Paula: Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for Loyalty Marketing Professionals.
Paula: I’m your host, Paula Thomas, and if you work in Loyalty Marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from Loyalty Specialists around the world.
Paula: I’m delighted to announce Capillary Technologies as the new title sponsor for Loyalty TV.
Paula: Capillary’s mission is to bring the loyalty market out of the 1980s and into the present, ditching the slow, chunky manual services of the past.
Paula: Capillary is all about making loyalty management easy, with scalable AI-powered tech that turns loyalty managers into superheroes.
Paula: Say goodbye to outdated methods and check out the exciting new way to achieve Loyalty Excellence in 2024.
Paula: Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.
Paula: Today’s interview is a long overdue episode with Dell Technologies, who were last on the show with us back in the summer of 2020.
Paula: Dell is of course a world famous technology brand.
Paula: With over $88 billion of revenue in their most recent financial year.
Paula: They are ranked in 48th place in the Fortune 500 list, and they sell to more than 98% of Fortune 500 companies.
Paula: Mitch Kennedy is the global strategy lead for Loyalty and Dell.
Paula: Across their consumer, gaming and retail businesses.
Paula: And he joins me today to share his thoughts on Loyalty as it continues to evolve so dramatically.
Paula: I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Paula: Mitch Kennedy, welcome back to Let’s Talk Loyalty, and welcome for the first time on Loyalty TV.
Mitch: Thank you.
Mitch: I appreciate the invite.
Paula: I cannot believe it’s been four years since we went riffing about gamification and Dell and all the cool stuff that you’re doing.
Paula: So, honestly, there’s so much to talk about.
Mitch: Yeah, I know.
Mitch: A great many things have happened in that four years, although it does feel like it was a day ago.
Paula: It sure does, Mitch.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: Well, listen, with so much to talk about, I want to get straight into it, but of course, we do have a standard opening question, which is really important.
Paula: And again, given your global perspective and all of the loyalty that you’re exposed to, particularly in such a mature market there in the US as well, I am dying to know, and all of our audience is dying to know, what is your current favorite loyalty program?
Mitch: It’s funny, you know, I don’t often think of loyalty programs in their entirety.
Mitch: I think of elements of loyalty programs.
Mitch: And one of the things that I have been bumping into in the last couple of years is actually a Texas brand called Tacovus.
Mitch: And they make hand made Western boots and apparel.
Mitch: And they have this element of their sort of brand, it’s called the Outpost, and they changed it a little bit and made it, they gave it another name, I don’t remember the other name now.
Mitch: But what I really like about it is that it’s this extension of the brand, because you don’t, buying expensive hand made Western boots are not something you do all the time, you don’t own 15 pairs of the things.
Mitch: And the Outpost is content about things that are brand adjacent, but are extensions of the brand, independent music artists, people that do, I think there was one story about a blacksmith, a ranch, it’s just really, really interesting content that’s an extension of the brand, and given some of the challenges I face at Dell with keeping people engaged in between purchases, it’s just really interesting to me.
Mitch: I mean, I love the brand and that helps.
Mitch: I’m definitely a brand advocate, which helps.
Mitch: But it’s just a really fantastic use of non-transactional content, and it just sort of sucks me in.
Mitch: And I look forward to seeing this content, I sort of seek it out.
Mitch: And so it’s the thing that I’ve been bumping into lately that has sort of the most impact on how I think.
Paula: I absolutely love that, Mitch.
Paula: And, you know, it resonates for me because I think what I’m kind of hearing and seeing again is all of the brands, we all really understand so many different elements to our marketing strategy, both within loyalty and, of course, outside of the direct responsibilities we have.
Paula: And, of course, social media as one form of communication has been done super well.
Paula: And with all of its challenges, it’s definitely not perfect.
Paula: But what I’m hearing from you is that this content is probably longer form, if I’m hearing you correctly.
Mitch: Yes.
Paula: And therefore, it’s kind of telling more stories, and that drives a totally different type of loyalty.
Mitch: No, that’s exactly it.
Mitch: It is very much story based.
Mitch: They’ve added content to it about how they make the handmade process for making the boots, some things that are more product centric.
Mitch: But a lot of it is, it’s a long form story about a family that owns a ranch and has like four daughters or something, if I remember correctly, and the daughters work the ranch.
Mitch: And there’s some things like that that are…
Mitch: And each one comes with a pictorial where you see the product and all of that.
Mitch: So there’s obviously a brand tie-in, but just really interesting content that is an extension of the brand, turns the product into a lifestyle or makes you feel connected to that.
Mitch: Not surprising, I don’t actually own a ranch, but the content was really interesting to me.
Mitch: So yeah, for me, it’s just one of the better uses of content to sort of create engagement in between purchases that has no…
Mitch: There’s no message in there about buying their product.
Mitch: It’s just something that’s an extension.
Mitch: If you enjoy the product, you’re going to likely enjoy that content.
Mitch: And it gets me to interact with the brand, probably, I don’t know, twice a quarter in ways that I wouldn’t.
Mitch: Which you think about how invaluable that is.
Mitch: So absolutely.
Paula: And what I’m guessing as well, Mitch, of course, it’s not just you as the recipient, but of course the advocacy, because for sure, you know, your family, if you have the daughter’s family or whatever, who are also probably interested in that lifestyle.
Paula: And I confess, I am a country music fan.
Paula: I have had Cowboy Boots.
Paula: I don’t have that brand, but I’ll make sure to get the exact name so we can put it in the show notes and I can personally go shopping.
Paula: But, you know, in all seriousness, you know, there is absolutely that advocacy piece, which, as you said, particularly for, you know, relatively expensive, infrequent purchases, there’s a whole role for content marketing.
Paula: And actually, it leads us perfectly into what I have seen, you know, on the Dell website at the moment, Mitch.
Paula: And for our global audience, I will say that we’ve obviously, you know, chatted in advance.
Paula: And because so much of what you’re doing is incredibly exciting, innovative, but also quite commercially sensitive, we’re going to be talking a lot about, I suppose, big ideas, and maybe slightly less detail because it’s just changing too fast.
Paula: And so I think what we’re able to talk about, if I’m right, is what’s currently live and in market.
Paula: And specifically because of your boots.
Paula: Actually, what was the brand again, Mitch?
Paula: Because I didn’t get the name.
Paula: Is it Tacovus?
Mitch: Tacovus.
Paula: Tacovus.
Paula: Amazing.
Paula: OK, so Tacovus obviously have their content marketing, again, long form content.
Paula: So very different to the short form social media content that we’re all familiar with.
Paula: But I was thrilled to see that Dell has an element of your loyalty strategy as well, which is, you know, incentivizing people in a non-transactional way to consume Dell content.
Mitch: Yeah, it’s funny, you know, just this week, I sent an email saying, listen, give me a list of everything we can track.
Mitch: Okay.
Mitch: Give me every behavior that we can trace back to an individual.
Mitch: And then let’s have an opening conversation about the value of each of those behaviors and how we might incentivize those, and either directly or indirectly, through gamification or whatever.
Mitch: And so it’s something I’m definitely, definitely passionate about.
Mitch: And with gamification, one of the great deployments is, like I always use the use cases.
Mitch: A number of years ago, I changed the terms and conditions and sent it out as an email.
Mitch: And I mean, truly, it’s the most boring email ever, right?
Mitch: Like, who’s going to look at that email?
Mitch: And you look at your opening rate, and you’re like, did you accidentally click on that?
Mitch: I don’t understand.
Mitch: What happened?
Mitch: And I put it out in game form and had tens and tens of thousands of people engage it, the content, answer questions, confirm they understood it because it was going to impact the customer experience.
Mitch: So there’s some things like that where, yeah, I use gamification when I, it’s a great way to deliver content.
Mitch: It’s a great way to deliver sort of a meaningful customer interaction.
Mitch: And for us, because we’re so big, it’s a way for us to personalize.
Mitch: It’s easier to personalize a game experience than it is sort of a traditional online experience.
Paula: But I don’t want to miss the huge point that you made there, Mitch, which is literally the internal conversation, first of all, about what are the possible behaviors we could track?
Paula: And then how valuable are each of those behaviors?
Paula: And then do we want to now invest some of our budget into rewarding that behavior and focusing on changing it?
Paula: Because I’ve never heard anybody on this show actually think about it that far back in the chain in like, like what is the universe of possibilities?
Paula: And then, you know, and then what is the value of each of those things beyond transactions?
Paula: Because I think that’s the big distinction.
Paula: We all know that we want to drive transactions, the most desired behavior.
Paula: But honestly, that’s the hardest.
Paula: And as you said, the least frequent.
Paula: Yeah.
Mitch: And I think that’s one of the going to be one of the more interesting deployments of AI, is I think it will give us insight into the value of disconnected behaviors.
Mitch: You know, it’s easy to look at a behavior sort of well removed from the transaction, and say, I could get more of that.
Mitch: Like, not all behaviors can you really lean on and get more of.
Mitch: But there’s some behaviors where you look at it and you go, I could actually get more of that if there was a value to it.
Mitch: And if I knew the value of it.
Mitch: You know what I mean?
Mitch: I mean, I can get you to do almost anything if I pay enough.
Mitch: You know what I mean?
Mitch: If I give you a thousand dollars in rewards, you’re going to wash my car, right?
Mitch: But that doesn’t necessarily make sense.
Mitch: That’s where, to me, the starting point is, let me identify the universe of things that I can actually track.
Mitch: And then let’s try to find the connection, even if indirect, to transactional outcomes.
Mitch: And then let’s back our way into a structure that allows us to invest in those behaviors.
Mitch: It takes time, and it’s going to take some group effort, but we’ll get there.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: So it almost sounds like you’re reverse engineering the ultimate end goal, which, as we said, is the transaction.
Paula: But again, rather than assuming we can leap all the way straight there, again, given the particular industry that you’re in.
Paula: So obviously, you have identified that, again, content, like the Fabulous Booth story, content has value.
Paula: So I’d love any sense of, is it two-minute content?
Paula: Is it 20-minute content?
Paula: And is it related with the currency directly to reward people for watching that content?
Mitch: Yeah, it’s funny.
Mitch: Obviously, it depends on the content, how long someone’s going to pay attention to it and where in the customer journey it is.
Mitch: We’re looking at a couple of engagements where the closer it gets to the transaction, the closer it gets to transactional pages inside of Dell.
Mitch: That content shrinks dramatically to the point of almost nothing, where it’s just a very quick hit engagement.
Mitch: If you’re out of market, we’re working on how do we leverage some of the more engaging, interesting content about Dell customers, the uses of the technology, you know, Dell servers do amazing things.
Mitch: They’re some of the most amazing things out there.
Mitch: I talked to a coworker who was, she was telling me about how, you know, a number of years ago, she had gone, and I forget the name of it.
Mitch: Anyway, she’d gone to this amazing place because Dell servers were there and they needed to do content on it.
Mitch: She was like, it was so incredible.
Mitch: And I’m like, we need to turn that into content.
Mitch: I’m like, we got to, like, I mean, it’s great that you had that wonderful experience, but on a purely selfish, I mean, that doesn’t do anything for me.
Mitch: Like, I need a video of that.
Paula: Yeah.
Mitch: And so, yeah, the nature of the content, how long it is, how we deliver it is sort of an exercise on how far removed from the transaction is it and sort of how engaging is it.
Mitch: So, right now, we’re doing stuff that’s pretty program-centric.
Mitch: How the program works, that kind of stuff.
Mitch: And we’re going to look to back away from that and start adding things to it.
Mitch: It’s going to take a little bit, but we’ll get there.
Paula: Well, I mean, I personally don’t expect to engage with content about servers, Mitch, so you might have to forgive me on that one.
Mitch: No, no, no, no, no.
Mitch: And that’s the whole point is that it’s not about the servers.
Mitch: It’s like the boots, right?
Mitch: The servers do, as an extension of the brand, Dell servers are a part of some of the most interesting, amazing projects in the world.
Mitch: The content is not about the server because no one cares about the server.
Mitch: It’s about the role Dell plays in changing the world around us.
Mitch: And from there, there’s some amazing opportunities to do interesting things.
Paula: Because you’re right.
Mitch: And that’s one thing is like a laptop.
Mitch: What possible content about a laptop am I going to create that you’re going to be all that interested in?
Paula: Yeah, yes, but it’s a good point as well.
Paula: Because again, I’m coming to the Dell product line as a consumer.
Paula: And I know you have, of course, the CTOs, you’ve probably got government clients.
Paula: I’m sure you’ve got just incredible scale and all global as well, I suppose, within your remit.
Paula: So I’m sure there’s plenty of CTOs around the world who’d love to see the server rooms that Dell is building.
Paula: So I suppose that’s the whole point about personalization.
Paula: That we all know, we all consume different things, as you said, relative to where we are in the purchase cycle, but also just our fundamental basic needs as a consumer, as a buyer of yours.
Mitch: Right.
Mitch: I mean, one of our challenges is exactly that, right?
Mitch: I build and manage programs that cover the gamut from a customer member perspective, from an individual sitting at home to the CTO of a publicly traded company or a federal agency, right?
Mitch: Yeah.
Mitch: What drives their decision, how they interact with the brand, is completely different, obviously.
Mitch: When we do market research, sort of the mindset and how they react to any aspect of the program, any element of the program or any element of the brand, it differs greatly.
Mitch: And what’s more of a challenge is they can be both.
Paula: Yeah.
Mitch: Right?
Mitch: If you look at our gaming community for Alienware, there’s a huge percentage of the people in there are registered in our database as being a IT decision maker or a small business owner, or they wear a completely different hat in other aspects of their life.
Mitch: And so we have to sort of identify when they’re interacting with the brand as an individual or as the technical person in the company.
Paula: Yes.
Paula: Well, Alienware is another word I’ve never heard before.
Paula: That’s amazing.
Mitch: Yeah, it’s an interesting brand for Dell.
Mitch: And that it opens up a wealth of sort of interesting gaming.
Mitch: It has become such a big part of sort of the zeitgeist.
Mitch: And so almost anything that we do, you sort of have to have your eye on that.
Mitch: Because there’s a likelihood that the person is actually a gamer.
Mitch: And so, yeah, it’s been a very interesting thing.
Mitch: I was very fortunate in that I was able to…
Mitch: We have a gaming community.
Mitch: And I got involved early in sort of creating some connections between that gaming community and the brand, its global community.
Mitch: And then from there, sort of expanding up through…
Mitch: It was the first strategy work that I did at Dell was…
Mitch: I was tapped to figure out how to make that connection.
Paula: Wow.
Paula: Wow.
Paula: And recently, I heard somebody talking about the New York Times, actually Mitch is clearly an extraordinary brand, and one that I would certainly only define as a media company.
Paula: But apparently, the New York Times now identifies itself as a gaming company because of Wordle, yes, because of the crossword.
Paula: So in terms of actual…
Mitch: Oh, okay.
Mitch: That makes sense.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: And kind of blew my mind, you know?
Paula: I was just like, oh my goodness.
Paula: And again, I don’t identify as a gamer because I think of gamers as people who play World of Warcraft and those kind of, you know, relatively, you know, to me, quite aggressive games.
Paula: But actually, I do the New York Times crossword.
Paula: So actually, I am a gamer.
Paula: It’s just a different type of game.
Mitch: Yeah.
Mitch: One of the most interesting things, and it’s funny that it took me a bit to get gamification in at Dell, because it is sort of a nonsensical thing, right?
Mitch: Like, as you described to somebody, they’re like, why would that work?
Paula: Yeah.
Mitch: Trust me, it does.
Mitch: Yeah.
Mitch: But the first place I got it in was Alienware Arena, our gaming community.
Mitch: And people were like, well, yeah, it makes sense because they’re gamers.
Mitch: No, it’s not the same.
Mitch: It’s a totally different psychology.
Mitch: It’s a different mindset.
Mitch: I was like, listen, the average, the most likely person impacted by gaming is not actually a gamer.
Mitch: I mean, we even had some trouble out of the game because they’re like, well, wait a minute here.
Mitch: I’m like catching raindrops in my bucket in the game and it’s not connecting to how many points I get.
Mitch: It’s not an earned engagement.
Mitch: So yeah, it is interesting that the psychology of it is vastly, vastly different, and I don’t think most people understand how they react to it.
Mitch: It also allows, I’m a big believer in making things dynamic.
Mitch: A bit of a Skinner’s box in terms of how things…
Mitch: And it’s hard to do because it feels disconcerting to people, and large brands don’t always have an appetite for someone losing in the game.
Paula: Okay, yes.
Mitch: And so it’s funny, I spent a lot of time having to say, trust me, we’re going to take care of them.
Mitch: They engage, they’re going to win.
Mitch: They’re going to come out of this ahead.
Mitch: But for the engagement to work, there has to be an element of risk to it in the short term.
Mitch: So it’s been an interesting journey, but it did start out of our gaming community, and then I used the success we had there to push it out into the rest of the brand.
Mitch: And a lot of what we do with it is not even, it’s, I think of it more as sort of personalized engagement, and more than I do anything else.
Mitch: Sometimes we use a game of chance, sometimes it’s sort of a hybrid game of chance, sometimes it’s just a very engaging way to deliver content and an incentive by somebody.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: And just one thing, just for my own knowledge, I’m guessing Mitch that those kind of gamification strategies that you’re describing, they sound like they’re all kind of designed and developed in-house at Dell, rather than necessarily like partnered with some of the global well-known games.
Paula: Is that fair to say?
Mitch: We partner with a game platform called Cataboom, and they actually deploy the games, and they have a pretty flexible platform.
Mitch: And so we use them to actually do the games.
Mitch: And then I just made certain that we had the integrations we needed to have data flow around all the systems and all that.
Mitch: Because that’s one of the…
Mitch: I mean, it’s a big data world, right?
Paula: Totally.
Mitch: Where the data flows is absolutely imperative.
Mitch: And to do the personalization, you have to be very thoughtful about how your data is set up.
Mitch: If you have a vendor in the mix, sort of what are their integrations, to be able to sort of personalize.
Mitch: And that’s one of the challenges we have with that long continuum, is that we have to be very thoughtful about how we handle data, how we map data, just to make certain that we’re delivering the experience the person expects in real time.
Paula: And you’ve already touched on, I suppose, some of the customer considerations, I suppose, is the word I’m looking for, in terms of how you plan and think about loyalty strategies.
Paula: But again, with your global hat on, Mitch, there is a whole other gamut, I guess, of considerations as well.
Paula: So given that you do have a global role, what are the other things that you have to think about, apart from the actual segmentation?
Paula: What are the other things that you have to think about, in terms of building your loyalties strategies?
Mitch: Yeah, that’s one of the challenges we have.
Mitch: Our country, or our program, is deployed in 10 countries.
Paula: 10, okay.
Mitch: And so, obviously, not all those countries are the same.
Mitch: When you set up a point system, you have to sort of tie it to the local currency, in that the value of a point can’t really be…
Mitch: Like years ago, when I was a consultant, I had a client that wanted to have an arbitrary value for their point.
Mitch: It’s like, I get what you’re saying, but it doesn’t really work that way.
Mitch: And people are pretty smart, they’ll figure it out anyway.
Mitch: And then, in any case, so we have different point values in the different countries and everything.
Mitch: So there’s some technical and logistical things like that.
Mitch: But the biggest impact is just scale.
Mitch: You know, not all countries are the same.
Mitch: Choosing how to prioritize sort of program advancements is always a bit of a challenge.
Mitch: Because, you know, the US is by far the biggest market.
Mitch: And so, if you took a purely value-driven business case approach, we would just be constantly enhancing the US program, and the others may not even exist.
Mitch: And so, it’s an interesting thing to make, to, you know, as a team, we have to sort of guide, okay, how are we going to handle with each of these countries?
Mitch: Where are we going to test new ideas?
Mitch: All that kind of stuff.
Mitch: And each country has a different mix, you know, so even as you look at personalization, how the customer mix in each country is different, how they come to the brand is different, what role Dell Rewards plays within that country is different.
Mitch: So, it’s, yeah, it’s a challenge, but it’s a very interesting set of questions.
Mitch: And that’s, to be honest with you, for me, it’s always, how interesting is the question?
Mitch: How interesting is the problem to solve?
Mitch: And that always sort of raises it.
Paula: Indeed, yeah.
Paula: We did an interview with McDonald’s about a year ago, Mitch, and, you know, like you, like an incredible global brand.
Paula: For them, actually, loyalty had come later in the overall evolution, which was quite surprising, especially as you just said, you know, it usually is the global market, but they had this lovely idea.
Paula: And I’m assuming, you know, you might not be able to say either way, but they had this kind of idea of freedom within a framework.
Paula: And I thought that was super clear in that there are certain kind of principles that drive loyalty for the brand.
Paula: But within that, you can go, and for example, they had a different brand name for the program in Australia.
Paula: And I’ve said it on the show a few times, but it just amused me endlessly that it’s called My Macers in Australia.
Paula: Whereas, you know, like I’ve worked with big brands, you know, where there’s absolutely no way you’d be allowed to change the brand name, you know, it’s like sacrosanct, so.
Mitch: As you get into more and more countries, things don’t translate well, and you have to be really careful if you don’t.
Mitch: And we have, we’re very fortunate, we have people on our loyalty team from all over the world.
Mitch: And it’s very funny because we all use Google Translate at times, and every once in a while you get this like, yeah, that does not make, what you just said makes no sense when I take it through to Google Translate.
Mitch: And so yeah, that part of it, like just naming the currency was one of the, I mean, we spent a whole afternoon, like, knocking around what we would even call the currency in each of the countries, because as you started to like translate it into the different languages, it’s like, yeah, that doesn’t, that makes no sense.
Paula: Oh, wow.
Paula: Oh, my God.
Paula: So you’ve got like, so obviously they’re not just points.
Paula: So what currency names do you have?
Mitch: Oh, it’s just whether it’s a reward, we focused on points, we focused on, I mean, it’s one of those conversations where, I mean, it’s sort of-
Paula: Super fun.
Mitch: Yeah, it evolves into like, we’re calling them buckaroos and, you know, what are the, how does that translate into Portuguese or Spanish or, yeah.
Mitch: So in the end, we try to keep it as simple as possible, but yeah, it didn’t play well.
Paula: No, no.
Paula: One of those global challenges, which again, I know you love, I’m sure keeps you awake at night as well from time to time.
Paula: Like all of us.
Paula: But listen, the big hot topic, Mitch, and again, I know you can’t at all comment in terms of what Dell is doing or thinking about, but AI is the big idea, I guess we’re all thinking about.
Paula: For me, I remember the very first time hearing about ChachiPT.
Paula: It certainly doesn’t seem that long ago, and yet we’re already using it in our business.
Paula: And I wasn’t expecting to be an early adopter.
Paula: But yeah, so wanted to ask you how you’re thinking, even as an individual about AI, where do you see the opportunities, the challenges?
Paula: I know there’s often seen to be, whether it’s ethical or legal issues.
Paula: I mean, it is a bit of a minefield.
Paula: So, yeah, I would love to get your thoughts on AI and how it might help.
Paula: And I suppose we need to be thinking about as loyalty professionals.
Mitch: I think, yeah, I think it’s definitely something we all need to be thinking about.
Mitch: As a large brand, I mean, one of the…
Mitch: It’s funny, you know, this thing came out, and like you said, it was nowhere and then it was everywhere.
Mitch: And not long after that, I get an email from the brand saying, hey, we all need to take…
Mitch: We all need to go through a training on the ethical use of AI, because we have to do that every year for how you handle data, for our ethics and compliance training.
Mitch: We all laugh about it because it takes hours, but we have to do it every year, and now AI is a part of that, and I don’t think it was ever even thought of.
Mitch: Obviously, not that long ago.
Mitch: And in terms of least, and this is my mind, I want to preface this by saying, this is the thoughts of me as an individual versus my speaking for Dell as a brand.
Mitch: Obviously, when you look at the JNAI stuff, it’s a reflection of what’s put in there.
Mitch: I don’t know what was put in there and what wasn’t put in there.
Mitch: So I’m always a bit hesitant to use it too deeply as more than even a starting point, and I rarely do that.
Mitch: And that may be just a generational thing.
Mitch: But too much of what I’ve seen come out is 80% correct, which always scares me because I’m always afraid that I’m going to miss part of the 20% that isn’t correct.
Mitch: And so that’s less impactful on me because also I don’t write content, and so I’m not part of the creative process.
Mitch: Which the brand is probably very thankful for or should be anyway.
Mitch: And so when I think of AI, I think more of going back to what we had talked about earlier.
Mitch: How can AI, how can predictive models help me have a better understanding of events that happen away from a transaction?
Mitch: The things that happens right around a transaction are fairly easily understood, particularly if you have the analytical resources to dive into it.
Mitch: There’s less of a direct connection the further you get from a transaction, and I think we’re going to have a better understanding in a year or so, two years, around what happens there.
Mitch: What piece of data do I need to collect that is going to be a pivot point for my understanding customer value over time?
Mitch: What behavior is going to be a driver of a transactional outcome, even though I don’t sort of myself intellectually see that connection, but I can use technology to identify its worth?
Mitch: So for me, that’s more of where I look at it.
Mitch: When I think of AI, that’s more where I see the value impacting loyalty.
Mitch: Because I’m also not content, like the GEN AI content stuff, it’s too far removed from value.
Mitch: Like a nuanced change in some of it, I don’t see as having a very impactful role in driving the transaction.
Mitch: How precisely it’s written or created.
Mitch: So I look more, I think, more on behaviors.
Mitch: So, we’ll see.
Mitch: I mean, the challenge with that is the more dynamic the system, the more weight has to be carried by your MarTech stack and your loyalty platform and all of that.
Mitch: And it puts a heavy load on data flow in real time and being able to react to that.
Mitch: You know, it’s very easy for me to say, hey, if a customer does this behavior, I’m going to incentivize, I’m going to give them a reward.
Mitch: Great.
Mitch: That’s easy.
Mitch: The problem is, my doing that behavior as an individual consumer is of far less value than a CTO doing that from.
Mitch: So how do we recognize that the behavior of the individual is not of equal value, that one behavior for me may be impactful in my likelihood of purchase, where it’s not for someone in a business role or just another even consumer.
Mitch: And so it puts a fairly heavy weight on the loyalty platforms to react to that.
Mitch: And what I’m finding is it also puts a pretty significant weight on your reporting.
Mitch: You have to have a much deeper understanding of what’s happening and be able to look back further in time and look, you know, I don’t need to know, I mean, it’s not, I don’t just need to know how many times you’ve purchased in the last year.
Mitch: I need to know how many times you logged in, how many times you updated your profile, is your profile even complete?
Mitch: How many times did you engage the brand where you didn’t even log in?
Mitch: How many times did you receive a communication and engage that communication?
Mitch: Even if there you didn’t click through, but you at least have some reason to believe you saw it.
Mitch: There’s, I think there’s a wealth of possibilities out there that we’ll be able to start taking all of that data that’s floating around and coalesce it into a way to sort of start to shape a personalized customer experience.
Mitch: And I think AI will be the driver of that, but we’ve got a few steps to take.
Mitch: It’s funny, the models are the chief part.
Mitch: You know what I mean?
Mitch: You can get, there’s a million predictive models out there.
Mitch: There’s a million GenAI engines.
Mitch: It’s funny that that’s the easy part, and that’s the most accessible part.
Mitch: I think the biggest challenge is going to fall to the platforms within the industry to be able to take that level of insight and action in.
Mitch: And that’s, I’m very curious to see, I think there’s some very smart people in the industry that are working to solve that, and I’ll be very curious to see where that goes.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: No, well said, Mitch.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: Like, to me, as I said, absolutely fascinating, absolutely to me, amazing that I’m at least able to engage, as you said, with some of the GNI stuff.
Paula: And I’ve even been told when people are researching, you know, loyalty topics on ChachiBT, that our podcast is being quoted as the source.
Paula: And that was, I didn’t know, really, to be honest, how to react to that, Mitch, because, you know, of course, it’s wonderful that we are now being, you know, credited or credible in that environment.
Paula: But yes, it does then, of course, for us bring up all of the concerns about, of course, making sure we’re always, you know, 100% factually correct and, you know, everything we publish is, you know, something that can be relied on.
Paula: To the best of our ability, of course, we are.
Paula: But yeah, it’s a bit scary at the same time, as I said, for us to be quoted like that and not even be aware that that’s what our content is being used for.
Mitch: Yeah, you know, I think that’s, there’s nothing more disconcerting than having your own content, your own ideas come back to you, because they don’t come back to you fully formed.
Mitch: They come back to you in small disconnected elements.
Mitch: And it is very disconcerting because it’s like, wow.
Mitch: Yeah.
Mitch: I mean, like I said something similar.
Mitch: I mean, I said that, but that’s a very small fragment taken out of context.
Mitch: And even if it’s accurate, it’s still very disconcerting.
Mitch: And I think that’s one of the things with those two is people pour in their own data so they can then combine it with the data from elsewhere and then extract some.
Mitch: But like, listen, what you just put in there now became part of this machine.
Mitch: And so it isn’t one way traffic.
Mitch: And I think people lose that.
Paula: Indeed.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: Well, watch this space Mitch.
Paula: I think that’s the only thing that we can do and keep ourselves educated.
Paula: And as we said, as up to date as possible.
Paula: So yes, it’s incredible.
Paula: It’s fascinating.
Paula: But I guess there’s going to be legislation and as you said, internal corporate policies.
Paula: And you’re the first brand I’ve heard.
Paula: I’m sure there’s plenty of others, but it’s great to hear that at least the education is happening so that you can be looking out for, you know, what do I need to think about when I start using these models in your loyalty strategy design?
Mitch: Yeah, you know, I suspect most brands are, were taken off guard by how fast it came in, and how easily employees could be using it to create content.
Mitch: And they’re not, they have no intent of doing anything that they shouldn’t, but, but yeah, I think people, I think a lot of brands probably are scramming a little bit to get employees trained on sort of the ethical use of it, and just in a way that protects the brand, because like you said, I mean, you have your own content come back through it.
Mitch: I mean, I think that’s probably a very significant concern for most brands, is that an employee that’s just trying to craft a better communication piece, put content into one of the engines, and something that the brand would never have wanted made public, make it made public.
Mitch: No ill intent, no, you know what I mean?
Mitch: Like no bad actors here, just simple human non-understanding what’s going on.
Mitch: And I know even as I went through our training, I was like, okay, I hadn’t thought of that.
Mitch: You know what I mean?
Mitch: There were pieces of it where as much as I have thought about it, there were elements in there that, it’s funny, once I looked at it, I’m like, okay, that’s kind of obvious, but I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms.
Mitch: And so yeah, I think it’ll be very, most brands will and it’ll be very helpful.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: I do remember seeing an analogy, and again, it was probably the earlier days, maybe a year or so ago, and it was kind of described as like, a new intern who comes into the office, totally hung over and starts publishing stuff.
Paula: And that’s the level of concern and attention that you need to like going, okay, this person is not ready for the world that we need to deliver.
Mitch: Yeah, I mean, I do think it’s sort of like the crazy uncle at the holiday that goes on a rant, and 90% of what they say is true, but there’s that 10% that is just absolutely crazy, you know, dark conspiracy type stuff.
Mitch: And yeah, I do think that’s it, because you read it and you go, oh my gosh, this is amazing, this is, oh, wait, jeez, wait, that’s not even remotely true, like, oh my god.
Mitch: And so I think there’s an element of that to it.
Mitch: And so for me, that part of it, I pretty much keep it arm’s length, just because it doesn’t really help, it’s not my job is more to deal with structural strategic things and not the actual deployment of things.
Mitch: And so I think more about sort of how that technology will help us take all these disparate pieces of data and gain a better understanding, and then with that understanding, start to shape the customer experience.
Mitch: That’s more the level that I deal with it.
Paula: Absolutely.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: And I know we have a lot of friends in common as well, Mitch.
Paula: So we do a lot of work with Capital Re Technologies and I know you’re working with their tech as well.
Paula: So we did publish a case study from them recently.
Paula: So again, like a lot of, well, all technology vendors, there’s a lot of case studies being done, a lot of great development work, a lot of thinking, and there certainly have been some great A-B split testing done and very significant results coming out the other end.
Paula: So bigger brains than me for sure, but I’m excited to kind of see the level of commitment that everybody has to personalization, I guess, because we’ve all said, it’s been the holy grail of loyalty for such a long time, but I think we’re finally getting the tools.
Paula: And again, the speed of which they’re developing is just unbelievable and very exciting.
Mitch: Yeah, it is.
Mitch: I think it’s the world of the open-ended question.
Paula: Okay.
Paula: Yeah.
Mitch: I think that’s where things are going to get really interesting.
Mitch: I think the brands that have the ability to ask themselves and those they work with, really good open-ended questions about what do we know and what do we do with this?
Mitch: Are the ones that are going to do some really interesting work coming forward.
Paula: Amazing.
Paula: So I’m really thrilled that you’re still so passionate about gamification, Mitch.
Paula: Again, I do remember our conversation and some of the global thought leaders like Yu Kai-chou, which-
Mitch: A great book.
Mitch: I read his book on-
Mitch: yeah, oh my gosh, so good.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: And we’ve actually just recently published an episode as well with Amanda Cromhouse, our fabulous host out of South Africa.
Paula: So I’m going to link to that in the show notes.
Paula: It hasn’t been published, so I know as we’re talking today, you won’t have heard it as yet, but yeah, there’s incredible stuff in gamification coming out of South Africa.
Paula: Always a market.
Paula: Yeah.
Paula: It’s unbelievable, Mitch, and you really will love it.
Paula: So we were down with Amanda at her Loyalty Leaders Conference recently, just in September.
Paula: And again, gamification, we’ve been talking about it for years, but it’s at a whole other level.
Paula: So there’s just so much more we can do with it.
Mitch: Yeah, we’re going to do some, and I can’t go into the details, but we’re going to do some pretty large scale things with it, higher profile things with it in the coming year, where it’s more of the starting point for how we engage people in the process.
Mitch: And I’m really excited to see that.
Mitch: And the pricing that we’re working on is pretty amazing.
Mitch: So that part, I’m really excited about, too.
Mitch: A couple of them, I’m like, you know, I think what they need is a brand to escort.
Mitch: I think that would be key to that price.
Mitch: Someone from the Dell brand, largely me, would accompany them on this experience.
Mitch: But yeah, I’m excited about that.
Mitch: I’ll take a look at that.
Mitch: You said it was coming out of South Africa.
Mitch: I wasn’t aware of that, so I would love it.
Paula: It’s incredible stuff.
Paula: Yeah, super inspiring.
Paula: So again, for everybody listening to this recording or watching it, we’ll make sure that’s linked in the show notes, because again, it’s ground breaking work.
Paula: So definitely we want everyone to pay attention to.
Paula: And I know you can’t say any more, Mitch, on that particular topic.
Paula: So I suppose the only thing left for me to say is you have to come back next year now, not wait four years to the next interview, so we can hear what you’ve been up to.
Mitch: That sounds great.
Mitch: I’d love to.
Paula: Amazing.
Paula: Great.
Paula: Anything else you wanted to say for our audience before we wrap up?
Mitch: No, I appreciate the chance to have a conversation with you, though.
Paula: Amazing.
Paula: Great stuff.
Paula: Also, Mitch Kennedy, Global Head of Loyalty Strategy for Dell.
Paula: Thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.
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