#20: What’s Wrong With eCommerce: Season 1 Recap with David Mannheim

~ This transcript is automatically generated so may contain some errors ~

when we talk about personalization, this need, this yearn for personalized experiences, and that's what we crave as humans, right, we're tribal beings of course, so we crave some kind of intimacy, we need that within our lives, that a website, an online experience, fills the antithesis.

Of that feeling and one could dare say that websites and digital experiences are anti human. Oh God, should we go down that? I mean, humans obviously code websites. We're going down a very deep, dark path here, aren't we?

Welcome to Statements of Intent. In this 20 minute episode, we're addressing how eCommerce has lost sight of the people at its very heart. You, the customer. It's a chat that's optimistic, it's casual, it's probably slightly ranty in places, but that's okay. But it's a place where I talk to senior eCommerce marketers.

And share their statement of how they're looking to change the status quo of eCommerce, adding more care, being more considerate to those very people that they're selling to - the customer. I'm your host, David Mannheim, the founder of Made With Intent. And we're going to jump right into it. Have fun

Hello, hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Statements of Intent. Look, this is the retro, this is the reflection, this is the end of season one, whatever that means, I don't know, I've just been told to record this, but I did put on a shirt, although I didn't comb, and definitely didn't cut, my hair. Uh, so, so I think this is some kind of special event.

I think, I think I've learned an inordinate amount. I think that most, the important thing that I've learned is that we've, we've kind of validated this belief that people have some kind of, um, problem with e commerce. Those working again have a problem with e commerce. They want to challenge the status quo that exists in e commerce.

And look, that's what we're all about. So statements of intent. The reason why we created this podcast is that we had this belief. We had a belief that people working with or in e commerce had some kind of, uh, guiding principle or value or promise that works against what e commerce does. Uh, today within society what feels very, uh, short term is a short sighted, uh, lacks care, uh, is very homogenized.

Um, and I found it absolutely incredible how so many other people also feel this way. There's a real community out there. My hope, just for reference, for this podcast is to give those people a home of, uh, Sorts, right? So it's, it's, it's basically, they're designed to be 20 minute chats, just kind of short, snappy statements of internalist guiding principles, personal promise about how that individual feels that we should measure, we should optimize, we should personalize, or even treat customers online.

Uh, and I felt very validated. And I want to talk to you now for 20 minutes or so to talk about, um, what it is that I've learned. And there are, there are, there are four things and they all relate in some way to the fact that there's a person behind the other end of the screen. And we sometimes forget that that's the case.

And we forget that's the case because of things like, uh, short term is pressure because of the need for efficiency and productivity. And AI certainly has not helped that, um, for the. The need that we are constantly chasing revenue and all that we are optimizing for what is essentially the wrong metrics.

You know, those are the reasons why we've created this aggregated homogeneic. Is that a word? I've made it up. I'm going to go for it. Homogeneic, um, series of experiences that all look and feel the same. And okay, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But when we talk about personalization, this need, this yearn for personalized experiences, and that's what we crave as humans, right, we're tribal beings of course, so we crave some kind of intimacy, we need that within our lives, that a website, an online experience, fills the antithesis.

Of that feeling and one could dare say that websites and digital experiences are anti human. Oh God, should we go down that? I mean, humans obviously code websites. We're going down a very deep, dark path here, aren't we? Humans obviously code websites, but there are people on the reverse end, end of the The screen, both as the recipient and the giver of that information.

Anyway, let, let's, let's, let's talk about that, right? Because it's, it's incredibly deep. And, um, Tebow, uh, who I think is the product director at Gusto, uh, Tebow Gusto started asking that very question when I spoke to him, he said, what makes us human, David? And he, he spoke about the fact that we may soon realize that we're, we're actually not much more than just an advanced.

Algorithm, but the difference between us and an advanced algorithm is emotion, is empathy. And the strongest type of emotion is connection. That relates exactly back to what I'm saying is that us as humans, we're tribal beings and that's what we need. We need connection.

So how do you as a brand, um, see The experience of being human through the amass of data.

And it was a particular theme that data could indeed cloud the judgment of what is the right thing to do, doing the right thing, putting yourself in the customer shoes as Cameron Goldie, head of e commerce at Grenade, uh, said is the, is, is what you're trying to do. And we spoke about customer centricity for what feels like the buzzword of the 21st century, but ultimately it's about bringing it back.

To connection, uh, Chris, the, um, e commerce director at Castor, lovely human, big runner, big, uh, big triathlon. He's got a book coming out, actually. Uh, I recommend you read it. It's a big Newcastle fan as well. Boo. Um, he spoke about, there's going to be a lot of football references throughout this cause.

Because it's me. Um, he spoke about what the best thing to do isn't necessarily what the easiest thing to do is, and those two things can get conflated, the ease of something to do and the best of the best thing to do, you know, time versus doing the right thing are often at odds or conflicts against one another.

Uh, and it's almost like as you scale and as you grow as a brand, you lose sight of that. The, the drive for productivity. Uh, so Ed, uh, Deason, uh, over at Wiggle spoke about this. He spoke about focusing on process and efficiency or the need. To focus on process and efficiency and that being a counter or conflict to customer obsession.

Okay, customer obsession takes time. It's about relationship building, okay? It's about people over process. That was his statement of intent. If you're on the phone to somebody like, Oh Sandra, how's the dog? Yeah? Are they still in hospital? That kind of conversation takes time and it's not It's not a directly attributable question to ask.

You know, Sandra isn't going to turn around and say, they, Oh, thank you for telling me that, uh, asking me my question about, uh, Mr. Biggles, my dog, he'd take all my money. You don't need to actually absolutely everything. And I don't know whether Tebow was trying to get at that point where how, how you see and relate with customers.

Isn't it through the awash of data? Isn't necessarily something that's. That's terribly attributable and it was a theme between Ed, between Thibaut, between Chris and Martin Newman, uh, as well, the founder of what used to be Practicology. He's a big Celtic fan, actually, Scottish man, lovely human being, likes to talk.

He, uh, he doubled down. On that concept of trying to try to move away from this idea of customer service towards customer care. Customer service feels like a very one way piece of communication is that I'm serving you. Um, whereas care feels more like a two way interaction. I found that interesting. He also.

Uh, started to move away from customer centricity, that 21st century buzzword towards human centricity. And it's, you know, I'm more having a more emotive experience with customers, turning customers into what he called fans. Maybe that's the Celtic fan coming. He's a brand ambassador for, for Celtic as well.

Uh, maybe it's the brand, um, the Celtic fan coming out of it. And, you know, can you see people as fans instead of. Customers, because this is about how you talk, how you engage, how you personalize with them, how you build some kind of, build some kind of relevancy. I think what Martin was talking about there in my conversation with him was.

was personalization. So I have this acronym that I use in some of my talks, which is what I call the personalization, facial, easy. And when people talk about personalization, they often speak about right timing, right message, right person, and that's all well and fine. They also often speak about recommendations or segmentation and how they talk about personalization.

But for me, The definition of personalization is all about relationship, okay, and a personalization facial is a stupid acronym for familiarity, acknowledgement, Care, intimacy, authenticity, and listening. Okay. Listen to those words again. Facial, familiarity. Okay. You want to be familiar with your customers.

You want to understand them. Acknowledgement. You want to identify that they are indeed a human being, not by asking them, are you a robot? Care, which is basically another word for intimacy, um, for emotion, but it didn't work. Within the facial acronym, intimacy, which is acting on that care, authenticity, having a level of purpose and listening.

Listening is probably something I wish my kids would do more often, but it's one of the most important things that as brands, we just sometimes fail.

To do, um, Matt Lawson, the CDO of Ripple Cycles, his statement of intent was it's all about context. And that's a hat tip towards listening. If you listen, you get context.

Look, that's what Made With Intent is designed to do. It's designed to get context. It's designed to infer signals and give meaning to those signals so you can act on them. So I think what we're all talking about here is The need, the yearn for personalization and how process can stagnate that need or acting upon that need.

Um, one of the, one of the things within, within, uh, what Martin was talking about was this idea of purpose. Like purpose being this nebulous idea, the creation of a thing, a company, a value system that's lost over a period of time. Uh, Chris at Castor spoke about it, uh, Paul Pryor, the head of Digital at Three, big United fan.

Um, he spoke about no purpose left behind. That was his statement of intent, but he, he spoke about it less so from a brand perspective and more customer perspective. So the idea that at three they're not just selling phones is a, is a much deeper connection than that, or it could be a deeper connection than that.

Customers might be buying a phone from Ukraine or from Russia, and it might be their only chance to stay in touch with a loved one. For example, it doesn't matter whether you're selling a washing machine or a kite or a Manchester United top. That's a bad example. Um, what matters is that there are people behind the phone.

The screen behind the data, uh, one of the interesting, like, how do you test that kind of mentalities was from rich chapel, the XCMO Jim shark. Uh, I don't think he's a football fan. I'm not sure, but he said that when he spoke to some retailers that only one in five. Could name their top 10 customers, online retailers.

So only one in five could name the top 10 customers. That wouldn't happen in a physical environment. In a physical store, the store owner would know their top 5 customers, top 10 customers were. So, we've all heard that phrase, how do we be more like the store? More like a, um, more, I remember when we worked with boots, we, we were.

They said that all the time, which is obviously they've got a huge online presence and a huge offline presence as well. They have physical retail stores. And the conversation in the boardroom was, well, what, what is it like in the store? How can we be more like one of our stores? And if you really dig into why they're asking that question, they're asking that question to basically ask, how can we be more human?

How can we create the familiarity, the acknowledgement, the care, the intimacy, authenticity, listening? How do we give a facial to all of our, Um, all of our customers, all of our prospects, I found that fascinating. So, yeah, so I think personal connection and doing the right thing and people over process are two things that I, I really, really learned, uh, not losing purpose as well, purpose being again, that nebulous that holds everything together.

Okay. So, so then, so then we move on to, well, what do you do with that information? How do you, how do you act on it? And what is the measurement of that thing? And I think the appreciation that it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. You know, uh, Johnny, Johnny Longden, uh, the group digital director at Boohoo said what starts off as a short termism or a measure of short termism reacting to some kind of pressure usually then becomes ingrained behavior.

And, you know, we've all seen this with mattress companies or furniture companies where there's a discount every single weekend. Um, I think that's very true. And I think that's a reflection of trade. over customer of revenue being the primary driver for something. And yes, revenue is important, but, but it's a balance.

And it's really interesting speaking to Sean Ellis, you know, the author of Hacking Grove. When I spoke to him, I was like, Oh, so Sean, how many books have you sold? He's like, Oh, close to a million books. I'm on the million book tour. And here I am. A wannabe author have been sold, I think we've sold like 4, 200 copies or something of the person in personalization.

I felt very, very small speaking to Sean, but what a lovely human being. Uh, so if you haven't read Hacking Growth, you know, he's coined, he's credited with coining that term. Uh, the, the idea, or at least the perceived idea, that, uh, growth hacking are these short termist, like, tactics, like, unsustainable things.

And, you know, what was really interesting about Sean is that when he said, when he talked about hacking growth, it couldn't have been more of the opposite. It was anything He said that anything that leads to customers being unhappy and not coming back is probably not worth doing, which is crazy. Right? So, yeah, so we measure things on revenue and, you know, you could have hacks towards getting revenue.

They feel quite manipulative as opposed to persuasive. Um, and it reminds me very much of just how Sean was credited with calling it some growth hacking. Brian Eisenberg and Jeffrey Eisenberg are quoted. Um, all credited with coining the term conversion rate optimization, you know, in all the people that I spoke with I'd say about 11 Somehow dissed conversion rate As a metric, it's, um, what, uh, oh, who said leading versus lagging metrics?

I think it was Martin Sheer and the digital director at, um, at br. I could be wrong with that. Someone somewhat. I, there's a lot of conversations. Someone mentioned the difference between leading and lagging metrics and the fact that conversion rate is a lagging metric. Uh, vet the, uh, ex digital director, John Lewis X.

Chief product officer, Kingfisher, not a football fan, uh, did actually, and maybe it was her who spoke about lagging metrics. She said that conversion rate is a lagging metric. And actually she mentioned how it's the worst kind of metric. Because customers could, in theory, find tooth and nail for where they want to get to and still convert if they are What Martin Newman would say, ah, a fan, you know, she spoke about reinventing customer metrics as her statement of intent, Janice Thomas, MD of Look Fabulous Forever.

She agreed, she said that if you only focus on conversion rate, you focus on the 2 percent and ignore the other 98%. Johnny Longdon also agreed, you know, basically said that. You can do something to increase conversion rate, but it might have a detrimental impact on the business. You can encourage people to buy, but they might spend less, you know?

So we're talking about customer lifetime value, Johnny, is that right? You're talking about longer term metrics as opposed to conversion rate, which is usually session based, isn't it? That's where it came from. It created. It was created from the Google analytics of this world. And you're talking about what expanding that it's, it's just funny how so many leaders thought that conversion rate was such a poor metric.

It leads me to thinking, why, why do they feel like it's a, such a poor metric? I feel like there's a couple of answers to this. Number one is that it's retrospective. Okay. It's already happened. You can't influence it. Number two, it's what Tom Bailey called, um, uh, uh, uh, one of our VPs. Uh, made of intent, basically called it aggregated.

So conversion rate is the definition of what the average thing works for each part of a website. It's an aggregated view of some things. An average of average of average of average of averages. And that leads to average of average of average of averages experiences, right? That's why we look at things in template orientations.

You know, an e commerce website has a, there's a homepage a basket and a checkout. By optimizing towards an aggregated metric, you aggregate everything before that metric. I found that fascinating. So why, why, why the obsession with conversion, right? I didn't really speak to anybody about this, thinking about it.

But I think because it's easy, it's accessible, it's easy to understand. It's now entrenched in a way of, you know, In a way of thinking how e commerce retailers all think, you know, it says the person that founded a conversion rate optimization consultancy, this idea that you optimize a doing word for a conversion rate, a thing, and that's all you do is wholly incorrect.

I can tell you from my experience of knowing the conversion rate optimization agencies, that is not what they do. It just so happens to be an outcome. Of what they do, but all the insights that go into that, all the, uh, analytics work, the experience creation, the, uh, the research, the validation through A B testing and experimentation, that's all ignored in favor of what is essentially this idea of optimizing a single metric, do you know where the term conversion optimization comes from?

Do you know? So it was created in 98, 1998 by Brian and Jeffrey Eisenberg, two chaps. I think they went on to create conversion sciences and they created the term partly through serendipity. It was like pre problem, converge rate optimization. The term or the category didn't, didn't exist. In fact, The only search term that remotely exists was conversion rate because people were searching for, for currency conversion rate.

So they knew that conversion rate from sales was an important metric. You know, how many people enter the site? How many people end up purchasing this, this funnel? So they were always, they were always doing optimization and also search optimization by virtue was growing as well. Conversion rate was a ranking term because of currency.

So they just combined the two. They optimized our conversion rate, which was a ranking term. And they were writing about it in similar terms for years and years and years before anyone was even talking about it. You know, they were the OGs, the GOATs. So they decided to rank for the term conversion rate optimization.

So they, they effectively coined it. They, I mean, they, they coined it wrongly. They spelled it with a Z, not an S, but whatever. We're not talking about the Queen's English. We are. You spelled it wrong chaps, but it's fine. I said, dare I say that. Brian and Jeffrey, can I say they gained the Google algorithm to not necessarily create a business, but to have ownership in something?

I think they did. And don't get me wrong, despite that, Brian always said, I remember speaking to him, Brian always said that conversion rate is a process. It's not an event. It's just that the term has stuck and it's become very popular, uh, because it's more simple and it's accessible. It's too simple. It's too accessible.

So that is the, the term, uh, the, the metric of measurement now for, um, for personalization, for experiences, for how we, uh, how we treat customers online. And for me, it's just very one way. I don't think it's a success metric at all. I think it's what, uh, someone called a lagging metric. So I feel like, uh, that was very, very evident throughout all the conversations.

And look, it just so happens that that is exactly what we're trying to do at Maid of Intent. We're moving away peop this, this metric of success away from retrospective towards predictive. Away from something that you can't do anything with to something that you can intervene in real time. We call it expected conversion XC, which yes, sounds familiar and is trademarked, but it's directly ripped off the ideologies of XG expected goals.

Uh, hence all the football quotes, right? This idea that quality does indeed be quantity. This idea that less is actually more. So I feel as though. There is a real community out there. You know, I'm going to end this with a couple of the conversations that I had with Matt Grappes, who's the ex customer director of Cigna, and Tim Ryan, the ex director of digital CESOL Cornwall.

And they both said something very similar, which is stay relevant, go back to basics, remove friction. In the way that you need to measure things, you need to measure things in more of a balanced Uh, CLV does come to mind, findability, buyability, engagement, whatever it is, it's balance. It's a marathon, it is not a sprint.

No one metric can capture the health of consumer and customer relationships. You don't need to attribute everything. But you do need to find your north star. You do need to find your big hairy goal, your BHAG. Big hairy ambitious goalies, isn't it? So anyway, that's what we're trying to do.

Uh, thank you so much for, for listening.

Uh, if you want any more information on this, come give us a shout at Maid of Intent. We love talking about this kind of stuff. We love talking about, uh, challenging the status quo of e commerce, but more importantly, what we can do to achieve that. That's fascinating for me. For me, the answer is creating a metric that's predictive, that's scaled, that you can intervene in real time.

That is expected conversion. For me, it's about listening. It's about getting context as Matt said, and that is all about intent. If you can understand customer intent, you could be more appropriate when you're more appropriate and more focused in how you sell, you create more impacts. It's a fairly simple equation.

Have a good day, everyone.

There we have it. Thank you so much for listening. Please do like, subscribe and share on whatever platform it is that you're listening to on today. This show comes from the team behind Made With Intent, the customer intent platform for retailers. If you are of course, interested in being more profitable, whilst being more personal.

And please feel free to check us out at madewithintent. ai. Thanks again for listening and joining us on our mission to change how eCommerce sees, measures, and treats their customers. I've been your host, David Mannheim. Have a great day.