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2 episodes with Digital Transformation Agency
2 episodes with Digital Transformation Agency
2 episodes with Digital Transformation Agency
3 episodes with Digital Transformation Agency
In this Greatest Hits episode, Lauren DeSouza speaks with customer experience mastermind Howard Tiersky, CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency. They discuss why you should put yourself in the customer's shoes, why companies need to be more customer-centric, and what exactly the Love Formula for customer retention is!
Marketing Leadership Podcast: Strategies From Wise D2C & B2B Marketers
In this episode, Dots Oyebolu sits down with Howard Tiersky, the dynamic CEO at FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency.As digital transformation continues to shape the business landscape, Howard offers insights from years at the helm of his digital transformation agency. He takes a deep dive into correlation and causation in the digital sphere, the importance of repeatability, and how to discern the “why” from the “what” using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research.The duo also delves into the realm of change management, especially in the context of marketing and digital experiences. Howard's recall of historical instances, particularly the missteps of Blockbuster, offers a fascinating perspective on the pivotal moments in technology history.Highlights include:The innate human tendency to correlate events, and why discerning causation from correlation is crucial.The role of repeatability in understanding the correlation-causation matrix.How to effectively combine qualitative research with quantitative data to understand customer behavior.Emphasizing empathy in stakeholder engagement for change management.Learning from historical mistakes: The Blockbuster saga.Resources Mentioned:FROM, the digital transformation agencyWinning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance - Howard Tiersky's book available on Amazon, iBooks and more.Winning Digital Customers website, where listeners can download the first chapter of Howard's book for free.Insightful Links:https://digitalmaturitybenchmark.withgoogle.com/en/advertisers/https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/customer/what-is-digital-cx/Thanks for listening to the Marketing Leadership podcast, brought to you by Dots Loves Marketing. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review to help get the word out about the show. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation.#PodcastSEO #PerformanceMarketing #PodcastAds #MarketingStrategy #MarketingIntelligence #PaidMedia
Transitioning Australia into a globally leading 21st Century economy can only be achieved through investment into the digital age. Chris Fechner shares the three transformation drivers at the helm of the next frontier of government innovation. Chris Fechner, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Transformation Agency. For more great insights head to www.PublicSectorNetwork.co
Lauren is joined by Howard Tiersky, CEO of FROM, the Digital Transformation Agency. In the episode, Lauren and Howard discuss why customer behavior drives the majority of revenue and growth for a company, why many of the most valuable companies are known for providing a great customer experience, and the love formula.
Howard Tiersky - CEO, FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency [Digital Transformation]ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my bi-monthly newsletterFind Press 1 For Nick on YouTubeFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedInLISTENER SUPPORTPurchase Nick's books: Reasons NOT to Focus on Employee Experience: A Comprehensive GuideApparel: https://www.teepublic.com/user/press-1-for-nick Support this show through Buy Me A CoffeeBOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests' book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/ BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/
Howard Tiersky is the author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book, Winning Digital Customers, as well as the Founder and CEO of Innovation Loft and FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency. As a Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencer, Howard helps executives at large brands transform their customer experience to win in today's digital world. One of the biggest mistakes a business can make is thinking they know their customers without doing much research on them. Listen in as Howard explains why you need to do rapid customer research, how to research your customers during the covid-19 pandemic, and how to turn your research into actionable insights that will help your business grow. During this interview, we discuss: 2:59 – About Howard's book: Winning Digital Customers 4:59 – Launching FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency + Their primary clients 8:00 – Howard's business growth 10:06 – Why do rapid customer research? 13:45 – A simple framework for how to do rapid customer research 22:27 – Making customer research actionable 28:43 – Expert advice on researching customers 30:07 – Howard's favorite growth tool 30:58 – His most recommended books 32:00 – How to connect with Howard and get a copy of his book Plus, a whole lot more! Resources: Winning Digital Customers by Howard Tiersky Digital Darwinism by Tom Goodwin Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Howard's LinkedIn Howard's Twitter Howard's Facebook Visit his website ————————- If you enjoyed this episode, please RATE / REVIEW and SUBSCRIBE to ensure you never miss an episode. Connect with Dennis Brown AskDennisBrown.com LinkedIn Twitter Instagram [Free Giveaways]
Achieving Customer LoveHoward is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance which was recently listed by Forbes as “One of the ten most important business books of 2021.”Howard was named by IDG as “One of The Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today,” and by Enterprise Management 360° as “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.”As an entrepreneur, Howard has launched two successful companies that help large brands transform to thrive in the digital age: FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, and Innovation Loft. Among his dozens of Fortune 1000 clients are Verizon, NBC, Universal Studios, JPMC, Morgan Stanley, the NBA, Visa, and digital leaders like Facebook, Spotify, and Amazon.Prior to founding his own companies, Howard spent 18 years with Ernst & Young Consulting which then became part of Capgemini, one of the world's leading global consulting firms, where he helped launch their digital practice.Howard speaks regularly at major industry conferences and is proud to have been on the faculty of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, his alma mater. He is a frequent contributor to CIO Magazine.BIGGEST TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:Why achieving customer love is the single most important criteria for business successWhat is the formula for achieving customer loveTransformation process brands can use to improve their fulfillment of the love formulaDownload the first chapter of The Wall Street Journal Bestseller Winning Digital Customers HEREWORK WITH MECOACHES, CONSULTANTS, ENTREPRENEURS & BUSINESS OWNERS if you are ready to step into your power, do what you love, and make your dream business flourish◉ Book a free call with me:☎ http://bit.ly/StrategySessionWithCatherineDownload LinkedIn Decoded eBook: https://www.lhmacademia.com/Visit https://linktr.ee/catherinebroy for more
Howard is an inspiring and passionate speaker, the Founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, innovation consultant, and serial entrepreneur. IDG named him one of the “10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today”, and Enterprise Management 360 named Howard “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.” In this episode we talk about Winning Digital Customers, the title of Howards Wall Street Journal best Seller. Topics: The 5 step roadmap to thrive in the digital world Customer journey mapping, shifiting attention to outcomes Optimising for the short term Finding your innovation hero, the champion of change Howards linked in - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiersky/ Howards company website - https://www.from.digital/ Howards book, Winning Digital Customers - https://www.amazon.co.uk/
Work with Purpose: A podcast about the Australian Public Service.
The new federal government has made the performance of the Australian Public Service a priority. A key part of this is the capacity of public servants to acquire and manage data and to effectively identify and adopt new digital technology. To deliver on those improvements, it is integral for those in digital and data to work together. This has been evident over the last couple of years, to deliver COVID-19 vaccine statuses and case numbers to the public in a timely manner.In this episode, we are joined by National Data Commissioner, Gayle Milnes and Chief Executive Officer at the Digital Transformation Agency, Chris Fechner. Listen as they discuss how they work to increase the use and availability of Australian Government Data.Discussed in this episode:· How the DATA scheme works.· The role of data sharing across government in the COVID-19 pandemic.· Digital transformation in the Australian government. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
We could call it customer experience. Or we could call it love. How should our customer-centricity change when we want to win digital customers? In this episode, I interview Howard Tiersky , CEO at FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and author of Winning Digital Customers , about emphasizing customer experience during digital transformation. Howard and I also talked about: What the three key elements of customer experience are Why you need an ambitious vision for digital transformation How to love your customers — and earn their love What the role of values are in digital branding How to temper the pace of change with customer-centricity Check out these resources we mentioned: Howard Tiersky on LinkedIn Winning Digital Customers FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency Tony Robbins Bulk Reef Supply Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Google Play or Google Podcasts , and find more episodes on our blog.
Most businesses today need dramatic digital transformation in order to continue to be successful. They may have adapted to e-commerce, but they aren't truly digitally driven. Howard Tiersky, CEO at FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, joins the show to share lessons from his latest book, Winning Digital Customers, about overcoming enterprise resistance to digital transformation. Join us as we discuss: What went awry with Toys“R”Us The 3 stages of digital evolution Tips for overcoming disruption caused by transformation Check out these resources we mentioned: Winning Digital Customers by Howard Tiersky What the Bible Teaches About Digital Transformation You can find this interview and many more by subscribing to Banking on Digital Growth on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or here. Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for Banking on Digital Growth in your favorite podcast player.
In Episoden 54 erklärt uns Soziotechnologe Jürgen Geuter aka "tante", wie das Internet aktuell weitergedacht wird.Zunächst widmen wir uns den technischen Grundlagen: Wovon sprechen wir hier eigentlich? Wir betrachten zugrundeliegende Prinzipien wie Dezentralität, Transparenz und Eigentum und deren technische Übersetzungsversuche durch Blockchain, Cryptos, NFTs, IPFS, DAOs und Smart Contracts. Wer verstehen möchte, was diese Dinge sind und wie sie zusammenhängen – hier seid ihr richtig!Web3 ist ein Versuch, durch die digitale Sphäre unsere politische Landschaft neu zu organisieren. Wir widmen uns den ideologischen Einflüssen, dekonstruieren die darin enthaltenen Konzepte von Macht, Wert und Recht in dieser schönen Neuen Welt und betrachten die Akteure, die das Web3 treiben – oder mitgerissen werden.Die Folgen in einem Satz: Human erkennt die Probleme, die das Web3 zu lösen versucht als solche an, lehnt aber die Lösung ab; tante erklärt, dass das Web3 als Projektionsfläche für unterschiedlichste Dinge dient, da es (noch) so diffus ist; und Mary-Jane will verstehen, warum die Verlockung mitzumachen für viele so groß zu sein scheint.Shownotes:tante.cc, Blog von tanteWeb3: Im vollen Galopp vor die Wand, Kommentar von tante auf HeiseThe Line Goes Up, Video von Dan Olsen/Folding Ideas: Blockchain Overview: Australian Government Guide, Digital Transformation Agency des Australian GovernmentThe Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism, Buch von David Golumbia: A Guide to DeSci, the Latest Web3 Movement, a16z NewsletterThe encrypted threat: Bitcoin's social cost and regulatory responses, Ulrich Bindseil, Patrick Papsdorf, Jürgen Schaaf, European Central BankComputer Security 161 Cryptocurrency Lecture, Nicholas Weaver (Zeitstempel zu den Praktiken der VCs)Gamestar Podcast: CryptogamingGamestar Podcast: Metaverse
On this week's episode of Product Love, I sat down with Howard Tiersky, the CEO of FROM, the digital transformation agency. He helps companies win with today's customers who reserve their loyalty for brands that deliver elegant and convenient digitally-powered experiences. Before that, he was the Vice President of Media & Entertainment at Capgemini. This episode, we talk about mapping out the customer journey, and the five steps to digital transformation.
Attracting digital customers is critical to the success of so many businesses these days, and those operating in payments or fintech are no exception. On this episode, we dive into the keys to winning digital customers with the help of Howard Tiersky, CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency. Howard is also the author of "Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance" and had many insights to share. Read show notes and more: https://www.soarpay.com/2022/01/from/
Howard Tiersky, CEO and Founder of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency has been working on big brands' digital strategies before they were even on the internet. Over the past 30 years, Howard has become an expert in digital transformation and launched his own business 15 years ago, which now employs about 100 people. Howard shares his story about the company culture and the critical role the leadership team plays in setting the tone for the organization.FROM is solely focused on (humbly) helping their clients drive customer behavior. If you can get your customers to do what you want them to do (customer experience), you're going to have a great business. Howard talks through the concept of how experience is what drives thoughts and feelings, and thoughts and feelings are what drive customer behavior (i.e., purchasing your product).Grab your notebook and pen before you listen into this episode that Betsy and Tony are raving about.
Howard Tiersky is a serial entrepreneur and author of the Wall Street bestseller Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. Since 2007, he has served as CEO of the management consulting firm FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency. In this episode, Howard dissects that all-too-common buzzword, “digital transformation”, explaining it via the evolution of nearly every aspect of our lives since 2010, from commerce, banking, and transportation, all the way to dating, fitness, and career. “It's hard to find any domain in our lives that hasn't been significantly shifted because of these smartphones in our pockets and other digital touchpoints.” says Howard. Therefore, businesses who don't adapt fast enough to these ever-shifting domains will be left behind. Listen in as Howard dives into the antidote to irrelevance describing it as the right way to go about digital transformation within your business by identifying your customers' pain points in order to craft the appropriate modern solutions for them. He goes on to speak about best practices for linking digital strategy to customer experience. At the same time, he provides the caveat that companies should be careful not to prioritize all things digital at the expense of every other facet of doing business with human beings. Finally, Howard goes into the principles he writes about in his previous book, Impactful Online Meetings. This episode is now on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen via the podcast player embedded above. Make sure to subscribe to “How That Happened” to receive our latest episodes, learn more about our guests, and collect resources on how to better run your business.
Summary: Thanks for joining us for another Startup Junkie episode! This week we welcome special guest Howard Tiersky of FROM, a Digital Transformation Agency, onto our podcast! We are also joined by co-hosts Caleb Talley and Davis Mcentire, who were both honored and excited to discuss the digital transformation age with Tiersky. Tune in now! Shownotes: (1:00) Introducing Howard Tiersky of FROM (4:56) The Evolution of Brands Needing an Online Presence (7:30) The Process of Evaluating Your Digital Marketing (10:44) Difference Between Art and Business (12:04) Addressing Website Problems 101 (18:42) The Journey Into Public Speaking (22:49) What Does Winning Look Like? (26:56) From the Dot Com Days to Today (31:28) Three Ways to Make Digital Customers LOVE Your Brand (32:52) Advice to the Past Self (34:56) Closing Remarks Links: Davis McEntire Caleb Talley Howard Tiersky FROM Quotes: "You think you've got a great website because it's pretty, but here's a video of people sitting down trying to use it, and they're trying to solve particular problems. They have a decision process they're going through and you are not meeting their needs." (8:23) - Howard Tiersky "Whether it's a website or an app or any kind of touch point with the customer, I think the first thing you want to ask is 'What's our definition of success?'" (12:33) - Howard Tiersky "The three things that make brands that are really loved is one, meeting customer's needs, two, occasionally doing something extra that delights the customer, and the third is to stand for something that the customer really cares about." (31:34) - Howard Tiersky startupjunkie.org
I got a chance to speak with Howard Tiersky. Howard is CEO and Founder of FROM. FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and we talked about Digital Transformation, Innovation and why these buzz words matter but also don't really matter. Howard has been working with many really big name industries and has helped them make the changes necessary to adjust or rebuild their business to stay relevant. He has published a book "Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance" which is a Wall Street Journal Bestseller. When the opportunity to speak with Howard came across my desk I was like "yeah! of course I would". One takeaway from the conversation was the fact that many perhaps most businesses are behind the curve on addressing their customers digital needs and that those who have a vision for transformation need to not hold back. If you are working in a business or consulting a business and have certain insights into what is working less than optimal then speak up! I hope you enjoy this podcast. I know I certainly did. Guests LinksWebsite https://www.from.digital Howard's Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/winning-digital-customers/id1535975495 My LinksMy most recent blogpost at https://digital-done-right.com/newnormalblog Spotify Linkhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/3WUVumpkK0RIRKBUnQ5m9f?si=399e32cbac75497b Apple Podcasthttps://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/new-normal-designing-great-experiences/id599434958?l=en&i=1000527225434 LinkedIn Posthttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrewfmaher_newnormalpodcast-innovation-cxstrategy-activity-6815650938762604544-ibDd
How to Win and Influence Your #Digital #Customers. Listen to Howard Tiersky, WSJ Bestseller of Winning Digital Customers talk about 'Digital Transofrmation' in retail. Few touchpoints: Who are digital customers and how you define them? What is digital transformation? What works and what doesn't? How is customer moving towards digital transformation? How can retailers get benefits from their digital touchpoints? View Video Podcast About Howard Tiersky: Howard is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. He was named by IDG as “One of The Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today,” and by Enterprise Management 360° as “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.” As an entrepreneur, Howard has launched two successful companies that help large brands transform to thrive in the digital age: FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and Innovation Loft. Among his dozens of Fortune 1000 clients are Verizon, NBC, Universal Studios, JPMC, Morgan Stanley, the NBA, Visa, and digital leaders like Facebook, Spotify, and Amazon. Prior to founding his own companies, Howard spent 18 years with Ernst & Young Consulting which then became part of Capgemini, one of the world's leading global consulting firms, where he helped launch their digital practice. Howard speaks regularly at major industry conferences and is proud to have been on the faculty of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, his alma mater. He is a frequent contributor to CIO Magazine. Listen to other podcasts at: https://proxima360.com/podcast or https://retailcorner.proxima360.com Subscribe our Podcast: Apple iTunes: https://apple.co/3eoeUdT Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3dvjpDJ Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/3DFHXHw Are you an innovative leader in your industry? Why not chat with us on the podcast, submit request at: https://proxima360.com/contact or email retailcorner@proxima360.com.
Howard Tiersky is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. Howard is the founder of two companies that enable large brands to win in the digital world: FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and Innovation Loft. Click here to purchase Winning Digital Customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On this episode, we talked to Howard Tiersky, CEO at FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, whose goal is to bring companies up to speed with customers' expectations of the digital sphere. After COVID fast-tracked digital transformation for everyone, it's even more essential to get it right.
In this episode of the Velvet Machete Leadership Podcast, host Amber Hurdle interviews Howard Tiersky, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers and founder of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and Innovation Loft. Howard teaches leaders that achieving customer love is the single most important criteria for business success, and that we can measure a brand's level of customer love with a single question. Together they discuss: *The important components brands with high love consistently have *How to differentiate between “customer love” and loyalty (hint: they're not the same!) *The exact 3-part formula for achieving customer love *A proven, 5-part transformation process brands can use to improve their fulfillment of the love formula This episode will teach you the transformative process your brand can implement to achieve customer love. Don't miss Howard's expertise on the exact steps brands should be taking in order to make their customers fall in love over and over again! He shares tips on understanding your customer, mapping the customer journey, building the future, optimizing the short-term, and leading the change. You'll want to revisit this wisdom, so don't miss it. Links and Mentioned Resources Visit Howard's website to download a free chapter from his book, Winning Digital Customers. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter. Follow @thevelvetmachete on Instagram for inspiration and free business advice. About Howard Howard Tiersky is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. Howard is the founder of two companies that enable large brands to win in the digital world: FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and Innovation Loft. Among his dozens of Fortune 1000 clients are Verizon, NBC, Universal Studios, JPMC, Morgan Stanley, the NBA, and Visa. Get Social: Free Book Chapter | LinkedIn | Twitter Want More of the Good Stuff? *Subscribe to the podcast: Be sure to subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcasting app. Prefer to watch? Subscribe on YouTube. Or simply ask Amazon Alexa, "Play Velvet Machete Leadership Podcast with Amber Hurdle." Easy. *Read the book: The Bombshell Business Woman: How to Become a Bold, Brave, Female Entrepreneur on Amazon, Books-a-Million, Barnes & Noble & other retailers. Downloadable Worksheet Graphic (569 x 214)-Link to Convertkit Opt-In Page Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Matt Gibson & Ramon Lapenta – 17th of July 2021, 8 pm GMT Matt Gibson is a Director at Cyber-Duck, a user-centric digital transformation agency based out of the UK.He helps oversee all aspects of the production lifecycle, including research, design, and delivery of products and services, for organisations like Sport England, Compare the Market, and the Bank of England. As a BIMA Hot 100 top creative in the UK, he is a champion for inclusive design, and accessibility best practices, levelling up Cyber-Duck's team and clients' awareness and knowledge. He truly believes in the universality of the web, and the power that inclusive design has in creating better experiences for everyone.Ramon Lapenta, also works at Cyber-Duck, and he is a technical lead and senior front-end engineer. He spent the best part of the last 20 years building things for the web, and most of his life involved in the design industry. Working at Cyber-Duck allows him to interact with people from very different backgrounds, and to learn to adapt is work to cater for many different needs, which eventually turned me to working with Accessibility.As a champion for Accessibility in his company, with Matt, they get to help their team to understand those needs and to work with an open mind for inclusive design, and building a web that's helpful for everyone.
Howard Tiersky is CEO and Founder of FROM – the Digital Transformation Agency and also author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. Howard joins Justin to discuss the evolution of technology and how progressive brands are transforming to leverage tech to their advantage.
In episode #131 of The CXChronicles Podcast we welcomed Howard Tiersky, CEO at Fromm, The Digital Transformation Agency based in New York, NY. FROM helps companies transform from where they are now to where they need to be to succeed with today's digital-first customers.Howard's team develops new digital products for shopping, banking, travel and entertainment. The team at Fromm optimizes existing platforms, to make them more engaging and more profitable. The Fromm team is comprised of an amazing team of inspiring leaders, strategists, designers and technologists and work with some of the world's leading brands to improve the customer experience – online, in store, and everywhere they need to be in today's world. Episode #131 Highlight Reel:How early life experiences in theatre led Howard to building a company focused on customer & digital experience optimizationHow to define what your version of business success looks like within your companyLearning early on in the process what customers really care about while building your businessHow to invest in the right tools while growing & scaling your businessWhy companies that achieve scale tend to have ample time & investments in process curation & optimization based on customer & employee feedback!Huge thanks to Howard for coming on the CXCP and featuring his team's work and efforts in pushing the customer experience & digital transformation space into the future. Click here to learn more about Howard TierskyClick here to learn more about Fromm, The Digital Transformation AgencyIf you enjoy The CXChronicles Podcast, please stop by your favorite podcast player and leave us a review, this is the easiest way we can find new listeners, guests and future CX'ers!Watch The CXChronicles Podcast On Youtube HereSupport the show (https://cxchronicles.com/)
Howard Tiersky is the CEO and founder of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, that helps companies grow revenue across digital channels by supporting the customer journey and resonating with today's hyperconnected audience. He has a new book out called Winning Digital Customers: The antidote to irrelevance.We talked about the three main themes in his book, which are understanding the customer, mapping the customer journey and design thinking, leadership and alignment. One key takeaway for me is his notion that many customer journeys are emotional journeys. Howard talked about customer research he conducts with his clients, part of which includes interviewing customers about their experiences working with his clients. He asks customers some form of this question, "What were you thinking during this experience/transaction/etc?" One of the most common responses from customers is, "I was thinking they (the company) don't care." Wow. Think about that. It makes one wonder, "Do our customers think that about us?" More about Howard:His book: winningdigitalcustomers.comHis podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/winning-digital-customers/id1535975495On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiersky/ Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com
Howard Tiersky is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. He was named by IDG as “One of The Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today,” and by Enterprise Management 360° as “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.” Howard has launched two successful companies that help large brands transform to thrive in the digital age: FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, and Innovation Loft. Click here for a free chapter of Howard's book.
Today we're going to talk about meaningful digital transformation. While “digital transformation” is currently a buzzword and many organizations talk about its importance in order to stay competitive both operationally, and in the battle to improve the customer experience, well-executed digital transformation is often easier said than done. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome an expert in this arena - Howard Tiersky, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of they book “Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance” and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency.
Today we're going to talk about meaningful digital transformation. While “digital transformation” is currently a buzzword and many organizations talk about its importance in order to stay competitive both operationally, and in the battle to improve the customer experience, well-executed digital transformation is often easier said than done. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome an expert in this arena - Howard Tiersky, Wall Street Journal best-selling author of they book “Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance” and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency.
In this episode, Richard sat down with Howard Tiersky, the CEO and founder of FROM, a Digital Transformation Agency that helps companies deliver digitally-powered customer experiences. Howard is also recognized at a Top Digital Transformation Influencer. During the conversation, Richard and Howard talk about companies and brands generating strong emotional relationships with their customers and how LOVE and business coexist. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiersky/
Benton Crane talks with Howard Tiersky, the CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency. Together they discuss why CEOs need to be persuasive, how to successfully make big changes to your company, and the fatal flaw of Blockbuster.02:15 How Businesses Need To Change 09:00 Howard's Poop To Gold Moment14:46 Don't Make This Mistake 25:13: What Could Be Holding Your Business BackYou can find links to buy Howard's book and all the other places to reach him below. If you're interested in learning more about Harmon Brothers, you can grab a copy of our book here.Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Episodes published every Tuesday at 6 am EST. We'll see you on the next one.Find Howard Tiersky here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiersky (LinkedIn)https://www.amazon.com/Howard-Tiersky/e/B08617F82B%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share (Books)https://www.from.digital/howard-tiersky (Website)
In this Podcast our host André Marquet talks with Howard Tiersky, WSJ Bestselling Author, Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencer, and CEO of From, the Digital Transformation Agency. Howard is on a mission to help brands navigate digital transformation—to re-invent their customer journeys to earn the love of today's "Digital Customers." [2:37] Howard's new book “Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance” [6:00] How Howard tried to fit all the secrets to digital transformation on the book [7:21] Superpowers of a Digital Transformation leader [8:21] How Howard started his career as a theater director and web designer [11:38] What is the top-secret superpower that came out from those days as a Director and as a Web designer [13:20] 3 levels to achieve customer love [19:37] Major customer pains, and how digital as overcome that [22:23] Experience and Process Redesigning the Avis app [27:33] Working with some of the largest brands in their digital transformation [37:04] What do you think is the biggest digital transformation trend we're seeing today and we'll see in 10 years? [41:45] The Main Skill of a Digital Transformation Team The Productized Podcast is produced by Productized - a series of interviews with product innovators, successful makers, and entrepreneurs. We hope those who listen to the ideas on this show are inspired to productize. For show notes and additional resources related to today's Podcast visit https://buff.ly/2SlnyEK
Howard Tiersky - CEO, FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency [Digital Transformation]Howard talks about:· What it means to be digitally driven· Why Executives grimace when you want to focus on CX· How to prioritize your Digital TransformationThe person who has influenced Howard the most in the past year:· Shep Hyken - Cult of the Customer· Tom Goodwin - Digital Darwinism His note to all customer service professionals:“You are the #1 listening post to the customer, so while your first priority should be to serve the customer, please recognize that you are our CIA, FBI, Secret Service...when you learn things, figure out how that information gets back to the organization, because we value the insights that you get...”Transcript: https://press1fornick.com/howard-tiersky/ JOIN THE PRESS 1 FOR NICK COMMUNITY:LinkedInWebsiteConnect with NickBOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests book recommendations hereBROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more hereThis podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M RadioSUPPORT:Want to support this show? Click here to buy me a coffeeSPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here
Digital transformation looks a lot different for today's companies than it did in the 90's. Howard Tiersky, founder of digital transformation agency FROM, joins the show to chat about the rapid evolution of technological innovations, how organizations can shift their mindset to the “new normal,” how solving customer pain points leads to competitive differentiation, and how to balance cost and thoroughness when conducting customer research. **Show Links** Howard Tiersky on LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiersky/ FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency | https://from.digital Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance | https://winningdigitalcustomers.com/freechapter Registration for Tim's upcoming talk at the Twin Cities Business Webinar on Technology: Fraud Prevention Tips | https://tcbmag.com/events/tech21/ JMG Careers Page | https://jmg.mn/careers Email [careers@jmg.mn](mailto:careers@jmg.mn) Connect with Tim Bornholdt on LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/timbornholdt/ Chat with The Jed Mahonis Group about your app dev questions | https://jmg.mn
In the ever-increasingly competitive race to win digital customers, what does a brand has to do to keep on thriving? To help us answer this question, I am joined today by Howard Tiersky, the author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote To Irrelevance.Howard is also the Founder and President of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency. He has been in the digital marketing space since the early internet days and has a deep passion for digital innovation.To thrive in the digital age, you have to keep providing a seamless online experience to your customers. The reality of today's digital world is that you have to keep changing and pivoting to meet your customers' expectations.Listen in as Howard talks about how to remain relevant to your customers, the secret formula to earn customer loyalty, the art of great customer experiences, and much more.Key Takeaways- The art of great customer experiences (02:03)- Bootstrapping a digital marketing agency (04:37)- Why Howard decided to write a digital transformation book (07:36)- The secret formula to earn customer love and loyalty (11:17)- What brands really need to be paying attention to (18:22)- Why many great products fail (21:04)- What Howard plans to accomplish in his bucket list in the next 12 months (25:44)Additional ResourcesGet a free chapter of the book here: https://winningdigitalcustomers.com/Learn more about what Howard and his team are doing at: https://www.from.digital/----You can find the transcripts and more at http://bizninjaradio.comBe sure to follow me on Instagram @bizninja
In the ever-increasingly competitive race to win digital customers, what does a brand has to do to keep on thriving? To help us answer this question, I am joined today by Howard Tiersky, the author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote To Irrelevance.Howard is also the Founder and President of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency. He has been in the digital marketing space since the early internet days and has a deep passion for digital innovation.To thrive in the digital age, you have to keep providing a seamless online experience to your customers. The reality of today's digital world is that you have to keep changing and pivoting to meet your customers' expectations.Listen in as Howard talks about how to remain relevant to your customers, the secret formula to earn customer loyalty, the art of great customer experiences, and much more.Key Takeaways- The art of great customer experiences (02:03)- Bootstrapping a digital marketing agency (04:37)- Why Howard decided to write a digital transformation book (07:36)- The secret formula to earn customer love and loyalty (11:17)- What brands really need to be paying attention to (18:22)- Why many great products fail (21:04)- What Howard plans to accomplish in his bucket list in the next 12 months (25:44)Additional ResourcesGet a free chapter of the book here: https://winningdigitalcustomers.com/Learn more about what Howard and his team are doing at: https://www.from.digital/----You can find the transcripts and more at http://bizninjaradio.comBe sure to follow me on Instagram @bizninja
Twitter has officially launched its subscription service today, but only for those of us here in Australia and in Canada. Twitter Blue is available through the iOS version of the app for $4.49/month, but right now you're not getting all that much for your money – which might be part of why it's only launching in two countries to start with. You'll get the ability to 'undo' a tweet, which is essentially a delayed send to give you a moment to reconsider your tweet or check for typos. You also get new bookmarking features and a special reader mode for reading things like long threads. Maybe one day it will have some features worth paying for, but right now it's distinctly underwhelming.https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/introducing-twitter-blue.htmlIn an update on the efficacy of the federal government's COVIDSafe app, the Digital Transformation Agency has clarified some recent numbers given to Senate Estimates last week that were inaccurate and now confirm that the much promoted 'sunscreen' for Australia has identified zero new contacts or exposures in 2021. The app has in total helped to find 17 close contacts in total, with a further 544 identified by manual contact tracers in NSW after the app confirmed someone had been a particular location. The app costs $70,000 per month to run with the cost reducing to $60,000 per month from July.https://www.innovationaus.com/covidsafe-hasnt-found-any-contacts-this-year/The Verge is reporting that Facebook is going to end its policy that protects politicians from being held to the same content moderation rules as others. Historically, Mark Zuckerberg himself has said that Facebook should not police speech by politicians, but the social network has also had increasing requests from those in power to silence dissenting voices, creating a power imbalance when the site chooses to adhere to legal requests on one hand and protect misinformation of politicians on the other. The changes may be part of the response to the Facebook Oversight Board that is due on June 5, which demanded Facebook hold all users to the same rules and be more transparent about its decision making processes.https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/3/22474738/facebook-ending-political-figure-exemption-moderation-policyThe EU has announced it will make a unified digital identity service for citizens to prove identity and share documents across the region. The digital wallet will allow Europeans to link ID and personal information like drivers licenses, medical details and bank accounts into a system that can easily be shared and verified in whichever member state they need to work with or live in. Businesses will eventually be required to support the digital identity system across Europe. The first draft framework will be proposed by September 2022.https://www.cnet.com/news/eu-digital-wallet-will-allow-for-easier-more-secure-cross-border-identity-checks/In special Byteside news, we have a delicious giveaway running over on the website right now to celebrate the launch of The Elder Scrolls Online Blackwood expansion next week. Bethesda ANZ teamed up with Melbourne Hot Sauce to create the official 'Hot Sauce of Oblivion'. To enter just visit the Byteside website and go to the competition page where confirming your subscription to the newsletter will get you in the draw. The link is also in the show notes of this podcast.https://www.byteside.com/2021/06/elder-scrolls-online-blackwood-expansion-launch-hot-sauce-giveaway/In other videogames, Hearthstone has a new Wailing Caverns mini-set that released today, with 35 new cards that can be purchased as a full set rather than through random packs. It costs $19.95 or 2000 gold and it'll undoubtedly shake up the status quo...https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/news/23676206/prepare-yourself-adventurer-the-wailing-caverns-mini-set-is-hereWhich leads to esports, with the Hearthstone Grandmasters Season 1 for the year... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Howard Tiersky is the Founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, a 75 employee digital agency that helps executives at large brands transform the customer experience to win in today's digital world. He is a successful entrepreneur who has been named by IDG as one of the “Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers” and by Enterprise Management 360°as “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.” Howard is also the Author of the recent Wall Street Journal best-selling book, Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. Howard also speaks for large organizations at major events and podcasts and is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at New York University. In this episode… To create a great customer experience, brands in the digital age have to find ways to maximize technology if they want their products to benefit their customers. You have to create value and increase your brand's appeal — and stand out from your competitors to become successful. According to Howard Tiersky, the most successful online brands use technology and the internet to provide better experiences for their customers. They focus on a hyper convenience frame of mind to make it easier for customers to find, learn, and use their products. They also personalize online experiences to meet the needs of different customers. Howard Tiersky, the Founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, is Rich Goldstein's guest in this episode of the Innovations and Breakthroughs Podcast, where he talks about transforming the customer experience online. Howard also talks about writing his book and explains what brands can do to become successful behind the screen.
In a response to a report on age verification for online gambling and pornography, the federal government has said it will consider whether work on a national digital identity system should be extended to include such verification processes. The Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs recommended that the Digital Transformation Agency explore extending any identity system to include third-party verification tools for online services and the recommendations have been met with "in principle" support.https://www.zdnet.com/article/canberra-considers-its-digital-id-for-use-in-verifying-age-before-accessing-porn/A global meatpacking company, JBS Foods, with operations in Australia, has had its plants shut down in Australia and North America this week after what is now known to be a ransomware attack. This follows the recent attack in on a fuel pipeline in the US which found that even after paying the ransom it was faster to restore from backups than using the decryption process supplied by the attackers. As targets increasingly seem to include critical services like fuel, food and health, governments are being called on to do more to fight back – including taking action against cryptocurrency avenues that are used for ransom demands.https://www.itnews.com.au/news/cyber-attack-on-meatpacker-jbs-foods-is-ransomware-565357In a great example for one possible future of the ridesharing industry, a cooperative of 2,500 New York drivers has created a new company that will give everyone better rates of pay and claims rides will be cheaper for users. It launched this past weekend, with drivers being paid 10% above minimum wages for the industry as well as profit share via dividends to the collective ownership group. Sounds like what ridesharing should actually sound like.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/technology/nyc-uber-lyft-the-drivers-cooperative.htmlMore Computex news, with Nvidia revealing its latest top of the line GPUs with the RTX 3080 Ti cards claiming another 50% increase in performance over the previous flagship 2080 Ti cards that were also a huge leap over the previous era. Nvidia pointed to a lot of new games adding ray-tracing support with Doom Eternal looking particularly shiny. Nvidia also revealed some big advances in how its processing power will be used in enterprise data centres and in AI processing.https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/05/31/computex-keynote/In AMD's Computex news, the company was bullish about its own new RDNA2 GPUs, which it announced will be heading into Samsung smartphones through a new collaboration on Exynos processors, which will enable ray-tracing and variable rate shading on mobile phones. Its new processors will also be heading into new Tesla Model S and X infotainment systems which will deliver processing power not far behind a PS5, enabling people to play the latest AAA games inside the car... which they probably really shouldn't be doing?https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/2021-05-31-amd-showcases-industry-leading-innovation-across-the-high-performanceIn other tech news, the gaming division of Kingston Technology, HyperX, has been acquired by HP. HyperX has built a big business in PC gaming peripherals like headsets, keyboards and mice. HP has its own gaming brand, Omen, so it will be interesting to see whether the brands remain separate or unify in coming years.https://press.hp.com/us/en/press-releases/2021/hp-inc-completes-acquisition-of-hyperx.htmlIn science, wonderful news for Australian fauna with word that Tasmanian devil babies have been born in the wild on mainland Australia for the first time in 3,000 years. The cute carnivores have been breeding in captivity in a special rewilding project for the past decade and in 2020 the first group was released from captivity into a sanctuary where the first group of joeys have been... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Summary: In this episode the Propcast talks Idriss Goossens from PropTech Lab, Alain Waha from Cogital, Alexandra Nicoletti from Camber Creek and Travis Connors from Building Ventures about Relevation 2021, the leading digital fundraising summit for Proptechs, and about the changing landscapes of VC. The Propcast by Louisa Dickins, Co-Founder of LMRE the leading Global PropTech recruiter, is brought to you in partnership with CREtech and ReimTech. This show will focus on connecting the PropTechs, real estate funds and VC's globally…and get everyone talking about innovation of the build to rent environment. About Our Host Louisa Dickins https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/?originalSubdomain=uk Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA). About LMRE www.lmre.co.uk LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community. About Guests Idriss Goossens https://www.linkedin.com/in/idrissgoossens/ Idriss Goossen's is the founder of PropTech Lab (Belgium), PropTech Lab are the Belgium community of innovators in the real estate value chain. Their mission is to foster innovations in construction and real estate and to ease digital transformation of the industry. PropTech Lab help to connect and relate companies, start-ups and investors, in order to underline the new trends of the market, to promote industry advancements, to contribute influencing and educating the market, and to foster collaboration and innovation in the Belgian Real Estate community. Idriss is also the founder of Relevation, which is the Global Digital Fundraising Summit for PropTech. This event aims to facilitate matchmakings between start-ups in fundraising process, and investors ready to invest . Travis Connors https://buildingventures.com/travis-connors/ Travis Connors is the co-founder of Building Ventures where he co-leads the Investment Committee. Building Ventures invests in companies that are reshaping the way the built environment is designed operated and experienced. Building Ventures partner with visionary entrepreneurs who will have a profound effect on how and where we live as humans on our planet. Travis currently manages the firm's involvement with Smartvid.io as a member of the Board of Directors. In addition, he works closely with the teams at Blokable, Dandelion, Join Digital and Measurabl. Travis is a New England native having attended Connecticut College and earned his M.B.A. from Columbia University. Alain Waha https://www.linkedin.com/in/alainwaha/?originalSubdomain=uk Alain Waha is the co-founder of Cogital and leads Ventures and Digital Strategy services. Cogital are an international Digital Transformation Agency for the Built-Asset Environment. They work with owners, consultants, contractors and ventures to guide and support their digital transformation journey. Alain began his career started in aerospace and automotive, deploying new business models and information systems. He later transferred to the construction industry in 2008 as CEO of Atlas industries, then CEO and founder of a further 2 start-up in BIM and Digital services. Alain also sits on advisory boards for VC funds, #contech and #protech start-ups, and is the co-founder of the Process Innovation Forum. Alexandra Nicoletti https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-nicoletti-a205ab11/ Alexandra Nicoletti is Senior Associate at Camber Creek, with over 10 years of transaction experience in real estate, investment banking and private equity. Camber Creek is a venture capital firm providing strategic value and capital to operating technology companies focused on the real estate market. Alexandra earned her bachelor's degree at Duke University and went on to work at Goldman Sachs, Apollo Global Management and Norges Bank, where she has managed commercial real estate portfolios totalling over $10 billion in value. Resources Referenced LMRE website www.lmre.co.uk UKPA website www.ukpa.com Relevation www.relevation.org PropTech Lab www.proptechlab.be Building Ventures www.buildingventures.com Camber Creek www.cambercreek.com Cogital www.cogital.tech Insights From This Episode We're also seeing a lot more real estate to strategics coming into this space, and having a greater desire to participate in the in the ecosystem, both from an adoption standpoint but also from a direct investment standpoint – Alexandra Nicoletti Do you want to have the support from generalistic VC? Do you want to have the support from more specific and more personalized, or specialized VC? So it's a big question you have to ask yourself as founder – Idriss Goossens COVID certainly up ended everyone's thoughts around what we needed space for what spaces we needed. But the simple reality is we still spend 95% of our time indoors. And now we have more choices about where that's going to be – Travis Connors At the beginning, I think bottom up wins. But then over time, expanding and putting a fundamental structural shift into the market means that Europe becomes potentially more attractive because you can you find a more structured environment where you can sell, iterate, and then scale – Alain Waha The volumes of capital that are deployed in the PropTech space according to our data are really growing almost 100%, year after year – Idriss Goossens Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart A Podcast Company - is the leading podcast production company for brands, organizations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right equipment, training, and guidance to ensure you sound amazing. - https://www.apodcastcompany.com and www.podcastsyndicator.com
Customer Love is the most important objective for business success and marketing technology is a critical component of it. I am joined by Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance and founder of The Digital Transformation Agency and Innovation Loft. Love your customers - but use tech to scale the love. Link to the Winning Digital Customers Amazon Page: https://wdc.ht/amazon Winning Digital Customers Website: https://WinningDigitalCustomers.com Digital Marketing Masters Podcast: https://hookseo.com/podcast
Howard Tiersky, CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, and author of the WSJ Bestseller Winning Digital Customers, talks with Jeremy Shere, Founder & CEO of Tribal Knowledge Podcasting, about remote employees, the value of podcasting as a marketing channel, why webinars might be overrated, and much more.Buy Howard's book, Winning Digital CustomersDownload the first chapter for free!
Joining us for this episode of The Small Business Show is Howard Tiersky, CEO of FROM, a company that describes itself as a Digital Transformation Agency. Howard is going to help us learn about successful digital product launches and how to get our companies ready for the digital future. Howard is also the Best Selling Author of Winning Digital Customers - a terrific manual for driving digital success at your own company. 00:00:00 Small Business Show #324 for Wednesday, April 21, 2021 Howard Tiersky, CEO of FROM – The Digital Transformation Agency Wikipedia: Digital transformation Transformed Banks: JP Morgan Chase, TransAmerica The value of Digital Transformation when attracting talent Redefining the nature of employment Winning Digital Customers Innovation Friction (aka “The Killer App”) VisiCalc
The Beatles told us that All You Need Is Love. Howard Tiersky says the same thing — but he’s talking about brands, not the whole of human existence. Howard is the CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, which has helped brands such as Mattel, Barnes & Noble Education, Mall of America, NBC, Avis-Budget, and more transform to compete and win in a new digital world — and they succeed by getting customers to love the brands and everything they offer. Whether you’re a shiny new ecommerce start-up or a legacy brand with decades of history behind you, getting a consumer to actually love you is a multi-step process that is getting harder and harder as the digital landscape evolves. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, we dig into what the pyramid of brand love looks like and how companies should be working to climb their way to the top. Plus, he reveals the biggest mistake he sees companies making that causes potential customers to shop elsewhere, and he gives some strategies to rectify that situation and improve your bottom line. Enjoy!Main Takeaways:The Switching Cost is Zero: On the internet, it’s easy for a customer to move from one brand to another and it costs them nothing to do so. That means a brand’s first duty is to explain very quickly and clearly that it can and will solve a consumer’s problem. This is the area where most brands fail because they don’t have clear, simple messaging or content that tells their story and delivers their value prop instantly.Keep It Simple: Doing customer research is the best and easiest way to find the kinks in your website and processes. Setting up a simple focus group to watch how customers are using your site to see where their pain points are or where they are getting stuck can reveal the most basic and easy-to-solve problems that could increase your bottom line.Pyramid of Love: Creating a brand that people truly love is a challenge that has to be tackled in stages. There are specific levels of customer affection that you need to build up and that eventually culminates in love. But reaching those levels takes work and requires a brand to take specific actions. What are the levels and how do you reach them? Tune in to find out.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone. And welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. I'm your host, Stephanie Postles, CEO at mission.org. Today on the show, I'm chatting with Howard Tiersky, the CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and the author of The Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Winning Digital Customers, The Antidote to Irrelevance. Did I do that justice Howard?Howard:Perfect. Stephanie, thank you so much. And thanks for having me.Stephanie:Thanks for coming on the show. So I wanted to start with something that we were chatting with a little bit before this, that your whole company is about reverse engineering love, which I actually really liked that saying. And I think I'm going to start using it in my personal life now, but I want to kind of start there to describe what is FROM and why do you say that?Howard:Sure. Well, what FROM is, is a kind of a combination between a consulting firm and a digital agency. We work with large brands like Avis, AAA, NBC Universal, Airbus, and our mission is to help them create a better customer experience that ultimately generates more customer love. Because in our experience, the companies that have customers that feel passionately about them, that feel appreciated by them, and appreciate those brands, those are the brands that do the best in the marketplace by all the most common measures of business success, revenue growth, profitability, and share price.Stephanie:Awesome. And a lot of the brands that you're working with they've been around for a long time. I mean, I was looking at, let's see, some of them. You said Airbus, Barnes and Noble, Facebook, Verizon, Spotify, Amazon. And I think I even saw it was like American Girl, which I used to have back in the day. And it seems like you catered towards the brands that have been here for a while and are now kind of seeking help on like how to get to that next level, how to find new customers.Howard:Well, that's exactly right. I mean, we have worked with some, what you might call sort of pure digital brands like Amazon and Spotify and different things. But the majority of what we do is really working with great classic brands that are faced with a real challenge because they need to transform to be relevant in a new age. And particularly when a company is large and has been around for a long time, that's not an easy thing to do. And so this is really our area of expertise, is how do you... Everything from the vision and the design concept of a future customer journey to dealing with the politics and resistance to change that you find in most large organizations.Stephanie:Yep. So when you're initially approaching some of these brands, I mean, how do you even go about finding out what the issues are? Because especially with the company size, it seems hard to go in and be, there's probably a thousand things going wrong, or everything feels like a fire in a larger company. How you start pinpointing, here's some of the things that are maybe not up to par right now, and that we need to start evolving and here's the game plan going forward?Howard:Sure. Well, the good news is most companies ultimately want the same things. They want more customers, they want more revenue, they want increased profitability, they want increased share price. So at the very top level, it's usually not too hard to figure out what the company's after. And one of my fundamental philosophies of everything I've done in business for 25 years is this idea that most business value is derived by influencing human behavior. If you can get people, people like customers, employees, shareholders, if you can get them to do what you want them to do, you're going to have a great business. And if you aren't able to get, for example, your customers to do what you want them to do, then you're probably going to be in big trouble, no matter what ERP system you've implemented or what other kinds of things you may be doing.Howard:So the first question is, all right, you want more customers, you want more revenue and profitability? Great. What behaviors do you need by customers, employees, et cetera, in order to get that business outcome? And in my book, I talk about many of the most common behaviors, but you can imagine what they are getting customers to buy more, to buy more frequently, to upsell to more expensive products, to refer you to their friends. And also there's some behaviors that are sort of value destroying behaviors. For example, customers calling you on the phone every day and spending hours with your support desk getting help, right? And so getting clear on, okay, well, if we can drive these behaviors, then that equates to business success.Howard:And then from there, the question is, all right, well, what drives behavior? I mean, how do you get people to do what you want them to do? And the answer is their thoughts and feelings. People behave in a certain way because of their thoughts and feelings. And then lastly, the question is, all right, well, how do we control people's thoughts and feelings? Where do those come from? And the answer is from their experiences, your thoughts and feelings come from experiences. So our job is to help conceive what would be the next generation set of experiences, a customer journey, that will drive the thoughts and feelings that will drive the behavior that equate to business results. So a very often it's research, doing a lot of ethnography, task analysis, different types of interviews, surveys, looking at existing data, for example, funnels on sites, things like that to understand well, to what degree are these things happening today? Because of course, no doubt, there is some degree of success in almost any business. We don't do often a great deal of success. And what's holding back the increase in that? For every customer that buys, there's a bunch that don't buy. Why not? For every customer that buys at level A and never comes back, why don't they come back, et cetera?Howard:So once we understand those things, well, then it's just a question of figuring out well, okay, how do you start to remove those barriers? Are we confusing them? Are we frustrating them? Are we annoying them? Are we just not offering a compelling enough value proposition, et cetera, et cetera?Stephanie:Yep. Are there any themes when it comes to the barriers within all these brands, were you have seen this come up time and time again, because maybe they have not thought digitally first because there are similar theme around customer barriers to buying?Howard:There are a number of very common themes. That's really a great question, actually. I would say one common theme is being failing to make it really clear, really fast, exactly what you can do for somebody. Anytime a customer is coming to you, they probably don't care much about you, that's just the way it is. Maybe they do if you've already inspired customer love. People really care about Apple. They really care about The 49ers, they really care about, I don't know, Aeropostale, or some fashion brand. Maybe they care about Rolex. But those are a very small percentage of brands that have inspired customer love. But before you get to that point, most of the customers that come to you, they really only care about themselves. What is it that they're trying? They're there to solve some kind of problem, right? Their kid is having a birthday party and they need to find an entertainer. Or their car is broken down and they need to get it fixed or whatever.Howard:And so how quickly do you make it really clear what you offer them? And it's fascinating to me how often brands don't do that clearly. They have different messages, they make it too hard for someone to really answer the question, can you help me solve my problem right now? And because the internet in this environment where it's so easy to just go back to Google, go to another website, it's like when you walk into a store, if you don't get clarity within the first 10 seconds that they're going to have what you need, the switching costs of getting in your car and driving to another store is at least a little bit high. But when you're on the internet, the switching cost is zero or so close to zero might as well be. So that means you've got to make sure someone understands right away they have a high probability of you being a solution to what it is that they need.Howard:So I think that's one thing. And if I were to just mention one more, it's just making it easy for people to transact. Sometimes I like to think of ecommerce as being basically about two things, persuasion and transaction. First, you got to get them to decide yes, on whatever it is you want them to do, and then you've got to get from there to the point that you have their money in your Stripe account or whatever, and that screwed up along the way. And how many times, Stephanie, how many times have you gone on a website and gone, I want to buy this thing and then started the process of checking out, but for one reason or another, you never wind up buying it?Stephanie:Or you go back to your cart, a day late and you're like, why is my stuff's not in there anymore? Why don't you just save that for a little bit. I'm ready to buy but now I give up. I give up easily though, that kind of stuff.Howard:And there's so many things that can confuse somebody about the checkout process, about the sales tax calculation, about the terms and conditions, about, I mean, it's about the promo code, why didn't the promo code work? So just really getting compulsive about asking what is everything that holds people back? How can I make sure that in addition to doing my very best to persuade people that they should say yes to whatever I'm offering, that I lose none of them between their intention and the completion of the transaction. So we do a lot of analysis and research to try to understand how many people are you really losing in that process. And of course, most people do that, right? They study abandoned shopping carts, things like that. So most people have a fairly high percentage of people, but of course not every abandoned shopping cart was somebody who had an intention to buy, some aren't right? There's various reasons people might be putting things in their shopping carts.Howard:But what percentage of those people are you losing? And then again, it goes back to a simple, what's holding them back? What is happening to stop them from completing what was their intention? And, I mean, I'll give you one tiny example. My company is from digital. Our domain is from.digital. My email address is ends in an at from.digital. It's a little bit of an uncommon first level domain, right? Many more dresses and in .com. And I would say a good 25% of ecommerce sites, when I check out, if I have to enter my email address, tell me that my email is invalid. It's not. Now, and I have a solution to that. I don't always abandoned because I have some other Gmail address, I'll give him something else. But these little problems along the way can very often add up.Howard:And the analogy I like to use sometimes is it's like if I had taped an extension cord across a hallway, let's say I was setting up a Christmas tree and I just had to run an extension cord across the hallway and I duct taped it down, so hopefully no one would trip on it, 50 people might just walk by and step over that duct tape, just fine. And 60 people and 70 people, but eventually, maybe it's the hundredth person, they trip on that tape down duct tape cord, and then another 50, 100 people and another person trips. It's a very small percentage of people. The vast majority of people deal with it just fine. But if you're running a billion dollar ecommerce site, and 1% of your customers are getting caught up by something like that and not purchasing, how do you feel about giving up 1% of your revenue? And for some of our clients, the answer is that 1% is a lot of money. And then if you have six, eight, 12, 15 things along these lines that don't affect everybody, but affect a few people and you start to remove those obstacles, all of a sudden you unlock a whole bunch more sales.Howard:And that's the optimization side of, if you will, digital transformation. And then of course, there's more of a envisioning, a dramatically different journey. But I think so often, and I guess this is my long answer to your question about what are the common themes, one of the common themes I see is the lack of what I call hygiene in ecommerce experiences. And by hygiene, I mean, most digital experiences are being constantly adjusted, tweaked changed. And of course, browsers are changing and iOS, operating systems are changing. And unless you're continuously looking through that saying, have I unintentionally planted a confusion bomb somewhere? Have I added a new feature, but it has a label or has a button that distracts from my main button or whatever? I've just added a cool new feature, but it pushed down something on the page, and now my checkout button is below the fold or whatever it might be, unless you're continuously looking for those problems, they'll creep in like weeds and they'll pull down your conversion. And that hygiene process is something that I find as a common theme, many of the largest brands in the world fail to do often enough.Stephanie:Oh, that's good. So, I mean, how do you go about identifying, I guess more like behavioral issues or how people are actually thinking? I mean, it's one thing to solve the tech and the UI aspect of it and make it easy to check out, but what about trying to figure out going deeper with the customer to really understand why didn't you check out, why didn't you follow through if everything else is there tech wise?Howard:Well, one of the things that I go into in some depth in my book is how to do customer research. And actually because at a certain point we had to start taking stuff out of the book because it was so crazy long, we were afraid of someone would drop it on their toe, they would injure themselves and we have a lawsuit on our hands for publishing such a long book. So we started to put stuff on the supplemental website. So I actually published for people to buy the book and additional PDF and a bunch of videos and all kinds of stuff. And the reason I mentioned all that is because research in customers to really understand them is foundational to being able to do all the things I'm talking about. You can't guess, and you probably can't figure it out even by looking at the site. I mean, you can look at a site and sometimes see some things that are probably problematic, and I do that all the time.Howard:But to really know, you use various types of customer research, such as bringing customers into an office or a lab or on Zoom and giving them tasks and saying, okay, great, go on my ecommerce site, here's the story. Your aunt's birthday's coming up. She's 62 years old. You need to find her present or birthday's in two days, you need to make sure you can get it to her in time. And and then you observe how that person uses that website. And as they do, you can ask them questions or we like to ask people to actually speak out loud, kind of verbalize their stream of conscious thoughts. And of course you record it, and you're studying and understanding, okay, well, what's easy, what's problematic, what's confusing, what's frustrating? And you can learn so much.Howard:And you do that for a few dozen customers and you start to see patterns and you start to see themes. And depending on how many different customer segments, a given website targets, you might do even more than that. But even still, it doesn't take that long, a week, two weeks. And in that time alone, you can learn what many of those issues are. You're observing people and then you're having the option to ask questions. If all of a sudden someone's using a page and all of a sudden they get that look on their face, they're fused or whatever you say, "Oh, what are you thinking right now?" They can say, "I'm thinking I can't figure out what the next step is." "Well, what were you expecting to see?" "Well, I figured there'd be like a next button, but I don't see one." Okay, well, and of course there might be a next button right there in front of their nose, but maybe it doesn't say next, maybe it says continue, right? And for whatever reason, that's not what they're looking for.Howard:So, and if a bunch of people are saying that maybe you should relabel the button. And as simple and obvious as something like that is it's shocking how often we find problems that are that simple. Then of course not all problems are that simple to solve, but very often that kind of low-hanging fruit. Can you imagine rewording a button and getting an extra $600,000 a week in sales? I mean, we've seen things like that repeatedly, of course, assuming the site has very, very high volume. So it's really, customer research just is many companies do some forms of customer research, of course, but my experience it's way, way under utilized. And then it's also about how you do the research. And so we've tried to be very detailed in the book and in the supplemental materials, suggesting some of the key things to do to make sure you're getting, you're really getting the insight and you're getting the most accurate. If you take a customer and say, "Hey, take a look at this website and tell me how you think we should improve it," you're not going to get a good information. You have to approach it in the right way.Stephanie:So what things didn't make it into the book that you wish made it in? What's not in the supplemental material is not in the book and you're like, man, knowing what I know now in 2021, I wish we would've had this in there.Howard:One is, I've done since then analysis on this idea of customer love and shown a bunch of examples. We have actually a scale of customer love from love down, sort of like what's the range from? It starts with love then it goes down to resonant, then it goes down to relevant, then it goes down to relevant and ultimately non-existent. And so this idea that companies exist in terms of the mind of any one customer at any time along this continuum. In subsequent to that, we talked about some case studies that show let's look at Apple, let's look at Disney, but let's look at some companies at each level, let's look at companies that are resonant, like Verizon, for example, great brand. A lot of people like them. They love them? No, probably not quite. Exactly.Howard:And then you go down from one from there, maybe now you're at Citibank and then you go down another one and maybe you're at Radio Shack. I don't know. So looking at them and then looking at their financial performance and really being able to show how this correlates. And then the other thing that isn't in the book that probably should have been, is answering the questions, how do you know what level you're at? And we actually have different tools we use, but one of them is a very simple test. We ask one simple question. And based on the answer to that question, we're able to say whether it's a brand that you love, or that's only resonant, or that's relevant, or that's irrelevant or non-existence. And the question is very simple, if this brand disappeared tomorrow, how would you feel? How would you feel Stephanie if Apple disappeared tomorrow?Stephanie:Oh, that's a good question. I'd be super sad because I own Apple everything.Howard:So if you'd be super sad, if you'd be distraught, if you'd be ah, really emotional, then that's a brand you love, that's a brand you love. That's the sign of love. But if you say, well, I be kind of bummed. I'd be like darn.Stephanie:[inaudible].Howard:Exactly. Well then that's a brand that's resonant for you. It's you care about it. I mean, you don't care about it like that much, but like, you'd be like, oh, rats. That's a disappointment. And then the next level down, if you're, well, I need to know that. I've no emotional response, but thank you for telling me that that brand is gone because gosh, I usually get my gas from Chevron. And I guess if they're gone, I'm going to have to go to British Petroleum. So thank you mental note. At least it mattered to you, it affected you, but not in a way that you're emotional about it. That's what we call a relevant brand. It matters, but you don't have an emotional connection. And then below that, if it's like, you're like, who's gone. Who are they? I didn't even know they were still around. Well then now you're down in this sort of irrelevant type range.Howard:And we do surveys like that all the time to try to understand which other brands that really people do love because a key question is, well, what are those brands doing? How are they inspiring love? And one thing that is in the book then is we showed the pyramid of how do you inspire love? What are the three things you need to do to get your customers to have that feeling of love? And that's in the book.Stephanie:And so what are the things to do? Because I'm thinking about a brand like car insurance, whoever's cheapest, don't care Travelers, Geico, whatever it takes, I'll just go with whoever. I don't feel myself ever feeling loving towards those kinds of brands. It doesn't really matter what they do. So how would a brand like that go about inspiring love when you're compared to someone like Apple?Howard:Right, right. So I'll answer your question and it's really not just for car rental, sorry car insurance, but for all brands. And I'll tell you the formula, which is a pretty straight formula. But before that, I want to tell you this, I've worked with a number of auto insurance companies over the years, including Allstate, Farmers, Mercury, a little bit with State Farm, CNA, so a lot. And I've done a lot of research over the years with customers of car insurance. And I will tell you this, there are without doubt people who love their car insurance companies.Stephanie:Oh, this is not me.Howard:I realize it's not you. And I'll be honest. This is not me, it's not me either. But I have been in customer research sessions and I have interviewed people who they are with the same car insurance company that their parents used, and they will never switch no matter what.Stephanie:Why?Howard:They are applying for life.Stephanie:Why are they so committed?Howard:Right, exactly. Why? So let's talk about why, but let me talk about it in the context of the recipe. So how do you get someone, how do you get a customer, how do you inspire a customer to love a brand? Three, just sort of show up in the book, a diagram of the pyramid, three levels. The bottom of the pyramid is to consistently meet their needs. And that is not enough to inspire love, but it is required. Whatever your area of, whether you're delivering pizza or whether you're a place that they buy power tools, or you're hotel or whatever it is, what are their needs, you are consistently meeting those needs. That's your base.Howard:Then the next level up is to periodically delight the customer, to do something above and beyond what you have to do and what you're expected. And then the top level, and that will get you farther up that continuum, but probably not to love. In order to love a brand you have to feel that they stand for something, they have kind of a value system that you reflect, that you see in yourself, a value system that you resonate with. In fact, to that last point, that's why we see some brands now that have taken a strong political stand, and by the way, a value doesn't have to be political. But like when Nike did the thing with Colin Kaepernick and demonstrated their support for Black Lives Matter, that had a massively positive impact on their standing in the market and their share price, and then their sales, because they were taking a stand for something that a lot of people believed in.Howard:And even though that also meant that they were taking a stand that some people believe the opposite and said, I'll never buy another Nike shoe in my life. And that did happen. And there are some people who won't buy Nike shoes because of that, the net impact was enormously positive because the love that they inspired meant so much more business than the people that turned away from them. And you can say the same, see the same thing on the opposite end of the political spectrum. There's a Chick-fil-A not too far from my house. And Chick-fil-A of course has taken strong stands on extremely conservative right wing social values. And I got to tell you there's police at that Chick-fil-A every day to manage the drive through lane, because there are so many people who want to buy Chick-fil-A sandwiches.Howard:And I have been told, I think I might've had one like years and years ago, but I'm not going to Chick-fil-A for the same kind of reasons, but I don't think there's anything that's special about what Chick-fil-A sells. And I think part of the reason of their popularity is because people... Like what they stand for. And you could say the same thing on the right of someone like a Hobby Lobby or other. And by the way, I'll just close this answer with one thought, which is why, why, why do these three things together create such an emotional reaction? And the answer is because they push the three levers, the three emotional levers that really inspire love.Howard:And what are they? When you demonstrate, when you consistently meet someone's needs, you're demonstrating to them that you understand them because you can't meet the needs if you don't understand. So that when someone's always there for me, I'm like, "They get me, they understand what I need, or they understand, I want that coffee hot when I get it, or they understand that I need whatever it is." When you delight someone, when you go above and beyond periodically, but you demonstrate another emotional thing, you demonstrate they care about me. They didn't have to do this extra thing, right. I was going to give them my money anyway. And they went and they did this extra thing. And that demonstrates that they care about me. So many brands they're constantly saying to their customers, "Thank you for your business." And all that kind of stuff.Howard:And man, that just goes right past people, right? How often do you believe when you get a bill from your utility company at the bottom, it says, "We appreciate you as a customer."Stephanie:You are like, "[inaudible 00:25:09]. You're welcome."Howard:Yeah, that's printed on the form, right? Come on, how stupid are we? We might as well not bother. I mean, it doesn't hurt or anything, but come on, people are very cynical. But when you make a genuine gesture that they knew took money, took effort that demonstrates. When someone at Zappos shoes goes out of their way to help you with something, or I was at an Avis Rental Car yesterday, and I observed somebody helping someone on the phone because they had a problem with the car for like 15 or 20 minutes and they were clearly doing everything they could. Way above and beyond what you would expect. When you get that, that demonstrates to someone that not by telling, but by showing that you care about them.Howard:And then the third level, when you express values that they resonate with, that makes someone feel that they are like me. There's a humanity there, not just a business. And that they share something about my belief or my values about the world. And when you combine those things together, and by the way, many companies don't do this. Many people, if we said, what does Ben & Jerry stand for? What does Whole Foods stand for? What does Apple stand for? I think most people would say something that is sort of [inaudible]. But if someone said, what was the auto insurance company that you were talking about?Stephanie:Travelers. Yeah [inaudible].Howard:Travelers. What is Travelers stand for? What does GEICO stand... You could say, well, GEICO stands for saving your 15%. But that's not a value, right? I mean, it might be a value in the sense of a discount, but it's not a human value, right? There's nothing wrong with saving people 15%, but it's not the kind of value that Nike stands for, or the kind of value that Apple stands for. We believe in you, we believe in unlocking your personal creative freedom and capabilities. What is Citibank stand for? There's so many brands. What is United Airlines stand for? And that's a great example. And by the way, I like United Airlines. I fly them all the time. fly the friendly skies, does anyone believe that United Airlines is the friendly skies? It's just words.Stephanie:I believe it. But I mean, I think that just shows that I don't think brands are able to tell their stories very well in a way that connects. I mean, like a political stance, I think that's an easy thing to jump on because it's like newsjacking. Something's going on. I'm going to take a stance on it. I think that's easy. But to actually tell your story without an event going on, to try and get news around it, I mean, that is still think is hard for large brands. I was just reading Warren Buffett's shareholder letter. I don't know if you also read that for fun like me.Howard:No, I don't.Stephanie:Maybe now you're like, "Nah."Howard:I probably should.Stephanie:It's great. I mean, he was going through the companies that they acquired and why he's going to bet big on America and he'll never bet against it again. And he went through the backstory of these companies that he acquired. I think Ikea was one of them. And it was just very interesting to see how he could storytell better for these very, very large companies. And going through why he even was interested in investing in them in the first place. I'm like, "That is what needs to be told." That startup story, yes, a huge brand now, but how did they get there and how you instill that message around your company without just having to newsjack or jump on politics.Howard:Right. Well, and actually it's funny because you asked about things that weren't in the book and one of the other things that's not in the book, but I did a live cast on Subsequent is the answer to that very question. How do you figure out? Well, actually there's sort of two questions. One is how do you figure out what your brand really stands for? Because some brands were birthed standing for something. Toms Shoes or something like that. And so the people that were attracted to that brand, both as customers, but also as employees, they understood what the brand was about. So you wind up with a bunch of people at that brand who believe in that mission, because that's what it was when they came. But when you start with a company that doesn't have that, then the question becomes, okay, so how do you achieve it?Howard:How do you come up with what it is? How do you figure that out? That's a challenge. And then also, and I did a live cast on that, but then also, and to your question, then how do you express that? How do you get the world? Newsjacking is one way or taking a stand on a political issue. But so anyway, so I did another one on what I call the seven Ps, which are just seven different ways. And you don't have to do all seven, but you probably want to do more than one of how you take the value that you're about, whether it's wholesome food, like Whole Foods, or whether it's personal, creative tools that unleash your creative potential. What have you like Apple and how do you actually get that to be something real in the world that people believe in and really see that you are standing for those values.Howard:And one of those Ps is positioning, which means basically telling people, right, which is what a lot of brands do. This is what we stand for. But if you only do that... What I always say is positioning serves only one purpose, which is to create cynicism, to create doubt, which is good. It's good to do that. Because if you tell people what you stand for, they're going to not believe you. And then they're going to look for evidence. And if you have the other Ps or some of the other Ps, and the evidence is there, and then they start to look for the evidence, then they'll start to see that it's true. Brands that are really strong at standing for something don't even need positioning necessarily because people experience it and they know what it is. But if you position, you better make sure that you've got some of the other things, because you're going to create doubt from your positioning.Howard:People are going to, if they're interested, test your positioning, to see whether it's really true in their experience. And if it is, then you're great. Then you've used the positioning as a lens to get them to evaluate whether it's really true, or if it's BS. But of course, if it's not really true, you've accomplished the negative thing, which is you've lied to them and you've allowed them to spend their time and energy proving that you've lied to them. And now, of course, no doubt, unless your positioning is that you're a lying company. It's harmful rather than helpful.Stephanie:Yep. That makes sense. So this kind of takes it way back to earlier in the interview, but a lot of brands right now, I see focusing on here's my mission and the company's starting around the social impact or causes or things like that. And a question that I've talked with quite a few companies about is, how do you balance the mission behind the company, but then also the product value? I mean, you mentioned that, so one of the big themes was that customers would come to a company's website and not know if it could help them right away. And it feels that's a newer thing where every new DTC company right now has some kind of mission, and I do see some of them struggling with, do you put it on your front page, do you sell with your mission, do you sell with your product, how do you think about that? So what are your thoughts on having a good balance there while not making the customer journey get harder?Howard:I think it depends who you're selling to. I think it goes back to what I said about understanding your customer. I know especially with millennials and younger we definitely see something that we generally don't see with older customers, which is a willingness to actually make a choice and spend money for a social reason, because of some sort of charitable connection or something like that. Usually with older consumers, they like it, we'll do tests like this. We'll say, this brand gives 10% of the money to the American Red Cross and this brand doesn't how do you feel about the fact that this brand gives them money? And people say, "Oh, I'm all for it. I think it's wonderful that they do that." And we say, "Okay, great. This brand's product costs $12, and this other brand that doesn't give them money, their product costs $11. Which one are you going to buy?" And very often they're like, "I think the $11 one."Howard:It's like they like it, but they're not really willing to spend more for it. Whereas with younger consumers, we find increasingly they say, "Oh no, I spend another dollar for the company that gives the money to the cause that I believe in." So I think part of it's understanding who you're communicating to, but also I think part of it's understanding that building a relationship is about a number of different thing. And you don't start a relationship usually by focusing on your values. Usually the first thing, I mean, if I said, "Hey, there's this restaurant that gives 50% of all the money to Greenpeace. Do you want to have dinner there?"Stephanie:And that's it?Howard:Do you want to have dinner there? What's that?Stephanie:If it's good food.Howard:Well, right. And you might want to know what kind of food is it? Is it Chinese? It's not enough, right?Stephanie:Yes.Howard:You kind of want to start with, well, what's the value proposition for me? It's like what I said earlier, people care first and foremost about themselves. So I think there may be exceptions to this rule, but I think by and large, you have to do a good job first of being crystal clear about... It's like that pyramid I talked about, right? You can't jump to the top of the pyramid. You got to start by consistently meeting their needs and demonstrate that you understand them, and that at a very basic level, you can deliver what it is that they need. And then you can go to delighting and then you can focus on values. And so I think the answer is it's probably not your first message, and it's probably not the thing that's going to attract them to you, but what's going to happen is they're going to be attracted initially by what's in it for them.Howard:And then you can start to build a relationship and help them understand, most people didn't buy their first car in a Ben and Jerry's because they were protecting grassland in Vermont or whatever environmental stuff. They looked good. They heard all Chunky Monkey, that's good stuff, and let's try and diet. But then they might've fallen in love with the brand over time because they realized that not only is that bottom of the pyramid, not only are they consistently meeting my needs really well, but that they're also doing things that resonate with my values. And then that keeps me coming back again and again, it makes me more loyal and less likely to jump to the next brand of ice cream that has something that sounds appealing.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah. I completely agree. So get them in the door with good products, showcase your value, and then you could probably upsell in a way, once someone knows this is a good product, and now maybe I am willing to spend that extra dollar now that I've already had a good experience with them versus trying to do it the other way around.Howard:Yeah. Or be less likely to switch or be willing to try new products from that same brand, et cetera.Stephanie:Cool. So the last thing I want to of touch on was content strategy. I saw you working with Aéropostale and American Girl around getting these brands to start creating content, making it more organic, getting customers to create their own viral content. How do you think about brand should be approaching their content strategy right now?Howard:Well, in this day and age, everybody's a content creator. And as you look at the ages of your customers, I mean, I'm a content creator and I'm over 50, but as you go down in age, it becomes everybody, my kids are all creating all kinds of content all the time on obviously Tik ToK and Instagram and everywhere. And so I think first of all, it's easier than ever. And I think that one of the best ways to inspire people to create content is to give them a platform. Because what every content creator cares most about is what, likes, whatever it is on the given platform, right? Subscribers, followers, likes all this kind of stuff.Stephanie:There you go, it's wrong.Howard:So I mean, there are many strategies of course, to inspire people to create UGC around your brand. But I think that the number one strategy to say, okay, how can I give someone a sense that if you create something you're going to get my platform, obviously if you're a brand, you want to make sure you have a good sized platform, which means simply how many people you can reach, how many followers, et cetera you have. And then if you can help someone see that by creating content around your brand, that's going to get that content more exposure than if they just create content and post it on their own personal Instagram account or whatnot. Then that's valuable. And then of course...Stephanie:What's in it for me? That's the same thing that we've kind of talked about this whole time, the whole time.Howard:Understanding your customer, 100%. And in this case, the customer is they may be your customer in the traditional sense, they may be buying your product, but they may not even buy your product, but it's, again, it's like what I said about human behavior, you want to influence people to create content about you online. Great. You have to make sure you understand those people and understand what drives them. And there are going to be some different personas, right? To get my daughter to create content is takes one thing, to get someone who's already a YouTuber with 15 million followers, now it's something different. It's called probably going to an influencer platform and writing them a cheque. And that can be a very viable and smart strategy to do as well if you do it correctly and you pick the right influencers and you make sure that it's organically integrated into their content and not feeling like something they just slapped on, like an ad. But that can be a very powerful marketing tool as well.Howard:So that's what they want. My daughter, they don't need your platform because they have an even bigger platform probably depending on, I mean, if your platform is big enough, if you're Coca-Cola, maybe you even have a bigger platform than them. In which case maybe the influencer is willing to do it for less or for free. But anyway, but it all comes down to that. Anytime you want to motivate someone to do anything, you want to make sure you understand, what do they care about, what are they trying to accomplish? That's right.Stephanie:Cool. Well, let's jump over to the lightning round. The lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have 30 seconds or less to answer.Howard:Okay.Stephanie:Are you ready?Howard:I'm ready.Stephanie:All right. First one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Howard:The elimination of a third party cookies.Stephanie:Okay. Expand a little bit more on, because I've had another guest say it doesn't matter and we have solved that and it's nothing to worry about.Howard:Okay. Well, I'll have to watch that episode because I would love that to be true. But essentially what's happening is between things that Apple is doing and things that Google are doing, Google is doing and frankly, things that may also happen from a legislation perspective, the ability to cookie somebody on one site and display ads to them on a different site is being no longer permitted or they're rolling out changes, which will mean that, if you're familiar with going on overstock and looking at a sofa, and then that's sofa is on every site you see around the whole internet, they're not going to be able to do that anymore. And it has the biggest impact on smaller or medium-sized ecommerce players, because that's a key strategy. So I think that's going to have a huge impact and require everyone to come up with different ways of attracting buyers. I think it's going to have a huge impact.Stephanie:Yep. When does that go into place? [inaudible]Howard:Well, some of it is already in place, certain browsers are already blocking third party cookies and other bots, but I think we're already in the middle of a transition.Stephanie:Okay. Got it. Onto a happier subject then, what's up next on your Netflix queue?Howard:My Netflix queue? Well, I think I want to watch this show about [inaudible], I think just started. Is that? I think it's Netflix or if not, it's one of the other services.Stephanie:On of them.Howard:All about how this [inaudible] thing got started and how so many people were hypnotized into being crazy.Stephanie:Interesting. Tell me how it is. What one thing do you not understand today that you wish you did?Howard:Women, and why they do what they do.Stephanie:Oh my gosh.Howard:I've got two teenage daughters and a wife and man, I don't understand a single thing about why they do what they do.Stephanie:Oh, that's great. I mean, I don't even understand myself sometimes. So that's a valid answer. What's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for you?Howard:Well, I guess I have my children, I've got five children. That could be [inaudible].Stephanie:Five. Wow. That's great. That's a good answer. What's the last ecommerce purchase you made that you maybe would not have made pre-COVID?Howard:Well, that I would not have made pre-COVID? I have been buying more gear for at home, stuff we're doing now because I used to do that all at our offices in Manhattan, where we had more of a studio. So I don't know the very last one, but a lot more lights and microphone stands and all this kind of a side monitor, an extra small minor like I've got over here to show me these slides, if I'm talking about things. So I've been buying a lot more Gadgets & Gizmos, did I say that? Gadgets & Gizmos.Stephanie:Whatever you say works for me.Howard:To make it easier to turn my office into a kind of a studio for all the content that we produce.Stephanie:Very cool. And the last one, if you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be?Howard:Well, I do have a podcast.Stephanie:Oh, well, what is it about?Howard:It's called Winning Digital Customers. And it is about how you most effectively win as a brand in an age where so many of your customers are living with digital at the center of their lifestyle. And the first guest on my podcast was a great friend and client of mine, Michelle McKenna, who's the SVP and chief information officer of the National Football.Stephanie:Oh, nice. I saw she wrote... Didn't sh write a foreword in your book?Howard:She did. She also wrote that. Well, that's kind of why we kicked off the podcast, which kind of connects to the book, same name. And she also was kind enough to to do that. And she's awesome and has driven a lot of innovation and transformation at the NFL, everything from the new way they do instant replays to stuff that supports player health and safety, to drones at Superbowls and sensors on players shoulder pads and helmets and the ball, so they can track with motion capture everything that happens in the game. So many cool things. And so she's always got great things to talk about and also a lot of stuff she can't talk about.Stephanie:We need to bring her on our IT visionaries podcast, which Hillary also produces. So we get her on there Hillary. Awesome.Howard:He is definitely an IT visionary.Stephanie:Yeah, we'll have to bring her on. Cool. Howard, thanks so much for joining the show. It was a pleasure chatting. Where can people find out more about you and your new book?Howard:Sure. Well, thank you so much for having me. If they want to learn about the book, there's a website for the book, which is winningdigitalcustomers.com, just like all one word. And in fact, if you go there, you can also download the first chapter of the book for free as a PDF if you want to just get started on it. Obviously it's available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, Apple books, all those types of places, and in bookstores, possibly near you if you go to bookstores. And as well, if you want to learn more about me, I'm on social media. I publish a lot on LinkedIn and other places. You can find me by my name, Howard Tiersky and my company is FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and we are at from.digital.Stephanie:Amazing. Thank you so much, Howard.Howard:Thank you for having me, it's been a blast.
Australian federal and state ministers have agreed to look at a national system for sharing data and digital identity. The system would allow for unified access to digital services across the country and includes related discussions on the creation of a Commonwealth COVID-19 vaccination credential of some kind. The idea of completely unified personal information has often been met with deep concerns in Australia, and recent changes to leadership structures now sees the federal Digital Transformation Agency under the remit of one of the architects of the robodebt scandal, Minister Stuart Robert, where national data was wilfully misinterpreted to punish Australians on unemployment benefits.Facebook has upgraded its Transfer Your Information tool to make it easier to export your posts and notes into formats more useful than a giant data dump. Now, the tool can be used to export your history of Facebook posts to Google Docs or to formats suitable for Blogger and Wordpress. Data portability is a big issue for the future of the web and social media, particularly around closed platforms like Facebook.In other social news, Facebook along with Reddit have both announced upcoming releases of audio room features in a direct challenge to audio-room social service Clubhouse. The debate over whether Clubhouse would be a standout killer service or just a feature is developing quickly, and new statistics suggest Clubhouse sign ups are slowly quickly after excitement peaked in early March.In science, researchers in China have developed a new cryogel sponge technology that slowly releases stem cells into joints. In testing on mice, the technique has been found to reverse the effects of osteoarthritis, a positive step forward for a condition with only pain relief as a management option for human sufferers.Up on Mars, NASA's Mars helicopter experiment went off without a hitch, with Ingenuity hovering for 30 seconds and landing again as hoped. Viewers of the livestream got to hear word of the telemetry data coming through to confirm the event had taken place correctly and it was quickly followed by a photograph from the helicopter's navigation camera where you could see its own shadow and then with video footage of Ingenuity's flight from the Mars Perseverance rover.Microsoft has announced its xCloud game streaming service will arrive on iOS and PC starting later today with access via web browsers. Initial access will be limited to an invite-only beta for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. xCloud streaming has already been testing on Android and Apple had refused to allow it on its App Store because it was in breach of its store rules by allowing access to games that had not been approved for release on the store. Because for some reason what's OK for video streaming is not OK for games...In other game news, Sony has stepped back from its earlier decision to close the digital stores for the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita. Back in March the company said it would close these stores along with the PSP, but a vocal enough backlash from fans has led to a change of heart for the PS3 and PS Vita. Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said "Upon further reflection, it's clear we made the wrong decision here." The PSP didn't seem to have enough friends out there, because its store will still close on July 2.And in games for good, NRMA Insurance has teamed up with legendary Minecraft design group Blockworks to develop a special custom-map to explore natural disaster preparedness here in Australia and includes unique Australian animal designs. The Climate Warriors map is available for free through Minecraft Marketplace or Education Edition. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
My guest on today's episode of the podcast is Howard Tiersky. Howard is CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency. Howard is also the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Winning Digital Customers - The Antidote to Irrelevance, so I invited him to come on the podcast to discuss best practices in digital transformation, and he did not disappoint.We had an excellent conversation and, as is often the case, I learned loads, I hope you do too...If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to leave me a voice message over on my SpeakPipe page or just send it to me as a direct message on Twitter/LinkedIn. Audio messages will get played (unless you specifically ask me not to).To learn more about how Industry 4.0 technologies can help your organisation read the 2020 global research study 'The Power of change from Industry 4.0 in manufacturing' (https://www.sap.com/cmp/dg/industry4-manufacturing/index.html)And if you want to know more about any of SAP's Digital Supply Chain solutions, head on over to www.sap.com/digitalsupplychain and if you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. Thanks.And remember, stay healthy, stay safe, stay sane!
Gloves in the time of Corona - Guerrilla Testing in a Pandemic How do you get real people to test a physical prototype during a pandemic? Alana Wade and Serena Lai, user researchers at the Digital Transformation Agency, will share their personal 2020 experiences. They needed to conduct research on a government device, testing a facial recognition feature to verify real people with real people. Something that couldn't be done remotely. Their option? Guerrilla testing: brief face-to-face interactions with people going about their daily business. Alana and Serena will share the lessons they learned pivoting a project in May from in-depth in person research into a socially distanced feat of guerrilla testing. This includes adapting to quick changes, preparing for rapid testing and insight gathering, and how to build trust in seconds with passers-by when you have to remain distanced. This was also a real challenge for observation on devices!
Top Takeaways: - The reality of today’s digital world is that the transformation of technology is never done. Therefore, all companies need to continuously change and pivot to keep up with their customers’ expectations and the rest of the business world. - A lot of companies may have an intuitive belief of where their customers are in terms of their needs, expectations, and pain points. Unfortunately, they don’t do the necessary research to keep their finger on the pulse of where their customer is right now. - Customer behavior is vital in keeping your business profitable – and there are more customer behaviors besides buying and coming back to buy again. - Many studies have revealed that while the emotional and rational side of a person plays into purchase decisions, the emotional side tends to be more powerful in purchasing behavior. - Customer love is the feeling that you can count on a brand to give you what you need and more, along with a feeling of alignment or spiritual connection. The companies that inspire a lot of customer love have better business metrics overall. - The formula for achieving customer love is spilt into three parts: meeting customer needs, periodically delighting your customers, and standing for something that resonates with your customers’ values. - Brands with high customer love consistently have more growth, profit, and valuation. - There is a proven transformation process companies can use to improve their fulfillment of the ‘love formula’: - Step 1. Understand Your Customer - Step 2. Map the Customer Journey - Step 3. Build the Future - Step 4. Optimize the Short Term - Step 5. Lead the Change Quote: “In this time of rapid change, you really don’t have a choice if you want your business to remain relevant and successful. You must keep changing with the times.” About: Howard Tiersky is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. Howard is the founder of two companies that enable large brands to win in the digital world: FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency and Innovation Loft. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Week In Japan, Japan to Launch the Digital Transformation Agency, CAPCOM Repeatedly Threatened by Cyber Terrorist Group, and Princess Mako struggles with marrying her partner.Random News of The Week: A Rice-Growing Game Sells Out in JapanWord of The Week: “Galapagos (ガラパゴス)”[Japanese Explanation]This Week In Japanでは毎週、日本で話題のニュースについて、イギリス人アーティストのJulianと日本人起業家のYasuが英語で意見を交わしています。他にも日本文化や、面白い日本語のフレーズを紹介しています。(Recorded on November 20th, 2020, in Akasaka, Tokyo) Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thisweekinjapan)
Laura Stevens: Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a Creative Content Producer at GDS. And like last month’s episode, this one will also be recorded via Hangouts as we’re all remote working now. So today we’re going to be talking about GOV.UK Notify. This is the government’s messaging tool which allows teams across the public sector to send out text messages, letters and emails to their users - cheaply and easily. It sent its first notification in May 2016, and this month GOV.UK Notify reached a milestone and has sent out one billion messages. Notify gets critical information to people that need it. It’s used by local councils, health organisations, central government departments, fire services and many other public sector bodies. And it’s used for a diverse range of services including flood alerts, blue badge notifications, doctor appointment reminders and informing prison wardens of their rotas, to name a few. So to tell me more is Pete Herlihy, so please could you introduce yourself, what you do here at GDS and your role on Notify. Pete Herlihy: Yes, I can Laura. So yeah, I’m Pete, I work on the Notify Team, I help them out. I’m a Product Manager. I’ve been at GDS since the beginning, I haven’t, I haven’t made parole just yet. I’ve worked a lot on a number of platforms in GDS, so publishing platform, GOV.UK, register to vote, petitions and more recently, when I say more recently, my, my latest gig is on Notify, which we’ve been doing now for just over 4 years. And we started with literally 2 people and we’re now 11, and yeah my role on that is just to help and support that team to deliver what is GOV.UK Notify. Laura Stevens And why was Notify set up 4 years ago? Pete Herlihy: Well there’s a story there. So Notify was one of the solutions that came out of something called the ‘Enabling Strategy’, which was a piece of work GDS did. The, the reality behind that piece of work was we needed to figure out as an organisation what we could do to help the rest of government do what they do. And so there was a bunch of stuff going on, we looked at various different kind of common problems across government that we wanted to solve, and, and that was kind of where the whole Government as a Platform programme emerged during that time. And one of the problems we wanted to solve was keeping people informed. And we, we learned very quickly that we probably didn’t need a status tracking application, but what we needed was a notifications platform. And the reckon was, which we did soon validate very quickly, was that if we could kind of just tell people what we knew as soon as we knew it, we didn’t have to wait for them to get anxious enough to jump on a website and look and you know, sign in and see where the thing was at. So it might have saved, or it would have solved our problems with regards to you know the cost of running contact centres and all that avoidable contact, but it wouldn’t really have helped our citizens or end users as much. And so we, we fairly early on validated that and pivoted from a status tracking application to a notifications application. Laura Stevens: And can you talk about some of the service teams that use it, like who uses it and what do they use it for? Pete Herlihy: Well we have now, what’s the number, around 2 and a half thousand service teams now using it, which is a lot. I think - when we started, someone, there was an external consultancy that did a little bit of work for us and they thought there might be 80 services that would use it. And, we were like OK cool, that’s a good number to aim at. But, it’s a completely different profile actually from what we’ve envisaged. We thought at the start they’ll be a bunch of really big services using it and that will be like where the bulk comes from and then we kind of quickly learned that there was a really really long tail of smaller service teams that, and many we didn’t recognise as being a service, necessarily when we started who are really going to get the most benefit out of it. So the big teams might save money, and they’ll get a better product but they probably would have done something anyway. Whereas the rest of them just maybe wouldn’t enter the space of digital comms in this way - so they benefit massively from Notify. So the types of teams, you list, you ran through a bunch at the start there. So, we do have nearly as many service teams in local government using it, as we do in central government. And an increasing number in the NHS as well. Obviously events of this year have seen massive surges in uptake from all of those sectors. For example of things we’re doing a bunch of messaging for the COVID services, all the support and advice the NHS is providing to the extremely vulnerable, that’s all going through Notify. All your test results are going through Notify as well. We’ve got a huge amount of business continuity messaging, so accounts all telling the staff where and when they need to go to do work or changes-changes to opening hours or that sort of thing. We do passport applications, progress updates, flood alerts, global travel alerts, I mean there are, every service is slightly different and that’s kind of the point. So yeah 2 and half thousand of them, 650 organisations I think across the public sector and there’s still a lot more out there who hopefully one day will be using Notify. Laura Stevens: And also was reading on GOV.UK, there was a press release put out which said that Notify is on track to save taxpayers an average of £35 million a year over the next 5 years. When you, it started, did you think you’d be making those sort of savings, yeah, to the taxpayer? Pete Herlihy: We were hopeful. We knew that the return on investment for something like Notify was massive because you know, a text message that cost you 1 and a half pence versus a phone call that costs you £5. That doesn’t take many many phone calls to be avoided to make a good case. And, I remember doing a presentation at GDS Sprint 16, Sprint 16, the orange one. It was very orange. And one of the slides on that was 1 in 4 calls to government is someone just asking for an update. It costs a lot of money to run a contact centre and the government deals with literally tens of millions of phone calls a year. So if we can knock out a quarter of those by investing in a small team doing notifications, then there’s going to be some massive savings. Laura Stevens: And I thought as well as hearing from you about, from the sort of product point of view, we also wanted to hear from one of the users. So we interviewed Silvia Grant who’s the Lead User Researcher at the Environment Agency, who works on the flood warning service which uses Notify. Silvia Grant: So my name is Silvia Grant, I’m a Senior User Researcher for DEFRA [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs]. And I work on an Environment Agency project called ‘The Flood Warning System’. We’re replacing that currently and the new project name is called ‘The Next Warning System’, so we’ve deliberately dropped the flood from that. Laura Stevens: And what, can you explain a bit more about that service? What does it do? Silvia Grant: Yes, so the Environment Agency has been sending out flood warnings since 1996. It’s a category 1 responder and has the responsibility for issuing these messages to the citizens and people who are at risk of flooding. So what the system does is we send out these texts, these emails, we have this information on GOV.UK, and it’s all about warning people that flooding in the area is likely or is happening. Laura Stevens: And how does that system use GOV.UK Notify? Silvia Grant: So at the moment we have over 500,000 user accounts registered to our service, and we use Notify to send letters and texts. And we send them letters to tell them when they’ve first registered that we update their account details, changes to the service, that sort of thing. And obviously also for our texts. Laura Stevens: And how does that translate into the amount of notifications being sent to the people? And obviously this must change year on year depending on the flooding and depending on the weather and everything. Silvia Grant: Yeah. Well so since we’ve moved across to Notify in December 2018, we’ve sent over 4 and a half million texts and close to 10,000 letters. So those are big numbers for us. Laura Stevens: How does having Notify help you get the information to the people that need to hear it? Silvia Grant: Well first of all it’s it’s quicker - so it’s simpler and quicker and cheaper for us to use Notify. So we can send, in in terms of letters for instance, we can send them daily rather than weekly. We have much more freedom around content changes, we can test those changes. So it’s it’s saving us a lot of that admin time, and cost as well. And because it’s a very stressful scenario for our users, it’s quite again, high emotion, high stress, high impact scenario that we send these letters and these texts in, it, it’s, it’s very important for us to get it right and to, you know for the process to be as slick as possible. And I think Notify really helps us do that. Laura Stevens: So this is a really important service because there are, there’s 2.6 million properties at risk of flooding. So what sort of information is being sent out through Notify? Silvia Grant: Yeah, that’s right. So in England the estimate is between 1 in 5, 1 in 6 homes in England are at risk of flooding. And obviously that figure is growing because of climate change and a number of other factors. So it’s, in some cases when we issue severe flood warnings, those are warnings where there is danger to life. So those can be very serious. But overall the flood warning service aims to save lives and livelihoods. So yes overall quite a high impact service. Laura Stevens: And how much would this, do you have an estimate on how much it’s saving money-wise for the Environment Agency? Silvia Grant: Yeah so just got the figure off the team and it’s saved, in the last 2 years that we’ve been using it, approximately saved the taxpayer at least £150,000. So that’s letters, texts, running costs, everything. Laura Stevens: But as you’re saying you’re working on like a high impact service that has to get out messages quickly and which has a, yeah an impact, a big impact on people’s lives. Does having something like Notify in place sort of allow you to then have the space to do other things? Because you know that that’s there, that’s just gonna work, and you can then focus on other thi-parts of this quite emotional and high impact service. Silvia Grant: Yeah definitely. So it’s, it’s quite a long, for our users it’s quite a stressful time receiving those alerts or those warnings, and when they pick those up we, we need to make sure that they arrive instantly, that they say the right things and using a central government platform makes sure that we have that extra accountability that we really need for sending these out. And yes as well that that has given us a lot more space for actually focussing on things like the content of the message. So it’s been overall a positive under all spheres. So it’s easy to use, it’s intuitive, it’s reliable, it’s transparent. So if ever there is an issue with it, we are notified instantly. And again the Notify Team has been really responsive with feedback, so whenever we have had requests or issues, there’s been a fantastic service on their part. Laura Stevens: How do you plan to use Notify in the future, in your product? Silvia Grant: So as our system gets replaced, the Flood Warning System into what we call the ‘Next Warning System’, we anticipate to use Notify even more. So we’re planning to send confirmation codes to users who sign up to the service on their mobiles. So that is, is a step forward in terms of security for us and it’s again, a cheaper journey and for the user, it’s it’s a 2-step journey rather than a 4- or 5-step. We’ve been testing that with the user and it’s, it’s a very positive response. Laura Stevens: Yeah, is that, is that how you imagined Notify would be being used? Pete Herlihy: I don’t think we clocked Notify being used to protect life necessarily when we started out. But we did get, or start working with the Environment Agency fairly early on, so, so, which was great, because what that meant was we had this use case that we could point out internally to say that look this is really crucial. This, this isn’t just about getting a passport update quicker or these kinds of things. This, this is literally a life-saving message and that, that allowed us to focus the right kind of energies on our resilience and make sure we got what we needed. Because we can’t not be there right like if we’re sending these-this kind of message. We have been working with them for a while, they’re a great team, they blog a lot about what they’re doing which is fantastic and very cool. Laura Stevens: Was there anything else in the clip that particularly stood out to you? Pete Herlihy: Yeah I think there’s 2 things. So one is letters. Because I think people think of text messages and emails and forget letters is a thing for Notify. Don’t forget but it’s less well understood. And when we started, back in 2016, when we started out, we were letters is probably a thing just because we need to offer a full palette of comms option and for some people they need a letter, or they prefer a letter, or digitally excluded, whatever it might be, they have legitimate reasons, some of them are legally required for example. And we only, and we kind of stumbled over letters, well not stumbled over, we confirmed our letters when we were doing our, these tours of the application processing. Tours sounds really grand doesn’t it? But we’d sit with a team and one of the things they would do is they would finish preparing an application receipt or confirmation of decision or whatever it was going to be. And then they’d press print and they’d select the printer and they’d walk over, join a queue and someone would yell out ‘stop printing I need to put in the letterhead paper’ you know and they’d, and we were like oh this must be very expensive, and then goes from a printer, they’re folding it up into an envelope, the envelope goes into a tray, someone comes round in the afternoon with a trolley and picks them all up and we thought ‘woah there’s got to be a better way of doing letters’. And that was real early confirmation that if we could make it easy for teams to do letters we could save, help them save, huge amounts of money and time. The amount of time people were just standing around waiting for the printers and things like this, so if that could just be a click it’s like great. And they could do lots more good things with their time. So that was one thing that was really interesting. The second is around the real time content changes. So one of the problems I guess we were trying to solve was often these things are like hard-coded and you need a developer and you need to pay a change request fee to your external supplier to update a typo even in a letter or change a URL in an email or something like that. And we really wanted, not only make it easier to do that in real time but also to allow the interface to be used by like a content designer or a comms person, so they could be involved in shaping the messages themselves in real time. Not just preparing it in a word doc that goes round for sign off by committee, and then is handed over to a development team to implement. So we, we really tried to bring those roles into the team. And you know we were hearing horror stories of people paying tens of thousands just to change a few letters, or including extra things because they couldn’t change a letter saying so please ignore this section, these kind of horror stories you hear about. So that was one of the important bits for us to get real time content changes in an accessible way into Notify and I’m glad to hear they’re using it well as well. Laura Stevens: We also have a clip from the Canadian Digital Service which is Canada’s version of GDS. Notify is obviously used across the UK in the public sector but how has Notify also been used around the world? Pete Herlihy: So we’ve worked with a number of teams actually around the world - some we’ve shared patterns with, others we’ve shared our open source code with. And we, as of today I think there are 2 Notify’s being used in anger, one in Australia through the DTA, the Digital Transformation Agency, it’s basically the, the Aussie version of GDS. They were the first, they forked the Notify code maybe about a year and a half, 2 years ago now. And they’re now running that for the Australian government. They’ve you know, taken the code, they then iterate on top of it to add things that are unique and special to them. The Canadian Digital Service are also running a version of Notify. And that’s growing quickly, it’s grown quicker than we did when we started, so yay for them. But those are the 2 that are being used at government level. Have to say there’s a lot of people who just pick stuff up from blogs or from Twitter or whatever, rather than any kind of formal introductions to the product. Yeah so it’s a great product, very proud that others have picked up the codebase and are running with it, we continue to work with those teams. Speak to teams like Code for America who are doing great stuff in the States. We’ve had a few all team web catch ups with the Canadian Team, and the Americans to show and tell really about what they’re doing, enhancements they’ve made, things they’d like to contribute back. So we’ve got a good little community going on, which is fantastic. Laura Stevens: Yeah, a very nice international community. And we’re going to hear from Bryan Willey, who’s a Product Manager of Notify at the Canadian Digital Service. Bryan Willey: So my name is Bryan Willey, I’m a Product Manager here at CDS, the Canadian Digital Service. And I am the Product Manager for Notify, a piece of software, an open source software, we took from GOV.UK. Sorry is that my cat or your cat? Laura Stevens: I don’t have a cat, so it’s not my cat. Bryan Willey: She’s miaowing outside the door. Sorry about that. Laura Stevens: And yeah would it be fair to say for UK listeners, the Canadian Digital Service is Canada’s version or the equivalent of GDS over there? Bryan Willey: Yes absolutely. I mean it basically has similar initials. Yeah, so the Canadian Digital Service was made with both GDS and the American 18F Group in mind. Laura Stevens: And could you describe what the product you manage is, Notify? Bryan Willey: So Notify is a email platform. Well we’re using predominantly as an email platform, it also does SMS. I know that yours does letters but we’re not there yet. We’re predominantly using it for email and it helps the Canadian government sort of send email messages from a centralised location to the public. Something that the Canadian government’s only been able to do with Outlook servers and traditional email servers before. Notify allows us to have this cloud-at-cost system that can deploy emails very quickly to anyone who wants to use the service, whether that’s an API integration to connect up to automatically reply when somebody submits an application, or if it’s a newsletter that goes out that people sign up for. And it’s been very helpful in sort of building any of those systems because in the past, we’ve had to go procure an individual cloud email vendor for each solution we built. Notify allows us to centralise all that, procure, secure and say yeah, this one thing is now what we use for email. And so we don’t have to go through the process of procuring it every time, and that’s been exceedingly helpful. Laura Stevens: And how’s it going? Because I see, I looked on your dashboard and now 22 services are using Notify and more than 740,000 notifications have been sent. Bryan Willey: Yeah. Well we think it’s going pretty well. The growth has been faster than we had expected. The current crisis has something to do with that. It’s definitely upped our volume more than it would have been. Out of the 22 live services, it’s a mix of how much they’re getting used; some are small, more prototype-y services that do things like password reset emails. Whereas some of our more recent ones include a subscription newsletter for Health Canada to combat COVID-19 misinformation. Laura Stevens: So I saw your blog post on the CDS blog from November 2019, and in it you said ‘this, meaning your Notify tool, isn’t something we built entirely from scratch. Using open source code from the hugely successful GOV.UK Notify service, created by the GDS in the UK, our team is adapting it to fit within our context, in English and French - both of Canada’s official languages’. So I wanted to talk about like, what were the user needs for Canada and how was that similar to the user need over here, and yeah how were you able to adapt, what had been done over here? Bryan Willey: Yeah. So much in the same way I imagine GDS discovered this problem, we had a lot of government services that were communicating with people by mail and phone and the people would rather just get an email, you know. Then they don’t have to sit around and wait for a phone call. And when we were building services early in CDS, we discovered this and we’d be setting up email for each of these services. So after doing this 2, 3 times, CDS said ‘we should really just make this so we can have it every time’. Because we’re not, also not the only ones looking for this. The government of Canada is moving towards more cloud-first strategy and as such they’ve identified the needs for email notifications in a bunch of services. So we forked not just GOV.UK Notify, the DTA [Digital Transformation Agency] in Australia also had a copy of Notify that they had modified a bit from yours. And we looked at both of those and evaluated them, and we forked GDS Notify because we wanted to be able to get your upstream security changes and stuff and pull them down into our repo [repository]. And the Australian one was merged into a big mono-repo which gave us less flexibility with the code. So forking the GDS one was a great idea to sort of prototype it and see what we had to work with because this was already a solution to the problem we’d found. And we then had to, we liked it so we modified it to Canada. Some of the first things we did was of course update SMS to Canadian phone numbers, add timezone support in, so that the logs and stuff functions across more than one timezone. We had to pull apart the whole UI [user interface] and translate it into French because Canada has 2 official languages. And so it’s been a bit of an overhaul for that, and that’s been a lot of our major work. And we also had to sort of modify the branding system bit. Because again, 2 official languages means 2 official government brands, one in English and one in en français. So we’ve had to sort of modify the templating system. We’re working on that a bit more now to expand it for both official language use cases. And so it’s, it’s just been a lot of tweaks here and there to the system and and re-you know changing the UI to look more like Canada.ca than GOV.UK. Laura Stevens: And by having this already in place, what has it allowed you to do? Has it allowed you to move quicker, has it saved you hassle? How has it affected your work and your plan with the product? Bryan Willey: It definitely saved us hassle because we’d have to set that all up from scratch on our own. The email problem, the notification problem, wasn’t going to go away. And these Canadian departments were going to solve it and were solving it by their own means - they were building up their own Outlooks servers and using email stuff. You know that wasn’t taking advantage of cloud-at-cost like Notify did. So having the software that you’d spent 3 years building and already putting a lot of the settings and permissions and access and security and tech in place, really saved us the time having to go through that on our own. Laura Stevens: And also I wanted to ask, so when I’ll be playing this, this edited clip back, I’ll be with Pete. And I wondered if you had anything you wanted to say to him, any questions or any requests as the Lead Product Manager for Notify? Bryan Willey: Thanks for all your help, I guess. You know. I..it’s working great for us so I don’t know if there’s anything we need or any help specifically from Pete. The software is pretty complete in its solution for email and SMS, and so thanks for all your hard work Pete. Laura Stevens: So was there anything in there that you were surprised by or that you hadn’t realised? Pete Herlihy: So I’d knew, I’d seen actually most of that we’ve shared with the team so. The one that I didn’t clock was the branding, and the dual language branding - I hadn’t even thought about that one. So we, we may, we may steal that back. Obviously there’s more than one official language in the UK as well so. That’s really great to hear that. There was an interesting point though around the use of Notify, either by an API or not, so again that was one of our really early reckons when we started Notify, was that not everyone’s got a development team or development capacity or is high enough a priority in their organisation to get the focus. And so we couldn’t just make something that only worked, worked for API and so everything you can do in Notify, you can do via the web interface as well. And the other bit I guess that is maybe even overlooked a bit, is that you get like 3 years worth of software development or whatever, but you also get 3 years worth of research. And we’ve, we’ve done a lot. You know we’ve always had a dedicated user researcher in the team, we’ve always done a huge amount of user research, which you have to d-, for something you’re aspiring to make completely self-service, you have to do the user research, otherwise it’s just never going to be. And so we’ve done loads with like developers, with finance people, with product teams - all the different types of people we see wanting to use Notify. I think what you get when you fork code or, or you know even just take the patterns that another team has, has, derived is you just save yourself years of user research. And again, at that point you can then focus on what are the, the like the niche research requirements around working en francais as he says or whatever else it might be. So that, along with kind of the blogging that goes along the way that shows some of the thinking that goes into the product and some of the decisions that are taken, I mean all of it just shows how, how sensible it is to be doing this stuff in the open. Laura Stevens: Yeah, for sure. And I think that, talking about doing stuff in the open and blogging, leads me on quite nicely to my next part, because I wanted to talk about Notify’s most recent work on coronavirus, which you referenced at the top of the podcast. And 2 of our colleagues, Miriam Raynes and Mark Buckley wrote a blog post about how Government as a Platform, or GaaP services, as a whole are helping with the COVID-19 response. But to talk specifically about Notify, they, in the blog post it’s talking about this huge increase in numbers, like 2 million SMS messages were sent using Notify on a single day in March compared to the daily average of 150,000. I’ve also got a figure here of daily messages up as much as 600%, as high as 8.6 million a day. So what services are using Notify to help with the government’s coronavirus response? Pete Herlihy: Yeah, there, so the, the increase in communication is obviously massive and needs to be. And one of the biggest users of Notify is the GOV.UK email service, and they, they do all of the email for people who subscribe to any content that the government publishes - so travel alerts for example, if you want to know can I take a flight to Namibia, here’s the guidance, or if there’s hurricanes coming through the Caribbean and these countries are affected, then I need to like push out information to say don’t go to these places, or whatever it might be. And those alerts are, you know, again potentially protecting people, life and property - they’re like really important. And there’s been a huge amount of travel advice and alerts being given, as, as you can imagine. So that’s been one of the biggest users. We’ve also seen, I mentioned earlier, like a huge amount of business continuity stuff. And we put a blog post out recently as well, just reminding I guess more than anything, that all of the public sector could use Notify to provide emergency staff updates for changes to working patterns et cetera. as a result of COVID-19. So there’s definitely been a big uptick there. And then I think, from, from the health perspective there’s, I’ll just say NHS because there’s like various bits of the NHS that are working like ridiculously hard and fast to spin out new services really quickly, and these services are like just incredibly crucial right now. So the extremely vulnerable service, this is one where the government said if you are you know, in this extreme risk category you should stay at home for 12 weeks, and they’ve been texting this group of people. There’s all the stuff around testing and results for testing, ordering home test kits, all these sorts of things. So there’s the very specific COVID response type stuff and that is, there is a significant volume of that that’s still ongoing. There is business as usual to some degree actually still going on. So people are you know, people are still having to renew passports or whatever it might be. Whilst the volumes are down, they’re still happening. So we don’t stop all the other messaging and just focus on this, we’ve, we’ve got all that to do as well, and this is, this is all additional, it’s all on top. It all came very quickly as well. You know this wasn’t a gradual ramp up over weeks and weeks to 5,6,700%, it was, it was almost overnight. And yeah, it’s been a huge task to, to keep the platform stable. We had one outage as a result of this on St Patrick’s Day. Which obviously we were massively disappointed at, like our resilience is like one of our, you know, one of the things we pride ourselves most on but we just couldn’t prepare for that kind of instantaneous ramp up. So we, we fixed that very quickly and you know Notify itself has been very stable since. But we’re still continuing on the basis of what we’re seeing now, we’re going to call that the new normal and then we need to add again capacity, 2 or 3 times that again. So there’s still a lot of work to be done, the team still working incredibly hard as they have been ever since, well always, but particularly since, since lock-in began. Laura Stevens: And I believe I’m right in saying as well the 1 billionth message was also a coronavirus one - that was for a notification sent by the coronavirus home testing service. Pete Herlihy: Yes, it was, that was quite opportune. It’s a good example of the type, the primary type of messaging that’s going on with Notify at the moment. And you know those levels are still high, I think we had like 7 and a half million again on Friday, so we’re not getting any quieter. We’re, and we have to plan that we’re not going to. And if we do get quieter then ok, that’s fine but we, we can’t sort of take our foot off at the moment. Laura Stevens: As you mentioned one of the organisations using Notify a lot at the moment is the NHS and the various teams within the NHS. And we’ve got a clip from Darren Curry, who’s the Chief Digital Officer at the NHS Business Services Authority, about how and why his team are using Notify. Darren Curry: Hello I’m Darren Curry, the Chief Digital Officer for the NHS Business Services Authority [NHSBSA], which is an organisation which processes a lot of nationwide transactions on behalf of the NHS, so both public-facing and towards other clinical-facing services. Laura Stevens: And you’re quite a long standing member of NHSBSA, aren’t you? Darren Curry: Yes, I am. So I’ve been at NHS Business Services Authority for roughly 17 years, 17, 18 years now. Believe it or not, I joined originally as a Data Entry Officer back in the day, whilst I was doing my university degree, for pocket money effectively, or beer money. And it paid for me through, through university and I have enjoyed it so much and progressed in the organisation to now be Chief Digital Officer so it’s, it’s been a good place to work. Laura Stevens: And I know that the NHS Business Services Authority has been doing lots of things in response to coronavirus but what I’d like to talk to you about today is what you’ve used GOV.UK Notify for. Darren Curry: Yeah. So we use GOV.UK Notify on a number of our live services as we stand now. So we, we issue exemption certificates, so prepayment certificates for prescription forms, maternity exemptions, which we now issue digitally - so, so we already use Notify for those services in our, our normal processing. We, we first started around coronavirus with Notify on a, what was a relatively small service, for informing individuals who were returning into the UK or who were being advised to isolate, so to provide advice during the 7 days isolation period. And since then our support has grown in the services. So we then utilised the Notify service to support provisioning information to patients who were identified as high risk should they contract coronavirus. So there, there’s individuals who have been asked to shield during the outbreak in order to reduce the chances of them contracting the virus. So we, we text messaged all of those individuals over a 7-so we issued them with 7 texts messages, so one per day, providing advice and guidance on, on what to do during their shielding period. That, that service has grown as, as more people who’ve been identified as being vulnerable, so working with GP practices and NHS England and NHS Digital to identify more individuals who, who may be vulnerable should they contract coronavirus. That, that has grown and we’ve issued more text messages and information to those individuals. We’ve used Notify to provide test results for coronavirus, working with NHS Digital and other partners. We’ve used Notify to also provide advice and information for individuals who go through the 111 service in providing text messages and also emails for those services. Adding it all together, over the last 4 weeks, we’ve issued around about 17 million text messages via Notify through the services that we are, we are delivering, so. It’s, it’s scaling and it’s growing very quickly. Laura Stevens: And so this is, the, the information you’re getting out there is obviously like, it’s really important it’s right, it’s really important that it gets to the right people, it’s an emotional service like, people are scared, like your users are concerned. So-why did you pick Notify to use this on, on these particular services? Darren Curry: Yeah. So, So I mean Notify brings a lot of benefits. I, I think should also say that we, we, in terms of building those messages as well, we worked with colleagues in behavioural insights teams within government, Public Health England, NHSX, content designers, on all of those, and getting the content right was, was critical for these services. But you’re absolutely right, the infrastructure to send those services, those, those messages needed to be kind of stable and dependable. And, Notify does that, so it’s, it is national infrastructure that we can, can leverage all of the benefits of that having already been built as a government platform that we can consume, to, to use as a service really quickly, securely and safely and knowing that, that those messages will, will be passed. There’s lots of benefits that the Notify service has, has brought us. So if, frankly if we were having to do this without the Notify service, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. So that we, we would have been dependent upon trad-more traditional legacy contact methods, such as post, to individuals to inform them on, on this scale. We would had to build a, a technology solution to meet this need - we clearly didn’t have to do that, we could leverage something that was already built for this purpose. And, and this is the benefit of government as a platform that we can consume, you know, the first service we set up with Peter was done within an hour. We, we were able to from, from the request to us being then able to actually push text messages, it took less than an hour to, to go from A to B on that. And you know, without Notify we would have been looking at days, and, and in this situation of a, of a national pandemic, then time’s obviously absolutely critical you know, for people to be able to act upon the advice which has been provided - it’s, it’s, it’s genuinely critical. Yeah, so, so Notify brings all of those benefits - secure, platform, scalable, to be able to deliver those messages. Yeah. Laura Stevens: Can you tell me about some of the responses to these SMSs? Darren Curry: Yeah. For the shielded patients list and the text messages we sent the first cohort when we sent those, we enabled individuals to reply. And some, and we did some analysis on the replies to, to those messages and some of, some of the messages indicated, well some of the replies that we received indicated the difference that the service was really having. So you know the, the replies from people thanking, just saying thank you for informing us and like, they, they would follow the guidance and the maybe hadn't realised that they were in that high risk category beforehand. In this instance you know, we sent it out and we were able to see some of the replies and know that as a result of that action that was taken by sending that message out to an individual, there was an action that that individual was then going to take. And that action potentially, more than potentially, more than likely will result in a reduced risk of that individual being taken ill, and consequences of that. So yeah, it, it really does bring home that and highlight the importance of some of these services and how they all join together. Laura Stevens: So, NHS Business Services Authority is obviously doing a lot of work, you’re working also with other organisations across government as well, aren’t you? Darren Curry: Yeah, so we, we are working alongside our partner organisations including so NHS England, NHS Improvement, NHSX, Department of Health and Social Care directly, Public Health England, the Behavioural Insights Team, GDS also and NHS Digital, have all, we’ve all collaborated and come together across on multiple different services that we are doing. So it’s been a real collaborative effort across the whole of the government family to get these services up and running. Laura Stevens: And had you, did you find you had to, ‘cause obviously it’s for use in like health services but it’s also used like in central government departments, it’s used by local authorities, it’s used in prison services, used by fire services. Like did you find you had to adapt it at all to the health context or was it all sort of ready to go for you? Darren Curry: The great, one of the many great things about Notify is it works just out of the box. So from my development teams in the [NHS] Business Service Authority, it’s a, it’s a really easy integration point. So whether we’re integrating using an API to push the, the messaging or whether we're doing batch uploads of CSVs [comma-separated values files] or spreadsheets or whatever, it works for, for all of those things. I think the, the other thing as well to mention is, is that you know Notify, it’s a trusted service. So we were able to work with the National Cyber Security Centre [NCSC] as well to, to ensure working with the Notify Team and NCSC, to ensure that the messages we were sending were protected numbers. So it was you know again, just adding that, that security to the whole service when you’re doing critical services for people, that we can make sure that they’re trusted and they are known and protected. Laura Stevens: If I’m playing this clip back to Pete, is there anything you want to ask him or anything you want the team to develop next? Darren Curry: I, you know what, it’s a, it’s a really tough question because the, the Notify Team, it’s, it’s a fantastic service. And I think rather than asking Pete to develop anything else, I think my encouragement to Pete and the team is to take that time to reflect on the things that this service has enabled in a time of a national crisis and the things that him and the team have been able to enable, are awesome. And it’s easy to forget that. And 17 million messages to people who needed support, that would not have been achieved, will have genuinely saved lives and protected people. Pete Herlihy: Wow. That’s awesome. Seeing the value that has to them and understanding that you know, without Notify being in place, that stuff just could not happen or you know wouldn’t have been remotely as effective as, you know I maybe hadn’t quite appreciated the, the extent of that. So yeah, that’s pretty mind blowing. Laura Stevens: Yeah. Yeah I think what Darren says well is articulate how this technology tool but how it translates to in people’s lives. Pete Herhily: Yeah, makes it, it makes it very real, for sure. I, I think, I think, you know we’ve talked a bit in the past about how we can’t afford not to have these platforms in place, and, and that was before a global pandemic right? But, and it’s not you know, Notify’s not the only platform in town - we’ve got publishing, you know identity, payments - so but we need them, we can’t afford to not have them. Yeah, now more than ever I guess. I just want my team to hear that. Laura Stevens: So thank you so much for Pete for coming on today. Pete Herlihy: Welcome. Laura Stevens: And you can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms, and the transcript’s available on PodBean.
The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) has given strong support for the Australian Government’s contact tracing app, COVIDSafe, designed to digitally alert Australians of nearby COVID-19 infections. As the peak industry body for innovation technology in Australia, the AIIA was given an exclusive briefing today by the Minister for Government Services, Stuart Robert MP, CEO of the Digital Transformation Agency and head of Australian Cyber Security Centre on the technology behind the tracing app and the cyber security protections built into it. Commenting on the detailed briefing of the app and the reasons for the support, AIIA CEO, Ron Gauci spoke to Executive Editor Chris Cubbage. Recorded 29 April 2020 - with 2.8 million downloads of the App in Australia. Related Episodes Episode 200 - Privacy recommendations for Australia’s use of contact tracing mobile apps like TraceTogether Episode 199 - National Security implications of COVID-19 - Prof John Blaxland & Jacinta Carroll - Australian National University Episode 198 - Early impacts & opportunity of COVID-19 on the Australian Cybersecurity sector - Michelle Price, CEO of AustCyber Reference Links AIIA Media Release InnovationAus article by James Riley - Sovereign capability and that shocking AWS deal Biosecurity (Human Biosecurity Emergency) (Human Coronavirus with Pandemic Potential) (Emergency Requirements—Public Health Contact Information) Determination 2020
In this episode of Make SEO Simple Again, I sit down with Woj Kwasi to talk about agency life, what it is life being the founder at an agency, and how events in one's personal life can have catastrophic impact on the business (and how to overcome them).
Gavin was the former Group Head for Personal banking at NAB before leading the Federal Government’s Digital Transformation Agency. He was appointed the CEO of Nimble last year (that pioneered 60mins finance in Australia) and set a new strategy for the business where it will exit payday lending and focus on becoming a full service, and branchless, digital bank. He believes they have the team, technology, brand and strategy to take on the banks and other providers and make it a reality.
In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Ruth Ellison, Head of User Research at DTA, the Digital Transformation Agency in Australia. We discuss the challenges of user research – and digital product development – in government, embedding researchers into product teams but maintaining a guild model to connect them, and how research [...]
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is the converged national regulator for telecom and broadcasting in the country. Interview with Nerida O’Loughlin, Chair, Australian Media and Communications Authority Ms Nerida O'Loughlin commenced as Chair of the ACMA on 14 October 2017 for a five year term. Prior to joining the ACMA, Nerida was Deputy Secretary in the Department of Communications and the Arts providing policy advice across telecommunications, broadcasting, online content and the arts. Nerida has also been responsible for major projects in the communications portfolio, including leading the Digital Television Switchover Program. Nerida served as interim CEO of the Digital Transformation Agency from 2016 to 2017. Over her career, Nerida has also held senior positions in the Victorian and Commonwealth Governments, predominantly across the technology and cultural sectors.
We take a look at the global state of digital identity. From the West we hear from John Erik Setsass, Identity Architect at Signicat and from the East we hear from Jonathon Thorpe, Head of Identity at the Australian Govt. Digital Transformation Agency. John Erik Setsass shares how financial institutions can position themselves at the centre of this technology shift, the opportunities to banks for investing within this space and some great examples of institutions that are leading in market. Jonathon Thorpe explains the next phase of work for the Digital Identity Framework, the organisations that they are partnering with to implement their solutions and how they build trust and mitigate against risks for consumers. The Global Digital Banker is an insight-backed podcast series, focusing on key trends, market insights, thought leadership and best practice within the fast growing and dynamic world of digital banking. www.globaldigitalbanker.com
Libby Varcoe, Content Community Lead at the Digital Transformation Agent, is no stranger to the content world having started around the same time that contentgroup was in its early stages. It all started with a conversation she had with a fellow communications graduate in a café back in 1997 who merely said: “look, I think we need to break into this content world.” And from then on, she was hooked. Opening her own agency in 2002 called write-minded, she has worked with some massive names from around Australia including The Australian Museum, The National Museum, St. George, Qantas and many more. As a boutique content agency, she would help brands create and implement their best content strategies focusing on online channels. While doing a nine-week contract for the Digital Transformation Agency, she was offered the opportunity to join the team permanently, which she took. And two years on she is now the Content Community Lead, leading a team of content designers to transport our government across federal, state and local areas to the digital age. Discussed in this podcast: From the late-1990s to now, content continues to become more relevant to the government and public sector Departments shouldn't just focus on a content team; all teams should have an understanding of content Why it's important to approach content proactively rather than leaving it to the last minute Why archiving is important There are over 44 million ‘.gov.au' pages floating around the internet How making the government/citizen interaction online easier boosts community participation Taking inspiration from gov.uk and their approach to content – click here Follow and like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Read our weekly blog too! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Libby Varcoe, Content Community Lead at the Digital Transformation Agent, is no stranger to the content world having started around the same time that contentgroup was in its early stages. It all started with a conversation she had with a fellow communications graduate in a café back in 1997 who merely said: “look, I think we need to break into this content world.” And from then on, she was hooked. Opening her own agency in 2002 called write-minded, she has worked with some massive names from around Australia including The Australian Museum, The National Museum, St. George, Qantas and many more. As a boutique content agency, she would help brands create and implement their best content strategies focusing on online channels. While doing a nine-week contract for the Digital Transformation Agency, she was offered the opportunity to join the team permanently, which she took. And two years on she is now the Content Community Lead, leading a team of content designers to transport our government across federal, state and local areas to the digital age. Discussed in this podcast: From the late-1990s to now, content continues to become more relevant to the government and public sector Departments shouldn’t just focus on a content team; all teams should have an understanding of content Why it’s important to approach content proactively rather than leaving it to the last minute Why archiving is important There are over 44 million ‘.gov.au’ pages floating around the internet How making the government/citizen interaction online easier boosts community participation Taking inspiration from gov.uk and their approach to content – click here Follow and like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Read our weekly blog too!
This week on InTransition we will listen to a speech made by Gavin Slater, the new CEO of the Digital Transformation Agency, held by the Institute of Public Administration Australia at the National Gallery of Australia. Mr Slater spent the last seven years at the National Australia Bank (NAB) focused on driving a widespread digital transformation agenda and leading initiatives to overhaul NAB's technology. Mr Slater is known for driving transformational change and responding to digital disruption having 30 years' experience working in the private Financial Services sector. In this speech, he discusses: Challenges in improving the government's service delivery; The Senate probe into the government's $10bn IT spend; and His vision for the future, including more transparency and website consolidation. Content communication is a strategic, measurable, and accountable business process that relies on the creation, curation, and distribution of useful, relevant, and consistent content. The purpose is to engage and inform a specific audience in order to achieve a desired citizen and/or stakeholder action. That is the practise and the process of content communication. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week on InTransition we will listen to a speech made by Gavin Slater, the new CEO of the Digital Transformation Agency, held by the Institute of Public Administration Australia at the National Gallery of Australia. Mr Slater spent the last seven years at the National Australia Bank (NAB) focused on driving a widespread digital transformation agenda and leading initiatives to overhaul NAB's technology. Mr Slater is known for driving transformational change and responding to digital disruption having 30 years’ experience working in the private Financial Services sector. In this speech, he discusses: Challenges in improving the government’s service delivery; The Senate probe into the government’s $10bn IT spend; and His vision for the future, including more transparency and website consolidation. Content communication is a strategic, measurable, and accountable business process that relies on the creation, curation, and distribution of useful, relevant, and consistent content. The purpose is to engage and inform a specific audience in order to achieve a desired citizen and/or stakeholder action. That is the practise and the process of content communication.
Why is it that we need so much agility for digital transformation? The answer is simple: the speed of digital. Howard Tiersky, CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, discusses the five types of organizational agility and key tactics for gaining agility in large enterprises.
You may well be struggling right now to drive some sort of change, innovation, or digital transformation within your organization. Why is it so hard? And what’s the secret to getting big companies to successfully transform? Learn about overcoming challenges in large enterprises with Howard Tiersky, CEO and founder of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency.
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