Make Your Business Immortal: Create Customer Advocates & Unlock Predictive Metrics!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Experts of Experience – "Make Your Business Immortal: Create Customer Advocates & Unlock Predictive Metrics!"

Hosted by Lacey Peace and presented by Salesforce Customer Success, this episode of "Experts of Experience" delves into the transformative journey of Prudential Financial under the leadership of Abhi Parakh, Head of Customer Experience. Released on May 21, 2025, the discussion offers invaluable insights into building a customer-obsessed culture, leveraging AI for predictive metrics, and creating enduring customer advocates.

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1. Defining Customer Experience

Abhi Parakh opens the conversation by emphasizing the holistic nature of customer experience (CX):

"The brand is the promise, but the experience is the reality." (00:00)

He elaborates that CX encompasses all interactions a customer has with a company, extending beyond traditional touchpoints like call centers or digital platforms.

"We define customer experience as a sum of all interactions that a customer may have with a company." (05:48)

2. The State of CX at Prudential in 2021

Taking over four years ago, Abhi describes the initial landscape at Prudential:

"We had the right aspirations at the company... to be customer obsessed. But it was hard to quantify." (08:29)

Prudential, a 150-year-old financial giant serving 50 million customers across 50 countries, faced challenges with inconsistent CX measurements and a fragmented approach across its global operations.

3. Scaling CX in a Large, Legacy Company

Addressing the complexity of scaling CX in a long-established organization, Abhi highlights the multifaceted nature of Prudential's customer base, which includes end customers, advisors, intermediaries, and institutional clients.

"Pretty nuanced and complicated, multilayered stakeholders." (11:20)

4. Embedding Customer Centricity in Culture: Rituals, Artifacts, Beliefs

To foster a customer-obsessed culture, Prudential implemented a framework based on rituals, artifacts, and beliefs:

• Beliefs: Central to their strategy, focusing on customer needs driving growth.

  "A focus on our customers and their needs... is the cornerstone." (12:09)

• Rituals: Regular forums and meetings to align leadership and employees on CX goals.

  "Every six to eight weeks to talk about this belief system." (13:01)

• Artifacts: Tools and ceremonies like internal conferences and quarterly voice of customer (VoC) calls to reinforce CX initiatives.

  "We arm the employees who join with a QR code that they can scan and access all the different ways that they can hear customer stories." (18:55)

5. Storytelling in Customer Experience

Abhi underscores the power of storytelling in humanizing customer interactions and driving empathy among employees.

"Storytelling is such a great way to convince people... So storytelling has been a pretty important piece of the puzzle." (17:55)

An early initiative involved creating customer testimonial videos, which evolved into robust, ongoing customer engagement through communities and panels.

6. Transitioning from Pockets of Goodness to a Consistent CX

Initially marked by isolated successes, Prudential's transformation aimed for a cohesive, global approach to CX, eliminating inconsistencies and ensuring uniform excellence across all regions.

"We had pockets of goodness, there were areas where it was working, but it wasn't homogenous." (09:19)

7. Leveraging AI and Emerging Technology in CX

Prudential's early adoption of AI began in 2023, focusing on generative AI (GenAI) for content creation and autonomous task execution through agentic AI.

"2023 was the year of exploration... 2024 was the year we really piloted and scaled that up." (35:37)

Use cases include:

• Marketing: Content generation and productivity enhancements.
• User Research: Synthesizing video interviews and feedback rapidly.
• HR: AI-driven coaching for employee performance.

8. From Customer Stories to Predictive Metrics

Abhi discusses the evolution from reactive feedback mechanisms to proactive, predictive metrics:

"The future... is not a post survey future, but a survey plus real-time and predictive future." (25:25)

Implementing real-time data analysis allows Prudential to anticipate customer needs and address issues before they escalate, exemplified by their proactive approach during tax season, resulting in a 20% reduction in incoming calls.

9. Impact of CX Transformation on Prudential

Prudential's CX initiatives have yielded significant improvements:

• Core CX Metrics: Increased by 138% year-over-year by 2024.
• Digital Experience: Achieved double-digit growth in usability.
• Employee Engagement: 94% of employees understand how to meet customer goals.
• Awards: Recognized by Forrester as the "Most Customer Obsessed Enterprise in America."

"Our employees... 94% know what they can do to meet our customer and their goals." (33:16)

10. Vision for the Future: Predictive and Agentic AI

Looking ahead, Abhi envisions a seamless, omnichannel CX facilitated by agentic AI, where AI agents autonomously handle tasks across various platforms, providing a unified and efficient customer journey.

"My ideal state for Agent AI is this thing I call the one conversation solution." (47:13)

However, he cautions that true agentic AI, capable of autonomous task execution across multiple systems, may take another one to two years to become commonplace due to data integration challenges.

11. Overcoming Challenges in Implementing AI

Key challenges Prudential faced include:

• Human Factors: Addressing employee anxiety and fostering curiosity about AI.
• Data Integration: Ensuring comprehensive, quality data across multiple systems.
• Cultural Shift: Empowering employees to experiment and innovate with AI tools.

"The trick is how quickly you can move folks from apathy and anxiety into adoption." (38:10)

12. Advice for Businesses on Adopting AI

Abhi recommends:

• Start with GenAI: Effective for content-oriented, low-risk applications.
• Experiment with Agentic AI: Begin with internal, assistive use cases while maintaining human oversight.
• Focus on Data Readiness: Ensure data is organized and accessible to maximize AI effectiveness.

"If you have low-risk use cases... that could be an interesting one where you can do it with low risk." (50:33)

13. Ethical Considerations of AI in CX

Abhi emphasizes the dual nature of AI as a force for good or bad, advocating for robust controls, regulations, and ethical standards to ensure AI benefits society while mitigating risks like cybersecurity threats and fraud.

"AI, just like any other technology, can be a force for good or a force for bad." (55:05)

14. Abhi's Favorite Customer Experiences

Closing on a personal note, Abhi shares his admiration for brands that excel in customer experience:

• Marriott: Praised for personalized and memorable stays.
• Costco: Valued for understanding customer needs and fostering long-term relationships through exceptional employee and customer experiences.

"They remember who you are and you feel really wanted." (58:25)

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Conclusion

Abhi Parakh's insights reveal that building an immortal business hinges on cultivating a customer-obsessed culture, leveraging technology like AI for predictive and proactive CX, and empowering employees to deliver exceptional experiences. Prudential's journey serves as a masterclass for organizations aiming to exceed customer expectations and foster enduring loyalty.

Transcript

[Abhi Parakh]

The brand is the promise, but the experience is the reality.

[Lacey]

We define customer experience as a sum.

[Abhi Parakh]

Of all interactions that a customer may have. So it's not just the call center, it's not just the digital experience. It's any experience.

[Daisy]

Can you just paint a picture for the listeners how big Prudential really is? It's a massive 150-year-old company. How do you even start to tackle that problem?

[Abhi Parakh]

We provide life insurance and retirement security and advice to 50 million customers.

[Daisy]

Wow.

[Abhi Parakh]

Across 50 countries globally. They actually had this email written to one of our presidents about how they're gonna thank Prudential when the polar bears are dying and the ice caps are melting.

[Lacey]

Wow.

[Abhi Parakh]

Because of the amount of paper that was being sent to them. So we created a network of champions. Hundreds of customer advocates within the company. Forrester recognized us last year as the most customer obsessed enterprise in America. You can't survive for 150 years. You can't thrive as a company for 150 years without that culture of customer obsession.

[Daisy]

Prudential adopted AI pretty early on. So when I was talking to you earlier, you'd mentioned that your peers are pretty amazed with where you guys are at right now.

[Abhi Parakh]

All sorts of emotion with any new technology that's introduced. The trick is how quickly you can move folks from apathy and anxiety into adoption.

[Daisy]

And how far away do you think that vision is? Welcome back to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lacey. Peace as always. I've got Rose, our producer, with me. Hey, Rose.

[Rose]

Hey, Lacey.

[Daisy]

How are you doing today?

[Rose]

I'm good. I'm thinking about a lot after that interview. That was a really cool one.

[Daisy]

No, it was great. We had on ABHI Parakh, who's the head of customer experience at Prudential Financial, which is one of the world's largest and oldest financial services institutions. Yeah.

[Rose]

Isn't it 150 years old?

[Daisy]

Like 150 years old this year? Yeah. They just turned 150, so happy birthday to them.

[Rose]

Yeah. That is a legacy company.

[Daisy]

Oh, for sure, for sure. Which it's so cool when we get to talk to these companies that have been around for so long to see how they've been able to stay relevant for 150 years. So many companies die after like year one, year two. I think it's like a huge amount of small businesses don't make it past year seven. So when a company makes it to like a decade, that's a huge mark. But to make it to 15 decades is wild. That means you're really Creating good value for your customers. This was a true masterclass in what it takes to be customer obsessed. ABHI rocked us through how he and his organization think about team building in a way that actually drives customer experience and how they've really developed a culture that, that has continued to put the customer at the central piece of literally everything that they do.

[Rose]

Yeah, customer obsession is something we hear all the time. It's something you read on LinkedIn all the time. But it was cool to hear the very practical advice and frameworks that Prudential uses to ensure that there's action being taken from all of this data that they get that their employees feel empowered. And the three, what was it? The three elements of culture. Right, Daisy?

[Daisy]

Yeah, this was. I mean, this was one of my favorite parts, was talking about how they've curated their culture.

[Rose]

Yeah, he listed out the three. He said the three elements were rituals, artifacts, and beliefs.

[Daisy]

This is one of the things about customer experience that I love the most, is when we can talk with people who are building cultures that cultivate this experience for customers. Because it all. We've talked about it so many times. The customer experience always starts with the employee experience. It always starts with how the employees think about their customers and how, how much do they actually care about this person that they're talking to on the phone or messaging over chat or emailing. And the way that ABHI and Prudential has been able to create this like, true human connection with their. What did he say, 50 million plus customers that they have? I think so, yeah. Like, they've got millions of customers around the world in 50 different countries, and they've, across this entire huge organization, been able to make it for all of their teams to connect with customers in a way that feels really human and that puts the customer at the center of everything.

[Rose]

This episode's a great reminder that there is no customer base too complex and there's no industry too boring to deliver great customer experience. Like, there's ways, proven ways to do it. And Abhi's not. He's not gatekeeping, he's laying it all out exactly how they created a truly customer obsessed culture. Before we jump into Abhi's episode, hit like, hit. Subscribe. Go comment on Lacy's LinkedIn page. Go comment on our experts experience LinkedIn page. Get into the comments on YouTube, tell us exactly what you want to be hearing from these executives, because we're sitting down with them.

[Daisy]

And without further ado, here's ABHI Parakh, head of customer experience at Prudential Financial well, abhi, welcome to Experts of Experience.

[Abhi Parakh]

Thanks for having me.

[Daisy]

Yeah, I'm so excited. Before we dive into everything Prudential and what you guys are working on, I actually want to start with a different question. What exactly is customer experience? Like, if I'm a college student and I'm like, hey, abhi, what are you working on? What are you doing day to day? I'm interested in this customer experience thing, but I don't really know what that means. What do you say to them?

[Lacey]

Great question.

[Abhi Parakh]

And actually, colleges should be teaching customer experience because it's not a formal discipline, but in colleges. But it's definitely a formal discipline in the business world. So I think we need to bridge that gap.

[Lacey]

We define customer experience as a sum.

[Abhi Parakh]

Of all interactions that a customer may have with a company. So it's not just the call center, it's not just the digital experience. It's any experience. It could be a marketing email, a brand experience. All of those things together are.

[Lacey]

Combined.

[Abhi Parakh]

And together the customer experience and the way I always describe it is the brand is the promise, but the experience is the reality.

[Daisy]

That's good. That's good. So you just told me that customer experience is not this formal education path that you can follow in college. So what drew you to this choice and to the job that you're currently at?

[Abhi Parakh]

So I've always been passionate about design, about experience. Before leading this team, which I started in this role four years ago, I had various opportunities to interact with the customer experience team with the design side of things. Just fascinated about how they use empathy as their superpower, how they get to make things easier for customers. And there's such an art and science to make these experiences consistently enjoyable. And there's so much power that can.

[Lacey]

Be unlocked if you do it right, but also so much emotion and frustration.

[Abhi Parakh]

That can be unlocked if you don't pay attention to it. It is such an important aspect in our personal lives when we have a good experience and then we recommend that company. When I go to a really nice hotel and you discover a really nice restaurant and you were wowed by the service, those experiences matter. And it builds word of mouth, it builds recommendation. So I've always been passionate about this space. But then four years ago, when the opportunity was knocking on my door, I jumped at it because I had so much passion for the area. And it's been really amazing to be able to lead such a talented group of people so that we can make an impact on Prudential's customer experience.

[Daisy]

I'm so glad you brought up the transition from four years ago because I know when we were chatting earlier, you'd mentioned that when you took on this role, what it looked like at Prudential was really different than what it looks like now. So in the past year alone, you guys have won several awards for customer experience and customer service. Where were you at in 2021 whenever you took over?

[Abhi Parakh]

Yeah, exactly. It was almost exactly four years ago, actually. So where were we? Right.

[Lacey]

What was the state of cx?

[Abhi Parakh]

I would say we had the right aspirations at the company. We actually had a documented cultural aspiration which we have today as well, just to be customer obsessed.

[Lacey]

Right.

[Abhi Parakh]

You can't see survive for 150 years. You can't thrive as a company for 150 years, which is what Prudential has done. We turned 150 years old this year without that aspiration. Right. Without that culture of customer obsession. So we had that aspiration, but I think it was hard to quantify that. It was hard. It wasn't tangible what that really meant or how we were doing. So when we looked towards measurement, we found that we were measuring our experience with customers in many different ways.

[Lacey]

Pretty inconsistent across the board.

[Abhi Parakh]

So again, apples and oranges and how things were and very hard to get a full consistent picture across the board. We had some basic capabilities, right, but we didn't have direct access to our customers to co create with them and see what they wanted from us, but also predict what they might need. So there were pockets of goodness, there were areas where it was working, but it wasn't homogenous, it wasn't consistent, especially globally. So our measurement was inconsistent. But part of that was also because our incentive model was unclear. It was unclear why you would focus on customer experience. And then all of that together I think was a little bit of shaky confidence because we weren't sure where we stood on customer experience.

[Daisy]

So you just described to me where you guys were at in 2021 and how kind of it was pockets of goodness that you wanted to create more cohesively across the organization. Can you just paint a picture for the listeners of how big Prudential really is? And when we're talking about like trying to make to trying to scale customer experience across the board what you guys are actually doing? Because I mean, It's a massive 150-year-old company. Like how do you even start to tackle that problem?

[Lacey]

So Prudential is 150-year-old company.

[Abhi Parakh]

Like you said, we provide life insurance.

[Lacey]

And retirement security and advice to 50.

[Abhi Parakh]

Million customers across 50 countries globally.

[Lacey]

So we're huge.

[Abhi Parakh]

We're also top 10 asset manager, which is not a very popularly known fact. So we manage wealth for huge organizations, governments. We have a lot of clients across the world that invest with Prudential leading customer experience. In Prudential, we create experiences that meet.

[Lacey]

Customer needs and business objectives. Our customers are defined as not just.

[Abhi Parakh]

Our end customers, but also our advisors, intermediaries and brokers that help us distribute our products to our customers and then.

[Lacey]

Ultimately the clients from an institutional perspective.

[Abhi Parakh]

That we work with as well. So, for example, group insurance would have.

[Lacey]

Employers that we consider our customers our.

[Abhi Parakh]

Clients, but we also look at the employees of those employers as being our customers. So pretty nuanced and complicated, multilayered stakeholders. So that's the first part of your question, is how big? Prudential is a pretty big global and complex organization. In such a large organization, you can't do it centrally, of course, you can spark the fire. Because our transformation has always been about embedding customer centricity into the DNA of the company, how we work, how we make decisions and so forth. Culture is made up of beliefs of rituals and artifacts, right? So if you have those three things running, you'll have the engine to keep the momentum going. When we think about beliefs, right? At Prudential, we do believe that a focus on our customers and their needs.

[Lacey]

And their experience will drive growth.

[Abhi Parakh]

That is the cornerstone. So you have to have the belief, and it starts at the very top of the company, but you have to engage the entire company, right? A big global company. So from the top of the house perspective, when we started this, we brought.

[Lacey]

The top 40 leaders of the company.

[Abhi Parakh]

Together every six to eight weeks to talk about this belief system, to talk about what our strategy would be, and align everybody on a set of common goals, common initiatives that would spark this movement.

[Lacey]

The second thing we did was launch a Champions program.

[Abhi Parakh]

So this is about engaging the rest of the company. We have that top level sponsorship. How do we engage the rest of the company?

[Lacey]

Of course, a small central team is.

[Abhi Parakh]

Not going to be able to do that. So we created a network of champions. They're called the Customer Experience Champions.

[Lacey]

Hundreds of customer advocates within the company.

[Abhi Parakh]

Who are driving advocacy for the customer, what the customer needs are, and different ways that employees within the company can get engaged with this movement for customer centricity. So those were the two big cultural ways that we embedded the belief around.

[Lacey]

Customer centricity within the company.

[Abhi Parakh]

But then we design rituals and artifacts too, right? So rituals like every quarter we not.

[Lacey]

Only have an earnings call for external.

[Abhi Parakh]

Shareholders and investors, we also host an internal all employee voc call, a voice of customer call that is attended by thousands of employees where cross functional leaders.

[Lacey]

From digital business, service, tech ops, sales.

[Abhi Parakh]

Right, you name it. They share what they're hearing from our customers. And what are we doing, what are.

[Lacey]

We planning on, how we're going to deliver on those needs?

[Abhi Parakh]

So we have a really good forum every quarter to do that.

[Lacey]

We also have an annual conference internally.

[Abhi Parakh]

Where we bring external speakers in internal leaders, we celebrate our progress and we reinvigorate our momentum for the following year. And regular monthly tactical meetings to look at feedback from customers and create strategic action plans with owners and timelines that then feeds into prioritization. So a lot of different rituals, artifacts have been put into place and a network of champions that keeps that belief alive.

[Daisy]

I just want to acknowledge those two words, rituals and artifacts. That's a unique way because you could have just said we have quarterly meetings. So what was the decision there with deciding to use that type of language? Language.

[Abhi Parakh]

And I would say some of the language is internal, right. As we think about these things, what our philosophy is, how we're going to approach it, we didn't get it all.

[Lacey]

Right in the first go. This has been an iterative process and we've learned a lot throughout the transformation. But if you look up what makes.

[Abhi Parakh]

Culture, it is those three things, right?

[Lacey]

You need to have a strong belief.

[Abhi Parakh]

In any culture, really. I mean, even if you're in your religious, a community and you have a culture or your national identity, there are.

[Lacey]

Certain beliefs that you hold sacrosanct, right?

[Abhi Parakh]

There are certain rituals that you go to church every Sunday or wherever your place of worship is. And you have artifacts like you have.

[Lacey]

A textbook that has the rules and.

[Abhi Parakh]

You know, everything is documented and you follow that. So I think it's drawn from real life and it works really well in the real life business setting as well.

[Daisy]

I know, I love it. I just love that language a lot. I think it's very interesting and it makes it feel a lot more human than just like very businessy of. These are our me, this is our meeting, this is our agenda, this is how we handle things. It just feels a lot more relatable and something that you could like support and buy into. And on that note, I did want to kind of touch on storytelling. I love storytelling and how businesses use story to get people on the same page. Was there an aspect of that that you guys incorporated? It sounds like creating that belief System really did require sort of shifting the mindset of how people talk and what language they're using and what they're thinking about.

[Lacey]

Absolutely.

[Abhi Parakh]

I mean, storytelling is such a great way to convince people human beings have passed on information in the form of stories from prehistoric times. So storytelling is hugely important, actually a skill that we constantly strive to better within my team through trainings and such. So important to communicating. I'll give you an example of storytelling, a really kind of interesting one. When we first starting our transformation and we had that sort of forum of the top 40 leaders that I mentioned, we wanted to make it real. We wanted them to hear from real customers on what their level of emotion and relationship with Prudential was. Well, when we first started, we actually didn't know how to do that. We had no access communicate with customers directly. We've obviously come a far away since then. But we went around asking our colleagues.

[Lacey]

If they had friends or family that.

[Abhi Parakh]

Were Prudential customers that would be willing to talk to us. And this was 2021, so this was post pandemic. Everybody was remote. We set up zoom meetings for everybody. We recorded there, recorded them in the comfort of their home, stitched together that video. And that was the first sort of customer video that we made where customers from all different areas of our businesses were able to talk about their relationship or their pain points were what they liked, what they didn't like. So really scrappy beginnings. Fast forward to today where we have access to customers on a daily basis. We are co creating with them, testing with them. So we've come a far away. But from the beginning, storytelling has been a pretty important piece of the puzzle. Every quarter when we have our voice of customer meeting, we arm the employees who join with a QR code that.

[Lacey]

They can scan and access all the.

[Abhi Parakh]

Different ways that they can hear customer stories. Whether it's calls with customers, whether it's the voice of customer feedback that the customers, advisors and clients are sharing with us. And each one of those nuggets tells a story. So I think all of bringing the customer into the room, bringing that, making it real has always been really important.

[Daisy]

Well, yeah, and it makes the your employees really want to help them. Right. Because now, oh, this is a human, this is a person. This is like the pain point that they're having and it makes it feel a lot more genuine and easier. It's not just this like number on a screen of these are the metrics I need to hit. So I think that's really fascinating. Another thing that I wanted to hit on. There was you talked about you had to go ask your friends and family for this first video. How did you get from that point to now having direct access to customers? How did you actually navigate that transition and what system did you build up so you could have more customer feedback?

[Abhi Parakh]

Yeah. So some of that is also from prior experience. I've worked at other big companies and banks, for example Citibank. We had a community like this that was, was alive and thriving and I knew the benefits that something like this could bring.

[Lacey]

So we did invest.

[Abhi Parakh]

The company has invested in customer experience.

[Lacey]

Because it is such a strategic priority.

[Abhi Parakh]

For us to deliver industry leading customer experiences. We invested in those capabilities and tools. We asked our customers with emails whether they would like to participate in such a community. And so we recruited our customers into those communities and panels and we refresh that every six months or yearly. We've actually seen so much engagement from our customers because it's just a matter of asking.

[Lacey]

Right?

[Abhi Parakh]

They're more than happy to be part of this story with such a strong brand and help us help them. So now we have hundreds of customers from our life insurance business, from an annuities business and not only that, we also have other forums with our advisors for example where we meet with them.

[Lacey]

Monthly in our businesses and we ask.

[Abhi Parakh]

Them and we share and communicate what's coming, what they can expect on the roadmap and things like that. So there are multiple modes where we.

[Lacey]

Are listening to our customers today.

[Abhi Parakh]

So that's just one example.

[E]

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[Daisy]

Customer story that you've gotten to hear?

[Abhi Parakh]

There actually have been a few. I'll share maybe one or two. One was from a customer in San Francisco who had received so much paper in the mail from us and it.

[Lacey]

Was such a disjointed experience between phone.

[Abhi Parakh]

Calls and paper that they actually had this email written to one of our presidents about how they're going to thank Prudential when the polar bears are dying and the ice caps are melting because of the amount of paper that was being sent to them and they would much rather be communicated in digital ways. So that was a.

[Lacey]

Sort of call.

[Abhi Parakh]

To action and a really great story that made the rounds and really as a Wake up call to say, what can we do? And led to a multi year investment and roadmap to digitize some of those and stop the paper. Because we want to be able to communicate to our customers in the mode of their preference.

[Lacey]

And the fact that our customers are.

[Abhi Parakh]

Actually asking for that just makes the case for us to invest in some of our digital capabilities.

[Daisy]

What I love too about all of this is people saying yes to giving you guys feedback because if they didn't want to continue a relationship with you, they would have just been like, no. You get this email, hey, do you want to participate? If they didn't see some value in what you guys were offering and had some good experience thus far, it just really speaks to the community that's already been built over the last 150 years that these people would even want to participate.

[Abhi Parakh]

Yeah.

[Lacey]

And these are long term relationships.

[Abhi Parakh]

Right. This is not a apparel merchandise that you buy and you can switch to a different provider tomorrow.

[Lacey]

Right.

[Abhi Parakh]

This is a lifelong commitment because imagine a life insurance policy, a lot of.

[Lacey]

Our policies have been bought 30 years ago.

[Daisy]

Wow.

[Abhi Parakh]

Right. Because you buy life insurance for the long term, annuities are your life savings. And you know, people are living longer and longer. And we are at peak 65 where we have had. We've never had as many people turning 65 than we have today.

[Lacey]

More people are living longer, they're retiring.

[Abhi Parakh]

And they will live longer retired lives than any generation before them. So we have to make sure we are there for them. Not just for tomorrow or the day.

[Lacey]

After, but for decades.

[Abhi Parakh]

So I think customers are more invested in that relationship because it is such.

[Lacey]

A long term relationship.

[Daisy]

And I love that you guys are investing back in them because you could have just been like, oh, you're stuck too bad, deal with what you got. But instead you're like, let's make this every step of the way, every second you're with us, something that's valuable.

[Abhi Parakh]

Yeah. And we do see our churn rates are actually very low single digits because because of that sticky relationship. And we want to make sure that they're not with us just because it's a high switching cost, but because they actually enjoy being with Prudential. And just one point about feedback, you know, and I'm sure we'll talk about this more. But we ask and we're so happy that they give us. So we ask and we receive. But we also want to understand what their needs are without having to ask or without having them telling us because that's an extra step.

[Lacey]

We have so much information that we.

[Abhi Parakh]

Should be able to predict or in real time be able to say this is what's going on and can we take action on that quickly versus waiting for all the survey results to come out. So that's an important step we're taking in the future of customer experience that we're building.

[Daisy]

Yeah. Getting more predictive. And I know, yeah, we can actually dive into that right now if you want to a little bit more. What does that vision look like for you with the future of like taking in all this information and making it so you can actually address things before their problems? How are you guys thinking about that at Prudential?

[Lacey]

Yeah.

[Abhi Parakh]

So as I said, surveys has been great, have been great. And I don't think surveys are bad. I don't think surveys are going to go away. I think you need to ask your customers, but that can't be the only way you understand what their needs are. Right. So that's the future that we're going, is not a post survey future, but a survey plus real time and predictive future. When I talk about real time, I.

[Lacey]

Talk about signals that you can get.

[Abhi Parakh]

From how folks are experiencing your experiences.

[Lacey]

And channels in real time.

[Abhi Parakh]

Somebody's coming to our website, they get frustrated. Well, we should know that they're getting frustrated because there are various different indicators in that website that when their mouse is shifting places or they're rage clicking, all of those things, it's actually a thing. It's a metric of rage.

[Daisy]

Oh, no, I am that person. I'm like, get this to work.

[Abhi Parakh]

So there's so many. The data is there.

[Lacey]

Right.

[Abhi Parakh]

It's up to us to listen to those signals in real time.

[Daisy]

Yeah.

[Abhi Parakh]

And also, if someone has come to us once, come to us the two times called us, there's definitely something going.

[Lacey]

On that we can predict what their next need or step is going to be.

[Abhi Parakh]

Perfect example is tax season. Right. It's so cyclical in nature.

[Lacey]

We don't need to wait for the.

[Abhi Parakh]

Customer to come to us. We can be proactive, we can be predictive. We know these people are going to.

[Lacey]

Come to us at a certain time.

[Abhi Parakh]

So we can expect some interactions and plan ahead so we can deliver seamlessly. And actually speaking about tax season, that's exactly what we have done. We have proactively reached out to customers. We've integrated all the forms and all the documents that they will need during tax season. And we've been so ready that actually.

[Lacey]

The incoming calls have gone down by 20%.

[Daisy]

Wow.

[Lacey]

In some cases.

[Abhi Parakh]

So we've seen a lot of benefits already of that predictive and proactive experience.

[Daisy]

Is that just in the last year or has that been over the last couple years?

[Abhi Parakh]

That's actually just this year. Year over year, we've seen a 20% reduction.

[Daisy]

So something I was thinking about while you're talking about the rage clicking is it's not just like measuring what people are doing whenever they're interacting with your website or email or they're calling you. It's also being able to interpret it correctly. Right. So there's this story my CEO was telling me she used to work at Google where they were working on an app and they were like, oh, look, they spend so much time on this app. That's great. This metric of like time on app is fantastic. However, the app was supposed to be helping them solve their problem. So if they were spending more time on the app, it actually meant that they weren't able to solve their problem quickly like they were hoping. So I was just wondering if there's any stories you have around that or any advice for people about interpreting the data correctly and making sure that we're not. We're looking at the right metrics versus just being like, oh, this thing must be good because it means there's more. But maybe we actually don't want them spending a whole bunch of time on our website or calling us all the time.

[Abhi Parakh]

Oh my gosh, yes. This is a classic how much data is good data. And I think you can be drowning in metrics and not being able to take action. So that's a very important question. So the way I think about metrics is about business metrics. So all of your metrics should be put in context of the funnel because you could boost traffic, but then none of that traffic converts.

[Lacey]

Right.

[Abhi Parakh]

So it doesn't matter in isolation, I should say, what your traffic growth is in isolation, what your engagement rate is in isolation, what your conversion rate from visits to leads looks like just as an example on the website that my team manages. Right. What really matters is have you ultimately increase the contribution to the bottom line. Right. Have you taken out steps within the servicing process? Great. But has that increased calls, in which case bad. So it really matters what the ultimate.

[Lacey]

Business metric is that you're trying to influence. And all of those early indicators should.

[Abhi Parakh]

Be put into context in the funnel. Whether you're trying to save costs or you're trying to boost revenue, or you're.

[Lacey]

Trying to increase experience, all of those.

[Abhi Parakh]

Things have to be looked in tandem with each other and in the context of the end to end funnel. So that would be my advice.

[Daisy]

Yeah, yeah, that's great. So I wanted to go into, you know, it's been four years now since you guys started rolling out a lot of these changes. What sort of impact have you seen on the customer? And any other like fun or cool wins that you can share?

[Abhi Parakh]

Yeah, actually our customer experience transformation has been really successful, if I can say so. And we have the sort of proof points right on that. So I would say in terms of just hard metrics, and I know that customer experience. You know, there's this whole debate of which metrics to use. Is NPS still the right metric? Is NPS outdated? There's so much customer experience, social media debate, a lot of that fueled by influencers who want to be controversial.

[Daisy]

But I know the LinkedIn thought leaders.

[Abhi Parakh]

But look, from a practitioner perspective, my advice is the following. Just when it comes to the debate on NPS or any other metric, just pick a metric, right?

[Lacey]

Make sure that it's consistent. Make sure that you have benchmarks.

[Abhi Parakh]

If that metric is NPS and it.

[Lacey]

Works for you, great. And you can get buy in in.

[Abhi Parakh]

That, better pick a different metric. If you can have consistency, it makes sense for your business and you can benchmark, then do that.

[Lacey]

But you need some kind of measurement.

[Abhi Parakh]

To be able to quantify the nuance in that is that with any metric, don't just run after the metric, right? Because that can lead to some adverse behaviors as well. Make sure that you ultimately are taking action. Are you making the experience better?

[Lacey]

The metrics are secondary and actually a.

[Abhi Parakh]

Guiding force to be able to do that.

[Lacey]

But it's all that under the hood, drivers and the verbatims and what are.

[Abhi Parakh]

People talking about that really matters. So that's sort of just my overall disclaimer. As I say, our metrics have seen a lot of improvement. So those are the indicators that I can talk about. But over two years, year ending 2024, which is the most recent information we have, our core CX metrics have jumped 138%. So huge improvement in that space.

[Lacey]

Our digital experiences have never been easier to use.

[Abhi Parakh]

We have hit record highs in that area, about a double digit growth in two years. And what's even more exciting, as I spoke about that cultural change that we were after, our employees, we do a pulse survey on customer experience with our employees every year. I was honestly shocked to see this metric.

[Lacey]

But of the employees that we surveyed.

[Abhi Parakh]

94% know what they can do to meet our customer and their goals. So they know what their needs are and what they can do to improve.

[Lacey]

And deliver on those needs.

[Abhi Parakh]

So that's really encouraging and a really leading indicator that says, okay, folks know what they can do. So we're going to keep doing the right things. Our culture is, is on the right track. So we feel really excited about that. And aside from that, we are also really proud.

[Lacey]

As you mentioned in the beginning of.

[Abhi Parakh]

The call of the external validation, it never hurts to win awards for all of this improvement.

[Lacey]

Forrester recognized us last year as the.

[Abhi Parakh]

Most customer obsessed enterprise in America. So again, you think about insurance, you're thinking about 150 years.

[Lacey]

But how we've embraced cultural change, how.

[Abhi Parakh]

We'Ve embraced technology and the excitement and momentum around that from the top down and bottoms up is really encouraging. And those things are important because they.

[Lacey]

Fuel the fire to keep going.

[Daisy]

And have you seen. So besides metrics, which are great, and I know businesses, everyone, we need to look at our metrics, but we've talked about stories and customer stories a lot. Are you seeing those customer stories change a little bit over the last several years as well?

[Abhi Parakh]

Yeah, absolutely. We have seen that. I mean, we've seen folks in the verbatim comments that we get right in our surveys, for example, in the call center as well. We are getting that feedback around our improvements because we have made changes where people had trouble understanding the person on.

[Lacey]

The other line, for example, because of.

[Abhi Parakh]

A difference in culture or difference in sort of accent, we've made some changes there.

[Lacey]

So now people are able to actually.

[Abhi Parakh]

Directly based on the feedback, have a better conversation, a more meaningful interaction. And we're seeing that coming through in the feedback as well.

[Daisy]

So Prudential adopted AI pretty early on. So when I was talking to you earlier, you'd mentioned that your peers are pretty amazed with where you guys are at right now. So I want to talk about that. Where did you guys or when did you start looking at AI and saying this is a tool that we really need to incorporate and kind of how did you start getting your team and your company ready for that?

[Abhi Parakh]

Yeah, I mean, I would say I'm going to talk on behalf of a lot of my peers and colleagues. All of us are working together to drive this sort of AI assisted future. I would say really in 2023 was.

[Lacey]

The year of exploration.

[Abhi Parakh]

So a lot of fact finding. It was also the year I think everybody woke up to the reality of how far the technology had come. So 2023, we were exploring a lot of different solutions to improve productivity, to assist our employees. 2024 was the year where we really piloted and very, very rapidly scaled that up to a lot of our employees.

[Lacey]

And we saw a lot of engagement.

[Abhi Parakh]

A lot of adoption and really focused.

[Lacey]

On the employee side of the equation.

[Abhi Parakh]

So that's really where we began and started to see a lot of improvement. I should caveat that with the types of AI that I'm talking about. So the timeline I just discussed is about Genai. There's obviously been traditional AI sort of in the machine learning space that Prudential has used. Right.

[Lacey]

We've been using that for a very.

[Abhi Parakh]

Very long time, such as in our underwriting function to be able to use models and big data and be able to make sense of that in real time. So we can improve the experience, improve the speed to market and improve the accuracy of decisioning of the life insurance application process. And then this is the year that we are obviously looking at agentic AI and a lot of heavy exploration going on in that space.

[Daisy]

Were there any early challenges you noticed in 2023 or even 2024 that were coming up as you guys were starting to explore adding these systems into your company?

[Abhi Parakh]

I mean, of course you have the human factor when you introduce any new technology. It is very natural for people to feel all sorts of emotion with any new technology that's introduced. There's always this cycle that I have seen personally of first folks are going to be and myself included, right. You're going to be apathetic because you don't really understand the technology. You're going to have anxiety and fear around using this technology and what it means for me and my job. And then there's curiosity. It's like, oh, this seems interesting, I.

[Lacey]

Want to learn more.

[Abhi Parakh]

Then you start engaging, the light bulbs go off and then you get that adoption. The trick is how quickly you can move folks from apathy and anxiety into adoption.

[E]

Consistency builds trust and that's what I love about tools like AgentForce. With AgentForce, AI agents can help you deliver consistently excellent service to your customers.

[Daisy]

24.

[E]

7 Fully integrated with Salesforce, Agentforce is redefining CX. Salesforce has the experts, resources and technology to help you start your agent force transformation today. In fact, Salesforce's support experience is now powered by AgentForce. See the future in action at help.salesforce.com right.

[Abhi Parakh]

And that's what I'm really proud about. Within Prudential, we've been able to do that. So a couple of things on that. So those were some of the challenges, but kudos to our company. Kudos to sort of my colleagues and.

[Lacey]

The team for embracing all of this.

[Abhi Parakh]

So quickly, I would say number one.

[Lacey]

From the top down, early on there.

[Abhi Parakh]

Was a lot of curiosity, right, and a lot of embrace of what this technology could do. So I think the faster you can move the higher ranks of the company from that apathy into curiosity and our leadership was there. So kudos to the Prudential leadership for that curiosity, for that engagement. Second, I would say the way that we've done this is not through some, oh, this is the AI team. This is going to be centrally managed, another governance, bureaucracy, none of that, right?

[Lacey]

This has been a very democratized process. Of course you need some central controls.

[Abhi Parakh]

We are a regulated company, we care deeply about our customers, finances. So you have to be able to.

[Lacey]

Have all the right controls and in.

[Abhi Parakh]

Place the risk assessments and all of those things. But to be able to say to every function and team, go ahead, experiment, right? Try new things. Let's see what we find out. That has been, I think, such an unlock for Prudential and a good playbook for new technologies as they come out because marketing to HR to all different sort of functions have been able to experiment very quickly. Third, I would say we are very fortunate that we already have set up a ventures team. So we have a team in Palo Alto that is very tech forward, always on the bleeding edge, and they have a whole ecosystem and partnerships with startups who are always on the, you know, sort of the next best thing.

[Lacey]

So they've been able to bring into.

[Abhi Parakh]

Prudential that external point of view and.

[Lacey]

Introduce us to a lot of startups as well.

[Abhi Parakh]

So there's been a lot of different things that have, I think, worked in that. And then I just, from the human element, more of show and less of tell, right? In the, in the show versus tell spectrum, once you put the tool in the hands of the people, you'll be amazed at all the different uses that folks will start coming up with. So when I talk to my people, I'm always asking like, are you using AI?

[Lacey]

And they said yes.

[Abhi Parakh]

And I said, what kind of tools are you using? And I was amazed at what tools that we thought people would use AI for. And actually the use cases have proliferated across the board.

[Daisy]

Well, I love that you didn't just say from leadership, like, hey, Here are the 10 use cases that we feel comfortable with you guys using this for and we think would be most effective. Instead you're like, here's the tools, play with them, see what works, kind of break the system, see where we should go, where we shouldn't go. And maybe this thing that we thought would work really well, actually, they don't care about that. They'd rather use it for this. So that culture of experimentation is very unique and very interesting that you kind of switched the roles there.

[Abhi Parakh]

I think that's a really good way to drive innovation through experimentation. However, we are running a business. I think use cases. Forecasting what the sort of business case is for these technologies is really important. But what happens is you actually surpass that over time. Right. Because now all these people are using it for all kinds of different things. But when you start, you do need to be very clear on what use primary use case you're trying to assess here and then see if that's working or not. But of course, we've been rewarded multifold by having this open and empowered approach.

[Daisy]

So what use cases are you guys leaning into right now? Has there been anything that you've seen, your team started to use and create that you're like, oh, man, this is really interesting?

[Abhi Parakh]

Yeah. I mean, I would say in general, if we just take the broad view of experience, employee experience, customer experience, I don't think there is one area of.

[Lacey]

The company that is untouched. Right.

[Abhi Parakh]

From a use case perspective, of course, some areas, like marketing, have been super early adopters. I think Gen AI lends itself really well to marketing. Right. Because it's about content, content generation. So we're all familiar. We've used ChatDBD to create new content or even in our personal lives or create some imagery. So of course, from a marketing perspective, that's been really good to assist with first drafts of content for our marketing assets.

[Lacey]

And we've seen a lot of productivity gains there.

[Abhi Parakh]

Our insights can be generated 50% faster, for example. So half the time productivity has gone through the roof in customer experience.

[Lacey]

We're using it for user research.

[Abhi Parakh]

So we have these communities of customers now that we were talking about earlier in the call. We do focus groups for them.

[Lacey]

Right.

[Abhi Parakh]

So video interviews, we see how they are reacting to certain new experiences that we're building. And it used to take weeks in some cases to synthesize all of those video interviews and drive those insights and then say, what actions would we recommend now we can do that in hours. I can actually very accurately synthesize all of that information, actually, even recommendations, what.

[Lacey]

Actions might be helpful based on what customers are telling us. We are doing the same thing on the voice of customer for all the.

[Abhi Parakh]

Hundreds of thousands of customer feedback that we get. And then I spoke about hr, we have been using AI for coaching and.

[Lacey]

Again that's not my area of expertise.

[Abhi Parakh]

But in the company, such an interesting use case to have an AI be able to have conversations with employees, difficult conversations with employees, and coach them to perform better. So lots of, lots of different use cases have come up.

[Daisy]

Abhi, what's the difference between Genai and.

[Abhi Parakh]

Agenic AI for those living under a rock? Gen AI is about generation of new content. Right? So whether it's research content, whether it's marketing ideas, whether it's imagery or even video, which the technology is moving so fast that it's pretty incredible. The voice and video elements that you can now generate is just mind blowing, but that's all about generating it. It's based on patterns in existing data that can be used to create new and unleash creativity. So Genai is actually pretty creative. So that's the sort of Genai space. Agentic is autonomous task execution. To do so you need context, you need memory, you need decision making capabilities. So that's where Agent Take comes in, is it can autonomously deliver on outcomes for certain tasks. So this is not predetermined tasks and sequences, but it can actually decide what it needs to do and it can.

[Lacey]

Talk to other agents who are specialized.

[Abhi Parakh]

In tasks and you can have all these virtual employees that are working behind the scenes to drive outcomes for you. But I think it is important, at.

[Lacey]

Least in this stage of the game that you don't give them too much.

[Abhi Parakh]

Autonomy and then there is a human.

[Lacey]

In the loop who can still monitor.

[Daisy]

What excites you about Agentic AI? As we look to the future, I know that we haven't like, we're all kind of in this phase right now of getting it set up, getting the system sort of integrated internally, getting employees comfortable with it. But like if we look maybe a year or a couple years down the road, what's really exciting you about what the capabilities are offering?

[Abhi Parakh]

Yeah, you know, my ideal state for Agent Ji is this thing I call.

[Lacey]

The one conversation solution.

[Abhi Parakh]

So you don't have to go to different places, you don't have to call and wait in ivr, you know where to go. You can have one conversation about it and it's handled and it's done and you can go back to the things that are most important to you. So on the customer's experience perspective, I.

[Lacey]

Think that we've always been on the.

[Abhi Parakh]

Quest to make it as easy as.

[Lacey]

Possible and as enjoyable as possible.

[Abhi Parakh]

But we've had all these different channels that you know and when I say we, I just mean in general, in the universe, not just prudential, different channels.

[Lacey]

That are owned by different people and run differently. And so there's this sort of omnichannel.

[Abhi Parakh]

Dream that has always eluded even the best companies. And I think with agentic AI we have that opportunity where the service agents and the digital agents in whatever modality we choose, whether it's voice or text, but you can have one conversation and.

[Lacey]

Then the army of agents can coordinate, have the context on all the previous.

[Abhi Parakh]

Conversations with this customer, have that memory, and also have the autonomy to be.

[Lacey]

Able to then deliver on the outcomes that they're after.

[Daisy]

And how far away do you think that vision is?

[Abhi Parakh]

I mean, I think the technology is a little bit over promissory, if I'm being honest at this moment, every company last year overnight became a gen AI company, and every company this year has overnight become an agentic AI company. So while I, while I appreciate that everybody's embracing technology really quickly, I just have not seen the agentic side of.

[Lacey]

Things delivering on the promise so far. A lot of that also has to.

[Abhi Parakh]

Do with how perfect the data has to be for that to happen.

[Lacey]

Right.

[Abhi Parakh]

But gen AI, I think it could happen much faster because it can be a point solution. You can point it at a PDF or a huge library of research or.

[Lacey]

Scripts that you have within your company.

[Abhi Parakh]

And then it can generate based on those patterns. But with Agent Aki, there are so many different systems and data points that have to connect with each other that I think that is the biggest challenge.

[Lacey]

That I'm seeing for these agents to.

[Abhi Parakh]

Autonomously be able to go and get the task done. So I think we are looking at maybe another one to two years before.

[Lacey]

This really becomes commonplace.

[Abhi Parakh]

I think there will be point solutions which you can point for specific things that live in a one dimensional space. If all your data, all your stack, is in one system of record, then I think it's going to be much more effective. But for truly autonomous systems where the.

[Lacey]

Customer can ask anything and they can.

[Abhi Parakh]

Go through different places, that orchestration I think is going to take some time for the kinks to be hashed out.

[Daisy]

Yeah. So whenever you're thinking about these new technologies, do you have any advice for people on how to sniff out what's overhype and what's something that like is really, really truly something we could apply today?

[Lacey]

I would say that some of the.

[Abhi Parakh]

Gen AI stuff, especially when it comes to being employee facing, but also customer facing, is ready. Right. We're doing that it's ready. We're already in the middle of that phase. I think with agentic AI, if you want to, this is the year that you should be trying and experimenting with low risk use cases, which mostly might be in the form of internal employee assistive use cases. But if you have low risk use cases which are heavily content oriented, for example, you have a lot of content about your products and your products are complicated, you might have an agentic AI system that may be able to go through that, answer questions, but also then connect you with the right people autonomously and maybe even ask you questions and.

[Lacey]

Give you some answers around.

[Abhi Parakh]

Financial calculations. All of that being in the realm of guidance and not advice. That could be an interesting one where.

[Lacey]

You can do it with low risk.

[Abhi Parakh]

But I think anything that has to do with real money moving and transactions happening can be really risky for where we are right now if there is no human in the loop.

[Daisy]

Yeah, that makes total sense.

[Rose]

So I have a question about how AI has impacted your ability to categorize, interpret and prioritize all of your customer data. Because when you were describing your customers, it sounded like you described there's the companies, so the employers, and then there's the employees of the employers. So that's a lot of humans to keep track of and have data about. So how has AI impacted your ability to house all of it and then also interpret all of it and prioritize and actually take action?

[Abhi Parakh]

So I'm not sure if this answer is going to make it in your podcast or not, but because it might be a little controversial. But look, I think AI is not the answer to every problem.

[Lacey]

I think when it comes to data.

[Abhi Parakh]

There'S two things I would say. One, to understand your customers better, to segment them, and to house all that data. That technology has been available to us for a very long time.

[Lacey]

Right.

[Abhi Parakh]

But the problem with, especially with companies who've been around for a very long time is the kind of systems we have and the number of systems we have and the number of places where.

[Lacey]

That data exists has been the issue.

[Abhi Parakh]

But there are existing solutions for defragmenting that data and housing it in domains to make it more useful. So I think even it's as a precursor to AI for AI to be more meaningful. Instead of AI solving that problem, getting your data problem sorted out is really important. I don't think you need AI to do that. You have existing tools to be able to do that. So you're ready for AI, because then the AI will be much more powerful. On top of that data. Now I do think, that being said, that problem is so big and when I talk to peers outside of my, everybody struggles with that and nobody has cracked it, right? Because the data is so much and it's in so many different places. So if there is a company that can actually make sense of that data without huge multi year projects for data to be sorted out and that layer to be all perfect, because perfect data is maybe just a pipe dream, right? So if you could use AI to actually be that layer so that you don't have to go through those multi year huge millions of dollars spent to make that data better, I think that could be really cool and a really good use case for AI to help with data.

[Rose]

I was going to ask you too where your skepticism lies when it comes to the future of AI or how it can or should be ethically integrated into different teams and different departments, but you may have just answered that question, but if you have a different answer for that, I'd love to hear it.

[Abhi Parakh]

Look, I mean, world is such a complicated place today and everything that happens outside of the business world impacts the business world. So I think AI, just like any other technology, can be a force for.

[Lacey]

Good or a force for bad.

[Abhi Parakh]

Cybersecurity, fraud, all of those things that we have had in the past and.

[Lacey]

Just gotten more complex and harder to.

[Abhi Parakh]

Deal with, are probably going to get.

[Lacey]

Harder and more complex to deal with.

[Abhi Parakh]

With the advent of AI. And they probably are, right? You're seeing that in your personal life with all the scams and you're already seeing that in the business world.

[Lacey]

So my skepticism lies not maybe specific.

[Abhi Parakh]

To AI, but with any technology, what.

[Lacey]

Controls, what regulations, how is it going.

[Abhi Parakh]

To be, what laws and policing mechanisms are going to come up and maybe standards internationally that will help AIB a force for good. So skepticism, but also hope, as we've done in the past with all technologies.

[Lacey]

We'Ve standardized, we've put laws in practice.

[Abhi Parakh]

And that there are mechanisms and agencies in place to be able to enforce the goodness of the technology. So my hope is the same for AI.

[Rose]

Well said. I love that. It reminds me of a conversation I was having recently with my dad. We were talking about just how AI is changing everything. My dad was born in 1957, so he was around for a lot and around for, you know, the inception of the Internet. And he said, you know, we thought the world was going to end when the Internet became a thing. So this is nothing new, like it's, it's brand new, but also it's not, you know, we've seen so much innovation and change and transformation. It's just going to keep, it's going to keep happening. So, you know.

[Abhi Parakh]

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I was around for the Y2K paranoia in the year 2000 because everything was, I think in Cobol and they said like, there's some issue where the, the number of digits can't like go beyond specifics. But anyway, there's all this mass hysteria that everything is going to go bad and the nukes are going to get fired and the world's going come to an end. But of course that was not the case. The human race is more resilient than we give it credit for sometimes.

[Daisy]

That's for sure. That's for sure. Okay, I do want to be mindful of your time here and close out with our final question. So we like to ask everyone at the end of every interview what one of your favorite experiences as a customer has been recently. So you can shout out one of your favorite local businesses or just maybe a bigger company that you've had a really fun, fun, beneficial, cool experience with.

[Abhi Parakh]

Wow. Okay, so I love the Marriott brand personally. We are all in on the Marriott brand. I think they have really expanded their footprint, acquired a lot of different properties and we've been able to stay at some really, really good ones.

[Lacey]

And I think some of their brands.

[Abhi Parakh]

Especially if you have the opportunity to stay at a Ritz Carlton or a St. Francis, I mean, I think those brands really understand.

[Lacey]

Customer experience.

[Abhi Parakh]

They remember who you are and you feel really wanted and they're always happy that you're there. So I think that experience has been a really good one. But I would say in the day to day life as well. I think Costco is another one that is not that high end and it's very, very low loved. And they're not Lux, they are not high end and, but they know who they are and they know what their customers want. Right?

[Lacey]

So the Costco customer is very different.

[Abhi Parakh]

Than like, than whatever higher end grocery store, like a Whole Foods customer. And you know what to expect and you're getting what you need.

[Lacey]

So I think those are the.

[Daisy]

I'm both. So I don't know, I feel like I could do a switch, switch between the two. I love Costco too because of their employee experience. Like there's a book I read about how they, you know, create such a beautiful experience for their employees that their employees want to stick around for years. Like they have a very unique philosophy on how to, you know, the cash, cashier is like so nice to you when you check out because of this philosophy that they have.

[Abhi Parakh]

Well, I mean, it's real employee experience.

[Lacey]

And customer experience go hand in hand, which comes down a lot of times.

[Abhi Parakh]

To, well, obviously having the right talent, but empowering your talent.

[Lacey]

Right.

[Abhi Parakh]

So having not a tight leash, but a very loose string with your employees and their experience is a very good thing because you hire the right people, trust them to do the right thing, democratize the tools like we talked about with AI, and let them uncover and unlock the potential.

[Daisy]

Yeah, I love that. Well, I want to go ahead and end there. Abhi, thank you so much for joining us on the pod.

[Abhi Parakh]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Lacey]

This has been such a great conversation.