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Claudio Baptista, Director of User Experience at GoPro

On this episode of Conversation: CX, Claudio Baptista of GoPro gives his tried and true advice for hyper-personalizing the customer journey and committing your entire organization to a customized approach. He touches on:

- Why data collection is an essential part of the journey towards personalization.

- The importance of creating systems that remember your customers' needs and wants.

- How to achieve the ultimate goal of creating long lasting relationships that keep customers coming back.

About Claudio Baptista

Claudio is the Director of User Experience at GoPro where he innovates the brand’s DTC strategy and establishes a clear UX vision.

More info:

Claudio Baptista's LinkedIn profile

Interview highlights :

What does "hyper personalization" mean to you?

It's all about relationships. Is all really getting deeper and more meaningful at relationships with consumers. So again, I think the concept has been there for quite some time to think about the evolution of the technology in the market to support the lab, what type of personalization that is available nowadays and was not possible. So hyper personalization is really a buzzword that came into marketing and UX and CX leaders, but it's been there for a few years. However, few companies are able to be structured and operational at that level. So I think it's right, now it opens up a lot of what are the discussions on the topic. It's how can you get to a personalization strategy that works? How to be ethical about it? How can we just because you could is not because you should use the data that way? But I think technology evolves quite a lot to allow us to stitch together these different data sources. I think consumers are exposing themselves to brands uniquely that didn't happen before, in the amount and volume of data that is available from first to third party data. It's quite phenomenal. So I think being able to finally start making sense of the data aggregated together using machine learning and AI. So there's a lot to unpack, and it really depends on whom you talk to and what your contacts are or the company you work for. I think there is this holy grail of hyper personalized injuries, and, from a policy perspective, it's really diving deeper into the data and looking at more data sources, not only transactional and personal data, but we're looking at behavior, we're looking at predictive analytics. We're looking at a lot of different sources of data to say customer features in the segment, so we can go in a really micro level of segmentation which allows you to do predictive analytics and predictive. Yeah, and you act that you can interact in a deeper, meaningful relationship. But it's all about that. It's all about trust, it's all about relationships. And a lot of companies are just not ready to get there yet. There's a lot of investment in technology. You really take the entire company to commit. And the way companies are structured, the silos that can be a barrier to get to a true personalization strategy. So there's not much, in fact they are. So it depends on where you are, depends on who you talk to. You might get a different answer, but this is where we have seen our data companies like Amazon streamers like Netflix and pushing the boundaries. You know how to connect with you on a one to one basis. Marketing doing one to one marketing. But it's still a long way to go for a lot of the other brands and companies.

So, is it all about trust relationships and company’s commitment?

Absolutely. That's the thing about personalization. I think the idea of putting your name on a subject line in an email is all good. But that's not what we're talking about here. Where we're talking about is really the evolution of modular UX. Is modular UI experience really being favored to you and on a one to one basis? And that's what's incredible about this. But again, it can be used in a bad way for the ASCO approach to collection of data usage privacy regulations. This all comes into play. So how much too much are you being too creepy? I think I predict way too much. There was a tweet that brought it up, just because they bought toilet paper doesn't mean that their life surrounding the toilet and that was in the toilet paper, related. So, it's a double-edged sword. It just had to be careful. But it's a phenomenal tool for marketers and user experience professionals and in all companies to use if you can get there.

How is GoPro taking on this hyper personalization stance to help stand out from the competition?

GoPro has a huge mission, and I think COVID accelerated their journey through DTC. So really, GoPro was a business that was relying on a lot of licensees and the retail and going through partners. I think more and more companies are looking to own the relationship for which the customer really is. And if you take a look even back from just an e-commerce landscape perspective, you will have these huge marketplaces like Amazon. All the T-Mobile was in China and 50 percent of sales on economists are happening through these huge marketplaces. So, it's very difficult for regular companies like GoPro or any other retailer to kind of match that level of service. Your prime points are delivered like today and all of that. So the question for us is what's left right, like if 50 percent of our sales are happening through those marketplaces? But again, a lot of these companies, they are not interested in a relationship: they want a transaction, they want the conversion. After that, you want to figure out. Your product might be a GoPro or not, but it's on you to keep pace of the brand and what they do. So the question forward is always “what is next?” What is the last part of the relationship, how we can really understand our customers, our community and really provide value and I can tell you exactly what we're doing, but I will tell you that the direct consumer pivot, it's definitely one of our key priorities. GoPro is really looking to deepen the relationship. We have an amazing community of content creators and people. They are really brand advocates for the company GoPro has. That's funny because when I joined and everyone that I talked about the brand and coming from Disney, it kept the same level of stoke between the brands. It's people that look at the brand say, Wow, it's really cool that you work for this company. They're very unique in the way they approach the business and all. So definitely be like, be keeping that trust with our community, our consumers, but pivot into understanding them better. And so personalization, hyper personalization. Of course, this technology advances that we need to do when resetting and thinking the company the way you operate in a way to support deeper personalization strategy. But I think we all know this is a huge component of the future.

What do you feel are the necessary steps to really begin to tailor a relevant customer journey for those sorts of relationships that you were talking about before?

I think there is one for this one. Technology plays a big part. As I mentioned before, we really are, our companies are really exposed to a volume of data that they would never have seen before, like the amount of data coming from social, coming from your first body of properties and all. So I think from a play by play, a framework kind of structure is really coming down to that data collection integration. That's number one. How are we receiving this data feed? How old are we putting them together? And then you said, making sense of the data and aggregating, and that's where machine learning can really help speed up the process. So really creating a unified view of our question is so personal segmentation and being able to really understand this cohort is something that they should be. Of course, you start targeting their kind of funnels in Germany's, well-known one to one basis and start quickly measuring, optimizing, analyzing and going back, and it's an ongoing effort. So I mean, all the things. It needs to be powered by technology, so back in the day again, we had these different systems that were somehow bringing data in trying to aggregate, but it was never that easy. I think with the adjuvant, with the advanced advancements of Philips consumer data platforms or DSP experience platforms and consumer data, all of that's become an advanced mini machine learning and predictive analytics. All that's becoming a little bit easier for a lot of the investment from a company to make. I think there's a lot, and we should be really looking at those four pillars. People have the right skills. We have the right skills on board. What are the prices we have? The right processes that we are communicating are just siloed, fragmented tools, technology. What are the tools necessary, and what are the parts that you need to kind of phase off like these? Again, you won't get to that level of personalization on the next day: it's really a long term commitment of the company. So I think having those pieces in place, or at least having what the success rate is for each phase, will help you kind of roadmap what it should look like.

How do you actually start to measure this right? How do you measure impact? And does building this sort of one-to-one customer relationships? Does it actually start to affect your bottom line KPIs? What can you share?

So I think there are a lot, and that's why companies are definitely very soon on that. But it is a delusion. We're going back to the people process and tools. You have to be delusional with measurements and having a team from data analytics to consumer insights to UX. And keep up with this dynamic nature of personalization. So being able to have a team that's looking very closely at the experiment, so we have to have a culture of experimentation and testing and having B testing platforms and multivariate tests, happens and a lot of these things are driven by everybody. So you have a dynamic UI being completely so looking from a way point of view, how can we be modular? Our UI, whatever property they're reporting about your website or e-commerce platform, if you're doing what you see, how can that evolve with your usage and really get to know you? Great example. Thanks again to start getting familiar behavior and tailoring this software to you and your usage. Although you have to have dedicated people tools to do that, and you start seeing actual lifts in certain areas. You won't hit all the points at once. It's very rare, but it is small. You're going to see how your bottom line might be affected, more lead generation, more conversion, more engagement. So you're looking at some KPIs, they are very key to the business, especially if you bypass the conversion cycle. So if you look down the road for our retention engagement in all of that, you're going to see how these meaningful journeys and the sailor customization journeys will be bringing you back as a consumer. And we start going back to the deeper goal, which is creating a long-lasting relationship. So that's the ultimate prize.

What sort of other obstacles are you encountering yourself in trying to create this hyper personalized journey?

I think for every company, it's because it's a not finished type of work that is just going to, we plan for disease and that is really changing mindsets, really shifting paradigms, in the way companies operate to be able to really do an omnichannel type of approach fully personalized to our customer segments and getting that to a micro level. It really takes a lot of changes. And I think that's the main barrier because some companies are just not able to do those changes on time. So there are the financial changes that we need to make, there are new tools and recycling your technology portfolio, so there are a lot of things that can get in the way of really fulfilling that vision. But I think that's really breaking down a phased approach. Define what success means, being able to measure and see those lifts slowly, incrementally. That's the key way to go about it. So because again, you won't be able to completely flip a company upside down to be fully prepared for hyper personalization or omnichannel approach. So I would say, just don't get too excited. I'll get excited, but take your small wins and slowly start paving the road. You're really going to the fundamentals and some companies that haven't been set up that way, the way they just the department the structure and the way they operate as the entire company sometimes is just the way the hierarchy were distributed. So being able to do that and bypass all of these variables that you need, I think those are the biggest challenges. Slowly but surely, you're progressing and moving forward, I think that's the key.