Unlock the secrets of sales enablement for banks & credit unions as Kerry Ryan from Seismic joins the podcast for an enlightening conversation that promises to transform your client engagement strategies. Discover how the seamless marriage of marketing and sales, empowered by Seismic's innovative technology, equips bankers with the tools needed for dynamic, personalized interactions. Kerry, with her profound experience at Salesforce and within the Financial Services industry, imparts her wisdom on how sales enablement is integral to adapting to changing client expectations and the strategic landscape of financial services.

Afterwards, in our Quick Takes segment join Eric, Josh, & I as we dissect the role of AI in revolutionizing the banking industry. Delve into the nuances of leveraging AI responsibly amidst the challenges of personal data protection and inherent biases, while also celebrating its potential to enhance the synergy between technological precision and human expertise. We tackle the implications of AI's data consumption and learning limitations, offering a thought-provoking perspective on how this technology impacts everything from marketing strategies to historical preservation.

00:03 - Kerry (Guest)

When you think about preparing like I'll just use client meetings because that's something that our customers across financial services are coming to us all the time. Like we know, client meetings are important. We know that they're taking new forms because of more use of, you know, teams or Zoom or WebEx, whatever your technology of choice is is that it's becoming like a really you know, a lot of pressure for a banker right Saying, okay, I need to do more meetings, I need to do them in different formats. I'm doing a mix of virtual and in-person and my clients expect, like, a high degree of service right and high degree of customization and personalization. How do I effectively do that? How do I effectively prepare for that meeting and deliver that personalized, meaningful experience that my clients come to expect?

01:04 - Fred (Host)

Hello listeners and welcome to Banking on Disruption. I'm Fred Cadena. This week, I'm stoked to be joined by my friend, kerry Ryan, who's the head of financial services industry strategy and marketing. At Seismic, we discuss the latest trends in sales enablement and how banks are using sales enablement technology to enable bankers to more effectively close deals. After the interview, we have a fantastic Quick Takes roundtable for you. It's an all AI Quick Takes.

01:32

This week, we discuss where all the new training data for the next generation of LLMs might come from, the use of AI to help today's generation connect with the veterans from the greatest generation, and a new AI chatbot that brings user sentiment into the mix. While you're listening to this podcast, why not take a moment to follow us on LinkedIn at the Banking on Disruption podcast, and on Instagram at at Banking on Disruption? Now sit back and strap in, because our show is coming to you right now. Now sit back and strap in, because our show is coming to you right now and we're back. I am super excited this week to welcome my friend, keri Ryan. Keri is currently the Senior Director of Financial Services Industry Strategy and Product Marketing at Seismic, or Seismic. We learned that during the interview.

02:22 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, Seismic.

02:22 - Fred (Host)

Seismic. Thank you, keri. At Seismic, in her role she's responsible for the go-to-market strategy for the financial services business. I first got to know her in her previous role when she was on the financial services industry team at Salesforce and then, prior to Salesforce, she had a number of leadership roles at Forrester's Financial, legg Mason and Citigroup Asset Management. Really excited for the conversation. I know she's going to bring a ton of insights to the table. Carrie, welcome to the podcast.

02:49 - Kerry (Guest)

Well, Fred, thank you so much. Thrilled to be here with you.

02:53 - Fred (Host)

Fantastic, so why don't we kick it off? I know a lot about you, but our audience doesn't Tell us a little bit about you and your role at Seismic.

03:00 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, so I mean, you start, I'm you get that right by the end.

03:02

Yes, yeah, no, you definitely. Thanks so much for the nice introduction. Yeah, so really excited about the role I have here at Seismic, which is the number one enablement technology firm globally technology and really what I see is this really exciting category of enablement, which is really all technology specifically designed to really help support anyone in a client-facing role a banker, an insurance agent, a wholesaler, a relationship manager and I think that's for me a passion point for me. I've spent my whole career in marketing but in roles that were very much linked to the success of my sales counterparts. I spent a lot of time on that core product marketing. But I also did a lot in the practice management space, which is really all around coaching and developing program and curriculum to help salespeople be successful salespeople.

04:01

So really fortunate that I'm in this place where I can really bring together things that I really love and that I'm passionate about that I really think also deliver a lot of value to our customers. So you know I do wear a number of hats. Obviously, I am in our product marketing organization, so do a lot of things that you would expect in that role a lot of customer research, a lot of customer analysis and just in terms of where we are performing well, where we need to be investing from a product and partnership perspective, obviously spending a lot of time thinking about our content and our messaging and what we need to deliver to really support our customers. They want to hear more from this category of enablement and how do they be successful. So really bringing that to the fold, as well as supporting my own sales colleagues in terms of what they need to do to really tell the story of enablement in financial services.

04:58 - Fred (Host)

No, I love that, it's fantastic. I want to dig in a little bit more on enablement, because I would say, you know kind of two things. That applies to, you know, technology projects as much as it applies to any kind of, you know, business management and even product management. There's there's, you know, everybody thinks about the technical aspects, the getting things done, but there's two critical things people don't think about. One is the are we building the right thing? Are we embarking on a journey that we like we're going to be at the end? And then there's the how do we bring everybody along with us? Right? There's the change management, and part of that is obviously enablement. But I think frequently in financial services and other places, right, enablement is kind of an afterthought. It's a little kind of newer category to be at the forefront. So tell me a little bit more about enablement and specifically how you see that as valuable in financial services companies.

05:51 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah.

05:51

So, fred, just in response there, you know, as we see, enablement it's really a function that strategically equips sellers with the right content, training, coaching processes and tools needed to successfully engage with prospects and buyers or their clients, throughout, you know, a sales cycle, and you know, when I think about it in its best form, really thinking about this category of gardeners really out there saying like, don't call it enablement, call it revenue and enablement, and I think that's an interesting concept as well, right, and thinking about what happens, what needs to happen, end to end, to provide that.

06:25

And we're on the front lines the bankers and this, you know, as we're talking about banking as well as everyone who's supporting them with the resources, information, tech and support they need to really, you know, help drive the, help drive the top line growth right, and how to do it effectively and efficiently. So a lot of these functions are not new in financial services, but what we're seeing is that oftentimes they're being completed by different teams. Right, you might have marketing organizations that are playing a central role on training bankers on new products, new services. They're walking them through the new marketing campaigns that are out there designed to drive more leads to support them. You've got that happening.

07:06

You may have a learning department that's focused on how do we make our bankers more successful in what they're doing, how can they be better equipped to help support the cross-sell initiatives, as an example, that the firm is laying out. Then you may also have a team that's focused on what's the technology stack for a banker? What does that look like? How do we optimize it as part of kind of the bigger structure of our technology footprint? Right, and what we've seen there is that these are three really important areas in terms of supporting a banker, as an example, right. Oftentimes they're not like coming together, they're working on different silos. So that's why we think this category of not only enablement technology but thinking about the role of enablement and thinking about as a part of the organization, I think is really something that I talk to a lot of our customers about. There's some financial services firms that actually have delved in and are starting to build out what I'd see as a modern enablement organization where it's including components of all those three areas that I talked about previously, right, and layered on with the partnerships that they may have to support some of their coaching and learning initiatives, right. So I do think you know it's kind of the time has come, because I also would say, you know, within marketing, you have a lot of marketers that I would say are acting in some degree as enablement professionals, and actually some really good ones, right, I've gotten to know the enablement profession and they started their careers out as marketers, right.

08:39

But I think enablement is really becoming a destination and a critical part of the organizational structure that I think you know, I've seen it, you know, in technology companies and I've seen some other professional services organizations outside of financial services, and I just see the power of these teams coming together and unifying all this together under a single umbrella and single organization and having people who kind of just think breathe around like, how can we make our frontline most successful, right, and what data do we need to make sure that we're supporting them through that journey and getting those good insights? Because, you know, certainly, as a marketer, having good marketing data is great, but I also want to have it augmented with data on, like, how is my sales team? Are they engaging with the content that my team's producing? Are they engaging with the content, the campaigns that we're putting out there? Right? Because you know, especially in financial services, like a banker is going to be that last mile right. They're going to be that person who's going to like actually close like a transaction. So knowing that banker and what they're engaging with, content wise, is just as really, frankly, it's just as important as knowing, like, how your marketing campaign is doing on social, on your advertising, on the interactions that are happening to your website or your apps or anything else that you're bringing into the mix.

10:02 - Fred (Host)

Yeah, no, I love that and I especially love the parallel you drew between marketing and enablement. And I'll say I've never officially worn a CMO hat or officially sat in marketing. I've led go-to-market, as you have, and I've definitely been a revenue leader, sales leader. But I always have thought of enablement as a bit of internal sales and marketing. Right, you've got to sell the vision internally to your sellers that are out in the market and then you have to sell them on, acting in the way that you're speaking, like delivering on your brand promise or delivering on the content that we know it's going to take to be successful, to get deals over the line. So it really sounds like you know you're viewing enablement, you know, as sitting at the intersect between sales and marketing. I'd love to know you know what is your perspective on how that partnership is evolving between sales and marketing and the role that enablement is playing with that?

11:02 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, I mean, I think in recent years, you know, the partnership between sales and marketing has just gone in a really interesting direction, right, like the pandemic just unleashed, like we all knew digital was there, we all knew it needed to be unlocked and unleashed in broader, deeper ways, right, but maybe there wasn't just that need to adopt in the way that. I think on the marketing side, we wanted the whole industry to think about and I think the pandemic just ushered that all in and said, yeah, it actually here's the moment where digital is much more needed. So I think, as a virtue of that is that sales and marketing have shifted their relationship too, because marketing is much more empowered too, right, they're driving campaigns, they're getting intelligence, they're really playing a role too to really help really bring in business to the organization. So they have, you know, kind of a greater set of responsibility to any bank in terms of achieving their revenue targets, right, and I think, on you know, the banker side, on the set, you know, kind of on that client facing side as well, is that that partnership needs to? You know, kind of on that client facing side as well, is that that partnership needs to? You know, take on a new dimension? Right, how can the two organizations help each other out? Right, knowing that if they're all aligned on what the business goals are, they're all aligned on how they're going to achieve those business goals and they're also aligned on how they're going to measure what success or lack of success looks like. I think that's kind of where it's really all shifting. And I think about this role of enablement and, of course, working now at enablement organization, where we have a very deep bench of enablement staff who is really just, I learn from every day and like, what good looks like from an enablement perspective and I see it in its best form is that enablement is really acting like as it should. It's like that strategic layer of glue that really fortifies the partnership between sales and marketing, you know, and just the perspectives that, like enablement, professionals can bring to the fold.

12:59

Right, and really understanding. Okay, marketing, this is what you're doing, and you may have your performance metrics in terms of your campaigns and your events and your activations. But let's also talk about how well are you showing up for your sales team? Right, what are the analysts telling you? Are the teams engaging with what you're producing? Are they really driving results of what you're producing and let's overlay some really rich analytics much. You know what we offer on the Seismic platform to really understand. So if it's you, fred, as a banker, I can intimately understand.

13:32

Like, what are you sharing during your meetings? What pieces of content are being most effective? And, even beyond that, like, what aspect of that content is resonating right? Is it page one of a brochure, is it page three, or is it a piece of content? Is it something that you're saying that's really landing? Well, that we have to say, wait, let's stop here, let's do more of that and less of other things. Because certainly if we look at, say, you're a top producer, we want to say, okay, what are you doing that we can replicate and package up in terms of training and learning for other teams so they can be successful as well.

14:08 - Fred (Host)

So you're getting into this a little bit, but I want to dig deeper and I definitely want to talk about specifically how does Seismics enablement technology empower bankers to deliver those experiences Like? How does the platform support that?

14:23 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, I mean, I think the platform is, you know, and thank you for saying it we're a platform because we truly do believe that now we've made some acquisitions over the last few years where we're really bringing together the ability to source content, to syndicate content, to get skilled, like based on what you're talking to your customers about, and then certainly to have those analytics that really kind of feeds back. So the idea is that it's like this ongoing, continuous loop in terms of you know, what I'd see is like you're preparing, you're engaging and you're improving right at every turn, and enablement is kind of the set of tools and capabilities that's really helping you. Right, when you think about preparing, like I'll just use client meetings because that's something that our customers across financial services are coming to us all the time. Like we know, client meetings are important. We know that they're taking new forms because of more use of Teams or Zoom or WebEx, whatever your technology of choice is is that it's becoming like a really you know a lot of pressure for a banker right Saying, okay, I need to do more meetings, I need to do them in different formats. I'm doing a mix of virtual and in-person and my clients expect, like, a high degree of service right and high degree of customization and personalization. How do I effectively do that? How do I effectively prepare for that meeting and deliver that personalized, meaningful experience that my clients come to expect? So I think that is really a top area that we've been focused in on.

15:59

You know, we have integrations into all of the big CRMs so that, like, a banker has all of that intelligence coming in. They're saying, okay, great, I have a meeting with Fred coming up. I'm seeing from the CRM record, these are some things that he's interacting with, or these are some topics that he'd like us to bring up, or there's some other, you know, sources of information, and then from there you're able to really think about okay, I want to really personalize that experience and actually, more importantly, I want to do it in a compliant way, both from a regulatory perspective as well as from a brand perspective. So we've had a number of banks come to us and say you know what this meeting prep thing is not working well, right, information from all these different places that are not integrated. They're pulling together decks, assets that are either out of date, not on, brand, inconsistent and actually and then guess what they're spending hours and hours doing this kind of work right, where we need them to be doing other things as well to really grow their business right.

17:03

So we worked with one bank in particular and they came to us and like, okay, we're estimating that every time one of our bankers is preparing for a presentation, they're spending upwards of six hours. And basically they came to us and said how can you help us? They came to Seismic and said how can you help us organize our content template? It make sure there's some functionality there to empower the bankers so that they can personalize it as they need to, but still keep the guardrails so that we're in compliance, we're staying on brand. And in this case they were able to really take that six-hour process and reduce it, frankly, down to minutes.

17:40

So you start thinking about banker efficiency coupled with the personalized client experience that they absolutely deliver. Personalizations, as we all know, no longer nice to have. It's absolutely a need to have, but doing it can be really, really difficult and doing it at scale is also really difficult. So that's a story I really think about when I think about some of our banking relationships and how they've gotten success off the Seismic platform, yeah, and plus it's compliant and it's on brand.

18:13 - Fred (Host)

It's not something that somebody's kind of cooked up because they didn't have access to some other type of asset. I love the fact that you mentioned you integrate to various CRMs. How else does Seismic fit within a bank's technology stack?

18:29 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, we also fit in as part of the MarTech stack as well. We integrate, you know, with a number of systems across the MarTech side. In particular, you know a lot of our customers are using us for our AEM, for the Adobe Experience Manager product, so that they're able to really use our workflows within Seismic to help create and automate content. But then they want a place to be able to syndicate it easily onto their web properties. So that's been kind of hand in glove, I would say. You know our CRM integrations are our most popular ones, not surprisingly given our focus on the sales persona, if you will. But I would say right behind that is looking at our connectors to AEM.

19:12 - Fred (Host)

So no real surprise Enablement as the glue between marketing and sales and also the Seismic platform as the glue between, kind of, some of the classic sales functions in CRM and some of the marketing functions in Adobe, experience and similar content platforms. Yep, I know one of the things that our audience is always interested in is how they can be more competitive with digital banks, digital banking. Is there a role that Seismic can play to help traditional banks compete with fintechs and digital-only banks?

19:46 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, I mean, look, I love following the fintechs and the digital-only banks. I mean I think they've done so much to positively reshape where the industry has been headed right, I'm thinking more acutely around the digital experiences that your customers are having when you're not face-to-face, but I think the advantage that traditional banks have is that ability to deliver a great client experience through a person. Right, I know some of these digital organizations are starting to think about the role of humans in the relationship, but I think that they have, on the reverse, they have a lot to learn from the traditional organizations, right? So I think there's a real value that enablement has for the traditional upstarts because, again, I think the research has shown it right, people do want a great digital experience, but they still love it anchored with the guidance of a trusted financial professional banker, an agent, a wholesaler, however they see fit. So I think that's the edge and I think enablement adds an edge through, in particular, the ability to personalize all of those interactions that you're having. It's certainly wonderful, but I think also the ability to really bring that expertise to the fold through a rich. To really bring that expertise to the fold through a rich, sales driven type of a focus on training and learning right.

21:10

So you hear about training and learning often, but a lot of times it's really training and learning through the lens of what does an employee need right Versus a very specific set of capabilities that say a banker needs right where it's a mix of technical expertise on the markets, products, services, right and marry that with all of the soft skills and all those other skills that are important as someone who's interacting with clients day in and day out, right.

21:37

So and then realizing as part of that too, I think I get really excited when I think about this category of training and learning and what's being done to think about it in a variety of different formats, is that we all have so much to learn from each other. In particular, bankers want to hear from other these subject matter experts on different products, different services, on things like soft skills, negotiating skills, all those things that you need to have in your toolkit, if you will. But it's also so incredibly valuable to say, oh wait, there's a banker I know and admire who's doing really well. I want to hear from them at a detailed level, like what are their tips for success? And I think bringing that into, you know, an enablement program is really kind of the special sauce, if you will.

22:32 - Fred (Host)

Yeah, yeah, I love that and I love the idea of peer learning. The other thing, that and you know, congratulations we've made it 22 minutes into the conversation and not talked about AI. But I'm going to ask you now a question about AI. Is there a role for AI in enablement and, if so, what do you see that role being?

22:52 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, no, I mean, we're all in on AI and we actually have been for a number of years and of course, now with chat, gpt, that's just taking it to a whole new level as well. But look, certainly as we think about kind of the practical use cases of AI, there's just taking it to a whole new level as well. But look, certainly as we think about kind of the practical use cases of AI, there's a lot that we're seeing our customers take advantage of. That's already built in the Seismic platform the ability to again stream the processes associated with the client meeting right the preparation, the delivering and the following up right. You know we have a relatively new product called Seismic for Meetings, which is really I'm seeing as a real game changer for meeting delivery, where you're getting really good insights. You're not in a position where you can finally have a really good conversation. You don't have to take meeting notes, you can truly engage with your client virtually and then get really amazing signals as well as content recommendations that make that follow-up really seamless end-to-end. So AI is obviously playing a really critical part in bringing that all together.

23:56

Look, I also think we talked earlier about how marketing teams are in a role, often to support bankers and relationship managers with just questions on oh, can you tell me about this product? Or do we have marketing material for X, y and Z and I think you know through we have our own chat product called Knowledge. That's certainly another place where you can get all those answers in the moment of need right through, kind of your Seismic console, right. So if you're asking questions, it can all come out there just based on what's sitting in the seismic environment at your company. I also think you know marketing and enablement teams they play. They do a lot to support their, their sales counterparts, the bankers, right, and they realize, like, organizing the content, making it readily available, searchable, findable, that can be really time consuming.

24:45

So we have an AI engine now built that gives auto recommendations on summarizing content, tagging content, so when it gets published, it's like you're going to it's going to get found, right. It's not going to be kind of throwing it down a vessel and saying I hope someone finds it. We're also in a position, with our AI capabilities, that we offer is that we're really able to personalize coaching and learning right, knowing that there's a broader array of topics that bankers and other you know relationship managers are really expected to support. They need modern ways to upskill teams. So I think this is going to be a continued area of focus for us on how do we unlock more use cases out of this learning and coaching capability that we've had. That we have to really support that. What we like to call is just-in-time learning.

25:37 - Fred (Host)

That's phenomenal. So I love all the different ways that you've thought about leveraging AI in the platform. I'm curious and I have conversations I'm sure you do too with banks and other institutions all the time. I find kind of two broad categories. There's the smaller category of people that get very excited. They're all in, they really want to partner very closely with compliance to make sure they're doing it in a compliant way. And then there's the other category, which is unfortunately a little bit larger, which is a little bit, you know, let's pump the brakes here, you know, very cautious. How have those conversations gone on your end? Are you hearing concern, hesitation with leveraging AI, or is it something that, since it's already baked into a trusted platform, people are a little bit less hesitant to want to adopt it?

26:24 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, I mean, I think what we're finding is that, to your point, baked into a trusted platform. I think that's the important thing to know, right, and I think also Seismic's approach to AI. We wanted to be very practical and thoughtful and results-driven right, because AI it means so many things, right, and it can mean nothing. At the same time, attaching it to what's the like what are the jobs that a person needs to do day in and day out and how can we make those easier through AI? Right, and that's been, I think, really very much our intentional focus in thinking about unlocking AI.

27:00

I do believe, and rightfully so, especially for, you know, these large institutions they do have to think of the big picture of AI, because there's obviously concerns around PII and privacy and security and all that good stuff, and they have to make sure that they're doing everything possible to protect that client data at every turn and to make sure that they're using AI responsibly, right? I mean, we all know the challenges around the biases that exist in some of these learning language models, right? So how do we really come against that? That's why I think our seismics approach on looking at like optimizing process flow has been a really good place for us as well, in addition to what we have with our social media product, live Social, which has been using AI for a number of years to really scrape all these different respected news sources to come up with content. Third-party content recommendations for the users of the product when they're looking to syndicate content on their social channels.

28:04 - Fred (Host)

No, that's great. That's fantastic. I love this narrow focus on enablement, but I would be very remiss if I didn't open the aperture up a little bit. We've both been in this game for a long time, helping companies leverage technology, stand up digital transformations. I just like to ask more broadly if you were talking to a financial institution and right now you are talking to a number of them what recommendations would you give them to help them drive more value out of their digital transformation initiatives?

28:45 - Kerry (Guest)

teams. I mean, I think we've all seen that oftentimes where there's one group with a digital transformation initiative and it's not necessarily connected to the other initiatives of their other business units, so, and I think that's without that alignment, you're kind of going to be doomed to like not really recognize the full value out of your digital transformation efforts, right, like full stop. Like the leaders need to be very well together and really take that message downward and across their organization. So I think getting that right is absolutely a priority. I also think, too, when these initiatives come forth too, a lot of times they'll get a little bit siloed, right. You have, like kind of your working group for a specific initiative and my question always is like who are your primary users? Like who are you targeting and are you bringing them in early and often for their feedback, so that when you go and ship out a new piece of technology or some new way of doing things leveraging an existing piece of technology you have, you already have built-in advocacy from day one, right, because that's going to really help change management, right?

29:47

Changing a lot of, you know, introducing a lot of stuff can be very exciting, but it can also be a bit daunting, right, especially for bankers who have, you know, very set protocols on how they like to work, the technologies they like to use right and their comfort level with all of that right. So, while introducing something you're like, this is going to make your lives infinitely easier. It sounds good on paper, but you want to make sure it's truly real and really like reflective of actually how they do their work, and that you're building some advocacy with their peers. That's really going to help you through that change management cycle, because I think one banker to another, if they're saying, wait, you know what that new initiative that Fred talked about actually you need to get on that, learn how to use it. It's already helped me. I'm already shaving time out of my day. I'm having better conversations. It's helped me with my client acquisition efforts. Whatever the case may be.

30:41 - Fred (Host)

Yeah, spot on. I've always thought, whether it be, you know, an external consultant or an internal product owner, they should have to take the same Hippocratic oath that doctors do right First, do no harm. There's already processes in place. You can't make it any worse than it already is. You really have to deliver on that promise that you're going to make it better. You know banks are facing a ton of challenges, obviously, both in the market and also in getting the attention and marketing their products and services to clients and prospective clients. What do you see as the most significant couple of challenges and what would your answer be and how to face them?

31:20 - Kerry (Guest)

In terms of the challenges for the banking.

31:25 - Fred (Host)

For banks, you know, to get, you know again, to get attention in the market to really differentiate themselves. I think you know, whether it be I don't want to dictate the answer here right, but whether it be, you know, competition with fintechs or just traditional competition across other FIs in the market, you know how do they really, you know, break through and get that attention.

31:47 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, and look, I think it's yeah, I mean you said it there it's a lot more complicated as a bank because you're not only competing against your peers, you've also got all this fintechs out there and look, who knows what big techs got their mind headed right. They're saying, oh, we've got all this data on all of these people that could be customers in a different way for us, right? So it is very much the perfect storm for any bank who's saying, okay, how do we, you know, make sure that we're really, you know, kind of the first option for you know, our clients, right, when they're thinking about anything financial in their lives. And I think then you overlay it with the challenges of what Gen Z and the millennials are introducing into the marketplace, kind of those traditional modes of marketing and branding are shifting really in a big way, right, and I think you know, certainly, when you take a look at what banks need to do is, I think you know obviously follow a number of researchers in this space, but I do think this word of mouth concept is going to be like that's very much. You know. We obviously see it with kind of influencers really influencing, kind of like marketing as a construct overall.

32:57

But I do think you know how do you build communities of people where they'll be sharing kind of your message to others right, because I think you know you see the stats right, like especially these up and coming generations. They're relying a lot on their friends and other quote unquote experts for information on topics of financial bent. So I think you have to kind of ride that. I think having really clear and honest messaging is absolutely vital and important.

33:26

I think everyone's looking for the financial services industry to kind of demystify themselves a little bit and get a little bit more real on like really tying like what you offer to outcomes, and we're seeing that being done. You know there's a number of banks who are doing a really nice job of really presenting themselves as the institution of choice along all those quote unquote moments that matter for either an individual, a family or a business, right, and then I think also just thinking in a very inclusive way too. I think historically the banking industry hasn't really thought about all the dimensions of clients that they can and should be working with. So I think thinking about all of that into the mix is really going to help banks remain really relevant in the hearts, minds and wallets of the clients they're looking to attract and retain.

34:15 - Fred (Host)

I love that.

34:16

I think it's spot on space between influencer and just what we'd call back in the day a COI, like people that just really kind of have, you know, influence in their local community, and how banks can leverage that. I don't have any great magic answers yet about how to identify them and really take advantage of it. We've certainly seen, you know, examples in the market of how opinion leaders can really move things for banks, in both positive and negative ways. So definitely something I think that banks and marketers need to lean in and help figure out. I wonder just generally, with all these trends, is there a role that you see for AI to play in these marketing strategies?

35:08 - Kerry (Guest)

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think about what I'm actually using actively AI and many things above and beyond, like my own use of my own firm's technology. But I get really excited, you know, when I think about the role of AI, right, and how can it be leveraged to really augment everything that you're doing. Look, first and foremost, I think it can play a really powerful role in helping develop content. Do I think it can finalize content? No, but do I think it removes the horror of looking at a blank piece of paper, which is always like a content creator's like worst feeling, right? You're like, okay, I got to start somewhere. I think what ChatGPT done is like kind of, at least gets you started. You're going to have to add a lot more of your own expertise, make sure your own research, but at least it gets you off of that like blank page dilemma, right, that can really block so many of us. So I think there's a an ability to really help facilitate that faster creation of content in a number of formats, because I think that's going to be the big move, right? How do you think about all the different formats of content? So I think AI has a really good role in that. I think it's going to continue to play a great role on how do we scale personalization right, like no one has completely figured out personalization, so I do believe, when used well, it can really help personalize, you know, the marketing, all of the you know associated kind of touch points as well.

36:33

I've also, you know, been reading up too and I just see, you know, ai coming into really helping advertising agencies optimize their recommendations on ad spend with a lot of the large banks, which I think is really going to be really powerful right, especially where you know maybe the clients that you're looking to bring on they're not interacting in places where you kind of have traditionally gone after them. So how can you make that your optimize your ad spend, which, because we know that the dollars are scarce for some of those activations, so how can you unlock a lot there? I think also, you know, I think it's also going to help with PR too, right. Just, I think also, you know, I think it's also going to help with PR too, right, just as you're thinking about, like, where to place your ad dollars, what PR placements should you think about from that earned aspect that you want to use AI to kind of say these might be.

37:30

The role of marketing has really a kind of at the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel and as it pushes off, hopefully into a great relationship with the banker. I think AIA is going to play a lot of roles to really start signaling like, okay, your campaign or your activation or your ABX strategy is working well here, it's not working well there. So it can allow the marketer to really act in. What I think about is not just in time kind of way where they can optimize. Really at the moment, things are starting to go maybe in the direction they don't want it to go.

38:00 - Fred (Host)

Yeah, I love that. I think all of that makes a lot of sense. I really am excited in all the different ways that I'm seeing marketers lean in to leverage AI. It's definitely become part of my daily workflow in a ton of different ways and I'm always trying to think of different ways. You've definitely given me some ideas to dig in on that I hadn't considered yet. Last thing I want to ask is what's next? Right, if I think back 18 months ago, nobody was talking about chat, gpt, nobody was talking about generative AI. What's the next thing? Months ago, nobody was talking about chat, gpt, nobody was talking about generative AI. You know what's the next thing? What's on the horizon that we're not thinking about? As bank marketing continues to evolve, and if you can see around that corner, what would you do as a bank to prepare for it?

38:42 - Kerry (Guest)

Yeah, I mean I think it's interesting. So I mean I think AI and chat, gpt, that's here and I think it's going to continue to be the positive. I think it's going to be a positive disruptive force. I think there's obviously any kind of new technology We've seen it with the internet, we've seen it with social media Like, yeah, there's some great things. There's obviously some downfalls to all of it. But I do think the marketing organizations that really lean into that and think about creative ways to unlock the power of AI are going to be far better off than the ones that are kind of holding back and waiting for some kind of eureka moment to happen where everyone feels really good about using the technology.

39:22

I think you just have to kind of dive in. I think just looking around kind of the bend too is that this real focus on the customer is really going to remain like very much front and center. Certainly, the banking industry has had its fair amount of you know around like different fees and different products and different product structures. So I think you know banks that are really going to be adjusting their offerings and really showcasing that to the broader market. I think we'll be really well positioned there.

39:52

I mean it may not sound like the most innovative thing, but I think it kind of needs to be an ongoing hallmark right of really thinking about customer empathy and experience in richer ways.

40:04

It's not just about the experience, it's also about the experience like what kind of product you have and how does that product make you feel like throughout the life of you have like with your bank, right? So, and I think another area you know if I had to, I mean there's already a lot, a lot of it happening and I hope more of it continues to happen is that banks really establishing or taking their kind of role of like positively impacting society and really like taking that forward. I think that's a really. I hope that just continues to expand, because I think banking has such an important role in our societies, right, and I think the role of banks like in conversations that people are having in terms of intergenerational wealth, thinking about education of their family around all things financial as well as their role to reshape communities through investment I think these are all really interesting things that are already being said out there, but hopefully they'll continue and they'll expand, going forward.

41:12 - Fred (Host)

I absolutely love that and it was one of those things that might sound sappy, but one of the reasons why I've worked in and around the financial services industry for principally all of my career like 27 years now is because it is a critically important thing for individuals, for families. You know. Access to capital being able to plan for whether it's a home purchase, whether it's retirement, whether it's college, like these are all things that are critically important to people and their success. And I think the more that a bank can do both for individuals and for communities, you know more than a bank can do both for individuals and for communities, you know and really get that message out there, not necessarily for the benefit of the brand or, you know, to sell more loans and open more accounts, but just to really get the message out about how critically important access to capital and really, you know, planning for financial well-being is important for people is a big part of why I do this. So I love that message.

42:13 - Kerry (Guest)

Great yeah, feel the same.

42:17 - Fred (Host)

Well, wonderful, this has been a fantastic conversation. I appreciate you taking the time to join us. I know you and I are both on the road quite a bit. Do you have any conferences or anything coming up where people can find you?

42:29 - Kerry (Guest)

Don't have anything planned yet. So, yeah, but certainly looking forward to the next time I'm out there.

42:36 - Fred (Host)

Yeah, I hear you. You could almost make a full-time job just going to conferences. So I'm also looking at my upcoming conference calendar with kind of the same critical eye. But it's been great. If our audience wants to connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?

42:50 - Kerry (Guest)

Well, you can find me on LinkedIn, and I also encourage everyone to go to seismiccom to learn a little bit more about enablement.

42:57 - Fred (Host)

Awesome. Well, thank you very much. Have a great rest of your day All right, thanks, fred. All right and we're back. Welcome back for Quick Takes. I've got Josh and Eric both here with me this week. I think we debated in the pre-show calling this like banking on AI, because I think we have primarily AI topics to talk about on Quick Takes today.

43:25 - Eric (Co-host)

Is there anything else going on in the world other than AI there?

43:28 - Fred (Host)

really isn't. I mean really there really isn't. I like, really there really isn't.

43:31 - Josh (Co-host)

I like my idea of call it official intelligence instead of artificial. The official intelligence show yes.

43:37 - Eric (Co-host)

The official intelligence the official.

43:40 - Fred (Host)

We'll have to see if we can get that website. We'll see if that sticks. I was really fascinated, eric, by this article you found in the journal about how AI companies are running out of data. The internet is too small. Yeah, you want to talk a little bit about that one?

43:56 - Eric (Co-host)

So this? I found this and it immediately made me think of. We've all seen the meme about you've reached the end of the internet, turn your computer off and go outside kind of thing.

44:08

I was like holy crap, could this actually be the end of the internet? Like all of the data has been consumed, there is no more nothing else to see here. Move on. But you know, google's gemini just announced that they're up to I don't like a million token count or some crazy amount like that with their 1.5 model that was released. And so these language, these large language models, are just consuming so much information and giving us the ability to put so much information into it that the article points out that it's as the engines are learning and trying to teach. They are getting to the point where they're just maybe not going to have enough information on the internet to keep it knowledgeable, and does that mean it basically knows everything that humankind has ever known and ever will? Is it going to rely on us to take more of an inward approach as it relates to training these language models with our own content?

45:16

I was on a training session earlier today and the instructor was going through the process of how he uploaded all of their corporate policies and procedures and HR elements and pulled up a custom GPT and open AI and was having a conversation Are we open on MLK day? Do we get Christmas off? What's the contribution amount for 401k. And if all that information maybe that doesn't exist on the internet but it exists inside of your organization, maybe we have to get to the point where we're thinking about training it with our own content, to make it more relevant to us as business owners and not be as reliant on the rest of the internet to train it. So I'm going to stop there and see what you guys think, because I've also got another thought, but I'm going to be careful not to go down the rabbit hole. I had a thought about it.

46:10 - Fred (Host)

The first thought I had go ahead.

46:13 - Josh (Co-host)

No it's your show. It's your show. Dude, Go All right.

46:16 - Fred (Host)

47:12 - Eric (Co-host)

Thank God, I'm so glad he did. It's been such a wonderful time.

47:15 - Josh (Co-host)

Thank, thank.

47:16 - Fred (Host)

God, I'm so glad he did it's been such a?

47:17

wonderful time. Thank you, al Gore, thank you, your vice president. Yeah, but there's not a lot on there that dates back much past the 70s or so. I mean, there's some history blogs and there's some stuff like that, but there's so much information that's not on the internet and I think that would be interesting. I don't know if Google's thinking about that or somebody else is thinking about how to how to do that in a way that you know everybody gets paid for their intellectual property, but but that was the first thought I had. And, josh, what were you thinking?

47:44 - Josh (Co-host)

well, I just sort of thought, so what?

47:48 - Eric (Co-host)

you were always there is that the voice of reason or, you know, dissension, like who?

47:53 - Josh (Co-host)

cares like, oh my, what's going to happen when AI doesn't have more information to learn from? It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Or can't learn fast enough. I just thought who gives a shit? And here's the other thing.

48:07 - Eric (Co-host)

And not suitable. Nsfw warning alert. Oh, yeah, yeah.

48:13 - Josh (Co-host)

49:04 - Fred (Host)

Broken through.

49:05 - Josh (Co-host)

We've broken through right. Like tech only exists when there's a problem to solve. People love to solve problems. They'll solve this one.

49:13 - Eric (Co-host)

Yeah.

49:13 - Josh (Co-host)

Will it matter to you or me, or even any of our listeners?

49:16 - Eric (Co-host)

I doubt it yeah, the and it's interesting the thought that I had that kind of dovetails to that a little bit is, I think at the early part of this I heard some people talking about we might even mention this on the show in the past but what happens when ai starts consuming content that AI created? Do you get a situation where the dog is chasing its tail?

49:42 - Fred (Host)

And it's already happening right.

49:50

Like. I mean, we've seen on LinkedIn, everybody's kind of seen posts, you know or not posts, but like comments on posts that are, you know, virtually identical. You can't tell me that that's not happening on platforms like Reddit. People aren't writing, you know, virtually identical. You can't tell me that that's not happening on platforms like Reddit. People aren't writing, you know, blog content with AI. I mean, whoever is still scraping stuff? In the last six months, I'm guessing 10 to 15% of what you're scraping came from AI, you know if not directly at least in part, agreed, agreed.

50:15 - Eric (Co-host)

So I think the the multimodal, you know, when it starts getting consistent access to YouTube videos and to podcasts and it can consume some of that, that's going to give it more information that hopefully is legitimate, that has been really created. So we will eventually start showing up, I'm sure, in your nearest large language model and all the amazing things that we share here.

50:37 - Fred (Host)

On the Quick Takes, All of our transcripts are publicly available.

50:42 - Eric (Co-host)

Absolutely.

50:43 - Fred (Host)

And Anthropic OpenAI. You know come get them.

50:47 - Eric (Co-host)

Come get them Exactly. But I think what I took away from this is and maybe it was just because I saw it in training today and it really got me thinking about how can we leverage not just the universe of information that we have at our fingertips, which may or may not become tainted and less reliable as it starts feeding on itself, but how can we take the technology that's doing that and use the data that we have in our own organizations to digest it faster, to understand it better, to provide better, faster resources to our employees, our customers, and make sure that we're controlling the data, but using all these tools to make it really really fast and easy for everybody to get access to. So that's kind of where I took this as the big takeaway is that that's where the real opportunity, I think, is Very cool.

51:44 - Fred (Host)

Well, and I think again, like it's one of those things that I mean you can do that already with the models that exist today. Sure, sure, the question is right, like how they're talking about the data to build the next level of sophisticated model. Sure sure, I don't see a lot of companies like, oh, let me license my proprietary data so you can make your model better, unless you're in the content business?

52:21 - Josh (Co-host)

No, that's not happening.

52:23 - Fred (Host)

Yeah, that's not happening.

52:25 - Josh (Co-host)

They're turning it off Right.

52:27 - Fred (Host)

Unless you're the New York Times or somebody in the content business. That's not going anywhere.

52:33 - Josh (Co-host)

Yeah, yeah, nor should it. And I mean we still have to have jobs. You know what I mean? Like the thing can't, like it's already cooking your burgers for you and you don't need to order through a person at some McDonald's, and things like that. Now, like it's already making things quote unquote easier until it doesn't work Yep, no, and then it's always five times harder.

52:57 - Fred (Host)

And with the $20 an hour minimum wage for fast food in California now, I'm pretty sure you're going to be doing less and less ordering from people in the next few months.

53:06 - Josh (Co-host)

Yeah, look, California's got it all wrong and they have for 30 years and that's unlikely to change dramatically fast, but they've got it all wrong.

53:16 - Kerry (Guest)

I mean, they are Sorry California to change dramatically fast, but they've got it all wrong.

53:18 - Josh (Co-host)

I mean, they are Sorry, california, just look around, just walk down the streets of your cities. You've got it wrong.

53:22 - Eric (Co-host)

We just lost our California audience.

53:25 - Fred (Host)

I will say this. I was just walking down the streets.

53:28 - Josh (Co-host)

They already moved to Texas.

53:29 - Fred (Host)

They certainly have a fair number of things right, at least in the wine country. I will tell you that.

53:36 - Josh (Co-host)

Yeah, look, and it's, it's, it's a, it's just beautiful land, isn't it? I mean, I just love California. Like I love California other than driving in certain parts at certain hours of the day. I love California, but they're not particularly business friendly. Same with Oregon, where I moved from. They're not very business friendly and that's why they're seeing major corporations leave.

53:56 - Fred (Host)

Yep, fair enough business friendly and that's why they're seeing major corporations leave. Yep, fair enough, well. Well, we'll have to monitor and see what happens to this twenty dollar an hour. Uh, which wasn't even the topic, but I didn't want to go back.

54:07 - Josh (Co-host)

I did want to go back to another do you want to? Talk about the uh? Do you want to talk about the world war ii survivors turned into ai I would.

54:16 - Fred (Host)

I would love that and two reasons. Reasons Number one my dad was a World War II survivor. And the second reason is I've been to that museum and it's really an awesome museum, but Josh kick it off.

54:27 - Josh (Co-host)

Well, I mean, you probably know more about it. Look, I myself. I'll confess I am a World War II buff and I hope that's not taken in the wrong, wrong way because I'm not a fan of the macabre or horrors or things like that. It's not that I'm absolutely interested and curious about both the combat experience and the political experience of World War II and probably more than anything the personal stories. If you read people like Stephen Ambrose, they do a really good job of personalizing the individual experience at war and you know a lot of people when they think of World War II, they automatically think of Germany, right, but it was a world war, it was going on all over the place.

55:07

My understanding from this article is that they're using AI to create holographs, sounded like holographsd images of of war veterans from all races and genders and and I don't know if it's from all countries, right, certainly from the United States so that when visitors come to the museum they can interact with the 3d hologram and you know they'll have that person's face and personality and dialect and they'll answer questions that people might have. I think it's creepy and interesting and awesome all at once. Yeah, I'm always kind of just a little bit put off by whatever Michael Jackson doing a halftime show. But it's not really him, it's a holographic like stuff like that. You know what I mean. I just think it's a little bit weird. But a lot of artists sign over their rights. I don't know how many of these people signed over their rights knowingly and I mean that knowingly signed over the rights of their image and their self and their voice and things like that. I don't doubt that they would be happy to be participating in such a thing. I can't imagine why. Not because what's happening right now and I heard someone talk about this recently.

56:23

I don't know if it was like on a show or if it was a discussion that I had, but now that the vast majority of veterans of World War II are gone, they've passed away that link to that aspect of history, that critical, defining moment in not just world history but particularly in American history. Really world history is lost the lessons of that experience, the lessons of the trials, all the foibles that have occurred. I actually just read a really interesting Gladwell book called. Was it Bombardier Mafia? I think it was something like that, the Mafia Bombers.

57:02

I can't remember exactly what it's called, but really interesting and it talks about, basically, the history of bombing, and so the more people can learn about what people's experience was like, I think, the more that they can be informed about seeing some of the patterns that precipitated the calamity of World War II. They can see some of those patterns in their own life. They can see it in their own personal life but, more importantly, in a global way, and basically our brains are, if anything, pattern recognizers, and so if they can learn more about massive events like World War II through an interactive way, in which case the information is more likely to be sticky for them and I think that's what that kind of interactive experience does, is it makes the knowledge more sticky then I think that it's good not just for that individual, I think it's good for all of us.

57:55 - Fred (Host)

Yeah, I agree. I just looked up that book. By the way, it looks fascinating Malcolm Gladwell and the guy from Revisionist History and it seems like it's pretty cool. It's called the Bomber Mafia.

58:08 - Josh (Co-host)

Yeah, the Bomber Mafia. Now, I do recommend that you listen to it instead of read it, and the reason why is this book was created originally as an audio book. So there are live interviews, there's music, there's sound effects and things like that but actual reels of some of these historical folks that were deeply involved in the story. So if you are into audio books, this is one of the best ones.

58:34 - Fred (Host)

I just bought it on my Audible. Right on man Cool, there you go, eric you're about to say something before I cut you off.

58:44 - Josh (Co-host)

Hold on, I got to buy the book. Just a second, I'll just throw something in here. You know, for those who are familiar with the show, the show, a foundation. The show, a foundation is based in Los Angeles and that is a foundation dedicated to preserving knowledge and experience of the Holocaust, and it was created by Steven Spielberg, and they, I believe, are also doing a similar thing. So what they had were archived interviews of Holocaust survivors, and same thing with um, with this other, with the World War II museum. They have these vast amounts of reels of of footage interviewing, uh, these veterans, and so that's what they're using for the AI to create this in both institutions, both foundations.

59:30 - Eric (Co-host)

Yeah, so just and I I think, and maybe it's a point of clarity I don't think AI is recreating these individuals. I think what the AI is doing, at least at this point now, it could very well get to the point where you take something like a HeyGen, where you can take a video and then have it basically become that persona and talk, but what AI is doing is it's taking the thousands of questions that they answered from an interview perspective and matching those up and AI is parsing through all of those answers and what they would be related to as it relates to a question. So, if you're someone like me, my grandfather was in World War II. He served in India, but he never talked about it and nobody really ever brought it up. But I would love to be able to have gone back when he was still alive and ask him questions, because nobody was ever really brave enough to you just heard don't talk about this to grandpa, and this would give you the opportunity to sit with someone. This to grandpa, and this would give you the opportunity to sit with someone.

And even though they may be dead for five, six, seven years, they've already answered all the questions in an interview process that were logged and recorded so that you could sit down with somebody that maybe was in India, that maybe did fly a bomber over Germany, or maybe was in Japan, whatever the case is and ask the questions about how did you feel when you got home? Why didn't you like talking about it? What could somebody say to you? Just different things. And then AI speeds up that process so it says, okay, you just asked a question. You're talking to somebody that was a Marine on the ground that climbed Iwo Jima. You're talking to somebody that was a Marine on the ground that climbed Iwo Jima and we've got 600 questions that this person has responded to. Which answer would be appropriate for that question?

And I hate that.

It seems like you're really having a conversation with them, but it's really them talking. They've just done that over prerecorded webinar and I remember seeing the Shoah Foundation on a 60-minute special several years ago and how they were taking those likenesses and turning them into holograms. And I remember seeing the show of foundation on a 60 minute special several years ago and and how they were taking those likenesses and turning them into holograms with all sorts of cameras. But it was really them and it was so moving.

Yeah, very moving. Yeah, like my granddad was in. Well, both my granddads were in world war two. One was one was a chief down in the Gulf of Mexico sweeping mines. The other one was Sherman's 10th Armored Tank Division, infantry, battle of the Bulge, bastogne, all that nasty stuff. Just like you, he raised four daughters. He did not talk about war in the house, it just wasn't something that he wanted to talk about. More importantly, I think he was trying to protect, you know, his daughters and his wife from some of those horrors. He did share enough with me to for me to get a sense of what was going on for him and his experience, but it was limited. You know I only have 40 other questions to ask, but he's been gone a long time now.

Yeah, yeah, I wish they had hit. As I was saying here, they had 18 people, which is great, but it's also only 18 people, right? So I said my dad was in the Second World War. He was a good Catholic. His dad was a good Catholic, I guess I should say.

He had 12 brothers and sisters and of the nine that were boys, all of them served at some point. None of them were old enough for World War II. But he had four other brothers that were also in the Second World War and I talked to someone, you know, when I was a kid, when I was younger, I talked to someone about it and the differences of opinions and experiences just between the four. Like my dad, and not taking anything away, he was not like Mr Patriotism, he was drafted, he went and he served, right, but he didn't like go run up to volunteer. When it was time for him to get out, he was happy to get out. But then I had one of his brothers that was only a couple years older than him, volunteered, stayed in career man, got out as a command sergeant major, and if I asked them both about their experience or any of those questions, they would give two very different answers.

And so I wish, like you know, 18 is great. I wish it was 1800, right. I wish they had just a giant library.

And I think it's just, you know, for us moving forward right, like it doesn't have to just be war, but you know all of these things. Like you know, there's a NPR has a project, I think it's called StoryCorps, where people just like tell stories, like I wish there was more of this kind of archival stuff. It kind of plays into the prior thing, right. I'd love to have you know a way for people to generate more of this. Really, like you know great content. You know obviously longer form than what you know people consume on social media but about you know everything you know worse since then and dealing with. You know domestic crisis. You know Katrina. You know Superstorm Sandy. You know all kinds of stuff that goes on. Because I think it would be very interesting to be able to go back and just look at that over a period of time and just how different people experience the same sorts of things differently.

Yeah, you know, right around Christmas time is usually when you see it. But I was being targeted on social media from a company that was selling a questionnaire slash, interview series book, whatever that you could buy for your parents or your grandparents and it would ask them a series of questions, whether it's through like an email or some sort of an online portal, and it would, I would say, trick them into journaling. But it would ask them questions about growing up and what was one of the funniest things you experienced as a little girl. So, you know, you get your mom talking about all this stuff that she may not have ever really even thought about telling you?

I want Fred to answer that question.

Yeah, That'll be next episode. Yeah, next episode of Cliffhanger. But I've always thought that that would be kind of a cool thing, because you think about the conversations that you don't have with your grandparents or with a parent that passes away and you're like shit, I should have asked that question and somebody's figured out what kind of questions you might want to pull out. Is there the possibility, seeing what they've done with World War II and with the Holocaust, could you take that and capture some video of your parents or your grandparents and then be able to have them be with you and share their story and have a conversation almost like you do with an Alexa or a Google or a Siri or a Pi?

Yeah, this is some Black Mirror stuff you're talking about.

The longer I talk, the more I'm thinking man, I don't know if I really want that.

Yeah, I think they've done this in a few films and it didn't work out great.

Well, you know where I went with it is. I almost want to flip it the other way and again, nothing for nothing, right, but people get busy and doing these types, doing these types of long form interviews can can take a long time. I wonder if you could use AI to drive the interview. You know, like, give, you know, give, give the person that you want to be interviewed. You know your mom, your dad, your uncle, your grandparent, whatever, give them a link, they, they can go on. There's, you know, very kind of humanistic. You know AI-generated person interviewing them and again, like, probably way better at like drawing stuff out than the average bear, right, you know, I think that would be really, we just need Barbara Walters' persona to be captured.

There we go Baba Wawa, baba, wawa Baba.

Wawa.

Wawaawa, baba Wawa.

Wawa PT yeah 3.0.

Yeah, well, that actually might be a really good segue into the other item that I know we've got on our list, because, as you're talking, I'm thinking what an appropriate utilization for this new AI tech that I was able to play around with this week, called Hume H-U-M-E dot AI and if you've not heard about this yet, it is by being billed as the world's first emotionally intelligent voice AI.

As you're doing that interview and you have the AI actually having a conversation with a parent or a loved one, when I was using this, it actually picks up on your inflection and your emotion and I asked the question because I know we've talked about Pi in the past on this show and I asked the question of Pi hey, are you able to tell if I'm really happy or if I'm really mad? And she came back and said no, I only can read the text script. It's just basically doing trans translation or transcription of your voice, and all that you're doing is essentially having a text chat and it's got audio being overlaid on top of it with a voice engine. This is actually listening to how you're saying things and it can say Like real life her.

Yeah, like I detect a little frustration in your voice, or you seem disappointed, or that seemed to strike an emotion with you. Is there anything more that you want to say about that? Yeah, almost to the point where it was super creepy creepy, but it was also because you had little real-time indicators where it would show you what are the three top emotions that it was either exhibiting when it communicated to you or it was hearing in your voice when you were communicating back to it. Yeah, and thinking of it from a customer service perspective, when does a call need to be escalated out of a chatbot to a real human? But I hadn't even thought of like an interview process where you go into it with the understanding that this is a tool that's going to do that yeah, I don't know you.

I think josh is a little concerned with me.

I'm right going like cut the feed. Cut the feed because I'm an right.

All I do is interview. So yeah, look, here's the thing. They can already do this in text, right? Oh sure, I have a friend who started a company they're doing quite well. It's only maybe five, six months old and it's AI interviewing, but it's not voice. It can record you, but it's not seeing your, it's not judging your emotions, just like the other one. It's just text. But what it's doing is it's analyzing the responses, based on what the criteria is, from whomever set up that specific interview for that job and said okay, these are the three things that I'm looking for. Right, I want them to be whatever, just you name it. Right, you could say I want them to be funny, right, or lighthearted or like whatever. You could say whatever.

So, but when what you're talking about just takes it to the next level, right, because you have to be able to describe emotions and articulate them with your fingers on the keyboard. It's the only way. So, sorry for all of those who don't type fast enough or can't articulate emotions. They just simply don't have the vocabulary. I mean, the average American reads one book a year, so you're not going to have a lot of vocabulary if that's all you do and you're just talking to the same 20 people for the last 20 years, yep, right, and so they're going to struggle. They absolutely need something that can read their emotions, that can tell the the timbre of your voice that you know is your breathing speeding up.

And what we're talking about here, more than anything, is a human lie detector. Sure, okay, so, like all this stuff is is already being used, like there there are people that analyze, you know, whatever someone, some crime happens, someone's standing up saying this person in my life has gone missing, please find them. And there are people, human lie detectors, that can look at that and they can tell you like, look, there's a lot of deception going on, but what they can't tell you and what the ai can't tell you and and this is where humans still come in, I think is around all of the context. Unless that context is put in, because you could be interviewing and I know I'm being tangential here, but I think it's worth saying, since we're talking about this emotional stuff, this ability to detect someone's feelings and describe it and reflect it back to them and gain more.

And when you do that, by the way, what happens? People open up, right, people divulge even more because they feel like they're being heard and understood and that's how it works. But the difficulty is you might be able to detect deception, for instance, but it might have nothing to do with the thing that you're asking. They might have to fart, like literally they might have to fart and it's going to misread it, right? So unless you're in the room you, you look for my room. You wouldn't know you and thank god for that.

You look confused no, no, I just have to point.

So, look, you know, all this stuff, no matter what, is not a full like it's a replay. I'll just say, from a recruiting standpoint, it's a great replacement for most recruiters which are really bad. Yeah, is it a replacement for the actual experienced person who's going to get even greater nuance, and I mean it's probably going to be able to pick up more than any single human can, clearly. But what it might not have is the full context, sure Of everything.

Because it's the first conversation, not their fourth, with them, right I mean I think it's interesting, right.

I mean. So think about the customer service applications. Like, I've definitely layered things like this into various like contact center solutions that will you know more for like a live agent to discern. But you know, it'll take in the recording and, in addition to transcribing it, it will give you like some sentiment analysis, right? You know, hey, this person's getting agitated or this person's getting calmed down, or what have you. I mean, I think stuff like that could be interesting. If you have a chat bot, this could you know help you or help the, you know, the router figure out. Hey, maybe we need to take this call from the chat bot and give it to a real person because they're getting aggravated, what I kind of personally hope it does. It's my one of my biggest pet peeves when I'm waiting on hold and they say thank you for your patience, because clearly they can't hear how agitated I am and they'd realize that I don't have any patience.

So they should be thankful that went out the door, that went out the door 20 minutes ago, yeah, but I think there's some interesting applications Like. Some of the stuff that I find a little disturbing in the list is like they have like a use case for making, you know, helping to make a clinical diagnosis of depression. I'm like I don't know that I want the AI to do that and if it does, I think I want it to be like really, really, you know, like almost default to over-diagnosis, like I think your error rate on missing people is highly at risk, like some of those use cases I definitely get nervous about.

But I think things like you know customer service use cases, or you know if we're going to use it for better interviews, you know, for having chatbots, you know and again this is, I'm guessing, dealing with voice interface that are able to sound more empathetic. I'm down with all of that.

Yeah, you can sign up for a free account. You can take the voice engine. The voice itself is a little rough. It doesn't kind of it's up and down, it's all over. I'm sure they'll probably refine the voice to make it sound better, but it's, I suspect, working on trying to determine the emotional situation of who it is that it's talking to. But I use a tool for note-taking that frequently joins my Zoom calls and whatnot, called Read. There's another one I used called Sybil for a while. It was pretty cool, but it leveraged facial recognition. It could tell whether somebody was disinterested. If I'm looking at my phone and I'm on a zoom meeting or I'm kind of staring off, it would tell you you know, hey, you lost interest. And then you can go back and go. Well, what was I talking about? And all that happens.

there goes josh just disappeared from the camera josh lost interest yep josh lost interest, never disappeared when eric cook speaks, everyone listens yeah, just like, yeah, just like. Who was it? Eve Hutton, was that throwback?

Yeah, eve Hutton, did I get it right? You got it. We touched on something about banking, so that's good you did.

So I'll bring it back to this. I mean more sales than banking, although I mean bank sales or anything else. Those types of things are great for deals Like, if you're doing a sales cycle over, zoom over your meeting tool of choice, being able to see when your buyer is disinterested, when they're maybe having an emotional reaction one way or the other. I think that's a phenomenal use case. I mean, I've used's a phenomenal use case. I've used a fair number of the recording tools as well. I haven't seen any that do that particularly well, but I took down the two that you mentioned and I definitely want to check those out.

I'm with you. I think it could be very interesting as a sales tool but, more importantly, as a training tool. Right, because, yes, good point. If we can't just default to AI to tell us how someone's feeling, I mean that's just kind of wrong. I feel like that's just kind of wrong. You know something inherently wrong about that. It doesn't mean that it doesn't have a use case, but there's also, you know, you can start poking holes in all this stuff, and I don't want to do it too much. I'm going to poke one little hole, but so so, for example, like when it becomes known that if you act agitated, they'll escalate your call faster, everyone's going to start acting, escalate, everyone's going to start acting agitated. Like there's going to be this experience where people, people are always looking to hack a system.

Do you mean people are going to try to game the system, hack it, take advantage of it? What?

are you talking about? Yeah, I know, I know it's unbelievable. Unbelievable. I can't believe that. It's just like a whole other system to hack, but the biggest system that most people should try and hack is the is human emotion and communication. Yeah, like, if you want to hack something, hack that for crying out loud. Read a book on NLP. You know, I wouldn't even start there. I would just start with something along the lines of what you shared earlier, eric Understand.

What does disgust look like, what does anger or surprise or fear? I'll give you a story. I there's a there was a TV show called Lie to Me and it was about. It starred Timothy I can't remember his name British actor, and he played the founder of the FBI the FBI, oh God, profiling division, okay and was a pioneer in lie detection. He traveled around to like some 60 plus countries or 80 countries and found out that there are a variety of expressions, but really there's just six core facial expressions that you can pick up on.

These facial expressions they're called micro facial expressions. They're like really quick, fast, less than a quarter of a second, and if you can get good at this, if you can train in it and you can practice, you can actually understand what someone's underlying emotion is right, and I think that this software could do that. It could certainly tell like everyone knows what some people generally know what anger looks like, but what they're not always paying attention to is when someone's pretending not to be angry. How do you find out if they're actually angry? Cause? There's a way to do that. Right, you have to see it and then you have to train, and when I did it, I did very well. I took I took the first. I got a certification, an advanced master's cert in microfacial expression, stuff, not a big deal, but when I did it, I was already very good at it Not a big deal to me.

Well, I was very good at it. It sounds very cool.

Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff and I was good at it. But, as an example, fear and anger eluded me. I got those messed up all the time, like all the time and so like and I recognized it. You know if my kids I thought my kids angry at me, but no, he's like upset or nervous or frustrated or like whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah Scared of me and I didn't, I couldn't pick it up.

I thought he was angry at me, but he was scared of me, right. And so that training, which took I don't know not that long, you just drill it, they flash these things to you and then you get it until you get better and better and better at it. If AI can do that, if AI can teach humans to be more aware of humanness in others, then I am all for it. But should it replace the humanness all of it? Well, I don't really support that. It's probably going to happen anyway, but I don't particularly support it.

Well, I don't know that. I see it as replacing it and I agree with all of that. I mean, I think everybody should strive to be more emotionally intelligent and to understand their fellow human being. I'm just saying, like the realities, to be more emotionally intelligent and to understand, you know, their fellow human being yeah.

I'm just saying, like the realities of you know, when I think about large enterprise deals that I'm involved in, you might have six, seven people on a buying committee. They're all in their individual box. I'm also looking at slides. I'm trying to make sure that you know different conversations are going, you know, back channel and all the rest, trying to make sure that different conversations are going back channel and all the rest. If I can rely on AI to help me out with some of that, I can't watch seven people's faces and everything else that I'm doing at the same time.

It's one of those things where it's not a replacement, but I think it sure as hell is a great augmentation. It's another tool in the toolbox to help things along. It doesn't mean some people aren't going to use it as a crutch, right. I mean some people are just going to use it as an excuse.

Some people need it. They just need it yeah.

I mean, I'm sure we're not that far off whether it's Brilliant or one of the other AI glasses that embed something like that that you know we'll put up.

Your girlfriend looks pissed right, flashing red light, you know. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, think of it medically, you know, in supporting, maybe someone who has severe Asperger's might truly be able to have a more fulfilling life and and and be more integrated with their relationships, simply because something in their glasses is like no, susie's pissed at you, like and and she's not saying it, but like she's kind of not really happy right now and I, you know maybe you should go talk to her yeah.

That would be good. Totally, we'll call it the Sheldon.

Cooper.

I love it. There you go there you go.

Yep.

Well, gentlemen, another fascinating conversation, as always. We started with AI and went down 16 different rabbit holes, per usual. As we wrap up here, I know it's beginning of April Any big travel plans for either of you guys, conferences or other stuff coming up?

I will be at New York World Tour Salesforce New York World Tour and, depending on the events that night, I don't know if I maybe I'll sneak into Rabbit AI, because they're having a launch party on the 24th. Ideally, I'll go to some sort of Salesforce event instead, and I'm not sure what's happening yet. I haven't really looked at it, but that's where I'll be and I'll be there on the I think it's the 24th, 25th, 26th, something like that. Yeah, 23rd, 24th through the 27th. So if you're in New York and want to catch up, that's where I'll be. Cool, eric.

I am off to Illinois in a couple of weeks going to do a full day AI for marketing and then some bootcamp for bankers for the community bankers association of Illinois and then they're marketing for them the next day and then I'm loading up the RV and the dogs and the wife and the Jeep and the bikes and we're driving to Madison. I'm teaching at the HR Management School talking to HR probably a room full of 60 plus HR managers from banks all around the country about ai and its impact on the workforce and skills, training and talent and the shifting workforce that exists in the technology ai world. So that's going to be a lot of fun. I'm sitting on a panel discussion so that's with the graduate school of banking in madison and then the following week I'm teaching at the Wisconsin Bankers Banking School, so doing a full day for them. So I'm going to get me a lot of Wisconsin in a couple of weeks. So I'm looking forward.

You're going to be full of Wisconsin. I love it though that sounds fascinating, I'd love you know one of the future shows for you to share. I'd love to hear what HR professionals impression, kind of reflecting on AI and kind of you know after, after having a discussion like what, what are, what are they thinking about? Uh, especially from kind of a talent perspective.

One of the one of the newer statistics that I also picked up on training today was we've all heard the it's nine times easier to sell a product to a customer that you already have than it is to an existing, to a new customer.

All that he brought a statistic in that he got I can't remember the source, but seven times more expensive to replace an employee than it is to train them and upskill them. And as people are looking at, you know, staff doesn't get it. We got to recycle our employees. We got to bring in people to understand AI or technology or whatever the case is. They still then have to learn the entire organization and everything else that's going on versus. Can we look inside? Focus on our existing staff, give them the opportunity, understand where they need to go and why we want them to learn new things to stay relevant, and there's some real cost justification there. So I suspect a lot of that will be at the heart of what I'm going to be talking with these HR folks about yeah, that makes sense, man, I'll tell you too.

I mean, because that's my domain, I am basically HR right. But it's that challenge, the extreme cost. And what they're really talking about more than anything is the cost of a bad hire. Right, because if you hire someone good, if they're just a good person, if they work hard, if they're reasonably intelligent for the tasks at hand, and you compensate them fairly and you treat them with respect and you give them a career path forward, they'll stay with you for a very long time. But it's the mishires that are expensive and I think AI is going to have a big say in how to prevent that. I think it's going to be several years until it's really fleshed out, but it will come in, it's already happening. I'm already taking advantage of some of that stuff and it's huge. So no bad hires.

Yeah Well, and you've talked about it before People have to be willing to step up their game and learn new things. You can't do what you've always done. I think we talked a little bit of. There's no easy jobs anymore, whether it's in Salesforce or wherever, and so if you've got someone that's working for you hopefully they're a good hire because they've been there for a while the hope is they'll take that next step and decide okay, I need to continue to be valuable, versus pitching them, bringing somebody in and then you run that risk.

Plus get rid of the as400 guy. Yeah, right, and hire the javascript dude or gal, right, like well, maybe, maybe the as400 person probably has the capacity to pick up javascript. I would think, yep, right, you know like that sort JavaScript, I would think Yep Right, you would think yeah. You would think yeah Plus time.

Yeah Well, we'll put a pin in that. I think that'll be a fun conversation for a deeper discussion.

Definitely looking forward to that conversation as well. Well, gentlemen, I am 50-50 on going to New York World Tour. I'm hoping to get out there some scheduled conflicts and and trying to make sure I have enough lined up out there, uh, to make it worth the the squeeze, if you will. The next place I know I'm going for sure as far as the conference goes is financial brand. Other than that, it's just a little bit of a little bit of personal travel, client travel, and we'll see you there.

But yeah, josh, should come out for financial brand. Exactly, it has nothing to do with Salesforce or hiring, but it is in.

Las Vegas and we'll be there. So you know, you got that going for you.

There's a couple of spots out there I do like yeah, I do like some parts of Vegas, usually where the pools are. Those are my favorites. We can hook you up.

Sounds good guys have a wonderful week, All right gentlemen, you too, yep. See you everybody, see you guys, until next time. Bye-bye.

Well, everyone, we hope you enjoyed episode 26 of Banking on Disruption. Don't forget. You can find show notes and a full transcript of the show on our website. Forget. You can find show notes and a full transcript of the show on our website, bankingondisruptioncom. New episodes drop every other Thursday, so we'll see you in two weeks and, in the meantime, don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at at Banking on Disruption. Until next time, this is Fred Cadena, wishing you success in your digital pursuits.