How do you explain something that’s never been seen before?
By flying above the clouds, Jacqueline Cochran also broke through the glass ceiling. During WWII, she brought women’s aviation to the forefront of the war effort. She taught women to be as good if not better at flying than the men — redefining aviation education at the time.
In aviation, understanding your product can make the difference between life and death. Though the stakes aren’t as high for a lot of us, customer education is a crucial part of CX. Ben Kovalis, Co-founder and CMO of Art AI has become a pro and fierce advocate for customer education.
Experience: Educating your customers
Inspiration: Jacqueline Cochran and the WASP
Modern Day Execution: Ben Kovalis, Co-founder and CMO, Art AI
Three Takeaways
Key Quotes
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Narrator: The world around her was speeding by. The plane engine roared and she could hear the air whipping past, even through the cockpit. Then things got quiet. All she heard was her own breathing and the slight shuffling of papers. The exhilarating flight turned eerily smooth and calm. And then, boom.
She had just crossed an important threshold. Jacqueline had just become the first woman to break the sound barrier.
That was in 1953, and Jacqueline’s successful aviation career was already well under way. She was known in the industry as a force to be reckoned with, and always had been.
Jacqueline first saw an airplane on a Sunday in 1932...her first time flying solo was the following Monday. Initially she used flying as a means to sell her makeup brand directly to distributors and customers. By the time WWII rolled around, Jacqueline was an experienced pilot. And she was disturbed by the astronomically high death rate of US pilots. As she looked into it, she discovered something even more shocking:
More American pilots died on US soil than in combat. Throughout WWII, over 52,000 airplane accidents happened in the United States, and almost 15,000 pilots and crew members died.
It wasn’t hard to see why. The education and training of the pilots was abysmal. With some only having an hour of training on the plane they had to fly into combat. One Colonel even told pilots that they could learn to fly the planes on the way to their target.
This was at a time when the vast majority of Americans had never even been on an airplane. It was the epitome of a new technology that people didn’t understand and didn’t know how to use. And the consequences were disastrous.
But this gave Jacqueline an idea. It involved some important user education. And with it, she was able to save countless lives.
So tighten your seatbelt, put your seat back in the upright position and stow your tray tables, because we’re about to learn how user education can save lives, and save your CX.
Welcome to Often Imitated, a podcast about remarkable experiences from the past, and how they inspire people to create great customer experiences today.
This episode is all about educating your customers. How Jacqueline Cochran trained women pilots during WWII, and how you can educate your users today. In this episode we’ll hear from Ben Kovalis, co-founder and CMO of Art AI, about how they’re working to educate their customers about what AI-generated art is. But first, a word from our sponsors.
Often Imitated is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Learn more at oracle.com/cx.
From the beginning, Jacqueline knew she had to be prepared and convincing to get her program off the ground, heh. She wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt that she wanted to put together an all women aviation school.
Her proposition was that the Air Force needed more men for flying into combat, and she had figured out a solution. There were a variety of non-combat tasks that were being done by plane in the US, and Jacqueline figured if she could educate women to become pilots, then those men would be able to join combat missions. It took some bureaucratic maneuvering, but soon the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP organization, was formed.
The women who were recruited to join were required to do the same basic training as their male counterparts. But more women went into specialized flight training. They’d know aircraft mechanics, Morse code, meteorology, physics, navigation, and whatever else came up. Every day they’d be training. For 12 hours a day, day in and day out their minds were solely focused on learning anything and everything about the planes they would soon be flying.
When WASP pilots graduated, they’d have 560 hours of ground school and then 210 hours of flight training. Compared to the men who’d only have 65 flying hours and 75 hours of training. Jacqueline educated her pilots to be the best, because they needed to be.
WASP pilots were placed at 122 air bases throughout the US. They’d ferry planes from factories to airbases, move cargo, and also...tow targets for troops to practice shooting at. You can imagine how dicey that got. Some soldiers who hit the plane claimed that they thought they had to shoot the plane and not the massive target...we’ll let the historians figure that one out.
When it came to ferrying planes, they ensured that their pilots were trained to fly any plane that was asked of them. They ended up ferrying over 12,000 planes and over 78 different types of planes. Meanwhile the men who were suffering so many accidents and injuries were usually only trained in one type of plane, and were often given responsibilities outside of their training when they were deployed.
Jacqueline dedicated her life to being a top notch pilot, and still is one of the most decorated in history, male or female. She did as much for the world of women’s aviation as Amelia Earhart, but her story has been mainly lost to history. And while the missions that her pilots flew were admittedly less dangerous than the combat training of their male counterparts, their sterling safety record and success rate is a powerful testament to the power of educating users.
We wanted to find an example of great user education today, so we talked to Ben Kovalis, Co-Founder and CMO at Art AI. AI-generate art is arguably as new and as poorly understood as aviation in 1942. Ben explained to us what exactly it is that Art AI does.
Ben: So are the AI or out AI gallery is the world's largest AI generated art gallery. And we are a combination of a deep tech company, which is also an art gallery and also in e-commerce. And we are creating thousands of different AI generated outworks that are actually bespoke canvases.
That people can easily blouse and purchase for themselves as original pieces, meaning that we use our technology to create new art completely from sketch and then present it basically to everyone in very affordable prices. So we'll kind of democratizing the market of original art for the very first time.
Narrator: Why would someone opt for an AI-generated piece of art? As Ben explained, it allows people to own something that is unique at a price that is affordable.
Ben: People really appreciate and love original art, one of the kind of opt and for many different reasons.And the major problem is that not everyone can actually afford such an outwalk.
Um, it starts for several thousands of dollars and some pieces ends with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. What makes even the consideration of owning an original piece, something that is off the table for so many people. And we are solving this problem by offering a almost endless variety of original artworks that almost everyone can afford.
I think that when you see something that is trendy, That everyone else knows about you kind of feel like everyone else. Um, there's no sense of a cop accomplishment.
Um, there's no added interest to it. There was no, like there's no unknown. You're basically stepping into something. Um, that was. Created and was popularize d by someone else.
And when you have something that is unique, especially if it's something that is so new that most people never heard about it before it gives you this stage, it gives you this opportunity to introduce something new to other people's lives. And so that will be one, one of the reasons why I think people appreciate uniqueness so much, and this is why major reason for me appreciating uniqueness and one of the major points that we want our customers to feel. I want my, the quality of outpaced, not only to be beautiful. Do you have an additional function to be a conversation piece. People say a picture worth a thousand words, and I can tell a lot of experience when you're speaking about the generated art, it could take hours, the process of creating it, what it means, the implication on the outward, both philosophically and ethically.
It's only that it is beautiful and grabs attention and makes your space unique. It also gives you an another something to speak about. It really adds depth and it is important for it is important for us to show to new gallery visitors that one of the functions of the product that we're offering is not just to be beautiful is intellectual.
Narrator: Because AI-generated art is such a new concept, there is a lot of explaining that needs to be done. And when it comes to customer education, Ben has to overcome something that early aviators knew a lot about: Fear.
Ben: since the beginning. Um, we will kind of expecting. Some of the , um, potential audience to be afraid of it, or to have negative feelings towards it because of it being so new. And I can't play in everyone because when you are , um, so in tune with the new developments in our world , um, about technology and you read about AI and you know what AI is and what new all networks are, you have.
A strong understanding on how the future is going to look like. And when you have knowledge, when you understand something, you're not afraid of it, but not everyone are into AI and everyone is very different. And when you go form hearing about self-driving cars, To an algorithm that creates out from sketch, especially as it was kind of looked at as the final frontier, when it comes to combining , um, Let's say , um, professions that were strictly belonged to humans and replacing them with technology and people are hearing about that.
It gets them scared. Like, no, it's not time yet. It was not supposed to happen yet. When we placing one of the things that is the most human that we can think of , um, with some, something that the machine can do. So we will be prepared for that, and we're not blaming anyone and we're tying to do our best to explain what we're actually doing and how this is not at all coming to replace out, even if we want it to which we don't.
We simply can't art exists ever since humanity exists. Um, people were doing on caves and new, new generals of art and you stars of out discovered. Basically all of the time. And air generated. Art is not going to be the less type of art that is discovered and used, but I believe , and, and we're trying to make sure that everyone understand that it simply means that the out of the future is going to be more versatile than what we know up until this point.
And that not only that air generated out does not come to the place existing art, it is going to be used by the artists of today and tomorrow. To make more complex artworks that a combination between a lot of what human artist's creativity , um, and w w was presenting , um, basically up until this now with an addition of using a very interesting tool that can create and use their own creativity to create even more unusual design
Narrator: Beyond overcoming fear, AI-generated art is something that many people simply don’t understand. Which is why it’s so important for the team at Art AI to educate their customers and the market on what exactly the product is.
Ben: And in the beginning, it was quite difficult for people to wrap their hands around it because it didn't make a lot of sense. This should not be possible. There must be a reason why this thing doesn't exist out there. So even the very little thing like explaining people, basically, this is real, what you read here.
This is what you're going to get was a challenge to explain people had a lot of doubts. And once we started selling the art and receiving reviews back. as soon as they started seeing the reviews and understand that the, these pieces are the real thing, they are actual original pieces that were created by.
A computer algorithm and they are creating these conversations and the Albanian, these values that , uh, the people that took interest, I hope it would. Um, it definitely made everything easier, but the very beginning of explaining people what this regular canvas, which is not a regular is and make them believe that this is what they are going to get was probably more challenging than any other.
Narrator: So how do you know exactly where you need to provide education? For Ben and the team at Art AI, it started with having open eyes and open ears, and taking care to look for areas where people were confused. This emphasis on listening allowed them to find and correct some important misunderstandings.
Ben: so in the beginning we just did it the wrong way. 'cause we, we had no idea what, what we need to act down, what is clear and what isn't. And we assume that not everyone, a tech savvy, not everyone that are into our artists is going to know a lot about the technology. And, and we'll be able to assume what's correct.
And what's incorrect. So we wrote down general explanations about what we were doing and. Fortunately we had , uh, since the beginning of very, very active , um, social , uh, very active social accounts and we were getting a lot of responses , uh, even on our spot, even on our sponsored ads and people raised questions.
For example, we were offering the pieces in several different sizes. That makes perfect sense. When you're buying home decor, you want it in the correct size and you want it in a , um, correct flaming and I'd call it. But when you are saying that you are selling each item only once, suddenly that doesn't make a lot of sense, how come that you sell these pieces only once, but I can choose different sizes.
So we understood that we really need to emphasize the fact that. The piece is created only after the order is completed, basically with creating the art specifically for the customer that orders it. And that saves a lot of confusion that we had no idea that, that that is even going to be a problem. But before we reach that conclusion, we tried several things.
We P we allowed each artwork. Only in a single size , um, something which is not necessarily best for revenue, but helped us explain better what his product is. It was easier for customers to have their hand around it. So it's kind of a trade-off you're trading , um, additional margins for higher conversion rate.
And we took some ex some experiments and deal. We, we understood what will be the correct way to explain it. So blending and the way that we're presenting our product still to this day plays a very big part. And in the general operation,
Narrator: So how do you know if you’re really doing customer education well? Ben and the team at Art AI have done something really impressive. Their customers understand the product and how to explain so well, that Art AI often learns more about how to explain the product by listening to their existing customers.
Ben: we have great trust in the visitors of, of our gallery to be. Dedicated and careful when they're choosing the outdoors and they definitely take path , um, more than that, because this is so new.
Um, our reach depends on our customers and what they think. About the product that they're getting about the art that they're getting. And we found that that many times our collectors are doing a much better job in explaining what AI generated art is than us. And they can say that because I really try to speak with our collectors as much as I can always interesting conversations.
And I learned a lot from Dell feedback from their input on what is. I I'm not going to say the correct way, but what is a good and interesting and effective way of explaining this technology to people that never heard about it before?
Narrator: Educating your customers so thoroughly that they become passionate advocates is a dream come true for any CX leader. Because it’s those anecdotes and personal connections that people derive from experiences that’s going to make them share your product with others.
When it comes to educating your users on something revolutionary, it takes guts and a lot of patience. Jacqueline Cochran tended to only have one of those...but her legacy lives on. And so can yours. Find those hang ups that your customers might be having, and figure out how to teach them, and your CX will take flight.
This is your host, Ben Wilson, Head of Content of Caspian Studios. Thank you for listening to another episode of Often Imitated. If you like what you’re hearing, tell a friend or leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This podcast was narrated by me, Ben Wilson and produced by Mackey Wilson and Ezra Bakker Trupiano. You can learn more about our team at CaspianStudios.com
This podcast is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Learn more at oracle.com/cx.