Ivan
Hello and welcome to Customer Friendship Conversations, the show where we bring you the latest trends, tools and insights into delivering customer experience as it’s meant to be. My name is Ivan Favelevic. I’m a CX excellence manager at Dixa. It’s no secret that we at Dixa are very excited about AI and its potential to improve the CX landscape. That is why today we’re exploring how we can be bold when it comes to making decisions in AI transformations. Joining us from Copenhagen is Silje Stougaard, VP of global operations at Vivino, the world’s largest wine marketplace, with reviews straight from the community. I’ll let Silje introduce herself.
Silje
So, my name is Silje Stougaard. So, I worked in Copenhagen. We have an office here. We have one in San Francisco. We also have one in Hong Kong and several smaller offices around in Europe. I’m VP of Global Operation. It means that I have the responsibility of everything that touches the wine, I normally say that. So from negotiations are done in the wine from one winery, and then we go and pick up the wine. And then you bring it into a warehouse. From the warehouse, you stock it there, you bring it to with a carrier to a hub that brings it to the customer. To the customer. It will have questions to customer services, delivery questions and things like that. So, and that’s also in my area of expertise.
Silje
Then I have, like, enabler teams to everything that goes with the operations to make sure that we have automation, we have simplified processes and really good data to support all the operations that we have. So instead of the customer journey, I have what I used to call the wine journey. That’s my responsibility. I have a team of 19 in total. And then we have customer services that are outsourced. So there we have like 36 agents sitting and then plus management and things like that. But people that really handle tickets, and we have 36 of them covering all time zones.
Ivan
Vivino is an app where you can track, rate and purchase wine as well. A lot of user reviews. When you scan a bottle, it’ll pick up on the wine. It’ll show you a little background into the winery, and then you see user ratings, maybe a little review there as well. And if you like it that much, you can buy cases of it, right?
Silje
That’s a quick intro to it. So, yeah, we started with the scan and rate and review. We became the world’s largest wine community. We have 68 million users now.
Ivan
I’m one of them. I’ll say that. Yeah.
Silje
Thank you. So we have like 12 million active monthly users. We get around 350,000 new users a month, organic. So there’s still room for new users. So we have, like, over 290 million ratings right now and 100 million reviews that started with just the app. And then, of course, there came e-commerce. When you have such a big user base, it was obvious for us to make e-commerce out of it. So we are in 16 countries with e-commerce and now expanded to have different commercial strategies. So that’s e-commerce. We also have a premium version of the app and then advertising. So that’s instead of just scanning or just e-commerce, now we are in three different streams.
Ivan
That’s wonderful. And I love the way you break it down. It’s varied. You have multiple streams, you have growth. To your point. You’re one of those Danish unicorns, and it’s fantastic to see that growth. So in your role, you’re working primarily with the winemakers, right? It’s a very unique approach. Or is there still some customer-facing or any user-facing interaction there?
Silje
So I have the responsibilities of all customer services. So everything that goes to the customers, I also have everything that’s transporting the wine, transporting wine, and transporting other projects that are really fragile is difficult. So it demands a lot of care and also a lot of attention. I have all our help centers, all our internal systems that our customer services they are using. It’s also in my area. So we have the B2B, and it’s also with our merchants. We have, last time I checked, over 800 merchants that are selling through our platform. So they are also customers some way, because that is a communication between customers and merchants. And that communication and automating that communication has been a huge project throughout the last year.
Silje
So, yeah, a lot of communication facing transactional communications to customers, interactions with customers is also, in my field.
Ivan
It’s very unique, right? Because you have a bit of that split in the type of user you’re interacting with. Like with any support leader, you have limited resources. You might have to decide very quickly or prioritize a merchant versus a user and a type of interaction there. I’m curious, you know, when it comes to decision making, when it comes to having to make a tough choice, are your days filled with having to make choices? And is that something that you expect to come into the role, or is it pretty novel and you’re always on your feet?
Silje
Yeah, that’s a decision making, I think we are in an age now, in Vivino, where we don’t need to jump on all decisions and you don’t have to make a lot of decisions all the time because I expect my management team also to be able to make some of these decisions. And many of our overall strategies about automation and simplification makes it pretty easy to make those decisions. Everything is data-based. We are not a startup anymore. We don’t make decisions because we think so. We make decisions because it’s valid and it’s data driven and it’s good for the customers and it’s good for Vivino.
Silje
So if you have those guidelines, making decisions, it sounds, but it doesn’t need to get to me to make a decision about what are we going to prioritize because it should be obvious based on the test and the data that we have.
Ivan
That’s very true. No, and that’s great that you’re leveraging that. I think that’s a sign of, yeah, to call it a startup at this point, I don’t want to say that because it’s almost insulting because Vivino is a very established company, but right as a company at this start as a startup, a disruptor, having that data, having that focus is really fantastic. So I think all of us in the CX industry are adapting our processes and adapting our decision-making process with AI. And I think that’s been the most disruptive and radical tool that has entered not just this industry but the world in general. And we’ll see what the impact looks like.
Ivan
But I compare like an iPhone moment, right when the iPhone released before and after, you could even go further back and say the Internet to that release or that became spread before and after moment. I think AI is going to have a similar outlook into our future right now. Vivino, is there a focus or a mission to integrate with AI more? And if you have, maybe can you share a little bit into what that looks like?
Silje
I see it also like you is really disruptive. Back in years ago when people were talking about we needed a digital strategy, like that was when digital became something that we talked about. And then you said you don’t need a digital strategy because digital is just a part of your strategy. So now you don’t have like digital people that works only with digital strategies. Now you have people that just works for strategies. I think we will see the same with AI. This is not just some we will need somebody who will learn, will teach us how to use AI. We will have that as an integrated part of the way that we are working. I see the most disruptive part of AI in my field, in my role is in the customer services.
Silje
As I see it right now, everything that we have built in Vivino are built on algorithms, and that works without the – without a lot of attention on AI right now. But, for example, in customer services, the interaction with the customers and which path to follow, I think is important. Do you follow the path of, like, people saying you want a personalized communication? Are we still saying that? Do we still want a personalized communication? Because we know it’s just a robot. Before, we said that we didn’t want to talk to a chatbot, but now chatbots are actually so common that you actually want to – you want to talk with a chatbot. I want to talk to the chatbot more than I want to talk to a real person. I don’t want a call anymore. I don’t want to have to.
Silje
Voice customer services, we are turning that off within the next two months. We are an app. We interact, and the more interactions we can do with our customers that are more advanced, the better. So, like, if you contact me, what they call a one-off customer issue or a request or a feature request or something like that, and we only contact each other one time, like the first time resolutions is called in customer services, one of the lowest loyalty touch points, because you should be able, I should be able to proactively send you. If you are typing in your password wrong or you forgot your password, I should be able to see that in your behavior. I should be able to send you that and say, I see that you have problems with this. Here’s the new password.
Silje
Click on this link or something like that. So the personalized for me is not about you and me talking. It’s about being proactive in using the data. We have. We have a lot of data. And now you can hear you started me and my me talking, but we have so much data on people. I’m not saying in Vivino, because it’s rather easy to make a profile in Vivino. So we don’t have a huge bunch of data when you start. But take other industries, they have come back to insurance. We can come back to mobile phone companies. We know a lot of what you’re doing. Use that data smart. Instead of using that data to just fill up your storage, I think we owe the customers to use the data.
Silje
Like, when you go to Vivino, you see, you buy a wine, and then I scan the next wine and said match for you. But maybe we know that you are, like, in the heavy wines we would recommend, or Vivino would recommend you to try this just to go a bit out of your comfort zone. So we are telling you something that could maybe benefit you and you could maybe just experience something new instead of just following the path. And I like using data that way. Instead of just using AI to optimize and simplify, but to use it and to connect different parts of a company to give the customer a better experience.
Ivan
Vivino in some way always had an early implementation of AI, right? The fact that I could scan a bottle and it’s scanning through hundreds of thousands of labels to be like, this is in front of you. That blew me away ten years ago, right? And then as you keep adding wines to your collection, you see a little pie chart, like what do you like to drink? What are the most common reasons? And then to your point, when that recommendation comes in for something, hey, you would like, you like your riojas, okay? You should try this specific Dora Valley, like. And it’s just a little bit off, but interesting and it helps you explore. And I think you’re in some way blessed to be in such an exploratory and fun industry.
Ivan
At least for the consumer of, you’re drinking wine when it’s a celebration, it’s a good time. It’s a reason to. To explore your palette. And I think that you’re leaning into that really well with your interaction, to your point, giving that data back to the customer. So it’s fantastic that it’s top of mind in how to best implement that strategy.
Silje
There was one guy that asked me, “Why is Vivino successful?” And I said, “We actually solve a problem.” It’s an actual problem. Our founders had a problem in the supermarket looking at wines. We all. I’ve tried that when I was in my twenties looking at labels saying like, OK, this price range, this label, oh, it looks too funky or not too funky enough or not funky enough. And, and then just picking out something or drinking the same as your parents, we actually solve a problem. I think that is one of the main successes of Vivino. But I also like it when you said like for ten years ago and with the algorithm, we also came from like, just nothing. Back in the days, you took a picture like Vivino started with you.
Silje
That’s also one of the things about technology that try it and test it and then be a bit more bold in your decisions. Just try to make it live. You took a picture of a label, put it in your email. This is many years ago. So you didn’t just have your smartphone right at hand where you just did your Gmail and then everything went and then you send it to Vivino. And then we had people sitting searching the Internet for that wine label to send it back to you in an email saying, this is the wine that could take hours. It could maybe also take half a day. To be fair. I don’t know the service level on that, but that was how it started. That’s like, okay, we have an issue.
Silje
How can we get people into the app and, OK, we make a competition. If you send ten emails to me with wine labels, because then I start to get into database. But if you say, okay, nobody will do that today, it will be like, it wouldn’t happen. That wouldn’t adapt to community today. It’s just like, try to stick to also your beliefs and saying, this is actually a good idea how we get there. It’s not pretty all the time. Like it was like a teenager when we grew up and became more and more sustainable for users. And also the identity of Vivino. And so, yeah, it’s exciting to work with wine. It’s exciting.
Silje
But I think some of the things are the most exciting things is that to test and try things, because wine, let’s be honest, it’s nice to work with wine because something people like, wine and poppies, maybe that would be. You can’t be, there’s not that many people angry at wine, but the way of having that mentality of trying and say, okay, we will try to make a premium model of our app, let’s see how it works. And we will build this ship a bit while we are in the middle of a storm. But let’s just try it and see how it works. And test it, and test it and test user cases, focus groups. I think the same with AI. Turn back to the AI. It’s like we just try it. I know that we are so big right now. So if we.
Silje
68 million users, if we break something, that’s, that’s that it’s going, it’s a bigger deal. You, bigger you get. But if you don’t try it, you will not succeed and you will not have that momentum. As we still think about of a startup, we still, many people still, as you say, yeah, we know it feels like still a startup, but we are teenagers now. So I think that mentality needs to go into the company in all sorts of teams and departments and divisions to be able to succeed. Because otherwise, it’s just a safe path. There are not people doing the safe path.
Ivan
You bring up some very good pieces of advice and I think of anybody watching this wants to start an app, has a business idea. The, the main one is Vivino solves a problem, right? Maybe we don’t know this, but folks like you and me that were shopping for wine 15 years ago, and there was. You’re just looking at labels, and it’s like, I guess it looks good. And then you go home and it’s not what you want. You have to know a friend. You had to ask the guy working at the store and hope that they’re not trying to sell you the most expensive bottle. And when you found that wine store that just knew what you liked, you kept going there, right? Vivino is giving you that in your pocket in some way.
Ivan
Then the other one of you were able to solve the problem even when the technology was not there for it. The fact that we’ll just get it done, send us a picture, and we will do it for you. To your point, that seems archaic. And it’s something that we’ll tell our kids about, right? Like Netflix, mail you movies, and they’ll be like, what are you talking about? Like, that was fixing a problem. We had to. The best of your ability to make it easier than what you have. If you’re starting from zero, then any solution, the right direction, as risky as it might be as a solution. So I love the. Yeah, I love the problem-solving aspect, the get it done no matter what, and then still taking risks. To your point, don’t lose that.
Ivan
That willingness to jump in the deep end and take a risk, especially as 50 years ago, a company does not see that much, this much change in ten years. Everything’s changing, especially in technology, with AI, with all new things coming around, being willing to jump in and take these risks. I guess the bigger question here is, do you see a future where customer support does not go through humans? Or is the approach to AI a bit different than we’re seeing? And maybe we’re not seeing the full picture here.
Silje
I think it’s a really good question. I think it has a lot of different takes on it. And it’s been, like, we talked about self-driven cars for years and said, like, in 2020, we will have no, like, driver license. Like, we will kill the whole world of people getting driver license and not really killing, but like, there will be no more driver licences. When my, daughter, she’s five, when she grows up, she wouldn’t need a driver’s license because it will all be self-driven. So I think the same with AI. This is a learning curve and it’s a steep learning curve.
Silje
Like the technology is expanding like this and our understanding is just a line, right? We can’t understand. I don’t think that we have the capabilities of predicting what is going to happen because we’re looking in a more year to year view. For me, the movement from customer services, from calling, reading out numbers with like, things that we have done with technology to not just customer services, but also just services out. When you had to gas, you put gas in your car and you had a person coming out and said, oh, it’s going to be…, everything is so automated. Yeah, but I don’t need to go and buy a Coca-Cola from a kiosk because I haven’t, I have a place where I can just put my card, tap my card and then I will, it will come to me.
Silje
We don’t think about that today. That that has actually been dehumanized throughout the years. I think that process will take some time, but I, I think that what is it that we need? I know the connection. I think the connection will be a luxury and not an ask. It will be something that you do with like a restaurant car. Like that’s like the connection you will get with people around you. That was because you have a passion about it and it’s a luxury and you pay for it because let’s be honest, to know where your order is, you don’t need that. If to customer services to advise what wine to pair with the food with, our app will tell you because we have all the data. Do you need this interaction?
Silje
So I would rather spend that relation and interactions with people that I’m close to instead of in customer services. I would rather had a rabid, a really clear answer from AI. Then I can move on and get to buy the wine that I need from my friends and then I can spend our time with my friends instead of waiting to get answer. So that interaction, we are just used to having that and that’s the normality now. But the world will change with this, like it has done with all the other things that we just don’t think about actually have changed already.
Ivan
The changes that are most impactful once you don’t notice the fact that I can book a flight on my phone right now and go to Copenhagen that years ago that was very difficult and 20 years ago is impossible. Something like, yeah, what bottle of wine should I have with my steak tonight might become something that I don’t have to go to the wine shop to talk to the person and tell them what I’m cooking with. I can just put the recipe in an app and then ship the one to myself. And I think the level of convenience there and the approach AI to make life easier is very interesting. I’m curious, as a CX leader in some way, do you see AI as a tool to empower the agents?
Ivan
Or maybe I guess to rephrase the question, is the end goal to give agents AI tools so they can be super agents? Or is to use AI to take away work from the agents and make them focus on that personal interaction that you mentioned?
Silje
I think it can be both. I don’t think it’s either or. It’s to give them as much information as possible. If you look in customer service 20 years ago, like every time somebody called, you need their phone number, name, and then you have to look it into the system. Now it’s a CTI pops up everything you have there. That’s also some automations that have helped us so we get a full view of the customer. I think the personal connection with the customer when, if they need an agent, I think that’s what they should focus on. So all of the other requests. So I think it’s actually, now that I’m talking myself into it, I think that it’s actually the same that you’re asking. Because what they need to focus on should be the personal relations with the customers.
Silje
If we have anything that needs to be resolved by an agent, and I’m not saying that we will remove all the agents. I’m just saying this is a process where we sometimes forget that there’s a technology evolution right now and that we maybe just not capable of seeing what this can actually end. Like, what are the end goals of this and the solutions at the end of the finish line? We working in Vivino, we’re working like six months ahead saying, okay, what do we want? Six months ahead and then a year, two years ahead. But everything needs to be a stepping stone. So right now it is to empower the agents, remove some of these non-loyalty-creating requests that we get like, move all the noise, give the agents the power to view you when you contact us.
Silje
Instead of start to like the customers that something like yes or no, like is this. And tone of voice and everything. There’s so much help in this that can be built in, but it’s not like it’s not done tomorrow. And I think that’s some of the, that’s one of the things that we need to take into consideration that it came so fast. AI, in the public opinion, like to be public, and then it’s like, but we need also time to make sure that we’re doing it the right way. And it’s not a quick fix. It’s not just like, let’s implement AI, and then we will reduce head counts and we will make everything automate. Like, everything is automated.
Silje
You know those bus buzzwords when you are, when we’re talking about strategy and budget, then everything like, yeah, but it all comes also with some prep. It takes time and it needs to be done. You can’t build a house on a shaky foundation. So if the foundation is not correct, that’s the AI would not have the same effect as you would wish.
Ivan
So I’m curious, right? The NAI fix bad customer service.
Silje
Bad customer service is normally done because of bad processes, but AI cannot fix that. So you need to fix your basics first. AI can tell you where you have some issues with some processes, but that’s when you have implemented. And if you’re so long in your implementation of AI that you have AI to tell you about your processes, then I think you shouldn’t be having bad customer services or bad processes.
Ivan
When looking at the issues that maybe come in or the service you provide to your customers on both ends, do you draw a line of like, I do not want AI to step in here. This is a human-only space, or at the moment is a pretty. You’re testing, you’re trying, everything is new.
Silje
If the customer wants to talk to an agent, the customer should be talking to an agent. Otherwise, I don’t see any processes where we can’t use AI either as a help or just to try to automate it as much as possible. We have a deflection rate on 66%. So the 66% of everything that goes to our, like, trying to contact us is deflected by our chatbot. You can’t contact us any other way than through the chatbot, because then we get the most information we don’t have. You don’t, can’t contact us by email. You need to go through a flow that creates the right information, both for your sake, but also for the agents, to make sure that we have streamlined it and simplified it. And that makes it so much easier for the customers and also for the agents.
Ivan
That’s what I tell my customers all the time, is when you have emails, when you have phones, and people can just reach you without any level of triage. Right. It’s just you’re just opening the floodgate and come on in. I can’t call Netflix today. I don’t think they have a phone number. I can’t email Uber and be like, please fix this. They’ll send me to a chatbot. They’ll send me to another solution. So as you grow, as you disrupt, as you become a leader in the industry, part of that becomes your personal efficiency as an agent and as a support leader and funneling every request through the same path. And I think that’s a place where AI can really shine. And to your point, with solid processes, it can be applied in a very specific way in a good approach.
Ivan
So I guess looking ahead, looking at the future, if you could sum up, where do you see AI in the world of Cx? I know we touched a little bit, multiple answers here, but in a general space, ten years from now, do you think that every company is going to have some AI chatbot or AI process there for us to talk to?
Silje
For those where it makes sense, you all still have small companies where you have one receptionist answering customer services and phones and saying hello to customers that walks in. Where it makes sense to put AI, I think you should. But I’m also aware that we have an industry, sometimes in customer services, that still uses IVRs, still have like a lot of legacy of all systems and how we are used to handle customer services and being in that industry area, in customer services and customer experience for the last 20 years, I still see some non-movers. So I would hope that this can be, that AI can be so easy to implement and so plug and play, that even the smallest companies that actually need it the most sometimes can benefit from it. Because there’s different layers of benefiting from AI.
Silje
There’s like telling you, transactional emails alerting you of new movement in customer base. It’s just responding time, giving you time back, and some of the smallest companies and need that the most. So for me, it all comes down to how plug and play, implementing AI in your response, customer response and customers interactions and transaction communication can be.
Ivan
Do you think that adoption, or resistance to adoption is generational?
Silje
I think sometimes I’m in my forties and so I grew up with a mobile phone when I was a teenager. But being aware that we also have a generation in my parents’ generation that grew up without tablets, without phones, without like with cash, like, yeah, my daughter, five, doesn’t know what cash is exactly. It’s just like, that’s one money. It’s like, yeah, I don’t see that people will not adopt. I just think that we should have some respect for generations that are not used to having an extension of a mobile phone in your hand. I see companies that I don’t think that is. Again, it’s like, when we started implementing chatbots, they were not that good, the loop of chatbots.
Silje
So if you implement AI now, and if you ask people now, they say like, yeah, but it can’t really do everything that it promised. There’s a, like, sort of drop in the trust in AI or just believe in what it can do right now, because it came out as fireworks, can make you coffee, can do anything. And then, like, then people started to work and said, okay, maybe we need to be a bit cautious about it. So I think that is, I think it’s a healthy push and pull generation have. I think it’s totally fair. It also keeps us on our tiptoes about, for example, sharing data and things like that the older generation has been much more protected about. And then we have young generations just like, click accept on everything, because we’re used to sharing data.
Silje
We’re used to our data being used to personalize our shopping experience.
Ivan
I guess there’s an ethical question there. Do you always tell them it’s AI, or do you hide it from them, knowing, trusting that the bot will solve their problem, whether they believe it’s a.
Silje
Bot or not, you always tell, like, the transparency of you. And if you don’t have trust, also talking about Vivino, like, trust is our, like, secret source. If we don’t, if you don’t trust our reviews, if you don’t trust, then we have nothing. So, for me, it’s really important that you’re transparent. You don’t show off as something that you’re not. I strongly believe that if you make good technology, solid solutions that will resolve people’s problem, that resistance would not be there, because then we’re actually resolving a problem. Back again to, like, we’re resolving a problem. And if you’re doing that’s most of the time what we need. And then maybe somebody will really like to have a conversation and talk and have that relation, that’s fine, but I don’t think that is our core we contact because we have an issue.
Silje
We have a problem. We need that to be resolved. If you can resolve that quicker by looking through my data in a split of a second, instead of having somebody reading through all the cases, I would rather have that for a split of seconds than waiting ten minutes for an agent to read through my cases. The better the technology, the better the solution, the more trust.
Ivan
Have you seen any resistance in Vivino to new technology from your users? I’m guessing is a very universal product line. Right. Do you have older, younger drinkers? I’m wondering if you ran into any situation where there was resistance to new.
Silje
Solution, not to new solutions, no. I think you pretty much connect with. It’s an app and it’s technology and it’s new technology. When you download Vivino, it can mean a lot to some wines if you get a good rating or not. That’s what we really try to take really serious, that we have a big voice now in the community of wine. We take it seriously.
Ivan
The Vivino experience has always been top of the line and really disruptive and interesting. So I think the approach and thought around it already has welcomed experimentation. And old-school wine drinkers probably don’t have a video. The new school wine drinkers do and enjoy it.
Silje
They actually do. So the segment is older, I think, with a new thing, but with 68 million users, we have a bit of everything.
Ivan
Okay, we have a few minutes left. There are some quick-fire questions, which I’m going to fire off to you and then give me your gut reaction to these. So how do you provide a personalized customer experience every time?
Silje
Through data. The more the data you have and collect everything that you need for your custom agents to be able to resolve the case.
Ivan
How do you measure the success of your customer friendships?
Silje
Return monthly users? If you want to use the app, you come back. If we are successful in that, you come back. If you think that the right content that we have for you, then you come back, then you’re curious, then we can fill with additional data and additional data.
Ivan
Great. What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your customer service journey that nothing is.
Silje
Favor and try it.
Ivan
It’s been wonderful to chat. It’s been wonderful to get your thoughts on everything. AI Vivino wine customer service I think, yeah. The thought and approach to how we implement AI, this serve into this industry, especially in such a personal product like someone’s wine choice and someone’s, you know, a knight can be made or broken with a good selection, I think. And, you know, the fact that you’re always looking at to give back to the customer, use that data, use the AI to both empower your agents and empower the customers is fantastic. So, yeah, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for your insight. It’s been wonderful to talk.
Silje
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.
Ivan
Thanks for listening today’s episode of Customer Friendship Conversations. If you enjoyed the show, then make sure you’re following us on your podcast platform of choice. It means that you’ll get notified each time we release a new episode so you won’t miss out on any of the other amazing customer friendship heroes we’ll be showcasing in the coming months. Of course, a rating or review is a huge help to the show, so we always massively appreciate those as well. And if you’re interested in learning more about Customer Friendship Conversations, then head to Dixa.com to discover everything you want to know about customer experience as it’s meant to be. I’m Ivan Favelevic, and another big thank you to Silje for joining us today. Take care, y’all.