?
Speaker 2:so, uh, looking to next year we are. We are helping a lot of brands, particularly fashion furniture, do clearance better. But we're very excited about going into business to business where small companies like, let's say, a pub buying supplies from a food service or a drinks company does their replenishment through increasingly through online portals. But what happens if that negotiation could say, look, I'm willing to try the new product with my clientele this week if you could give me a discount on the new product and maybe give me some promotional materials that I could put in my pub? So I think in b2b, where negotiation does still happen, there's probably quite a lot we can do, and also in procurement, where people have a tail spend. You know they have hundreds and thousands of suppliers that account for important but very small financial parts of their business and what we're finding there is. A lot of people have put processes in place to avoid negotiating, to roll over existing contracts or to give a fixed deal, and actually, for those people, having an AI conversation is actually better than having no conversation at all.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, I feel like, uh, I mean that could definitely happen and and the use cases, particularly with the, the pub one you mentioned is is is a good one I saw.
Speaker 2:I can tell you my dream, though can I tell you my dream yeah, especially if they're listening. I want to renegotiate my virgin media broadband contract that's your dream, that's the dream, okay, okay, at the moment, I phone them up every two years and tell them that my husband's moved out, so I have to cancel his uh subscription. And then he moves back in and then two years later he calls them and say I've moved out general.
Speaker 1:That's such a good example actually looking at, like tv and broadband subscriptions, because they're always giving the best deals to new customers. Yeah, and that is an industry that's prime for a negotiation software like nibble, because I'm sure there are millions of people out there that have similar tactics around how they can cancel their contract to then reestablish them, or you give it the whole call them up. You sit on hold for a long, long time, which is a bad customer experience, to then threaten to leave, to then get pushed to a manager that escalates as much as they can to then give you X amount off. It's like car insurance as well, home insurance, all of those industries where you're signed up to these yearly, two yearly rolling contracts to then get chucked a massive price hike at the end of it is.
Speaker 2:The customer experience for them is is awful, really frustrating so actually something like this would be great if they were more confident in the renewal rate. I've looked at the financials of this right. So if the provider were more confident in the renewal rate I've looked at the financials of this right so if the provider was more confident in the renewal rate they wouldn't have to differentiate so heavily between new and existing customers Basically when they take you on. If they were more confident that they could keep you for 10 years, they wouldn't have to discount so heavily to get new customers in. It's a sort of leaky sieve problem, isn't it Right, heavily to get new customers in.
Speaker 2:It's a sort of leaky sieve problem, isn't it right? If they know that their average retentions are quite low, as in people leave after two or three years, then they know they have to fill the hopper really aggressively and give really aggressive discounts. If, by having a much more effective conversation with you at your point of renewal, they got more confident that they'd be able to have you renew, they wouldn't have to fill that hopper so aggressively, so they wouldn't have to give such deep discounts here so they wouldn't irritate you quite so much of that differential. Do you see what I mean? But it's about getting off that um unhealthy cycle yeah, I, I agree entirely.
Speaker 1:But if they didn't up your price by 40 percent at the end of the contract, then you wouldn't even entertain going elsewhere, because it's a bit of faff and for a couple of quid a month you'd probably be happy. It's when you can go elsewhere and save 20, 30 pounds a month, which is when you're like, okay, well, actually, joe, that's a lot of money over the course of a year, I feel a bit cheated, right yeah, and that's it.
Speaker 1:It's worth sucking up like a two-hour phone call of pain with five different people to leave. Do you know what I mean? Because, again, that's a painful process in itself. But there we go. Probably a good point to wrap up, then is two industries that would really benefit from an advanced negotiation tool.
Speaker 2:I wonder whether you can find one of them. Hey, benefit from an advanced negotiation tool. I wonder whether you can find one of them.
Speaker 1:Hey, rosie, I wonder. I wonder. Uh well, there we go. Well, if you're listening from those industries, you know what to do. Um, rosie, thank you for joining me thank you, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 2:It's been such fun chatting and thank you very much for your really excellent questions I uh, I really enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 1:As I said at the start, it's an area that I do feel a lot can still be done. When I think about that, I think about retail, as that's one of the core areas that we deliver into as a business, but actually, as we've identified in this conversation, there is almost every industry can benefit from an advanced negotiation tool for all the reasons that we've discussed, but one of the main ones being a better customer experience, which we know has so many benefits. But I hope you've all enjoyed it as well. Thank you very much for listening. Please do like and share and I look forward to seeing you next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you.
