← Owning the Outcome
Owning the Outcome
Designing for a Generative Future: AI, Intelligent Interfaces, and Enterprise CX
00:20:28
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- [00:00]
Eve Sangenito
I think there's a lot to come, but some of the immediate things, you know, AI, augmented human experiences, generative interfaces where multimodal interfaces that are prompted by voice and create dynamic content based on triggers is another area. Personalization is an area that's been a challenge, you know, for years for many companies. Sort of a broad scale, real time personalization that I think is going to help be solved a lot through AI and we've done a lot of experimenting in that area.
- [00:28]
Sarah McDevitt
One of HubSpot's newest partners, proficient, is a global digital consumer consultancy with over 7,000 employees across more than 40 offices worldwide, delivering AI first solutions to leading brands in healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and more. A few years ago, a partner this size might have shied away from HubSpot simply because product market fit for upmarket and enterprise customers. Today, that conversation has flipped. That's just one of the reasons why I'm so excited to talk to today's guest, Ian Eve Sangenito. A principal at Proficient, Eve is at the forefront of integrating AI into enterprise solutions, helping clients navigate this evolving digital landscape. I'm Sarah McDevitt and this is owning the outcome. Eve, welcome to the show.
- [01:22]
Eve Sangenito
Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
- [01:25]
Sarah McDevitt
Perficient is new to HubSpot's ecosystem. Can you give our listeners a quick overview of the business?
- [01:31]
Eve Sangenito
Sure. I think you said it well and in your overview, but we're a global digital consultancy. So being global, we have a combination of strategists and technologists that are in regions like the us, Latin America, India, Europe and as you're, as you made the point, you made that we're AI first in our strategy and approach our business. We organize into what we call pillars and we have a number of pillars. Strategy and transformation, customer experience and digital marketing, innovation and product development, platforms and technology, data and intelligence, and they're all supported with global delivery. So those are our focus areas with helping our clients in all of those areas and we do that across multiple industries and what we call business functions. Healthcare, financial services, automotive, energy, retail, many others. As you mentioned, I'm a principal and I focus on customer experience and digital marketing within that realm and I live in the Boston area.
- [02:25]
Sarah McDevitt
I'd love to get into your role and how you're leading. At Proficient, as a principal focused on service delivery, customer experience and digital marketing, you have a pretty huge scope, including SEO, paid media, data and analytics, customer research and content. Most of those areas are being heavily disrupted by AI right now. What at the moment, you know, is driving new outcomes for customers in this kind of platform driven services.
- [02:55]
Eve Sangenito
Yeah. And I do have a large scope, but I'm supported by big teams in terms of that. And really before I dive into that, I've been in the marketing space for over 25 years and I started on the creative side and moved into the business side over time. And we've seen a lot of shifts in digital and in the space in that time. Right back in the dot com boom era and then when social media came along and then, you know, consumerization of things like Amazon and Uber came along. And in that time I started in corporate marketing and then I moved over about 10 years ago to consulting. So I feel like we see these shifts, right. And now we're seeing the latest elements of it. I would say I don't see a lot of the goals changing. Right. I think a lot of that stays the same. We still have to be helping our clients and even for our own business understand, you know, what our strategy for approaching the current landscape and how it's shifting. Are we capitalizing on the right channels? Are we enabling the right technologies? And always, you know, being focused on outcomes. Right. As marketers, we have to be focused on outcomes. ROI ROAS LEAD generation CUSTOMER SATISFACTION so that part seems like, you know, it's more just that we make it more targeted about that and refined over time. But in terms of what I think the biggest shifts I'm seeing and where we are today and in an area that we're happy to play in with our clients, is to help them imagine the possibilities of AI and how it can change the way that they go to market and also the solutions they deliver for their clients. But coupled with how they can do that responsibly, I think that's an area right now that a lot of organizations are trying to figure out. What's that? What's that landscape of how do I use this effectively but make sure that I'm being more effective and being responsible to compliance, data privacy considerations, things like that. One example, I actually have a couple of examples. But you know, one example of that sort of bridging that gap is we've had worked with some organizations that have dove right in and maybe did so without thinking through all of the potential risks that could come about or the implications. One example was they dove right in. They generated a bunch of content using tools that they published on their site and it wasn't great content and it didn't have the right oversight and the right strategic approach and that impacted their performance on their website. And they had to come to us to work with them to figure out how to unravel that and redo it the right way, leveraging some of the same efficiencies, but with the right guardrails in place. So that's one example.
- [05:20]
Sarah McDevitt
I mean, I think the example you gave there and the importance of human oversight when it comes to the use of AI is incredibly important when it comes to the client side of things. As AI kind of reshapes how solutions are scoped and delivered. What's a delivery model shift that you've had to make and embrace and that you think is going to define kind of the next decade of services?
- [05:42]
Eve Sangenito
I mean, I think the foundational area is really productivity. Efficiency is both for our own internal teams, but also for clients. So how can they embrace these technologies to think about things differently, remove some of the rudimentary tasks that they're doing that are time consuming but necessary because they haven't had AI solutions available to them before. But then the other side of that, and you'll hear this sort of some of my thinking in general in the conversation is the other side of that is how do we get differentiated solutions, how do we get to better outcomes, how do we get to quicker findings out of masses of data? Those are areas that can help really drive a better experience from a customer standpoint and from a marketing standpoint and all across the spectrum. So I think those are some of the considerations in the delivery model shifts.
- [06:27]
Sarah McDevitt
So you're talking there a lot about the opportunity. Right. And the potential. But can you maybe share with me some of the most exciting outcomes that you've seen, even internally when it comes to adopting AI as a company?
- [06:39]
Eve Sangenito
Yeah. So internally, honestly, one of the biggest shifts that I've loved seeing is the sort of reinvigoration of, of energy and the culture around the topic. Right. There's a lot of team members that are diving in to explore and experiment with new possibilities. They're tapping into like new opportunities to, to bring solutions to clients that are feeling a little bit lost and, or, you know, want to navigate the areas or even where the landscape is shifting for them. And they've got to bridge that fine gap between what's and where can we really use this? So that energy is coming through in our culture quite a bit, which I think is a great impact of kind of where we're evolving to.
- [07:17]
Sarah McDevitt
I think if you are seeing a culture of excitement about the adoption of AI, that's something that is the opposite for many companies that are suffering with the challenge of, you know, people feeling disrupted and potentially challenged. So.
- [07:30]
Eve Sangenito
And you know, that's going to help you improve because AI is not going away. It's only going to continue to become more and more adopted and more part of what we do every day.
- [07:39]
Sarah McDevitt
Absolutely. I like to say that we're not selling software, we're selling human amplification. And I think that is exactly what it does for the average customer that is considering using HubSpot. Can you give me a sense of what challenges they're facing right now and how both buyers and users needs and concerns are shifting because of AI within the enterprise space?
- [08:03]
Eve Sangenito
Yeah, so this is another area we still see a lot of the typical challenge that we'd see within marketing automation or CRM. Typically that includes things like not not having enough bandwidth to keep up with the content demands to build nurture campaigns, the data quality issues that come up, complexity of integrations. All of that still persists in some of the landscape that we see. But new enterprise buyer concerns that coming along with AI. That gets back to some of these areas of responsibility that I talked about earlier are things like concerns about plagiarism, Ownership rights of your content and your creative data privacy issues are another one. So there's a lot that's still being explored and shuffled through in those areas, even legally. Right. We also see a lot of shifts in user behavior. And again, that's not a surprise, we've seen that before, is that, you know, people moved more towards Uber or Amazon and wanted faster delivery. For everything that happens, the user behavior now that we're seeing is people wanting quicker access to summaries of content, to automated analysis of multiple data sources that take them forever to mine through things of that sort of. And areas like within HubSpot, like Content Agent, we see helping with those challenges. Right. For the people that are tapping into those parts of the technology for creating and scaling content across channels for suggested blog topics, things of that sort. So again, with human oversight, there's solutions that actually help you improve how you do your job.
- [09:27]
Sarah McDevitt
So you've kind of talked through there about like you've given some great examples there, where AI does add value for some customers today. On the flip side, I wonder, do you have any examples of where maybe it's adding some unnecessary complexity that doesn't need to be there. And how are you navigating? Because there is a tension between AI hype and real AI value for customers. So. So how are you navigating that for customers?
- [09:52]
Eve Sangenito
We see clients, kind of some that are More at the trepidation or you know, very cautiously moving into AI all the way to ones that are moving into like full blown differentiation related to AI on the sort of more cautious end or I would say the more simplified version of it. I have a colleague who had a quote that I love that really resonated with me and it was, I'm not looking to use AI to point to paint me a Monet or to write me a symphony. I'm looking for it to wash my windows and clean my floors. And like I think that really crystallizes some of how some people perceive it. They're not looking for it to replace those higher talent value crafts or necessarily come in yet and deliver your health care. Things that are higher risk or higher concern or higher value. They're looking for that manual time consuming work to be taken out of the equation. We see other clients that are kind of in the middle where they're experimenting with different dimensions of it and working with us to help them experiment with those dimensions so where they can explore and stay attuned to the landscape that's shifting under them. I mean, one example of that is in the organic search space, right? You can avoid not sort of adapting to what's happening within that space if you want to still stay competitive within that space. AI overviews coming out, things of that sort that are changing how that all functions and that has real impact on your, your business. So in those cases we're, we're working with them to responsibly look at how we can analyze and optimize better and building solutions to do that. And then there's the other end of the spectrum where you're really getting into the companies that are at the forefront and they're trying to be more innovative and bring to market solutions that are going to change the game using AI. Examples of that are like Generative Commerce where you know, that's enabling brands to connect different data sources to make personalized content readily accessible based on prompts and triggers on demand. So you're seeing that whole spectrum. Where you see the complexity come in is if you're thinking about redoing things or building things that you don't need to. Another example might be sometimes we're building solutions that we're exploring on our own or other companies are exploring on their own. And some of the technologies we use every day are coming out with features that support some of those. So capitalizing on what's available and what's coming out, I mean that's changing every day, literally. So There's a lot to keep up with, but leveraging, you know, AI enabled technologies you already have is, is, is a good way to sort of reduce some of that complexity.
- [12:16]
Sarah McDevitt
So what I'm really hearing from you is that it's intentional AI adoption as rather than just for the sake of us. There's a lot of shiny toys out there, but you really have to be truly intentional.
- [12:27]
Eve Sangenito
Yes.
- [12:28]
Sarah McDevitt
So when you we've seen some astounding kind of outcomes for customers when it comes to like things like customer agent for example. Have you seen something that has been truly astounding in your from client base where it could be something super simple that has just, you know, created a little bit of magic for that particular client?
- [12:47]
Eve Sangenito
Yes. So I mean in the realm of HubSpot we've seen, you know, the use of lookalike lists being really effective. So for example clients struggling with the segmentation or finding the right list, they have great content, they know what they're targeting for that but they aren't always easily able to find additional contacts that it's going to be relevant for. So leveraging that capability is having an impact on how they approach that and solve that problem. Sort of thinking more broadly in the more broader digital space, we've seen some exciting outcomes also around virtual agents. Some of the companies that we work with to deploy and build virtual agents, we're seeing significant increases in the percent of people engaging in higher value actions. So as like an example engaging with the agent to price a vehicle which is an action that shows a lot of of high intent to buy. Right. So being able to elevate those through the noise and be able to increase that kind of engagement has a real again potential business impact for the clients.
- [13:45]
Sarah McDevitt
Absolutely. So I'm thrilled HubSpot is thrilled to have you with HubSpot and I'd love to know how have you been thinking about partnering with HubSpot differently today than you may have thought about as five years ago? What's changed your perspective?
- [14:02]
Eve Sangenito
So I've been in the Boston area for a couple of decades, so I've been familiar with HubSpot for a long time and in the earlier days when HubSpot really became visible, especially in our region. But I know expanding beyond that I think it was known more for and this like being an SMB play, a great, you know, entry point solution for startups and things like that, I would actually used it in startup environments that I've built marketing teams around. And I think the company had a great reputation around inbound marketing. I Read some of the books that your founders had put out in the earlier days around the Grateful Dead marketing lessons, and I thought a lot of that was a really refreshing take to kind of resonate with younger audiences and things like that around engaging in marketing. I think the shift that we've seen in HubSpot in recent years is really expanding more in that product innovation and expanding that product innovation to more enterprise needs to play in that more enterprise segment. Things like deeper integrations, a more unified solution stack, and that plays more to some of our client portfolio within Proficient.
- [15:01]
Sarah McDevitt
I mean, I would be the first to recognize that it takes a pretty significant investment for consultancies as large as Proficient to onboard onto a new platform like HubSpot. I'm curious, do you have a roadmap now that you've joined the program of kind of what the next few years look like?
- [15:18]
Eve Sangenito
Just a couple things that come to mind on that. One is we started out with our partnership focused on marketing Hub. We're in the process of expanding our marketing automation basically practice overall. And we saw needs arising where HubSpot might be a fit. We like to think of ourselves, that we call it Platform Harmonious. We do support a lot of different technologies as a digital consultancy, and we have deep expertise in those technologies and a wide range of them, because not every technology is a fit for every customer. And we really approach it that way. What are the requirements and the use cases they're trying to meet and what's the right fit? And so having a broad spectrum of available technologies where we have expertise just adds value to our clients. I would say one of the things that we see in the HubSpot ecosystem that is really helpful as part of that is how unified your current ecosystem is. And so over time, while I don't know if we have a formal roadmap yet, we're planning that as our customer demands and needs arise to expand more into some of those other hubs, the sales hub, service hub, things like that.
- [16:22]
Sarah McDevitt
That's awesome. That's awesome. And then, you know, obviously there's a reason you're here. You're seeing the outcomes and the upside for your clients and your customers, which is absolutely fantastic. When you look ahead maybe a year from now, maybe 18 months, what are the signals that you'll be paying most attention to on how you are positioning your teams to respond to what you actually do in the future?
- [16:47]
Eve Sangenito
I think there's a lot to come, but some of the immediate things I think, you know, AI, augmented human experiences, generative interfaces where multimodal interfaces that are prompted by voice and create dynamic content based on triggers is another area. Personalization is an area that's been a challenge for years for many companies. Like targeted personalization, not necessarily, but as sort of a broad scale real time personalization that I think is going to help be solved a lot through AI and we've done a lot of experimenting in that area. Automated content supply chain is another topic. And then when you look out kind of more broad, broadly, things like artificial general intelligence, like getting closer to the human intelligence and having the model self learn continuously, those are all areas that I think are going to, we're going to see a lot of change and evolution as we go, including things like autonomous agents where you know, we're trying to automate human tasks without having human involvement required. As long as it has that oversight and how it's governed. Right. And how do teams respond? I think that test and learn mindset and getting energized, but I behind experimenting, optimizing, seeing what's really working and what's really adding value and kind of leaving behind the things that are unnecessarily complex because they've been embedded within, you know, enabled technologies of other sorts, things like that. I think that's going to be important in the, in the whole, you know, approach over time. Over the next 12 months, 18 months and beyond, you know, I'm getting energized by seeing so, so much of our business, especially our internal teams sort of really embrace it and start to identify new and exciting sol an individual level, not even just at a team level, but at an individual level and being able to showcase new ideas and new approaches to things that really get their clients excited. So that's kind of what is invigorating me about it at the moment is all of the interest in really honing in on it and how it can add value. And I think we're going to see a lot of creative solutions come out over time that are going to change how we interact as teams, how we do customer experience, how we go to market. I think is going to change a lot. Again, not necessarily even just at as proficient, but just companies, how we go to market and, and I think all of that is going to continue to really excite people and make lives easier. I mean that's what it's really about in the end, right? Making making lives easier and also finding new solutions to problems we hadn't yet solved.
- [19:13]
Sarah McDevitt
All I was thinking in the middle of that was I was thinking to myself, I do love my Ninja shark mop. And when you think of it, you were saying earlier about like, well, you know what technology can solve for you. Like you're the basic needs that you want. I want my floors clean. Like that's what I want out of life.
- [19:30]
Eve Sangenito
It's true. And to that point, sometimes in this AI sort of mode that we're in, I wonder things like can I just get certain things that are supposed to work a different way to work better? If we just get that, how do we have all this AI technology coming out and making game changing solutions and we still have problems with printing or something. Particular conference calls. We needed to solve some of those things that have been challenging and unsolved. I would love that. That.
- [19:58]
Sarah McDevitt
Well, I would definitely love a printer to work the first time. You're 100% right about that, Eve. So every time I do this show, I become more and more convinced about the opportunity for partners in the HubSpot ecosystem. And as we evolve into the upmarket space. And if you want to hear more about experiences from some of our partners, click on the subscribe button. I guarantee you you won't regret it. Thanks, Eve. I appreciate it.