Pull Up a Chair: A Conversation with Si Elliott

Speaker A: Foreign. Today's episode is sponsored by Idera Talk to your marketing data for instant insights at Idera Chat.

Speaker B: So good morning, good afternoon or good night wherever you are Listening to your podcast. So I'm your host today. My name is George Hunier and uh, we are on a podcast, Analytics Friday. So today we invite Simon uh, Elliott or Sy Elliott as he uh, knows how to, how to address him but he's going to explain how he came to this marketing podcast and uh, what he's doing and present uh, himself to our audience. Simon, go ahead.

Speaker A: Thank you for the introduction. Yes, I typically get called Simon when I'm in trouble and it's usually just Si so but feel free to call me whatever you like and um, good afternoon as it is the time for me at the moment. Delighted to be joining you and really uh, pleased to be having a conversation today. I think just to give a little bit back background on me. So as you can probably tell from the accent, I'm from the uk. I run a group of digital marketing agencies, well full service marketing agents in the UK but of course most of our work now is in the digital sphere and our uh, specialism is customer experience and I run a consultancy that specializes in implementing behavioral science within customer experience. And when I say customer experience we can think of brand business, we can think of overarching customer experience or just the relationship between you and a customer. Marketing communication. So relatively broad reaching. I've been in the industry for, and the reason I have to talk about uh, I find it interesting to talk about digital is because I started the industry 25 years ago so digital was nowhere near the size it is now. So I'm a traditionally trained marked here and then find myself now operating in an ever increasing digital world. And I also lecture at ah, university both here in the UK uh, and also internationally. So I do some lecturing and really my areas of fascination are around psychology, marketing and communications and that's what I'm hoping we'll get chance to unfold a little bit today in our conversation.

Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it will be a very interesting conversation for sure. So um, Sai, uh, what I'm trying to tell you first and my question is, it's about, it's a question that everybody asks. So um, what is the path, what is uh, the path for marketing and AI? What will be and for relating to customer m experience and behavior? There are going to be some challenges here. What is your take on this?

Speaker A: So uh, we're straight into the big one There AI. Fantastic. Of course, that is something that I guess asked about a lot by students and also academics during lecturing. And of course it's something that, uh, we and I have within my agency. I have a creative function. And the world of creative and how we communicate is of course being hugely influenced by AI, I will always come back to the human center, to everything. So I've recently written a book, Customer Experience Thinking, which is about how behavioral science helps us understand, connect and build deeper relationships. This is at a human level. So we have to think, although, yes, we live in this digital world, you and I are human beings. And that needs to say, at the center of how we think and how we communicate. And digital is just one lens and one mechanism that allows us to connect. And for me, certainly one of the trends I've seen a lot of as well is that we are more connected, yet somehow people are a bit more lonely. We're losing that human connection. And that's my point where I start to really go, well, how do we bring that back in? And of course, through a commercial lens of marketing and brands communicating with people. But we have to think that as a broader level as well. Which is what's wonderful about us having a conversation today is we're going to be exploring these things, but it's George and Si having a chat. And we could very easily have built out our two AI avatars to work off the back of a master massive large language model and be the most experts in any subject area, but it wouldn't have the same kind of connection. And, um, that's where brands and marketeers are wrestling at the moment, is this challenge of AI promises us a lot where we can improve efficiency, where we can now maybe increase bandwidth, do more things with maybe less resource. It's opened the world up as well. The processing power has opened the world up. From the big four consultancies may have only had access to be able to research certain things, and now it's broader. But with all of that, do we start to lose the people in the process? And that is really important. And then from a brand perspective, certainly when we are looking at creatively, a lot of conversations are about worrying about being too samey. And statistically, ultimately it's mathematical models that are driving the outcomes. And we want to be different, we want our tone of voice. And that's where I think the human in the process will always elevate that. But I would liken it to, if we're thinking about AI, it's like giving a carpenter or A builder, power tools. It allows them to be able to increase their output or do more challenging, more elaborate buildings than they could have done if you just give them a screwdriver and a hand saw. But the reality is you still need them in that process to help build this and um, bring their lens on IT and their understanding of the challenge. I think that. And obviously your background is a lot more technical from an IT perspective than mine. So uh, you would be having a conversation with me and going, okay, si, tell me about what your business does, what systems are you using, what are your challenges and your diagnosis is where you make such a difference. Because you'll be listening to me and you'll be going, I hear what you're saying, but it sounds actually like your biggest challenge is over here. I wouldn't have put that in my brief. You will extract that and you'll be piecing bits together from the conversation and actually understanding on a human level what is its size. Really worried about when it comes to the IT infrastructure or when it comes to data protection.

Speaker B: What, um, let me rephrase again and put in a different context. Um, okay, sometimes I can go like you said, but I think it's not the big issue or the big points to be in. Um, because without strategy, brand strategy, you cannot uh, why you need data. So the questions about how you need data, how you communicate with your customer, um, that should be. And what kind of values that you are going to bring to your customer about your brand. Uh, and uh, if it's, you can use AI for that for sure or you are going to use AI for that, otherwise you'll be out of the game for the reach, ah and the engagement of the first touch points. So um, on top of that I think, um, and that I will need your take here. It's okay. We can do a plan and to craft a brand for humans and then get the tools to get rich, to get uh, out there and to get the data creatively, uh, to use against, against the strategy. If the strategy is going well, it's not going well. People are replying to that or not. And um, I think this is more comprehensive, uh, way of uh, doing brand creativity in the times of AI. Or are you seeing a different perspective?

Speaker A: I think you've got a really good point there in terms of how you're using it. But you started off with that. Uh, I've got real clarity on my brand. I know my brand values, I know my tone of voice, I know my competitive position in the market. So because the strategy Is right. You can then start to use the tools to support you in execution of the strategy. But you still need that human at the wheel somewhere to be directing this and taking control of this. Without doubt, when we look at data and analytics, some of the advancements are far beyond what I would ever be able to do with my uh, Excel spreadsheet and my own analytical capability. So. But that expands out. But even still, quite often you have to come back to the question of what question am I answering? It's fine. And I think part of the challenge for people in life is that we have these prehistoric brains that we've had and they've evolved for many thousands of years and really they would serve us in quite a different world to the one we face. We're now in a world where we have a level of intelligence that it has probably already far surpassed us. And if it hasn't at this point it will do in weeks, months or years will far surpass us. We now have to. We've got a new challenge that we face which is how do we harness that and how do we use that and how do we understand it as well. And in this world where digital communication we're overloaded. There's lots going on. There's a lot of cognitive load on our brain. So how much processing we have to do, it's greater than it has ever been with that cognitive processing. Our uh, brains are uh, cognitive misers. We yearn simplicity. We're looking for things to be simpler. So I think just that point of lots of data but what am I trying to understand? And then actually go what's the data telling me to that question. But the questions may be the most important bit.

Speaker B: So I have um, um SaaS products that uh, gives you out that cognitive load. So because you get paralyzed with so much data so the, the AI will only um, be using um, some questions that every marketeer does. Okay. And uh, in real time so you don't have for, for you it's easy to get there because you get the answers that you that sometimes giving some hours to look analy and will be out of date. So AI can help you discover segments of your audience that need your brand, need a different touch. So I think um, and we'll get there for sure. And some brands get that uh, already that. Okay. So uh, I'm going to talk to the humans but let's give us to our teams ways to, to get that cognitive load out of the way to have time to be more present for the customers to give more initiatives to the customer. So what do you think that AI can do? A different perspective than just surpassing, uh, us. So you are the one that are going uh, in with AI or going out with AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I, uh, think there's a really interesting point if we expand out in customer experience at the moment beyond let's say the traditional marketing lens to dealing with customer contact centers and things like that. And we've seen a rise of chatbots and we've seen brands that have gone, we're going to cut down our customer service team and um, we're going to cut it down radically by 90%. And we've then seen some of those brands bringing people back because I'd realized that customer success scores are impacted, customer satisfaction is down. And what actually AI and technology will allow us to do is the heavy lifting on the simple things to free up exactly what you're talking about there, which is the team to focus on the high value things, the bits that maybe they would have neglected. So I spent some time in the States with a, uh, brand called Zappos, a uh, shoe retailer that Amazon bought for 1.2 billion. And they were very proud that there was no targeted call time. So the longest call was in excess of 10 hours because they stayed for as long as it took to do the right thing for the customer. But technology supports that by maybe doing the heavy lifting of you forgotten your password or you're trying to catch up on a delivery so it freezes up to do it. And what you just talked about there with that SaaS product is I'm a marketeer. I'm um, overwhelmed. I have a million things on my plate. Any marketeer listening to this will completely relate to this. How do I, how do I get to. And you know, it's like having, how do I get to the point where I, I know the important things to look at. Well, if there's a system that can help me with that based on a good brief that I've given it, then that helps me curate my day, it helps me zone in my focus and understand. And it's that matrix of urgent versus important. And we often find that urgent things take over and actually it's the important things we want to look at. Well, AI should be doing the, or certainly can perform a job of helping me reduce down my work list and actually spend the time on the important rather than just the urgent but unimportant. So that's where I think it can be revolutionary for us really. And it can work as an executive assistant, a Personal assistant, however we want to phrase it, to remove a lot of those things. So actually we can focus on the important stuff.

Speaker B: Uh, continue with this conversation. Tsai. Um, I see that McKinsey say that in the near future the typical marketeer will do things that you should do on 50% of the time that um, today does the same jobs or the same tasks. So if it will be 50% free, uh, to do another thing that I'm sure with uh, all people in the occidental world without time to do their normal tasks, there will be more time to think. That is a thing that um, even with the speed of lightning and so on, people don't have time to think about the results that are in front of them. And sometimes they need time for the person. It's not a computer. So it is to understand what should concentrate their time. So in regarding for that you have that example that okay, you can cut jobs or you can do like Ikea does, that is recentering, um, these people to do customer experience, um, that the brand does and with awesome results that uh, I saw, that everybody saw. Uh, it's a public case study. So I think um, um, and I know I need your take because for some people, okay, let's cut costs and uh, let's be shorted for the short side just for uh, improving the profits right away. But in the long term we are taking the creativity out of the teams because you are getting time, you are getting time to do things that you need to think about it. What do you think about it?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a really great point as well. And as a marketeer I'm always going to be in slight conflict with a CFO because they're going to say, well we can now reduce headcount by 50% and therefore that's good for the bottom line. Yes, it is today. But, and you will know from being an expert in analytics, some things are lagging indicators that you won't find out for length, uh, and time. Now our work is typically around building up advocacy and loyalty for customers. So we don't do much work where it is about first acquisition. First acquisition forms part of it, but it's never. You're totally zoned in on that. We're looking for whole life value of customers. How do we build up a long relationship? How do we build up loyalty? Because that's where the value really sits, not in. I can acquire you on TikTok today and make €20 and then I go on to the next person. As long as my Cost of acquisition was €10. I've made money. We're looking at things in a slightly longer lens. So. And that comes down to the point about what's the important metrics and understanding that from the outset. So our task is very much around creating the best experience for the customer. So it doesn't always mean maximum value in the first transaction. It means how do we actually build a long term relationship. And it comes back to that point about if you really want to be successful with a customer, reducing cognitive lowdown is really important. So our uh, brains separate into two mental systems. You've got system one, which is intuition, instinct, 95% of your processing happens at subconscious level. And then you've got system two, the rational thinking which is the 5%. So our brains are super busy anyway. If we can allow more time to pause and think rather than react in a world then that is going to be fantastically valuable for the depth of connection that we're going to build with other people as opposed to just a volume of how am I churning things out the door. So I think your point is, is, is a really important one for us to keep in mind.

Speaker B: Okay, so, so um, I agree totally with you because of what you are um, uh, finishing to say and um, how you see um. Because I see two things that are um, that are related. You just talk about it, that is okay. If you go short term you get no creativity, you get only operational marketing. Operational marketing, Operational marketing. If you do mid and long term you get more than operational, you get way to think about customer, how I'm going to leverage relation, how I see my customer, customer lifetime value and so on. So how you think you're going to use AI for that um, in nearby future because uh, it's like the calculator, um sometimes ago all people does all the calculations by head by heart. But uh, for sure AI can give you a heads up in terms of the things that you don't need to think about too much but you need to have to then because they are repeatable tasks that um, you don't like to do it in one way and the other way gives you more space to be more strategically to think about the customer. How you think will be the future of customer relation and uh, customer experience. Uh, at that time you're going to

Speaker A: see a divergence in mindset. You're going to see some people that are looking at the. And uh, I have to accept when I'm dealing with CFOs of public traded companies they have a task which Is meet this quarter, meet this year's targets and that's fine. But it does drive you to let's say the shorter term metrics and thinking. And so if there's cost saving available that could be there a slightly, a longer term mindset. Um, and ultimately you have to look at what someone's role is because whatever their incentivization is, is what's their behavior and what's going to be important to them. People with a longer term mindset will go okay, well thinking of like vicious and virtuous cycles, vicious cycle. You cut costs, you drive savings, you cut costs, you make it cheaper. Uh, and you're in a race. The bottom virtuous cycle. I invest, I invest more in the product, the price can go up, I've got more money to invest in the product. That's where we want to be. So if we just view this moment in time now where we've got these potential, let's call them AI savings on certain resource. If you take the saving now, you might be trading off the future. Whereas if you then say how do we take the brilliant efficiency it can bring us and now invest time into thinking and um, building long term relationships. That's where real brand value has grown.

Speaker B: Yeah, nice. Uh, take Sai I think uh, yeah, that's the way to think I think because um, if you get all squeeze, all people squeeze on the human resources people like if they are squeezed in the operations and tedious repeatable tasks they'll be most operational. The human factor, that is creativity, that is to think about. Things will be lost and in the mid long term they will be equal to another companies. Like you said, it will be more for the price they are leading for the price and cost price and to cut price and the cfo, it cuts so much uh, meat, uh so to say people will be not able to think differently, they only operate and uh, that's very bad. So okay, so uh, Sai, um, so we are in a transition phase now. Um, I don't know what is the future for five years now I think nobody has. Right. Um, but um, there are things that in these certain times what people should do on marketing, on marketing relationship, on these uncertain times.

Speaker A: So in uncertain times first thing is um, put yourself in the customer's shoes and understand who you're serving. We have a trend in society at the moment about how everything's coming to me, how everything's convenient, how it's all about me. But actually our job as marketeers, as brands, brands, as businesses is to add value to someone else and um, get a financial compensation for the value that we've added. Brands at the moment, yes, there's a lot we want to say, there's a lot we want to talk about, but actually the reality is who am I serving? What's important to them? How do I make their life better? How do I give a demonstrable improvement to them in whatever guise, whether that is B2B or B2C, how am I helping that person? So take your SaaS product that you talked about there and you're going, well, I know SI is, he's spinning a lot of plates. He's trying to understand across a lot of different clients the important metrics. I can make his life easier by giving him this great dashboard or this daily report that just lifts this load off him. And actually beyond just telling him the metrics, I'm, um, making his life easier, um, I'm reducing stress from his life. And actually I'm making the first hour of the day that he typically looks at the analytics stuff. I'm ah, making it a more pleasurable hour where he's got a cup of coffee and he's thinking, and he's also thinking, with this information that's been presented to me, how can I add value to my clients? So I'm making him look better in his job. So this all comes down to we have to think about who we're serving, what we're here for. The reason I, the reason I wrote a book is because there's only so many people I can have conversations with in my lifetime. There's only so many clients I can work with, so many talks I can give in person, so many lectures. Whereas a book allows me to expand that out and serve more people in a really readily available format available globally. You know, thanks to the likes of Amazon, people can get it the next day wherever they are. So just allows for that capability for me to serve, uh, more people with. This is what I've learned. This is an interesting lens on the world and that's I think, where brands have to start. But that's always been the case. Just because we've got AI now, we didn't have the Internet before then we've got the Internet, we didn't have social media then we got social media. It's just an evolution and admittedly this is a very fast evolution. It's going a lot quicker than those others I've just touched on there. And it's very broad reaching, but it is just an evolution. And fundamentally this life is about our Human experience. We are human beings on this planet. It is about our human experience. And we have to be really mindful to make sure that the technologies that we surround ourselves with serve as well, rather than us just serving them as data points and we're the processors. So brands just put yourself in your customer's shoes and make sure you really understand how you can do a great job for them. And that's always, that is always going to pay off.

Speaker B: Okay, Sai, so you're talking about your book. So tell me a little more about your book. What is the expectation, uh, for a marketeer who is your launch new book? What is going to take. Uh, so please refer the name of the book and all people can get the book as well and then make a uh, pitch about your book, please.

Speaker A: I will pitch my book to you then. So, uh, it's called Customer Experience Thinking by myself, Si Elliot. And it's about how behavioral science will help you understand, connect and build deeper relationships. The book is designed for anybody working in marketing, an entrepreneur, anybody working in business, or in fact someone that's just interested in why they make decisions the way they do. And it goes through and looks at uh, customer experience principles. So eight principles that help direct and I like to think of them as kind of financial principles that help direct the way you think about designing your customer experience or your marketing communications. So again, anyone listening to this, when I say customer experience, you can just think marketing. And then the second half the book goes into behavioral science and behavioral economics and explains how different biases will influence our thinking and um, where they come from. Some academic studies there, but in every case I've given a real life example and then a thought for people as well. So it's designed as something people can pick up, flick their way through, understand the subject matter a bit more and just try and apply it to their lives and I think to their circumstance. And hopefully, as I say it gives people and the feedback I've had so far, it's Amazon bestseller in the first week which was fantastic. Uh, available from Amazon all bookshops. So had really good feedback on it. And for me it's mostly about people from all walks of life going, there's something in here that actually is quite useful to me and I can relate to and people can find me on LinkedIn as well. So if they see something in the book and go, I didn't fully understand that, just DM me on LinkedIn and I, uh, have lots of conversations about, oh, uh, I saw this and I've got this Challenge. I'm trying to appeal to this type of customer or how do I get these people to rate my experience higher? And we just have. It just spans off into interesting conversations. And um, my job's toughly serve other people. And I've been blessed with so many great books that I've read over the years. This is me repaying some of those authors by taking the time, putting it down on paper, and then spreading it out to the world.

Speaker B: Giving back.

Speaker A: That's the plan.

Speaker B: Okay, so, um, okay, Simon, so we are almost, uh, on the earth of the book recommendation. Uh, in the end of our shows, you normally ask for the author, for the, for the speakers to the guests to recommend the book. You already recommend your own book. You have another recommendation?

Speaker A: Of course. Yeah, I have to be a bit more modest and not just recommend, recommend my own book. A fant. A fantastic book that really got me thinking about marketing very differently was a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. And when it comes to behavioral economics and behavioral science, it might be one, if not the most important books in this space. And it really was, it was a light bulb moment for me. It inspired a lot of my journey in terms of going from marketing into behavioral science and how we can apply that in marketing. And yeah, anybody given the chance, I would certainly give, uh, that a read.

Speaker B: Okay, sai, so, um, thank you very much for your time. I think was an awesome conversation. I've put a bit harsh on you, but I think was very good questions and very good answers and I think the audience will be pleased by that. And, um, you pitch your book. And I think the book, the reading, it's a human thing that we should do to get our knowledge, um, reimagined with our mind and take for our places. And it's always good to read. So because read starts our own engine, our human engine. So it's very good to have, uh, an author. It's a pleasure here in our podcast. And um, thank you very much for your time and attention and uh, attention for our audience as well. So thank you very much. And for our audience, uh, we'll speak, we'll have another show with an awesome guest for sure for September now because we are on plan August, we are going on holidays as well. Everybody is on holidays. But you have here a very nice episode to reflect on AI, on customer behavior and customer experience. And you can buy a book from SAI and have read it, um, on beaches, on the fields when you are. Thank you very much.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. Today's episode is sponsored by Idera. Talk to your marketing data for instant insights at Idera Chat.

Speaker B: Analytics Friend, a podcast.