Master Customer Experience: How You Can Leverage AI for Customer Service and Digital Marketing w/ Jay Baer

Coming out of the pandemic , I had this observation that people , including myself and I suspect you as well , value their time more than before , because the pandemic taught us a lot of things , but one of the things that reminded us is that tomorrow's not guaranteed Time is money . But now it's actually true .

If I don't want to do a project , I say no , and I guess maybe the easier way to answer your question is to me , success is the power of saying no . To me , success is the power of saying no . Got it yes ?

Was it as a college ? Where did that happen ?

And I was 30 and had not done that yet , had always wanted to . Ever since I got out of university I'd always wanted to kind of do my own thing .

But I got really fortunate and right out of school I got a series of pretty highly paid jobs in corporate and so I was like I don't really want to leave this job and start my own company , because what if it doesn't work out ? And so I was just scared , right , I was scared to make that success leap . And here's what happened .

Brad , my best friend , had been my best friend since second grade , right . So we were best friends since we were seven years old . We were such good friends that he married my wife's sister . So my best friend , yeah . So my best friend became my brother-in-law , which I totally recommend to everybody . If you can engineer that , do it .

My brother-in-law , which I totally recommend to everybody . If you can engineer that , do it . It's great . It makes Thanksgiving so much more fun . So it was amazing . So when we were 30 , he was 30 , I was 30 , both of our wives were 30 . And he called me one day and said I just got back from the doctor . I'm like , oh , what's up ?

He's like I have brain cancer and he ended up having very serious brain cancer and had a series of surgeries etc . And the day after he called me I walked in and quit and I haven't worked for anybody since Because that phone call made me realize that my downside of pursuing a success path was nothing compared to his downside .

It contextualized the risk for me and that was the nudge I needed to kind of take the leap , and I never looked back .

And to me it's always the same playbook , which is just provide as much value to an audience as possible , like figure out what you know that they don't , and then give all of that knowledge away , one little bite at a time , and if you do that long enough , good things will happen .

So right now I'm the I'm the number two most popular tequila influencer on the planet . I made my first tequila video two years ago yesterday and and in a very quick period of time became , you know , towards the top of that profession , if you can even call it a profession .

But the secret is I just make videos that teach people a lot about tequila and I do it every single day and eventually people recognize that and then eventually they start to pay you and eventually , because I understand how these kind of things work , you figure out a monetization scheme and then you just kind of climb that ladder .

But all of my businesses and sort of all my successes have been rooted in the same principle , which is just be as helpful as you can .

What I have learned about failure is this when I fail , it's always for the same reason . Always , every time is this . When I fail is always for the same reason . Always , every time it's because I get super excited about an opportunity and I go and pursue it without fully thinking through the actual plan .

Right , um , I , I , I , I look before I leap or wait other way around , I don't look before I leap .

And then I leap and I'm like , and I'm like halfway down , like in midair , and I'm like , and then I leap and I'm like , and I'm like halfway down , like in midair , and I'm like , oh wait , I forgot to figure out how we were going to pay for that , right . And then I'm like oh well , that was dumb , I should know better by now .

And so every time I've screwed up , it's been the exact same reason I got too excited and I didn't actually think it through all the way .

But then invariably sometimes that won't work right . They get confused , they get angry , they get disappointed , they get frustrated and then they're like wait a second . I got to get some help here and that's where customer service kind of takes place .

So , if you think about it , probably a shorthand is that customer experience is often a more proactive version of it and customer service is a more reactive version of customer interactions . Does that make sense ?

But one of the things that reminded us is that , like , tomorrow is not guaranteed , like nothing's promised to us , like you don't know , like you don't know what's going to happen , right , you get hit by Sputnik like you don't know what's going to happen .

And then we had all these trends , right , like the great resignation and quiet quitting and people wanting to work from home because they don't want to commute . Bleasure travel , which is a hot thing now . It's the combination of business and leisure travel . It's when you take your kids to the conference and double dip the trip .

That's like a hot trend , even in baseball , right , major League Baseball has the pitch clock now , so the average game is 26 minutes a night shorter than it was before the pandemic and they've got record ratings , record attendance , because it turns out people don't want to spend an extra 26 minutes a night watching somebody stand around and scratch their nuts .

Like it's all the same trend . Yeah , like all of this is the same trend , and the trend is we care about our time more than ever . So I did a huge research project on this and found that indeed it's true .

Two thirds of customers two and three say that speed is as important as price , and half half of all customers will hire whichever business contacts them first , regardless of price . So if you know those things to be true , shouldn't you elevate responsiveness and speed in your list of business priorities ? I think you absolutely should .

Of all the different elements of customer experience , personalization , empathy , et cetera I believe speed is the most important right now .

We've obviously been talking about the the phrase time is money for a long , long , long , long long time , but now it's actually true Like it's , it's demonstrably true , and so one thing and AI will help with this One thing you've really got to figure out in your business , like right now as we're having this conversation , is how can you be faster for your

customers ?

Fill us in . What's the scoop .

I'll give an example from my own career . Many , many years ago , my let's see second third internet venture . So this is like mid 90s , some friends and I started a free voice and video calling company online . It was , for all intents and purposes , skype , like 10 years before Skype . Like we were like the first ones , and it totally failed .

Totally failed , and partially for the reasons I talked about earlier . We got too excited and didn't think it through . And the thing we didn't think through was in those days , mid nineties , nobody was like you know what sucks the phone ? Like everybody was , like nobody had a problem with the current state of affairs , right ?

So that's going to be the thing about AI . It's going to take a little longer than some of the futurists are predicting . Only because my mom is not going to switch horses just because I say so , there's a whole world out there that takes a while to adopt stuff , but but it is going to change everything .

If I may give you one example of how it works today , that will help everybody understand where we're headed very quickly . There is a insurance company called Lemonade . Lemonade primarily sells renter's insurance to young people who live in apartments , et cetera . My son is a Lemonade customer . Lemonade was built with AI from the beginning .

The way it works is if you have a claim . So the example that they often talk about that I use in presentations is this guy , paul , lives in New York City , has like a $950 Canada Goose full-length parka , goes to the restroom , leaves it on the stool , gets stolen . So he opens up his phone , goes into Lemonade app , clicks make a claim .

He talks into his phone , makes a video . Hi , it's Paul . I'm at this bar in New York City . I had this Canada goose parka . I don't have the receipt , obviously , but I think it was about $950 . I left it on the stool . It got stolen . I'm totally sorry . Hopefully you guys can help me Submit .

On the back end , lemonade runs a bunch of AI machine learning algorithms . They analyze his tone of voice , his rate of speaking , his breathing patterns . They look at his eye movements to see if he indicates that he's not telling the truth . They do some lookups behind the scene on his credit history , et cetera .

They already have access to his bank account because that is set up when you establish the relationship with the company . They decide , yes , he's probably telling the truth . They reduce the payment by the fee of his deductible , which is $250 . So the jacket's $950 , deductible's $250 . They owe him $700 .

They wire the $700 to his bank account and they push a notification to his phone that says claim approved , your money's in your account . Ok , that entire process , three seconds , three seconds .

Conventional insurance company is like here , right , and they've got the highest net promoter score , the highest average rating , the best word of mouth . Why would you not recommend them ?

What things do you do that are repetitive ? What things do you do that you hate ? Because typically , if humans hate a job or a task , ai will love it and will crush it , right ?

So , for example , one of my friends is building a lot of AI solution technology for business , and he works with a commercial leasing company , and so they built an AI application that will read like a hundred page lease and instantly surface the 10 different clauses that are unusual compared to most commercial leases , that they can then have conversations with the

tenant about those clauses . Well , historically , they do that with , like , human attorneys , and it takes and it takes 10 days . This does it with AI , and it takes 10 seconds , you know . So it's those kinds of things . Anything that you consider to be like drudgery in your organization is a great place to start .

So this idea of like give me some AI in my business is like ridiculous . That's not how it works . You've got to find like very specific use cases and the best place to start is with the stuff that's bullshit that nobody likes to do in your company .

So , if we think about the customer experience and you know , when you go back to your and I want you to touch on , hug your haters as well , because I think people need to read that as well but when you think of all of the customer experience that can be solved with AI , the drudgery of that , help me understand how the haters giving us the negatives and

the AI can work together to solve things for us .

So the data is that only five out of 100 unhappy customers will ever say anything Only five out of 100 . The other 95 just gone . You don't know what happened , right ?

So the five who actually , you know , asked to see a manager or call you or email you or leave a negative review , they're actually doing you a favor because at least they're going on record as saying hey , man , I think you could do this a little bit better .

And to me , that's how you really get good in your organization is incremental improvement , and customers can help you get there . And so taking the negativity and embracing it not just tolerating it , but actually embracing it and then responding in a way that actually makes that customer feel heard and respected , can really yield very powerful business outcomes .

But now , in an AI world , a lot of that interaction is not going to be with human beings , it's going to be with your AI tools .

There's a new application that's just in beta right now . It's actually a demo called Hume , and it will absolutely blow your mind , brad . It's Humeai , and it is a voice agent that reads and analyzes your tone of voice and your rate , kind of like what Lemonade does , and then it modulates and changes its verbal patterns in real time accordingly .

And so what's so great about this kind of technology is it never gets mad , it never gets frustrated , it never gets annoyed by your accent . It's tuned to be positive . It's like the ultimate customer service agent . It's pretty amazing , and to think about where we're going to be even 18 months from now is staggering .

I imagine they'll use something like Hume to add to that ability to answer every customer's call .

But when you think of digital marketing now , because that's an area where you've done phenomenal , like you know when you take your tequila , where you've become technically a digital marketer because you're a content creator in that way , let's first of all start with keys to success in digital marketing . Then we'll add the AI component to it .

Here's how long ago it was Brad , my partners and I in my first internet company , we sold the domain name budweisercom to Anheuser-Busch , and in 1993 , for 50 cases of beer . That's a true story , buddy .

We had no idea what we would ultimately unleash .

So I've been doing this a long time and the success formula for digital is only this you have to be constantly curious , you have to have a thirst , a yearning , a burning passion for experimentation and incremental optimization , because if you think you , in all of your wisdom , know the right answer , I'm here to tell you you don't .

Your instinct is almost always wrong in digital , and the more you set up tests and A-B tests and multivariate tests and do a subject line test and add creative tests , you're always wrong . Your gut is almost always wrong .

And and I learned that very early on and I continued to use that um to my advantage and for my clients uh , you , you just have to find out the . What I used to always tell people is this . They'd ask me like okay , how much money should we spend on Google ads , or what ? Which one of these ads should we run Like whatever ?

Some question and I would say I don't know the answer , but I know how to find out Right which is we actually test it and look , if you're not doing that kind of analysis , why are you using digital ? The whole reason that digital is great is that the answer is knowable .

If you want to just hope you're right by billboards that don't have that , you know that . That that don't have data and analytics right , that don't have data and analytics right , like sponsor a golf tournament , do something like that .

I want to get into the how we can make that exponential , but let's take a break . Quick hit subscribe gang . We'll be back in a second . Jay Baer is going to tell us how to use AI to multiply those results .

I mean , every time Meta recommends an ad to you , every time Meta recommends a target audience to you or a lookalike audience , right , every time you say auto-optimize when you're buying Google ads , you know almost every display ad buy is now AI driven . It's all AI . It's just because it's an ingredient in the larger tool set .

We don't think of it in the same way we do , as , like , let's go to a specific AI tool , like a chat , gpt , et cetera , where , where we know it's AI because it says in the corner , ai . But almost everything , almost everything in digital is very AI driven , even even something like whatever you use for for marketing automation , right ?

So , whatever sending your emails , assuming that you're using the delivery optimizer , which says OK , we know that Brad is most likely to open his emails between 2 pm and 4 pm , so we're going to auto send emails to Brad at 3 pm and they do that for the totality of your list . Right , that's all AI . Right , there's not like there's .

There's not like there's an intern in the back figuring that out . Right , that's machine learning out . Right , that's machine learning . So so you know , this is it's , it's already there and and what's going to and what it will help you with . Though and you talked about it earlier with 14 color block ads , the near term future is 140 color block ads .

Yeah , because the , the , the , the , the Delta , between 14 and 140 will be nothing , it won't matter , it will be no extra time or money to do it that way . So you're like well , let's just test all the colors of the rainbow , because , like whatever .

And so , as an agency , as really any professional service provider not even marketing services , but it doesn't matter if you're an accountant , an attorney , anything that's professional services you only have two options , right , you can either say to your clients okay , we're going to keep your price the same , but because we have access to these tools , we're going to

give you more , so it's more for same . Or we're going to give you the same amount of stuff and we're going to drop your price . You only have two options it's more for same or same for less .

And you have to understand , as a professional service provider , which of those paths you're going to take , because if you don't pick either one of them , your clients are eventually going to say why are you still charging me what you charged me two years ago ? I know you're using AI to do all this and you're keeping all the benefits of that .

If you've watched this show before and enjoyed it , just please click that button to subscribe , hit the notifications bell and make sure you're a part of it , because as the show gets better , your success gets better . I see that transition from the customer . Well , I want to take it to a deeper level the marketing experience , the customer experience .

How does the marketing experience determine the customer experience ? Going forward in this day and age .

So , because it's very difficult to win now on an actual price or product differentiation it's pretty rare . There's not very many categories where you actually have a defensively better or different mousetrap , and so where you're typically going to win is in experience .

Right , you're going to make the customer feel better and that's going to be your competitive advantage , and that then needs to be reflected in your marketing . Right ?

So the marketing has to talk more about what it feels like to work with this company , as opposed to the actual products and services that this company offers , because those are kind of undifferentiated and essentially axiomatic . Right , hotels do this pretty well . You know there's so many different hotel brands and they offer different experiences . Right ?

So the JW Marriott and the Hampton Inn are not the same product , at least in terms of the experience , but the core product is the same . Right , it's a bed and a shower Like it's not . You know what I mean . It's essentially the same thing , but it's the experiential elements that are different . And then , of course , the marketing tends to promote those things .

It's not like yeah , we've got a whole different bed , right , this is a bed of nails , right ? No , it's like still a bed . So the experience becomes sort of the marketing message , and I think increasingly that will be what marketing has to do has to focus on the experience more so than the product itself .

I mean , what's the actual success formula ? Having your customers grow your business for you right ? Having your customers proactively tell their friends about your company . That is the real formula . But that doesn't happen as much as we want it to .

And it's not because we have bad companies , it's because , brad , almost every business person makes the exact same mistake . I'm going to tell you what it is . They believe that competency creates conversation , and it does not . Competency does not create conversations .

Competency keeps your customer right , it reduces churn , it reduces defection , it increases lifetime value . But we don't talk about good . It's brain science . We talk about things that are outside our circle of expectations . Hey , brad , let me tell you about this experience I had last night . It was perfectly adequate .

Nobody ever says that because it's not a good story and word of mouth is a story . This is also why you almost never see three-star reviews , because who's going to write a three-star review ? See three-star reviews . Because who's going to write a three-star review ? Hey , yep , I paid my money and I got pretty much what I expected .

Three stars People don't even do it right , it's ones or fives . So if you want to turn your customers into volunteer marketers and you do , trust me , it's the least expensive way to grow a business you've got to do something that they don't expect , and that's what creates the conversations . You have to transcend the transaction .

So , going back to our hotel example , doubletree Hotels is one of the best examples of this . Doubletree has , for years and years and years , the chocolate chip cookie you get when you check in . So we did a case study on them for the book , and they hand out 75,000 chocolate chip cookies a day , a day , and so we did a huge survey .

We partnered with Hilton on it . We did a huge survey . One third of their customers have told somebody a story about that cookie . That's a lot of stories . That's a lot of stories , right , and consequently they don't spend very much money on advertising , because the cookie is the ad , essentially .

And I really liked that quote because it reminds me that it's never going as good as you think it is and it's never going as bad as you think it is . To me , one of the best things you can do as an entrepreneur , as somebody pursuing success , is to try to keep an even keel .

When you get super high and super low , you start making bad decisions and bad decisions will chop down that tree of success . It helps that I'm Swiss and a Libra , but still I think it's a good philosophy right . Try and keep it chill and it'll result in better decisions .