Human Centered

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Human Centered. I'm Nick Brunker, a group director of experience strategy at VML and your host for the show. Thanks for giving us a listen. As we're recording this podcast, we're just a few days away from Black Friday, but the truth is peak shopping season has been in full swing for weeks now. With Thanksgiving falling late this year and Cyber Monday landing on December 2nd, brands and CX teams are already navigating what our research shows will be the most channel diverse and technologically advanced shopping season we've ever seen.

Whether you're interested in how brands are handling the rise of compressed commerce, curious about the impact of social commerce on customer engagement, or looking for strategies to maintain service quality during these high volume periods, this episode has something for every CX professional to take away. We'll explore how some of our CX teams are adapting to this new reality from managing the surge in AI powered interactions to creating seamless experiences across both physical and digital touch points. So let's dive in and explore how brands can deliver those exceptional experiences during retail's most demanding season. I am so excited and thankful to be joined today by VML's chief strategy officer, Michelle Baumann, who helped lead the charge on VML's power of peak report, which I'll link in the show notes. And it examines how the traditional one day shopping event has evolved into an extended season that's reshaping customer expectations and behaviors.

Michelle, thanks for being with us. Welcome.

Thank you so much, Nick. I'm excited to be here and talk with you today.

Yes. For those that haven't had a chance to meet you, give us a bit about your background and what you do at VML.

Absolutely. I have been with VML for the past 7 years, and I lead our strategy data and insights practice, particularly in the commerce space. I have a background in commerce consulting and data and analytics in the past and get the opportunity to work across a wide variety of our clients, particularly those in the CPG and retail spaces that are looking to sell their goods during the season.

A super busy season and and the report, there's so so much stuff in there, that anybody can take away depending on what specific role you are or where you are in a CX or marketing or commerce organization. What what I think we hit off the top is that the report you guys found shows that, more than a quarter, about 27% of holiday shopping starts in October. How is this extended season versus kind of waiting for a Black Friday or even when Cyber Monday became a thing? How's it changed CX teams and your team's approach to building customer journeys?

Yeah. So, you know, in the past, it was really about hitting that hot moment and really being able to make sure that you were reaching those deals and deep discounting in a particular period of time to capture consumers' attention. Now with this much longer journey, there's a lot more consistent passive shopping going on. So it means that you want to be grabbing attention early. Those early offers, those price drops coming in more important, but it's also around having that sustained attention over the board.

This also means as you think about CX teams, how do you stay with them without giving them information overload? So that's going to be around choosing the right channels to show up, the right moments to show up so that you're consistently top of mind without too much. I think it means that personalization is going to be more important than ever, making sure that with a longer season, there's a much bigger variety in journeys and times that people are coming in and out. So brands and teams are going to need to flex accordingly. I think especially as we think about the October November times early on, obviously we're nearing the end of November, but there's gonna be a lot of discovery.

Right? So it's how do we start with social media? How do we start with Google search? Those types of things early on that we know they're hitting on in October November. And as we get closer to December knowing that it's going to be less discovery and more about purchase.

So really planning those touch points accordingly.

And when we talk about customers, you were hitting on it a little bit with with channel hopping. It's happening more than ever. The report called out that 61% are wanting that seamless personalized communication as they go across channels. What are some of the key CX challenges that you're seeing in that?

Yeah. And I think just just to to double down on that stat, I mean, I I know that over half of consumers say that they won't shop a site that doesn't meet their expectations. So you essentially have one chance to get it right. Mhmm. Obviously, price still remains the most important consideration more than ever to customers.

So comparing price is going to be important. But as we think beyond that, what are some of the things we can do from a customer experience, you know, perspective? Once we get beyond price, it's all about reliability and convenience. So how do I make sure I find what I want easily? And then once I do know it's in stock and know I will receive it on time.

Any gap there becomes an issue. So, you once you have a consumer actually selecting an item, if it's suddenly not available in their size, that's a problem in the experience, right? Means that inventory is going to be really important, because if we don't have that available, that was a break in the experience. Now if you go to order an item and it's not going to show up in time for that holiday party or in time for that, you know, gift exchange, that's also going to be a problem. So again, making sure that we have the products being able to be shipped quickly.

I think there's also certain elements making sure that our teams are giving consistent brand voice and messaging across the board so that every single touch point that these consumers are seeing is consistent. That requires a lot of complexity and there's some costs involved, right? So how do we completely manage this omnichannel strategy to make sure that we're investing in the right technology and optimizations so that we're able to make this really seamless without being extremely costly to our partners? And again, I talked about the right channels. It's managing that channel proliferation, so making sure that we're really choiceful around where we're starting to invest that time to lead to that convenience and not spending money in places that don't matter.

I think the one other really important piece as there's more channels than ever for these customers is how do we make sure that we're bringing our data together on the back end. You start to get a lot more data silos across the board when you're gathering, you know, data across, you know, CRM systems, marketing automation systems, social media. So how do you tie all of that together into one view while still being mindful of maintaining privacy and security and data issues? So a lot of that's going to start to become, really important as we bring this to life.

And I think you hit on, something that leads me to to the next thought that I had reading the report around, you know, card abandonment and just maintaining what was, I think, a much shorter window to try to, both attract and and convert these customers on a Black Friday or even just the week leading up. If you're talking about 3, 4, maybe 5 weeks of this, quote, unquote, season of shopping, the, you know, holiday shopping season, power of peak, Talk about how brands can maintain engagement rates over this period because the strategy, I would imagine, changes when you're trying to, you know, maintain that engagement over 5 weeks instead of 1 or or even less than a week.

Again, this is going to be all around that real time response, that personalization, you know, understanding how we can give quick responses, personalized interactions no matter what channel they feed on to, and having systems where relevant information is living across them all in real time. You know, as you start to think about actually getting to purchase and having people abandoning their cards, right, we've got like 20% card abandonment rate. It's also going to be how do we make checkout really easy throughout. If you know you have a 5 plus week season to purchase, there's less of a sense of urgency to purchase at any given time. So how do we reduce friction in the checkout process?

How do we really simplify it? Make sure that there's fewer steps. How are we really transparent with costs knowing that price is such a factor? All of a sudden, if we're getting to check out and we're not able to, you know, pay all the extra fees, You know, shipping is something people just expect to be free. Right.

All

of a sudden it's not. That can become a problem. How do we start to engage and kind of, retarget people who we know are interested in our products to bring them back? And I think it's all about doing this at the right frequency and how do we as CX teams support our partners to make sure that they're doing this this retargeting, that they're reaching back out, but at the right frequency so that they're not over speaking to their consumers as well.

As we shift to kind of our our next section of the report, there is a really good meaty couple of sections on AI, which I mean, what report these days would be complete without talking AI a little bit. The compressed commerce kinda you're speaking to and, obviously, the the importance of mobile as people are second screening and, you know, kinda doing a bunch of things at once, and that trend is only gonna continue. The report shows I guess we could start with the AI front. The chatbot traffic, understandably, is is doubling as more brands come online with more, let's just say, robust or at least somewhat maturing, capabilities in that space. How is that changing customer service strategies as you've talked to brands that are in this space?

Absolutely. I mean, this is really helping to enable just hyper personalized recommendations on products and services. I talked a little bit about data. What using AI does is it lets us grab data at scale and we can understand search history, past purchases and other behaviors in a very quick manner. When you're talking to a human, there are a lot of questions that they need to start to ask you.

They need to go back and look at your history. We're saving a lot of that time at once. So it means that we can, we can move a lot faster to getting that personalized support, proactively. Obviously, it also means that there's suddenly 247 availability. There's no longer 9 to 5 hours that we have to work within, which is going to be helpful to our consumers that may be working during those hours, may be unavailable.

It means improved response times. I mean, it's like a little bit gone are the days where you're placed on hold for multiple hours to start to get to your solution. And again, that constant feedback loop where we're able to gather all of the data about our customer interactions in a very seamless way. You don't have to worry about your call will be recorded so we can go analyze it. All of a sudden in the chat and text, we have the information available.

So should certainly start to make us able to, really get that right personalized solution and reduce some of the friction for consumers. We obviously don't wanna completely eliminate the human. There are always going to be those instances where you need that special attention. But I think the nice thing now is it enables us to have the humans that are working for these companies, be really trained up to deal with some of the more complex issues and not to spend their time on the simpler issues. They can really focus on the elements that require more, you know, human interaction, human emotion, human connection.

Yeah. And and one of the more surprising stats in here, in addition to the, you know, wanting better, faster, smarter inspiration to purchase journeys, which I know is also played out in that that AI section of the report, which, again, we will link in our show notes so people can read the full thing. This one stat kind of made me sit back in my chair for a minute, and it says 40% of customers find mobile shopping difficult, which in the year of our Lord 2024, I'm kinda surprised by that. I guess, a, did that surprise you as well? And, b, what should we think about as pros to prioritize for a better mobile experience?

Yeah. I mean, I think I think part of what what makes it surprising and not so surprising, I think historically when we thought about mobile shopping, there was a lot of going to Amazon dotcom or, you know, the Amazon app. And I think now people are shopping mobile y via social. They're shopping, you know, on, retailer websites. They're shopping on brand websites.

There's so many different places and so there's less of a consistency of experience, which is kind of leading to that issue.

Sure.

I think there's there's there's front end and back end issues that we need to help our partners think about. You know, from a back end, how do we make sure that there's fast loading times? On mobile, there continues to be this expectation, especially with 5 g of instant gratification.

Yeah.

Our images optimized immediately. How are we getting, you know, quick loading times? Slow becomes an issue. How do we streamline so that we can minimize the number of times we have to click between different products? So a lot of those back end things, I think, we need to make sure that we're helping our our our partners to to optimize.

And then again, on the the front end, this is nothing new. It's all of that user experience design. So how do we have a mobile first experience which most brands have done a good job on? Obviously, it's not happening everywhere. Needs to be intuitive.

Things that are touch friendly, obviously going really well and just staying very clear, very concise with all of the messaging and all the information.

As we think about the strategies between web and CRM, which I know a lot of brands wrestle with on a day to day basis, you've attacked this as well. I'd love to hear your perspective on the importance of having your teams, the teams that are both, you know, let's just say just from a VML perspective inside our house or even if you're a marketing pro, on a client side in a brand, having those digital touch points super connected from a planning perspective, because I've seen it firsthand where you've got a CRM team kind of doing their thing and a web team kind of doing their thing, but the secret sauce, which is not so secret is in the magic, I guess, is when you can consider, both of these, major, majorly important digital touch points coming together. Have you have you seen that be a challenge, in your experience of late?

Absolutely. And I think it's I'll say a a simple solution in theory, but not always the easiest to bring to life. And it all comes from centralized planning and making sure that while we have deep teams with expertise across all of the different touch points and ways of marketing that we're starting at the center. So we have one set of audiences that we're all working from, that we have one job to be done that we're all working from and that everything starts at the center and works out accordingly so that you feel that consistency. It's the same way we talk about building brands and making sure that we're growing their equity as well as getting them to sell.

Right? Bringing commerce and brand together at the center through that commerce experience. And I really think the more teams are coming together from the start, the more we're going to see that seamless integration.

No question. And I think the other thing that's really interesting about, in the section about AI specifically is that natural tension and balance between finding the the automated and human touch points during this peak season. Because to your point, everybody wants the instant gratification, yet I think they also crave accuracy. And I think being able to get the right answer, not just an answer, especially if it ends up, you know, dovetailing into a lack of availability of a product or they can't get the answer to their question. How have you seen brands balancing kind of when to lean more into the automated versus still that that human touch?

Yeah. And I think I think part of it is what the brands are doing and part of it is what we're also doing as agency partners. So making sure that that even from the planning perspective, we're not landing, leaning too much on the AI, but we're actually taking our strategic human hats on all of the recommendations at the start. I think in actual practice where we're putting this, out in the world, it's seeing what kind of cues you're getting. We can very quickly leverage the data that's coming in from the consumer.

And if it's functional focused, if it's product focused, that's more likely something that we can be solving through AI. But we can look for cues around things that might be more emotional. Right? If someone's talking about they need a product at a certain time because of the date. Now all of a sudden we're getting into an emotional element where that that consumer, feels that something is not happening in their life if they don't get the product.

I think the more we can train our AI to look for human emotional cues and then make sure that we're bringing in those human agents, that can really start to strike that balance.

Yeah. It's a hand off of sorts and and be able to architect the the proper handoffs for when something needs to meet a human versus, if the data set's right, what an automated system can do. And I think there's a similar tension as you kinda shift into, the sections of the report that talk about physical retail, social commerce, the importance of content strategy in the mix. Not surprisingly, we're still in this world where, especially coming out of COVID, you know, 2 thirds are are saying they prefer retailers that have both physical and online. And there is shockingly still, at least based on what I see in the report and what I feel personally, this kind of glide path that brands are still on to create truly omnichannel experiences.

How have you seen the ones that are doing it right do it right?

I think a big piece, you're right, there's total connection, especially as you think about the browsing versus buying. Even for those people going in store, we know over 70% of them are actually looking online and making those decisions and walking in the store. And I think the important thing there is if you found the product online at a brand's website and you walk in the store and that product isn't available, now we just broke the experience. So again, there's integrated inventory management. How do we make sure that we have the same products available online and in store?

When you think about offers, you know, I can even say from a personal standpoint, I've had brands that I've interacted with where they have coupons that work online and don't work in store. That's not a proper experience that the customer is looking for because they want to know that they can take that coupon, they can use it in either place. Making sure that the brand experience across the board is similar. So again, I talked about coupons, but pricing structures as well. You know, you need to have that consistent pricing structure online and offline.

You need to have that consistent customer service where if I buy something online, I expect I can return it to store and making sure that these things are really connected. There's also things that we can be doing in store in terms of adding technology to the forefront, right? Having mobile devices available, being able to access real time inventory from mobile without having to go check-in the back of the store physically and save time. And having just overall the the we talked about the human, that human customer service integration where it's not just the data and the inventory is integrated, but I'm getting the same kind of customer support wherever I go. If I'm engaged in a loyalty program and I receive and redeem points, it's the same everywhere I go.

So I feel like I have that one consistent experience.

And underpinning all of it, in addition to the technology, is the right level of content to both, to your point, kind of inspire people, get people excited, but also give them the functional needs that he would likely have to have in order to pull the trigger, especially when I think they're weighing this time of year and, again, myself included, weighing the the the cost benefits, the does this feature work for me? Does that feature work? Especially when you get into the more, types of products that are commodities based or perhaps not at higher of a consideration product. And when we talk about how CX teams and content strategy teams work together, clearly, they they aren't separate. They are equally tied together to build an experience out, and the report emphasizes that content is key.

As you've coached your teams and you've coached your clients that you've worked with, how are CX teams approaching content strategy across channels in this this commerce heavy port portion of the year?

Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to making sure that we're completely tying through our audiences, the human journeys that they are taking across this time period, the touch points that we should be reaching them at those moments, and the type of messaging, creative and written, right, that content that they want each step of the journey. And having an overall experience map that we're planning out together so we have one playbook to work from is going to be really key. Right? So we ultimately know it's this audience at this moment.

We're using this touch point with this type of of content. And again, we can start to use things like AI to optimize the content. We can actually build synthetic audiences and we can test how the content responds with them and and do a lot of test and learn, but really kind of putting that all at the center together to make sure that we're delivering consistently across the board.

Let's take it a a click deeper on that, synthetic audiences piece because I know that there are people listening to the show that are, in a particular, skill set or they're working to kinda do some of the things you're talking about as the technology has advanced in a way where we can start to build those synthetic audiences out and start pressure testing some of our strategies weeks, perhaps months ahead of time, what are some good first steps, to to do that and do it well?

So I think my first watch out is to just, go into an OpenAI and start to ask questions and think you're going to get to the right solution. We always believe in starting real data first, And so we'll leverage different real data sources, whether it's things proprietary to us like a choreograph, whether it's secondary sources like an MRI Simmons, but really making sure that we're building out those data based, you know, personas and audiences. And then it's going in and bringing those into different open tools that you may have, available to understand, and enrich those audiences. So what might you say about them? What might you predict, etcetera?

So it's all based on some of that real data and being able to predict forward. And then using your human review, you know, doing focus groups offline if you have time as well and and putting that gut check because you'll find that if you're just, leveraging AI in and of itself, you're not going to get the right answers. So it continues to be a dance back and forth, but it at least gives us some quick ways to brainstorm and move forward.

Yeah. And it does feel like it's maybe not to your point, a 1 or 2 click, solution, to get to the answer, but it gives you, in a lot of times myself, speaking personal experience, the engagement with those LLMs or other technologies gives you a good starting point to kinda gut check what you're thinking. And and, you know, obviously, leveraging if you can put really good data in, and and train it to go off of that data, Very, educated starting points that can easily be riffed on and, you know, take the human human element and put it back in there, at the beginning. So I think that's fast that's fascinating and and spot on. The other thing that I saw in the report that was not terribly surprising, but also, you know, at the same time, I think perhaps underutilized, you can kinda confirm or deny that influencer marketing.

They had a stat in the report that says it's converting 10 x more than traditional social media. How is that changing customer engagement and the plans that we put together?

I think it is obviously, we know social commerce is exploding. It's a big it's a big deal, especially for younger shoppers. I think we are now moving to the point where social and as we think about things like TikTok have been, let's call it like an experimental test in every marketer's plans. Hey, let's hold x percent of our budget and test and see how this performs. I think we are now past the testing point, and we've proven that this is just a key part of every media plan.

And so how do we make sure that we're starting to work with brands to hold a certain amount of their budget consistently for things like Amazon Storefronts, like TikTok shop, you know, even looking at, at YouTube doing some of their video content and how do we make sure that there's a real true part of the budget invested in doing that type of social commerce. I think also knowing our brands know that if they're targeting younger Gen Z Gen Alpha audiences that this is the right move. But I think reminding brands as well that as they're looking to these, millennial Gen X audiences, we continue to see this kind of behavior where social commerce is really taking off. So it's not a, hey. This is for a younger audience.

This is a small bit. This really needs to be a consistent part of our our team's strategies now.

So off the beaten path from from that topic, but I think tangential to it, is the impact of some of the emerging marketplace solutions. And I know that, you know, at least every time that I log into X or if I'm, you know, scrolling through other social media apps, like, I've got Timoo ads everywhere. And much like TikTok kind of came out of I don't wanna say nowhere, but it certainly had a meteoric rise once people started to latch on. For a long time in digital shopping, well, Cyber Monday started to get popular and obviously bolted on to an already busy shopping season. You're seeing more TMUs and AliExpress kind of, you know, emerge at least in the United States.

How do you see that kind of changing the game or approaches for marketers or even just how we, as you and I as consumers, shop? Because before, it was, alright. You wanna shop online? It's primarily Amazon. Then the big box retailers got better at it, and now you've inserted a completely new variable into play.

How how has that impacted what we do as a as a group?

I think it's making us, think proactively a lot more quickly. I think we can no longer react. I think, you know, I talked about about testing and learning. It's making sure that we start to test really quickly and hold out the dollars to put marketing spend against these different channels to see how they perform. And it's making sure that we're really choiceful when we use them that we don't just hop on a trend because it's the latest thing.

Right.

But that we're very clear of who's the audience we're trying to reach, what's the product, is this a good fit? Because we know these audiences are looking for that authentic connection and they need to feel like this is a place that they should be going to, to purchase this product.

So knowing that as we talked about off of the top, that it's no longer just a one day or even weekend sort of shopping season, you know, for Black Friday. It's as the power of peak, report would suggest, it's becoming that that extended season. How are brands measuring CX success? Because, obviously, there's the, you know, it's the economy stupid sort of it's revenue, it's profit. How does CX measurement factor into this extended period of time where people are shopping in holiday?

Yeah. I mean, to your point, of course, bottom line, CX success is did I get someone to buy my stuff? Right? So I think first and foremost, obviously, am I getting my fair share of the dollars? I think it's also being able to look at media attributed sales against all of the different tactics and touch points that becomes more and more important as you're leveraging a number of different touch points along that journey, making sure that you understand it's not that you were either successful or unsuccessful, but which were the elements that really drove that most success and getting to those those pieces to plan for future.

I think also starting to look at what kind of retention we got across the board. So not did we win 1 single consumer at one touchpoint throughout this 5 week period, But were we able to get consistency across those consumers? And, you know, we talked earlier about bringing all that data together to identify what a single consumer looks like, but that retention piece is going to be huge. Did I drive retention so I can start to think about what my lifetime value might be with that consumer beyond this holiday time period?

And I think the other thing that comes to mind for me is the the the c x of the buying process, which has to be done. You mentioned the the free shipping. What are the expectations there? The ultimate delivery experience, like the onboarding, the, unboxing experience. So, obviously, for a lot of folks in this time of year, it's can it get here before the holiday that I need to give it?

So So that's, like, primary number 1. But then there's also, like, the the after effects of being able to feel like you got a good deal, but then also are really engaged with the product. So is it you know, in CX land, you know, proper, we've talked about how, you know, brand experience and commerce helps ultimately, you know, make a promise and make it really easy to buy. And then, you know, the CX side of the house, maybe this is a little bit myopic, but the thought is, like, you prove the promise by providing the good CX after the ownership. So I think as much as, like, this season right now is about the the, making promise, doing creative ads, getting people through the flow really easily.

It's it's also just the beginning potentially for some of the these brands of of building lifetime value and long term customers. So, really not a question in there as much as a really interesting way where, yeah, we're talking and thinking a lot about, okay, the buying process. How can we make it easier? But then brands also have to make sure that they're not forgetting that, okay, once they've bought it, once they've engaged with it, once the gift has been given, what are those experiences that we can, you know, continue to pay off after the fact? And I think it's just fascinating.

Yeah. I I agree, and I think there's a couple of things for brands to think about there. You have your loyalty programs and rewards, and I think, historically, there's been a lot of point based systems. That's a very, you know, traditional way of thinking about it. But starting to have tier programs, think about what hotels and what, you know, airlines do.

Starting to create that for other brands where you feel like you've reached a certain status, giving out exclusive perks. So it's it's a next a next generation version of point based. I'm really gamifying it. We know that gamification is huge. How do we start to really create that?

I also think there's a lot of community building. Right? So how do you make somebody an advocate for your brand? We talk a lot about earned media and how do you get somebody who purchased and used your product to love it and to create their own content on social and create that buzz and start to build communities where people are talking about your brand, customers are coming together and really strengthening that connection so you can ultimately, build the brand.

It's, again, just feeding the beast. So you're spending less time and and ultimately money on trying to promote your products the next time around. You're you're spot on, and, we could talk for hours on this stuff. But knowing we try to keep these around a 30 minute episode, I wanted to do one last thing with you. And for those that have listened to the show before know, we kinda like to end our, episodes with some fun facts about our guests or some, you know, more off the beaten path topics.

And since we are obviously recording this podcast before Black Friday right up until, the, the holiday season really beginning, a lot of folks are gonna start to shut down already for for the holiday. But those listening, this is when we recorded it. So, two things I wanted to talk to you about. First thing, is there any Black Friday to you as a shopper that stands out, to you? Did you go out early for a product?

Are you somebody who always got up early? Did you go buy a product early because it was on sale? Tell me about the most memorable Black Friday shopping experiences you've you've had in your life.

Sure. Oh, that's a fun one. So I I was not usually a huge Black Friday shopper, but I do have a memory of 1 Black Friday. And my mom and I went out shopping. I think I was in high school, and we joked we couldn't believe we were doing it.

We walked into a department store, and we got a deal on some new leather black boots. And, we were actually amazed that it wasn't nearly as crowded as we expected it to be. I think a lot of people were headed to the electronic stores back then. This this ages me. Right?

I'm with you.

But we we we had a great time going and buying some some new fashion products that I would have just in time for the holiday season. So that experiential element of it, right, that we're talking about still being important to people, was very memorable to me. Well,

what's really funny about that, and not to go down that rabbit hole too far, I I think it is interesting to see who, has that historical like, that's just what we did. Like, we would get up, and I now have family and friends that would that's just part of their Thanksgiving. Just like people that are in Detroit, they watch the Lions or or in Dallas, they watch the Cowboys or really anybody across the country. It's like kind of football and food. It's a tradition.

Like, getting up and going to the stores has been a tradition. So it's always funny to see those as digital has come online. Like, how many people actually still just do it because it's, well, that's what we always do. I have not been that guy. I typically did not go out.

I, a, I hate getting up early. B, I don't really like a lot of crowds. Although I don't mind them, I really don't wanna stand in line. And c, I hate being cold. So standing outside in the cold is another no no for b, but I digress.

The second thing I wanted to do before we wrap up is a little rapid fire thanks giving, preference testing. So Okay. Depending on who you are and depending on how you've grown up, there are some what seem to be very visceral reactions to certain thanksgiving traditions in in relation to food. So first and foremost, pumpkin pie, apple pie, or other pie?

Well, I actually made an early Thanksgiving, and I made an apple pie, and I bought a pumpkin pie. So that's a really hard one for me, but I will say apple. Let's say apple.

Okay. So that that basically segues away from my next question was with the pumpkin pie, although you said you bought 1, are you a whipped cream or cool whip? Oh, whipped cream always. And are you like me where you have to overload the whipped cream or are you a less whipped cream sort of person?

Just a little dot on top.

Alright. Next question. Food touching or food separate?

I am fine with the food touching. I like having my corn in my mashed potatoes Yes. My cranberry sauce on top of my turkey.

That and speaking of that, I'm totally aligned with you there. This is where I feel like people, like, throw down. Fights actually can begin over this conversation. The canned cranberry or the fresh cranberry relish?

Growing up, we always had canned cranberry, and I actually just said the other day, I can't believe that we didn't make it. I personally make it from scratch, and I did this year because making cranberry sauce from scratch takes all of 10 minutes. So I'm I'm a make it from scratch.

Alright. Alright. And I'm I'm not actually opposed to either one, But when I had this conversation with somebody yesterday and we didn't really get into an argument, but the the person was, like, viscerally against the canned cranberry. They thought it was the most disgusting thing ever. So I'm like, ah, it's, you know, tastes good to me.

I don't mind it. It's easier to cut. Just cut it up like Jell O. It's fine.

Yes.

The other one that I think has come up there are 2 other ones, and then we can wrap up. Green bean casserole. Is it a yay or anay?

No. I don't do it. There's too many good foods. Why bother with vegetables that are unhealthy anyway?

I am with you. I could not agree more, and I'm also, like, doubling down on the fact that I just don't like mushrooms. And so I know I've heard other recipes. People are gonna yell at me or send me emails, but, like, I just can't. I just can't do that.

I don't like mushrooms either. I'm with you. It sounds like we would have a lovely Thanksgiving dinner together.

Yeah. I'm totally with you. I I think we should do it. I think we should do it. Maybe, you know, have a Thanksgiving feast after the fact when we get back from vacation.

I I love it. Last, probably most challenging question that I've asked in relation to Thanksgiving. Favorite dish?

Mashed potatoes. I love mashed potatoes.

That was a quick answer. Most people, like, go between, like, a few of the, you know, the tried and true's, but you had you did you had that bowl in the chamber. Mashed potatoes all the way.

Mashed potatoes always. Yes.

From scratch?

Yes. They have to be. Mashed potatoes have to be from scratch.

Oh, I love it. I love it. Michelle, I know this has been a busy season for you as you can understand, for everybody, but for you especially in the commerce space. Yeah. It means a lot that you were able to jump on a a call with us and chat.

Thanks again for all the great insights, and have a have a great Thanksgiving.

Absolutely. Thank you. Have a great Thanksgiving too, Nick.

And thanks to you all for listening to Human Centered as well. To learn more about VML CX practice and our approach to the work, you can check us out online atvml.com. We'd also love to hear your feedback on the show. Give us a rating and offer up your thoughts wherever you listen to your podcasts, including Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon, and more. Have a topic idea or just wanna drop us a line or maybe a Thanksgiving recipe?

You can connect with me on x@nickbrunker, or you could shoot us an email. The address is human centered at vml.com. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.