EP 413 - AI’s Impact on Digital Experience: What Metrics Should You Actually Track? - Jeffrey Lin - ContentSquare

Hi, it's Michael Wade and welcome back to ATP, digital teams across industries are drowning in metrics and analytics, but it still feels like they're guessing most of the time. Everyone knows the real numbers, traffic conversion, retention, NPS, all this stuff. But what most teams don't know is whether any of those numbers are actually any good, whether their competitors are quietly outperforming them, or where experiences are breaking down in ways that dashboards just could simply never reveal. Those are the gaps in which ATP is interested. What is actually going on here? Using benchmark data drawn from 99 billion, you heard me I said billion, digital sessions, thousands of websites and millions of customer conversations. Content squared decided to step back from vanity metrics to ask the harder questions. What did great digital experiences really look like in 2026? What should they look like? And is anybody getting it right? What separates top performing financial services to institutions and digital platforms from everyone else? And what role does or should artificial intelligence play to answer these questions and more? The Asia Tech podcast is joined by Jeffrey Lynn. Senior manager solutions consulting APAC at Content Square. Jeff, I cannot thank you enough for coming and joining the show. I do want to say like I'm feeling a little weird because we're in the same clove. I'm not sure how it's going to look to the rest of the people, but I'm comfy. I hope you're OK. I thought the report I don't feel so bad matching you. So if you're with this, we can keep this rock and roll in. Yeah, I mean, the biggest difference is the color of our hair. Your match is your shirt. Mine is a little bit different. Anyway, how are you doing today? Good. How about yourself? I could not be better. OK, look, let's just jump right into this thing. Why are digital experience benchmarks suddenly like a board level topic? Like what changed? I don't know whether it's something has changed or just things are always cyclical in my role. I mean, you think about everything big trends we think about. When crypto was big, I mean, 25 years ago, the internet was a promise to all things, only to 25 years to realize that. But I think things are always cyclical. And you look at kind of investment cycles that go into it. We pump a lot of money, lots of attention, right? It kind of wanes for a while and it comes roaring back. And I just think like now, it's like, it's that time. It's the timing of it all, right? The realization, oh, shoot, we invested in this. What's actually in result? And I think the realization of this is that cycle is very much true in this case of 12 to 24 months. Which transitioning into something else do you think? Do you know what I mean? And that's why people want to know they're like, wait a second. All this stuff is changing. And I know what all my metrics are. Like, what do they really mean? Do you feel like we're in some kind of transition phase? I think so. I think so. And I think it goes back to the whole investment cycle. Where you want to see some results. And before you invest in the next thing, I mean, if you're a sea level or anybody who makes decisions at the very top, you want to improve your case. And the fact that, hey, my last project did well or didn't do so well, it really dictates in terms of what your next investment will look like. And that's very much buying, I think, behavior in a lot of different ways when you think about how tech is often procured. So that is that realization of, oh, I need to get that next thing. Which in this case, maybe AI, maybe something else who knows, right? But I need to prove what I invested in last before. And even look back a couple of years ago, right? The whole COVID times where there was a lot of investment in tech. Everything's burgeoning, right? Every two-way I can imagine that you want to get, you got. And now you're actually seeing the questions being asked. And so we have to kind of go in there and prove what do we actually invest in and make a market nod. But things where people self-deceive, if you know what I mean, is there some sort of, what sort of trend where there's this common self-deception that people fall into when they look at their own KPIs, if that makes sense? Yeah, possibly. And I think that's one of the things, it's always a hard question to ask, right? Because you think about how KPIs were derived in the first place. Right? There were two things, right? One element is the culture side, I think. We've always done things this way. And we need to go in, right? It's an easy track to go. This is when you try to reestablish and blow it up again, right? To re-measure things why it's important. I mean, I think of this one story, I'll show this with you, right? I was working with this quick-served restaurant, a ball back. And they're so involved and so attuned to engagement as a measurement of success, as a KPI. I mean, I think all business, digital business, somewhere form you look at engagement, which is like this podcast, engagement, what does that mean to you? But they're looking at kind of the checkout page, right? And they're seeing a lot of activity. And you think about QSR, right? Quick-served restaurants, right? What happens in the checkout? Well, you can put a coupon, you can upsell and cross sell, right? If I'm buying some hamburger, I'm buying some chicken nuggets along with that. So those are always a flurry of activity, right? And traditionally, that's always meant that people are interested. They want to do more, right? And that engagement metric typically will go up. In this case, they went out, it went through the roof. Okay. They went celebrating and popping champagne, telling me a good time. But then you bring the data element to this and start kind of digging deeper, right? And asking the hard questions, like, is engagement the right metric? What they discovered was the reason behind the high engagement. It wasn't that people were actually going through the checkout process and purchasing. What they discovered was that the reason they had such high engagement is because people could check out their own ones working for it, right? They're clicking around, right? And then a fact finger, a upsell, right? Trying to buy a value meal and so forth. So they saw engagement go up, but conversions and revenue went down, right? So they're still running away too early. It's almost like an American analogy, right? You're dropping the football to fight. Go line, that's exactly what I was thinking. And so you start questioning, like, what are we looking at the right things here? Right? So how do you determine, or I guess the better question is, how do you help people determine what are the right metrics? Because I was thinking as you were starting to tell the story, which is a great way to explain this thing, right? Like, sure, there's a flurry of engagement, but maybe it's because I don't know what to do, right? Or I didn't put my credit card in. I put it in wrong. I did something wrong. But then I'm thinking, okay, if the engagement looks good, but that's not the right thing to look at, how do I know what the right metric is? What I mentioned in the intro, like vanity metrics, it feels to me in this case that engagement may be a vanity metric, not always. But then how do you determine what the right metric is? How do I know what I should be looking at, if that makes sense? Yeah. And that's a hard one, right? Obviously, in this reason, different verticals. From what I see, right, and from kind of talking with so many different companies, right? One of the things that we can take a look at is you need a baseline of some sort. Right. Okay. Go ahead. And that baseline could be a couple of different things, right? For instance, what is a user behavior? What is customer behavior? What is a right customer for you? And how do they traverse through kind of your experience you give them? Is the right experience for a VIP segment? What does that dictate? And those are things that you kind of think about, right? Because you can argue, I want a great user experience, but a user experience is very different from who you are. Like for me and you, Michael, right? Like, what's a great experience for me going to Victoria's Secret? Call me none. Probably not. Probably getting taken out in handcuffs would be the thing. Exactly. Right? Like, especially, what you need to see before, right? It's inappropriate. Yeah. But those are things that you have to think about and how we kind of help companies think about that is helping them establish that baseline, right? Like, give you a visual dictionary, if you will, of understanding traversals from each individual, right? Go ahead. That formulates kind of the gig hypothesis, the segment of people that is more attuned to the type of business you're going after. And only then, right, you have the right baseline to establish the right type of metrics. Right. Coming here and saying from day one, my engagements are what I'm actually focusing on. If you're a bank, right? Yeah. Right. For podcasts, right? You probably don't care about like, hey, people open up a account and so forth. Maybe you do. But these are things that our standard practices, the rest of the role, undertakes that maybe is not very pertinent. So, underscores the importance of establishing what is the baseline user journey that you're targeting. Yeah. It's really important to understand this, right? So you're right. When I think about what do I want, I want as many people as possible to watch, but I want to write people to watch. Right. But the other thing is I want them to watch for a long period of time. I actually don't like it. If a million people watch for 30 seconds on mad, right? But if 20,000 people watch for 15 or 20 minutes on average, now I'm stoked, right? And the numbers look way lower in some cases. But those are metrics that are really important to me. Can we do this? I mentioned in the intro like 99, excuse me, billion, you know, questions and all other stuff that you did. We just walk through a little bit the methodology and the data here that you used to produce this. I mean, all this stuff is coming off a report that you guys did. Yeah. You just run through a little bit of that, the methodology and the data stuff that was used. Yeah, absolutely. And just to let everyone know, I mean, we publish a lot of these data points that we're talking about. Michael. Yeah. So one thing you do, right? And we do absolutely. And you know what? Best of all, it's free. So should we link to it? Yeah, at some point. No. Probably a good idea. Yeah. So. Yeah. Okay. It's like like there, but yes. But a good one, I think. Fair enough. I'll take that. So at a heart, it's hard, right? What we do at Consist Square, the fact that we do work a lot of different companies and we do help them kind of co-lay, collect, cleanse as well as derive insights from their data. Yeah. Right? So to kind of put these what we call bench bark together, we do this every year by the way for our customers and also for the public. We basically are looking at a lot of anonymous data around our customer base with their permission of course. And I think the last this year or last year, there's over what 500 plus billion page views that we looked at and analyze for 99 billion sessions. like you mentioned. So we're talking about actual users, actual customers coming here, understanding their behaviors. And this spans across 6,500 websites, we're all around the world. And so you imagine the aggregate you have on that, right? That's very much a global view. And we've taken that to kind of apply some of our best practices and methodologies to get some of the insights that we're going to be talking about here today. Yeah. Can you talk about this? Like I'm going to skip ahead a little bit because I want to talk about traffic right only because you mentioned the podcast. We love to see people come in and look at what we're doing and listening to what we're doing as well. But if the benchmark suggested like acquisition is getting harder, like what actually does good traffic look like at scale? And I know it's different for every kind of business. But if you want to pick a specific business or pick a specific vertical and kind of run us through that, that would be great. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll give it, I'll start with the global trend first, right? Because I mean, you look at all these, you know, let's call for what it is, right? All these search providers out there, right? Only one big one that you call for what it is, right? It's no surprise, right? Like every year, it gets more and more expensive to buy keywords at. I'll give you an example. At one point, I was working on the platform for legal startups or legal, right? And did you know that legal keywords were the most good keywords of every possible pump permutation out there? No, I did not. Yeah. I mean, this was over 15 years ago, but at that point, right? We're talking about say things, I just say, um, what's wrong with a misalute theme in Loma? I can't even say any more. I don't think I should get mine checked though. Fair, right? But this is the big thing in the US, obviously, right? But that one particular keyword alone on a per click level, it was $1,500 USD. And this is over 15 years ago, right? And since then, these keywords have gotten more and more expensive. And as a result of that, right? Overall, traffic from, say, search keywords and search terms, all right? Has gone down. And then we think there's about 4% difference compared to last year, because obviously the cost plays a big factor of it. At the same time, right? We're still seeing about 42% of traffic is all paid, right? So it's coming down, but yet it's stabilizing at a very high level. And that was a favor that surprised me. Here's the kicker, though, Michael, is the fact that even though overall traffic is going down, our customers are actually seeing more conversions coming into the platforms that they own, right? Which if you look at it holistically, you're seeing less traffic, but you're making more money. Like what gives? Something's different. I think that speaks to maybe a wider trend that we're seeing here across the world. Maybe even here, technology. I don't think you ever thought about that. So here's what I am thinking. So that 42% number doesn't seem high to me. But what I do think is happening is this. I think there's more intentionality, right? In other words, if 42% is paid, maybe there were a ton of people that were looking at it, maybe clicking on something or taking some activity that they didn't really want to do, they weren't really interested. They weren't intentional about it. And then maybe they've just stopped doing it, right? I mean, I think over time, attention spans, unfortunately, just like, get shorter and shorter. And I think people are trying to only look at the things that are interested, interesting to them. And one of the things I noticed yesterday, I saw some news yesterday. And I'm curious what you think about this, right? Because I think this might be related to this. It's hard for me to call the company meta, but I will do it anyway. Because I even feel like when I say it, people are just like, do you mean Facebook? I feel like I have to say that. But let's just say meta or Facebook, whatever it is made an announcement. I think was yesterday the day before I can't remember where they said they're going to start charging for premium services. So just work with me on this for a second because I'm really curious what you think. And I remember when I signed up for Facebook. And at the beginning, I was kind of afraid to do it because I knew that I was going to be like, I was the product, right? I knew that when I first started doing it. But it said Facebook is free. And it always will be. And I can't get that out of my mind. Because now on the Facebook platform, the Instagram platform, the WhatsApp platform, they're now saying that they're going to start charging for premium services. And my feeling was, and I know I'm talking a lot, so I'm sorry about that. But I really want to know what you think about this. Do you think that means that just in a trend that maybe that 42% number is going to start going down and that they're kind of afraid because they are a platform business, right? At least Facebook itself is a platform business that there's some concern, you know, with the onset of chat, GBT and all the other big, excuse me, AI services that people are going to be going there. And that the money that some of these big platforms make from paid is going to go down. And that's why they're starting to charge for stuff. Absolutely. I believe that is true. I mean, you look at kind of even say creator, the creator economy, right? I mean, sub stack is a very, very popular platform, or selling newsletters. Yeah, very, very. But if Michael, if you told me this like 22 years ago, right, when Google came out and Yahoo and all these heydays and whatnot, all to business, I'd say, who the heck will ever pay for a newsletter, right? Because content's free. Right. But that's kind of what's happening, right? You look at the platform like YouTube, right? YouTube premium, everyone out there, right? You have to find some way to give us a separation of the experience of services. Yeah, I completely agree. Look, I pay for YouTube and the reason why I pay for it is because I don't want to be distracted. And I know that these companies are trying to be relevant, right? But I don't want to be distracted by ads that are not relevant to me. Absolutely. The decision that I made was I'd rather pay whatever the amount of dollars it is a month to say, I'll decide on my own, what I'm interested in from an advertising standpoint. But on here, I'd rather pay you so I don't have to watch these ads. Does that make sense? Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, I mean, you think about the core of that is, right? It's an experience, right? You're being very, very, positive experience that you and otherwise get, right? And I think that speaks to kind of the shift in the consumer economy in a lot of different ways. And can we just get back to this newsletter thing? Because I agree with you. I would not have guessed that people would pay for newsletters. But I think it's part of this same trend, this idea of what I said earlier, intentionality, where they're saying, I just, I'm happy to pay for this stuff that I want and the stuff that I don't want. Please just get it away from me. And I think that's one of the reasons why sub stack itself has been so successful. Right? And while YouTube premium has been so successful, do I have that right or wrong, you think? I think so. I think there's a formulated attention or attention to that particular realm. Yeah. I'll give you an example here. Here's what you're seeing a lot of, right? AI is changing the game a lot of ways, right? How you acquire traffic. For sure. When we see that, right? Yeah. Did you know like most of the AI traffic that we see, even though it represents what 0.5% of all traffic in the world, right? That's it. That's it. Really? I don't quite right? But you think, but there's so much like hubbub about it, right? But what it's actually resulting in, well, the thing is that most of the traffic coming from AI is actually landing directly in say PDP or product detail pages, right? The end goal. So imagine you're Nike, you're selling a pair of shoes or something, right? Right? Are people actually going through the main site and then reading your story and then content? No, no. They're taking AI, right? And helping them find the best price and ultimately landing on that particular shoe description page. So quick go back to this because you said these are all experiences, right? Here's the other thing. I know that when I go to my favorite restaurant and I'm going to analogize here for a second, it's not always the food. At least to start as a premise. I mean, she's a factory's popular for a reason, right? Yeah, it's the voluminous menu, man, although to be fair, outside the country for 30 something years, never been to the cheesecake factory. But of course, I've seen all the memes. But here's my question. Experience is actually super important. And I've always had this contention that the online world should in some ways mirror the offline world in the sense that when I'm looking at my favorite restaurant, I really want them to kind of know my name, right? So it's personalized service. And as long as the food that I'm ordering is kind of up to snuff, I'm kind of happy with it. But when AI gets in the middle of me buying my Nike shoes, right? How does it change the, and I'm asking, like, I don't know the answer. I'm just curious what you think. But how does it change the experience and does it make it better? Again, because it eliminates a whole bunch of noise, right? Yeah, I do. I do. What do you think? Does it make it better? I think it's, I know it's my hard question. And it's not like good answer per se, but I'm just curious what you think. I mean, if I would quote myself in this, right? I mean, the easiest ones you you kind of reflect upon your own experience, right? Arguably somewhat, right? And I'll give you an example here. This is a more personal personal thing I'm going to write now, which is I'm trying to find new decking for my place. Okay. Right? And since I live in Singapore, I mean, admittedly, I'm not super, super into and they were familiar with how generally you procure a lot of services here. I'm American. Yes, not your hometown. So how it is not, right? It is literally not. And so what I have done recently is I literally just ask, like, yeah, I say, hey, do this research for me, right? Like pull through and come back with me for the best, full best service, right? Trying to get that with reviews, right? What people say, right? To help me formulate actually the decision. So I think for me personally, this is helping me where in a place where I'm not specialized, I'm not specialized in. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't seem somewhat respectable. Kind of like this podcast, right? So these are things that I think can help the laymen, right? Help people like us, right? So here's the other thing that I was thinking. He said earlier that 42% of stuff was. paid. And again, I don't think that that numbers, it didn't surprise me. But if you're using AI, like here's, and I don't know the answer to this question either, but if you're using AI to do the research like this, because in the old days, which means like three years ago, you would have, and I'm just using it as a proxy rep, but you would have gone to Google and said, tell me the top fat, you know, top five decking people in Singapore, whatever it is, yeah. But some of that could be paid probably all that's paid, like the top five to answer, so probably always going to be paid. So your confidence level, at least mine, is like, I'm not sure 100% whether that's actually true or whether somebody bought the ad word to get themselves at the top of the list. And I guess this was the question I was trying to ask before, if now you just go to like, chat, you be tea or anthropic or whatever, and just try to say, do research for me and tell me like where the best ratings are on these decking providers and the best service. What's the impact then on the results that you get? And does it remove the paid stuff from those things necessarily? It's fair question. Not quite sure to be honest. Yeah, neither of mine, but you understand what I'm trying to get at, right? Because when Google first launched, you know, what was it? 1870, I think it was a while ago, but you know what I mean? They didn't, they had not bought double click. So the search results you got were really just the search results that you got. Right. Sure. The internet was much smaller than, but people understand the premise. But I think people have lost a little bit of confidence in paid. And maybe that's why some of this stuff is bifurcating and moving into AI, which is the same exact thing that you just did. Yeah. It could be. I think it's also, I mean, I look at the core of it all, which is that no matter how someone gets there, right? Whether it's service, whether shoes or whatnot, right? I mean, that's an opportunity. Yep. No, I agree. Right. And then thing is, there's always going to be to me, like there's always going to be multiple channels, no matter what the next thing is, right? Of attracting people, eyeballs, rectal people into your realm. And it doesn't attract them. The fact that a good experience at its core is what brings people back. Like returning users, right? And this is the thing I forget. I think a lot of people want to talk to, they forget is it's nice that you're focusing so much on acquisition, right? But what we call returning users, meaning someone who's been there once already and came come back the second time. Go ahead. Actually, it represents like the bigger chunk of possibilities here. I think it was like, I think I'm looking through kind of what we have here is like 4% of return users are highly more likely to convert something like that. For sure, for sure. And I don't know if you'll like this or not, but here's my hot take. I think most of this stuff that we do in life is like dating. Like if you like a second date, so if your first date has really high engagement, no, I'm serious, just work with me on this. If you're, I'm just going to love this, I'm going to look at this. I'm going to look at this terminology. First of all, you have to meet a bunch of people. This is traffic, yeah, so tell me where I'm wrong. Second is you have to be able to engage with them. If you have high engagement, well, then you don't have this frustration, right? Because you've had a great date. And now you converting, you're like, okay, can I get this return customer? Do you want to go out again next Friday? And then you have this retention problem. But that makes you think about like what should you be optimizing for even taking that example of is the acquisition part important, less important, more important than the recurring part? Yeah. Three date, right? Is first date equally less important than your second and third, fourth date? What do that mean? Looks like right? The goals of it. Yeah. Yeah. But I do find this like if you're engagement is good, and this is true for the online world as well, right? Then then retention should be good too. I think. Can we talk a little bit about frustration? Like, how would you define and quantify it? And how do you explain it to the people with whom you're working? Because I can just see like some senior executive going, this seems like a weird concept to me of like frustration. Yeah. Once you explain it, I'm sure they get it to like, oh yeah, I've had that kind of thing. But why would you define it and explain it to somebody? I mean, at Surface, very frustration in the digital really represents, let's say like rage clicks, what we call one day, right? Like when you, I'm sure we all've gone through this, right? Where you're on a site, you can't do something. You slam your hand on the mouse a couple times, or I try to get through the work. Were you watching me this morning? I don't think so, but okay. Because I was on a website and it was very clear. It said, go to this section. It was a gigantic button there. And I clicked on the button and the website just kind of looked at me and yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, so sorry. Go ahead. Well, no, I'll give you this story. This happened just recently, right? With a teleco. I was working with it. And it kind of came to us with this one problem, which is that they saw a lot of people basically adding a phone, adding a SIM card to card. Right? Right. Oh, yeah. And don't check out. In fact, there's things like 60% drop off. So imagine if you're trying to buy an iPhone, right? Yeah. You did that last step and you did it. Something must have really gone wrong, right? For that to happen. So that was actually pretty interesting because this is a very common problem to have, especially in the retail business. And so we kind of took a look at it and went in a little bit deeper. And what we saw was that most users are kind of going through picking what they want, adding things of cart. But that last step prior to them checking out, they asked one question, which was what phone number do you want? Oh, my God. Really? Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. And what they observed and what we observed was that people were actually clicking through. There's like 22 pages of all of the possible permutations that phone number that's available. Yeah. Clicking through every single one, not find the one they're in absolute love with jamming their hand on the mouse or and finally just quitting 60% drop off because they could not find the phone number. So here's what we had them do is like, well, if we know that this is the last step, it's not a great experience. People are expressing frustrations as part of your, your funnel. What can you do to make that scenario better for them? So what I had to do is revamp this, right? They took that same step. We're out of the say, here's all the possible permutations of phone numbers you can look at. Tell us what do you want. Give us a combination that you like. I was going to let surface that up for you right in the beginning. So you don't have to go to the frustration of jamming your mouse, click on every single thing to get to something that you're not going to convert anyways. So no, I love this. And the Telco is the perfect example because when I bought my first, not my first, but when my wife and I sort of after we were together started going and buying our cell phones together, right? They asked us what number do you want. And they would give you like literally pages and pages and stuff with little tear sheets on them. Yes. Yes. You know, like when you were in college and it said if you want to ride home, dial this number, you'd take the number, go back to your dorm room and dial the thing. I don't know if they still did that when you were in college. And I was like, I don't know, but you know, my birthday is July 3rd. And if I could get 7, 7, 3, 3, that's I don't care what any of the other numbers are. And that was my phone number in Japan. I asked them. Yeah. So my phone number in Japan, I don't remember what it was 090 something something something 7, 7, 3, 3, 3. And my wife, who's birthdays, November 2nd, 1, 102. Wow. It still has the phone number, by the way. It's funny how we have such affinity for numbers, right? I mean, they get perfectual ball player and whatnot, right? Like yeah, certain number they choose to wear. It's iconic for them. But yeah, who do thought right? Applied to phone numbers right from a mass majority of people. Oh, it definitely does. Like I I don't know when this started with me, but I like everything to the power of two. Oh, okay. Like anything that's like power 248 1632 64128 anything that I could do that with somehow is like buried into my brain. And I don't know why. I know it's kind of funny, right? But like that's it is what it is. Let's talk a little bit about retention. Because this has to be kind of common across multiple industries. And they're like, I can't imagine that the metrics that a financial services institution looks at is different than an online retailer looks at. And I could be wrong, right? So tell me where I'm wrong. But what is the most useful way the useful lens to look through for retention? If that makes sense. And then I have another question for you. Go ahead. Well, as I was going to say, I mean, I think you mentioned finance where I financial sector is part of this. And I think it's really unique. I mean, when we talked about this, Michael, right? Like we're both from the US at one point. They're right. And I do know that the behavior of the consumers, and we see data on this of how they interact with the finance industry or financial sector is probably very different. And I think the reason for that is that it's such a fragmented avenue here in Southeast Asia. Is it different here than it is like in the States? I absolutely because you think about this in the States, right? We have one governing body, right? That sets rules and regulations across the entire country. Fair enough. We have how many countries, right? A lot more. Yeah. So your business person, right? Who is global, right? You're spanning bank accounts in five or six different countries here. For sure. You have the regulatory requirements each and every time as part of that, right? So your experience in maneuvering through all these legal requirements, right? Is top of mind, right? And so from a banking app perspective or even bank that you work with, right? That experience is going to be very, very disjointed. It's everywhere you go. And so at another day, right, you want to create a great experience, right? For that end user to help to overcome, he's banking challenges, right? Regulatory challenges, right? Or do you make him do their homework? Right? And the smart answer would be that you help them a lot at best as you can. And that goes back to kind of where content drives a lot of the practices here. Wait, content drives what? No, a lot of the best practices. How does that work? What do you mean when you say content drives a lot of the best practices? What kind of content do you mean? I mean, I think of anything, even taking that that telco example, right? What is the content here? The content is the phone numbers. I got it. I got it. The phone numbers, right? What's the format? It's infinite ways. And so, go ahead. Sorry, sorry, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, and then you think about from a banking perspective or a finance perspective, do you make it easy enough for people to adhere to local regulatory requirements through how you position things and give them access to things, right? Yeah. We make them up to groups. But I'm looking at this more from a consumer perspective, right? So I was thinking about this. I bank at a specific bank in Thailand. It's not worth saying what it is. And periodically, when I go to pay for something, and this is really embarrassing, right? Because I don't carry cash. And this may surprise you, but I don't have a credit card. I know you're like, what? What? What are you doing? It's a long story. But I don't carry a credit card. And I don't carry cash really. So when I go to the gym and I want to buy some water there, I just scan a QR code here. You know in Asia, like scanning QR codes is the way people pay for most things, right? What is it in Singapore pay now? Get paid now, pay a lot. Yes, we have prompt pay in Thailand. It's super easy. But every now and then, I'll try to pay for something. And the app just won't work. And it makes me feel like a deadbeat. Do you understand? Yes. You know what I mean? Because the idea is you don't have any money. You'll be like, just emptying, you open up your pockets and being like, there's nothing in there. Kind of thing. So I'm curious. And I'm just using me as an example. But I'm curious in the context of that type of experience, particularly when it comes to whether it's conversion or retention or whatever. And this is maybe get falls into the frustration bucket. But like, how often, if you know our financial services firms actually analyzing or looking at that type of behavior or that type of reaction going, oh, we need to fix that and make that because the payment thing itself, just being able to pay for stuff, this gets back to the phone number idea you were talking about where you were like, I don't know what phone number I want. Don't make me do that. So you have to change the way that people get assigned to phone number. Yeah. Right by asking, like, what do you know? What's your astrology science? Now, you know, I'm cancer. So it's seven kind of thing. But how often do the banks look at this stuff or financial services institutions that large look at this and say, oh, we need to fix that thing? I think it's actually increasing quite a bit because one of the things that we do see quite a bit of nowadays is that frustration comes in different forms. We saw in the last year, API error rates go up by 16%. And what does that mean? You think about how a payment gateway goes, right? When you pay for something, it actually calls another function, right? And you're getting all these crazy things, right? That's kind of 16%. Right? So imagine, right? You can't buy payment for something. Right? You're ready to buy high in 10 and you can't actually convert because of these errors. As a result, rates please have gone up 1.5% from what we've seen last year. So you're seeing these kind of frustration kind of being built in as a result of that. So you're seeing more and more banks in general think about these things, right? And that example gave you more consumer centric. But that doesn't mean the banks aren't thinking about it. In fact, I've been working with one big bank here in Singapore where they recently went through a big redap of their website and actually caused a lot of frustration with their end users. Right? Because so can I guess why do you mind? Go ahead. And I was thinking about this actually before you brought up this story, but tell me where I'm wrong here. And again, I'm starting to rub too. Banking is sticky. It's really sticky, right? Like I told you, I have a bank account of specific banking Thailand. And for the most part, I would say like 90% of the time. I love it. But the likelihood that I'm going to switch just because I'm disappointed with some kind of behavior, particularly on a website that could be complex and have multiple pages and all this stuff, it's unlikely for me to leave because it's like the devil you know versus the devil you don't kind of thing. But if they, you know, and I think most humans are good with clutches, you know, the clutches, yeah, a clutches were like, I will fix the procedure myself and make up some process that they didn't intend for me to make just so I can get to the end game that I want. And even if they make it better, but I don't know how to do it, I'm like, I'd rather do the clutches. So I go ahead. You were saying that. You know, it's funny. I can relate to that. Does that mean we're just getting older? No, I don't think so because it was because when I was at Coleman's, right? We had a trading application. And I had to, and this was when I first arrived there and this trading application was horrendous. I feel like it was built like in the 1930s and this was in like 2001. I mean, it was terrible. We actually, I actually helped rebuild it so I can say whatever I want. But the point is that I had to come up with like alternative ways to get stuff done inside the system, you know, taking data out, reform out and even excels spreadsheet, putting it back in. And I'm like, I know what to do. I can do it really quickly. Don't make me change. And that was when I was in my 30s. Like, I don't think it has anything to do with age. I think it just has to do with human nature, but go ahead. No, I, yeah, I'm kind of joking, right? I know. But you're not nearly as old as I am, dude. You can't go there. Remember the hair anyway. Who knows this is not fake? Yeah. Good. Tonight, you never know. We're talking about again. You said you were working with a bank and they were revamping their website and people were getting frustrated because it was new and maybe they just did not use it. Yeah. I think that's true. Yeah, exactly. I think that they were voices frustration by responding and hitting the chat button, right? Right. Writing anger emails. And now the feedback that was actually getting fed all the way to the top that, hey, why fix something that wasn't broken for the sake of change, right? Because it does happen. Right? Like, you get into a cycle of every year you're making change or sake and making change. I think this was an example of that. Yeah, fair enough. Can we talk a little bit more about artificial intelligence and like where it fits into this whole scheme? Just tell me like it's scale. Where do you, because I remember when chat GPT was introduced and I always hesitate to remember the year, but I think it was at the end of 2022. And I started using it. My life has not been the same since. And I could probably give you 10 or 15 different instances where, or where I use it every single day. For a whole bunch of things, like I was doing some writing and I want to fix the writing or make it tighter and stuff like that, it's not perfect. But it makes me more efficient kind of thing. And I'm wondering where corporations are seeing this stuff fit in or where it maybe helps you guys analyze data more. Just like where do you see this fitting inside this conversation that you and I are having today? I think the, I guess it really comes out to who we're working with and talking to as a corporation. Yeah, fair enough. And what I'm seeing, especially in my world, is that, you know, the whole problem is a big data from maybe what 10, 15 years ago was such a hot topic. I mean, I work in a base and all these big companies and whatnot. And it's in a way, it kind of still exists, but just in a different form, right? That was top of mind for a lot of people. Yeah. And what they actually figured out later on was that most companies didn't have enough data to born big data. Exactly. They did little data. Little data. Exactly. Right. Miniscule data. Right. But the whole value proposition of big day was a promise of helping unearth things about your organization about your customer, things within your business that you never thought about and never considered. Yeah. So, I'm still seeing a lot of those type of requests from corporations big and small. Is that, look, we don't know what we don't know. Can you help us give us something that we can latch on to? And I use this knowledge all the time where it's like, you think, you know, back in the days, right, where before AI really came to play, right? And I think a map quest, which I don't know if our listeners are familiar with that, right? Where back in the day, we had to like physical directions to getting one place and another, right? You literally have to print it out in your printer and take it with you, right? In your library, right? But on the way there, I need to get some gas. Oh my gosh. What do I do now? I gotta go home, reprint that out. Right. But now, right, we just have Google Maps. And I think what we're seeing with AI is it literally is the Google Maps of helping you get to direction and making decisions very fast and very quickly, right? The agility of data that's around you, right? And having AI supplement what you know to give you faster access and make quick decisions. It's always gonna be right, but that's not the point of it. It's to give you choices. You have literally just changed the way I thought about online experiences. No, because, and this is one of the reasons why I love doing what I do. And I made a note to myself to ask you how much you love doing what you do. So don't let me hang up on you without asking you that. It's in a way what you do feels like, I don't want to say gamification because I feel like it simplifies what you do way too much. But it does feel like a ton of fun to me. We're like, you get to go in and look at this existing experience and set of procedures and rules and whatever and then just go, you know, if you fix this or did that or based on the data that we have, this anonymized data, in this industry they do this thing. And while you're not in the same industry, if you kind of took some of the best practices from financial services or if you took it from the automotive industry or from the mapping industry, you could then fix this and make it easier. I mean, imagine a situation where I'm on a website or a mobile app and this is the thought you maybe just have, right? An unanticipated thought about wait a second. Shouldn't every app have some kind of Google map experience on it and not meaning like, how do I get from here to Prompong or here to Singapore? It's more just like, how do I get from where I am right now in the most efficient way to check out? And if you build that kind of sort of mapping capability into every application, like you said, I can oversee because what I use Google Maps, my phone. I can scroll all the way to the end and go, "Oh yeah, that's not how I want to go though. I want to go around because whatever, for whatever reason." Like you said, I want to go get gas or my sister lives over there, whatever it is. But you could do the same thing on an app, on a banking app, no? We're like, "I want to go to there." But before I get there, I want to do this one thing. Can I do that one thing first and then officially get back to that thing? Am I thinking about this the wrong way? No, I think so. I mean, it's so experienced with it in a day, right? And it's surfacing of these various experiences that anticipate the goals and the reasoning for the customer. I think that's what we're all trying to get to. And the proliferation of these AI models is to help you take that data to make these generative or predictions, to allow you to get ahead of it. And that's to me the holy grail. But don't you find even yourself when you're doing your stuff, right? You learn something from this company, learn something from that company, learn something from this and this. And then when you go to number five, you're like, "Okay, I can't tell you where I got this." No, because you can't, right? Absolutely. But you do still have the knowledge. And don't you find it fun or am I just barking up the wrong tree? You can apply that thing that you may not have even known a month ago. But because of all these little experiences you have along the way, you're like, "I got this. I think here's the thing that we need to do." Obviously, I'm simplifying. But you understand the point. That to me sounds like a ton of fun. It is. I mean, don't get me wrong, my God. And do this for quite a long now, like over 20 years. Oh, my God. You mustn't know so much stuff. Sorry. I don't know. I mean, things for 20 years have got how much of his pertinent, right? But you're still building upon that all the time. Yeah. And so I think that's the fun part of it is that you're always picking up things new. And even moving here in Asia, right? What I thought I knew back in the US and bringing it over here, right? Otherwise, it was a solution and I had to rethink how I go about things, right? When you're surprised, can I ask you this? Because I know I asked this before, but I don't remember the answer. But how long have you been out here now? About five years. Okay. So five. A pretty good amount of time. You're probably less surprised today than you were when you arrived. But were you surprised by just how different not everything was? But like, do you know what I mean? Just how different the experience was for you, where you were like, I would have thought that this would have solved that problem. But because of X, Y and Z, that's not the way this has to work. You know, it makes you have to adapt. And in the way, and I try to explain to people, Kansas City is definitely different than, you know, Sacramento, but not that different. But Singapore is definitely different than L.A. Oh, absolutely. Every way, shape and form. And I find that a lot of people that aren't from Asia come out here and they're just like, you have to do it this way. And it doesn't work. Were you surprised when you first arrived? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that's the biggest fallacy is that you can take a playbook or take a bunch of knowledge and you've accumulated elsewhere and just plop it down here. You got to account for a locality, right? You got to account for behaviors, right? And it's easy to say this out loud, but in practice, right? That's very hard. And as much as I want to hammer this home, right, with the friends back home, tell you actually go through it with it. Right. Doesn't really work that way. No, I agree. And this gets back to the experience thing. Like once you, if you don't go through the experience yourself, you're never actually going to understand or be able to empathize with it. Okay. Before I let you go, where are we going? Do you want to give me some kind of prediction? Like what's going to distinguish people that are providing great experiences from everyone else? Yeah. So if I were think about this, I mean, I'll take the context of Singapore, right? I think it's a way to think about this as a rest of Asia. Is that in here in Asia, I mean, trust is not just a tagline. It's not lip service, right? And it's near and dear to everyone here. And it's a foundation of how things get really done, right? In fact, if you think about kind of digital experiences, it's literally a product requirement. Right. Yeah. I think about kind of leaders here, right? And when they think about experiences that they're going to build, there's a couple of things that come in mind, which is that everything has to come back to either privacy, reliability, safety. And more importantly, because we live in such a fragmented place, they have to be able to survive kind of the scrutiny from the risk factors, the legal factor that also regulators, right? Because it's very different from one country and other from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and what? Indonesia. Like they're all different. They're all different. There's some less, but you have to carefully think. But the ones were able to take those factors in. Again, the risk, legal and regulatory factors, right? Are the ones who are going to be very, very successful, right? And you think about, say, data requirements, PDPA, right? Yep. We have a GDPR system like they do in Europe, right? Every country has their own in this way, right? It's very loose in association. Yep. So that's why it becomes even more important, right? To earn people's trust. You let them know that I've taken care of the hard stuff for you so that you don't get caught in the bad situation. And I think how this ties back to us here at Contasquart is that, and I might get my hands up for this by sharing it anyway, is that we look for ways to help customers, right? Improve their experiences without creeping people out. That's kind of what it is. Yeah. And we back this up, right? What think about governance, right? The consent and the privacy-sate practices. Through all the years that we've been in existence or applying to things that we do well and we give this knowledge to our customers. Right. Yeah. It's so, this idea is actually really interesting. And just to go back to this thought that I had earlier or that I shared earlier about the restaurant, like when I walk in, I kind of want them to know my name. Mm-hmm. But I don't want them to know my name so much. And the way you say it and the way you behave around it separates the sort of, wow, that's great personal service from that's kind of creepy. Exactly. Yeah. And that's a fine line to walk, right? But it's a really good point that you've made. Is there anything else you want to point out before I let you go? No, I mean, it's been wonderful, right? And I think the one thing I'll leave with everyone here is that it's easy for me to say because I'll be said in a day, right? Contasquart is a vendor, right? It's like, change is always going to be hard. Yeah. And the whole concept that we're talking about here is kind of change, not the sake of doing it right, but for purpose, right? When we talk about experiences, right? Experiences is just a tip of iceberg. Convergence could be something deeper, but don't let vanity get in a way of greatness. Right? Yeah. So that's something I hope everyone kind of takes away from all this, right? And how you think about the things that it's going to really change for a different world in the next couple of months. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. I mean, engagement into conversion. It's all the time, actually. Anyway, thank you for doing this. Jeffrey Lynn, senior manager solutions consulting impact at Contasquart. I meant it when I said it. I don't say things that don't mean you're really good at this. You should do more of it, actually. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. But it's great having you here. So you kind of led me down the path. So thank you so much for being gentle. It's my pleasure. Okay. I will let you go. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]