Scaling AI Without Losing the Human Customer Experience with Brooke Sellas

Speaker A: Hello. Hello. This is the Making a Marketer podcast with hosts Megan Powers and Jen Larson. This show is your resource for all things marketing, business and branding. From the marketing curious to the seasoned veterans, we continue to be your resource for what matters most with guests who teach us no matter where we are in our business journeys. Settle in, friends. This is season nine. And here we go. Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Making a Marketer podcast. I'm Megan Powers from Powers with marketing. Hi, Ms. M. Jen Larson. How are you doing today?

Speaker B: I am doing great. I have been out at Wichita, uh, riverfest today, and I am doing wonderfully.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker A: I forgot you told me you had that today. Oh, fun.

Speaker B: Well, I was today, but then I got moved to Sunday, but I went out there anyway.

Speaker A: Oh, your time got moved to Sunday, not the riverfest itself. Okay. Okay.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, get famous and stuff. I'm not that she's not already famous in Wichita because she's kind of a big deal, I think.

Speaker B: Oh, my God, I love you.

Speaker A: No, I love you too.

Speaker C: It's good to see you.

Speaker A: It's been a hard few months, but I'm like, ah, you guys are making me in, like, a super good mood today. So thank you for that. And, uh, welcome to our previous guest and current amazingness, Ms. Brixellis.

Speaker C: Y' all so happy to be here. We've been having way too much fun being silly, but now we have to be serious. No, we don't.

Speaker A: You could listen to us for like, two seconds and learn that we are the least silliest of all. We're locked in business podcasts. But hey, man, we get the job done and we have a good time. I think that's like, you know, the most important part. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I'm going to read Brooke's bio. Brooke Seles is CEO and founder of B Squared Media, a leading social media marketing agency specializing in customer care and social listening strategies since 2012. With over 15 years of social media marketing expertise, she pioneered the Think Conversation, not campaign methodology that transformed customer centric digital marketing. As a recognized thought leader, Brooke is a keynote speaker at, uh, premier marketing conferences, including Social Media Inbound and marketing profs. B2B forum. She brings academic authority as a social media studies professor at New York University and Baruch College, plus teaching at University University of California, Irvine on behalf of Thermo Fisher while providing executive education programs nationwide. Well, that's quite.

Speaker C: Say, who are we talking about again? She's in school. Oh, wait, it's Me.

Speaker A: That's funny. And Jen included. Fun little note. Three years ago, we talked about connecting through conversation. Today we're going to ask what connection looks like when AI enters the chat. So to speak, she general room. But entering the chat felt like, um. Yeah, like a better way to phrase it. Let's get started.

Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. Like Megan just noted, last time we were talking about connection through conversation, every marketer I know is feeling some sort of whiplash. We're about to do an event here in Wichita all about AI And I know that there are people completely unsettled about what that even means. Search is changing. AI is changing customer expectations in real time. And sometimes it feels like the ground is moving beneath our feet. When you look at the intersection of social media, customer experience and AI right now, what feels most important for the marketers to understand that they may be missing right now?

Speaker C: There are two sides to the coin. Very cliche, I know, but I'll expand. I love AI. I use AI. I think it's an amazing tool. On the flip side of that, I think what we're seeing, and I think we've all seen it ourselves, especially the past couple of months, like the tides are turning. You know, when AI first came out a few years ago, we were all like, oh my God, uh, it's amazing, right? Everybody was like, and we're gonna AI everything AI first. This add this AI tool, we're gonna do a lot, you know. Now if you look at the news cycle, it's a little more like a, I messed this up. AI ruined this thing. This company fired all their people and put AI in their place. And then they're having to backtrack and rehire people and people are not happy about it.

Speaker B: Duh.

Speaker C: Uh, right. So I think we got a little too excited. I think we thought that AI was going to be like the end all, be all, and it's just not. And when it comes to connection specifically, I think we need to leave the automation at the door. So don't let the AI in the room. It can come in the chat, but it's not coming in the room. You know, I'm, I'm cool with like self service AI chat bots, speaking of what I do, which is a lot of customer experience, but through social media channels. AI is great in those self service bots, however, and our clients feel the same way. So I feel very steadfast in saying this. They don't want AI building that relationship, making those connection points on their behalf or um, on behalf of the brand because they Know better, I guess is the best way to say it.

Speaker B: Yeah. If everything is automated, you lose so much opportunity to keep learning about your audience. Right. Yeah, I noticed that. Even, like just simply in the comments section and reading and responding to reviews, I know so much about what our clients like. The person that runs social media for a hotel like, I have quite a clear picture of what our guests are expecting and what they're disappointed, um, by and, you know, the joys and all those kinds of things because I'm sitting there roofing, culminating in that all the time and getting to know them. And if you put AI in the room and, and leave yourself, then you're. You're losing all that really good intel and connection.

Speaker A: It never answers the question I'm asking anyway.

Speaker C: Oh, my gosh. Right. It's also degraded. Have you noticed that a lot of the platforms feel like they've degraded you listening to. That's real. Because what's happening. You're probably reading this in the news cycle as well. Like people have. Who replaced that, their whole team with AI. AI is becoming more and more expensive. It was the whole freemium model. Remember Facebook used to be free too. And so they're moving things up. They're throttling the AI because packages are about to change. They can't keep affording. If you look at how much money these AI companies, these large language model companies, including Meta and you know, all the big ones, they're losing money on AI. They're not making money on AI yet because all of these usage tokens that we're using as users, but we're only paying 20 bucks a month or whatever it is. So they're throttling now. You're going to see some of that output degrading. And that's on purpose because they want you to tear up, they want you to pay more. And so I think we're in for a real AI reckoning. And I think it's going to happen like before the end of this year.

Speaker A: Okay, that's like a really good segue. That's a really good segue to my question. So we're living in this weird marketers or specifically living in this weird tension where we are excited by the AI because it's been helping us move faster. Although that m. It may slow down again. But we're also terrified of losing the humanity. Going back to the. I never get question answered that I'm actually asking. But that humanity is what makes brands memorable. Right. So where do you think AI genuinely improves the customer experience and where do you think brands should be really careful to not over automate? You kind of answered this a little bit already, but, um, I know there's more to it.

Speaker C: Behind the scenes. AI should never be front and center when you're talking about relationship building, building connection, building trust, building loyalty. It should never be the point person, the point machine for those kinds of initiatives. It should always be behind the scenes. Like, so, Jen, you were talking about like customer views. I love using AI. Go look at all reviews, put everything together. Give me the top themes for this product. Give me the top themes for sentiment. Tell me the top three things that people complain about that I can fix so I never have to hear that complaint again. You know, I might not be able to change the color of my wall. I guess I could change it because

Speaker A: I just painted it.

Speaker C: That's a bad example. But you know what I'm saying, like there's something you can actually fix and then never get that complaint again. Like say you have a bug in your software. Much better analogy. Okay, brain, thanks for playing along. But you know, like, if you find a bug, top three things is like on mob, well, I can't log in or I can't do this thing. Well, that's a bug. Go fix it. You'll never hear that complaint again. So I love using AI for the behind the scenes analysis, social intelligence. This is the problem. I think if we would have just stuck to just being more efficient with AI, it would have been fine. But instead we want to be like, oh, you know what, Let me replace all these humans with these machines that I think can do this cheaper. A, they're not doing it and B, they end up being more expensive than the people. So let's just use it a little bit and not try to replace like the entire planet with AI and I think we'll be okay. But here we are.

Speaker B: Yeah, so you said it so well there. I feel like sometimes like once you say it out loud, it's.

Speaker C: Well, a lot of the budgets, they're

Speaker A: going to the hardware because the more AI you have, the more data centers you have to have, the more money you put into that in the.

Speaker C: That's a whole other thing. The data centers, right. We're seeing that happen like again, news cycle. But I'm very big into the news cycle. Right. A lot of leading indicators, indicators happen in the news data centers. People are like, absolutely not. And the places where data centers have been put in, people are saying they've had problems with their electricity, either they're having blackouts or Their electricity have skyrocketed. Their water is turning yucky brown. I don't know if you saw that video of like the water, I forget where it was, but they had a jar, they brought it to like the city council meeting and it was brown water because of the data center. So I just think we went all in way too fast. Like, I guess I'm just more risk averse. Like if I get to the gambling table, which I do like to gamble, but I take my $250 and I take my chip and I, I try to make it last. We just threw all of our money we took. We unloaded our whole bank account and went all in and we don't even know how to play the game. Like, it just seems a real dumb decision. Sorry. For those of you listening who are all in on AI I mean seriously

Speaker B: though, like we're, we're then so blind we don't even know what all like can actually happen on AI we literally

Speaker C: don't even know how to play the game. It would be like some um, game you've never heard of, like the tissue gambling game. Oh, very cool. What are the rules? We don't know. Okay, great.

Speaker A: All in.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: What?

Speaker B: Sounds wonderful. Yeah.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh.

Speaker B: So to kind of go back a little bit, marketers are still separating a lot of the times marketing from customer service, which I know, but on social media they've kind of become the same thing. Kind of like what we were just talking about the comment section, the reviews, they become a reputation moment real fast. So what should marketers be thinking differently about social media as part of the customer experience today?

Speaker C: Well, as I said last time, I think social media is really not about content. So you know the problem with social, I think this is just my opinion and based on, you know, 14 years of plus of experience and working with some pretty cool brands, we made social a content platform. When you, when you say to someone like, well what's your social strategy? They're going to launch into what their content is about. And we as you know, think it's really more about the conversations, not the content. The experience that your customers are having on social are happening through those social media conversations. Most of the time I hear people say, yeah, people just want to complain. Yes. But they're giving you a chance to fix it. They could just be quiet and take their money elsewhere, but instead when they come and they complain to you, Jen or Megan, they're, what they're really saying is fix it. Because I want to see with your brand so that's number one. Number two, if we want to add that AI layer and think about how AI works, right. It is built on natural language processing. Nlp. Social media is like the world's largest kind of sort of free, open source place for conversations, natural language. So AI and AI answers. You know, you might call it AEO or geo, whatever you call it, it's really all a subset of SEO anyway. But again, my opinion. But AI is looking at all of those conversations and that's how it is answering what your brand is all about. So it doesn't matter. You know, a lot of people are like, oh, we're doing this, that and the other to the website. Okay, great. It does pull from websites many times, but when you really look at where it's looking for some of these deeper questions that aren't necessarily like, oh, well, go to this website or read this blog post. It's looking at social media conversations. It's looking at, um, reviews, a very big place that AI looks. So if your customers are just complaining and then you're not responding or you're going on and you're being defensive, that's getting picked up. If you're going on and you're quickly saying, oh my gosh, Megan, I'm so sorry, let me fix this for you. Let's get this done together. It's picking that up, right? It's picking up the sentiment of what your customers are saying about you. So that story is written without you. And the only thing you can do as a brand is gently try to guide that conversation the way that you want it by being super helpful and focusing on experience. And unfortunately, that doesn't have much to do with content.

Speaker A: Yeah, engagement. Weird concept, huh?

Speaker C: So weird. Uh, yeah.

Speaker A: Can of worms. Can of worms.

Speaker C: We can go fishing with that can of worms. If you want, you just tell me where we're casting and I'll go there.

Speaker B: I mean, here's the thing about social. It's in the word, right? Like, social media is supposed to be social. Engagement.

Speaker C: Doesn't it frustrate you though, that we're saying this all these years later?

Speaker B: Yeah, like I.

Speaker C: Social media dinosaur. I know we all. I won't call you all by that same name, but we've all been on social for a very long time.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And we're still. It's like the whole, like, I'm. This is the way I've always done it. I don't understand why it's not working. Well, because you built it for content. You didn't build it for return investment or experience or whatever.

Speaker A: Well, uh, not just that. Like for my president of my professional association, my. The San Diego chapter and acting as VP of marketing because we don't have one. We do have a director now and she's rocking it. She's awesome. Hi, Katherine. She said she listens sometimes, but that's the thing. We're doing a lot of selling. Right. Here's this event. Here's this event. Come to this event. And I've been saying since I was actually VP of marketing eight years ago, we need more thought leadership. We need more engagement. Not just on our stuff, because people are commenting on things and nobody was liking or responding, but also on other people's. Like, let's chat up our other industry friends and try to reshare their stuff and give them some love. Because there is an impact in that. But I think it gets forgotten or we don't have enough time. I guess a lot of this comes down to time, right? And not being, not being staffed up enough. And yeah, I need more minutes in my hours. I like to say I don't, I don't want more hours on my day because I don't, I don't want my day to be longer, but I want the need to the hours.

Speaker C: I like that. I like that. But to your point, LinkedIn is now showing you the reach that you're common on other people.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Are getting you. And that is exactly to your point, Megan. You are way ahead of the curve. Because all of the platforms, by the way, it doesn't, uh, we're talking about LinkedIn, but all of them have updated their algorithms of late to talk about meaningful engagement. LinkedIn literally changed one of the metrics which is now showing you. Hey, this comment that you left on this other person's post is getting this much reach. Some of my comment reach is now higher than the post that I'm posting because they are literally trying to tell us if we would just open our eyes or listen. Uh, hey, engagement is very meaningful. Engagement, not just likes. So I want to be clear, like they're conversation comments and what they call comment threads, which are really just back and forth conversations. Those are weighted as high as a share. So that is what the platforms are going for because they want dwell time. The more time you spend conversing on these platforms, these platforms get dwell time and that is exactly what they want as a platform. So you would just have to think about the behavior on all sides of what you're doing. You have your brand behavior, which is sell, sell Sell. Stop that. But then you have the customer behavior, and you have the behavior of the people who own the platforms that you're doing business on. For social, you need to understand all three of those behaviors to successfully navigate social in today's times.

Speaker B: Yeah, word. Yeah.

Speaker A: She says, not in today's times, but in olden times. That was a, uh, very old dinosaur comment. Okay, so right now there feels like there's two camps. People who are using it for everything, and the people who are like, I, uh, don't know about that stuff. I'm a little scared. So what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes that you're seeing marketers make with AI right now, especially when it comes to those customer relationships?

Speaker C: I don't know if we have enough time, but let's see how far we can get using it for everything, automating everything. Number one, which. Number two, not putting guardrails in. So everybody's saying, like, hey, what can you do? Can you give me this output? Can you give me this?

Speaker B: Whatever.

Speaker C: But they're not giving enough guardrails. I think it's so important with AI. I teach a generative AI for marketing class with Thermo Fisher at the University of California, and we spend a whole section on understanding guardrails, meaning what are the parameters that you're telling AI not to step outside side of? You know, it could be as simple as the story I like to tell is. When I first started using ChatGPT and I was using it to help write some drafts for things, it would say the word delve. And I had literally never heard the word delve before. Don't ask me where I was living. I just never heard it. So I was like, delve. And I went and looked it up, and I was like, oh, like, dive in. Like, let's unpack this. Whatever, delve, Right? And I'm like, hey, so don't do that. I don't. I would never say that word. I'd like, let's go, let's dive in. Like, just don't do that. Okay? And the bot was like, all right, won't do it. Kept doing it. Well, when I built my custom bot, it was also doing it. I had to literally put it into my configuration. So I have a whole section in my custom bots or in my projects, if you're in Claude. Like, the whole section that has guardrails, the do nots, the never dos, never say delve, never cite a source without linking to that source. Never cite a source that's greater than two Years old. Never cite a source that's from not a top well known, uh, well researched platform. Right. I'm giving it guardrails so that it's not giving me slop back. I think the reason why we're putting so much AI slop out there is because we're going write me a blog post with zero context and you're getting slop. You know, trash in, trash out, as the old cliche goes.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, those are good tips. Garbage. And we talk about prompt, you know, prompts. We talk about that very generally about like it's all about the prompt that you give it. But it's also great point, like tell it what you don't want.

Speaker C: Yeah. Like put those parameters in there because otherwise you're just going to get basic sloppy sounds like everybody else stuff. My whole goal with using AI, especially for like content and writing is so it sounds exactly like me. I've given it my book. It should, based on what everybody says about AI, it should be able to take that book and be like, well, now I can write just like you. It still doesn't. I still have to give it those guardrails and corrections. And I think people just assume. I think people think it's. That's. I guess this is the third and maybe final thing, but I think people think. I think it's just smarter than it is. It is not the end all, be all. It makes mistakes. It's not good. Sometimes it's really only as good as the input that you're giving it for that output. So.

Speaker A: Because there's a lot of slop on the Internet.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I told my student. I'm like, so the way AI works is it goes and it's giving you the best answer based on kind of like context clues. And it's looking at the Internet as a whole to find those context clues and bring you back information. So is everything you read on the Internet true?

Speaker A: Honestly, no.

Speaker C: And I'm like, uh, okay then, so everything AI tells you, not true.

Speaker B: Think it through.

Speaker C: Yeah, Yeah, I love that.

Speaker A: All right, so we are to halftime, and these days we're doing a little rapid fire. So you got to answer one or the other, this or that. Ah, there's no.

Speaker C: There's no but.

Speaker A: Well, maybe I no mind the other.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: Jif or gif? Gif. Night owl or early bird?

Speaker C: Permanently exhausted pigeon. Neither, neither, neither. Permanently exhausted pigeon. It depends on the day. I'm just always tired if I. I'll stay up late if I have to, or if I'M having fun, but normally my bedtime is like 9:00pm um, yeah.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: But I don't like to get up early either. Oh, talks me like at least the first hour.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: that's why I, like, lay in bed before I when there's people around because I just don't want to talk and I don't want to be rude. Beach or mountains?

Speaker C: Beach.

Speaker A: Coffee or tea?

Speaker C: Ooh, I'm off caffeine right now, so tea. Okay.

Speaker A: I'm m sorry.

Speaker C: I know, but it's great. I don't miss it anymore. It's been eight months, so, like, now I'm over it.

Speaker A: Oh, wow. Awesome.

Speaker C: Amazing.

Speaker A: That's nice. All right, cut up the dance floor. Or wallflower.

Speaker C: Oh, cut up the dance floor. All by myself too. It doesn't matter who's there or if anybody's there.

Speaker B: I'm on the dance floor.

Speaker A: By car or by train?

Speaker C: Uh, both have their merits. I'm gonna go car.

Speaker A: Okay. Dog or cat?

Speaker C: Dog.

Speaker A: Phone call or text?

Speaker C: Oh, my God, please don't call me.

Speaker A: That's definitely winning. We're gonna have to do a, uh, little, little AI compilation. Yeah, yeah. Get percentages on all of these. Um, answers.

Speaker C: Don't call me ever. I scream my call. So bad. I'm so bad. I'm sorry. Admittedly, my friends are gonna be listening to this and be like, yeah, she sucks. I'm sorry. I hate talking on the phone.

Speaker A: I like talking on the phone, but don't catch me off guard. Send me a text first and then we'll figure out a time I need it. Context. Yes. Because also my family, I rarely hear from them. So then when I just get a job text that says call me, I instantly think something bad happened.

Speaker C: Oh, yeah. But maybe that's why I'm like that. Cuz when I call my family, like if I talk to my mom, my grandma, my sister, minimum, um, one hour conversation. So maybe that's why I'm like, so scared. Get on the floor, people. Because I'm like, I don't have an hour.

Speaker A: Right. It's so funny because I do the same thing, but also then I put it off for so long, then I want to do it even less because it's going to be even longer. And then when we finally do it. Yeah, forever. Put me on a train or in a car for a while and then we can make the time pass by really fast.

Speaker C: Fun question. I do like making phone calls in the car. Okay, I'll talk to you when I'm in the car because it Passes the time.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Anyways.

Speaker B: So true.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I don't have to talk on the phone.

Speaker A: I don't have CarPlay in my car right now. I mean, I still. Obviously I get an earbud and whatever, but when I rent a car, that's one of my favorite things is like, I can be like texting back.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Can talk through text. Megan.

Speaker C: But I'm on my way. Yeah, I love that. I do use that. Yes.

Speaker A: All right. Awesome. All right, Jen, let's go.

Speaker C: Second half.

Speaker B: Yeah. Right back into it. So we want to make this really practical for our marketers that are listening while driving or folding laundry. If someone listening wants to better connect social media customer experience and AI in their marketing, what are a few places you'd tell them to start this week?

Speaker C: Okay, y', all, this is. This is gonna be fun. I'm having fun. Maybe you're not having fun. I'm gonna have fun. I would wish I could do it with you because then we would have fun. But go download your. If you're not using a social media tool, go to each platform that you're active on and download just your native raw commerce and grab as much as you can. You can upload that into AI and start to run analyzes on what's happening. I would start with all of the conversations that you're having. So if you're having lots of convers, your content that you're putting out, people are tagging you, all that kind of stuff. Great. Ask it those questions we talked about earlier. What are some of the trends and patterns you're seeing in all of these conversations? What are the top things people are upset about? What are the top things people love? What's my highest rating? Review. Is there any user generated content within some of these conversations that I didn't snag and turn it into user generated content? The sky's the limit. Now if you're not having a lot of people say, but Brooke, no one's talking about you. Well, that's. That's problem number one. We need to create more conversational content that gets people talking about us. But if you're not doing that, then go ahead and upload the content to AI and say, nobody's talking about me. Tell me how I can get people to start talking about me or talking to me on social. It will help you revamp your content so that you can start to have some of those conversations happening. And if you really want to get nerdy, tell it when it's looking at your content that you want Your content to be more conversational and that you want to tie it to the social penetration theory. Terrible name, brilliant concept. But this is what I did my undergraduate thesis on. And it's all about how we form trust and relationships. And essentially there are four levels of disclosure. Cliches, facts, opinions, feelings. Most branded content lives in cliches and facts. Guess what doesn't remove, move relationships forward or create trust or loyalty. Cliches and facts. So if you do it with that little prompt in mind, it's going to put skew towards opinions and feelings, which gets people to stop, to scroll, start talking to you, sharing their opinions and their feelings. And that's how you can get to that content piece or that conversation piece with the AI that I mentioned earlier. Hopefully that makes sense.

Speaker A: Well, I just went to reach for my comms theory book. I got my master's in communication in 1973.

Speaker C: Altman and Taylor. Social penetration theory, also called the Onion theory degree.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's in there. So did you get your degree in communication?

Speaker C: No, to I did, but to graduate with honors from Penn State you had to do an undergraduate thesis. And so that's what I did the thesis on. I took that 1973 communication theory and I said okay, obviously it's not 1973 anymore. Now we have this thing called social media. Does this work on social media and doesn't work from person to brand, not just person to person. And yes, I mean because ultimately, right, we're all humans on either side of the screen. Even though we're talking to a brand, it's a human who responding. So the way we build that relationship still exists in that way, I should say.

Speaker A: So I'm curious, your teaching that you're doing, are you teaching in marketing departments? Are you teaching in communication departments?

Speaker C: So what's interesting is even though I teach at UCI, my students are actually all Thermo Fisher employees. So what's so cool about that is yes, I'm teaching a lot of marketing and comms people, but literally the scientists who are creating these drugs will take the class because they're just curious about the process of what happens when they create something and how it gets marketed and put out to the masses. So most of my students are comms marketing, but every now and again I get really cool like product market or something like that. But I get really cool like scientists who come in, which is so cool. Super interesting. I mean I really think Thermo Fisher's gotta there there because there's the marketing 1.0 and 2.0. But there's also the AI class, which is, I'm sure you've guessed, is very popular. But it allows them to see how to use it in their role in what they're doing. It makes their job exciting again, I think. And so I just think. I don't know. I just love the way that they have built out this program because it's not just for. Yes, it's a marketing class, but it's not just for marketers. And, um, the scientists really actually enjoy it when they take it.

Speaker A: That's cool. Yeah. Well, I really enjoyed going to the National Communication association convention because that's where you get to learn about all the research that's being done because they're presenting

Speaker C: their papers about that. Because that sounds like something I would. Would eat up with a spoon.

Speaker A: Yeah, let's check it out. Maybe we go next time. It's also super affordable because it's academic. Um, great. Compared to what? Like smmw, you know.

Speaker B: Oh, no.

Speaker C: This is my bone to pick with marketing. These event price ticket prices are getting just out of hand. Thousands and thousands of dollars. A lot of the time it's the same speakers. It's still 101 content. It's not a communication theory or has no. Has no academia behind it. So like I say, we get a group of us together who care about academics and we start going to those types of shows. Hey, man.

Speaker A: And then maybe we'll get teaching.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker C: Yes. Let's go.

Speaker A: Let's go.

Speaker C: I'm all for it. I'm down. I'm so down.

Speaker A: All right, so this one we ask, uh, cautiously because nobody can predict anything. Uh, we always like to ask people to look into their crystal ball and you know, it's. It's impossible. Well, I doubt. Okay, all right. But where do you think this intersection is headed? I guess, you know, between in marketing and AI and customer experience over the next couple years? Like, what should marketers start preparing for now?

Speaker C: Gosh, I think again, on the back end of everything we do with and customer experience, AI is masterful in most places. I think that the separation just needs to be. Do not replace. There should always be a human in the loop with cx and I think more so with anything else because again, we're talking about relationships. Relationships, trust, loyalty. How can a machine create relationships, trust and loyalty. Maybe it can. I just. At this point in time, I don't see it. And again, marketers and companies are on this AI train and we're pushing to use more AI and do More with AI. But if you look at the consumer research, right? If you're actually interested in, and you go to, you say, hey, well, how do consumers feel about this? It's not good, right? Most of them say they don't want any AI coming into cx. This is in our State of Social Care report, by the way, so go download it. But most humans say they don't want AI involved with CX customer experience because they're scared that it'll mean that they have less of a chance to speak to a human when they need to. And that's already a real fear that we had prior to AI. So I think we need to slow our roll. And again, you gotta understand all three behaviors. We know our behavior. More AI, Build the quotas, do the thing, sell, sell, sell. Right? That's the brand. We know the platform behavior behaviors. Or now you do. But you need to know what those customer behaviors are. I'm telling you what most Americans are saying about cx. What are your customers saying? Survey them, ask them, talk to them. They may love it, they may hate it, and whatever they say should be your North Star for what you're going to do with AI.

Speaker A: Well, and uh, large companies like though, to your point, I work for one who, uh, became overnight, became an AI company. We are now an AI company. And like, wow. Having, uh, all of these Friday sessions to get people, people to learn about our AI tool and how to use that, because you're not allowed to use an outside AI tool, which is really incorporating the outside AI tool because you're not. They're not reinventing the wheel. But it's just this weird thing that I'm like, okay, I went to the first couple sessions and I was like, all right, it can't. I mean, I guess it's gotten better. But I was like, it can't remember what I said before. Like, what's the point in that? Also, I don't with what I do. I'm working with humans one on one. And I'm a writer. I don't need to spend time learning this school to do this job that for me I'll use on occasion, but it doesn't require it. Like, so I think that's the misconception too, right? That every job should be using AI. And it's like maybe for certain things and maybe to review something or to give you a more succinct answer to something. Some people cannot be succinct in email. I am not one of those people.

Speaker C: So anyway, it's like construction I think about construction. Right. It could probably help with analysis. Oh my gosh. You could probably get those plans done faster or figuring out how to be more efficient if you use this material versus this material. But it's not going to build the house, right? Right. Well, at least not yet. I mean, I'm sure that will come at some point, but it's just like, it's just what I said earlier. We're so eager to replace everything with AI and then what? What's the end game? When you all, uh, cite this stuff, it makes zero sense to me. It's okay. So we're just going to erase humanity? Cool story, bro. Yeah, it's rude. Just like the time. It's rude. Just like the time. It's just rude.

Speaker A: I'm gonna remember time is.

Speaker B: I am too Rude timing.

Speaker C: The older you get, better it gets.

Speaker B: Okay, so you've spent years helping brands build stronger customer relationships. So in a world moving faster than ever, what do you think people still fundamentally want from brands?

Speaker C: They just want to be noticed. Like literally. I'll tell you again, we work with a lot of big brands. They have a lot of negative conversations that are coming their way when we first start working at them. And there's kind of two camps. There's the camp that's like, well, we only address the negative comments because we don't have time for the positive stuff. And the negative we want to get fixed. Totally get that. Still wrong. Totally get it. And the other camp is we'll just stick our head in the sand and it's okay because like, we still have these great reviews. Our NPS score is this. And those people are just complaining, you know, both are wrong. People, nine times out of 10, just want to be heard. So when they're giving that complaint, literally nine times out of ten, if we're like, we're so sorry that happened, let me help fix that for you. They're over it in two seconds. Nine out of ten of them will change that one star or that two star review to a four or a five star review once you've just taken the time to talk to them. We're humans. I mean, it's literally just be more human would be my answer. But we're in the world of machines. So I guess the fancier way to say that is people will. And this is research from McKinsey. People will choose experience over price. They will leave over one bad experience. Right. Everything. The again, consumer behavior, this behavior over here is telling us is that experience is everything. So the companies who do focus on experience usually have a 2x higher revenue and sales rates because they focus on experience. So focus on experience. I. I would just say be human, but if that doesn't work for you, focus on experience.

Speaker A: Well, and this is why live events in person is not just still important, but like gaining traction. Because the only way truly know a brand, truly know a person is if you experience it firsthand.

Speaker C: Did you see that other new cycle? There was something that came out this week that said events where phones are not allowed are like instances of those happening are up 500% or something like that.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: So people are really shunning even just technology, not just AI. I think the pendulum always swings, right? So I just think we've just been on this AI like crash course for like three years and people are exhausted and I think think the, the consumers never want it in the, in the first place. So we're seeing more of this like no technology bespoke events. Me saying to y' all like, let's get a group and go do this thing right? Like yeah, person experience. Yeah. I think we're going to continue to see that pendulum swing that way and then maybe we'll go the other way. I just think like again, the allin and the answer to everything. I'm just not that person. I'm sorry. I guess I just have trust issues. Like, no, it's not going to be the thing that saves us. It might be the thing that tanks us, but it's not going to be the, the thing that saves us.

Speaker A: Right? So good. All right, final question. Who is inspiring you now and why?

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: Meow.

Speaker C: Do you want me to answer this like in a personal way or in a professional way like business or personal or just.

Speaker A: I want you to answer it however you want to answer it. There's no rules.

Speaker C: My little sister, Taylor Morgan, pickup blowing me away. We are 13 years apart. So she's super young. She's just such a go getter. And in the past couple of years she has gotten married. They just literally Memorial Day when they were here, bought a house like put a bid in and got approved for a house. She's having a little baby. She works at Google and has this like highfalutin job. I'm just so impressed by her to be so young and be so mature and handle all of these like life altering things like in stride while looking like a little cutie patootie. Like I just inspiring me right now.

Speaker A: I love that, that I. I know,

Speaker B: I love that too. That is so sweet.

Speaker A: Thanks a Perfect answer.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, Might as well do all the major life things all at once. If you're gonna be stressed, like, you might as well just throw it all in there, mix it up.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: This is stressful. But then she's just like, cheery and happy and beautiful, and I'm just like, go you. Look at you.

Speaker A: Go.

Speaker C: I wish I had that kind of, like, put togetherness. I'd be like, on the floor in a puddle.

Speaker A: I don't think that's true. Something tells me it runs in the family.

Speaker C: Uh, maybe.

Speaker A: All right, so before we go, let you go. What's place for our listeners to find you and do you want to share anything? Do you have a show of your own? Like, what do you want to share

Speaker C: if this topic interests you at all? I do have a podcast called the Social Media CX Podcast. We talk about, literally, you guessed it, customer experience on social media. But if you want to find out about me or B Squared Media or read that State of Social Care report I talked about, just go to B Squared Dot Media and you'll find all of those things. If you want to chit chat with me directly, I hang out on LinkedIn most of the time. I'm pretty active there. So hit me up there and we can connect and talk about all kinds of things. Whatever you want. Almost.

Speaker A: Almost. Yeah.

Speaker C: Perfect.

Speaker A: Well, thank you so much for being with us. This was such a great show. So much fun.

Speaker C: Awesome. Well, thanks for having me back. I can't believe it's been three years.

Speaker A: Well, we'll try to. To not go that long. Uh, this is. Yeah, season nine, so I think we're going to get to 10, right, Jen?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, we're getting to 10.

Speaker C: You're doing it. We're getting a 10.

Speaker B: We're cracking some champagne and getting a 10.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Invite me to that party too, please.

Speaker A: We're definitely gonna have to have a, uh, parte.

Speaker C: Yeah, well.

Speaker A: And when you were on before, we used to do reunion shows to kick off a new season. We didn't do that coming into this season, but I think this is maybe an impetus for that. Maybe we do it in person. We get a studio and we bring people in to the studio, like one by one. Like, while the party's going on, we're gonna have to explore.

Speaker B: Oh, my God. Yes.

Speaker C: That would be amazing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Gonna take some planning. All right.

Speaker B: Oh, we can do that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker A: Thanks, Jen. Have a good time at On Stage at Riverfest.

Speaker C: Can't let your other show. Yeah.

Speaker A: All right. Y' all and thank you for listening. We appreciate you more than we can explain. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Making a Marketer podcast and we will catch you next time.