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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#658: Winning retail by reducing customer frustration with Jean-Christophe Pitié, ContentSquare
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- [00:00]
Domo Representative
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- [01:03]
Jean Christophe Petier
Brand.
- [01:11]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and Martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, E commerce and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And now onto the show.
- [02:10]
Interviewer
We are here at Shop Talk 2025 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and seeing and hearing all about the latest in retail, e commerce and more. If customer acquisition costs are rising and conversion rates are falling, how will your brand survive the next wave of digital disruption? And who's already getting it right? Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Jean Christophe Petier, Chief Marketing and Partnerships Officer at Content Square. Jean Christophe brings a wealth of experience helping brands navigate the evolving digital landscape. Content Square works with top brands like the North Face, Clarks, Rhone and Bose to optimize digital experiences and drive better business outcomes. Jean Christophe, welcome to the show.
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Jean Christophe Petier
Welcome. Nice to meet you.
- [02:51]
Interviewer
Yeah, great to meet you and great to be able to do this in person. So always love doing These. So before we dive into the topics here, why don't you start by giving us a little background on yourself and your role at Content Square.
- [03:03]
Jean Christophe Petier
Yeah, you know, I've been a seasoned marketer. I started at Microsoft, 22 years at Microsoft. I run Microsoft.com and Microsoft Store and@Microsoft.com, you know, one of the largest websites, we needed a tool, analytics tool to improve the customer experience. So I became a customer of Contentsquare. And then 18 months ago, I joined Contentsquare. I love the product so much, I joined Content Square and as CMO and in charge of marketing and partnerships.
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Domo Representative
Nice, nice.
- [03:30]
Interviewer
That always bodes well. When you like the product so much, you want to join the team, right? That's great. So, yeah, we're going to talk about a few things today, but I want to start with maybe at a high level, the digital experience landscape in 2025. And so content Square recently released an industry analysis of 238 billion retail page views. A lot of page views across 11 different sectors. So based on that data, how would you describe the state of digital customer experience in 2025?
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Jean Christophe Petier
I would say it's tough, it's a bit scary. You know, traffic is down and I can give some numbers if you want, but traffic has been down overall and we surveyed 6,000 websites, so it's a lot of brands across the globe. And so traffic Overall is down 3%, retail is down 5%. The paid traffic is up. So the share of paid traffic, it means organic traffic, is down, you know, by two points. You know, so paid is up from 37 to 39. And among paid, paid social also is up versus paid search. And why is it a perfect storm? Because it means basically you have less traffic, you have more paid traffic, so basically you're paying more to get less. And so that's the first learning and learning from it. The second one is you're paying more, getting less, and still 40% of the session visits on our customer website are haunted, I call it haunted by frustrations. You know, right click errors, bugs. And so basically you're paying a lot of money and more, and then you see customer flee and leak. So the good news, the frustration is slightly better. You know, by one point I said 40, 40%. So it was 40 one last time. So it's getting better, but still, still a lot of money left on the table.
- [05:17]
Interviewer
Yeah. And I mean, I guess why is this, why is thing. Why are things getting more expensive? I mean, I have some thoughts, but like, what are your thoughts there?
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Jean Christophe Petier
No, it's a great question. There's no, I call it almost a butterfly effect. You know, there's not one single reason. But it's a combination of things. Think about, yeah, Google changing algorithm. It's about people spending more time on TikTok or social media. And we know social media converts less than paid search. It's about, you know, the rise of AI. So more people are, you know, Genai and you know, chatgpt, some more people are spending time on it, different conversion rates. So it's all these small things, things you know, I did together that is driving down, driving up the pad and driving down traffic.
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Interviewer
Got it, got it. Are there certain industries like you know, home goods, consumer electronics, fashion, any of these feeling the pressures more acutely or and you know, what are maybe the top performers in these categories doing differently?
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Jean Christophe Petier
Yes, that's a great question. We clearly see some industries like home goods, consumer electronic, fabric, fashion, they are feeling this, this pressures. And I think in short, all these industries have one thing in common. They are highly visual and mobile first industries. You know, so you start the journals on your mobile and usually what happens and you probably have been trying to shop yourself consumer electronics or homegoods on a, on a phone. It's clunky. Usually you have clunky filterings. The visuals don't render well. So talking about customer experience, yes, they are impacted harder. So industries are brands which are doing well, you know, usually what do they do? They focus on speed, they focus on segmentation, they make sure like hey, if you're a returning customer, a loyal customer, you don't have the same experience as a new customer. They use all their data to improve the customer journey. They make sure if you're coming from paid search, you don't land on the same page as social because we know you have a different intent. So that's some of the patterns and behaviors we see.
- [07:20]
Interviewer
Great, great. So you know, we talk about AI a lot on the show. Let's go there now. I want to talk a little bit about solutions here. So you know AI's role in optimizing digital experiences. So how is AI helping brands remove some of the friction that you mentioned earlier and improve customer journeys, you know, especially in light of the report. According to the report for four and a half times higher success rate among top performers who reduced customer frustration.
- [07:50]
Jean Christophe Petier
Yeah, AI, obviously AI is a game changer. I'm stating the obvious. But in our customers, what we see customers using our analytics tool, what do they see? They use AI to do, to automate and do A summary of issue patterns, automatic pattern recognition. AI is great at it. And to give you an example, like we have a feature where you can do session replace. You can see what the thousands of visitors websites have been doing, clicking, hovering with their mouse. It's dreadful to do it. If you use AI, they're going to watch all the session and then you're going to get a summary and tell you, hey, you know what, the last 500 customers coming from paid. Here's what happens. They had issues of their wedge click. So AI is a great tool to send you proactive signals to improve or identify and then improve your customer experience. It's really, you know, we call it, I used to call it, you want to turn data. AI is helping you turn data to insights interaction. That's where AI is really amazing.
- [08:47]
Interviewer
Yeah, because I mean, I would imagine watching 500 users go through the site, I mean, not only is there not enough time for that, but humans aren't really well suited to make sense of that.
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Domo Representative
Right.
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Interviewer
So that's perfect application of AI, right? Yeah, yeah. So AI, you know, used a lot for personalization, but how can brands use AI not just for personalization, but to anticipate and maybe even prevent some common frustrations in the digital experience?
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Jean Christophe Petier
Yeah, that's what I think. Personalization you mentioned is great because usually you get frustrated if you don't feel like you get the right experience tailored for you, especially if you are a returning customer. I said, as I mentioned, everything related to error detection and I gave you one example just before. AI is amazing and we're going to see it more and more. I think we hopefully later we can talk about agents and where the shopping experience is going, but we're going to see more talent experiences.
- [09:48]
Domo Representative
We all know data is valuable. We use it to tell a story, to make informed decisions for our businesses. But turning data into actionable insights can be a challenge. It's time to unlock the true potential of your business data with Domo's AI and data products platform. Domo lets you channel AI and data into innovative uses that deliver a measurable impact. Ask your data. Anything at any time. Anyone on your team can use Domo to easily prepare, analyze, visualize automate and distribute data, all amplified by AI. Domo goes beyond productivity. It's designed to transform your processes, helping you make smarter and faster decisions and drive real growth. All powered by Domo's trust, flexibility and years of expertise in data and AI innovation. Data is hard. Domo is easy. Make smarter decisions and propel your business forward with Domo. Learn more today@AI.domo.com that's AI.domo.com Want to learn more and join the discussion About Marketing and AI? Attend the premier conference dedicated to marketing and AI. That's Meicon, the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference. From October 14 through 16 in Cleveland, Ohio. Meacon brings together the brightest minds and leading voices in AI. Don't miss this opportunity to connect with a dynamic community of experts, visionaries and enthusiasts. The Agile brand is proud to be the lead media sponsor of this important event. Register today@marketingai institute.com that's marketing AI institute.com and use the code Agile 150 for $150 off your registration fee. I can't wait to see you there.
- [11:41]
Interviewer
And so you, you touched on paid social a little bit earlier. The report mentions what's referred to the paid social paradox. You know, traffic from paid social is up, but performance metrics are suffering. Why are brands seeing, you know, more traffic but fewer conversions from these channels?
- [12:02]
Jean Christophe Petier
Well, you know, I think paid social is great at grabbing attention, you know, but when you scroll for Instagram or TikTok, I don't know if you're in a buying mode so you click on an ad. Out of curiosity Again, I'm trying to do Consumer Psychology 101, but I think you're out of curiosity, but you're not. Your intent to buy is very different than when you're on Google and you type hey, I want to buy a jean, a pair of jeans, you know. Yeah.
- [12:28]
Interviewer
Catching someone at the exact moment they might buy versus they're searching for something. So you kind of know they're at least interested, right?
- [12:37]
Jean Christophe Petier
Correct. So the intent is definitely less. 2 We say too many brands still make the mistake of treating the traffic from a paid social and paid search the same way, landing you on the same page. And we know, we just talked about it, it's different intent so you should segment and have different landing pages, for example. And further implied paid social is a lot mobile mobile experience is usually more clunky. It's not as good as on desktop. It's usually slower. So again, work on the frustration and that.
- [13:06]
Interviewer
Yeah. And I know we talked a little bit about conversion rates dropping and you know, revenue per visit is declining as well. But what, what can brands do about that? You know, I know you touched a little bit on the underlying factors here, but maybe talk a little bit more about that and then what brands can can do about this because I mean obviously they've got to keep driving traffic and Driving conversions.
- [13:30]
Jean Christophe Petier
Yeah, I think conversion is, conversion is just a consequence. Dropping is a consequence of everything. We said less traffic, less qualified, meaning paid social is less qualified, more expensive, more new customers. So that's all these reasons, if you really think about what you can do. Yeah, obsess over speed, you know, very important and I think Google has been saying it by the way, for years. Speed, speed does matter. You see the impact segment ruthlessly and meaning segment returning and customers and new customers. Paid, paid social and paid channel, paid social and paid search, for example. So, and then lean on AI, lean on AI to personalize, lean on AI to automate and remove all the, you know, small frictions in your, in your customer journeys. That's what you can do and we see the best brands doing.
- [14:22]
Interviewer
Yeah, so let's, let's, let's build on that a little bit as well. And so, you know, you've noted there's a digital discipline gap where, you know, top performers are removing, as you just said, you know, significantly more customer friction than their competitors. What does, you know, can you define digital discipline and how do brands that do that develop it internally?
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Jean Christophe Petier
I think, you know, it comes down to, I used to think people, process and tool. So people, you know, good brands, they bring together this multidisciplinary team, like team from marketing, customer experience, product data, it. So they bring them together to think about the customer experience end to end. That's a people piece, process track, monitor, AB test and tools. Content Square is a great tool. Obviously I have to say it at one point, of course, but you know, data without data is just another opinion. That's what we used to say. So use tools and data to inform your decisions. That's what we see. Companies embracing these cultures, we've been talking about it for years, but not all of them have the same level of maturity. You see really the gap and I get the benefits.
- [15:37]
Interviewer
Yeah, well, and to kind of touch on that, maybe talk a little bit. What does Content Square do and how does it fit in this.
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Jean Christophe Petier
Yeah, contentsquare is this analytics platform where basically we capture all the data points, interaction customers have on your mobile app, on website. So where you hover on what you click and if you went back and forth, what you scroll down. And so it gives you, it's anonymized, of course, but it gives you a huge amount of data to optimize your content, your campaigns, your website, your customer journeys and so on. So that's what we do.
- [16:12]
Interviewer
Great, great. And so data certainly playing a huge role. And there's Been lots of talk about first party third party data. We don't have to go into the cookie apocalypse or anything like that, but want to talk a little bit about the role of first party data in improving digital discipline and personalization. So can you talk a little bit about that role and especially the role of first party data as even if Google delays some decisions or whatever, privacy regulations continue to evolve, we're still moving into the world of first party data more and more.
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Jean Christophe Petier
No, you're correct. And first party data is gold. I think for any brand and any company. You have to balance and especially as you can hear European, you have to balance with privacy. It's very important. So I think as you collect more and more data and first party data being very transparent with your customers about what you collect and government in Europe, especially customers, what you collect is going to be very important.
- [17:16]
Interviewer
Yeah. And definitely, I mean to that point gdpr I remember back in the day working on when it first rolled out. At first it was kind of a do we have to do this? But it's so important to take those things into account. And Europe's been leading the way there. I think they're leading the way with AI regulation as well. Still a little work to be done there, but tend to be a little ahead of the curve.
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Jean Christophe Petier
I tend to be an optimistic here because we are a European based company, founded company, even if now the headquarters in the US we are of course we were built with privacy first in mind but I think it's a competitive advantage at the end of the day because if you build a tool which enables your customers to feel safe to have and so on, I think it gives you an advantage. Even if it's more regulation and a little bit more red tape initially.
- [18:11]
Interviewer
Well, yeah, I mean it stands to reason that if you're using actual information, as long as the customer trusts you with the information and they give it to you, it's going to be way better to use that than some third party information that may or may not be true. Right. So that's. Yeah, definitely, definitely agree to get back to AI a little bit. You know, what do you see as being next in AI for digital experience optimization? You know, are you anything from, you know, predictive personalization? You know, what are you seeing?
- [18:43]
Jean Christophe Petier
Yeah, we've been. That's something we are spending a lot of time with a leadership team and the product teams. I would say I see three stages. I would. First search is changing dramatically as you all know, but I think it's changing faster than the numbers are seeing if you look today, I think roughly less than 1% of searches are coming from ChatGPT or LLMs. But I think it's going to shift very quickly. If I look at myself, I dropped Google about a year ago and I'm not going back to do my searches. I think I'm not the only one.
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Interviewer
But yeah, yeah, totally.
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Jean Christophe Petier
So search is changing and again, as a brand, what does that mean for you? You know, how do you show up on this LLM? How do you acquire traffic when it's shifting? Second thing is everything's talking about it but Agilent, ki or agents. It's pretty clear that in a couple of, very soon, in a couple of years, you're going to use personal agents, you know, to, to shop for you. And I was thinking, I was talking to a big retailer customer. He was telling us, hey, he's in a home goods. He was telling me, hey, you know, tomorrow we see more and more people. Today they watch a YouTube video, you know, to do it yourself. They use inspiration ideas from Pinion Trust and then they go on our website Home Goods to buy. But it's clunky. Tomorrow you would want to outsource all of that experience to a couple of agents, say hey, I want to do that. Get me all the tools and materials I need so you can see this one coming. The first third step is probably, we call it, many people call it the segment of one. You know, we've been talking about personalization Today it's personalized by segments, demographics, where you come from, blah, blah, blah. Tomorrow is going to be a, I do believe it's going to be a segment of who and you, you're going to have a uniquely personalized experience.
- [20:18]
Interviewer
Yeah.
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Jean Christophe Petier
So that's why we are anticipating and we are building our own map and product based around these trends.
- [20:25]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah, I love it. Well, looking forward to seeing what, what comes next there. Well, it's been great talking with you here and one last question before we wrap up here. I like to ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [20:40]
Jean Christophe Petier
I'm a very curious person. I love to learn. So I'm trying to be a learn to develop and have a learn it all approach.
- [20:46]
Interviewer
Love it, Love it. Well, again I'd like to thank Jean Christophe Petier.
- [20:51]
Jean Christophe Petier
Thank you, Greg.
- [20:51]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. I'd like to thank Jean Christophe Petier, chief marketing and partnerships officer at Content Square for joining the show. You can learn more about Jean Christophe and contentsquare by following the links in the show. Notes.
- [21:05]
Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagilebrand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.greggkilstrom.com. that's G R E G K I H L S T r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co. Op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
- [21:59]
Jean Christophe Petier
The Agile Brand.
- [22:03]
Domo Representative
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- [22:59]
Greg Kilstrom
Before we continue, I wanted to share a key strategic resource that a majority of the Fortune 500 are already aware of. Finding the best technology, business and talent solutions is not easy. With business demands and competitive pressures mounting, you need to be able to design, deploy and optimize your technology to provide leading customer experiences while driving business growth. Those of you that have been listening to the show for a while know that this podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, a global provider of technology, business and talent solutions for more than 80% of the Fortune 500, tech systems accelerates business transformation for their customers. Whether you're looking to maximize your technology roi, drive business growth, or or elevate customer experiences, Tech Systems enables enterprises to capitalize on change. Learn more@techsystems.com that's T E K systems.com now let's get back to the show.