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 turn the page on 24 and are about to step into 25, we're back with our annual prediction special of human centered. Today, we're peering into the future of CX, offering our thoughts on what might unfold in the months ahead.

We'll explore the emerging trends, potential challenges, and exciting opportunities that could reshape how we connect with customers in 2,025. Consider this your strategic preview of the year ahead. And, of course, it's become kind of a tradition for us to do these episodes with my very good friend, BML's Global CX DO, Karen Boswell. Karen, thanks as always for doing this.

Nice to be back again, Nick. Thanks for having me.

Of course. Let's get into it. 1st, kudos. You did an amazing job predicting 2024. I went back in preparation for this episode.

I was like, I wonder how well she did. And not that it's like a judgment on my part, but I'm thinking we I think got into 4 or 5 different topics last year, and lo and behold, damn it, you got almost all of them exactly right. And and not that they were easy predictions, but I think there were some really interesting nuggets in there. We talked gen AI and how it's gonna start delivering for business. We talked about, the reshaping and the reinvention of the workplace, tech regulation, and and a lot of the things that we talked about last year, going into 'twenty 4, turned out to be true.

But I think one of the things that I would imagine will probably carry over into 2025 was that topic of Gen AI. And, well, last year, we talked about how it's starting to deliver for business this year, and we say it every year, things are evolving faster than ever. You got the sense that that Gen AI is gonna continue to be one of the top things that we focus on in the coming year ahead.

Absolutely. And I think, I was on a a panel at Lisbon Web Summit recently, actually, with some some good friends, and the the theme of the conversation was that whilst we still, at this moment in time, believe that AI won't overtake humans, it's really clear that humans with AI will overtake humans without AI. And we're seeing it, in the integration in things like, broad strokes CX. You know, how do we actually enhance customer satisfaction through cloud based omnichannel technologies that start to bridge the gaps. So things like broad voice CSaaS, you know, those kind of cost cutting technology upgrades, AI driven personalization, and we'll probably come on to that.

There's a sort of tension bubbling up there between, you know, how, hyper personalization can actually start to chip away at a brand's strength and stature. So these are some of the things that are now becoming a little bit more obvious. But, yes, we've got generative AI, conversational AI. Like, this this sort of application of it has advanced hugely in in 2024. And certainly, we're seeing more industry specific implementations as well, especially in retail.

So we've got a lot of AI use enhancing how people shop, how people scan, how they you know, sort of cashless is becoming much more common. It's much more efficient now. It's more widespread, and and people are getting used to it. And similarly in in FS. So not surprising that the sectors that have been adopting adopting AI for longer, have been scaling faster this year, and they're at the pointy end of the new set of, challenges that are coming out.

And to your point, a lot of those still remain around ethics and the governance and the need for transparency in AI driven decisions, interactions, exchanges, and how do we actually enable businesses to increasingly focus on the responsible adoption. And not just from an efficiency point of view, give me more bang for my buck, but from an effectiveness point of view, make that money work harder but in the right way for people.

Yeah. We talk about the 3 Es of efficiency, effectiveness, and emotion, and it does feel like that marketers, CX pros are gonna have to make sure that they're keeping a watchful eye on the balance between customer experience and brand experience because you kinda skew too far one way. You may be sacrificing, you know, goodness on the other end. And one of the other things I think we talked about, last year that I think will continue to be true in 25 is is that gap beginning to close at a more rapid pace between technology for technology's sake and real solutions? And I know that we've seen a lot of really good examples.

We could get into any or many of them, as we go through the pod podcast today, but that gap between technology and what is it considered a real beneficial solution for a human, using the technology or using somebody's brand leveraging AI, is, I think, gonna be something we see more of because as we look at last year where Gen AI was still getting its sea legs, so to speak, where people were becoming more familiar and theoretically in the mainstream, this year, it's not just going

to be enough to have the ability to to leverage AI in certain ways. It's gonna be finding what are those value propositions that AI could bring. Right? Agree. And I think, the brands that have started to pull forward are those that are trying to close that gap.

And it's it's a big gap quite often. And it's, you know, the bigger the company, the more, ad hoc pieces of technology and adoption of, you know, innovative ideas there are. And, you know, you and I both know because we work with complex organizations and often matrix within matrix, structures. Like, there will be 100 of thousands of tools and startups and ventures and, and pieces of fragmented, technology all with the right intent. But unless they are connected at the scale of the business and refined and organized around the customer base or the client base depending on what kind of sector you're operating in, closing that gap becomes a heavy investment.

And, that's where businesses sometimes, slip back into those habits of not necessarily investing consistently in people first. But we're seeing, like, some trends, I think, that are starting to solidify a little bit more. And as we head into 2025, I think you've got I've touched on hyper personalization, so I'll I'll start there. But you do have the Netflix and the Amazons of the world that continue to lead the way in how to use AI to refine content, to better understand individual tastes. And they have done it in a way that hasn't deteriorated their brands because they've made that customer choice and that customer, personalization part of boosting their engagement and part of, their retention strategy.

You do have others then that are doing it for the sake of doing it, and that isn't working quite so well because they're losing track of their brand in their assets. And so the assets become too much of the people, and suddenly customers are looking at this content not really sure who it's coming from. Like it's you know, they've sort of got confusion. I think the second thing that we're starting to see a gap close, between, people wanting things from brands and technology is the say I talked a lot about sustainability and purpose driven brands. Now it's hard not to reference Patagonia, but I think, a company I've had my eye on this year actually is Fairphone.

I don't know if you've come across them, but, an Amsterdam based electronics company. Essentially, they've kind of disrupted the supply chain on how their devices are are built, so that you can replace a component part of your phone or your headphones. You don't have to buy a whole new phone. So you're upcycling a piece rather than the whole thing. And actually that's starting to happen in fashion as well.

So tools and AI in the fashion space helping, drive the resale renaissance. So, fast fashion, big bloody problem, still, you know, huge and ugly. And resale of of fashion has been, stuck in a space where it's had the dual challenge of, both efficient sourcing and buying and selling of secondhand products. So it's really amazing to see actually that technology, many of them that do use AI, are making that a lot more accessible, and a lot easier. And and this sort of, like, omnichannel CX as well, I think that's that's definitely a space that we've advanced in every sector.

I don't think there's a sector that hasn't moved forward and cloud based, AI driven solutions are definitely at the heart of a lot of that.

What I think is really interesting about some of the the Gen AI stuff you talked about off the top, specifically the the way that it shows up for customers, I can't help but think about, in my mind, the the flip side of that. So as people like us who are working and CX pros that are listening to this podcast are saying, alright. Well, how do I leverage the tool to help me potentially do my job better? So as much as we want brands to be able to deliver these tools that are customer facing or maybe even, you know, some of the operational elements to, you know, increase supply chain effectiveness or whatever. There's a part of me as a CX pro that's like, man, as these technologies advance, again, talking about your your comment around AI not replacing humans, humans with AI replacing humans without.

What are the impacts do you see coming in 25 as it relates to our business and as strategists and as CX practitioners where we can leverage some of these things to potentially speed up the process of getting a brief or come up with some shower thoughts where you're thinking about, like, okay. I've got all these thoughts. How can I, you know, streamline them and be more efficient? My day zero brief. Like, talk to me about, as a CX pro, how we might look ahead to the next 12 months and say, damn, we could be way more efficient at our jobs if we use some of this stuff.

I think the short answer is just stop. I think if if people are on the edge worrying about it and hoping it's gonna go away, it's a fool's quest. It's not going anywhere. I I was resistant for quite a while because I was adamant that I was going to generate all my own IP and come up with all of my ideas and write every single thing on my own because I always have.

Mhmm.

But actually, what I found was, and a lot of this is down to knowing how to speak to AI, which we'll come on to in a moment. But eliminating the obvious so that you can focus on the new is generally my personal rule of thumb. So I use our AI tools that we have within WPP, and we're very fortunate to have quite a lot of extensive ones to help me do things like run a brand playbook, pass the brief that I've received from a client and tell me whether their brief is accurately depicting the core values that that brand stands for. Okay? And it will do that in seconds rather than me combing through a brief and trying to decipher subjectivity and, all of that kind of stuff.

I will use AI to do, desktop market research. And, again, you need to sort of practice, but we're talking days, not weeks of, you know, how to ask a good question of AI. And once you get going so we have we have things like you'll be familiar with this, but for those listening, we call them agents and they're sort of light touch plug and play, open AI sort of frameworks as it were. So you can connect a chat GPT, for example, into a Miro space, and you can teach it, to understand the audience that you're writing for. So you might upload a persona and you might upload said brief that you just checked was, on point.

And you might ask it to generate some copy for some new social apps. And what you'll get back is a lot of the stuff that, is obvious is, scraped from what it already knows. And so you can use that to kinda go great. So if that's obvious, how can I be better? How can I use more strategic intent?

How can I brief my creative teams, my creative partners to back flip over that bar that it just set? But then you start to spar with AI and you start to have a conversation with it, and you can ask it to be better. You can ask it to, you know, what would my audience think of this? And you can create a synthetic persona. So you can engage with your audience.

Now never to replace talking to your actual consumers, but it does mean all of that real world research that can take an incredible amount of time or engaging focus groups that just is high cost, that can be done in a much shorter space of time. So that when you're getting to that first presentation, you've done 10 x the due diligence on that kind of research component. Now I will just say one more time, never replace humans with this process. Use it to enhance some of the more mundane stuff so that you can get to the cool stuff quicker.

And what I found is in working with some of our creatives that I think you had mentioned about, like, back flipping over the bar that it sets. I, as a strategist myself, individually, think about, okay. Where do I even start? So I can obviously spend time using and thinking and doing my own research and, you know, getting started on a couple of, like, thought starters. The the first few things that come out of the system, so to speak, may not be the answer to your point on it's not replacing me, but, damn it, it gives me some really good ideas, with my my human brain, such as it is, and can actually create, you know, prompts or or thought starters that I can then build upon.

And I think that's that's fascinating. The other thing you said that sparked another prediction was was about this idea of autonomous and smart solutions going and pushing beyond the obvious. And one of the things that you had kinda started to tiptoe into was this idea of and I think you said we call it agents in house. We think about AI right now as a as a tool, can help us give us answers quickly or what have you, but it's it's still, in a lot of cases, a very transactional approach where you go to a tool wherever that tool is, you prompt them with a question or, some sort of activity or task to complete, and then they spit it out. What I think that we might see this year, and I know you had talked about this in a prediction, is about this idea that it becomes less of a transactional tool and more of a companion.

Talk a little bit about that.

So it's interesting, isn't it? Because autonomous products generally, when we hear the word autonomous, we associate it with self driving vehicles. Right? Because that's sort of, like, the first big splash thing. And and then you might get mumblings of smart fridges and all of this kind of stuff.

But I think what's interesting is that in the in the age of autonomy, which I think we're coming into, and the autonomous Internet of things or the Internet of autonomous things, I can't remember now, is it? IOAT? I think it's that way around. Gotta love another acronym. Actually it's it's sort of this idea of a a pocket companion for life, I guess.

So building on the examples I was just giving in the workplace, actually I use chat GPT probably more than I use Google now because, if I'm searching for something or wanting to understand something, I'll have a conversation with it. If I'm preparing for a conversation I wanna have in my head, I can spar with chap GPT. I can, you know, write agendas and I can kind of like ask it, you know, how might you make this better? How might you make it lighter? And I can do you think this is a good idea?

What's that based on? Can you find some research papers? You know, all of that kind of stuff. Can you help me jam with a few different ideas for a workshop I'm running? And and it it's just a different level of companion versus Google, which is comparatively quite binary these days.

And I know they're obviously advancing their own things, and all of that kind of stuff, but I guess I'm sort of referencing the ones I have. But then I think the that behavior is more mainstream now. I mean, it was only a year or so ago I remember my dad kind of getting really confused with why I kept talking to Alexa. And now he's like, ew ew. Came over to visit recently, and he was just getting music to play.

And we had Roy Orbison on in no time and, you know, all of this stuff. And it's just like, okay. Well, he's 70 odd and pretty, like, tech phobe. But but but that behavior of engaging without really thinking about it too much and allowing technology to progress without your interaction in the background, the trust that that is bringing, that level of autonomy is what I think is quite interesting. And that's what I think is going to be interesting between human and AI interaction.

Like, I sort of trust that my AI partner is gonna help me move forward. I might not take the finite, but that behavior, I think, has advanced a lot in the last year or so.

Yeah. I I could see it really taking off in 25 where where that becomes more of the, you know, default habit where in, you know, the last, you know, 20 or 30 years, it's always gotten better, but it's still been a, hey. I'll go to Google and Google that. And now I think what you're starting to see is even the Googles. I saw a commercial here in the States the other day where that premise is kind of being sold.

And I know there's been things like Gemini and Siri out there, Alexa, you mentioned, where there's still a a speak to get sort of interaction.

But

I don't think it's been as as advanced as I believe they're trying to project in 25, where in this commercial, I'll just speak about it from from the Google perspective, where they were kind of, forecasting this this customer in the commercial just talking to their phone.

Hi. I'm Gemini.

Hi, Gemini?

How can I help you? So I just talk?

Yes. But Google We can have

a conversation about anything you like. Anything?

The wrath of all

the Achilles. That's right. Yes. I knew it. Next question.

I don't wanna go to jail.

Why don't you just go for 10 minutes and see how you feel?

It's so far.

Give me another one, but more intense. Like I've never fixed a car before.

Make it sound professional.

In regards to working this weekend, we believe it's important to prioritize our well-being.

And I think that that sort of muscle memory is going to advance quickly in 25, and certainly beyond. But it's, like, kind of, you know you know, beginning, the podcast you talked about, how it continues to move faster than ever. I imagine that shift in 25 is gonna be pretty quick. But the outcome of that is ethics and privacy. And, you know, we talked about it last year as one of your predictions where tech regulation is gonna continue to become a big deal.

I don't know if it really got, as mainstream in terms of coverage, especially in an election year of all years in United States, at least. I would suspect that if if we continue to advance in the speed, in which we're talking, there's gonna be some serious regulations to follow because what you just talked about, Karen, is kind of, part and parcel to alright. Well, how does that shift our privacy rules or ethics? Like, as a brand, do I retain that information? How do I use that information?

So I think there there's kind of an interesting ethics angle there too, isn't it?

I agree. And I think there's still a lot of work to be done to help businesses come to terms with how fast AI is advancing and how fast it's being adopting. And we saw, at the end of 2023, I think it was, the provisional agreement between the European Parliament and European Council on the Artificial Intelligence Act. I'm not 100% up to speed with what they're called in the US. Apologies.

But the idea is that there are multiple compliance processes that are being deployed and they are moving forward. But, there are so many different cases in progress that shift and change faster than the law currently can shift and change. Yeah. Where to place emphasis on accountability and where human begins and AINs is is like this sort of like symbiotic, circle that just keeps blurring the lines, I guess, between, like, what's collaboration, what's dictatorship, what's coercive, What's mimetic? Like, there's so much in it.

It's quite an amorphous thing, but it is advancing. And I think what's interesting is I've been at a couple of events recently where I have been approached by, lawyers in this space actually, and that's new. That was new for me in 2024 where, lawyers will come over and introduce themselves as a professional in AI ethics. And I was like, Okay. So I think it's definitely moving forward.

I think the key thing is to get a board in place. And most of the clients that I'm working with, and there isn't a single one where we're not having a conversation around AI with them. We are pretty advanced in having representation from across the business in a small steering committee in a room, sometimes as often as once a fortnight so that we can start to address what is right for the business when it comes to understanding and governing how they're going to position AI for their employees, how they're gonna position AI toward, for, and around their customers, how they're going to, be transparent about that in their reports up to stakeholders and out to stakeholders and then down across the organization. And the key thing and back to that trust. You know, I'm talking about trust between a companion AI and a single human.

That needs to be there at scale. And it's no surprise to see, you know, sort of the tech giants like Microsoft and Apple, both very focused and, and I think leaders and very much sort of looking at what's responsible AI development, from a Microsoft point of view. And Apple are going big on sort of strong privacy protection. So they found their kind of way to sort of lead, and I think that's a good starting place. So if a company can find its place to lead the conversation and lead now, I think there's still 2025 and maybe even into 2026 space to, make small failures, but the time is running out for that.

The expectation will be greater the closer we get to that governance. So, again, with all of this stuff, if you ignore it, you're gonna fail. Like, it's about getting on board now while we have that grace period to still be figuring things out.

One other thing I wanted to get into from a prediction standpoint is how the health and wellness industry might adapt as we talk about all these technologies increasing. Do you see 25 as a year where that particular vertical is even more impacted in the year ahead?

Yes. It's the short answer. I think last year I sort of talked about subscription based, sort of health personalization and, you know, referencing the Zoe's of the world. I think we've gone further than that through 2024. And, again, it does come back to embedding that sort of AI driven personalization factor.

But the fact that you can now have DNA based pretty much everything if you want it from, nutritional advice to workouts, to supplements, to mental well-being, to personalised storytelling, to sleep patterns and all the analysis of all of those things correlated through, an app and a watch. I think, personalized everything is is definitely, on the up. And I think some of the stuff I mean I subscribe to all of this by the way. You know, this sort of my new my new saying at the moment is shut the door in 24. Like it's been a year.

Like it's had very turbulent, ups and downs. And

Mhmm.

And it's it's, for everyone, I think. But I've really sort of refocused in. And so I've gone quite deep on some of this stuff. But the idea is sort of gut microbiome profiling. I was like, well, I mean, it sounds like it would be good to me, but what does that mean?

But, like, it's insane. Your gut's your gut's your second brain. Right? There's so much stuff that we don't understand about how to look after ourselves in a world that just gets faster and harder to live in. I do think that, health and people's understanding of health and their own health will just continue to be more pertinent and more prominent into 2025 and beyond.

So, yeah, I'm I'm quite excited about this, actually. It's always my favorite track at South Bay as well, so I love hanging around the health track when I'm over there.

Well and what I find fascinating about it, and not to riff too deeply into it, is that that goes hand in hand with how much does somebody, down to the individual, trust the information it's getting back from these things. Because, I mean, you there these DNA based nutrition plans are nothing new as a thing, but it's the speed upon which you can get something that's very valuable and usable back as a you know, not to completely thread the needle from how we make a CX plan to how you, you know, create a nutrition plan. But it's it's not that it can't be done already. It's that it can be done faster, potentially more accurate, tell you things that you may not be able to get access to at the speed in which AI is creating, the ability for you to get them. And so what I find interesting is in the in the space of of health and wellness, and, again, not being an expert in in either, being able to go down the path of, okay.

I can use the tools and it can give me information and I can act upon that information if I want to. But do I really trust that it's not to use the term hallucinating or that it's giving me inaccurate information? And so is there going to be in 25 a all in? Yep. I'm totally gonna rely on whatever Jet AI tool that I subscribe to to decide what am I gonna eat every day or what shouldn't I eat.

I don't know. There's still that that, I don't know, hesitation on my side, yet I feel like we're not that far off. And I'm not sure if you feel the same or or if you think that it's gonna get so good in the 12 months ahead that this is gonna become the norm. I don't know. I'm I'm kind of on the fence.

I think my my principle remains the same as I was talking about earlier actually, when I was talking about it in the workplace. Like, it's I consider it to be a tool that fast tracks my knowledge. I think the dangers and I've seen this and I can see it a mile off and I can't prove it when people rely on AI to do their thinking for them. And unfortunately, humans are inherently lazy. Like, we're lazy people.

Like, if there's a shortcut, we'll generally take it. These are facts. These are facts. Facts by science. And it's you know, if silently quitting was the 2024 thing, I think whatever we call this kind of, like, AI laziness is probably the 2025 thing that we wanna watch out for.

But I think if you can have use it as a tool. I think nobody will ever understand what is going on in your body better than you will. And so if something doesn't feel right, don't do it. Like, doctors aren't gonna disappear overnight, but you will have more information than you had before, more relevant to your moment in time. And therefore, that empowerment that you can get through knowledge can inform your decisions to enhance your health, to have better, more sustainable eating practices, by which I mean enjoy today without detriment to tomorrow.

You know? Like, I know I can eat a slice of sourdough 1 or 2 times a week. If I smash a pizza, I feel rubbish the day after. Do I wanna smash a pizza? Of course I do.

Yes. You know, like,

it's just it's just sort of understanding to help make those decisions.

But I think, understanding to help make those decisions, but I think, make the decisions on your own or, like, with the new knowledge. People that use AI to make their decisions and do their work for them will be short lived. It won't be long before it really can spot them.

If last year was any indicator of of how you're gonna do in 25 in terms of your predictions, you got a pretty good track record. So, certainly appreciate you doing this, and, obviously, it's become kind of a tradition at the end of every year. We we take a look, at the year ahead, and, it's certainly exciting to catch up with you anytime. But, let's keep doing this more in 25, and, we'll we'll go back in December of 25 and take a look at how you did.

For sure. I look forward to it.

Thank you so much. And thanks to you all for listening to Human Centered as well. To learn more about VML's CX practice and our approach to the work, you could check us out online at vml.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? You can connect with me on x@nickbrunker, or just shoot us an email. The address is humancentered@vml.com. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.