Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the C. X. Goalkeeper podcast, your host Gregorio Yoni will have small discussion with experts thought leader and friends on customer experience, transformation innovation and leadership, I hope you will enjoy the next episode ladies and gentlemen a big big pleasure to f the next session of the C. X. Code keeper podcast. Today is a special day because on the stage I have not only super expert on customer experience but also a friend Federico Cecconi chow gregorio, are we talking in english or in italian, let's always the big question. I think it's important to switch to english that everybody can understand what we are discussing and and the audience can profit from from this discussion because I am really thrilled to to discuss with you first of all about the european customer experience organization and then secondly about the new strategy of sciences plus I think you are really going in a specific niche in a really interesting field and I would like to deep dive on that but before we start, thank you very much to european customer experience organization to make that possible.

This is also a big advantage of being a member of this great associations because I have the opportunities to have checked with really seeks professional six expert great minds in in customer experience Federico before we deep dive in all this discussion and everything we would like to discuss. Could you please introduce yourself? Yeah, first of all I have to say you know we are competitors because I run my own podcast, the sea expand chat but you were guests at that post podcast. So now basically you you exchange we exchange the roles in the polls cat. I'm I'm really happy um yeah, the european customer experience organization I think is uh is a very interesting um organization is a very interesting initiatives because the aim is to include uh you know, european customer experience experts in an organization.

What I like a lot and I discuss a lot with one of the founder of the organization ricardo is the the inclusion idea of the organization. So um because you you know a little bit you know my way of thinking in customer experience and I'm not really, I'm I'm more focused on the P. N. L. Side than you know the emotional wow wow offside. Probably it is because also you know my background in telecommunications moved me more on pay attentions on the P. N. L. And I think that it's important to have different aspects and consider different point of view when we think about customer experience at the end. There is not a single true that say okay disease the way customers experience should be done and what I love and I like a lot in the european customer experience organization is the respect but people have to the other opinions.

You know, I for instance, I I you probably interviews other other ambassadors member of the european customer experience experience organization and you probably probably show different point point of view that are different from me from for instance, from my point of view, but this is you know this is the really the nice, the nice things and you know, I a stronger believer that we have, you know to investigate and respect the opinion of the others and how they perceived or they see different things and customer experience. So this is this is definitely something I like a lot. Oh and I love to be part of the european customer experience organization. Federico, you already answered also the next question I know that it's like because you are a Ceo and you are not really listening to the question I asked to introduce yourself, but you already introduced the european customer experience organization.

Okay, I thought, I thought it was more you know focusing on the european customer experience organization. I think european customer experience organization is more important than me in this in this stage. But yeah, I can do, I can say a couple of words about myself basically, you know, I studied law at the university, so I have a PhD in law then I have an M B. A. But basically, you know when I was at the university I used to work for a marketing agency 50% in my time and uh you know, I was really in love with marketing with advertising and in the meantime, you know when I was young, 14, 15 years old, I was really passionate about computer at that time I used a spectrum that that X 81 which is very old, small computer to connect to the television.

And I had always this passion to combine technology and to support marketing with technology. So I come from from that background worked a lot in inter communications, worked a lot using uh, you know, creating uh machine learning models back in in 2000, uh, here 2000 and my old man. Um, and uh, and yeah, and then a certain point in time this passion uh was transform in adventure and I start sense if 11 years ago, more or less now. And yeah, it was quite successful because I still exist after 11 years. So it's a good thing they say is a good sign. I can confirm that. I think this is what is doing in the customer experience. What it's really outstanding. A short comment on what you said, I will pay attention on what I'm going to say because if you study law, I will pay attention.

Don't worry, don't worry about it. And I'm not shaking the close below what we are discussing. And at the end we are not competitors. Also with the podcast, you have an outstanding webcast is C. X punk chat and it's really of great people discussing with you in your 1 to 1 I really like and enjoy the way you are discussing. It's a bit different. It's not always the standardized, standardized one, but therefore it makes sense to listen to it. And more than that, he also to share in the, in the show notes, the link to to your C X puncture. Because there is a lot of measure there. I think we are playing in the same team, we are playing together in the customer experience professionals. Word you are a Ceo, I am a six professionals and I think we have all the same aimed the same goal, the same target. And I think we are sharing also a lot of values that the european customer experience organizations as perhaps you already spoke about the european customer experience organization.

And I think it's important to mention that if somebody would like to join, there is a direct link, you can find that in the show notes and it's free of charge. It's it's really free. You can start having a look a look at the platform. The platform is really full of content and perhaps Federico, why should somebody join this organization? Well, I think it's important to get knowledge, you know, from, from the other peers um, in in, you know, the day life when we don't know something. We go in google research and uh, we basically asked to the crowd asked to the crowd and answers, so if this crowd is specialized in customer experience or you know, is is is a big team of customer experience professionals. I think definitely you can get really, you know, good feedback, good advice. Uh there are very good articles written by the people of course as I said from the beginning there is not a unique view.

So maybe you can find something that probably you don't fully agree or probably you know make a click you know in your brain and say okay, this is an interesting point of view, let's let's think about it. So I think there are big advantages to be part of this community and as you say it's totally free, so I think it really makes sense to join the community. Thank you Federico and I think it's it's really important to mention that and also you can create new friendship, new discussion and understand also older point of views from an european point of view. I think we discussed about the european customer experience organization as a matter of fact that I have the big opportunity to have you on the show and we are able to share some insights on on sensitive perhaps before we start discussing about your future, your future vision about sensitive what is all about sansa Well, since I was born, as I said in 2010 and one was born, you know with the idea to create a solution to support the customer experience management process.

So we based uh and we still base our solution on a framework I designed around 2008, five pillars capture, analyze, integrate improvement measure and the old the old platforms is designed designed uh to basically support and to create values and benefits out out of Process. So uh yeah, this really explained, you know in a Nutshell, in a in a very bad way. So as I said, we we started 11 years ago, we can't uh we mainly serve the enterprise market and uh yeah we are quite successful along along our journey let's say. And based on the fact that you're saying that why are you so successful or phrasing another way?

What is differentiating sensitive plus from the older competitors on the market? And also the big one. Okay, this is a very interesting, interesting questions. You know, the first thing I would say is uh you know when when we started the customer experience management was not really a hot topic. I remember my my partner when I told him, okay let's let's focus you know, our effort in creating something to support customer experience the day after it came to me and said, are you 100% sure because I search in google and I got something like 80 pages, you know, searching for customer experience and I said yeah, I'm sure I'm sure let's go in that direction, don't worry, thanks God, you know, I was lucky and now if you search customer experience there are there are more than 80 pages probably in google, then you know we really go through the whole journey because at the beginning we had for instance to offer consulting and the technology because no one was open, you know, to take the technology without the consulting.

And uh there were no possibility to find really consulting focusing in customer experience. Then three or four years ago we decided okay, now we have, you know, we have partnership with accent or with the young will also boutique consulting, you know, our friend Beppe in uh in Switzerland. Uh Next uh let's let's do some advertising to him and exa so it's uh so and and we have such kind of boutique consulting around the world in South Africa for instance, uh in in in in other in other area of the group. So we decided to basically focus um you know our efforts just on technology and and become scalable in order to be able to uh to offer to offer the technology. And uh and now we are we are really focusing just you know, working with partners and or providing the solutions can say for instance, we sold the solution to several companies also in Switzerland and we were able to work with the internal people and deliver, deliver the solution.

But there are other other customers or clients that prefer to have, you know, kind of managed service or for instance the solution we we are we give the solution to uh consulting partner like Deloitte or or as the young and then the consulting delivers the full scope of the project. The final client. This is a little bit small, small history of France but Gregori it's very important to mention. We were born from scratch serve the customer experience management process and this is important because we never we never been market research platform, our survey platform but then try to basically transform in a customer experience management platform. And this is important because I always say to my clients, you know, you have Excel and you have words and you can create a table in word and write a letter in Excel and it works.

But probably if you do the opposite will work even better. You know this is this is what I, what I usually say to my clients, I think what you're saying makes totally sense and there are plenty of really good customer experience book but I didn't found in any of them. This is the insights that you were offering to the to the customer and I think this is the customer meaning the the corporate, the enterprise that wants to start the customer experience transformation. It's something that we never discussed and you can say, I don't agree, don't worry about it. That's the open discussion. Even if it's not, it's not your punk chat but we don't need to agree but my view is really, it's not stated in the books, but if you want to start the customer centric transformation. The first thing that most of the enterprises are doing is serving the customers, trying to get feedback from the customers and then starting working with with the feedback and you mentioned the five pillars and I think I summarized them in three P three.

It's asking the customer understanding what the customers are telling to you and then creating actions and solutions like sensitive are there in order to, To harmonize the data that you are getting, creating an enabling this X to define these actions. And again, we don't need to agree basically what the customers are telling you. It's not that it must be your first priority and not only work on these 10 or 15 ideas but at least you have another source of inputs in order to really focus on the customer because this customer of the customers that are buying your products, your services and sensitive is really offering this opportunity in a super easy way surveying the customer, understanding the data and creating actions out of debt. For me was mind blowing, having discussion with Federico, he was talking about the technology behind debt and therefore it's not only about these three steps that I mentioned but a lot more.

And now we are coming also to to the next phase that's what you are offering what you did with all your tools that you are offering, but let's say what would be or what is the next step. This this is a very interesting question and uh, this requires a little bit of uh contextual is asians, you know, as I said we are focusing on the enterprise clients. So for for several reasons we we always focus on on enterprise clients and what we have seen in the last three years in the market, it was something extremely interesting and I think every everybody that is in in um you know in I. T. And basically look look around the in a in a very attentive way can see so big investments in the clouds.

So nowadays big companies including banks that before was the kind of Norway today is we must do that. Um but you know I was talking with Customer that we recently acquired, it told me in 2015 we we started the migration of our IT in the cloud and nowadays we don't have any single applications that run on prem we have everything in the cloud, the next wave will be you know, the multi clouds approach. So the big we see also the big investment in in in google, in Microsoft, in amazon, so this is this is a trend. And is there you know, if you want to compete with the revolution, You need to be a a child and faster in order you know to have your system support your strategy.

And this is something that basically we started to think three years ago, so we wrote the full rewrote the full applications and the full architecture of the applications in containers and we are able to basically orchestrate the containers using kubernetes. So today senses is available in the cloud of your choice, in the geographical node of your choice and it takes 20 minutes to set up, you know, a new instance wherever you want. So the cloud, native cloud is important and it's different from SARS, you know, I'm quite provocative and I am saying you know SaZ is dead at the end, at least for enterprise customers that move the infrastructure in the cloud. Why? Because you need you know security, you need agility, you need to be able to back up your own data and to restore your own data.

You need to ensure data privacy, you need to ensure security. So it's a totally different competitive game and this game is played you know in containers in kubernetes and in the cloud this is the first step. The second step is the integrations so integrations with the ecosystem and the system that our target clients use. So for us it's very clear things like Salesforce, like Smp like Microsoft dynamics, like whatever other system tag managers, marketing automation tools that run in the cloud and we are able you know to create these automatic package to easily integrate the script. 2nd, 2nd pillar third and those pillars are all connected that don't don't take me this is disconnected from from this.

So the fact that we are in the clouds means we are open and we can communicate to whatever other unity in in the cloud, we need to be netflix, not blockbusters, this is this is the message, this or we need to be a revolution, I don't know whom compare revolution but we all know the value, you know the evaluation or revolution compare other other you know financial or banking services. Third important pillar. And you will laugh because it sounds like you know a buzzword is artificial intelligence. When we talk about artificial intelligence, our view for the future is very clear. You know on one side we need the really to make uh you know the possibility to have these artificial intelligence integrated integrated, integrated in the cloud and integrated in the communications with with the the full ecosystem.

Uh the second things and this is what we already worked a lot in the past in our in our application is to offer a no code artificial intelligence. So the really the ability for business people without any knowledge of python or java or whatever. Two build models in our platforms, models that make sense for your business and and produce immediate value for your business. I've seen no clients, big clients of our platform building, you know, topic detection model, sentiment model, churn risk model by themselves, business people, not data scientists and deploy the models directly in our platform. So these those three are really you know three important pillars in in our in our basically view for the future.

The the one in the artificial intelligence pillar, Another important point, you know, because I've wrote a lot uh you know articles about it and also I created some post in linkedin and and some articles is uh you know the transformers world. So we are going to release this month, the first beta of uh you know, an algorithm that we offer to our clients based on the transformers world and it will create a big advantage for our clients. What is the advantage basically I tell you the name internal internal recording name of that specific project is called the magic button. So the magic button means you have, you know a collection of feedbacks or a text or whatever. You push the magic button and the algorithm discover automatically all the topics and creates already out of the box are training files that can be used then to build a more solid models to the classification topic detection and sentimental Alleys.

This is the first step that we will have in our platform for, you know customer experience people and this will generate really higher accuracy, you know, short time to value short time to market for for for all our clients. So those are a little bit uh, the things that we are working on and everything is basically towards what I think the migration from a customer experience management, you know projects or or platform to a wide customer intelligence and when I when I talk about customer intelligence, I I talk about possibility to have uh you know these solutions in the cloud as I said at the beginning uh integrated with all the other systems or be able to communicate bi directional with with the with the other the other system as a pay salesforce, whatever and provide the intelligence, you know, and and this is the way in the in the next years the company will compete.

You know, I was attending a fantastic presentation of uh you know alibaba like with alipay and there is an insurance company of alipay, uh you know um a data flow and the artificial intelligence models connected in in the data flow, the benefit goes in two hours in two hours. The client is able to open the case at the insurance company after two hours he received the money if of course everything is okay and everything is basically analyzed by artificial intelligence model. So this is the world that we are going uh you know, to and and this is the way we have to compete in the future and in the future, you know, everything will be in this word of interconnected clouds and we have um we have really to be ready for that.

We cannot anymore pretend to have, you know on prem solution, legacy systems that makes us really slow and uh and uh yeah, it's impossible, it's impossible to compete with the revolution of the world or you know the the netflix of the world if you don't, if you don't have a change, you know in your mindset I think it was really a long explanation but this is the way to go and and it was really interesting as I know you very well you are, you spoke also in a technical way but to to make it that understandable that the technology is there to be everywhere to get data from everywhere 24 7 and to create this customer insects and I know we're running out of time but I think this is really important to have this discussion and to make that understandable for for business people like me, what you are saying is What you can create or what you created already to be discussed is really to have not the let's say 180 customer view or degree or the 360 but we are already on the next level having really all the data that you have in a company, let's say financial data, operational data and the specialty of of sensitive the customer data to put them together and then leverage and make magic.

You you mentioned the magic button, make magic out of this data and we are not speaking about only being quick and giving the opportunity to to somebody that has an insurance to get the monitor. But we are really speaking about finding the best insights to optimize the return on investment, exactly your company, it means it is not possible to compete with this solution having and sorry to say that a C suite sitting in at the, at the round table and taking decision and saying this and that because other companies like Alibaba and there are other insurances and other great examples, he was already machines to prepare this decision and telling these are the models, run them and see them. I had also the big opportunity to see one model running providing feedbacks, how to tackle one big issues. That was something that human beings were not able to define because we would not be able to calculate to get these inside for the machine was it's a one night calculation, let's say good feeling a one night calculation and he was the best insight to maximize dramatically increase revenues compared to the old fashioned.

You mentioned that except calculation. Yeah, but Gregorio, imagine, do you know how many, how many users have alibaba connected to alipay in china Actively? I'm talking about active users, I tell you 460 millions. So users, I don't know how many transactions they've done daily, but without machine learning, without deep machine learning that Autumn eyes and take decisions on certain processes, it's impossible to work. So those are the companies that we will have compete in the future. So I think, you know, legacy company here in europe need really to think, you know deep and understand what they can do to change because otherwise in the next years such a kind of companies, they will build a competitive advantage that will be impossible, you know, to basically to run on to run behind.

And uh and uh and and this is uh you know the competitive field we will we will have to play in the next years and also for us becoming as you said, and and you summarize very well in a business way becoming, you know, the intelligence system, the customary intelligence system that will provide, you know, informations to system like Salesforce marketing automation tool, er p etcetera etcetera in order to make automatic, you know, decision on customer. What kind of what kind of campaigns I have to send to Gregorio today, based on information. If Gregorio has an open incident, please don't send the campaigns because it's useless and it's counterproductive. So all all this kind of, you know, information basically we want to provide and what you're saying and then we can conclude this discussion, but really important. It's it's for a lot of companies are speaking about personalization of experiences.

What you're mentioning is not item personalization but is individualization of experiences. I can create a specific experience for Federico because I know Federico as an entity, leveraging the data that I f and all the information I have, I can individualize experience, it means it's already to step forward compared to discussing. For me. For me, the point is the experience to you. Gregorio must be relevant. You must have a relevant experience, not a personalized experience, a personalized experience. In my opinion, I cannot really understand very well what could be but relevant. I send you the information, the content that is relevant to you for you in this moment. This is important. It makes the difference in my opinion, very much looking forward to see this solution, these tools in place because these are the future and uh and I think it really makes sense.

I'm thrilled to to listen to the official presentation that you are going to 12 and I think I I will publish the podcast later but we can share them the links together that you can get all the inside we are coming to an end. But I would like to ask two or three questions to you, Federico and this is a bit more on the human side. Is there a book that you would recommend to the audience and saying this is something important that you should have a look at? Yeah, I I would say based on what I tell you before I am, it's a book, if I well remember I recommend also to you and probably you are bored. It is competing now. I don't remember the title very well but is competing on artificial intelligence is a book written you know by different professors of Harvard Harvard business school.

One of the professor is uh is an italian one and is from Rome and I think that book really opened me the eyes from the reality. For instance, we were talking about alipay or ant group as he called today. Those, those giants are really, you know, unbelievable and and we need really to better understand them how they do in, in a way that we still can compete to them. There is a running joke that everybody's telling sharing, but I would like to mention it also in this in this podcast, I cannot say the source because everybody's telling that, but perhaps some people didn't heard that it's summarize your business before it gets product. Exactly. This is one of the slides I have in my presentation. So I, I said before, would you like to be netflix or blockbuster, This is, this is the decision that you have to take it, you know, I think there is no way to decide.

There is only one way, one way to go. Federico. If somebody would like to contact you what's the best way? Well, they can, they can contact me on linkedin. I always answer to people in linkedin, so definitely linkedin, they can find me linkedin. Uh Federico cheese coney, you, you can see here the, the, the name and yeah, linkedin, definitely, I'm, I'm quite active there and as you're saying, not what is on your right side Frederick which is going to Lincoln but also on your left side you can find also Federico on the european customer experience and organizational platform and there it's it's full of great inside and you will find also the way to get in contact there. You find people smarter than me. So so just to go there, thank you Fredricka. And now we are coming to. The last question is the usual question that I always ask is Federico Golden nugget.

It's something that we discussed or something new that you would live to the audience. No golden nuggets. I don't have a lot of golden nuggets. Uh um the only thing I can say, you know, and and this is in general um yeah, Follow your passion, so follow your passion because you know I'm now 56 years old and I can tell you the life is really short, so don't don't lose time and follow, follow your passion. Thank you Federico. And as usual, I'm not commenting the golden nugget because it's Federico Golden nugget. One thing I wanted to mention to at the end, Federico wrote also together with a friend, a great paper about measuring the digital experience of the digital experience. It's something that I would like to share also in this podcast because if you have the opportunity to discuss with you, let's really share this additional golden nuggets that that it's it's really makes sense.

It's easy to understand from the mathematical point of view, it's a bit complicated, it's really something that helps understanding how to measure all this transformation, can the digital transformation, can their business transformation can be a customer centric transformation, but it makes always sense to measure something and I think something is really a great platform also to measure customer satisfaction. Just just one comment, that paper is published on research gate dot net, so it's uh if someone is interested uh it's uh it's uh it's quite successful I would say you know and yeah, probably people think is uh is helpful, you know? Thank you very much and really I hope that the audience enjoyed this discussion as much as I did because it's always outstanding to discuss with Federico, the big issue that I have. It's we did we say we we meet for half an hour to have a coffee and then at the end we discuss 1.5 hours.

But that's the case if both people are passionate about the same topics and I really enjoyed this discussion. And again, thank you very much to you Federico and to the european customer experience organization to making this discussion possible. Thank you. Thank you Gregorio. And thanks as well to the european customer experience organization. If you enjoyed this episode, please share the word of mouth, Subscribe it, share it until the next episode. Please don't forget we are not in a. B two B or B. Two C. Business. You are in a human to human environment. Thank you.