Elevating Brand Perception Through Experience

You've heard "listen to your customers." Easier said than done. I'll be the first to say that's the hardest thing to do in a role like mine. We have hundreds of customer conversations a month, and the biggest challenge is understanding what customers are actually saying, uncovering themes, and identifying how to act on them. That's where AI has been invaluable. In the past, focusing on the easiest things to measure has been my biggest mistake. Lagging indicators and reactive metrics based on what already happened. Important, but not predictive. AI listens to every single conversation we have, and without it, we wouldn't have connected the dots between those hundreds of hours of calls. We found lags that weren't a lack of effort or skill on our CSM team's part—they only became clear when we zoomed out and saw patterns across all those conversations. That's listening at scale, and it's provided systemic opportunities that wouldn't exist without AI. #AI #Listening #Opportunity

Imagine this: I was working at a company, and we were about to lose a $2 million client. But here's the twist – I was the only one who saw it coming. Some years back, I had a job focused on developing client relationships. One day, a client dropped a bombshell on me: they were really unhappy with a process our entire team had JUST reworked. To make matters worse, this wasn't just any client; it was a $2 million client hanging by a thread. I jumped into action, telling the client, "Thank you, I'm going to talk to my team. I promise I'll be back with a solution." I approached my team, expressed the seriousness of the situation, and emphasized the importance of listening to what this client was saying. They didn't listen to me at first (just like they weren't listening to the client), but in the end, I managed to get through to them. They listened and agreed to take this client's recommendations. That experience, way back when, was a wake-up call about the power of listening. It wasn't just about hearing; it was about genuinely getting what the client was saying and what they needed. It was an awakening! Instead of losing them, we not only retained their business but forged a stronger bond and even expanded our partnership. 📈 Listening isn't a "nice-to-have" skill; it's the foundation of understanding. It's the bridge that connects what we think someone wants with what they really need. 🗝️ Of course, today, stories like this have made it my mission to spread this idea of The Art of Active Listening. I teach individuals and organizations how to weave active listening into their organizations because, truthfully, it makes all the difference.💡 Have you ever had anything similar to this happen to you? What made the difference in your situation? #Activelistening #Clientsuccess

Here's how I got my client to listen to her community instead of just her business My client, an owner of a local coffee shop, was puzzled. Despite active social posts, her coffee shop stayed quiet. She was shouting into the digital void. One day, she overheard customers: "I wish there was a quiet place to work with good Wi-Fi and late hours."  Lightbulb moment! She shared with me over the discovery call that she'd forgotten to listen to her community. I changed her approach. 1. Tuned In: Followed local hashtags, joined community groups. 2. Read Between Lines: Noticed discussions about study spaces and late-night coffee needs. 3. Adapted: Extended hours, upgraded Wi-Fi, created quiet zones. 4. Engaged: Joined conversations, shared tips beyond just promotions. 5. Measured: Tracked mentions and sentiments. Result? Her shop became the go-to spot. Revenue doubled, engagement soared – all from posting smarter, not more. Most businesses focus on sales rather than social listening, so here's why social listening matters to all brands: 1. Uncover needs 2. Improve offerings 3. Manage crises 4. Gain competitive edge 5. Build authentic connections For those of you who are missing that vibe in your business, I would like to set a challenge: 1. Observe your niche for a week without self-promotion. 2. Find three surprising audience insights. 3. Plan strategy adjustments based on these. Share your biggest revelation! How will you transform your approach? #SocialListening #DigitalMarketing #BrandStory

For years, companies have been leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to provide personalized customer experiences. One widespread use case is showing product recommendations based on previous data. But there's so much more potential in AI that we're just scratching the surface. One of the most important things for any company is anticipating each customer's needs and delivering predictive personalization. Understanding customer intent is critical to shaping predictive personalization strategies. This involves interpreting signals from customers’ current and past behaviors to infer what they are likely to need or do next, and then dynamically surfacing that through a platform of their choice. Here’s how: 1. Customer Journey Mapping: Understanding the various stages a customer goes through, from awareness to purchase and beyond. This helps in identifying key moments where personalization can have the most impact. This doesn't have to be an exercise on a whiteboard; in fact, I would counsel against that. Journey analytics software can get you there quickly and keep journeys "alive" in real time, changing dynamically as customer needs evolve. 2. Behavioral Analysis: Examining how customers interact with your brand, including what they click on, how long they spend on certain pages, and what they search for. You will need analytical resources here, and hopefully you have them on your team. If not, find them in your organization; my experience has been that they find this type of exercise interesting and will want to help. 3. Sentiment Analysis: Using natural language processing to understand customer sentiment expressed in feedback, reviews, social media, or even case notes. This provides insights into how customers feel about your brand or products. As in journey analytics, technology and analytical resources will be important here. 4. Predictive Analytics: Employing advanced analytics to forecast future customer behavior based on current data. This can involve machine learning models that evolve and improve over time. 5. Feedback Loops: Continuously incorporate customer signals (not just survey feedback) to refine and enhance personalization strategies. Set these up through your analytics team. Predictive personalization is not just about selling more; it’s about enhancing the customer experience by making interactions more relevant, timely, and personalized. This customer-led approach leads to increased revenue and reduced cost-to-serve. How is your organization thinking about personalization in 2024? DM me if you want to talk it through. #customerexperience #artificialintelligence #ai #personalization #technology #ceo

About 20 years ago, I started doing something simple yet incredibly powerful: I picked up the phone and asked my clients’ customers a few honest questions. No fancy research firms. No complicated surveys. Just real conversations. Fast forward to today—I’ve done over 1,000 of these interviews. And I can confidently say this: Talking to your customers is the single most important thing you can do to shape your marketing. But here’s the catch: you have to keep probing. If you ask, “Why did you choose this company?” most people will say things like: ~ They had great service. ~ They were professional. ~ Their pricing was fair. That’s surface-level. It’s not the real reason. So, I always ask, as a follow-up, something like, “Tell me a story about a time when they provided great service.” That’s when the gold comes out. 👉 “I was in total panic because my system went down before a big presentation, and they picked up the phone on the first ring. I didn’t feel like just another customer—I felt like they actually cared.” 👉 “We were struggling to figure this out, and they didn’t just fix the problem—they walked us through it step by step, so we felt in control again.” This is what they are not getting anywhere else in their life. When you listen for emotional words and themes, you uncover what really matters. It’s rarely about product, price, or features—it’s about trust, confidence, relief, and peace of mind. And when you use the exact words your customers use to describe their problems (instead of industry jargon), your messaging becomes clearer. Your website resonates more. Your ads perform better. So here’s my challenge to you: Go talk to your customers. But don’t stop at the first answer. Keep asking. Dig deeper. Make them tell you a story. "Tell me more about that" is your best tool; keep asking it over and over. You might be surprised at what you hear. And it just might change the way you do marketing forever.

The world preaches loyalty, but how many brands actually live it? Last month, I got an invite to something called Summer Smash, 1st Phorm International's invite-only community event in St. Louis. Think three days of HQ tours, private pre-parties, high-energy workouts, rides, and live music from artists like Ludacris, Lil' Jon, Pitbull, and Steve Aoki. The whole thing sells out in under a minute each year. Pure community building at it's finest. I couldn't make it due to personal obligations, but here's what blew me away: they still sent me a surprise box packed with over 10 of their top products (proteins, apparel, energy drinks, protein sticks), plus a handwritten note that felt genuinely personal, not like a marketing ploy. We've gotten so caught up in digital tactics that we've forgotten about the power of high-touch moments that forge actual emotional connections. This kind of follow-through is almost unheard of in today's brand world. Most companies would've moved on to the next person on their list. But 1st Phorm gets something that a lot of brands miss: real loyalty isn't built through campaigns or offers, it's built through experiences that make people feel like they belong to something bigger. That's where lifetime value really takes off. Summer Smash is far beyond just an event; it's the kind of experience that flips the loyalty script entirely, where customers don't just buy, they simply belong. Here's what I think other brands can learn from this approach: ➟ Send unexpected value for no reason. A surprise product or handwritten note shows customers they matter beyond their purchase history. ➟ Build exclusive communities around shared values, not just products. Whether it's in-person events or virtual experiences, give your best customers something they can't get anywhere else. ➟ Create moments people actually talk about. A few hours with A-list talent or behind-the-scenes access beats another discount code every time. ➟ Lead with gratitude, not growth metrics. When thank-you moments drive your strategy instead of the other way around, authenticity follows naturally. The bottom line: loyalty is earned through emotion, experience, and belonging. If your brand isn't building that, you're just another transaction in someone's day. When did you last surprise your customers with something that wasn't even on your roadmap?

#CustomerExperience leaders need to split their strategies into deliberate bottom-up and top-down approaches. Many get the bottom-up right, but they struggle with the top-down. Bottom-up strategies focus on improving customer-centric employee behaviors at scale. These approaches include #CX or empathy training for front-line workers, using Voice of Customer feedback to set touchpoint expectations based on customer feedback, and building customer-centric KPIs into individual performance appraisals. But where many CX leaders struggle is often with engaging senior leaders to influence their customer-centric behaviors. It's difficult to influence C-suite behavior, but if you're expected to improve customer-centric culture in the organization, then you cannot avoid this. Top-down strategies start with showing senior leaders how customer satisfaction impacts growth, retention, margin, and lifetime value. It also includes improving CX and VoC reporting to provide more recommendations and actions, not just findings and data. Having discussions with leaders about the importance of financial and non-financial rewards for customer-centric behaviors is another tool in the top-down toolkit. And using personas and journey maps is a vital way to convert customer and touchpoint data into a compelling story of necessary change. Don't rely on dashboards and reports to do the job of top-down CX engagement. Don't count on a couple of positive customer-centric comments from leaders as a sign of meaningful, irreversible support. And do not assume that the fact your CX job exists is evidence of senior leaders' commitment to customer experience. Part of the job for a successful CX leader is to constantly prove the value of customer-centric strategies, influence senior leader priorities, and arm decision-makers with the insight they need to make customer-centric decisions. Don't just empower your frontline workers and assume the job is done. If you aren't building a consistent dialog with executives, you're not only missing an opportunity to make the most significant customer impact but also seeding future problems that can lead to declining support, budget, and resources for customer experience initiatives. Take a comment today to identify or define your top-down and bottom-up CX strategies for 2024. If there's an imbalance, solving that now can lead to better outcomes by the end of this year.

Companies who put effort into really understanding their customers will be the ones who win long term. Thats why what Rare Beauty (Katie Welch) did a few months ago with their ‘Comfort Club’ is a great example of this. If you’ve never heard of Rare Beauty, it’s Selena Gomez’s beauty brand. They realized something fundamental to Selena and their customer’s definition of wellness: that wellness is not this never-ending checklist of just doing things. A lot of the time, it’s just finding comfort in what feels good. So they came up with a line of products based around comfort. But they took this realization a step further. They asked their staff team: what other methods do you use for self comfort? They got back things like: - Yoga - Massage - Breathwork - Spending time with friends Then they used this as a basis for their content strategy. Their content (and events) now tie into these ideas of self-comfort, including collaborations with Open, Beyond Yoga, The NOW etc. They made an online series of free videos around those topics and created in-person events where people could come and do those things with their team. I think this is such a great example of going the extra distance to care for your customer. These events and these videos aren't necessarily the biggest moneymakers for the company. They are brand-builders. They help people care about the company because now these people have gone to an event, met with the team, and had an experience together. Thats why, the more you understand and give to your customers ❤️ the more they will care about you and want to support your brand.

Want to see brand storytelling done right? Etsy’s 20th anniversary "What it Takes"  campaign reminds us that being original, human-centric, and true to your values builds trust *and* stands out. Let's break it down... Devoid of traditional (and expected) branded flair, the campaign shifts attention to the creators—the users—and what it takes to produce the one-of-a-kind items that fill the marketplace. Instead of focusing on the highly-visual products, this quiet tribute celebrates the power of originally, the need for human connection, and the richness of craft through telling the stories of three makers. As Etsy CMO Brad Minor put it, this is about “celebrating originality” in a world that often prioritizes convenience. I often advise that content should educate, inspire, or entertain. This hits all three. Through a mix of in-person events, social video, and UGC, the campaign (by Orchard) successfully humanizes an otherwise intangible online space. In a great breakdown for DesignRush, Roberto Orosa surfaces three key lessons: 1. As mass production and AI-generated products grow more common, shoppers are increasingly drawn to brands that feel human and handmade. 2. By showing the hard work behind creativity, the platform shifts the narrative from product to process. 3. It’s one of the cleanest examples of how brand storytelling can focus not on what’s being sold, but on why it matters. 🌟 Takeaway: As trust becomes the biggest currency in brand-building, stories about your people, your purpose, and your process ensure you’ll never run out of original ideas. See the Etsy “What it Takes” campaign in action: https://lnkd.in/gSE4HYJ2 Full article via DesignRush: https://lnkd.in/gmFTzYDz Video credit: https://lnkd.in/g4rtY_cw

Bad customer experience (CX) is costly. But worse than the cost is the damage it can do to your business. We’ve all seen the fallout from poor customer interactions—lost sales, negative reviews, and damaged reputations. That’s why it’s crucial to prioritize and enhance CX. Here are key strategies to implement: ➡ Map the Customer Journey: Each click and interaction shapes their perception. Create detailed personas to uncover needs, behaviors, and pain points. ➡ Process Inventory: Identify inefficiencies, like delayed shipping, by mapping the customer journey and tracing issues back to their roots. ➡ Ethnographic Research: Study customers in their natural settings to gain insights data alone can't capture. Align strategies with genuine customer expectations. ➡ Cultivate a Customer-Centric Culture: Follow Tesla’s lead—ensure every employee is driven to enhance CX, fostering continuous feedback and adaptation. ➡ Leverage Data: Use a 360-degree view of each customer to predict needs, personalize interactions, and exceed expectations. Don’t cut corners when it comes to improving CX. Focus on these strategies to drive loyalty and revenue. It’s worth it.