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Hello, hello. How is everybody? Good. Sessions Day 2,
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heading into post-lunch session or pre-lunch session. Hey everybody,
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my name is Tyler Bryson, and I lead revenue for Stripe here in the Americas.
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I'm also the leader for all of our product sales globally.
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And it's just an honor to have you all here because hopefully we're all going to
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have a chance to talk about this phenomenon that we're all dealing with of the
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agentic front office,
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this way of rethinking the way we need to engage our users, our customers,
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to grow. And it's something, of course,
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that's a huge part of Stripe's conversation internally every day.
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We support over five million businesses with many different needs.
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We're seeing about $2 trillion of volume as you've heard throughout the economy,
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and we're seeing incredible patterns. And we're thinking every day,
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"How is our experience from that first time startup to the largest enterprise in
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the world?"
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Ian, we were just talking about this.
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"And how do we use agentic technologies to improve the experiences of our
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users?"
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And that's what we want to explore today. So to help me do that, I'm glad to,
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excited to, introduce you to Ian Kahn, a partner at PwC.
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He leads their commercial and service excellence practice,
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which is right at the forefront of the things that we're talking about,
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making it real. So let's welcome up Ian.
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Thanks, Tyler. Great to be here.
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So a great thing about PwC and working with Ian is
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not only are we working to tackle these problems together,
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we're doing it in a partnership. And as you know, Stripe
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has many capabilities about enabling growth for our users,
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but we need help from partners like PwC to help take
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that from products and solutions to real transformation.
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And so that's why we're so glad to have you here, Ian.
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It's great to be here. We're a bit of an odd couple though.
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We were talking about this. So Stripe is 15 years young, is that right?
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15. Yep.
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And PwC is 175-year-old partnership.
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And changing fast every day.
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I know. But I think we'll get into this conversation.
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I was reflecting a little bit, just to go off script.
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Yeah.
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And it's like a collision of multiple forces.
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You have innovators colliding with scale players,
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and there's so much happening right now.
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And I think this whole conversation about the agentic front office is,
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going forward, like what wins? How do we need to adapt?
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What do we need to do to win in this new world?
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In Stripe's annual letter, you may have, if you've read it,
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there's a section about what we call the "sorting machine." And it's this idea
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that this capitalist system is constantly sorting and choosing winners and
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losers. And one of the things, Ian,
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that we call out or we're seeing as a pattern right now is that the sorting
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machine is working faster and faster,
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and there's becoming this real bifurcation of winners and losers right now,
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where there are organizations that are winning, taking share,
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and others that are dormant and really struggling. So with that as a foundation,
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Ian, what's happening? Why are we having this kind of shift,
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and who's winning with profits and who isn't?
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Yeah. I mean,
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the shift has been unbelievable and been kind of
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talked about extensively in all of the sessions this week. And
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I think that the debate about the relevance and the strategic priority
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around the AI agenda has sort of been, to a large degree,
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it's been settled for most organizations, but at the same time,
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the question is still outstanding around value capture, right?
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So today,
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our research suggests that while the vast majority of companies are prioritizing
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AI-powered transformation as a top three agenda, still,
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only 75% of the companies that we study
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are really not capturing any sort of meaningful ROI.
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And that's sort of this value gap,
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that's the disparity that jumps out from the Stripe research, the bifurcation,
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as you say. And I think there are a number of reasons for that.
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I might just sort of paint a quick concept for a second.
The title of the
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session is talking about agentic front office.
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I was at another session yesterday with your chief revenue officer for
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AI, Maia, and the CEO of Vercel,
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and they were kind of talking about the same thing.
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They were talking about this massive shift that's happening in the market,
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traditional commercial models,
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sort of product-led growth to sales-led growth to agentic-led growth,
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and this shift is happening. And when we talk about agenetic front office,
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one question I get sometimes is, "Well, what do you mean by 'front office?'"
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And so this is not a universal term, but for us,
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"front office," it's the collection of functions that are designed to enable
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that end-to-end customer journey. And a lot of organizations today,
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it's just very fragmented.
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And the "agentic front office" is what happens when you reimagine those
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customer facing functions, that customer journey,
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when you understand that your customers are now engaging with you in very
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different ways, using their own agents,
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and you have to evolve your model in order to meet them where they are and in
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order to unlock the growth opportunities.
I think the bifurcation reflects the
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fact that some companies are doing that very well right now,
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and they're growing at a much higher pace. We see that in the Stripe data,
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the AI leaders are outgrowing everybody else.
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The other companies that haven't gotten there yet,
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I think they've got a short window to catch up.
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Great. Yeah.
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And if you were in John's session on the economy and economic models,
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it's clear that this diffusion is not going to take as long as the diffusion of
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electricity. It's diffusing fast. We've got to be ready.
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And in most cases,
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you've tried to talk about this idea that it's the operating model that
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deserves the AI, not take what we have and throw AI on top.
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That's a huge mistake to do that. Yeah. So
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most front office sort of functions-step back-I'm talking about marketing and
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sales and service, maybe pricing functions.
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At a lot of the organizations that we study,
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reality is these are functional silos.
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They're designed to perform specific tasks.
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They often perform those tasks with high degrees of proficiency.
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And what we find is that the deployment of AI within those
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silos, it speeds things up in those silos,
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but it doesn't address the friction points or the gaps that have existed between
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those silos for a long time.
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The inability for a company to properly
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transition that qualified lead from marketing into sales with a
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very sort of tailored approach that meets the customer where they are,
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the handoff between sales and service that lacks context and leaves the customer
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feeling frustrated. We think that
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value leaks from these fragmented processes slowly,
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quietly, but actually it's pretty significant.
And that sort of leaky,
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that problem of value leakage is really significant. And so
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what the agentic front office really represents to us is it represents a pretty
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significant shift of looking end to end at the customer journey and redesigning
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that commercial model in a very, very integrated way.
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The functional silos need to disappear.
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At least your customer can't know that they're there.
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Yeah.
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And you said that there were some three different moves companies should take.
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Do you want to outline those or...
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Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, as we partner with organizations and think about
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unlocking the growth potential that exists, first of all,
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I think you got to step back and look at
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the way you're approaching the customer.
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Very few companies actually have an executive that is responsible for
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end-to-end customer experience.
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And so starting there and identifying the critical customer journeys
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and starting to understand that in the context of your business model,
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maybe in your industry, these customer journeys, they're different now.
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The customer is starting with some sort of AI-powered discovery process that's
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often-.
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They know your content better than you do sometimes.
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100%, 100%.
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We've experienced where our users, our customers,
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are so well prepped before we even have our first sales conversation that I've
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had to challenge my sales: "Uplevel, people. Like, uplevel.
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They've come to our site, they've read,
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they've understood it's about something more.".
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Back to the sales-and you run a high performing sales organization-it's the What
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Got You Here Won't Get You There kind of conversation because for a lot of
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high-performing sellers that have had very successful careers,
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it's sometimes a difficult conversation to say, "Actually,
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the way I've been approaching my job as a sales executive,
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that's not going to work going forward because the customer has changed their
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behavior.
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They don't want to engage with us in the same way." And so I think the three
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moves, just in summary, are: one,
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we have to reorient away from these sort of functionally focused approaches
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to this end-to-end customer experience design-led approach, one. Two,
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it has to be
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intelligence- and data-powered, right?
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So I think your customer data is one of your most valuable assets.
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You've got to get the house in order,
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you have to layer intelligence on top of that-agents that have the
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ability to sense and properly interpret customer intent,
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agents that have the ability to initiate and execute actions
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increasingly in autonomous fashion,
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and also agents that have the ability to read all of the
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signals in a way that humans struggle to do
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and learn,
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right?
The power of what we think of the concept of a commercial brain in your
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organization,
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do you have a data and intelligence layer that gives you the ability to
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continuously learn and serve your customer in a very tailored way using what we
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think of as "privileged insights?" And then, look,
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the last point is you have to redesign and reorchestrate the way work happens.
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Your jobs are changing. And this is the change management story,
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but looking at all of your roles and thinking, "Look, the job has changed.
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How do your sellers and your marketers and your service representatives,
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how are they leveraging AI to do their jobs differently and to serve the
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customer at a higher level?"
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And that's the opportunity. So the three things, again,
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it's end-to-end customer experience design-led. You've got to pick that up,
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building out what we think of as the "commercial brain"-your data and your
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intelligence layer.
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And then kind of redesigning your jobs and optimizing your workforce.
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Those are probably the three pillars that we need to focus on.
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And I would just say in each of those, Stripe's on our own journey to do that.
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I would say if you came to Stripe now and looked at my team,
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you'd see our AI strategy for SDR function,
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our AI strategy for customer support, our AI strategy for customer success.
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And what I'm realizing is like each of those people who are touching that user
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actually needs context of everything that's going on.
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100%.
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And that means, like you said,
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getting our data in order to a place where all of these systems can be
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interrogated quickly. And we've been building systems for a lot of years,
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but this universal dashboard is really just this intelligence now that's making
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it happen. So great insights, Ian. I appreciate it. So, Ian,
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where's it actually working? You're in boardrooms,
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you're making pitches right along with CROs, pitching transformation.
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Where is it working right now?
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Yeah. I mean, look, we're seeing early success stories.
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One I go back to-I'm going to reference the Maia's presentation yesterday for
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anybody that was in the room. I mean,
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you see AI leaders emerging right now,
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growing at incredible rates.
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That's a pretty good signal that something is working incredibly well.
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And as a 175-year-old global network of firms with a half a
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million employees,
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I'm jealous of some of the smaller companies that are,
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they're incredibly nimble. They lack the legacy baggage.
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They can get things done very quickly.
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And so that speed is an advantage in a lot of ways.
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But also you see big organizations making the change and making
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moves as well. I think
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one thing that we're seeing in the companies that we've studied, and, again,
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you kind of have this group of leaders that are emerging.
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It's like 20% of the companies we study are actually,
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they're seeing massive value capture from their AI deployment.
And where it's
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working is where you have an organization that has a focused strategy.
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They've picked key areas of the business where they see opportunities,
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and they focus on that customer and they really implement in a thoughtful way,
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kind of using those three pillars that I outlined before.
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And I think when you do that well, you have the ability to create value very,
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very quickly.
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I think I read in the notes that you had some success with the global consumer
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goods company that was using Stripe at one layer,
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but the data wasn't being connected to an intelligence.
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So I know the story you're talking about, and it's a pretty good one because
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we initially picked it up in completely the wrong way. And so,
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this is a consumer brand that you all interact with on a daily basis,
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very large global organization.
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They came to us with a pretty common pain point.
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The pain point was they had operational costs
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that were growing, especially around their customer service function.
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Not only were the costs growing, but they were getting
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a high rate of customer complaints,
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and they felt like their service function was broken and needed to be fixed.
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One of the key metrics they looked at was average handle time. And so,
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the kind of going-in hypothesis was,
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"Can we leverage AI to optimize the service function, take cost out,
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reduce handle time,
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and maybe deliver a better customer experience?" That was a decent thesis,
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but it was missing a bunch of critical points.
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Back to the kind of like silo solved.
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The short version of the long story is the customers were really
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frustrated with the ordering process and the ordering process,
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was highly time-consuming and it was very manual.
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And we thought there was an opportunity to leverage sort of AI ordering to
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optimize that, and to, also, when you do that well,
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you'll drive higher
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ticket size and ultimately growth.
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But that was actually an incomplete thought as well because the customers were
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actually increasingly coming through what we think of as and commonly described
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now as an "agentic commerce" sort of engagement model. And so,
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in the past, we were thinking, "Well,
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customers are coming through traditional channels,
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and they want to engage with us a certain way."
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And we built our front office and our service function in order to like serve
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them in that traditional pattern.
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But the pattern broke because the customer is now coming in through agentic
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channels.
They want to deal with us in a very different way.
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They don't just want to talk to a customer service representative.
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They actually want the ability to make smart decisions about ordering details,
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and then they want to transact. And so, by the way,
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that changes the job of the salesperson.
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So notice we started talking about customer service,
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but actually what we end up looking at is, well,
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now how do sales and service work together?
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And if the salesperson used to spend all this time on the ordering process,
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but now that's being done by AI,
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it really changes my end-to-end thinking around the whole front office,
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not to mention there's a marketing story. So when you pull these threads,
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you may start with,
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"I've got a particular pain point in my service organization:
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handle time is too high." What you get to is-.
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Connected to something else.
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And by the way, we're unlocking growth and taking out costs at the same time.
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And Stripe is a key partner because agentic commerce is,
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it's one of the tools in our toolkit here as we reimagine the end-to-end agentic
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front office,
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but we think that agent commerce capability and obviously ability to convert
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at the point of transaction is essential and no one does it better and with more
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confidence than Stripe.
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And one of the things that we hypothesize for you is this idea that
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payment flows and their-people's interaction with their money is an actually,
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a critical experience that we've got to get right together.
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And when that gets wrong, trust is lost, and we're down the wrong path. Okay.
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But, Ian, I want to get your thoughts though. So,
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some amazing companies in this room, running fast, do you suggest, "Hey,
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get started, do something." Or, "Oh no,
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I've got to pitch a two year transformation." What's the balance of like getting
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the right visibility as CROs in the room maybe and getting back to the board?
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How do you pitch this? You got to have some early wins. What are your thoughts?
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Yeah. I mean, we get the sort of the two-year,
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three-year transformation push a lot. And
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I wake up every morning feeling like we're not moving fast enough,
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and I'm sure many of you feel the same way. We don't have two years or a year
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to accomplish our objectives.
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We've got to break things down into smaller chunks.
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And so what I believe is that, with the right focus,
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you have the ability to move the needle at a much faster
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pace, right? So I think my advice is, when you look at your business model,
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if you think about the customer or the user that you're serving,
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and if you take the time to look end to end at that journey,
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what you might find and probably will find,
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is that there are gaps or seams
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in the way you're serving the customer from kind of the start of the journey or
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like what we think of as kind of what our marketing function is kind of focused
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on doing through the sales process, through the post-sales service.
And so,
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when you take that end to end, and you look at those journeys,
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you'll find the friction points, you'll find the opportunities for improvement.
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I think you pick one or more of those high-value opportunities,
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you go at it hard, you ought to be able to move the needle in 12 weeks or less.
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We think getting started with focus and moving fast, that's your wedge,
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is the way you build momentum and the way you start to drive the transformation
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that we think of as the shift to the agentic front office.
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So the clock speed has to be much faster than multiple years.
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Yeah.
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When you hear-I don't know if some of you were here yesterday for the Sam Altman
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discussion, but it's like, "What is your planning horizon?" He said, "Well,
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I'm planning 10 years for energy and data centers,
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but we've got to move so quickly now." I think he said that they're planning at
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most like two years ahead. So, I think most of our ideas now,
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to make agentic a growth engine,
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not just the old sales funnel, into something different,
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we've got to have 12-week kind of turnarounds.
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You do.
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The world is just like expecting that from us.
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Yeah.
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And I think we're seeing that. I mean, I'll just share a few examples at Stripe.
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We, for the first time, are launching our first agent-led,
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entirely agent-led campaigns and outreaches out to you.
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I don't know if any of you've experienced that yet,
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but our early results are really promising,
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which just means that we've opened a dialogue with the user in a sustained
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agentic conversation, where we're able to assess interest,
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share insights,
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and basically prequalify a lot of the work before it even got to our SDR
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function. And again,
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we think we're actually improving the experience because these agents are really
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accurate. I mean, there's a lot of concern about hallucination.
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Believe me, real people hallucinate in some ways, as you know.
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So we're seeing accuracy, we're seeing interest,
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and that was a 12-week sprint to get that moving. And I've got to run,
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with the breadth of Stripe's product offerings,
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I'm trying to run 12 different motions or campaigns every
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quarter-hopefully not all to you at the same time,
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so don't throw eggs at me yet.
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But
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we
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want
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that
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to
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be
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a
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very
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natural
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experience.
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"Oh,
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it's
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Stripe.
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Yeah,
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I
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trust
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Stripe.
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What
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do
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we
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want
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to...
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Great,
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I
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didn't
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know
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that
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was
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available.
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Oh,
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you
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think
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that
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I
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could
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have
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an
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improvement
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in
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my
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operations?
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Yes,
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I'd
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like
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to
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learn
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more."
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What
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do
400
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you
401
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think?
402
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I think we all need to be... First of all, I think you're leading the
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way. That sounds leading edge to me, Tyler,
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and I think we'd all love to hear more about that story and the results,
405
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and learn together, but
406
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it's exactly the direction that we all need to be going in.
407
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Even for our business, again, 175-year-old partnership,
408
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50% of that is consulting,
409
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but we have big tax and advisory M&A and audit businesses.
410
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We're thinking hard about what does the future look like when our clients...
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They're engaging with us through purchasing agents, right?
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Majority of B2B buyers are now already using agents in their purchasing journey,
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and
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they want to be able to engage a firm like PwC and consume our
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services in a completely self-service,
416
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agent-driven model
417
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that is very different from what we've done traditionally.
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So we're on the same journey, and I think it goes back to that,
419
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the signals that you mentioned and the learning, the importance of that.
420
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We call it the "commercial brain," but this,
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getting your data organized with the intelligence layer and making sure that as
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you deploy these agents, you do it with guardrails. We talk a lot about trust,
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but also the instrumentation,
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so you are reading the signals and learning so you can optimize over time.
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Because, for sure, we're going to deploy agents...
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We'll do lots of great work on design and testing and whatnot,
427
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but we're not going to get it right 100% of the time.
428
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I think one of the key disciplines that you have to have is governance and
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continuous improvement.
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Your customer is not going to give you a long leash or have much tolerance for
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poor execution or bad experiences.
432
00:23:29.880 --> 00:23:32.960
Yeah. Okay. So let me recap what we've covered before we wrap up. So,
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there is a bifurcation happening, for sure. There are winners and losers,
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and they're emerging faster than ever.
435
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AI is one of the elements that's differentiating those organizations already.
436
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Some of them are AI companies that are growing really fast,
437
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but obviously that technology, those capabilities, are coming.
438
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Second thing we talked about, hey, it isn't just about throw AI out there;
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get back to the customer journey.
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And I think we've talked about customer journeys, at least I have, for many,
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many years, but now there's a new variable in the equation of like,
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okay, you thought you knew what the customer wanted,
443
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they want something different now.
444
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And turns out they don't want what you used to offer or the way that you engage
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them. Third step, find a process, find an area of that customer journey,
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get moving fast.
447
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How can they work with a PwC and a Stripe to make that happen?
448
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Look, I think we all learn from each other. Conversations like this are good,
449
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but
450
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every business needs to figure out what are the core capabilities
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that they have that create value for their customers.
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And then I think you look at everything else and you say, "Okay,
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how do I find partners that can do this thing for me maybe better than
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I can or can help me to go faster?" This agentic front office conversation,
455
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it's a huge transformation for most organizations.
456
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That's probably not the way you create value for your customers.
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And I think whether it's driving the change management or thinking about the
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architecture of the commercial brain or redesigning some of the jobs or
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leveraging a platform like Stripe to help you with the end-to-end monetization
460
00:25:15.660 --> 00:25:18.780
platforms that are required to grow your business,
461
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I think we all need to engage with partners to scale faster,
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to transform in more inspired ways.
463
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And I think those are the types of partnerships and relationships that we're all
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looking for.
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We're grateful for that.
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And I'll just throw in our point is we're not ripping and replacing anything
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right now.
468
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We are using the data that we have and exposing it in the commercial brain
469
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concept.
470
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Yeah.
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And it's just unlocking so much.
472
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So I mentioned agents earlier,
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it's actually just changing the way Stripe shows up better every single day,
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whatever the interaction point is. And we hope that you start to feel that,
475
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and we have long ways to go in that journey,
476
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but it's a bright opportunity ahead.
477
00:26:05.960 --> 00:26:10.640
And I'll just wrap by thanking you all for being on this journey with Stripe as
478
00:26:10.700 --> 00:26:14.120
we figure out this way. One of the concepts that we're working on,
479
00:26:14.200 --> 00:26:15.640
and you heard about it yesterday,
480
00:26:15.720 --> 00:26:20.520
is we know you need more of our data so that you can embed that into the
481
00:26:20.560 --> 00:26:22.140
intelligence of your processes.
482
00:26:22.200 --> 00:26:27.120
It's just got to get easier so that when your customer support teams or your
483
00:26:27.180 --> 00:26:30.000
CRO or your CFO needs insights and information,
484
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it's part of the intelligence of your agentic front office. Sound good?
485
00:26:35.600 --> 00:26:36.080
Perfect.
486
00:26:36.080 --> 00:26:38.480
All right, Ian. Well, thank you so much for joining me. Everyone,
487
00:26:38.560 --> 00:26:39.960
let's give Ian a round of applause.
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And I look forward to coming back and doing this again next year with even more
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stories of what's happening. Okay. Thanks, everybody.