Objective: Verkeer wanted to develop AI-first client health scoring approach to optimise service delivery

Results: Sentiment scores increased across the entire client portfolio

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Hannah Carthy, Managing Director of integrated digital marketing agency, Verkeer. We make our clients get traffic and grow their websites. We work across nearly every sector and obviously part of that is ecommerce. 

Can you describe how you’ve implemented AI into your operations at Verkeer?

Initially everyone thought AI was going to write content and it was going to replace all forms of content writing, as well as all of those tedious little tasks. In reality, what we’ve realized is AI isn’t quite there yet for delivery of service. It can speed us up, but it can’t replace anything at the moment. So where we’ve really seen AI help us is operationally, particularly working on our client management. We have built AI into Slack and we’ve trained AI on our handbook, for example, no one has to ask me how they book their holiday anymore, instead it goes through the AI bot. AI is helping speed up those tedious tasks which are non-billable that freezes us up to do what we’re good at. 

What are some of the hopes and objectives around how AI will be used at Verkeer?

It’s about freeing up all of the non-thinking time. If the team can replace the time where they’re  just clicking the button and doing brainless activity, if we switch all of that out and replace it with AI, then the time we pay people for is going to be focused on using their brain. We can get the real talent out of our team, that’s where I’d love to see AI go. 

How has AI improved the way you deliver services to clients?

We track our client’s happiness through Kaizan. We’ve seen over the past four months a consistent improvement across every single client where their sentiment scores are going up and up and I think that comes from the fact that we’re now more conscious of it. We’ve got Kaizan taking the notes and paying attention to the important details so our team can be their bubbly selves and be excited to be on the calls and improve the client’s happiness. 

In a world with AI, what does the future of marketing services look like?

The future for marketing agencies, practically speaking, as a result of AI means we’re going to have to change how we bill. A lot of agencies bill time and if you’re using AI to speed things up, but the client’s getting a value similar to before, they’re going to ask about that time they’re paying for. There’s a big question mark there around how we bill and what we sell. 

I also believe that agencies will need to become more consultative. Once AI is in a position it can do the doing and do it well, we’re going to see everyone moving towards a consultancy sphere. We talk a lot about using AI as a tactic rather than using it as a strategy. We’re still solving the same problems we had before, we’re still moving in the same direction as an agency, but we’ve just got a new tactical way of solving problems rather than shifting our whole strategy to be around AI. 

What do you enjoy about using Kaizan?

The dashboards that we have are great at showing us exactly what’s going on and giving us a bird’s eye view. It stops us focusing on any single one instance where a client may have, for example, sent a grumpy email. We look into it and then average their sentiment over the past month, three months etc and understand what, if anything, changed. It’s also helped us tier our clients into gold, silver and bronze. We look at them in Kaizan and then assess if for example a bronze client is getting more attention than gold clients. We’re not the sort of agency to just revoke your service because of it, but we are the sort of agency that will review it and if that’s happened consistently for a few months, we either need to get that manager more help so that we get them into a position with servicing to a profitable level, or review whether the client needs to be paying for new services. 

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Annaleis Montgomery. I’m a senior search manager at Verkeer, specialising in SEO although I oversee other channels. Verkeer specializes in SEO, consultancy, paid search, paid social, and all things digital marketing. I’m responsible for the clients strategic plan and action in terms of growing their online presence moving forward across all channels. 

Thinking about how AI plays into your role, what changes would you like to see in the future?

I would like to see us work hand in hand with AI, which we’re already experiencing with Kaizan. We want to focus on the strategic side of things and build relationships with clients. All the ways that humans can add value whilst using AI to help speed up the admin. AI is useful for following up actions or taking notes from calls, all that kind of stuff. Also there’s a sentiment score that, as a company, we love. It helps us flag if a client is a bit off one week, we can look into recent conversations and see what’s happening. Generally, AI allows us to have time for more of the important areas of our job.

How do you think AI can directly benefit your clients?

It allows us to spend the time that they’re paying for on the work that humans need to do. Things such as strategic thinking, planning, building relationships, trustworthiness, testing, and all that kind of stuff. AI can do the work on the resource heavy, admin tasks, to free up the client’s budget for more strategic thinking which alleviates teams to make sure that we’re utlising client budget in the most efficient way.