#232 Exploring Machine Learning Impact on Customer Experience with Dr. Mohamed Zaki

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to have with me from the UK, Dr.. Mohamed Zaki. He is a professor in the University of Cambridge. But, Dr. Mohamed, what I love to do, I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves and what they are up to. 

0:00:20 - Mohamed
I show Mehmet pleasure to be with you in this show. Just a quick, brief introduction about myself. As you introduced me, I'm an academic in the University of Cambridge, but also as well I'm running a research centre called Cambridge Service Alliance, which is an industrial consortium where we do a lot of research in areas like artificial intelligence, customer experience, services in general. My background I started as an informatic person and then I worked a bit in industry. Then I decided to go academia back, so I did my master in PhD in the business analytics area. She learned AI big data at that time. Then I joined Cambridge in 2013 and since my old expertise and research is around how we can use AI to design and manage customer experience, create new business models and etc. That's probably a brief background where I'm doing research. 

0:01:22 - Mehmet
Great. Thank you very much, Dr. Mohamed, for being here today. Actually, it's something I love to do blend things, a lot of things. I mix tech with business Because we're going to discuss today about the areas that you mentioned data analytics, customer experience and AI. I love to hear it from, not business perspective, but from academia perspective, because actually, from my humble experience, I know that things start at academia level and then sometimes they find use cases and take that. So let's start from machine learning and customer experience. How? Because it's something I started to think when I read your article before I reached out to you. The first thing, a question that came to my mind how does machine learning contribute to enhancing customer experience in today's landscape? Can you elaborate a little bit on this part? 

0:02:20 - Mohamed
Sure, I think they contributed two things. One, if you like, the design questions and also as well. The second one is the management question. When it comes to design question now, most of products and services digital, if you like, platforms integrating this new emerging technology like AI to enable us to provide the seamless experience to our customers. So that's probably the design part, so how we can understand our customers better in the back of this and what kind of preferences we need. So I can't involve this in the design part. And then, when I am talking about design here, it's actually how we can integrate the digital channel with the physical channel and the social elements as well. And that's a big problem with a lot of firms. They are struggling at the moment yet because sometimes you're thinking only from the digital part. So how can I make the capability of the digital work? And then I'm not integrating this role with my physical journey and also as well, my social interactions with my customers. So that's me, if you like. There is no consistent experience that the customers will be interacting with the firm, have a lot of challenges because I can work with you, take very well, but then when I go and integrate with your physical, it's not working somehow, and also as well, the social part is not working. 

A very good example let's imagine I am buying a product from the home and specific brand. So I go first of all to the online presence, the platform or the app. Then I check that product. It exists in one of the branches in close to my home, for example, or house. So the first thing I want to do is experiment and try this product, see it, etc. So I don't want to buy it straight away from online platform and when I go there I don't find the product, even though in the digital channel you will find that the product is in this kind of store. So that's the integration between, if you like, the digital and the physical is broken. So if you go now back to asking an employee inside the physical store, so that's the social interaction part right with the employee inside the organization. And if it's a matter of a scenario where the employee doesn't understand or he's not knowledgeable or she's not knowledgeable enough about what is this product is, etc. 

And that's break the relationship now between you as a customer and the brand, because the whole experience now becomes very, very bad. Right, so probably I come out from the experience saying I'm not going to visit the store, I'm not going to buy from them anymore, and hence this is where, for example, some of the brands loses customers in this kind of misalignment or not integrated channel. So that's probably the design question part, so how we make sure even we are including not only the AI, the digital components in general between, and make sure that the design is really consistent and very great experience integrated so the customer can still work with us In the management part. Really, this is where a lot of, a lot of examples where the AI could be used to help us to manage the experience better. So traditionally organization again relying on metrics is like make the motive score, overall satisfaction, customer effort score, like survey metrics is the enable us to understand customer preferences, how the service where, how the experience went and etc. And these just go and do some general statistics in our customers each person or customer happy you know 50% of, for example, not happy and how we can recover some of these Now with with a lot of these kind of new digital capabilities and integrated the game with the physical and the social. A lot of data will be generated from this platform. 

Actually, this is one of the key promises of the digital at the moment. So we are trying to engage better with our customers in a private, get closer from our customer, and we try to inject a lot of data that comes from these channels. Right, it is where you can apply the AI analytics to understand your customer preference, what they like, what they prefer, what they need, how can I customize and personalize journey based on their preferences? Right, and how can I cluster them, how can I understand who is valuable for me, who does not value for me? And this is going to enable now to use some of these capabilities like predict with analytics to predict behavior, to predict the attitude right, you know what I can offer for my, for my specific segment of customer, and things that we need personalized experience in general, right. So how can I personalize it? And hence this is a lot of capabilities now that we can use and integrate what I call an attitude of data that can be generated from a specific sources of systems, also emotional data, right. 

So that's it comes from our reviews from our communications call centers, right from CRM systems and et cetera, and then what we call it behavioral data. So that's could be, for example, our sales transactions, and that's now again going beyond. I'm just relying on one method to tell me whether my customer is really happy about the service and the journey. I'm offered to learn Now into more rigorous approach. Right, that's, I'm, can. I'm integrating different data from different systems to enable me really to use capabilities like AR to predict whether my customers will be loyal or not, right, and if they're not loyal, how to get, how to give them to become a loyal customer to me. So, by understanding, obviously, the behavior, the attitude, the quality, to compare components as well when we are expressing this individual. 

0:08:25 - Mehmet
That's great explanation, Dr. Muhammad. One question that came to my mind because you touched base at the end little bit on the metrics that they need to measure and track. Now, what is the best way to figure out what all these metrics? Because, like I know that it might depend from vertical to vertical. So, for example, the metrics in the retail vertical are different, let's say, from manufacturing. But I mean, like, what are the trades that would determine? Okay, let's focus on metric one, metric two, metric three. How do they choose these metrics? 

0:09:11 - Mohamed
I think the metrics is helpful, but I think before the metrics, we need to build a culture internally before we go to the metrics themselves. And this is where we call it how to become a customer experience-centric organization in general, regardless the sector that you are operating on. 

We saw a lot of examples where firms just focusing about product simplicity or service simplicity, they not return the same retail investment I mean when they are investing in technology and et cetera then the one that really rely on experience has a key thing right, or a key culture that enable all the organization to work around it, enable to sell experience in essence right, and the differences here is really unique here. So the one key thing is actually you need to think about the shift to the attitude. So you need to go from I'm selling a product when I'm selling a service and I'm trying to get some margins from these products and service and profitability in essence into more, into sustained gross bi-loyal customers that keep all the time come to me and actually they are become my advocate, customers that go and bring more and more customers right. So I think this is one of the key aspects that organization need to think about that shift to the attitude, shift to we as an organization not selling only a product and service. We are selling experience here to our customers. And the second part here is actually again going beyond one function. Like I have a marketing function who is responsible to, if you like, communicate my products and service ideas to my customers and also measure it, like you said, by specific methods like net promoters, pros, et cetera, into more, a become a wider perspective. Right, I'm really all of us, from the CEO to the, the typically who is interacting with our customers, all of us really into this customer-centred perspective. So that change a lot. You know how we are measuring it, how we are managing it, et cetera. 

Now, when it comes to where the metrics is and the measurements, come back to your questions, you need to think about a couple of dimensions. One is the superior performance. Every customer, when they are interacting with your firm, they are really looking for a superior performance. I'm not going to pay a money for a service, especially for a service or a product that has a lot of competition, right, so I can use this company A right to buy from and I can use company B. So, again, it's my choice here as a customer and I will choose typically the one that perform well, right, perform better, right. I think the second element here is the quality of the service and the product that you are providing, or the quality of the journey. So, if I have a seamless experience with you. I don't have any hassle when I'm interacting and engaging with your company. Probably I would prefer this. So, actually, how firms can measure quality of whatever they do over the time to the customer? So that's going to be translated into the metrics that you should focus on. 

I think that there is an element of adoration, I call it, or emotional attachment with the firm, and we saw this a lot with a lot of brands. So I don't want to put just names here, but you can see when Apple, for example, tomorrow initiate a new product out, there are people queuing outside Apple Store. So that shows emotional attachments with the brand. Design is what they are offering, what things they're doing different than any organization. You need that similar kind of customers loyalty coming to you that when you are initiating new product and service. So that emotional element and adoration about what we do is quite significant when you are managing and also designing your service to your customer. 

I think the fourth element is the purchase. So I could provide a good service and product, but if not translated into a quantification of profit, there's something wrong here, right? So customers like us, like Adoras, they don't buy from us. It's not a business metrics at all. So how you really go to the behavioral aspects are the customer rebinding from us repurchasing product and service? They come from our issuing new product and service and et cetera. Then I guess the last part is a communication. So if the customer really happy about our product and service and quality rebinding from us, how, to what extent he or she become, if you like, our advocate customers who's telling others around our product and service and convince them right as well. Sometimes they become your fan in essence and they become try to tell people about your products and how they're doing that service. So I guess this is all the key measures or key dimensions. But before you go to the dimension you need to build the processes, the capabilities, the attitude shift from on selling a product and service toward that same experience and essence. 

0:14:43 - Mehmet
Yeah, and I like the example of Apple and there are, like some other brands that they do this very well and it's, you know, the customer experience People. I think they mix it back to Mohammed with just one aspect, like it's the website or you know it's just, but I think it's the full journey right, like it's not only you know, like okay, how I do I purchase, it is, and I think there's a lot of examples of even After sales also sake a custom experience, right. So, pretty much you know, I love this example. I know you mentioned in a previous interview something related to Data maturity, I mean our digital maturity, sorry. So what is this digital maturity and how it helped in crafting a seamless custom experience, and Also, like an add on the question, if I am new to business, how I can achieve this maturity as fast as possible. 

0:15:46 - Mohamed
I Think this is comes in a question about capabilities. Are we saying so if you want to become a Customer-centric organization and digital obviously on the heart of this? Right? So All organization now have a strategy or a ways to think about how they transform the business, specifically for established firms who are Shifting from what they were doing into using digital to become enablement right to what they will offer in the future. Also, this is relevant to startups and new businesses in essence, which is, I'm thinking, mostly they are doing this well, because Sometimes they they quite fresh, they quite new and they don't have that legacy businesses that typically they have. The the back to the maturity questions that I was referring to. This is one of the key challenges was a lot of. They are Graveling is because of that. 

Integration between this digital and physical and social needs a lot of complexity here. Right, integrating the system, applying new capabilities of AI, for example. Let's shift into an. Amazon goes to, for example, right, that's a good example of digital, physical and social in one place, right? So if you go to Amazon girls as a store, you will find a lot of sensorial IOT solutions, cameras and, you know, capturing Visions and images and etc. All this on the cloud mobile apps as well. So you get in inside the Amazon using your account from others, amazon girl, you go and choose your products and the whole thing is about seamless experience. I go, I buy a products, right, I go out without queuing for a cashier or you know, or paying the money. It's actually everything will be Counted in my digital wallet and paid automatically after I go out, right? So that's an example of how complex will be a place that integrating a lot of digital capability. 

Now imagine there are not mature capabilities here from the digital and it's integrated with the physical and the social element. You will have a very hot, very Bad experience, obviously. So I let's imagine I go inside Amazon girl, I put my mobile app to get me in the barrier doesn't come, doesn't open, right, for example. Tried once, twice, third, probably I will leave right because it didn't work. So that's an example of a technology didn't work right and Something glitches happening that doesn't enable me, as a customer, to get in the store. So the whole value proposition that you are offering is gone out in the window. Another good example Is typically chatbot interactions and etc. So how many of us, right, have a lot of bad experience Was chatbot. 

So that when we are interacting in digital platform although it's quite material at the moment, this technology, but it's still not in the level that fulfill your needs, what you want from the company, and you get frustrated very quickly because you expect that companies does these things very well and when you try to interact and engage, it turns out it's opposite, which make you decide sometimes that you're not going to buy from this brand and etc. And Microsoft at some point as well. You know that TAY, you know Experience that happening become abusive in the social media. So if you have to shut it down in the second day. So even with a big tech firms, sometimes that maturity doesn't reach and they put it in the public eye of the customers To engage with an interact and if it didn't work it could really come back as a fire store more. 

I'm not gonna use that service again. I'm not gonna use that problem. So it's key, important when we are offering the digital service. It has to be material and work, because one of the key aspects that customer really come to you is about the function. Right, I need something for me and if it doesn't work, I'm not gonna interact and engage with you, so you could lose a lot of customers with that journey at some point. 

0:20:05 - Mehmet
Yeah, correct, and I've heard about stories before the chatbots became so famous, but that was with IVRs, you know, where there is a Robot that actually answers you and people were frustrated, you know, because they were rerouted again and you don't have an access to a human being to speak with. And, yeah, like it's funny stories. Now we are discussing mainly kind of the mass or the business that you know. It's like B2C businesses right now. Personally, I'm curious to know how that Compare or can be applied also to B2B businesses. And I'm asking this out of curiosity because you know, like every Company that I used to work for, like even now I do business to business, I say I want to be customer-centric, I say I want to be to give the customer experience, but you're dealing with business, so someone might ask, okay, how does that work in that space? 

0:21:10 - Mohamed
No, it's the same. So when I'm talking about the whole customer centricity approach is actually B2B and B2C, and actually B2B more easier, not easier in that sense is actually more relevant because it's based on relationship. So you have a handsome or a handsome it's like a number of customers that you are interacting and engaging with them. Some of them you have very good relationship with, so that's why you have a success manager or, equally, account manager, and some of them they are not that valuable to you, so that's why they are scattered around. They come to you from one time to another to buy a specific product or services and in general, a lot of these B2B organizations really go into that customer's simplicity as well, because it's valid. So imagine if I'm a loyal customer, that I'm paying millions here, because a B2B relationship sometimes is the volume of the transaction is quite a huge amount of money, so that's why you are trying to build that kind of great relationship with them. So imagine the world again of digital and physical and social, what that means. So let's take an example of construction example or, for example, asset heavy, for example. So that's a good B2B relationship. So one way is if you think about I have a machine and digger that will operate in an aquarium. So a lot of these kinds of asset heavy industry try to go from a traditional approach that the customer calling you right when there is a breakdown of one of these assets and ask for your help to send a technician to fix a machine, for example right, and again that's could take a visit of two to three days. You go diagnose, for example, you need the right tools. You can back again, you need the right part as well to fit it in and etc. Right, so that's again part of the journey, part of the experience. Now you want to employ the digital. Now, right, so you can think about ways of which is existing to moment, obviously. So you have predicted mentors, for example. Right so you have some assets, sensors inside these assets which give you an indication when you know these machines could fail. So now become a proactive approach. Right, so I can tell my customers. Right, you don't need to react, to work in the active mode and call me when the machine gonna fail. I can write straight away from my operation center, identify the machine that will have a problem and automatically I will send the right part, the, the, the technician that can fix machines and etc. So that's again, if you think about the digital physical here become changing, because I'm moving from a traditional social interaction with the customer into more integration of the digital and the physical, because you're still operating in a workshop or a site, but also as well you're still relying on your technicians to go and fix the machine. So there is that human to human interaction with the customer. Now think ahead a little bit. Hopefully in the future we'll have a digital twin of this asset right? 

So this is a lot of discussion at the moment, specifically in these sectors and applying, you know, capabilities like digital twin to automatically at some point autonomously fix some of the errors and the machine itself without relying on the human element as well. 

So you don't send the technician device to to close, to close that loop and make it faster in terms of fix machine automatically. So again, now you are relying your resources over the time to go more into the autonomous solution autonomous, you know digital twin capabilities and that's again to keep your relationship with your customer better. Offer new services, because again it's relying on the experience. Offer new offers here that could actually build the data driven business model opportunity with your customers, which is, can move again from a traditional contracts that you're having with your customer here into sometimes it's a platform or SaaS services. So you're shifting again your business model opportunity, relying on the experience you're writing on the digital to offer the right solution for your customer. So, to summarize, it's actually for B2B. In some instances it's actually more important because it build that kind of relation more and more with your customers and avoid them to shift to another vendor. 

0:25:59 - Mehmet
In that sense, Great explanation again here Now. You mentioned something a few moments ago regarding because, of course, when we decide to be customer centric and enhance the customer experience, we need, you said, to also have the culture right. So now, in a traditional business, I know that a lot of these things. Currently they are hiring chief digital officers sometimes, but who is really the one who should be lobbying and convincing the board that guys, we need to be, as you said, data driven, we need to be customer centric. So, first, whose responsibility if there is no chief digital officer? Second, from your experience, what advice you can give them? Let's say so, what are the pitch that they need to use to convince the board to go and actually become a customer centric, data driven company? 

0:27:08 - Mohamed
I think there is a lot of statistics. So you're right. So there is a question about the sponsorship and leadership inside the organization. My view in this again if you really keen to become a customer centric organization because this is we are living in experience economy so if the board doesn't believe that we are in this kind of economy at the moment, there will be a problem and actually the millennium, the next generation of employees, the next generation of customers, are really opting in this kind of phenomenon. Right, they are more into this and they can switch easily from one brand to another. And actually this is the danger of this and actually customers really need more and more. 

There is a lot of, if you like, market research statistics. Comes out of it very significantly that consumers needs care about their businesses. The less speed, convenience, consistent experience. Like I said, if they go to a website and they found it quite not in a good shape or dodgy or wherever, they wouldn't go and actually interact with that digital platform at all. So come back to your question all these kinds of statistics. It has to convince the board. 

There is has to be initiatives inside the organizations to work that shift and attitude and et cetera. Who should responsible in this. That's a context question, but more importantly, it needs like a refreshing of sponsorship. You need to give organization, or whoever leading this, the agility and the responsibility to take action how to build programs internally to do this kind of integration that we talked about and et cetera. Now it could be under the CEO kind of initiative, because it has to be visionary enough to explain to the whole organization strategically why we are shifting into more and consume a customer centered organization, and that's could be translated into capabilities that they have, but also methods, but also as well a way and process internally, because you still have the delivery part which has come from our employees and our frontline that were integrated with our customers. It could be your really give this to your chief marketing officer or you could actually at point achieve experience officer. There are organization at the moment they are really giving this to a specific person to think with the digital officer or the data officer, if you like, how we can build an alignments between our digital capabilities and the right journey that we want to offer to our customers. That you will ask to understand it better. 

So to answer your question is I think you have two ways here. One is the top down and it has to be sponsored somehow by your chief executive officer and, to be honest, the convincing part is actually coming from when you are really build business cases, engaging with your customers and you have a profitability comes all the times from your annoy, your customers. It will be a really easy pitch to your board to say we need more to build these initiatives and capabilities. So, going beyond the game that traditional metrics says, that our customers say 80% are happy or not happy, going deeper into their behavior and build personalizing spirit Again, if you look the digital born firms, that's what all the offer is about. 

So think about Netflix. It's about personalizing movies to specific segment culture, country right, they are really offer about this and that's all the business. Mobile is around is Spotify right, and et cetera. So that's could be translated as well to some of the established third context start of context as well, and how you build these offers based on the experience with the beat translated into sustainable growth of loyal customers over the time. And if you show these statistics and these return of investments from some of the successful initiative, it will really a good pitch to your customers. 

0:31:47 - Mehmet
Yeah to you, yeah, great, and the spot on. I would say again now you mentioned something about digital twin. So, and I'm not asking about digital twin, this is certainly here, but what are other emerging technologies you are seeing having or being able to play a role, maybe now or in the future, to enhance the customer experience? 

0:32:15 - Mohamed
I think there is a huge shift now into this autonomous AI solutions. In general, that's could be a combination of new emerging technologies, not one technology per se, and I would say, in some context and some businesses, not the one technology could be the case. You can have the cloud, obviously combined by the AI capability and AI. You could obviously include the generative AI. At the moment, right, quantum computing is well so, where you have that huge computing power and that's can help in terms of driving these initiatives, like autonomous cars in the future. We're starting to see some example of this at the hour, if you like, economy at the moment, like there's a lot of experimentations about these autonomous taxes, autonomous vehicles and really, and that's all equipped by this number of technologies that we're seeing how to put them together and build that stack together, if you like, to enable that seamless experience to happen. But again, digital is not the or new emerging is obviously a key component, but the more important how you integrate it with the whole physical learning and social learning, like I'm saying all the time, and because if it's only that digital part, sometimes it becomes silenced and there is a lot of breaking experience, if you like, and these interaction, engagement is a lot of thinking, a lot of new methods to integrate the new ways of designing it, to make sure that these experience are seamless, and sometimes it's reached that point what we call sometimes customer delight. So if you want to think about how to go extra mile with your customers, so this is how you think about delight of your customers in some ways to enable that loyalty to increase and to enable you to use all this time. So, yeah, so it's a combination of these new emerging technology. Obviously there are technologies not only in the tech, but there are other technologies contextual. So thinking about the car, for example, kind of context, or to what it in general, you need to think about battery, for example, at the moment. Right, so how you combine the AI with different physical, if you like, technologies that will integrate in a specific context, and we'll see this more and more and more. 

And this is where I would say a lot of established frameworks struggling, because sometimes they the pace of these technologies is quite high and you build a strategy about using a specific technologies to enable you to offer and build the business cases internally and offer things to your customers. Then all of a sudden, a new emerging technology comes out, then it's top you right About doing thing. So this is the, if you like. One of the key challenges is that we are facing industrial transformation in general because of the pace of the technology. Volatility Also is when you don't know your competitor. In some aspects you can find some small startups comes from nowhere you know competing with your sector. Who is this company right? And again that pace is actually put. A lot of pressure and a lot of executives and a lot of established firm in general. 

0:35:54 - Mehmet
Yeah, now to your point, Doctor, like how fast? Because back in the days and you know I've had the chance to work with you know, within the academic, let's say, society for quite some time. So at that time you know, I used to hear, you know, whenever we do something on the academic level whether it's a research center or, you know, maybe it's like writing papers and so on it's used to take long time until it reach out and get the business case, how things have changed now and how fast actually, like from the work, for example, you're doing currently within your research center, how fast you know things are going from labs, let's say, to be a full-fledged, you know, use case that we can see and interact with nowadays. 

0:36:47 - Mohamed
I think it's a very good question. So typically there is a pace between R&D labs and firms and, in general, university labs as well, and what they do, and I think it's complementary. That's my straight answer. So typically organizations that we are dealing with, they have their own R&D activity. They do. They look as well to what kind of new technologies they should explore and experiments and try to do all the approach of design thinking and try to get customers involved and offer services. 

But I guess the way I'm seeing the labs in academia it's more looking ahead, right. It's not about your traditional solving current problems that you're having with your customers. It's something should be looking at the next two and three years, right, and that's to give time for us as a researcher to think differently and think about different approaches, different methods, different frameworks, different tools. That can help to shed some light about new thinking, new models etc. By the time it comes. It helps the firms to get their thinking about that kind of concept, that framework and how they are to be applying. So this is where I'm seeing the complementary approach. So R&D labs in general try to think about current problems, key challenges that the firm have and how the experiment is For us. We are thinking more about research questions that can sink ahead a little bit in two, three years at times. What that means and sometimes this is complement these two approaches. That is happening and that's what we're saying. Some of our industrial collaborators like to come into our events and engaging with our researchers because they think it's quite going to be beneficial, give them new learning, new ways of thinking, new dimensions, that they should think about it when it comes to offering these services or tools and framework to their organization. So both of them we need because really the landscape of challenges is really complex and we have our role to play as an academic and obviously industry have a role to play and by complementing each other and coming in, it's changing these knowledge and information. What do you do and can learn from them? And obviously we offer as well some learning and they can learn from us and we need more of these dissemination challenges. 

Now, coming back to the time frame of publication question about term frame of publication goes out and dissemination we break down these things into different things. So there is what we call an academic outcome and the academic outcome is more sometimes in some publication. That's the norm. It takes times for rigorous review. Some of your peer review academics has to look about your work, try to criticize it and you have to defend it until it's become agreed that this is a novel way of thinking about things. So it takes it's own time. 

But in between this journey you do a lot of things to enable the message to go out. So some of them for example the show that we have with you now you know, sometimes you try to use some content generation like a small brief blog activity. We do industrial events as well, when some of these kind of new ideas we tested with them. We try to take some feedback about the approach that we took, the finding that came out from the research and that can be incorporated to help us to put this publication to an end, the practical kind of output as well, so we can put this into things like more practitioner magazines, right, so like our business review, mit, etc. So in general, between the journey the academic outcome could be out live in a journal etc. Which is sometimes in some journals takes time and you read these downs into conferences, events, workshops with people and also as well some of the practical outlets as well that help to get the message out there until the final publication happens. 

0:41:31 - Mehmet
Great. Thank you very much for sharing all these insights. One question I think I missed and this will be my final question for today. I think we should have discussed this before, but that's fine, because we talked a lot about data and we talked about utilizing this, and you gave the example from Netflix and Spotify about giving the experience and you need the data to give this. So maybe it's a traditional question, but I love to hear different answers From someone like yourself because you are in the academia. 

So when we deal with data, we need and I'm asking this for my audience, who are mainly in the startup space and co-founders, technical co-founders. I think there is a thin line between collecting the data and then being compliant, and about protecting this data First from theft, breach and even encryption, like this data can go like be hit by a ransomware or something like this. So what do you advise fellow co-founders when it comes? Okay, they need to collect data, but how they should deal with these? Let's call them challenges, let's call them pitfalls maybe it's like running on fire pits as well so what you can tell us on this challenge? 

0:42:59 - Mohamed
Of course. So I think this is the first question how we can collect data. So, especially for startups sometimes established firms they actually have the luxury that they have access to a lot of data internally. What types of data? That's probably the first question. 

So we have classified this in a very simplistic way. One is internal data. So TU, as a startup or a co-founder, have internal data that came from previous experience and etc. That you can rely on to enable to inject this into your products or AI products to enable you to come this to a life. Or you have an external data that you're relying on. We saw a lot of the startup that relying on social media I mean chat, gbt, for example, the recent breakthrough for generative AI, the whole experience, the whole model or large language model, is just relying on the external internet, basically so relying on the internet data. They enable them really to train these models, they enable them to become more intelligent, and this is a way that now people interact with these kind of products in general. So the more we saw a lot of examples from startups in general relying on these external data unless you have access to companies and customers who are willing to collaborate with you to give you access to this data and to enable you to do things with it and you offer new value proposition to this. So this is what we call a customer data in general, and it is a lot of startups operating, some of them operating in that space. So they try to pilot with customers and they want to prove that they have a new capability, new models to pilot, for example. So the customer agree to give them the data. 

Now come back to the question how can I use this data in a transparent, in an ethical way and also as one secure way? Right, right, there is a lot of ways to think about this. So, probably at the first start, typically established firm, when they provide you the data, they will operate in non-disclosure agreements. So this is one of the key things that they will start with you and integrate with you, and you need to make sure that, obviously, all the things that you comply with is you are really not in a situation where you have a problem later on. So, like you said, theft or data has been breaches and et cetera. There is also relying on some cloud infrastructure established cloud infrastructure like Amazon and AWS and et cetera. They follow some protocols and some processes where they try to make sure the data is secure, servers the data in a place that you actually have some compliance aspects, and you should really go with the one that your customer is happy with right, or the customer that all the data is really integrated with. 

Now, technology in general has this kind of problems all the time, so you will find that a hacker or something that they could try to steal these kinds of data for ransom and et cetera and these kind of things. This is why you have to not really get excited as a startup in general that you are really captured some data from your customer. You need to put some protocols how to save the data in a secure place, how the data could be, really avoid any problems and issues, privacy protocols as well. Sometimes, if you're dealing with customer data or the customer customer data, you need to have these kind of frameworks and tools, gdpr issues and et cetera. 

Where are you operating in general and this is really key, important things to make the customer of this startup or this firm trust the firm over the time that they put the right protocol, the right guidelines, the right processes to avoid any issues that are happening in the future. But that's one of the kind of key advises and I found a lot of co-founders get excited about getting the data and now let's apply some of our capabilities on the data. But they put the data in servers where it's not secure, for example, or machines are not secure. It's exchanging these data as well, so it has to be a protocol where you can share and exchange and secure this data, applying in the right way and there is frameworks and tools and digital platforms can help you to enable you to do so. It might cost a bit money, but it will build that trust and great relationship with your customer or whoever give you access to that. 

0:48:09 - Mehmet
Yeah, 100%, and this is why I always repeat to founders like you need to take care of that, because you are dealing with something that actually you don't see it immediately as tangible money, but actually this is your, this is your wealth, because data is the new wealth. Dr Prabhat, really I enjoyed the chat with you today. Was there anything that you wished I have touched up on too? Is there anything that you want to add? Maybe? 

0:48:37 - Mohamed
add Not at all. I think we cover a lot of a lot of items, a lot of issues and of topics and I'm really it was a pleasure to be with you on this show. I really enjoyed that discussions and hopefully it's helpful and useful for a lot of people who are watching me show. 

0:48:52 - Mehmet
Great. Thank you very much and really I appreciate you know you have a very busy schedule and you have been generous with the time also as well. So thank you very much, and this is how I usually add my episodes for the audience. I hope you enjoyed this episode Like I tried to do this time something different, having someone from the academia to tell us about what's happening in the customer experience, digital transformation and even data security we touched on at the end. So thank you for the feedback that you are always sending. I really appreciate that. Thank you very much for all the recommendations that you also are writing to me and, as usual, you know, if you also are interested to be a guest on the show, don't hesitate. Reach out to me and we will can arrange for that, no issues at all, and don't forget to tune in to a new episode very soon. Thank you very much and bye, bye. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page