Hello, welcome to the Retail podcast live from NRF.
I'm here with Twilio CMO. Regional CMO, VP of marketing
for Twilio A PJ. Nicholas Kontopoulos
Contopoulos. Actually quite easier to say
than Reed, which which always makes me nervous.
I have a horrible habit of getting the names really wrong,
so it's off to a flying start. Got the right name company at
the right start. All off to a great start.
I I've seen you guys literally everywhere, you know, in terms
of solution provider at conferences.
But for those who don't know you and and what you are all about,
can you just all give us an overview?
Of virtual yeah, yeah, I mean truly is a communications
company. That's where we started.
We started out in the world of SMS and Jeff who was the founder
of, created the category, I guess you could say of CPASS or
help create that category. Yeah.
But we've evolved over the years.
We've now become a customer engagement platform.
Yeah, able to help customers basically create a channel
that's customer experience. So you know, whether it's SMS,
WhatsApp, e-mail, we'll provide a set of solutions that enable
you to engage your customers in a frictionless fashion.
We've all through that journey. We also acquired a company
called Segment, which brought in a CDP capabilities and that's
now enabling us to really tailor our experiences through the
channel of preference with our customers.
So yeah, really exciting times to be a toilet.
So I can imagine an event like this.
You must be in a really happy and positive way, overrun with
customer meetings. I'm just curious what's at the
top of everyone's mind when they're coming to talk to you
right now? What's the problem they're
trying? To solve, I mean there's
obviously every customer's got different problems, Yeah, but
you know, not just attracting customers, but retaining and
converting and retaining and become two key areas I'm seeing
a lot of businesses really focusing in on.
That seems to be a common theme across the customers.
Do you feel so from a customer journey perspective in terms of
the communication circle that you must work with your
customers in? Is it like at the front end like
when they're registering or is it like literally at any part
from delivery? In terms of what they're looking
to solve. Yeah.
Yeah, against holistically. So it can depends who you're
talking to, where they sit in the organisation.
But if you're talking with CMO's or heads of customer experience,
obviously looking at the holistic experience, yeah.
And looking at it not only in how they can attract those
customers, but again, as I sort of said, retain, convert and
retain, looking at how they can increase lifetime value and also
just to create more richer experience whether it's through
the digital or physical world. So those you know, the physical
world, they're looking at how they.
Can you guys sit in the middle of, I mean, that's the way I, I
see how if I'm in a physical store signing up for some
something that's the connection to digital, which I think you
guys bridge. I mean, actually it's from
pretty much any part of the journey, whether you're signing
up in store or on your mobile on the train, you know, we, we help
power companies abilities to help onboard you as a customer.
We're OTP processes right through to, as I said, you know,
taking that data that we're collecting about you and then
using that to enrich the offers that we make to you again
through the physical or digital channels.
Yeah. And, and is there something that
this year has really surprised you like, you know, when you're
in a customer meeting or you're like, is there, is there
something that's just you weren't, you weren't expecting
that? No, why, what, what have I am
pleasantly surprised. That is just the willingness for
folks to really take a really close look at AI in a new
through a new lens. So obviously a I is not new.
It's been around for a while, but we're generating AI coming
on. It's obviously presenting a
whole new host of new possibilities for businesses.
So a lot of retailers are now really looking at how can they
get predictive and generative AI working together in a way they
can enable them to, you know, Dr increased value for the
customers, but also help them scale and reduce cost in their
businesses as well. And then is there any, I mean,
we're hearing grocery or food, but I, I assume you guys must go
across all categories, right? There isn't one category that
stands out more than the. Other, I mean whether you're a
pure ecommerce vendor through to a traditional bricks and
mortars, we work across all those categories from a retail
perspective. Yeah and again each is coming at
the same problem from different vantage points.
Obviously ecommerce vendors are you know that were pure
ecommerce vendors are looking at how they can move into retail
spaces and great retail experiences in the retail
businesses have been heavily focused on looking at how they
can improve their digital experiences.
Biggest inhibitor I see typically is not necessarily the
technology, it's actually operationally organizationally.
So these are the types of challenges a lot of our
customers we're working with is helping them reframe their way.
They think about how they set their businesses up.
Because again, if we look at the most organisational structures,
they've been created around quite honestly, 19th, 20th
century business operating practises, right?
So we're really a lot of the, especially the traditional
businesses are looking at how they can reimagine the way they
organise themselves around their customers and use technology as
an enabler to have more meaningful interactions with
their customers. But most importantly, to also
help their employees deliver on their brand promise.
Because this is the other thing I think we often talk about
customer experience. Yeah, but what about the
employee experience? And again, this is an area that
we're having a lot of great conversations with our
customers. What does that look like?
You know, you sort of run for an example.
Ohh, yeah. I mean, good simple example
might be if you're a retailer has a call centre capability.
Yeah. And obviously those call centre
agents are there to feel cause obviously giving them access to
the information that enable them to have meaningful, impactful
conversations, you know, with the customer as they call in.
You know, it really is quite critical.
And especially we see that when that isn't the case, you see
high churn rates in terms of staff as a result of that.
Yeah. So how can you know through the
smart use of technology, but also the reimagining of the
people process side of the equation is absolutely critical
if you're going to drive transformational change.
It's not just technology alone as those three elements coming
together. Ohh, I love that.
Yeah. In terms of the the messaging
platforms, what's happened sort of ruled the roost for for a
long time, specifically in in Europe.
Yeah. I'm just curious here with the
plethora of messaging apps that you have.
Yeah. Do you, do you see any trends?
Are there anything, is there anything happening in that
world? There's no one channel.
This is the problem. I mean for businesses, this is
the reality. Like again I sort of referenced
earlier this idea of having we talked about Omni channel for a
long time and it's become a very channel sort of or technology
specific conversation. What I'm challenging customers
to think about is the channel's experience and the reality is
you and I will have different channel preferences.
Yeah, you might start in through an SMS engagement, I wanna start
an e-mail or chat part or I might want to talk to a human.
Everyone's different. So this is the real challenge
for businesses. The problem they have is that
historically those channels are being set up in a much silo,
very siloed fashion in the organisation and.
Experience, right? Exactly.
You can have a different e-mail experience with different.
Messaging and that's what the that's where we come in to try
to help customers through our customer engagement capabilities
deliver a solution that enables you to bring those channels
together in a much more integrated fashion so that if
I'm serving you, I'm you know I've got a clearer understanding
of who you are, which channel you you've come through to us
before on what are the issues you've raised and how having
that aggregated view and enabling me to have a more
meaningful conversation with you is really at the heart of what
we're trying to help I've got. You with this, this is a tech
question, so I don't mind if if because I haven't prepped you
for it. But in terms of the number of
channels that you've seen, like what are we?
Look what we're talking about in terms of like, because you know,
I can think about e-mail. I can think about.
I'm just curious. It's like, I mean.
Is there a number? I don't know if there is an
actual number, I haven't got a number that jumped straight out.
But the reality is, is that the, the challenge is that the, the
channels keep evolving, right And new channels come online.
And the real challenge also for businesses, if you think about
it, is how do I create content and serve that content up
through the right? I know, yeah, the form factor of
contents changing. So there's a lot of, as a
marketing leader, that's something I'm always thinking
about. Right?
Yeah. So you've gotta.
Yeah. I actually think it's about
putting in place the capabilities that enable you to
scale up with existing channels, but also potentially bring on
new channels as and when they come.
OK. And then just jumping little bit
back to AI in terms of you talking about your AI
capabilities, because I mean, I talk about retail experiences
being like a conversation, right?
A good conversation, you wanna stay in a bad conversation, you
wanna leave. Yeah.
Where does the AI bit come in? Like what?
What elements of AI would you help me as a retailer?
Yeah. I mean, we've got, again,
historically we've had a a long history in terms of the segment
2 segment capability, CDP with predictive AI.
What we're now bringing in is building on those capabilities
and the predictive side, but also marrying that with the
generative AI capabilities. So actually we demoed a really
cool demo just yesterday. So we haven't shown you that.
I've got to show you that. OK, lay down where, you know, we
can actually deploy, you know, chatbot or or you know, through
voice, actually through a voice channel AVR.
Yeah, the ability to talk to it, AI, which, OK, very human
sounding, actually has an Aussie accent.
Alright, you got kitchen eyes in the background.
It's you. I'm placing an order from a
pizza perspective. I can actually have a
conversation with the AI and actually I wouldn't even know
that that is an AI that I'm talking to.
The cool thing about that is as I'm having that conversation,
I'm sharing insights about what my preferences are for pizzas,
etcetera. That data is being collected and
actually mapped against my profile, so from future.
Calls. Yeah, can be brought back into
the conversation with the AI to say, hey, Nicholas, did you want
the ham and cheese? Pineapple pizza again?
It kills. Me Friday night pizza time
pizza. I I need to recommend them to
come to you guys because every time you have to put the same
well, you order back in exactly to get it.
You mentioned the future and as we sort of come to a close on
this, where do you see the future going?
How, What? What's like the vision of the
future? Here, what's the vision of the
future? That's a big one.
I'm, I'm not a big, I don't like trying to predict the future
because it's, it's always hard. But I, I do feel that what we're
going to start to see is businesses reimagine the way
they organise themselves internally around their
customers. Again, as I sort of signalled
earlier, I think a lot of businesses still very operate,
still much structured around old world operating model.
Yeah. And it does require more
innovation in how we actually structure our organisations and
how do we empower those individuals have more, you know,
have the capabilities to actually drive change inside
their organisation. So I think the future for retail
or as well as, yeah, if you think about it, you know, when
with the advent of ecommerce, you know, it's how do I bring
ecommerce and digital channels and integrate them more
seamlessly with the retail traditional channels.
Again, I see a lot of challenges there where they're still
operating those in silos. Yeah.
And you know, I kind of 100%, yeah.
So I think that's the future really innovating the actual
business models that we use to operate our businesses against I
think will be a key area of innovation.
Yeah, I mean, I, I was at Shanghai the week before I came
here and the one thing that was so evident there, technology
almost sort of dissipates. It's so irrelevant.
It's about how you engage the customer for for the life cycle,
right? How are they gonna?
Are you gonna be with them? And it's always changing.
That's the other thing. That's the other thing that
consumer behaviour is always evolving.
So there's, there's no silver bullet here like to say there's
a silver bullet there is. You have to be constantly
adapting and leaning into that customer experience and employee
experience and helping. Basically, those two have a
meaningful engagement. Experience, yeah, it's how much
data you lose as well. But again, that's a whole
because just listening, going through like all the data that
you're capturing about my pizza, how much of that is?
Lost. Well, that actually really good
point. If you're thinking about it from
an internal perspective, sort of what I said earlier about
collapsing the silos. Yeah.
The big challenge it faces, most organisations, this idea of dark
data are not familiar with that. No, no, no, God no.
Coined the term, got data. OK, Dark data, and I love it.
Most of the data that we have is siloed in our organisations
based around functions. So this is again, where the
innovation will come and this is where we're helping.
If you look at Twilio segment, we're helping brands unlock that
dark data across the organisation and bring that
together so that I can engage you through the right channel
based on your preference. Right.
So that will be where a key part of the innovation comes, not
just from the technology, but as I said earlier, how we organise
ourselves internally around that data.
I think it's going to be important.
Final question. I've got so many more questions,
but like integration, is it? Is it difficult?
Is this like something that's gonna take me like months System
integrator to how quickly can I get value from?
This I mean, obviously I I can't give you an exact time without.
Knowing how big I am, yeah. One of the things that Twilio is
strong at is we're an API LED company, so assemblies are much,
much more agile to deploy. What I love about it is we can
drop our capabilities in on existing legacy applications and
actually help you extract value out of those quite quickly in
that respect. But obviously it depends.
On the use case. But yeah.
I'll give you like final question like fine, do you find
that e-commerce is driving more than physical?
Then no, actually, interestingly I think there's not one of.
This is the last question. It's a great question and actual
fact. I think everyone thought as we
came out of COVID, ecommerce was going to be the primary channel.
We haven't seen that. What we've seen actually was
people flow back into physical, but it's the interplay between
the two that's becoming increasingly.
Important. And how you connect those
experiences, whether it's in the store or in the digital format,
and having a seamless experience is absolutely critical.
Yeah. Fantastic.
I love it. Thank you so much.
Pleasure mate, No problem at all.
Cheers.