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More retailers turning to the new technology AI that is this holiday shopping season, but balancing the efficiency that technology can bring with the trust customers place and human interactions can be tricky. Dan O'Connell is the CEO of Front and AI customer service platform Dan, welcome and thanks for joining us today. So how does Front differentiate itself from other purportedly AI dominated customer service platforms.
Yeah, great question and thanks for having me today. It's a friend's really the only plot form that combines traditional email, help desk and chatbots together in a single platform to deliver exceptional AI drone customer experiences for incredible depth and breadth of customers.
Okay, sounds interesting. So who are your customers and what do they pay you for the service?
Yeah, so our customers today are really focused on two things. One, they want to automate low value, repetitive tasks to deliver exceptional customer experiences. And they've got high value relationships that they want to have a human touch for. And so our customers are b to B customers specifically at mid market and lower enterprise that leverage us again as a way to go and communicate and manage their relationships with our customers.
All right, I'm going to just cut to the chase cuz CEOs they understand and the terminology, But what is it that you really are getting to for one of your clients in terms of the customer information and what you're doing for them.
Sure, every business out there needs to manage customer relationships, and so again that can be how do we go and respond to customers over chat, or over SMS or over email. They need to understand the insights that are coming from those conversations so they can better route them, and again really focus on just these wonderful customer customer experiences across really any channel that's out there, voice, video, SMS, text, and email.
Dan, I have to say, I think it's either the control rooms around here or everybody around us are like, come on, we've all had a customer experience where we're either don't get the answers or get into kind of a chatbot that doesn't ask the right questions and says, hey, are.
You all done now? So how do we make it better?
So that really is this about, you know, customers companies gathering information or is it really about making the customer experience easier and more productive?
Well, I think it's a balance. Like we're at the earlier segment. You know, we're all incredibly excited about the opportunity for AI to deliver faster responses and instinct answers. We know that every consumer out there wants to get an instant answer any question or problem they have around in order, and I think there's all so a balance of Look like we're in this holiday season, it's really emotional. If there's a shipping delay or an issue, you want to be able to go and talk to a person.
And so I think the balance of finding this opportunity is incredibly important for every brand that's out there. You can't just automate away the people. You can't just automate away every task or workflow, and so I think the best businesses are going to strike that balance, and I think we're in this real time experiment right now in this holiday season given kind of the excitement around AI.
So what do you use for large language models? Whose AI do you use? And you know where is all that data stored?
Yeah, So in terms of we've got a multipletive partners that we leverage to provide our AI. We do some work in house. We obviously leverage open AI and Mistroll, who are large foundational large language models. I'm sure most of the audience is familiar with some of them. And one thing that's really important is we talk about this data is making sure that our customers have full control
to that data. Again, and then when we talk about the customer experiences, nobody wants to be tricked out there in terms of when they're engaging with AI, and so I think this is also a fundamentally important focus for us at FRONT, which is make sure that the users have full control. Make sure that we're very clear around where there are experiences with an AI or an automated or automation and when you're actually engaging with a human.
So software as a service.
Your AI chatbot just brought me over to your pricing page, which thank you very much and is asking me if I have any questions, and you can get a starter pack for twenty five bucks and it goes on up to one hundred and five. But I imagine as small and medium sized enterprises mainly that you're targeting, right, because the bigger companies are doing it themselves.
No, you would be surprised. And so I think every business on the planet is going through a platform shift right now around customer experience. And so we are working with some small businesses that might have five or fifteen seats, and our largest sense to or upwards of thousand seats.
Some of the largest brands that are recognized. Uber Freight, for example, is a business of ours leverages us and so again, like I think what's interesting at this moment in time is everybody you're picking new platforms around customer experience. And again that's because of what AI is cap already demonstrating, and capability has real capabilities and real revenue traction. But I think also people are excited about what are the opportunities that AI can deliver in the near future.
Hey, Dan, just got about thirty seconds here. You have so much data on your platform. We all care about what the US consumer is doing. In thirty second, how would you say the US consumer is doing and fairing?
Yeah, I think what we see is I am expecting us to have one of the biggest cyber mondays in holiday seasons that we've seen. We already know that people are shifting and making more purchases online and through mobile. Again, that increase in volume obviously leads to there's going to be some increasing frustrations and breakdown, and they're going to want to have these ecceits optional customer experiences across any channel.
And so again I'm expecting to sta have a pretty big holiday season here, all right.
So it sounds like you're gonna be pretty busy going ahead. Hey Dan, thank you so much. Dan O'Connell. He is the CEO of up Front.
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With consumer sentiment overall this month following the most since the month of April. There are questions about how holiday shopping and retailers full year earnings will be impacted. So there's a lot going on this holiday season and expectations to around it. We're joined now by Natalie Cutler. She's Video's national retail and consumer products industry leader, and she joins us on this Black Friday.
Hey Natalie, great to have you here with Vonnie and myself.
What are your expectations around this holiday shopping season?
Well, great to be here, thank you. You know what, I think this holiday season is going to be challenging, yet I do think it's going to ultimately be okay. I think there's going to be winners and losers on the retail side, just like we would expect to see in any year. Those retailers that really understand what their consumer is looking for, whether it's value, convenience, or experience, those are the retailers that are going to be successful.
Natalie.
One thing that I caught my attention this week's City coming out and saying that Black Friday performance is overblown as a metric for retailers, going on to say the Thanksgiving weekend shopping event is given too much attention as the season is quote typically one or lost in the weeks leading up to Christmas, with the post Christmas week becoming more important to most retailers that city's view.
Does city have a point though?
So, I do think that the week'sly up to Black Fridays certainly are an indication of what will happen on Black Friday, the entire weekend, and then certainly for the rest of the Monday December. Black Friday used to be the turning point and the key day from most retailers, and we know now that it is so much more than that. It is now beginning November and even Amazon as early as October, so the holiday season has really stretched out more so than it has been in years past.
So it's kind of difficult just to nail down a particular day. Having said all that, I do think at Black Friday or this entire weekend and including Cyber Monday, are still critical days for retailers because that is the day that the consumer's mindset is, oh, I have to go out there and get my shopping done.
Not are there any new approaches when it comes to marketing. I picked up my phone a little while ago, and there are must have been about fifty emails offering me things. Obviously, these are people I've given my email to already and they think of me as a loyal customer.
But for many of them, I'm not.
So let's dig deeper a little bit on that whole concept of loyalty. So loyalty programs are super important, and retailers are doubling down on the loyalty programs. So in the past, probably as you did in so many others, as did I, you wanted a five percent ten percent sign on discount. Lots of consumers signed in, got their initial ten percent, and that was the end of that,
and then we're all continuously getting these emails. But good retailers are doubling down on the retail on the loyalty programs, and they're offering either tier discounts by X get a discount of ten percent, by why get a discount of twenty percent. Some loyalty programs are offering exclusive promotions, they're offering those promotions early, and then they're also offering exclusive
drops or exclusive products. So I do think that the old loyalty program that we've seen for many years, where you just get that initial discount, are no longer are no longer the case, and retailers are not only providing those discounts, but they're really doing is actually getting information, and they're gathering data about us as consumers, what we're buying, when we're buying it, and utilizing AI as to how they can offer us better and more targeted and personalized promotions.
And I imagine they were turning some shoppers away with the volume of these emails. I want to ask you about omni channel because it used to either that was sort of in person or online somehow, but that's expanded as well now given that we can all shop through our social media ups.
Should we want to, absolutely so.
It used to be just as you said, used to be either in store, used to have online. Now we have mobile commerce, and we have social commerce, and retailers really need to have a very strong omnichannel to capture all of those different channels so a not to lose the consumer. You know, if you have a promotion in the store, but you don't have the promotion available online or vice versa, or in social commerce. And I think social commerce actually opens up a whole nother area of
opportunity for retailers, and that's the through influencers. You know, buying through influencers is someone that you can relate to, someone in with your interest, perhaps in your age bracket, someone you can really connect to. I think influencers are certainly driving the sales and the interaction on social commerce.
Hey, Natalie, just to wrap up, because you know we've talked a lot about the consumer, but you obviously work with a lot of companies and businesses that sell stuff to the consumer. Just got about thirty seconds left here or so what are they saying about the environment right now? Are they optimistic? Are they more conservative about the outlook? Just quickly if you could.
I think you're really seeing a mix of all of that. Some retailers are optimistic, the ones that have a very strong front end back end in terms of how they view how they view the consumer. Whereas some retailers that are not as comfortable or do not have all their processes in place. They didn't buy the inventory at the right time or at the right price and now are Therefore we'll be offering significant discounts in Q four and beyond.
All right, Natalie, thank you so much for joining us.
That is Natalie Cutler from Videos Retail and Consumer Products Industry Group.
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Keeping up with that holiday theme, holiday travel, you know, is often stressful in other place, maybe gummies and cannabis they come in handy. Some might say, Hey, this year travel maybe a little bit different, though, as many Americans made changes to their plans during or because of the US government shutdown. Even so, it is expected to be one of the busiest travel seasons in years. Let's get
more on what to expect with Clint Henderson. He's travel insider managing editor of the travel media platform.
The Points Guy.
Always knows so much about what's going on and where the deals are.
First of all, Clint, just look back.
How much do you think or how much are you hearing that the government shutdown may have impacted holiday travel this year?
Yeah? So we did a poll with you Gov at the Point Sky and we found that forty percent of those planning to travel for Thanksgiving, a Christmas were reconsidering their plans, changing their plans, or canceling their plans. So in the end, because the government shutdown ended when it did, I don't think anywhere near that number ended up canceling. I do think some people chose to drive instead, and maybe some people were scared off of traveling for the
Thanksgiving holiday. That said, there's still record crowds, so it didn't really dent the numbers as much as it could have. But I definitely think the air traffic controller shortage thing got a lot of publicity. That's an ongoing problem that I think a lot of people hadn't heard about before. So you know, we did see an impact to pricing
for Christmas flights. So we did an analysis with points Path and we found prices dropped around six percent year over year for Christmas, which is really unusual this time of year. Usually it's only up, up, up for Christmas.
So I've noticed some great deals to some European destinations that I definitely definitely didn't notice when I was speaking with you last year, because I remember, well, give us the skinny, we're the best destinations, were the best discounts when it comes to Black Friday shopping.
Yeah, so pretty much every single airline has a Black Friday sale on right now or is planning one for travel Tuesday Cyber Monday next week. It's a great time to shop for travel, especially if you have some spring break trips that you're going to plan, because that can be really expensive. But roundtrip under five hundred dollars is common this week from everyone from Singapore Airlines, air Lingis. American Airlines launched a huge sale today, so lots of
good deals to Europe for example. Out there. Also, American Airlines has flights under one hundred dollars one way all over the country, including trans cons between San Francisco or LA and New York. So really good deals out there. Alaska Airlines thirty percent off, and then all the hotels are twenty five to thirty percent off today, so take
a look around. We have a whole ride up at the Point Sky that I've been updating frequently, and so there's lots of good deals out there, so much so that I think travel has replaced sort of merchandise as the best deal during these Black Friday holidays. It's pretty remarkable because when I started out in this business, it was really a gimmick. Travel Tuesday was not really a thing, and now it really is.
I agree, I definitely have had good luck on this particular weekend actually booking travel. Talk to us about some of the domestic and international places that people are booking most.
Yeah, Europe is good, it remains hot, and it's always the case. Florida, Las Vegas is still hot. New York City crazy demand in New York City. If you've been out in the city, you know what it's like out there. I just can't believe hotel rates eight hundred to one thousand dollars a night. It's just crazy to me. But Europe is hot, and then of course Japan. The US dollar remains strong, so places like Japan are a relative bargain for Americans and that's really well where everyone wants
to go. I don't know if it's Instagram that seems to be the hot spot.
Really fascinating.
One of the things I want to go back to, though, Clint, is in terms of deals, you talked about thirty percent off or this percentage off.
What about for people who use miles.
Yeah, I'm not seeing as many mileage deals though they are out there. I think you just have to be really flexible and you have to be nimble with booking mileage deals right now. You know, last year that's what we were seeing more was mileage deals. This year it seems to be cash deals. So very interesting trend to watch. I use tools like seats Dot arrow to find cheap business class flights and you know, there's explanation of all
this stuff at the points guy. But you have to be a little You have to be a little tricky these days to get a really pine.
That is so true.
Hey, listen.
The other thing I want to ask you about is cruise lines because I've seen a lot of commercials for the cruise companies and they do seem to be saying sign up now and a big percentage off. How much of that is kind of amping up to bring in consumers.
Yeah, it's really interesting. The cruise industry was the last to recover coming out of COVID, and we saw some extraordinary deals. I just have not seen a lot of deals in the cruise space these days. So if you see something and now that looks really good, jump on it. Because cruises are selling out. It's remarkable to come back in the cruise industry. I haven't not seen a ton of deals. I'm sure there's a few out there, but yeah, if you see something on sale, grab it.
Klint just remind us, he said, seats dot arrow and are there other websites that we should know about because I feel like these websites change all the time.
Yeah they do. We've got a guide to all the best travel tools at the Points Guide, but seats dot arrow is good, Points Bath points dot point dot me is another good one. Uh, There's there's all kinds of really fun tools out there where you can you can beat the airlines at their own game.
Yeah, or at least, you know, spend spend an hour or two and have fun dreaming. Clint Henderson, thank you so much. Always wonderful to speak with you and actually can be very profitable to speak with you as well. So thanks again. That's Clint Henderson, who is managing editor at The Points Guy, and do check out the Points Guy website as well.
For all of those deals.
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You know, look at the market today, Carol, we have to point out that in this last trading day of November, we've actually turned positive on the month with the S ANDB five hundred. We're finishing the session of more than half a percent and we only needed to make up point four percent. So my math tells me that we are in the green, having dropped four point seven percent earlier on this month, really really rocky month than I was.
Like.
One hundred is up eight tenths of one percent to continue this nice Thanksgiving rally.
The Dow up six tenths of percent.
Not much movement for the dollar, equity in disease, as I say, higher equity markets closed. The bond market has another hour to go, but not seeing too much movement there either. The ten year yield just above for one right now, the two year yield just below four fifty and a little bit of addition to oil, so we're about fifty nine to forty seven for WTI Brent crude.
Really no change at sixty three thirty seven, but plenty of interesting moves today in the SMB five hundred, Carol Energy was the best sector.
Yeah, really fascinating to see that at performance today. If you're thinking about what performed best in the month of November, folks healthcare at the top of the back, it is up about eight and a quarter percent. All right, let's get more on the market trade for you. Let's bring in someone who want which is it day in and day out for us here at Bloomberg. She's the Blueberg Markets correspondent, Norm Melnda. She joins us right here, Noura,
where shall we begin here? What kind of caught your attention? First of all, for today in what was certainly a light volume day.
Certainly light volume. But what I've been hearing from a lot of analysts is the fact that actually in holiday shortened weeks, we do tend to see a lot of outperformance. That we're just looking at how the week ended. The S and P five hundred saw its best week since May.
And of course, as we're looking at a lot of the monthly scopes here, but I was hearing an expectation for us to see a bid in the energy sector, especially if we're continuing to see a lot of focus on the geopolitical tensions in Ukraine Russia that development there. So I was talking to some sources over at Integrity Asset Management who did expect that to see some some boosts today. So it's interesting that that was the best performing sector on the day today, Carol.
And then of course for the retailer is Nora. We had a double Jamie of a week because we had a lot of earnings out, some of them were very amenable to the retailer's stock let's say ANF included.
And then consumer discretion.
We're doing quite well today too as the group up point nine percent. How important is the holiday season for these retailers to keep their stock prices where they are into the year end.
Well, certainly a deluge of earnings that we've really been seeing from retailers, and it's really painting a mixed picture, but we are still seeing to be underscored during this time period. Is the consumer is really strapped right now?
We've been talking a lot about this K shaped economy where essentially we are seeing the upper class continuing to be resilient, still spending money, but we are seeing the lower income consumer really being a lot pickier during this time period, looking for spending more on necessities instead of
splurging during this time period. So, while we did hear the National Retail Federation saying that they expect this to be a record year, in terms of the traction that we're seeing on Black Friday, which is Black Friday today, through the five day stretch through Cyber Monday, we still
are seeing a resilient but cautious consumer. And as we think about what that means for stock prices for the retail space, if you look at consumer discretionary Index of the S and P five hundred, it's up only about four percent, so clearlyagging the double digit games that we are seeing from the broader market in the S and P five hundred, and the majority of the holiday sales account for about twenty percent of the sales more broadly
for the retail space between November and December. So this is a very critical time period in terms of seeing how this develops and how much consumer appetite we can see during this time.
Yeah, you talk about neurocritical periods. I mean hard to believe that we've only got one month left here in twenty twenty five. It's been quite a year, a lot of volatility, to say the least, I'm looking at an S ANDP that's up almost seventeen percent, a Nasdaq one hundred that's up twenty one percent, and Russell small caps up about twelve percent.
So you know, what are traders focusing.
On at this point with only another month to go until we wrap up the year.
Just about a month to go to wrap up the year, and you are seeing traders, of course, trying to really just settle their books as we're heading into year end.
Of course, the focus still remains on the Federal Reserve and what they're going to do next, especially with us seeing a lot of the stocks levitating off of this idea of a potential FED rate cut ahead, and we are really just seeing a lot of people just grappling with how we can really end the year on a positive note and see what are the opportunities in the market right now given the fact that tariff have still remained a concern through this entire year, We've been seeing
geopolitical tension still remaining and focus. So you are really seeing the traders right now just trying to figure out what sectors and spaces make the most sense in terms of just having a defensive position.
I love that Nora sucks levitating what an idea, but they are though on indices too, Nora, Melinda, always a pleasure.
Thank you so much for joining us this Black Friday.
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