Connecting with Your Customers | What's Your Process

Let's talk about your customers. Are they feeling the love or do they only hear from you when it's renewal time? Christina Garnett is the Founder of Pocket CCO and the Author of Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships shares about the power of empathy in marketing, the impact of AI on customer interactions, and the critical balance between human touch and automation.

From building communities that make products 'stickier' to understanding the correlation between employee and customer experience, this episode is packed with actionable insights for marketers, business leaders, and anyone looking to have a better relationship with their customers.

The Process

1. Intro + Book Announcement! (0:00)

2. What is one thing you're world class at? (4:01)

3. Do a full audit of your customer experience (8:17)

"Improving customer sentiment is a long journey. People are not going to hate you and then love you tomorrow. There's not a single marketer that can make that happen. There's not a single campaign or Super Bowl ad that's going to fix that."

Start with a thorough audit of every customer touchpoint. Make sure you talk to team members across departments to learn about the different nuances
Create a full customer journey map that covers everything from stranger to customer
Pay attention to what's being said on social, in customer stories, and in reviews
Make a start/stop/continue list and identify what's working, what needs improvement, and what's problematic

4. Look for silos (13:57)

"In this land of attribution, brands are so focused on who gets the credit for the sale that we forget that every single person has a role to play in how that customer finds them, how that customer is perceived, how that customer is taken care of, and what their overall view of the brand is."

Silos develop as companies scale and create more specific roles—they're the first thing that will help you identify a breakdown in customer experience
You want to break down silos ASAP because they usually lead to teams and departments working against each other instead of collaborating
You can improve the customer experience until you break these silos down

5. Look for red flags (26:15)

"Sitting down with the CS team and listening to calls and seeing like what their day to day is like will teach you more about the product than any deck will."

Look for gaps in your customer communications and plug them
Assess the level of empowerment teams have to help customers—do they actually have the power and autonomy you say they do
Continue monitoring how departments collaborate and share information to avoid silos coming back
Bring your leaders into the mix so they can experience what's happening on the ground level and develop more empathy

6. Define what customer-centric means to you (34:41)

Determine what customer-centricity looks like for your company
Create empathy maps for each stage of the customer journey
Focus on safely and ethically nudging customers to the next stage in the customer journey
Avoid deceptive patterns, tricks to force conversions, and turning everything into a marketing tactic—we can see through them

Connecting with Your Customers with Christina Garnett