Hazem El Zayat, Chief Experience Officer (MENA) at Ogilvy, explores why AI's true potential is still largely untapped—and how a strategy-first mindset is essential for making the most of MarTech.
Hazem El Zayat, Chief Experience Officer for the MENA region at Ogilvy, joins Sara to challenge the status quo of how AI is used in marketing today. From content generators to so-called chatbots, Hazem argues we’ve only scratched the surface of what AI can and should be doing. Hazem discusses why strategy must always come before tech selection, how brands can co-design relationships with customers, and why predictive modeling and next-best-action frameworks are the future of AI-powered experience.
Hazem:
"Is writing emails what AI was meant for? Not really. Let’s talk about predictive modeling, natural language processing, and elevating healthcare, travel, and more."
Links & Resources:
Connect with Sara: linkedin.com/in/sara-faatz-b67213
Connect with Hazem: linkedin.com/in/hazem-el-zayat-ccxp-2871593
Learn more about Progress: progress.com
Timestamps:
00:20 – The overwhelming MarTech landscape: too many tools, not enough strategy
01:40 – AI misuse: What it’s doing vs. what it should be doing
04:30 – Why chatbots often disappoint
05:00 – True CX: Relationship co-design, not customer “management”
07:45 – CX done right: Banks, airlines, and even a luxury retailer
08:35 – MarTech hot take: CX is everyone’s job
10:05 – Go-to sources for MarTech inspiration
0:00:00.1 Sarah Faatz: I'm Sara Faatz, and I lead community and awareness at Progress. And this is 10-Minute MarTech.
0:00:05.1 Hazem El Zayat: I feel like the current utilization, if that's the right word, is way off the spectrum of what AI was originally perceived to become. Is that really what AI was all about? Not really, as far as I'm concerned.
0:00:16.3 Sarah Faatz: That's Hazem El Zayat, Chief Experience Officer for the Middle East region at Ogilvy. Let's get started.
0:00:30.6 Sarah Faatz: Well, thanks for being here today, Hazem. I think the first question I would like to ask you is, what is the one thing from a MarTech perspective that's keeping you up at night right now?
0:00:39.0 Hazem El Zayat: I guess immediately the first thing that jumps to mind is just the vast sheerness of the number of options that are out there. And that's a question that typically we sort of get asked a bit too early, maybe, in certain situations. What's the right tool for me? Or can we see a demo of your tool or platform or product or what have you? Now, I'd say, obviously, on the consulting side of things, so we don't have a tool or platform to demo. We work with partners and software providers and what have you and so on. But we very much obviously come from the context of strategy precedes selection of tools and platforms and so on. And just making sure that we can sort of gear people towards that mindset of you've got to figure out the strategy first and then find the right tool to make, do what you want it to do for you, as opposed to buying a tool and almost sort of post-rationalizing what you could do with the tool based on what the salesman told you really essentially more than anything else as opposed to particularly the strategy.
0:01:36.6 Hazem El Zayat: So that's really what keeps me up mostly at night is because, is that, again, sheer variety of options out there and how easily, I guess, people can get lost in making a choice.
0:01:49.8 Sarah Faatz: We can't have a conversation about MarTech or technology in general without talking about AI. What are you thinking about right now with regard to that technology?
0:01:59.7 Hazem El Zayat: I feel like the current utilization, if that's the right word, is way off the spectrum of what AI was originally perceived to become, let's not necessarily say be, because it probably is still, there still is a bit of a learning curve. So I think there's a lot of dependency on, you know, ChatGPT is going to answer something for me or give me a presentation or an outline of a document that I need to write or write a better email or what have you and so on. Check, okay, it does that and it does that well. But is that really what AI was all about? Not really as far as I'm concerned. The next use case is probably around content production at scale and just using it to produce faster content. There's another article every day about a three-hour video or a two-hour movie or, you know, whatever it may be that was fully developed using AI. Okay, great, guys. But again, was that necessarily what it was conceptualized and brought to life? And when we say conceptualized or brought to life, we're talking, I don't know, the '60s, the '70s or whatever it was when it was actually started first coming on the table.
0:02:57.8 Hazem El Zayat: And the third use case is I'm going to deliver an AI chatbot or what people call an AI chatbot. And what it essentially ends up being is a decision tree that is based on an if-then-else statement. I come from a tech geeky sort of background from code and what have you. So I think I have very strong opinions about these things again one more time, whereas AI chatbots for me should be really much more about natural language processing and large learning models and what have you and stuff like that as opposed to, you know, again, a decision tree and an if-then-else statement where when the customer says this, I'll start, when the customer does this, I'll start. And then eventually, chances are it gets stuck. I still support those use cases. I'm not suggesting that they're the wrong use cases or any of that. But again, I just always ask the question, is that what AI was originally conceptualized to do for us? And I strongly believe the answer isn't. And I lean more towards the camp of what can we do with AI in the space of predictive modeling and predictive analytics and really trying to determine next best action, or next best use case or what have you, you know, to really elevate whether it's custom experiences or comms or whatever sort of interactions that we're trying to achieve, but also to facilitate things.
0:04:12.4 Hazem El Zayat: So when you look at all stuff that is being done around the world of travel and airports and hospitality, medicine, health care, all that sort of stuff. And I'm much more geared towards those use cases and that utilization of AI. And I'd like to see a lot more of that happen.
0:04:28.1 Sarah Faatz: Yeah, and I think, you know, I think that's brilliant. And when you think about that, probably one area, and you and I have talked about this in the past, where people really then need to focus is kind of on the foundation and foundational principles of marketing and customer interaction and human interaction. We've talked about that at some level. Can you share a little bit your thoughts about that? Where the basics and foundations are important and where people are doing it well?
0:04:54.8 Hazem El Zayat: Essentially, everything a brand does these days really ladders up to a customer experience in some shape or form, obviously, at the end of the day. So even your above the line, if that's still really a valid word, but your above the line advertising and awareness for a brand is essentially still a customer experience at the end of the day, because in some capacity, you're, well, on one hand, you're exposing somebody to the brand and that's an experience in its own right. On the other hand, you're driving call to action to pick up the phone or to visit a store or to get online or, you know, whatever it may be. So it ends up with a customer experience in some shape or form. And customer experience is obviously all about putting customer at the heart of everything that we do. The challenges and the abundance of access to devices, networks, channels, content, you know, all that sort of stuff and how the right versions of those need to stand out for customers to get attention and get the right action out of them. But I think the flip side of that is customer control, if that's the right word, right?
0:05:50.5 Hazem El Zayat: Customers feel like they've got control, right? They can decide when to engage, when not to engage, on what device to engage, or what language they want to engage. Whether they fully engage or not, you know, share data or not, all that sort of stuff. And that's the shift that we are seeing at Ogilvy. We certainly prioritize that significantly in moving away from what has typically been called customer relationship management or customer management or customer care, maybe in certain words and so on. Although I'm a very big believer that customer service and customer care are something, customer experience is something else. But they all sort of ladder up to the same thing, all around under the word, you know, customer management. And then you've got CRM programs and so on. We're shifting away from that narrative to relationship design, as we call it at Ogilvy. And I tend to put a spin on it further and go relationship co-design because design, again, feels like it's being possibly a little bit imposed on the clients. The rationale is clients or customers don't want to be managed anymore. They want freedom of designing the relationship that they have with the brand.
0:06:52.8 Hazem El Zayat: Which again goes back to when do I want to engage? How do I engage? What device do I want to engage on? You know, et cetera, et cetera. And the more we allow that freedom to happen, the more we're successful at getting their attention, getting their share of time, mind, thoughts, money, you know, social interactions, et cetera, et cetera. I've had a recent interaction with a fairly sort of luxury brand out here in the market, but I didn't necessarily expect that from the service I was seeking. So there's an outlet that sells, you know, high-end watches and pens and wallets and what have you and stuff like that. I just went in to get a watch fixed. And when I called up to follow up on the status of my repair, it was very obvious that the information gets served to the customer service agent very timely. You know, there are some good examples to cite in principle in the region. You've got the likes of airlines doing a fairly good job. You know, the Emirates of the world, the Qatar Airways of the world are doing a pretty solid job. Some of the banks are doing a fairly good job as well.
0:07:51.5 Hazem El Zayat: There's still a little bit of issueness sometimes in some of the comms that you get and what have you. But there are a few banks that are probably doing a pretty decent job as well. But again, I think it's really important to call out the ones that are not necessarily under the spotlight when it comes to that sort of thing. Sort of your airlines, your banking, your financial services. All of these sectors are very much under the spotlight, having been disrupted by, you know, in the case of FSI with the likes of the Monzos of the world or what have you. Whereas retail has not necessarily been a massively disrupted market. And seeing a brand sort of address it in a fairly stronger manner, it was quite refreshing, to be honest, as well.
0:08:30.7 Sarah Faatz: You know, we've talked about a lot of things, but do you have a MarTech hot take right now?
0:08:35.4 Hazem El Zayat: I'll need to go back to sort of the same premise of, you know, strategy drives MarTech investments as opposed to MarTech investments being upfront. It becomes a bit of a struggle on the brand side from who owns the conversation. But if you then connect that back to the net objective is customer experience resulting in better customer CSAT scores, MPS scores, retention rates, reduced churn, blah, blah, blah, and ultimately better revenue, then it becomes the responsibility of an entire organization. And in that case, you sort of remove the stress, hopefully, from the struggle of who owns the MarTech conversation and so on. I speak to a lot of brands and I speak to a lot of clients, and I generally always say the experience, customer experience is a responsibility of everybody in the organization from, you know, the security guard at the entrance up to the CEO and vice versa. It's not a one person or a one department job. That would always be my concern on sort of the whole MarTech conversations, like let's drop the struggle of who owns it. Let's embrace it as an organizational wide effort and a culture that needs to sort of filter through the entire organization. Even when it comes to, you know, HR or people or what have you.
0:09:47.3 Hazem El Zayat: On one hand, it's embedding, again, a customer centric mindset in all the people that we hire and the training programs that we do and so on and so forth. But then it obviously then connects to a very popular area these days of employee experience, obviously, as well, because that becomes the other side of customer side of things, I guess, in some sort of capacities.
0:10:05.3 Sarah Faatz: That's awesome. Wonderful. So one last question. Who do you follow for either inspiration or information?
0:10:11.6 Hazem El Zayat: There's a lot out there, again, in the context of abundance, some weird times, so there is a lot out there. But some of the go-tos that tend to always never disappoint is your chiefmartech.com, TechCrunch, a lot of the industry sort of publications, I guess. I mean, I refer to what we do in the consulting capacity, but we are part of a creative industry, actually, at the end of the day, sitting on the Ogilvy side of things. So your campaign magazines, editions across different markets and different regions, they're always quite a good source of inspiration and knowledge sharing. And then all the sort of the events and ceremonies and what have you and award shows and so on that go on. So, you know, the right ones, obviously, as well, because it's quite an abundance of those as well. But there's a bunch of those that goes on across particular verticals in customer experience and what have you on one hand, but also in particular industries. So there's things around fintech. There's a number of things around hospitality and what have you. I was at the Arabian Travel Market this morning over here at the Dubai World Trade Center.
0:11:14.4 Hazem El Zayat: And again, there's quite a lot of really impressive stuff that's happening with technology to showcase, you know, the latest and greatest in hospitality, in hotels and travel, OTAs, all that capacity. So it's quite a lot to see out there. It's a bit hard to filter through. But yeah, some of the obvious ones, like I called that, would be your Chief MarTech, your TechCrunch and some others as well.
0:11:37.5 Sarah Faatz: I love that. That's great. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for your time today and thank you for the conversation. Really enjoyed it.
0:11:43.9 Hazem El Zayat: I appreciate it. Thank you. I enjoyed it too.
0:11:45.9 Sarah Faatz: Listeners, thanks for tuning in. To make sure you never miss an episode, make sure you like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, I'm Sara Faatz and this is 10 Minute MarTech.