HubSpot Spotlight with Yamini Rangan | INBOUND 2023

Foreign. Please welcome Chief Executive Officer HubSpot Yamini Rangan. Welcome, everyone, to Inbound. We have over 12,000 attendees in person in Boston. Hey, Boston. And we have over 100,000 joining us online from all over the world. Welcome. I'm so excited that I get to talk with you all today. I know you think I'm only going to talk about AI, but I'm here to talk about something even bigger. Change. AI came in hot on the scene this year. And while we have seen major shifts in technology, from cloud to mobile to social, what makes this feel different is the speed of change. From the launch of ChatGPT to Bard to Llama, to the exciting new ways in which we can use generative AI, more has happened in our industry in the past nine months than other industries have seen in the last nine years. Can you feel it? Yeah. Technology is changing. The way customers buy is changing. So how we connect needs to change. So I want to share my thoughts on how you can adapt and grow with these shifts. Now, a small confession. I'm an AI geek. While many people like to watch Ted Lasso, I really like to watch YouTube videos on Neural networks and deep learning. I love it. I can't get enough of it. The way generative AI has really transformed the world that we live in this year has just been fascinating and at the same time, a little daunting. So let's demystify AI. What exactly is AI? Why has it taken the world by storm this year? AI is not new. It's been around for decades. And in fact, predictive AI, the kind that forecasts future behavior based on data from the past, is ubiquitous. We love it. We depend on it. This is the intelligence that drives HBO to recommend succession that you binge watched. This is the same intelligence that drives your favorite clothing brand to say, I know you have that switch sweater in black, but orange really pops with those new white jeans. Orange is always good. That AI is not new. So what has changed this year? There is a new kind of AI called generative AI. And in the most simplest terms, instead of just analyzing the old data, generative AI can generate something new. AI has gotten really good at creating new things. New content, new code, new insights. It can draft everything from blog posts to biographies. It can generate everything from data reports to Drake songs. For the first time, AI has the potential to transform knowledge and creative work. And that is a profound change. And that means generative AI is moving us from the age of information to the age of intelligence. Now think about this. The Internet gave us Access to information that was in books, articles, encyclopedia, right at our fingertips. It changed the way we live, work and buy. Now, generative AI is giving us access to intelligence. And once again, the way we live, work and buy will change. That's a big shift. How do we process that? Well, what if we put the word artificial aside for a moment, really focus on what's left? Intelligence. Because at its core, that's the shift that's happening with AI. We're going from acquiring information to acting on intelligence. And if you're a marketer out there, a salesperson, a service rep out here, I know you're here. Then what's the best way to use this intelligence? The answer is simple. The most intelligent way to use intelligence as a go to market professional is to drive customer connection. I want to share a personal story about the power of this intelligence to drive customer connection. Now, my home is made up of two teens, two careers, two cats. It's just absolute chaos. And we love it. And we thought we would add to this chaos with a much needed kitchen renovation in the middle of the pandemic. I know that's a bold move, right? I like to live life on the edge. Now, when I first met with this contract and design firm, I was ready for mind numbing information gathering. What kind of layout do you want? What color of tiles? What type of wood? They didn't ask me any of these questions. Instead, they actually observed our chaos. They looked at how we are using the space, they asked insightful questions about how we come together as a family. And they connected deeply with us as customers. And because of that, they didn't help us renovate our house, they helped us create home. And as a customer, what have I done ever since? Well, it is amazing. I have been their brand champion, their number one fan, and I've talked about them non stop. That is the power of acting on intelligence, to be able to connect deeply with your customer. Now imagine this. Imagine if you can scale that type of connection with hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of your customers by observing their patterns, anticipating their needs, and offering them insights that's possible with AI. I know some of you are thinking, well, it's so great that you and your cats feel so connected with this company, Yamini. But really, does this connection matter? The answer is yes. Connection matters because it drives growth. This is why I'm personally obsessed with customer connection. Because in order to help you all grow, we need to help you connect with your customers. So at HubSpot this year, we took a step back and we Looked at all of our customers who are growing most and how they are connecting with their customers. And specifically we looked at the growth in the number of deals won. Anybody care about winning deals here? Yeah, everybody cares about winning deals. So I want to offer two insights based on the research that we did at HubSpot. One, companies who focus on customer connection saw five times more growth than the average company. We have intuitively known that connecting with customers is really good business. But now we have the data and the intel to back it up. Five times more growth. Next. We found that companies who consistently connect in every single stage of the customer journey saw 19% more growth. What that really means is that no matter which segment you're in, which industry you're in, the more you meaningfully engage with your customers, the more you're going to grow. So the takeaway is really simple. Customer connection drives growth and AI can drive that connection at scale. So that's great. Where do we get started? We start where we always start, with the customer. At HubSpot, we are customer journey connoisseurs. In fact, Brian and Dharmesh just built this into the DNA and I love it. So with this big transformative shift, we're doing exactly that. We're getting deeply curious about our customers journey and we went straight to the source. We asked many of you, our customers, how you think the customer journey is evolving and changing with AI. Let's actually listen.

There have definitely been some customer behavioral.

Changes over the last year or two.

Better, faster, cheaper and more personal. That's what they want.

Our buying process is becoming more involved for our buyers. Conversely, the information, the content that is available kind of on the Internet has gotten worse over the years.

Customers are having so many different sources for information. A lot of it's highly indexed on social media.

I think you can't be just in one place at one time. You are expected to be in all the places at all times.

Customers are looking for more information in their interactions that is valuable and actionable, not just a sales pitch.

Generative AI gives us an opportunity with all the data we have to get more personal.

Customer connection is all about understanding the customer at a much more granular level and forming a genuine two way relationship.

We're talking about connecting to people, understand the entire person and that enables us to where we can be a better partner, be a more human partner and engage in the moments that matter.

That's amazing. You just heard them. Customer journey is changing. You look at the entire journey. Customer expectations are changing, really changing. And we need to Put ourselves in the shoes of these customers to understand this change from how they discover and consider new products to how they buy and use these new products. So let's jump straight into the customer journey and let's start with the discover stage. Now, discovery of new products is actually going from search to social. Customers simply used to be able to search and get access to lots of links from all over the Internet. But things are changing because customers are discovering new products before they even search. And that's because companies are finding them where they are on social. Now 44% business buyers say that they use social to discover new products. That's become their primary Source. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, they're all on the rise because they serve customers engaging and relevant videos before they even have to search. So in the discover stage, it's really clear customers don't want to search, they want to get social. So your customer has discovered your product, that's great news. And they're considering purchase, they'd like to learn more. How they learn is going from clicks to conversations. Now let's think about this. When your customer wanted more information about your product, what do they always do? They headed to your website and within your website they would click filter and sort through all of that information that you provided to try and figure out what they want. But all that clicking around is just so time consuming, super inefficient, especially in this chatgpt world where they never even have to leave a simple chat box to figure out exactly what they want. So now when they're looking for more information, what do they do? They go to the website, but they want to chat. They just want a one on one helpful conversation to find out exactly what they need. So customers have spoken or well typed and it's really clear they don't want to convert on your website, they want to converse on your website. Your customers had great conversations and they are getting ready to buy. Here their expectations are actually going from being okay, getting personalized information to getting personal insights. And there is a big difference. Let's think about this. Your customer is about to get on a call with your rep and that should be an easy, breezy conversation, right? The call starts and your customers getting the sinking feeling, oh no, I'm getting qualified because your rep starts with tell me what you're looking for. Describe your pain again. And your customer's thinking, you know what is really painful is explaining the pain for the fourth time in a row. You know, customers have given us all of this information across so many different Channels, it just didn't make it to that particular conversation. They expect you to take the context across all of the interactions you've had with them and bring them insights every single time that you connect with them. So personalized is templated. Hello, first name, not gonna cut it anymore. Personal is tailored. They expect insights that are specific to them. All right, your customer bought, sign, sealed, delivered, they're yours. You're out there celebrating, but this is when the real work begins. Because in the used to, the expectations are going from being okay with reactive help to wanting proactive assistance. Just imagine this. Your customer, when they want to get a question answered, what do they do? They submit a ticket, they call in, listen to some elevator music, and then try to follow up with an email to get the answer that they need. And guess what? Most of the time, they don't even get the answers that they're looking for. No wonder 98% of customers find service interactions absolutely frustrating. The other 2% must be doing a lot of yoga because they know you have AI and they know that that means you have the intelligence and the insights to delight them proactively. And we all know as customers how powerful that delight moment can be. In fact, I actually remember my first or one of my very first delight moments as a customer way, way, way back. I was 15 and I would go to the local library every week. I was a bookworm of epic proportions. And my librarian, who got to know me would hand me a stack of books. Mystery novels, biographies, Archie's comics. Books, anyone? Yeah. And her proactive action made me feel seen, understood, and it just delighted me. I still remember that moment. That's what customers want to feel delighted. Customers don't want reactive assistance. They want proactive action. Now if you step back and you look at this entire customer journey, wow. Things are changing in every single stage of the journey. AI is not only changing the technology landscape, it's causing your customers expectations to change pretty dramatically. So that means standing still here is not an option. You need to evolve. You need to evolve how you connect with your customers. And if you ask me, my best advice is just get started. There is no playbook for AI, for marketing, for sales, for service. Because things are evolving really rapidly. The best thing that you can do is to start small, iterate fast, and iterate responsibly. And that's exactly what we are doing here at HubSpot. In fact, our motto when it comes to AI is do, don't deliberate. So we have been responsibly, experimenting, learning, getting a ton of feedback from all of you customers and we've learned a lot over the last nine months. So I want to share four ways in which you can start Start evolving your Go to market for the age of AI. Want to get started? Yeah. Well first one get going with bots. In fact, start one for your website. Remember your customers, they don't want to click, sort, filter through all of that information. They just want to chat. So your chat should be able to answer questions about your product, about pricing, but case studies that your customers are interested in and it should be able to do it better. At HubSpot, we added a Genai powered chatbot earlier this year and it's been working great. In fact, 78% of chatters questions have been fully answered by the bot and these chatters have great customer satisfaction scores. Once you have a marketing chatbot, next it's time to add a support bot. Get the most repetitive questions answered right away by the bot so your teams can focus on the ones that require complex answers and expertise. Your service levels are going to improve and your customers will be absolutely delighted. All right, next hit refresh on your content strategy with AI. And specifically you should be asking two questions. What kind of content do I generate now? And which communities do I share that content in? Now, whether you're creating blogs or podcasts or infographics, the content that you create should be optimized for AI. And that means it has to have depth. Keywords are still important, but the relationship between words and the context across these words are even more important for Genai. So that is how you should be thinking about content. So for example, let's say your customer is going to search for the best standing desk. They will actually find your blog article which said blessed best standing desk in 2023. But what if they ask the bot question about your product pricing models where they can buy it? Do you have all of that information available for the bot to pull it from? Make sure that you really understand your audience intent when you're creating this content. Next you have all this wonderful content. Where do you share it? Multiple communities needs to be across all of these communities. And here's where AI can really help. It can help you take that base content you have and optimize it for every one of these communities. It can schedule posts on your behalf. It can even recommend the time of the day that you need to be posting based on prior engagement metrics. Almost every part is of content ideation. Creation and distribution is ripe for change with AI. So this is a great place for you to get started. All right, third, flip the sales formula. Sales leaders, sales reps, this is for you. There's an old sales formula which is hire a lot of reps, give them a stack of tools and drive a lot of activities. That whole like more is more strategy no longer works. Your reps are overworked and your customers are just overwhelmed with their outreach. There's a new way which is an AI powered way. Efficient reps that are assisted by AI with connected tools and insight driven activities will lead to more sales. And here's the best news. You have all the data about your customer. AI can help you convert that into insights. And that means you can focus on what you do best, which is meaningfully connect with your customers. Okay, last one here. Most important, let's talk about service. Believe it or not, getting people to buy your product is not the biggest challenge facing companies today. It is getting them to use it, engage with it, get value from it. This is where you need to be proactive. Instead of just waiting for your customers to call you, be proactive with more insights because more insights equals more value. Make every conversation count. And AI can absolutely help. Here can tell you the next high value feature your customer needs to be using. What customers similar to them are doing in other industries share that make every conversation insight rich to drive value. So if you asked me how can I evolve my go to market for the age of AI, I would say start with these four practical ways. Get going with bots, hit refresh on content with AI, flip the sales formula with insights and be proactive with service. It is such an exciting time to be in go to market. We now have the opportunity to drive customer connection with Intelligence and HubSpot. We're there on this journey with you. Our bread, butter and jam is all about helping you grow. Now back in 2014, we launched HubSpot CRM. And back then, our motivation was very simple. We believe that millions of organizations can grow better with a great CRM that's easy and powerful. Now in 2023, we believe every organization deserves an AI powered customer platform. We want to help you leverage the power of intelligence. Yes, we're building AI into every one of the engagement hubs and across the entire customer platform. In a minute, Andy is going to come in and he's going to take you under the hood of our entire customer platform and share all the exact exciting new developments that we have been working on to help you grow. You're going to be so excited, blown away. I want to finish by bringing us back to where we started. Change. Technology is changing, customer journey is changing and how we connect really needs to change. My world is changing too. Genai has revamped how I approach my life and work. I wake up in the morning with Chat spot and ChatGPT eagerly waiting to assist me. I use it to get insights about our monthly pipeline, to prepare for customer calls, to help me write talks like this one. I use it to unearth incredibly new recipes for the bottomless appetites of my two teen boys. It's really changed the way I'm living and I'm energized by it. I welcome you all to join me. This could be the most profound change to transform marketing, sales and service and help us connect better as humans. With that, it is my absolute pleasure and delight to welcome Andy Petrie, our Head of Products in ux, to take you on the journey with our product. Thank you so much and enjoy Inbound.