Experience is Everything

Life is a series of experiences that continually shape our perception of everything. The great experiences are memorable, the good ones are often forgettable, and the bad ones can be down right unforgivable.

I was recently on vacation with my wife, and we decided to have dinner at this cute little Chicago style restaurant with good ratings. Upon entering, we were seated quickly, introduced to our lovely waitress, and served good enough food, but all-in-all it was pretty average at best.

Still on the hunt for a great experience, we gave it one more shot by ordered their award-winning, must-have, specialty pizza-cookie topped with ice cream. As we sat eagerly waiting for this confectionery treat, a tray of drinks came crashing down in front of me, shattering on the table and dousing me with various ice cold liquids. Unpleasant, yes, but accidents happen. Apologies were quickly dispensed, tables moved, and we were assured this would all be taken care of. I dried off to the best of my abilities, but was unwavered in my mission to indulge. Well, the cookie like everything else was just ok – leaving me cold, wet, and overall disappointed by the whole experience.

More than ready to go, our previously bubbly server quickly hurried past to drop a check and mutter the words “Sorry for the spill, I removed the drink from your bill”. I wish that could’ve just been chalked up to an embarrassed young person looking to run from a bad situation, but that encounter just led to a series of conversations with management about spill policy and dry cleaning reimbursement protocol. Ultimately, it took some heated back and fourth debate to finally be told by a second manager to forget about it and just go. For me, even with everything that had come before, that’s the moment the experience became unforgivable – and you never want to hit that point.

Jeff Bezos once said “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” I’ve always liked this thought because it wasn’t about perfection, but rather the discipline to consistently work at creating great experiences every day.

The Next Great Conversational Experience 

Over the last few years, we’ve built different applications on top of our predictive AI engine, allowing our customers to understand almost anything about the behaviors of the people that matter most to their organization. The challenge with any ultra-powerful tool is learning how to use it to its full potential… and here lies our biggest opportunity with boodleGPT.

What was once a series of button clicks and slider adjustments, coupled with personal organizational knowledge, is now a simple chat conversation. Instead of learning and managing a platform (ugh!), you simply ask questions and receive answers based on an intimate knowledge of your organization and a deep understanding about key groups of people – moving you more effectively towards your goals. The conversation automatically reveals hidden opportunities that are aligned with targeted individuals and outlines the strategies to execute. That is our vision. That is boodleGPT. So how are we gonna get there?

The Path Forward

It all starts with leaving our biases at the door and listening really closely. All feedback is good, but the best comes when a user can actually interact with something. 

First we began by “training” ChatGPT with data similar to what we could produce in order to experiment with the types of responses it could return. Though clunky and often frustrating due to ChatGPT’s limited memory, we were overall optimistic about its potential and started sharing our findings with the world.

After a few sleepless nights, our world-class data team was able to deploy a working boodleGPT proof of concept which demonstrated that we could combine our proprietary boodleAI insights with the foundational functionality of GPT-3.5 to produce responses beyond what was possible with ChatGPT alone. 

From there, it was a full court press to transition our proof of concept into a more accessible interface -allowing us to expand our user testing to the entire company. After a few more sleepless nights, we had a simple chat platform that users could log into and really start to put our initial experience through its paces.

After a couple short long weeks of patience, good guidance, and listening, we’ve come to a place where we are ready to introduce boodleGPT ALPHA to the family. The beauty of having existing rockstar customers is that we have built-in supporters who are excited to see our new bundle of joy with optimism. And are of course willing to offer honest feedback – even when our baby doesn’t act so well behaved. 

And now is the time when listening becomes most crucial. All the new usage and feedback will guide us towards the one thing we can be best at. We’ll continue to expand our ALPHA users and implement rapid – but subtle – enhancements. Once we land on our foundational experience, we will open up boodleGPT Beta to our waitlist, and eventually the general public, so make sure you sign up now!    

Help Guide Our Rocket Ship

If you don’t have access to boodleGPT yet, not to worry, we could still use your help! 

First, we’re launching a series of Prompt-a-Palooza Challenges on our LinkedIn page. We will ask the community to provide prompt ideas that could solve specific organizational needs. Each prompt idea will be submitted as a comment and the best ideas win. Our inaugural Prompt-a-palooza tackled the task of solving a nonprofit’s greatest fundraising challenges with absolutely amazing responses. Hint: prizes may be awarded, so be sure to submit multiple prompts and encourage your friends to like ’em.

Second, we have made our boodleGPT feature requests and product roadmap public. You are invited to request new features, vote for existing suggestions, and follow the development roadmap. 

Here are some of the popular feature requests:

• Set conditions based reminders and suggestions
• Chat/Thread sharing
• Download new target prospect lists 
• Create chart or graph visuals based on results
• Prompt response sourcing

We are excited to watch how boodleGPT will evolve, and not only empower us to deliver great experiences, but also other forward-thinking platforms. Next, our CTO Ansel Teng, will explore how we can meet all users where they are through thoughtful integrations.