So, Andy, I love that. I just it's so fun. Yes. Thanks, Chris Zimmerman. He's laughing. Yes. Yes. I'm I'm laughing too. The B2B search and discovery process will look completely different by the end of twenty twenty six. Completely different. Wow. What does that mean, Andy? So what's going on? Share some data, mister Data Man. Yeah. So Forrester published a really interesting report, cited a couple of interesting statistics. So the next slide will indicate this. This one surprised me a little bit. Yeah. So we know that, you know, various levels of adoption are taking place in B2C and B2B companies. But what this data shows is that the adoption rate for Gen AI is much higher in B2B companies than is in B2C companies. I mean, maybe the point here about the person who's using it eighteen times a day is instructive. Right. But I think most people would have thought, oh, B2C is farther ahead on this than B2B. I don't think so. And Forrester says eighty nine percent of people they talk to in B2B are either using or plan to use generative AI tools in the purchase of products or service. In the purchase. So, it's almost three to one. And the other piece of data that was kind of fascinating here is that the conversion rates are noticeably higher right now for early ChatGPT sales. So, you can go to the next slide, you'll see that ChatGPT is holding its own. In fact, it's doing better than that. The conversion rate is better than direct, better than paid search. Eleven point four percent from ChatGPT. That's incredible. We're early here. This could vacillate. It'll probably regress to the mean and go down a little bit some, but early indicators are that the conversion rates are high, which I think goes against conventional reason, which is now leading us to the last piece here before we have our special guest join us. Next slide. Is that, you know, we believe that B2B sellers are going to have to really up their game around search. In particular, guided selling is going to be really important because the metaphor that's shifting here is people aren't just going to a box and entering something and waiting for a result. They're talking to chatbots, they're using facets, etcetera. So, we wanted to get a little more insight into this from somebody in the industry. So, we're really thrilled to have Sheerine Reid join us today from Coveo. So, if we could bring Sheerine in, that would be great. Here she is. So, Sheerine is pro. She's been with us the last couple of years and we should see how well your predictions have come to pass, Sheerine, if we're gonna hold everybody else's I'm scared actually, if you go back and look at my track record. Hopefully, it's on point. Do you agree with us, Sheerine? That's the first question. Yes, always. Thanks for having me, by the way. So the next generation of guided selling. So what does that really mean? I always like to take a step back because I find, you know, that word AI is used a lot and it's thrown around a lot. So I like to kind of break it down a little bit and unpack it. And if we look at just AI, in essence, you know, machine learning algorithms that predict outcomes, using things like this is typically is for retrieval and ranking of products recommendations, maybe to deliver some kind of personalization. So typically, and hopefully, most B2B companies right now have that at least powering their search box, right? So that's kind of the basic one. If you look at you had a startup there around Gen AI. So Generative AI is really around you starting to use those large language models, LLMs, to create like new content. So an example that I like to give always is like, you know, if you summarize product reviews on a website, if you see those little summary, so that's generative. If you then take it to the next level, which we see popping up on a lot of sites now is that conversational AI, right? So it's more natural language dialogue. It's in the realm of AI assistants, intelligent chatbots, those kinds of things that we see around up and around. And then related to that, we have the new term that probably everybody's sick of hearing already with all the hype is Agentic AI. So it's not only able to carry on that intelligent conversation, but it's also able to like reason and act on things. And so we take it a step further, right? So what a buyer is doing, wants to do research products, compare them, and then even buy autonomously. So that's in the realm of Agentic AI. So if you lump all this stuff together, definitely agree that, you know, product discovery is going to start to look a lot different. It's not just going to be about enabling, you know, you to go on a site and searching by SKU and finding the right products. It's really, I think going to come down to two big factors. So the first thing that we see is that conversational interfaces are going to start to go native. And what do we mean by that? It means that right now, are still in this kind of dichotomy where they have a disjointed experience. So they have, you know, your typical product search, box up there that you can go in and write a product. And then they have these side things, these chatbots on the, that you can go in and ask a question, or it's really in a, even a separate part of your site sometimes. And I think that you want to start bringing those pieces together. And you want to start being able to either propose products, or answer questions without sending your buyers to a separate part of your site. So I think with the technology maturing as quickly as it is, it's going to be able to understand the nuance between providing a list of products versus when to offer an answer and also being able to take keep that conversational context that intermixes products, suggestions, answers all within a conversation. And if you take that to the extreme, you know, in an ideal world, you want also your post purchase support to be able to be answered by that same search box, product discovery box that you have there. Okay. So Sheerine, we have to ask the I know you have another point. So hold it for one We all think that this is gonna change the game. Let's go ahead and pop the poll question. And while you finish your comments, let's ask the audience to chime in. Should see it up here. Hold my fingers crossed that everybody Your fingers are crossed that you made the case. The search discovery process will look completely different. Folks, vote yes or no whether you agree. Sheerine, go ahead and finish your comment while Yeah. Just the second part of that is that, you know, we see emerging a product and content in especially on the B2B side. And that might be why you see such a high difference between the adoption of B2B and B2C is because you have all these technical specifications, compliance documentation, installation guides, whatever it is that you have all that rich content. And you need that to become searchable in order to drive that conversational experience, right? So companies, I think that start treating that content as a discovery tool versus, you know, an afterthought for marketing purposes, they're really going to be able to provide these rich experiences that mirror really how B2B purchasing is made right with the research in advance and the specification validation and all that stuff. And we have one customer I wanted to point this out that has, for example, already has this vision of like one portal for you know, every stage of the customer journey. It's ABB robotics, and they want their customers to both discover and transact on that place. So you can come in already in their experience and type in something like welding software and get products. Or you can ask them more complicated question like, how does, you know, my robot studio software interact with my robot seller, whatever it is that they have, and then be able to get an answer for that. That's that's really Hard item shift to starting. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So let's go ahead and reveal our poll results. See if the audience agrees with us. What did they say? Yes. Sixty two percent said yes. Alright. Thirty eight percent said no. So thank you everybody for voting on that. That's interesting. So, yes, we got a vote of confidence there. Sheerine, thank you. I mean, thank you. Prediction prediction. Andy. This one's all yours, and it's also related to AI. Go. Well, it's all interrelated, yes, B2B e commerce teams will own the questions and answers to product questions. Justin referred to it. Shereen referred to it. What are we talking about here? Well, on the next slide, you can see there's this acronym called EAT. You know what EAT is. Right, I do. Expertise, authoritataneous, and trustworthiness. The point of this is that there's a way to create better AI friendly content. And the one I would highlight here is citing trusted sources, for example, trade publications, analysts like us, customers, and the number one one is product reviews. That's what this research has shown is the stuff that the the AEO engines really like and want to ingest. So what we've predicted is that B2B companies will have to invest in things like newsletters. They have to create their own EAT content. And on the next slide, you'll see they don't have a lot of time because we polled this earlier this year and we found seventy six percent of the people polled said that AEOGEO was going to overtake SEO, sorry for all the acronyms, within one year. So they've got to do this sooner versus later. And, you know, we wanted to bring Sheerine Reid from Coveo, search and discovery vendor Coveo, back in to get her quick thought on this one because, obviously, data and search are all interrelated. So if we could bring Sheerine back in. Let's go ahead and pop the poll question right at the beginning of this to see if we can get some feedback from everybody. But Sheerine, what do you think? Do you agree? Yeah, I do. I mean, people are already starting to think about it ourselves too, internally within Coveo as well. But I think, you know, some of the short term things that you could look at doing is really understanding how people are searching on your site, because they might have already started using some of those longer, more complex queries and asking questions and using that information to inform where you should be developing out your content and what kind of questions you need to be answering. And another quick and and good way to do this is adding an interactive or conversational search capability on your product pages, and that can generate answers. So it's almost like having a sales rep in front of you and asking questions about a product. And those types of questions are like gold, right? They can can really drive your content strategy and the things that you need to then expose to something like for GEO and it can be indexed and then drive people to your site. If they're asking those questions on your site, chances are other customers out there are asking the same thing and want those answers. What about what Justin said regarding video? He said they're investing heavily in short form video to retain relevance. Is that something that you're seeing your customers investing in? Or is that a trend you're observing? Yeah. And I well, not so much, but I think that, you know, also short form video, you have the capability of easily creating the the transcript from those and having that transcript transcript then searchable. I know that we're doing that with at Coveo as well. So that's exactly true. We had a roundup yesterday and people are saying that the video itself is not as useful as the transcript from the video that is now textual and searchable. So let's see those since we've talked about the script. So let's go to the poll results and see what they have to say on this one because we've had a few conversations about this one so far, so we could see. Okay. Sixty six thirty four. Yes. Wasn't it sixty six on the first one? What is this? Yeah. Yeah. It yep. Yep. We we paid them. This is all rigged. Well, we can see the numbers. We can actually see the numbers behind it, are state secret. But, yeah, the numbers are different. So I I I'm I'm kidding. But it's it's no. But that's interesting. Yeah. B2B e commerce teams will own this this process. Process of of product questions. So Well, and you wouldn't think this was you wouldn't think this is controversial. Right? But it is because Right. The e commerce teams have been separated from this. So they're gonna have start doing content marketing like the B2C guys have. Alright, Sheerine. Thank you again for making another quick update for us. We appreciate your support.
