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EPISODE 110 : 04/20/2023

Pavel Los

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Pavel Los is a global leader in the world of loyalty marketing. He has a wealth of experience from working in multicultural organizations on both a national and regional level. For 20 years he served Shell Oil in a variety of leadership positions, starting off on the marketing side and working his way up to Country Chairman for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Pavel is currently the Consumer Engagement & Loyalty Strategist at Oracle, a cloud technology company that provides organizations around the world with computing infrastructure and software to help them innovate, unlock efficiencies and become more effective.

Host: Ned Hayes and Ashley Coates
Guest: Pavel Los

Topics discussed in this episode

  • Detailed small business insights from Olympia, Washington
  • Small business resiliency and adaptation during COVID
  • Doubling community outreach during the pandemic
  • Opportunities for small business loyalty programs

Watch Spark Loyalty’s Small Business Success Channel

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Audio Transcript

Ned Hayes [00:00:00] Welcome to Spark Plug, where we talk to smart people working at the intersection of business and technology brought to you by SnowShoe, your smarter loyalty leader.

Ned Hayes [00:00:10] Today’s Spark Plug is happy to welcome Pavel Los to the podcast. He is a global leader in the world of loyalty marketing. He’s a wealth of experience from working in multicultural organizations on a national and a regional level. For 20 years, he served Shell Oil in a variety of leadership positions, starting on marketing and working his way up to country chairman for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Pavel is currently the consumer engagement and loyalty strategist at Oracle Cloud Technology Company that provides organizations around the world with computing infrastructure and software to help them innovate, unlock efficiencies and become more effective. So welcome, Pavel. 

Pavel Los [00:00:49] Great to be here. 

Ashley Coates [00:00:50] We’re so happy to have you here, Pavel. Well, let’s start off with your area of expertise, which is loyalty marketing. Can you share a personal definition of loyalty marketing with our listeners? 

Pavel Los [00:01:01] Thank you. I think the definition of loyalty marketing obviously evolves evolve over time. Where I think today what loyalty marketing means and what every loyalty professional as a as a matter like any manager should focus on is that loyalty marketing is about engaging customers about throughout their entire relationship with the brand. So even before that and before that for purchase and way long after the purchase, that that is what in marketing is how do I know the customer before they even start purchasing and create that relationship from start? 

Ashley Coates [00:01:41] Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And what first drew you to this world of loyalty marketing? 

Pavel Los [00:01:48] You wouldn’t believe it. It was an advertising that actually was an ad in a in a newspaper where the local show branch in Prague was looking for a loyalty manager or actually a marketing support to a loyalty manager. 

Ashley Coates [00:02:02] And you said I could do that. 

Pavel Los [00:02:04] I know. I actually came and I studied for you for sometime in the U.S., in Denver, in Colorado, and I studied marketing and I was working at a small advertising or 3D promotional agency called Spectrum Advertising. If microarrays is listening, I might. And then they were looking for something that when I when I came back to Prague, they found this ad and they were looking for somebody who was going to make the loyalty program with marketing, with their reward selection. And my experience with the 3D promotional items kind of draw their attention. And so that’s what drew me in. And then many, many years later over my career and I morphed into a global loyalty manager role, I was managing the loyalty schemes for Shell across the globe, supporting colleagues in the US, which use the word network and out of their mouths about some of the schemes in Europe helping markets to launch in the Far East. So quite a lot of experience to turn that kind of a loyalty is my passion right now. 

Ned Hayes [00:03:10] Well, today, Pavel, you’re a certified loyalty and marketing professional, which is the only recognized professional certification in the loyalty marketing industry. So can you tell us more about the certification? 

Pavel Los [00:03:22] If indeed I didn’t have the exact number of others? There are about 500 certified loyalty marketing professionals around the globe. The certification is run by the Loyalty Academy, associate vice marketer, and I think it’s a good quality certification, which I can recommend to anybody who wants to understand loyalty, who wants to get on the journey. And that might be if you are in a starting position or you might have some experience, that’s plenty, plenty to learn. My kind of a on one of my life mottos is that education never ends. And you need to you need everybody needs to continue to learn because those who stop learning, they stop getting better. Right? And I’ve actually done CLP certifications fairly late in my career. But the fact that you engage with these professionals that have been doing this for their entire career is always hand reaching and there are always a nugget of gold that you can find in every single in every single course. So strongly recommend, I believe they are running now. Right now a session in Amsterdam that was recently in Dubai or will be in Dubai. I did not exactly look them up at the loyalty academy. 

Ned Hayes [00:04:41] Great. Thank you. Well, could you tell us why you feel loyalty? Marketing is important for brands and retailers? 

Pavel Los [00:04:49] Because what I said in the first question, either the loyalty is about engaging your customers throughout the entire relationship. And in this day and age, most our customer expect. A personalized service model, loyalty marketing model, loyalty program. If you allow apps, you is to collect the data points along that customer journey and use the data points to make the right decision and the right business. Decisions are used to create insights, to make the right decisions, and then personalize the experience that those customers are going through. So it is always easier to keep your existing customers happy again to acquire new on and cheaper too, right? 

Ned Hayes [00:05:33] Absolutely. I can’t agree more. We found loyalty is really important for retailers to continue to build their business. I know that during the pandemic people really struggled with this. So I’m curious if you could share with us what you see has changed in the world of loyalty now post pandemic? 

Pavel Los [00:05:49] I think what has changed massively are the customer expectations. During pandemic, my switch switched to let me put it differently. Pandemic accelerated the move of customers to digital or tried them. They do much more of their day to day tasks, day to day chores or satisfactions. They do them online. So many of us do online shopping. I don’t remember when I was the last time that in a in a physical store to buy groceries. Right? Because I just to wake up in the morning I realized we are missing something our online in 90 minutes is what it’s in it’s in front of the door. Right. So that has changed the customer expectations in what this means for loyalty is that customers actually expect that brands use that data to personalize those experiences. Recently I heard a some quoting don’t remember what customers expect is show me, you know me, right? Show me that what you know about me. You actually are putting it to good practice. And I think that’s the major shift in the post-pandemic world that kind of because that was caused by the fact that a lot of our activities have moved online. 

Ashley Coates [00:07:12] That’s a great way to sum it up. Show me, you know me well, so I know that you’ve been going to lots of conferences post pandemic. We’re curious what some of your key learnings have been about loyalty and related areas from some of these conferences that you’ve gone to. 

Pavel Los [00:07:28] So I wouldn’t say I’ve been to a lot of conferences, I’ve been to a couple of events, but very impactful events. I think the most recent one that I attended in the loyalty commentary, I think very nicely kind of summarizes what’s what’s actually happening. And I, I think it’s just about and know I’m going to keep repeating. Right. This is about customer experience. It is about understanding what happens along the way. It is the importance of it is important, the importance of staff. And it is the importance of your fans and the fan science of going beyond that. Beyond that, the transactional relationship. I think the customer experience, I just talked about it in the end of the pandemic, kind of a context, and I elaborate on that on that more. But it is it is critical that every brand understands where what their customers are doing and what data the brand is collecting. And on the customer journey to the customers that the brand cares and that the brand knows the customer. Right. One of the most impactful messages that I am taking away from the tour of the conference is the importance of staff and those that work with me. They know that I’ve been always saying that training and making and getting buy in from the staff is is the most important part of the entire mix. So everything happens with the frontline staff. And if we are in a retail context, if it is, the retail staff at the theater is not going out, is not asking you for loyalty cards. If we stage this in isolation for loyalty, then you lost that opportunity. I think that is why that if the person serving you in the restaurant is is not smiling and is rude, then that goes all and you can do miracles with your loyalty scheme. But it falls down some. The sound is more on the small occasions. So I think there is a lot that loyalty up and other discipline can learn from customer experience. Michael In talking about this INTERREG and you used an equation, I’d be staff equals happy customer and happy customer equals happy shareholder. And I think that’s so much that is so much true. That is so much true. 

Ned Hayes [00:10:05] So it sounds as if that is absolutely critical here. So are there trainings or ways to make your staff more effective with customers? How do we ensure that that staff are actually communicating the values of a retail business? 

Pavel Los [00:10:19] And I think they need they need to understand the purpose of the business and then they need to be they need to be on the side. And and don’t get mistaken, this is not just an I was talking in a in a in a frontline staff context, but this is everybody in the company. This is everybody that needs to that needs to stand behind this because we we’ve seen over time that the successful loyalty schemes actually are underpinning the entire business at the moment. The loyalty, the loyalty team is treated in isolation and we create a marketing activity calendar and we dedicate one month or two months not to a activity and the next two months are for loyalty and the three months are for activity. B that’s when it goes wrong, right? Because loyalty actually needs to be underpinning then everything else that the company does, right? So that that’s the important, that’s the importance of the of of the entire staff, not just the frontline. But yes, as you said, it is training, getting there, buying, making sure that they understand. I do. QUESTION And that’s something I have not discovered myself. And it’s interesting that you don’t see many loyalty schemes allowing the staff to participate in the company loyalty schemes. Yeah. But I would pose that question. Why is that? 

Ashley Coates [00:11:43] Very good question. So today you’re at Oracle and you focus on promoting Oracle Cloud with that solution. Can you tell us about the solution? 

Pavel Los [00:11:53] Yeah. Thank you. I joined Oracle Lenders in the year and a half ago after spending 22 years in show and I joined because I believe it is a it is a good solution. It’s a it’s a loyalty. It’s a customer engagement and loyalty, loyalty solution that helps brands to cross that bridge that I’ve been talking about across the bridge from transactional loyalty to emotional, I think it helps brands to create those engagements with customers that are not just based on whether you exchange your currency or whatever that currency might be. This allows brands to reward customers on various brand interactions, whether these are when whatever you do online, when you visit a website that you read an article or a blog blog post, whether you complete a a ceremony or a polo, you play a game, whether you connect to an Instagram page. So all of these kind of brand value behaviors can be turned into a rewarding. Opportunities, and that’s what causes brands to do well. 

Ned Hayes [00:13:03] So thank you for that explanation. And in the interest of full disclosure, part of the way that we know you, Pavel, is that SnowShoe, the company sponsors this podcast, did a pilot with the show and in partnership with you. And I’m curious if you can tell us more about that deployment. There’s a pilot using our proprietary stamp technology, and I think you had focused especially on a regional market. Could you tell us more about regional markets and about the technology, why it worked for you? 

Pavel Los [00:13:31] Yeah, indeed. And we used to think of SnowShoe in Mexico as a launch trailer. This teams in at that time a new market entry for show on dot com obviously talking detail about the all the numbers and can’t disclose the results. We were looking for a something else called a loyalty lite solution that we can deploy that we can deploy relatively quickly and cost that kind of a solution that brings playfulness to the marketplace that does not require the integration with the boss. And that was that was the critical I in Mexico, if you can imagine. When I entered Mexico, it was just a handful of petrol stations open, but different point of sale systems or different cash cash deals. And we were looking, so how do we do these things that we can’t. It was not economically viable to bring a full fledged person to this game and to be connecting to the various different cash systems. So that’s why that’s why we brought that. That’s why we actually partnered with you. They brought SnowShoe technology and it worked. It worked very well. The those customers that participated, we could see that they really like the the gamification right at the turn of the paper stamp card to a digital digital version. Those customers that actually used that did participate, that we could see that they are heavier user of some of the premium fuels of shall be power that we that that shows us across the board and including Mexico. There a good there’s a good retention and I think it works right otherwise it wouldn’t be successful. 

Ashley Coates [00:15:21] Thank you. And so perhaps as a follow up to that, we’d love to focus on how regional markets differ in connectivity or tech access. So maybe you could talk a little bit about do loyalty schemes differ in in regional markets? 

Pavel Los [00:15:39] So I had the benefit of seeing show loyalty schemes across the entire globe, as I said, from the U.S. all the way to all the way to India, China and to some extent to some of the indirect markets that show France and some of the more complex ends. And I think from a tech side, I think that are two key differences, not one good. One is indeed. Now, there are two aspects of this. One is the tax side, and then there’s the market and the customer expectations. And so I think from a. From the technology side percent, there’s not much of a difference. Right. You have a you have some kind of a setup. If you are a retailer, you might have a point of sale. If you are not a retailer, you’re on a e-commerce platform or you have something, you have something else. And so I think from that perspective, that’s where today’s acceleration of technology actually allows fairly easy transport of of technology across the border on some road, whether wherever you are. What’s different? What’s different about the customers and their expectations, their needs, how they how they behave, their behaviors, how they. So if I kind of take the shell experience, show an experience I had a customer in in the US when he when you come up to a petrol station you pull out your credit cards, you typically pre-pay and you fill up and you leave. So very small number of customers actually venture in the store. That’s very different in Europe. In Europe, typically customers actually just fill up and they that is a process and they go in the store and be in the store. So there’s much more opportunities to engage with those customers in the store. And then you go to some of the some of the east markets or markets that are south like some of the in the hot climate. That’s where customers drive on the forecourt, open the window two centimeters so that the climate air doesn’t doesn’t leave and just tell the forecourt attendant, can you fill up with $10 for the fuel and just pass through the window and then close the window quickly back. So very different behaviors, very different, obviously, then very different needs and expectations from that service. And I think that’s what’s that is what a good loyalty professional. Needs to understand that those customers are different and not all size fits all. And I’m just I’m looking at this on a big geographic level, right? And then you go into in a much smaller environment on how that behavior in the context of the behavior differs city to city or a type of a petrol station? Is it a city petrol station or is it a commuter petrol station? Right. So very, very different. And that’s what’s driving the difference in the loyalty scheme. 

Ned Hayes [00:18:50] Right. Well, there must be across these different loyalty schemes, though, some common benchmarks. So do you have in your own mind some standard benchmarks for loyalty program return on investment? What’s the ROI that you look for to know whether or not it’s successful? 

Pavel Los [00:19:06] So the number I use and might be right might be wrong, I don’t know. Whoever can get a marketing benchmarks, so that probably should get a Noble Prize because it is always so difficult to measure. I to know what the goals are, the impact around, but the number I use for our allies 150, 270%. I think that’s the ROI for loyalty program. It’s kind of it gives you understanding on what you invest and what you get out and what you and that you don’t get out. Sometimes I’ve seen cases that you that some loyalty schemes get out too much, which means that they are not leaving enough on the table for the customer. And those customers then might be walking out unhappy. I mean, this context solving, I think the most important thing is, is to measure the ROI and to measure on a consistent basis, because then it gives you the the longevity of the of the measurement, the trends, and then you can assess whether you are reaching your objectives by the original objectives or not. I wouldn’t believe that I’ve seen many brands that don’t measure at all because it is difficult or they just look at this very wrong lens. 

Ashley Coates [00:20:25] Pavel, you recently posted that 82% of customers would be willing to share some type of personal data for a better customer experience, which kind of goes back to what you were talking about at the beginning. So what are some of the most successful ways of collecting customer data and how can brands use this data to create a better customer experience? 

Pavel Los [00:20:44] So, you know, the traditional loyalty schemes that started in the in the nineties would be collecting the data about the customer purchase behavior you bought back of milk or in the in the context of share, if I use that body, it’s 20 liters of fuel, maybe a modest bar, maybe a coffee. And so these are just three data points that the brand has to start creating your profile and then the personalization. Then they use the location they get done spans the the the timestamp, the date, right. Of whatever data is related to the with the transaction kind of way to kind of expand on this. But that’s still does not allow for a true personalization. Right. So something being on my screen, you haven’t realized this. So that allows the brand to create a one size fits all loyalty scheme. Right. And only when you kind of move on that imaginary ladder of maturity of of loyalty schemes and you start collecting data points about those customers that are much richer, that might be about what they do when they are not visiting with you, What is it that they how they behave in their behavior? It might be attitudinal data. It might be data that they give you voluntarily because you ask them, me or them, and a few points so that some of the ones, the successful brands that they do that are using crowd your account design. So I mean, look at what Footlocker is doing, right? So when you log in to the affiliates, the rewards System reward scheme, a footlocker would be asking you some simple questions What’s your shoe size, what color you like, what’s your what type of shirts do you like? These are small questions and that kind of it helps to build the profiles. Then use examples. I would mention something that often is on a national lottery or that some of their data that they collect in their loyalty schemes are quite, quite interesting. Right? What are your favorite, what’s your favorite vacation destination? And all of that kind of then helps to build a complete profile of the customer and then you can use that to to generate insights and make the right decision. Right? So maybe and I don’t know whether they do that, but that is on a lottery could initially then do a majority of customers say they log onto the like Bermuda has their favorite vacation so that might be one of the main prizes that they do or they do Bermuda themed lottery, you name it. I said, So these are but that’s what they need to do, is to look beyond the transaction, beyond the dollar that the customer spends. What is that customer like? Use the data to segment personalized, then personalize the experience, because then you have the data and you know that that customer told you that. He is not going to go to Bermuda because he likes Norway, because he likes to be in the cold. Then you are not going to be selling him a content that talks about why don’t you go to the tropical islands sometimes? Simple as that. Not many, many brands are actually using that data or not even collecting the data. 

Ned Hayes [00:24:10] Right. It goes back to that classic statement that you said at the beginning, Show me that you know me, right? 

Pavel Los [00:24:15] Andy. Andy. 

Ned Hayes [00:24:17] So there’s a conversation in the loyalty world about whether or not brands should be allowing points to be portable. Should should points be shared with other retailers? Should they be shared about businesses? Should they even be used in other areas where you didn’t originally accumulate the points? So what’s your perspective on point sharing the bigger debates? 

Pavel Los [00:24:37] I think this could be a podcast probably on its own, its own. And, you know, I don’t have a universal view on this because I think it depends on the brand. It depends on what the loyalty scheme objectives are. And that’s what every loyalty professional should ask first before going to be going to those decisions. What is it that I want to achieve? Why do I have a loyalty scheme? What is the target audience? And only that is going to then lead you. It’s a point. Is it points with the brand, with other brands. The right thing to do? Or do I allow customers to sell their points to friends? So I think I think and I think this is not an easy question. I wish that the technologies that are appearing now will allow for this in a much more controlled, controlled way. And there are certainly there are always pros and cons. So if you if you along allow that, then very likely potentially might create a better engagement. But engage customers, Right. Because then he might be feeling that he’s just got the freedom to do whatever he wants in those points. All right, then, then if you look on the flip side, then if you allow that, you sort of lose control of that currency because it is the currency that you are sharing. So what for all the measures are you going to put in place, if any, and how are you going to prevent that? Somebody is not start does not start to scheme the program and scheme other members and steal their points because they that they can be turned into cash. So I think there’s a lot of considerations. There are I mean, the three blockchain type of technologies that are coming and I think we we are seeing first pioneers to start using this that will create much more security in the system, will allow for the functionality to be available. But again, I go back on the and what I said at the beginning, it really depends on your on the objectives, but on the target audience that you are targeting, whether you allow for that or not. 

Ned Hayes [00:26:59] Right. Well, you just mentioned the blockchain, and I’m curious if you could elaborate a little bit more about blockchain technologies in general and why these are pertinent in the loyalty market. 

Pavel Los [00:27:09] I think blockchain and this, it’s all new. I think to many brands, this is a new technology that is appearing. I think many marketers still don’t know what that means. So there’s a lot of a lot of education that needs to that needs to take place, that needs to take place. There’s there’s a lot of technological advancements that actually need to need to take place. I mean, if you look at some of the wallet, NFT, wallet experiences that are out there, some of them are just little more endless ride. And let’s just turn off a first customer that’s going to be stand by certain standards upon and then an feel for it. And I think that it’s a it’s a learning curve, right? Whether we like it or not, I think this is this is where the world of the digital world is going, because that will because the Web 3.0 logic will allow better ownership of digital assets. And that’s what I would. How would I summarize the two sides, whether we call it blockchain or whatever? I think that NFP is the name of the mandate that this kind of a jargon name is going to be might scare a lot of people, but it’s about digital, it’s an ownership of digital assets. And as we are moving towards everything else being digital, I think that’s ownership. That’s a confirmed digital ownership. I will be more and more important and that’s what these technologies allow. And then whether you allow them the points to be owned by the customers so that the customer is entitled to sell it somewhere. I think that again, depends on whether your object is tied. Certainly blockchain technology will allow you to do that under a security. Once again, it depends how, but what’s your setup on what’s your what’s your strategy? So I’m thinking I think it is a it is an evolutionary path where we go games will be moving. Is it here tomorrow? No, it’s not here tomorrow. I think there’s a lot of still a lot of technology innovations ahead of us before it, but before the three technologies can be fully adopted. 

Ashley Coates [00:29:32] Well, another question along the lines of best practices and loyalty. You have previously shared the stat that one third of loyalty members are not redeeming their rewards because the process is too complicated. There’s just too much friction. So what are some common instances of friction in the redemption process that brands should work to avoid? 

Pavel Los [00:29:53] You know, I say that more important than the actual reward is the redemption experience. And I think that’s what’s neat. That’s what brands needs to work on. All right. So what happens? How does how do we allow customers to redeem? And what happens along the way? I’ve seen examples of brands. For a section of customers. Extraordinary high redemption rates. But then those customers disappeared. So the churn of those customers that are redeemed was actually much higher than the children of those customers that actually did not redeem. So when we went into when we went into the detail, we actually found that the experience and the value that the customer get got was just so poor that he said, Why would I bother? This comes down to some of the detail on how if your loyalty is still in daily gifts, you might have a gift catalog and you deliver a promotional items or or a nice T-shirt or whatever it comes to how that item is delivered and what comes along that night. What’s the packaging? How does it look like? How quickly does it arrives? What is there? A crinkled delivery notes in the box? Or do you get that personalized letter thanking you for for being a member of a scheme and and congratulating us on the choosing, choosing the reward. So I think I think that that’s what drives redemption. It is the experience and the experience of people, the redeeming of the items that should be more important than what the redemption item actually is. And it’s, you know, one of the one of the trends that I’m going to that I think we are going to see is that loyalty will move more and more in some of the sustainability areas which started many years ago as a classical CSR, right, where our customers could redeem their points and donate the points to a charity. I have not actually seen many loyalty schemes that guards that donation practice the donation redemption rates because you donate the points and you would get a good feeling that you did all right. But that good feeling would very likely disappear very quickly. All right. Well, let’s imagine if that if then the loyalty schemes in the partnership with the charity then send you a letter. Thank you. Letter saying you’ve donated your points. Thank you very much. And maybe is a pain or a poor remembrance or that might be nice. Again, that comes down to the experience of the redemption that I think it’s super important. 

Ned Hayes [00:32:37] Right? It is really important to get this kind of handover stage right, because if people don’t feel like they can support their points or use their points, then the points are kind of were not. Right. 

Pavel Los [00:32:50] Indeed. And and I’ve seen the many, many schemes where points states on the account the lower limit liability rule and then then it’s a struggle. Right. So what you do is many brands then revert to an expiry of points and guess what? That’s not going to create a happy customer. 

Ned Hayes [00:33:10] Well, speaking of happy customers, there’s been a lot of noise in the air lately about air. Right. And a lot of information out there about how I can improve your relationship with customers or or can actually make it worse depending on how you use it. So, you know, Chat GP2 and Google BYOD are out there. I’m curious if you could share your perspective on how these new kind of AI technologies could be used in the loyalty space. 

Pavel Los [00:33:37] Indeed, there’s a big hype around, I rightly so, exchange some of the hype around metal that is layer by layer, but I think it’s a very powerful, very powerful tool that is that is available, but it is not another new tool. I think it’s been popularized recently and it’s been a regular customer can now experience the power of A.I., but it’s been around the dust for many, many, many years. All right. And those that that use I know that I can be can be used for a predictive modeling and AI. So understanding what they are, how we are analyzing the customer behavior from the past and predict what is going to happen in the future, how it can segment your customer base based on their preferences, behaviors, purchasing portents and give you give you segments that you can use for targeting and for targeting and that give them offers that are personalized as well, using using our AI so it can maybe be used in the in the offer, not only the offer creation, kind of identifying what is the right offer for it for that particular segment of customers. And look, what’s the creative, what’s the company that that this going to work best for the customer can be used for? I mean, the notion of Deep Horizon just gives you the notion of using using AI for ten more times, which can actually can create a much better customer experience on. That feels like talking to a real person. And so I think there’s this there’s a lot that has been done. I think the technology’s been popularized by some of the recent developments and obviously by Microsoft being very loud about the manner of the acquisition and some of the integration of the air and some of the tools that are now available to a normal user. I, I think that’s the biggest change has been around, as I said, for some time, has been always a bit difficult to comprehend and a bit of a black hole on how do you use it. But now it is clear you just type. Can you type of send thank you letter for my birthday to all the, all the parties, the participants, the cameras gives you a copy it and it’ll be it and it can be writing it yourself. 

Ned Hayes [00:36:02] Right. It’s kind of amazing how much a I will be kind of an adjunct or an assistant to human beings in the future that we can start to compose a lot of content. Some of that content could be good, some of it could not be good. So we still need a human in the loop in order to assess the veracity and the usefulness of the content. I think that’s absolutely key. It’s not going to take over jobs. It’s going to be an assistant speaking of what’s going to be in the future. Could you jump as they had 5 to 10 years, ten years from now, if we were having the same conversation possible, what would the world of loyalty look like then? What’s going to change? What’s going to stay the same? 

Pavel Los [00:36:39] I think the customer is going to stay the same. There’s going to be customer needs, the principles of loyalty scheme, of successful loyalty scheme, which means that the A and loyalty money manager and manager understands the the objectives have a clear, clear objective one and why this scheme exists, or is it for a specific customer that is not going to change? What’s going to change is to think that we’ve seen companies popping up left, right and center think. I just talked about it’s going to play a huge role. 3.00. Okay. So the ownership of the digital assets, the decentralized, the ownership of digital assets rights, that is going to play a huge role I think in ten years from now. I think we can easily see that those schemes, those successful schemes, schemes will run on a three and a bit technology. I think it remains to be seen where Metaverse will fit in this as a digital immersive experience and we are going to live in the Matrix or whether we are going to live in the real physical world. I think that’s that remains to be seen. But certainly the acceleration of technology will play a major, major role on how we are able to access customers and build the relationships with them and build relationships even before they start being a buying customer. Right. 

Ashley Coates [00:38:08] It’ll be very interesting to see. Well, Pavel, thank you so much for joining us today. You’ve just shared so many wonderful insights and we’re so glad to have this conversation with you. We do have one last question before we let you go, which is what do you want your legacy to be? What would you like to be remembered for? 

Pavel Los [00:38:26] Very difficult question. I don’t think this is about legacy. It’s not about a to me, to me, legacy is not about a professional achievement that I built a loyalty a or to be able to be or achieve these fantastic business results. Or I jump the highest high jump to me. I want to be remembered as a friend, as somebody who was good to work with, and it was pleasure to have a conversation with. It was fun. It was was satisfying to have a relationship. That’s what I want to be remembered for. 

Ned Hayes [00:39:00] Well, frankly, it’s been fun to talk to you today. And a real pleasure to have this conversation. 

Pavel Los [00:39:05] Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s fantastic to be here. Wish you good luck. 

Ned Hayes [00:39:10] Sparkplug is a wholly owned property of SnowShoe. Copyright 2022-2023 Spark Plug Media.