[00:00:00] Ziv Peled: Most of us, generally, we are trying to help you be more productive, be more effective, achieve your goals. Doesn't matter if it's a team member that I'm working with or in the end, the company that I'm selling to. And I think that people need to think about these granular things, these levels. I think it's  significant.

[00:00:24] Andrew Michael: This is Churn.fm, the podcast for subscription economy pros. Each week we hear how the world's fastest growing companies are tackling churn and using retention to fuel their growth.

[00:00:41] VO: How do you build a habit-forming product? We crossed over that magic threshold to negative churn. You need to invest in customer success. It always comes down to retention and engagement. Completely boosts that profitable and growing.  

[00:00:55] Andrew Michael: Strategies, tactics and ideas brought together to help your business thrive in the subscription economy. I'm your host, Andrew Michael, and here's today's episode.

[00:01:06] Andrew Michael: Hey Ziv, welcome to the show.

[00:01:08] Ziv Peled: Thank you for having me again.

[00:01:10] Andrew Michael: It's great to have you. For the listeners, Ziv is a long time friend of the show, having joined in 2020, '21, '22, and '23, and is back after taking a break from his ChurnFM residency last year. Ziv is the chief customer officer at AppsFlyer, the global leader mobile attribution and marketing analytics. And he's been there for over 11 years now where he started as a senior customer success manager and grew up the ranks to now leading the entire customer team.

[00:01:35] Andrew Michael: During his time, he's obviously experienced some explosive growth at the company and my first question for you today, Ziv, is what has captured AppsFlyer this long? I think your tenure is rare when you look at  how long you've actually been at the company.

[00:01:49] Ziv Peled: It's a very good question. It's also interesting because I did the ChatGPT. Someone  pushed me yesterday to do a roast for ChatGPT to roast myself.  And one of the points that they roasted me about was why am I stuck in this company? And I think... it's a really good question. First of all, it's a great question from my reflection, but I think it's a great question. And I think that you have rare opportunities in your career to get to work in a really great company. And I think  I want to explain specifically what it means. Great company can be great funding, great people, great products. I think for AppFlyer, it's something, it's a balance of everything.

[00:02:34] Ziv Peled: And I'm sure that I said it in one of the episodes when we met in the past,  but  there's something magical  and it's so related to customer success and product, but there's something magical  when you build the product and you deliver it to people and you see how much of value it provides. And I think you see that in B2B classes, you see that in many, many cases where products are creating categories, products are making people so much more productive, or in some categories, think that products that enable things that people couldn't do before. I think in our space specifically, when marketeers, and think about how much money, how much budgets marketeers invest every year.

[00:03:27] Ziv Peled: And then before AppsFlyer, before some of our companies in our industry and AppsFlyer is the leading one, they weren't able to say, these are the installs, these are the events, these are the purchases that came from those marketing activities. It can be a brand campaign, can be a performance campaign. This is, if you think about that, every day that I'm waking up, and it sounds like a cliche, but it's not. I'm thinking about the market here that uses  my product today, what it provides. And I'm also very passionate about what can we do more? What's next?

[00:04:11] Andrew Michael: Hmm. That sounds very cliche, but yeah, I do, I do get it when you're in a space and you like have  a product that's really, really delivering value. Like it just adds so much more meaning to the work that you do because you get to realize and then say, okay, it is having a big impact outside of like-- [overlap]

[00:04:26] Ziv Peled: Let me break the cliche. When we started, when I was working here in 2013, '14, '15, we always looked at a few companies that we never thought that we will be our customers. And at some point we became the leader in the market and some of these customers started using us and some more of these customers. And again, I cannot say that everyone are using us, but if you look at that and around 60 % of the marketing is using us from wherever you want to pick on the most east side of the world to the most west and up north and south. It's crazy to think about how many people are using us every day.

[00:05:08] Ziv Peled: And this is, I think, breaks the cliche because this is what keeps me going also for the future. But what's the next feature that we can work on and then we can deliver it and then with some of the Alibaba, AliExpress, Walmart, Amazon, TikTok can use tomorrow? It's ridiculous.

[00:05:29] Andrew Michael: Yeah. Absolutely.  So obviously I mentioned you've been a long time guest of the show. 2023 was the last time we spoke. And I think actually at the end of the call, you had to leave to find shelter.  So obviously not a great time where you were living, but  what's been new since then, like 2024, like what changed since we last spoke?

[00:05:48] Ziv Peled: Yeah. So I think first of all, the last five years were really tough for everyone. So we can connect from the pandemic and then a war in Ukraine and now war in Israel. But I'll take the positive side. Think  what, by the way, we can connect not so negative, but AI, and we should speak about AI later. But I think that AI, also a big transformation is also connected to all those things that happened in the last five years. And I think that what I'm really positive about is that it's a fact. It's a real proof that people can cope everything.  

[00:06:33] Ziv Peled: And for me, it's a very, very, very good point about myself, first of all, but also the people around me and my teams and the teams are in our company. And I think it's really good because like, you know, we are coping with things as an individual and then as a team. And then we go forward and then we take like, if I remind you,  when we started the pandemic,  also had in parallel also a big change in the AppsFlyer ecosystem with privacy. And many people in that year, in  mid 2020, thought that it's the end of AppsFlyer, there's no need for this solution anymore. And it was totally the other side.  

[00:07:20] Ziv Peled: Actually, you need it even more and this is a great thing about that. Don't always fall for the crisis. Don't always think about the current situation, how bad the pandemic is, et cetera, et cetera. And maybe, you know, I'm connected to some of maybe our next subject, potential next subject. Don't think that AI is the end of your career, jobs, et cetera. Think about what you can do with it.

[00:07:51] Andrew Michael: Yeah. I think as humans, we reluctant to change, when change comes, we adapt really fast. And I think things just become the norm and we forget what things used to be like as well. So think AI is a very good example of this. In the beginning, I think there was quite a bit of resistance from people like, ah, this is not great. It's not good. But knowing that there was a little bit of fear and worry in it.  And now to the point like where it's only been like a couple of years max when it's had this much impact.

[00:08:22] Andrew Michael: I can't think of going back to the way things were without it. Like it's, it's almost insane. And it's like, if you think it's like a huge monumental shift of where we were to where we are today, just in the space of two years, but it's just become so normalized now that we just take it for granted almost. Keen to hear your perspectives. Cause I definitely like, when it first came out, I like, I flip flop between these sorts of, my God, everything's over. AI is just going to replace everyone.

[00:08:50] Andrew Michael: Add to the point you're like, oh no, it's not, that's not the case. Like, especially in software, like it takes good craft and iteration. And, I just keep flipping. I kept flipping backwards and forwards, but now I think like to your point, I think it's definitely not the case. It's just going to enable us to do more faster and  in a better manner. I think if you have will and urgency and  also like want to create, I think these tools are amazing for you. What are you seeing in the market? How are you seeing this impact? Like customer success, like the roles in your team and the general market overall?

[00:09:24] Ziv Peled: Yeah, I think first of all, I think that the world is changing.  It's changing now. We are in the middle of  the biggest jump ever. And, you know, when I speak about it with people, first of all, I connect them to,  I'm trying to ask them when they started using the two, I think biggest, like we can look at even three, maybe products that were the last three huge jumps in your life, in my life. So for me, it's the iPhone, it's Google search,  and it's probably ChatGPT.

[00:10:03] Ziv Peled: And I'm trying to ask people like, you know, some remember when they started using, I remember when I started using Google search, it was also a Yahoo, [inaudible] and Alta Vista you would search every day because of that. And it's a huge change. iPhone, I don't need to speak about the change. I bought the first iPhone 2008. I have  the receipt. Sometimes I'm posting it on LinkedIn and I'm writing a story about how it changed my life, that receipt that I had to go through the US to buy because it wasn't available in Israel.  

[00:10:37] Ziv Peled: And ChatGPT, we can speak about it later, that phenomenon. But I think right now, the biggest change happens with Cursor, Lovable, Bolt, and more companies. I'll be happy to speak about a new company in Israel that I'm using significantly. And it makes... it just pushes people to be, I can name it, and I'll go to customer success soon, but like, pushes people to be builders, enables you to be a builder. You don't have to quit your job now and do two years of entrepreneurship and be a builder. Oh, it can be a builder for one hour.  See if it  works and then decide to go for another hour. In customer success, I think that it's making, in go-to market in a whole, makes you, everyone can be an expert very fast. I think that, you know, going to a customer and having a ride of 20, 30, 40 minutes, so precious 40 minutes, you can be an expert in their market, in their challenges, in their goals.

[00:11:42] Ziv Peled: And you can come very, like you can be at least doesn't matter if you are account manager, account executive, customer success manager. You can be at least on par with as a team member in that discussion. Sometimes you might be even  more knowledgeable in some areas because of your  preparation, because think about it when someone comes now to work, they don't necessarily come as prepared as someone that comes from a meeting that is rare once in a week, once in a month, once in a quarter.  

[00:12:19] Ziv Peled: So  you might be in front of the CMO tomorrow of your customer. You might, because of your preparations with AI, deep search, deep analysis, some things are also unique because of your product and your view. You have a great chance to come more prepared than your customer to the meeting. And this is great. I saw, can give you examples and you know, I came to a customer, even not that smart, but with AI last year.

[00:12:53] Ziv Peled: And we had a meeting with the customer in a different continent a few weeks  before, and we did something with AI and we did the tests with push notification. And we came with that story to the other customer in the other continent. We spoke about that. And the CMO there, just that morning aired the podcast and it was something about push notification and he had some idea to start and that connection between what that CMO thought about and our practice and research with AI and then with the customer.

[00:13:30] Ziv Peled: And so what I'm trying to say is that like with AI you can boost something so significantly, but connect it also with reality with product, with practices, with experiments. And I see it as a huge, huge, huge opportunity for the future. Go-to-market people that are not using AI are going to lose, but the ones that are using, they have a huge, huge opportunity, first of all, to excel in their job too. But I think it's later they will be able to develop themselves to whatever they want. You can grow in go-to-market, you can really go and be a builder.

[00:14:14] Ziv Peled: I foresee hundreds of new companies coming out in the next two or three years where entrepreneurs will be very, very small companies with, we already have hundreds of ARR, so probably billions.

[00:14:29] Andrew Michael: Yeah. No, for sure. I think definitely there's like a huge shift in this trend of like in the past was to scale the team, grow the numbers, the headcounts. It was like this badge of honor as well, the size of the team. Now I think it's almost the complete inverse is there's a badge of honor for to see how far you can go with the least amount of people by automating away steps within AI.

[00:14:52] Andrew Michael: And yeah, I think definitely, like you mentioned at the start, there's a lot of these tools now that enable you to really like experiment, become a builder. You don't require months like you needed before as well to dedicate to building something. You can literally just chat away and will something to life as well.

[00:15:08] Andrew Michael: Huge opportunity there, but I really like the example you gave as well of like how you can do your deep research when meeting prospects, when meeting clients as well from the customer success perspective, because like that can really create then these wow experiences for your customers. I think it's still at the early stage where people may not expect this type of work to be being done by AI. So it is still come as a surprise when you're hitting them in the meeting and saying, hey, like you just had about this on a podcast this morning.

[00:15:39] Andrew Michael: I think from a perspective of thinking, well, they listened to our podcast this morning. This is some deep work that they're doing, but it's really like you're able then to get a lot more efficient in understanding your customers better. So you can deliver better solutions to them. Are there any other specific ways that you're doing this within your team? How are you going about this research with all them? Is any specific like prompting you're doing as well to help with this? Like keen to understand a little bit more about this topic.

[00:16:06] Ziv Peled: Yeah. I think it will sound  funny, but I think we are  so, so, so advanced with AI in AppsFlyer and  we're in the baby steps. Because we gave the teams so many things and they are using themselves and so  it's both bottom up and top down, so that's remarkable and really important. I think it's still baby steps because I think it's, it's not yet with that we built the operating system of the company as AI, but it's in progress. And I can give you a lot of examples.

[00:16:42] Ziv Peled: So we're using ChatGPT Enterprise as a team. We have a lot of custom GPTs. Also in the custom GPTs, we have integrations with different tools that connect ChatGPT to Gong, ChatGPT to Salesforce, and it gives you also a lot of value. I think we are looking to go to the next level. So I think that the next level is really customer 360 and from one customer to look at more customers and to look at all the customers and to the value of CSM for the one customer to prepare for the meeting.

[00:17:22] Ziv Peled: But for product to look at the group of customers and say, oh, these are the users. These are the people that are utilizing. These are the people that are not utilizing. Why are they potentially should utilize it, etc, etc. I think that there are a lot of scenarios. We can quit our jobs  and fully end it over to AI, where it frees time to do a lot more, a lot more things that are not possible with AI. Because I think that we can look at the long tail and SMB customers, and you can say that at some point the product will be fully self-serve and AI will completed, I  think that enterprise will never change.

[00:18:08] Ziv Peled: Again, it's not that saying that nothing will change. It's just the people to people, the human to human interaction is still needed there. And again, it also, we can back it, there's a lot of B2B products that are B2C kinds of, and then humans are not needed there, not even necessarily today. And there are B2B products that are not B2C products that will always need  humans  interaction. Some will need less interaction. Some will have the opportunity to have more interaction.

[00:18:48] Ziv Peled: Think, if I'll give you one more example with AppsFlyer is that so we can do an analysis, we can do benchmarking analysis for our customers with data that we have that they don't have that we cannot share with them. So some of that data we share with them in the product. Some of that data is not shareable. We are not allowed by policies of government and some of the partners that we work with.  And then we can  build benchmarking that is rare to them, so priceless to them,  that we can share in QBR.

[00:18:48] Ziv Peled: And it makes the QBR so valuable. And by the way, we use a new company from last year called Matik, Marek. Maybe the people in the US will say Matic. It's M-A-T-I-K.io.  It connects to Salesforce and connects to the data lake. With the press of a button, a template of 200 slides creates a QBR with the right data for the customer. It's just magic. It's a product that we built in our solution before. But when we saw this,  it was much, much, much better. Our product was great, but this was much better.

[00:20:05] Ziv Peled: And it was an easy decision for me. they're starting now to also release some AI features. It's going to be 10x more value for me next quarter and probably even more later. CSM, a day before the meeting, they prepare that output and it's mind blowing both to us and the customer.

[00:20:31] Andrew Michael: Yeah. Well, we previously had, I think it was Nik Mijic, the CEO of Matik on the show as well, talking about the product. So familiar with it there. We'll leave that episode in the show notes as well. Yeah. So I think there's a couple of different like good use cases.  One being sort of the research, as you mentioned, heading into client meetings, two being this QBR prep that can be fast tracked by AI. You also mentioned that you have quite a few different custom GPTs internally that you're using. Is there there that you can share that's interesting that you're using on a daily basis or the team is using regularly?

[00:21:04] Andrew Michael: Sure. Actually, I'll tell you about something that we're now building. I think it's great. First of all, it's very important in customer success. I think you and the audience will like it. So I think in our evolution, I'm here almost 12 years. So in the beginning, customer success were really the product experts. We knew the product inside out. You could say that we even completed the product where the product was short. We were there, support and customer success. And then in the process, I think we understood the customers more and more. And also in our product is that after product expert, you are also becoming an ecosystem expert. which partners should you use? What other marketers are doing? What strategies you see?

[00:21:50] Ziv Peled: And I think that we are getting 12 months, 12 years later, we're getting to the level that we can and should, maybe you can say we should have been before, we are getting to the level to become growth partners to our customers. So it means that we are trying to understand more about their business, their apps, their marketing strategies, and what they're trying to do. And that's the custom GPT that we're building now. It's like, what can we do? What can we bring to our customers that will help them? Will help them and us to move their needle for them to have the 10% growth goal.  

[00:22:36] Ziv Peled: And with us, either we can help them achieve the 10%  or more and really move their needle. I connected in customer success. I connected directly to the business desired outcome. And what I call today the operational business desired outcome, because in 2025, we break it. We say the account manager or account executive that signs the deal or renewal with the customer. They go and connect the customer to the objective, what I call an EBDO, an executive business desired outcome. You can think about it as why should I invest $1 million from my budget to buy AppsFlyer?

[00:23:20] Ziv Peled: And then the OBDO, the operational BDO can be five to10 things over the year that are activities with the customer that in the end fulfill the value realization bucket. So if you think about if you bought from me something for $1 million, obviously you want to generate more than $1 million out of it. So we can say one to five ROI. So you want to generate 5 million benefits from using AppsFlyer. In the OBDO, you are now running a new campaign and with my new  measurement for iOS campaigns, you are now able to do 2X. You did 1 million before. Now you do 2 million. So the 1 million incremental goes to the value realization bucket. And this is  my vision on growth, partnership and customer success in two minutes.

[00:24:17] Andrew Michael: Nice. Yeah. I think that's definitely sort of the math that often gets left behind when thinking about like, what is the actual value that you deliver your customer? And as you said, like they're really coming to you because they want to receive an ROI from your product or service. And if they don't, like that's where churn comes in. In some cases, it's like saving money. In other cases, it's saving time. And in other cases, making money as well. Like, yeah, I think in an upsized case, you're lucky that you have the ability to almost directly measure the uplift and impact that you're having due to the nature of the product. And then it really becomes sort of like a no-brainer for customers when you're able to do that and you're able to sort of validate and prove that as well.

[00:24:57] Ziv Peled: Yeah. But by the way, I want to add something here. I think it's a little bit early for go-to-market to think like that. Maybe there are companies that think like that, but I didn't hear. But I think the go-to-market motion should change significantly as I'll give you the example. Both A.E. and A.M., both acquisition and renewal, commercial strategies should change to not think about, I manage $10 million in ARR and I want to grow it to 12. I  can upsell or I can bring new business.

[00:25:32] Ziv Peled: I think that especially in companies like us and what you mentioned, that we are so close to the value. I think that  A.M. mindset should change to be saying like, I work with 10 companies. Yes, they are bringing up 10 million, but these companies, if you think about their revenue, these 10 companies aggregate revenue is $500 million. And I'm going out to a prospect and I'm saying, I have one last place in my book of business and I'm looking for a company, $80 to $100 million that I want to help to go to the 120.

[00:26:14] Ziv Peled: And by the way, in the last  five years, I worked with companies like AliExpress, TikTok, Walmart, Amazon, shopping, et cetera. And then just from that, you also example that like, this is something that we've done. And then, yes, you are selling a product, but you also connect to say, and we have the customer success in the solution architects, the product, product experts, and then bringing that you're actually instead of selling for the one million dollar ARR, you're selling the promise.

[00:26:50] Ziv Peled: I know how to help you achieve your goals. And this is what I'm selling you. And then I bring you the product. I think that this is huge. in the past, it's  maybe you could you could say this is value selling. I think this is the future. A company that will come to their customers with this messaging will win.

[00:27:15] Andrew Michael: Yeah. They need to have the product and the service to back it. I think that's probably the problem most of the time is most products don't really fulfill that value that they promise on their websites. But if you do  and you're able to get to that point, it's definitely 100 % the way to go. And the focus really should be on driving value for customers. I think ultimately when it comes to channel retention, they come to you for a reason. They want to extract some sort of value from your product to service. They're willing to pay for it.

[00:27:41] Andrew Michael: If they're not getting that value, they're going to churn. So too often, we focus, as you say, trying to drive top-line revenue for our business when really we should be focusing on what is the impact that our customers need to get, what is the value that they're trying to achieve, and then really working as a team to enable that and to focus. And I think also  it's a culture shift internally as well that shifts the mindset in terms of how you think about features and how do you think about value.

[00:28:07] Andrew Michael: Because there's one way we can optimize for short-term revenue gain for your own internal business, or you can optimize for something maybe a little bit more long-term terms of revenue, but it's going to add significant value to your customers. And it really is like, I think it is an important culture shift as well. to the first point, I think you need actually the product and the service that delivers the value that you take.

[00:28:26] Ziv Peled: B2B SaaS is built on value. You can't trick that. It's a must. I also think that it's connected to a lot of other things in B2B SaaS. It's like the motions, like I see many companies not doing lend and expand and like,  you know, lend and expand is also something that keeps people are stuck on something specifically there. But sometimes I look at lend and expand from the customer perspective. So thinking about when you sell to enterprise, when was an account executive really thought about like, can the customer implement what I'm now selling them in the next quarter to two quarters  instead of, Oh no, I can sell a huge, huge, huge deal here and sell everything to them.

[00:29:13] Ziv Peled: But, oh, but they will not never be thinking about enterprises, huge enterprises, companies that they need to build their roadmap for product and engineering to integrate, to adopt. For me, that's lend and expand. It's thinking about the customer connecting  what are their priorities? And then, okay, we do a Q1, then we lend and expand Q2.

[00:29:37] Andrew Michael: Hmm. Yeah. No, for sure. So  obviously we've talked a lot about the internal tools of how AI is being applied now and how you're using it from your customers to improve things. I think it does change a lot of the team dynamics and how things are evolving now, like not only in customer success, but in general internally at startups. What other sort of effects are you seeing outside of obviously just the day to day implications of becoming more effective, but are there any sort of greater, wider effects that you're seeing AI happening now in the CS and then overall SaaS space?

[00:30:14] Ziv Peled: Yeah, I think the world is changing. And I think, always when I think about these kinds of significant changes, I always try to think about like, what are the core things that they are changing? I think about us as humans, when was the last time you wrote on a paper? Like you do that when you have to write. Like, but I think one big shift, core shift as humans is that we're starting to shift from reading and writing to reading and reading. Think about that. What does  AI means for us? It's mainly generation, ChatGPT, GenAI, a lot of it is in  writing.

[00:31:00] Ziv Peled: And then if you think about that, like if I use ChatGPT to write an email to you, so I read and read and I send it to you, you read and then you generate from ChatGPT, you send to me. So we as people, as human beings, as a culture, we're moving to reading and reading. By the way, coming into this, don't think that average worldwide, we were good at reading. Like we're improving now.

[00:31:32] Ziv Peled: Now, I think that this is also the way that we should look at things in internally in the company. Externally, we should be generous. Like when I'm sending you an email, whether if you're internally in my company or Slack in my company or externally, if I'm sending you an email, I need to  be short, concise, and to the point so that I will be generous to you because always I think about like emails, Slack, calendar, all these things are me trying to take your time from your desk  and both internally in the company, between teams, in teams, and externally with customers, with prospects, I think that as generous as we can be, because in the end, both the A.E. and A.M. and customer success manager, they're trying to achieve something with the customer.

[00:32:26] Ziv Peled: So in the end, we're trying... Most of us, generally, we are trying to help you be more productive, be more effective, achieve your goals. It doesn't matter if it's a team member that I'm working with or in the end, the company that I'm selling to. And I think that people need to think about these granular things, these levels. I think it's significant.

[00:32:47] Andrew Michael: Yeah. I like that chain of thought as well. It definitely is quite a big shift. Like you said there reading and writing used to be a thing like now, essentially through the generative AI, like you can receive an email, you can hit reply with Gen AI and it automatically writes it for you. That's skip that, skip that step for you. And you're literally reading what you're about to send. So it's sort of this reading to reading. I think there's also other formats now that are coming into play, obviously like voice. And I think that'll be an interesting, see how that evolves. I think like it's definitely the natural way of communicating for humans. And it's a lot easier than both reading and writing for the most part.

[00:33:27] Andrew Michael: I guess there's obviously different segments and audiences that prefer reading over voice, but I think to your point though, like there's a lot of reading going on now at the moment that there was before. It's probably like 2X way before you had time to think and process while you were typing or while you were writing. And yeah, I like that point of keeping things short to the point, being generous with other people's time.

[00:33:49] Ziv Peled: People should  think like that because we, in the end, a lot of the things that we're doing is around that.  I also think I like your point about voice. I think that maybe we're a little bit behind the real, real, real huge change revolution. Because now when you said that, I started to think when the written revolution, you know, I studied that in maybe 30 years ago and I don't remember a lot, but when newspapers started to come out in the early days and then books and then maybe we're now changing to the world. Yes, I'm sure books will be here.

[00:34:37] Ziv Peled: And we already have some books going digital, but now if people will communicate and the communication will go to be asyncronic voice, then I think that we'll start to... Oh, we have audio ball and all these things. Maybe it will reduce even written even more. Written, printed, digital. Because, you know, I think in the end it's your personal perspective is what you like most. You know, I personally, if you would see like how I work today, I'm commuting 35, 40 minutes with advanced voice, Chat GPT, writing  answer to an email, a prompt for a presentation and then I take it from Chat GPT to Gamma and I prepare a presentation and then I edit the presentation in Gamma. It's remarkable. Like, feel like superhuman every day. I feel like more  and more superhuman than before.

[00:35:37] Andrew Michael: For sure. And, but it's crazy how we've normalized this as well. And yeah, I think to the point as well as like, think it'll probably get to the point where I think as humans, like there's different types of learners and some are audio, some are visual, some prefer like reading, some prefer watching, like some prefer listening. And I think at some point probably we'll end up having modes that we can choose between ourselves. I think it was always one of these things I was like waiting for in things like WhatsApp and chats. Like you would always have this ability to like send a message and you could like play it or listen to it or the inverse.

[00:36:10] Andrew Michael: When somebody sends a voice note, you could read it. And I think just being able to like choose your preference of like how you want to consume information and automatically having it in that format, I think is definitely like something that'll be experimented with. be interesting to see how it plays out. But I've been definitely using a new product as well called Whisper, which enables like a desktop... it's a Mac app and I can, wherever I am in Slack, I can just dictate what I want to say. It automatically transcribes it, pastes it in the correct place, like does a little bit of formatting for me.

[00:36:42] Andrew Michael: And I think that's just like cut out, as you said, so that writing step for me in a lot of cases as well. So it'd be interesting to see how we adapt as humans now to this next wave of technology and what sort of changes in our communication patterns. So we're running up on time. It's been absolutely pleasure chatting today. I've asked you this question many times, but maybe like things have changed quite a bit since we last shared a year and a half ago. Like what's one thing that you know today about channel retention that's changed since we last spoke in 2023?

[00:37:14] Ziv Peled: Two main points. I think we are, we're in a very advanced mode that we can know so many things. And I think that it's interesting is it like most of it doesn't really matter. It sounds remarkable, but like most of it is... Not to say that the voluntary, non-voluntary churn.  I think most of the Intel that we have is not going to change the outcome. The core thought didn't change.  Maybe it's a realization, because I'm thinking always that churn is not something that you are able to prepare an algorithm AI tool for.

[00:38:01] Ziv Peled: It's really about what you've done before. like the activities that you are doing sends the purchase and then onboarding and then adoption. The activities you do there and in the end it connects to success and the achieving goals that dictates churn. And you can look at it like 2023 was a very bad year for many, companies, including us in churn and downgrades. And it was mainly because of a huge external factor. And that factor was not part of 2024. 2024, we achieved all our goals.

[00:38:49] Ziv Peled: So I think maybe one thing that I'm saying there is really, you really need to focus on the things that you control before and do that really, really well. And when I say before, I mean, in the beginning of the relationship, beginning of the work with the customer, cetera.

[00:39:09] Andrew Michael: Absolutely. Well, it's been a pleasure as always chatting today. have any final thoughts you want to leave the listeners with before we wrap up today?

[00:39:15] Ziv Peled: Yeah, I think I'll be short this time. It's  really about being super proactive with AI. So learn, use, test. I never wrote code. I'm writing code. I think you can, and it's not, it doesn't mean that I will write code next year, but the experiment and pushing yourself, you will be able to  realize new things about yourself. The next self reflection of people is not what they remember from the 360 or whatever process they do. It's something else. It's to the moon.

[00:39:57] Andrew Michael: Yeah. For sure, for sure. I think now we like have all these tools at our will to be able to learn and adopt new skills and stuff. There's sort of no excuse anymore not to experiment and try things out and test.  Well,  Ziv, absolute pleasure. For the listeners, we'll make sure to leave everything we discussed today in the show notes so you can pick those up there. And I wish you best of luck going forward. Thanks again for joining, Ziv.

[00:40:19] Ziv Peled: Thank you.

[00:40:20] Andrew Michael: Cheers.  

[00:40:22] Ziv Peled: And that's a wrap for the show today with me, Andrew Michael. I really hope you enjoyed it and you were able to pull out something valuable for your business. To keep up to date with churn.fm and be notified about new episodes,  blog posts and more,  subscribe to our mailing list by visiting churn.fm.

[00:40:42] Ziv Peled: Also don't forget to subscribe to our show on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts.  If you have any feedback, good or bad, I would love to hear from you. And you can provide your blunt, direct feedback by sending it to Andrew at churn.fm.  Lastly, but most importantly,  if you enjoyed this episode, please share it and leave a review as it really helps get the word out and grow the community.  Thanks again for listening.  See you again next week.

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