Data-Driven Customer Experience Transformation with Mohamed Zaki
IN CLEAR FOCUS: Professor Mohamed Zaki of Cambridge University discusses his new book “Data-Driven Customer Experience Transformation.” Mohamed explores the shift from product-centric to customer-centric business models, distinguishing customer satisfaction from delight, and leveraging AI and data analytics to predict customer behavior. Mohamed also shares his insights on omnichannel experiences, personalization strategies, and real-world case studies, including Caterpillar’s CX transformation. < Episode Transcript Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS … Professor Mohamed Zaki: One of the key things is the interpersonal relation with the customer, which is coming from where we see now a lot of the tech firms are going, it’s personalization. So we saw this with all these new tech firms, what made them successful on their platform, they understood every customer, what they really care about, what they need, what they prefer, and they offer that to them back. Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising produced weekly by BigEye, a strategy-led full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, BigEye’s Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. Recent research from Kantar reveals a striking insight. Customer experiences contribute more to brand perceptions than advertising. In fact, while paid media delivers 25% of brand building impact, direct customer experience and word of mouth account for around half of all brand perceptions. Our guest today is uniquely positioned to help us understand this data point. Professor Mohamed Zaki is based at the Institute for Manufacturing in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, where he serves as Deputy Director of the Cambridge Service Alliance. This research centre brings together the world’s leading firms and academics to address digital transformation challenges. Mohamed has consulted and lectured for over 50 organizations, including Manchester United, Caterpillar, and IKEA. He’s also the course leader for the Data-Driven Design for Customer Experience online course at Cambridge University Press and Assessment, and co-founder of Customer Experience Insights Limited, which developed the 360CX AI platform for customer engagement decision-making. He serves in advisory roles for several companies, most recently as AI Innovation Advisor at Tactful AI. His new book, published by Kogan Page, is “Data-Driven Customer Experience Transformation: Optimize your omnichannel approach,” which is also our selection for the BigeyeBook Club this month. To discuss some of his book’s key ideas and frameworks, I’m delighted that Mohamed is joining us today from Northamptonshire in the UK. Mohamed, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS! Professor Mohamed Zaki: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here with you, Adrian. Adrian Tennant: What inspired you to write “Data-Driven Customer Experience Transformation”? Professor Mohamed Zaki: So I work most of my career helping organizations around this area in particular for a while. So most of my research helping firms to understand how they can leverage data and AI to design better experience, but also as well to manage it in particular. What makes me drive to drive the book is actually the fast pace of the era that we’re living at the moment, especially the digital transformation that’s happening with many firms. When I’ve been asking a lot of practitioners, they were struggling a little bit with the right tools and frameworks that enable them to design the future of services and experience for the firms. But more important is leveraging this new emerging technology like AI and data to enable them to understand their customers better. And this is particularly problematic in enterprise firms or established firms, not the digital-born organization. You can see digital-born organizations, they’re quite starting as a startup, nimble, their tools and softwares and solutions is quite up to date. So that’s allowed them to become more data-driven, if you like, organization. Think about ChadGPT, for example. This is an example of a data-driven business organization, which has managed to do a better experience for users when we are interacting with a machine, in this case, a conversational AI. There will be a lot of attempts before, but they were the most successful one, and that came from the statistics. Many users daily joining their platform now, and this is because of the experience they had with this conversational AI capability. So I guess to answer your question in particular, there is need for a lot of practitioners now with fresh thinking, fresh tools that go beyond the traditional ones that exist for a while, like design thinking, journey mappings, and emotion mapping. So I thought, let’s leverage some of my engagements and interactions with a lot of firms, and most of the tools I’ve been developing through my research in this book to communicate and disseminate, and hopefully this is helpful for people. Adrian Tennant: In your book’s introduction, you highlight how we’re living in an experience-driven economy, where even beloved brands risk losing market share due to a single negative customer experience. Mohamed, what’s driving this shift? Professor Mohamed Zaki: This just came a lot as well from a lot of facts and figures that a lot of big practitioner firms, we’ve been surveying customers to understand, you know, the new generation of customers, what they think about the brand they are engaging with. And you can see the new wave of customers, let’s say this way, needs not the standard ways of services or the transactional strategy that we used to have with established firms. They need personalized experience, they need the speed, they need care about some of their issues and problems. Hence, this is a discussion in the book, to deliver a quality product or a service is not at the moment making your biggest competitive advantage. You have to have a quality product, of course, and quality service here, offer it to your customers. But what differentiate you versus your competitors is the customers really feel that they have a great experience and seamless experience with your brand. So we saw a lot of statistics,
What’s Right with America With Honorable Paul Johnson and Larry Aldrich
IN CLEAR FOCUS: Honorable Paul Johnson and Larry Aldrich, authors of “What’s Right with America,” challenge fear-driven narratives dominating media. They discuss how optimism drives innovation, the power of individual agency over collective thinking, and the economic strengths of the United States. The conversation explores marketing lessons from their data-driven approach to countering pessimism, the importance of entrepreneurship, and how brands can tap into shared American values rather than divisions. < Episode Transcript Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS … Larry Aldrich: You simply can’t solve problems from a position of fear and negativity. You have to be optimistic. You have to believe you can solve them. Paul Johnson: The single greatest thing that our country ever did was, from the very beginning, it empowered the individual over itself. Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising produced weekly by Bigeye, a strategy-led, full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Bigeye’s Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. In today’s polarized media landscape, marketers and brands face unprecedented challenges when communicating with consumers. As society appears more divided, many brands struggle to position themselves authentically without alienating segments of their audience. This challenge raises important questions about how brands can navigate these complex waters while staying true to their values and connecting with consumers in meaningful ways. Our guests today offer a unique perspective on America’s foundation, its values, and how understanding what’s right with America might provide insights for brands and marketers. Honorable Paul Johnson is a former State Department official, CEO and co-founder of Redirect Health, former mayor of Phoenix, and host of The Optimistic American podcast. Joining him is Larry Aldrich, a former federal antitrust prosecutor, former CEO of University Physicians Healthcare and two Gannett newspapers, and founder of Tucson Ventures. Together, they’ve authored a new book titled “What’s Right with America … And How We Can Keep It That Way!” Published by Post Hill Press, the book examines America’s core strengths and values, challenging the prevailing pessimism that dominates so much of today’s discourse. To discuss how their insights might inform marketing strategies in a polarized world, I’m delighted that Paul and Larry are joining us today from Arizona. Paul and Larry, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS. Larry Aldrich: Thank you. Paul Johnson: Thanks for having us, Adrian. Adrian Tennant: Larry, your book, “What’s Right with America,” comes at a time when many perceive the country as deeply divided. What inspired you to write this book? Larry Aldrich: So I would say Paul, specifically. I don’t really kind of suck up when talking to Paul, but Paul is the inspiration for the book. He and I are running buddies, and I knew about his podcast, The Optimistic American. And one day I said, “You know, you might want to market this a little differently. You might want to write a book.” And he goes, “Well, I’ve written books.” And he said, “If you want to write a book with me …” meaning “you want to take the first crack at it.” And I said, “Sure. I’ve always been thinking about writing a book. So here we go.” So that really was the inspiration, specifically. Generally, I think I tire very much from the negativity. And I get caught up in it like everybody else, and you just kind of find yourself just spiraling down. And again, the inspiration of Paul just spending much of his time on a podcast talking about optimism and what makes America great, those two things intersected for me to be quite interested to write the book with Paul. Adrian Tennant: Paul, when we were preparing for this podcast, you mentioned how fear-driven narratives dominate media channels on both sides of the political divide. Now, as someone who’s worked in both politics and business, how do you see this affecting the broader cultural conversation? Paul Johnson: Well, I don’t think there’s any doubt that it’s had a big effect. I do want to say one thing about Larry. I appreciate Larry giving me so much credit. But Larry was a publisher. He worked for the Justice Department. He has an incredible understanding of the Constitution. And I have known him for a long time. And his fundamentals and his belief in the foundations of America are almost unshakable. It’s one of the things that I’ve loved about him. And he contributed and wrote a ton on that inside this book, that I enjoyed myself. You know, what we see that’s happening, and that is counter to my instincts, is a huge amount of pessimism that exists in America today. The pessimism is being driven really by both sides, and there are a wide variety of reasons for it. But there’s political advantage, and it’s profitable to be negative. But consequently, the American brand is being hit on a regular basis. If you were trying to figure out how to market into that, my guess is the first instinct would be you have to be negative as well. But as we know about branding, anytime you’re talking about branding, sometimes being counter to the existing culture is what actually gets you noticed. We’re hoping that is what happens. Although I can’t tell you how many times Larry and I have been up on podcasts and seen comments from people saying, “What’s right with America? Are you guys morons?” That there’s not much right with it. And here’s what I would say to that. “You’re wrong. You know, take a look at the data. Start with that.” You know, today, again, on the right and the left, we, you know, we can listen to the Bernie Sanders talk about inequality that exists because of income levels. We can also hear both sides talk about things like the need for tariffs because the United States has been hollowed out and our industry has been destroyed.
Bigeye’s 2023 US Pet Owners Study
Results from Bigeye’s new 2023 US Pet Owners Study reveal 97 percent consider their pets to be family members. What are the implications for pet care marketing?