Mike Boyle: Sort of along the same lines of what you were just talking about there, and you did mention this a few moments ago, is, you know, we’re still in the early stages of this. We’re all still learning and trying to become comfortable with it. But let’s talk about how AI can help B2B companies possibly predict and prevent customer churn, especially those high value enterprise accounts. What are your thoughts on that?

Megan Burns: Yeah, you know, this is a tricky one because really, so much of the churn lives inside the heads of the decision makers in the organization. Right. I call it the messy middle. We love to talk about, you know, the experience, the events, here’s what happened. We love to talk about the outcomes they renewed, they didn’t. But all the rest of it, the perceptions, and do I want to keep doing business with this company? Right. It all lives inside human beings’ heads, and so it can be tough to, you know, take into account all the different factors and really understand what someone is thinking. I do think that there are opportunities. One of the scenarios that I’m really, really excited about right now is I’m working with a client who wants to do a better job of supporting their customer when there’s a leadership change at the decision-maker level. So normally, the decision maker in your customer organization changes and you’re kind of like, oh, okay, we’re starting from scratch. I have a hypothesis, as do other people, that being the way that you handle that scenario can help prevent churn. And so I’m interested in seeing how. And it’s going to take a while for the data to get to the size, but seeing if we can’t use information that we can pull from the organization and the person to really start to think about what’s the best way to do things at these. It’s an overused phrase, but you know, these moments of truth, some of these transition and risk points that I don’t think companies have traditionally paid as much attention to as they should have.

Mike Boyle: Want to get your thoughts next on personalization at scale? In particular, B2B relationships are often more complex than B2C. So, what do you think about how AI can help deliver personalized experiences while maintaining that human touch that’s very critical in B2B relationships?

Megan Burns: To me, I’ve always replaced the word personalization. With relevance in my head, you know, it’s not about, you know, I know that anytime it says hi Megan in a computer interface, you know, there’s no human on the back end that recognizes that it’s me, right? That’s all technology. So I think the personalization and the relationship at scale is really about being not only sending things and sharing things and tools that are hyper relevant, but not sending things that aren’t. I mean the biggest problem people have, I shouldn’t say the biggest problem, but one of the big problems people have right now is there’s just so much coming at them. And it’s always been the case that companies that show restraint end up having customers who prefer that experience than people who just sort of say, no, prevent, you know, here, send everything. So knowing what not to send, potentially timing, and there’s been some very interesting stuff that’s been around for a while in terms of conversation analysis and emotion and tone analysis, particularly as we move more towards digital. I run a book club, and we read a book recently called Can You Hear Me? by Nick Morgan. He’s a Harvard professor. And it’s all about how communication is different through digital channels. And so much of the non-verbal signal that we use to understand emotion and make human connections and pick up on how people are reacting to things is either stripped out or muffled in technology. And so thinking about how, as we move more towards being able to make sense of these digital interactions that are happening, can AI help us understand, you know, what kind of a communication style does someone have? You know, are they starting to tune out? You know, as a speaker, could it help me potentially get a read on where my audience is so that I can change my tone or my style or pick up the pace, you know, midway through if I’m starting to lose them. So, for me, it’s the human dynamics piece of it that is most interesting. But I also think helping companies get more relevant in what they send and don’t send their customers to potentially help.

Mike Boyle: Megan, in the world that I live in here, Salesforce’s agent force has become a very big new tool in this world. I’m curious about your thoughts on how B2B companies can leverage AI tools such as that one to provide proactive support, rather than just a reactive kind of problem-solving tool?

Megan Burns: You know, I honestly don’t know, and I know I that’s probably not the answer you wanted to hear, but that is at a level of detail that I don’t usually work at with companies. I’m usually working more at the corporate level. So I think the specific applications, you know, of potentially flagging a situation and taking action. I wouldn’t want to mispeak because I don’t know what I would need to know to be able to say that I’m following it closely, I’m interested in seeing it, but I just am not that close to it right now.

Mike Boyle: And just for those who are listening to the podcast, we recently did one on Salesforce’s Agent Force. So, we talked to our inside AI guy. And if you’d like a little bit more about what we’re talking about there, you can just go to the previous podcast… Let’s talk about some unexpected ways that you’ve seen AI improve B2B customer experience that most companies might not have considered. And again, we’re still in that realm of, you know, we’re early into this, but any early thoughts or observations there?

Megan Burns: Yeah. Again, the applications that I’m seeing people be most comfortable with are helping employees internally. So I did a project toward the end of last year with a contact center staff that had, you know, decent functional relationships with their people, but they weren’t really, they didn’t have a lot of emotional intelligence in their conversations and they didn’t necessarily know or realize how they were potentially coming off. And this is a regulated, industry complex organization. And so we actually looked at and I helped expose this team to some of the tools that can help you anticipate how communications that you send might come off to people, help you strike the right tone with the things that you say, avoid having people infer emotions or implications from the things you say, or especially writing that you didn’t actually intend to. So that is one in particular that this team has really. It’s only been. I finished the project in December, so it’s only been a couple months. But they were really excited to learn and see that there were tools to help them do that because they’re super nice, friendly, caring people. But as more of their interactions moved from the phone to email and other digital interactions, they didn’t feel as confident that they could convey that warmth that they feel over to the customer.

Mike Boyle: Human interaction, Megan, as you know, has been, well, you know, the crux of what you do with B2B customer experience, it’s kind of changed here with AI and I’m wondering about the balance that B2B companies should be thinking about there. The balance between automation, you know, with AI, through AI and human interaction, especially with those high-stakes client situations. What are your thoughts there?

Megan Burns: Yeah, I mean, ultimately, people want problems solved correctly and quickly. And so, to the extent that AI and technology can help do that more so now than was the case 20 years ago when I started, not having a human interaction is actually the preferred experience for a lot of people. One of the interesting things that I found, a research report I read years ago, I think it was also in HBR, was that people are more satisfied with automated interactions when they know they have the option of talking to a human, even if they never actually do. So this sense of control, this sense that I could get to a person if I needed to, I think, is a way to potentially balance that. Obviously high-stakes situations, when people ask me, you know, what should our customer experience strategy be? The phrase that I give them is to be consistently good and strategically amazing. Because consistency is really important. It’s not sexy, but it’s so important to customers. I’ve had many situations where customers say our clients would rather have us deliver when we say we’re going to than deliver faster. They’d rather have us be consistent, you know, they’re okay with the timelines that we’re using. So I think that’s strategically amazing. When is it strategic? Sometimes it is the typical, you know, high emotion. There’s a problem, you know, there’s something that needs to be dealt with. There are other times that it can be, you know, what is the nature of your brand and what are the things that, you know, you lean into as a company and can you use AI to help you, you know, do something unique and different in a place that is particularly reinforcing with your brand? You know, product startups release upgrades. It’s harder to give specific examples in B2B, but that’s where I think the opportunity lies, is in being more consistent with getting the basics right and then enabling and supporting the amazing things in the moments where it’s going to make a difference.

Mike Boyle: One of the things that could make a difference is the subject of metrics. And I’m really kind of anxious to hear your thoughts on this. Again, we’re early into this. We’re, you know, we’re just kind of getting rolling here. But just your thoughts on maybe some early metric steps that B2B companies should be focusing on when measuring the success of an AI implementation in their customer experience strategy.

Megan Burns: Measurement was the very first thing I covered when I got to Forrester 20 years ago. So it’s a topic near and dear to my heart, and one of the things that I realized is that the core elements of measuring an experience, the quality of the experience, don’t change based on how that experience is delivered. Right. I want it to be fast. I want to feel like I was heard. I want to, you know, So, I think people may think that we need all these new metrics when we introduce AI. Really, what we’re doing is looking to ensure that we are still meeting the sort of fundamental human needs that don’t change. We’re just doing it with a different technology. So the kind of core definition of a good experience, and looking at that when we use AI versus when we don’t, doing some standard testing. There are operational elements of AI in terms of did it deflect more contacts, did it prevent potential churn? Those are all things that matter to the company. But I always envision a two-by-two matrix that says, can we deliver an equally good experience more efficiently using technology? And it’s gotta be both of those. I am increasingly, I don’t wanna say harping on my clients, but encouraging my clients to be more explicit in the way they measure and talk about trust with their customers. I’m working on an article right now with a colleague about just how big this lack of trust problem is. And I think with AI in particular, it’s an opportunity to see how customers’ level of trust. In one of the recent Salesforce data to connected customers, they talked about whether or not one of the survey’s questions was whether or not people trust companies to use AI ethically, and the perception of whether or not the ways that they are using it are actually ethical. I think it’s something that we ought to be watching closely because what the customer thinks and what we think internally are, you know, usually not the same thing.

Mike Boyle: So, this as everyone obviously knows, is not a video podcast. So you can’t see Megan, and she’s got the crystal ball cap on. Gonna ask her about AI in three to five years… Megan, what do you see as emerging in terms of AI capabilities and the biggest impacts that are yet to come for B2B customer experience, and can companies prepare for that?

Megan Burns: I’m not sure how much any of us can prepare for much of anything these days. You know, nobody knows where things are going to be tomorrow, let alone in three years. But I think looking at, I mean, the obvious applications now, but I think the opportunity to do things that customers would expect you to do or would hope that you would do, and do them proactively. Right. There’s a lot of places now like changing an address. Something as simple as changing an address. You know, I, when I moved, this was 13 years ago, but I moved. And I have the same company for auto and home insurance. I know this isn’t a B2B example, but it’s an easier one to understand. And I was applying for a new homeowner’s insurance policy with this company, and they approved it, and it was going to be my primary residence. Was that enough to trigger them that, oh, I should change the address on my auto insurance? Or at least ask me, hey, does this mean you’re changing? You know, there’s so many opportunities for things like that where there are, you know, pieces or steps or things in the middle that just don’t get done. And it’s not necessarily, you know, a big deal that it’s not there, but it could start to be a big deal if there are companies that can do it. And there’s this whole layer of work that the customer organization no longer has to do.

Mike Boyle: Well, I don’t want to wait three to five years to have you back, Megan. I think there’s enough here and you’ve given me enough food for thought that we can check in with each other again real soon. Maybe just talk, not specifically about your clients, but just maybe just some feedback that you’re getting about AI and how it’s performing and, you know, impacts and metrics and things like that. So, you have an open invitation. I’d love to have you come back.

Megan Burns: Well, thank you so much. I can’t quite process the fact that it’s been four years since I was here last time. When you said that, I was like, no, it couldn’t be that long ago, but it was.

Mike Boyle: And again, I just want to, you know, highly encourage folks to go back and check out that podcast because we had a very wide-ranging discussion about B2B customer experience. And those same things still hold true today. I promise you. Megan promises you. Thanks, Megan. I really appreciate it.

Megan Burns: My pleasure, Mike. Thanks, everyone.

Mike Boyle: And if you would like to connect with Megan, I highly encourage you to visit her website. It’s Megan-Burns.com. I will have that link and some other helpful links inside this episode’s show notes… Hey, if this is the first time you are checking out our podcast and you like what you heard, would you please give us a follow? Tell your friends about the podcast. And if you listen on Apple or on Spotify, would you consider giving Megan and me a five-star review today? Hint, hint, wink wink, nudge nudge… People ask me why we say that. Well, the reason is simple. It helps us get the word out throughout the community about the podcast. So, thank you very much in advance. And lastly, if you are a podcaster and you’re looking for guests to speak on your podcast about all things Salesforce, MuleSoft, or technology in general, you just visit the ‘Contact Us’ page at our website, AdVic.com and we will gladly put you in touch with an AdVic team member for your podcast’s next episode… I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions, thanking you for listening to this episode of the Salesforce Simplified podcast. Our next episode is just around the corner. 

Announcer: You’ve been listening to Salesforce Simplified, the podcast from Ad Victoriam Solutions.