AIs Role in Modern E-Commerce
Join Jess and Logan as they discuss how new skills like coding can boost career opportunities and make the most of AI tools. Discover Logan's innovative strategies for unifying customer experiences across channels and shifting from traditional marketing to cutting-edge AI techniques.
(upbeat music)
- My name is Jess Servion,
and I'm super excited to bring you my new podcast,
The Juice With Jess.
This podcast is gonna be about everything
in your customer's journey.
We're talking acquisition, awareness, making that purchase,
retaining that customer, bringing them back around,
and everything in between.
This is gonna be all about delivering dope brand experiences
and talking to some really amazing people
who are in the customer experience space,
and marketing space, and everything in between.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome back to another episode of The Juice With Me,
Jess, I am your host.
This week, I am joined by my homie, Logan Dunn,
head of e-commerce for WISE Labs.
Did you guys drop the labs?
- No, no, technically we still are WISE.
- Okay, WISEy Labs.
- Yes.
- But I mean it's WISE or something.
- Yeah, WISE.
- Yes.
- And we'll get into who WISE is in just a second.
But I do wanna take a moment to say
we are live recording this at SubSummit and Dallas,
which is the greatest subscription conference in the world.
- Yeah, I mean I think they can claim the biggest.
- The biggest, the biggest.
- And the greatest.
I mean greatest is subjective, but.
- You're slinging cameras, I'm slinging podcasts
at the subscription.
- This is the subscription summit.
Okay, Logan, before we get into it,
my Dean would tell the homies who you are.
Where are you, like everything?
- Yeah, and I guess, I don't know,
is that where they see me or my break?
- Oh yeah.
- The barrier that I'm not supposed to break?
- That's good.
- No, so yeah, Logan Dunn, I've worked at WISE now
for about five years.
WISE is only about six and a half years old as a company.
So yeah, I'm the head of e-commerce.
I run our direct to sewer business,
which is WISE.com or Canada Store.
I also do our TikTok shop with our,
I mean, there's a whole team.
I don't actually don't do very much at TikTok.
But our team does a ton.
- TikTok.
- I know, right?
We can spend a whole episode just talking TikTok.
- God, like I'm walking to spend a whole episode
of TikTok, you had TikTok.
- All right, coming soon.
- Episode two, TikTok.
Well, can we talk about what WISE is first?
Because I think that's really important of laying the grout.
- Yeah, and maybe why we're speaking
at a subscription conference, right?
- Yeah, Doug.
- Yeah, so WISE makes security cameras.
So we do little smart home security cameras.
We actually brought the camera industry to its knees.
Literally when we launched,
we launched a $20 security camera.
And it was at the time when our competitors were $200 plus
dollars.
And they were just like everyone,
all the news media everyone was like,
"How can you do it?
How can you launch something or $20?"
No subscription attached.
Obviously that was in our roadmap,
which is why we're here at SubSummit
is because there is a subscription now if you want it.
I still think we offer the most for free of like any company.
That's something that we do value as being friends
with our users, it's one of our core values.
But yeah, just mostly cameras,
but we do all sorts of smart home.
We have plugs, we have lights.
Cameras is definitely the core business though.
- Cool.
I think that WISE has become a household name at this point.
I mean, I went to Salt Lake City recently
and everybody's like, "Cummy, Logan, WISE."
And then like, I'm in another city and somebody's like,
"WISE cameras."
And I'm serious, like it's really become a household name.
And I think that's, go ahead.
- Well, no, no, no.
I mean, I think I hope that we're a household name level,
but I will tell you one thing that's for sure
is like on the whole technology lifecycle, right?
You have to cross the chasm.
That's like a big thing, right?
To go from like the early adopter to mass.
I mean, we're definitely cross the chasm.
We're seeing like all the pain points that come
once you become like a generally known brand.
Like it's crazy how accurate that book is actually.
- Yeah.
Well, what do you think some key strategies were
that helped you build that brand recognition initially?
- Well, I mean, so from the marketing standpoint,
I think one of the things that we think about is,
is how are you boring, right?
Like you have to be not boring.
And in the beginning, we were like very much
different when we came to like our marketing messages.
Everyone was like, love your kids and your family.
And our first marketing video had a cyclops with One Eye
because our camera looked like a cyclops.
And we did the whole like, like just very like,
oh, I don't know, like irreverent and funny.
And so we adopted this like very core group of users,
like that just loved wise.
Like that's, I mean, that's really how you do it.
And again, going back to technology curve,
that is like a thing.
You have to have like a love group that loves you so much
that they will carry you to the masses.
- Yeah.
- And I think that's what we did really, really well.
- Yeah, I think, I mean, listen,
I come from the creator economy, like creator businesses.
And but I always say that like even from like you can,
you can utilize that with the learnings
from the creator economy from the acquisition point of view,
right?
So you can acquire those customers all day long, right?
And then you have like your raving fans,
but then what's interesting is how you actually retain that.
So we're not, we're not going.
- Done going, okay.
- We can't go and retain.
- They're already.
- No, no extension.
Yeah, but what I want to talk about,
like I want to still stay on like the acquisition
and like the brand recognition piece of it
because I think it's really important
when you're coming onto the market.
How are you thinking about your customer personas?
How are you saying, okay, I want to sell like sell
to this particular person?
And like, and I think what's interesting is that like
wise has become this, you know,
hot player because of from a differentiator
from a cost perspective.
But how did you guys think through the persona building?
- Yeah.
So here's the thing.
It's like when you, when you get your love group,
almost, I feel like I wish I could say that we like
did all this research and we were super smart about
who we selected and this was our customer group
and we marketed directly towards them.
But the truth is like when you're starting out a company
you have to have like this little bit of luck.
- Yeah.
- And you have to find something, you know,
some pain point that you saw for
and something that people just like adore you for.
And if you have that, like the customers come to you.
Right?
I know that it's not just like if you build it,
they will come like that's way easier said than done.
But with wise in a sense, that's kind of how it started.
And obviously what we did is made a very accessible camera,
very, you know, low cost that was very high,
like I mean, it's just as good as 200 other cameras.
Right?
And then what we did is we built a community.
That was huge for us.
So even right now we have a really big community.
I read it.
We were one of the top new emerging brands on Discord
as far as like a brand server goes.
- Oh, that's interesting.
That's interesting.
- Yeah, they like, they compared us to Taco Bell.
- Okay.
- I mean, I thought it was really cool
that we were compared to a food brands,
like their community.
- Yeah.
- But Discord loved it.
And they said that our engagement was super high.
We had a whole community team.
We have a private Facebook group
that's just community members, we have our own forum.
You know, each community is totally different.
I mean, if you wanna like just get totally like destroyed,
go read Reddit, right?
If you want people to like just sing your praises,
go to your own forum, you know?
And if you want like Facebook is more like your own forum
and then, you know, Discord is actually like very like
kind of in between like a Reddit and a forum,
but I mean, they're much more like supportive and building.
But the community was huge for us.
And then what they did,
we also had all sorts of features.
Like it flashed the security camera to your own firmware
and you could hook it up to Raspberry Pi.
So you got these like super techy people using it
and just loving it and talking about it
and all sorts of cool like experiments popping up.
So it created this like momentum for us in the early stages.
And I remember like when I first started it wise,
I subscribed to wise on, you know,
just Google search results and every day
it was like 12 to 15 article.
I kid you not like every single day.
And now, I mean, it's more at a normal level
where we're seeing like a few a week.
But back then it was just every day
we couldn't even keep up with all the media
just because it was just so talked about.
- Yeah, that's crazy.
And I mean, I guess this is like a little bit more like
tactical and tech related.
Were you utilizing any sort of like social listening tools
to track any of that like the statements,
the immunity or any of those things?
Cause everybody's strategy is different.
- Yeah, so we have, we'll say,
the truth is the best thing to do is like
you miss some of the chatter,
but just to have like a team and have people
that are actually in there and engaging into the trenches
and have that community team that's constantly
giving you the back.
So even now we have a channel where we get community bugs
and reported so like if it comes to the community
it's actually a way to shortcut for like big bugs.
I mean, still best do normal support ticket
but like the community of reported bugs and things
actually get like CEO level attention right now still.
You know, six and a half years in.
- Yeah, okay, I'm gonna look directly at this camera
and say ding, ding on actually having a team
to manage your community
because I think a lot of brands fail at this.
I think you don't like you think of customer experience
as just customer support
and you're not thinking about it as like
customer experience should be support,
it should be community.
If like we are in a digital eight,
brands are online.
They like people are talking about us
and you leave people to manage it.
- Yeah, and I will say in the early days
I think it's more important
and should be a larger amount of investment
than like again going to like this idea
of like crossing the chasm
and the technology adoption cycle, right?
In the early days that's actually when your community
is the most important
because these are your evangelists.
These are those that are going out
and like telling everyone how much they love your brand
and they need like they wanna feel like
they're part of something.
And as I think as you start to get into the more broad level
if you have to start serving, you know,
millions and millions of customers differently
than you serve, you know, tens of thousands of customers.
And so I would say our community was bigger
and more involved in the early days even than it is now.
- Yeah, I mean, honestly I share in that sentiment
because I have peace to goals.
And I know I like go back to peace to goals
but like I tear so much about-
- But the growing consumer brands.
- Yeah, and it's also like very directly related
to community, right?
And so I was an early employee
because we cared so much about the customer experience
and then the second employee was actually a community manager.
And so we like divvied it up.
We like built a customer experience team
that was a support community
and as well as the digital experience.
And we built the team from that.
And what's interesting is actually as,
and I don't know if you feel the same way about like with wise
but as you go into like more omni-channel and retail,
like the chatter becomes less and less.
- Absolutely.
- So then the teams become less and less.
- The chills right now, I don't know if it's just cold
but that's like-
- There's no reason.
- Yeah, no, but really that's true.
Like I totally believe that.
- Yeah, which I mean, honestly it makes it a little bit sad
I'm not gonna lie but like the core
at the beginning of your founding company, right?
You should focus on your support.
You should focus on your community building.
And yes, maybe you're putting a lot of employees
like at the forefront of it
but you should also be looking at it
from a technology perspective to the flat tickets
as well as the gather information
from like more of an automation standpoint.
- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I think that, I mean, especially in,
I don't know, I mean, you went from consumer packaged goods
with festivals, right?
And then you did it with community
and we're very like tech specific
which seems like that would be even more important
for community.
And in the end, I actually think it's just like,
you just need that community
to really get a brand going.
And it's just so, so critical.
Like your customers need to put a base to it.
And then I will say like that is, like I said,
it's one of our core values.
Like we have five values
and our number one values be friends with our users.
Are we always friends with our users?
No, I mean, we try to, right?
That's the point of a value
because it guides you back into it.
I would say in the early days,
we're even better than we are now.
Just because it was so much smaller,
so much easier to manage.
We put more resources into it.
But I think you can't just say,
oh yeah, we're gonna hire community team and that's it.
Like if you wanna have community,
you have to make it core to your business.
And I would suggest putting in your values.
'Cause if you don't,
if you don't have your customer somewhere in your values,
then you probably need to revisit your value.
- Yeah, dang, I wanna feel like,
I feel like this is a mic drop.
And we should just walk away.
Like I was so--
- And that's the juicer chest.
- I mean, point your customer experience in your values
because then you're creating a culture
where people actually care about your customer experience.
- Yeah, I mean, if you look at some
of the really, really big successful brands,
like Amazon, for example, right?
That's four to what Amazon is, right?
Is putting the customer first
and that's what they've always had written into their values.
And I mean, it helped the Y's was founded by X Amazon employees.
You know, they left Amazon to actually build Y's
and that they carried that over.
You know, customer centric is just so critical.
But again, if you leave it out of your values,
thinking that like, no, we're gonna do this other thing
instead, you probably won't continue to focus on the customer.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I've seen many companies like actually flip.
I've seen cultures change, not gonna name names
because--
- Every culture changes.
- Every culture changes, but like--
- I also wise it's way different now than it was.
- Oh.
I mean, let's start up like, right?
Like being employee four or 10 versus employee, like, 800
is so different, you know?
- Yeah, right.
I was employee 63.
- Oh.
- I wasn't like that early.
- So, or how many employees are we up now?
- We have about 300.
- Okay, that's pretty early.
- Yeah.
I feel like--
- Their policies were in place, but now HR's really coming in.
- Yes.
Now we have HR policies.
Before we didn't have HR policies,
they were all like back of napkin HR policies.
- Yeah, that's like my moment to leave.
When there's a real HR team,
they F bombs need to stop and I can't--
- Written in.
- I can't--
- You're doing a really good versus your other juice podcast.
I'll just say that.
- Ooh.
- I'm seeing nodding from the audience.
(laughing)
- They all know.
Gee spans.
Okay, wait, I wanna like double back on something real quick.
'Cause we were like talking about community,
we were talking about it being like in the culture
and all of these pieces, but I think that's something
that's interesting that you brought up
was like your technology company and I come from CPG,
but I actually apply so much of my CX automations
and even marketing automations
from what I've learned working in B2B.
And I think that in CPG,
like whether apparel, whether food,
what if they're selling something,
I think if you think about it from like a tech,
if like you think about building your customer experience
from a technology perspective of like always having
to answer the questions before they become questions,
you can then create like a really good customer experience.
And like that, and so like, I know this is in my interview,
but I like this is, it's important to name
because I think there's a lot to be like learned
from technology companies, like an Amazon or Dell
or I don't know, I just age.
- Ironically, it came from a B2B company before as well.
- Okay, me too.
- Yeah, I feel like that is the thing,
because with B2B you liver die
based on your customer relationship.
Like in CPG, of course you need to care
of your customers, but I mean, you're talking about
like customers in the thousands to like if you're big B2B
like hundreds of thousands, right?
Two millions, right?
If you're big CPG.
And so you're just, it's different when the way you talk
to a million people versus the way you talk to a handful
of people, right?
And so, but what you're saying, which I agree with is
like what can you learn from B2B software or you know,
whatever it might be in relationship building
and how can you bring that to the master?
I would say that tools today actually do make it easier
to do that.
- Absolutely.
- You know, now the software is where it is.
- Yeah, well, yeah, no, and I agree.
So like on B2B side, right?
Like you have your customer support,
which is usually like a technical support, product support,
whatever you want to name it,
or some sort of like tier one, tier two,
then you also have customer success
and you also have products marketing, right?
And all of these, and like there's plenty of other functions,
but these are functions that I've like worked across.
So I've like, I've learned so many things
from those like B2B functions that then I apply
to like customers I consult with or even festivals.
And the whole point of customer experience
between like support community marketing
is answering questions before they become questions.
And lastly, I want to get to a stat that you shared with me.
Also, how do you automate things like the low hanging fruit
with technology too?
So like, yeah.
But I like what you said, because I do think
in the early days of your business,
as you're in a company, like your community is,
they like, technically they're asking you the questions,
but because of your dedicated loyal community members,
they're asking you the tough questions
and the questions you need to solve for before the masses.
Yeah.
Right?
So here's a great example from why, okay?
So when we started at WISE,
we were patting ourselves on the back
because we got to 95%.
We're greater than 95% camera uptime, okay?
Right.
That's terrible.
That was like, interesting.
Great.
95%.
No, no, no, no.
In my head, I was like, hmm.
I'm like, wait, is that--
Were you selling product?
Yeah, that's right.
But you know, the community very much voiced
like how important that is.
And I think that like as we get into more of the masses,
you have less margin for error.
Like now we have to be 99.9% camera uptime.
Because if we're not, like, you're just
going to go to the next competitor.
Yeah.
That was--
I know.
I like that.
Anyway, so we'll end on that.
We'll like say a final point.
Sorry.
Anyway.
And you have the viewers and listeners
that are not in this moment.
That's right.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, yeah, 99% uptime.
Anyway, but like in the early days,
your customers, your community specifically, right?
The ones that you're building relationships with
are like, I don't know, canary in the coal mine
for another analogy, right?
They're telling you, like, here are the issues to solve.
And I'll be honest, we've made mistakes on not listening.
Like, we just implemented a dark mode on our app
like months ago.
Lessening, you're more than a couple months, less than a year,
right?
And that was one of the early asks for our customers.
And it's been hugely successful for us to have a dark button
in the app.
So, yeah, like, they will tell you the questions
before they're being asked, even though they're technically
being asked, because they're your love, love, love group.
That's what communities are so important.
Right.
And let's reemphasize this.
But this is why it's so important for you
to develop feedback loops from, like, anything
that's coming through from, like, your community.
If somebody's read, somebody's asking a question
and your support, you need to take all these channels
and build a feedback loop to then reiterate.
Yeah, and I will say, I think a community team
in the early days is probably the easiest way to do that,
because you have humans thinking like humans
who are able to know what to escalate, whatnot,
how to bring things up.
And you also don't have the sheer number of inputs
that you have once you get bigger.
So, yeah, I think that's critical.
Wait, let me get your hot take on this.
Hot take, ready?
Do you think a community team should sit in,
like a customer's border experience team,
or do you think it should sit in your social--
Oh my gosh, we had arguments about this.
I would be at the--
Yeah, I did not.
Senator Social Team will tell you that.
I actually sat on our product team.
Mm.
Thank you for staying.
Well, we're a product-led company.
OK, yeah.
Yeah.
No, we had our own support team, but there were constant battles,
and we had them in support for a while,
and we moved them into product.
And I actually don't know where which group they are in right now.
You should go back.
Yeah, I will go back and look.
But I do think that we was more effective when
it was in the product team.
Yeah.
Because they were directly connecting with product managers
and things rather than customer support type issue.
Yeah, that makes sense, because it's easier to manage.
I mean, we always will have support agents
in the community, too.
But not the community team, the community team
serves a different purpose than answering the support queries.
OK.
So that's one distinction.
You always will have a customer engagement, customer
testing that does the support site.
Community building is a different role.
And so I know they were marketing for a little bit,
and then they went to product.
And I think that's where they were the most effective for us.
OK.
Well, at least you've tested.
You've A/B tested your community team.
Yeah, that's right.
I don't know if it's a C/B.
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Check it out today at community.customer.com.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
OK.
Well, I'm really interested to talk about subscriptions.
We are at Sub-Summit App.
Sure. Yeah.
So I think it's really important.
So you've come out to the market.
You have this market adoption.
You have this dope product.
People love it.
How did you think through--
besides just being on an app, how did you think
through subscriptions in an upsell perspective?
How are you looking at data?
Let's just tell me the jams.
Well, so I love this.
Because this was a big win for us.
But what ended up happening-- so when I joined,
we were using a very small ESP.
It's a very popular ESP that meant for smaller businesses.
And we had about a little over a million email
subscribers at that time.
So we grew really fast and was first year, year and a half.
So I come in.
We have a million email subscribers.
And what I saw was we were sending out monthly newsletters
or batch and blast.
And we can do so much more here.
And I actually called my friend who--
he lived in Salt Lake at the time.
He now works with me.
He was on my team.
I brought him over because I just--
I love this guy so much.
But anyway, he said--
I talked to him through the business.
I was just starting.
I looked to him as a mentor.
He was the vice president of this company that had an app.
But they also had 50 retail stores.
So he was kind of a big deal.
And it's like, what do I do?
I'm coming in.
I need your help.
He's like email.
Focus on your email list.
Focus on creating an engagement
with your existing customers first.
So I was like, OK, that's great.
But I also knew that no one could use our products
without an app.
So what I used to--
and I still say this all the time, it's like a cheat code.
I mean, imagine at feasibility, if every person who
bought one of your products, they
had to give you their email address and phone number.
Yeah.
Holy--
That would be changing your entire business.
I mean, we did.
Kind of.
Because we made-- it was a give or take.
You want to enter into this giveaway?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, no, no.
Sign up.
But that's the way.
That's what you do is you're like,
I have to figure out a way to get this customer information.
Right?
I didn't have to figure it out, because otherwise,
you just bought a piece of metal and plastic.
You know?
And you can do anything with that.
So I was like, look at all of this.
And we have an app.
And they're like extremely like our stickiness, which
is your DAUs divided by your MAUs.
A daily actives by monthly actives.
And you're like, well, how much are they using the app?
And I was like, we have to get an engagement.
So I went through this long RFP process
and ghosted many different engagement companies.
And I'll actually say, because they
took the time to be in the audience here, but Brazen--
that's who we went with.
We've been with Brazen for three and a half years.
Shout out to Brazen.
They're waving from the back.
Usually, I keep it generic.
But because they took the time to attend,
they get a tall one.
[LAUGHTER]
Anyway, but with Brazen, we put them in place.
And we put all of our engagement channels.
I mean, direct to customer engagement.
Obviously, community is a little bit different.
But we put that all into one single app.
So we have in-app messages.
We have push messages.
We have emails.
We have text messages.
We have MMS.
We have content cards, little pieces
of content in delivered places in our app.
And so we built all these new channels.
And every time we built a channel,
we actually increased engagement,
without sacrificing engagement with other channels.
So going back to your questions,
like, how did you build this subscription
and get your customers to do this?
Well, when we first started our subscription,
we actually already had brazes.
And we had it implemented.
And we were going from batch and blast monthly
to a regular email cadence.
So that was one of my first jobs at WISE.
It was implement brazes.
Get us going on that.
But I knew the reason I picked a tool like brazes,
I wanted something that could do workflows.
I wanted to map out little journeys with my customers.
And I wanted, because of my visual brand,
I wanted to drag and drop tools.
Yeah.
If anyone wasn't dragging, drop your route.
If you were sequential listed--
Did.
Oh my gosh.
Honestly, straight up.
Yeah.
Five.
Goodness.
God, the one thing I hate, real quick,
I'm not going to name the tool, because I do like to stay
agnostic, is when you have to edit the definitions
for your segments.
And then it never works.
And then you forgot to do the and or whatever.
Yeah.
Sometimes just make it easy, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
100%.
Anyway, so what we did, though, is we
knew that this was going to be pivotal to our business.
So in fact, my first real move inside of WISE
was from a director of product marketing,
where I got to do the content.
And we created this crazy video where a guy wrote a buffalo,
which two weeks before the shoot,
the buffalo died.
Yeah, and we went to-- we had to find another buffalo
in two weeks.
That's a crazy story.
It's a hug.
Another time.
Yes.
Anyway.
Second, second, second.
The third, we already have a second plan, remember?
Anyway, so what we ended up doing, though,
was just like I knew that we needed.
So I moved to be like head of subscription growth.
We created this growth cell with product.
And kind of like what you do when you create a growth team.
And we went from 9% attach rate,
where when we were just doing the batch on blast,
like super early to, on average, we
attached it about 26%, 27% right now.
But that's been through iteration after iteration.
A/B tests, after A/B tests, looking at what is actually
working to convert these people.
Where are we converting them?
When are we converting them?
Like what time?
So we developed a 21 week cycle to seven day free trial,
to 14 days after your trial.
We keep getting you to convert.
And then I think we actually extended it to 28.
But it was all that experimentation
that took us from that 9% up to 26%, 27%.
And in the last two years, I moved to head of e-commerce.
We have a new guy that does head of subscription growth.
But we still use that same tool just to methodically drive
towards bit by bit percentage growth.
Yeah.
Wow.
I think that's really awesome.
So my next question to you is because this actually--
I don't even know if I actually answered that question.
Hopefully I did.
I don't think you did.
OK.
Dog, you talked about like I grew, you did things.
A buffalo.
Good.
Benny, please edit some of this up.
OK, next one.
OK.
So what I'm really interested is like, OK,
so you started out with these strategies, right?
You started out in subscriptions,
and now you're in e-commerce growth, right?
Right.
And so before we started on the pod,
you were actually telling me a stat.
And I want you to share that stat.
And I want you to tell me how you're applying.
I'm a good story too, because you were in the story.
What?
Yes, OK.
So we've actually been seeing a little bit of a decline
in our e-commerce growth.
And so I wrote this e-commerce pivot plan recently,
and what we're trying to do to continue to stimulate growth.
I was in a meeting presenting this plan to our CEO.
And our CEO was like, when was the last time
you talked to someone about WISE?
And I was like, oh, it was a week ago.
I talked to Jess.
We were talking about this podcast.
So this is, I don't know, a month ago now from time.
And I was like--
he was like, yeah, when you talk to someone about the product,
you can sell them on the product.
And I was like, oh, yeah.
Like, literally after I was done,
she was like, I'm going to go replace all the cameras
in my parents' house with WISE camps.
And I was like, yeah, you're totally right.
If I have 20 minutes with any single person,
I can get them to buy WISE.
And he's like, without even trying,
he's like, they just need to understand the value proposition
better.
And so if you have that really big insight--
and this is part of our pivot plan, which is to--
I mean, we have an AI tool, and not like chat GPT.
I'm talking like real AI.
I mean, chat with GPT is huge.
Don't give you a--
Well, you showed me this AI.
Yeah.
I mean, we're trying to do really cool AI.
Like, for example, all your videos, like, we--
at one point, we're uploading more videos
to the cloud every day than YouTube.
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean, we didn't store them, so YouTube's
so much bigger database.
But in the amount of video that we're uploading of people's
very important, air-quoted lives, right,
you just so much data to filter through, right?
I mean, if you go look at your own cameras,
and you've got two or three cameras,
you're talking like hours and hours of footage,
sometimes per day--
A thing.
Of nothing.
No, no, literally.
Your cat walks across and boom, recorded, right?
So the AI that we're developing is actually,
like, you could just go search and be like,
hey, I need videos with cartoons,
and it will show you all your videos with our coons.
Like, that's how we're applying this, you know,
the large language models and everything into our cameras.
And we're doing a lot of other stuff as well.
And are you giving that access to the client, too,
the customer?
Well, we just actually launched it to the customer.
We've had it, like, in development for, like, two years.
But we did just deploy it to our customers,
and it's really cool and surprisingly accurate and awesome.
But my point is, is like, we're starting to get known,
and we're branding ourselves.
In fact, we bought WIS.AI, we're trying to, like,
brand ourselves more as an AI company,
and who isn't.
But--
Everybody.
Yeah, I know.
And it'd be, like, GU-stot AI.
Yes, exactly.
It's like the only podcast that uses AI.
Obviously, it's buzzy right now.
But the reason I tell you this is,
like, we're trying to build a brand around that.
So the thought of this is, if I can actually, like,
sell you on WIS just by talking to you about it,
like, it's that good of a product.
Right.
Like, how can we extend that into the masses, right?
And obviously, with JetGPT and all of this that we have now,
like, this should be possible, right?
So we've been working with a team to develop a sales agent
that's, you know, based on all of the newest AI, right?
And what we've seen is, if customers can engage
with the sales agent, like, our normal conversion rate,
you know, just taking raw numbers might be, like,
a 2 and 1/2 percent.
And we're seeing, like, a 7 and 1/2 percent conversion rate.
Not, like, like, 7/2 percent increase, like, 7 and 1/2 percent.
If you engage with the sales assistant,
we're talking, like, a 3.4x increase in conversion.
Yeah.
Like, 340 percent.
Yeah.
Right?
This is no joke.
Like, this is real data.
We've been doing AB tests.
I mean, it's been incredible for us.
So what we're trying to do is take this wise AI
that we're branding as a company that's about all
of these really cool features.
You can do the camera.
We're trying to tie that to customer shopping experience
and create, like, a wise companion shopper.
Wow.
And then I think we're going to be the first,
if we can pull this off fast enough,
we're going to be the first, actually, inside of our category
to make this, like, the first thing you see when you land.
Not just like a little modal, but, like, that is the feature.
That is the hero, is, like, let us help you.
Yeah.
And use these large language models
and, you know, to really teach the customer what
wise is all about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I think this is actually really interesting,
because I believe it.
Like, whether I say your dad or not, I do believe it.
I do believe that, like, you have, like, some sort of, like,
AI assistant, like, on your website, no matter what,
like, your product is.
And, like, you train it to, like, know what your product is,
it can move the needle.
So even on, like, a simplest term, right?
Like, at Feastables, I had not even just, like,
natural language processing, like, or, sorry, like, generative AI.
Yeah.
It was, it was mostly intent-based, right?
And we have this chatbot on our website.
And unintentionally, that chatbot
became, like, a little sales assistant.
Correct.
And it was responsible for about 7% of the launch revenue
of Feastables.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's a big number.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was massive.
Well, and that's what we're trying to do.
So to your point, we actually have our customer segments, right?
So going back to, like, one of these original questions,
like, who are your customer segments, right?
We know, through research, some of our different customer
segments, like, why do you have your pet owner,
or you have your baby owner, and largely, you
have your security owner, but then your security owners,
you have your, like, people who are the front porch patriarchs,
right?
Like, these are these people who are really trying to protect.
Yes, man.
Yeah.
Then one of their packages, one of whose at their door,
you know, the door is the most important place for them.
Then we have other people who are, no, it's my backyard.
It's the places I can't see.
You know?
And so what we do is we actually have this big matrix
that we're working with this company on to basically map out
some generative AI, like, not necessarily prompts,
but we're giving the AI based on our research.
Yeah, it's like training to kind of help them shortcut
the paths, because you could technically do this.
Think about it.
You'd come in and you would, you'd do a long survey.
Yeah.
And you'd say, OK, hey, what do you want to use this camera for?
And then they'd say, well, I want to watch my, like,
I want to watch my front door, or I want to watch this,
or, you know, they do that.
Well, this is the benefit of generative AI,
is it can actually do all of that kind of stuff.
You just need to give them cues based on, like,
other prompts that they might search or things.
Like, it'll learn, but you need to give it clues
as to, like, what are some of the traits or types of products
they're searching for or other things.
And it can start to build and find out who that cohort is
when they're shopping.
And so it can start giving them.
And then the other big thing we're combining this with
is specific bundles to, like, really help people shop.
Yeah.
And so, like, to me, that's the beauty of it.
It's like, you do have to know your customer still.
Like, the generative AI is only good enough
with the information it has, right?
Which obviously is massive, but let it learn, right?
That's the big part, is that it can learn.
So if you can take the time to train it,
and then it learns from the customers and the customer
inputs and their searches, you can really start to build
a very, very strong sales assistant on your side.
Yeah.
Well, I also think what's really important here, too,
is if we're thinking about AI and you're thinking about
training and all of these things, like, your company is
essentially embracing it.
And what I think, or what I've heard a lot on the streets,
where it on the streets is, people are scared of AI
because they think that it's going to replace their jobs.
But what I really think it's going to do is one enhance,
but also create additional jobs, which it has been.
So to me, there's more work on a different side of it now.
Exactly, because it's like, you still have to QA,
you still have to train, you still have to provide the
boundaries, if you just let it go, you can have hallucinations
to your customers, you have to make sure you have somebody
who's actually right.
Which means, as your job skills, what you need to be
is you need to be flexible.
Yeah.
To me, it's like some of the most important things you can do
is teach yourself coding, teach yourself database.
Teach yourself a broader amount of skills.
Because then when GenoaVy comes in, you can be really,
like, flexible and still add a lot of value into,
like, whatever situation you're saying.
Yeah.
I mean, absolutely.
I think it's about developing new skills with utilizing it.
And I think that's the biggest state, like any new technology
that comes out there, right?
Like, I remember in my career, I was just like,
taking phone support, you know, tickets or typing,
like email tickets, whatever it is, right?
But I always wanted to learn other things with,
like, this is on my B2B days, but like, learn more stuff
and I'm like, how I can talk to, like, the engineers
in a better way.
So I actually, like, learn how to recode in a better way, right?
But my point is, though, is like, that was a skill
that I acquired that has, like, helped me the rest of my career.
Because now, like, I'm not saying I'm, like,
the dopest shop if I code her by any means,
but now I understand my way around, like, HTML
and, like, encode some things into a theme, right?
But the reason I'm sharing the story
is because it's the same thing with AI.
Like, if you are on a CX team or marketing team,
it doesn't matter.
Like, some form, AI is going to come into your job
and it's better to embrace it and learn a new skill.
So then, like, you're bettering the tool
and you're bettering yourself, even.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
And if you even look at it from, like,
going back to this customer relationship thing,
I recently bought a surfboard on a website.
- Yeah.
- And when you talk to, like, the dollar value of that
is much higher, you know, the customer base
is probably a lot lower than where we are right now.
But, like, I can actually get in touch with a real person
to, like, support me and answer my questions, right?
And that makes sense in that world.
But once you start to try and scale
or you have some sort of other constraining factor,
like low AOV, right, where it doesn't make sense
till every single conversation be with a real person.
- Right.
- Right, that's where you have to start looking for bridges
to still create meaningful customer relationships,
but at scale.
- Right.
- And that's the, I mean, obviously,
that's the biggest thing about Jenery of AI.
But I think that us as, like, professionals,
as marketers, as business owners, right,
we have to start thinking about, like,
"Am I bridging this gap enough?
Am I?" 'Cause that was the moment,
like, when my CEO brought to my mind
the conversation that had with you,
that it clicked more for me,
and I was like, "Oh, like, they, our customers need a touch."
Like, yeah, they're only spending, like, right,
we're lower cost security, but they're only spending
80 to $100 on a visit, right, or on a single purchase.
But what's happening is, is like,
they still wanna feel like they are getting the right thing,
especially in a highly competitive market.
- Right.
- Like, what sets you apart?
- Right. - Right.
- Right.
- Absolutely, and I think it's, well, I mean,
granted, it's the simplest way, too.
This is then always on sales assistant, too.
People are, it's like two in the morning,
and there's no support staff available
to help them with that product question.
This is the ability to help you
convert your customer while you're sleeping.
- Yeah, exactly.
And once you can move that
into the entire customer journey,
not just their website visit, right,
because if we look at this, like, you know,
a very focused, like, right now,
we're only looking at a single website visit.
- Right.
- Right, but the actual journey,
you might have seven touch points, right,
from the ad experience before that brought them there.
And even before that, from like the broad level ad
that is bringing you into this last click ad
that brings you to the site,
and then you have your post-purchase experience.
- Yeah.
- And so what we're gonna start to see
is we're gonna start to see technologies
that bring all of that together with the generative AI,
and you can start doing everything from the pre-add, right?
'Cause we're already thinking about this.
Like we're creating specifics in our matrix
that I was talking about.
We're creating specific, like, hey,
if they come from an ad with this tag,
you can skip the first five steps, right,
when they land, and when they land anywhere on the site.
- Right.
- Right, 'cause this agent is with you throughout the site.
But then, once you can start tying that to,
like, a generative AI that can go
to the post-purchase experience
and can start asking questions about, like,
you know, I don't know, related products
or can start asking things.
I'm trying to, like, figure out how to do it,
like, not creepy stuff.
Like, how's Brian?
- Leave Brian alone.
- Imagine you bought this for your boyfriend, Brian.
How does he like it?
You know that?
Obviously that's not right after there, but--
But once you can decide, like, when to deliver,
what's the right message in the post-purchase, right?
You're starting to create this, like,
really unified customer experience
that's just, like, magical.
- Yeah. - And that's where we're headed.
- Yeah.
No, and I agree with you.
You know, I always ask the question,
how do you look at personalization?
And you were the first guests that I've actually
have had on that really has thought about it
in the entirety of the journey,
not just a piece of the journey.
And I think that there's a lot that can be learned
out of this matrix you're building for your AI.
- Well, just going through the practice,
don't build every AI, just do this for yourself.
- Yeah.
- And then you can start being like, what are like,
in the easiest way to start is to actually start
by creating a survey for your customers.
- Yeah.
- And just go through and just--
- Well, we're the ones in the back.
- Yeah.
Right, just go start, like, being like, okay,
and then I'm gonna ask him this,
and then I'm gonna ask him this,
and then I'm gonna ask him this,
and then you can start, like, you're basically narrowing
through a survey what your customers want,
and then you can go back and say, okay,
what can I learn from the survey that I've made
for myself, for my customers, right?
Like, okay, first I would ask him,
do you want an indoor or outdoor camera?
Then I would ask him, well, is it for, like, security,
or is it for watching something important?
Oh, do you have a furry friend,
or do you have a hairless child?
- Yeah.
- You know, I mean, you could start to go down that path,
and then you'll start to think, like, okay,
what is the most important parts of my journey
for the customer?
And that's all the general of AI is doing,
it's like doing that very rapidly, right?
- Yeah, yeah, totally.
I agree.
I want to ask you, because I think what's really interesting
is, like, we're looking at, like, all the generated of AI,
and we're, like, doing all of those pieces of that pie.
But what I'm really interested to know from you is, like,
just from the technology perspective,
where, what trends and innovation are you seeing?
Like, what's the next phase for WISE?
Like, besides cameras, besides, you know, like,
where does that home security,
just your personal being security look like?
- Well, I mean, this is a great opportunity
to discuss our new brand platform.
So, our new brand platform is never wonder, right?
Never wonder, right?
No.
And so that's where we're going with it,
is the idea of, like, you have so much going on
in your life, around the house, whatever.
Like, you don't have to wonder anymore.
Never wonder, comma, no, you know?
We're not actually gonna put the no in the branding,
but, like, that's it.
- Do you mean our message after?
- And maybe, yeah.
But the idea here, though, is, as we start looking at,
what does that mean for the technology aspect for WISE?
It's, we're collecting a tremendous amount of data
for the customer, right?
And, like I said, it's just hours and hours
of useless data, right?
When all you really care about is that one event, right?
- Yeah.
- Like, if people get a security camera,
they get almost as a form of insurance.
So, if a break-in happens or something, you know,
have a forbid of, you know, anything
that you don't want in your life, right?
You wanna instantly be right at this area.
You don't wanna just search through hours and hours of video
or have something that didn't get caught or, you know what I mean?
- Yeah.
- And so, when it comes down to it, for us,
it's really like, how do we help the customers
in a very rapid way process all of the security data?
- Yeah.
- Like, 'cause the capturing side of it, to me,
is not where the technology really is.
I mean, that's always gonna improve, right?
We just, our latest cameras are 2.5K.
The reason that I'm not 4K is because your Wi-Fi
can actually get supported yet.
So, we will see that you will start
to see higher definition cameras,
but there's not a whole lot more from, like,
the capturing perspective.
Like, cameras are already behind.
- Yeah.
- Like, your phones can do, right?
- Yeah.
- So, you're gonna see them start to catch up, period.
But what you're really going to see is how you process
all of that data that is caught by the camera.
- Yeah.
- Right, into meaningful snippets, like,
important life events, like catching the first steps
of your child versus catching something that was like very,
you know, like traumatic, yeah, like a break-in or something.
- Yeah, I don't know why I want to go to the bad stuff,
like the criminal stuff.
- Well, that's why people get them.
They get it for sure.
And very few people are like,
oh, I'm gonna buy a WISE cam
so I can catch my baby's first steps.
No, you have a device in your pocket
that's gonna do that, right?
- Yeah.
- If it happens, which we've had tons of customers
have that happen, because it's just always there.
We have tons of funny moments.
- Yeah.
- Like we have someone, a viral person on TikTok
who has a camera out in front
because they have two speed bumps that are too close together.
And so they have a TikTok account
called the Speed Bump Olympics.
- Yeah.
- And all it is is just watching people hit the speed bumps
too fast and the WISE cam just captures them
just wrecking their beautiful.
(laughs)
- Dude, I have a camera in my dad's living room,
just checking on him.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, that's actually one of our core segments is,
is elderly care.
- Yeah.
- Being able, as a child or caregiver,
to be able to check on that person, right?
- Yeah.
- So, but how do you get to the critical events of that, right?
Like what, let's say that like your parent is always
in that room, like eight hours a day,
you know, this main living area, right?
Well, how do you get to the important stuff, right?
And that's the really, really important thing
that's gonna happen from a technology standpoint.
It's gonna happen in the industry, not just us.
Like it's a race to who can really provide
the most meaningful information from your security cameras.
- Well, my money is on WISE.
- I hope so.
- You know?
- I mean, we're investing a ton.
We think AI and like processing that data.
I mean, AI is the answer,
but really the task is the processing of that data.
- Yeah.
- We think that that's probably
the most critical thing that you could be doing.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Well, Logan, we have hit the end of the road
because you and I got things to do after that, so.
- That's right.
What's the point?
- We do.
- I know, we do.
We gotta go.
We gotta get to that happy hour.
But Logan, tell the homies where they can find you.
- Yeah, it's just WISE.com.
And that's WISE because you're not a tech company
if you don't spell it wrong.
So, WISE.com, come find us.
If I just on TikTok, I think we're growing massively
on TikTok where the number one
and consumer electronics on TikTok.
And so hopefully see a lot of crazy videos
about WISE on TikTok.
- Thank you for joining me.
I really appreciate it.
- I appreciate it.
- And shout out to Fold Commerce for sponsoring this stage
where we could hold this very special podcast.
And for anybody tuning in, I will listen,
or you will listen to me.
And I will talk at you next Thursday.
Thank you so much for joining us.
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That means that you like me and I like you,
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