Latest / The Retail Podcast / Why Twilio Says Personalization Is Broken | NRF APAC 2025 Debrief

Transcript

Why Twilio Says Personalization Is Broken | NRF APAC 2025 Debrief · The Retail Podcast

• 0:01
  Let's be honest with you. I need to know you, Alex.
• 0:03
  I need to know who you are. I need to know what you do with
• 0:06
  our brand, what you care about, what you want, and then help you
• 0:09
  actually understand how we can help you in that process.
• 0:13
  And AI is allowing us to really kind of scale that out.
• 0:27
  Hello and welcome back to the Retail Podcast live from the
• 0:30
  show floor NRF a pack. Now you may recognise the
• 0:34
  branding Twilio. I interviewed them last year.
• 0:36
  I'm back again for more. I'm here with Ben.
• 0:39
  Ben, I hear there's some new research, so I'd love to know
• 0:42
  what you do. It's Willie.
• 0:43
  Oh, and anything can tell us about this new research?
• 0:46
  Brilliant. Thank you, Alex.
• 0:47
  So my name is Ben Chandler and I lead the solution Engineering
• 0:50
  team focus more on customer data.
• 0:53
  So we really care about how do our customers really understand
• 0:56
  who their customers are and help them really drive those
• 1:00
  relationships. So let me just talk a little bit
• 1:02
  about the research we have about to release the State of Customer
• 1:06
  Engagement report for 2025. This is a big piece of research
• 1:11
  that we do every single year really to understand how
• 1:13
  customers are engaging, you know, what are they expecting
• 1:16
  from businesses and really, you know, how can we help?
• 1:18
  Yeah. Fantastic.
• 1:20
  So what's your data set that you use in terms of the research you
• 1:24
  who are you interviewing and what are they telling you and
• 1:26
  what are you saying? Well, there's, there's two kind
• 1:29
  of groups if you like. We're going out to businesses,
• 1:31
  our customers to better understand, you know, what are
• 1:34
  they doing? What are they're, you know, what
• 1:35
  are they seeing in the market? What are the trends they're
• 1:37
  following? And then on the other side,
• 1:39
  we're going out to broader, a broader customer base trying to
• 1:42
  understand from their perspective are the what the
• 1:44
  initiatives that businesses are going on, are they actually
• 1:47
  resonating? Got you.
• 1:48
  So I noticed that in terms of you've got this sort of
• 1:51
  philosophy about why brands must shift to a channel first,
• 1:56
  customer first strategy actually if you can expand on that for
• 2:00
  us. Look, I think that's, I think
• 2:01
  that's a really interesting point.
• 2:04
  Businesses typically operate thinking about the channels.
• 2:08
  So how do I build a world class e-mail programme?
• 2:11
  How do I build a world class website or mobile app?
• 2:15
  But that doesn't take the customer to the centre.
• 2:17
  Customers don't care about the channels, they just want to be
• 2:20
  able to get to a resolution. Yeah.
• 2:21
  They want to be able to do their research, they want to be able
• 2:24
  to find their products and they then want to be able to check
• 2:27
  out and buy what they need. So really is that shift.
• 2:30
  But like to understand the customers journey now traverses
• 2:33
  all of these different channels. How can we have the right
• 2:36
  information, the right engagement in the right channel
• 2:39
  at the right time? And like obviously AI is having
• 2:42
  such a massive impact on all elements and all technology
• 2:46
  providers. I was just wondering how how do
• 2:48
  you see AI redefining personalization from your
• 2:51
  perspective? So I just want to take a quick
• 2:54
  step back because AI is a, is a future lens that we're putting
• 2:59
  over how we engage with customers.
• 3:02
  But from our research, from the State of customer engagement
• 3:04
  report, we've seen that 82% of businesses are out there
• 3:09
  thinking they're doing a good job, but they're really trying
• 3:11
  to personalise customer experience.
• 3:13
  Yeah. But on the flip side, customers,
• 3:15
  only 16% of them think they're doing an excellent job.
• 3:18
  There's a big gap that we've got to fill.
• 3:20
  Yeah. Now 60% of customers are willing
• 3:24
  to spend more with brands. Yeah, in actual fat, 48% will
• 3:27
  make repeats purchases if you personalise effectively, right.
• 3:31
  So there's this big gap in terms of perception, and there's a big
• 3:35
  win out there. So how's II helping?
• 3:37
  Yeah, well, look, let's be honest with you.
• 3:40
  I need to know you, Alex. I need to know who you are.
• 3:42
  I need to know what you do with our brands, what you care about,
• 3:45
  what you want, and then help you actually understand how we can
• 3:48
  help you in that process. And AI is allowing us to really
• 3:51
  kind of scale that out. I got you.
• 3:54
  So look, one thing I would say is that there is three things
• 3:57
  that brands are looking at with AI.
• 3:59
  They're looking at actually understanding the customer
• 4:01
  journey, interrogating that, understanding the pain points.
• 4:04
  Yeah, they're investing into solving customer problems.
• 4:08
  So when you think about that, that's a support lens and issue
• 4:10
  resolution. And then the last 1 is really
• 4:13
  sort of analysing what happens after that point.
• 4:15
  So how we can really, you know, improve over time?
• 4:19
  I got you. If we just take a regional
• 4:21
  perspective in the AIPAC area, I was which is just so massive.
• 4:25
  So even saying the AIPAC area. Feels wrong, right?
• 4:28
  Because like 3 billion people roughly, but how, how do you see
• 4:33
  organisations in the region unifying customer data and to
• 4:38
  sort of drive that deeper engagement?
• 4:41
  So I, I think that piece is, is interesting.
• 4:44
  As you talked about, Asia is such a diverse region with
• 4:47
  different countries, different nuances, different approaches.
• 4:51
  Realistically, their focus is actually who is my customer, not
• 4:56
  just who's my custom from a loyalty lens, who's my customer
• 4:59
  from an online or offline commerce lens.
• 5:01
  But how can I bring all of that together to really understand
• 5:04
  who that person is? Yeah.
• 5:06
  And then enrich that with predictions, with
• 5:08
  recommendations, and then driving that into those channels
• 5:11
  that we talked about. Now from an AIPAC perspective,
• 5:15
  on the customer side, we're talking about 3/4 of customers
• 5:20
  really wanting to have a human like experience.
• 5:23
  They don't care that there's AI powering under the hood.
• 5:25
  They want that human experience. And about half want to have that
• 5:29
  escalation. They want to know that if
• 5:31
  they're dealing with AI that they can then escalate that to
• 5:34
  a, you know, a human if they get stuck.
• 5:37
  So that's the lens I put over it.
• 5:39
  That's fantastic. Final question, yes, you must
• 5:42
  have met a lot of customers coming onto the stand.
• 5:45
  What's top of mind? I'm just curious.
• 5:47
  Again, we talk about this as being an APAC event, there's
• 5:51
  lots of customers coming from different regions.
• 5:53
  So and some of the customer, the conversations are around privacy
• 5:57
  and consent. As legislation is changing my
• 6:00
  home country, Australia is about to seem greater change in
• 6:03
  privacy legislation. We're also seeing like what does
• 6:07
  what, how do we actually utilise AI?
• 6:09
  We didn't some really interesting and innovative
• 6:12
  things in the voice space and bringing that AI conversation
• 6:16
  and engagement to whatever channel we're in.
• 6:19
  Yeah. So AI is definitely how do we
• 6:21
  leverage that, but it still comes back to clean, consistent
• 6:25
  complete data. So we still understand talking
• 6:27
  about how do I collect data from where customers are, how do I
• 6:31
  activate that across all of my channels.
• 6:33
  Those are the the trends that I'm seeing.
• 6:35
  That's brilliant, Ben. Thank you so much.
• 6:36
  Really appreciate. It really appreciate it.
• 6:38
  Thanks, Alex.