DM Magazine November 2020 by Lloydmedia Inc

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Taking Contact Centres to the Edge PM 4 0 0 5 0 8 0 3

VOL. 33 • NO. 9 • NOVEMBER 2020

THE AUTHORITY ON DATA-DRIVEN ENGAGEMENT & OPERATIONS

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❱ 16 4 Why Digital IDs for Businesses ❯❯

8 How to Thrive in the Pandemic ❯❯

13 The Future of Marketing ❯❯

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Why Digital IDs for Businesses Vol. 33 | No. 9 | November 2020 EDITOR Brendan Read - brendan@dmn.ca

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Taking Contact Centres to the Edge

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Keeping Concerned Callers Off Hold NOVEMBER 2020

The Future of Marketing Interview with Mathew Sweezey, director of market strategy at Salesforce.com

How to Thrive in the Pandemic

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Loralee Orr Sangeeta Bhatnagar Stephen Shaw Andy Bird Danny Singer Andrew Eppich Brooke Stephen Jeff Gallino Debbie Gamble

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Why Digital IDs for Businesses BY DEBBIE GAMBLE

DEBBIE GAMBLE is chief officer, innovation labs and new ventures, Interac Corp.

he COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgency of a digital-first approach, altering how Canadians are looking to interact with each other, access services and complete transactions. Seeking to limit the impact and frequency of in-person interactions, six in 10 Canadians reported that they are more often transacting in ways that reduce physical contact, according to the most recent Digital ID Survey from Interac. In addition, nearly the same amount (59 percent) cite worries about hygiene when handling physical IDs. However, while COVID-19 may have catalyzed and increased adoption of online access to goods and services for Canadian consumers and businesses, these changing behaviours point to a permanent shift to digital. To support this shift, however, will require significant innovation: particularly when it comes to increasing access to forms of digital identification (digital ID). According to our survey, nearly seven in 10 Canadians (69 percent) believe such innovation is needed to speed up access to government services (particularly in a crisis). Over six in ten (65 percent) Canadians wish there were a more convenient way to verify the identity of someone they are doing business with online. Digital ID is essentially a way to verify who we are, both online and offline, in a manner that safeguards personal information. And digital ID is central to providing citizens with access to critical services and to facilitating safe and secure online transactions. In seeking to implement digital ID, and to benefit from the critical role it can play in building an inclusive and vibrant digital economy, there are number of key considerations that businesses should bear in mind from a customer perspective. Security remains key Although Canadians are demanding increased access to goods and services online, security remains a key consideration for adoption. According to our recent survey, nearly seven in 10 (67 percent) Canadians responded that they are open to using a digital ID if it means their identity data is better protected than it is today. Over six in 10 (62 percent) care more now about keeping their identity data safe online than they did in the past. And Canadians over 55 are more likely to cite this concern (72 percent). In order to speed access to digital ID, we can leverage the existing capabilities we have in place to facilitate the secure exchange of information. For example, the encryption and data abstraction technology currently used to secure payments made via the Interac network can also be used to secure digital IDs. Need for frictionless experiences Users (i.e. customers) have come to expect a frictionless digital experience, which extends to the use of digital forms of identification. The importance of offering a secure and seamless online customer

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journey has only increased as a result of the pandemic, with businesses and government interactions moving online. Canadians agree that digital ID can play an important role in making online transactions more convenient. According to our survey one in two Canadians (51 percent) believe it would be, more convenient to have a single digital ID that bundles various physical IDs in one location when accessing online services, including fast authentication and login. Currently we are overly reliant on physical forms of ID, which undermines the ability to deliver efficient, convenient and secure transactions. This is especially true at the moment for many smallmidsized businesses (SMBs) where digital IDs can provide an important solution that better equips these organizations to reduce customer friction. This will lead to an enhanced online experience for them while increasing efficiencies for SMBs across Canada. Transparency is critical Canadians are also becoming more aware of the threats of fraud and cybersecurity attacks and are asking for greater transparency around how their information is used (70 percent in 2020 compared to 58 percent in 2019. Canadians need to know how their information is being handled, stored and shared. Meanwhile regulatory bodies are placing increasing importance on putting safeguards in place to protect the privacy of customers/users. Digital ID is one solution that would give consumers greater choice over how their personal data is stored and used, by allowing consumers to share only the data that is required or that they deem appropriate, while keeping the rest private. Organizations that are able to provide transparency and maintain strong security standards will ultimately be rewarded for following the regulations and elevating the user experience through increased customer loyalty and a competitive edge. Digital ID and the future The shift towards a digital economy has only accelerated because of COVID-19 and shows no signs of slowing down. At the same time COVID-19 has exacerbated security concerns over the current forms of identity. New forms of identification are needed to access the full benefits of digital-based commerce. Physical identities can no longer be the status quo, and secure digital-first solutions, underpinned by government and businesses, must be adopted to meet the changing needs of Canadians. In preparing for this future, Interac, alongside its subsidiary company 2Keys Corporation, are working with public and private sector stakeholders to bring digital ID solutions to market. They are being designed to address the increasing need for secure, convenient and privacy-enhancing identity verification by Canadians, while yielding a high degree of trust. NOVEMBER 2020

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Rising Above

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Insights from the GTACC’s Virtual Conference

BY SANGEETA BHATNAGAR

020 has posed daunting challenges to the contact centre industry stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, from huge call volumes from worried customers to having agents working from home (WFH) as both customers and agents and their loved ones fear contracting the virus. The Greater Toronto Area Contact Centre Association (GTACC) decided to tackle these issues, and safely, in our Virtual Conference on November 5, 2020. It was a day filled with leading edge tech providers, heartcentered leaders and inspirational keynotes with valuable nuggets of information to take away. Here are several highlights from a variety of speakers and sponsors. ❱ DMN.CA

Employee focus Although all the speakers were stellar, I was able to capture a few direct quotes from several of them. While top-tiered companies focused on the employee experience (EX) and voice of the employee (VoE), since COVID-19, there has been a greater emphasis on the physical and mental care of employees. Companies understand that their employees have more responsibilities on them with many WFH and helping their children who are schooling from home, along with many changes to their daily routines. One highly respected heartcentered leader is Heather Arthur, vice president, customer care, Rogers. She stated “through all of this, I think our success pattern was building the trust through

Heather Arthur, vice president, customer care, Rogers

Sharon Stines, assistant vice president, customer care, AIR MILES

consistent communication, we were honest [and] we were open. Our whole company was focused on taking action with two purposes in mind: keep employees safe and customers connected. Our whole company rallied around that mission.”

Sharon Stines, assistant vice president, customer care, AIR MILES, spoke about how, “more so today than ever before, schedule agility is a key requirement in associate [agent] engagement. WFH is the perfect environment for the implementation of NOVEMBER 2020

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microshifts [splitting standard i.e. eight hour shifts into two to three mini-shifts] as commuting is not required. It enables businesses to continue to meet targeted service levels, while creating flexibility and convenience for associates.”

employees will stay put because they do not care.”

Tony Porciello, director, retail operations/consumer care at Spin Master

Lisa Running, vice president, client services, CI Investments Inc.

Lisa Running, vice president, client services, CI Investments Inc. shared the importance of listening when you don’t see the team. “Listen, learn, build trust one person at a time”, said Lisa. And that when leading a team, you must “listen for the words that are not spoken for the well-being and mental health of your team.”

Tony Porciello, director, retail operations/consumer care at Spin Master, stated “the strongest creatures in the world are not the most aggressive, the strongest creatures are the ones that can adapt to change because they learn how to survive and how to move on with different scenarios. Adapting to people’s lifestyles is key and I think it will be like that for quite a long time moving forward.” Diversity and inclusion Part of the EX and overall mental health is connected to diversity and inclusion. As this important subject has been brought front and center in the workplace, we heard from highly respected industry leaders about it.

experiences from both sides.” Bradshaw went on to say that “we are doing lots of listening.”

Harriet Thornhill, vice president, RBC Contact Centre

Harriet Thornhill, vice president, RBC Contact Centre added that “diversity is a fact. We are all different, and that is a fact. The choice is inclusion. Everybody wants to feel included. Actions and behaviours of inclusivity are so important, giving individuals the opportunity to bring their full selves to whatever environment they are in.” The common theme with these highly respected operations leaders is to really LISTEN to your people. Contact centres and the future As we look at the role of contact centres and the future, Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and CEO, Uniphore stated “The success of contact centres in the future hinges on their ability to engage customers and quickly address their reasons for reaching out.

Mike Aoki, Reflective Keynotes

Mike Aoki, Reflective Keynotes, is a respected trainer, author and writer in the customer experience/ EX space. When speaking about WFH burnout, Mike asked: “Is your team ‘working from home’ or ‘living at work?’ Help them set proper boundaries between work and home life, even if both happen in their living rooms. Role model the right behaviours. You cannot tell them to have balance and then send them emails at midnight.” Mike went on to add that when companies do not listen to the VoE, “Your best employees — the ones who care about the company and want to make things better — will quit in frustration. Your worst NOVEMBER 2020

David Bradshaw, vice president, client care, ATB Financial

One direct quote I am borrowing is from David Bradshaw, vice president, client care, ATB Financial who stated that “Diversity is so important because of the richness of thought, richness in problem solving, so people think and look at the things through a different lens. Diversity adds richness to the workplace. The real work is actually listening, understanding people’s

the best conversational technology with the best service from people and automate it, great things happen. The year 2021 will be the year of conversational service automation.”

Robin Malhotra, director, Servion

Robin Malhotra, director, Servion, shared that “[The] customer experience is now the most essential differentiator in any business. It’s far more valuable than the quality of your product or service. Today consumers expectations are increasing drastically. Consumers don’t just want an excellent experience when they connect with the business over a call. “However, consumers need a consistent experience across all channels and platforms, from video to social media. It is imperative for organizations of all sizes to adapt and transform and explore new ways of engaging with consumers and provide [a] consistent customer experience across all channels of communications. This means businesses need to adopt new channels of communications, new technologies (e.g. omnichannel solutions, AI, bots, analytics) and transform business processes.” Technology is critical as we can use technology to create better employee and customer experiences. But in the end, it is the people that matter! SANGEETA BHATNAGAR is founder of the boutique

Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and CEO, Uniphore

“To do this, organizations will need to couple the latest AI [artificial intelligence], automation, natural language capabilities and machine learning technologies with well-trained and empathetic live agents to deliver transformational customer experiences. When you combine

human capital firm SB Global, which focuses on talent acquisition for top-tiered contact centre and CX professionals. With an emphasis on human behaviour, Sangeeta helps companies to attract, retain and develop top talent using behaviour models, strategies and emotional intelligence principles. Sangeeta is a best-selling author of the anthology Called to Action, as well as the chair of the Greater Toronto Area Contact Centre Association (GTACC). DMN.CA ❰

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How to Thrive in the Pandemic BY JEFF GALLINO

usinesses have experienced many disruptions over the last several months. But few departments have faced the challenges that the contact centre has endured as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Between a sudden shift to remote work, an influx of calls with urgent and sensitive requests, more vulnerable customers and workforces and a wider range of consumer concerns, it’s safe to say it’s been chaos. Regardless of whether the worst of the pandemic, and the resulting economic crisis is over or not, enough time has passed for contact centre and customer experience leaders to assess, learn and adapt to the new state of consumer behaviour. Righting the ship — and delivering an exceptional customer and contact centre agent experience across channels — requires us to listen to customers, analyze and respond to what’s happening in real-time: and act on the insights. Brands struggling CallMiner recently surveyed 2,000 consumers to assess how brands responded to the pandemic, the ongoing impact on customer preferences and behaviour and how organizations can deliver exceptional customer experience in the contact centre. And the results are not good. One alarming finding: only 16 percent of consumers said brands handled call volumes and service requests exceptionally well during the crisis. To illustrate, nearly 40 percent of respondents said 75 percent to 100 percent of their calls mentioned coronavirus. Yet 30 percent said agents were only “somewhat” able to answer their coronavirus❱ DMN.CA

related questions or concerns with accuracy and credibility. Why? Because few contact centres had time to prepare their agents for the influx of pandemicrelated questions, and even less could respond to what consumers needed in real-time. As examples, many hotel contact centres didn’t have answers yet on whether or not restrictions would be placed on travel. Also, most retail agents were still unaware how their brands were going to enforce sanitary procedures around their deliveries, and when (and if) they would reopen. The sudden shift to remote work has also caused challenges. 60 percent of consumers encountered issues with at-home agents, including delays to information, noise and disruptions, the inability to process certain requests and abrupt hang-ups or failed transfers. Human connection reigns Despite the rise in self-service channels and chatbots, the human connection has been preferred throughout the pandemic. 77 percent of consumers called customer support despite warnings of long wait times and encouragement from brands to use self-service channels. In fact, 63 percent of respondents preferred human customer support over automated and self-service channels (up 11 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels). Why? Because humans crave connection and empathy during times of need. One of the prime reasons for the increased desire for human connection is customer vulnerability. Consumers experience vulnerability in many ways: financially, health-related, in their relationships, at work and at home. Vulnerable populations need to be treated delicately, with

extra attention paid to their needs and concerns. These consumers are looking for personalization, flexibility and above all empathy to their situations. They don’t want to search for answers on a brand’s website. They want another human that will truly listen, care and help. In fact, of the customers that switched providers during the pandemic, nearly 45 percent said they would have stayed if brands delivered a better customer experience or connected with them on a human level. Leveraging insights The most successful, customer-led organizations monitor 100 percent of customer conversations to identify trends and common pain points, equip their agents with real-time insights and coaching and adjust their strategies based on the insights they extract. For example, after reviewing an influx of requests and calls driven by COVID-19, Gant Travel, which manages corporate travel for its customers, created an automated process for their customers to cancel trips. This saved travellers time and freed up agents to handle more complex issues. While other travel companies saw hold times of up to six hours, Gant identified the issues and acted to automate the cancellation function. The result: Gant kept its average hold times under six minutes for consumers with problems that required human attention. Leveraging insights to make quick decisions and change critical business processes like Gant did is crucial. The survey found two of the top three customer service qualities that consumers value during the pandemic are speed to resolution and the ability of agents to answer questions quickly. The third set of qualities consumers

value — empathy and flexibility — is also enhanced by insights. Implementing the right technology to guide your agents in real-time, especially during sensitive calls, helps them know when to show more empathy, when to personalize the conversation and how to resolve customer needs quickly and effectively. Naturally, this leads to higher customer satisfaction and a better employee experience. Building for 2021 and beyond Few brands were prepared for the virus-driven tornado that was 2020. But humans are innately resilient, and so are the businesses they run. While the research shows that brands struggled to deliver a great customer experience through COVID-19, there is plenty of time to adapt and improve as we go into 2021. There are three essential steps to take in order to be successful going forward. The first is a commitment to listening to customers to understand how behaviours, demands and preferences are changing. Next, deploy enabling technology that empowers your agents to resolve issues in realtime: with confidence, information and empathy. And finally, it comes down to business process improvement. The most mature, customer-led organizations operationalize the consumer insights they extract across the organization and act quickly to adjust processes, policies and strategies to improve the customer experience and business outcomes. JEFF GALLINO is founder and chief technical

officer of CallMiner. He oversees research, language development and future product direction. NOVEMBER 2020

Reinventing Outbound Dialing

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BY DANNY SINGER

very now and again a new idea comes along that changes the rules of the game. For contact centres using predictive dialers to make calls, such an idea is just about to explode onto the scene. It is called Live Person Detection (LPD) and it will reduce the cost of outbound campaigns by at least 30 percent, improve the results of each campaign and lift the morale and effectiveness of contact centre agents. How is this possible? Some ingenious lateral thinking has delivered a breakthrough that has finally provided a definitive solution to the age-old problem of accurate and safe answering machine detection (AMD). But one that has managed in one fell swoop to deliver a whole range of other solutions to what were previously considered to be intractable problems associated with outbound dialing. Any contact centre outsourcer that makes outbound calls cannot afford to ignore this development. Early adopters of this new technology will certainly be at a clear advantage in the very competitive market of outbound campaign management by being able to offer much better prices and quicker turnaround. This will allow them to profitably increase their market share, possibly at the expense of their less efficient competitors. The AMD problem Calls to answering machines – whether of the domestic, network or voicemail variety – form on NOVEMBER 2020

average well over 50 percent of all calls made daily by contact centres. During certain times of the day, this figure can go up to 70 percent or even 80 percent. Filtering out these calls so that they never bounce back to contact centre agents will therefore have a rather considerable impact on productivity when used in conjunction with efficient predictive dialers. The desire to eliminate most calls to answering devices is not new. Indeed, such technologies based on the now-discredited cadence method have been around for decades. The fact that these technologies have been persistently deployed by contact centres for such a long time, despite their ineffectiveness and propensity to generate silent calls, attests to the almost desperate pursuit of a solution to the problem of answering machine call pickup. As the cadence method of AMD has been shown to be unsafe, and annoying and creepy to customers all technologies based on it have effectively been outlawed by regulatory bodies around the world. But as until now no other method existed, most contact centres had to desist from attempting to filter out answering machines and suffer the negative effect that this had on staff productivity and morale. The Live Person Detection solution LPD is a British invention from Noetica, a London-based company that develops software products for the global contact centre

market, including Canada. To date, patents for LPD in an automated calling system have been granted in the U.S. (Patent no. US 10,277,740 B2), Europe (Patent no. 2802133) and in August 2020 it was granted a patent by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (Patent no. 2851004). LPD is not only safe but also, unlike the old methods, highly accurate and it does not upset customers and, by extension, lawmakers and regulators. In a way, like the mythical Philosopher’s Stone, LPD can turn base metal into gold by transforming a loss-making or break-even outbound account into a highly profitable one overnight. Unlike the Philosopher’s Stone (or indeed previous AMD methods), it actually works. Most importantly, it delivers considerable value straight to the bottom line. Additional value Apart from solving the thorny problem of AMD, LPD also delivers some other very tangible and profitable benefits. It eliminates the awkward initial pause at the start of dialer-generated calls i.e. the infamous dead air that used to make the recipients of such calls uneasy about staying on the line and cause them to often simply hang up. Because of the way LPD works, it eliminates all calls that would have otherwise been immediate abrupt rejections or agent abuse, removing a major cause of stress for outbound agents. It reduces call duration by limiting dead air but also by agents no longer needing to repeat their names and opening

statements hundreds of times each day: which removes further sources of their daily frustration. Put simply, when LPD is deployed and an outbound call is automatically dialed and connected, a pre-recorded introduction is played, using the voice of the agent the call will be routed to, should a live person be detected. This process is so quick and seamless that the call recipient is unaware of the transition between the robotic and the live agent. Proven success The work on this ground-breaking technology has taken several years with our patent proceedings, product development and testing, including beta testing by our clients, and refinement and validation, so it is only now that we are able to talk about it openly. The results where LPD has been used have been dramatic. Not only have the classic indicators of calls per hour and decision-maker contacts risen by a factor of over 30 percent but most importantly, conversion rates (i.e. sales) and collections have also shot up to a similar extent. No less important has been the agent feedback. A survey conducted after one of the latest implementations has revealed that agents’ effectiveness and job satisfaction have benefited from a dramatic boost. In fact, most agents reported that they would have found it hard to get back to their old way of working without the advantage of LPD. DANNY SINGER is founder and CEO of Noetica. DMN.CA ❰

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COURTESY LIFESIZE

Keeping Concerned Callers Off Hold BY ANDY BIRD

he contact centre has come back into the spotlight in a big way. Our newly remote world has complicated organizations’ abilities to connect with their consumers in-person, making contact centres and their agents indispensable. However, many contact centre teams are struggling to maintain a high level of productivity and customer service while working remotely. Like many knowledge workers, agents have had to adapt to a sudden environment change since March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. But unlike some other fields, contact centres and their staff are also grappling with a considerable uptick in work as customers seek information and help for financial services, to cancel travel and with unemployment benefits. And from the shift from in-person retail and restaurants to eCommerce and meal delivery. COVID-19 has also meant much higher use of videoconferencing, which has led to support calls from customers seeking to access or having difficulties using the applications. In these cases the customers are very often stressed from the issues they are calling about, their personal stresses and unfamiliarity with these means of obtaining products and services. Stresses that inevitably are heard and felt by the agents: who are often experiencing the same issues at home. Digital transformation desperately needed This spike in traffic has overloaded contact centres and left thousands of callers met by automated messages asking them to call back. When it strikes unemployed ❱ DMN.CA

workers, the stakes are incredibly high as they and their families’ survival are on the line. But similar scenarios are playing out for retailers, universities, financial institutions and other brands. Contact centre supervisors are scrambling to find solutions to bring down resolution times and meet their service level agreements. This imperative to adapt has been the main driver of the expedited contact centre digital transformation we’ve seen over the past few months, most notably through the integration of artificial intelligence (AI). 4 ways to implement AI AI represents part of the ticket to solve the excess in contact volume right now and it’s becoming a vital component of contact centre efficiency. Here are four ways you can incorporate AI into your contact centre processes and customer experience (CX): 1. Front-end call support. AI bots can resolve many customer requests and problems upfront in the calls. It’s not always necessary for customers to speak to live agents to receive service, meaning agents can reserve their time and skills for more strategic customer tasks that require intuitive, human reasoning that AI can’t replicate. For example, a customer might call a retailer’s customer service number to check the status of their order. The AI bot can validate the customer’s identity and order number, ask what they need help with, identify the corresponding solution keywords, ask follow-up questions and fully resolve the issue. 2. Call transcription. During calls, contact centres can lean on AI to more accurately transcribe

conversations in real-time, just like closed captioning. However, while speech recognition technology processes the conversations it also looks for key phrases, such as “I am very upset.” AI can then coach the agents mid-call with suggestions for words, phrases, data or actions to use as a next step, like offering the unhappy customer a 20 percent discount on their next purchase or free return shipping. 3. Performance evaluation and future planning. Supervisors can use AI-powered tech as observation and optimization tools to gather insights from each call. Supervisors can sort through this information and the AI’s suggestions to flag learnings, feed into performance reviews, make adjustments and plan for future training. This is an especially important capability for a distributed, remote workforce where it’s not so easy to evaluate agent performance on a one-to-one basis. 4. Effective routing. Finally, contact centres can leverage AI to engage the right agent(s) to handle specific calls or customer issues. For example, if the contact centre is receiving a high number of calls about a certain product, AI can detect as much and reroute calls to specific individuals who are skilled and specialized in that product area and able to provide a higher level of service to those customers. With today’s burgeoning selection of AI solutions, organizations have the power to choose the complexity and extent to which they implement AI into their contact centre experience.

There are fully customized solutions tailored to the unique needs of your organization, as well as solutions that are prebuilt to offer a simpler level of customization. Most solutions are also agnostic, meaning it doesn’t matter if your contact centre platform and database operate on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), another cloud or a mainframe: they’ll still be able to ingest and learn from your data. What’s more, AI technology doesn’t require months of lead time before it’s fully operational. In fact, some solutions can be deployed in less than a week. But remember there is no blanket AI solution. So before diving into AI, consider the full scope of solutions available and how those solutions could meet your organization’s unique needs. What are you trying to achieve with AI for your contact centre? Why do you think you need AI? What are your costs per transaction/per minute? Narrowing down exactly where and how the technology will elevate CX is the first step. The need to support both customers and agents remotely is only increasing, whether it’s in a fully remote, distributed organization or a hybrid model. AI is one of the most impactful, utilitarian digital transformation tools available for contact centres. With the power to influence how contact centre decisions are made, where callers are routed and how the business can optimize and improve productivity as well as the overall CX, AI solutions are an invaluable potential addition to contact centre leaders’ toolkits. ANDY BIRD is director of product management for CCaaS at Lifesize. NOVEMBER 2020

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Taking Contact Centres to the Edge

hen we turned the corner on a new decade, nobody imagined that an international pandemic would change the direction of the global economy, but that’s precisely what COVID-19 has done. Over the course of a short year we’ve seen remote work go mainstream in a big way, forever changing the way businesses develop, produce and deliver their products and services across the enterprise. Contact centres are no different. Since the onset of the pandemic, many have switched to a remote work model, with contact centre agents addressing customer concerns from home. This increase in remote work is also driving up demand for the type of network bandwidth needed to support the volume of voice and video traffic now travelling across the internet. For example, the latest Global Interconnection Index (GXI), an annual market study published by Equinix, shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has already had a dramatic effect on how businesses are planning their digital infrastructure initiatives over the next three years. In particular, telecommunications, cloud and IT services, content and digital media and technology providers, are forecast to increase private connectivity bandwidth 5x by 2023. To ensure contact centres thrive in this new digital-first environment, there are a few things they need to focus on: ❯❯ Infrastructure; ❯❯ Interconnection; and ❯❯ Having the right infrastructure partner. Powering the next decade of work One challenge all digital businesses face is connectivity. Inadequate connectivity makes NOVEMBER 2020

it difficult for multiple components to quickly transfer data in a costeffective manner: an essential feature for contact centres. And in a global ecosystem that runs on multiple cloud platforms and data centres, even milliseconds matter. Fortunately, two closely related trends are coming together to solve this challenge. These are edge computing and distributed cloud. Edge computing places content collection, information processing and solution delivery close to its source of information — i.e. users — thereby reducing latency. For contact centres, this translates into shorter response times regardless of where the users (customers) are calling from or where the agents are located, traffic remains local. To have its greatest impact, however, edge computing requires distributed cloud support across multiple touchpoints: i.e. different parts of the country. Distributed cloud essentially applies the idea of edge computing to public cloud infrastructure, with cloud service providers (CSPs) offering their services from locations which are outside the CSPs’ physical data centres but remain under their control. As the amount of data generated by interactions between users and agents soars, locating computing and storage at the edge is essential for contact centres to retain high performance and low latency. The new digital infrastructure Businesses often want to rely on multiple clouds to power new innovation, avoid being locked in with a single vendor and ensure their clouds remain as efficient as possible. However, creating such a

IBX Data Center Interior.

multicloud environment requires businesses to deploy virtual infrastructure in each cloud, and each infrastructure needs to be managed separately. The way today’s public clouds are designed, applications deployed in multiple distributed cloud infrastructures cannot be easily connected. This challenge has led many senior IT decision-makers to feel that as their companies become more digital, the infrastructure powering them is becoming more complex, not simpler. According to recent research by the Enterprise Strategy Group, digitally mature organizations are three times more likely than those with no digital transformation initiatives to say IT is significantly more complex today. The answer lies in providing a hybrid multicloud environment. It allows businesses to extend their on-premises infrastructure into the cloud, move data from one cloud to another, and even run applications across different cloud servers. According to Equinix’s 2019-20 Global Tech Trends Survey, 51 percent of companies are deploying hybrid multicloud models to ensure peak performance and data security. Distributed cloud at the edge is helping pave the way for greater

COURTESY EQUINIX CANADA

BY ANDREW EPPICH

multicloud adoption in the future by helping enterprises seamlessly manage their on-premises services and services spread across different clouds as one logical cloud with minimal infrastructure duplication: a boon for contact centre services. A matter of interconnection Leading enterprises are significantly focused on digital transformation projects, which have become more acute and amplified as these organizations optimize their employees’ experience working during the COVID-19 global pandemic, often from locations that were not originally planned for. While the pandemic has undeniably sped up the worldwide adoption of digital solutions, it accelerated a movement which had been gathering steam for the past decade. Today’s digital leaders, whether it’s in collaboration or customer service, had the foresight to strategically distribute their IT infrastructure close to users and are now benefiting from a more agile digital foundation that is better equipped to meet today’s challenges than their localized competitors. ANDREW EPPICH is managing director, Equinix Canada. DMN.CA ❰

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CASE STUDY

Pioneer Brand Helps Canadian Farmers “Bust Through” with Spirited New Campaign BY LORALEE ORR

ioneer brand helps Canadian farmers “Bust Through” with spirited new campaign Canadian farmers have relied on Pioneer brand products for more than 70 years, but like any historic brand with a long legacy in the market, there’s always a risk of becoming stale. When Corteva Agriscience, Canada’s leading pure-play agriculture company, tasked FleishmanHillard HighRoad (FHR) with developing a new marketing campaign for its premier seed brand, we knew we had to create something that would not only capture the essence of Pioneer, but show Canadian growers that we’re still capable of surprising them. We wanted to prove once again that Pioneer is not the brand to ever sit still or back down from a challenge, much like the farmers themselves.

that has always placed a strong emphasis on innovation and breaking through to new frontiers. We also aimed to celebrate the modern Canadian farmer who never backs down from a challenge. Today’s growers are faced with a myriad of obstacles that would make the average person’s head spin. These include ongoing geopolitical tensions restricting access to important global markets, crops increasingly under attack from shifting weather, drought, floods, diseases and pests, changing dietary needs, misconceptions about their trade, and more. Our campaign would showcase the strength and resiliency of farmers as they continually overcome whatever’s thrown in their way, staying focused on the future of their farms and always striving for excellence.

Developing the new campaign The first step was putting ourselves into the shoes of the modern Canadian farmer. Running a farm these days is much different from what’s perceived: there is a lot of innovation and technology involved, and it requires an incredible amount of energy and focus, not to mention risk. While never given credit for it, today’s farmers really are trailblazers. And any innovator in any line of business is going to encounter their fair share of doubters, especially in agriculture, a profession as old as time. Therefore, our goal was to highlight all the farmers who blaze their own path forward, silencing the doubters along the way. This campaign theme was especially synergistic with a Pioneer brand

Helping farmers “Bust Through” When you boil it down, the “Bust Through” campaign is about putting doubters in their place. In farming as in life, there’s no shortage of people ready to tell you “that won’t work” and “you can’t do it that way” because that’s not the way it has always been done. But the Pioneer brand and the growers that rely on their products and services are not about settling. They’re about striving for the impossible and taking on challenges to grow further than ever before. To communicate this maverick spirit, our print and digital ads used black and white photography to amp up the intensity of the campaign and help the brand stand out against the competition. In the ads, the wry smiles on the face of our heroes speak volumes. It’s

❱ DMN.CA

a face that tells the doubters that we know something they don’t. With their heads cocked to the side and glancing over the shoulder, the farmers are looking back at the doubters as they leave them in their dust. As you can see, the headlines and the copy in the ads convey this same attitude: Never one to back down from a challenge. You’ll face doubters along the path you’re blazing, but with Pioneer there is no doubt. Your Pioneer Rep is here to back you up with local agronomic support and the best genetics from our world-leading innovation program to help you grow further than ever before. Let’s bust through. Launching “Bust Through” We launched the “Bust Through” campaign across Canada at the onset of the 2020 fall harvest, just before seed purchasing season in September, to help encourage and excite all the Pioneer reps who are selling seed this fall and winter, as well as growers who are planning for 2021. Pioneer had done emotional creative before, particularly in Eastern Canada where the

brand’s roots run very deep, but past campaigns always served more as an ode to the farmer from the brand. In comparison, “Bust Through” really captures a shared emotion between the farmer AND Pioneer: the desire to overcome challenges and continuously put the doubters in their place. This campaign also united the Eastern and Western Canadian markets with a single, bold new message as opposed to previous campaigns that were divided regionally. While the ads have only been in market for a little over a month, early yields look promising with both farmers and Pioneer reps reacting positively to the fresh new approach. In an industry known for its tradition, the campaign is busting through a sea of sameness and resonating with today’s growers, helping invigorate the trusted, historic Pioneer brand. LORALEE ORR'S life and passion have always

been agriculture. Growing up on her family farm and her love of people inspired her to pursue a career in the industry. As a member of the Canadian leadership team and commercial leadership team, Loralee is responsible for overseeing all marketing communications for the organization and championing the marketing communications department. NOVEMBER 2020

// 13

FEATURE

The Future of Marketing Interview with Mathew Sweezey, director of market strategy at Salesforce.com

Mathew Sweezey

BY STEPHEN SHAW

STEPHEN SHAW is the chief strategy officer of Kenna, a marketing solutions provider specializing in delivering more unified customer experiences. Stephen can be reached via e-mail at sshaw@kenna.

NOVEMBER 2020

arketers have always been on the front lines of change. Each technological leap forward, each cultural inflection point and each seismic shift in the market has brought a new set of existential challenges. Embattled marketers have always figured out a way to stay relevant — whether it was the changeover from analog to digital in the early web era or the rise of the omnichannel consumer over the past decade — or more recently, the rapid ascent of mobile commerce and streaming video. But now, in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic, marketers face their greatest challenge ever. Now they truly have to think differently. Otherwise they’ll be of little use to businesses digging out from under the rubble. The answer to every market opportunity can no longer be an ad. The brand experience can no longer be thought of separately from the customer experience. They are one and the same. Today experiences trump messaging. Which means marketing must operate with a new mandate, which is to lead innovation in the interest of creating value for customers. In his new book, The Context Marketing Revolution, Mathew Sweezey says that we’ve entered a new era of “infinite media”: one which marketers have no chance of harnessing. The only way for marketers to break through the suffocating volume of media noise is to

stop thinking they can. Marketing has to pivot from its constant obsession with brand communications to creating experiences for customers that help them in the context of the moment. As head of marketing strategy at Salesforce.com, Mathew is in a unique position to ponder the future of marketing. He oversees the always much-anticipated and oft-quoted Salesforce State of Marketing study. Plus his work allows him to explore the frontier of marketing, learning from top performing organizations. He channels that learning into the talks he gives around the world.

Shaw:

Your first book, Marketing Automation for Dummies, is still a top seller seven years after it was published. How do you explain its continued success? One of the reasons the book remains relevant is because I didn’t write it about technology. I wrote about what the technology allows marketers to do. Otherwise it would have been irrelevant in six months. So, I focused more on how the technology changes the role of marketing. That’s why my message still resonates all these years later.

Sweezey:

DMN.CA ❰

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FEATURE

We need to think about how we grow our businesses with our marketplace, not how we force our messages and our products.

A lot has happened since you wrote that book. Is there a need for an updated edition? You do hit on a very good point. Since 2011 there are now 50 times more marketing technologies available. It’s just a radical, massive change. And it’s become a complicated landscape to navigate. But I don’t know that it needs another book. [Instead] I would like to see the vendors being more helpful. Their approach today is, “Here’s why you need to buy my product. If you don't buy my product now my sales rep will call you five times and send you six emails”. So it’s a very difficult process for marketing people to buy technology.

What’s your perspective on the state of martech today? Are we in a technology bubble? Scott Galloway [who teaches brand strategy and digital marketing at New York University and hosts two popular podcasts, The Prof G Show and Pivot] says it feels a lot like 1999. Yeah, I definitely agree with Scott and I’ve been saying the exact same thing. We’ve got a massive technology glut right now. Marketers are probably going to have to drop tools or ask for more budget. And it’s going to be easier to drop tools that really aren’t providing much value. So, yes, I agree with Scott.

Infinite media

Let’s move on to your current book, The Context Marketing Revolution. What’s behind your core idea of “infinite media”? A massive amount of research as well as 11,000

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interviews over four years finding out what high performing marketing organizations are doing differently. What I was able to prove through this research is that we have actually entered a new media era, one I call “infinite media”. It’s not just TV shows and Twitter: it’s all forms of media. What that means, simply, is that our old idea of marketing, based on stealing somebody’s attention to get them to do what we want them to do, was a game we could only play in a more limited media environment. So, all those old ideas — such as “sex sells,” “right message, right person, right time,” “no such thing as bad press,” all those truisms — they’re no longer true. We have to give up those old ideas and do a reset. The question then becomes how? And I say it’s very simple. It’s this idea of context. We need to think about how we grow our businesses with our marketplace, not how we force our messages and our products into the marketplace. And that’s exactly what the high performers are doing. This entails a new business model, a new definition of marketing, new executive leadership, new tools and technologies, new ways of thinking and new tactics. It’s an entire reworking of this word we call marketing.

By context, do you mean providing customers with the assistance they need at a moment in time? Yeah, totally. It’s helping somebody. The old idea was that a brand can push out a creative message and get a person to think or do something. But today the only way you can get anything in front of somebody is through a contextual feed. If you look at any newsfeed or any social media feed, check the timestamps.

These are not chronological feeds. These are contextual feeds. A Google search result page is a contextual feed. It’s using all of your personal data, plus what other people have found interesting and important. That’s what makes the contextual result page so powerful. That’s why we choose to engage. So, it’s this idea of helping somebody achieve their goal in any given moment.

But how do publishers avoid the clickbait trap? Only producing content that is popular or sharable? The Washington Post did some research showing we like to share content that validates our self-image. In fact, 60 percent of the time articles are shared without ever being read. And they’re shared because the headline suggests something about the individual that they want other people to associate with them. That’s how fake news spreads so quickly. It’s enough that the headline validates their point of view. But will clickbait take over if we just leave it to the algorithms? I honestly can’t answer that. We’re still in a very nascent stage of social media. We’re still trying to figure these things out. The challenge we have is that the major platforms make their money based on keeping people engaged. Their business models are still based on ad buying. And as long as people are staying engaged longer, they don’t care what people share. They just want to sell more ads.

Q: A:

Does marketing need to do a better job of defining the content experience? When marketers think, “I must make content, I must distribute content,” that’s just saying, “let’s do what we know

worked in the past”. And in the past that consisted of magazines, TV and branded promotion. It was all about centralized content creation and distribution. With social media, the real value for marketers is not in free distribution. It’s in personal engagement. Consider this: because of this ability to share content, a person with a social network of 135 people has exactly the same influence as a brand with a million followers. Marketers need to ask themselves “How do I engage my audience by fulfilling their goals?” Only by thinking that way can marketers create better content. The function of marketing

Let’s talk then, more broadly, about the marketing function itself. Marketing still answers to a corporate imperative to drive growth and sales, not to make customers the happiest people on earth. Is what you’re describing an impossible leap without first figuring out a new corporate purpose and organizational model? You’re correct in that, but that’s not the first step. When we look at the data the number one difference between a high performing marketing organization — which is only 16 percent of all organizations globally — and everyone else, is executive buy-in to a new idea of marketing. In those organizations the new mandate of marketing is to be the owner of all experiences.

Getting that top-down blessing is the challenge, isn’t it? Because the markets reward growth, not virtue. Your boss, Marc Benioff, recently wrote in The New York Times that NOVEMBER 2020

// 15

FEATURE

The platforms are going to have to ask themselves, “How do we create better communities? How do we monetize those communities?” businesses have to value purpose as much as profit. He goes so far as to say that capitalism as we know it is dead. What did he mean by that? The simple answer is that brands must have a goal other than a strict financial one. And that’s not a new concept: E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful is probably the seminal book on economics that proves this theory out. Then you have The Experience Economy, which came out in 1999, by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, which talks about experiences being the highest form of economic value a firm can create. It’s about creating a better society and a better world. Those brands with a purpose beyond profits are able to think about things differently. They’re more sustainable, they have greater retention of employees: I mean, there are just so many positive outcomes. When I did some research with the Economist Group, we found that purposedriven brands are two-and-a-half times more profitable than those that are not.

Post-ad future?

Q: A:

You’ve talked about a “post-ad world”. What does that look like? Ads are not a bad thing in themselves. They’re bad when they’re used the wrong way. An ad is simply a way to make an impression on people at a moment in time. How that moment is used determines if it’s a positive or negative experience. Traditionally, how we utilize ads is interruptive. But in future we could use ads in a very different way [i.e. contextually].

NOVEMBER 2020

Benioff also said that Facebook is the new cigarettes. We just talked about social media helping to shape the conversation. How do you see this tension playing out over the next few years, between what Facebook represents today, which is an ad-supported engagement platform, versus what you think it should be? I’ve always said that social media is the modern-day smoke break. It’s simply a way to take a break from the rest of your day. How do I see things moving forward? The platforms are going to have to ask themselves, “How do we create better communities? How do we monetize those communities?”, rather than just be a newsfeed selling ads. Look at China and how WeChat functions. It is an entire ecosystem inside of a social application where all goods and services are able to be bought and sold. It’s not just an ad-serving platform.

Exchanging privacy for value

If you look at the big players now, Apple, Google, obviously Amazon, Facebook, which ones do you see being closest to offering that kind of fully integrated ecosystem? None of those are close to it. For example, Google is mostly a search engine. But it doesn’t really have a social network. They tried one, Google+, that failed. Facebook is a social network, but it doesn’t necessarily have a search engine like Google. It’s all over the place. A lot of the bigger questions will probably be answered through regulation. I fully believe we are one more Facebook debacle away from massive federal privacy

regulations. Does the consumer own the data? Do they know what data on them even exists? Can they port it from one place to another? All of these platforms we’ve talked about are walled gardens. So that’s another question: in the future will they remain walled gardens and will that be regulated?

80 percent of businesses actually believe they create a great experience for their customers. But when you actually ask those customers, just 8 percent agree. And to your point, consumers are very happy to give up their data as long as they receive something of value in exchange. And that value is not monetary. To help them, in some way, shape or form, you have to give them a better experience.

Presumably there’s a trade-off between what people are prepared to give up in terms of privacy, and the value they get back from their experience.

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// 16

EXCELLENT EXECUTION

Bend Beauty’s narrative shift during the COVID-19 pandemic

Emily MacCulloch and Ingrie Williams BY BROOKE STEPHEN

BROOKE STEPHEN is marketing manager,

Bend Beauty.

❱ DMN.CA

n a year that has demanded more honesty and transparency from the businesses we choose to support, consumers want more information about the ethos behind brands. Communicating your brand purpose has therefore become more important than ever before. Creating affinity for your brand goes beyond the products you sell. It’s about why you do what you do and the feeling you inspire in the communities you are part of. Bend Beauty creates premium skin health supplements that are designed to unlock your skin’s potential. The company was started in 2015, when our founder and CEO predicted we would see a future rooted in the convergence of wellness and beauty. The skin is our largest organ, and based on its physiology, it’s clear that treating it topically isn’t the opportune way to care for your skin. This is what sets Bend Beauty apart from other beauty brands. We use research and innovation to

deliver highly effective skincare treatments from the inside out. At Bend Beauty, our brand purpose is about “creating a beautiful life”. This powerful purpose statement means something different to everyone who considers it. At a core level, we believe our purpose is to nourish all the connections in and around us. Our brand conversations In this year of the “great pause”, our team realized our purpose statement was more important than ever before. We began to have more conversations around what creating a beautiful life meant to each of us and recognized the positive and hopeful feelings these conversations evoked. In May 2020 we engaged the help of Proof Strategies, an integrated marketing communications agency, to help us raise brand awareness of Bend Beauty across Canada and into the U.S. There were several exciting NOVEMBER 2020

COURTESY JUSTIN WU

Flipping the Brand Script

// 17

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COURTESY BEND BEAUTY

EXCELLENT EXECUTION

Bend Beauty creates premium skin health supplements that are designed to unlock your skin’s potential. The company was started in 2015, when our founder and CEO predicted we’d see a future rooted in the convergence of wellness and beauty. The skin is our largest organ, and based on its physiology, it’s clear that treating it topically isn’t the opportune way to care for your skin. This is what sets Bend Beauty apart from other beauty brands. We have a different approach: one where we use research and innovation to deliver highly effective skincare treatments from the inside out.

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COURTESY JUSTIN WU

At Bend Beauty, our brand purpose is about “creating a beautiful life”. This powerful purpose statement means something different to everyone who considers it. At a core level, we believe our purpose is to nourish all the connections in and around us.

Tara Salloum ❱ DMN.CA

COURTESY JUSTIN WU

Bend Beauty Virtual Photoshoot Participants: Emily MacCulloch @emilymacculloch Ingrie Williams @ingriewilliams T-Zone Beauty (run by Emily MacCulloch and Ingrie Williams) @t.zonebeauty Narley Karikari @narleyk Geri Jeune @mllegeri Tara Salloum @taraleighrose

developments happening that we wanted to share, including the rebranding of our foundational product, Anti-Aging Formula. Anti-Aging Formula is one of the first products of its kind that has been authorized by Health Canada to make the impressive label claims of improved skin hydration, elasticity and firmness, roughness and redness (from skin inflammation), while providing a dose of antioxidants for skin health. Perhaps most impressively, this product has been clinically proven to help in reducing skin sensitivity to UV (ultraviolet)-induced sunburn. In a clinical trial, after eight weeks of taking Anti-Aging Formula, participants were able to stay out in the sun 84 percent longer before burning. This is not your average skincare product. But the name Anti-Aging Formula has not felt right for our brand for some time. It also alienated a segment of our audience who didn’t feel they needed “anti-aging” products, but who we knew would really enjoy the product’s benefits (it is approved for ages 19-plus). The beauty industry had been moving away from the term “anti-aging” for awhile. And we felt it was the perfect time to make the change and connect our foundational product to our brand purpose. First, we landed on a new name, Renew + Protect. This name more accurately reflects what the product does for your skin and makes it a more appealing proposition to people looking to optimize their skin health. Rather than focusing on “anti-aging”, we decided to shift the conversation towards “skin health and longevity”. Namely “what if we all changed the way we talk about ‘anti-aging’ and focused more on the concept of skin health instead?” and “how does that shift the way you think about your appearance, and what you want out of your skincare routine?” As to longevity we wanted to tie Bend Beauty to the concept of living a long and beautiful life, which includes the pursuit of a strong and healthy body, soul and mind.

A new kind of campaign Second, with the help of Proof, we embarked on a campaign to highlight our brand purpose and celebrate our recent re-brand. However, there was one key challenge: COVID-19. We couldn’t host an engaging kick-off event for beauty influencers and editors, and the whole Zoom cocktail hour thing was feeling pretty tired. With collaboration between our marketing team and Proof Strategies, we undertook a different kind of campaign to showcase and celebrate beauty from within, in collaboration with world-renowned photographer Justin Wu. The result? A first of its kind Canadian virtual photo shoot, shot safely from the comfort of participants’ homes, directed virtually by Justin. We carefully selected our photoshoot partners to include a group of compelling nano- and micro-influencers, who we knew could drive target consumer behaviour. More importantly, each participant embraced their outward natural beauty with a confidence that can only come from feeling good in the skin you’re in. Our campaign purpose, to promote natural beauty from within, was rooted in a singular question that we posed to participants: “What does living a beautiful life mean to you?” The results (and photos) were magical. How each participant described their version of a beautiful life is exactly the shift in narrative Bend Beauty hopes to see in the world, and more specifically, in the beauty industry. Take this example from Narley Karikari, a model and mindset coach. “To me, a beautiful life begins with creating a beautiful mind. When you agree to be happy moment to moment, rather than milestone to milestone, then you’re on your way to true beauty… beauty is more than skin deep. A beautiful life is a way of thinking.” We are proud to share the results of the #BendBeautyFromWithin campaign with our community online, and to continue to flip the script that typically surrounds discussions of beauty and skin health. NOVEMBER 2020