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.