Defining the Agentic CVM Era

Why Listen

Özge Efe Aşcı, Senior Manager – Customer Lifecycle Value Management & AI at Vodafone, has spent nearly 15 years driving CVM strategy across multiple markets. For a decade, CVM lived by one mantra – right offer, right channel, right time.

What happens when that personalization playbook meets the agentic CVM era? Efe shares how Vodafone shifted from product-first campaigns to customer-first AI orchestration – and why the rules of personalization are being rewritten right now.

5 Tips to Nail Personalization in the Agentic CVM Era

1. Lead with Customer Need

Start with the customer, not the campaign.

• Address change ≠ marketing trigger
• Broadband offer ≠ default action
• Complaint = fix it first

Tip: before building any campaign, ask: “What is this customer trying to solve?” – not “What do I want to sell?”

2. Modernise Your Stack First

Can you get insights in natural language – or still need SQL? Do you still do manual work where AI workflows could help? If you spend more time building campaigns than understanding customers, fix your foundation before going agentic. Tip: fix your top 3 CVM bottlenecks with AI.

3. Decide in Real Time

Every web visit, call, retail interaction, and app session is a signal. Agentic CVM captures them in real time to read customer intent. Not next week’s campaign batch – right now. Tip: connect your top customer signal sources – calls, web, app – into one real-time decisioning layer.

4. Design for AI Shoppers

Customers now use ChatGPT and Gemini to compare deals and get recommendations. Match this new digital experience – or lose them. Tip: test your customer journey through an AI assistant’s eyes. If it can’t find your best offer easily, neither can your customer.

5. Set Two KPIs, Not One

Agentic CVM can optimise anything with the right objective. Minimise churn alone, AI gives away margin. Maximise revenue alone, customers leave. Balance customer relevance with commercial guardrails using human judgement. Tip: set two AI KPIs: one customer-focused, one commercial, and optimise within both.

Episode Highlights

• CVM is the real growth engine for mature industries like telco
• Personalization fails when it starts from products, not customer needs
• The jobs to be done framework reorders priorities by customer reality
• True 1-to-1 communication is only possible with AI orchestration
• Customers already use ChatGPT and Gemini to compare telco deals
• AI is rational – behavioral economics playbooks lose their power
• Four stages ahead: chatbots, AI concierge, new interfaces, agent-to-agent
• Vodafone UK transformed retention from legacy grids to personalized recommendations
• Optimizing one KPI in isolation can backfire – digital mix drove churn
• Human in the loop is not a slogan – it’s good business

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In the agentic CVM era, we shouldn’t focus on selling more – we should focus on understanding what customers are actually going through in the moment. – Özge Efe Aşcı

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Recommendations for Growth as a Professional

Focus on specific CVM journeys you’re passionate about – onboarding, retention, renewal – and go deep. Learn by doing, not just reading. Look outside your own company for industry best practices. And master storytelling alongside analytics – fame comes from the stories you tell, not just the numbers you deliver.

Final Words

The rules of personalisation in CVM agentic area are being rewritten. The shift from product-first campaigns to customer-first agentic orchestration is already here. The CVM professionals who adapt now won’t just keep up – they’ll set the new standard.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Efe Aşcı: Personalization sounds very good until it’s done badly. It could very easily turn into a creepy customer. Confusing and irrelevant stage. Agent to agent. So customers, agent versus telcos agent, they are going to communicate and then make the decision. We shouldn’t be focusing on how to sell more, what product to sell more, but we should focus on understanding customers.

[00:00:23] Exacaster: Welcome to CVM Stories, the podcast on customer value management. Together, we explore how companies can be more successful and the customers happier through the use of latest customer value management techniques. Learn key commercial and analytical insights from telecoms, retail, finance and other industries that drive CVM forward.

[00:00:42] Egidijus: Hi, I’m your host, Egidijus. Today our guest is Efe Aşcı, a senior manager for customer lifecycle value management and AI at Vodafone for his. Efe Aşcı, has been driving CVM strategy across multiple markets for nearly 15 years. We will be exploring what true personalization means beyond simple ARPO uplifts and diving into the exciting new world of authentic customer value management. So let’s dive in. Welcome to our CVM Stories podcast. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:01:27] Efe Aşcı: Thank you for your invitation.

[00:01:30] Egidijus: And as always as we start, I know that you are working in the CVM area for ages already. Um, could you walk us through a little bit through your career journey so that our listeners, would get a little bit context about you?

[00:01:50] Efe Aşcı: Yeah. so I’m a Efe, I work in Vodafone group in, customer value management area as senior based growth marketing manager at the moment. So, if I walk you through my career, I started in, Vodafone 15 years ago and, it’s been a travel across multiple markets and multiple departments. So I began in pricing and revenue management, in Vodafone, Turkey. And then I had a short stop in commercial finance, in Vodafone group. after I moved to, UK, but then I found my home in, CVM. So I make, I made another change from Vodafone group to Vodafone UK, to start working in customer value management area. I looked after, churn management, retention, revenue enrichment, upgrades area in UK and I continued, working for CVM, moving to Vodafone Group supporting multiple, markets in the last one and a half years. I’m working with Vodafone Germany. So for me, although it looks like Vodafone only, CV on paper. I traveled across, three different markets plus, Vodafone Group. and it seems I’m going to continue working in CVM area. so allowed, CVM and I enjoy what I’m doing, basically focusing on, keeping customers happy, engaged, delivering more value and also earning more, value with our customers.

[00:03:40] Egidijus: So, if I have touched quite a lot of different areas like pricing, product management, etc., so why, why CVM is, like keeps you so excited compared to other areas.

[00:03:57] Efe Aşcı: But it’s a very critical area influencing, both customers and also, commercial, impact. Although sometimes it looks invisible, in area, but it is actually a real, growth engine, especially for the industries like banking, telecom, which are mature, industries. For example, if you look at mobile penetration in most markets, this is above 100%. That means we have the customer base. we have the maximum, base, although we are competing with other competitors, in markets, base management is a critical, area for our growth. But this doesn’t mean that this isn’t as important as other industries where they focus on, acquisition or growth. I think it is, even more important for them. For example, if you consider, digital fintechs, new subscription services, they usually start with highly, focusing on, customer growth through acquisition, but eventually they understand that they need to keep the customer happy and, make them stick to their services and products because it isn’t very sustainable, to grow your customer base through acquisition because it’s very expensive. Customer acquisition costs are increasing. So it’s also very important to keep your customers happy and engaged, with you. So from that aspect, what we do is, very critical, in CVM, both in telco and also in, other Industries.

[00:05:53] Egidijus: Mhm. And so I know as you worked through, three really large, markets and they are all very different. Um, I wanted to, um, kind of deep dive with you in a, in basically a few topics. So first topic is like personalization. So what, what did you learn over those years, about personalization and what does it mean for you as a customer value manager?

[00:06:32] Efe Aşcı: Yeah, it’s actually one of my favorite, topics, but it’s also very, critical because personalization sounds, very good until it’s done, badly. so it could very easily turn into a Creepy. Customer confusing and irrelevant stage. If you are not doing it, properly. And the customer’s expectations are also, rising in terms of, personalization. So for me, this is not just a high for, in the email, title personalization should be relevant to customers need customers preferences, their, current situation and what they expect, for example, and also, as I said, the expectation is rising. For example, when I click the search button on the Google Maps, maybe it’s laziness, but I don’t want to type the postcode or address. I expect Google to predict, where I’m going and see, them in the top three recommendations. and this is not a rocket science. because I go to grocery store, park, gym, coffee. So if you take into account the day of the time and time of the day, you could easily predict where I’m going and show it to me there.

[00:08:00] Efe Aşcı: So as I expect this from Google, our customers are also expecting the same from us. So when they log in or even before they log in, even before they, call us, we need to understand, what they are experiencing at the moment and what’s best for them. so they don’t wake up thinking, how, I can engage with my telco today, but they wake up thinking, okay, is my bill, higher this month? Why is it or, I’m going to travel, next week. Am I going to be charged correctly? What product I should use in Europe or US? so they have some concerns. so we shouldn’t be focusing on, overly on, how to sell more, what product to sell more. But we should focus on understanding, customers, what they are going through at the moment and, how we should communicate, them. So from that aspect, I think relevance, understanding customer truth is more important than our, product, portfolio.

[00:09:19] Egidijus: So here I would like to be a little bit of a devil’s advocate, you know, for, for the last ten years, maybe 15 years, consultants and vendors and in this field, we’re really saying the mantra, right offer, right channel, right time. But, what you say, if I understand correctly, it’s totally not about this. So could you draw a little bit? The line between this personalization is, you know, the offer piece versus, the things that you are trying to explain, right? Right now.

[00:10:03] Efe Aşcı: They are not completely different, actually, but there’s a clear distinction between, where we start. So yes, right channel, right offer, right time. That’s definitely, needed and, important because, as telco, we have a lot of data, as I explained for this Google example, we also have a lot of data and data is the ingredient, for this meaningful, communication. So meaningful means, going to the right customers with the right message, not spamming the whole customer base, with a generic message. So if the data is the ingredient. Yes, that’s true that the recipe is the right decisioning, mechanism, looking at all customers differently and having a 1 to 1, different stage because everyone is in a different, moment in their life cycle and experiencing a different state. For example, a customer is moving from one address to another address and they are looking for how to move their services, smoothly and what fiber offer, they should pick in their next address. But another customer is coming to end of iPhone contract and they probably want to, get a new one. So from that perspective, it’s true that the decisioning should be personal and right channel is important. Like, if we move on this cooking analogy, some like it on some like it on fried boiled.

[00:11:48] Efe Aşcı: So channel is should be aligned with customers appetite. And also, the last one is, the measurement is also important. So testing what we are telling to customer whether this is relevant, or not. So I’m also a believer of, right channel, right, time, right moment for this, decisioning system. But the difference I highlight is it should start with a customer. It shouldn’t start with our product portfolio. If we start with, okay, I have X product and how I could sell this to all my customers, then this is a very. Product oriented approach. But if we look at customer. So where the customer is currently, what they experience, what they feel, what they need. Maybe they are happy. They don’t need anything. They just need to stay with us with some loyalty, rewards because they are happy customers. we shouldn’t, just go to customers always to sell, more and more irrelevant, products. But when it is relevant, we should definitely bring it to a customer before even they reach out to us, without waiting for them to call us for them to, browse our website website whenever we see the intent. we should, put this into action.

[00:13:20] Egidijus: If I would try to convert it into numbers. Yes. It’s like, every time when I hear personalization, it’s like, okay, it’s about our uplift. This is like a, a starting thinking point, you know? Yeah, yeah. But what you are trying to say, like, but if we start looking at it from a customer perspective, yes, what is the measurement that leads to our uplift basically. So what is the leading indicator, you know, that says, okay, if we try to push this metric, we will also get the uplift as a outcome.

[00:14:07] Efe Aşcı: Yeah. Our uplift is really the outcome. And the way going to this outcome is, I think coming from the relevance and relevant communication. For example, if you open your inbox, you probably receive 50, 60 different, emails from all different, websites, your providers, your, e-commerce, websites and probably you click 1 or 2, every day. so when you see it’s relevant to you, you open your email. If the content in your email is also relevant, then you click and go to a website. So if this journey keeps being relevant, to you, you probably end up, purchasing a service or a product, which leads to a revenue for that, service provider. So that is an outcome. And because you purchased this, it means you need it. so if you are not making an impulse, shopping, that’s probably something you, need. And, when the relevance, meets with customer’s needs, the outcome is either uplift or generation. new revenue stream is coming, naturally. But if we start from, uh. Okay, I have a million customers I’m going to send an email to all of them. A fraction of them is going to convert and I will get, X incremental revenue. Yes, that’s also an approach, but it isn’t a sustainable, approach. And over time, you will see that your, click through rates are going to decrease, your conversion rates are going to decrease, and it’s just going to be another, spam emails that are not opened, going forward.

[00:16:06] Egidijus: I imagine that I am customer value manager and I want to change the approach and start working from a customer centric point of perspective. how would I sell it to my management? Because if I go and say, I will increase output by, you know, pushing these, promotions, it’s easy. And now I’m saying I will not push the specific promotions. I will start from what customer needs and then push the promotions, which will be much less promotions. You know, in general, because I will not spam the whole base. But how will I sell this story? Because it suddenly became much harder for me to say, okay, this will be the uplift, you know?

[00:16:57] Efe Aşcı: Okay. I think the outcome probably is not going to change too much. And probably it’s going to be a leaner process. if we start with customer jobs to be done understanding better, the customers, appetite to get a new product or service or understanding the customers churn propensity to see, they are looking elsewhere. so eventually the customers who will get a new product more or less the same ones, compared to a mass, campaigns where you see, the base. So personalization is going to just increase the efficiency, at this moment and will help us to go to the right people, at the right time. So it’s just going to, make us a leaner organization with smaller campaign sizes, smaller operations, and smaller workload. Also for your, for example, telesales agents, they don’t have to call everyone, they just need to call, the right segments. And we could find this out by looking at the customers and understanding, their, behavior. So if we start with customer jobs to be done, then it will, tell us, okay, which customers are happy with us and want to get a new product. They need one product. For example, they are using the same device for the last four years and highly probable, that they are open to get a new one.

[00:18:34] Efe Aşcı: If we go for a good offer, then this is your automatically your target audience for a new device campaign. Another one. You know that they called us and asked information about address change. Then you already have that intent, and then it’s the right customer for you to talk about a home move process with any broadband offer to move their TV package, broadband package. And if you know that a customer experiencing a network issue, that’s a sign that either you should invest in network or this customer may leave soon, and you need to keep them happy with some other promotions until you solve the network issue. So starting with customers will also tell us, the right campaign set and the right communication with those right customers, rather than, going for, batch, campaigns with generic, messages. And eventually, yes, the conversion will come from, that and also, will come from that because there’s no point to communicate, a customer with no intent because it will be just a zero, uh. Zero revenue from, that campaign. So by doing this, you are just eliminating the, unconverted customer base, which will also, show your campaigns cosmetically better by bringing even higher revenue.

[00:20:11] Egidijus: Mhm. Um, if we would talk a little bit more about jobs to be done framework. Yes. So because this is like a super important, thing, I would say for those who don’t understand who haven’t touched this framework, could you explain it in short, how it works?

[00:20:32] Efe Aşcı: Mhm. So, if I deep dive on our customer journeys throughout lifecycle, of the customer, there are different journeys like onboarding. They join, they need to understand, what’s available in Vodafone, or telcos, first three months, the app, what Vodafone offers, if there’s a, if they are a new customer. so it’s, there’s a period that, they need to get to know you better and you need to get to know them better during maturity. you better, you start better understanding the customer and, see whether their experience is going well or not, or are they open to get more services from you. For example, they joined with a new handset offer, maybe in three months is the right moment to sell a device insurance because they are using a 1000 year old device and, you know. They are currently happy you measure the customer NPS and then, uh. That’s probably the right offer to go in three months, at that moment or at the end of life, the first contract, you will see what’s next for them. Are they open to stay with us and renew their contract or are they looking elsewhere? it wasn’t a good, period in their customer journey. So depending on where they are customers, by understanding the signals that you get from the customers throughout, their life with you, this is basically any web interaction, any retail interaction, any, telesales interactions. You will get the signs. the critical part is to capture and process, those, signals, triggers, intense for us to understand. Okay, what is the job to be done for the customer and then translate this into your, communication and, messages, for them, to basically respond to your, communication so that jobs, to be done. It’s actually thinking, well, with your product and services, catalog as well as your, support services, not just, generating, catalog, but there’s also a service, side of, this. So whatever the customer needs, the critical part is to match it, with what we provide.

[00:23:19] Egidijus: And, when you start thinking through jobs to be done framework, And I bet that, the campaign flows also get different. So, um, if I would take a specific example, for example, if we try to sell a new iPhone. Yeah. So that could be a really normal marketing campaign, you know, for all people who have, let’s say iPhone older than three months or three years, we push a recommendation to purchase a new iPhone because we know that between 3 and 5 years, people renew their iPhones. And so this could be one approach. Yeah. So this would be a standard campaigning approach. And then if you think through jobs to be done perspective, if I understand correctly, it’s a little bit more different because you think more completely of what does it mean for a customer to change the device? Yes. Could could you explain kind of are there any differences? Do you integrate, the broader organization because it’s not you don’t only need to sell, but you need to, you know, switch the device, do the transfer of your contacts and learn how to use it, etc..

[00:24:38] Efe Aşcı: I think if we look at this from the iPhone perspective, so we are we want to sell iPhone. And as you say, the trigger and signals are probably in line with, device, tenure, like three years. Okay. That’s a probable scenario. And they probably checked website. That’s another indicator. And yes, this customer is suitable for iPhone, campaign. So that’s from the, iPhone perspective. We could pull all of them into a one iPhone campaign that will be sent out, next month from the other perspective, maybe that same customer is also experiencing, they have an open ticket, that is not resolved, in their last three calls, with our telesales, team, for example. Then on top of this, if you send an iPhone offer to that customer, then probably they say, okay, solve my problem first and then, send me an iPhone offer. I’m trying to reach out to you. I told you three times in three different conversations, I repeated myself, in 20 minutes, calls three times. And now you are sending, you are not reaching out to me about my open ticket, but you are sending me an iPhone campaign. So from the device and, iPhone perspective, that customer was a suitable match for the iPhone. But if you look at from the customer perspective, they have other priorities, before, iPhone. So we should solve it, first and then probably iPhone signal, will come to the surface. okay. This customer is also suitable for an iPhone, campaign, so their highest priority would be something else at that moment. If we don’t capture that, then, we are not going to convert, that customer, but from their perspective. So from 1 to 1 perspective, their first problem is to solve that open ticket. Second, maybe it was about the address change, make it. And then, iPhone will come, from third to one.

[00:27:04] Egidijus: Okay. So this, begins to change a perspective really, really nicely because you kind of, you are solving customer needs one by one and basically making sure that it’s their priority, which is addressed. Yeah. Now, when you are making those decisions, you know, should they solve the ticket or should they solve or should I try to upgrade the iPhone? Or should I maybe try to sell a new TV? You know, there are kind of a lot of things that are happening. who makes the decision? is, is it like, in, let’s, let’s live a little bit, in AI world, but, are you pro machine learning guy who says that all decisions should be machine learning based and AI based? Or are you like, you know, from the business perspective, I know what’s the best for my customer and I want to be in control. So how do you solve this?

[00:28:17] Efe Aşcı: Yeah. When it comes to decisioning, yes, I’m a pro AI, person. So because if we are talking about a true personalization, 1 to 1 communication, that is only possible with the orchestration of, AI, otherwise it would be, just a fragmented, segmented, campaigns. There’s no way, that we could achieve a true personalization, with static campaigns, batch siloed, ways of working. So definitely. Yes. AI is the right, answer for the true personalization and orchestration, but this doesn’t mean, there shouldn’t be human, in this process or commercial, priorities, or, guidance should be disregarded. Definitely. I should also take into account, the business objectives, and, commercial priorities and embed this into, decisioning, layer, because it is, at the end of the day, there’s an objective and you are using constraints and then you are trying to come up with an optimal, word that’s best for the customer and that’s best for, the company. So this is an optimization problem at the end of the day. So if you ignore the commercial side, and if you want to say, okay, I want to minimize, churn, if that’s the only input, okay, then AI would probably give the best and best offers, the biggest discounts to, everyone. You could probably have the lowest churn in the industry, but that wouldn’t be the best, decision from the prophet, perspective. So yes, that should be, human in the loop for the, commercial, priorities feed the, right guardrails, into decisioning systems, just to manage this orchestration successfully.

[00:30:40] Exacaster: If you are interested in customer value management, check out our customer value management body of knowledge, CV, and BOC is a comprehensive guide for CVM professionals offering tips, tools, and best practices to help you in your job. Visit cvs.com for more.

[00:30:57] Egidijus: I have a tough question for you. When we optimize something, especially with machine learning or AI algorithms in the decisioning system, there is always a KPI Because this is like you need to have a number to which towards which you do the optimization. So how do we build that number? You know, because if you put only R, it’s really, really bad. If you put only retention, it’s also bad. So how do we, what number should we put there?

[00:31:33] Efe Aşcı: Mhm, I think that depends on.

[00:31:36] Efe Aşcı: The, journey, and the area you, manage. I’m also a believer in the base management. for those who are not familiar, that’s, to look into all your base activities from inflow base, activities, retention renewals, and also, outflow. So from the base perspective, our KPIs, on cross-sell activities is the conversion to bring new services, new broadband to mobile or new mobile to broadband. customer so that this would be an incremental, one customer, with an output of X, euro for the service for the inflow section. So for the base, that’s probably your migration activities, where your customers go up and down. So you optimize, this up and down, movements while, you offer, maybe bigger data bundles or bigger speed, while managing, this minus two plus two, euro, range. Same for retention and for outflow, you optimize two different things. you try to reduce the number of customers disconnecting. And also there are so high value customers, low value customers. So from the commercial management perspective, all of them are critical, to Have an impact on your EBITDA and bottom line numbers. So it’s a little bit dependent on the activity managed, but eventually, yes, all of them are serving to base output at the moment and, base volume. So bringing in flow, stopping churn, it’s all, helping for our base volume and also base output, which leads to the total revenue at the end of the earth.

[00:33:41] Egidijus: Mhm. So, so basically, if you want to win this game, you need to master how to juggle those basically 2 or 3 different variables. Yeah. It’s like.

[00:33:50] Efe Aşcı: Exactly. It’s not a straightforward, job.

[00:33:58] Egidijus: I thought that there will be a simpler answer, you know. Now, as we are talking about AI and the challenges of, of AI. I would like to move to the our conversation towards the opportunities and the new term. of course, it’s a genetic customer value management. Yes. And I would I would like to ask you how, how do you see the genetic customer value management? What is your definition of it?

[00:34:31] Efe Aşcı: Yeah. So as you say, the personalization has been the story so far in Cbmm. And what’s happening right now is the AI, transformation. This is literally the hottest topic, at the moment. And in my every circle, there’s almost the only topic with my colleagues, with my friends, even with my wife at home. We are talking about AI, its implementations, and I feel a real fear of missing out because, I’m not able to track, every new model, published, every new, video models, open cloud, cloud covers every weekend, every day, there’s something being launched and, that’s really difficult to catch up with. So that’s also transforming, CVM, area, obviously, so both internally and also, our relationship with, customers. So I think internally we started seeing, some new, products being launched in many companies. I think, for example, we are now able to generate, insights data using natural, language and prompts. so we could call this, natural language CVM analytics that removes barrier, for, for example, SQL knowledge and everyone can get the insights and data more information, through natural language. So that’s probably the simple, piece, optimizing our internal, operations. The second part is, the workflow automation. So we can remove the frictions, reduce the dependency to some legacy systems by automating certain CVM, workflows.

[00:36:40] Efe Aşcı: that’s again happening right now in the world. And we are seeing examples, but this is still an internal one helping us, to increase efficiency, in our job. What’s important, I think, is how our relationship with the customers, is evolving. so if I give you an example, from my experience in the past, I used to go to booking.com, use the filters, eight stars, nine stars, with that price range, blah, blah, and then filter and sort, the hotels to select or for restaurant selection. I used to go to Google maps, narrow down the area, add my, keyword and then look at the reviews, scores, etc.. But right now I’m going to ChatGPT or Gemini asking, okay, find me three restaurant recommendations. No, three real local dishes. Blah, blah. And then I follow the lead, from the Gemini. So this customer behavior change, is also happening in telco. So our customer. So the critical question is how are we going to adapt to this, change. So there are different routes, on this one. One is, yes, customers are going to stay like this. They will visit our web or app, use standard grids that, we ranked or our MBA recommendations. they will do their own research.

[00:38:24] Efe Aşcı: This was based on the old, behavioral, economic studies, influencing the customer’s decision, decision, etc.. What if. Yes, we see more and more traffic coming from, AI models. because I’m also tracking the competitor websites through AI right now. Okay. Bring me the best, deals from the market check. Uh oh two e three, websites. Yes. The customers are also, doing this. So then, how is this going to change the relation? because AI is rational. So far all the studies were based on customer decisions, are not rational. So it’s a complete paradigm shift, at the moment. So the interaction is changing. The third option is maybe we will have, our own AI concierge in our, channels through maybe chatbot through WhatsApp or just our home page will be, ChatGPT like, window in the moment. And all our, decisioning will come through this, screen. and the fourth one probably is agent to agent. So customers, agent versus agent, they are going to communicate and then, make the decision probably this is the last one we will see. but I believe the first one is already happening second, third and fourth one. We are going to see this shift. are we ready for this? I don’t think so. We are, yet.

[00:40:14] Efe Aşcı: Ready yet? Everyone is, working on this. I’m seeing lots of different, industry examples. There isn’t any clear, right answer or, blueprint, yet, but we will probably follow this, path and everyone is trying to find their way in this, journey. So if I summarize, probably the external and internal, bid to win in this area, I think, we must turn our external channels into an AI, concierge just to adapt to this customer behavior change and start preparing for a. Agent to agent Commerce because that will be also happening in the e-commerce area. That’s the same thing. And secondly, the internal, CVM agents for our, execution optimization decisioning, we should continue deploying, internal CVM agents, as well to help us. But although I say this, humans should continue staying, inside this loop. So I think, yeah, the human in the loop is not just a slogan. I think it’s good business. We shouldn’t, leave, this, completely to, AI. I don’t know if you have seen, I saw, that was it meta or Google, security head of, AI security gave access to open cloud. couldn’t manage and stop them from deleting all their inboxes, so we should be still careful to keep humans in the loop.

[00:42:06] Egidijus: Yeah, I agree that we still need humans in the in the loop. but I really enjoy your vision. And could we dream a little bit about this agent agent part? because, kind of, I, as a very early adopter of all these AI things, for me, it would be like the best thing if my agent can go and talk with the telco and get me the best deal, you know? And, one thing which you mentioned, which was not obvious for me is that, um, the agent is actually rational. or, or the rationality for the agent depends basically on prompt. Because if I, you know, as a consumer, if I purchase an iPhone, you know, I start thinking, okay, maybe I need more storage, maybe less, you know, maybe a bit better camera. Even though I only take like five pictures per month, you know, it’s like a totally irrational thing. And if suddenly and this would be managed by my agent agent, I bet that my bill would be smaller. You know, I believe.

[00:43:30] Efe Aşcı: So.

[00:43:31] Egidijus: and, what, what other challenges here will appear, you know, because maybe the moving from one carrier to another might, might become slightly different. You know, if my agent decides to move me, what will happen, you know? what other perspectives that you are thinking about. You know.

[00:43:57] Efe Aşcı: I think this brings simplicity for both the customer and also, telco, as well. Things are more automated. maybe we don’t need, this much, change to respond to competitors to, respond to, changing customer demands or, business, pressure for the commercial, performance. And as you say, agent, can really optimize it depending on, the objective. you give them. Okay, check my usage, phone need and find me the best one. Cheapest one. It will definitely find you the cheapest one you, need. So probably, this could also simplify product, portfolios, as well. And, eliminate the need for complexities. for this, phase and product management from the telco perspective as well. and as the decisions are also taken, by agent on that side, so this would probably, speed up, the change, time to market, in terms of, bringing the right offer set for the, agent APIs, whatever, we will feed them at that time. So I think it will come with, simplicity, and operational efficiency as well, both for customer and telco.

[00:45:40] Egidijus: Mhm. And, I know that predictions are really kind of tough game. how soon do you think we will see the bigger shift towards this agentic interface for the consumers? Because now we can like get simple answers, um, through the AI interfaces, but it is still very, very limited. You know, it’s more like, you know, just an easier search type of thing rather than, you know, I am doing everything, through this interface type of thing. How soon do you see this adoption?

[00:46:29] Efe Aşcı: Yeah. if we face them, I expect that we will, we are seeing. And we will continue seeing more and more true, existing channels, such as, most telcos have their, chatbots, web chat, channels. So that’s probably the easiest one, to embed first. So maybe our standard journeys will stay as it is, but, existing, chatbots, will start using it, through AI and, it will help you iterate instead of you go to, handset page and then basket page checkout. So you could probably do this, on our webchat interface. this shouldn’t take too long. I will, I think this will probably be the first step. And another existing channel would be like WhatsApp or other, text based, channels. The other, like I said, the website transformation that would probably, happen or not happen. I think as if you have other, alternative of, that probably this wouldn’t be too soon. because, if we consider the digital transformation before the those apps and apps we had shops, other channels, they all still remain. But we have other, channels, at the moment. And I think yes, the current ones could stay, and we could, add, maybe, these interfaces within those, channels, and the evolution could, be happening there.

[00:48:15] Egidijus: Mhm. Okay. So, so you are saying that, both stores and the websites will still be here for, some time?

[00:48:26] Efe Aşcı: I guess so, but we will be able to do all this stuff through other interfaces.

[00:48:33] Egidijus: Mhm. yeah. That’s interesting. I’m still really keen to try out the, the new ones, you know. Um, so FM we are moving to the final stage of our conversation. And I have a couple of questions that I ask every our guest. And the first question is about the proud moments of your of your career. Could you share some, wins that you are very proud of?

[00:49:06] Speaker 4: I think I.

[00:49:06] Efe Aşcı: Could, add my transformation of UK retention, journeys. so when I was in UK, CVM team, we started that personalization, shift from, more, we used to have, an outdated legacy systems, more a product oriented, approach, less personalization across all channels. I was in the center of this transformation because what made it personally important is that I wore two hats during this transformation. One, I was the commercial folk who gave the requirements, built the roadmap, built what we needed. And on the halfway through, I moved to the POC to lead and deliver the transformation. So I first ordered the food and then I moved the kitchen, to help serve it. And eventually what we delivered is basically a very good personalization in our digital app, retail and telesales channels, along with, UI upgrades for our frontline, stuff as well. So in the past, when you log in, on our website, you used to see, standard grid, in the same rank, for all products. But today, as I mentioned, we are capturing all these intense, we are using big data models, AI orchestration. We embedded commercial, layers. So when you log in, you are seeing some, personalized recommendations together with reasons for recommendation. It’s not just a recommendation we are telling.

[00:51:02] Efe Aşcı: Okay, we see you are roaming. that’s why we are offering you, this, or because you are, browse this phone. Here is the best phone, you would like. So together with reasons for recommendations. Most importantly, the, assisted channel agents have a very simple, minimal, UI where they see, details about customers, historical, engagement with us, their recommendations again, reasons for recommendations or during the conversation, customer stated, oh I don’t want iPhone, I need a Google pixel. So this input could be easily, embedded, during the conversation. And with one click agent could just refresh all these recommendations and come up with, okay, Google pixel. Or if the customer said, I need an entertainment Netflix in my package, this could be easily embedded into recommendation logic. And this is being refreshed. So compared to the old world, this was a big transformation that we, delivered a couple of years ago. so I’m proud of this. And then since then, we are also sharing this, together with other, Vodafone markets, and also with the industry. we presented this, a few years ago in the Pega world as well, to all, other telco and industries. So when I consider my career history, this was, the best, delivery, in my career.

[00:52:45] Egidijus: that sounds super exciting. Can I ask two more questions? Yeah. Here. so, um, when you when you did this transformation, did you manage to measure how the engagement from the client perspective changed and how the satisfaction of your, um, assisted channels changed because it’s like, um, people who are giving those offers, the great user experience matters as much for people who received offers. Yes.

[00:53:23] Efe Aşcı: We measured both. so, both before the launch, before launching, we had a very careful, ramp up, period. Like 50% of the customers used to see the old 50%. Of seeing the new one. So we measured all the critical metrics, like, engagement, conversion, uh. Time spent. all of them was very positive from the customer perspective, including the commercial, results, like the, both volume and value, wise. Because when you have, more relevant offers, the conversion increases. And then you could also optimize, your recommendations based on the value objectives. that was the first one from the channel perspective. The reaction was even better, from our percentages because the old system was very heavy. so they used to go through a long list of products, not even, for example, iPhone, black iPhone green 256 gig. So they used to navigate through so many different variants, when they, have this, very clean, minimal, offers together with refined by, options together with indicators of their commissions. For example, they used to calculate what they earn in the past, but now they see which offer is, bringing how much commission for them together with the commission indicators together with the impact on customer, like this is, same, with a better price. This is more with a slightly better price, this type of indication. So that really reduced average handling time that improved, the tele sales conversion output. And also most importantly, the satisfaction. So we received, so many good feedback from the channel as well.

[00:55:30] Egidijus: And I bet that the channel guys started getting better bonus. Yeah, So it’s a really great success story. over those, I don’t know, more than 15 years, probably in this field. I bet you had some challenges as well, or let’s say stories from which you can learn. could you share, one of those?

[00:56:01] Efe Aşcı: Yeah. that was a difficult, that’s a difficult one. not because I don’t have any. I have many, but which one I should pick? I, I’m in between one. There was one apple, launch and I’m not going to talk about the apple, I think. Yes. Uh. One of the objectives we have, is also driving digital, mix across, channels because, customers are adapting more into digital. and it’s also a channel, where you can manage easily, with going live and taking things off. And also it’s a cheaper channel. so there are lots of reasons, to prioritize, digital. So once I was very obsessed with the digital mix KPI, and I launched, I did actually what I suggested we shouldn’t do, which was I went with a mass campaign to drive customers to, digital, for an online exclusive, campaign. The result was great in terms of, digital mix. So we hit the peak, point in terms of digital mix in our retention renewals. But at the same time, we saw a peak in, numbers, as well.

[00:57:37] Efe Aşcı: so literally what I did was, to trigger customers, to go to online, check all the prices, and take an action. after that. so I realized that, okay, when we, look at the KPIs, we shouldn’t look at them isolated from other, dynamics. so if you talk to customer again, that comes back to the point of, relevance. this should be relevant if you bring them into your, shop. And if they can’t find what they need, then that means they could also, check other areas and they could, leave you, because, you invited them to take an action. so that was the lesson I learned. also, the good part was that we are measuring the results. So we spotted this, very early if you compare this against the control group. So the control group was much lower. although they are digital mix was also, lower. So that was a good lesson. I got, at that time.

[00:58:55] Egidijus: So you basically won and lost at the same time.

[00:59:00] Efe Aşcı: Exactly.

[00:59:02] Egidijus: for, for people who would like to join this exciting journey of customer value managers, what would be your recommendation for learning sources? Like how do you prepare yourself for, for these challenges?

[00:59:20] Speaker 4: I think like.

[00:59:20] Efe Aşcı: Everything else, the best way to learn is, practicing, which means on the job training. but this doesn’t reduce the importance of, theoretical information industry best practices, what other companies, do. So I think, for those who want to learn more about, CVM, I would suggest, focusing on, certain journeys they like, for example, onboarding, customers renewal and go deep dive in this, to understand the customer, truth and basically identify how we could, do this, better. So if they are, working for a company who is doing, CVM, maybe, working together with them, bringing this, to, new project, would be a great way to start. but if they’re already in CVM area, definitely looking outside is very important because sometimes we would be so focused on what we do, and then we forget about what’s happening in the industry, how we could do things differently. So there’s a lot of great learning opportunities, outside, as well.

[01:00:47] Egidijus: And one final, toughest question for you, FM is we are on a mission to make customer value managers famous. And, what should we do to make them famous?

[01:01:01] Efe Aşcı: That’s a great question and great mission. so that’s why I really like what you do, with this, CVM podcast, series because, usually the work of CVM is a little bit invisible, although it has a very big impact on the business. And the second thing is that CVM Stories is usually seen as numbers. not like stories. but we have stories as well. So I think the platforms like this, are great opportunity to tell, transformation stories to tell, CVM, stories. And that fame comes from the stories. So I think, uh. like being analytic, having an analytical mindset is important in CVM, but also storytelling is as important as analytics. so, given that I believe we should produce more fame assets like this podcast, maybe case studies, benchmarks, sharing sessions, across the industry. We already do this, within, our company because we have, so many different, operating companies in it, and we are doing best practice sessions and it worked really well. For example, we say, okay, Germany has that challenge. Uk has delivered this very good. Let’s bring them together to share best practices. But this is also possible across the industry and markets. So all these assets and sharing this is very useful I think to make CVM more famous.

[01:02:50] Egidijus: So learning how to tell your story really really well. Yeah. Thank you. So thank you. It was a really interesting conversation. Thank you for sharing a really deep insights.

[01:03:06] Efe Aşcı: I thank you to you for this opportunity and inviting.

[01:03:09] Exacaster: CVM Stories is produced by Exacaster. We help companies take their customer value management to the next level. To stay updated on our latest episodes, subscribe to the podcast or sign up for an email newsletter at exacaster.com/cvmstories.