Swimming With Sharks: Enterprise GenAI Unplugged

In this insightful episode of Swimming with Sharks, Kevin Dean, CEO of ManoByte, sits down with Amelia Jones, Principal Customer Success Manager at Mural, to discuss the role of AI in enterprise environments and how visual collaboration can enhance business processes. Amelia shares her experiences from Mural, highlighting the impact of human-centered design and agile methodologies in fostering better decision-making and collaboration.

Introduction: Kevin introduces Amelia, who brings nearly a decade of experience in customer success and a passion for human-centered design. They dive into Mural’s visual collaboration platform and how it reshapes traditional workflows.

Interview Highlights:

• Visual Collaboration for Better Decision-Making: Amelia explains how Mural transforms linear tasks, like spreadsheets and to-do lists, into more engaging and collaborative visual experiences. She emphasizes how visual tools can foster better communication and alignment, especially when mapping out workflows.
• AI in the Enterprise: The conversation explores how AI can assist in ideation and decision-making processes, with Amelia stressing that AI should enhance human creativity, not replace it. She discusses real-world use cases where Mural helps enterprises document, plan, and evaluate AI initiatives.
• Human-Centered Design & Agile in AI Projects: Amelia shares her expertise on how organizations can leverage human-centered design and agile workflows to better implement and scale AI initiatives. She discusses techniques like abstraction laddering and the five whys, which Mural facilitates to help businesses identify and solve the right problems.

Key Takeaways:

• AI as a Collaborative Tool: AI should act as a collaborator, assistant, and coach, helping teams to innovate while keeping creativity and problem-solving at the forefront.
• Documenting AI Processes: Mural plays a vital role in helping organizations document and map out their AI processes, ensuring that initiatives are well-planned and stakeholder engagement is prioritized.
• Balancing AI Excitement with Practicality: While AI can be a powerful tool, Amelia advises businesses to be deliberate in its implementation, ensuring that it adds tangible value to workflows.

In this insightful episode, Kevin Dean welcomes Anne McDonnell-Aisiku, Principal Customer Success Manager at HubSpot. Anne shares her unique journey from global education to customer success, offering valuable perspectives on how her background shapes her approach to delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Episode Summary:

Introduction: Kevin Dean introduces the podcast and welcomes Anne McDonnell-Aisiku, highlighting her extensive experience in customer success and her journey from the education sector to HubSpot.

Interview Highlights:

• Anne’s Background: Anne discusses her transition from global education to customer success, emphasizing the parallels between supporting students and managing customer relationships.
• Challenges in Customer Success: Anne outlines the current challenges in the customer success space, including economic headwinds, the need for faster results, and longer sales cycles.
• Balancing High Expectations and Limited Resources: Anne shares her strategies for managing customer expectations while dealing with limited resources, emphasizing the importance of empathetic communication and setting clear expectations.
• Communicating Difficult News: Anne discusses her approach to delivering bad news, stressing the importance of empathy, honesty, and offering alternative solutions.
• Technology and AI in Customer Success: Anne explores how technology and AI are transforming customer success, providing tools that offer deeper insights and enable more effective customer interactions.
• Generative AI Impact: Anne shares her initial hesitations about AI and how she now sees its potential to enhance customer success workflows by freeing up mental space for more strategic tasks.

Key Takeaways:

1. Empathetic Communication: Always lead with empathy and honesty when communicating with customers, especially when delivering bad news.
2. Leveraging Technology: Utilize technology and AI to gain deeper insights into customer behavior and needs, allowing for more meaningful and proactive interactions.
3. Continuous Learning: Stay nimble and continuously update skills and knowledge to keep up with the rapidly evolving customer success landscape.
4. Customer-Centric Approach: Understand and prioritize customers’ goals and KPIs to align efforts and deliver value effectively.

In this adventure, we are joined by Doug Brown, CEO - Business Success Factors.

Video Summary:

• Introduction.
• Interview: Doug Brown, CEO - Business Success Factors.
• Question of the Day: Name the #1 Webinar you attended in 2020 that delivered the most value. What was the topic?
  Who was the presenter?
  What made it so valuable?

Video Takeaways:

A few key takeaways from this episode:

• People who intentionally work on themselves also see growth in their business.
• Average performers can succeed when working within an excellent process.
• Resolving objections is always better than overcoming objections.
• Ask "questions that care" to further discover needs in a sales context.
• Getting truthful is the first step.

For a copy of Doug's book "Win-Win Selling" go to: https://www.winwinsellingbook.com/

In this adventure, we are joined by Krystina Gillenwater - Director of New Business for Digitopia.

Video Summary:

• Introduction.
• Interview: Krystina Gillenwater - Director of New Business, Digitopia.
• Question of the Day: If you are using HubSpot Snippets - what is your best snippet?

Video Takeaways:

A few key takeaways from this episode:

• RevOps is more than a "flavor-of-the-week" industry buzzword.
• RevOps is a business practice that aims to align an organization's revenue engine.
• Sales leaders are problem solvers, not pushy influencers.
• Teaching your customer service people sales techniques can open up more opportunities for your business - it worked at Digitopia.
• Running after every opportunity by trying to be "all-things-to-everyone" is counterproductive.
• Get really good at a few things - they you will be known for it.
• Smarketing Meetings are good - RevOp meeting with your Marketing, Sales AND Service leaders are even better.

In this insightful episode, Kevin Dean explores the transformative power of generative AI in customer experience. Drawing on his extensive experience at ManoByte, Kevin delves into the four key pillars that can elevate customer satisfaction and drive business success: educate, engage, entertain, and inspire.
Episode Summary:

Introduction: Kevin Dean introduces the podcast, "Swimming with Sharks," and sets the stage for a deep dive into the dynamic world of customer operations. He outlines the importance of understanding and implementing the four pillars of customer experience to stay ahead in a competitive market.

Key Pillars of Customer Experience:

Educate: Kevin discusses how educating customers builds trust and credibility. He highlights the role of generative AI in creating personalized learning paths and delivering relevant information. Examples include HubSpot's tailored educational content and IBM Watson's personalized medical education.

Engage: Kevin emphasizes the importance of creating meaningful interactions to build lasting relationships. He shares how AI-powered CRM tools like HubSpot and Salesforce's Einstein predict customer behavior and personalize communication, enhancing engagement and driving revenue.

Entertain: Adding an emotional layer to the customer experience makes it more memorable and engaging. Kevin explains how generative AI, augmented reality, and virtual reality can create immersive experiences that captivate customers and solve their problems creatively.

Inspire: Inspirational content fosters customer loyalty and advocacy. Kevin discusses using AI to create personalized, inspirational content that resonates with customers' interests and aspirations. He shares practical examples of leveraging AI for testimonials, success stories, and case studies.

Integration for Seamless Experience: Kevin underscores the need for delivering integrated, value-based experiences through an omni-channel strategy and data-driven decisions. He stresses the importance of leveraging generative AI to ensure customers interact with the company in the right way at the right time.

Key Takeaways:

• Educate: Build trust with personalized learning paths using generative AI.
• Engage: Foster lasting relationships with AI-powered CRM tools for personalized communication.
• Entertain: Create memorable experiences with augmented and virtual reality.
• Inspire: Drive loyalty with AI-generated, personalized inspirational content.
• Integrate: Ensure seamless, value-based customer experiences through omni-channel strategies and data-driven decisions.