Your Customers Are Not Your Content Strategy
We've we've focused on, like, how can we show up on social as a best friend when it's like, just be normal. Just be human. Just, like, just care. Like, that's it. Like, nothing nothing crazy.
Christina Garnett:Like, just do that.
Brian Rowley:Welcome to Prose + Comms: Engagement, Unplugged. I'm Brian Rowley.
Laura Smith:And I'm Laura Smith.
Brian Rowley:One of the things that we realized is every brand wants loyal customers who will actually share their stories, offer feedback, and actually advocate on their behalf. But that kind of relationship actually needs to begin with trust. When a company only reaches out because it needs a quote or a survey response, the relationship you'll see can quickly start to feel one-sided. Customers notice whether a brand has supported them and made them feel valued long before that moment. And every interaction shapes whether they feel connected and willing to engage.
Brian Rowley:So today we're actually going to talk a little bit about what it takes to build real customer relationships, earn advocacy over time, and make people feel valued before asking them to do something specifically for your brand.
Laura Smith:But Brian, before we introduce today's guests, let's start with a quick customer relationship check. Okay. I'm gonna ask you a question.
Brian Rowley:Alright.
Laura Smith:I'm ready. What is okay. Are you? What is one brand behavior that immediately makes the relationship feel one-sided?
Brian Rowley:Well, I think it's when a brand asks for feedback and then never shares what happened as a result of the response of whoever they're asking. It's that one-sided question that you just like ask, and then you just disappear on those folks and they never know what you did with it. I mean, it's it's I talk about this all the time, because it's one of the things that just absolutely drives me insane. What about you?
Laura Smith:Yeah. Well, I would agree with that. That's definitely annoying. It's also annoying anytime you ask anyone to do a survey and you don't like even like thinking about like we just went through a whole engagement survey process as an organization, and you have to kind of, you know, go back and give people what the results are. Like, you know, here's what we're gonna do or here's how we're gonna action.
Laura Smith:So I think it's super important in all circumstances, whether it be from an employee, employer standpoint, or a consumer one. But mine is asking for review while you still have an unresolved support ticket. Because it feels like those two sides are not talking to each other. So you know that there's like a system in place that just spits out these surveys and asks for feedback, and they're not seeing in the system that I'm actually dealing with the company right now, and it's not to give you positive feedback. It's to help solve my problem.
Laura Smith:So it's just it feels like they're they're not talking across departments in that organization, and it feels very, not authentic.
Brian Rowley:Yeah, I would agree. And I think that happens more times than not. I mean, I think we've all either currently worked or worked in the past for companies that have done this. And it's almost like cringe worthy because you just get into a position where you're sitting there saying, just don't, you're not under you just don't really value me. Because if you did, you would actually take the time to do all of that research before you even reached out in either form, To have a conversation with me.
Brian Rowley:You'd know what my trajectory or what it is that's going on with me within your company. So I agree with you. It's actually a bigger problem. And I think one that continues across a lot of organizations.
Christina Garnett:Agreed.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. And I think that the gap between what a brand says and how a customer actually feels is actually at the center of our conversation today. So today's guest is a fractional chief customer officer, Customer Experience Strategist, and the author of the book Transforming Customer Brand Relationships. Her actual work focuses on helping brands build trust, advocacy, and meaningful customer relationships. So please help me welcome Christina Garnett.
Christina Garnett:Thanks for having me.
Laura Smith:We're excited to have you, Christina. Since since our our prep call, we were very excited to have this conversation. So thank you so much for joining us. It's gonna be great. Okay.
Laura Smith:So brands say they want loyalty and advocacy. That's what they're always looking for. But often they treat the relationship with the customer as transactional. So where does that disconnect usually begin?
Christina Garnett:It comes down to the brand cares about revenue, and it cares about retention. But because you're only seeing that through the myopic view of numbers, you start treating those people like those numbers. You start basically chasing for the behaviors that are going to get you there the fastest. What we wind up seeing is, if you followed along on LinkedIn with everyone at CAN, there was a lot of brands talking about trust, but they never got any deeper than that. They just basically said trust is important or they'll say you should take care of the customer, but there's no like deep dive into what that looks like because that's boring.
Christina Garnett:That's not the cool stuff. There is no hack. You have to actually care. You have to do the work. And so what I find is that when you are so focused on those numbers and you want those numbers to be solved quickly, you want immediate return, you start doing those transactional behaviors.
Christina Garnett:You start cosplaying is what you think it's gonna take so that people can convert quickly. And so you want short term results, you can't do that with the long term action that's required.
Laura Smith:Do you so do you think these brands are just saying the words because they have to? Because in today's day, like, you know, we know there needs to be trust with you know, people have to trust who they're buying from or who they're working with. And do you feel like anyone's doing it right?
Christina Garnett:I think Chewy does it right. I think Chewy's done a really great job. They're one of the brands that consistently goes viral for the right reasons. There was even something where someone was saying something negative about them on Reddit, their entire fan army showed up to basically say, like, that's not the normal experience. And so I think that I think Chewy is an example that you can be profitable, you can be well known, you and can take care of the customers, but they are very much a rarity.
Christina Garnett:There's not a lot of brands that are doing that. I think if you wanted to trust a brand, the easiest way to trust a brand is to look straight at their fine print.
Brian Rowley:That's interesting. I agree with you on Chewy. I think I mean, I'm I'm a huge fan, and I I do agree with you that they they definitely have their customers first. I think the trust thing is interesting because I think everybody wants to use the word trust. But I also think that in the end of it all, and you start to have an understanding, and to your point, the fine prints are really interesting approach to that.
Brian Rowley:I think, you know, trust should be about, just a two way discussion or a two way relationship, right? Like you can't just say it like, and I think the problem that we see so often is that these big words get thrown around and then they just turn into nothing. That makes the brand almost an irrelevant talking point for them because it just, it doesn't work.
Christina Garnett:A 100%. Yeah. I mean, we've seen that with authenticity. We've seen it with community and now
Laura Smith:we're seeing
Christina Garnett:it with trust. We're also seeing it with taste. We love as marketers, we love to commodify these concepts and then try to figure out like, how do we deconstruct it and turn it into something that we can do? Like, how can we turn it into a playbook instead of how do we actually do the work? You're you're a 100% spot on.
Christina Garnett:I think when it comes down to it, we understand that we need to do we need to have trust, but we are still looking for ways to buy it. For example, one of the conversations that I'm seeing a lot with the creator economy is that they're saying that the creator is the one with the relationship to the audience. By bringing them on, that's going to help them trust the brand. I call this parasocial trust transfer because it does work, but it is not a substitute for the brand actually taking care of somebody because it doesn't matter if you worked with their favorite creator, their favorite influencer. If you are not taking care of that person, that closeness only exists until you burn them.
Christina Garnett:Then they've learned their lesson, and then they feel tricked. Not only do they not trust you, they don't trust the person who they once did. I think we're seeing that right now with, I wrote a piece for, Campaign US about how Meta Glass is using Kylie and then Polymarket used Rick Rubin to do this like soup this World Cup ad. It was we are used to seeing like controversial creators work with like really strong thoughtful brands and now we're seeing the opposite of this. We're seeing these creators and influencers and celebrities try to normalize and make it okay to trust these entities that we're not so sure about.
Christina Garnett:We're not so sure about gambling. We're not so sure about meta glasses, It's very interesting to see how it's playing out because in some ways it is working. Meta has seen an uptick in women buying the glasses, so the Kylie effect is in a sense working, but how long will that work until people remember all the things that Met has done? Remember the ramifications and consequences of using this kind of technology? It feels like we're in an everyday social experiment.
Laura Smith:Yeah. It's interesting because the whole, like, content creators and and, you know, people who, like, you do trust them. But and maybe because I'm a marketer, I don't know. But I know they're getting paid. So while I, you know, kind of say, okay, well, that lipstick looked great on her and she's touting it and all these things, have I gone and purchased it?
Laura Smith:Yes. It's it's a low risk though purchase, I would say, because I know she's getting paid. You know? It's not you know, no names mentioned. But, you know, it's just that's the so don't people see through that to some degree that like, okay.
Laura Smith:Because I'm not even yeah. To me, I'm thinking less about the brand in that situation. I'm thinking about like what looks right and it doesn't look good on her and will look good on me or whatever. So do people see through that or do you think that people fall for it, I guess?
Christina Garnett:I think it's a mix of both. I think there are people who absolutely see through it, but they see through it for like an aspirational way because what people are wanting to do now is there's a shift from this influencer to creator, where creators don't want to be called influencers. They don't want be associated with negative connotations of that. Then they want to be seen as more like thought leadercreators. There's definitely this idea of like the intellectual creator.
Christina Garnett:Those people are basically not only saying like, hey, this is what this lipstick look like, but they're coming from a place of knowledge, so you want to trust them. There's this weird interplay of some people, like there's a lot of marketers who see through this completely, but they see how other people are winning by playing the game. Maybe I need to be doing more video on LinkedIn, or maybe I need to start doing this or start doing that. Then there are people who are like, I'm just happy you got the bag, but we saw this with OpenAI. OpenAI just did a retreat to Upstate New York and they had all of these tech and elite and kind of like thought leader y creators go up there and the backlash was immediate.
Christina Garnett:It makes sense like if you if you follow and deconstruct like marketing or pop culture at all, you could see the backlash was gonna happen. It was just gonna be how big and how how wide it was gonna hit. It's very interesting to see that they're kind of, I'm seeing a lot of B2B creators fall into the same traps that B2C creators did. They were going on LinkedIn, but they're not revealing that it's an ad. They're saying it's a partnership or they're not saying anything like that at all.
Christina Garnett:On top of that, they're not realizing that there's a consequence. There's a responsibility for what you do because we know that you're being paid. Like you said, it's not even so much like we're not falling for it. It's a we want you to be held accountable for the choices that you make. If you're gonna that deal, if you're gonna do that, then you need to understand the consequences of what that says about you.
Christina Garnett:Whereas B2C, maybe you like a product, but it wasn't successful as you said it should be or it didn't work as well. You can have it be a bit more subjective, but when it comes to the more intellectual thought leader and creator place, you have to understand that it's not a subjective opinion. It is your credibility on the line. What I found fascinating was a lot of the thought leaders in this space, they really want to be the person that's dictating nuance to you. They're telling you what is taste, they're telling you what is culture, they're telling you what is important, but then they become a mechanism of that process.
Christina Garnett:What it looks like from the outside looking in is that you were so excited about getting a brand deal that you didn't read the room. When you're the person that's always telling us you know how to read the room. It's very interesting. I'm very fascinated to see what kind of brand deals those other creators get or if they sync because they've really there's certain things where you don't get three strikes. Like that's that's a one big mistake.
Brian Rowley:One and done.
Christina Garnett:You're done.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. For sure. Let's look at this from a marketer's perspective though, because the reality of it is, is customer stories play such a significant role, right, in our content mix. And so, you know, why do customer stories, and the requests for them so often feel like a favor rather than an opportunity?
Christina Garnett:Yeah. I think it becomes it looks like a favor because it really is. And there's nothing on the other side. So if you're a marketer, if you're doing customer marketing, or if you are working with go to market and you're trying to get these assets ready, you understand why you need them. You understand why it benefits the brand, but you need to take that extra step to understand how can this be mutually beneficial for that client or for that customer.
Christina Garnett:I find that you don't need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to add an extra step. And so what I would love for marketers to start doing is instead of seeing customer marketing as an opportunity to just get a testimonial, get a review, get whatever, you need to treat it like a co marketing campaign, where if you wanted to co market with another brand and you are able to expand your revenue, expand your reach together, if you treat your customers that same way, then you're gonna be able to start thinking about what does this do for them too? Like, this is how it benefits us, but this is how it benefits you. Maybe it gets you more leverage. Maybe you want to be seen as more of a thought leader.
Christina Garnett:Maybe being associated with our brand will help you get a raise or promotion at work, or maybe it will help you, maybe you wanna be a speaker and this would create visibility for you, but it's just that extra step. It is a favor until it's mutually beneficial, It can't just be the ask, it has to be this is a partnership, we've loved working with you, we know that you enjoyed working with us, we'd love to be able to do this, this is the ask, this is what it's going to look like when it's done, we'd love to promote you for it, Maybe it's an opportunity for you to do a talk or a webinar with us, whatever that looks like. But it has to be mutually beneficial, otherwise it is a favor.
Brian Rowley:Yeah, I think that's a great point because we all ask for it and and, know, we constantly it's one of the things we all struggle with quite honestly. And when we were prepping for this, that perspective, I think, changes it completely. So it's not actually a case study. It's a collaborative campaign, right, that you're trying to do. So immediately that changes the groundwork where it sets us on an equal playing field versus one gaining something more than the other out of it.
Brian Rowley:And I do think that that's a really interesting approach to it. And I think one that I think a lot of people should try because it is important. Telling that is customer huge, just from a, you know, being accountable, right? Is one part of it, but then also like the authentic part of it, right? From a brand perspective.
Brian Rowley:When you say your customers are important, if they're willing to stand up and have a conversation with you about you, there's nothing better than that.
Christina Garnett:Yeah. And you can't and you can't buy that either. You can tell how earnest it is.
Laura Smith:Right? And I think it's like people want that third party validation before making a purchase, especially like in a business, the B2B where costs are higher. And it is, it's true. In our business, it's just hard to demonstrate really what we do, like what our technology does without showing it in an experience. And that requires customers to have to help, to work with us to help share that.
Laura Smith:And we've really put a good amount of effort behind that. But you're right, you know, in a lot of times, sometimes, you know, we can't those customers are like, no, we can't put our name out there or associate with you. And other times it's, yeah, we would love to be associated with you and to get some reach. And so, of course, we're willing to do that, but I think we're not going we haven't historically gone into it with this mentality that you're talking about. And I think that's just just that shift would be really helpful because when we distribute that content, that is the most engaged with content we put out and we know it.
Laura Smith:So
Christina Garnett:I think they know it too. The people that you're asking those case studies for, if there's nothing in return, you're base what they're hearing, even if they don't say it, is that you're asking them for free labor. You're asking me to act as a sales team for you, but what do I get out of it? Do I get a referral? Do I get a cut?
Christina Garnett:What's in it for me? Depending on how thick the case study is, depending on how if there needs to be marketing assets, if I have to do a video tutorial, if I have to do like all these things, that sounds like a lot, but if you know what's important to me and you know how we could work together to be mutually beneficial, then what it feels like an opportunity. It feels like, hey Christina, we know that you've been interested in doing more talking engagements or you'd love to be seen as a thought leader. We'd love to have feature you in this case study and maybe maybe you could do a webinar with us in like a couple months. Like it's so easy to tie into the motivations of who you want to talk to, but you have to take that step to say like, we'd love to work with you.
Christina Garnett:We'd love to build this, but how and even if you don't know, how can we make this work for you too? That's where they can get into the, well we can't publicly say anything. Okay, what would you what would make you feel comfortable? Or but you have to ask those questions.
Brian Rowley:Well, I think the other side to it too is, you know, I think oftentimes we look at it from our perspective. And I was just on a call earlier today and it was, you know, if you put the you forth, it it's the results of that are much better. So this is what you're gonna benefit from it. Work your way into our value, right, that we get out of it. But if I lead with you, immediately that changes the whole conversation because it doesn't take until the very end for you to be like, oh, now I get why I'm getting, you know, why there's benefit to me.
Brian Rowley:We're coming out of the gate with that. And that's what people are looking for is the reality.
Laura Smith:100%. So I wanna shift a little bit, and because you've made the point that everyone owns the customer experience. Right? So how do we get how do we does how does the customer have the best experience? It can't just sit with one group.
Laura Smith:So what does that shared ownership look like inside a company?
Christina Garnett:So most companies, especially when they're building out their brand, they'll have their mission statement, they'll have what they are, they'll have their style guide, they'll have their what they talk about, how they show up on social, all of these things. There needs to be a customer mission statement. There needs to be a universal understanding across the entire board, so that when you're talking about like this is what our brand stands for, this is what we want to be known for, you should have the exact same thing, but for your customer experience. What does that customer experience need to look like so that everyone understands? Maybe there's no way to have a frictionless customer experience, so maybe that's not part of the mission, but maybe you make it very clear that everyone is here to help.
Christina Garnett:Everyone is here to answer a question. We are really receptive. Anyone will pick up the email or the phone call, whether it's CEO, janitor, support, engineering, doesn't matter. There needs to be a mission statement for what the customer experience needs to look like, and that needs to be a part of onboarding. It needs to be what that looks like, because the true customer experience needs to be a part of the entire culture.
Christina Garnett:It needs to be embedded. You can tell when customer experience is an afterthought. You can absolutely tell.
Laura Smith:Or when it sits with one group. You know? Because you're like, okay, I'm dealing with the team that's focused on this, but when I interact with another department, I don't feel the same. Yeah. But I love that.
Laura Smith:I love that idea, Brian. That's something that
Brian Rowley:we Me too.
Laura Smith:Can definitely think about because it is about the I mean, I I was on a call right before this one, all about the customer experience. How do we make it better as someone's trying to get ants you know, answers to questions they have more quickly, through a web experience potentially and all that. And it's like we all everyone on the on the call, a couple different departments, but we all were like, we wanna improve the customer experience. We know we do. Right?
Laura Smith:But so we all kind of, you know, and we all in that in that call maybe, but not, you know, across the whole organization. But if we all had that mission statement, it feels like, oh, that's kind of embedded in who we are. Yep.
Christina Garnett:And you'll find too that people assume that it's someone else's job unless it is dictated that it is a part of their job. Well, that's support. So if I get a call from you or I'm talking to you on social and you flag it to me, then I'm immediately gonna be like, hey, let me get you over there instead of, is there something I could already have? So one thing that I would recognize is there needs to be a place. It can be a knowledge base.
Christina Garnett:It can be whatever, but there needs to be an understanding of this is the mission statement for CX across our entire org. This is what this is the CX that we aspire to create. This is the experience they should be getting. Then is there a central place that has all of the like, these are the biggest problems that we're facing, here's the stuff that keeps showing up in NPS, here's the patterns that we're working on, here's like, I don't it doesn't need to be like hyper specific, but it can say like, hey this a problem that has come up the last six months and it's in the roadmap. So anyone could say, hey, we've gotten this a lot.
Christina Garnett:We know that this is actually a documented problem and we're working on it. It's in the roadmap now. That is something anyone could say because it is true and it is in that one central place. Now if they wanted to have more details than that, maybe that you need to talk to support or engineering or product or whatever, but a central place where people know, Hey, I want to send a review. How do I do that?
Christina Garnett:Like an FAQ from a CX perspective, having like one landing page. It can be internal, it can be external, whatever. Having that availability and knowledge that everyone on the team can see, it's huge. Because a lot of brands, no matter how big or how small, they don't create a culture of collaboration. What they do is they focus on a tech stack, and if the tech stack talks to each other, they assume everybody talks to each other, and that is not true.
Christina Garnett:That is that has never been true. And so you need to make it as as easy as possible for everyone to get on the same page and then you can work on creating a collaborative culture, but I would do those two things first. Those are that's a huge first step in improving CX.
Brian Rowley:So would you say that, that in itself is one of the reasons why NPS falls short, for companies?
Christina Garnett:I think it's one of them. I think also, I think companies I think if you've ever been in a call and they'll be like, what's the North Star? Everyone wants that like Staples easy button that's like, what's the one dashboard I need to look at? What's the one metric I need to care about? I think NPS is not broken.
Christina Garnett:I think we've tried to turn NPS into this fix all, this end all be all for CX and it's not, Because there's no way to capture all the data necessary for that to be a true accurate depiction. Because you're getting people that are responding to a survey, that survey is dictated by their mood that day, where they were at, did they struggle because it was on their phone or desktop, was there a lag, did they not understand a question, was their kid crying in the background, Did it happen after a really great experience or a really bad experience? When was the trigger for the MPS? That in itself creates so many variables you don't factor into. Then you're also not counting the people who are so angry at you, that don't trust you anymore, are gonna leave as soon as the contract's over, that know that they don't they're not gonna spend twenty minutes on a survey because you're not gonna respond to it.
Christina Garnett:Those people are completely absent in your NPS. The people that you are so afraid of turning, they're not they're never in your NPS ever.
Brian Rowley:And that's the scary part Because those are the people that that can cause the most damage to any organization. I've said that for years. Like, people get all caught up on the ones that either score really really high or really really low. And they don't pay attention to the ones that are indifferent. And for me, the indifference is the piece to it.
Brian Rowley:But even even that, like companies, we fall victim to this. Let's talk to the people that love us. No offense, I love all of our customers, right? But at the end of the day, the one who loves me the most is going to provide me the least value in terms of how I can improve my organization.
Christina Garnett:Or they or what they'll do is they won't give the right signal to the people who love them.
Brian Rowley:Yeah.
Christina Garnett:Like, they'll like going back to our previous conversation, oh, you love us? Great. Can you do a review?
Laura Smith:Yeah. Right.
Christina Garnett:Thanks for loving us. Will you do us a favor?
Laura Smith:Yes. Right.
Christina Garnett:That's a
Brian Rowley:great point.
Christina Garnett:What you'll see is they either they they ignore the people that are not in the NPS because they haven't captured them any other way, so those people are gone. Go They to the negatives, they'll go to the really loud detractors, and they'll either be like, hey can we do a deal? Can we cut your price? Is there something wrong? So you go in there not trying to fix the problem, but trying to haggle.
Christina Garnett:It's not even a like fix the problem, it's a save us save the relationship which makes you behave differently. You come across as desperate. And then what's also funny is there's the middle people in the MPS that always get ignored. They're the middle child. So you ignore, so the two data points that are the most important, one is very visible, but it's in the middle, so it's kind of feel safe when it's actually the most vulnerable, because it could go in either direction quickly, or the data point that does not exist because they won't take the survey, but both of those data points are completely ignored by most people when they look at NPS, and it's wild to me.
Christina Garnett:Yeah.
Laura Smith:And I think when we had this discussion before when we met, we talked about the indifference is more dangerous than the angry. Right? It is. It is. How can brands recognize how can brands recognize that those customers are stopped know, they don't wanna be heard.
Laura Smith:Like, they're just like they're in the middle. Like, how do how do you control that? I mean, obviously, yes, improving your customer experience so everyone has a great one. But what can they do knowing that there is this group that's indifferent, which is dangerous?
Christina Garnett:They need to be looking at what gets what has to happen for that behavior to exist. So you've lost them along the way. That's usually not like a big echo. It's usually death by a thousand cuts. That's usually how people go because they have enough data there to support.
Christina Garnett:Be like, I've tried 10 times, doesn't work. So what I would do is I would look for signals. So what's the smoke? So assuming that the person who leaves is fire, what are all the signals of smoke before that happens? Maybe like look at your ticket counts.
Christina Garnett:Is there a correlation with the number of tickets that people create where at some point they give up? Because there's some people who you might see that their ticket numbers hit like a cliff drop and you're like, oh we must be taking great care of them. It also could be they gave up and realize that creating a ticket and talking to support doesn't help. So they've given up completely, but to you it just looks like the ticket number goes down. So looking for signals to figure out like what do we need to do?
Christina Garnett:What is the average number of tickets for like an onboarding customer versus an established customer? If you see too high or too few, should that be an escalation signal for the CSM to reach out to be like, Hey, you haven't opened a ticket in a while, I'm just trying to make sure that that's because everything's good or you didn't wanna bother us or something else. It's those little things, those little check-in moments that I think are incredibly important. The other thing is that we want to put things on a calendar. We want to put things on a schedule.
Christina Garnett:So one of the things, the behaviors that I hate more than anything else is when someone that you have never spoken to in your entire life will slide into your messaging three months before your renewal and want to be your best friend. I've never talked to you before in my life. You've never asked how things are. We've I I would not know who you are if I didn't know who what your email domain was, but it's always three months before the renewal every single time, and now they care, now they know. And my thing is if you had just said like, hey, I'm gonna be the one that's handling your renewal in a year, but I know that a year takes time.
Christina Garnett:So I'm just gonna check-in maybe once every two months just to make sure you're doing okay. I'm not gonna replace anybody else, but I'm just here to make sure you're good. I don't wanna just surprise you and pop out of nowhere in three months time while you and I both know what we're talking about. I wanna make sure that you're getting taken care of now so that when the renewal comes up in a year, it's a no brainer and it's easy for both of us. I, what, added, what, five emails to that person's job?
Christina Garnett:That's it? Yeah. Yeah. Huge difference.
Laura Smith:Because, you know, also the process I know this is the process because this is how business works. I'm talking b two b. And when you purchase something, say it's a software or say it's a tool, and you go through this process and you're pur you know, that that like making the decision, like being sold, right, a salesperson's doing that, and then you're handed off to someone else in a different department Yep. To kind of manage the relationship. And to me, I always feel like that's like a bit of a, well, I liked you and this person I may not like.
Laura Smith:Right? I have the trust in you as you were the person that really kind of like convinced me and demonstrated. And then you're like, oh, and here's Sally. And I'm like, who's Sally? And and that's who's potentially checking in.
Laura Smith:So I get that that's how, you know, it's it's there's relationship managers and all that, like, I I understand that. But I do feel like there's gotta be a better way to do that so that trust does transfer because it is human. It's human. Right? We trust certain people and it's in the brand, of course, they're associated with the brand, but it might be that person that feels better.
Laura Smith:And then you're feeling like, okay, now I'm being like quote unquote sold to throughout this every month by this other person.
Christina Garnett:I completely agree. Yeah. No. I completely agree. I I like to refer to that as like a baton in a relay race.
Laura Smith:Yes.
Christina Garnett:And so what happens is because they'll be like, no. We have the handoff. And I'm just like, yeah. Like a like a relay race. And the customer's the baton, and they get manhandled, like the whole way through, but then they aren't the ones that win.
Christina Garnett:It's all the humans that did the handoff like through the whole experience. Usually if possible, what I like to do is you basically are building a team And so you can say like, this is your primary point of contact for all of this, but this is the team that you're gonna deal with. This is the person who you're gonna talk to for renewals. This is the person if you need like anything, they're here, but also I'm not letting you go either. I there's a lot of there's a lot of money in b two b, but we treat it like it's like a like a lip gloss.
Laura Smith:Yeah. Like a so so transactional.
Christina Garnett:Yeah. It's deeply transactional, and so I'm gonna bop you over to the next person. They're gonna take care of you, but you gotta love them the way loved me even though I'm the one that built rapport with you. Then also it gets worse because what if the first person lied or didn't set you up for success and then that bleeds into everything else. That's why it's so important to have that team culture for CX, because it is a team sport, but you want to make sure that at the end of the day you were not treating that person like a baton.
Brian Rowley:Laura, it reminds me of just, I mean, we just did a project not too long ago, and, it was one of those things where when we were negotiating it, it was all hands on deck. Everyone was there to help us. They were all like there ready to go. And then we got the team who was going to actually implement this with us. And it wasn't a baton handoff.
Brian Rowley:It was literally they tripped at the time of the baton handoff. And Laura and I were just like, what is going on here? Like, this is not what we were hoping for. And to be honest, we won't work with them again. Like it just, it was it was that messy that we were just like, this is like it.
Brian Rowley:These are two very different companies that we're having this conversation with. And then from that point on, we were like, I don't trust anybody now within the organization
Laura Smith:know because I who these people are. They come out of nowhere. But that
Christina Garnett:is why. But that goes back to what we were talking about before is you're so focused on the sale Yeah. That you you you basically are saying like, here is the here's like the vintage Jag for for your car. And then you get like well, it's the same green car. It's just like rusted.
Brian Rowley:The bumper's not there,
Christina Garnett:and the wheels are Yeah. Not It's it was it was a jag at one point. Yeah. One second time. Yeah.
Laura Smith:But the best part of this whole thing with this process was in the middle of the pro project going on, the person we originally again, we negotiated with and kind of sold us on this and all that jumped in to try to sell us something else, like additional work. And to that, we just ignored. Like, you don't you don't even deserve a response because the response is not gonna be nice right now because, a, I don't even have the end product that I paid for. Yep. And, b, you haven't even checked in on the process.
Laura Smith:You don't even know. And then now you're trying to sell me more things? Like No. So bad. Yep.
Laura Smith:But they're but
Christina Garnett:that's what they're doing. But they're also, like and I think that's also opens up the conversation of why employee experience is so important for CX because a lot of people so that person, they might be greedy and might just be trying to get more money, or that person might be trying to hit quota so they don't get laid off. Yeah. And so there's a lot of incentives for employees to like employees are humans. They they're going to want to keep their job.
Christina Garnett:They wanna pay their bills. They wanna live their life and take care of their families, be able to go on vacation every now and then. If there's a culture where they're afraid that they're not going to be able to take care of themselves if they don't make this deal, they're gonna do whatever it takes to get that deal, whether that's good for you or not. And so there's also this, when we think about CX, we also need to talk about the implications of EX, because I firmly believe they are directly related.
Laura Smith:Mhmm. I 100% agree.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. A 100%. There's one other topic that I want to get to because we, during our prep, had had talked about mid fatigue, that idea of so much content and customer experience now feels average and sort of inter exchangeable. And one of the things that I wanted to get was when everything is mid, how do brands create sort of that customer connection that actually feels that distinctiveness that they're looking for?
Christina Garnett:I think it's something that shows that you ideally understand your customer base. You understand what they're thinking. You understand what they like. And you're coming from a place of craft and a place of love and character. And so I'm a big nerd.
Christina Garnett:And so like Spider Man, I went and saw it this past weekend. Absolutely loved it, and I think it really encapsulates, and I think that it's done so well at the box office because it encapsulates this. It is so deeply comic book accurate. There's like scenes from the movie that are directly from comic book covers. You don't have to be a massive Spider Man fan to appreciate it because the storytelling is so strong, the acting is so strong, and you believe and care about these characters, but it's craft, and it's storytelling, and it's care.
Christina Garnett:And I think if you look at the Odyssey, it's the same thing. We want craft. We want storytelling. We want care. And so any brands that are telling a story and are doing ads or doing campaigns or writing email, like whatever it is, if you are able to showcase that you understand craft, that you were doing the effort, you're doing the work, you're not trying to shove everything into Claude and like copy and paste it into an email, but you were doing the work, you were doing the craft, and that you were showcasing that you understand the customer's perspective, then I think that that is how you do it.
Christina Garnett:Because we've so much gotten to this place of like, well your video needs a hook, or you need this, or you need that, when what you actually need. The hook is the hook is the first start of a story.
Laura Smith:That's what the hook is.
Christina Garnett:The hook is telling me this is the kind of story I'm gonna get. This is a once upon a time. This is a dark and stormy night. You're prepping me for something. That's what it is.
Christina Garnett:So it isn't you need a hook, it's you need a story. You need the primer to tell me that I'm gonna get a story. It's just like five finger down. Put your finger down if you did this, and I know immediately what I'm gonna get. Brands that are doing that need to showcase the story because otherwise what you're doing is you're telling the exact same thing that everyone else is doing.
Christina Garnett:We have this new feature, great everybody has that, and if they don't have it now, can vibe code it and have it forty eight hours later. But it's, do you understand where I'm coming from? Do you understand my problem? Are you able to talk to me on a human level and showcase that you're that you that you get it? If something's wrong, will you give me the psychological safety that I know you'll take care of me, that I can rely on you?
Christina Garnett:The thing is that we've done a really great job of chasing all of this stuff, but we need to go back to the basics. If you treat your customers like influencers, if you give them the care, if you were like a mom and pop shop, it's that stuff. It's the foundational stuff that we need to get back to because a lot of people don't want to do it. A lot of people want to take the shortcut, they want to do the hacks, they want to do the tricks, they want to feed, like create something with a prompt instead of actually doing the work. You're gonna see a lot of people showing up as deeply human, deeply crafted, deeply talented, and doing the work, and that's what's gonna shine.
Laura Smith:Because honestly, as consumers, like you can like I there are notable moments when I have a great interaction with the brand. Right? That they're you talk about them, you're like, wow. And again, we're in this business, but I think it's just how it makes you feel and how I feel that I'm being treated. Because again, your point, Christina, we're human.
Laura Smith:We wanna feel like we're cared for. We wanna feel like we can trust you. We wanna feel like I'm making the right decision. And when those moments happen, those are really great feeling moments, and you want more of them. But we don't have a lot of them in reality.
Christina Garnett:We don't. We don't. We there's a lot of people who they're they're going through the motions. Like, it's not enough that so like right now it's like, I'm gonna ship something to you and if it gets delivered, it doesn't matter what position it's in. It doesn't matter if it was on your porch through a rainstorm and now it soaked through.
Christina Garnett:Like, I did my part, it got delivered. People are doing the bare minimum, they're doing mid, and saying that's good enough. And so for the brands that want to really wanna shine, I would say that like the gap is actually not that big. Like just to show up a little bit more human, to be able to provide an opportunity for people to speak to a human. You can still have like tons of automations in AI, but give them an off ramp and say, we do have this opportunity in case you'd rather speak to a human.
Christina Garnett:Or if something bad happens and you're anxious and there's no there's no way a chat bot could fix this for you, here's an opportunity. And I I love the thing that y'all talked about at the very beginning where like, what's the one thing that signals that for you? For me, it's a no reply email. Nothing feels like a greater slap in the face than a no reply email because you got to email me, but I can't email you back? Right.
Christina Garnett:That is literally one-sided. What do you mean? It's that stuff. It's It's the you wanna talk to me all the time, but you don't want me to talk back. I think the brands that are receptive and want to show up as humans and not in a, hey strange, like hey kids, like how you do, like none of that.
Christina Garnett:We've we've focused on, like, how can we show up on social as a best friend when it's like, just be normal. Just be human. Just, like, just care. Like, that's it. Like, nothing nothing crazy.
Christina Garnett:Like, just do that.
Laura Smith:Yeah. I think
Brian Rowley:it goes back to your earlier point where, like, the example you gave of if people just checked in with you more than just right before the three month renewal, like, that extra five emails is not gonna make or break anybody in their role. Right? But it does make them feel like you're actually engaged in care versus just showing up at that last minute moment. It's an important piece.
Christina Garnett:The thing that's wild to me is we also know that when sales are gonna happen, we already know that like our inbox is gonna be like deluged with all of these things. Like, we know Black Friday. More people actually, like, clean their inbox on Black Friday than shop now because I know you're gonna talk to me. But I've I've asked so many people this, like, when was the last time a brand checked in with you without a CTA, without a button? Just like, hey, how you doing?
Laura Smith:Yeah. It doesn't happen. What what I was gonna say was I just had this really good experience where it was a, I had a call I hate calling anybody, but I had a call company, and it was AI. It was it was someone you know, the answer they said that though, like this. But what I loved about it was it was like a real person's voice.
Laura Smith:I mean, it sounded like that. You can kind of hear AI. It like this it sounded like a young woman and guiding you through the process and then basically was like, you know what? I can't help you any further, so I'm gonna pass you on to, like, a human. Like, they basically said that.
Laura Smith:Like, it was so transparent. Because at first, I'm thinking this person sounds real. And then realizing that, you know, it was pretty, like, standard kind of questions and things like that, but very helpful to navigate through and then said, okay, now I'm gonna pass you on to somebody who can help you further because I can't. Like, I only have so much knowledge or something like that. But it was very I appreciated it because they weren't trying to pretend that this was really a real person.
Laura Smith:I just felt like I liked hearing her voice versus, like, a robot's voice. You know? It just it felt more of human. And and I just it stood out to me, I'm like, that was a pretty good experience for having to call someplace, which is always annoying. But Yep.
Laura Smith:You know. So yeah. So I think some people are are getting that and doing it right because I because it does make you feel like that wasn't bad. Yeah.
Brian Rowley:How bad is that? They were sitting here saying,
Christina Garnett:that wasn't so bad.
Brian Rowley:Bar is very low.
Christina Garnett:And the bar is so low. So low.
Brian Rowley:So low.
Laura Smith:And I mean, again, I don't wanna call anybody. I'm like, I don't I don't wanna order pizza, like, call for pizza. So when I have to call and deal with the transaction that's bigger than that, I'm like, oh, boy. Okay. This has been riveting.
Laura Smith:I love this conversation. But it's time to put you into the special place that we call the hot seat. Let's go. Questions flying fast. We keep it real.
Laura Smith:We keep it sweet. Christina Garnett's here. Turn up the heat. She's in the hot seat. There we go, Joey.
Laura Smith:Always fun with the music. Thanks, Joey, for that great introduction. So as we said as we said at the beginning, before we let you go, we're gonna have one more activity where you don't know that what what it's gonna be. Yeah. And we're gonna talk today in the spirit of our conversation.
Laura Smith:We're gonna play a game, and you have to we're gonna rattle off some some, ideas or some some customer experience tactics. Yep. And you have to call it mid or meaningful. Okay. Okay?
Laura Smith:Let's do it. And you can and you can, like, elaborate if you want or explain or we might question you on something, but just it can just just be mid or meaningful. Okay. I'll start. AI personalized customer emails.
Christina Garnett:It's mid.
Brian Rowley:Surprise and delight gifts.
Christina Garnett:I'm gonna say mid, because you gotta do the work first. It's only meaningful if the foundation is. I I like to say like, imagine you had the worst meal of your life and then they give you a free dessert. That dessert So true. It doesn't fix the problem.
Christina Garnett:It probably prevents you from writing a bad review, but it doesn't like it doesn't save the thing. So I love surprise and delight, but only if the foundation's correct first. Fix the foundation then mean like, surprise and delight to your heart's content, but not until you've done that first.
Laura Smith:Love that. Customer, advisory boards.
Christina Garnett:Priceless, meaningful. Big plus. Big, big, big plus.
Brian Rowley:Brand communities.
Laura Smith:Priceless, meaningful. Love them. Yeah. K. Personalized onboarding videos.
Christina Garnett:Yes. But they should be but I would add that those are meaningful, but I would add that you should have differentiated instruction. So if you were doing onboarding, you should have it be done for tactile, visual, and auditory learners. So that way you let people choose their own adventure based on how they learn best, because not everyone's gonna learn from a video.
Brian Rowley:That's a really good point. Social media banter between brands.
Laura Smith:Mid. I feel like it's so old. Yeah. So like 2000 something. I don't know.
Laura Smith:Asking customers to participate in a case study.
Christina Garnett:Meaningful, but you got like what we talked about, you gotta do the work.
Brian Rowley:Yep. Sharing customer feedback publicly.
Christina Garnett:I think that's meaningful. I think it's priceless. The guy who, I think Tyler, who is the CEO of, Beehive, he just went on Reddit and also went on social different channels to basically say like, roast me. Tell me what you don't like. Tell me what you do like.
Christina Garnett:Tell me what we can do better. And he listened to the feedback. He's already starting to implement that and it it's huge credibility signal. Massive, massive fan of sharing feedback publicly.
Laura Smith:Using AI to respond to customer questions.
Christina Garnett:I think it's great to set up as like a starting point if you don't know where to begin. So like if you need to have all this data consolidated into like what are the major questions and problems they have, but it should all be rewritten. So like blank page AI can start it, but for it needs to be completely rewritten by human hands before it gets seen by the public.
Brian Rowley:Well, Christina, I can't thank you enough. This has been an amazing conversation. It's been great having you here. So thank you so much.
Laura Smith:Thanks, Christina.
Brian Rowley:So Laura, I have to say there's a couple of things for me that really stood out here. Obviously trust, right? We talked about the whole trust factor. One of the things that Christina mentioned was treat your customers Christina And I would say you should treat them like influencers because at the end of the day, they are the influencers, right? So I think if we just change the behavior just to understand and accept the fact that that's what they are, They just might not be on social media platforms talking about it every single day.
Brian Rowley:They are they are big influencers and they they can impact the brand. My favorite thing, the customer mission statement.
Laura Smith:A 100%. That's like so easy. Like, we just can do that. There is no reason not to do that. Because we worked as we came on board and really worked in honing the mission and the values and all that for the organization.
Laura Smith:It's like, that to me was just a missed opportunity, but we can still do it. And it feels like any organization can do that.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. And I love the the example of that is just as could be as simple as everybody's here to help. Right? Like if if you can just boil it down to that, what a great experience that would be. If everybody who had any interaction with a customer took that approach, that my job here is to help, it would fundamentally change, I think the way that, people actually interact with customers.
Brian Rowley:So I think great conversation for those of you that are out there. Thanks for listening. And most importantly, if you like what you heard today, be sure to follow us. And if you want to hear more from Christina Garnett, you can find her on LinkedIn. You can also check out her book, Transforming Customer Brand Relationships, and look out for her next one coming soon.
