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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#690: Focusing on long-term customer value using next best action with Tine Van Calster, Telenet
00:23:17
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- [00:01]
Strayer University Announcer
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Carvana Customer
I sold my car in Carvana last night.
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Tina Van Kalster
Well, that's cool.
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Carvana Customer
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
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Tina Van Kalster
So what's the problem?
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Carvana Customer
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothie. I'm waiting for the catch.
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Tina Van Kalster
Maybe there's no catch.
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Carvana Customer
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
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Tina Van Kalster
Wow.
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Podcast Host
You need to relax.
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Carvana Customer
I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
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Podcast Host
I think it's laminate.
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Carvana Customer
Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
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Tina Van Kalster
Car Selling without a Catch Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up these may Apply
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Strayer University Announcer
the Agile Brand.
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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]
Podcast Host
What if your most loyal customers are the ones you helped spend less? Agility in marketing isn't just about moving faster. It's about aligning brand intentions with customer outcomes in real time. Even when that means giving up short term gains to earn long term trust. Today we are here at Pegaworld 2025 at the MGM grand in Las Vegas and we're going to talk about how Telenet is transforming customer loyalty in a saturated market. Not with discounts or gimmicks, but with the ethical AI driven decisions that prioritize long term value. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Tina Van Kalster, Product owner Segment of One at Telenet.
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Greg Kilstrom
Tina, welcome to the show.
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Tina Van Kalster
Hello. Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
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Podcast Host
Yeah. Looking forward to talking about this with you and great to be here in person with you at the show. Before we dive in, why don't we get started with you giving a little background on yourself and what you're currently doing at Telenet.
- [03:06]
Tina Van Kalster
Sure. So I'm currently a product owner at Telnet. What's in a name? But my background is actually in AI. So before I started working at Telnet about six years ago, I did a PhD in AI and then went through data science to product ownership of Segment of one, which is what I'm currently doing. And that's basically the name for our program that has to do with data driven hyper personalized marketing. And it's all built on Pega cdh. So I lead the team that builds and configures the marketing campaigns in the tool and works closely together with all of our marketing teams and with our technology teams to really bring it to life for our customers. So that's basically what we're doing. Love it.
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Podcast Host
Love it. Yeah. So let's dive in and we'll talk a bit about how you're using Pega Customer Decision Hub in a minute. I want to kind of start at a high level here, talk about the strategy and can you give us an overview of the Check and Smile initiative? You know what inspired Telenet to take such a customer first and some might say, counterintuitive approach in a highly competitive market.
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Tina Van Kalster
Sure. So maybe let's start with explaining what Check and Smile is all about. So Check and Smile is an application in our app. So it's only inbound and it's only for our existing customers. And the whole idea is that we do proactive checks for our customers that make them happy. So hence the name Check and Smile. And we do it for four different facets of their experience of their products together with us. And the two main ones are their network. So we do a check on their network quality and also offer them proactive solutions if something is going wrong. So that might be sending a technician or sending a new modem or whatever is needed. And secondly their products, which is more of the ethical side. So we know that some of our customers are maybe having some additional services that they're paying for, but not using so that's where we try to make a difference with either trying to stimulate the usage to make sure that they get the maximum value for money out of their current products, or actually suggesting a downgrade or even suggesting to turn off a certain service if they're really not a good fit for the customer. So the idea of Check and Smile is to start from our customers, start from their needs, think about the long term. So think about just building a good customer relationship, whatever that means, not only focusing on the short term and providing that as a service in our app with an effortless digital journey behind it so that it's easy for them to do whatever we are suggesting them to do. So that's basically the idea behind Chicken Smile.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, I mean it sounds like that customer relationship is a key part of that. So, you know, from a product ownership standpoint, you know, how do you define, typically speaking, you know, success would be like greater revenue or things like that. You know, how do you define success for something like Check and Smile when the immediate financial return might not look great on paper?
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Tina Van Kalster
So it didn't look great on paper. No, but that was a very conscious move. So it's actually, it was a reaction to customer service had some hiccups. We saw it in our brand perception. And so that's also the KPIs that we are focusing on. How loyal are our customers, how are they perceiving our brand? So we're looking at things like nps, but also in our brand tracker we have certain questions like do you feel valued as our customer? And so on. So we're more tracking it from a customer loyalty or customer perception point of view. And then next to that also are they really engaging with the Check and smile? So what is the acceptance rate? Whenever we offer something, are they actually likely to do it, whatever we are telling them? And then finally an operational impact. So we did want to make sure that it didn't put too much extra stress on our contact centers or on our technicians to make sure that they could handle whatever we are trying to provide to our customers. And that's also the reason why we started with only Inbound, so only in the app and then now the next round will also be proactive outbound. So actually sending customers emails whenever there's something ready for them in the app and there also customer engagement with that communication will be the first KPI that we are going to track.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, yeah. So I mean it definitely it sounds like it's about the long term value, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'll get to that in a minute as well. But yeah, I wanted to also talk about the technology behind it. So, you know, we're here at pegaworld here. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, how you're leveraging pegas in this case Customer Decision Hub to power those, you know, those offers are next best actions. Right. So you know, what's different about this approach compared to maybe, maybe more traditional personalization or targeting methods?
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Tina Van Kalster
Yep. Well, we've been doing segment of one for a little while already. So it's about five years ago that the program started. So we've come a long way and it was always pegacdh as a tool that was behind it. But we've been through a path of five years of capability building, of really connecting it to all of our channels and then the change management that has to come in it. So by the time the Check and Smile came around as a new cvp, we were kind of already established as a team, as a tool and it was a logical fit with the Check and smile because it's always on, it's hyper personalized and it is omnichannel. So the main difference for me when we launched Segment of one was two things. First of all being extremely data driven and AI driven in every decision, and second of all being omnichannel. So not only doing push marketing and being the annoying next email in an inbox, but also being there for our customers when they are reaching out to us. So making sure that our advisors are empowered with the next best actions, making sure that our website, our app, everything is there because there we see the real interaction and the real uplift of the capabilities of cdh. And then outbound is more like an additional bonus on top instead of being the main star, let's say, which is usually the case in a traditional approach.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, I mean, I think that hyper personalized and omnichannel, I mean, you know, lot, lots of people are talking about that. But you know, I think in reality there's this, you know, a lot of personalization is, is literally like substitute first name, last name or something. So you know, it's either what I would call substitution, not really personalization, or you know, it can feel impersonal even though it's personalized. You know, it seems counterintuitive. But how do you balance, you know, hyper automation with the human elements of things like trust and empathy so that it feels real and feels personalized to the, to the individual?
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Tina Van Kalster
That's a very good question. And to be honest, we're still in a learning curve there. So it's not easy to really make it feel super personal to your brand at scale. So we were lucky that Check and Smile wasn't too big to start with. And it was a manageable amount of next best actions where we could really do it iterations with our brand managers and with the copywriters to make sure that it felt like the Tailor Net logo is a little winky face. I don't know if you know it. And so we always say the Tailor Net wink has to be in there because otherwise it's not the Tailor Net product or CVP that we are offering. And that is definitely in there. But to do that at scale is not easy. And even then we got the feedback from some of our customers that they don't fully trust its yet because we are actively promoting downgrades and movements that they wouldn't expect from their telco provider. We see that we need to be even more transparent on what is behind that decision. It might be a complicated AI model that is behind it, but you need to be able to explain it to your customer. Why is this for you the next best action? And it's also a capability that we're now working on to provide even more personalized data in the message to really make the link with for example usage or just a customer profile with what we are offering them. So that's for us the next frontier, let's say for Check and Smile. And other than that it's a good collaboration still with your brand managers because in the end they put the flavor on top of it and that will be the case even in the world of Gen AI there will always be a human winky face that needs to be added on top I think.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, yeah. And I mean it does seem like though that the right choosing the right platform that has the ability to be explainable is pretty key as well as I mean you mentioned which you know, I've seen, you know, in my experience as well, starting with a campaign, you know, not starting enterprise wide but you know, starting with things that you can then build on and optimize seems like the right approach because then you can, you can expand that as much as you know you want to, which is
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Tina Van Kalster
not what we did. So but yeah, it was because we were like in an IT transformation etc. It just happened that PEGACDH was really built out as a capability and connected to all of our channels even before one campaign went live on it. Which was a very steep learning curve for us then and for Marketing to suddenly you have like these Rolls Royce, but you don't even have your driver's license. And so figuring that out was definitely. It took a while, but once we got the hang of it and we saw, okay, these are the best practices, now we can really scale up. And that's what my team has been doing the last three years. But yeah, it would have been smarter to start very small and then learn from that and then keep going. So that's also what we're now trying to do. For example, with Check and Smile, start with a very not basic set, but at least a limited set of next best actions and just keep adding on that. And that's what we're doing now. This year it's our second run of Check and Smile. So adding in new journeys to make sure that the customer has the best experience.
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Podcast Host
So let's go back to the topic of customer loyalty and the long term or lifetime value. So as we were just talking earlier, you mentioned this approach has increased customer loyalty and renewals. Can you share what kind of behaviors or insights or metrics can you share around that?
- [13:52]
Tina Van Kalster
Well, as I said before, the main KPIs that we are tracking are our brands KPIs. So we especially wanted to see if this is a type of service that our customers would enjoy and if there was a side effect on our app usage. Because whenever I'm at a conference like payaworld and I see the banking, like the banking colleagues, and you know that our customers come to the app every single day and then you don't do that for a telco app because you only do that if you're, you know, in trouble or something is not working or you're paying too much. And so this is actually a reason for our customers to come to our app. So one of the side effects is that we had, especially in the first weeks after launch, a lot more app downloads and a lot more new app users, which was a very nice side effect. But then for our brand KPIs, we saw that actually 50% of our customers feel more valued because we now offer this service. And then we hope that gets even better now that we're going to add the proactive layer on top where we add reach out to them whenever something is waiting for them in the app. So we're hoping that that will bring an additional effect. And we actually also checked with our non customers to see if they would like this or not. And actually more than 60% said because this service is there and especially with the network quality Checks and so on. I would consider Telenet as my provider if I want to switch, which is a nice effect as well. We're not there yet because there's still a group, as I said before, that doesn't fully trust it yet. So that really indicates, you know, it sounds too good to be true. So what's the catch? So we're trying to see how to deal with that. But overall already very promising results. Also a decent uptake of the offers. So around 10% of the offers that we give are accepted, which is not bad if you compare it to a traditional campaign. So good first results but still building on the CVP and so making sure that it's better and better.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, yeah. And so I know you've touched a bit on this, but you know, what have you learned about kind of customer expectations in the telecom environment? I mean you mentioned the idea that it's often kind of a transactional, you know, like my power went out the other day and I was on the, I was on the site checking, you know, and stuff like that. But it was a very reactive thing. I don't go there every day. So, you know, what have you learned about, you know, customer expectations, value transparency and brand behavior?
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Tina Van Kalster
Yeah, well, when we came up with the CVP it was as a reaction to, you know, a situation where we had brand loyalty and brand perception going down. So of course the first thing we did was go to our customers and just ask them, you know, what do you expect from your telco provider? And the answers that they gave were really for me, astonished. Like they, they expect you to bring these effortless journeys. It has to be proactive, it has to be completely fitting to my needs and also has that layer of empathy on top and then check and Smile was born as a CVP to try and touch on all of those aspects. But I remember it mostly was, wow, expectations are extremely high and not easy to go away from that purely transactional behavior to really building a relationship with your customer. And we see it going in the right direction, but it's an everyday, not battle, but everyday learning curve to see how can we manage all of those very big expectations. But it's a nice step I think, in the right direction.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, yeah. So last thing I want to talk about is just you touched on the internal change that's required here and initiatives like your talking about, you know, it requires a cultural shift and as well as a techno technological shift. What did it take to, you know, internally to get buy in across stakeholders for, you know, and to Talk about the Check and Smile thing, you know, might seem kind of like a risky strategy, right? You know, you're potentially giving up revenue without a promise of return. You know, how did, how did you go about the internal part of making that happen?
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Tina Van Kalster
Well, there's Segment of one and there's Check and Smile. So for a segment of one, because we've been doing it for five years, that's where the real mindset shift or change management had to happen. So we were lucky enough by the time we arrived at Check and Smile that the idea of hyper personalization and data driven marketing was already kind of business as usual by then. So for Segment of One, it was really a long time of working together with marketing and seeing how can these capabilities really reinforce what you're doing. And I think there for me, the biggest shift happened once we started to get out of the conversation. Segment of One or the, the always on campaigning is better than what you are doing. If you just say it's an additional thing on top, it complements it, it can reinforce whatever you are doing, then the real change, because they saw, okay, it's not a competition, it's just something additional that I can use to make me hit my targets, which is eventually what I want to do. So that's segment one and for Chick and Smile, yes, it was risky, but it was really led by our head of marketing. As you know, this is a necessary reaction to what is now happening in our markets with our customers, how they are perceiving us. And the original code name for the project, because we always have code names, was Braveheart. So it was really like just standing up for your principles, which is customer centricity and just going to battle in whatever way. We need to get to the end result and really with brave hearts, make sure that we get there. We also had a very strict timeline, so the idea was we have to do the marketing campaign on this date. We have six months to build an app that works for our customers. And she really made sure that everyone rallied behind the idea and that all the teams freed up their time and made sure that the deadlines were kept. And we did it in six months. So yeah, it's internal PR is not unimportant. So come up with a good code name and then everyone rallies behind you.
- [20:09]
Podcast Host
Love it. Love it. Well, two last questions for you here. We're here. I know we're relatively early on at pegaworld here, but so far, you know, what's been a highlight or what are you most excited about this year? At pegaworld.
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Tina Van Kalster
Well, I think as most people answer, especially given my background in AI, I'm also going to mention AI.
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Podcast Host
Yeah.
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Tina Van Kalster
So in the last few years we've had the bubble of gen AI growing and it's the scalability and the democratization basically of AI. But my personal background was always more in predictive and making the combination between the two, like putting the amazing customer experience of genai or user experience on top of the predictive, which hopefully is coming together in the CDH blueprint. I'm really looking forward to demoing for marketing teams like what can you do with blueprints to ideate even more? And see with that tail and that winky face on top, that layer, what can we do to make better marketing campaigns or better offers to our customers? I'm really looking forward to that. So nice.
- [21:23]
Podcast Host
I love that. Yeah, the combination of predictive and generative is very exciting to me. I feel like it's the thing that enables one to one personalization. We've been talking about personalization for at least a decade or more, but enables that and definitely, I mean blueprint, I was amazed last year at what it could do. It's come a long way in a year as well. So yeah, definitely excited to play with it a little bit here as well. So last question for you. I like to ask everybody on the show, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [22:00]
Tina Van Kalster
Also a good question, I think what is most important? So I've been leading the same team for three years and we started from a place where we were very much still, you know, fighting for a reason of existence. Like CDH wasn't the norm yet when it came to marketing and now it is. So the world has really changed and that meant that in our team we continuously had to recalibrate. So really have the open discussion on roles and responsibilities. How is the team working together? Can we maybe work together with marketing in a different way? How do we do proper stakeholder management? So focusing on all of those different aspects regularly. So making the time with the team to have the discussion on what is going well, what isn't going well, and not being afraid to maybe change even little things about your way of working together with others or within the team, that really makes a difference for me. So having the open conversation specifically.
- [23:04]
Podcast Host
Yeah, love it. Well, again I'd like to thank Tina Van Kelster, product owner segment of one at Telenut, for joining the show. To learn more about Tina and Telenet as well as to learn more about pega's latest announcements from here in Las Vegas at pegaworld. Please follow the links in the show.
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Tina Van Kalster
Notes
- [23:22]
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 the agile Brand 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.gregkillstrom.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.
- [24:15]
Strayer University Announcer
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