Kabir Daya: Human Connection Still Drives Discovery

I'm Sarah Fatz and I lead community and awareness at Progress. This is 10 Minute MarTech. The level of data available is in excess, right? We have more listening tools, more analytics tools than we know what to deal with.

Without understanding the human story though, that, that tooling, those analyses, that data, it's meaningless. And so being able to translate that into the why is a critical but frankly a quite a rare skill. That's Kabir Daya, Chief Digital Officer and Chief marketing officer at ThriveWorks. Let's get started.

Well Kabir, let's talk innovation, serendipity and human connection. I know this is a topic that you are, you know, near and dear to your heart, but in this era of AI, what are things that marketing teams, Martech teams can or should be doing to take advantage of this exciting space and time that we're in right now? Now what I'm seeing in the market as we go through this evolution of marketing, as the consumer is also evolving as well. The consumer that comes to us now has gone through a multi touch journey for discovery.

They have more research tools at their fingertips, they're shopping a little bit more. They've fundamentally rewired how they discover, evaluate and trust brands, which is a shift that all marketers and product teams really need to keep in mind. The knowledge baseline of a consumer has, has risen just dramatically. But again, I would say we do need to remember that we're ultimately still building products or services for humans.

I think some brands have over indexed on the Google and the AEO side of things, focusing too much on that discovery piece and not enough on delivery and the actual experience. For example, a recent study that Thrivers ran found that of American adults currently in or seeking therapy services, almost half would turn to their primary care provider first followed by recommendations from their friends and family and then followed that by an insurance company's website and customer service.

And so it's really trailing from those three that we start to see digital discovery finally turn into the way that a client discovers us, right? It came in as force after all these human word of mouth intermediaries with only about 28% using Google or other search engines and 15% using AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini. So while we as marketers tend to index quite heavily on the digital side of that discovery, there's still the human aspect that is still very, very, very much valuable in how consumers find us.

When you think about where we are, so many organizations are moving so quickly, right? They're evolving and they're rapidly iterating and it feels like we're working at warp speed. I read an article that you were quoted in a few months back, Forbes article, and you were talking about those harnessing those moments of serendipity through that human connection and being able to find innovation through that. Can you talk a little bit and share with some of our listeners what you mean by that and how can you have that human connection, those serendipitous moments and innovation when.

When we are moving so quickly and when we are so, you know, really disperse in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think there's two sides of this. One is more external facing, which is for the client. How do you leave some of that in that client experience?

For us, thankfully, it's a bit easier because humans are literally part of our client experience internally. However, as we think about how the way that we work, it's giving space for that exploration within your teams. For us, it's basic things that have historically been around, like hackathons, like the Google 10% time, for example, or just encouraging a little bit more of this, try something out, see what sticks. And for us, we're a remote company as well.

Right. So really being able to get that interstitial tissue between our employees and our team members to make sure that those, those innovation juices are flowing, that's really important. And so for us, that's like setting up chat groups that are explicitly around this, where you're encouraged to sort of play around. It doesn't necessarily have a specific, you know, PRD that's scoping.

This is the specific thing that you want us to do. Rather, it's an opportunity for people to share what they're doing within those. It's not just product and engineers, it's not just designers. It's also other employees that are around the company.

So what we found is AI is really lowering that bar of who can play. And that's a beautiful thing. Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. I mean, along those lines, are there specific skills that you think a marketer would need today to take advantage of that kind of growing or evolving function?

I think this is something that I've learned in my past. When I was at Intuit, they were very big on understanding the client journey and really understanding the multiple types of data that one can be interpreting. And so the skill here is the ability to translate data and tech savviness into a human narrative. The level of data available is in excess.

Right. We have more listening tools, more analytics tools than we know what to deal with today. And so without understanding the human story though, that, that tooling, those analyses, that data, it's meaningless. And so being able to translate that into the why is a critical but frankly quite a rare skill.

From my angle right now. It's less the technical skill set, it's more the experimental skill set. Right. Are you willing to try new things?

Are you willing to just get your hands dirty and see what sticks, what doesn't, what works, what doesn't, and be willing to get a little uncomfortable with it? Because as we know, with all of our experimentation, it's not going to be 100% hit rate. Right. We take that same ethos within, yes.

The way we work with AI on internal processes, the way we work with AI to, you know, let's say even create a presentation or visualize some data, but also with marketing channels that are starting to leverage AI or how we can use AI within the outward facing, you know, whether it's web pages, whether it's experiences that hit our clients or clinicians, it's having that mentality of experimenting, experimenting, experimenting and seeing what sticks. Yeah. And do you see that in the health care profession or mental health profession?

Are you seeing the use of the tools differently or do you, do you still put them more in the general consumer? Yeah, no, no, I do. And I think that's because healthcare is just a bit more conservative and rightly it should be, right? You're dealing with human lives.

There's HIPAA concerns, you know, data privacy concerns, all of that particularly. I see a lot of this on, for instance, the scribe side, right, where the benefit is you want more efficiency for the clinician. But on the flip side, right, it's, if you get it wrong, it's detrimental. Like there's the worst case scenario that, you know, none of us really, really want to encounter.

But let's say it's the inconvenience scenario, right? You as an organization have brought this tool in or built this tool to give efficiencies to the clinician. But if it's, if it's even a little bit off, there's a distrust that starts to grow, right. And, and it becomes an annoyance because now as a clinician, I have to review all this stuff because I know there's going to be a 1 to 2% deviation and that's, that's not enough for me.

I need this to be foolproof. So there is that inherent conservatism that you will see on the healthcare side, but I think it's on us as, you know, technologists, as people that are pushing the envelope, innovating to really get it right and make sure they're. Everything's tested right and we show our work and we bring clinicians along for the ride. So internally here at thriveworks, the way that we do that is with any new piece of technology, we really make sure we do a, a bit of a pilot kind of a model with real life clinicians.

We get that way, we get buy in, right. We can get the kinks out of the, out of the system early on. And then when we go live right, we have real proponents in the internally and champions that are saying, hey, I was a part of this, I helped build this thing and I'm for it. And what a great example too of bringing humans back into that conversation, especially when you have so much technology at your fingertips.

Well, I guess one more quick question, maybe two. Who do you currently follow for inspiration or information? Yeah, so there's a spectrum here. I guess I'll start with a bit more of the technologist side.

So Sol Rashidi is the world's first chief AI officer. She's been at the forefront of AI adoption, but has also consistently made an argument for the human side, which again is part of my ethos and our ethos here at Thriveworks. Caitlin Stamatis, PhD, licensed psychologist, ex Google and one of the leading researchers at the intersection of mental health and technology. And then more on the marketing, pure play technology side.

You know, there's Lenny, Lenny Rashitsky, as I'm sure you know, he's the product podcast guy, really like his stuff. We have Elena Verna, she's I think at cursor right now as a growth hacker, but really like her newsletter and the stuff that she puts out there. And Ethan Smith on the SEO side and AVO side, I think he's been putting out some really good stuff too. That's great.

What great list. One last question. Do you have a Martech hot take right now? Personalization is now expected by consumers, but current behavioral targeting tools treat people like patterns and totally overlook the human that's actually guiding it.

Kabir, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation today. It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me, listeners.

Thanks for tuning in. Make sure you like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time. I'm Sarah Fatz and this is 10 Minute Bartek.

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