Episode Highlights
- Unique journey. From engineer to Senior Director in customer engagement. Silvia’s diverse background shapes her unique approach to CVM.
- Emotional connection. Understand needs and address them with empathy. Anticipate problems and be proactive.
- Consistency wins. Long-term relationships over quick sales. Regular, meaningful interactions build trust and reliability.
- Measure engagement. Metrics to gauge the true strength of customer relationships.
- Every interaction is a chance to build bonds. Each touchpoint is an opportunity to strengthen relationships.
- Holistic view. Customer feedback across all channels for a unified approach.
- Customer journey mapping. Key touchpoints for emotional engagement.
- Innovative campaigns. Creative memorable experiences that resonate deeply with customers.
- Cross-functional collaboration. Align marketing, sales, and support teams to ensure a customer first approach.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Silvia: You want the brand to build a connection with the customer, not just in the moments that you want to sell something. We have seen that the results are way better with the loyalty and customer emotionally oriented. How much better they are. It’s part of the business, have a specific KPIs, but then overall we are all trying to be customer first. That way we’ll be able to achieve customer metrics like NPS, financial metrics, lifetime value, ARPU, CapEx targets, ROI, all of those.
[00:00:34] 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.
[00:00:53] Egidijus: Hi, I’m your host, Egidijus. Today our guest is Silvia, a senior director and expert in customer engagement. Silvia will share her insights on why emotional connection with customers matters and how it can increase conversions, reduce churn, and grow overall customer lifetime value. So let’s dive in.
[00:01:14] 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.
[00:01:29] Egidijus: Silvia, thank you for joining us to the on the podcast.
[00:01:33] Silvia: Hi. I’m very happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:37] Egidijus: So, uh, Silvia, um, could you, uh, kind of introduce yourself to the audience and describe a little bit of what is your role, what you are doing right now? Yes.
[00:01:49] Silvia: Thank you. Yes, I am a senior director. I am an expert on customer engagement, customer life cycle. I have built my career over the years working with telecommunications, with financial services, and also with the big four management consulting firms in Spain, where I am from, and also in Australia, where I live now. I particularly enjoy working with the data, with, um, the complexities of driving customer centricity, influencing a lot of senior leaders, and then working with many different kinds of people and diverse teams and making that customer experience, that customer engagement, the number one priority in an organization.
[00:02:38] Egidijus: Uh, Silvia, you are kind of. You mentioned that you came from different backgrounds. Uh, could you tell us a little bit more? How do you did you actually end up in the telco?
[00:02:50] Silvia: Yes. Yeah, it’s a funny story. I am actually an engineer at Telecommunication Engineer myself, so I think it was always there in the back of my mind. However, when I finished uni I started doing management consulting. I work with a big four um organisations in Spain, did a lot of strategy, a lot of data and work with the big banks and insurers and telco also in Europe. Then I came to Australia with my family. My kids were very little, yes, one and three years old at the time. My husband and I made the move to come and see how it was, what it was look like to work here in in Australia, started here working in consulting at EY and I work at Vodafone as well, and I am currently working at Optus. So yeah, overall, as I said, telco was at the back of my mind and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk here about my career, my experiences. Yeah, and hopefully this helps other people in similar roles.
[00:03:59] Egidijus: So you are a very unusual marketer. You know, you come from, uh, extremely technical background and uh, but you are working in marketing right now. How how do this kind of technical background help you on your daily work?
[00:04:17] Silvia: Yes, I think you’re right. I think there are not many engineers in marketing. Um, but I believe it helps a lot. And even being a senior leader at the moment, I really like to be close to the technology as well and to the data and the ground. I think that really understanding how things work helped me in my day to day to make better decisions. Um, having been involved in the data, in the predictive analytics side of things, having really understood the complexities of how to drive a transaction, a sales with a customer has helped me evolve my thinking and move beyond just a transaction to building an emotional connection with the customer. Using the data. It’s only helpful to, uh, up to a point. Uh, there is a lot of predictive, uh, predictive analytics, a lot of hype at the moment about AI, generative AI, all of those. The reality is so far is that the data can only predict or the models I can only predict what has already happened. So I evolve my thinking to use not just data, but also qualitative information. Marine AI with human centered design to marry up the quantitative side of things with the qualitative side of things and build better experiences. When we go and try to sell a product to the customer. In the organizations that I work with, it’s very much about addressing the transactional need, the technical need, but also the emotional need. You want the brand to build a connection with the customer, not just in the moments that you want to sell something. It’s also to build that ongoing engagement and make sure that, um, it’s like a trust. Yeah, you get a lot of trust from the customers if you continue to engage with them, hopefully nothing wrong happens. But if at some point something wrong happens, if the trust jar is full enough, you will keep the customer. Definitely you have more chances to keep the customers if that’s the case.
[00:06:32] Egidijus: Mm. Um, Silvia, I need to stress this out because every technical person that I meet and which is in the, let’s say, customer value management area, they always talk about, you know, I need just better algorithms to do the upsell better, etc.. And you are coming from the engineering perspective and you are talking about emotional connection. What why what is your definition of that emotional connection. How. Yes.
[00:07:09] Silvia: And the definition of that emotional connection to me is very much about being relevant. And as I said, being able to understand in each of the customer interactions what we call the moments that matter, they’ve been called the moments of truth in the past as well. When we as an organization have that opportunity, we want to make it count. Some organizations talk about signature experiences. To me, it’s about knowing, being empathetic and knowing what is the customer need. And there is a lot of research that you can pull out in every organization to understand what are those customers? My needs, how they are connected to the brand of the specific company, and then how you bring them to life in those customers interactions. Um, so the definition for me is about knowing what is the customer need and being able to address it in the moment that matter.
[00:08:07] Egidijus: Um, so now, uh. This is not a this is a not very standard situation. You know, as I said. So you are trying to kind of, uh, uh, you are evangelizing this term in organization together with your team and, uh, kind of, uh, when your organization asks you, so why should we take into account customer’s emotional needs? Yes.
[00:08:36] Silvia: Um, I think to me it’s a little bit, um, and this might be a little bit controversial. Right. But it’s about not taking the shortcut. It’s about building the relationship with the customer one step at a time. Obviously, I am a maths person, a data person. And what we can see is that when we look at the qualitative information and the highest satisfied customers, and then we look at other metrics that are more financial metrics, like the output of those customers or the, uh, time value of those customers, the customer lifetime value. We realize that it’s higher. So yes, there is that financial end goal. If you like to keep customers happy, to build that emotional connection is just not taking the shortcut. For example, if we wanted to understand, uh, what customer satisfied customers, um, what is the value of those customers? Uh, we could easily correlate the number of interactions that we have with the customer versus the sales, the churn, all of those things that are more traditional CV and metrics. Uh, there are research, for example, from the Harvard Harvard Business Review I read already some years ago, customers that are satisfied deliver 52% more value, that customers that are just neutral. You can see that the financial implication is already there. It’s about taking the right steps.
[00:10:14] Egidijus: And are there any ways to measure that emotional connection? You know, it’s like because you can calculate customer lifetime value. Um, but can you calculate the emotional connection kind of so that to correlate those two, you know.
[00:10:30] Silvia: Yeah, there are different components you can incorporate to really mean, um, to really create a line between the emotional connection that is a baseline that you can use. I believe it, it is about three key components. It’s about the relevance of the communications that we send to the customers, or that we do have in different channels, and customers can consume on their own time. I also believe it’s about how invested customers are with you, whether they use your products, your services, and how much they use it. And then the third component, from my perspective, is about the advocacy is whether the customers will recommend you as a brand to their friends. And writing a paper on this is quite advanced. Now. I’m hoping to publish a soon, uh, and is the combination, as I said, of the interactions, the investment as well as the advocacy. If you combine those three, I believe it is a good measure to determine how emotionally connected customers are with you, how engaged, actually whether they love you as a brand or not.
[00:11:46] Egidijus: Um, and, uh, I have one totally kind of, uh, random thing to ask you. Yeah. There is a mantra like communication in the right, uh, channel, right time, uh, right offer, you know, and, uh. Is it enough and how does it link with what you are seeing from, you know, emotional connection, etc.? Is it like, is this mantra enough to, to be to perform well in customer value management? Yeah.
[00:12:16] Silvia: I think it had its moments. Right. Um, I think it’s thinking that any person that has been in the CBM space for, um, five or even ten years, I would say they learned that and is very, very top of mind and kind of the basics to get the basics right. I believe it’s not enough. And this is just my personal perspective. Based on experience, I think we are getting into a world where customers have so many different screens, so many different touch points with you. That is probably much more about understanding, again, the need in the moment, whether that is an outbound need or when customers come to you from an inbound perspective, using empathy, understanding what that need is, and then using technology, martech technology to drive that personalization at scale. You talk before about many experts in the KVM space, talking about the models, the data, and willing to have better models. I am a passionate about the models. I want the models to give us. At least 20% will give us the 80% of the target or the response that we are expecting. However, I have to say that to me is much more important to have a model that we can explain that the front line can understand, than having the perfect model that has no error and no one understands, because I believe there is magic and value on building the models, tweaking the information in there like enriching the model with specific indicators or attributes that you build ad hoc based on what you are trying to use the model for. By doing that again, you might not get the best model in the sense of the minimum error, but you will get a model that is addressing the business needs and also that is easy to understand by the front line or anyone who needs to use it. And yeah, therefore I think everything works in sync is the data, is the models, is the front line enablement, is your apps where customers can go and have the best experience? Yeah, everything works in coordination so that the whole is bigger than its parts.
[00:14:49] Egidijus: Um, I think you just mentioned one totally non-obvious part is like, uh, why would a front line need to understand how does the model work? You know, because it’s like it’s not obvious.
[00:15:08] Silvia: Yes. And it’s probably less about understanding all the complexity of the model. And everything that goes in there is about understanding the output of the model and how to use it. For example, uh, if the model is about churn and identifying those customers that have the biggest risk, it will help very much just to explain in the operational cerm, whatever the name is and the different organizations in the operational CRM, just a few points explaining why that is the case. These customers high churn risk because in telco is very common to say because the phone is contract is about to end, for example, or it’s at a high risk because it had a negative experience and gave us bad NPS or low NPS, right? If we are able to explain the outputs of the model in that way, that is going to be much better used. The conversation with the customer will be more effective, and it will overcome or offset any decay because the model is not perfect.
[00:16:23] Egidijus: Um, okay. Uh, and this was totally non-obvious for me. You know, me as a as a person who, who, whose first idea was, let’s write the best machine learning algorithm to predict churn. 15 years ago. Uh, it’s like, uh, totally heartbreaking, you know, because you use the kind of the best, uh, AI tool that you can get. And usually it’s very difficult to extract the insights. Why does the score is, uh, the one or another. But I would like to come back to emotional connection with the customer. It’s, um. So we talked why? This connection is important. We talked. How can we measure that connection? And the next question is, uh, when do we have a chance to build that emotional connection? What are those moments when we are actually building it?
[00:17:24] Silvia: Always? The answer is always. And I’ll explain why. So there are two ways. For example, to sell a product you give the price and oversimplifying, but you are straight away talking about the product, the price, and why. What are the benefits? Or you can do it in a way that is related to an emotional need with the customer. For example, if customers are about to, um, upgrade their phone, you can give them a discount, an offer, or you can talk to the customers about how long they been with you. And because you value the customer, you give the customer a specific discount or offer that is tailored to them. So very similar situation. One is very transactional. The other one acknowledges the customers, understands that customers value or want that. The company recognizes that they’ve been with the company for a long time, and then puts the offer in the context of acknowledging customer loyalty. This is just one example, but that can be applied to any interaction with a customer. You can think about the sales, the business first, and then those become very transactional. Or you can think about the customer first and what’s important to the customer to build that emotional connection, that empathy.
[00:18:53] Egidijus: Mhm. So this is a very good, uh, topic. Silvia, I want to stay a bit on this topic. Um, uh, I have an anecdotal example of exactly what you said. So one of the exercises was I was sitting down together with the people in telemarketing who were just kind of calling to the client and, um, kind of initiating the upgrade of the current, uh, the prolongation of current price plan and then kind of, uh, you know, the call is, uh, pretty transactional, etc.. And then one client says, hey, I am with you for like more than ten years, and why are you offering me the same that they have, you know, and, uh, then, uh, some things struck me about how customers perceive the loyalty. Uh, yes. And in this case, you are explaining exactly the same. You can give the same discount. But if you start from the appreciation of the customer, that’s kind of that you’re a, uh, kind of long time with us, etc., etc.. Now the question is, is it an anecdotal example or, uh, do you have any numbers or kind of gut feeling of for what is the, let’s say, population size, which appreciates that because there are some people who appreciate the fact of transaction and there are people who appreciate, you know, your appreciation. So, uh, do you have any numbers or feelings about that?
[00:20:24] Silvia: Yes. And I don’t think it is anecdotal feedback or insight that you have. Just pick up. The reason why I believe so is a number of things. First, when we do research and this has been recurrent not just in the company where I work now, but also previous organizations that I work for. When we look at what customers, uh, pain points are loyalty and the recognition for being with the company for a long time, it’s always top three, no matter the the industry. I will say in particular the ones I know more are financial services and telco. But they, as I said recurrently, are in the top three. The second is uh, you can definitely have proof when you do testing. We do AB testing with different copy of the communications. In one. We are more about the price, the offer, in another one we are more about the customer and the reason why we acknowledge the loyalty. And we have seen that the results are way better with the loyalty and customer emotionally oriented, how much better they are. Obviously it depends on the specific dollar value that they offer is, but I would say somewhere between 5 to 15% increase. That is easy. Very easy to achieve.
[00:21:57] Egidijus: 5 to 15% in postpaid is huge. Uh, but, uh.
[00:22:06] Silvia: I’m talking about the specific cohort that the that the offer will be directed to, not the whole of postpaid because otherwise the business case wouldn’t be sustainable. But if we identify a specific cohorts of customers that have risk, and for those customers, we tailor an offer, we can’t really compare how we communicate to one group of customers versus the same profile of customers, but with a different message. And look at the difference. And then we look at open rates, click through rates and conversion as well as the improvement on churn. And we can see there are significant differences. They can vary between a 5% to a 15% depending on the metric. Um, and obviously there is always the the context in the market and a lot of other things that the customer might be experiencing. But overall, between a five and a 15% is something that we see consistently depending on the metric.
[00:23:07] Egidijus: And, uh, while I was listening to, uh, to you, uh, another idea struck me was that. Um. You as a business might say that we have a relationship, emotional relationship with the customer or not. So and basically you can choose your perspective. But if I understand correctly, customers always have a relationship with you whether you want it or not. Now that’s right. Uh, so if I understand correctly, kind of going towards that emotional connection is just helping customers kind of keeping their relationship with you basically, for if I interpret this correctly, every.
[00:23:52] Silvia: Time the customer comes to to you as an organization, the customer comes with an objective and an expectation. So it’s very much about understanding what that is. It’s like treating a patient. If you are a doctor or a dentist, the first thing is understanding the customer, the client. Right. And then once you have connected with the client, then you can start treating them. I believe that in a CBM role is the same thing. If you are able to really connect with the customer and understand what they like, uh, is it being recognized for their loyalty? Is it interacting with you in a specific channel? Is it not receiving communications about their bill because that annoys them? And is it is it is it? At the end of the day, you build a profile of the customer similar to what you can do with data similar to what you do normally in a segmentation. I always talk about creating the face of the different segments, right? The eyes, the mouth. By doing that segment analysis. At the end of the day, with the data, you understand how your customers look like. If you add into that profile, the more emotional profile about channel preferences, the specific customer needs, um, and other things, then you build a holistic, um, view of the customer and how to interact with the customer. I like to talk about a whole brain CBM, in the sense of using the right and the left side of the brain, because at the end of the day, you use the qualitative and the analytics information to build really, um, signature experience.
[00:25:47] Egidijus: Um, this is a very unusual interpretation, but, uh. But I love it. Uh, you know, uh, I would like to come back to one of your comments is like, uh, when is the the the best moment to build that emotional connection with the customer? And you said it’s like, you know, always, you know, and for me, as a professional, it’s like very stressful, you know, always it’s like I am always. But, uh, but can we actually do something and nail the at least most important pieces or situations where I actually need, uh, to do my job at the best level and then kind of, uh, uh, expand from there?
[00:26:33] Silvia: Yes. Yes, absolutely. I can talk a little bit more about that. Um, as I said, every time the customer comes to us or they buy a product, uh, they come with an expectation and an objective, right? So it’s about understanding the journey, the life cycle journey where customers are at, whether at the beginning is normally more about onboarding, getting to know, um, how to get everything set up, up and running. We know fast like really easy getting to know you as an organization exploring more products. So there very much is about making the first impression. And there is never a second chance to make a first impression. So in that onboarding moment is really important to focus on, uh, the simplicity, the simplicity of things working well, no hassles, no problems. Obviously, if something goes wrong, getting into resolution straight away. Then as customers start to use your products, your services, making sure that the experience is consistent again, that there are no problems in telco. Obviously we use, um, we have a connection with the customer every single day because they use the network. Therefore it’s about ensuring that they use the network like. Like if it was the best night ever. Like, they don’t even need to think about the network. There are no problems. The connection works perfectly if they have to download things that is downloaded. Seamlessly. Transparency is very important as well, showing customers that they can rely on the network, that we continue to upgrade, the network, that we are building a better network and investing on that better experience that is also really relevant.
[00:28:31] Silvia: So in those two stages, there are specific moments where you can center the conversation about the emotional connection, not trying to sell more things. Then, as the customers start to use the product more regularly, there are situations where you take an opportunity to celebrate a few things. Normally here we connect the emotional connection that we want to build with the brand values or drivers as well. For example, if as part of your brand you have, um, a specific values that talk about sustainability, it is important that you have a moment in your life cycle that talks about sustainability as well. So you can talk about how the organization is offsetting the carbon footprint. And in that moment in that conversation, you don’t talk at all about selling anything or upgrading or a second service or anything like that. It’s about celebrating, for example, the Earth Hour and finding opportunities and customer scenarios where people is celebrating the life, the Earth Hour. Uh, those engagement moments occur normally around the middle of the life cycle before the. I already talk about the onboarding, but then when the customer has already been onboarded, well, when things are working fine, it’s about those opportunities where you don’t want to sell anything, but it’s about finding points of connection with the customer.
[00:30:14] Egidijus: Um, sounds very inspiring, but quite a lot of, uh, perspectives, uh, at the same time. Um, uh, I have one again, one other random, uh, idea in this. So, for example, if we follow this. Yeah. So if we make sure that this service is good and we build the emotional connection, is it a good expectation to have, let’s say that your churn rates then should become close to the natural natural death rates in the company in the country? You know, I know this is a very long shot. You know.
[00:30:55] Silvia: It’s a very good question. I think this question is very similar to how do you justify the value of a loyalty program? What is the business case to have a loyalty program? And again, throughout my career I have many times been asked, do the business case? Is this stacking or not? But also it is also true that. We know that those emotions, um, the way that people make decisions is very much heart driven, and then they find the way to justify what they want to do with their head. Right. So to your question, I don’t think that trend rates are going to be close to the population average death rate at all because the telco market is always very competitive. However, when you start doing it right, you see significant improvements. I think it’s about consistency. It’s about not trying to get the shortcuts too soon. Obviously, we all work in a very agile environment and we need to be very responsive when the market changes. But if you plan it properly, if you build the interactions with the customer equally to grow sales, cross-sell upgrades, as well as to build that emotional connection with the customers and start measuring the more and more customer metrics, not just NPS, but also, as I said, trying to measure the emotional connection with a combination of relevance, investment and advocacy. If you start to go in that direction, I have no doubt that the churn rate will go down because customers won’t want to leave. Is that trust that I mentioned before is like they are trusting you because you have multiple opportunities to show them that you care, and then there might be an issue, things might go wrong. There will be customers that are always trying to find the best price and they will leave. But I’m sure that the customers that stick with you will stick with you for longer.
[00:33:15] Egidijus: Um. Okay. Um, uh, I will keep this as a promise, you know?
[00:33:25] Speaker4: No, as.
[00:33:25] Silvia: I said, there is data that proves that there has there has been improvements on the churn rate. However, the churn rate, if you look from the action to the churn, it’s very hard to measure because, as we know, um, it takes time. It’s not that you execute the campaign and then the next week the customer has no churn and you can say, oh, there was no churn because customer account churn in three weeks, in three months. And so there is one way to measure that is from the campaign towards the outcome of the metrics, and then have different time periods to account for the long tail. But at the same time, if you look at the specific events, for example, churn, you look at customers who have churn, and then you look backwards and compare the customers who have churn versus the ones that didn’t churn. And then you look at the kind of relations and interactions that you have with them, the customers that you’ve been more proactive with from an emotional perspective, the customers that have better NPS with you, those customers just saying NPS to simplify those customers will be staying longer and will have lower churn rates.
[00:34:44] Egidijus: And. Now, Silvia, going a bit further with this discussion. Yeah. So. Uh, we are, uh, when we have this emotional connection, you know, uh, we need to build that, uh, connection. And there are multiple specific situation when we have, let’s say, the best chance to build that. Yeah. So, for example, customer comes to, uh, our store or calls to call center or comes to our website or mobile app, etc.. Uh, when customer does that intention, you know, you said that customer comes always with an objective and expectations. Yeah. Usually you don’t know their objectives and their expectations. So this is like part number one and part number two in organization, uh, we have many programs running at the same time. So for example onboarding program we have upsell cross sell program. We have loyalty program. And we have something else branding campaigns and so on, you know. And now how do we, uh, you know, connect all those things because it’s like, yes, customer comes to point of sale. And now we are, you know, bombarding. We have a new great phone for you and a better planet. By the way, what would you like?
[00:36:09] Silvia: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That is the beauty of these kind of roles, the KVM roles or the customer centric transformation roles, if you like. And in the organizations where I work or I continue to work, um, we try to combine the data and the technology, the enabler that martech technologies can become, with also some forums that we just need to run across the business, right? For example, if a KVM is running a specific campaigns, um, or and then collections wants to do something else, it cannot be in isolation. So we have a specific, uh, forums so that we understand all these customers are churning. They are in collections. How do we coordinate? Because there is this involuntary churn, which is when you need to disconnect the customer for specific reasons. How do we coordinate so that collections and KVM communications are in sync or equally, if there is, um, I don’t know, a natural disaster if there is a natural disaster straight away, we stop any marketing campaign to those customers impacted despite the channel, despite billing, despite collections, despite the app, despite any channel because the number one priority is to resolve the customer need that is to offer support to those customers.
[00:37:41] Silvia: So in total or as a summary, what I would say is. There may be a time where the technology, the martech ecosystem, resolves for all those silos, and we find the perfect tool that helps us have all that single customer view, connect it with the models, the decisioning. That can be what we call the single brain that knows what to tell each customer, and then the deployment to the channels, and then of course all the feedback loop to learn what has worked, what has not, and then adjust the predictions. I still believe I am an optimistic. I still believe that will come. But in the in the meantime, as we progress towards that, there is a number of volumes that need to be orchestrated manually. A few of the decisions, because billing might be in a different platform than marketing, is so engaging the organization at the right level and being able to influence different parts of the business to have that customer centric mentality, it is critical to really address those customer needs, functional and emotional. And that’s also why being in a customer role requires so much energy, optimism and conviction that it is the right thing to do.
[00:39:05] Egidijus: Her silvery. You just mentioned the topic, which is very important. I think, uh, for all CVM professionals, it’s like you are in the middle of everything. And how do you and your team, where do you build that energy, you know, to align the organization towards that thinking? Because like, you know, every function has its own role.
[00:39:30] Silvia: Yes I think. Well, there was a time in my career where actually I thought, oh, it will be great that everyone in the organization will have it will have the same KPIs so that we all work towards the same KPIs. Therefore, there are no conflicts and we all deliver those KPIs. But then, silly enough or funny enough, I was thinking about the body. Right? Our eyes, our brain, our heart. They have different functions. They have different goals. But it is the combination of all of those working together that make us humans. That is the smartest creature in in the on earth, right? So I believe the organization is very much the same. I think it is important that each part of the business have a specific KPIs, but then overall they are all trying, or we are all trying to be customer centric to be customer first. That way we’ll be able to achieve the customer metrics like NPS, the financial metrics, lifetime value, our CapEx targets, ROE, all of those. And at the same time, we will have that brand in the market that customers will be proud to be with us. Right. And they will tell their friends. So I think that if you believe that which I do, then that passion, that energy, it is just perceived by people around you, and it is perceived by your teams, by your leaders. And at the same time, it’s not about knowing that things need to be done one way or the other. There are multiple different ways to solve the problem, to be customer centric. It’s about keeping that conviction, that passion, asking questions, being humble, and also trying to understand what are the the KPIs or the interests of other parts of the business, trying to understand where they are coming from. Because at the end of the day, I’m sure that if we understand where where each team is coming from, then we’ll be able to lift that up a level and find the common objective, which is the customer first.
[00:41:58] Egidijus: Um, and they have one more question towards that as well. Um, if we go, uh, I don’t know, ten, 15 years back, as we said, uh, the, the mantra at that time was like communicating on the right channel, right offer, the right time for the customers. It’s all about, you know, pushing that communication, selling. Then we went to more customer journey management. Now we are going to towards uh, then, uh, I kicked in, then, uh, you know, uh, customer centricity and emotional connection is adding up. It seems that the KVM role becomes more and more and more and more complex. You do not kind of, uh, uh, remove some parts. You kind of you don’t remove the outbound communication with the customer, but you add things on top. And do you see that this role of customer value management would stop evolving, you know, so stop having more on the plate.
[00:42:59] Silvia: Well, I hope we don’t have more on our plate because there is not much more space that we can carry. But I hope that the role evolves and continues to evolve. I think, again, that is one of the beauties of the role. I believe that with the new technologies in AI, there are more opportunities to do what we do faster and better. And without that level of complexity, hopefully with again the new platforms, instead of having a lot of different siloed technologies in the organization, there are new technologies that are able to combine channels so that the deployment of the treatments, whether that is SMS, EDM, push notification or you name it, is simpler also that the creative component is more standardized. And that we are able to learn faster what is working and what is not. I believe that the closing the loop feedback or the feedback loop is something that. Not many organizations have nailed yet. Um, yes, you can do a B testing. You can look at the reporting of a specific activities and compare against control groups. But being able to automate that within the engine, within the platforms in a way that you can still understand and make sense and is aligned with the business objectives, I think that is not ready or as mature as I would like yet.
[00:44:40] Egidijus: And Silvia, uh, I know the companies when there are. Starting to move towards a more, let’s say, customer centric approach, etc.. First thing, what they think is, uh, we need to change, uh, the technology stack, because technology will do everything for us, you know, and uh, kind of to achieve the result. How would you add kind of what are the components, uh, technology and what what are other components to, to get that result?
[00:45:17] Silvia: Yes. Well, I think people is the number one component. I think you should start with the people first, making sure that the people has the right skills, the right, um, aspirations, and that they are resilient enough to go with some setback that they will occur because it is a very complex problem. And then, of course, you can look at the technology, but it is better once you have identified the team to define the strategy, how are you going to differentiate? What is the part of the market that you want to win? What are the insights that help you define the customer segments that you want to attract, and where do you want to get in those segments to win versus be the second player? So you have the people, then you have the insights that help you inform the strategy. And then yes, you can look at the enablers. And the enablers will be a combination of data, technology and processes. And starting with the technology can be tempting because I think is probably easier is a more narrow approach. You can see multiple technologies doing great things on demos, and there are multiple vendors that know all the features of the technologies, and they will show you upside down what that particular tool can do. However, it is important to find the right vendor, the right partner as a vendor, and then look at the different technologies and how they work in sync. Because some organizations even decide to go with an in-house manual solution that they code themselves versus other organizations decide to go with multiple best of breed technologies and then building great interfaces that, um, help, as I said, to get the best out of the CDP or the decisioning or the modeling component. And then the third solution will be an kind of in between. Um, you don’t have the best on every single aspect in every single pillar, but you have a dominant technology that then you can support with some additional manual personalizations or smaller tools to support what you have to do.
[00:47:58] Egidijus: Um, and, um, if you would be in the place when you need to start moving towards more customer centric or to redesigning customer value management. So what would be your number one job? You know?
[00:48:16] Silvia: Yeah, I think the number one job is actually understand where to start. Um, and I mean this in a good way because it felt to me that I had just replied or repeated the question. And what I mean by that is doing an assessment really a maturity assessment of the key components that, um, make an organization to truly be customer centric with the data, the models, the marketing approach, everything across all the different stages, and then compare the results with your best practices with those, um, organizations that you look up for, those organizations that are similar to you and do something really well. Then you look at the gaps and then you identify where do you want to start? Caps versus return on impact. Therefore, that you know where to begin. But you need to do the homework first.
[00:49:23] Egidijus: Sounds so simple, you know. Going to, um, uh, the last part of our conversation. So we always ask, uh, professionals to reflect a bit on their career and share with us, uh, some moments of their career. Um, could you share your proudest moment in your professional life when you say, okay, I did it, or we did it as a team, and it’s really, uh, kind of. I am proud of that.
[00:50:01] Silvia: Yes, um, it is a professional achievement, but it’s also a personal moment that I’m going to share, which is when my husband and I, we decided to come to Australia. Proudest moment when we first of all landed here. We were just landed on the plane, and then someone was waiting for us to take us to the home we were going to be, and we just crossed the Sydney Bridge and the opera house and it was like, wow, yes, we made it. We are here. We made the decision, here we are. And then as the years go by, having been able to build a career in a foreign country with a foreign language, yeah, that is a moment that I am very proud of.
[00:50:48] Egidijus: Um, that sounds very inspiring. It’s like, um, uh, I’m not sure about, uh, many people, but for people who live so far away from Australia, somehow it becomes, you know, a country where you dream of, like, you know, landing and riding, you know? Yeah.
[00:51:07] Speaker4: So sounds very beautiful country.
[00:51:10] Silvia: I’m grateful for how welcoming it’s been with me and my family.
[00:51:14] Egidijus: And what about, you know, all the crocodiles and spiders and, uh, other horror stories?
[00:51:22] Silvia: Yeah. No, we know how to deal with them. That’s not an issue anymore.
[00:51:30] Egidijus: Uh, and, um. Next to the proudest moments. There are always the moments. You know that when you say, okay, now I have a horror story about my career, so could you share some of those?
[00:51:45] Speaker4: Yeah.
[00:51:46] Silvia: So there is one situation back in the days when I was in Spain where we were working with a big bank, trying to implement a campaign engine system right there, the equivalent to what would be the seasoning called the seasoning today. And at that time, this was a very big technology that had their own proprietary data mart and had to operate on a specific way and processes and the way the technology was built was not compliant or fit for purpose with the way the bank operated. There were a lot of attempts to change processes and even approaches in the bank to feed the tool, but in the end, it didn’t work. We just had to get rid of the tool and say, hey, we try the best we could, but now is the time to stop. Think again. What is the next step? And it meant to change the technology that it had been chosen in the first place, and find a combination of tools that were smaller but more fit for purpose for this bank. And again, that was a failure. The project was not very profitable at the time, but it was a huge learning that has been with me for, yeah, all these years.
[00:53:15] Egidijus: Yeah. I think this is a super brilliant insight. It’s like, uh, that the tool should not change your company. It should somehow empower your company. Yeah. Enable. And the last thing is, could you share some resources, uh, or for, uh, or inspiration that you get for your professional career? Um, uh, what people could, uh, read, learn, listen, you know.
[00:53:48] Silvia: I generally like reading, uh, and kind of studying almost about everything. Not everything, but on several, uh, large number of topics. Um, in the recent months I’ve been reading Margaret Heffernan, I’ve read uncharted, which is a very good book. Um, very good for CBM people, I believe, as well, because it’s about how to map up the future, which is uncharted. So she actually talks about what something I mentioned, which is you cannot predict what has not happened before in a different way. But there is something in her book that talks about that and how history we think that repeats. But actually history does not repeat. And if you are very, very focused on predicting the future based on the past, you are missing out on innovation, sometimes even killing innovation and creativity. So yeah, that is one book that I actually recommend to everyone who is interested on learning more about the unpredictable future.
[00:55:07] Egidijus: Thank you. Silvia. It was a pleasure to have you.
[00:55:11] Silvia: Thank you very much. It was my pleasure joining you today. It was fantastic.
[00:55:16] Exacaster: Thank you for listening to CVM stories. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review. You can also ask us a question about a particular customer value management challenge you have at work. We will happily ask our experts to tackle your challenge in a future episode.
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