Amber Armstrong Talks About the Future of Conversational AI

Welcome to be customer led where we’ll explore how leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the accidents and behaviors of lawyers and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host, Bill staikos.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of be customer led, really excited to bring a special guest to you all this week. Amber Armstrong is chief marketing officer for LivePerson, which is an amazing organization. And we’re going to get a little bit of that, but Amber has a very, very rich professional, background as well. And I think that we’re going to get a little bit of that too. So Emma, thanks so much for coming on the show. I’m really excited to have you on thank you for the invite. So I ask each guest before we get started, Amber, just to tell us a little bit about your journey. You’ve got this rich professional experience and background. How has that set you up for success in, in the CMO role? at LivePerson?

Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been a marketer through and through for, for a very long time now. And I started my career working in a much smaller tech company. Moved from there to go to business school after business school. And I intentionally went to business school actually to be able to go to work for a much bigger company. And I worked for IBM for almost 15 years. And at IBM I had this great run. Working at different business units, learning how big companies really make money working in the geographies. I went to 13 countries in one year for IBM at one point, which was really exciting. Yeah. It was a crazy year. And then I decided, I wanted to go. To a smaller company, not as small as the company I was with originally, but I wanted to go and be able to really just move fast and do really big, important things and really be part of a growth engine. And so I think, my experiences at IBM have taught me so much about scale that I’m bringing that now to live person where, the thing that I’m limited by here is just how quickly I can hire. We have lots of opportunity to invest budget and we’re have a market that’s growing really quickly. And so it’s all about how can I, how quickly can I just get additions into the team so that we can execute.more quickly.

Love that. So in my own career, I did that as well. So I know what you’re kind of going through, or maybe even some of the, sort of the mental decisions that you’re, trying to place. when you were going back to a company from, large company, like IBM into a company like LivePerson, let’s talk a little bit about conversational AI and, maybe start with sort of a simple chat bots, simple live agent chats, present day where we are, which has gotten really sophisticated. But how has the market evolved for, from your perspective, what are some of the most striking differences that you’ve seen maybe from three years ago, even relative to today?

Yeah. Well, if you think back to the whole reason live person was created, our CEO founded and he innovated chat on the web. And so we come from this really rich history of trying to help brands connect with consumers. And the way that the consumer wants to be connected with and what’s happened since then, is all the ways that consumers want to connect with the people. They love people in their lives and with the brands that they engage with, have all expanded to so many different channels. And really importantly, in that is that the brand can respond to all of those challenges. And that they can do so in a way that’s really cost-effective and efficient for them without sacrificing any of the engagement to the customer. So typically. And you think about, if you’re trying to work on a change you need to make with your airline, right? You may be doing five other things at the same time, certainly multitasking and something that’s continued to, to increase since the time the live for someone’s created in. You need to do that while you’re also, feeding the kids dinner or doing things that are just part of your normal life. And so when you bring in messaging, what you add that’s really different than chat is asynchronous. We’ll talk to our friends or family via text, via messaging. And now we can talk to our brands in that same way, and it just really opens up a lot of convenience for the consumer and then the data that we can bring in. And so this is where the AI aspects come in, the data that we can bring into those conversations to make it easier for the consumer. It’s really, really, really impactful. And then that data on the backend. So it creates a better experience for the consumer, but on the back end, it creates a better experience for the brand because the brand can now analyze the intent of those conversations. It can work through how to automate some of those conversations, so that. Consumer gets to outcomes faster. And so that the consumers having to give as little information as possible so that the system can predict what they need and really be able to help them meet those needs.

And especially if, I guess, the backend you’re bringing together that individuals, maybe they call the contact center and not just doing messaging. Maybe they are engaging with their sales person or rep somewhere as well, if you’re connecting those dots and all those signals across. And you’re feeding that into an engine that can learn that creates for a better engagement through messaging, et cetera. I really love the, airline example because. If you are trying to change your flight, and I’ve tried to do this, actually, you have so many other things you’re calling your family. You’re calling maybe the next appointment. You’re stressed, everything else. Like you want something easy and convenient. And that digital convenience is really important now. and messaging can really deliver that. I love your perspective there. How do you think it’s changed? Due to the pandemic, right. Digitalization just generally has really, I mean, it’s really blown up, but a lot of companies are rushing to create even digital solutions to where maybe they didn’t have one in the past. Outside of that from conversational AI perspective though. And messaging, how do you think that’s changed?

Yeah, I think it has fundamentally changed and it’s not going back and we’ve seen that right as the world has started to. Kind of reopen globally now. Right. And the U S era has been reopening quite a bit for awhile, but in other countries, we just, Australia just opened up last week or so. Right. People now appreciate this additional convenience and it’s not just messaging it. It’s, it’s lots of things. Right. the, the, if you look at the stats on online delivery for groceries is another example. Where this things have fundamentally changed. People will continue using online delivery for groceries. Similarly, they will continue messaging with the brands, the, the buy online pickup in store as something I’ve worked a lot with when I was at IBM and I was running our supply chain marketing. that’s something that, is. Just foundational to how people want to operate. Now. I think we’ll see that continue on the messaging side as well, but it’s about broader than, than just that. I think it’s also, we’ve gotten used to companies having certain information about us. And we have started to opt in to what we’re comfortable with. And I think that’s one of the things that’s a little bit different in this change as well. Over the time of COVID, when COVID started, we had. We knew lots and lots about people everywhere. Right now we do see people are being more careful and more intentful with how they decide to share data. I think that’s something that will also continue. And as long as we can create better experiences from that data, we’ll see that people are more interested and being able to, to share more data when they can see the benefits of it.

Yeah. I mean, there’s a huge, huge debate out there in terms of privacy versus data security. Right. are you keeping my data safe because I’m giving you a lot, maybe even more than I’m aware on some level, but outside of that, what are you doing with it? And how are you using that to enrich my life? I feel that particularly in the pandemic, a lot of individuals are rethinking the brands that they purchase from, what is their mission? What are, what is their purpose in the world? And do I have a connection or affinity to that purpose and does it align with my own values? And then, what type of technology is there to help me kind of facilitate a transaction or engagement with that brand? It’s really, the dynamic has really, changed quite a bit, on the flip side though, with, with, even with this rush to digital. Amber, you also have this kind of like re humanization. Maybe it’s more of the workforce than, than anything else, but how do you strike the balance between digital and human? Right. Like, I mean, I’ve heard people say like, you got to make digital more human. Well, I don’t know if it’s about making digital more human. Right. Digital is digital, but how are you thinking about striking that balance? Cause that’s really a, it’s a fine line, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. And there, it’s a very fine line to, into creepy as well.

Right? So when you, you want to make digital more human, but you want to make sure that you’re putting consumers in control of that because what you may think is more human. Maybe more, maybe different than what I think is human. Right? And so the way that brands can win with that and make it more human to, to use your term is to allow a lot of control over the experience for the consumers. They’ll tell you what they want. Some of them don’t want you to know anything, and they don’t want you to personalize anything for them because that’s where they feel comfortable. And you have to, respect that in this world where we are seeing, cookies eventually going away and third party cookies, capturing that first party data is so incredibly important and we absolutely have to make sure that we’re capturing that and using it. And then you can’t break trust once you break trust on it, it’s done. Right. And that’s a consumer that we’ll come back into the.

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I want to come back to the privacy and privatization, topic a little bit. I I’ve heard you talk about this in the past and maybe some of our listeners have as well, but maybe for, for those that have not heard your, your view on this, like explain what you mean by. Yeah. Finding the balance between privacy and privatization. What does that balance mean to you? And even maybe more specifically is how does conversational AI drive the balance for companies as well?

It’s a really interesting one. I think naturally think of it in, unless you really sat down and thought about, gosh, how do I find out what my customers want? And you try to think of all the different modalities that you can do that. Well, a really simple way to find out what your customers want is to ask them. And so when you’re messaging with customers, you can have a great conversation with. The puts them in the driver’s seat. And the thing that’s really pretty magical about having conversations, via messaging, via chat, whatever the modality is, is that they’re naturally intentful. So they’re naturally that person’s telling you what they want by talking to you. They’re also naturally consentful and that’s really important, right? Because if I’m talking to you. It can give me a sense to respond to me. I’m looking to have a conversation with me because I’m engaging you. And so then for brand marketers, the trick really becomes how do you engage those audiences? How do you get them to enter into that conversation? And you do that by offering them value by engaging them on their journey and how they want to make their journey. Better and how you can add additional value to the buying process.

I get that in a B to B to C context really well. I used to, before I joined the company I worked for today, I worked for a B2B company and we were looking at conversational AI for our own clients. The use case, we felt like it wasn’t a strong maybe in B2B versus B2C. I mean, B2C. It makes absolute sense. Right? How are you thinking about the value prop from a B2B perspective and maybe what are some of the use cases that you’re thinking about that do make sense that maybe listeners on the show should be thinking about?

Yeah, absolutely. There’s there’s a lot. I mean, I think you still have, whether it’s B2B or B2C, you still have a visit. Your web visitors are still trying to find something. And sometimes we split hairs over what’s a B2B or B2C. It’s still a human on the other side of that who has needs, they’re trying to meet and conversational AI can help meet those needs. That part’s not, not different at all. When you think about tactically, some of the ways that you can deploy conversational AI is through conversational ads, right? And this, this is really important in a B2B environment. So when you place an ad, you can drop someone into a website, which is what we typically do drop them into a form, drop them into a homepage, whatever. But what we can actually do is drop them into a conversation. And then they don’t have to navigate their way around. They can just start talking about what they want and what they need, and you can navigate through there. I think it’s actually quite easier on the B2B side to handle some of the automations because the volume of requests is less. It’s not the same volume, which means it’s harder to learn from. So that that’s important. We think about AI. AI is always learning. Because there’s not that significant of a volume it’s harder to learn from, but from the perspective of we’ve got this person, we know what they’re asking us for. We have a fewer things to kind of select from, to be able to point them in the right direction. Right. We don’t have. 400 pair of shoes. We’re trying to figure out which one would be the best fit for them. Right? We’ve got maybe 10 assets we’re trying to figure. And there’s also something that’s interesting on the B2B side is, when you’re having these conversations on a consumer side, you get a lot of value and reducing cost. But the thing you’re selling is oftentimes, and last year we had, we have lots of customers who are like car dealers and car marketplaces. unless you’re those kinds of really high value items, you don’t have a lot of that high value. However, in a B2B environment, you often have very high value items. And so if you can really get those conversations performing well, there’s a huge opportunity for.

Really interesting. What I love about conversational AI is that it is like the ultimate personification of journey orchestration, right? I mean, at its very core, I think you’re, you’re, you’re helping the customer go down a path that is beneficial to them as well as beneficial to the customer in a B2B context though, because of the, the, the ticket could be significantly higher. Are you bringing more of the human element into that? Why at a certain stage or. Are you still seeing companies wanting to drive more of that through, just straight through the conversational AI through that messaging?

I think we do bring humans. And just as you do with any, with any kind of a, an agent type conversation, whether that’s an automated agent or. You know, a real life agent, the humans played two roles. So ultimately they play the role of paying. This is escalated. This didn’t work. The butt is not yet where it needs to be in order to meet this specific intent that that’s a role that play, but we’re the role they also play. And this is Trump B2B, and B2C is an educating the AI. Right. And that, that’s a really interesting job, right? If your job, as an agent is to help the AI becomes smarter to take some of the things that are the more basic commands that are the things that customers just want quickly, then that’s actually a really interesting job. And then you’re not just taking calls all day. You’re actually learning about AI and how it can improve our world more broadly. Hmm. I love that view. Where do you think the space is going? Like where, where do you expect conversational AI to be in the next three or five years? Even? Cause it’s changed quite a bit, even the last three to five years. Right. And you got to think about that. Speeding up even more, perhaps. Yeah, I think it’s, there’s a couple of things I’ve been digging a lot into analyst’s reports here lately. And there’s a couple of things that I think are really kind of coming through in those kind of reports. One is it’s going to continue to grow. It’s going to continue to grow really, really fast people. As I said, aren’t going back to the way that things were previously, just like, we, once we all started texting, calls really went down, right? Like we call when we have something really intentful, let’s talk about an important, but we don’t call just to say, Hey, I’ll be home in 20 minutes. Right. You just change. It changes your behavior. And so I think what we’re going to continue to see that happen. I think there are things we haven’t even imagined from that perspective, from a vendor perspective, though, and from a brand perspective, what’s really important and what’s coming is how all of these things are connected. So you want to make sure that the conversations that you’re having can be fed through the rest of your technologies. In order to be able to best leverage that information across the full organization. Right? So all this interconnectivity is something that the commerce side of businesses has been working on for a long time and is now an opportunity for conversational AI because, an example, you can purchase directly through messaging. You couldn’t have done that. Previously messaging was just, Hey, can you tell me the order of my status, kind of a thing. Now you can purchase directly in app, whatever app you’ve chosen and that’s how it’s going to continue. And so the complexity and how brands interconnect these tools is the opportunity for us to really lift up the experience to the next.

Yeah. And that interconnection one will require machine learning, artificial intelligence in and of itself. But when you’re piecing together all of these signals and you create scale learning around the, for the organization around the customer or even around the employee for that matter, that’s where, certainly you can deliver a better experience, whether that’s through messaging or other mediums as well, whether you could even use that, obviously to get more sophisticated in store and branch, whatever that might look like really interesting conversation. I have one, one final question for you. And I ask every guest this, where do you go for inspiration?

You know, I am big on podcasts, so we’re, we’re in here today. but no, I really love the, just, just personally, the Brene brown unlocking us podcast is something I’ve got, lots of things was come out of that work smelling. Oh yeah. I really feel that, when I think about, getting inspiration for work, I, I do, I spend a lot of time in analyst reports, really trying to understand what’s happening in the market so that we can really think about how do we leave. Where people are today and really be a leader in that. but I also, I do tons and tons of reading, joining in on podcasts. but the thing that, I get a lot of inspiration from, and this all sounds super cheesy, but it’s incredibly true is, and talking to my team, I, this team here at LivePerson is, is really fascinating. So I have. team that’s kind of was here when I, when I joined and they really, really understand and are incredibly passionate about black person and they understand conversational AI in a way that it’s just really incredible. And as we’re expanding, I think I still have like 14 open roles where we’re kind of filling roles faster than we can, or we’re filling roles more slowly than we’re opening up new ones. And so where we’ve kind of had. Pretty steady around 14, 15 roles that we have had open. And I’m inspired by the people that are coming in and are coming in from lots of different companies. And so being really curious with those people and, you know, how did you do this at this location? And how does you at that location? I get really inspired by that because for me, my whole goal is to build the best Amanda engine that I possibly can and then involves obviously telling a great brand story and all of those, those sorts of things that that’s what I want to do. And I need to rely on my team to really. Help me do that and to inspire the path.

So I don’t think that’s cheesy at all. I think that’s an awesome answer. Personally. Not a lot of leaders would say that. So kudos to you for being the type of great leader that gets inspiration from, from their team. Really loved this conversation. This is such an important topic for every company. frankly, and is really more and more getting to the fabric of everyday business and our everyday lives. as digital becomes a more and more important part of how we engage with a business, love what live person is doing. And I really appreciate you coming on the show. This has been a great conversation, and I know our listeners are going to love this. So thanks so much. Yeah,

absolutely. Thank you for having me.

All right, everybody. Another great week. We’re out.

Thanks for listening to be customer led with bill staikos. We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time. Be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com for more episodes. Leave us feedback on how we’re doing or tell us what you want to hear more about until next time we’re out.