In this episode of The Partner Marketing Podcast, host Matthias welcomes Glen Calvert, the founder and CEO of Kaizan. The discussion explores the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on client services, Partner Marketing, and enterprise relationship management. Glen shares his professional journey, his vision for AI-powered client services, and how Kaizan is designed to help businesses automate repetitive tasks, improve efficiency, and enhance client engagement.
Throughout the conversation, Matthias and Glen delve into the practical applications of AI in account management, the challenges of AI adoption, and how AI will evolve in the coming years. They also examine AI’s growing role in Partner Marketing, discussing how businesses can use AI-driven insights to identify better partnerships, optimize engagement strategies, and enhance their marketing efforts.
Introducing Glen Calvert and Kaizan
Matthias: "Hello, everybody. A warm welcome to the Partner Marketing Podcast. In today's episode, I will be speaking with Glen Calvert. Glen is the founder and CEO of Kaizen, an AI client services platform for client services companies. Very warm welcome, Glen. It's great having you today. As a first step, could you please introduce yourself a little to our listeners?"
Glen: "Matthias, thank you very much for having me on. So, I'm currently co-founder and CEO of Kaizen. We're an AI platform specifically for software. Our vision and mission are to build the ultimate AI assistant and AI co-worker for anyone in enterprise relationship management, so, client service teams and account management teams. We've got this vision where I think, in the past, client services and account management has been very much a very manual, very reactive profession. We think it should be much more automated and strategic and add as much value to clients as possible. So that's what we're building."
Glen shares his career journey, explaining how he started at Tradedoubler, where he gained foundational experience in digital advertising and performance marketing.
After finishing university and traveling for a while, Glen returned to the industry and became a founding member of Struq, an early pioneer in personalized retargeting. At the time, personalized digital advertising was still relatively new, and Struq played a significant role in advancing targeted ad technology. Following his time at Struq, Glen went on to establish Affectv, a programmatic marketing company that helped agencies and Brands optimize their display and video advertising strategies.
After a successful run in digital marketing, Glen took a break before launching Kaizan AI. He explains that Kaizan was created with a clear mission: to revolutionize client services by leveraging AI to automate administrative tasks, improve communication efficiency, and provide actionable insights. He believes that traditional client service roles have been too manual and reactive, and that AI can help transform them into strategic, proactive functions that drive business growth.
How Kaizan works and its impact on client services
Glen describes Kaizan as an AI-powered assistant designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of client service teams. The platform integrates with a company’s existing communication tools, including email, calendar systems, and messaging platforms such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. Once connected, Kaizan begins assisting users in several key ways.
First, it automates administrative tasks such as drafting emails, generating meeting notes, and updating CRM systems, which significantly reduces the time account managers spend on routine work. Second, Kaizan analyzes client interactions by reviewing past emails, meeting transcripts, and other communications to detect patterns, trends, and areas for improvement. This analysis enables account managers to better understand their clients’ needs and expectations.
Additionally, Kaizan provides proactive recommendations based on the data it collects. For instance, instead of account managers spending hours researching a client’s industry, competitors, and market trends, the AI delivers relevant insights directly to their inboxes. Glen emphasizes that Kaizan is not just about making tasks easier; it is about transforming the way client service teams operate by enabling them to be more strategic and proactive.
The CARE Framework: AI-driven client services strategy
To structure its approach to improving client service, Kaizan follows a methodology known as the CARE Framework. Glen explains that this framework consists of four core elements that drive client engagement and business growth.
The first element, Client Knowledge, focuses on AI’s ability to gather detailed information about each client, their industry, competitors, and key stakeholders. By having access to this data, account managers can engage in more meaningful and informed discussions.
The second element, Activity, ensures that client service teams maintain consistent and effective communication with clients. Kaizan tracks engagement levels, monitors response times, and alerts account managers if a client has not been contacted for an extended period.
The third element, Relationship and Sentiment, involves AI assessing the tone of client interactions. By identifying both high and low sentiment moments, Kaizan helps account managers recognize potential issues or areas where client engagement can be improved.
The final element, Expansion, is about identifying growth opportunities. Kaizan analyzes past conversations to determine whether there are upsell or cross-sell opportunities, helping account managers proactively expand business relationships.
Glen explains that this framework allows businesses to improve client retention, strengthen relationships, and increase revenue.
Glen: "So the care framework sort of is embedded in everything that we do and it's basically looking at this in real-time across every single client relationship and making suggestions through to every account manager saying, 'Here's how you can level up the client health score or the CARE score with that you manage, you measure activity obviously, you look between the lines, you look at the tone, you look at the topics that have been discussed. You do some kind of gap analysis and come to conclusions: Where are we with this client? What might we have missed? What could we do next?"
AI’s role in Partner Marketing and account management
Glen shares how AI is transforming the Partner Marketing industry: AI can assist businesses in identifying the most suitable partners by analyzing historical data, market trends, and performance insights. Instead of relying on manual research or intuition, businesses can use AI-driven recommendations to make better partnership decisions.
AI also plays a crucial role in automating partner relationship management. It can track engagement levels, flag potential issues, and suggest strategic follow-ups to maintain strong partnerships. Additionally, AI can help businesses optimize performance tracking by benchmarking different partnerships and determining which strategies yield the highest return on investment. By incorporating AI into their Partner Marketing strategies, companies can create more efficient, data-driven programs that deliver better results.
Matthias: "Do you think AI can take over all client services or management tasks at a certain point?"
Glen: "I think services will evolve; I don't think it'll end up with a place where it's fully replaced. I think certain types of products and services will be delivered through a company's AI and removed from the humans because there's no value in them looking after that workload, and then the larger clients will still be managed by the humans. And I think it will also evolve if you look at any sort of tech, look at any tech platform breakthrough over the last sort of 30 years. It doesn't replace jobs, they just change."
Glen predicts that AI will become a fully interactive co-worker, capable of managing a wide range of tasks independently. Rather than just providing insights, AI will actively engage with account managers, draft responses, schedule meetings, and even handle routine communications with clients.
However, Glen does not believe AI will replace human account managers. Instead, AI will handle repetitive, time-consuming tasks, allowing human professionals to focus on higher-value activities such as strategy, problem-solving, and relationship-building. He envisions a future where AI enhances human capabilities rather than eliminating the need for human expertise.
Handling large-scale client communications with AI
Matthias: "Can you describe how your tool helps companies that manage a large volume of client interactions across different markets?"
Glen: "Yes, so how it works is you basically are looking at every type of communication that happens with an individual; so you would either have it on a call, you'll understand their email address as a participant on an email. You've got their email address and what you can then start to do is build a model specifically for all of the communication happening with a particular client, and then also all of the individual stakeholders, so then the model you have assesses what's happening with that particular client: what are their high sentiment moments? What are their low-sentiment moments? What are the products and services they're buying? What's happening in their world? What are their objectives? So, you build a specific model for every single client, and then from there, you can really understand what their needs are."
Glen explains that Kaizan builds a unique AI model for each client by analyzing historical communications, including emails, meeting transcripts, CRM data, and internal messages. By consolidating all of this information, the AI detects patterns such as sentiment shifts, communication gaps, and potential follow-ups.
For example, if a client has not been contacted in a while, Kaizan will flag this inactivity and suggest an appropriate next step. Additionally, the AI personalizes email drafts based on the user’s writing style and previous interactions with the client, ensuring that communications remain natural and engaging.
The in-depth conversation between Glen and Matthias provides valuable takeaways for marketing professionals, business leaders, and anyone interested in the intersection of AI, client services, and partnership marketing – listen to the entire episode on Spotify, Apple Podcast, our website, and all other podcast platforms.
About The Partner Marketing Podcast
The podcast brings together thought leaders and professionals from across the globe. In each episode, our host, Matthias, sits down with guests to discuss the evolving world of Partner Marketing and share personal stories.
For more details, please visit www.tradedoubler.com/podcast