Episode 100 is here! Throughout this episode, we present the best moments and insights from the various industry experts we have spoken to. Join us as we dive into the increasing usage of AI, the impact the cost of living has, the rise of electric cars in the automobile industry and much more.
Episode Summary
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This compilation is split into six sections (time-stamps provided):
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Technology / AI (00:48)
This section includes the best moments discussing technology and artificial intelligence, with insights from Virtual Reality expert Clare Mutzenich (7th Sense), Founder Director Napo Cornejo (Geokapti) and healthcare specialist Katie Bowden (NEXA).
“It’s a whole new world. It’s like the Wild West currently in the virtual world…“
“If we can learn how to use it [AI] properly it can automate a lot of things to give us more time to actually do the creative stuff.”
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Banking / Finance (06:08)
This section talks all about new initiatives and developments in the world of banking and finances, with Donata Peksa (HSBC), Ubong Nkanta, Javier Diaz Hernandez (Santander) and Andy Willmot (OneBanx)
“The branch will not dissapear in the next coming years. The branch is to remain because it is offering value to some part of the population. However the branch has to reinvent itself… Make it more collaborative”
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Cost of Living (13:22)
On the CX Insider Podcast, we discuss the cost of living and the impact it has on customer behaviour, as well as how companies tackle this crisis. This section consists of clips from Donata Peksa (HSBC) and Piers Watson (NFU Mutual).
“The best way to approach it is really to just communicate that there are ways and there are means and solutions, you just need to encourage people through calls to action to have that conversation”
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Retail (17:27)
In this episode we also dive into the world of retail, with expert knowledge from Sham Aziz (Selfridges), Marc Montagne (Vacheron Constantin), Lysa Hardy (Hotel Chocolat) and Dominik Olejko (H&M). We discuss chocolate industry, the watchmaking industry, luxury clothing and more!
“Think about the store as your house, your home. So when someone steps over the threshold of the shop front, they’re coming into your home, you know, would you ignore someone coming into your home? Of course you wouldn’t. You’d go and greet them and say hello, and you’d want to make them feel comfortable. And for me, that’s what you want in a store environment. And that’s what I look for when I’m recruiting people, is who brings that humanness, that energy.”
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Automobile Industry (23:33)
This section talks about the general public’s consensus when it come to the automobile industry, the regulations set in place and the future of the industry. In this segment, we revisit discussions with Dr Clare Mutzenich, Andreas Schmelzer and Mats Bredborg.
“The general public don’t really want automated solutions. They want to own a car for a start even Gen Z that you think would be loving technology, digital natives, they want to own a car. They still see themselves driving and they don’t want to relinquish the opportunity to have their own car.”
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Check out our full episode – available on all your favourite channels. Now including YouTube!
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This article summarises podcast episode 100 “100th Episode Special: The Best Moments” recorded by CX Insider.
Written by Octavian Iotu
Full Episode Transcript
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Octavian: Welcome back to The CX Insider Podcast. Today, a very, very special episode is lined up for you. As you can probably tell by the title, we’ve decided to create a collage of the best moments from the show from a wide range of industries. We’re going to be splitting this episode into six sections technology / AI, retail, the banking / financial sector, cost of living, the automobile industry, and quick-fires. So if you want to watch a section that best suits you, you can go right ahead and do that. For our YouTube viewers, each section is titled, so if anything stands out to you, you can go ahead and search the title to watch the full episode. Before we get into it, a huge thank you to our sponsor, ACF technologies. Global leaders in Customer Experience Management Solutions. So let’s begin with the tech section. Enjoy the conversations.
Sham: I think you can automate to an extent. If we go back to what I was saying earlier, can you eliminate something? Can you reduce something or then can you automate it. And I’d go that way around. I wouldn’t necessarily start with automation upfront because you might be hiding the root cause of something. Just because you’ve automated it, it might be out of sight and out of mind for you. But if there’s a root cause problem there and that you need to go and solve it within your business, then, then you should do that. So I think automation works. Some of the pitfalls of automation would be that you can automate things that are repetitive and easy. And so what you’re doing then for your team, you’re giving them the hardest stuff to deal with because you’ve picked off all the easy stuff. So now you’ve changed the nature of their role. So you need to make sure that what they’re dealing with, they’re equipped to deal with it. And imagine if you get, I don’t know, 2 or 3 contacts, you get an easy one and you get a slightly medium one and a slightly harder one to deal with. If going forwards, everything’s just really hard to deal with. It changes the job.
Adam: Almost cherry picking the easy ones and giving that to the AI, aren’t you?
Sham: Indeed. So I think that’s the glass half empty vie.w. The glass half full is that if, depending on the type of your contact center and what services you’re providing, if you’re giving people advice on products and you talk to them about an event that they’re going to and style advice or that’s a great, kind of call to have. And it’s not one that I can deal with, at least today, to my knowledge. So you get to have those kinds of conversations. So I think it depends on what your contact center is trying to do and what types of content you’re dealing with.
Marcell: So if a brand is thinking about using virtual reality to tap into the emotional drivers of their customers, then what are the potential challenges of doing that? Because it doesn’t exactly sound easy. And beyond that is using VR to enhance customer experience even worth considering, or is it just another fad?
Clare: Yes, it’s worth it. It’s a whole new world. It’s like the Wild West currently in the virtual world, and that’s going to have to be regulated. I think there are some big factors, not even necessarily ethical, but just social interactions, that we have rules that govern our social interactions and our social spaces when we’re in person that we haven’t yet learned in a virtual world. Yeah. So there are lots of examples, particularly in terms of between men and women, where the virtual world is not a safe space for women because the types of behaviours that men don’t show, hopefully in person they will to an avatar. And so we need to deal with those kind of issues first. And even if we’re you talked about like a salesperson having a bad day and a bad day in the virtual world may read completely differently. So you might need to be extra because you’re not getting this sort of bodily language, these tiny little micro cues that we’re all giving each other right now. You’re nodding. So I’m thinking I’ll carry on. You know, you’re smiling. I’m like, they like this. You know, that’s really hard in a virtual world. So are you going to have to have some emoji on your face that’s going to like lift up your smile even more?
Napo: AI can be a very powerful tool that could make our work more efficient. If we learn how to use it properly. It can automate a lot of things to give us more time to actually do the creative stuff. Could substitute, I guess some jobs, others it will make it more efficient and humans will have to adapt to that.
Greg: What do you feel about artificial intelligence making decisions in more critical situations, like in health care, for example.
Napo: There’s a lot of research on AI that interprets x -ray. And actually in some cases it comes to make a better diagnosis than actual specialists. But it also does make mistakes. And the problem is, can you hold the machine responsible for the life of a human being? Can you can you take it to court? Where is the liability? So AI is a tool to help us become better. And in this particular case, like health care, it should always be vetted by a human specialist, a doctor or a council with the AI as an input, but not as the final decision maker.
Greg: Yeah, probably the morally best place for it to stay for now.
Napo: Right? Indeed.
Octavian: On the CX Insider Podcast, we speak a lot about the future of technology in various different industries, from retail to banking and even the automobile world. But what about the health care industry? Is there any technology within the health care space that Katie would like to see more of in the future?
Katie: I think one of the big things that I always wanted to see when I started my career was more transparency. Being able to see, you know, a health record that was for everyone and everyone could have access to it, which, you know at the time was just an absolute pipe dream. But now we are moving towards that space. But, you know, sooner rather than later. I would love to see one patient record that regardless of where I am anywhere across the world, I know it will start with Australia. I’ll be able to access that record myself to be able to provide, you know, wearable data or mental health information into that. And also for any other health professionals who I’ve given consent to be able to access and contribute to that health record so that is a single source of truth. We’ve all got watches. We’ve all got all of the, you know, the things that we’re collecting all of this data for, but for centrally manage that and be able to, you know, put it into the hands of the right people. I think it’ll really improve the care that we’re providing to our patients and also their overall experience.
Octavian: This section will be split into two parts. The first will be all about the financial / banking sector, and the second will be about the cost of living, with our guests talking about how it impacts customer behaviour and how companies are tackling this crisis.
Greg: Is there any one initiative or thing that you’ve done at HSBC, in particular with the employees that you’re either proud of or is going well, or maybe not well, but you know, whatever you want to share, is there anything that stands out?
Donata: So one of the recent pieces of work that we have developed within our team was to bring that brand promise to life through a brand narrative and a campaign. So we developed last year a brand narrative, a brand platform that was called Open Questions. We are very proud of that work because it was a very extensively tested with our customers around the globe. But it’s also quite an interesting creative narrative because open questions are generally thought provoking. People love to be answering questions, asked questions, you know, it means that it’s a dialogue. It’s a two way conversation with with people that are listening to us. And because we are in a world with increasing levels of uncertainty, questions are everywhere. And not everyone has, you know, is able to answer those. But I think it’s about asking questions. That’s that’s where the power of questions lie. So we’ve developed, you know, a really beautiful creative route. And we launched it firstly in our airport. So it’s live in some of our major, major hubs such as Hong Kong, UK, Singapore, China. So you will see it in Jetbridges if you travel. And it’s basically a super priming campaign, which means that it’s to really raise people’s awareness of HSBC, but it’s also to really attract their attention, to really grab their their view whilst they are travelling. The questions are from across our four strategic pillars. So they are about international connectivity, they are about legacy, about wealth, they are about diversity and inclusion. They are about human connections. They’re about digitalization. But especially kind of technology trends such as, you know, the increasing power of AI. And they’re also about sustainability, inevitably, because that’s one of the strategic pillars. So again, sustainability transitioning to net zero.
Marcell: Could you maybe share some insight into what similarities or differences you perceive between customer behaviour in those two different markets [UK & Nigeria]?
Ubong: Well, you know, every I would say location. They have their own nuances, they have their own preferences and they have what drives their day to day transactions. Over here in the UK, the mode of transaction is not as cash based compared to Nigeria today, even though we are getting over there as well. And then also there is the level of organization, right, and also the infrastructure. But in Nigeria today, we are progressing, we are getting there, especially with the advent of this, the the naira redesign, there has been an increase in transaction velocity. That means the banks are being forced to either step up their game in the infrastructure. Right. And also we’ve seen new entrants, right. The fintechs and the new banks are coming on board, you know, which are things that already been happening over here. But I think customers expectations are universal banking. They want to be able to get their banking transactions done on time. All right. And seamlessly so I think that is basic. But however you could have the changes because of the economies. There are different economies. The level of growth might be different. The main organizations in those economies should be able to domesticate their customer experience to meet the needs of their customers. You meet them where they are. Years ago, when I was developing the complaints management process, I actually learned from one of the big banks in the UK, right? I understood their process and I was able to adapt it, domesticate it. That meets the needs of the Nigerian banking space. Right? Then adopt same customer’s behaviors are actually impacted based on the environments, right? What is going on, what is happening around the economy and. A lot of other things.
Javier: The branch will not disappear in the next coming years. The branch is to remain okay because it is offering value to some part of the population, and it will keep doing that. But what we have to do, and it’s already been done, and Santander is, I think is a clear example of it. The branch has to reinvent itself. We have to forget the idea of the traditional branch as we know it, and we have to do the branch to make that branch be a more collaborative way in a space, physical space to get together people, not just bank and customers or non customers, but we have to promote networking within our branches. We have to promote, as we said earlier, education about the new ways of doing things. The branch is a perfect place to get together our customers and explain to them concepts that we think are relevant to the new branch. My opinion the branch has to remain. That’s why we are here, trying to explore new ideas for the branch, the physical space. Okay, but obviously it’s a reality that many people are not going to the branch and are doing anything that they need using different channels. Okay. But the branch is another channel. We have to give it value and we have to fight for it.
Andy: Open banking came about largely due to complaints that were made to CMA around the lack of access to banking information from third parties, and this was about around about things like account switching. So a new startup bank starts up, but all of the banking details and information and data are available at a different bank for that customer. How do they get access so that they can then leverage that to support a customer and enhance their services? That’s kind of how it started. It evolved over time and combined a little bit with with a European wide initiative, Psd2. And what we ended up with in the UK is a CMA led initiative to open up banks data for customers and that’s called account information Service provider, and then also payments to allow third parties to make payments on behalf of users. So payment information. But what we now have available is APIs that have been set up by the banks, that allow third parties to be able to go and make payments with the consent of a customer, and also to get their information for a period of time and use that information to provide services. When we decided that we would use open banking, that meant that we weren’t actually using cards. So we didn’t. We don’t use cards for any part of the process, and that means we still needed some form of strong identity. But we did that using digital identities. And therefore that’s the reason why people have a mobile app on bank’s mobile app to log in to the kiosk securely. But it’s all off the shelf technologies to a certain degree. There’s a bit of work we’ve needed to do and invest in to actually ensure that we can log people in across, you know, your mobile phone to the branch. But, you know, this is stuff that is pretty well thought out in the digital space and it’s quite strong. A card is something you have a physical card, a chip on it, and it’s a four digit Pin. Now, even now, I think we could all look at each other and go, is four digits enough? But it doesn’t feel like enough really doesn’t it, for any password. So a digital identity in that respect can feel a bit stronger as well. So we do feel that we’ve got quite a strong solution using digital identity. And that’s what we’ve implemented in our kiosks.
Valentina: Customers don’t give second chances in a in a crisis. How do you think that the cost of living crisis in which we are right now, how do you think this impacts customer behaviour?
Piers: We’ve seen from our research that customers, certainly in the last quarter, are definitely more concerned about generally the cost of living and what that has in terms of their their purchase decisions. And we’re seeing that concern that’s greater than in the second quarter of the year. And what that means is that customers are looking now to pull back on potentially spending, you know, luxury items, going out for dinner, some of those things that actually you would like to do. So they’re cutting back on some of those. And we all know clearly that customers are cutting back on energy and all of those things. So that means that they are becoming more price sensitive. You can see from the Institute of Customer Service, the UK Customer Satisfaction Index, that when they ask customers what was the most important thing you were going to consider in the next two years? When engaging with our product and service provider, it was absolutely price that was top of the list, so it is absolutely driving behaviour. But I think the important point to note in that study, it also said that customers it’s not just about price, it’s about service excellence. And there’s around 35% of customers would definitely pay more for a service that they believe is really providing that excellent service. And that’s more than the 12% at the bottom, are just purely about price. So I think that’s the key point here is that it’s price. Yes. But actually they’re going to consider the service they’re going to get. And I think the fundamental point for me is the second more important thing that customers are now going to be considering is whether they trust that organization, and trust really is at the heart of this. If you’ve not built that reputation for a trusted brand, though, customers that talk about you don’t really trust what you do, you’re really going to struggle no matter what your price position is, to be able to attract that customer and retain them. So that’s absolutely key.
Marcell: In a way, promoting diversity and inclusion should also mean that you’re considerate and accepting of others who view the world differently, and those whose perspectives and philosophy differ from your own. This stance of inclusion resonates across multiple pillars of society, including customers with various economic situations too. In our time of inflation, how is HSBC tackling the cost of living crisis from a customer experience angle?
Donata: The way we react to this landscape will vary slightly market by market, but for everyone, the crisis will manifest itself in a slightly different way, which is why there isn’t really a, you know, a one size fits all approach or answer to it. The best way to approach it is really to just communicate that there are ways and there are means and there are solutions, and you just need to encourage people through call to action to to have that conversation. And then whatever your specific situation is, there are solutions for that. And then in other markets there might be slightly different problems. So I think it all needs to start with a very robust social listening and research exercise, just to understand what are the top five pain points that people are struggling with as part of that cost of living crisis? And then to really manage the proposition accordingly first and then to develop a campaign around it. But it has to be an orchestrated effort between brand marketing, product proposition team and obviously, and it has to be aligned with the strategy of the bank altogether. The thing is, it has to be customized, right? It has to be personalized. And that’s why it varies from one market to another.
Greg: That that makes a lot of sense. I think definitely one thing I’ve picked up over the years with customer experience is brand image. And brand equity is quite commonly built in the toughest of times. So when the chips are down for a customer, i.e. they face a challenge or they’re stuck in their in a difficult situation, especially in a financial sense, that’s when your brand, if it then plays a positive role in a helping role, that’s when I think you create the most positive brand experience for the long term.
Octavian: This next section will dive into the world of retail, from Selfridges to Vacheron to Hotel Chocolat. We have had some incredible retail experts on the podcast, so here’s what some of them have had to say. Starting with Sham’s secret formula to customer service success.
Sham: I ended up going down this road where I thought we could turn it into a formula. And so essentially it’s the idea that if you could resolve something, it could lead to a better reputation, which could then lead to retention. So the formula would be resolution x reputation x retention = fire emojis. And so the idea is if you can nail those three points then there will be fire emojis. And that’s kind of the goal. That’s where anyone and everyone’s trying to get to. If we think a little bit to our marketing colleagues retention is that sort of golden metric that everybody’s trying to get to. And I believe you can do that through customer service. So for me, customer service is the glue that binds products, services and experiences. And so if we can do a bit of a rebranding exercise in the world of customer service and demonstrate that value back into the business, then we get a seat at the table.
Octavian: I wanted to talk a little bit about online shopping. What effect do you think online shopping has had within your industry [Watchmaking]?
Marc: It’s really interesting because obviously digital has changed everything in all the industries and watchmaking industry. When you compare it to other industries, let’s say fashion, for example, is watchmaking is much less advanced and there’s many reasons for for that. I suppose maybe one of them is the fact that as an industry, even if we are looking ahead of us, we’re also looking backwards to our heritage, etcetera, which we are extremely proud of. And there’s other industries where that are exclusively looking forward. And so we tend to be a bit less fast paced than other industries. And so we’ve been quite late at adopting e-commerce and digital overall. Most of the brands, especially at the higher end brands, are not selling online yet. I believe personally that this is most a mistake, if I may, in the sense that whether we like it or not, extremely high end watches are already traded online. Most of the bids are actually either coming over the phone or over the internet. And so this is how customers are shopping watches and pretty much anything. And so yes, I believe it’s just a trend that people are. Living and us as an industry, but pretty much anyone and any- I would say when you’re evolving into an emerging industry, your goal and your purpose is to serve your customers. And so if your customers are willing to purchase online, then so be it. Then my job will be to facilitate that.
Adam: Hotel Chocolat sounds like it’s incredibly important to people. And you’re right, in retail, it’s about people there. You’ve got a store. That’s who people remember, isn’t it? Customers remember those people. How do you recruit for that? Because I also spent ten years in retail and I was a branch manager and all that kind of stuff. And I remember at the time it was recruitment process was pretty awful, to be honest. It was like, oh, can they work weekends? And that was it. Yeah. What do they look like? Can they work weekends? Can they use a till almost. But that doesn’t necessarily create a great customer experience. What do you guys do. Is there any kind of secret to that that we should all be thinking about?
Lysa: It’s a really good question because it is a challenge. It’s a challenge that retailers really grapple with. And I think various retailers have tried different things to various degrees of success. Pret’s probably the most famous one, where they get people to actually work in the store, and then the colleagues decide whether they get a job or not.
Adam: Really? I did not know that.
Lysa: Which I think is brilliant. Right.
Adam: It’s amazing. Yeah.
Lysa: Because you all know you only need one person that doesn’t quite fit. And the whole energy-
Adam: Like a poison pill almost just brings it all down. Yeah. You’re right.
Lysa: So they actually kind of shortlist people clearly there’s competency interviews and things. But then when they’ve got their shortlist they go and work in a store and then the colleagues go, yeah, we want to hire him or we don’t want him on shift.
Adam: Yeah, that’s a brilliant idea. I didn’t even know that existed.
Lysa: And actually I picked this up from a retailer I was working with in Holland in the Netherlands. Think about the store as your house, your home. So when someone steps over the threshold of the shop front, they’re coming into your home, you know, would you ignore someone coming into your home? Of course you wouldn’t. You’d go and greet them and say hello, and you’d want to make them feel comfortable. And for me, that’s what you want in a store environment. And that’s what I look for when I’m recruiting people, is who brings that humanness, that energy. Yeah, right. And that energy.
Marcell: Do you have any ideas or thoughts that you’ve had specifically in retail, how everyday integration with ChatGPT could elevate the retail experience for both employees and customers?
Dominik: I think the first one is about what comes to my mind when you were talking. It’s about the service for online, because the biggest pain point that we see on the online experience is lack of human touch. And this I wanted to mention that it will always be there and we as people are starving for the interactions. And I would say that for online is missing. And I would say I see it’s implemented in every website in the future, even in the form of the person talking to me where I can ask the question, discuss, have some doubts, and even challenge a little bit the product and see that usage of it with the real time database would be amazing to understand. The product features, the allergens, everything that is connected with the fears that customers may have, and the pain point that we need to solve. For instance, imagine that you lost your parcel you’ve ordered and normally it’s night. You wanted to ask, nobody is answering the call, the chat is off, and what do you do? And if you have this chat GPT with real time and probably filled in and he has a knowledge how to solve your problem, he could propose you the solution even on the real time. And that was happening already in certain platforms that the returns take don’t know three minutes. No, there is not any more need to claim something. So the team needs to sit. As you remember, we used to have the customer claiming something. Then we look at it and then we decide okay, yes or no and now you can automatize it.
Octavian: And finally, this is our section all about the automobile industry, talking about the general public’s consensus, the regulations set in place and the future of the industry, starting with Dr. Clare Mutzenich and The Seventh Sense driving the future study.
Clare: One of the things that we’ve found year on year and like you say, we’re just about to start a new wave is that the general public don’t really want automated solutions. They want to own a car for a start even Gen Z that you think would be particularly, you know, loving technology, digital natives, they want to own a car. They still see themselves driving and they don’t want to relinquish, you know, the opportunity to have their own car. Generationally. We have similar attitudes that range from being really scared, very skeptical, to absolutely love it. Sign me up for my, you know, autonomous utopia. When I started my PhD in 2018, they were saying that we’d have fully automated cars on the roads by 2025, and by the time I’d been doing it a year, it was like, ooh, 2030. And then by the time I finished, it was like 2050. And now it’s still like, the jury’s out unless you’re in San Francisco, in which case they are on the road. Just recently they had cones on the bonnet. So like, pedestrians were putting cones on the bonnets and they couldn’t, couldn’t go. Yeah. So it’s like obviously. It’s an object. It’s a solid object.
Adam: Is it fair to say, though, that there is, without a doubt, a change happening in automotive industry?
Andreas: For sure. I mean, just look at the change basically in the customer behaviour. There is now way more people financing or renting or sharing cars than before. I mean, think a few years back, who would have shared his car or her? No. That’s mine. I know most of the day it’s just standing out there because I’m in the office, but it’s mine. I’m not sharing it. And now you’re having-
Adam: You might move my seat.
Andreas: Yeah, yeah. But no, that’s that’s really changing. And simply our approach to mobility or to mobility services is, from my point of view, changing. But once again, this is a very personal view. I mean, who would at some point in the past agreed by your purchasing a vehicle and someone like the manufacturer can turn on and off certain services in my car? Yes. And now it’s like, oh yeah, for sure, no problem. Even paying for it this has to has a huge impact on your business model or on the approach what you’re doing, obviously.
Adam: No, absolutely. Because obviously technology has made a big thing. Do you think consumers and their use of technology is changing? They’re kind of not only buying behavior, but also what they expect as a customer experience. And is that making a big difference to technology that consumers are using?
Andreas: I’m not sure if the technology is really the leverage or the changing factor. I think it’s simply the more customer and user centric approach. First of all, they are valuing and the technology is enabling that. But I’m not sure if the technology is really the driver behind it. Again, personal assumption is more that my expectation and by seeing bits of different services, online services, stuff like that, by being more international and seeing what’s happening in other countries, in other industries, I mean, just look into the banking sector and all the fintechs in there. Why should shouldn’t this happen in my industry?
Mats: I think the car industry, I mean, there is no regulation saying that you have to have an electric car. I mean, you can still buy a diesel car and you can buy a diesel car that meets the regulations. But the public opinion has swung to completely over towards electrification. So even if, I mean there are incentives in many countries to do this, but you see that that shift has already happened. And that has happened because one manufacturer, Tesla, stuck by the guns, did the right thing, got to develop them to be so good at that that people say, okay, now I’ll go electric. And then I will say that all the ones that were sticking with the diesel kind of status, we will sort this out. They now have to switch over. So I mean, all other manufacturers are switching over to fully electric cars too.
Adam: Yeah, absolutely.
Mats: It’s tough to be first. It’s tough to be the leader in something. And we probably need to behave a little bit different being the leader-
Adam: That’s what I was going to ask you, because you’re right, it would be different to be the leader and be the first people that are doing or the first organization that are doing it. But would you prefer to be that, let’s say, or I suppose looking at Tesla, for example, now we can see that Tesla is so successful and we chatted earlier and you were saying they’re going to sell like a million cars. And in hindsight you’d go, yeah, I’ll absolutely want to be the Tesla. But obviously they’ve gone for a lot of work to get there. And if you’re doing this first in terms of electric construction equipment, is that the right place to be or would you prefer to someone else did it and you learn from their mistakes?
Mats: I think I think being first fits Volvo very well. I think being first for some of the other brands doesn’t fit them, and it will be a bigger challenge. So Volvo is more like has always been into this with sustainability. I mean, already in the 70s we said that this is this is the main direction that we need to take. And we have innovated a lot around this. So it’s a space that we feel fairly comfortable going into. So and I think as a whole organization, we, we feel that we can take that space.
Octavian: And that concludes the end of the episode. Before we get into the quickfire questions, I just want to say a big, big thank you to all of our listeners, and thank you to ACF technologies for making this podcast possible. Thank you to all the hosts before me, including Louis, Alessia, Valentina and Marcell for paving the way. And thank you to our co-hosts Greg, Alex, Adam, Sofie and Simon for making a podcast come to life with their expert knowledge. I’m so proud to be in this team during this milestone. So here’s to many more incredible stories and lessons in the next 100 episodes. Now that I’ve got all the gratitude out of the way, let’s finally get into some quick fires.
Katie: Dreading these questions, by the way. Absolutely dreading. Like I tried my hardest to get out of these questions.
Greg: We’ll start with the easy one. What’s the meaning of life? No. I’m joking. That’s not really one of the questions. Don’t worry.
Valentina: If you could go back in time, which time period would you choose to visit?
Harry: I don’t know, go back to Wembley. In 1966, maybe.
Greg: What was happening then?
Harry: I’m going to find out.
Marcell: What advice would you give to someone looking to start a career in marketing?
Duncan: Farming is far better.
Marcell & Adam: Farming is better. Farming.
Marcell: How many kids do you have?
Andreas: Two.
Marcell: And how old are they?
Andreas: They are both eight. Because twins. You know, I’m highly efficient.
Valentina: I have a feeling that all of a sudden, when you said chocolate gives you a feeling of escapism, like it’s all of a sudden it became cloudy and like, there was, like, more shadow and more light. Like chocolate.
Valentina: What scares you?
Andrei: What scares me? Well, I think sometimes myself. Honestly.
Valentina: Interesting answer.
Marcell: If you could interview anyone, dead or alive, who would that be and why?
Tom: I’d like to interview Genghis Khan. Why was he such a cruel?
Greg: [BEEEP]
Octavian: If you could live anywhere outside of America, where would it be?
Ty: Probably London when I went there. The pace of life, the environment was just very laid back. And I was like, oh, if I was to go anywhere. Really? Yeah, I was 2011. I mean, I’m talking about a long time ago, but it was so chill.
Valentina: Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid or other.
Jorge: Real Madrid.
Javier: Other.
Greg: Who is the other?
Javier: I’m a Barcelona fan and if I have to choose, obviously it would be Atlético Madrid.
Jorge: Yeah, that’s the reason they always have the same problem. They do not support a team. They are anti!
Javier: No no no no I support Barcelona.
Jorge: No, they are contra Real Madrid. Counter Real Madrid. It doesn’t matter if he’s Cadiz or Arsenal, Manchester United. It doesn’t matter.
Valentina: What’s your spirit animal?
Benoit: Panda.
Greg: Kung fu panda or regular panda.
Benoit: Regular Panda.
Sham: Wrist check.
Greg: Favourite thing to do just in your spare time?
Andy: I’ve started trying to make hay. Okay, this is a new endeavour that nobody thinks I’m going to keep going. But anyway, that’s. That’s my new hobby. Making hay. Yeah. Properly. Literally making hay. Yeah.
Greg: What’s the plan with the hay? To sell it
Andy: No idea.
Andy: Just want to do it.
Valentina: What is the best present you have ever received?
Mona: Food.
Valentina: What food, do you have any favourite one?
Mona Any food! I’m okay with every types of food.
Valentina: What would be your superpower?
Mats: To have the influence to change the minds of people. To go electric!
Adam: That’s amazing because we had this conversation before and I said that, influence people’s minds. They all looked at me weird. So yeah, this is two of us that think that.