Today’s interview revisits and finalises the series of podcast conversations that I had with various folks whilst at Pegaworld earlier this. This episode is a combo affair and features a conversation with Tara DeZao, Director of Product Marketing, AdTech and MarTech, at Pega. It is then swiftly followed by a chat that I had with Simon Thorpe, Director – Global Product Marketing – Customer Service & Sales Automation, at Pega, who is then joined partway through the conversation by James Dodkins, a friend of the podcast and CX Evangelist, at Pega. Fun and games!

Our conversations cover my guests’ highlights from the event, their perspective on the current state of play in marketing, personalization, customer service, customer experience and the impact of Gen AI on all of the above, amongst a bunch of other things.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Print-era thinking is holding personalization efforts back – Interview with Vivek Sharma on Movable Ink – and is number 515 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Disclaimer: I partnered with Pega to conduct interviews and provide my perspective on PegaWorld iNspire 2024.

Here are the highlights of my chat with Tara:

• Pega are not mandating a back to the office policy, as Alan Trefler, the CEO at Pega, says he wants the office to be a magnet not a mandate.
• In order to achieve the sort of level of personalization that we’ve all been trying to attain, we need to be helpful to our customers.
  • For example, Navy Federal Credit Union has a great example of working with a client who had one product that was a checking account, and they were paying a lot of ATM fees. However, they figured out that this person could upgrade to the next level of checking account, and they would get a $10 credit every month for ATM fees. – that’s an illustration of being super helpful to the customer.
• Jess Cuthbertson from National Australia Bank “if it matters for your customer, it’s important.”
• Leaders are moving from traditional campaign marketing to one-to-one customer engagement.
• We need to shift our mindset to understand that we can’t speak to segments anymore. We have to actually speak to the needs of individual customers.
• That doesn’t mean you don’t need brand marketing. Everybody needs brand marketing. However, it’s about altering your programs so that you’re getting the results that you need out of your one-to-one engagement and you’re getting the results that you need out of your brand marketing.
• Tara’s best advice if you want to deliver a personalised experience: Understand your data sets, be as real-time with your interactions as possible and create a multi-channel approach.

Here are the highlights of my chat with Simon and James:

• We need to keep talking about not baking logic into channels, as that’s what’s at the centre of many of the disconnected experiences we see around us.
• We’re using Gen AI to simulate the customer, where we can turn the knobs and basically make Gen AI act as a grumpy customer or a really enthusiastic customer, someone with lots of questions, someone who’s very stubborn, and give them the opportunity to interact using our customer service framework dealing with that customer and learning how to navigate the system, getting all the power of our next best action recommendations, knowledge pops, insights that come in without having to put them in a classroom.
• Many, many traditional customer service training programs in classrooms and contact centers tend to be very boring and long.
• This is one of the reasons why it often takes three months to get people onto a phone because it’s a tough job and it’s really difficult to get people up to speed with the scope and complexity of the job.
• James and I did a zip wire thing, called Slotzilla, whilst in Las Vegas, which runs down Fremont Street (see picture).
• Call center agents, mostly and especially in the Western world, are looked down on and not respected.
• They tend to be the least paid, least respected, least trained, least empowered, least considered members of any organisation.
• Let’s say, for example, an agent spends six hours on the phone or on the chat dealing with customers every single day. Let’s say you’ve got a thousand agents. Put that into perspective, that’s 126 million minutes every single year of experience being delivered by what are essentially forgotten people.
• At Pega, we see a completely different future with respects to those folks.
• I think, Gen AI is going to kickstart a correlation between delivering good service and profitability.
• James’ best advice: Don’t focus on technology, focus on people.
• Simon’s best advice: Get into the call center, put the headset on, answer some calls, experience it firsthand. There’s not enough executive leadership that does that. You will learn more in an hour answering calls and seeing what it’s like for customers than you will learn from anything else.

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.

About Simon

Simon Thorpe, Director – Global Product Marketing – Customer Service & Sales Automation, at Pega, is a self-described CX enthusiast and has spent years in the customer experience and contact centre space, working alongside a network of highly respected individuals who are doing fantastic things for customer service.

He is the global lead for product marketing within Pega’s customer service portfolio. In his role, he works with industry thought leaders to inspire businesses to think differently about how technology can be applied to improve customer engagement and digital transformation.

Connect with Simon on LinkedIn here.

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.