In today’s episode of Agents Influence, host Jason Cass interviews Tariq Valente, Head of Business Development at SurFly, an Amsterdam-based technology company that offers a customer engagement tool for leading brands. Tariq Valente discusses the importance of going beyond technology implementation and providing strong customer experiences that exceed expectations, why the more outlets for stories we have the more it erodes trust, and how insurance is moving towards daily challenges and prevention. 

Episode Highlights: 

• Jason Cass introduces Tariq Valente. 
• Is Tariq an iPhone user or an Android user?       
• What is the last app that Tariq has downloaded? 
• Is he stronger because of his skill or because of luck?
• Does he love to win or hate to lose?      
• Tariq did a university dissertation on how trust fits into business. 
• What does Surfly do to help their clients? 
• Prevention and daily challenges are areas the insurance industry are pushing towards. 
• What are ways AI technology will factor into our lives?  
• Why does Tariq believe that social media erodes trust?  
• Data, people, and process are the future of businesses. 
• Comfort zones are nothing but the habits we’ve created and excellence is not an act but a series of habits. 
• The brands that stay more human in the age of automation are going to stand out.    

3 Key Points:

1. Technology needs to be useful to the user because it is expected. But a great customer experience is what will make those customers tell the world about it.   
2. Insurance is moving towards prevention and the daily challenges of the user.  
3. It is not about finding the right answer. It is about arriving at shared understanding.    

Key Quotes:

• “The highest form of intelligence that I regard is intuition. So the more you’ve done, the more you’ve experienced, the more you build up your intuition, the more you can get yourself in the right place at the right time.” – Tariq Valente
• “I just became fascinated with trust because I see it as kind of the truest form of currency in the world. Before any monetary is exchanged, before any goods are exchanged, there has to be that element of trust.’” – Tariq Valente
• “For me, as an advocate for more human technology, I think that it is important that we use AI responsibly and how they can help us make more better decisions.” – Tariq Valente

Resources Mentioned:

• Agency Intelligence
• Reach out to Jason Cass
• AIBrainshare.com

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