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Streamline your operations with TELUS International

What to speak with a business process consulting expert?

Discover how TELUS International’s business process consulting experts helped a leading telecommunications company drive improvements in its customer service delivery and efficiency.

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Maximizing profitability in telecom: leveraging customer insight for digital transformation excellence

Discover how knowledge management can boost organizational success. Explore challenges, best practices, trends and more.

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Navigating knowledge management: A complete guide for success

Discover digital customer experience success stories and insights from leading financial services brands that can be applied across industries.

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Lessons in customer experience from leading banking and financial services brands

Intro: TELUS International Studios where customer experience meets digital transformation.

Patrick Haughey (PH): Welcome to TELUS International Studios. I’m your host Patrick Haughey. And on today’s episode we’re talking fintech. Specifically, the recent changes and challenges that modern fintechs are bringing to traditional banking. As the needs and expectations of consumers and businesses continue to change and evolve. Our guest is Ante Spittler, co-founder and CEO of Moss. Moss is a digital spend managemet platform for businesses of varying sizes, and they’re exploding across Europe with very impressive growth. Ante starts off the conversation telling us a little bit about Moss and their own customer experience approach. Let’s have a listen:

One of the big things we talk about on TELUS International Studios is the world of customer experience and how you interact with your partners, your clients, how you win business and how you help them succeed in partnership with you. So does that form a big part of what you do and your strategy?

Ante Spittler (AS): 100%. Like absolutely. And you can break it down, as you said, in different elements, right? It’s almost like how you look at the lifecycle of a customer. But it’s also how you look at the lifecycle of your employees starting from before they like, engage with us, up until the point when they maybe even leave us and trying to, of course, like shape this journey. So it’s definitely like probably one of the most important instruments and points of view, because otherwise you always end up in this very silo focus. And with this, there will be wrong decisions, that’s for sure.

PH: Well, what has your experience been? Have you just for anyone listening? Are there some key watch outs in the sort of journey you’ve had? Is there a mistake you’ve made that where you to do it again, you would do it differently?

AS: Yeah. Like, we have done hundreds mistakes, but one that we cured, for example, in this, with this company versus probably the last company put a very strong focus on the people’s side and especially the initial team that’s joining us like from the very first days. We focused on bringing in experienced people with a fairly high level of like professional education, but also like very high level of like understanding the problem in depth, almost like sector experts. And with this, we just ended up having a very strong SWAT team. They could do both — manage and build at the same time. And that, of course, also attracted the right people in the next wave, right? Because ultimately, your hiring becomes decentralised is not only one person, it hires it like a number of people, the people they know who are strong from their own network, just fuel referral based hires. So it’s almost like it starts from the beginning, but eventually it has a huge spill over into the whole organisation.

PH: Well, as you move from that start-up phase into a more up phase and scale-up mindset, has your approach to customer experience adapted and evolved?

AS: So it like there is always this discussion around when does marketing hand over to sales? When does sales handover to operations? Is it with application or sign up? Is it before or later? And we had to figure it out. It was a process and we changed it. So, for example, the first phase of customer onboarding was pulled out of the sales organization and is now a customer success organisation that’s quite separate and it has a couple of other KRs on top. At the same time, we’ll probably also be experiencing if part of this journey, maybe even go back to sales, the commercial development. And it’s a never ending process. So quite clear that this is something that needs to be managed really well because it will spill over into NPS, into retention, into engagement like all these elements of our product.

PH: And have you brought in any types of technology or certain programs to assist you and to enhance your customer experience operations?

AS: Yeah. So generally speaking, all processes are tool enabled. We have so many tools. It’s crazy. Like I’m pretty sure that every company or tech company or less tech company with more than a hundred employees, will have 50 plus subscriptions for tech tools. And what we decided on is a plug in like basic customer relationship management tools as a baseline. And we decided to use Salesforce on that side. There is other options which probably also make sense in other cases. And then on top of that, we have extended basically the offering by other tools or have bought tools on top that connect. And that’s how our entire customer journey is managed, including the commercial process, but then also the operations piece that comes later. I would be lying if I would know all of these tools, it’s just not my daily bread and butter.

PH: Yeah, well, you can only do so much. And you mentioned sort of the fact that there’s now many different departments and people and what — you’re trying — to have to try and avoid silos and kind of keep a consistency of communications across the company. And how do you also like you mentioned all the software tools and the various pieces of technology you have? Is that also a challenge is to try and keep them somehow connected and have a broadly working in tandem with each other?

AS: Yeah, I think it’s a huge challenge in how I can advertise Moss a little bit on one element. And then we’re going to answer the other side. So it almost starts like with being able to monitor these subscriptions and also not lose control over how much it’s getting spent. So for our platform, for example, has a subscription feature where there is one virtual card there is to attach to each subscription. So your Salesforce subscription would have one, your Calendly, your Zoom, whatsoever. And you can basically automate the entire process from what gets billed, how the receipt is attached, how to spend is categorised and can track the spend development over time. And that’s probably one of the most used features for finance teams in terms of managing subscriptions. But then, of course, there is also this technical product and almost user perspective, which is the other side of the table. We need to make sure that these tools are either connected or synchronised in any way, because otherwise you end up managing three or four silo tools that don’t interact. And I think that’s a huge challenge. Partially, it’s a — partially it’s a structural challenge because these tech tools are sometimes like scale-ups themselves. They’re just growing and building their product on the goal. And they might be a closed ecosystem initially and only become like an open ecosystem later with open APIs to connect, etc. So it’s almost like restricted by the tools that you use. Yeah, how much you can connect them. And the other one is, of course, being able to, like, process it from an organizational perspective. Yeah, I have the right people understand and can connect. I think more — there is probably more that can be connected versus what is connected just because there is a knowledge gap on the team.

PH: Yes. Yeah. And you know, and each of those roles requires a person or a team of people. And I guess that’s probably part of the reason that you have gone from, you know, your founding team up to over 170 employees in two years. That’s a really rapid scaling, I guess you could call it, and speaks to the initial success of Moss, I would imagine. Have things gone well as you would have hoped in the last couple of years?

AS: Like overall, 100% super happy. Looking in details big variation when we saw. One thing is for certain, we brutally underestimated the complexity when we started. And I think it’s good because if we understood it, we wouldn’t have done it.

AS: So it was almost like a self-protection mechanism to not over-engineer, but just decide to do it at a certain point of time, like we have a pre-assessment phase. But then you just go ahead, quit your job, raise funds, hired a team and just try it out. It’s better than just doing the research for months and years. And then on this journey, things played out really well. So we have been quite lucky with a couple of elements. I think the biggest and most successful element was really around hiring this first team. We get it together as an extended co-founding team with equity incentives. And we made sure that everyone has a certain edge. It can be a cultural edge. It can be a way of working edge or a knowledge edge. And all of those contributed to just being very punchy and fast. We could just turn around things in days and weeks versus like months for in other organizations. And this also brought us to where we are. So right now we have we have hundreds of SMBs on our platform. We grow almost 100% quarter over quarter. We are running more than 100 million in total process volume right now. So it’s really gaining traction. It’s heavily used by our customers and that’s what’s giving us like the early indicators that the company makes sense and that the choices we took were the right ones.

PH: Well, congratulations. And based on all that, I would like to, we’ve got some questions that came in from the TELUS International team. A lot of questions for you. I have to say it’s a very — such an interesting space and such an interesting company from many perspectives. So there was plenty questions here. I’ll just give you a handful and you might answer the ones you can. So here’s one. How did the need for SMBs access to finance change over time and during the pandemic? And was this a major catalyst for change?

AS: It was probably one of the biggest catalysts for change. And even though it’s awful, what happens, I was hit myself with the infection. Nevertheless, we as a business, it helped us. It helped us massively because in essence, what happened is companies from one day to the other move from being together in the office to being at home. And suddenly business processes had to survive the switch from being jointly in this office to being disconnected and distributed. And with our platform where you can basically issue cards to any employees and a super flexible way, this just helped companies continue running their business in an efficient way because you couldn’t hand around the credit card anymore and you couldn’t just walk into the finance department or get something from them, right? You needed technical tools that can support this in a digital way. So for us, it was a massive uplift and not only in terms of like business performance, but also in terms of market education. I think that’s where the question is almost hitting too, like the market understood that something needs to change to work effectively in the future. I think it was, it learned this lessons also on being able to jump on a video conference call like we’re doing right now, right? Not having to take planes all the time. But then, of course, also in terms of how to manage your payments and how to manage your finance processes.

PH: Ok, very good. So another one, how will the SMB lending slash credit card space change the corporate world in the next five years?

AS: And, yeah, also here, I have a strong belief, naturally, I have to be the evangelist. But it’s also honestly my 100% sincere opinion. Finance teams will not run their organisation in the same way they did the last couple of years in five years’ time. And the same also for other functions. It’s like it needs to — We have to move away from any manual workflows, non-digital processes. It just doesn’t make sense. Yeah. We just like people are inefficient and they’re spending time on topics that are not exciting. It’s not engaging brains, it’s engaging hands and other things. And that’s why I think there would be a huge shift. We see the shift happening right now. So I mean, we are now acquiring early adopters, but this backlog of early adopters is growing and growing massively. And I think one of the critical elements that needs to happen to make this work is market education. So people understanding there is another way of doing. Understanding that I don’t have to send an email to ask for an approval to buy something. It’s very inefficient. It can be a Slack integrated request that also pops on a mobile phone if someone is traveling. That’s one green that tracks all these approvals where you cannot get lost later and streamlines the process. And that’s basically what will happen from my point of view.

PH: So you’re saying it’s the end of the petty cash box for companies?

AS: 100%. There will be — so there — like it will exist for quite some time and maybe it’s even good, but the share that runs through it will become so much smaller.

PH: Yes. Yes. Ok. And a couple more quick questions. The role of regulation. How is the role of regulation influencing new fintech’s launching?

AS: Yeah, I mean, regulators have this massive effect. Yeah. And it’s sometimes very hard to predict the recent trends with PSD2, open banking and the whole regulation on that side actually show positive signs. And it’s the whole the opening of the markets, the streamlining of how regulation is done across markets like the U.K. versus the German versus the French versus Malta. It’s just getting harmonised with the European Central Bank initiatives, and this is helping. Nevertheless, like whenever there is a change, it shuts down doors and opens up others right? So it’s going to kill businesses and it’s going to open up new businesses and yeah, important to stay ahead of the curve.

PH: Well, and how do you — do you have any tips in terms of how to stay ahead of the curve?

AS: Just stay close to the business critical elements in terms of what’s getting announced. So for us, for example, now in the card space, there was a decision to regulate consumer card interchange. It’s the main revenue stream that Mastercard and the scheme is paying out to card issuers. And this one has been reduced from more than 100 pips to 20/30 pips, so it killed business models. The commercial one is not regulated. There is good signs why it also will not be in the near future, but it’s something to monitor because the business model changed dramatically if this happens. Same around open banking. People couldn’t access bank account data unless it was shared through scraping or to sharing excel sheets or something similar or something very inconvenient and insecure to a certain extent. Now, with PSD2 and open banking APIs, you basically can tap with a pretty quick process into like 90 days history and can keep the connection and run your processes on this as long as the customer consents, of course, the idea needs to be a reason to do so. But that’s a that’s a huge lift. It just opens up a more modern way to run a business versus how it has been done by the banks before.

PH: Yeah. And that brings me to my final question from the TELUS International Team. How are modern fintech’s changing the traditional banking and financial services sectors for business?

AS: So it’s a very complex question, I’m going to try to answer it very, very easily to not get lost with my own answer. So I think it’s two elements that probably stand out the most and the one is the this aggregation of financial products and financial software. In essence, it’s basically offering a neo bank account or a next generation credit card as a payment instrument is a totally different activity. Versus building tools as a software stack that aim to further enhance those financial products. Integrate them, attach certain products to it, workflows, whatsoever. And I think where banks focused on and what SMBs used to consume was financial products with almost zero software. Just look at business bank accounts — like the online login was the biggest invention that they had. Yeah, like, it’s doesn’t synchronise and link with anything. And I think this this aggregation of the two, and then allowing people to tap into each of those and build products on top, sometimes into both. So we’re doing both, for example. Just opens up a totally new opportunity base and will therefore also change how SMBs work and interact in the future.

PH: You did a very good job and it concisely answering a very complex question, so thank you for that. Ok, look, my final question then. We spoke earlier, you came from the very the comfortable corporate world, safe job and took the decision to leave on this roller coaster, start-up and scale-up journey. Is there anything you miss about the old world? Are you fully bought into the craziness of your current life?

AS: I’ll be lying if I didn’t have moments where I cried for safety and structure, that’s 100% certain. At the same time, I think once you catch the entrepreneurial fever, there is no way to go back like there is — I would not be successful. Like I would probably get like grey skin, be depressed and would not source my energy and my potential. And it’s not — and that’s just because there are other things that attract me more. And so the answer is lots of pain, but also lots of gain.

PH: Great. Ante Spittler thank you so much for sharing your story with us and your views on a very, very interesting industry today on TELUS International Studios.

AS: Thanks. Thanks for having me. Very much appreciate it.

On this episode, we’re joined by Ante Spittler, co-founder and CEO of Moss. Tune in to hear the origin story of Moss and how it was born from a passion to resolve common pain points in the customer experience.

How a modern fintech is transforming traditional business banking, with an illustration of guest Ante Spittler, co-founder and CEO of Moss

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(Previously recorded as TELUS International Studios) On this episode of TELUS International Studios, we’re joined by Ante Spittler, co-founder and CEO of Moss. The company offers an all-in-one solution for intelligent spend management, with the aim to be the leading financial management platform for businesses across Europe.

Tune in to hear the origin story of Moss and how it was born from a passion to resolve common pain points in the customer experience. Ante also shares insight in how fintech is evolving, key driving factors and the impact of regulations on the industry. Go on, give it a listen!

To learn more about TELUS International and our digital CX solutions, contact us today.

How a modern fintech is transforming traditional business banking

Watch this recorded webinar from Everest Group and TELUS International for new insights to help you skillfully transform your digital customer experience.

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See how we worked with TELUS Communications to design, build and deliver an integrated network design solution that meets the needs of their customers.

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Robert Zirk: Brand loyalty isn't what it used to be.

Research from TechSee, a technology partner of TELUS International that provides visual customer experience solutions, shows that more than one in three U.S.-based customers aren't brand loyal and would leave for a competitor if the right opportunity presented itself. And the SAP Emarsys 2023 Customer Loyalty Index found a 14% drop in the number of U.S.-based consumers who considered themselves loyal to one or more brands.

Those numbers might seem alarming at first glance, but they don't mean that loyalty is going away altogether. Today's customers are looking for personalization, speed and convenience, and as technologies like AI continue to be leveraged to enhance the customer experience, this represents an opportunity for brands willing to put in the work to swim against the tide.

So today on Questions for now, we'll ask: What does customer loyalty look like in the age of AI?

Welcome to Questions for now, a podcast from TELUS International where we ask today's big questions in digital customer experience. I'm Robert Zirk.

Robert Zirk: Before we get to our big question, we need to start by clarifying that when we're referencing loyalty, we don't mean "loyalty programs" like frequent flyer miles or a freebie after a certain number of purchases. That's a distinction one of our expert guests was keen to emphasize.

Shep Hyken is a keynote speaker, author, host of the Amazing Business Radio podcast and customer experience expert with more than four decades of experience in the field. He views loyalty programs more like incentivized marketing programs. They can be a great tactic to deploy as part of your overall marketing strategy, but shouldn't be confused with the overall concept of customer loyalty.

Shep Hyken: What it really drives, and I love this, is repeat business. Now, my question to the people that do these types of programs is simply this: if we took away the perks and the points, are we strong enough in the experience to make customers still want to do business with us? That's true loyalty.

Robert Zirk: In his book, I'll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again, Shep dives deep into the concepts of customer loyalty and retention, and clarifies the difference between repeat customers and loyal customers.

Shep Hyken: Sometimes we think customers are loyal to us because they keep doing business with us, but sometimes it's just easier to do business with us than switch to a different vendor. Sometimes it's, you feel like, "Eh, these sticky solutions make me want to stay. Even though I'm experiencing frustration, I still stay."

So one of the things we want to find out is why does a customer keep coming back? Is it because, if we're just, say, a retail location, is it because I'm closer than my competitor? What happens if a competitor moves one mile closer to my customer or even just a quarter of a mile? Does that mean I'm going to lose the customer because that customer was more interested in convenience? Then they were my store, I just happened to be the more convenient store at the time.

What about price? We advertise low prices. Does that mean the customer is going to go wherever the lowest price is? If that's the case, they're loyal to the price, not the business. Maybe it's somebody inside our business. This happens, especially in the B2B world, where an inside sales rep decides to move to another company and in the process may end up taking customers with them because it turns out that the customers love the rep and it just happens to be where they were working.

So all of these factors need to be considered to understand: why does a customer keep coming back? And are they truly loyal or are they coming back for other reasons?

Robert Zirk: Shep challenges leaders to think about customer loyalty as something that's built one interaction at a time.

Shep Hyken: I did a keynote speech for an organization and we talked about loyalty and I said, "Here's the way I want you to think about it. Think about: 'What am I doing right now as I interact with this customer?'"

At this moment, as the customer interacts with us in any way that they do, to ensure that the next time they do what it is that we sell, they're going to come back and want it from us because of the experience we're giving them right now.

If it's people to people, are we doing all the things that are expected? Are we showing empathy, concern? Are we supportive? Is it an easy experience? Was it easy to reach a person? Was it easy to get an answer? Are the self service options intuitive? Is AI being used to deflect human-to-human interaction, or is it used to support and augment the interaction?

All of these things go toward creating an experience that makes the customer want to come back.

Robert Zirk: In a TELUS International survey, 62% of US-based consumers said if they had to choose between the two, they would prefer a more personalized customer experience over one that takes less time. Furthermore, 55% of respondents said that nothing excuses a bad customer experience.

And while it's important to consider the questions Shep raised from a business perspective, it's also valuable to take a step back and look at how your customers think about loyalty.

To do that, I spoke with Colin Shaw, who's dedicated the last 22 years to helping leaders and brands improve their customer experience. He's the author of seven books, co-host of The Intuitive Customer podcast and among the top 150 business influencers on LinkedIn.

To demonstrate his thesis on loyalty, Colin has a question for you:

Colin Shaw: Who in your life are you loyal to?

Robert Zirk: Consider anything and anyone in your life. Take a second... Okay. Did any of your answers include your partner, family or friends?

Colin Shaw: Absolutely. And that's what everybody answers. Everybody answers family and friends and your family and friends can do things to you that you don't like and that bug you and annoy you, but you still love them and you're loyal to them.

Robert Zirk: So now, Colin has a follow-up question.

Colin Shaw: If I was to turn around and say, "I've got this really great family. They're a lot cheaper to run than your existing family. Would you fancy swapping?"

Robert Zirk: Which... you'd almost certainly say "Absolutely not."

Colin Shaw: And that's the point I'm trying to make is that loyalty, true loyalty, is an emotional attachment. You have an emotional attachment to your family and your friends and they can do things that you don't like. But it's not based upon price. It's not based upon the running costs of the family. All too often, businesses look at loyalty as a transactional thing when it's not.

Robert Zirk: In other words, it's important to remember that loyalty isn't built only on rational decisions, but also emotional connections that are formed through memories.

Colin Shaw: Loyalty means that I have dealt with this company in the past and I am now going to go back to this company. So, by definition, there is a memory. If there was no memory, you wouldn't be loyal. because you wouldn't know that you'd been there and therefore it would be the first time and it's like the first time every time you went to that company.

But you are making a decision based upon the last interaction or the first interaction that you're having with that company. So the really interesting question starts to become how our memory is formed.

Robert Zirk: Colin cited research from psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Daniel Kahneman, who found that people tend to remember and assess life experiences based on two points of that experience. The first is the emotion they felt at the peak or the point of greatest intensity, regardless of whether it's good or bad. The second is the emotion they felt at the end of the experience. This concept is known as the Peak-end rule.

Colin Shaw: One of the phrases that Kahneman uses, which I love, and this is probably one of the biggest things I've learned over the last 10 years, is we don't choose between experiences, we choose between the memory of an experience. Okay, so it's a subtle difference.

So if I was to say to you, "Okay, I'm coming into town, tell me a restaurant I can go to." You would then say, "Oh yeah, go to so and so." And you're basing that upon a memory. So again, memories become really important. and therefore, the peak-end rule becomes really important.

Now, let me now apply that thinking to customer experience. What that says to me is: where is the peak emotion that your customer is feeling in your current experience? And what again is the end emotion that your customer is feeling currently today? And is that what you want them to feel? Because again, most organizations won't be able to answer that question.

And what you should be able to do is you should be able to design an experience that evokes the emotions that you're trying to evoke. I can't just say to you "Hey, right now, be happy. So let's just create happiness." Happiness is through an evolution of feeling some of those other emotions like trust and cared for and valued.

So when you think about someone who feels that, if I feel cared for, then typically things like: they respected me, they spent time with me, they went out of their way to do things for me, okay?

Now, just simply put that into the business context. If you want your customers to feel cared for, you need to spend time with them. You need to respect them. You need to go out your way for those customers. And if you do that, they will feel cared for. And if they feel cared for, that increases value and that goes towards making a customer feel much more loyalty because loyalty is an emotional attachment.

Robert Zirk: And Shep noted that CX leaders don't need to overthink the process. Loyalty can be built on small improvements that create a better and more consistent experience.

Shep Hyken: If you can create an experience that consistently and predictably is the tiniest bit better than average, or a hundred percent of the time meets the customer's expectations, they won't want to take a chance of doing business anywhere else.

Why? You know what? "They're always, whenever I call, they're always so knowledgeable. They're always so helpful. Even if there's a problem, I know I can always count on them." So you've got this word "always" followed by something you want the customer to be saying about you. And "always" means it is consistent and predictable.

It's like Amazon. How much true interaction do we have with Amazon? It's totally self service. So we're interacting with a computer. Yet, they create this incredible amount of comfort and convenience and confidence because the moment I place the order, boom, I get an email. Your order's placed. Next, your order's been shipped. Here's tracking information. Next, here's a picture of the box outside of your porch. They give us this great communication in addition to this digital experience that just makes it so comfortable and confident that things are happening the way they're supposed to.

So this is what companies need to be thinking about. They don't need to be Amazon. They don't need to be big brand, small brand, it makes no difference. What they need to do is understand what their customers want and expect and deliver on those expectations because nobody can argue with "They always meet my expectation." Why would I want to do business anywhere else?

Robert Zirk: Shep shared a personal story involving Costco that highlights exactly how brands can set themselves apart from competitors by setting expectations and consistently meeting them, which he illustrated with a statistic from his 2023 Achieving Customer Amazement study.

Shep Hyken: Half of American consumers, actually 51 percent compared to last year, it was 48%. Half of American consumers felt customer service was more important than price. Specifically Costco. I can speak from experience. I love my Costco membership. And we bought carpet from Costco and had our whole home carpeted with one of their vendors.

And we got the price and I said this seems a little bit higher than what I thought it was going to be. And I looked at competitors and sure enough, it was a tiny bit higher, not much higher. I thought I was going to get this incredible discount by doing business with Costco. Here's what the vendor said to me.

"On this particular item, we'll be happy to price match. That's not an issue, but we're not going to be lower. We can't afford to be lower, but I'll tell you why you'll want to do business with us: the Costco guarantee. Put that carpet in. A month later, if you don't like the color, you don't like the shade, something's bothering you, we will rip the whole thing out and replace it." Wow. Okay. That's the Costco guarantee.

Robert Zirk: I asked Colin, as AI plays an increasingly important role in CX, how is customer loyalty changing?

Colin Shaw: The reality is, the human being, the customer, is not changing. The way that you deal with that customer through AI is the thing that's changing. So it's a bit like when people talk about social media. All that social media is doing is providing the platform for already social animals, us human beings, to be able to communicate through that means.

What you're looking to do is you're looking to turn around and say, "We want our customers to feel this at the end of that experience. So how are we going to design it?"

And lots of organizations don't have that amount of data on customer emotions to be able to design their experience. And the other issue then becomes do the CX professionals even understand the result that AI will be able to provide?

Robert Zirk: Colin compared this to the depiction of AI in Douglas Adams' s book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Colin Shaw: One of the things that it talked about was that there was this planet and they had a big AI machine and the population wanted to know what the answer to life, the universe and everything was.

And this computer called Deep Thought went away for seven and a half million years to process what's the answer to life, the universe and everything.

And it came back with the answer. And the answer is 42. And clearly, that's ridiculous. It's not ridiculous. What it was really saying is, you don't really even understand the question. And that's my fear, with people with AI implementations now, it's going to come back with answers that CX professionals don't understand the answer to, yeah? So it's either not going to come back with the right answer because it hasn't been trained well enough because it hasn't got the emotional data, or it will have that data and it's going to come back with the answer, the equivalent of 42. And people are going to go "I don't understand what I'm meant to do with that."

Robert Zirk: One of the strengths of AI is pattern recognition, and Colin shared an example of how this might be applied to behavioral patterns that don't factor in the emotional aspect of decisions.

Colin Shaw: Disney know when they ask their customers what they want to eat at a theme park, Disney know that people say they'd like to have an option of a salad. Disney also know that people don't eat salads at theme parks, they eat hot dogs and hamburgers. So what customers tell you and what customers do can be very different.

So the issue becomes that, in my view, there's going to be a big issue or a lack of understanding about customer behavior at that behavioral science level to be able to interpret what the customers are actually doing.

And let me give you two examples of that. So there was a telecoms company in the States that asked, through its AI, we want to identify customers that are leaving us. AI went away and came back with a list of "Here's all the customers that are going to leave us." Then they asked it, why are they going to leave? It couldn't answer that, because it hadn't been trained on how to understand that.

Robert Zirk: According to a Zendesk study, only three out of 10 CX leaders are using AI or machine learning to predict customer interactions. So there are opportunities to get ahead of the competition. And Colin demonstrated examples of how AI can provide proactive experiences based on behavioral data.

Colin Shaw: Just think of Google when you type into Google something to search for. I've got a Jeep, and I was trying to search for, in England I would call it a towing hook, in the States it's called a hitch. Okay, but when I type "towing Jeep", Google starts to put words in there of what it thinks that I'm looking for. And that's based around one really important word, which is intent. So what is my intent? What am I really searching for? Because I may not be expressing myself very well. But it's trying to help me go, "Look, typically this is what people are looking for." So it's understanding human behavior at that level.

And then from a CX professional perspective, it's being able to understand what is happening and to get into a more positive perspective, how can we use behavioral science to design our experience? How can we predict how our customers are feeling?

Robert Zirk: Research from McKinsey indicates 71% of consumers count on brands to deliver personalized customer experiences. And when that doesn't happen, 76% report feeling frustrated, placing the brand they're interacting with at risk of losing future business to a competitor.

Predictive AI can play an important role in delivering a more personalized experience, and Shep shared an anecdote from a demonstration he saw that showed how predictive AI could support agents in a contact center environment.

Shep Hyken: Not only did it feed the agent information because the agent knows how to properly ask the question, they were typing in what the customer was asking and getting a good answer back, where sometimes customers don't do so well typing in their answers into a chatbot, and getting clarity to the bot so that they completely understand. Again, this agent now can reflect that information the way they need to interpret it and give it back to the customer.

But here's what else that AI was doing. By the way, and I'm going to paraphrase, this customer is the same as 3,000 other customers that have called in and asked the same question, have bought the same products, have the exact same buying patterns. So whether this customer knows it or not, this is the next question they are going to ask. So why don't you answer it for them so they don't have to call back?

By the way, this customer doesn't realize they are going to be buying another product from us. They just don't know it yet. Why don't you share with them what it is so they don't have to call back and take the time filling out an order form?

So it is able to predict with uncanny accuracy, what customer behavior is going to be, what customer future purchases are going to look like. And the data that we're getting is going to allow for these types of one on one interactions to feel completely hyper personalized. And I love that. Personalization is going to be more powerful and better than ever. And we need to do it the right way so the customer isn't creeped out.

Robert Zirk: Colin has noticed some organizations implement AI in silos within different teams. And he cautioned that, to best serve customers, AI needs to be holistically deployed across the organization. He shared an anecdote of the early internet, where different departments of the same company would often have their own web pages that were distinct from one another rather than one unified cohesive web presence.

Colin Shaw: I think there is a danger that things are going to be implemented in a siloed perspective. And therefore it needs that more holistic view answering those questions, what's the experience that we're trying to deliver to our customers and what emotions are we trying to evoke?

Robert Zirk: And then, CX leaders will need to decide the right tactic for the right point in the customer journey.

Colin Shaw: So let's go to our example where the delivery is late and we can get AI to send out some messages, etc. That may be fine, but there may be a group of high value customers that a phone call is going to be best, yeah? So where is that? And with what group of customers is that?

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