Resistance is Futile: AI is Changing the Customer Journey

Hello and welcome fellow Awsomologist to Awsomology. I’m Sue.

And I’m Ben. And in this episode, we’re talking about why marketers can’t afford to ignore AI, especially now that tools like ChatGPT are changing how people find and interact with information.

Yeah.

So we started off Yeah.

So yeah. So sure. Oh.

The dual chat GPT. We gotta talk about it.

Oh, for pity’s sake. Oh, for cute.

We should probably start over. God bless. No. Everybody outside of the, upper Midwest is like, oh my gosh. Stop.

This is like a Fargo episode I need to listen to for the next You should.

So we started off the beginning. Sometimes I am really aware of how thick my accent is, and sometimes I forget about it.

That makes one of us.

Okay. So, we started off twenty twenty five and actually, like, into the end of twenty twenty four, cautiously looking at AI and thinking about how it looked on our team.

And we knew we had a lot to learn about how it fits into our workflow and how we can use it, not ignore it, but how we can improve efficiency, all of those things.

And it was we really applied this cautious approach, and now six months later, everything’s changing, AI is everywhere, the conversation is completely different.

How how like life? I mean, people are using ChatGPT now, instead of Google for a ton of stuff. We’ve spent so much time, how many years, trying to figure out what does Google want.

And now people are going to ChatGPT instead for finding things, comparing things, finding recipes, gift ideas, researching products, therapy, as we discussed last week. So it’s worth having this conversation, like, where are we at? What do we know? And I think I should tag in a quick little disclaimer here to tell the listeners, we’re learning all this stuff in real time. Right. And we don’t claim any expert any special expertise.

Right.

We can tell you what we know and that we have more to learn. Yeah. And we have things to try.

Yeah. Yeah. Not we’re not an AI agency.

Right.

We are users of AI and it’s becoming daily more and more implemented into our workflows and procedures and all of that good stuff.

I will I I do wanna just also mention for anyone that might have heard the intro and is freaking out on any level, which might be people’s reaction to talking about AI almost anytime. But, actually, our good buddy, Dean, from Mission Disrupt, who was a guest recently, I don’t know, six months ago ish, maybe. I don’t know.

I what is time?

Something like that.

Just shared some really cool information on LinkedIn about how, yes, like everything you said is true. Like, people are using ChatGPT as kinda like primary search tool now more than ever. And Google search inquiries are also up year over year. So, like, people I think are just, like, as more and more people are more comfortable with going to the Internet for information, they’re searching all over the place, including Google, which is still incredibly popular.

Mhmm. And their data shows that it’s actually up. But there is this super powerful new thing, not just ChatGPT, but AI and several platforms that people are using to get their info right away too. So so don’t feel like, you know, anything that we’re gonna say is telling you to pull the rip cord on Google and understanding how that works.

And spoiler alert, they’re using AI too.

So Right.

Yeah. It’s just, it’s another tool in people’s tool belts now for sure. And a really popular one.

Yes. And spoiler alert, as we look ahead to the things that we know that we’re gonna talk about later, some of the advice for optimizing for AI echoes what we’re optimizing for on Google.

Right. Yeah.

So, and some of it doesn’t. Some of it may be the emphasis of what we were doing is changing, shifting, or Yeah. I don’t know.

And and maybe it’s more a thing that it is a mindset of shifting away from gaming Google Right. To just doing the things and creating good things and putting them out there Mhmm. And making them available Totally.

Which is what you should have been doing on Google. Yeah. So Yeah.

Anyway, because we were going to be talking about ChatGPT and because ChatGPT also helped me with the notes for today’s podcast, I wanted to give it a chance to I told that I was gonna talk about it. We were gonna talk about it today. I wanna give it a chance to get the first word here. So I asked it for a quote to get us started and here’s what it said. Hi, I’m Chet GPT, an AI developed by OpenAI and I’m excited, parentheses, and maybe just a little self aware, scary, and parentheses, to be a part of today’s conversation. Marketers like you are starting to use tools like me, not just to speed up work, but to rethink how people find and engage with information.

Whether someone’s planning a trip, researching a product, or writing an email, AI is becoming the first stop instead of Google search.

I don’t replace human creativity but I do amplify it and the smart marketers are the ones learning how to make the most of that shift.

You buying it? This is what ChatGPT is selling us.

Yeah. Very intentional response from ChatGPT letting us know that it’s maybe just a little self aware and it should we should be going there instead of Google first. Pretty interesting.

Right. Right.

But, also, can you deny any of that?

So, yeah. Well, hey, let’s dive in and talk about that big line in there about AI being a first stop for search instead of Google. Right?

So we’re gonna share a link to a a really cool article that shares some pretty inter interesting information about some of these chatbots.

Just a couple of quick numbers that I wanna call out.

ChatGPT has experienced unmatched growth, speed, the speed of their growth.

So they set the record for a hundred million users in just sixty four days Oh, how?

When ChatGPT three point five launched. So, again, one hundred million users in sixty four days. Unbelievable.

So And they waited those extra four days just so they could hit that hundred million mark too.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So that makes it the fastest growing consumer software, in history.

To date. Like you said, in six months, it’ll all change. Right?

Right.

As of May twenty twenty five, it still commands the lion’s share of the generative AI market around fifty nine point seven percent of people going to ChatGPT first. So pretty pretty amazing. So and that’s amongst other generative AI platforms.

Last thing I’ll share, despite rising competition, ChatGPT’s early mover advantage and ongoing upgrades, so four o, four point one, four point five, have all cemented it as the default choice across development, enterprise, education, and content workflow. So it’s it’s not just search. It’s like it being a tool that’s integrated and brought into platforms that all kinds of industries and verticals are using. Right? Whether that’s business, education.

It’s said as simply as possible, it is changing the way that all kinds of people and organizations work.

Full stop. Period.

Yeah. And I would imagine it’s part of it is the it becomes the relationship you have with chat GPT.

Mhmm.

Where if you if you’re doing one thing successfully with it and you learn it can do something else.

Well, now you’ve built relationship. So you’re gonna refer to it Mhmm. For that next thing and the next thing. Yeah.

And what I have noticed as I’m using it that it is also pretty adept at saying, oh, well, I could also do this.

Right.

If I did that instead?

Do you want me to take this and do that with it? Yeah. Totally.

Yeah. So it is aware that it can build this I mean, aware in quotes.

Right.

But it is programmed to build that continuing trust and relationship and get you to do more things Mhmm.

In it and become more sort of reliant Right.

On it Yeah.

To make your workflow. And no doubt there’s an efficiency there.

For sure. Oh, yeah.

But that it’s just the more we build that relationship, the more we’re gonna keep referring back to it.

Mhmm.

So the question is, now you you pointed out that Google Google’s also continuing to grow in search. But if people you know, Google’s sort of a one trick pony in terms of search.

And I think there have been enough there’s been enough chatter about some things people are dissatisfied about with Google, like the fact that you can’t it’s hard to get past the sponsored Yep.

Parts of Google to actually get to the things you’re searching for.

Right.

Certain things that are that Google is giving priority on your search page are not what you’re looking for.

Right.

So you have to dig to actually get to what you’re looking for.

That coupled with this growing relationship with any AI, not just chat GPT, but it becoming this trusted resource, I think leads to people just starting to skip Google Mhmm.

And move over to Chad GPT, which leads us to the question, if we’ve spent all of this time trying to optimize for Google, How do we make sure our content is going to get found if people are looking in chat GPT? I think and by no means do I have the perfect answer to that. Yeah. I think this is one of those things we have to experiment with.

Yeah. And I think we have a we have a unique advantage in ChatGPT in that we can search we can search in there as a user looking for our stuff and get what that user experience is, which I suppose we can also do in Google to some extent. But if we’re doing it, we’re doing it on our work PCs and we’ve already done a lot of things on our own website on those work PCs. Yeah.

So I think that affects the results Mhmm. Probably significantly. Yeah. So anyway, long way to say, what do we do?

How do we get that content found? How do the people that trust us to tell them the answer to this Right. Get their content found?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, probably a less than perfect or right answer from us for now, but hey, we said we weren’t experts in this.

It’s true.

True. A couple of things that we know are proven to be things that you can do, And it’s all valid based on what generative and large language models are as opposed to Google search. Right? Mhmm. These are two very different things.

So, first thing is no more rigid keyword strings. And the example that we’ll use is someone looking for running shoes. So if I was trying to build, content or, a search campaign or something like that for Google exclusively, at least in the way that we have known Google to work historically, I would probably use a keyword string like best running shoes twenty twenty five.

The end. Now, if I were to enter that as a prompt in the chat GPT, my results would probably kinda suck. Because Mhmm. Or chat GPT would be like, okay, tell me more.

What are you looking for? Right. And tell me more about you, and how do you plan on using these? Right?

Like, they’re looking for context, and that’s really what we need to shift to is from keywords to context. So instead of that short rigid keyword string, we would ask something like, what are the best running shoes for flat feet this year? Or what are the best running shoes for gravel in Central Wisconsin. You know, whatever.

Right?

Or somebody with, what is it, pronoun pronunciation or Yeah. Supination.

Pronate. Pronate or supinate.

Yeah. Right? Yes. So, you know, if you know something about yourself or the people that, you know, your product serves or something, that that’s the kind of context that it needs to give a relevant answer and make sure that you show up.

And we also know, like we’ve talked about, like search engines now are using AI to understand meaning behind your context.

So, to show up in the results, you need to be genuinely helpful Mhmm.

And actually cover your topic in a real way that gives people real information, not just, like you said, kind of hacking Google to get people to show up at your site.

Right. Right.

You know? Because that is something that Google has done for a long time, is connecting search results to relevancy and accuracy, right?

So, you know, if you were able to hack it and get somebody to visit your site, but very quickly people realize, yeah, this is what I’m looking for, and they bounce immediately, even though you got them to come to your site Mhmm.

That does not help you when it comes to ranking and stuff, or historically hadn’t helped you. Right? So, of course, it’s all changing.

Right. You know? But Right.

Like, I I think that, like, if there’s something that I want, like, myself to remember from this episode, but anybody listening too, it would be what you said at the top about like, really, this is what we should have been doing all along Mhmm. Anyway. Right? It’s like connecting people to real results, connecting people to real information, to the context, and not just using the keyword search tool and hacking a result, you know, to get people to land on your page.

Then, you know, really you know, maybe depending on what that page included or what was on it, maybe it’s driving conversions, maybe it’s driving business activity, but also could just be driving like page traffic, which Mhmm.

Isn’t the thing that pays the bills, you know?

Right. Right. Well, and it it feels positive to someone like myself, who, you know, I we have talked about plenty. We have talked about the fact that when anything you write, any content you write for your business should be clear.

It should be helpful. You should write as a human. It’s ironic, I think, that the this evolution in AI is really pushing back and being like, oh, well, what if you considered writing the things that you have to offer in a in a way that humans would understand them? So now bots are forcing us to talk to each other.

Yeah.

But to me that feels like good news Mhmm.

Because that’s the way that I genuinely believe you connect anything you’re doing to the people that will benefit from it. Yeah. And, know, as a marketer who is in the space to benefit people, that means a lot to me.

Right.

So I was never going to get good at keyword stuffing and I was never going to get good at disingenuous backlink sort of campaigns. I was never gonna get good at that. Yeah.

But what I and what I think a lot of people can get good at is think about what does this human being need to hear?

What is the compelling message that gets them connected to my product, my service? Yeah. And how can I say that in a variety of interesting ways?

Mhmm.

And how can I continue to tell the story of that?

And in in new and different ways too. Yeah. And keep keep the content on my website, on my social media fresh and interesting to people. Mhmm.

Which is what we should have been doing. Yeah. Dang it.

Well, and a lot of us were doing in our Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. And there’s also there is a lot that we have already been doing that, as we as we spoiled a little, that we were doing for Google, which is things like, structuring our content, using headers, using summaries, using FAQs Yep. And saying things in a conversational way. Those were all things that were tactics we should have been employing. Now, some levels of success, some levels of not success. Right?

Yeah.

But that’s a great tip to continue to do those things where you’re I think I think later on we’re gonna talk more about page schema and all of that kind of stuff. I don’t know. I’ve lost track and I can’t. There’s a chance that I can’t read notes. But headers still matter. Organization still matters.

Yeah.

Lists. All of those things still matter because it still helps chat GPT understand context. Right. In the same way that it we we have been told it helps Google understand context.

Mhmm.

So and, also PS, it helps people understand context Right.

Which really is what we should be writing for.

Mhmm. Yeah. When you look at the journey of this content like, you know, I just I think it’s interesting to see how AI is just like this this tool, you know, people have referred to it as an assistant, a consultant, whatever, along the journey from idea to publish content, you know. And again, circling back to something that you said at the top about how it’s getting really good at, prompting you for the next thing that you might need, you know. So, you talk about headers and page structure and things like that. Well, after that initial set of content is generated, a question that you might get from ChatGPT or whichever one you’re using is, do want me to format this for you in a place that can be, you know, published to your web page with h two tags and, you know, everything else that’s necessary?

And take advantage of the power of it to help you at least with the first version of that. And then, yeah, sure, when you plug it into your website, you might need to do a little cleanup, but that’s a head start that, you know, didn’t exist Mhmm. You know? Or you had to pay somebody to do for you.

Right. I whatever I was working on yesterday oh, maybe it was this podcast that I was working on. It also asked me if, once I had the outline, if it wanted me if I yes. If I wanted it to create some headlines for social media and some other things that I could you know, so basically doing that thing that we’ve talked about for a while which is taking in one piece of content, blowing it up Right. Getting it on multiple channels.

Yeah.

Like very smart. Mhmm.

Still just a part of the hallucination that is happening in AI because it’s taking that from the best people in the business. Right. Who, you know, that’s a tactic they employ.

Along with your own prior prompts to say, now I need a social media headline for this thing. Yeah.

Right.

So let’s talk about some other ways. We’ve we’ve gotten really deep into the the thing that I think we spend most of our time caring about, which is Mhmm. How does it affect us as marketers? Yeah.

It’s not just marketing, it’s consumer habit Right. That is evolving and you know, we’re all in this same sandbox together Mhmm. Where we are asking it for marketing help and other people are in that sandbox asking for things like shopping Yeah.

And price comparisons and reviews. And that actually, I went, when I started researching what we were doing, I went to try a few different things in there.

I got listen, I got mad. I was pretty mad at ChatGPT because the thing that I I was looking for, and I wanted ChatGPT to help me find, I already knew it was okay. I wanna buy a scooter. This is my whole deal. I want I personally in real life want a scooter.

Yeah.

K? And I’m also very cheap.

So I don’t want to spend a ton of money. And a couple of years ago, maybe more, you could buy a used like your little, you know, your little free scooter. Yeah. Two, three hundred bucks.

Yeah. You could tool around on that little sucker. I don’t know until the wheels fall off. Yeah.

It’s two hundred dollars worth.

Right.

You can’t do that anymore, not a running scooter, not one with the title. Yeah. You need a title to go on the road.

And I So, I’ve been searching for like a year and a half for a good deal. So finally, you know, I saw that people are doing this price comparison and up to and including Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, and it’s able to search all of those places at once. I’m like, oh, I wanna see I wanna see what you do. And, it basically told me, listen, you can’t find the thing that you’re looking for for the price.

Listen, Chatziqa T. Nice.

Why don’t you Set you straight.

Find it?

That’s so funny.

Yeah. So but also, I don’t know how many people know that you can aggregate a search like that.

Mhmm.

And just spend a whole heck of a lot less time manually searching only to be like, I don’t know why I’m not finding results for this. I don’t know you know, what’s assuming what is wrong. What is wrong with my search? What is wrong with Facebook marketplace that’s not showing these results?

Mhmm.

Where if, you know, I took it into ChatGPT and it’s like, no, it’s it’s definitely not Facebook marketplace. Yeah.

It’s just straight up these things do not exist for the price point you’re looking for.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, it gave me ideas of, you know, you could probably find that thing in running order. Like, was really it was interesting to to say because it went down the list of you could find it in running order with a title that you could use drivable right now, but this is the price point you would pay Yeah. For something like that.

Mhmm.

So a wealth of information. Yeah. And people can get that. I used it to search the best I wanted to see what would happen if I just asked it, like, the best meal in Stevens Point under twenty five dollars. Yeah. What and I specifically asked what do people say is the best place to eat with an entree under twenty five dollars?

And it gave me a list of four different restaurants Yeah. And a little bit about each one of them and the types of entrees they have and some of the things that people say about the different restaurants. And it’s, you know, restaurants are restaurants, man. Yeah. You that is just as good as asking your buddy.

Sure. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting and a good, use of it and, kind of interesting to think about how, you know and again, just bringing this back to, like, what we should have been doing always.

Like, if you don’t have things like your menu published, if you don’t have, you know, some connection to reviews or you’re not, you know, actively encouraging people to leave reviews and things like that, like this information just won’t show up when people are asking for it this way. So, yeah. That’s that’s funny how like it all feels so new and cool because it can all happen in one spot and everything, but the source of all of it is like the source that always should have existed. Right.

Right. But Or at least since the Internet came about. But Yeah.

Sidebar, but related. Can you imagine being, like, a consumer behavior professor at a school right now? Like a university was retired.

Yeah. Right? I’m out. I’m done. I have no idea.

Like, how can I don’t know what a little is I need to version of the curriculum that you taught in the last five years because of Mhmm?

Like how much change is happening because of stuff like this. I mean, now, I’m I haven’t done the like shopping experiments that you’ve done in chat GBT or whatever, but most probably just because, like, anything that I’ve been buying recently, like, kinda knew what I wanted or I’ve found it through the channels I was used to searching or whatever. I haven’t bought anything off marketplace. I’m not looking for a scooter.

But Okay.

But let’s counterpoint. Exclamation Services Scooter Gang.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

And jackets.

We should probably trademark that real quick.

And just, oh, the patch. We big patch on the back of a denim jacket. Anyway, please Sons of Anarchy in my Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s which is basically what we’d be. Right. Like that anyway.

It’s a little less killing maybe.

A little.

Little. No.

That’s it. That’s my digression. Just Okay. I can’t imagine trying to teach teach this stuff to people because of just how constantly it’s changing right now.

Right. Anyway.

Yeah. Yes. And, one of the things one of the things that I get the chance to do is to be on one of the one of the groups consulting to Mid State, the technical college.

Mhmm. Cool.

And in the last they do quarter quarterly? Quarterly meetings where they just get marketers together with the folks that teach marketing and talk about, you know, challenges and recruiting and different things that people are using in marketing and AI was a huge topic there. Yeah. And they their attitude is positive.

Now that I’ve now that I’ve named CheckMins today, I wanna make sure I’m being very careful here. They’re excellent at what they do. They’re doing really good work, but there is this sense of, we yeah. We don’t know how to teach.

We don’t because it’s pipeline for them. Right? And by the time they would have taught people what we knew about CHET GPT in January Right. Right.

And they would have graduated in May. It’s too late. There’s everything.

Right.

Yeah. So Yeah. Bless their hearts.

Mhmm.

We should pay teachers more, think is what I’m sounds good to me.

Okay. So, shopping, travel. I don’t wanna miss any of this stuff. Customer service interactions.

Right.

Helping, write emails and things like that.

Yeah.

I think I I would be really curious to find out how much business time is being saved by people just consulting AI to write an email.

Because sometimes Oh, for sure.

Those even like, especially if you’re talking about you’re trying to broach a subject that somebody, you know, a colleague, you want to keep a great relationship, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah.

And just having somebody else rate that so you’re not second guessing Mhmm.

Every three words. Yep. Is that just me? That’s just me.

No. Yeah. No.

It’s interesting to think about, like, the time savings to write write an email Mhmm.

Say things the right way, maybe to avoid conflict, you know, whatever. Right? I will say though, like I also wonder just as more and more people’s radar are up to AI, and especially with some really shoddy copy and paste jobs sometimes, like, how often does that backfire when the person on the receiving end is like, you totally had chat GPT write this. Yeah.

And then people maybe dig their heels in a little bit more or object stronger or, you know, whatever. Or you just have to deal with that conversation like, hey, like, is this you talking or AI? And like, let’s figure that out, you know. Not to say that that’s wasted time or unproductive time or anything, because some of those conversations might just be necessary anyway.

You know, like, hey, have we talked about how we’re gonna use AI to talk to each other and Yeah. With each other and keep things genuine and strategic and all those really important things. So, I’m sure the net is a gain for sure. Right.

But, like, I also wonder how much time is wasted because people just not quite doing it right or seeing it as like a purely, like purely a shortcut and not like a strategic move.

Using it using it as a way to say, like, I don’t really want to have to talk to you. Yeah.

I want ChatGPT to me.

Have to think about what’s the Right. You know, best thing here for both of us. I just want ChatGPT to tell me. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. Well, and I’ll tell you what selfishly, as somebody who writes like chat GPT with the emojis and the em dashes Yeah. And all of that, I wanna know how long until somebody calls me out.

Mhmm. Yeah.

And I have to say, no. It’s just me.

Right. Yeah. No. I and I appreciate that about, chat GBT, like like the em dash.

I remember learning about the em dash and the em dash in school and everything. And I’ve actually, like, come out of habit of using them because I don’t think people appreciate them or understand why they’re there and everything. And now, of course, it’s like, dang it. I shoulda shoulda been doing it the right way all along.

But Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, as as somebody who can’t stay on the same topic for more than about fifteen seconds, those I do find those very useful. Right.

Yeah. I’m a context person. I like to give you context. Yeah. That’s what’s always in behind my m dash is you get context.

Right.

So before we shift away to some quick tips, how are we feeling about consumer habit consumer habits? Have we talked about everything you wanted to talk about today?

Well, the question is where where do we get, where do we insert ourselves Yeah. Into those experiences? How what what can we as marketers do?

And for right now, I think my answer to that question I like to ask you a question and then answer it because I want a mansplain to you now.

Oh, yeah.

Well Yeah.

Goes around, comes around.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Exactly what we’ve talked about, make sure that we are making our information available, make it human, make it palatable, make it make sure it is consistent across platforms, do good work out there, and make sure that we are visible.

Mhmm. And that is gonna feed some of their algorithm. Yeah. You know, make sure I think the maybe, maybe I now I’m trying I’m questioning myself, did I read this or do I believe this or is it is this junk science?

I think maybe a thing to think about, to experiment with, is because so many things have gone, have moved maybe toward images and then metadata with the images in order to get Google to, pay attention.

Mhmm.

Maybe the shift needs to be back to words, back to text, and probably and still metadata with the images, but making sure that everything is aligned, making sure that if you have a great image, you know, I think we see and we do a fair amount of things where it is the text is across the image. The most important information is on an image.

Sure.

And maybe this is a call for making sure that text is on the page in the post.

Yeah. Yeah. So that ChatGPT can find it.

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I guess I would say, like, thinking of the question being, how can we insert ourselves into these experiences? I think right now, there’s maybe a bit of a feeling or perception of the output being like AI behind the human work, you know, like AI supporting the human work. And I think that that is mostly how things are happening.

And as it gets better and we use it more and there’s more comfort and stuff, it might flip and the place that we insert ourselves is kind of behind the final output. It’s almost like it’s humans behind the AI, the thing that is getting published or that people are seeing because it’s gonna it’s gonna get better. There’s gonna have to be less like rework and all of those things.

So we need to make sure that we’re still involved, you know, that we’re reviewing, that we’re approving, that we’re influencing what actually goes out into the world and not just doing the copy paste thing.

Right. And we’re going to get, we are going to learn more about prompting.

Mhmm.

Get more adept at prompting. You know, you you already see people sharing great prompts.

Right.

So I think doing that robustly probably will help. And I I think it behooves us to remember that these OpenAI, the information that they have in them, comes from us.

Right.

So the better we are as people are putting information out there that Chattypity is gonna crawl, the better the information is going to be. Mhmm. Yeah. So keeping things you know, having sort of a having pristine habits about your business. So old information is gone, new information is in its place, keeping everything, you know, clean and up to date Yeah. Informs what ChatGPT is gonna find about you.

Right. Yeah. Or any AI implemented or something like your website. Yep. Yeah. Sweet. Alright.

Should we Quick tips.

Start to wrap up with some quick tips?

Yes.

Alright.

First and foremost, review your web content for clarity and conversational tone. So this is bringing us right back to the first point. Like, it’s it’s all about context.

It’s all about conversation providing real, helpful, clear Mhmm.

Information. And human information, like said in a human way and supported by supportive resources, whether that’s images or data, whatever it might be.

Right.

So, I am I I would love to find a study that, had some sort of a like, I don’t know what you wanna call it, like conversational tone score Mhmm. Or something that could give like a, I don’t know, A through F sort of Right. School grade example of like the conversational tone on companies websites. And I wonder what like the national average would be or the average within the credit union industry or something, you know. And I’m guessing that people probably aren’t getting getting as good of a grade as they think they are, you know.

Let’s build that. Let’s make that. Yeah. I love that idea.

Yeah. The conversational grader. Yeah.

Yeah. Can I I side note, I just wanna throw this advice? Anytime you talk about conversational tone, if you are writing for your website, remember that people read to themselves like talking to themselves. So if you can’t say what you’re saying out loud, if it’s hard to say, it’s hard to read.

Yeah. Sure.

So the very first step to making it conversational is it’s easy to read out loud. Mhmm.

And from there, like, make it good, make it charming, make it interesting.

Yeah.

But if yeah. If that’s what my m dashes are for. Right.

Yeah.

I brought it back to my No.

That’s a that’s a that’s a good tip, and I’ll, plus one or validate it.

Because I I feel like when I proofread your stuff or when you ask for feedback on things, I feel like probably the most common, like feedback other than a straight up approval that I give you is something where I say some version of like, these words trip me up. Mhmm. Like as I was reading it, going from this word to that word or this thought to that thought, like tongue literally twisted or like my brain didn’t quite make the connection, you know, whatever. So yeah. I mean, exactly what you’re saying. Like, if you can’t read it without like the speed bump, then you’d probably need to change something.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. K. I feel better having gotten that out.

Good. I’m glad.

It’s all about me.

Yeah.

Alright. Next one. Test AI tools yourself. Understand how they think.

And I say that myself admitting. I don’t understand how they think.

Right. But that’s what the testing’s about. Right. Right?

Yeah.

To see what it will do. I’m absolutely fascinated by, you know, every time I’ve had an opportunity to go and just ask it, you know, to find I’ve I’ve done this with, guests we’ve had on the podcast just to see, like, tell me tell me everything you can tell me about this person.

And one hundred percent of the time, if it cannot if it’s somebody who has a website and should have like, we’ve we’ve had a lot of great guests.

Mhmm.

I’m trying to get I’m trying to be very careful because I don’t wanna Do you wanna call anyone out?

I don’t wanna out anybody. But if it’s somebody who has a website, has a social media presence, you know, has all of those things or or should Yeah. In order to run their business, then to me ChatGPT not being able to find them anywhere is kind of a red flag. So then I go and look and say, oh, no.

Actually, I can’t tell any I don’t know anything about you. You have a lot of words, but all of them read like a LinkedIn header. You know? Yeah.

Synergizing with my I don’t know.

Yeah.

Synergistic fractional.

Clearly Sue has a trigger word.

Got it. Maybe. Maybe.

Yeah. The point is test. Right? And and understand, how the input affects output and how these things think.

Right. And what and how if you can find yourself. Yeah. And when you find yourself.

I know you’re probably getting sick of hearing all the different things that I have tried. I also tried with one of our clients to have it give me, sort of the social the ostensibly, it would be it’s all probably based on Google Google reviews. It’s reviews.

Sure.

Right? But I what I was looking for was people sentiment, the public sentiment about the client.

Sure.

And then asked it to compare. You know, basically prompted it as if I was looking for, you know, for what this business did. Yeah.

It came back and said, yeah, actually, I would go instead of this one, would go to that one.

Interesting.

That’s not great. Yeah. Yikes. So that’s but it’s good to know that.

So if you if you’re a business who relies on customer sentiment and what business doesn’t rely on customer sentiment Yeah.

Go out there and find what chat GPT or any AI can tell you about your business. And if that is a thing you want to fix, you know, a place you want to grow, if you care how people feel about you, it gives you an awful lot of information.

Yeah. I love that. Super practical. Okay.

So, okay. We’re we’re going back and forth.

Oh, yeah. Sorry.

Are we or are we not?

Yeah. Let’s do it.

We’re gonna find out.

So we we talked a little bit about this. Explore the ways to make your brand part of an AI answered conversation.

So again, that is making sure that your information is clean and clear, structure that data, h one heading, h two heading Mhmm. FAQs, bullet points, numbers, whatever it needs to take, structure it, and make sure that you are talking about your brand because it is it’s it’s crawling words. Right.

And if you’re not And documents and Yeah.

Yeah.

If you’re not using your own name, if you’re not putting your reputation out there, it’s not going to find your reputation.

Mhmm. Ditto? Can I just say you can ditto? Okay. Perfect.

Sure.

Alright. Last one. Be safe.

You know, and of course, this is, you know, maybe what feels like it should be obvious by now when we talk about AI, uploading personal information and things like that, you know. At the end of the day, we we don’t fully know or fully understand like where this stuff is living, how it might show up elsewhere, and all of that. So be safe, be smart, put together a policy, you know, and even if that policy is not super comprehensive, but just as like a high level way to get your team aligned on here’s how we use it, here’s how we don’t.

If you don’t know something, this is your opportunity to stop and ask, and we’ll develop his policy more in the future or whatever. And then, all the copyright things. Right? So like the stuff that’s created, know, that’s not copyrightable, you know?

So Right. Understanding that, and that who know again, here’s another role I don’t want right now, a copyright lawyer, you know? Yeah. Because like all of this stuff is growing and AI is influencing it, what does that look like in the future?

You know? So, be smart, be safe. I don’t wanna say like be conservative and don’t test and try, but you know, just do it as mindfully as you can.

Yeah. I would and I would say in terms of copyright, watch out for your own copyright. Yeah. Watch out for other people’s not infringing on other people’s copyright.

That is, definitely why I think we’ve pursued this best practice of take notes, bullet points, ideas, from chat GPT and let that inform what you’re doing. Mhmm. Don’t take something of whole cloth Yeah. And publish it as if it’s your own.

Right.

You know, and especially don’t do that like one of the things that we do on our website is if we have if one of us writes a blog, then we list them on our website as the author. Mhmm. Yeah. So don’t for pity’s sake oh, for pity’s sake, don’t go on chat you b t, have it write you something then put it on your website listing you as the author.

Yeah.

So we’re there.

We did it. Holy smokes.

So final takeaways.

I think the big one is evolve or get lost.

Right. Yeah.

Be be ready to pivot. And you’re not gonna be able to change everything overnight.

Mhmm.

You’re not if you’re listening to all this stuff and we have said terms you’ve never even thought about or things that feel like a whole lot of work to change Yeah. You’re not gonna change it tomorrow. Yeah. But that’s why evolution is this slow process. Yeah. And if you’re committed to evolving, then a lot of us are gonna catch up.

Right. For sure. Yeah. And some of the questions that we have about it all are gonna get answered.

Know? Right. I feel more like hopeful about it than I did maybe like a year ago or something. Like, it felt pretty scary for a while there Yeah.

Just seeing like the pace of everything and and all of the questions that came out, like, how does this work? How does that how’s that gonna this aspect of my life or my job or whatever, right? And I think as you experiment with it, as you work with it, as you test, you get more comfortable with the uncertain future and the pace and Right. All of that stuff, which, you know, it’s of interesting for the last five years.

I feel like this is just the way things work now. Right? We just fly into the unknown and get comfortable with not knowing what the hell’s going on. Right.

But I that definitely applies to chat GBT. Just do your best to stay up to date and evolve, and it will feel better if it if it scares you, you know?

Yeah. You know the thing that on that topic, the thing that really changed my attitude about AI in general is the course that we took through master class. And the one the one expert in that AI course who, the quote was, all AI does is hallucinate. It’s all a hallucination.

It is all taking information, putting it together in a way that’s meant to simulate a sentence. Yeah. So, whether it simulates a sentence or not or whether the sentence is correct or not or any of that, Chattyputee is not worried about. Yeah. It’s all a hallucination.

And once I understood that, that it is learning and growing, but it is essentially taking everything that it can possibly access and putting it together in a way that seems to make sense based on the data it has, it became a lot less scary to me. Yeah. It became a lot less like something crawling up out of a big dark pit.

Yeah.

So if don’t know if that’s helpful or if it doesn’t make any sense to anyone, but helps me sleep at night.

Yeah. Alright. I think that was a good conversation.

It was.

I don’t know what we did to people.

You’ve got that You’ve got that last line in quotes in the notes and I know.

I can’t I was afraid to skip it because it’s so cheesy.

Yeah. And I can’t read it. You gotta read it.

Okay. Well, we’re not saying Ben, so cheesy. We’re not saying that ChatGPT is taking over the world, but if it starts writing your grocery list, maybe keep an eye on it.

For sure.

Check those So cheesy.

Check those nutrition labels. Who even does this? I love it.

Okay.

Well, you know what I love? I love creating Awsomology for our listeners, and we’re always excited to have them here with us. So thank you for listening. You can always learn more about us at our website exclamation qso dot com and find us on the blog, exclamation kuso dot com slash blog.

Thanks friends for tuning in. Be awesome and we’ll see you next time.

The Ophthalmology Podcast is a production of Exclamation Services. Executive producers are myself, Ben Bauer, and my friend, Suzanne Campbell.

Thanks to Kylie Ganther for our show artwork, Scott Saager for booking our guest, and Alex Westerhausen for social media support.