3rd Party Cookies And The Increased Need To Focus On Retention

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Counter Experience podcast. And before we jump into this week's episode, I have an urgent news brief. Sorry, I've always wanted to say that, but we do have news. I'm excited to announce our new hosts for season two. The CEO and co founder of Customer Gauge, the retention rebel himself, Mr. Adam Durrell, will be joined by our account experience guru and and head of customer success, Mr. Dave Barber. And let me tell you, have they ever lined up a list of guests for you in season two? And don't worry, Kerry and I aren't out of a job yet. We're simply going live every Thursday at 4:30pm Eastern Time on our newest show called Experience on the Rocks where we dissect the toughest B2B experience problems in real time. So without further ado, let's dive into the first episode of season two where Adam and Dave speak to Bob McNinch, an expert in everything B2B CX and they discuss the implications of third party cookies and why it's more important than ever to retain your customers by providing amazing experiences.

Hi there. Welcome to season two of the Academy Experience podcast. My name is Adam Terrell and I'm joined here today by Dave Barber and Trishella Chengappa. Hello.

Good afternoon, Adam. Afternoon, Trish.

Good afternoon.

Great to have you all. I'm really excited about this. This is the first time I've ever hosted a podcast. Well, we're following in the very well trodden footsteps of Ian Lark and Carey Self, who I think had a blinder in the first scene.

Tough act to follow.

I'm also really excited about this season. By the way. I've got a great first guest today, Bob McNinch, who's been in B2B customer experience for years. Worked for Dell and Vodafone. You're old boss, right? Well, we try to keep a bit quiet. Yeah, he was. So don't let him know about that. Got it. And also we've already lined up six great clients already that I'm really excited to about talk to. So Sugar, CRM, SuperOffice, Shure Telecom, you know a lot of these guys. So rent a kill as well, which is a bit of random rent a kill. So I'm really excited. So how's your week been, Trish? How did your week pan out last week?

My week was actually pretty good. Headed out to some of the seaside areas of the Netherlands, getting in some sun while we can, I think. And right after, I think a quite a big release week. So.

It was like. It was huge. Can you talk through a little bit about what you got out in Customer Gauge last week?

Yes, definitely. I think we had quite an exciting release. We changed the way Customer Gauge looks, but also the navigation that customers can use inside of the platform and that's pretty big when you normally do that. It's a lot of user change. And I think Dave can kind of chime in here because this was done in combination between customer success and product based on a lot of customer feedback that we received over the last year using our own kind of surveying the product survey as part of the feedback collection method.

Yeah, there's always a special kind of feeling in the CSM team before any kind of major release. It's one of excitement and utter fear sometimes as well. Not that we don't trust our product team, of course, but of course it always needs to work really well for customers and whenever people have questions, this is who they're going to come to. So really excited for it. And also it's really going to help us to make sure that customers can use the system a lot better.

Hold on a second. You said this is a special type of feeling. Was that present this time?

This is probably the biggest release in terms of actual system change that I've been a part of since I joined Customer gauge back in 2017. And I'm not sure how it went before Trish and Adam on previous whole interface updates, but I think for us, we were looking very much forward to responding to things that customers have said, not just recently, but over the past couple of years. You can't do a UI refresh every time a customer says, this button will be better here. So we're excited for that because actually made sure that customers got to use.

It a bit better.

I think just also answer Dave's point. We get better and better at this. So you learn from your previous experiences, you understand how to make the process as smooth as possible for customers. And I know Dave had a special feeling we did too, because it's very exciting. But I think the release side of things, we were incredibly calm as a team and that's always, I think, good rather than bad. So I think in that sense we have learned from our last change to this time. But the massive change of course, is the navigation and that came at the back of customer feedback where they wanted us to make it easier for them to find things inside of Customer Gauge, but also to be able to improve the search functionality. So again, it comes around finding things and I think we Combined both of it. We had a lot of customer validation sessions before we put it into the product. So the design session through the customer feedback session, before it actually went in and went for launch across, so. So I think that really helped in also making sure we are getting it right.

I think what we learned from this as well is you can't communicate this too much.

Yep.

I think a message every single day, just to make sure everybody sees it, really helps to reduce those surprises. When people log in in the morning and they go, what is this? Whenever it happens when one of your favorite software changes and you go, I'm never going to be able to use it in this way. And within a week you can't remember what it used to look like. So even me, I stopped clicking where I used to click already. And only a week.

There's no such thing as too much communication when it comes to something as big a change as this.

Well, it's really good to hear about the new user interface. So we got it out, it wasn't too much. And what's the feedback been so far?

Feedback's been great on our side of it. So I think, like I said before, the requests that have come in aren't brand new requests that we had and we did a big product survey last year and so we're actually able to really act upon those and like Trish says, to actually engage some of our heaviest users of the system and say, this is where we've come to in a way, here's our vision. And then using our customers to tweak it then, and to really get it to a point where it needs to be, then it just rolls out smoothly and they go, right, well, this is what I wanted now, now I can work better. So some really good feedback so far from our side.

On another topic today. You're a good Cornish lady. So there was a big meeting in.

Cornwall last week, the G7 summit.

Yes, that's right. So is that local? For years.

So that's all the media and the police were staying outside my mum's front door, basically. So my mum lives in Falmouth in Cornwall. Cornwall, for anyone else that doesn't know, is a little. Nice little county in the southwest of England. And so basically they got a big ocean liner into the harbor for all the police and the military to stay at. Mum needed an ID card to try to get into her own street for a little bit. And the actual G7 was about 20 minutes down the road, but that's where they put all the media and stuff. Like that. So lots of videos going up on my Facebook of Joe Biden's motorcade going down the little back road where I used to live. So really quite interesting to see all these world leaders in my little neck of the woods.

And what do you think they ate while they were in court? Do you think they're some pasties?

I would hope that Mr. Biden would enjoy a pasty, basically a handheld pie, so long as he got the right one. I would have given him a good recommendation as well.

So you would give your NPS 10 to what kind of pies?

I'm a true traditionalist, really. As soon as it's got anything else in it apart from steak, potatoes, turnip and onion, I'm not interested.

Trish, how do you feel about that? Have you had a Cornish pasty in your life? No.

We're still waiting for Dave to introduce us to that in our customer gauge office.

So, Dave, next, next time we cook for the cook for the office, we'll. We'll be sure to have a go at past these.

All right, we'll be right back after this. Welcome back to the Account Experience Podcast. I'm here with Dave Barber and I'm here to introduce our very special guest today, Bob McNish, who's got more than 20 years of industry experience as the B2B customer experience expert. I knew Bob at Dell actually 20 years ago, and before that he'd been at Apple and IBM with a really industrious career behind him, and then went on to Digital river and Vodafone. This guy knows way more about B2B experience than we ever can. So I'm delighted to say hello, Bob. Hello, Bob. Welcome to us.

Good afternoon, Bob.

Hello. Thank you very much indeed for that kind intro as well as shaving a number of years off my age. I am forever grateful for that. Thank you.

Well, it also ages me as well. We've known each other for a long time.

We have.

You've been sort of a guru, mentor. So also you've been a customer gauge customer as well, which we thank you for that. So you've also got net promoter expertise under your belt. So you've been in these very large B2B roles. I mean, take me out of there. What do you think some of the issues facing the industry are right now?

I'm ever the optimist and as I look at the terrible situation we've had health wise from COVID One of the things that's been a blessing to many digital people in organizations that had here before, not paid attention to it. Suddenly the digital transformation agenda has been put right to the front. And there's been a lot of very good news in getting the technology in, in upgrading things that previously were getting clogged through. Have you got a business case? What's the roi? Shall we do a little bit of it, et cetera. So there's a lot of good news that there's been a lot of investment there. Come back to what my thoughts are on that. And the other thing that's kind of top of my mind at the minute, which again I'm looking as being good news, is there's the changing law in the third party cookie which is going to over the next months make acquisition harder and harder. Now I don't say impossible. I know that all those clever people are going to think of ways around it but it's going to get more expensive and it's going to be more difficult.

Where's the good news Bob, in terms of actually what the third party cookie does, does that mean I'm going to stop receiving all my, all my shopping recommendations on Instagram? Because I'm not looking forward to going out and looking for it myself.

Yeah, what it means is that any of those, you know, retargeting or you wonder when you come to a website, how did they know that I was looking for a new pair of shoes? And I'm reading the newspaper and shoe adverts suddenly appear and so it really is that whole thing of taking the footprints of where you were and reusing that to target you with offers. And so it's radically affecting the fact that if I want to get new customers then the way that people are doing it today is they're saying, well if I've seen you looking on the website for these products, you're probably a likely suspect for me to start talking to and advertising and then you're able to target your money appropriately on those audiences of people and that's what's going away. So you've either got to go back to spray and pray where you just try and put ads out to anybody and hope that the people self qualify or you know, and that's going to be expensive or you stop. And so you certainly are going to have to stop doing the Funny enough. I don't like it. I think a lot of people don't like it.

You think you're being stalked, that's why it's going to go away. People Google are doing it in order to get ahead of any privacy legislation. I'm thinking.

Yeah, yeah, Exactly. So that sounds like bad news, but I put it in the category of good news.

Let's grab it. Why is it good news then? For industry? It's going to be more expensive to attract customers, right? Yeah.

But what it's going to mean is you better pay attention to your customers. It really is going to put that agenda that says your installed base is somebody else's acquisition target and you are going to have so much trouble in getting one. You don't want to fight for everybody else's acquisition target, so look after your own. And it's really going to, I think, set the agenda of saying our marketeers really investing in their own install base. Are they caring about them? Are they loving them? Are they nurturing one of the companies that I work for who should remain nameless? But you can probably guess we actually worked out that we didn't need to acquire another customer if we could keep all the ones we had. Now, needless to say, we didn't. And so we had to get those because we didn't get they, you know, we didn't do it right in the customer relationship, etc.

That's interesting. Why do you think there is this focus on the need to acquire customers when we all know that the economics behind retaining customers is so much, you know, so positive? Why is this big drive to keep acquiring?

I think it's a whole mix of things, I think. Well, for some of the organizations, it's actually part of their mandate. So some of the telcos actually have to do it. They have to set out an acquisition target to, in other words, to spread broadband to every household and various things like that. So that's why that's part of their charter. Other than that, I don't know whether it's a macho thing. I'd be interested in your views as well on that. Because there is this sort of thing that salespeople. It is, I am going to get someone, I am going to win that account, I am going to do it, I. And then they win it. And then they immediately run off to the next one and you go, wait, you haven't skinned and cooked that one that you just caught. Why are you running on to the next one? And you haven't got that whole lifetime value discussion and it's always about, I'm the hunter, I will bring home food, me good. You know, and I think that's just. By the way, I have enormous respect for that. Enormous. Because I think it's the hardest job in business. You know, I would far rather my Daughters would marry a drummer in a rock band than a great acquisition salesperson because you know, man, they are tough cookies. They are good.

But I think it's a really good point you bring up. I mean I like to think of it as the acquisition addiction. And funny, it comes back a little bit to the, to the cooking that you're talking about because Google and Facebook and Instagram have made it so easy for marketers to spend money. It's like, hey, we're showing we've got these dials, look at these people you're acquiring. Actually very little indication of how you're doing it. At the back end especially, it's like you can spend money this way. Suddenly marketers look great so they can do math. So it's a really easy addiction to have. But retention is, is much harder. Right? Yeah.

You see I think also the thing is that I actually think that great. If you like install based marketing requires much more technical understanding, especially off databases and it requires a discipline. Now if you do that, the benefit is it doesn't cost you as much money because you're not paying the acquisition budget. So if you look at sky, you look at, you know, the Telcos, they're paying 350 quid per new customer and you know, then you look at the number of customers that they have to acquire to achieve the numbers because of the leakage they have and that's very quickly a very big number.

Yeah.

Now on the other hand, if you had a really great database and if you were really loving your install base, you know, doesn't the finance make more sense that way? But then the marketing person might not get as much money, as much budget and I think we need to change that vocabulary. It's not about how much budget I've got, but about how little can you do it on.

But I totally agree, but I mean you've been right at the top of some of these companies and how you've seen what happens at board levels. How would you categorize the resistance to this? It seems like such a no brainer. Why does it, why does this not mainstream?

That is a very good question. I think that part of the answer has been technical because if you think the whole area, you've got to start talking about investing in your CRM, your database, you've got to talk about investing in upgrading your my account area. And that can often be very difficult because it's built on application type software. Even it's proper code, it isn't, I'll buy a CMS and we'll put loads of content in and we'll build it up and, and that's great. We get some landing pages, get some emails, you know, get some PPC, etc. That machine seems to have become more optimized and everything. But one of the things that I think this will drive, just like Covid Drew, the transformation was, you know, it's a lot of marketers will talk about winning the next click. I'm going to win the click.

And.

I think it changes now to where can you win the login, can you win my account? Because if you do that gives you something that is far more important than third party cookies, which is first party relationships.

Exactly. And really trying to boost the actual natural engagement that you have with the products, with your goods and services.

Right.

Because I think we have the same conversation with my team in the CSM world with a lot of customers that say or would potential new customers that say, well, we can't do this because we haven't got the data so we're going to turn on the money hose at 10 new salespeople and trust that they'll get the business in and then that'll make up for the customers that lose it. And because it's such a big scary position to be in, to say we've used this system for 15 years, we developed it ourselves, we've invested hundreds of thousands in it and now you're telling me to stop, stop and start again or to reinvest all of my staff's time in making sure it's better now when I'm not losing loads of money because it's all balancing out. At the end of the day it's quite a hard decision or quite a hard conversation to have with those kind of people to really improve that and have a stop.

But if you think that if you've got somebody who has registered with you and have established my account, yeah, that's, that's the basis of personalization. You know, it's how many companies don't even know what they've actually sold you and you just go how can you do an upsell or cross sell if I don't know what you've got already? And then you think, well, how do I message that to you? Well, even the people like the utilities, like the telcos, like all those people that you come back regularly to actually don't drive you coming back enough. And when you arrive at my account, what an opportunity. At the same time as I'm looking to put in my meter reading that my eyeball is subjected to some little upsell across sell offers. But really it is. You know, people used to look at Amazon and say, oh, I wish we were like Amazon. Wish we're like Amazon. I wish we were like Amazon. Their latest my account I think is wonderful. I'm a Prime customer. And so they have expanded the basics that started, as we all know, with books and you know, going Now I can see everything I bought going back years with them. I go, oh my goodness, I need to replace that. I immediately go back. Would you like to reorder?

Yes.

And I'm off on a journey because it provides a wonderful service that I can see where it's in guarantee or warranty period upsell. Where I got it from, how much I paid it is taking the people like you also bought that. I've now been educated because I get prime music and I can't remember the last time I'm going to use the right, the term to explain the last time I bought something. The last time I bought a record, you know, it's like I can't remember. And I used to say, oh, there's no good music out there. Don't make it like the old days. And I started on prime whenever I got it, listening to various music and it said, would you like a discovery tape based on things that you've been listening to?

A discovery tape. Sorry, hold on a second.

I'm glad you picked up on that deliberate mistake.

We're going in the right direction.

Yeah, I know.

Where's the final 14 year old son loves cassettes. So these all come and.

But now I've discovered all these people that I didn't know before and I'm now so much more appreciative of the young singer songwriters and the bands coming through. I just love it. And that's what I mean.

I'm going to drill down on the Amazon experience if that's okay. Because I think we all take Amazon as a wonderful experience. Actually as a company we're huge consumers of Amazon from the business side, from the hosting. So you can really see that they're not just consumer business. When we talk to consumer goods companies, some of our clients are really in that space. We used to call it FMCG Bot, if you remember. And actually they are really worried about the actions of Google and Amazon because first of all, Google and Amazon hold all the data. We'll come Back to the third party cookies for B2B in a second. But they're also really great experiences. So if you're talking to millennials, that run a bar or something like that, they'd rather order from Amazon. And I think these companies who are in the beer and the soft drinks business really start to see that as a threat because Amazon and Google just, they own the complete shopping experience. They just make it easy to buy. And this is a huge billion dollar issue that these guys have got to solve. Right.

And what I try and remind all the B2B marketers about is a customers expectation of their business experience is set by their consumer experiences. So if I know that I can get that from every consumer site I go to or all the popular ones when I get to a business to business site someone I'm spending a lot more money with and they don't have a good my account, they don't have a good asset base, a good inventory list, a good list of users. If I can't self serve, if I can't see my back bills, they just go, sorry, are you ready for prime time? You know, what are you doing to me here?

Yeah. Or returning something or looking something out. The B2B experience is very different I.

Think, I think that the age old thought that, you know, B2B is less personal. You don't need quite so much, you know, bells and whistles and things like that. But you're actually a lot more stressed when you're at work and you need these kind of things and you need it to be a smooth experience and that matters a lot more to you a business purchase a lot of the time than a consumer one does.

Yeah, I'm going to try and switch Bob the lens a little bit to this B2B thing because I think that we think that all B2B has to be is less like B2C on steroids. But there are some significant differences in the B2B experience for me. Number one is that there's multiple contacts. Excuse me, from your side, how do you, what's in your experience? How would you characterize a great B2B experience? Maybe a million dollar account?

Well, I'll, I think rephrase the answer a little bit because it's one of my favorite subjects as to you know, going back to why haven't so many people done it, you know, the, the earlier digital transformation and why aren't more people selling to a sober. It is exactly the point you're getting to there, which is who are you talking to? And it. Do they have the permission to make the decision, you know, can they spend that money?

Yeah.

So it is that thing about having the rules, the access management the privileges, the different profile levels, which is now becoming not just part of the ability to log in and see various stuff, but it is at what level can I buy an upgrade? Can I spend 20 million? Can I spend 20p? Can I spend nothing? And you need to have that. So to me the whole key is being able to manage the hierarchy of relationships and be able to get the right message to the right person at the right time. Again, let's linking it back to the consumer experience. So many of the business to business solutions actually do go through to another user. So although I might sign up a contractor, you might customer, you sign up with a decision maker, go through the process and I do all my good account management, there's the decision maker, there's the influencer, there's the relationships in the power base. The thing that once it goes in, if the person has made a Decision to buy 10,000 seats of VoiceOver IP technology from my company, that's only the part, that's where you start. Now you've got to actually say how can you get the use of it? So a lot of enterprise solutions to make sure that they get aligned are saying, I think Microsoft are one example. You don't get paid for selling in, you get paid for them actually using it, which I think is a very healthy move, that you're not just going to load them up with unneeded seats, terminals, devices, but you're actually going to make sure that your supplier is part of your success. And I think that's where the similarity and the difference goes. That now if I'm a user of Microsoft Teams, I have a login, I have an account. So I say, hey, I'm on board, I am now interacting. I have got a digital person. Can I go online and buy something? Heck no. Because I don't have that role in the privilege, but somebody in the organization does. So I need to be able to. Now let's turn the lens around. If you like, from a Microsoft point of view or a vendor like that, you need to be able to manage all those different relationships. And if all you're doing is making the ones you've had direct buying relationships with, you're going to fail. Because you need to make sure that all the people that are going to be the users of your service, the users of your product are as happy. And that's where I say Net promoter score can't just be were you happy with buying it would be doop. But it's the proof is and what will get you the renewals is did you actually survey the people that were using it? Did you actually find out what their feedback. And more importantly, because that's one of my vet noirs, did you actually do anything with it?

Hold on a second. Are you talking about response and closing the loophole? I want to hear what you've got to say about it.

Oh, I'm. It's. I get so annoyed. I am inundated with people saying, oh, before you go, could we just ask you a question? Oh, could you just give us some feedback on this? I said, you do it. I'm willing to help.

You know, brrr.

Gone into the ether, off in the ozone. And I think, wait a minute, you know, I'm a longtime customer of yours. You've asked me for something. Will anybody ever tell me whether or not it's personal? Oh, dread the fact that it could actually be personal. But certainly, could somebody say, look, we had 2,000 people responded. The majority of people said, these were the three things that annoyed them or these are the three things that we thought were great. So we're going to work on those and we'll let you know what happened. I would. I think I'd fall off my chair if somebody did that. I would love them to death. I really would.

It's like dinner party conversation, isn't it? Somebody said, well, thank you very much. This is what we learned from you. But I just want to tune into this for a second because around the world this minute, there must be. There must be billions of, or at least millions of surveys going on where they're asking for feedback. All right, Nobody does anything with it. What is it? Chucking, putting a message in a bottle or something like that, or beaming it off into space, hoping that something.

These are the same programs that are still fighting for increasing responses. And they're expecting people to repeatedly take time, give feedback, have nothing back, and then three months later, they're going to say to Bob again, Bob, do you mind? Again. If you give me that. Take some time to give me that feedback. Why would you have to give me a bit more than that to make me keep wanting to give that feedback?

Right. I'm going to run with this for a second, Bob, see what you think of this. I think that we're training customers to not answer surveys, first of all. So we're actually actively training people to not give feedback because after a while, your generosity keeps up, I think. And the other thing, and this kind of spikes the point about acquisition is that we are training customers to be promiscuous because there's always a better deal if you shop around. Right? That comes back to this whole acquisition addiction. What do you think about that, Bob? Can we ever break out of that loop, you think?

I think if we are to break out of that loop, it will be because of something that is outside of our control, a tangential to it, like the cookie law. Like someone changing the law that says you've got to offer your existing customers the same prices as your acquisition customers. And that's what's going to change it. Because we've been trying for years to change it without that help and I've failed.

Okay, I'm going to. I agree with everything you've said that it's about we need to change things and that they try to change the law in the UK for insurance so that you have to have the same offer for acquisition customers to do for retention. And we're trying to get rid of third party cookies. I just believe marketers would just find a way around it because there's too much money at stake. So what do you think about that? Will we ever change really, even if they start to change the law?

I think they will. I think that as certain parts of the market establish that that is the behavior, then that sets the standard for what is normal. It's like I said, your expectations set for business by your consumer experience. Similarly, if I'm treated that way by my utility or my insurance, why wouldn't my telco treat me the same way? I was real happy. My Norton360 is coming up for renewal. And every year at this time, I play the game, I clear my cookies, I go onto a site and I do an acquisition and I buy it for a lot lower than renewing it. And I'm always annoyed because I say, why don't you just offer me the upgrade and I'll do it this year they offered me the upgrade at the acquisition price.

Whoa.

Job done. I have signed up. I just immediately went, I don't need to do research. That's a great price. So they have a totally frictionless upsell and they didn't have to pay for whenever I clicked through and did all that as if I was a new customer all over again. So in fact, although they looked as if they gave me a bigger discount, they actually saved money on that transaction.

Wow, that's. So what would be a typical saving every year? Can you quantify it? Were you able to like stray £5 or £10?

About £20 a year.

Whoa.

Yeah.

So that would have been a really great money saving. Tip. Had they not changed. So, you know, if you think about the. Because you've been years in the telco business, I mean, what are some of the bad habits of these guys that you'd like to see change?

Let's say they're in a number of industries. I draw the comparison to imagine you've gone to the same bar year after year.

Hold on a second. Hold on. Let's chat with Dave.

Yeah. And they keep on sending you beer offers when all you drink is screaming Vikings.

What is this? I'll come back to that one. Yeah.

Or. Or the cocktail of your choice. The reason why I chose a Screaming Viking is that it's a cocktail that was invented by an American TV series. Do you know which one?

No, I don't.

Where everybody knows your name.

I did not know that. I never, you know, I saw a few. I'm that old. I recognize that.

Yeah. It was invented in the bar to get Sam's job back and it was just invented in Cheers.

Okay, I'm going to use that trivia. Yeah.

Nice.

Because nobody.

But anyway, that's the point is that so many of the. I cannot. In any of the telcos that I have been of which I've been a customer, I don't think one of them in my account or through email has sent me a relevant offer. So you send in beer offers to a wine drinker.

And that's because they're not good at knowing who you are as a customer?

Yes, it appears so.

Do you think this is the direction.

That a lot of the customers are going now with all the investment that's happening with big data tools like Power BI and things like that? Is that why they're investing in that? So they can be more customizable with their current customers?

Yes, they're absolutely doing it. I know that. Absolutely. And then they're finding out, as I said earlier, that it's hard in a lot of them. You've got multiple databases. And we all know what happens when you try and merge multiple databases. That data integrity, you've got things that have evolved, have been careless over the years and it's just very hard to get it back again. But, but companies need to understand that in B2B marketing, or I'd say in any marketing, your database. And Adam, you remember this from many years ago. Your database. Your database. Your database.

Yeah. And I think that one of you keep. You're talking about data mining and I think that's. That's really relevant in B2C and I think perhaps it's not such a bad thing that they've been using cookies because you can figure out what adjacent offers of just working through Some sort of AI B2B is more difficult and that's because there are bigger deals involved and there's this, you know, this is much more human element in bringing in a million dollar deal. I mean I'd love to for people to come along and click yes, I'd like to buy for a million dollars on a deal. But my experience that doesn't happen. You did a lot of shopping around. So I think that's part of the problem Bob, is that the, not all of the corporate memory exists in the data banks. It's in people's heads and they move around. So that's, that's one of the sophistications that's coming.

I totally agree. Or else it's in little personal notes, little personal things, a little spreadsheet or a little CRM that one of the offices just spun up on their own, you know, kind of skunk work offs somewhere. But that's what you've just got to pull it back in and you just need to start doing it because until you start you're not going to be done. And I just think that that attention to your database is where people are investing. They're putting a lot of technology in and I say going back to B2B. Yeah, the problem is easier and not because if you think about what account based marketing would mean that you would be looking for how many people came to your site that are registered from the same account are you looking? How do you identify them? If they're from the same ip, the same email stub, if they're from you know what, what if they're interested? Because if you can start seeing momentum in an account with multiple people looking at it, you're thinking okay, now what do you do with that? So building up a picture, as I said earlier, it's not just the one or two decision makers, it's the influencers, the users. It's all of that ecosystem of people that if you're really clever, you're only really successful business to business marketing. You're getting that picture to see what's happening. If a load of people somehow come through from one of your target accounts, you want to know about that and be able to say oh wait a minute, something's happening at ABC account out of all the accounts we should be working on and you don't have enough resources to go after all the accounts. Something is self selecting as a prospect now, can you spot them fast enough to be able to allocate your resources to the opportunity that appears to be emerging? Let's again leave on the positive and I would say we've touched on digital transformation, we've touched on databases, mention big data. I would go further with some of the technology that it's available from the big guys as well as, you know, the more the smaller, cheaper ones. There's such an amazing range of technology, the sort that at the start of my career we only dreamt of. What I'm disappointed are some of the things you've seen come through is are we sweating the asset during this Covid time people have actually gone out and bought some technology and they're probably using 10% of the capability. You probably see that in some of your own customers. Are they using all the features? Are they really making it work as hard as possible and getting the most for their money? That is what I would encourage any business business to marketer who's listening here, who's still with us, we'd be to say guys, dream some more, be creative, sweat that technology, but love the technology. It's there to help you.

Thanks a lot for that, Bob. Also, thank you for sharing your thoughts about screaming Vikings about saving up to £20 on Norton 360, which is. Although maybe it never went away, but also helping us talk about the acquisition addiction and the third party cooking issue, which is really one I hadn't thought about. I really hope that businesses start to take it seriously and start to get behind the whole experience thing with their retention. And thanks for sharing your thoughts on that with us today. So Bob, thank you so much today. Bob McNich. By the way, Bob, if anyone wants to reach out to you, how would they do that?

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn bmcninch, so please do reach out.

Super. Thanks a lot, Bob.

Thanks a lot for your time. God, thank you. Great to speak to you.

Catch up.

Thanks guys.