Vantage Point Speaker Series

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Hello.

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Good afternoon.

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Good evening, everyone, and welcome
to this installment of Vantage Point

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Speaker Series hosted by the Worldwide
College of Business.

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The series was created
to increase connections to the industry

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by offering a platform
for thought leaders to discuss topics

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which impact and improve business
and organizational performance.

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As Dean of the College of Business,
I wish you a very, very warm

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welcome, and I'm very excited
to introduce to you a dynamic speaker

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from a, from a very exciting background.

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Mr. David Edelman.

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David is a highly sought-after

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advisor on digital transformation
and marketing strategies.

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He is a developer of foundational 
business concepts,

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including the customer decision
journey and segment-of-one marketing.

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Most recently
as Chief Marketing Officer at Aetna,

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he guided Aetna — now part of CVS Health;
many of you may already know that —

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through becoming a digitally-oriented,
customer-centric enterprise.

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Before Aetna, David built practices
for the Boston Consulting Group

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(otherwise known as BCG), Digitas

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and then for McKinsey & Company
focusing on global digital transformation.

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David has been recognized by Forbes
as one of the most influential

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CMOs in the world,
and by Adweek as one of the top

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20 marketing and technology executives.

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His writing and work have attracted 
over 1.1 million,

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with an M, followers to his LinkedIn blog.

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Wonderful. Impressive.

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And he has delivered dozens and dozens
of keynote presentations and conferences

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around the world.

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Currently, David is a senior lecturer
in marketing at Harvard Business School.

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He also advises CEOs and CXOs in 
health and marketing services,

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focusing on where A.I.

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and personalization unlock
transformational opportunities.

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David, we're so grateful
to have you to share your wisdom with us,

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all of us in the audience,
including faculty and folks from industry.

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So before I turn it over to David,

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I do want to make a point here and mention

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that I invite you,
our viewers, to ask any questions

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you have through the question
and answer icon, please.

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And then Matthew and/or Michelle will be,
will be taking those questions for David.

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And now it is my absolute
pleasure to introduce

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and invite David to the stage.

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David, please, thank you for being here and the 
floor is yours, my friend. Great.

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Well, thank you, Maneesh, and hello, everybody.

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I think it may be best to open up with a story

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because we all have interesting
experiences and to talk theoretically

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about where customer experience is going
without actually talking

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through an experience
just seems way too theoretical.

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So, a few years ago,
not that long ago, probably around 2016,

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my town, Lexington, Massachusetts,
where I live,

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passed an ordinance that gave incentives
to people

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who would be putting in solar panels
into their house.

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And we had been looking into solar panels.

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I had been looking online.

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And that action by the town

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triggered an avalanche

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of emails and mail and all kinds of stuff

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from companies' marketing services
to put in solar panels.

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It was quite a deluge, and it was hard
to figure out what was what.

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A lot of it was just pretty generic
and everybody

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desperately trying to just simply
get an appointment and come into my house.

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And it was hard to figure out who was who.

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But one stood out

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and one piece of mail came to me

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that had a personalized URL.

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The company's name was called Sungevity,

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and when I typed in that URL —

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so this was actual physical mail
that came to me

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that had a URL with my name

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and my address as part of the URL code.

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I was intrigued
to figure out what that might lead to.

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So I typed it into my browser

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and, boom, right in front of me

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was a Google Earth image of my home.

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Superimposed on my home

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were images of solar panels on my roof.

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They had calculated how many solar panels

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could actually fit on my roof,

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and they had a running calculation

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on the side of the image of how much electricity

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those solar panels would generate
based on the angle of my house

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and what they expected to be tree
cover and, I forgot, longitude, latitude.

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But whichever one, wherever
I was, the way the angles of the sun go.

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They also pulled information from Zillow

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about the square footage of my house

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and used that to estimate

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the actual energy consumption
that I would likely have.

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They also knew that my house was serviced
by gas as well as electric,

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so they had taken off
what they thought would be gas-supported.

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And then they calculated how much savings

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I could actually get through solar panels.

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So how much of my electrical use
could actually be displaced

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by solar panels,
which turned out to be 25%.

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For those of you at the school down in Daytona, it could be, I'm sure, a lot more.

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But nonetheless,

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that was significant and interesting to us

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and especially with the incentives
from the town.

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So then after looking at that, it
said, “Click here to talk

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to a representative
who can walk you through

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how those savings actually work.”

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So I click on the link

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and then I am moved immediately

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into a video chat.

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And this was in the very early 
days of video

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talking before COVID
and before Zoom became big.

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And that person immediately,

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he had all of the information about me
right then and there.

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Greeted me by name. “Mr. Edelman.

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I see that we can save you 25%

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of your electricity bill through solar,

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and I'm excited to walk you through
how this actually works.”

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And so I had an extremely

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productive conversation
with this sales rep.

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He asked me a few questions
to just clarify things about my home.

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And in the course of that conversation

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told me about the different ways
that the whole system could be financed.

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And it wasn't that simple because there's
a whole lot of issues around

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you can store electric,
you can send electricity back

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into the grid and get paid for it.

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There are tax incentives.

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All of this adds up and it's
actually not a simple calculation.

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But he walked me through it very calmly,

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visualizing on the side
how that calculation worked.

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Then he explained that there were three

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different kinds of lease options
or an option to buy and how those worked.

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And then he sent me a link to a video

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that would explain in even more depth
about these, and also something

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that I could share with my wife
so we could talk it through.

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So, end of the call, I’ve got the link, and then
I watched the video.

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The video was extremely simple and very clear 
about how the leasing options worked

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and basically after eight years, 
the lease is completely paid off 

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and they pay it off through savings.

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And I won’t get into all the complexities there, 
but it basically was very clear 

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that for eight years I was essentially break even. 

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I wouldn’t save money, but 25% of my solar, 

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of my electrical use,
would be through solar.

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And then after that,
the savings would start accruing.

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And if I didn't,
they would refund the balance to me

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as part of the contract, which by the way,
in a couple of years they actually did.

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Then after the video, you can go back in,

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click and talk to somebody and work 
through the deal.

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He said, “Would you like to talk to some people
in your neighborhood 

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who have, already have the solar panels from Sungevity and worked with us?” Yes! 

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So he sends me the email link to them.

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I didn't know those people
even though they were in my town.

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I send them an email.

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They tell me about the aspects
of the experience.

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It was all extremely positive.

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And so then I sign up, I do it,

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and then they send me a link to an app
which I download

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that gives me all of the updates on
when they're going to come to install it.

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And then that app on an ongoing basis

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becomes the way I would actually track

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all of my energy use, the savings,
if there were any issues,

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and by the way, I did have an issue once
where a squirrel ate a wire.

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They actually sent me an alert right away

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because they could tell
it wasn't generating what it should

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and all the scheduling

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and everything just goes
incredibly smoothly through that app.

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It was... or we are going to judge brands
and, in fact, we're already doing it,

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based on the seamlessness
of the experience

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that we, that they offer,
through all the stages

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of what a customer journey might be,
the quality of the information

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and how that information
is used along the way,

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the amount of time and effort

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that we have to use, or better yet,

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don't have to put in.

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And then the accessibility over time

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in case there's any kinds of issues

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or things like that, the ability
to communicate and go back and forth

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and actually have some kind of tether
with the company that is credible.

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And all of those kinds of aspects
are things

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that go into our minds

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as we evaluate more and more of the brands
who we want to do business with.

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It’s certainly the basis of brands
such as Uber, AirBNB

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and newer brands that are able to do this

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kind of customer
journey design from scratch

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and build their whole system
and value proposition based on that.

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But increasingly,

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I'm starting to see this pop up in health care,

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in telecom, in financial services,

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starting in travel,

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although there's a lot of

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different parties to coordinate in travel,
which is true also in health care,

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but it is definitely becoming a way
that more and more companies

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are challenging themselves
to be more customer-centric.

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And by customer-centric,
it means taking the attitude

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of the customer, looking at all
the different points of that journey

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and figuring out how to use information

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and process to string that together

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into a distinctive experience.

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Doing so, though,

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is not just a question
of having the cool A.I. algorithms.

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Sungevity had to sort through the data
from Google Earth and from Zillow

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and to put that all together.

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Yes, that was an A.I.-type capability

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that they used to scan
and spot houses for whom

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the economics would work.

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But it also means having the right

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kind of processes in place,

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really linking things all together
so that the handoffs are clear.

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And let me give you a contrasting example
where this doesn't, didn't work.

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My daughter,

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a few, about three,
just before COVID, was in a program,

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an exchange program for college,
and was over in Paris.

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My wife and I decided
we would go over and visit

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her and the host family
that she was staying with.

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I got a credit card
from one of the major banks

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that seemed to market itself based on

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being useful for travelers.
You get extra points

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if you use it for plane
tickets, you get free foreign exchange.

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And it seemed like
it was perfectly designed for travelers.

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So I got the credit card.

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I used it to buy the flight to Paris.

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We land in Paris.

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I go to use the card
to buy some chocolates in a beautiful

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chocolate store in Paris, and immediately
I hit a brick wall because it's

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the first time I'm using this credit card
and I'm using it in a foreign country.

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Well,

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isn't that the purpose of the credit card?

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Didn't they have the data?

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Because I bought the plane ticket?

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Couldn't they have sent me
even just a text and said, 

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“Is this really you?”
But no, the charge was rejected,

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and I was told to call
the phone number on the card.

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So I had to step out of the store,
and it was just an incredible hassle.

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But it's a perfect

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example of where different
functional groups have not been working

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together to create a seamless experience.

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And so that is a huge part

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of thinking from the customer's lens.

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And there are companies now
and one that I'm going to talk about,

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Comcast, who are trying to make big strides

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in rethinking the whole way
they interact with customers.

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Comcast is not a brand
from a legacy perspective that had

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a great image in the minds of people
from a customer service perspective.

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It even led to a movie called 

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The Cable Guy that wasn't terribly
flattering about the people

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who might come to your house
to deal with your cable TV.

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And they knew that this was an issue.
It was an issue,

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especially as new competition
was going to come in

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from the likes of AT&T and Verizon,

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so they would have less of a monopoly
in most of their markets.

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They needed to up their game.

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They also wanted to get into mobile
telephony and offer Xfinity Mobile.

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And so they had to find an angle
and customer service

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was the most obvious one if they weren't
going to just simply compete on cost.

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So they started

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looking at the key types of customer journeys

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that would make a difference,
and several come to mind: doing a move.

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So you're going to move your house,
you want to be able to move your account,

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you want to be able to move access
to your cable TV

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and to your internet,
and you want to be able to do that

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seamlessly. There's a lot of different parties

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involved in that: billing, installation,
possibly credit.

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All of those have to be strung together
to make that work.

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They also realized
that a lot of the marketing that they did

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was leading to dissatisfaction
when people had their first bill

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because they didn't
understand charges on that bill

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and they thought they were getting
certain deals that weren't very clear,

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and so there would be dissatisfaction
and a lot of calls into the 

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customer service center
when people got their first bill.

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So they started looking at a journey

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which was from marketing to first bill,

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and that has a whole end-to-end

00:16:52:11 - 00:16:57:01
series of different functional groups
that work together,

00:16:57:01 - 00:16:59:17
and especially onboarding,

00:16:59:17 - 00:17:03:05
when someone actually becomes
a new customer.

00:17:03:05 - 00:17:06:00
Let's show them, for example,

00:17:06:00 - 00:17:09:23
a video, a customized video
that explains to them

00:17:09:23 - 00:17:14:11


what it is they're actually 
getting and how it all works.

00:17:14:11 - 00:17:16:17
And they have made tremendous strides

00:17:16:17 - 00:17:20:21
in terms of their net
promoter score, their retention rate.

00:17:20:21 - 00:17:25:09
And when they launched Xfinity Mobile
using this whole philosophy

00:17:25:09 - 00:17:29:17
of journeys from scratch, within two years
they became the top 

00:17:29:17 - 00:17:33:23
J.D. Power pick in terms of 
customer service in mobile

00:17:33:23 - 00:17:38:12
telephony for three years straight,
which they still have today.

00:17:38:12 - 00:17:45:14


So there's a mindset to customer
experience that you have to get into.

00:17:45:14 - 00:17:47:19
But there's also new capabilities,

00:17:47:19 - 00:17:52:16
especially data capabilities,
that are now coming to the fore.

00:17:52:16 - 00:17:56:15
I'm going to share a few,
not many, slides with you

00:17:56:15 - 00:18:01:10
that explain capabilities
that are making this

00:18:01:10 - 00:18:06:11
managing of journeys a lot easier to do.

00:18:06:11 - 00:18:12:19
So can we just get this up on the screen?

00:18:12:19 - 00:18:17:08
Okay, that's. There we go. Okay.

00:18:17:08 - 00:18:22:01
So the first I want to talk about
is a company called

00:18:22:01 - 00:18:28:00


SundaySky that enables you
to create those personalized videos.

00:18:28:00 - 00:18:30:14
When I was Chief
Marketing Officer at Aetna,

00:18:30:14 - 00:18:36:07
we realized health
insurance is unbelievably complicated.

00:18:36:07 - 00:18:40:17
When you sign up for health insurance,
you don't really understand

00:18:40:17 - 00:18:45:05
premiums, co-pays,
co-insurance, deductibles.

00:18:45:05 - 00:18:50:23
We did a survey of people, members,
to see if they understood those terms.

00:18:50:23 - 00:18:55:20
Maybe 10% understood all four accurately.

00:18:55:20 - 00:18:58:11
And because they don't understand it,
they do things like

00:18:58:11 - 00:19:02:06


go to doctors out of network
or they don't understand bills.

00:19:02:06 - 00:19:03:16
They are unhappy.

00:19:03:16 - 00:19:08:05
They call in,
aspects of their care could suffer.

00:19:08:05 - 00:19:10:18
And so we used SundaySky

00:19:10:18 - 00:19:15:22
to create personalized videos
for every member

00:19:15:22 - 00:19:19:18
to explain their specific health plan.

00:19:19:18 - 00:19:22:08
70% of people to whom we sent the link

00:19:22:08 - 00:19:27:11
to watched the four-minute video
all the way through,

00:19:27:11 - 00:19:31:13
and those people who watched
it churned at a lower rate,

00:19:31:13 - 00:19:35:20
way fewer calls into the call center
and interestingly

00:19:35:20 - 00:19:39:09



spent less time in the emergency room.

00:19:39:09 - 00:19:41:10
Because one of the things we talked about

00:19:41:10 - 00:19:45:18
was we gave people addresses
of local urgent care centers

00:19:45:18 - 00:19:50:05
that were in-network that they could go to
that were near them

00:19:50:05 - 00:19:53:20
so that they wouldn't
have to go to an emergency room.

00:19:53:20 - 00:19:57:03
Here's a very simple example
of how SundaySky works.

00:19:57:03 - 00:20:00:04
This is for a company called Naked Wines,
so it doesn't

00:20:00:04 - 00:20:03:09
necessarily have to just be big companies.
And here's an example of it

00:20:03:09 - 00:20:08:21
being used from a sales perspective
for animating a digital ad

00:20:08:21 - 00:20:12:18
where first you have an opening scene
that based on data

00:20:12:18 - 00:20:15:05
you may have about this person
from the past,

00:20:15:05 - 00:20:18:11
whether they like white wine,
red wine, mixed wine,

00:20:18:11 - 00:20:21:00
the opening scene, then, depending

00:20:21:00 - 00:20:25:20
on the mindset of the individual,
whether they're high-end and what they

00:20:25:20 - 00:20:30:06
bought before. And then the third scene
is a customized call to action.

00:20:30:06 - 00:20:34:01
What kind of discount or incentive
would you give them?

00:20:34:01 - 00:20:38:21
Or maybe you don't need one at all,
depending on the situation.

00:20:38:21 - 00:20:42:14
And so being able to do this at scale

00:20:42:14 - 00:20:46:10
with video capabilities and they already have

00:20:46:10 - 00:20:50:03
tons of pre-filmed scenes
that you can use,

00:20:50:03 - 00:20:52:22


they have access to the Getty Library,
and things like that.

00:20:52:22 - 00:20:56:19
It opens up a very different way
of thinking about interactions

00:20:56:19 - 00:20:59:22
because video is so much more powerful

00:20:59:22 - 00:21:03:01
than text.

00:21:03:01 - 00:21:07:07
The next one I want to talk about
is a company called OfferFit,

00:21:07:07 - 00:21:11:16
and if you happen to see I authored,
coauthored

00:21:11:16 - 00:21:14:13
a recent article in the Harvard
Business Review just a couple of months ago

00:21:14:13 - 00:21:18:10
called Customer Experience in the Age of A.I.
And the opening

00:21:18:10 - 00:21:22:11
vignette of that is OfferFit

00:21:22:11 - 00:21:26:01
working with Brinks Home Security.

00:21:26:01 - 00:21:28:18
And what OfferFit does is

00:21:28:18 - 00:21:33:06
it allows you to test all kinds

00:21:33:06 - 00:21:39:14
of possible variations of the message,
the content, the pictures,

00:21:39:14 - 00:21:44:16
the timing, the channel in order
to accomplish some goal with the customer.

00:21:44:16 - 00:21:46:07
In the case of Brinks,

00:21:46:07 - 00:21:50:01
one of their most important things
is people renewing their contract

00:21:50:01 - 00:21:55:16
for home security, and they used to
just do a very simple A/B test

00:21:55:16 - 00:22:00:06
to try two different variations
and maybe two different kinds

00:22:00:06 - 00:22:04:22
of discounts. But the reality is there's
so many different variables.

00:22:04:22 - 00:22:06:22
Some people may not need a discount.

00:22:06:22 - 00:22:11:03
Some people, maybe if you just bundle in
and upgrade to wireless,

00:22:11:03 - 00:22:12:21
you can get them to do it.

00:22:12:21 - 00:22:17:13
Depending on the time of
when you should send it, it could vary.

00:22:17:13 - 00:22:21:14
And so this is massive
multivariate testing,

00:22:21:14 - 00:22:27:17
essentially automated experimentation
of innovation,

00:22:27:17 - 00:22:29:22
and it's using A.I.

00:22:29:22 - 00:22:34:18
to structure the tests,
figure out all the different test cells.

00:22:34:18 - 00:22:38:01
You decide the variations
you want to test.

00:22:38:01 - 00:22:41:04
OfferFit decides the combinations,
and then

00:22:41:04 - 00:22:44:19
based on data about individuals,
how to set up the test cells,

00:22:44:19 - 00:22:49:19
it looks at how people respond,
and it continuously optimizes

00:22:49:19 - 00:22:54:20
and you can keep putting in more
and more different variations.

00:22:54:20 - 00:23:01:05
And what you see here with Brinks
is basically a 4x

00:23:01:05 - 00:23:05:06
ROI on what they had been doing before.

00:23:05:06 - 00:23:09:06
And the CEO, Bill Niles of Home Brinks,

00:23:09:06 - 00:23:12:01
they're actually on tour
talking about this

00:23:12:01 - 00:23:16:22
and how he's transforming his company
around using A.I.

00:23:16:22 - 00:23:20:00
and combining that with a journey view

00:23:20:00 - 00:23:24:04
to now take this and use this
to take people all the way through,

00:23:24:04 - 00:23:27:17


through an installation,
a service journey.

00:23:27:17 - 00:23:32:02
And he's really thinking about
customer experience and personalization

00:23:32:02 - 00:23:36:15
at a whole new level,
armed with this kind of artificial

00:23:36:15 - 00:23:40:18
intelligence capability.

00:23:40:18 - 00:23:45:19
And then the last one I'd like to talk
about is a company called Pointillist.

00:23:45:19 - 00:23:49:04
Pointillist allows you to see

00:23:49:04 - 00:23:53:20
what's actually happening
in customer journeys.

00:23:53:20 - 00:23:55:14
So they use A.I.

00:23:55:14 - 00:23:58:13
in two different ways, two different A.I.

00:23:58:13 - 00:24:00:06
engines. The first A.I.

00:24:00:06 - 00:24:03:06
engine finds an individual

00:24:03:06 - 00:24:06:13
across all the different databases

00:24:06:13 - 00:24:12:07
that the marketer makes available.
So Comcast uses this.

00:24:12:07 - 00:24:17:01
They have embedded Pointillist across — 
so looking across

00:24:17:01 - 00:24:21:11
their billing system, their service history system,

00:24:21:11 - 00:24:27:19
even what people actually click on
when they're using their cable TV,

00:24:27:19 - 00:24:30:23
their marketing contacts, all of that,

00:24:30:23 - 00:24:34:17
they're all in separate databases,
they're all in different schema.

00:24:34:17 - 00:24:37:10
And instead of creating a grand new

00:24:37:10 - 00:24:41:01
grandmaster, integrated, all singing,

00:24:41:01 - 00:24:45:01
all dancing database,
Pointillist can actually use A.I.

00:24:45:01 - 00:24:48:15
to go in and find matches

00:24:48:15 - 00:24:52:01
based on a percentage
likelihood of somebody being a match

00:24:52:01 - 00:24:55:08


because of various things
that are likely to be in common.

00:24:55:08 - 00:24:59:14
And it assembles the database
on the fly of all the touches

00:24:59:14 - 00:25:04:23
that you've had and timestamps them
and puts them in a sequence.

00:25:04:23 - 00:25:07:20
And so you actually see
the customer journey

00:25:07:20 - 00:25:11:08
and you can look at it
at an individual level

00:25:11:08 - 00:25:16:01
where you can see
what happened to somebody specifically.

00:25:16:01 - 00:25:17:19
So, for example,

00:25:17:19 - 00:25:21:03
if a person had a problem
and calls into a call center rep,

00:25:21:03 - 00:25:25:06
that rep can immediately
know where the customer had been before

00:25:25:06 - 00:25:29:16
and what the problem had likely been
and have a prompt popped up right away

00:25:29:16 - 00:25:34:02


of what they should do
by the time they even answer the call.

00:25:34:02 - 00:25:38:04
Or you can look at it
in aggregate and spot broader problems

00:25:38:04 - 00:25:41:16
such as calls from people who are trying

00:25:41:16 - 00:25:45:20
to use the Android version of the...

00:25:45:20 - 00:25:48:22
are spiking now in the call center.

00:25:48:22 - 00:25:50:22
Well, why is that?

00:25:50:22 - 00:25:52:14
Do they have a problem paying the bill?

00:25:52:14 - 00:25:55:18
What's going on? But it is spiking.

00:25:55:18 - 00:25:58:20
Oh, we just launched a new version.

00:25:58:20 - 00:26:03:23
We just got that out. Maybe there's a bug in the Android version of our app.

00:26:03:23 - 00:26:07:22
We better deal with it,
and you get an immediate alert

00:26:07:22 - 00:26:09:18
and you can fix it.

00:26:09:18 - 00:26:15:14
And then actually see using this tool what
happened to people after you fixed it?

00:26:15:14 - 00:26:16:23
You can also

00:26:16:23 - 00:26:21:02
use this tool to come up with new ideas
for different kinds of journeys,

00:26:21:02 - 00:26:26:01
inserting new kinds of content pages
or videos in an experience,

00:26:26:01 - 00:26:31:21
and seeing whether that personalized video
that you just put in during onboarding

00:26:31:21 - 00:26:35:21
actually does in fact 
drive people to better behaviors

00:26:35:21 - 00:26:42:00
versus calling into the call center.
You can literally see that and track it.

00:26:42:00 - 00:26:45:00
So this is a breakthrough to be able

00:26:45:00 - 00:26:51:01
to actually see, understand
and manage journeys.

00:26:51:01 - 00:26:54:08
And so that's really the philosophy

00:26:54:08 - 00:26:57:17
that I want to make sure

00:26:57:17 - 00:27:01:02
everybody starts to get their heads around

00:27:01:02 - 00:27:06:00
because it's not just about
what happened in the call center.

00:27:06:00 - 00:27:10:15
So I got, when I was turned down
for that credit card,

00:27:10:15 - 00:27:14:11
when I talked about being
in the chocolate shop in Paris,

00:27:14:11 - 00:27:17:06
I received a survey asking me

00:27:17:06 - 00:27:22:07
how I felt about the interaction
with the rep, and they asked me

00:27:22:07 - 00:27:25:04
did she know what, was she efficient,
was she good? 

00:27:25:04 - 00:27:26:11
Yes, she was.

00:27:26:11 - 00:27:29:22
She was doing what she should be doing
and it was perfectly fine,

00:27:29:22 - 00:27:33:07
but I shouldn't have had
to do it in the first place.

00:27:33:07 - 00:27:34:16
It was looking at

00:27:34:16 - 00:27:37:11
a very narrow aspect of the experience

00:27:37:11 - 00:27:41:06
and not at the total journey.

00:27:41:06 - 00:27:46:09
And so this linkage
between thinking about journeys

00:27:46:09 - 00:27:53:05
and taking advantage of new technology
capabilities is what is fostering

00:27:53:05 - 00:27:56:05
breakthroughs in customer experience

00:27:56:05 - 00:27:58:22
that are already driving

00:27:58:22 - 00:28:02:23


breakthroughs
in terms of brand preference.

00:28:02:23 - 00:28:07:07
And so I'm a former consultant,
worked at McKinsey, in BCG,

00:28:07:07 - 00:28:11:07
and we like to come up with cute
little acronyms.

00:28:11:07 - 00:28:15:00
So it's a way to make it easy to talk

00:28:15:00 - 00:28:19:22
about the steps involved
in actually pursuing something like this.

00:28:19:22 - 00:28:24:19
So using the acronym IDEAL,

00:28:24:19 - 00:28:26:07
five things to keep in mind.

00:28:26:07 - 00:28:30:11
Now I realize these are at a high level,
but if you actually think through

00:28:30:11 - 00:28:36:00


what it would take to do, you can get
 down to a much more concrete action plan.

00:28:36:00 - 00:28:39:06
The first is thinking about how you can

00:28:39:06 - 00:28:42:17
integrate, manage and draw insights

00:28:42:17 - 00:28:46:19
from a much broader range of data signals.

00:28:46:19 - 00:28:51:18
So in the case of Sungevity,
they knew that

00:28:51:18 - 00:28:56:12
my town just passed
something that gave incentives for solar.

00:28:56:12 - 00:28:58:21
They looked at Google Earth

00:28:58:21 - 00:29:03:18
to find homes
that might be suitable for solar.

00:29:03:18 - 00:29:08:07
They used Zillow to figure out the percent.
So all of that

00:29:08:07 - 00:29:14:03
was quite a broad range of data signals
that they were able to pull together.

00:29:14:03 - 00:29:16:17
Then think about what would

00:29:16:17 - 00:29:19:16
the right seamless experience be

00:29:19:16 - 00:29:24:02
that can be powered by automated support.

00:29:24:02 - 00:29:28:22
So the flow of what I experienced
at Sungevity, I spoke with their Chief

00:29:28:22 - 00:29:33:03


Marketing Officer and she told me,
you know, it didn't happen overnight.

00:29:33:03 - 00:29:37:16
They had a general sense
of what they should do, but it took a lot

00:29:37:16 - 00:29:40:17
of very deliberate trial and error

00:29:40:17 - 00:29:45:20
working things through, training the reps,
figuring out the right way

00:29:45:20 - 00:29:51:09
to do the interfaces for the customer,
for the reps, the design of all of that.

00:29:51:09 - 00:29:54:22
But they were determined to make it flow.

00:29:54:22 - 00:30:00:19
Their whole approach was that
this was going to be a seamless journey

00:30:00:19 - 00:30:04:10
that would never hit a dead end,
where the customer would never have

00:30:04:10 - 00:30:09:22
to give us a whole bunch
of new information. It would just flow.

00:30:09:22 - 00:30:11:07
Then you

00:30:11:07 - 00:30:15:20
got to reach out to the customer
wherever they are, and make it clear

00:30:15:20 - 00:30:19:19
that the way you're interacting with them
is of value,

00:30:19:19 - 00:30:24:20
and the way you're using
data will be a strong indicator of that.

00:30:24:20 - 00:30:29:10
So sending me a personalized URL
with information of how

00:30:29:10 - 00:30:33:20
I can save on solar — that is extremely powerful.

00:30:33:20 - 00:30:37:04
So sending me a personalized video

00:30:37:04 - 00:30:39:20
that helps me understand my health plan.

00:30:39:20 - 00:30:41:15
That's something that has value.

00:30:41:15 - 00:30:43:15
Okay, the recording's back...

00:30:43:15 - 00:30:50:03
in a company is how to bring that
into the philosophy of management

00:30:50:03 - 00:30:55:11
and make it just part of the way people,
I think... news services...

00:30:55:11 - 00:30:59:04
When I look at companies
who have been putting this together,

00:30:59:04 - 00:31:03:03
generally I think about it as 70%...

00:31:03:03 - 00:31:06:18
about 20% is about the data

00:31:06:18 - 00:31:11:16
and making sure you're being disciplined
and deliberate about the data.

00:31:11:16 - 00:31:13:15
And then 10%...

00:31:13:15 - 00:31:18:02
good technology, but you can do a lot
for many companies with technology.

00:31:18:02 - 00:31:21:09
They may already... the organization stuff

00:31:21:09 - 00:31:25:14
because I think that's one of 
the biggest challenges. 

00:31:25:14 - 00:31:28:03
If you remember when I was talking

00:31:28:03 - 00:31:31:18
about... and we did the same thing at Aetna.

00:31:31:18 - 00:31:36:14
It's around bringing people together
to look at a journey

00:31:36:14 - 00:31:40:09
and actually in some respects
thinking about the journey

00:31:40:09 - 00:31:43:19
as a product that you offer

00:31:43:19 - 00:31:48:15
where there's a... from different functions.

00:31:48:15 - 00:31:51:05
It could be led by a marketing strategist,

00:31:51:05 - 00:31:55:20


it could be led by somebody from product...
be led by service ops.

00:31:55:20 - 00:31:59:01
Probably, though, either

00:31:59:01 - 00:32:05:05
the product or form is usually where
that happens, where there is a team around

00:32:05:05 - 00:32:09:15
that person of people who are doing analytics,

00:32:09:15 - 00:32:14:06
they're doing design, they're doing,
there's marketing operations,

00:32:14:06 - 00:32:18:16
then there's service
and there's digital operations

00:32:18:16 - 00:32:23:20
depending on what's needed in
that journey, they are working together.

00:32:23:20 - 00:32:28:16


It could be physically, although in today's world, you know, it'll be virtually.

00:32:28:16 - 00:32:33:05
But they have goals together working,

00:32:33:05 - 00:32:37:02
and so they are trying to hit certain targets

00:32:37:02 - 00:32:40:17
in terms of what they want to accomplish
with their journeys,

00:32:40:17 - 00:32:44:13
such as, you know,
reducing the number of call centers.

00:32:44:13 - 00:32:46:12
That's a very popular one.

00:32:46:12 - 00:32:50:18
How do we cut the volume of calls
not just from a cost perspective

00:32:50:18 - 00:32:54:09


because often it's
a dissatisfaction as well,

00:32:54:09 - 00:32:57:01
and how or are there

00:32:57:01 - 00:33:01:01
positive actions
that we want to get people to take?

00:33:01:01 - 00:33:04:02
And how do we design the journey
to get people

00:33:04:02 - 00:33:06:22
to take those positive actions,
such as, in our case,

00:33:06:22 - 00:33:10:05
use an urgent care center
instead of the E.R.

00:33:10:05 - 00:33:13:07
So there's all kinds of things 
like that where

00:33:13:07 - 00:33:17:02
the team is working together
on a set of goals,

00:33:17:02 - 00:33:23:03
but doing that to work together
requires thinking from an organization

00:33:23:03 - 00:33:26:10


perspective of how you're going to 
make that work,

00:33:26:10 - 00:33:30:10
allocating people to the journeys to focus.

00:33:30:10 - 00:33:33:07
So Comcast has about 13 different journeys

00:33:33:07 - 00:33:36:15
that has teams organized against

00:33:36:15 - 00:33:40:00
and that's a very powerful concept to them.

00:33:40:00 - 00:33:44:14
And the incentives for those people
are primarily based on the performance

00:33:44:14 - 00:33:45:06
of their journeys.

00:33:45:06 - 00:33:46:19

They're looking at data,

00:33:46:19 - 00:33:50:02
they have eyes on Pointillist 
every day, looking at

00:33:50:02 - 00:33:53:19
what's going on in those journeys
and seeing what they've got to do.

00:33:53:19 - 00:33:57:14
They have processes behind them
so that when things screw up,

00:33:57:14 - 00:34:01:01
they know who to call and stuff
gets done quickly.

00:34:01:01 - 00:34:05:07
They have hotlines to the right people
who can fix things.

00:34:05:07 - 00:34:10:15
They also have legal support on call
so they don't have to wait

00:34:10:15 - 00:34:14:14
forever for compliance and legal review
to get things out the door.

00:34:14:14 - 00:34:19:01
So things are organized towards journeys
and towards speed,

00:34:19:01 - 00:34:23:22
and that's a big difference for many companies.

00:34:23:22 - 00:34:25:08
Thank you, David.

00:34:25:08 - 00:34:26:06
You know,

00:34:26:06 - 00:34:30:20
one of the things that you were talking 
about and this actually dovetails 

00:34:30:20 - 00:34:35:04
into another question is, is there such a thing
as information overload,

00:34:35:04 - 00:34:39:00
speaking to the amount of testing and
data that is collected?

00:34:39:00 - 00:34:40:05
And do you have any advice for what

00:34:40:05 - 00:34:46:04
data points are most important
to understanding the customer experience?

00:34:46:04 - 00:34:50:08
Yeah, there, certainly you could have data overload, 

00:34:50:08 - 00:34:53:19
especially if you're looking through
it manually.

00:34:53:19 - 00:34:57:16
One of the interesting things that a lot
of these A.I. tools now are starting to

00:34:57:16 - 00:35:04:03
do is use that data productively and insulate 
you from that data, 

00:35:04:03 - 00:35:09:16
providing insights, graphic renditions
of what's going on, things that can help

00:35:09:16 - 00:35:14:18
you understand what's going on without you
having to be as dirty on the data.

00:35:14:18 - 00:35:16:14
So, for example, Comcast

00:35:16:14 - 00:35:21:21
saw how many data scientists,
if they were going to scale journeys,

00:35:21:21 - 00:35:24:22
they would likely need to do all the analytics.

00:35:24:22 - 00:35:30:00
And with Pointillist, they did not have to
grow the number anywhere near as much.

00:35:30:00 - 00:35:31:03
They didn't let anyone go.

00:35:31:03 - 00:35:34:07
They still needed to hire, of course,
but nowhere near the scale

00:35:34:07 - 00:35:39:08
they had originally estimated because
the tools were able to take care of it.

00:35:39:08 - 00:35:44:06
In terms of what data to look at,
you know, it depends a lot

00:35:44:06 - 00:35:47:05
on the design of the journeys

00:35:47:05 - 00:35:51:06
that you're looking at. Generally, I find

00:35:51:06 - 00:35:52:02
there's

00:35:52:02 - 00:35:54:21
three things that you should always
keep in mind.

00:35:54:21 - 00:35:57:03
One is context.

00:35:57:03 - 00:36:03:21
What data do you have about
where somebody is in their journey?

00:36:03:21 - 00:36:06:03
What was the last thing they clicked on?

00:36:06:03 - 00:36:09:15
What was the last thing
they called in about?

00:36:09:15 - 00:36:12:04
Where is somebody?

00:36:12:04 - 00:36:16:19


That is often a trigger for some kind of follow 
up action in a journey.

00:36:16:19 - 00:36:21:10
The second is
anything about the customer's history

00:36:21:10 - 00:36:26:18
and preferences, what they have responded
to, what has worked for them,

00:36:26:18 - 00:36:32:02
how they have, you know, any kind
of promotional activity, all of that.

00:36:32:02 - 00:36:38:00
And then the other part of data
is on the back end, understanding

00:36:38:00 - 00:36:41:03
what's happened, being able to measure

00:36:41:03 - 00:36:44:03
the outcome of what you are doing.

00:36:44:03 - 00:36:46:12
So there's input, there's output.

00:36:46:12 - 00:36:50:10
You know, you've got garbage
in, garbage out, but you got to be able

00:36:50:10 - 00:36:56:01


to really think about the data on
both sides of the actions you're taking.

00:36:56:01 - 00:36:57:18
Thank you, David.

00:36:57:18 - 00:37:00:16
You know, one of the things that you mentioned

00:37:00:16 - 00:37:05:01
was getting as much information
from your customers as possible.

00:37:05:01 - 00:37:10:02
And Apple has certainly taken some steps to, to

00:37:10:02 - 00:37:12:08
keep customer information private.

00:37:12:08 - 00:37:17:16
And in the future, that may become
even more so as more companies do that.

00:37:17:16 - 00:37:21:18
So some potential customers may engage
in activities to prevent marketers

00:37:21:18 - 00:37:27:11
from finding personal information about
the individual, such as using certain

00:37:27:11 - 00:37:31:23
platforms that allow it, or by disguising
their real estate purchases

00:37:31:23 - 00:37:36:15
through trusts or whatever. Do companies
recognize some of these individuals

00:37:36:15 - 00:37:40:20
are offended by the use of their data
and using their personal information?

00:37:40:20 - 00:37:42:23



And what do they do about it?

00:37:42:23 - 00:37:44:01
Absolutely.

00:37:44:01 - 00:37:46:11
Every time I talk about this.

00:37:46:11 - 00:37:49:06
Privacy is huge.

00:37:49:06 - 00:37:52:03
There are a few things to think about.

00:37:52:03 - 00:37:57:04
One is first is the difference between
first-party data and third-party data.

00:37:57:04 - 00:37:59:19
So the vast majority of the examples

00:37:59:19 - 00:38:04:23
that I gave were first-party data.

00:38:04:23 - 00:38:07:15
Now what Sungevity did in terms

00:38:07:15 - 00:38:11:11
of looking at Google Earth images
and looking at Zillow,

00:38:11:11 - 00:38:17:08
that is third-party data,
but it's out there and it's skimmable

00:38:17:08 - 00:38:19:17
and they're putting it together to create

00:38:19:17 - 00:38:23:05
some kind of value.

00:38:23:05 - 00:38:26:19
Browsing history
or things that you've done in media,

00:38:26:19 - 00:38:31:18
your use of one app and selling that data
to another... Yeah, third party.

00:38:31:18 - 00:38:34:04
Third party. Cookie deprecation is real.

00:38:34:04 - 00:38:35:05
It's going to grow.

00:38:35:05 - 00:38:39:16
It's already taken $10 billion
out of Facebook's pocket.

00:38:39:16 - 00:38:41:14
So it's important

00:38:41:14 - 00:38:44:21
to get first-party data
as much as possible.

00:38:44:21 - 00:38:48:18
So in the process of interacting
with people,

00:38:48:18 - 00:38:52:16
making sure that you can actually

00:38:52:16 - 00:38:56:01
get their preferences
and open up access to their data

00:38:56:01 - 00:38:59:15
because you're offering them
something in exchange. 

00:38:59:15 - 00:39:06:00
Too often. I find that a lot of the asking for
permission to use people's data just says,

00:39:06:00 - 00:39:10:05
"Yeah, it's just a box to click."
You know, you'll get marketing stuff.

00:39:10:05 - 00:39:13:12
Better ones would actually say, you know,

00:39:13:12 - 00:39:17:14
“Would you let us use your data
to improve your access

00:39:17:14 - 00:39:20:14
to health care providers
in your neighborhood?”

00:39:20:14 - 00:39:23:08
or things like that and get more

00:39:23:08 - 00:39:29:03
value into that... 
So frankly, what we've seen in there,

00:39:29:03 - 00:39:31:20
actually there was a very interesting
survey done

00:39:31:20 - 00:39:35:16
by Google and BCG about people's attitudes
towards information use

00:39:35:16 - 00:39:41:03
and the general sense was
if it's really adding value to me versus

00:39:41:03 - 00:39:46:20
just creepily trying to pitch me things,
I like that.

00:39:46:20 - 00:39:50:01
That's what I would expect you to do.

00:39:50:01 - 00:39:51:06
If I'm,

00:39:51:06 - 00:39:54:10
you know, a bank customer
who repeatedly goes over my balance,

00:39:54:10 - 00:39:58:11
help me find a way to manage my financials

00:39:58:11 - 00:40:05:10
in a smarter way.
So people expect that more and more.

00:40:05:10 - 00:40:08:04
And I think there's also
a generational issue here

00:40:08:04 - 00:40:12:02
of younger people
just being much more comfortable with it.

00:40:12:02 - 00:40:15:01
And that's a line
where you just have to test it,

00:40:15:01 - 00:40:18:13
bottom line always being it's a value exchange.

00:40:18:13 - 00:40:19:19
Yeah. Thank you.

00:40:19:19 - 00:40:24:22
You know, one of the things
that this may bring about is user fatigue.

00:40:24:22 - 00:40:27:08
So how do marketing professionals

00:40:27:08 - 00:40:31:10
understand and avoid user fatigue?

00:40:31:10 - 00:40:35:23
How do, how do they also make sure
that everything is safe and user-friendly

00:40:35:23 - 00:40:39:18



for their people and their products?

00:40:39:18 - 00:40:41:09
I'm not sure I understand what you mean

00:40:41:09 - 00:40:44:14
by user fatigue, but if it's just,

00:40:44:14 - 00:40:48:17
you know, too many interactions,
people are going to start tuning out.

00:40:48:17 - 00:40:49:14
We actually

00:40:49:14 - 00:40:54:14
did a study at Aetna
looking at the number of contacts

00:40:54:14 - 00:40:59:13
that we had with an individual
and how often they engaged.

00:40:59:13 - 00:41:01:01
And it was quite interesting.

00:41:01:01 - 00:41:06:02
As soon as we hit over four interactions
in a month, it plummeted

00:41:06:02 - 00:41:09:04


and basically people
just thought it was all spam.

00:41:09:04 - 00:41:12:05
It was useless
because there was just too much stuff.

00:41:12:05 - 00:41:16:19
And so we started to think about
customer contact as a scarce resource

00:41:16:19 - 00:41:20:09
that we needed to prioritize when,

00:41:20:09 - 00:41:23:23
whom we would, when we would...

00:41:23:23 - 00:41:26:13
And that, you hear a lot of terms
like next best action.

00:41:26:13 - 00:41:31:18


That's a nice language for,
you know, what to do next with somebody.

00:41:31:18 - 00:41:34:09
But if you're really managing right,

00:41:34:09 - 00:41:39:03
you should be thinking about
the next best action and make tradeoffs

00:41:39:03 - 00:41:43:09
that it's not okay
to just have one part of the company

00:41:43:09 - 00:41:45:23
just pitch crap at customers
of another division.

00:41:45:23 - 00:41:50:16
And if it's really not in that customer's
best interest versus the other thing,

00:41:50:16 - 00:41:55:01
things that you can do for that customer,
and sometimes there's really tough

00:41:55:01 - 00:42:02:00


tradeoffs that you have to make
in terms of actual access to customers.

00:42:02:00 - 00:42:04:23
Those are some
of the things that come up along the way,

00:42:04:23 - 00:42:09:18
which is managing
customer communication streams

00:42:09:18 - 00:42:11:14
and being smart about that.

00:42:11:14 - 00:42:14:09
It often happens
in multi-division companies

00:42:14:09 - 00:42:18:00
where everybody wants to hit
the same customers as often as possible

00:42:18:00 - 00:42:20:13
because they have some kind
of relationship with the brand.

00:42:20:13 - 00:42:23:23
And that's where often centers of excellence

00:42:23:23 - 00:42:28:03
in a marketing organization do set up
things like we did. We had a customer

00:42:28:03 - 00:42:31:06
communications council that set up a hierarchy

00:42:31:06 - 00:42:33:22
of what would go to whom so that

00:42:33:22 - 00:42:37:10



we weren't spamming them anymore.

00:42:37:10 - 00:42:38:14
Thank you, David.

00:42:38:14 - 00:42:42:03



Can you speak to your 70/20/10 rule?

00:42:42:03 - 00:42:46:15
Yeah, sure...

00:42:46:15 - 00:42:50:13
If you've got cool tools

00:42:50:13 - 00:42:53:10
and you're not set up as an organization

00:42:53:10 - 00:42:57:17
to think about how you would work together

00:42:57:17 - 00:43:01:03
to manage somebody,
those cool tools are kind of useless.

00:43:01:03 - 00:43:02:06
And so

00:43:02:06 - 00:43:07:17
the operational capabilities to

00:43:07:17 - 00:43:14:09
use this stuff are more significant
than the tools themselves.

00:43:14:09 - 00:43:19:12
Because I bet there's a lot of large
companies that have Salesforce, Adobe,

00:43:19:12 - 00:43:22:20


they have every possible tool
that they need.

00:43:22:20 - 00:43:25:23
They are not getting the value
out of those.

00:43:25:23 - 00:43:29:10
Often it's because they're not managing

00:43:29:10 - 00:43:33:02
in terms of bringing together
the experience.

00:43:33:02 - 00:43:36:21
So there's a term we use a lot now
which are called Agile teams.

00:43:36:21 - 00:43:40:15
It comes from software 
development of having

00:43:40:15 - 00:43:44:01
a group of people
working together towards a goal.

00:43:44:01 - 00:43:47:16
They use scrum teams, things like that,

00:43:47:16 - 00:43:53:13


where they're managing in tight cycles,
often as short as a week or two weeks.

00:43:53:13 - 00:43:59:17
We actually set up Agile marketing
for four different parts of our business

00:43:59:17 - 00:44:02:09
in different customer segments,

00:44:02:09 - 00:44:04:20
and we pointed them towards journeys.

00:44:04:20 - 00:44:08:22
One of the biggest ones for us
being everything about onboarding,

00:44:08:22 - 00:44:13:17
and those Agile teams
have a backlog of things

00:44:13:17 - 00:44:18:10
that are going to test, ideas, areas
that are going to innovate,

00:44:18:10 - 00:44:22:06
and they are working together
to constantly see what works

00:44:22:06 - 00:44:23:21



and what doesn't.

00:44:23:21 - 00:44:25:21
So, for example, our teams across

00:44:25:21 - 00:44:30:10
all of the Agile teams,
everybody had an 11 a.m.

00:44:30:10 - 00:44:34:18
stand-up for their team
where they would all look at the data,

00:44:34:18 - 00:44:38:05
see what they've learned
from the last day, and figure out

00:44:38:05 - 00:44:41:21
what the implications of it are for what
they should be doing going forward.

00:44:41:21 - 00:44:44:19
And we had cross-functional teams

00:44:44:19 - 00:44:51:06
working together from, for example,
our call center, our agent,

00:44:51:06 - 00:44:55:16
or we had third-party agent,
agent management, marketing, analytics,

00:44:55:16 - 00:44:58:16
we had finance, somebody
from finance often in there,

00:44:58:16 - 00:45:03:03


because decisions would have to be made
that could require more funding or not.

00:45:03:03 - 00:45:04:05
And the finance people 

00:45:04:05 - 00:45:06:03
helped us do the business case.

00:45:06:03 - 00:45:08:15
We had legal people on top.

00:45:08:15 - 00:45:12:17
So working together towards goals in fast

00:45:12:17 - 00:45:15:18
cycles makes a huge difference.

00:45:15:18 - 00:45:22:00
And having looked at the processes
behind that, to get rid of everything

00:45:22:00 - 00:45:26:01
that slows you down
is just as important to moving fast.

00:45:26:01 - 00:45:29:23
So what's the point of having real time
data that tells you

00:45:29:23 - 00:45:34:02
there's a problem with your app
if you can't act on it quickly? 

00:45:34:02 - 00:45:36:09
So the technology, yeah,

00:45:36:09 - 00:45:39:10
that's valuable, but you got to act on it.

00:45:39:10 - 00:45:42:05
And so you need the organizational
processes to do that. 

00:45:42:05 - 00:45:43:07
Thank you. So you need the organizational
processes to do that. Thank you.

00:45:43:07 - 00:45:49:13
So you worked at Aetna and what event
or was there a performance issue?

00:45:49:13 - 00:45:53:15
Maybe it was market
share or whatever that compelled

00:45:53:15 - 00:45:57:18


you to embark on
this path or was it organic?

00:45:57:18 - 00:46:01:17
There was a very major issue,

00:46:01:17 - 00:46:04:23
which was as an insurance company.

00:46:04:23 - 00:46:09:04
So I was brought on as the first Chief
Marketing Officer at Aetna in 2016.

00:46:09:04 - 00:46:13:19
Marketing was not a very major strategic
part of the company.

00:46:13:19 - 00:46:17:10
The CEO, Mark Bertolini,
though, said we can't just be a commodity

00:46:17:10 - 00:46:20:10
insurer competing
mostly on cost and coverage.

00:46:20:10 - 00:46:25:15
We have to rethink the equation
and help people

00:46:25:15 - 00:46:30:00
lower health care costs and help
people get healthier.

00:46:30:00 - 00:46:32:18



Make the system work.

00:46:32:18 - 00:46:36:05
And so that required
a very different attitude

00:46:36:05 - 00:46:39:06
that would look at the brand...

00:46:39:06 - 00:46:42:19
And as we started doing it,
we saw which processes were in our way.

00:46:42:19 - 00:46:46:23
We saw what data we needed,
we saw what tools we would need.

00:46:46:23 - 00:46:48:22
We started with it pretty manually.

00:46:48:22 - 00:46:53:11
It wasn't that fast, but eventually
we started building up the pace,

00:46:53:11 - 00:46:59:19
and within, and within two years,
we had over $50 million in incremental

00:46:59:19 - 00:47:03:20
profit from those kinds of actions.
So it was serious.

00:47:03:20 - 00:47:07:11
And then we started expanding
that to areas like small business sales,

00:47:07:11 - 00:47:11:11
Medicare sales, various
other parts of the business as well.

00:47:11:11 - 00:47:15:04
But a lot of it came from
how do we engage to create

00:47:15:04 - 00:47:19:00


a different kind of health care journey
and different relationship with us?

00:47:19:00 - 00:47:21:00
Awesome.

00:47:21:00 - 00:47:22:11
Thank you so much.

00:47:22:11 - 00:47:25:13
We only have so many questions
to choose from here.

00:47:25:13 - 00:47:30:05
I really applaud Rachel because
I don't know how she manages it all.

00:47:30:05 - 00:47:31:10
I'm going to ask this one.

00:47:31:10 - 00:47:34:21
Is there a cultural or a leadership
profile for better 

00:47:34:21 - 00:47:36:16
customer service businesses?

00:47:36:16 - 00:47:39:17



Is there, is there a certain profile?

00:47:39:17 - 00:47:43:19
You know, lots of different leaders
whom I've met, I think one of the biggest

00:47:43:19 - 00:47:50:08
ones is people who are always asking,
what's the impact to the customer?

00:47:50:08 - 00:47:54:13
What data do
we have on the impact to the customer?

00:47:54:13 - 00:47:58:20
And is there actually a tradeoff where

00:47:58:20 - 00:48:03:23
we're trying to make more money
but the customer is not better off?

00:48:03:23 - 00:48:08:22
And putting that on the table
for actual discussion,

00:48:08:22 - 00:48:13:00
I was very lucky to have two 
consecutive CEOs,

00:48:13:00 - 00:48:17:07
Mark Bertolini and then Karen Lynch,
who became the CEO of CVS,

00:48:17:07 - 00:48:21:00
who were very, very, we call them members,

00:48:21:00 - 00:48:27:02
member-oriented, who were always putting
those kinds of questions on the table,

00:48:27:02 - 00:48:28:14
constantly pushing for data.

00:48:28:14 - 00:48:32:15
And frankly, they also changed our incentive plan.

00:48:32:15 - 00:48:36:16
20% of executive bonuses were tied

00:48:36:16 - 00:48:40:13
to various kinds of customer 
satisfaction measures.

00:48:40:13 - 00:48:43:06
That's serious. That gets attention.

00:48:43:06 - 00:48:46:05
We first had to put the capabilities
in place to manage it,

00:48:46:05 - 00:48:50:09
so I was in charge of getting that set up,

00:48:50:09 - 00:48:55:14
and then we started to look at the data,
see what the baselines were

00:48:55:14 - 00:48:58:12
and start setting targets.
And so when you have everyone

00:48:58:12 - 00:49:02:08
around the leadership table,
20% of their bonus depending on this,

00:49:02:08 - 00:49:08:09
that gets serious and people play ball.
Thank you, David.

00:49:08:09 - 00:49:12:13
One final question
and we only have time for one more.

00:49:12:13 - 00:49:17:09
Many organizations have data but struggle
to translate that data into insight.

00:49:17:09 - 00:49:20:09
Poor interpretation of data
can be quite misleading and consume

00:49:20:09 - 00:49:24:06
a substantial amount
of organizational resources at best,

00:49:24:06 - 00:49:27:00
or misguide the organization at worst.

00:49:27:00 - 00:49:30:18
Do you have any suggestions
for ensuring that insights generated from

00:49:30:18 - 00:49:35:13


data are both accurate
and generate high impact?

00:49:35:13 - 00:49:36:19
Well, accuracy

00:49:36:19 - 00:49:40:12
is hard to say, per se,
besides, in some respects,

00:49:40:12 - 00:49:46:00
having people who really understand
the business doing the data analysis.

00:49:46:00 - 00:49:49:23
I think one of the most important things
is the analytics

00:49:49:23 - 00:49:54:13
cannot be people in the back room
who are just crunching numbers,

00:49:54:13 - 00:49:58:04
but really tied to the business,

00:49:58:04 - 00:50:02:00
understanding what is actually 
happening with customers,

00:50:02:00 - 00:50:06:04
putting it in the context of the business
where the business is trying

00:50:06:04 - 00:50:12:09
to figure out tradeoffs, priorities
from that. So marrying analytics

00:50:12:09 - 00:50:16:10
with business priorities
is one of the most powerful ways.

00:50:16:10 - 00:50:20:05
It's also then the best way
to make sure stuff happens because

00:50:20:05 - 00:50:23:01
business people have been part of this

00:50:23:01 - 00:50:26:02
and they actually see the opportunity.

00:50:26:02 - 00:50:29:08
And then if you're in the kinds of
Agile teams I'm

00:50:29:08 - 00:50:32:21
talking about, where you've got targets,
you're looking for insights

00:50:32:21 - 00:50:36:17


that can move the needle,
you're going to test things out.

00:50:36:17 - 00:50:39:12
I think one of the great things
about some of the new A.I.

00:50:39:12 - 00:50:42:09
technologies is it allows you to test

00:50:42:09 - 00:50:44:03
and to

00:50:44:03 - 00:50:48:09
actually innovate in a lower cost, 
lower risk way.

00:50:48:09 - 00:50:53:04
So it makes the pain
of a misguided insight lower

00:50:53:04 - 00:50:56:12


if you can test on a small scale
metric and manage it.

00:50:56:12 - 00:50:59:06
Wonderful.

00:50:59:06 - 00:51:00:07
Thank you so much, David.

00:51:00:07 - 00:51:03:03
I'm going to turn it back over to Maneesh,
who will close us out.

00:51:03:03 - 00:51:05:20



Really appreciate it.

00:51:05:20 - 00:51:08:10



Sure.

00:51:08:10 - 00:51:10:15
It takes, it takes me five minutes, David,

00:51:10:15 - 00:51:14:16
to unmute and put myself back on camera.

00:51:14:16 - 00:51:17:20
So keep clicking that button
and it just doesn't come out.

00:51:17:20 - 00:51:22:00
So, David, what a wonderful conversation.

00:51:22:00 - 00:51:23:14
Thank you so much.

00:51:23:14 - 00:51:27:10
Thank you for sharing your research,
your perspectives, your experiences

00:51:27:10 - 00:51:31:13
in the various businesses and roles
that you have been in,

00:51:31:13 - 00:51:36:09
from Aetna
to CVS to McKinsey to BCG, using A.I.

00:51:36:09 - 00:51:40:00


to deliver a more personal, personalized
customer experience.

00:51:40:00 - 00:51:44:12
I think I speak for all of us,
my colleagues and anyone else on the call,

00:51:44:12 - 00:51:49:04
that I think higher education
can certainly benefit from, from

00:51:49:04 - 00:51:50:08
all the, all the,

00:51:50:08 - 00:51:53:16
all the experiences and all the activities
that you're undertaking.

00:51:53:16 - 00:51:55:05
Most definitely.

00:51:55:05 - 00:51:58:13
And I think we've got,
we've got ways to catch up to where

00:51:58:13 - 00:52:02:04
the Aetnas and the CEOs of the world are.
But I think it's great insight.

00:52:02:04 - 00:52:03:22
Thank you so much for taking the time.

00:52:03:22 - 00:52:08:19
And, you know, in the future,
let's hook you up for a Boston Tea Party.

00:52:08:19 - 00:52:12:23
As they mentioned on Friday,
we will collapse our schedules together.

00:52:12:23 - 00:52:15:11
And still there is a chance
to have a cup of tea with you in Boston.

00:52:15:11 - 00:52:18:17


So, David, it has been, it's
been my honor hosting you.

00:52:18:17 - 00:52:23:08
Thank you so much for taking the time
to speak with all of us.

00:52:23:08 - 00:52:24:10
Appreciate it.

00:52:24:10 - 00:52:26:01
And as

00:52:26:01 - 00:52:29:12
we close out
this edition of Vantage Point,

00:52:29:12 - 00:52:31:22
we encourage
all of you to stay tuned in the future

00:52:31:22 - 00:52:36:09
for future events and visit
our ERAU Worldwide YouTube channel

00:52:36:09 - 00:52:39:04
for on-demand
recordings of the past events.

00:52:39:04 - 00:52:42:18
So until then, I wish everybody safe

00:52:42:18 - 00:52:45:06
health and safe well-being. 
So take care, everyone.

00:52:45:06 - 00:52:47:05
Have a great evening. David, once more.

00:52:47:05 - 00:52:50:04
Thank you so much. My pleasure.
Thank you.

00:52:50:04 - 00:52:51:10



Goodbye.