Showing Up in the Moments That Matter

Kailey Raymond: Nowadays, selling products and services has shifted to a nearly all virtual landscape, but human to human interaction is a vital step in delivering a solid customer experience and one that's often overlooked. Getting to know your customers is more than collecting data. It's about knowing them in authentic ways and creating strategies so you can show up with them when it matters the most. Chris Madan from Telus is on a mission to make the lives of customers easier by building a truly personalized and relevant omnichannel experience. In this episode, Chris and I discussed humanizing digital experiences, listening to implied customer preferences, and being there for the moments that matter.

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Kailey Raymond: With me today I am really excited I have Chris Madan, the VP of Digital Sales and Service at Telus. Previous to that at CIBC for over 16 years. He has a wealth of experience across digital data design, product development, marketing. He knows the telecom industry, financial services industry. So we are in great hands today. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Madan: Thank you, Kailey. It's an absolute pleasure.

Kailey Raymond: I'm excited to dig in. Typically, I like to get to know you and how you got to where you are today in your career. So in your own words, I know I just had a lot of different pieces of your experience that I kind of rattled off, but how did you get to where you are today at Telus?

Chris Madan: The ultimate generalist, if I can say that. So I had another career before financial service, which was aviation. So I've spent a series of interesting experiences and career progression across three continents, three major industries, so aviation to financial services, to telecom now. And I think I've just really, really been fortunate along the way. You called on some of those journeys. So I started off in operations in aviation. I went into accounting and finance with yield management. Moved to Canada about 20 years ago now and was looking at a complete career switch. So went back to school, got an MBA, got an accounting designation, went into banking and went into finance. And three years later an opportunity came calling that opened up the world of data and segmentation. And then from there I progressed into marketing and then all the different disciplines that you've called out. So stumbled into what I would say I'm doing today about 10 years ago, but it's been a series of interesting experiences along the way.

Kailey Raymond: It's humble when you say you stumbled, it seems like you've definitely had a lot of intentional career steps and have kind of worked your way across a lot of different parts of the customer journey and ways to engage customers. So can you tell me a little bit more about your team and their role specifically in the customer engagement journey?

Chris Madan: Absolutely, Kailey. You hit the nail on its head. If I think about what's common across the last 30 years is the fact that I've been at the forefront of the customer experience across these different dimensions. And that's what a lot of the team does today. So my team and I are the custodians of the digital experience now for clients at Telus, and that means all the stuff that happens on our digital storefront. You could be coming to our website, you could be coming to the app to buy something, to pay a bill, to check an account balance, to move your home, all those things, all those little moments that matter, we are the custodians of the digital experience over there.

Kailey Raymond: That's amazing. So you own a lot of different channels across different business units, is that correct?

Chris Madan: That is correct. That is correct. We think of it again as as a one common storefront for our clients to come visiting. So businesses, etcetera, are just the way we internally divide ourselves. But having said that, it's a common connected experience on the front end and we look to unify and bring it to life.

Kailey Raymond: Nice. I love the word bring it together, unify. Business units can be a four letter word, but making sure that you are making the customer experiences smooth and that journey makes sense to somebody on the other side. We're gonna get into that. One of the things that I'm looking to learn from you, I mean, you've been kind of in and around this term, which I think has really been heightened over the past five or so years, customer experience, making sure we're going back into the base, especially now with the economy. You've probably seen some trends come, some trends go. So right now, what are you looking at? What are some of the top trends related to customer experience?

Chris Madan: I think the top trend, which probably transcends customer experience, but is actually taking over our lives, is just the power of AI. And I know it's been a buzzword for the longest time, but John Oliver did a segment on AI and he spent 27 minutes on the topic two weeks ago. And when that happens it's more mainstream. So we're getting exposed to it at a scale that we haven't seen. And I think it'll truly transform a lot of what we do and how we do it. So for me, that whole aspect of AI, especially from a generative perspective, which transcends everything from data to content creation, to experiences, to how long it takes for us to stitch together those moments that matter, I think is truly gonna be transformational. So that trend, I would say it's more mainstream now with things like ChatGPT, etcetera. But we've traditionally used data and we've traditionally used AI, but it's more to manage lots of data or it's more from a risk management perspective. But now I think it's becoming more and more client facing, more than a trend for sure.

Kailey Raymond: It's shaping an industry and it really does feel like there's this massive race. There's this recent article in The Times, I'm forgetting the name, but actually I think a Waterloo guy. So maybe in your area. He created neural networks. He worked at Google for a long time. And the ethics of this and making sure that we can figure out the ways to embed AI ethically in a way that will build businesses, but in a way that, makes sense for us as humans too, is we're at the precipice of a really interesting moment.

Chris Madan: We are. We are. And the choices we make and how we leverage this will truly define the next generation as it comes to life.

Kailey Raymond: I love it. I know AI is obviously on the top of everybody's mind right now. Any other trends that you think about, you look at that you're working towards at Telus?

Chris Madan: Quite a few, I would say. I was at the Mobile World Congress, which was a fascinating experience in Barcelona about two months ago, and you get to see the back end from the telecom providers and the networks as they're built to the front end and how data and technology is being used. And again, the roll of things like AR and VR. They're just other aspects of augmented and virtual reality coming into our ecosystems. So if you think of our clients and the way they consume information, the way they have those experiences. So I saw a very interesting demo on a virtual AI assistant, but it would allow your stores to be open 24/7. It would allow you to not actually have these big aspects of real estate where you go to buy devices, etcetera.

Chris Madan: So how you start to turn even, let's call it your neighborhood bus station into another retail network. Very, very interesting. I think some of these are a little bit more farfetched, but having said that, there's a lot of digital noise out there. There's a lot of digital devices out there, there's a lot of digital distractions out there, and how we meet customers at where they are and keep them at the center of everything is truly gonna be important for us.

Kailey Raymond: Definitely. We're seeing this interesting trend where, especially post pandemic, I think, and this is true, I do think that everything needs to have a digital component, but everybody thought that everything is gonna shift entirely towards digital. And there's kind of this interesting need of making sure that we're still humanizing some of the digital experiences. So the example of AR and VR and having a personal assistant, it's still like trying to attempt to replicate a very human experience of going to a store or a tactile experience and building more scale to that perhaps.

Chris Madan: And you actually picked up on some words we have in our internal playbook. So we use the word humanized digital all the time. It's at the forefront of what we're trying to do. And you're absolutely right, and we see it in our own lives as well. So you put shopping behaviors aside and you put commercial outcomes aside, the human condition has a craving to interact and to interact with another human and to interact in physical settings and to make sure that those experiences are pleasurable and enjoyable, etcetera. So we see that, which is why you continue to see the long lineups outside of an Apple store. I'm always fascinated for a technology company that actually uses the same interface to sell you things in store that they do online, and you had a bunch of people line up over there and you want to touch a device, etcetera. So we see the same thing. We see the same thing play out across our network, which is why the word humanized digital for us is that connected omnichannel experience. Some of these are buzzwords that get used pretty often, but it truly is trying to make sure that whatever channel you interact with, we recognize you and we augment that experience to the extent that we can with digital means, but it doesn't replace one or the other.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah, and I think really kind of what we're talking around, but not saying explicitly is this idea of one-to-one personalization, making every single moment in the customer journey feel like it's meant for me, Kailey, based off of all of the data that you Chris have about everything in my lifecycle, and making that as seamless as humanly possible for millions of people at the same time is not so easy, right?

Chris Madan: Oh, it isn't. It isn't. There's so much noise in these signals. And all the buzzwords over the years, I'm sure you've heard about the one with personas. Maybe I'll tell a story and we'll see. It's a common marketing term. So if I told you that it's the year 2016 and we've got a persona, it's two gentlemen born in 1948 in England, fairly affluent, prominent role in society, in their late 60s. They've both been married and are now remarried, and they shown up in your model as sort of one-to-one. But if I then gave you the names that one is Prince Charles and the other one's Ozzy Osborne, you'd completely end up missing the mark if you tried to personalize that experience. So there's so many aspects to information and so many different datasets and so many different models, but at the end of the day, as you said, you're trying to replicate the human condition, which even if you tried wouldn't be that easy. So what we try to do, and as you said, is more around the fact that how do you use the information and make sure that it's relevant to the extent that it is, but don't get blinded by data or don't get blinded by models and don't get blinded by processes and segments and personas and try and recognize and stitch together all the different signals in a way that is still meaningful enough but doesn't try to overreach.

Kailey Raymond: It's interesting when you say you don't get blinded by, I find that very often it's like there's this big task list in front of you. You're trying to do all of the things in the finite time you have in any given day. And instead of lifting yourself up and saying, does this make sense? Like Occam's razor, the easiest thing is probably... The simplest solution probably is the one that's right. I think segmentation is kind of a lot like that. It's like, yeah, somebody told you they like the color blue. Maybe send them an email about something blue. I don't know. It's like sometimes it is incrementally that simple.

Chris Madan: It is. And as you said, if you do the basics right, the 80/20 rule always kicks in so you'll get the outcomes you need. It's that next level of incrementality that people keep searching for that I think becomes marginally more difficult to do. But that's where both the time horizon that you're thinking through and the information that you stitch together becomes really, really important in that piece.

Kailey Raymond: Let's talk about that. So stitching together data, you work with multiple channels, you work across many different products, bringing together all of that information into unified profiles. Speaking to me as an individual human, challenging. Step one, maybe a little easy. Individualized campaign based off of something that's not about you. Step two, little bit longer time horizon, little bit more complex as you were stating. What are some of those challenges that you've run into related to building this journey towards customer engagement at Telus?

Chris Madan: It's a really, really interesting question. And I would say that the challenge is you're trying to replicate an analog form into a digital form. And let me tell you a story. If you think about, at least I'll think about my childhood. We'd go to a neighborhood bakery every Sunday and the baker knew my parents. Sometimes I'd go with them and he knew me. And over a period of time, he figured out what were the things we bought all the time. So it was a loaf for bread, sometimes it was pastries. If it was a holiday, occasionally I'll get a freebie. There was weeks and weeks and months and months and years and years of information in that human brain that recognized me, figured out who I am, gave me that empathetic smile, connected with me on a humane level and built a connection. So the challenge I would say with data is to make sure that you leverage it to actually build a connection and it's part of a continuum versus the one offs.

Chris Madan: So I can go with a promotionally relevant or seasonal offer because it's, I don't know, if a new iPhone is launched or it's RRSP season and then it's time for you to save. But how do I recognize who you are? Because you're a combination, especially in the digital world, you're a combination of your devices, right? So we get signals from the type of device that you have. We stitch that together with you and what we know about you, how long you've been a client of ours, what are the products and services that you own, which can go higher, what household are you a part of? If that's the case.

Chris Madan: What are some of the other behavioral patterns that we see? Maybe you travel a bit and we can leverage some of those pieces. So I think the biggest challenge is trying to do the daily tactical stuff, but having the big picture in mind and creating those connected experiences in the moments that matter. Because I think those are the ones. You'll interact with us maybe 100 times and we see a lot of "digital traffic" coming to our storefront. But across those hundreds of experiences or hundreds of visits, there are two, three or four that matter in the year. And making sure that we are there to leverage those and to augment those based on what your needs are is where the holy grail lies.

Kailey Raymond: I really like this. So what are the moments that matter? Is it different for every individual? Walk me through how you think about that.

Chris Madan: It should be, and if you think about ourselves, we're all unique individuals and just state the obvious. So the moment that matters for, let's call it Joe, maybe the time they buy their first new device. And they're unpacking that phone, unpacking that iPad. I took my daughter, she's in grade 12 and we went to buy a new iPad and we went to a physical store. I have seven iPads at home and she wanted to go and touch and feel and figure out her own iPad. So the moment that mattered for her, if you looked at this from a data perspective, it'd be we're a household with so many devices, etcetera. It should be a very mechanical purchase.

Chris Madan: But it wasn't, it was a series and exploratory journeys that took us to different ways. So the moments that matter to us, look at what do we know about you? Where do we see a data point or a behavior that's strong? So I'll give you a couple of examples that bring it to life. We know which clients are out there looking to buy the new iPhone the day it's launched. Because guess what? We set up a registry to allow customers to go in and pre-register for the new iPhone launch. We typically launch that two weeks prior to the second week in September, which is a seminal moment in their life.

Chris Madan: And if you look back over the last two, three, four, five, six years of data, you'll actually know which ones are repeat and you know that those customers are waiting. So for them, getting them that device as soon as possible, acknowledging we got the order, express shipping it to them is a moment that matters. 'Cause we wanna be the first to give them something in their hand. Another example of an experience that we've built is pre-pandemic and now post-pandemic, we've got a fairly good idea of people that travel, roaming kicks in maybe in November, December, gone for a few months. How do we leverage that information to think that maybe they are a snowboard, there's frequency in their travel, offering them a pre-packaged offer versus waiting for them to call out and reach us to maybe pause their services here and set up a roaming package. How do we leverage and create some of those things? So for us, the moments that matter are the ones where we make your life easier. The whole point of humanized digital experiences and Telus' tagline is to make the future friendlier. So how do we make sure that we're there in the times we use the information we have and we create those experiences for you at at those moments and times?

Kailey Raymond: Those are great examples of being able to identify small segments and pockets based off of known behavior and making it just as simple as humanly possible to click a button and say yes. Like no convincing needed. We've already done a lot of the back work that we know these things about you. Yes or no, you know? And I think that's kind of the beauty in that.

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Kailey Raymond: So you've talked about leveraging data in interesting ways already. I wanna get into some additional tactics soon. But I'm wondering if you have a definition around good data. What does that mean to you at Telus?

Chris Madan: I think good data is something that gives us information in increments. It's not this big bang of data. Again, back to the holy grail of one-to-one marketing is to get someone the right message at the right time in the right channel. So any piece of information that helps augment those steps for us is good data. The other aspect of good data which I think is really, really important is what we are using it for and how it's being used.

Chris Madan: You hear the term ethically, you hear the term ethical data at all points in time. So making sure that data doesn't lead to any forms of discrimination, any forms of targeting that is not right or is not relevant for what we need. There's a wonderful example that I read about from a prominent Fortune 500 CEO who talked about the fact that on their website they have an option where you can go and check on life events. And if you click down, it's got all the aspects of the human condition from having a baby, getting married to divorce and separation. So that's an organization that has access to the fact that one of those things is potentially happening to you or in your ecosystem, but just because you have access to that information doesn't mean you need to use it. And for me, those are the elements where we have to be really careful and have to be really responsible on how we use data. Good data is something that makes things relevant and personalized, but is also something that we have to be really smart about.

Kailey Raymond: And I think that's something that you've seen a massive trend towards in the industry as well, kind of going back to that is privacy, trust. You've seen obviously these massive shifts from governments. You've also seen Apple and Facebook coming in with their own solutions to this, and that's impacting the ways that you and I have traditionally marketed to people. But at the end of the day, the consumer demand for making sure that companies are doing right with this deeply personal information, I think makes perfect sense. And it's pushing the boundary for us to think about the ways that we might have traditionally done something in a more perhaps ethical way.

Chris Madan: It is. It's no different than... You think of ESG in so many different forms. It plays out in the same way. I think we're a more informed generation, we are a more humane generation. I'd say we've seen and learned through those cycles of what excess looks like. And I think we are reacting in a very, very humane way to some of these pieces. For me, I think data is just, it's like oil. It's important to what we do. It's a bare essential in what we do, but how we use it and what we use it for and where do we stop using it are important considerations in how we operate.

Kailey Raymond: The only difference between data and oil is the fact that there's finite amounts of oil. And in terms of data, oh dear, the proliferation of data has been unbelievable. Every single year doubles. Or every 18 months, data doubles.

Chris Madan: There's So much noise. As I said, there's just so much digital noise in that data. Beyond a certain point in time, it starts to become overwhelming and meaningless in some ways.

Kailey Raymond: Absolutely. And to your point, I think knowing your use cases, kind of going into understanding why am I even asking this question or how is this gonna benefit some of the campaigns or tactics that I wanna run? Is this ethical? All those things are really great questions to ask before you even start collecting data, because frankly, I think that a lot of companies are probably just sitting on this mountain that they have, quite frankly, no use for. No idea how to use.

Chris Madan: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: And so starting from there, so let's talk about that. We've kind of talked about good data, you've talked about a couple of examples, but wondering if you have some other tactics or programs that you wanted to highlight related to how you're using data for customer engagement.

Chris Madan: There's a number of different pieces here at Telus. We've got a customer first priority, so a lot of it comes from our culture. Talked about a future that's friendly. We've got this program which actually allows us to recycle a lot of devices through the network. So we've got a variety of different channels, we've got a variety of different places. So we start to leverage that information and that data as well. We know customers that are maybe potentially in the process of upgrading, getting a new device, getting a new program, etcetera.

Chris Madan: How do we take that old device and recycle it back into the communities, etcetera. So we run a lot of programs that allow customers to bring it back, bring back the devices, and have them flow through our foundation to the needy. So for me, that's another place where running programs and signals is important. The other piece that, and I'm gonna use a campaign that we don't do, but I think is someone who's doing data right, is Spotify. And I don't know if you saw, they launched a new program called DJ in the middle of February.

Kailey Raymond: No, excuse me. Tell me about this.

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Chris Madan: Spotify has a new program called DJ. It creates these instant mixes of the types of musics and genres that you use. And so it's basically a DJ on demand, depending on your mood, but it's a personalized DJ. My daughter's tried it twice now with us, and it works really well.

Kailey Raymond: They're always innovating around customer data.

Chris Madan: It's another simple way that they've used the information they had based on the behaviors and patterns that they see. And all they've done is actually increase the frequency of a certain campaign that works. So I was sharing this with the team and I said, "We run some of these campaigns more programmatically every quarter or every year, but the way to actually accelerate these is to actually figure out what's the right time to run it for which customer and how they'd use it."

Kailey Raymond: They come up often because they're just like, they found a way for it not to feel creepy and you know they're collecting all this data, they know exactly what you're listening to and sometimes that's embarrassing, let's be honest. But they still make it feel like it's this gift that you wanna unwrap and it's just this beautiful little thing that makes you feel just this moment of delight. Like they get you, they understand who you are. We mentioned Spotify, but are there any other companies that you think are doing it right related to customer experience?

Chris Madan: I'll pick maybe my favorites. I use Spotify as one. Another one that I think does it well, at least for me, is Uber. If you think of where you end up spending time and the brands you go back for. I don't look at it just purely from a campaign perspective. I look at it from a lifestyle perspective, and I'd say Uber gets it right for me. They keep me informed about what's happening from the time that I'm looking for something to the time I've bought something to the time it's showing up. So whether it's Uber Eats or it's my Uber ride, they do it for me really, really well. And I've had the benefit of a fair bit of travel and actually experience them in different geographies and in different countries and the different playbooks that they have.

Chris Madan: And Spain, you've got an Uber bike ride. And in India you can now get an Uber rickshaw. And you go to New York and you can get an Uber jet. So there's just different pieces that play out. But for me it's a curated experience. When you're there, it's quick, it's informative, and they're processing just vast amounts of information to make sure that journey lives life.

Kailey Raymond: They're really doing some really interesting things right now. I've noticed a couple of recent updates to their app. One is, they'll have your journey if you're taking a ride now on a push notification on your screen so you can follow it the whole time without having to open your screen. So like you know exactly how many minutes with your screen being locked. I'm like, that makes perfect sense. You don't need to have your app open the whole time. It's beautiful. And one thing as a marketer that I was like, how do we use this? They are now doing geo tagged ads, you know, within cities for conferences. So if there's a massive trade show coming into a city, you as an advertiser can be on their platform. I was like, I never even thought of that space as being advertising space, but they have a new ads product, which I was like, "Huh." So I wonder if we're sponsoring this conference and a ton of people are flying in, how do we capture those people? It was really interesting. It's like, okay, innovation. Do you have a favorite databased campaign that you've maybe run in your career?

Chris Madan: I have a few that I'm really, really proud of, including one that won gold at the Canadian Marketing Awards four years ago and got a very stale name. It's the Client Lifecycle Management Program. What we did was we completely transformed the first 30-day experience for new clients joining the organization. And it went across a variety of different channels. It curated and created a similar day one experience to the extent we could replicate it in digital, in store, in the call center. But from then on over a 30-day window, it collected a lot of data. A lot of it was trigger based and they were anywhere from seven to 10 outreaches in the first 30 days. But we transformed how we looked at what those days looked like. So instead of a new client buying a new product, it almost being a new client getting a new membership.

Chris Madan: So how do you expose them to the benefits of this membership? How do you expose them to all the features, the rewards, the programs? How do you make sure that the primary product that was bought was actually being used? So created this curated 30-day experience, which ended with a survey and ended with an ongoing feedback loop. And it was the first time we tried it. We tried it at a 30-day scale, which in those days seemed daunting, but I now know has evolved. It's also tailored and run out of what I would say were pretty basic datasets at that point in time. It's a good blueprint I've used and reused over my life.

Kailey Raymond: It's such a critical moment in the customer journey where somebody's finally said yes to you and then what, like making sure that you are being so intentional about what that experience is, is so, so critical.

Chris Madan: Hey, if I may add, it was driven by a lot of analytical insights. It was driven by the fact that if in the first 30 days you don't onboard someone, much higher likelihood to churn. If in the first 30 days you don't actually get a customer using someone, not just the primary product, but also digitally engaged, knowing where the local store is, etcetera, and don't feel as part of that community, much higher likelihood to churn, lower usage of the primary product. So driven by some of those insights and those were the problems we were trying to solve and hit this pivotal way that transformed and we actually went away from a lot of major mass market campaigns to a huge investment in purely targeted time-based, lifecycle-based campaigns and triggers.

Kailey Raymond: Incredibly cool. Yeah, I mean I think bounding it by time. So you found that 30 days was the kind of conversion point, which is leading to ultimately revenue, and then by action. So if you do this particular action or go to this particular location or whatever the thing is for you, you're more likely to upsell, you're more likely to retain whatever the kinda metric you're going after is, that is the goal and making sure that you're segmenting it for each different type of back to personas, the Ozzy Osbournes and Prince Charles's of the world.

Chris Madan: We had like hundreds of different creative and content plays that would play on across those 30 days, depending on the product, the segment, the persona, but also depending on the types of personalization we were trying to do. I was listening to one of your podcasts, you were fascinated by time-based outreach. We did the same thing. We actually said, you know what, we know these people open emails between 7:00 to 9:00 AM, they're probably riding the train to work. That's the right time to send them emails and get some of those opened up as well. So we tried a number of different things and as you said, all these things lead to that incrementality where the sum is larger than its parts.

Kailey Raymond: Totally. It's all these micro decisions that you're making all the time and you have to constantly A/B test. I mean, having hundreds of different assets for what is a 30-day campaign feels like the most daunting task in the world. But at the end of the day, if that's what's actually leading to retention, which as we know, much harder to acquire a customer than to retain one, you're gonna get more money from those customers that are already in your door. Super important place to focus.

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Kailey Raymond: We're going back to trends. We started, we're talking about AI, we're talking about omnichannel and personalization and making sure it's humanized digital. What trends do you see on the horizon in the next six to 12 months related to data, marketing, digital experiences?

Chris Madan: I would say one that we actually showcased quite recently is the coming of age of the Internet of Things and how do you actually have a truly connected home and truly connected experiences through that. We're at the early stage of launching this whole connected ecosystem that plays out across your home. So whether that's your security devices, but it's also managing your light bulbs, managing your doorbells. There's such a proliferation of devices out there from a number of different hardware and software providers that even stitching those together, even if it's your Alexas and your doorbells, how do they start to speak to each other? So, from an IoT perspective or the Internet of Things, how do we start to connect and converge some of these pieces is a little bit more than a trend.

Chris Madan: It's a fair amount of digital friction that exists in households that as they bring in more digitally connected devices into their house, from your TVs to your fridges, to your doorbells, to your security alarm. So a little bit more than a trend, but how do you manage these off common interfaces is something we at Telus showcased at Mobile World Congress about two months ago, and is something we're quite passionate about. It goes, again, goes back to that larger purpose of using technology for good, making the future friendlier and making our lives simpler. We're trying to humanize these experiences in a very, very meaningful world.

Kailey Raymond: That's incredibly cool. IoT is something that just when I think about it too hard, it kind of blows my mind in particular, just thinking about what my fridge knows about me, that kind of thing. Similar to Spotify feeling moments of delight and making a borderline of creepy and making it feel really lovely. I think the fridge is a really key opportunity. [laughter]

Chris Madan: I think the fridge is a key opportunity, but the fridge could also be a key friction point.

Kailey Raymond: Oh, yeah. It's gonna be mad at you.

Chris Madan: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: It's gonna be like, "Why did you buy that again? Because we were trying to be healthy this week. Come on."

[laughter]

Chris Madan: I know. Or, "You need to pick up milk. I said that to you the morning and you still haven't picked it up." [laughter] And then you go beyond the individual household, right? There's work that's going on on connected buildings and what those look like and how that plays out. Back to that digital proliferation that's happening, the connectivity that's happening and how do you know to not overwhelm you, but to augment what you're doing is gonna be really important then. And that's where the winners and losers will be decided.

Kailey Raymond: Very cool. I am super excited to see where y'all land on IoT. It's something that I've been watching for like a decade. I love it. Chris, last question for you today. What steps or recommendations would you have for somebody that's looking to uplevel their customer engagement strategies?

Chris Madan: I think we touched on a number of different ones today, but I would say there's probably three that I'd recommend. Number one is that start with customer. Don't start with data, don't start with technology, don't start with frameworks. Don't start with all these different buzzwords out there. Understand your customers and figure out where you want to go. I think the second one is less is more. There's just so much noise out there, and especially in a post pandemic world where we're just all exhausted as human beings, the last thing you want is to be inundated on those pieces. So less is more. And the third one I would say is probably, for me, the most important is there's explicit preferences that a customer gives you, but there's a lot of implicit preferences or implied preferences that you can observe through data. So a good one that I like to use is on email. If someone hasn't opened your last three emails, email is not probably the channel to inundate them with, so give it a rest and try something different. So use the data to understand the implicit preferences that our clients give us versus the more explicit ones.

Kailey Raymond: I love it. It goes back to the Occam's razor discussion. Simple. Making sure that you are thinking about your customer and also listening to their known behaviors that you can actually see every single day. Chris, thank you so much. This has been lovely. I really appreciate your time.

Chris Madan: Kailey, it's been fantastic. Thank you very much for having me.

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