Hello, everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Wherever you are, whatever your timezone. Welcome. This is Digital Transformation Talk and I am your host, Kevin Craine. Welcome to the show. Today, we'll be discussing the topic of trust at scale and ways of building customer loyalty in an AI-driven market. Look, this is an important topic because customer expectations are changing rapidly as AI makes digital experiences more personal, immediate and predictive. But greater personalization also raises an important question. How does knowing more about our customers automatically create more trust and loyalty? Or can it sometimes have the opposite effect? What has changed and what should we consider when it comes to personalization, customer loyalty and trust? Well, today we'll be exploring three important discussion areas. We'll look first at how the psychology of loyalty has changed in the AI era. Which customer moments carry the most emotional and commercial weight, and what it really takes to have a customer feel valued and connected with our brand. We'll also look at how AI can enhance personalization without eroding trust. How can brands use AI to make experiences more relevant without making customers feel uncomfortable. And finally, we'll look at moving beyond incentive-driven marketing and intentionally building loyalty rooted in emotional connection, something deeper than discounts and points and rewards. So it's gonna be a great session today. We're gonna dive in in just a moment, but first I wanna say thank you to everyone attending today and that includes the folks that are joining us on LinkedIn, hello everyone, and the folks joining us today on Zoom as well. Thank you all for being with us today. Look, during today's discussion, as always, I'd like to hear from you too. So I'd to encourage everyone attending today to participate. Join in with your comments in the chat section and if you have a question along the way, Just jump on in. I will attempt to get some of your comments into the flow of the show. All right, we've got a great panel of guests joining us today and let's bring them on board now. Starting with Charlotte Nicholls. She is RVP of Revenue for SAP. Charlotte, are you with us? I am, hi Kevin, good to see you. Hello, Charlotte! Where are you calling in from today, Charlotte? I'm London, so Wimbledon today. Wonderful. It's great to have you back with us again, Charlotte. Hello. Also joining us today is David Balko, Chief Marketing Officer at Wren Kitchens. David, are you with us? Good afternoon, Kevin, and hello, I am... Hello David, where are you calling in from today? So I'm in leafy, not so sunny anymore, Oxfordshire. Okay, welcome aboard. Well, David, it's great to have you with us. Thank you. And also joining us today is Christopher Peterson. He is Senior Director of Digital Commerce, most recently for KFC in Europe. Christopher, welcome on board. Where are you calling in from today? Good afternoon, how are you? I'm calling in from Geneva, Switzerland. Good to see you all. Wonderful. Well Christopher, David, Charlotte, it is great to have you with us. Thank you so much for being here today. I'd like to start our discussion today by pointing our attention to an article published recently by Reuters, and it talks about how retailers are optimizing their websites for AI-driven shopping. This is as consumers are increasingly using tools like chat, GPT and Gemini, for product recommendations. The reason for this is that AI-referred shoppers tend to spend more and generate higher revenue, but retailers worry that they are losing valuable customer data when purchases occur through AI platforms. Many retailers, therefore, are on one hand seeking AI traffic while keeping transactions and customer relationships on their own sites. I'm wondering what the group thinks about this article and if we should be considering anything important. Charlotte, what do you thought what your thoughts on the article? Yeah, I think you summarized it perfectly. It's about this dilemma, right, that retailers are finding themselves in of wanting to embrace AI as this new route to the customer. But at the same time, that nervousness around your brand image may be becoming a bit more invisible behind that technology. So there's this real conflict that we seem to be in at the moment. Well, that's right. And David, we're talking really getting into this distinction between personalization and trust. The topic naturally invites questions about things like customer data and privacy and transparency. And really the point at which personalization becomes intrusive, what are your thoughts on that balance? Well, exactly as you say, there is a balance. I think I always start with being relevant, and I'm sure we'll talk about this as the show goes on. If it's relevant and if it's appropriate, then often customers absolutely embrace it because there is an underlying knowledge of that customer and what they are looking for. When AI guesses and doesn't quite get you there, Um, Well, and I've seen it recently where certain searches kind of nearly get what you want and you kind of expect more from AI. I think that's when customers get kind of cross with it in that sense. But being relevant, it starts with that. Relevance is key. Christopher, I'm curious about the destination of all of this. It perhaps may be the most valuable opportunity, maybe the moments that create an emotional connection and not simply just another transaction or another targeted offer. Is that where we're headed and what are your thoughts on we should achieve that. Yeah, I think we're definitely headed to figuring out and understanding how AI can end it just being kind of an everyday experience that we're using in our buying and discovery process in general. Back to your question about what the end goal is. I think it's always been the endgoal for us to figure out the best way to get the right product and the relevant product to our consumer and make sure that experience overall makes cohesive sense. And I think back to David's point, one of the kind of key stickier points is really around the data that is being leveraged for ushering this consumer through the journey with the brand and through the product discovery and how do we know and what's the explainability level of what data is being used and is it being used to effectively, as you hear in the medical field, do no harm. So I think that's where there's a real onus on us on. How we can make sure when we're using these LLMs that it's being done in an ethical way to kind of mitigate bias, but also bring real value to the consumer, not just real value to the brands we all work for as well. So I think that end goal is really helping us to be really ethical guardians as well through the process. And I think will engender brand love. And it's all right. And there's lots of statistics on how that plays out in terms of customer data, whether it's AI or whether it own data. So I'm excited to see where we go. It's only day one, really. Well, the article is from Reuters, called Retailers Tap AI Shopping Traffic Fight. Keep customer fight, keep customer data. I don't even know what that's about. It's about customer data, it's about personalization. It's from Reuters. The link to the article, is here in the chat feature. Look, everybody take a look and let us know what you think. Does it resonate with your place of business? What do you think about the article? Is it hitting on important points that we should consider? So, alright. Very good. Well, thank you for that, everyone. I'd like to move us on to our first discussion point for our session today. And that is how the psychology of loyalty has changed in the AI era, which moments carry the most emotional and commercial weight. Customer loyalty has traditionally been associated with things like pricing and convenience, rewards, service. But as AI changes the way that brands interact with customers, the psychology of loyalty is also evolving. Charlotte, how is AI changing the way brands understand the moments that matter most to customers? Yeah, I think it's, like you say, it used to be so much more evident in that repeat purchase. I know this brand, I trust this brand. I'll keep going back to them. So we were looking so much more at repeat purchase as that sign of loyalty and that moment that we could really confirm that the customer was still with us. And now we've got this ease of comparison and it's so much more simple for people to switch and find another organization that will give them that offer. So we need to try and understand the positive side of that. How can we utilize that more emotional loyalty? And I think that the moments that matter, part of your question, it's a little bit of a cop-out. I don't think there is necessarily a key moment in the journey because I do think it's so dependent on where that customer is for themselves. Are they a new customer or are they a lapsed customer who hasn't shopped in a while, in which case your discovery stage is really important, taking them on that journey of your business and your product, or are perhaps in a service moment, have they got a query about their order, have they gotten an issue with their delivery? I think if I have to pick one, I would say that the point of service has become so much more crucial because I think it's an opportunity for us to show customers that we really value them and we take their individual circumstances seriously because it's that point where it's a great time, I'd say, to demonstrate loyalty, but there's also so much risk if you get it wrong. So I think bringing service delivery commerce teams into that conversation is a key moment that we need to think about as well with that weight. Well, Charlotte, how can organizations use customer data and AI to identify those moments without reducing loyalty to another set of metrics? I think you can use it by sharing that knowledge across the whole organization. I think so often we can think about customer experience and customer loyalty as being a marketing-owned topic, but actually if all the different departments of your organization have got that same view of the customer and you're making sure that that real-time data is apparent and accessible to all of the different department, actually using it internally first, I think is a really good way for you to get started. And David, I guess I'll ask you kind of the same question from a marketing perspective. In your experience at Wren Kitchens, which customer interactions do you think carry the greatest emotional and commercial weight? Yeah, it's slightly interesting with kitchens. Annoyingly, loyalty is quite an old thing in kitchens, you tend to only buy three in your lifetime. So once you've bought one, I often don't see you again for many decades in some cases. But I'll talk about it in the context. Again, I started by talking about being relevant. I think using data in a very common sense way is a good starting point. I think there's an opportunity for a business called Voice of Reason, and actually a good example is I did some work many years ago with, or a few years ago, with a very well known sneaker brand. And really started with, when you talk to me, don't send me a shoe that isn't available in my size. Don't show me what I could have won! No, that I've bought loads of shoes from you and they're all size 9. You can use technology to show me the products that you have available that are size 9's. Don't tell me to say, when I click on it and you say, I haven't got a size 9, that's quite disappointing. So again, showing people what they want and what they're likely to buy and using data to inform that is quite useful. At Wren, we use it in the buying process where, you know, customers will come in, it's quite a long process to buy a kitchen, it is quite an in-depth process. And sometimes people go backwards and forwards quite a few times, but often customers know, for example, what color they're buying. So we then use that knowledge to follow those customers around in social media, in the kind of product, in the world that they're inhabiting during that buying process. You know customers said they quite like a blue kitchen. Don't show them a green one, right? It's really basic stuff like this and I get Christopher touched on this we are in hour one of AI, right? We're not even out of the we're no even out the blocks yet, and yet we're trying to ask it to do so many things. You know, if you think about the car, we are a hundred years into the car. We finally got around to using electricity, you know, it takes a while for this to happen. I think we're asking so much of this, but just get the basics right, and it will have transformative effects on your marketing. Don't show me shoes that are the wrong size, don't show me a blue kitchen, right, so, all right, so you would expect with AI that that wouldn't happen or would happen less, and so my expectation as a customer has changed, and from your perspective, David, how do customer expectations change when AI is involved and brands are capable of responding much more quickly, much more personally, much more accurately. Yeah. I mean, I think, again, Charlotte touched on it, actually, it's about getting all of your internal systems talking to each other in a much better way. You know, customers get cross when they have to go over things again and again, when they, you know, and I actually start from a position of actually, no one's loyal, no one cares. No one's really loyal in this world, you know, particularly with trainers. I'll buy another brand. I don't care. You know, I'm not bothered. But actually if you create good experiences and good knowledge of me, I'm so much more likely to come back to you. And so I start with joining those cut those processes up so that when customers do come back to us, particularly in the case of Wren where they might come back five, 10, 15 years later, just know them, use that information really well. And follow up with them, give them a good experience during that long buying process, the installation process and all those kind of moments that matter. And they come back, they remember you. Occasionally things go wrong, you're remembered for how you fix them, not for the things that go wrong. If you do a good job. Now Christopher, across the different brands that you've worked with, how have you seen the psychology of loyalty evolve and what do you feel separates customer interaction that is simply an interaction convenience from one that actually creates a connection? Yeah, I think back to the point that Charlotte had alluded to and David also spoke to it as well. I think when we've been speaking about driving qualitative loyalty, we always kind of think of how can we go the extra mile and do something existentially great in terms of surprising and delighting. And we may miss the mark in terms of really stepping into the spaces where, doing well doesn't really get you a gold star. I mean, because that's expectation, but doing poorly can do you very detrimental harm. And so I think back to trying to understand the emotions behind where we're sensitive to driving loyalty, you can kind of take a step back and yourself into the shoes of if we were going through any of the purchasing process and discovery processes, where could you go wrong and where would you be frustrated from something going wrong? And that can be your starting point. Now back to that end, one of the things that I have found that's been quite impactful in terms of driving performance and loyalty is focusing on those areas where it's the small tweaks that you can really change, change and drive loyalty. So for example, when we're launching A/B testing within KFC, within the restaurants, we found that our UX tweaks were really driving order satisfaction. So we weren't doing broad bells and whistles in terms of content enhancements, but we just made the experience quite smooth. And that experience not only gave us the lift in order satisfaction, but also an average order value. And that also speaks to kind of the community at large and what we need to do to drive loyalty. And back to Charlotte's point, launching A/B testing within the restaurant actually didn't just take the digital team, but it took the operations team and the IT team. So when we're thinking about loyalty in general, we need to be pragmatic about the fact that it's not just a marketing discipline. It's actually holistic because the output of what happens when you touch delivery as an example, doesn't sit with market, it sits with the supply chain logistics. And so we just need to be conscious of that as we go forward on sensitivity to emotional moments. But we can back into them, I think quite well. Back to David's point about following and understanding our consumers' experience, we can kind of put ourselves in that and then flow AI on top. Well, Christopher, your discussion about A/B testing and measurement makes me wonder about measurement today. I believe that if you can't measure it, you can manage it, but it's difficult to measure loyalty. How are brands measuring loyalty today and are they measuring too narrowly? It's, I mean, for me, it's a great question. I don't have the nut cracked per se, because to your point, there's maybe two kinds of, or maybe more, but two dimensions of loyalty. There's one you can kind of see from a behavioral perspective. So as Charlotte said, you know, are we getting repeat? Are we having retention there? You know, does our lifetime value grow? And then there are the questions around the attitudinal aspect of loyalty as well. Do we really generate brand love and do we formally like know how that manifests versus you know engagement on social, the repeat relationship. So I think the first step back to your point is maybe having clear measurements across these different criterias of behavioral versus attitudinal to start and then beginning to work through understanding the relationships and the levers across them and they impact them. How they impact consumers remaining within our brand ecosystem year after year after year. It's not easy, but I think back to your point, the first foundation is understanding it's a bit broader than just what we see in our transactions and then beginning to lay out those particular measurements and using them qualitatively and directionally first and then building on sophistication over time. Potentially with AI and their LLM and advanced analytic capabilities to be able to do that faster. All right, I do wanna move on to our next discussion point, but we have a comment and a question coming in from Jennifer. Jennifer, thank you for your contribution this morning or today. Jennifer says this, if every brand has access to the same AI capabilities, where does competitive advantage actually come from? I'll put it out to the group. Does anyone have any feedback for Jennifer? Yeah, I think it's a good question. Actually, having AI is just a tool. I think how we all use it will vary. Yes, two businesses may have the same AI capability, the same underlying LLM, might use the same product and service, but they're going to apply it very differently. And actually, that's the great thing with AI. It can be so customizable. I still genuinely think it's just a tool. You know, I'm old enough to remember in my early days in ad agencies people walking around with kind of you know artwork under their arm and then along came the Macintosh and it was going to change everything it's just a tool, relax. It's how we as humans work with that tool and implement it just like we did with a Mac that then will create the magic that happens and actually working in harmony means as Christopher was just saying can do it faster, you can get there quicker, you can get all kinds of multivariate testing all running in a way that was much harder when we were kind of hand cranking it, you know. So I think the truth will be the human aspect of it will create the magic, even if we're using the same tools, you know, it's no different if you're a woodworker. If I was sat next to a master craftsman using the same tools the output would be very different because I don't know what I'm doing with them. Human aspect, well we hear a lot about that. Charlotte, can AI actually strengthen an emotional connection or is that something that ultimately has to come from people? Yeah, I think there's ultimately still this human connection element. There's still your brand voice, your brand image, how you're applying it, what you're offering, how your engaging with your customers. So yes, I there is so much deeper that we can go when we're thinking about. And I think that's what customers want. They still want to feel like a human and an individual customer who is interacting with your business. So we've got to keep that at the forefront of that conversation. All right, very good. Very good, all right. Well, let's move on to our next discussion point. We are having some comments come in. Oh, here we go. Before we move on, Alex has this to say. Thank you, Alex. Alex is asking, you've spoken a lot about brand loyalty, but what happens to brand loyalty when people start using AI agents to choose and design products for them? Do we end up having to build loyalty with the customer's AI rather than the customer? Anyone have any thoughts for Alex? I mean, I think there is a certain sort of madness here. You end up, you know, the machines talking to each other and we're just on the outside of it receiving what they give us. I genuinely still think consumers, I think customers and consumers can smell a rat, right? I think, you now, they know, and I think it's getting harder and harder to know when something is being pushed upon you using kind of search engines that have got AI and knowing when it's sponsored and knowing when it s kind of made up and so on. But I think consumers are quite good at sniffing out those kind of those moments. It will get harder, but I think brands have a responsibility to be legal, honest, decent and truthful, which is the sort of advertising principles in the UK. And if you live by those rules and you stand by them and build good products and talk to your customers, then I think good wins every time and using AI to to enhance that journey can only stand you above the kind of madness that goes on underneath. I'm not saying it's going to be the madness will still be there and I think that's the challenge that good brands have to step above. This is Digital Transformation Talk. I am Kevin Craine and I'm here today with Charlotte Nicholls, David Balko and Christopher Peterson. We're here talking about personalization and marketing and we've talked about the moments that create loyalty but as brands become better at using data to understand these moments, there is another challenge, making personalization feel helpful and relevant rather than intrusive. And Christopher, I'd like to move to you. Can personalization actually undermine a premium or distinctive brand experience if it becomes too automated? I think it can, to be quite frank, and we've seen lots of experiences out there where it's become and moved into kind of the sci-fi realm in a very scary, scary way. I mean, David alluded to the fact that the objective with personalization and the use of data whether it's AI-driven or other sourced stuff, is to make sure that the data is being used, that it's used responsibly, and that it is also used in a helpful way that doesn't kind of over-index on bringing value to the brand versus to the consumer. And I read a statistic not too long ago from Accenture that said that there was about 27% of people that found personalization invasive, but 65-64% of those cases was really around data being used that was never given to the brands to use. And so, you know, as David said, smelling a rat, it's a question on being able to understand how that data is being used to bring value to the consumer, but also then understanding and making sure and developing and using AI. You have a level of explainability to be able to articulate that back to the consumer or anyone within your organization on how data from the LLM or from your organization is being used to drive personalization. So I think in that respect, it's more around if you understand how and where you're using the data to bring the customer along with you, as mentioned in the first question. There is a you build an implicit safety for everyone to know and and trust that you're doing well for with the data that's being being given. Well, it's all about that trust. How can brands make AI-driven personalization feel transparent and trustworthy to customers, Christopher? Yeah, so the first way to make it feel transparent to consumers is the kind of obvious spaces where you're making it clear where AI is existing and the experience in a more forthright way. So when you're thinking about search, if you're using it, just being very open and the context of the information you're sharing and that functional area that AI is being used. And that you also, secondarily, in instances that are possible, such as customer service, you create a lever for the consumer to move to a human where possible, if need be. So I think that level of that transparency builds trust more than anything else. The second area where I think you can build that trust lever is actually around not over-indexing in the use of personalization just for the bells and whistles. So in some instances, back to David's point, there was a big miss on being able to give a relevant size shoe to the consumer and that's data that's not even AI held. So the question is first, making sure that you're using the data in a way that's thoughtful and a moment that makes rational sense. Not in a moment where you're just trying to be really cool and be newsworthy and so making sure you're really injecting that data and personalization to a relevant moment is actually the most most. Trustworthy building activity you can do. And Charlotte, where do you see AI adding the most value to personalization without compromising that customer trust? Yeah, I completely agree with everything that Christopher said to start with. I think customers aren't, customers are okay with AI being part of the process and that sort of expecting brands to be using it, but they don't just want you to sort of hold up a mirror and be like, here's all the information that we have on you and we want you to know that we are personalized experience because we know this stuff about you. They want you be using the data that to Christopher's point, they have chosen to share with you to make that experience genuinely better for them. So how can you use intent, preferences, behaviors to make that journey more relevant in that particular moment? And I think it's maybe a very similar example to what David said, but a really good example at Molton Brown of how they used this to target the right customers is they were launching a new refillable product, product line. And so they did some research into understanding who in their customer base had a genuine interest in sustainability, who had visited their brand ethos page, who had been browsing around ingredients that were environmentally friendly. And they used that to target the customers to talk about, we believe this is a topic that really matters to you as an individual, and we'd like to show you about these refillable products, not saying, we know that you like vanilla candles and this refilled product comes in vanilla scent, you know, they're trying to understand that emotional connection with a person to understand them as an individual. And they saw great results from that. There's a 22% increase in that average order value, because they're trying to understanding what does the customer care about, rather than just showing that they know data points about a customer. Yeah, it's a thoughtful approach. I mean, it makes sense, but can easily be overlooked. So would you recommend that that be a strategy, an overt strategy to really be ardent in looking at those opportunities for emotional connection, rather than just tactical interactions? Yeah, I think sitting down and understanding what is our brand ethos? What does our brand stand for? Why does a person interact with our business? Is it because we're trustworthy, reliable, deliverability, you know, in maybe David's industry, we are there at each of those checkpoints that he talked about installation, we're there, we are reliable as a partner. Is it because of the materials that we use and because we are a sustainable business and then using that to have that with your customer because it's something that you know that your brand can deliver on, I think that's how you try and match those two up. Hmm Yeah, David, I want to ask about this idea of transparency and the role transparency plays. And I guess maybe what I'm driving at is actually leaning in to, it seems to me today that there can be a hesitancy to disclose that AI is involved at all. There's a backlash about the use of AI and data centers here, especially in the United States. But in a way, customers, as I think Charlotte mentioned, expect AI to be involved now. And in fact, really almost maybe prefer it. Should brands be leaning into this whole idea of, hey, AI is involved here, but guess what? We're very transparent about this, very trustworthy, in the fact that we know that you know, and we're happy to be working in this new era now. What do you think about that? I think that it is... I think I've got two views on it. When the accountants get involved and they go, yeah, let's use some AI because we can cut corners and make more margin, I kind of start throwing things at people. I get really angry about it. And actually, consumers know it. A great example, you hear lovely insurance companies, for example, say, oh, you know, we always care about you and when you need to make a claim, it's all going to be smooth and everything. Cut to when you actually need to make a time, you know, in an AI, you're cool is important to us, but you're on hold for 20 minutes and you go, hang on. The story here isn't matching up to the reality there. And that's when AI to me is bad. You know, you are using AI to make an already quite complicated process a little bit easier, but worse for the customer. When you do overtly say, look, you know, I mean, I think Charlotte's example was perfect. You know, we've learned from behaviors of existing customers. We've aggregated and brought all that information together and then we're using that to have a meaningful conversation with our customer base about a new product. It's genius. That's good use of AI. It's really smart. And I think... You don't need to be then, you don't have to sort of reveal, take the mask off and go, ah, it's AI. You don't need to do that. Because if it's done with relevance and with understanding and good creativity and good comms, it won't feel like AI. It will feel like the right thing to do. And actually, along the way, you'll have those conversations. We use AI an awful lot to generate imagery for our customers, you know, kitchens look better when they're in imagery. We don't lie about it, we don't say look oh yeah we went and built this model, we just say look it's an AI image, it's one of those things you know and consumers expect that so there's a moment I think when you start to use it nefariously or in a way that you know the customers know your cutting corners particularly in that journey that we're talking about. Yeah, you know, I swear I kind of look at the accountants and go get out stop just count the beans. Just go away. Don't get involved in growing the beans or bringing the beans in just stop it. And I think that makes a big difference. Be honest. All right, we have another question coming in from our audience I'd like to put out to the group. This one coming from Allison, and Allison, thank you. Allison says this, really great points. Thank you, Allison. Where have you seen companies get AI-driven personalization wrong, not technically, but from a customer trust point of view? Can anyone give us an example for Allison? I think one that comes to mind actually kind of perfectly with what David was talking about of the AI imagery around kitchens, that's great because you have exactly what your kitchens look like and you can put them into a space that you know that they would fit in and that therefore is a transparently perfectly great use case for AI. I was in a meeting where people are talking about clothing and AI generated images of and then I'm like, well. Then we're kind of stepping into a question mark of well does that dress actually look like that on that person and does it fit like that, on that human person body and having all of these conversations but then we need to get a little bit more, that transparency starts to go. So I think it's about using those use cases in industries where it absolutely makes sense. And then there's examples where it does kind of cross that ethical question mark line that I think Christopher was talking about earlier, where we need to be realistic about how we are portraying the products within the organization. So I think that's maybe one where I was like, oh, I think we're crossing that, that ethical line into a little bit of a gray area. All right, we are here today with Charlotte Nicholls from SAP, David Balko from Wren Kitchens, and Christopher Peterson. We're talking about, well, we're talking about moving beyond incentive marketing and intentionally building loyalty programs rooted in emotional connection. I'd like to explore this a little bit more beyond the points, beyond the discounts, beyond the rewards and promotions. How can we deliberately mine these emotional reasons customers choose to return to our brands? Charlotte, how can we do that? How can we use AI to strengthen an emotional connection rather than just simply optimize our incentives? I think we've talked about, I think it's about showing up in those moments that matter, that we referenced earlier. So when you, particularly around service, it's something that we talked about a lot. I don't necessarily think that discounts or incentives are completely gone. I think they still have their place. I think its about not confusing incentivised loyalty with true genuine loyalty and understanding where it comes in in that place. So it's it's that broader value exchange. So as long as we've got that communication across the whole enterprise, and we're all delivering on that wider customer experience, that's where we need to focus. But I don't think we need say incentive authority is gone, because people do still switch for a better deal, and they do still look at commercial factors as part of a buying decision. But it's those moments that remain with a customer long after they've purchased with you, when they've acted on different touch points that will allow them to keep you top of mind. I want to ask Charlotte again about that whole measurement aspect of it. How should organizations measure loyalty when the goal is an enduring relationship rather than just another transaction? I think there's different, we've come into more behavioral tracking as well, right? So I think Christopher mentioned it, how are they engaging with your brand on social media? How are they continuing to come back and review products or set up subscriptions or different things that they could be doing? And if you're an industry like David's industry, are they referring you to their different family members? You know, they might not buy a kitchen for another 10 years, but when their friends come around and they go, oh, I loved you cupboards and I love your fridge and all these different questions you can try to work in kitchens. That is another way of demonstrating loyalty, it's through that referral, we have that concept of inherited loyalty, where we trust a brand because mum always had that brand growing up and therefore that's the brand of shopping powder I always buy. So there's different avenues that we can go through and I think that extended customer lifetime value through referrals is also really important. So, David, can emotional loyalty actually be measured? Yes, I think so. I think it very much can. Again, Charlotte touched on it. It's how you recommend a brand. It is how you talk about it. I am slightly skeptical in certain areas. You know, liking a brand on Instagram, you know. Don't overthink it. It doesn't mean I'm going to be loyal forever. I'm not going to, you know, we don't want to get married. You know, it's relaxed just to brand, you know, I, I think again, brand, we often get kind of caught up in our own kind of, you know self-importance about brands. No one's listening, no one cares is my starting point. You know? I kind of think In the great scheme of the things we really care about, our loved ones, our family, health, education, welfare, they're the important things in life. People don't care about Nike trainers in a really meaningful way. They just like them. So when they come and like you on your site, A, don't get all over them. I find out if my daughter's gone back to school, I need to buy her a new pair of shoes. When she went back to the school, the amount of websites I went onto that said, sign up, we'll give you a discount. I'm like, I'm on the homepage. Just calm down, relax, you know, just back off. Let me have a look, let me look around. The discount is gonna convince me to immediately buy if it's not right. I think brands have to kind of relax a bit, build, understand that there's a relationship. Whether it's a pair of shoes, KFC, a kitchen, all of those things, they all sit in consumer's minds in different levels and moments. And understanding those moments makes it much better. When you get that right, the emotional connection is so good because you then talk about it to your friends. When you've get those moments right, you say, oh, that really stood out because actually the bar is very low. It's really easy to get it wrong and be boring. When you'd get it right, it's really simple to shine. Now Christopher, as we've been talking today, it occurs to me, we often hear about keep a human in the loop with AI and that's great, but really what we're talking about here is that it takes human creativity and thoughtfulness to still be successful in all of this. So from your point of view, where does human creativity remain essential as AI takes on more and more of the marketing process? Yeah, I mean, back to Charlotte's point around human in the loop from a service point of view and just a general question when we kind of took a step back and also echoing David's point around maybe not over-complicating what effectively we're doing and bringing the magic of our experience to the outcomes that we're looking at using AI is going to be important. So effectively. Where we still have an opportunity to actually bring our level of creativity actually sits in our experience within the brand and the function we're in to be able to figure out and design an outcome that makes sense for what the brand can deliver. And also make sense for what the consumer can receive, because those are all bespoke pieces of knowledge that's made and comes from an individual group thinking about what could come next and what could be best suited. So there's lots of space for human in the loop and general creativity. I mean, human in a loop and creativity using AI are two separate things. When you're actually thinking about how AI can be an enabler to driving what you're doing versus having AI do the work for you and the context of the creative thinking to get to the end goal. That's more of a philosophical way to phrase it. But I mean, I think that the question is not when thinking about AI and delivering something new, it's not around, you know, can AI just create it? It's kind of, can AI be a thought partner in helping me to get to a better goal and to think about the white spaces that I don't have the capacity to from a knowledge point of view or from a resource point of view because all my team members aren't accessible, they're kind of brainstormed through where to go next. So I think keeping that in mind as AI being a tool, still leaves that capacity for creativity versus it being the deliverer of everything you want to do. Christopher, Charlotte, David, it has been great speaking with you today. Where has our time gone? We have reached the action item round of the program. I'm wondering if each of you could please provide us with one quick action item that our viewers can use to take advantage of your ideas and advice. Christopher, do you have an action item for us? Yeah, I mean, maybe it's an action item slash word of advice more than anything. So one, I want to first, before we go, thank everyone for this really great and engaging conversation. But I mean it's the action item for me kind of sits back to the very essence of what we should be thinking about when we go out day to day with something so Herculean, which is AI. And that's kind of the keep it simple, stupid principle. I mean, like you don't have to reinvent the world with this capability, being out there, testing, thinking about use cases, failing fast is the only way you're gonna really see how you can bring this tool to bear in a personalization context. And in doing that process as well, you'll discover some of the nuances where trust can be eroded using AI, particularly when it comes to the data and the types of biases it can give you, the types hallucinations you can potentially fall subject to. So keep it simple when going through this journey with AI in particular. That is Christopher Peterson. Christopher, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. David, do you have an action item for us? Yeah, for me, it echoes what Christopher said about being simple, but being relevant, you know, I think really get inside the minds of your customers, you understand what they're really thinking about and how your brand sits in their lives and where it really does make an impact, and be relevant to them. Use the information and the data that we hold about them in a meaningful, responsible, creative and interesting way. And that will be much more relevant, engaging to yours and our customers. And by doing that, it means that they will have better longer term engagements with us. And again, to Christopher's point, you know, don't overthink it, be sensible. If I was on the receiving end of this, how would I feel? You know, so and if it's complicated and convoluted, then it will be for your customers. That is David Balko, Chief Marketing Officer at Wren Kitchens. David, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. And Charlotte, do you have an action item for us? Yes, I'm laughing slightly because I think we've all been very aligned in our thinking because mine were don't overcomplicate it and start with relevance, not scale. And they've both already been said. But I think, no, that really is where you need to start. Pick one moment, pick a customer moment and don't think about how can I send more communications around this or how can scale, how can increase the output that we're doing. And instead think, how can I make this part of the experience genuinely easier, more useful, more valuable to my customer? And if you can do that with the right data, that right context, you can then start to do what we've been talking about and build trust with AI rather than maybe causing more risk in your organization. That is Charlotte Nicholls with SAP. Charlotte, thank you so much for being with us. Charlotte and David and Christopher, it has been a great session today. What a great panel. Your perspectives and advice are spot on. So thank you, so much. And I hope that we get a chance to talk again soon. And to everyone joining us today, thank you too, it's been great having you with us, thank you for your contributions. And you can join me again next time for our sister show, AI Talk on September 29th. I'll have a great of panel of guests discussing how AI exposed retail's biggest content problem, that should be another great discussion, so join us then. In the meantime, if you'd like to find me, you can do so. I'm on LinkedIn and I'm happy to connect there. Check me out. I am Kevin Craine. And you can check out my weekly audio podcast, the Digital Transformation Podcast. But for now, that will do it for this episode of the Digital transformation talk. And until next time, I am, Kevin Craine, saying thanks for watching.