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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#668: The Five Levels of AI with Courtney Baker, Knownwell
00:33:26
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- [00:00]
Greg Kilstrom
Your brand may be staying on top of current trends, but are you agile enough to stay relevant, resilient and successful as customers, competition and the world continues to change at a breakneck pace? I'm thrilled to share the newly revised version of my first book, the Agile Brand. I'm calling it the Agile Brand Revisited. It's been updated to reflect our continually changing world, and it provides seven principles that form the backbone of an agile brand, offering detailed insights and actionable steps for incorporating them into your business strategy. This is the book that started it all and I'm excited to share it with you. It's now available in print and digital formats and available everywhere. Learn more by going to the Agile Brand guide website at www.agilebrandguide.com.
- [00:46]
Courtney Baker
The Agile Brand.
- [00:55]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trend, 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. Now on to the show. As AI continues to evolve, how can marketing leaders ensure that they're staying ahead of the curve instead of simply keeping up with it? And how do you navigate the complexities of using AI while maintaining a personal human touch in your campaigns? Joining us today is Courtney Baker, Chief marketing officer at KnownWell & Co host of the AI Know how podcast. With a wealth of experience in marketing and AI, Courtney's leading the conversation about how artificial intelligence is transforming the marketing industry and redefining business strategies. She's going to share insights on the next era of client intelligence and the five levels of AI that are reshaping businesses. Welcome to the show, Courtney.
- [02:31]
Courtney Baker
Thank you. Really glad to be here.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this. I mean, you know, of course, you know, we talk about AI plenty here. But like, I really like this, this angle here and looking forward to diving in. But before we do, why don't you start by giving a little more about your background and your role at KnownWell and you know, what, what kind of inspired this, this interest in, in AI and marketing.
- [02:54]
Courtney Baker
You know, one of the things I love about being a marketer is I've always felt like I could take my craft and to deploy it to what I was interested in. I, you know, I used to joke that I felt like I could market anything. You know, if it was a two by two base, I was like, I can market that. And so I think my career has really showcased that in a way that, you know, in my 20s I really spent a lot of time in nonprofit and traveling the world and getting to really figure out how to market to unique audiences to get them to do something to change the world. I've worked in professional services companies where we're doing executive coaching and really working on productivity for executives. And so in a lot of different ways I've been able to take things that my craft and what I'm like passionate about at that time and be able to use it in conjunction which I think makes for a really marketing. It's such a fun career. Personally, obviously I'm very biased, but it's just really neat to be able to do that. And so in my career I was connected with David DeWolfe, who's our CEO at KnownWealth. The company that I was working with was building an app with his previous company, 3 Pillar Global and we just hit it off. I remember from the very beginning I was like, this guy is very impressive. I think he, I just would love to learn from him. And so as he started to look at launching a AI platform for professional services, you know, I joined the founding team and so that was two years ago. You know, the rest is really history from what we've, what we've built and done at knownwell.
- [04:38]
Greg Kilstrom
Nice, nice. Well, yeah, let's, let's dive in here and definitely you are the right person to talk about this, this topic here. So love this, love your. So let's talk about the next era of client intelligence. So as you mentioned briefly and want to dive in a little more, you know, KnownWealth focuses on client intelligence for marketing and professional services firms, it sounds like. So can you define, you know, first, what do you mean by client intelligence and you know, what does that mean today and maybe, you know, where does it come from?
- [05:09]
Courtney Baker
Right. Well, speaking specifically for professional service firms, in so many ways it's hard to be a professional service firm because unlike SaaS companies or E commerce Companies that have all of this rich transactional data on their customers, and professional service firms, you don't have that. What you have is rich relational data. And funny enough, we don't think of it that way. And so in a lot of ways, a lot of these tools that we've kind of had over on the E commerce side or SaaS side, it's just, it doesn't apply for performance professional service firms. And so if you think about, you know, a small marketing firm or small, small technology service firm at the very beginning, you know, when you're small, you just know your customers. You know, it doesn't take anything special because you've got 25 customers. You just, you have your thumb on the pulse of what's happening with your customers. But as you scale a professional service firm, that becomes harder and harder. And you know, when you're early on, there's somebody that's just really good at that. They just have intuition. They know, hey, the Stanley account, they were. Something was off there. In our meeting today, I think we need to have an executive way, you know, jump in, you know, reach out to their connection there. But obviously as you scale, that becomes harder and harder and you're just, you're less able to get your hands around what's really happening in that client relationship. And what we are doing is really what that person does on a small firm of being able to, you know, use their intuition to say, like, hey, we should flag this. Somebody should reach out to them with AI. We can do that now. So at scale, we can take all the exhaust from those relationships, all those communications, all those transcripts, emails, slack conversations, and really provide an objective view of what's going on in the health of that relationship with that client and signal, hey, you need to take action here. Something needs to happen here. And so we're really excited about this new era of client intelligence for professional service firms and excited to see. You know, I always joke with our team, you know, we, we say, see, we talk about marketers, we talk about CRMs all the time.
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Greg Kilstrom
Right.
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Courtney Baker
And it's a customer relationship management. You know, we all know that's what it stands for, but it's not actually what it is. You know, it's really an acquisition platform. It really ha. It's really actually a terrible way to track what's happening in your client relationships or your client management. And so what we're doing today, it's sometimes I'm like, what we are doing is real client intelligence, client management in the modern era.
- [08:02]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I mean, I think so two things there. I mean I, I think what you're saying is, you know, a CRM is trying to quantify very. So there's some like emotion and you know, some real relationship stuff that's happening and you know, how, what's the drop down value for you know, angry client or whatever or something like that. But also you know, I think to maybe to use an analogy like if, if a company sells products, you know, sells widgets let's say and they have, you know, they can have a hundred or they can have a million and AI actually probably does a decent job at scaling to that. But to your point, when there's so much nuanced conversation happening, when sometimes the thing that's happening is what doesn't happen. I would imagine, you know, there's right, there's all, there's so much nuance there that the idea of structuring that data must be, I mean the. Yeah, that must be a challenge, right?
- [08:55]
Courtney Baker
Yeah, absolutely. And at the end of the day what, what we're trying to do, what we believe wholly in is really using AI to help us humans do what only humans can do. And what we believe is humans are the ones that engage in relationship, that actually know other people and know them well. And that's where our name known well comes from. And so that's what we're trying to do is take, you know, give professional service firms the information they've always needed and not known that there would ever be the kind of technology to help them do that for them to go be in relationship with their customers.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, well, so then you know, next logical thing, what, what does that allow people to, you know, for the, these companies to do and, and do better with their, their marketing strategies?
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Courtney Baker
Yeah, I mean I, I think there's so much especially in the growth opportunity side, you know, so upsells fall in an organization. It's, it's, it's like a revolving door. You just don't know. It gets changed all the time. Whose responsibility is it? And I think when you have a intelligent source like known, well helping you see when there's opportunity and when it takes the guesswork out of that, it makes it a lot easier to figure out who, how to solve that problem the best way you can in your organization. It makes it where hey, if it needs to be a collaborative process. But we've taken the hard work of figuring out when that collaboration needs to happen. It takes those opportunities to the next level. And so we're really excited about what that means for the growth of the existing bases within these organizations.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. And so to dive in a little deeper here. So with enough time and resources, I'm sure a marketing company, a professional services company could probably make a really, really detailed spreadsheet that has a lot of here. But I mean, to your point, you're using AI to take things much further, right. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, what, what's the power of AI in this to, to really do what you're saying?
- [11:04]
Courtney Baker
You bring up a great point. I, I mean, we have interviewed hundreds and hundreds of professional, professional service firms and even the most successful firms, they are using a spreadsheet, a red, yellow, green, hey, what's the status of our clients? And that there is value in that. But at the end of the day, it is still subjective and it takes a lot of work to wrangle. Hey, has everybody got that in. And as you're, if you're in leadership, you're having to just trust people's perception of things, their subjective assessment of what's happening. And what you want is actually to know that you've got something covering the blind spots, the things that help you not have that surprise churn. I think it's the worst kind of turn is that surprise turn. You think you've got a great client and then you find out they're leaving. That is painful. And so, you know, what this does is really give you that other source, that objective source. Again, both very powerful. It's not that you're not going to need subjective, it's just that you're going to use both and really create kind of a powerhouse of knowing, confidently knowing that you know what's actually happening with your clients.
- [12:21]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that that objective source is really important because, you know, I would imagine in some case somewhere, you know, someone doesn't really want to say that the client's upset and report a problem. But I would, I would say probably in most cases people are well intentioned. They just may not pick up on all of this. They may not have all the data. Right. To, to change that from yellow to red or what, what in that? I've seen that spreadsheet way too many times, by the way. But so, you know, like AI being more objective, like it applies the same rules, right. To everything, you know, that I, I think that's, that's a really powerful thing. And then to your point, you know, then leaders can adjust, I'm sure, or they can, they can interpret still, but at least it's a Level playing field. Right.
- [13:06]
Courtney Baker
Well, and I, I think the other powerful thing that I'm not mentioning is, you know, the red, yellow, green is on a client by client basis, you know, a subjective, at the client level, there's nothing to really take the level up of what's happening and actually being able to apply and see the trends and connect the dots between all of these things, that is hard work and that's what AI is so good at. And so not only are you looking at what is the health of these clients, what's the objective score with these clients, but what's the intelligence sitting above all those clients and able to say, hey, here's what's happening to your portfolio. Hey, all of your clients that have this certain product, they always churn after 90 days and here's what you can do to fix that. It's really being able to help you connect dots like you've never been able to before.
- [14:03]
Greg Kilstrom
Want to learn more and join the discussion About Marketing and AI? Attend the premier conference dedicated to marketing and AI, that's Meacon, 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@marketing AI institute.com, that's marketing AI institute.com and use the code Agile150 for $150 off your registration fee. I can't wait to see you there. So I want to, I mentioned at the top of the show of the five levels of AI, and I wanted to get back to that and have you kind of walk us through and, you know, explain kind of, you know, how each level impacts various business functions.
- [15:09]
Courtney Baker
Yeah, thanks. So I, this is one of my favorite topics because obviously AI, I'm passionate about it. I talked about, you know, being able to deploy my craft in different ways and this area specifically with AI, just, I think it's really exciting. And if, if you're listening, you know, I think early on we got really used to thinking about AI as just a tool to help me, you know, be more productive in my own job. And I think this frame really helps unlock a little bit of where we're going all the time. You probably hear like this is just the beginning, but it's hard to really think of, okay, well, what could or will the future look like? That's, that's tough with this new technology and so I'll break it down this way. If you look at the very bottom layer of work, it's really manual labor. And if you think of how AI applies to manual labor, we all get it's robotics and we've had it for a long time. And so really easy concept. The level up from that is execution and it's really automating core knowledge work and driving individual performance excellence. And that's really what we've had with ChatGPT, you know, starting two years ago. And a lot of the AI tools that we've had up to date, they're all on this level of execution, helping us do our jobs better and certainly valuable. But if you start to look at these levels above this, this is where I think it gets really interesting about examining where AI is going to take us in the future. So the, the level above that is operations and it's really how do we work together across the organization to move the business forward, to drive results. And that's where you're starting to see more AI platforms like KnownWell and other platforms that are actually helping work across organizations, not just to drive individual performance, but to drive the entire business forward. And so hopefully that's helpful for unlocking, oh, I can start to see how AI is going to start changing business on the operational level. Now, obviously if we go above that, you have the strategy of the organization, I don't think there yet with AI, but certainly I think we will start to see more AI impacting strategy. And then at the very top we have, you know, the ideology of our businesses. And I don't think, I hope, and this is where we have to do some work as a society of figuring out where does AI, how far do we let AI go. And I hope that maybe this is an area we retain as humans that we drive the ideology of our business, our values, our purposes. Hopefully we retain that. But I think thinking about it in this frame really helps maybe unlock what could the future look like as it escalates through these different levels.
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Greg Kilstrom
I love that framework. And yeah, I mean, I agree when we get to that top level, it's going to look a lot different than we could imagine it right now too. Right. So in other words, I, you know, because I think even over the last couple years there's been, you know, as with anything, I mean, it used to be like back in the day with like social media, like Facebook changed the placement of a button and society like cried out that, you know, life was unfair or whatever. And now it's like AI is Going to take our jobs. Yes, it will take some of them. But you know, we're, we're actually making, you know, making a lot of progress in how we work with AI and stuff. So anyway, I guess I'm an optimist when it comes to a lot of this stuff. Not hopefully cautiously optimistic, but right, I guess to, to get to the, the operational piece because I feel like that's where a lot of companies either, either are or that's where they're striving to get to. To your point is like that's, that's kind of the next, the next step. If not, if not current state for a lot of companies. To me that's where I see like a lot of the agentic AI and those things that are, you know, that's like the buzzword of the, of the month or whatever in AI circles. But you know, I think there's tons of promise there because we have had a lot of people in their little silos like somebody using Claude and somebody using ChatGPT and all in the same company. And then, you know, when a company tries to do something, it's like, okay, well what do we do? Which one do we use? So I think, I think there's so much promise there and good to see that. You know, I've been at, I've been on, you know, the other side of things too, but I've been a, plenty of professional services firms with some of the challenges you describe. And so knowing that someone's trying to tackle this problem is very reassuring. So where do you see most marketing firms today? You know, are they, are they, have they gotten quite to the operational piece or are they still, you know, before that?
- [20:07]
Courtney Baker
Yeah, I would say they're usually before that and I think partly just because we haven't seen a lot of offerings on that operational level yet. You know, I think we will continue to see more. You know, it's, if you think back early, you know, hindsight is 20 20, but so many of these, like large enterprises, we're talking about, you know, building their own AI. How do you get that talent in? And in many cases I think probably jumped the gun on, you know, spending the resources to go build their own thing. And I think we're going to have a lot of options here to help us solve problems that are going to be off the shelf and hopefully a lot more affordable for mid market firms and smaller firms to still be able to leverage that technology without the cost of trying to maintain the technology. And so I think today, you know, a Lot of marketing firms don't have the option of these operational tools yet again. KnownWell is one of them. I think there are going to be quite a bit more. I do see them deploying, you know, at the execution level of, you know, evaluating how do we, how do we get more out of, you know, for everybody on this team, with professional service firms, we know if we can, you know, there's such a cost with people. We have to have people in professional service firms to scale. We can't scale without people. That's been the recipe for so long. But with AI, you can actually that curve of that growth curve doesn't have to be so linear between clients and people needed to provide the delivery. And so that's what's really exciting to me for marketing firms is can we start to bend that curve more than we ever have before? And so I do see them, you know, working with a lot of the different AI tools for execution because of that of trying to bend that curve and get more, more than they've ever been able to do before out of their individual contributors.
- [22:09]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I mean, I think what's interesting here to totally agree on the execution side, it's like there's, I think, and I think in the long run people will find more value in their jobs because of it. I think in the short term, you know, certainly there's, there's some, you know, and right. Rightfully so. There's, there's some trepidation there as far as, you know, not wanting to lose their role or whatever. But I think on the other side, on the relationship side, I think that was the harder thing to scale to. I mean, obviously known well found a, found a business model there. Right. So it's like, I think that's, that's promising too because yeah, I mean if you're, it's going to come down to, I think a lot of clients are, are going to want to rethink the way that they're compensating firms. And so I, I know even with some firms I, I deal with, they're rethinking how, you know, their business model. And, and no, they can't just cut their costs because they've reduced some people but have AI like it doesn't quite work like that. But they also need to be able to scale their ability to have relationships with their, with their clients too as they scale the ability to churn out content with AI and stuff like that. So I don't know what the question is there. I guess maybe my next question would just Be, you know, I think there are some aspects again, marketing firms, professional services firms have been really focused on, you know, again, how do we execute and all that. What, what are they overlooking? Like what do you see as like what's the low hanging fruit that people aren't just paying enough attention to now?
- [23:42]
Courtney Baker
Yeah, that's a great question. I, in some ways I feel like, especially when it comes to churn and I would say even going back to what I said at the beginning of just not being able to have the information they need to really successfully run their firm because they, when you're having to run off subjective information, you're really having to use your gut. Do I trust this subjective information? And it only takes a few times of eroding that subjective that you start to question. And it's just natural it's going to happen because at the end of the day it's people working with people. There's like perception on perception and it's a hard job. Like what these teams do, these people dealing with their clients, they're the, they are some of the most absolute, most important people in your organization. It's a hard job, but it's also hard for the leadership, you know, to be able to make data driven decisions off those subjective analysis of what's happening with their clients. And so, you know, they're missing that there is a new world being open where there is platforms that are able to bring in all of these different resources to really give them where they can lead from confidence and not having to lead from gut really being able to make decisions from data. I would say that's the big unlock here.
- [25:11]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I mean I think, you know, as, as an entrepreneur myself, you know, there's a fair amount of. I, I'd like to think it's not delusion, it's optimism in that like it, you have to be optimistic as an entrepreneur or I'll broaden it and as an entrepreneurial person because I think, you know, salespeople and client services account people within organizations, they're entrepreneurial in the sense they're either trying to grow the business or get more clients. So like you get a bunch of entrepreneurial people there that want to look at the glass half full and to your point, you know, again, best intentions, you know, it's but, but it's still, it's a, it's a bit skewed sometimes and, and you, you, you know, there's a buy, there's an anchor bias, there's a whatever, whatever kind of bias that's, that's causing you to think that way. But again, best intentions aside, it's still, it can lead to that unintentional churn that you mentioned earlier, Right?
- [26:07]
Courtney Baker
Absolutely. That, that's the whole thing is like, we all have blind spots. So this is a platform that helps you make sure you don't have that blind spot on every level of the organization, from the person on the ground dealing with the client to the CEO.
- [26:21]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. So I want to switch gears just a little bit here. You know, as I mentioned, you host your own podcast, so definitely highly recommend everybody checks that out as well. Don't stop listening to this one. You can, you can. There's plenty of hours in the day. Listen to both, please. I just, you know, curious. I'm always curious. Others journey as well here. You know, how has podcasting, you know, whether it's deepened your understanding or just kind of broaden your understanding or, you know, what, what impact has it had on just how you think about AI and marketing and business?
- [26:53]
Courtney Baker
Yeah, it's, it's been an absolute game changer on that front. I think there is something to be said to just being able to have conversations with people that are thinking about, excited about really examining what AI is going to look like for business and society. There's a lot that we have to think about as business leaders, as professional service firms, but all the way down to just at the individual level of, hey, how, how is this going to change our society? What are. What things are we good with? Which things are we not? How do we start to really question what makes humans human? And then how do we retain those things that are so core to being a human? Those are heavy topics. And I think being on the podcast and talking to a really, really sharp, and I would say a lot of times very technical people has been really enlightening and then trying to, trying to help executives, especially those of us that aren't necessarily technicians, you know, translate those very smart technologists and what they know into things that are very practical for, hey, what should we be examining in our business? How should we be thinking about AI? How do we deploy it? Well, how do we deploy all these different questions? It's been really helpful for me. I'm just challenging my own thinking. And, you know, I don't know, for those of you that are listening, if you're anywhere close to my age bracket, which I'll just tell you, I was in college when Facebook came around as one. Do you remember when you had to, you had to have a college email address? You know, and so I think I'm especially primed for, you know, if I look back, you know, I'm always like, if I only would have known, you know, like I was one of the earliest people using this platform, if I would have done something different earlier in my career, could have really paid off. And so I think now that we are here with AI, we see this, this as, hey, this is a huge moment in time and you know, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm smarter now than I was when I was, you know, 18. I'm gonna engage in this differently than I did back then. And so I think it's. If you're in this similar age bracket, you're looking at this and being like this is either for me it's very exciting of okay, how do I. There are things hopefully that we've learned in the past about how these new technologies, how we need to be thinking about them. And so for me it's really exciting to have a platform to be able to do some of that wrestling and that thought provoking work and then hopefully to be able to share it with people that are listening.
- [29:42]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, Courtney, thanks so much for joining today. One last question I like to ask everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [29:53]
Courtney Baker
Oh, such a great question. You know, I, I would say it's so much of it is the people around me that help me do that and the collaboration with really smart people and helping, you know, totally be there to challenge and to think through and push me to new levels. That is when you find those people, hang on to em, they're, they're worth it even, even when it's hard, it's not always easy.
- [30:20]
Greg Kilstrom
Love it. Well, thanks again to Courtney Baker, CMO at KnownWell for joining. You can learn more about Courtney and Nonwell by following the links in the show notes. 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@theagile brand.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.
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Courtney Baker
The Agile Brand.
- [31:29]
Greg Kilstrom
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