The WordPress Agency Is Becoming Invisible: Why That Is a Good Thing | Vivek Jain

Hello everyone, thank you for attending. Uh I'm Vive U. I work with Ricamp. I'm the chief business officer and today I'm going to talk about the changing customer perception about WordPress agencies. I'm going to talk to you talk you through through a few shifts that we have been observing how we have adapted to it and a few takeaways that you all can take and uh think over with your team. I'll first start with what this talk is not about. Sorry to disappoint you. This is not an AI talk. There is only one mention of AI and not more than that. This talk is not about WordPress getting weaker. In fact, WordPress is getting stronger. There are newer adoptions, larger deployments and there are companies who are coming into WordPress whom always lived in the license ecosystems. For them, open source was never part of the conversations. They are coming on to WordPress. So WordPress stronger, better. That's not the story. Agencies, it's not a talk about agencies not doing a great job. In fact, agencies have been doing a stellar work. They're doing more meaningful work than ever. They are the average time that a customer is staying with the agencies at least for us is now more than six years. So that tells about how enterprises are using WordPress and how they are staying with it. So what is this talk about? This talk is about that change of that compounded identity that a customer perceives that is is changing. So for WordPress from a customer for enterprise customer perspective they think differently about a WordPress agency now and sometimes they don't even see it. I'll take a pause here and take a quick show of hands. So in the room, how many of you have interacted with a lead or your customer who didn't who mentioned their requirement but they didn't mention WordPress at all in that requirement? All right, I'll just take it a little further. A customer mentioning a requirement, they mentioned WordPress, but they mentioned something that is sent just beneath the requirement that is assumed. See if you there. So this is what I'm going to talk about that WordPress is not part of the conversations. It just starts a little before than that. My job primarily involves working with customers. usually the first point of contact with customers and I'm doing this since good like in my 17 years with Articam I've been doing this since 15 years and in the last few years I'm seeing some shifts and these shifts give me a pattern and those are the patterns and shifts that I'm going to talk about there are uh there are many but I'm going to walk you through just four of them which would give you a picture of uh what the shifts are and what those means to The first one is the RFP. In enterprise setup, requirements usually start with an RFP. Few years ago, the RFP would start with platform requirements. U the stack tech requirements, the security, the performances, the strategic questions about what customer actually wants. They used to sit somewhere on third or fourth page of that RFP. That has changed. Now the RF start with that business requirement. What they actually want from the website after after it is there. How the content operations would look like, how the pipeline would look like, how their editorial team, the marketing editorial team would use the website, how fast they want the content to be published in there. WordPress is mentioned sometimes. But again, now WordPress has shifted back to third or fourth page. Now this shift tells us something that customer is now thinking they're not starting with hey we need WordPress work they are starting with something that they would they're starting with a business problem and how a platform like WordPress could solve it the second shift is that's the biggest one um who is actually making the decisions so if you all ever have been like in the last few years if you had been in a decision- making room of a customer where customer are making a final decision there you would It was dominated by it before. Head of engineering, director of technology, um security heads. Um there were business teams but those were just consulted. They were not primary decision makers. The rooms that my team sits now, those are led by the business teams and they have business leadership at the center. uh think of people like director of content operations, director of digital experiences, uh there could be a CMO, there could be a CRO. Now the business teams, they're not consulted parties. they are the primary buyers and it is still there but it is now playing a supporting role to validate the engineering and the and the decision like decision that the business team is taking that the IT is just there to support and validate the decisions but they are not the primary buyers anymore and as per a Gartner survey that was done earlier this year for a B2B buyers it says that a B2B buying group now consists of 5 to 15 people that are coming from at least four different functions. So now a decision-m group is they are coming from different functions, different expectations, different success criterias and different different view of the platform that they want and since the people in the room have changed and so have the questions that are coming with them. So that's another shift. The third one is and that is a very important one that I felt uh whom we are now compared with. Few years ago we were compared with other WordPress agencies uh similar styles of working, similar portfolio, similar case studies. uh the customer just had to make decisions around I would say logistical decisions whether price point u uh their comfort like the geography where they can find quick replies where they find the teams but I lost my train of thought here but that is not the list that we are compared as upon we are not compared against another WordPress agencies Now we are compared against other digital experience providers, system integrators, software implementation partners for other platforms and sometimes these these these competitors they are not even working with WordPress at all or they are working if that is a secondary function that secondary solution that they provide. So customer has narrowed down the problem to who can help us with the outcome and not who can help us with WordPress. The fourth shift again the customer themselves the first point of contact that that is talking to you about the requirements even their requirements have changed they're not they are not coming in that hey we want to look we want to move to WordPress hey we want to rebuild our website to WordPress their requirements talk about something like hey we want we are modernizing our marketing team operations we want a better editorial governance across the a a full set of brands that we have or we want to we want to just enable a marketing team that can just fasten our pipeline and give us a better solution. So you see the customers they're not starting with the platform choice and then working outwards they are actually starting with the business problem first and they are working inward to find that particular solution. So to sum up four four shifts one is the RFP language is changing second the people in the room are changing third the people the agencies that we are competing with those are not workplacebased agencies and most important one is customer also have a different uh a different uh way of expressing their requirements. So that said what what that shift means to us what the shift means to u so this tells us something about a change in how enterprises are thinking about the outcome and experience this is not just about and in in my opinion this is not just about an enterprise buying experience that shows in that general buying experience too and this is something I related to my own buying experience that was buying my own first car. Flashback a few years ago, I wanted to buy a car. My auto engineer friends, they said, and I was always like, "Hey, German cars are the best cars. You should start with a German car if that's your first car." I like, "Okay, I would buy a BM." I looked up, "Oh, no, that's expensive. Maybe I buy a BM a German car, which is not as expensive." So, I went with Volkswagen. The model was this is called Volkswagen Polo. And for a second option, I had this because if not BM, I might as well have a car that matches the BMW blue iconic color. So I had two options and I was very much into Fkswagen. I wanted to buy it because I was a fan of it. I walked into the Folkswagen store. I booked the appointment with the rep and they started with all about the how great the engineering of the car is, the turbo engine, the top speed, u the torque and I was super impressed. That was the car I thought I'm going to buy and that's it. Like I love it. Then I walked into Suzuki. I went there and it also comes with a reputation. It comes with a reputation so much that a generation before me always preferred Suzuki as their first car. I walked in there and I said, "Hey, I saw Pelino and I like it." And they were like, "Okay." So before you make uh a decision, I would like to talk to you about few things and they asked me about is this your first car? What kind would you drive it inside the city or on a freeways? Do you like drive with stick? Uh how experienced you are with the driving? How big is your family? How you want your driving experience to be? And they just build on top of that conversations. And when I'm back home, I thought over it and any guesses and like think from customer perspective from my perspective what I would have buy any guesses even after it had a 4 months of weight I booked a pelino because after a point the cars didn't matter the conversations did engineering of course I I was impressed by the engineering but I went with a car which just suited my expectations the outcome that I wanted and that is the learning I took from there and that is the pattern I'm I'm just if I apply to WordPress and the general enterprise buying experience so the customers they're not leading with appreciation for engineering they are they are coming in with the problem in their head and the experience like what experience they can get and they're not talking to just like I did with two car providers They are also talking to multiple vendors right now and the vendor who can relate most to the outcome and the experience that a customer would want that is where the customer leads toward and that brings me to a very important point that in our space the platform identity is now changing to an outcome identity. So what's the difference? So if it's a platform identity, a customer looks us as WordPress experts. But if if it's an outcome identity, the customers are looking at as a a partner who can actually solve a business outcome. Of course, in their mind, they know that we are WordPress experts, but they know that we are solving a business outcome for them and not not just implementing WordPress for them. Now these are shifts and these are shifts I've seen in last few years but is there a reason behind it why these shifts are happening and these shifts are not very common to us this is now a trend for us and we have pivoted a lot to meet these shifts u one one of the reasons for these shifts is change is a change in who the customers are now few years ago the c the major customers of WordPress. The major users of WordPress were digital companies, the media companies. For those customer, website was the product. A reader would land on the website, content would render, ads would render, revenue will be generated and that's where the business happened. And if the website is your product, it becomes a first order decision. It's not an afterthought. you lead in with the platform that you want and then you look out and find the find the right partner for you. But for the customers that we're dealing with now, their website is not the product. They they would be coming from different industries. They would be coming from financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, insuranceances. Their product could be a physical device. Their product could be a document. Their product could be a service as well but website is not not the product that they are selling. Their website is just a channel for that product and by that I mean the website just becomes an enabler to get them to get noticed by their customers and helping sales close. Those are not the website is not something that they're using that's not their primary product. So the way I think about is now WordPress is just a delivery vehicle. It's not the deliverable. So the deliverable is a business outcome they want and WordPress the platform now becomes just a delivery vehicle. That said, when someone is buying when someone is buying or they are they are leading for a mission critical business outcome, they they don't want to uh they don't want to be fully reliant on a rented vehicle. They would want to own the vehicle. They would want to own something they can have it extend it. They can scale up or down. And this is what exactly WordPress gives them. So the reframe is not that vehicle has stopped ma mattering to them. The vehicle still matters. It's just that customer has has stopped asking about the vehicle first into the conversations. They are talking about the business outcomes first. And when when that is happening so how we as agencies change or what that means for us. So when an agency is operating from a platform identity to an outcome identity, even the customer's mental model is changing. They are not thinking in you just as a WordPress vendor that involves just WordPress. They are bringing you bigger problems. They are bringing you problems like conversion optimization, governance, digital experiences. So that essentially means that what customer could bring to you that range of those problems are broadening and that means more work. Um and is it because we are doing anything differently technically? No. It's just that the way we position ourselves, the way we are putting up our narrative that is changing and customer sees us differently now and for us it changes as well and even for customers. So when they see a vendor from a outcome identity they don't just introduce as hey this is a WordPress vendor they would say hey this is the vendor who has helped our marketing to hit their conversion goals this is the company that has that has helped us to u build editorial governance across our 20 brands. So the shift is from an vendor to an enabler and what it means when a agency so when the shift happens uh there are few changes so what and I just tell it from my experience when we saw that shift there are few things that we we did uh and we're still doing that at RTCAP uh there are many places the shifts show up uh and many places that you have to change the one of the First places is of course the places where you are not there to talk about yourself. It's your website. It's your socials and that is where the customer lands first. The first the first change of first adaption that one could do as an agency is your website should think from a customer perspective and answer their wise. So by wise I mean that you could have your website that could talk a lot about WordPress a lot of case studies great things that you have done but it's not actually saying that what problem is solved and that essentially means when a customer is customer or lead who is coming to your website um they may seen something that hey it's a great WordPress agency but they are not able to relate they're not able to find the problem they're trying to solve and they may just walk away and in any say the agency is really good. They're doing great work. It's just that customer didn't find something relatable and they just walked away. And it's not just about website as well. If it something is an AI tool, AI chatbot, I used a I told you I'm going to use AI once. So even there if your website doesn't reflect the content which is solving the problems and just talking about so the thing is like your content if I can just reframe it your content should talk more about why rather than what and how. So this is a reference from S Simon Synynic. I'm a big fan of his work. So what he says is it's a leadership principle but we apply that on our work and our socials that we should start with before thinking about what and how you should think about why and by why I mean solving that customer problems and if that is not there customer is going to land on your website the first thing that they have is and and this is from a customer POV so answering the wise helps to build our own website content but the customer thinks is what's in it for me? They are on the website, they're looking at or maybe they're on they landed on one of your landing pages, they're looking at your case study, but they think what's in it for me? And if your content, if your website, if your landing page, if your socials, those are not answering that question very quickly, I think customers just going to walk away and they're going to move somewhere else. And and this is not just a customer who has come for WordPress problem. They might just they're just walking away from you as an agency. They are walking away for not using WordPress because they feel oh WordPress may not be the right solution for the problem I want to solve. And we may notice or not but customers are customers and lead. Uh and by that I mean by customers and lead I also mean the people who are curious who are lurking in because in my experience we get a lot of inquiries from the marketing people who have joined their companies recently. Uh they are marketing managers, junior marketing executives who are there at a company and they are they are trying to uh transform how the web web work is done. So one of the companies that we work with they are and we have recently started working they are into a physical product manufacturing which is a sensor that they build for big big big civil architectures geo sensors for them all everything was working great. What now they wanted was they felt that hey our website do a better job at talking to the people because they said hey we don't get a lot of leads from the website but what we're aiming is that we are being checked on our website for before the conversions we want the website to be better and that was initiated by a very junior marketing person who felt WordPress has something and those are the queries uh we got from them so my point is the queries coming queries coming on the people with curiosity about WordPress they are coming onto your website and the your website and your socials should answer that and just a quick example of how we have done that if you'll see on our own homepage of course it mentions WordPress it mentions a lot of things but now it it also has which is like tangible we are saying that we migrate and unify if you are a brand with lot many brands we can migrate and unify we can help your developers to uh just publish content without doing any indicates we can just help you launch faster and in there we're not mentioning WordPress at all. It is just an outcome outcomedriven section that just speaks to the person who is coming onto the website and that could have a problem. The second part is what uh we are we have adopted and u uh is uh the second point the first sorry I'll just take a second So the website becomes website the social becomes your first point of contact with the customer like you don't know them they're just there they're looking up the second place which is the most important one now they're talking to a human which is your sales team your inside sales team your reps your account executives and they're talking to them and this is where what we have done and what I would recommend is to just go back back to basics So uh Nick Reman had a spin selling framework which is called situation problem implication need payoff. This basically is just a method to make sure that you are not just leading with what you know and your expertise. You are leading with first understanding where the customer is what their possible problems are asking them hey if you don't solve the problem what is going to cost you and then you're ending with that hey if we solve the problem how that would what change it will solve and I'll just give a quick example for that somebody coming to us saying that hey I want to move from site core to WordPress we know the situation they want to move from site core to WordPress we don't have to ask that because we already know it the then we'll ask the problem Hey, why do you want to move from site code? And then they will say a marketing has a very tough time to publish content faster and then we can just ask another question. And why is that? Because any changes it goes to engineering team, it takes a lot of time. Great. So if your marketing team is not able to push content faster, what is causing you? It's costing us almost two weeks of delayed brand launches, landing pages and we are losing to our customers because they are faster than than us and they're moving fast. Then last part, if we solve this particular problem, if we solve the if we solve if we create a U system in which your your team is able to just go onto the website, build a page and push it, what what change it would make? they they would say if you publish faster that means our landing page are out there we are getting more leads and probably we may see a 5% ride in our SQL that are coming to our website so now you know the problem now you know the solution and now you know your actual goal and this is just my version of spinelling which is a simpler version that we follow it's called start a conversation and conversion will follow so if you're genuinely trying to have a conversation and you're not going into just sell something WordPress you're just it's not just about WordPress if you're just not going and pushing for a sale you're just genuinely trying to have a conversation so you would look up the person you are talking to what problems they possibly could have and you would want to solve you'll have that empathy to solve that problem and that automatically turns into more conversations and if a customer or a lead of a person you're talking to if you have more conversation they build trust and of course there will be a point where they would become your client and you'll be able to serve Going back to the spin cell. So we understood the questions. We understood the problem that they have here. Now WordPress still is the answer. You see like we solving the problem using WordPress. But now WordPress is the is the answer to the right question which is us building an experience that could help their marketing team push content faster. So So that's the second space which is the sales side where you're trying to learn about the customer their problems deeply and trying to give them and try problem deeply and also the end goal what is the business outcome they want once you know that you are able to have a better conversation and then bring in WordPress which could just fit into the which which could give them confidence that hey WordPress is the platform that could give us uh that solution so sales the the second place uh where we as an agency we have adapted and this is my recommendation as the delivery of the site. Uh historically delivering the site making it live that's where the delivery conventionally we feel the delivery is but that has changed. The site delivery is now not the finish line. Uh the site delivery is not the outcome that customer have signed up for. uh the customer has signed up for their goal which could have been a pipeline conversion, editorial velocity, governance or whatever they are chasing and those results take a lot a few months to appear. So and they show unevenly. The my point is the agency job doesn't end at site delivery. It actually starts from there and it ties back to my spin setting a point where you understood where you as the client hey if you solve the problem what it would what it would mean to you and they said like 5% lead conversion. So after site delivery you keep chasing them every month you get feedback that hey have you reached your 5% conversion goal? Yes, great. If you haven't what else can we do? Can we help you with the design? and can we help something else or like uh is there a more UX conversion most UX work you would want. My point is knowing that knowing the end goal it just helps you to align with that customer's outcome and continue with it. Uh we covered sales what means for sales what curve for delivery. The last part is the talent that you have. So with these trends I said like shift of the customer the customer's conversation the focus on the outcome is changing. So for your existing teams there's not a big reskilling or upskilling that is needed right now. It is more of just a change in narrative. Uh if they are not comfortable yet to sit in the room and the customer is asking business questions before technical questions. I think that is where more internal conversations can happen so that they can be ready with those rooms. And for hiring, if you're hiring someone new, hiring people with WordPress, of course, that will be great. But what we have essentially done is we have we have looked for talent who are essentially good with outcome based kind of consultation and selling and uh they are able to have business business first conversation rather than leading with WordPress. So to sum up we have seen shifts we have seen what it means for us and agencies platform identity to outcome identity so has everything changed I don't think so what stays the same so my next two points will tell you what still stays the same and has not changed first is WordPress is still still the claude gave me this word I like that it is here WordPress still is the substract. It it is it is the most important thing. It's not going anywhere. So your technical depth, you being fluent in Gutenberg patterns, your team thinking when you're when they're talking to a customer, them thinking live in WordPress implementation, them thinking abilities API and things like that. So all those things are still at play that WordPress expertise never it's not going anywhere. There is foundation of the work still there. Community matters, contribution matters and part of the ecosystem. Being aware of the ecosystem and where the software is going, it still matters. The reframing is just for the positioning and the perception that the customer is having and just to adapt to that and then platform identity, outcome identity. So do does do you one should have a form that oh I have to move to a outcome identity. I should have changed my whole narrative. Not really. There are customers and in real numbers who wants a WordPress expert. They exactly know what they want and they are in the market to choose a good WordPress partner. And and for them leading with WordPress is absolutely correct. There is no change needed there. And so what I'm describing the outcome identity is not an replacement to what one is doing right now. It's just an addition. The outcome identity is now growing with the platform identity and and and just how the ecosystem is. There are multiple ways to grow in that ecosystem and all are valid. So that said, are you hearing me? Are you able to make out whether you are a platform focused company or a outcome focused outcome identity company? If not, there are just three quick questions that you can ask yourself and go back and ask your team. One is you can ask your client. Hey, if you were to introduce me to your peers or to another to another brand in your network, how would you do that? If they say WordPress partner, that is your first indication that your customer is looking only through you through the WordPress lens, just a software implementation partner, not a partner who can solve their bigger problems. Second, and that's an important one, there could be a few deals where you would have felt that you've done a stellar job. You had great conversations, great demos with the customer, but still you lost that deal. And if you would know, you would have lost it to a competitor that you didn't know were there in that list. And those won't be the competitors that you usually come across when you're working. Those could be somebody uh which is outside of the ecosystem doing something else. Third question is would be for your current projects um and there's a question you can ask to your teams as well whether so that we after getting the site live did we chase the customer and to understand whether we actually hit their goals or not we meet their goals or not if not that's a sign that there is some changes if at all you want uh you can go there To sum up, uh I started my talk that a shift is happening and platform is becoming a secondary decision. It is not a bad thing at all. It's a great thing. It's a sign of uh a mature ecosystem where the platform has become strong enough that it is trusted by the clients and the new people that are coming in and that's a great place for WordPress to be and it's a great place for us agencies to be in. This is absolutely not a case against WordPress. This is a case for what for us as WordPress agency is coming next for us. That's been enterprise. Thank you. Great. We've got a little bit of time for questions. So, there's a couple of microphones in the aisles. If anyone has a question, you're welcome to go and use those. Hi Vivic, it's Matt. Harry, how are you? Uh, thanks for that. I think you put your finger on something I've seen changing and I just detect that overall the agency space is changing rapidly right now. So, I appreciate you characterizing what the change is. My question is, and I think you touched on this a little bit at the end when you describe some kind of maturation going on, but my question is just why? Why is this changing and why now? Like why have you why didn't this happen five years ago? Like is there any specific set of circumstances in the whole ecosystem that are producing this change or is it just natural maturity or something? >> That's a great question and I can answer that from my experience. So um the the shift happened after as the companies who and organizations who came across WordPress not for their um revenue monetization for companies who are not digital media. So that shift happened somewhere in 2018 19. So there are big life sciences companies like Merc. Merc was was the first uh non-digital publisher and enterprise that I know that moved to WordPress. Uh and them using WordPress was never about content monetization. Them using WordPress was for their brand awareness and lead generation. And after that I've been seeing similar patterns from different industries. So we are working with companies who has nothing to do with content. So we working with um life sciences, healthcare, automotive, everybody just doing the same thing which is lead generation from their websites and that has picked up lead generation through a WordPress website is something that has happened in last few and that has caused that has caused all the changes that we are seeing. So everything is changing around that. So people who are buying it, people who are coming first for a query to an agency they are also changing. They are not engineers. They are not developers. They are marketing people, sales people who think if they are on WordPress, they would able to do great things that would just pick up extra traffic, extra queries from the web and they're just going to get more leads. >> Hi, my name is Alex. Uh, thanks for the presentation. Uh, I also have an agency and, uh, I'm interesting like how do you convey this message, this change uh, internally? How do you talk to your team nowadays? How do you make them shift the mindset from we need to code, we need to develop to we need to think strategically in be and take ownership of our decisions and like thinking about the clients. >> Um it's a um it's a great question. So if there's a style of working which is leading through WordPress, leading to engineers. So um so leading to engineering conversations it's it's it's a great way to win a deal because engineering conversations are objective like it's very hard for it's very easy for a customer to just see you are a great company or not when it's business outcome driven conversation it becomes a little difficult and that's a challenge for the internal team as well. So what we have done is uh we have spin like I mentioned the spin selling uh we make it a point that every AE going on a first conversation with a customer they have to do a due diligence. So due diligence starts with what the company is doing. Uh there is a audit that we do for every every brand that it would have. We would try to identify a problem. By that you would try to understand that what are the problems through which they are coming to us and they are saying that hey we want to move from our current platform uh and the possible opportunities that could be there. So conditioning the A the current A that we had conditioning them to think beyond the requirement that is given and think more that why the customer would have reached and what could be the possible solutions that we can give. >> Um hi Vivic thank you so much for your talk. My name is Janette. I've got two questions. Uh first one you mentioned that if your client describe your agency you know as WordPress partner means that they see you through the lens of WordPress. So in ideal scenario how would you like them to describe you and why? And the second question is you said um we need to understand who are we competing against in real deals. So you mentioned that you sometimes you would be up against like SAS company other kind of solution. um providers. So is there any examples you can share what kind of business that you're competing against? >> Yeah. Um the first question where customer changing their mental model. I'll give you our own example. So we have a customer who are one of the biggest in uh US called Cox Auto Automotive. So we used to work with them. Uh previously we used to get requirements which are like that. Hey um these are the things we have worked with a consultant. uh sometimes it could be deoid sometime it could be like any consultant that they work with they used to come up with us that hey this is what we want and then we used to implement it in the last few years so there was a talk from my colleague a yesterday he showed uh the AI uh the publishing I'm using AI again in my talk okay uh so uh he showed like how you can use claude and use your own design system to publish pages and now that is not a requirement that was that is not something that we did this time they came to us that hey we want to solve our editorial problems using clot how can you do it and then we went back in and so that's the narrative that has changed in last three four years with that particular client so we are seeing that shift uh second question was the competitors >> yeah who did you up against uh not in the WordPress scene >> uh so some are the obvious which are the other proprietary platforms it could be Adobe it could be Kentico sometimes it could be web flow Sometimes uh the others are interesting. Some those would be u more of a marketing agencies. By marketing I mean companies who are well aligned to solve that pipeline generation conversion problems for the customer. So those are the those are the agency that we come across. So they lead with that solution part and we don't know them like it's only very late in the conversation we know that okay this is the agency they do marketing solutions and they are our competitors >> and how did you address that if they are coming from marketing perspective >> we don't lead with WordPress we mention WordPress at the end of the document we lead with what solution that we can give to them we lead with our own solution that we are provided to the customer but WordPress is there so we don't we always want to come across as WordPress expert but a outcome solving company who can do things for you with WordPress. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Sorry, I know you said you weren't going to talk about AI, but AI is a big competitor right now for agencies and that people are like, well, can't you just like press a magical AI button and spin up your website? So, how are you seeing that in your marketing to clients? Where do you lead with AI versus where do you pull back and lead on the expertise of your people? >> I if you can repeat I didn't get the question correctly. >> Yeah. So, how do you determine when you're trying to sell your agency to clients? When do you lead with yes, we do AI, we understand it versus we are the experts here. Let us come to you with a solution. >> It's a good question. Um so we lead with AI uh for the things that we are very comfortable and we are very we have explored it thoroughly. For example, we are now super comfortable using AI claude to create pages on WordPress directly and it's a easy job but then we have figured out a way to put in guard rails where a marketing person can go go into cloud chatbot and just put what they want and it's just published on it just goes into draft on a WordPress site. So things that we are comfortable with already we lead with that. Um but like that said internally also we are very much aligned with uh the AI tools. So I mentioned about like how we do a lot of due diligence before going on the first call that is all run through AI. Now our CRM it when a lead comes in our CRM picks up everything inside our own system and picks up which projects that we have done what are the relevant case study. So an AE going on a client call before they go on a client call they have pretty much everything ready for them to just look into get themselves ready for the call. >> Does that answer your question? We've got time for another question or two if anyone has one. >> Hello Evic. Um I'm Victor agency owner here. What changes have you seen the impact of AI in terms of sales? I know you're in charge of sales. has that has that impacted and how does that um are there any trends that we should be looking for as agency owners >> AI affecting sales >> right are you seeing any push back or any type of pressure um whether it's um scope or budgets >> the way I think of it that is that um you cannot have you cannot not have AI into the room with conversation so u and as I said the folks the people who are coming with uh those conversations about using WordPress. They are the people who are exploring solutions and they are aiming for better lead generation um better conversions more people landing on the website them enabling themselves to do more things with less people. So AI is the right tool for them and I won't say it's affecting but we are mindful of that and we tell them the possibilities that would be there if they want to use it with the tools. I won't say it's direct I don't I won't say it's affecting sales but what I'm saying is if you are not open to have the AI conversations with the customer when they want to know about it that would definitely make you lose the deal.