Clare Muscutt talks with Anna Noakes Schulze about the future of Web3 customer experience and the Metaverse.
Want to dive even deeper? Read Anna’s blog, ‘Women in CX Guide to Customer Experience and the Metaverse’ here.
Episode #411 Show Notes:
Clare:
Welcome to the 11th episode of the fourth series of the Women in CX podcast. A series dedicated to real-talk conversations between women in Customer Experience. Listen in as we share our career stories, relive the moments that shaped us and voice our opinions as loudly as we like about all manner of CX subjects. I'll be your host, Clare Muscutt and in today's episode, I'll be talking to one of our community founding members, a seriously fabulous CX queen from Germany. Let me introduce you to today's inspiring guest. She's a digital experience strategist, a business innovator and an expert on ecosystem CX. She is a TEDx keynote and corporate event speaker, workshop facilitator, guest lecturer, board advisor, start-up mentor, awards judge, and a co-author of the international bestseller, Customer Experience 3, and in 2022 was named a Global CX Influencer to Follow by Engati. Please welcome to the show CX sister, Anna Noakes Schulze.
Clare:
Hey Anna.
Anna:
Hi Clare. How are you?
Clare:
I'm good. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Anna:
Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. I'm so excited about the conversation we're going to have today.
Clare:
Me too. Welcome to the Women in CX podcast and welcome to everybody listening along at home as well. So yeah, just to kind of position this episode, it was a bit of an extra one really because Anna is a founding member of our community, uh, brought to the attention of the community the whole concept of what's happening in technology, things like web three and the metaverse and what the impact is going to be on customer experience. So we set to debating that, uh, through our social media network on women in CX, but we thought this would be a great opportunity to bring this conversation to broadcast and share it with our listeners as well. So today's really going to be me asking Anna a lot of questions about the ins and outs of things like the metaverse and web three, and hopefully, it'll bring value to everybody, uh, who is wondering what the hell some of these terms mean just as I was when we first started this conversation over on the Women in CX platform. So, Anna, I'm going to start there then. What the hell is the metaverse?
Anna:
What the hell is a metaverse and that is exactly the question in the last year or so. There's been an explosion of interest in the metaverse. You have big tech companies that are investing vast amounts of money in it. You have marketers buzzing with excitement about it, and brands are wondering what it means for them and their customers. The trouble is it's very difficult to say what the metaverse will be because it doesn't really exist yet. Ah, what we call the metaverse is actually a convergence of technologies, behaviours, and uses that collectively drive the development of virtual worlds. And to most people, this is pretty unfamiliar territory. There was a recent report from Klaviyo saying that roughly half of consumers across all age groups have no idea what the metaverse is. And also 17% of those that are at least vaguely familiar with the metaverse mistakenly, believe that the metaverse is owned exclusively by meta previously known as Facebook.
Anna:
So, let's talk about what we know so far. The term metaverse was first mentioned by name in the 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash describes a computer-generated networked 3D world where characters can escape from their dystopian reality, but it's way more than just a game or a distraction. The characters dip in and out of the metaverse to get information, empowerment and connection, but they then can leverage in the offline world as well. So this is well worth reading. The notable venture capitalist Matthew Ball author of the metaverse primer describes the metaverse in this very, very technical way. He calls it an expansive network of persistent real-time rendered 3D worlds and simulations that support continuity of identity objects, history, payments, and entitlements, and can be experienced synchronously by an effectively unlimited number of users each with their own individual sense of presence.
Anna:
That is a mouthful, but the idea of a single unified metaverse is still pretty far away. I particularly like the simplicity of Cathy Hackl definition, where she describes the metaverse simply as a convergence of our physical and digital lives. Something that's very much in the spirit of Snow Crash. So, in this sense, the metaverse is part of an ongoing process of technology is becoming more and more integral to our lives, which only accelerated during the global pandemic. When we couldn't meet in person, we found ways to meet online in new and varied ways. So not only was there this huge consumer shift to digital for everyday activities like working and shopping and socializing but there was also increased exploration of new digital spaces like online games and other virtual environments during the pandemic online gaming environments like Roblox and Fortnite hosted concerts by popular artists that attracted tens of millions of attendees.
Anna:
Gucci has been selling virtual goods on Roblox with one of their digital bags reselling for more than $4,000, well over the retail price of the bag in real life. The Nike land store in Roblox has already attracted over 7 million visitors. So marketers have taken notice of this huge opportunity space to connect with consumers, especially gen alpha in these novel and potentially lucrative ways, hence the gold rush. But since we're not yet at the point where the metaverses has mainstream buy-in or even access, now is a great time to start imagining what the metaverses could be starting with web three.
Clare:
We're going to web three in a second, but like, I don't get that. So there's, Gen Alphas who, I don't think have credit cards, who is buying this stuff in Roblox?
Anna:
Can I let you in on a little secret?
Clare:
Yeah, please do.
Anna:
Their parents.
Clare:
Oh.
Anna:
Their parents, but kids are basically the gateway drug to the metaverse for many people. And, and there's, I'll just tell you this little story on the side that, that Cathy Hackl who's, sometimes called the godmother of the metaverse likes to tell where middle of the pandemic, she has a nine-year-old son who wants to have a birthday party, which is impossible, because you can't actually see people. And he was able to convince her not only to set up a birthday party for him on Roblox, but to buy NFTs of cool outfits that he wanted to be able to wear
Clare:
… Avatar could wear for his birthday.
Anna:
Yes.
Anna:
That's exactly. Exactly. So you can see how that means the, how, how the parent has to get involved and, and create a digital wallet and to, and to fund it in. I actually, I forget which cryptocurrency they use in Roblox, but you know, doesn't matter which one and then actually buy these, these digital goods that their child wants. And I just thought that was really interesting. And that was just kind of a sign of the social shift that we were going through at that time.
Clare:
Yeah, no, totally. And I really get the kind of pandemic when we can't actually interact and socialize with each other why that I might have become more valuable, but the concept of a digital Gucci bag for 4,000 pounds, <laugh> like, I I'm looking at buying it myself a very small Gucci bag at the moment. But there's absolutely no way that I would buy a digital version if I can't actually physically wear it, but there's something going on. Isn't it? I know I watched a program the other day on it is just on YouTube and it was about this sneaker company who make trainers <laugh> just for the metaverse, but avatars wear. And they've got like limited-edition sneakers like that mirror, the outside world. And they've made like these little digital versions of them and the prices are actually quite similar. It just literally blows my mind, how…
Anna:
It really does.
Clare:
…Value is attributable to the same degree in something that you will never actually physically touch yourself and is modelled on something from the actual real world, is that the opposite of the metaverse?
Anna:
Yes, and then, and then when you consider how, you know, NFTs like digital shoes and bags and clothing and weapons and tools and all that stuff, they, even, if you have the NFT where you basically have a, a, a title of ownership on the blockchain saying you own this thing, what is the value of it? If it's trapped on a privately held server belonging to Roblox or Fortnight or any of these, it's not like you can take your Gucci bag out of Roblox and go somewhere else with it.
Clare:
No.
Anna:
And you know, and that's a key concept of, of, of the metaverse is portability. You know, you have to be able to take your goodies to other environments. And right now that doesn't really exist.
Clare:
That is so interesting.
Anna:
Yeah.
Clare:
That's so interesting why I'll be keeping my Gucci bags in the real office for the meantime.
Clare:
So, you mentioned web three. How is the met, what is web three and how is the metaverse connected to web three?
Anna:
Well, let's just go through a short internet history recap to bring us up to the present.
Clare:
Okay.
Anna:
So web 1.0 1990 to 2003, this was the first iteration of the internet connecting us to information and it was nicknamed the worldwide web or information super highway. But it was mainly one-way communications, little interaction, brochureware websites, spray and pray marketing, push all of that stuff. It was the beginning of the information economy and it showed us what some of that potential might be. Then right around 2004 and up to 2020, we were in the web 2.0 era. And this was really characterized by the rise of social media platforms and the so-called social web, which connected us to information and people in a two-way flow. This was the beginning of the platform economy, which you've heard me talk about before. And it also led to things like user-generated content, influencer marketing, creating, and driving conversations. So it was much more interactive. Now, major problems of web 2.0 included exploitation of user data, major privacy violations by most of the soc big social media platforms, not to mention the explosion of misinformation, propaganda, conspiracy theories, et cetera, with negative mental health consequences on a wide scale.
Clare:
Yeah, I'm laughing here because, Facebook obviously now being meta, but they were the main protagonist.
Anna:
Perpetrator.
Clare:
Perpetrator, sorry, wrong word, in that whole kind of misuse of data in web two. So I just have to mention that one, there…
Anna:
The misuse of data, huge theme, and also tech companies becoming incredibly powerful and generating massive wealth for a few while entrenching inequity. So web three is basically meant to address some of these issues and give control back to the users, especially over our data. So now that brings us up to web three, which unofficially at least starts roughly 2021. So we're just at the very, very baby beginnings of this thing. And in transitioning to web three, the idea is that the internet will now connect us with communities, places, things, activities, and events, and web three is going to be the foundation of the metaverse. So the idea is that web three will be built on blockchain-enabled decentralized applications that support a token economy of user-owned, crypto assets and data, including your own data. So there's a fundamental shift at work here. Web 2.0 focus was capturing people's attention in any way possible ads, clickbait, posting you name it, but web three focus is capturing investment and loyalty rather than just attention. And that's why communities are going to be the key to this brave new world. This next evolution of the internet involves multiple converging technologies, including 5g, blockchains, crypto extended reality tools. And all of these are worth talking about in more detail.
Clare:
Gosh, they are like, I guess I'd not really, uh, understood the implication of that, how this kind of decentralization back to the end-user, uh, away from big companies is fundamentally the biggest positive shift in the technology capabilities that are now being built. I really appreciated that. And like, as you said, a lot of the misuse of how particularly data, but things like clickbait and you know, how unfriendly the web two space has been with things like cyberbullying even, and…
Anna:
Exploitative, Unfriendly.
Clare:
Exploitative. Yeah. So I'm starting to get more warmed up to some of these words and concepts. But there are a lot of big words in there. So I just wanted to check my understanding of a couple of things. What is blockchain again? What is a blockchain?
Anna:
Oh, well, should we go through all of these, these terms that I'm just.
Clare:
Oh yeah…
Clare:
Sure. Fine. Let's do them
Anna:
Do that because one of them kind of leads to the next.
Clare:
Okay.
Anna:
So, let’s go through this. Let's talk about, first of all, just in the mobile world, you probably heard a lot about 5g in the press or through your mobile service provider and what that means, 5G, It's the fifth generation of wireless communications, which started back in the days of 1G that was analogue voice. 2G digital voice and texting. 3G, basic wireless internet and low definition, video. 4G, mobile web access gaming, high definition, video, and video conferencing. And now we're coming up to the glory days of 5G and this enables much higher data rates, reduced latency, higher system capacity and numerous device connectivity. So 5G is basically just what the metaverse needs to be accessible over mobile and wireless devices.
Clare:
That's so interesting. I'm like really geeking out there because I had no idea that every time we moved up a number, it actually meant under the capability. So, thank you. That was…
Anna:
Fabulous.
Clare:
…Super interesting capability.
Anna:
It really is. And you know, I used to never really pay attention to where we were 3G, 4G, 5G, but you would notice the deficits that your device had like, there's a buffering problem with this video or whatever. And, and now I'm starting to realize that every time we move up, the capabilities of our mobile devices become so much more powerful. And that means that, you know, we, they can do more in our lives, you know, and it, and, and I think, I think that this, this, this mobile development to 5G is part of that merging of, of physical and digital that, that, that Cathy Hackl talks about. So that's part of it too. It's not just going to happen over, over, uh, you know, desktop devices or laptops. It's going to be all our devices that can connect to the internet.
Anna:
You know, I also talk about, yeah.
Anna:
Yeah. Now, now blockchain is a big, big, big, big, big topic, and I'm going to concentrate it right down to a juicy nugget for you. So, blockchain is basically key to web three and key to any kind of decentralized system. So, it sounds very, very geeky, but it's actually really fun and cool. So, so the idea with blockchain is that in contrast to centralized databases, which can be hacked, the blockchain is this kind of shared distributed immutable public ledger. It lives over potentially thousands of different systems, you know, as opposed to one, one place and it's verified via cryptography as well. So the idea is that any kind of transaction gets recorded as a block of data. So hence blockchain. So the block is securely linked to the blocks that came before it, and after it via cryptography, and this creates an irreversible chain that certifies the exact timing and sequence of the transactions.
Anna:
So each success of block is confirming the prior blocks verification, and therefore the entire blockchain from inception up to the present, it is almost impossible to tamper with the blockchain. Once the data has been entered in there, it can't be changed. That's why people talk about the blockchain being immutable. So crypto is very closely related to blockchain and basically, it is a block. Crypto basically means cryptocurrency and it's a blockchain-based digital currency that doesn't rely on governance by any central authority, such as a government or a central bank you know, and this is why cryptocurrency is part of this sort of decentralized environment around web three. And you might also hear other terms for crypto like digital tokens or coins. Now the first and most famous of the cryptocurrencies was Bitcoin.
Clare:
Bitcoin.
Anna:
It appeared in 2009, but at the moment, I think they're up to 2000 others, notably Ethereum.
Clare:
Ethereum.
Anna:
Which gave rise to hugely popular innovations like NFTs, dows and smart contracts, which we're gonna talk about as well.
Anna:
So, let's start with smart contracts. Smart contracts are basically, they can be very simple if then programs that run automatically on the blockchain when certain defined preconditions are met, they execute and that saves time and the need for intermediaries to process transactions. So for example, you could have a smart contract that is programmed to release the door code for your new apartment as soon as you've paid your security deposit. It can also be used to trigger automatic workflows and enterprise settings and this improves speed and efficiency while providing total transparency of the completed transactions. Cause the blockchain is a public ledger. Anybody can look and see what's been done. Now a Dow is a decentralized autonomous organization that is governed by smart contracts on the blockchain. And they're basically groups of people with common goals who pull their money to achieve these goals in a non-hierarchical way.
Anna:
So in a Dow, no one is authorized to spend money. They can't dig into the treasury without the group's approval. All payments have to be approved by vote before being executed by the smart contract. Members of the Dow acquire proposal rights and voting privileges when they buy the Dow's native token and decisions are made collectively by the token holders rather than the CEO or a board. So Dows allow communities to be owned by their members and incentivize them to make that Dow successful, which I think is a really interesting concept. I have an amazing Dow story for you. It's it's my absolute favourite. And that is the real-world impact of Ukraine Dow. So in March the Ukrainian president, Zelensky, legalized cryptocurrency in Ukraine to address the Delage of crypto being donated to support Ukraine's military defence and humanitarian aid. So to date, Ukraine has accepted 14 different cryptocurrencies, roughly worth a hundred million dollars.
Anna:
And much of the early support came from the Ukraine Dow, which was formed in February 2022, thanks to a founder of the famous Russian activist, punk band, pussy riot. The Ukraine Dow.
Clare:
Yes.
Clare:
The good girls.
Anna:
Pretty go girls. And the Ukraine Dow has raised millions by selling an NFT of the Ukrainian plaque, which brings us to NFTs, what are they and how did they set the world on fire? Well, NFT stands for non-fungible token, meaning a unique digital asset that can hold value like photography, art, music, videos, or even memes. And in gaming environments, of course, NFTs can be avatars, skins, clothes, tools, weapons, all kinds of stuff. But in every case, the NFT is not just that digital item. It's that digital item plus verifiable proof of ownership stored on the blockchain. Now in contrast to NFTs fungible tokens like Bitcoin and other currencies are non-unique and interchangeable.
Anna:
So each Bitcoin has the same value as every other Bitcoin. That's what makes it fungible. Whereas an NFT non fungible token has a unique value as agreed between a buyer and seller. Now last year was crazy, crazy for NFT sales and to cite one famous example, you probably heard of it. The digital artist known as Beeple sold an NFT artwork called the first 5,000 days for over 69 million at auction house Christie's in March, 2021, which puts him in the top three most valuable living artists. And another great example is the board eight yacht club, a collection of computer generated cartoon eight profile pictures what that have now generated around US 1 billion in sales and counting.
New Speaker:
Ah, now, while the value of the digital art might be debatable ownership of a board ape also confers membership in an exclusive community with access to a discord server alongside celebrity owners. And there are other perks such as, uh, free NFT drops. These can then be resold board date, merchandise, and real-world events such as parties or charity dinners. So it's, it's, it's a community and a club as well as a collection of NFTs. And what I think is really, really interesting here, you know, for all of us is that board eight yacht club has found a way to tie their NFTs, not just to these pictures, but also to real, tangible utility and privileges that their members value. And this also creates a community with a cohesive identity as well. It's just fascinating.
Anna:
Mind blown.
Clare:
Deep breath. Yeah, my, well, I suppose I hadn't appreciated that a Bitcoin was a fungible token and the NFT what non-fungible meant. So that was really educational. But is there a risk of like equity getting worse if people can't afford to take part in this metaverse and don't have access to fungible or non-fungible tokens? I don’t know, that yacht club sounded pretty cool until it was like multibillion-dollar millionaires having champagne.
Anna:
It's a millionaires club. Absolutely, and I think that's something I'm going to get to later is equity in the metaverse and, you know, different models of inclusivity as opposed to exclusivity as well.
Clare:
Yeah. Because there was a lot of controversy wasn't there about crypto entities last year. So like blockchain being immutable, is it really? What's going on?
Anna:
Well…
Clare:
The more shady stories.
Anna:
There's so many shady stories. I had to leave out so many good shady stories that I wanted to share with you, but I'm gonna cover some of the big stuff. So just the last month has been so packed with crypto controversy that I'm, I'm struggling to keep up with it. So
Clare:
I love the alliteration crypto controversy like that. Just,
Anna:
You know what that appeals to me too. I'm gonna stick with that. <laugh> crypto crash works too.
Clare:
Crypto crash.
Anna:
So just, just to highlight some of the biggest juiciest stories in this space that I think people are really gonna enjoy. The first controversy I wanna talk about is the May 2022 crypto crash, AKA crypto winter, which literally just happened. The collapse wiped out 600 billion dollars of cryptocurrency value in one week.
Clare:
Wow.
Anna:
Bitcoin and the Ethereum, cryptocurrency, there are still trading at roughly half of what their peak value was from September, 2021. And for many people, this isn't just a news story. Some 40% of crypto investors actually lost everything. So it's a real wake up call to invest carefully people please never invest more than you can afford to lose. There's also a lot of NFT volatility as well. You may have heard the story about how Twitter founder Jack Dorsey created an NFT of his first tweet.
Anna:
Just setting up my Twitter in December, 2022 and then sold it a few months later for 2.9 million well dollars. Well what's happened since then is this year the NFTs buyer has put it to auction. I believe it's on open sea and hasn't been able to attract any bids much over $14,000. So in the time that's elapsed from peak hype, when he bought this NFT, it's actually dropped an estimated 99% in value. And the bottom line here is the only thing that determines the value of an NFT is what one person is willing to pay for it. Needless to say, NFTs make for risky investments with high volatility. And then, and then there's the whole Smargas board of thefts, scams and heist. Every week, another crypto crime story breaks. And how is that even possible if the blockchain is so secure and imutable, isn't that the million dollar question?
Anna:
So the answer there is usually that these crimes involve exploiting some kind of security vulnerability, and most of the time it's off chain to be, to be fair. So Gizmoto has been documenting the 10 biggest crypto Heights of 2022. And I love that they put in quotes so far. They say that more than a billion dollars in cryptocurrency was stolen in the first four months of this year and answer that with pretty good Q1 for the criminals. Now, the biggest of these highs by far was that the online gaming platform, AXI Infiniti in March hackers used stolen private keys. These are the, the passwords needed to access digital wallets or crypto wallets to make off with 625 million in crypto tokens. And last month, another story you might have heard about hackers were able to gain access to the board API club's Instagram account, and they executed a phishing scam.
Anna:
This involved uploading a post linked to a clone version of the board APIs club, white website with an offer of free crypto tokens than anyone who authenticated and connected their digital wallet to the fake site, lost their NFTs and crypto-assets. Anything that was in their wallet and this scam netted the hackers about 3 million worth of crypto loot. Now the trouble is legally, it's nearly impossible to force a thief to return stolen crypto assets to their rightful owner because crypto you've gotta understand is a bearer instrument just like cash or bonds. And what that means is whoever has possession is presumed to be the rightful owner. So as long as the private key is correct any transaction to move, your crypto will be recognized as valid on the blockchain without any other proof of ownership. And that's why your best defence against theft is to keep your digital wallet and private keys secure and preferably offline. That's a whole subject in itself
Clare:
<laugh>In the irony, but <laugh>, you have to keep your digital offline.
Anna:
Exactly.
Clare:
Online in a matter. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah, so kind of cooling down a bit again now because the potential for some of the most positive advantages or why this is like, could be a really great thing they're starting to get on picked there aren't they, if it isn't immutable and it is…
Anna:
Or the immutability means you can't correct theft.
Clare:
Theft. Yeah.
Anna:
Or errors. Yeah. That's a really tricky point. And, and that's, that's one area where I wish I could see in the crypto community a little bit more concern about these very serious security issues because for web three and the metaverse to become part of the mainstream world, we've got to be able to, to address these, these security, uh, coal that criminals are exploiting because if these issues of risk are not addressed, I don't see how you're gonna get mainstream adoption. And, and, and I, I want to see web three in the metaverse move forward, but I want people to have reasonable security when they, they take part in it. That's why we could have, we could have a whole seminar just on, uh, software and hardware, wallets, custodial, non noncustodial wallets, cold wallets, all kinds of stuff. It it's literally a topic into itself.
Clare:
Yeah. Oh, I need a part two to this. And, but then, but then I guess it's got me thinking though that you we're programming generation alpha, who literally are addicted to Fortnite and Roblox like we're raising a whole generation of children who are plugged into the metaverse already. So
Anna:
Mm-mmhhh<affirmative> yeah.
Clare:
You know, kind of seeing like millennials and <laugh> gen Zs experiencing these problems of how we've used these technologies and that it's coming up apart, but when you've got literally a whole generation, but, but where there's a small, like you said, it's not mainstream, it's a small number of users where if we're growing a mainstream population from the ground up, like what is gonna happen in the future? Is it gonna be chaos or is it gonna be able to deliver the, the promises that something like this for the capabilities that could possibly exist? I don't know. Interesting, interesting.
Anna:
It, it is. And, you know, and I wonder about, you know, a whole generation coming up really becoming bugged down in the materialism around this entire new market of, of, of digital items, you know, and how is that going to affect how people feel about themselves, how they feel about their online identity, how they feel part of their communities or, or what, what is required for them to buy, to be part of a community. I, I, I think there's some really interesting questions and it's following so hot and heavy on the back of, of, you know, some reports recently released that showed that Instagram was incredibly harmful to especially teenage girls' self image. And so I sort of worry about how do we, how do we get, how do we get the good things out of this without all of these sort of negative contingencies?
Anna:
Because, you know, when, when back when I was in grad school and the internet was a we baby being birthed, we had this very, very I know idealistic idea, you know, information wants to be free. We didn't see. And, you know, everyone was gonna be well informed because it was gonna be so easy to access information. And we never anticipated, uh, misinformation and propaganda and conspiracies and how much social harm that would do. So, I'm not, you know, meaning to be pessimistic about web three or the metaverse, I'm just trying to.
Clare:
Yeah, <laugh>.
Anna:
Anticipate some of the things that could come down the track later that we, through human-centred design and through, you know, the right values and intentions could perhaps alleviate just by being conscious of these issues. You know,
Clare:
It's back to kind of square one and what you said right at the beginning, like none of this stuff is real, cuz it's not in real life. So whether that's Instagram images that have been airbrushed that make people like young women feel bad about their real bodies, like the metaverse is basically building an entire ecosystem where you don't have to take part in reality or physic sorry, physical reality and, to me, it made sense that it made things possible when humans couldn't be in the same spaces as each other because due to a pandemic, but it accelerated the adoption of it to some extent didn't it.
Anna:
Mm-hmm <affirmative> and it not certainly did.
Clare:
And it's not declined because people can meet in person. Actually, I think a lot of people are enjoying living these avatar-based lives, engaging in digital communities and not having to deal with the realities of some of the maybe less fun parts of life. You can be who you wanna be. Right. If you're not there, if you're not in a real world.
Anna:
Yeah. You don't have to do the laundry in the metaverse with all that mundane stuff
Clare:
That really made me laugh. So, I'm just conscious of time, for our listeners as well now. So, so I guess like let's just cut to the chase around customer experience, like obviously marketing and getting super excited about it, the latest bud buzz word, but where do you see customer experience taking a different approach? So it not being a buzzword or a flash in the pan kind of the latest, big thing, where are we going?
Anna:
Yeah. And, and I, I think, I think this is a really important question because even though CX is traditionally very related to marketing, I think the approaches are fundamentally different. So what I'm seeing right now is a lot of fizziness in the marketing world about the novelty, the metaverse and the opportunity it presents to sell more stuff because marketing, you have to realize if we're looking at it, honestly, marketing is the art of leveraging desire and persuasion to convince a customer to buy. And that means that marketing is always gonna be drawn to the excitement and opportunity of hype because it's highly effective for driving sales in the short term. Now customer experience is a little different because we optimize for the long arc that includes customer retention and advocacy, not just acquisition. So we focus on creating positive experiences for customers, as well as employees and partners, to help businesses solve problems, remove pain points that people experience and generate loyalty.
Anna:
And of course increase customer lifetime value among other things. So CX is that longer gain, but it can be harder to measure the impact of CX from a short-term financial perspective. So if you look at the example of Amazon creating value and better experiences for customers is exactly what they've done all through their celebrated history. And it's easy to forget how much vision it took to bet the farm on customer experience and to stick with it through I don't how many years of financial losses was it? I forget it was 10, 15 or 20, but it was years of financial losses. And personally, I can still remember the first time I ordered my textbooks for uni on Amazon and they came straight to my door because in the pre-Amazon days, I had to line up for hours at the campus bookstore to get my books.
Anna:
And this was a life-changing moment when Amazon came on the scene. Now the upshot of this is I don't love Amazon because of the things that I bought or the prices that I paid. I love Amazon because it made my life better. And for me, this is, this is our absolute mic drop moment for customer experience. It's not about exploiting desire or greed or human weakness. It's about continually working to understand customer needs, solve their problems and create value in ways that they appreciate and will gladly pay for, for all the right reasons. And that's what CXers will need to focus on to innovate in the metaverse.
Clare:
Interesting. I'm just waiting for somebody to start branding MX next CX and MX my metaverse experience. So yeah. So what would your top three takeaways, if you, if you could give women in CX, yeah, kind of three big things to take away from this conversation, what would they be?
Anna:
Well, first we need to play to our strengths of understanding customers, meeting where them meeting them, where they are and engaging with them through their preferred channels. So if they're in the metaverse, then we need to be there too. Second, don't be afraid to experiment with metaverse projects. Brands have to be willing to start small test and iterate and see what resonates with their customers in different environments. Third, make sure to engage with the people and Val people and places that align with your values so that the metaverse can be a place that's authentic, courageous, collaborative, and inclusive, just like us, the women in CX.
Clare:
Yeah. And I'm gonna go away and start designing my first Women in CX NFT. I think, so you can all have little digital logos but that was super interesting. I learned so much and I'm sure everybody listening along has learned ahead of a lot from this as well. It feels like we might need a follow-up article, perhaps something that we can put with some of these terms that people can go back and read. Would that be all right, Anna, for me to ask?
Anna:
Oh, I think so because we haven't even gotten to like key drivers of metaverse experiences from the social driver side and the technology driver side. There's so much more that we could talk about if we just had more time.
Clare:
Yeah. Okay. So we'll do a part two podcast. And then if we can maybe take that early part about like the definitions of the different things you gave such good descriptions. Maybe we can link to an article on Women in CX website and then it'll help people to just maybe take another little deep dive back, having heard everything that you said about customer experience to go back to the beginning and, uh, and refresh themselves on that. But I super useful, really insightful. Just thank you so much. I know we really appreciate you coming on and sharing all of this knowledge and insight with us today.
Anna:
Oh, I love talking with you about it, Claire. Really enjoyable. Thanks for having me.
Clare:
You're welcome. And thanks for everybody who listened along as well. Yeah. Keep your eye on the Women in CX website and we'll provide some me more resources there. That's it, everybody. See you soon. Bye for now.
Anna:
Bye for now. Bye.
Clare:
Thanks for listening to the Women in CX podcast with me, Clare Muscutt. If you enjoyed the show, please drop us a like, subscribe and leave a review on whichever platform you're listening or watching on. And if you want to know more about becoming a member of the world's first online community for women in Customer Experience, please check out www.womenincx.community and follow the Women in CX page on LinkedIn. Join us again next time when I’ll be talking to one of our community members from the UK about customer experience and proposition development in the context of supermarket retailing, see you all next time.
