Today’s interview is a bit different as it features two, separate interviews in one episode. It’s a two-fer!

These interviews were conducted on a recent trip to Pegaworld iNspire held in Las Vegas.

The first interview is with James Dodkins, who is the CX Evangelist at Pega. This is swiftly followed by a chat with Tara DeZao, Director of Product Marketing, AdTech and MarTech at Pega.

I talk to them both about their highlights from the event and what’s top of mind for them in the service and experience space right now. Unsurprisingly, we cover the autonomous enterprise, generative AI, new shoes, bad rock tracks, a surprise but great musical collaboration, first-party data, getting your ‘data’ house in order, getting personalisation right and, of course, how gen AI will impact all of this.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Taking an employee-centric approach has allowed us to achieve an attrition rate of 5% – Interview with Jose Herrera of Horatio CX – and is number 475 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here are the highlights of my chat with James:

• James describes much of his role as taking complex ideas around our products and creating content to show people how they could work in their lives to help improve their customers and their agents lives.
• AI in and of itself isn’t all that useful. It’s the application of it that makes it useful. It is but another tool.
• The unification of AI and automation is where things get interesting.
• Generative AI is good at creating things but it’s not any good at doing things, and that’s where the automation thing comes in. You can use AI to decide things but if you don’t have anything to actually do something with those decisions … I don’t want to say it’s pointless. But it’s never going to reach its full potential.
• That’s where the autonomous enterprise comes in.
• James uses an example of a failing guitar peddle to explain how the autonomous enterprise would work in practice. He suggests that the system would automatically sense the failure and make an appropriate adjustment, therefore not interrupting the guitarist’s performance and also the fans’ enjoyment.
• Biggest moans and challenges right now: waiting on hold forever, being asked for the same information 84 times on a call, being passed around from department to department to department, a brand not being able to call you back even if you’re in the middle of a call and the call drops on their side…
• As customers, we are seeing technology evolve, and as a species, we’re becoming more tech-savvy. As a result, we’re getting less and less patient with experiences like that.
• A lot of companies think of themselves as a Metallica and they’re not. They’re an orchestra. They are a group of people coming together from different departments, all doing different things that are performing processes or delivering experiences that they didn’t create, trying to come together to deliver that cohesive, enjoyable experience for the customers. The problem is that many of those companies are performing without a conductor. That, for me, is what Pega is for businesses. It’s that conductor. It’s that orchestration.
• Customer experience should never be driven by the technology. Customer experience should always drive the technology.
• With the changing nature of service, I think there will be a shift from quantity of agents to quality of agents because of automation.
• You decide the song you want to play, and then you form an orchestra with the instruments needed to play the song. That’s the mindset we need to take with customer experience and technology.
• The worst rock track James has heard in ages is (O)rdinary by Avenged Sevenfold.
• James’ best advice: Go through it yourself. Actually, experience the experience that your customers are experiencing.

Here are the highlights of my chat with Tara:

• Tara believes that the deprecation of third-party cookies is not going to happen when Google says it will happen and their timetable will change again.
• Third-party cookies aren’t all that accurate as they are.
• When third-party cookies are deprecated, first-party data is going to be the solve for brands.
• According to Gartner’s multi-channel marketing hub survey, 61% of respondents said that leveraging and activating their first-party data was a challenge.
• Brands who deal with consumers directly (telcos, say) have all the data they need. Their challenge is about unifying it and activating it.
• However, the ones that don’t have direct relationships with their consumers are going to have to procure first-party style or zero-party data.
• With third-party cookies going away, brands are going to have to be much more intentional when it comes to identity resolution.
• But, before, brands take any sort of leap on better activation technologies. They have to get their data clean, organised and ready for activation.
• If you’re not really talking the same personalization game that your customers want, it’s a busted flush.
• The CMO of Sephora, the makeup company, was telling Tara about some of the ways that they do personalization, including when you come in store, they use AI to get your skin tone, they then match it and offer you products that are complimentary to that skin tone.
• Zero-party data is a tricky animal because it’s basically data that is consented data. It can add context, but we must be aware that consumers sometimes lie so there are possible data quality issues there.
• Good and accurate zero-party data, particularly if it provides guidance around a customer’s preferences, is definitely going to help you drive closer and closer towards a 1 to 1 engagement model.
• The key is to demonstrate a value exchange to the consumer as to why they should give you that data.
• Loyalty programmes are going to be the way that brands that lack that first-party data are gonna get closer to having quality data to build on.
• Gen AI, from a marketers’ perspective, is going to add a layer of speed to some processes that have historically not been very fast. Consider the example of working in an ad agency and you find a typo in your ad unit. Think about the mountains, you’d have to move to get that ad unit taken down so you can fix the creative. Traditionally, you’re looking at at least a couple of days to relaunch that programme. With gen AI, you will potentially, be able to pull down whatever you need to pull down and create something almost instantly to replace it.
• For those of us, like me, who are allergic to shopping in person, if I can see myself or generate an image of myself in an outfit, I love it. I’m for that.
• Tara’s best advice: Approach your employees and your customers with empathy because some of the decisions that they’re making regarding some of the engagements with your brand are like major life decisions and consequences.

About James

James Dodkins used to be an actual, real-life, legitimate, award-winning rockstar. He played guitar in a heavy metal band, released albums and tore up stages all over the world, James is now the CX Evangelist at Pega, where he researches the mindsets, principals and philosophies of companies that deliver ‘Rockstar Customer Experiences’. He shares those strategies through transformative training, engaging video content and inspiring keynote talks.

James was awarded The UK’s #1 CX Influencer by Customer Experience Magazine in 2020, The UK’s Most Outstanding CX Keynote Speaker by Corporate Vision Magazine in 2021, The World’s #10 Customer Service Guru by Global Gurus in 2021, as well as countless other notable mentions in industry publications like Business Insider, The Times and Forbes.

James is also a two-time #1 Best Selling Author and the Ex-host of Amazon Prime’s weekly topical CX show, ‘This Week In CX’.

Connect with James on LinkedIn here.

About Tara

Tara DeZao, Director of Product Marketing, AdTech and MarTech at Pega, is passionate about helping clients deliver better, more empathetic customer experiences backed by artificial intelligence. Over the last decade, she has cultivated a successful career in the marketing departments of both startups and Fortune 500 enterprise technology companies, including Bizo and Oracle.

She is a subject matter expert on all things marketing and has authored articles that have appeared in AdExchanger, VentureBeat, MarTech Series and more. Tara received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Connect with Tara on LinkedIn here.

Credit: Image by Ernesto Eslava from Pixabay