Loading summary
Transcript113 lines
- [00:01]
Michael Stelzner
Hey there, Mike Stelzner. Before we get started with today's podcast, picture this. While your peers are struggling with basic chat GPT prompts, you're the marketer everyone turns to for AI solutions. You're automating tasks that used to take hours, creating stunning visuals in minutes and analyzing data like a pro. This, my friends, is not a fantasy. It's exactly what's happening to marketers. It's in the AI Business Society. When you join the AI Business Society, you get monthly live training from leading experts, real world examples you can implement immediately, and a community of innovators pushing the AI boundaries. Don't let this moment pass you by. Visit socialmediaexaminer.com AI and start your AI transformation today. Welcome to the AI Explored podcast, helping you put AI to work. And now, here's your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the AI Explored podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers, creators and business owners who want to know how to put AI to work. Today we're going to talk about something really fascinating. If you've been looking for tools that are really refined, tools that can help you with critical parts of your marketing, and you don't want to have to build everything from scratch like so many other people are doing right now, but you want something that's really refined that you can apply to the various stages of your marketing. I believe today's podcast episode is going to reveal solutions to you that I can assure you I have never heard of before. And I think you're going to find them absolutely fascinating. They're ideal for businesses both large and small. And I'm going to be joined by Susan Westwater and. And you're going to love today's episode. Also, if you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow us so you don't miss any of our future episodes. Let's now transition over to this week's interview with Susan Westwater, helping you simplify your AI journey. Here is this week's expert guide. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Susan Westwater. If you don't know who Susan is, she's co author of Voice Engaging Customers Through Conversational AI. She's also an AI strategist and founder of Pragmatic Digital, an AI agency that helps businesses train their teams and develop AI strategies. Susan, welcome to the show. How you doing today?
- [02:36]
Susan Westwater
I am great. Thanks for having me.
- [02:38]
Michael Stelzner
I'm super excited you're here today. Susan and I are going to explore how to use AI to develop practical marketing strategies for any business. Now, before we get into these practical use cases for marketing and developing strategy with AI, I'd love to hear a little bit of your story. How in the world did you get into AI?
- [02:55]
Susan Westwater
It's a funny story. So I have lived through, basically through my career, every major tech wave. So the conversion to web, mobile, social, all the things and all of those impacted how we grow. And then when Scott and I saw AI coming, we kind of said to each other, you know what, this is going to be a big deal and let's learn about it while we can. And so that was back in 2017. So it's a while ago, but for me, it's really personal. I was nearly a medievalist. I don't know if you knew that. A few credits short.
- [03:24]
Michael Stelzner
I don't even know what that is.
- [03:25]
Susan Westwater
So a medievalist is literally someone who specializes in the medieval history and all of the culture and all of those things. Yeah, proper liberal arts major happening right here. But I obviously I'm a few credits short, but, you know, you study as part of that how information flowed before the printing press. So things you see would be like troubadours, words of mouth, human conversation. That was how news happened. And then when the printing press happened, at first, only the elite benefited because it was all in Latin. And it wasn't until Dante started to write in basically local vernacular battalion that we started to get real access of like, here's what printed word can do. And what's kind of amazing to me is I've seen this parallel with AI, especially like conversational and voice, is this notion of democratizing information, making insights accessible and just powering better decisions. And it's kind of amazing to see. You know, they always say whatever is old is new again. That is something that we've seen. So it's been super interesting to be able to help folks kind of unlock those things and be able to make better decisions so that, you know, I see AI as a decision partner now, not just a co pilot.
- [04:39]
Michael Stelzner
So tell us a little bit about that journey. So when did you decide, like to go all in?
- [04:43]
Susan Westwater
Back in 2017, we decided we're going to go all in. We're going to make this consultancy, we're going to focus on this because as we had gotten, innovation had been something that we had always been a part of. It was one of those moments of like, why not us? Very similar to the times when I was Told web is a fat or this is a fat or even having to justify putting web addresses on major packaged goods brands. Seeing that type of behavior happening again, it was like, you know what, I'm not going to fight this of trying to put it through here. I'm going to dive deep, we're going to learn about it and we're going to make sure that people are building the right thing. Because in the early days it was about the tech and how it was being built and folks were experimenting. But it was also where we started to say, hey, let's build the right things. Let's ask the questions that we wished we had asked during all of these other major moments. And so that was when we went and started, started to learn. We were going to conferences, reading every book we could get our hands on. And then actually that's what also pushed us to write our own book to say, you know what, we've spent seven years learning about this. Let's share that with others.
- [05:50]
Michael Stelzner
So tell me about what you're doing today now with AI specifically, like who are you working with? And all that fun stuff.
- [05:55]
Susan Westwater
So we are helping primarily we have a focus on marketers, but we also have a focus then in manufacturing, healthcare and cpg, just because that's where our background is. We're used to working in regulated and unregulated industries. So we have just been helping a variety of different, basically organizations with a mindset of we see this opportunity, how do we tap into it and how do we even implement this from the start so that we're doing it in a smart way and not kind of a randomized or frenetic way.
- [06:29]
Michael Stelzner
What I love about the story and the journey that you shared is this concept of democratization of knowledge. The printing press obviously allowed insights, originally the Bible, right through the Gutenberg Press and eventually all sorts of other things to be shared. But now AI takes what I call secret knowledge, right? Like for example, you have to pay a lot of money to go to an attorney, right? You have to pay a lot of money to talk to a specialist, like a healthcare specialist. And now this information is effectively available to everyone without having to like have anybody translate it. You know, you read these journal articles and stuff and it's like your eyes roll back. But now this knowledge, this secret knowledge, as I call it, is available to all. And that's what I love about AI. And I know it threatens a lot of people's businesses because they've developed their entire career. Especially people have access to special knowledge and they feel like that knowledge is now available for the entire world. But I look at the flip side of it. The entire world now has access to knowledge that frankly was hard to get access to before. And just like the printing, this is going to open up a renaissance of opportunity. Don't you agree? For those that understand how to leverage it properly.
- [07:42]
Susan Westwater
Yeah, absolutely. I have a saying. Wizards are for Hogwarts. This is definitely like the anti wizard situation. The gatekeeping is different. But we now have this opportunity of instead of spending all this time getting access to this information, we get to apply our brains and find out what are these insights or what, what are these ways that we can do things? And that frees up so much more opportunity as long as we know how to recognize it.
- [08:09]
Michael Stelzner
Love it. Okay, so big question here. Why should businesses have an AI strategy in particular and not just adopt very specific tools? Said another way, if people apply what we're going to be talking about today, what's possible, what's the upside?
- [08:25]
Susan Westwater
So the really quick sound bite is AI tools are like instruments. So without a scorer conductor, it can just be noise or it's going to be a singular effort as opposed to the incredible symphony that you hear when all of the instruments come together. And I think where we're at right now is there's companies that think they're behind because they haven't picked the right tools and then there's other companies that think they're on track because they have an AI task force and a policy. But the reality is they haven't decided what winning looks like. And that's where strategy is really helpful. And having a strategy puts in this plan that will enable an organization to be able to, I like to call it operationalizing AI so that you're reaping benefits from not just the individual contributor, that person who's experimenting with ChatGPT where you can actually start to operationalize it so that the team can understand how we're winning and also how the organization is. And so that way they can actually start to go from here's what we can do with AI to then what we should do. And then when we put some realities of prioritization of resources and etc. What we actually will do. And that gives you an incredibly powerful guidebook that makes sure that what you're working on makes sense and that you're also moving towards a roadmap that's going to give you the learning and the results you need. And you're not just going to be, oh, we have X failed pilots. We actually have learned something, but we've also had some wins along the way.
- [09:53]
Michael Stelzner
I love this and I am a strong believer that strategy trumps just reacting to the latest features that come out from these tools. Right. And what we're going to talk about today, folks, is going to be very intriguing. We're going to go through different kinds of ways that you can develop strategy that you could apply from a marketing lens to your business. And we're going to really dig in deep. And I'm very, very excited about this. But I just want to reiterate, any tool without a strategy is just a tool. Right. Like with a butter knife. What can you do with a butter knife? Lots of things. Right. But you don't use a butter knife if you don't understand that it's specifically for butter. Right. So you need to have a strategy. Right. And it may be that you know you're using the wrong tool or you're not thinking through things before you go into the tools because you haven't thought about the higher level order things, which is strategy. So I'm excited to see what we unlock today. So let's begin with wherever you want to start. Where do we want to begin here? Sure.
- [10:48]
Susan Westwater
So let's talk about strategy. I mean, there are folks who coming up on the agency ranks of are you strategic? And no one bonks you on the head with a magic wand and says you're strategic. It's how we think about these priorities and guardrails. That's actually what's going to. So to keep it simple because AI can get pretty complex if you start getting in the weeds. We like to think of it as a framework of four pillars. One is get business. One is about delivering excellence of. Let's be honest, you're not in the business of AI. I am.
- [11:20]
Michael Stelzner
And by the way, let's not reveal all the pillars just yet. Let's go one at a time. That'll be better for our audience. So let's start with the get business pillar. Let's, let's, let's unravel that.
- [11:29]
Susan Westwater
Sure. And so from a marketing perspective, when I think about that, that's how do you acquire smartly?
- [11:33]
Michael Stelzner
Okay.
- [11:34]
Susan Westwater
So you're not just going to be looking at like how do I automate lead gen. You're looking at how do I optimize so signals to noise. So that can be something of behavior based personalization. We've done that with Voiceify is a platform that we've used and it's conversational AI platform, but it allows us to Use voice based interactions and through voice based interactions you can hear how does someone talk about something, what questions are they asking? And those enable me then to then answer those questions relevantly, which then helps me start to hit that personalization of way deeper than what's your name, what's your account? We're able to do that. However, that's also an important part and we'll talk about that later in one of the other pillars about how that helps. But that's how we're able to move forward and think about those things of how do I engage my prospects, how do I collect them and how do I show them that when I'm, you know, the golden three questions of content right are, is this the right place? Can they help me with what I need to do, what I my problem? And then why should I? If we can find out those signals and answer those questions in a relevant and short manner using these tools such as like a Voiceify or we use Lindy AI which helps us create some additional CRM automation, these are ways that we are then able to talk to someone in their language, not what I think. And I'm not projecting on them. I'm letting them signal to me what they want to know.
- [13:07]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so let's unravel this a little bit. So this first pillar that we're focusing on is how to get business right? So help me like unravel. I want to dig in a little bit on the tools that you mentioned, but like help me connect the dots between using AI and getting business because I feel like we might have skipped over something there and I just want to unravel that a little bit. Does that make sense?
- [13:26]
Susan Westwater
For sure. So the first part of that is we look at these pillars as a way of prioritizing what we're doing and giving me the opportunity to say no. Okay, so if I am looking at ways of where my challenge is, I need a pipeline or I need to improve speed to lead, I need to do these things. That is how we then start to look of where AI might fit and that can be in a range of using tools or even looking at my process and saying this is where AI will help me. Because there is something here that is a major time suck that keeps me from being able to build that better, follow up to have those more in person conversations. Where are ways that AI can almost be my sales assistant to help me pre qualify and look at things from that sense. So that's really getting into brass tacks of kind of what those pieces are. But it is looking at those processes and those opportunities for how am I going to get more business. And that can even be onboarding. I mean, we're just talking about lead gen and acquiring, but it's all of those processes that we use. How can I make them smarter? And how can I make myself smarter by asking better questions? Because I'm working through AI, so some things are covered off on.
- [14:40]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so give me an example of this. You mentioned Voiceify and Lindy AI, like help people understand what the heck those things do and maybe, or maybe how you've used them or how your clients have used them.
- [14:50]
Susan Westwater
Sure, absolutely. So I have a case study that was really interesting with Voiceify. We had a utility company, local utility company here in Chicagoland area. They have two different types of programs. They have a business program and a residential program. And of course they support local sports teams. And therefore there were talking, you know, in between periods or quarters or even in between plays. They had talked about ways that they could support either one of those paths. You only have 30 seconds to cover off on that. By using Voiceify, we were able to create an experience where all someone had to remember was the name of the utility and ask about those questions and be able to then trigger into do you want to learn more about business or residential? And making it that much easier for them to go from radio into a conversation where then they could start to learn more information about those programs. So it was connecting those different channels, but it allowed them to be able to accomplish a small amount and drive traffic to something that would give them a lot more as opposed to remembering a longer web address or something along those lines.
- [16:01]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so voice of I spelled V O I C I F Y. So like functionally, what the heck does it do? Does it listen to actual conversations or what does it do? Exactly.
- [16:11]
Susan Westwater
So what it does is it actually allows you to build like a voice experience. So that could be either on the phone, that could be using ivr. Actually they even have a part that works with drive thru in the restaurant space or even in healthcare of it basically being either telephone or your mobile device or things like that. It allows you to just talk and.
- [16:31]
Michael Stelzner
It sounds like a person.
- [16:32]
Susan Westwater
Yeah, well, it can, yeah, it depends. That's a whole other conversation about what does that agent sound like and how does it present.
- [16:38]
Michael Stelzner
Right.
- [16:39]
Susan Westwater
But at the bare minimum, yes, it sounds like a person or it sounds like something that you're talking to as opposed to having to type something in or remember something. And it is able to do that quickly because it can scale. So I'm not waiting for someone to pick up the phone. It is able to take my order, make my reservation, answer my basic questions before it then hands me off to, say, an agent. And therefore, I'm not waiting on a hold line. I'm able to just get at that information.
- [17:05]
Michael Stelzner
And what about Lindy? L I N D Y. Lindy starts.
- [17:09]
Susan Westwater
To move towards that notion of agentic AI. So when we think about AI, and this is a helpful way to think about it, is there's human in the loop, which means I'm the orchestrator and I am directing and managing. There's human on the loop, where I am the human who is verifying or double checking things before I let them go. And then there's human out of the loop. And out of the loop is more of this autonomous. It's learning, it's following a workflow, it's adjusting as needed. And Lindy allows me to make agents that are then capable of performing tasks such as, can you set up this meeting? And that acts like my virtual assistant. Or it can do something along the lines of lead generation, of give me a dossier about this prospect I'm about to speak with or I'm prepping for. That way, then you have sort of this assistant who is able to give you what you need because you're able to request it, and you're able to set up these workflows so that they are repeatable.
- [18:04]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, cool. Let me just kind of echo back what I'm hearing. You say we're talking about four different pillars here. This first pillar is really about getting business or qualifying leads. And then the question is like, how can AI assist? Right. And in the case of Voiceify or Lindy. Lindy AI, they can do different kinds of things that basically can allow you to augment, if you will, some of your manual processes so that AI is kind of in the loop and allowing these things to be more efficient. Is that the essence of what I'm hearing you say?
- [18:36]
Susan Westwater
Yeah, absolutely.
- [18:37]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, cool.
- [18:37]
Susan Westwater
Yeah. And it allows you to do whatever dossiers or any of that time you spent researching, you're able to drop that down because you have your tried and true questions you ask. And then it can even say, well, we've learned these other things. How about adjusting? Love it. So it's really helpful.
- [18:51]
Michael Stelzner
Love it. What's next?
- [18:53]
Susan Westwater
So what's next is kind of when we look about delivering excellence or we even think about from the idea of a marketer that's converting faster. The idea is to look at how do I understand when to follow up, how do I balance that? And so the idea is to kind of look at things that will help me be able to continue conversations and also be able to stay relevant and not feel like that can stuff. I mean I think we've all been bombarded by the follow ups from bots that don't make sense. But it's making sure that you're able to personalize things so that they resonate. And it's more than just first name, last name again it is looking at ways of helping to cover off on hey, these are the things we talked about, these are the next follow ups or these are those pieces of engagement that I'm able to have a proper sequence because I can figure out where my lead scoring is happening.
- [19:45]
Michael Stelzner
Now before we get into kind of some of the tools that you recommend, what are the channels in which these generally work? Are we talking email, are we talking DMS on Instagram, are we talking about LinkedIn messages? Like what are the different spaces where follow up can take place so it.
- [20:00]
Susan Westwater
Can across it's multi channel. If it's digital there's ways to do that and there's even now opportunity to use phone. I always caution with using phone because the idea when we use these bots is not to pretend to be humans. We're enhanced humans so we're not replacing. So that's where I am always a bit cautious about how much you're going to be doing that automation or adding in this bot. But it's helpful to have that follow up assistant that's going to be able to handle your repetitive tasks or, or those things that you kind of bog through that you have to get done and you know you need to do that but it's a way of freeing you up then to either have more in person conversations or some of those other things especially as like teams of one or I think we always are getting asked to do more with less.
- [20:44]
Michael Stelzner
So how smart are these things? And then let's talk about some examples. Do they remember where the conversation was last time like a human or like, like how intelligent are these follow up systems we're talking about here?
- [20:55]
Susan Westwater
They can be as sophisticated as you are comfortable. Oh so and I think that's an important thing to highlight of what you build and you can iterate off of these workflows. So like Reply IO lets me be able to personalize emails and put things through where I know where it's at in the sequence and I can always check into it. It's not that revolutionary when we think about how HubSpot works where you can see where someone's at. So it does remember those conversations. But what's nice is that it also sees if there's replies and then saying what do we do next? And then also we'll then use those as signals for then lead nurturing so that it isn't again just email 1, email 2, email 3. We can get a little more sophisticated in how we structure what email 2 might be. I don't just have 2a or 2b. There are certain things that I can empower it to do.
- [21:47]
Michael Stelzner
What if I told you while your marketing peers are still fumbling with basic AI prompts, you could become the AI expert you're now entire company depends on. That's exactly what's happening inside the AI business society. Our members aren't just using AI, they're mastering it. They're automating repetitive tasks, creating professional videos in mere minutes, and making data driven decisions that leave everyone on their team completely amazed. Most marketers are barely scratching the surface of what AI can do for them. While they're stuck creating mediocre content, you could be leaping so far ahead that people look at you as if you're from the future. Here's how we make that happen. First, you get monthly live training from leading AI experts who actually use these tools in real marketing situations. Secondly, there is a incredible community of innovative marketers who are pushing the AI boundaries every day that you have access to. Third, we have multiple meetups per month where you get a chance to interact with your peers and ask questions from our experts. As member Lisa Kanda said, quote, the quality of training offered is the best I've experienced and from an organization that I can trust. Here's the truth. The marketing landscape is changing very quickly. Don't get left behind while others race ahead. Visit Social Media Examiner.com AI and become the AI Enhanced Marketer your company or your clients need. Future you will. Thank you. Visit Social Media Examiner.com AI to learn more. So okay, you mentioned Reply IO that sounds like it's an email tool predominantly, Is that correct?
- [23:22]
Susan Westwater
Yes.
- [23:23]
Michael Stelzner
Do you have any other tools that you recommend for this kind of work?
- [23:26]
Susan Westwater
So Exceed is another one that we use. And again, I'm going to let everyone know I'm being intentional about being sensitive to not talking about too many enterprise products. A We all know where they exist, they've got plenty of marketing dollars. But B some of these also have some free trials that you can use as well to be a little Bit more nimble and experiment. Exceed allows you to also do email, chat and sms, especially inappropriate channels. I mean obviously if we're talking about big dollar deals, not really sure we're going to be doing text, but there are situations where it makes sense to then follow up with someone. So it is a much more two way. Especially because people will sometimes reply to text a lot more off the cuff.
- [24:06]
Michael Stelzner
So Exceed AI is an enterprise tool or is reply an enterprise tool?
- [24:10]
Susan Westwater
Neither of those are enterprise. They actually have an approachable plan.
- [24:14]
Michael Stelzner
Okay.
- [24:15]
Susan Westwater
So that way then you can kind of kick the tires a little bit on them.
- [24:18]
Michael Stelzner
Do you have an example of how you or a client have employed these things?
- [24:21]
Susan Westwater
Actually we use reply and we use that to be able to set up some of our structure of how we're talking about things or when someone's asking us because we'll get questions, especially in our lead gen forums. Everything from do you do public speaking to how do I get started with AI to engagements. So we use that as a way to automate some of our follow up sequences because we have those signals. So that way then we can also then be able to continue following up with them in a way that makes sense and is a little more to the point.
- [24:53]
Michael Stelzner
So tell us a little bit about how smart that is and how it works. Like, you know, is it like manychat was back in the day where you had to think of every conceivable situation or is it a little bit more sophisticated?
- [25:04]
Susan Westwater
We actually get to be a little more sophisticated these days because generative AI is a thing.
- [25:08]
Michael Stelzner
Yeah.
- [25:09]
Susan Westwater
And that's what makes life awesome. There are certain things where the brain exhaustion of every permutation. It actually helps figure out through fuzzy logic how we are to identify if someone says I need to get started, we know what path that is as opposed to if someone says now what? Or things like that. They don't have to be like for like, like the if thens become much more vague. And I appreciate that because then I can also see, hey, this is how these folks are talking about it. And therefore I also know then know how to signal that outwards when I'm saying, yes, I'm talking to you, I heard you. And I'm not just going to keep using technical jargon if you're not starting meeting me with that.
- [25:50]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so a couple thoughts that might be going through people's brains is some people have been on websites where they have like a live interactive chat bot that they can interact with. Other people have very experienced especially been around for A while that you have to fill out a form. Are these generally tools that are form fills or inbound email inquiries or are they interactive, kind of like a chat bottle?
- [26:12]
Susan Westwater
It can be a mix.
- [26:12]
Michael Stelzner
Okay.
- [26:13]
Susan Westwater
Because at certain points when someone's on our website, they might just want to fill out a form or they might want to go through the chatbot we have. You can do either option. There's other times though where it's like, no, that shouldn't be through like a chat, that should be through an email or something like that. We can kind of toggle that depending on the significance. I'll be honest, that's where I get excited as a content person of content strategy of like we can actually have behave like a human normally would and not just get stuck and forced into one type of communication.
- [26:42]
Michael Stelzner
So does this mean in particular with this reply I O tool or do you have to use different tools to be able to pull this off right now?
- [26:51]
Susan Westwater
Again, it always depends on how sophisticated you want to get.
- [26:54]
Michael Stelzner
Right.
- [26:54]
Susan Westwater
There are some pieces where you can put two things together.
- [26:57]
Michael Stelzner
Got it.
- [26:57]
Susan Westwater
But like with Piyo, we do. All right. I think I would like to say as you look at it getting more complex, then you might layer a couple things. It also depends on how clean and ready your data is to.
- [27:09]
Michael Stelzner
Got it. Okay, so so far, here's what we've covered. First, two pillars of your strategy are what are some ways you can use AI to help you get business in the first place? Right. We're talking about generating leads or even outreach. We didn't actually talk about outreach. Other AI tools that can actually do.
- [27:26]
Susan Westwater
Outreach for you, you can actually use Voiceify for that as well. Of where you're putting your outreach out to that way reply also is good for cold emailing. If I do a combination that is a combination of where let' say I use Seamless to help me with finding my prospects and then I want to start engaging those conversations. I can start to put those two together. Of this is a cold email. I don't have as much context. Let's start that conversation differently than if it was a hot lead of someone I spoke with at a conference or someone who downloaded a piece of content off of our website.
- [27:59]
Michael Stelzner
You said seamless. Is that referencing a tool that maybe you didn't mention yet?
- [28:03]
Susan Westwater
I did not mention it yet.
- [28:04]
Michael Stelzner
Talk to us about that real quick.
- [28:05]
Susan Westwater
Yeah, so seamless AI is essentially. It just allows you to take more. It's a more automated way of being able to find prospects and finding out information and also sometimes getting Contextual, like I like to combine that. And then maybe I'll look at ChatGpt if I'm looking for an agency person looking at a client and say, oh, who are their agencies right now? Okay, I see who they're working with right now. Do they have a review going on? Okay, then maybe we won't talk to them right away. Or if we do reach out to them, it'll be in an incredibly non aggressive top of funnel way.
- [28:36]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so I just want to pause for the sake of the listeners. You're learning from Susan that there are tools that are probably behind the scenes powered by some of the same large language models that we use, like Claude or ChatGPT, but they've developed these really sophisticated applications that we're narrowing in on. Right. So so far what we've learned from Susan is you've got to first of all understand what's the objective in this case we've been talking about how to convert faster with this particular example. And then once you understand what the objective is, then you can begin applying the right tools. And sometimes the right tools are specialty tools that were designed to do that applic, which probably make it so much easier than just using a broad tool. Is that right? Do you want to talk about that just briefly?
- [29:18]
Susan Westwater
Yeah, absolutely. I think. What is that? I was hearing someone talking the other day last week we were at a conference and someone said, oh, that's just a wrapper around ChatGPT. And my feeling at half the time is so what? Having the focus of having someone who has already thought through a very set workflow that I can use and take advantage of, that takes man hours off of me figuring that out and how to string that together. So if I'm clear about what the outcome is I want it to be or the thing I need, I like to be able to look for tools because why build it all? Like we are at a point now where the technology is sophisticated enough that I don't need to be a Python programmer. I can see where Python programmers or very talented information science degree folks have thought through, hey, this is how this workflow works, and I know that then I can also be assured that they've probably also thought through all of the information security challenges or HIPAA compliance and all that well.
- [30:14]
Michael Stelzner
And in addition, they probably have lots of feedback from their clients and they're, they're iterating and they're coming out with new features or making it better. They know when the models have upgraded on the back end and decide which ones and to Test them and, and frankly, it's just the easier way to go. Right? Because like, yeah, you can say there's only a few companies that power all email in the world. Right? But you still go through email service providers because you don't want to have to, to deal with all the hassle of all the other things. Right. So there is value in having these, these software products that were specifically designed for an intent so you don't have to worry about it, which I love. And that's the exciting unlock that hopefully is happening for people. Okay, let's go to your next pillar.
- [30:51]
Susan Westwater
So that next pillar is. So then, okay, let's say we've made that sale. So we call it engaging better or it's keeping that business. Because, okay, there's a lot of folks, I mean, a lot of when we're looking at the acquisition or the customer journey or whatever or flywheel, it's always, okay, so we've got the sale, then what? So there are ways then for us to start looking and using these tools for churn forecasting or hey, how do I show them that what they purchased is actually something that was really helpful. It's especially as like an agency person help me with the reporting, help me to know what reports or what market conditions are happening and that I can be that much more proactive without having to spend any more time because I spend a lot of time reading every, you know, every trade journal, market watch all of those things. How are ways that then I can make it so that I'm thinking about my client's business without giving up all of my soul, quite frankly, or thinking about my. I mean, right now, I think the discussion I heard just this morning was we were talking about AI of all things, but then they had said, I don't have time, I have to deal with tariffs. So how do we make sure that we stay relevant and say, well, here's a way that AI can help you with that tariff navigation or here's a way that we can strengthen some other part of the experience or the value benefit. So that way then it offsets the fact that you know what, you're not going to be able to absorb that tariff. So it's kind of thinking through those types of things. And so there's a couple, there's tools that we use that look also at like churn forecast of, hey, we're seeing where someone's at. There's a chance that they might not renew or they might not. Essentially they're getting to a point where we need to See that they're probably going to be reconsidering. How do we stay top of mind? How do we make sure and remind them, yes, we would like you to renew, or yes, we would like you to repurchase. This is an opportunity to, through AI, that we can kind of look predictively if we look at usage or we look at attitudes, or we can even look at what general sentiment is, be able to then retain those folks. And there's ways of covering off on that with a client where we were looking for. I can predict, I know what you've purchased. I know that when you're calling my customer service now, I know that you are, because I just saw a flag that shows me whatever it was you purchased didn't arrive in time. So chances are I can be proactive when you call, or I can even let you know ahead of time. Again, that makes it a richer experience and then continues to deliver so that someone will stay loyal.
- [33:16]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, before we get into the tools, I know people are probably thinking what I'm about to ask, which is these AI tools, tools sound like I have to give them personally identifiable information of my customers. And that's going to be a big red flag in a lot of people's brains. So help everybody understand what they need to navigate on that front. Because if we're doing turn forecasting and all that kind of stuff, we're giving a lot of stuff to the AI models that's confidential. So how, how do we wrestle with that and sell that internally? You know what I mean?
- [33:43]
Susan Westwater
Yes, yes. So, first of all, when we even start discussing going down these paths and we're building our roadmap, we make sure that, number one, there is a representative from legal, and we also make sure that someone from IT is involved, because that tech stack is going to be what's going to also tell us what we've got going on. What can we even actually rationally do? It sounds complex, but it's not. It's just bringing them into the conversation earlier that ensures then that as we're doing the vetting and the requirements, and before we even start to sign a contract with a tool, we're able to say, these are our requirements. Will you meet them? And if so, then essentially, what are those requirements? You're going to meet them? How are we going to implement that? And then what does that look like? And sometimes that may mean that what we're looking to do may take three months, six months, 12 months, and we crawl, walk and run. Because to your point, we have to Stay very. Our data is precious. We need to make sure that we've got information security set. I actually think that's going to be one of the biggest career choices in the upcoming years of how to make sure that that's happening. But also a lot of that also will be guided by the fact that you should have a data policy already. And so following that these tools and when you talk with their sales folks they're able to say yes, these are the things we can promise because everyone clearly knows out in this world that if you're in healthcare it's gotta be HIPAA compliant. If you're in financial services it has to be Loctite. So we make sure that those are actually part of the. I'll be honest, it's a non starter if they can't even speak to that.
- [35:15]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so what we're talking about here obviously is for the bigger businesses that are listening and we're going to get into some tools for that. But I just want to ask first for the smaller businesses that don't do churn forecasting, are there basic tools or maybe other features built into the existing tools are already using like maybe HubSpot Marketo or maybe like their email service providers that can maybe layer in some sort of monitoring or insights or any of that kind of stuff that might be a little bit more approachable for the smaller business.
- [35:44]
Susan Westwater
So there is a tool in Plaro that you can put over top of that. I think HubSpot does allow you to have some of that information of where you're able to set in those workflows. I know for sure. Lindy also allows me those reminders of when to be looking at those things. I do like Amplero though, just because it is again we were talking about specific. That's its job, that's why they created it. So that makes it easier for me to be able to use that and actually have access. We're not a huge company, we still use these types of tools so that we can do that.
- [36:18]
Michael Stelzner
So Amplero is a M P L E R O. So what does that do exactly? Just help people understand.
- [36:23]
Susan Westwater
Sure. So basically it applies machine learning to that predictive marketing. So it able is to add that scoring, customer segmentation, all of those things of taking that data. So assuming you have normalized data to some degree it allows you to be able to process it from that way and they do have security and when you have an account that is your account, it's not like it's training from other data, it works within there. So that way then it can start to help you highlight and say, identify, hey, these are a risk. Or here's some lookalike marketing that will also help me understand this is someone who might be right for an upgrade or something along those lines.
- [37:02]
Michael Stelzner
So fundamentally what I think I'm hearing you say is you've got your customer relationship management system or some email system that you're using that's got all this data in it and Plaro sits on top of it and somehow notices like, hey, this person has not been opening your emails or this person has not been actively visiting your website in a while. You might want to send them a coupon or something like that. Is that kind of the stuff we're talking about or is it more sophisticated than that?
- [37:29]
Susan Westwater
No, it can be that simple. I mean, let's be honest, you can make a huge difference just with that. I'll be honest. Funny story, and this has nothing to do with AI, but we forget some of the importance of those small things. Back in my doctor days when I was doing direct response campaigns, we learned that by investing and the volume was there to do this, that putting a 2 cent post it note on a letter would actually lift like 20%. And it's a simple little thing that was a reminder that said remember and I think it was remember to apply here or call this number. And that actually was a 20% lift. Some of these things that we're doing to be effective don't have to be great huge efforts. We can start a little bit simple and then get more sophisticated. And we have to keep that in mind because as we're experimenting with these things, that's also what helps us kind of we can very much say is did we get a lift from that? And that also helps us stay really true to the idea of a business objective.
- [38:29]
Michael Stelzner
When we were prepping, you mentioned something called retention science. Do you want to mention that at all?
- [38:33]
Susan Westwater
You know what, I'm player of retention science. They're very similar creatures.
- [38:37]
Michael Stelzner
Okay. Analyze both of them.
- [38:39]
Susan Westwater
Yeah.
- [38:39]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, cool. All right, well, let's go to your next pillar. Unless there's something else we forgot to mention here.
- [38:44]
Susan Westwater
I think that's a huge piece of it of just making sure you're looking at that. The only other thing I would just say is there's also an opportunity of not just looking at that churn, but this is a much larger client. But with some products even especially like in the medical device field, there's a really long amount of time between purchase and then repurchase and an Old school content marketing statement is, you know, content makes the weight shorter. There are ways within here that you're not just looking at churn, but it's also giving you your signals of when to re engage to stay top of mind without being spammy. And that's a way of just continuing again to keep that relationship going. And that could be anything from service reminders to simple things of customer service or just even just a general piece of information on how they might be maintaining their product. That's obviously can be completely customized based off of your industry. But there's also that opportunity as well of where when you're thinking about your outreach, that isn't just happening in the upfront, that can also happen after purchase.
- [39:47]
Michael Stelzner
Love it. So what is that last pillar or did we already talk about that? We didn't talk about that yet.
- [39:52]
Susan Westwater
We didn't talk about that yet. Okay, so across all of this then is these are all outward facing pieces, right? These are all, I mean they might be agencies but there's this notion of what we call operating leaner. And that's just a simple thing of like I actually heard this statement the other day of if your team spends hours preparing their reports, you're not really data driven, you're data drained. This whole notion of how do I get at that information? How do I see now like how do I know what good looks like now? How do I know I've got good happening? And so there's lots of ways that we can just ask versus having to remember all of the processes of how do I pull that from tableau? How do I pull that from HubSpot, how do I pull that from all my reporting software? There are things that go over the top that help me just ask a natural question. Like I had said of like how did we perform in the southwest region? Or how is my client regional looking? Or numbers like that when we look at being global? Or what do inventory numbers look like? These are all questions I'm just asking them. I'm not having to type it in or things like that. It's so simple of being able to use my own natural language. So where there's ways that we can have dashboards that help us also capturing the information of like in manufacturing a big challenge is as folks retire, 20 years of knowledge is walking out the door. How do I capture that? How do I turn that into an automated accessible SOP or lessons learned or reference guide? Capturing that type of information is really helpful. Or how do I make it easier for someone to check what Is the policy on this or what is my AI policy? How do we make it so that it is easy to reference but isn't always nagging in the background? Because at the end of the day, we're all kind of like children and if the more you nag, the more someone's going to tune something out. So how do we make those things more accessible? And that's where we look at where AI can do those things. And that can be everything from conversational assistance that are in a closed system that no one else can access.
- [41:57]
Michael Stelzner
What is that? Explain what you just said. Is that like the equivalent of a private bot for like a chatbot?
- [42:01]
Susan Westwater
Absolutely. It can be a private chatbot or your own private, for lack of a better term, your own private Alexa, where I can have something in my office that I'm asking questions to, but I'm asking it. It's. It's locked away, so it's behind firewalls so I don't have to worry about espionage or someone saying the wrong thing. It's got some firewalls in place.
- [42:22]
Michael Stelzner
Is that something you have to build or is there companies that you can just buy that?
- [42:26]
Susan Westwater
There are some places like you can actually be able to add that onto other conversational solutions or there's even ways that you can use. Like an example of a real simple one is Looker Studio, which is, you know, Google+ conversational AI that allows you to be able to ask those questions of what's going on on your dashboards and being able to do that and tracking in real time. There are other systems that are in place where you can use a conversational assistant. There's a couple tools where perhaps you're building it in the sense of you're putting the workflow and the information in there, but it's really simple and it's no code, so you don't need like a development team and it can assist of like this makes sense. But the reality is, is that it's not nearly the heavy lift that it once was of putting some of those things together.
- [43:16]
Michael Stelzner
Okay, so Looker Studio is Google's data studio, just renamed. And I know it has some like ability to just ask it some basic AI questions. Are there any tools that you recommend on this conversational AI layer? Did we already talk about that? I'm just curious, like, if people want to try to mess around with that.
- [43:36]
Susan Westwater
Sure. If you want to get from a standpoint of building those assistants, there's a company called Voice Flow.
- [43:41]
Michael Stelzner
Voice Flow?
- [43:43]
Susan Westwater
Yeah, one word, voice and Flow. And they Have a simplified. They actually have a really nice user interface. So that way then you can put something together. And they actually, I want to say just in one of their recent updates, made it possible so that you have the ability of a large language model and understanding of processing the information. So whatever I'm saying, it's figuring that out and you don't have to go through the painful synonym game. Then you can actually insert your own corpus of information securely. So that I only want you to pull the answers from there. I only want you to pull answers from my HR policy, or I only want you to pull from my competitive reports or my information. And then on the backside it then basically, and this is a very simplified explanation, but then it will then use again an LLM to put that back and generate the answer again in English or actually whatever language you need, because I know that that's a possibility these days too, but of giving it back to you in natural language. So that way then you're asking the question, it's pulling from the right part of the library, so to speak, and then it's giving you your answer back and saying, this is your answer to the question you asked.
- [44:51]
Michael Stelzner
So voiceflow.com, i'm on their site right now. It looks like they take inbound phone calls, chatbots, the whole shebang. Fascinating. So any other things you wanted to mention on this operate leaner thing?
- [45:02]
Susan Westwater
I think if anything, it's just starting to think about if there's something that you're doing three times a day or more. Think about whether or not that's opportunity for automation. And I think also just thinking about whatever those things are that make you sit and say, oh my gosh, there has to be a better way. I am so sick of doing it this way. That's an opportunity to kind of look within there. I would also say, as you look at that, make sure that you include the people who actually are doing that stuff if you're a leader, because those are the people who know where. Yep. You can definitely expedite that step. Or they will say, you know what, there's actually a couple consequences or implications if it doesn't go right. Let's assess that risk.
- [45:41]
Michael Stelzner
Susan Westwater, you have rattled off a whole bunch of tools that most of my audience has never heard of before. And I know that some of them are going to be like, I want to talk to Susan. So first of all, if they want to connect with you on the socials, what's your preferred platform? And then if they want to potentially engage you. Where do you want to send them?
- [45:59]
Susan Westwater
So socials, LinkedIn, you can find me there. I also am on X only because that's where all the AI kids play.
- [46:06]
Michael Stelzner
So is it Susan Westwater on both of those?
- [46:08]
Susan Westwater
Yes, and you can find me that way. And then we also obviously have our website and one thing I wanted to let folks know is if you want to know more about those tools, because we only talked about a handful. Something that Scott and I put together is a bit of a what we call our AI toolkit. And you can get that at Pragmatic Digital AI Toolkit and that has we've gone through about 30 different types of toolkit and also then share a little bit more about that framework and we even talk a little bit about models and what their strengths are. I do caveat that it was released a week ago. So it's as of, you know that.
- [46:47]
Michael Stelzner
Date as of June of 2025 when we're recording this. And it's Pragmatic Digital. You said aitoolkit?
- [46:55]
Susan Westwater
Yep.
- [46:55]
Michael Stelzner
Susan Westwater, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insights with us.
- [46:59]
Susan Westwater
Thank you so much for having me. This was great.
- [47:00]
Michael Stelzner
Hey, if you missed anything, and I know we talked about a lot, we took all the notes, find them over@social mediaexaminer.com a62 and be sure to follow this show on whatever app you're listening to. And if you've been a listener for a while, would love a review, would also love it if you would share with your friends. And don't forget to tag me and do check out our other shows, the Social Media Marketing Podcast and the Social Media Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the AI Explored Podcast. I am Michael Stelzner, your host. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may AI help you become more successful. The AI Explored Podcast is a production.
- [47:41]
Susan Westwater
Of Social Media Examiner.
- [47:45]
Michael Stelzner
Just a quick reminder before you go. If you're ready to become indispensable in the age of AI, the AI Business Society is your solution. Join now and secure your discounted membership by visiting socialmediaexaminer.com AI I can't wait to see you inside the AI Business Society.