What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Reimagining Customer Value: CoreMedia's AI Innovations and Market Expansion
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Unlock the secrets behind AI's power to revolutionize customer experiences! Soren from CoreMedia joins us to explore how AI is transforming content generation and enhancing customer relevance across global brands. Hear firsthand about Telecom Italia's incredible success in Brazil, where AI-driven personalization led to a significant boost in customer conversion rates. Moreover, Soren emphasizes the importance of blending AI capabilities with human touch for superior, impactful results.
Curious about how cross-functional teams can supercharge brand growth? The meteoric rise of Hoka offers valuable lessons. Discover the pivotal role of breaking down silos and fostering rapid collaboration for more efficient outcomes. We'll also tackle the challenges marketing teams face in maintaining campaign consistency, particularly in multilingual and multicultural content. Learn from leading companies like Farfetch as they navigate these complexities with tailored content strategies designed for diverse markets.
Finally, we delve into strategies to maximize customer lifetime value through personalized interactions and headless front-end technology. As industries such as finance, travel, and telecommunications experience renewed investment, we'll showcase Finnair’s seamless customer experience as a shining example. Additionally, we’ll reveal strategies for utility companies to expand services and boost retention. Stay tuned for exciting upcoming events, including a show in Porto and a visit to John Deere in the US, and gain intriguing insights into the differences between US and European election processes.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
AI and Personalized Customer Experiences
Speaker 1Hey everyone , interesting topic today diving into the world of using AI for personalized customer experiences with Soren from CoreMedia Soren , how are you ?
Speaker 2Great Thanks , Evan . How are you ?
Speaker 1I'm good Thanks for being here Last days of summer , here in the US and in Germany , so appreciate your time . Maybe start with introductions who is CoreMedia and what was the big idea behind its founding ?
Speaker 2So CoreMedia , we are the partner for global brands quite a few of the luxury brands that you know , but also B2B brands around the world to manage their customer experience . All the things you see and touch on mobile devices , on online stores or even in physical stores , all the content for all these devices , but also the interaction , how you interact with some customers , what do you know about them , how do you personalize the experience and we do that basically at a global scale . Quite a few of the brands that we love and , yeah , that's what Chromedia does .
Speaker 1Well , it's a great mission , important one . It's on top of mind to all of us , as consumers and as brands , and you know what's the big idea behind AI personalization . You know how does that work , how does it tailor content to individual users and what's the impact .
Speaker 2So our mission is to elevate the customer experience for our customers and then to drive impact . The business impact , basically make it more relevant for customers . Make the customer experience easier , like less friction , increase the conversion , but also increase the customer lifetime value . Make it more relevant for customers , so make it more enjoyable . So , when you have these two dimensions , it is basically what the challenge is for quite a few brands around the world , and it's also kind of like the mission for every marketing department how do we create a better customer experience and how we drive impact , how we drive our business forward . What we see is that AI will certainly disrupt this market . Like a year ago , we saw people starting to use AI to generate more content and to basically , it's amazing to see what these large language models can do . The truth is also , though , that usually the text that comes out of these things , when you don't give them a lot of context , it's not that good . Basically , you also create a lot of medium level quality of content . What we learned is that there is a lot more potential , though we see AI with our customers , often as a co-pilot as something that can empower humans to have a much , much better control over the personalized experience that they create for customers . What we also see is that there are use cases where AI is so good that it's basically superhuman . They are better at consistency with structuring stuff . They are better to analyzing kind of like , for example , the tone of voice or to adjusting text for a certain customer , because they can really , you know , take something and adjust it just the right way that is relevant for you . So what we see is that at the end , ai will play a massive role in optimizing the experience for every single user and it will play a massive role in driving business value , in increasing conversion and the like . What we see as the market as a kind of bad idea , is to say now everything , let's do everything with AI . Ai is the one answer that we have for everything , because that seemed to be not the smartest solution .
Speaker 2What we see with our customers when they combine AI with the opposite , with human interaction , that they have much more success because suddenly you can use your agents to do exactly the things that create value for customers the high value stuff and have the ai do the basics to the standard , to the things that are kind of like , you know , a lot of work , but not much value , and with that combination we have a lot of success it can give you .
Speaker 2Give example , for example , like Telecom Italia , they have a basically big business in Brazil .
Speaker 2It's 40% of their business is Brazil , a country with 220 million customers , and we had them over for our customer event recently and they shared their numbers and what they told us is that they have an increase , it's an uplift in conversion for people coming to their sites of 209% .
Speaker 2So the same marketing spend , but they are able now to interact with those customers more relevant and blending human touch in there that they have three times as many customers at the end . So just imagine what happens to your business case when you have the same amount of marketing spend , have three times as many customers at the end . So just imagine what happens to your business case when you have the same amount of marketing spend but three times as many customers that you win every month . So that is kind of like why they are rolling this outcome for much more of their business . And so that's a good example where you combine these two things automation with AI and human touch , by really having the difference between talking to a real human . Yeah , that's kind of like the big idea that we see is not what the rest of the market is doing .
Speaker 1Interesting . And let's talk about the rest of the market . There are many different options and choices customers have and , to get very jargony and insider , you have something called hybrid headless content management , maybe . What is that , and how is it different from all the different options , approaches that customers have in this space ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so the first thing is that content is , from our perspective , this old saying content is cleaner . So for all the companies that we see , all the brands , they realize they need to produce much more content to basically address the fact that they need to be found , they need to be relevant , they need to engage with customers . Customers want more relevant content and different customers need different information . In the B2B space we have customers being challenged because they're a complex product . They need everything about the product online all the manuals , all the ways to interact with it , all the arguments why it's better , and that in many languages , right , like often in 40 languages for 100 countries . So content , from our perspective , is still king and it's a huge problem . What we see with most of our customers is they really have bottlenecks before we start working with them to manage and create and optimize all this content , because it's cumbersome , like translating into 40 languages . It's cumbersome , especially when you then have to adjust it for all the different touch points and make it look great on a mobile phone and great on a browser , but also great in-store and great in an ad and great on LinkedIn and great on Meta . So that part is , from our perspective , key and that's why you need a content management system that will not go away . From your perspective . With AI , it gets even more of a problem , because AI will basically tenfold , hundredfold your content production . You will have a lot more content to manage and you have a much bigger problem now to govern that , to say , whoa , what is the content that is really approved that we want to give out there , or is it something that is not okay anymore ? So we see our customers asking us for much more support to govern their global content and then to bring it to all the different touch points . One big one where we learned from , from global brands , is you need to be able to take the same content and really have a very efficient process to translate it to many different languages , but also to adjust it for the local market , because not every product is available every market , not every visual works everywhere . Not everything is similar . Even though you have a like a similar language , you might have some adjustments that you have to do , and this these two dimensions together already is the massive complexity that we address .
Speaker 2Yeah , and then you want to connect content , from our perspective , with data . So data is queen when you think about something like TikTok . Tiktok has great content right , a lot of content uploaded every day . But they also have data . After half an hour with you on this app , they know exactly , evan , what you like , they know exactly what you're reacting to . They know what you don't like . What they do is they take the content and the data and then they have their smart algorithm , their AI , to optimize that , to find out what you are into and then give you more of that , but also find out what is good content for which target audience and provide that more in those fields . So they have this , I think , powerful data-driven experience that is so addictive that people can't put down their phone . Right , it takes the question away what do I look for ? You just open the app and you swipe , swipe , swipe and you are entertained all day long .
Speaker 2That , from our perspective , is what will happen with brands . They have to do the same thing . They have to have better content , they have to have better data and they have to have better algorithms to optimize what content is shown , to whom , when and what is the outcome that you want to optimize for . So it is a good kind of like idea of where the future lies . That is not content management . That is more like digital experience platform , where we call it engagement club , where you manage the customer engagement , where you personalize the experience where you kind of like , use that to optimize it , have this feedback cycle being run all the time . Those two things together content and data .
Speaker 2The third thing that we provide is all the different .
Speaker 2Those two things together content and data . The third thing that we provide is all the different touch points , because nowadays you as a customer , whatever you do , you always have more than one touch point . You have your phone in your hand when you go into the store , but you also , when you are browsing the website and you need some help , you might click a button to talk to or have a chatbot experience and help you . That is not good enough often . So you want to talk to a human or chatting with a human . Then maybe chat is annoying , so you click and you want to talk to someone and maybe that person is then able to take over your web experience and help you solve your problem Basically , browse the website for you , put things together for you and help you solve your issue . So this interplay of multiple channels and even a video call that you want to see someone , to know this is a real bank , this is real people , it's not fake , it's not kind of like a scam . All that is what we provide in our digital experience platform .
Speaker 1Well , that's fantastic . You describe really a world that doesn't quite exist today with most brands . So how do you bring that ? How do you bring that all together ? How do you integrate all of those touch points and simplify the experience and journey for the customer ? You've got world of Salesforce and SAP , and on and on and on , and you know it's not always easy to break down those silos .
Speaker 2That's the surprising part , right , when you think about the vision that you have a unified omni-channel experience , that have a unified customer profile . That everything is kind of like seamless is not so new , right . So it's kind of like what we should aim for for a long time , and customers have invested a lot of money into Salesforce , sap and many other systems , and often they still struggle to get this personalization going and to make it consistent across customer . What we see is , though , is that , yeah , when you have these silos , and even when you have the data , often you don't have the ability to connect the dots to now take the data and change the web experience , or connect the data and say , well , on the web , when you do this and then you do a call center call , we connect the dots too , because we give you a phone number that we track . It's just for you . So when you call that number , we know Evan . Oh , evan is calling . He was on the website right now . He looked for this issue . Likely , he has a problem with his phone that he could not resolve . Let's basically connect him with the right person to solve that issue .
Speaker 2So these kind of things are possible . We developed amazing technology there . The good thing is you don't have to replace your Salesforce , you don't have to replace your SAP , you don't have to replace your e-commerce store . We are composable . We can connect with these things . So if you have customer data , we can activate that . If you don't have that , we can give you a starting point as well . We can provide a customer profile for you that goes across all the different touch points . But if you have data connected with our system and we can embrace that , we can enrich that , we can use that as well .
Speaker 1Oh , impressive . What about the human side of all of this ? Typically in big companies , or even smaller companies , you have silos between customer service and sales and marketing , and it's not always efficient moving across those teams . How do you think about team collaboration when it comes to content ?
Speaker 2Yes , I think that is what might be my advice for enterprises right , look at what you want to achieve and look at the structure that you have . Is that really the best structure ? So when I look at some of the really most impressive customers that we have when it comes to executing their own strategy , it's companies like Dekker's Brands .
Transforming Customer Experiences Through Collaboration
Speaker 2You might know Hocker H , hoka 1.1 , these nice shoes . Hoka is such an amazing brand so they grow like like wildfire In the US . They're everywhere In Europe . They're everywhere .
Speaker 2I love the shoes and the fact that behind that success is also a team of marketing and technology experts that basically , for us , was really standing out . How they managed their processes . What they did was they did these teams that were collaborating with different kind of like expertise there and they were moving very fast . So , instead of silos , they really broke it down and , kind of like , got moving so quickly iterative approach , one after another , learning quickly , and that is , I think , what I advise people to do Like , maybe do a project outside of the old structure , but bringing people together in this room where they have a project goal and let them basically figure it out .
Speaker 2How could that be done better ? Because the truth is often the customer experience is something designed by department , by org structure . You can see the org structure in the customer experience , and that is usually a bad thing , right , because nobody cares in your customer base . Do I now have a nice marketing side , or do I now talk to the support ? Why is everything looking different and not fitting together ? That doesn't make sense for the customer , so it shouldn't make sense for the brands . So , yeah , my advice is bring these cross-functional teams together , empower them and have an iterative approach . Instead of these , oh , let's actually do this five-year project where we build everything new . That is usually not working .
Speaker 1Yeah , well said . I think the other side is marketing often get ahead of their skis in terms of amazing marketing campaigns and ideas and yet the back office or the rest of the organization struggles to keep up in managing those large-scale campaigns or executing ensuring consistency across different markets . How do you help with that and those poor marketing folks who I empathize with trying to ?
Speaker 2that's true , because the marketing has this pressure and they also have budgets usually , so they can buy nowadays by quite some technology , but then at some point in time they reach the point where maintaining all that becomes an issue . Right , then you you often have then the second dimension . It's like the cio , cto , that cdo say okay , now , how do we manage this ? How do we basically get all these wild things that are now not working together anymore ? How to make that solid again ? So I think you need these architects , you need someone looking at your infrastructure and saying , hey , how do we want to evolve it ? What are the guidelines here , and how can we basically test things but also consolidate things afterwards when we learned , okay , is this working or not ?
Speaker 2What we see right now happening in the market is that , after this wild wave of , oh , let's basically have all these different components from different vendors , we make it all kind of like little things that we put together . Then we have an agency building something for us . People realize , yeah , that's pretty complicated , it's pretty expensive and it's hard to maintain . And then , when the agency moves on , then suddenly you have this big problem on your hands that you can't manage . So what we see is that customers ask oh , I saw you can also do the digital asset management for us . Could you basically just do that , because it would solve my problem of managing multiple systems , or could you do that too ? So we see customers actively trying to consolidate the infrastructure and say , well , we want to use more of you guys and then add the stuff that is not there , but we don't want to have like 30 different systems that we have then to maintain and make sure that they still work together tomorrow and the day after .
Speaker 1Oh , well said , we talked about your example in the beginning . You know Tim having a campaign in in South America and in Europe and you know different variations of languages and localization . I assume that can work in many different ways . You know , in the US you might have English and Spanish , of course , in the EU , many different languages . How do you bring all that multilingual , multicultural content together ? It sounds tough as well .
Speaker 2No , it's actually . That was one of the most exciting things we started out with giving you the tools to not just translate your website and have it in another language , but , like what happens after the day after , you will have a lot of changes .
Speaker 2You will have changes because , oh , legal tells you you can't say this anymore . This is why we got sued . We don't say this anymore , and you have to be able now to guarantee that on all your sites this statement that you have in there is not happening anymore anywhere . How do you do that if you don't have full control of saying , okay , this statement here , we take it out . But now we have to trigger the retranslation of all the texts where this statement is in there too , and we have the full transparency there . Our system tells you exactly these are the 23 other places where this statement is in these languages and this is the text that you have to undo or review . So it gives you full control and full transparency and helps you later on to keep the consistency up . That's the first thing that we do . The second thing we learned is yeah , it's , this thing of translation is not enough . You will have these localization topics . That means imagery , product catalog messaging is not 100% the same in different markets , and that means you have to be able to have multiple language versions but then combine them differently in different markets Like , for example , Switzerland , right , they have Italian side , usually a German side , a French side and then a Swiss side . So basically they have , like they have multiple languages there that are representing the Swiss content and that's not 100% the same as the content in Germany and France . So those things we manage . And now it comes .
Speaker 2The best companies that we see went a lot further . Like customers like Farfetch , they are in the luxury marketplace . Like customers like Farfetch , they are in the luxury marketplace . They got to the point to say , well , we want to offer any language anywhere . So , wherever you are , if you are kind of like just now browsing in Thailand but you are from Paris , but you speak kind of like whatever , like German , you can have your experience in German even though it's in Thailand and even though you pay with dollars . So , kind of like they made the step to say , well , language should be something that is invisible . You can just automatically adjust to the language that the person in front of you wants .
Speaker 2And when you think about it , that makes a lot of sense , right , and when you think about it , that makes a lot of sense , right , A little online . But then , when you think of it a little further for our luxury clients . It makes a lot of sense in the real world too . So what if you could , when you enter the store of kind of like let's say kind of like Louis Vuitton , and you are a big group coming from China , why shouldn't everything be in Cantonese ? You have the Chinese visuals and we should be able to adjust the customer experience to you what you like , what you want , and that is what's happening . We have the technology to do that . We have basically the same imagery , but for big screens and with all the languages .
Speaker 2So we could indeed , wherever you are somewhere around the world , adjust the experience to who you are , personalize it for you , and that , I think , makes a lot of sense . When you think a little bit further like , for example , buying a car you go to a car dealer and you ask in the past , do you expect to see all the cars ? That's less the case now . It's more like , hey , I want my car to be personalized , but when you come there , why shouldn't they have all the cars that you configured already ready for you ? Here's the convertible for me and my color . So that should be in the room , in the showroom for you , on these digital screens around you , so it should be a personalized experience for you . We think that will happen . The physical places will be personalized , will be optimized for you as an individual .
Speaker 1Wow , wouldn't that be fantastic . What a vision . So you know , a lot of business leaders within brands might be listening to this and thinking this is great . But how would I even get started ? I'm not Amazon or Apple . I don't have giant tech teams , and when I do IT implementations I , you know , lean on the SAPs and sales forces and it costs a lot of money and it's a year long project if you're lucky . I mean , how does a customer of core media embark on , and how quickly does it take to kind of really begin transforming their experience ?
Speaker 2That very much depends , right . We have customers like . The German Army is a customer , for example , german government team . They have these 10-year rollout plans , gigantic like , with hundreds and hundreds of websites to be reinvented , so that is kind of like a massive project with IBM and other kind of consultancies . On the other side , though , what I see what is now possible is you can start very simple with , like add this tab to your website and start basically analyzing your customer interactions .
Speaker 2Maybe add some more channels that you have . If you have data from your store or data from your call center , add that too , and then we give you the first part . We give you kind of things . We propose to you , our team . What could you do better ? Let's add this , this and this .
Speaker 2We see this for your kind of like in your market is working well . For example , you know what do you do after someone closed a deal . Do you have a follow-up ? Do you basically check in a week later ? Are you happy with this ? Oh , you're happy . Great , here's a reference . Could you basically fill out this review for us , or could you ? Hey , here's another upsell opportunity . We have something special for our best customers . It's for you . Do you want something special for our best customers ? It's for you . Do you want to buy ? Or here's an invite that you can invite other friends to basically get 50 bucks if you convince three of them to test our system . Oh , you're not happy ? We're sorry . Let's schedule a call for tomorrow . We will call you , make it right and then tomorrow , when you're happy , we have another successful conversation
Business Growth and Future Plans
Speaker 2.
Speaker 2So that part , for example , is a huge game changer for our customers , not just the conversion of one customer , but the customer lifetime value by really treating the customer differently afterwards . And those things are something we can really do very quickly within days and start activating them . Things like you know , add the ability to talk to someone when you have a question , and you don't want to do that for every customer . But what if you only do it for the customers where you know those are very , very promising ? So you then you start to pop up hey , can we help you ? I see you know that you basically do these things in the right moment . All those things can be done within days , so it doesn't take much to start there .
Speaker 2That the content part usually is a bigger part , because often people have to replace what they do today . Today they often have very complicated ways that not efficient , and we usually help them then with the plan to replace that step by step . So , you know , start with new website , build the new structure and then move over more and more of your business to the , to the new structure . And you mentioned earlier the headless part . Yeah , usually the front ends these days are headless , but that is not the best solution for all situations . So we have the ability to do both , like the headless front end , where you basically have the front end being developed in a front end technology that is attractive . Or you can also use the content the same content to generate simultaneously a front end that is more kind of like historic , the most static , like more HTML that is delivered to a browser . That can be helpful in some situation for some customers .
Speaker 1Wow , crawl walk run . What a great approach that is . And so we're in the deep final days of the holiday season here . But what's next for you and the team as we head into September and beyond ? What are you looking forward to ? What's on the radar for the busy end of year season ? Of course , retail is that's the busy season for your customers , I imagine .
Speaker 2Yeah , the summer season as you can imagine , in Europe and partly in the US , but more in Europe is a little quieter . But we see quite a few companies now coming back . You know , in 23 , there was more fear of a recession coming up , so we saw some companies delaying their investments . We see now , fortunately , like an uplift in the projects that people bring back . We say , yeah , now's the right time . We basically have now a clearer outlook where things are heading and we are investing more again .
Speaker 2We see strong kind of finance , for example . Like finance , you know they have to reinvent their customer experience . When you think about , like you know , about how some banks still treat their customers , it's far away from where you should be . We see airlines and travel as a big topic . We have a customer like Finnair , a beautiful airline from Finland , and they really implemented something a consistent customer experience pre-flight , when you book something , in-flight , when you sit on 3A in the flight to Tokyo , and post-flight . So what they did was they said well , we have the same content platform , the same experience platform to push content to your seat because we know you and where you fly . We know who you are . Why shouldn't we use the opportunity to show you , for example , information about your favorite hockey team in Helsinki . So when there's a goal , you want to know it right away . So that kind of experience is something that we see coming up for the travel world . Yeah , and then telco certainly is a big topic . Yeah , and then telco certainly is a big topic .
Speaker 2It's markets that are looking for . You know how can I help my customers to be unburdened ? Because quite a few of these markets like utilities they can't grow much anymore . You have more like the incumbent utility vendor in Europe . They can't win more customers . They start with 80% or something and people want them to have less market share . However , they can sell more to you . What if I also give you , you know , like solar panels ? What if I give you insurance for the solar ? What if I give you insurance for the house ? What about I give you mobile options that make it cheaper for you to have the mobile service for me as well , and then internet .
Speaker 2So basically , they started to sell more services to the same customers because we have just a good customer experience . We know the customer , we know they're paying . Why shouldn't we now basically freeze our business with just doing more ? The great benefit there is that customers kind of like stay with you much longer when they do more than one thing with you . It increases the retention . When you are a good provider that helps with many problems . It's much better than just with one problem . So these things we see in the market that customers really look at hey , what is the best customer experience ? How can we un unburden our customers ? Do more for them and not less , and that's another . Yeah , we see , and I'm like we will have a nice show in porto soon , for a comedian porto is beautiful .
Speaker 2Yeah , we have another uh development center there . Now we acquired a company uh . It's such a beautiful city and beautiful people . It's really wonderful . Everyone is really full of energy and open for innovation . Very powerful what they do there .
Speaker 1I was just there one year ago . What a great choice for people and for a get-together Wonderful .
Speaker 2The US is important for us . We will visit John Deere We'll be in a few weeks , our customer there . Take us friends . So the US is a great place as well . I'm curious about the next election . Hopefully , basically , we have then some more time to execute stuff .
Global Perspectives on US Elections
Speaker 2It's an interesting you know the thing where the globe is looking at the US . It's every four years . It's this massive operation . It's so not what we have here in Europe . Europe's elections are two weeks or three weeks . In the US it's two years .
Speaker 1Yes , it's a bit dramatic and overwhelming , to say the least . It's a bit dramatic and overwhelming , to say the least , but we'll keep our sight on improving elevating customer experiences and hopefully I'll see you at some point , Maybe the big NRF show in early next year is always a good place to get together . This is one of my favorites .
Speaker 2Beginning of the year .
Speaker 1And so thanks so much for sharing you know a little bit of the vision and mission , and so thanks so much for sharing you know a little bit of the vision and mission , something we can all get behind as consumers and business tech leaders . So thanks so much , soren , thanks for your time , thank you , thanks for having me , thanks for being here and thanks everyone for watching and listening . Take care .