Humanizing the Customer Relationship: An Interview with Christina Garnett, CX Evangelist and Pocket CCO

CG: Yeah. So I was looking for like, things to like, learn and be like, all right, well, if I'm going to do this, I can't just say I'm a marketer. I have to actually, like, learn.

SS: Did you know really anything about marketing at that point or was this all brand new and it just intrigued you? (9.08)

CG: All brand new. All brand new. The reason it came to that was when I was like, early on in my, in my relationship with my husband, I would, we'd watch TV and watch movies and stuff like, like you do. And I would fix commercials in real time. So we'd watch a commercial and be like, that was fine, but like, they should have used this or like they should have said that. And so I was fixing ads. And my husband had worked in ad agencies. He was a graphic designer by trade. And so he's like, I'm seeing you do what I've seen other people do on my team, but they were marketers. Like, you're just a teacher. Like, what are we doing? And so, he was the one who - because I was trying to figure out like, what I wanted to be. And he's like, you should look at marketing because you're naturally really good at it. And so I was like, well, whatever you say, but I should actually, like, do the work. I can't just, I can't be that person on TikTok who's like, I'm a strategist. And like, just because you say you are doesn't mean you are. Like, you have to actually learn the craft. So basically Googled everything. Like, what's available, what's not available, what's good, what's deemed as like, high quality content versus not. And that's how I found HubSpot Academy. And then I took absolutely every single thing I could take and then was reading every book I could read.

I went on Coursera and was taking like college classes on like brand strategy and like behavioural psychology. And just like, everything did courses through like UVA and Urbana Champagne. And um, I think there was one from like John Hopkins that I did on like, data science. Like, I did every single thing, like just constantly feeding my brain to figure out, like, what more is there to know? And so that really helped me as I was trying to figure out what this was going to look like. And so I started consulting for a local non-profit that was doing consulting for businesses, called Score, which is retired executives that kind of come together and then they help other brands. And so I was their social media person because I was doing all the social stuff and looking at what it looked like.

And, and so from there I started working at SBDC1, my local SBDC, was their Marketing Director and was doing a lot of like, someone comes in and says, I had an idea last night for a business, like, how do I get started? And so same thing - was constantly keeping up with updates on what was happening with Facebook at the time and what were all these new social media features and how, like, teaching classes there based off of like, what I was seeing. So I was like, all right, how do you create a Facebook Business page? And this was like a while ago, um, like, how do you create a Facebook Business page if you're a small business owner and you don't, you don't have the funds to pay someone to do that? Or how do you create Google Ads? And like, what are the step by step processes for that?

And so did that for a while, left to consult and was doing consulting for small businesses and then was brought on to be a strategist for ICUC2 because I was creating playbooks for them for like, Fortune 500 brands. Like, we love this but like, we want you full time. So was at ICUC, worked with some Fortune 500 brands, I can't say because I have an NDA, but like, you've heard of them.

And so, worked through that. The pandemic hit and that whole process of stress really kind of fostered, I was writing a lot during that time period. I was writing a lot on Medium. One of my pieces about the pandemic actually got picked up by the “Next Web”3. And it's about how like social media managers, like, we can't, we can't unplug. Like, especially in a crisis. Like, we are the ones who are paid to be plugged in. Like, it is a part of the job to like, see the worst on the Internet and be able to not only take it in, but discern it and figure out how do we tell that to leadership and what do we need to do next?

And so, wrote that, left and then during that process was working for a really cool startup, around AI lenses that created sentiment, around like, what kind of like, what your digital shelf should look like if you are an e-commerce brand. Like, should your product be at angles, what should be in the foreground, what colors are more likely to capture the attention of your audience. And then during that time period, I was writing about HubSpot and they saw my content and I was asked if I wanted to join. And then I led the Hub Fans Advocacy Program4 which was a lot about community meets advocacy meets brand love, which was kind of like in a lot of ways put all of my work together under one roof. And so when I left trying to figure out what I wanted to be, I create a job description of like, here's everything I want to be responsible for. Here's the work that I really love doing. This is the impact I want to create. What does this look like? And so, I left and started Pocket CCO for all the people who've ever wanted to work with me. But they're like, because I've had people say like, I wish I could just pull you out of my pocket and ask you questions. And so that is basically the business model for my, for my work.

SS: So the fact that you're a polymath I think has really helped - the fact -

CG: Yes.

SS: And that you have clearly insatiable curiosity. So...

CG: Yes. Yes.

SS: … and you've adapted quite well to circumstances and certainly came in at the right level really in terms of social media and community building, advocacy. In terms of your experience at HubSpot, you did mention that you led their advocacy program, tell me a little bit about that. What was involved in that? (13.58)

CG: Yeah, so there was a gamified element which was where there would be like challenges that people could do in order to gain points. And then there was a community focus where it was more about like communal coming together, behind the scenes, access, things like that. And when I was helping to build it, what really kind of struck for me was, I really thought of it like going to a concert. And so, everyone wants to get to the concert, but obviously the more you pay, the closer you like, the better seats you get, the better experience you get, the more access you get. Now what if we, in exchange for money, we did advocacy. So like, the more you work with us, the more you do with us the closer your seats get, the closer you get to the stage. And so it comes from like you enter the arena and then, like, what do you need to do to get to the better seat? And then the better seat, and then the better seat. And now you're in the pit, and now you want behind the scenes access. And so, one of the things I created while I was there was the INBOUND Correspondence Program, which is where we treated our advocates like influencers. They got a ticket to Inbound, they got to share their experience, and it blew up every year on social.

There was tons of social UGC because we treated customers like influencers. And that's the, that's the one thing, like, if anyone, if anyone's, like, what is the one line that, like, would fix your CX in a heartbeat? It's always that, like, if you treated your customers the way you treat influencers, you would fix so many big and small problems naturally. You would just naturally start treating people better because they are influencers. They are, they are absolutely having conversations behind your back that you will never see. And they are deciding why people either would never work with you or can't wait to sign up.

Like, those conversations are happening anyway. So the more likely you are to treat your customers like influencers, instead of only giving that attention to people based off of their follower count, the better off you're going to be and the actual, like, relationships you're going to foster there. And so, that's how, like, that program was very much, how can we make these people, how can we make it easy to love us? How can we make it easy to advocate for us? And then how can we make it feel as special as humanly possible?

So it's not just you're in this program. It's only HubSpot could give you that. And so one of the things that was very cool was there was a, there was like a host, like an emcee host of Inbound the past few years, Troy, and then we added on Christina, and they were both very big advocates for us.

And so it goes from an idea of, yes, you could get behind the scenes access, but what if we could change your life? Like, what if we could give you a once in a lifetime opportunity? And it's not because you have a certain follower count, it's because you get it. It's because we see you, it's because we appreciate you and we want to treat you the way that you deserve. That's really powerful.

SS: Treat you the way you deserve is really the mantra, isn't it?

CG: Yeah.

SS: For customer relationship building. So let me just segue a bit because you came out just recently with a blog called “The Great Breakup”, which resonated with me. And one of the things you say in the blog is that customers are losing faith in the entire relationship model. It reads like a Cri de Coeur. Have you lost a bit of faith or optimism around the willingness of companies to actually see the light around this?

CG: I haven't lost faith, but for better or for worse, that I'm an, I'm an idealist, I'm a regularly disappointed idealist. So I know that they want, they want the ends of what a customer relationship can do. They just don't want to do the, like they don't want to do the work to get there. And so, I do believe that like, if I beat the drum long enough and loud enough that they'll realize that like, I can get you to the destination you want to go. We're just going to have to take some stops along the way. We're just going to have to take some really colourful detours, but it's going to be worth it in the end. So I do believe we can get there. But I, but I also think that a lot of brands are going to have to lose a lot of market share in order to see what they're doing wrong.

SS: When you say oh, you mean it has to be painful for them to actually see the light, that's what you're saying?

CG: Yes.

SS: Yeah. Isn't there though, just an inherent paradox within companies today? Marketing is in charge of sales and CX is in charge of the operational part of the post sale experience. One is seen as a revenue producer and contribution of the company, the other is not. The other is seen as overhead. Isn't that at the heart of the problem?

CG: Yes, I would actually agree. Yes. If you see CX as a cost center when it is actually a revenue engine, I think that that's a massive problem for brands. I also think that a lot of brands only see CX as a CS issue. Like they think if you talk about customer experience, they just think, okay, well support's fine. I was like, oh no, no, no, no. Like, everything the customer touches is a part of the customer experience.

So like, they could have the best experience with marketing and sales and CS, but then your CEO says something that they are like, they are very counter to or they feel offended by - that touches the customer. Love it or hate it, that impacts whether or not that customer wants to be a repeat revenue stream for you. Or not only that if they want to be loud about why no one else should either. It could be also that like maybe sales lies to them about what the product or service can actually do. And so marketing's great. Marketing hasn't done anything to offend them. But now customer support has to clean up a mess they didn't make.

And so, CX is kind of bottled into this idea of it needs to live in this little silo. And because you have all these different silos saying like they're all just head down doing their own work, the CX suffers because proper optimal CX is going to require everybody to be on the same page. You need everybody to be aligned on what that looks like, how do we take care of them? And if you do that correctly, then you do create an actual flywheel. You will create something that is going to be self-sustaining because the people who love you, they're going to want other people to take care of them, of their friends, of their, of the, of the, their partners, of their peers. And if they have a great experience, they're going to want to share that.

Meanwhile, you have brands that only care about the bad. Like it has to go viral and it has to become a PR crisis before they step in and fix it. And then they think that they can do the bare minimum and that's fine. At the same time that's a problem. But then they also don't have escalation protocols for the good. So they'll have people in their, in their social media comments saying, oh my god, I love you. And then those comments don't get liked, they don't get responded to, they don't get appreciated. And so, going back to like, the behavioural psychology of it all, we have brands that want love, but when they get love, they don't appreciate it or do anything to signal that they see it and they are appreciative of that.

And what that's doing is if you only show up when people are mad at you, if a CEO only pokes out to talk to the audience when somebody's angry, that's the only way you can get their attention, you're conditioning your audience to only talk about you when they're angry because there's no benefit to them to say something kind. There's no benefit to praise you, because you're not going to get anything out of it. It doesn't work. And that's what we keep seeing.

I actually saw a tweet earlier today that I thought was actually like, really indicative of this. And they were praising Netflix's Frankenstein marketing team because instead of just giving PR packages to like cinema like, Twitter Film, like influencers, they actually were doing social listening and seeing, like, who are the accounts that were really loving this and creating content that people responded to and they were sending PR packages to them, to the fans, to the actual fans. That's huge. That's like pouring … that's like seeing a fire that you really want to grow and then you pour gasoline on it. And that's what they did. And so just more of that. More of that all the time. (21.34)

SS: Yeah. I think there's a lot to be learned from the entertainment business and the sports business these days in terms of cultivating your fan base and treating them correctly. That's an area we're going to explore a bit later on. I do want to, obviously talk about the book - reads like a playbook of best practices. Was that the vision for the book that you felt that, especially with your expertise in social and community activation, that you really needed to spread the gospel around the importance of those principles? Was that the vision behind the book?

CG: I think it was that and the temptation for me is like, I don't want to go negative. I naturally go negative because I want to deconstruct, like, why something didn't work. And so I think there's only like, one or two, like, negative examples in the entire book. And like, one of them is Morbius versus, like, Sonic. And so I wanted to go towards positive. So it's not about … I don't want to lecture people even though it probably sounds like I'm lecturing people most of the time, I don't want to lecture people. I want them to see, like, good can absolutely exist and here's how you can create good. Like, here's what good could look like.

And so, I hope the book is, because when I, when I was like, all the books I've read, I've seen the world of CX from all of these different lanes, but I've never seen a book that puts everything together to say, like, it's actually going to take all of it. And so, there's going to be marketers who don't know everything in the book. There's going to be, like, there's going to be statisticians who know game theory but don't know everything else in the book. There's going to be community pros who don't know everything in the book. And so, what I'm hoping is, is that all these different disciplines realize they're part of this team that has to build CX. And so I hope when they get to their section, they're like, yep, yep. And they're nodding their head. And then when they get to another section that has nothing to do with their, their specificity that they're like, okay, that makes sense. I understand why those play together. Like, I hope that the book is a player coach because I've done the work and I want to coach you through how to do it. And so I hope that that is how, I hope that that's how it's perceived by people. It's like, what if, what if a player coach like, walks you through how to build this?

SS: It's certainly jam packed with ideas, but I think you've touched on something which is marketing has become a very complex discipline. It's multidisciplinary, but there's also factionalization that's gone on. So you have the media group here, digital group here, over there, you have the brand building group over there. No one's really talking to each other and there's no coherent overall strategy around it, which is really should be the customer strategy, right?

CG: Agreed, yeah.

SS: At a, at a more level. And then that brings everybody together. And I think that's hence the problem that organizations face. Obviously they're, they're siloed. We're going to come to that subject, I hope a little later on as well. The other thing I wanted to clarify is you stress the emotional connection to the brand, clearly. And I think you hear that from brand marketers as much as you do from CX folks. But I don't really, or I haven't really seen, of all the books I've read either an exact definition of what that really means because there are various levels, or degrees, should I say, of emotion. What are we striving for here? You're an idealist, I presume.

CG: Yes

SS: The pinnacle of emotion is advocacy. But let's face it, that's going to be 5, maybe 10% of your customer base.

CG: Yes

SS: And you've got what I call the malleable middle. We'll talk about that a little bit later on too. The 60% that could lean either way. How do you define emotional connection to the brand? (24.55)

CG: So for me, emotional connection is that it fosters something in you that makes the choice safer. And for different people, that emotion is going to be different things. So like for example, if you are a parent, the emotion that you need for a brand to make you want to buy something as a parent is very different than if you were buying a concert ticket for like your favourite band. So the emotional is … the emotional like name itself is going to be different.

But it's what is the emotional trigger that makes the behaviour absolutely necessary and feel like your life is actually going to be lesser for doing it. And so for me, it's, it's the opposite of rage bait. So brands, for me, brands absolutely understand how emotional connection works because they understand how, how rage bait works. They understand how controversial marketing works. They understand how unhinged content attracts people's attention. This year has been like Machiavellian levels of controversial marketing. For the sake of rage bait, for the sake of attention. It doesn't matter if it's bad. Look how everyone's talking about us.

So those brands, you did that, that signals to me that you understand emotional connection. You're just doing it for bad instead of for good. And so what are like, the good side emotional triggers so that people feel, is it psychological safety? Is it kindness? Is it shared values? Is it feeling like you belong? Is it love? Like, a lot of people, I think get in trouble because they only see emotional connection as love. And I think that really, really narrows down what you can do for people.

And also, like, there's different levels of love. Like, there's romantic love, there's paternal love, there's familial love, there's brotherly love. Like, there's all of these different ways that you can really capture that. And so, when we're thinking about emotional connection, it … that's what it needs to do, is it needs to feel like this is the safe choice. This makes sense. This is a signal of me, all of these things. And so, the emotion can be a multitude of things, but it has to lean positive, it has to lean into, this is something I have to do because it is for me, it is made for me. It makes me safe. It aligns with me, it aligns with my higher self, it aligns with what I want to do.

SS: It's quite category dependent though, I imagine as well.

CG: Yes, yes. Yeah. But I would argue that is category dependent. But psychological safety I would argue works across categories because you need that. And, and what that psychological safety looks like is different by category. But there's still an element of psychological safety, especially when you have economic uncertainty. If, like, no one wants to make any kind of investment if they don't have psychological safety in the choice. And so you're seeing a lot more hesitancy and purchasing decisions, you're seeing, you're seeing like sales cycles get even longer. And when you're thinking about that, like, what can we do to foster psychological safety, to make them feel like this is a safe choice in a very unsafe environment?

SS: So you say in the book that - I don't know if you, you've coined this or not - but “Brandom”. You reference Brandom as the emotional pinnacle of loyalty.

CG: Yes.

SS: What makes it the ultimate expression of, of loyalty? And can you offer up an example or two of what you think are prime examples of it?

CG: Yeah. So I did not, I did not coin Brandom. I would say there's like a contingency of fandom people that have been around that have been using that as a distinction between fandom and Brandom. So I can't, I can't take credit for that. But I will say that for me, Brandom is when you have hit a pinnacle of not only brand affinity, but self identity together. That's when you see Brandom, where being a part of that group, having that affinity becomes a part of your personality.

Two groups that I think really kind of showcase this are Tesla owners and Apple owners. Just absurd levels of Brandom. They not only are going to show up when there's a new product or service, they're going to, they're going to. Something positive happens, they're going to rally, they're going to champion it, they're going to spread it everywhere. But more importantly, and this is where Brandom is important, is they also act as a reputational safeguard where if someone starts talking trash about the brand, they are going to be louder.

Like the Tesla people will be louder than Elon on any given Sunday. If someone says something bad about Tesla, Elon doesn't have to say anything. He pays an entire army that will show up to basically dismantle whatever that negativity is. Either saying it's untrue or talking, like, speaking badly about the person, whatever it is. But they are going to immediately go on the defensive. And so, that is something that is at the pinnacle where it's not at, like, they don't just love you, they defend you.(29.47)

SS: Yeah, it's interesting because I, my most recent podcast was with Sara Wilson. Coined the term “digital campfires”. And Sarah talks about this. She says if you, if you build a strong enough community, they can help to insulate, defend or protect you against the detractors, the people out there to criticize you. You know, it's a very valid point. There's a model that you introduce in the book called the “Hierarchy of Customer Delight”, and I thought was excellent and that I thought was very unique.

CG: Oh, thank you.

SS: I hadn't seen that before. Take us through if you can. I know you don't have a visual here, but just take us verbally through the various tiers of that hierarchy.

CG: Yeah, absolutely. So that was something that I worked on as I was like brainstorming, like, how do we build up the evolution of Hub fans? And so it's based off of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. So going back to the human, what are our needs as humans? So we have like, the survival level all the way up to safety and then we kind of keep going and going and going. And so, I made my own version but for customers. And like what does that actually look like? And so, if you look at the survival layer, that's going to be like, as a business, you did what you said you were going to do, nothing more, nothing less. But you did what you said you're going to do. And now that I've said that, now you realize how many brands actually don't even get on the survival layer. Like they don't even get to that level

SS: Right.

CG: But they want the top of the pyramid. They, they want belonging and self-actualization. And this changed my life. But they didn't even have the survival layer down. And so then you have safety. So safety is obviously like CS. So nobody's perfect, no product or service is flawless. So there's, there's. What happens if something goes wrong? Do they have the safety of knowing that the brand's going to show up, is going to fix it, is going to take care of it, it's going to do what they need to do?

And then they move up and so now it gets a bit more warm and fuzzy. Now we're talking more about belonging, we're talking about connection, now we're talking about community. And this is the middle of the pyramid. That's where most brands stop and think they've done a fantastic job. Like they created a Slack channel and you would have thought that they won the Nobel Peace Prize, like, they figured out everything. Look, we have a community. We sent swag sweatshirts like, with a massive tech logo on it. See, we're doing great. We're the best business ever.

And so, you need to have that visual to see what you're actually missing. And so when you get to the two top layers, that's when you realize where you're actually seeing transformation. I try to say that like, if you're a part of a, if you're part of a good community, it will help you. If you are part of a great community, it will transform you, because it will.

And so, that top part, those two top layers is where I want brands to get to. This is where you're treating your consumers like your customers, like influencers. You're giving them behind the scenes access. Maybe you're letting them talk to the product team, you're empowering them. So now you have someone, especially if you're a SaaS … if you're a SaaS company, you should have people like the loudest person that talks about you on Twitter or LinkedIn or anywhere else. They should be invited to talk to your product team. They should be able to give their ideas. They should be able to say like, if you just had this one feature, it would make my life so much better. Because when you ship that feature, that is their new child, they're going to tell everybody they've ever met. They are going to be a one person advertising campaign telling absolutely everybody.

And so, not only like, they can take as much credit as they want. Your company has the feature, your company shipped it and now you have proof that you listen to your customers and not in a we heard you email drop, but like, and uh, actually we listened and we did, we actioned on it. And then at the very top of that, that's where you're going to make them the star, you're going to make them the hero. That's where you get the ultimate piece, where now it's a part of their personality. Now you are changing their lives. Now you are making them the host, the stage host at Inbound. And that's going to completely shift and pivot how they see the rest of their career and opportunities they're going to get.

That's what we need to get to, is we need to get to, how are you as a brand working with your customers and lifting them up in such a way that you change their life, that they get to reach their final form because of you? And the thing is that brands want to believe they're changing lives. They absolutely will go into a board meeting and we'll talk about how like, we are saving people's lives here. But they're not. But they're not. It's a SaaS product. Now you could have those stories where you're changing people's lives, but are you actually doing that?

SS: I want to hit on that point exactly. Because you do talk about this idea of passion points, finding the passion points of your customers and focusing storytelling there. You also just made an interesting point about, and Fred Reichheld says this, that the job of companies should be to actually change people's lives, make them better. And I just love what you just said about that.

CG: Yes.

SS: Unfortunately, the marketers are saying that, not corporate management often. But that aside, I'm just curious … a couple of things. Where does brand messaging fit into the picture there? So are you suggesting that if a company has a purpose statement that connects with what the passion points of customers are, therein lies the core brand messaging that you need to spin off of. Is that kind of what you're alluding to here? (34.55)

CG: Absolutely. Patagonia is a great example. Patagonia is a living, breathing example of that. They are not only creating a great product, but they're standing by it. And so the people who attach themselves to that, they're not only saying they're a Patagonia fan. When someone says they're a very loud fan of something, they're not only connecting themselves with a brand, they're connecting, especially if it's a very powerful, well-known brand, they are connecting their identity to what that brand stands for.

So Ben and Jerry's is another great example. When you align yourself with that, you are aligning yourself with the values that they have as a part of their core mission statement, as a part of their messaging, as a part of all these things. And it's important because that becomes a tether … because you're not just letting go of ice cream and a vest, like the vest in the ice cream symbolize something so much more than that. And people are fans of something so much more than that because you can get a vest anywhere, you can get a really nice vest anywhere, you can get great ice cream anywhere. But it's the actual mission statement, it's the shared values that becomes the differentiator.

And so, brand messaging is huge in this, especially as we are seeing even more and more AI slop that's being used to like position these brands. And so, what you're doing is instead of leaning into what your actual core differentiators, that's aligning yourself with your customers, you're choosing this like, amalgamation of words that doesn't really hold any real value.

SS: Well, it's that whole area of performative purpose statements that really paper thin and don't mean much. They're not transforming really anything.

CG: Yes.

SS: I want to swing a little bit of the conversation and we may come back to this subject a bit later on to sort of the meat and potatoes of this a little bit in that, again to go back to what we were talking about earlier, that one of the challenges is convincing senior management that it's important to have great customer relationships. Virtually all of the Fortune 500, Fortune 5000, indeed, use NPS as a beacon metric, right?

CG: Yes.

SS: It's on their corporate scorecard often. It’s one of their, you know, strategic KPIs. Yet apart from a very select few of companies at the very top of the NPS scores, most scores are fairly middling. What's your perspective on NPS as this universal beacon metric? And is there, or should there be, complementary measures that round out the picture other than willingness to recommend? What are your thoughts on the measurement piece? Because it's so important convincing management to follow through on the principles that you've been talking about.

CG: I think that NPS is important. How it is utilized is incorrect. And I think that is the flaw with NPS I think NPS is kind of the … it encapsulates like the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That is NPS. Because the thing is, is that, like, I'm sure you're sending it and you're, this is your, like, checkbox of. See, we did an NPS and see, this is how people, like, listen to us and see, like, here we go. The problem is, is that it's, it's a few problems.

One is there's not a deep enough look at the qualitative data. And I am very much a qualitative is just as important as quantitative kind of girl. You need both. You absolutely need both. And one NPS score is never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to tell you the whole picture. It's just not. It's absolutely not. This one number is not going to tell you the full story. It's not going to tell you that, like, the angriest people didn't even do the survey because they know you don't listen. So it's actually in the middle when it should be quite lower because the people who were super angry at you have given up.

It also isn't telling you about the people who might be advocates that are being told to, like, score it really high. And they don't have psychological safety to believe that if they don't score it high, they might lose their credibility or their benefits. Like, I love working with Christina and being a part of this program, but if I don't give her a five out of five, like, maybe she won't give me opportunities in the future. So, like, all right, well, now we have potential bias in the scores.

On top of that, they often don't operationalize what to do with those numbers after that. At best, they will go after the negative, they'll go after the detractors and see how they can fix that problem. Very, very seldom do they celebrate the top people to thank them and be like, hey, we saw that you scored really high. We love that. Would you want to be a part of our cab or would you want to be a part of this? Or, we'd love to invite you to this. And then they absolutely, they absolutely are not going to the middle, which is actually where the gold is.

SS: Yeah, the path.

CG: Yes. Those are actually where the gold is. They are the middle child of NPS and they are treated like the middle child. Those people are your future detractors or your future advocates, and they are completely ignored because it's not high enough to care and it's not bad enough to be scared. And so, NPS as it stands, is a completely wasteful exercise. It could be fantastic. It could be absolutely utilized in a way that is incredibly informative, both internally and externally. But as I see most brands execute it, it's just a waste of, it's a wasted exercise. (40.02)

SS: Well, I guess it has two maybe values, I guess you could say, is that it's at least awakened senior management that this is an important thing, customer loyalty. But the other part of is, it does create a benchmark or a bar in that respect. It serves as a target. Unfortunately, many companies use it as a customer satisfaction metric and not a measure of how well they're doing in terms of improving the lives of people. Which brings me to the question, what adjunct measures would help or augment the NPS score in your view?

CG: There needs to be a customer effort score. Customer effort score, I think, is huge. I think a lot. There are a lot of brands who actually make the job too hard for the customer on purpose. Insurance companies are probably the best example of this. If you've ever had to call an insurance company to get anything done, they make it, like, very difficult to get in contact with them because they want you to give up and then that's lost tickets. Like, we didn't have, like, look at all. Like, we didn't have to. We didn't have all these tickets because, like, no one, no one needed us. When that's not actually what happened. What happened was they have this issue, but they gave up because they didn't want to wait for three hours and there was no other way to contact them.

So customer effort score is huge. The other would be, and this goes back to the silo question is there needs to be a translation from the people who are doing the work to leadership. Because a low NPS or some patterns of NPS, what that actually can be used for is a signal. Because low NPS in Q1 is going to be loss of, loss of revenue and like retention churn in like Q3, but it takes time. And so leadership in like Q3, Q4 is going to be freaking out because their churn numbers are crazy. But they didn't see the smoke that was the NPS score where they saw a lot of patterns.

So there needs to be more qualitative data. There needs to be more qualitative questions. There needs to be a lot more. Like, one thing that I really, really find interesting is there will be if you're seeing a lot of like, qualitative breakdown of like, well, it's not working or it's taking too long, or it's not doing what I need it to do. That's an opportunity for product to sit down with that person and be like, do a reverse demo. Like, I want you to show me what you're doing with the product to do this so I can figure out, like, why it's not working. Because maybe it is customer error. Maybe they're just not doing it right. Or maybe it's not intuitive.

Like, a lot of like, brilliant devs will build something, but it doesn't work for the customer because the customers are like, the devs are thinking like devs, they're not thinking like customers. And so is the customer using the product or feature in a way that is counter to what the dev thought was intuitive. It could be that, like, it's just not integrated properly or they were never onboarded appropriately or whatever. It could be a multitude of things, but you won't actually see it unless you actually see them do it. And so, taking the time to do that and like, figuring out like, you're saying it's broken, but how is it broken? That's important. And then on top of that signals, what leadership wants is leadership wants a dashboard. Is it green beside their name? Is it yellow beside their name? Or is it red beside their name? And they don't realize all of the signals that need to come together in order to create if that green, yellow, red is actually accurate. Because I would argue that most of the green, yellow, red in dashboards right now are not like, a true indicator of whether or not the customer is going to stay or not.

SS: Well, there are internal measures, how much market share we have, what's the share of expenditures, you know, the traditional marketing measures, but they don't incorporate sorts of CX measures that tap into how connected are people to us as a brand. And that's my question is, if your perspective is that the most important thing is, is to maximize the emotional connection to the brand and what's the measure that captures that or measures that captures that, that should sit on the dashboard right alongside NPS.

CG: It should be social sentiment. That's going to be the easiest, that's going to be the easiest track it.

SS: But social sentiment amongst customers or the market or how would you define social?

CG: Both. It needs to be both because they will feed each other. So if you have social sentiment of customers, the market, if there is enough of a pattern of people saying good or bad things about a brand, that will shift market sentiment. Same thing in reverse. If the market as a whole is tending to lean in one direction for a brand, that will also influence customer sentiment. And so it should be social sentiment.

It's shocking to me how many leaders want to improve their stats, but they never talk to the social team. They'll spend an obscene amount of money on a social listening tool, but they never talk to the social team. The social team doesn't need a dashboard. The social team, like, especially someone who is like, manning the social accounts and like responding to comments. That person, you can call them at any given moment and be like, what are people saying about us? And they can just like, rattle it off like in real time. They can probably even like, send you accounts. Be like this person saying this, this person saying that. I saw this a couple days ago. I haven't seen anything like that since. Like, they know. Same thing with customer support. If it's not escalated, it didn't happen. (45.12)

SS: Exactly.

CG: But they don't have a seat at the table. Like, if anyone, if you really care about CX, your CS team and your social team should have a seat at the table because they are in real time seeing your sentiment and they will be able to tell you immediately if the dashboard is correct or incorrect. They'll be able to tell you like the dashboard looks all green and the NPS looks fine, but on Twitter and LinkedIn they're killing us. On Facebook I can't even put comments on because they keep burying us. It's things like that that they know because they're in there. They live with customer sentiment and attention all the time. They'll be able to tell you what content does better. They'll be able to tell you when they get called out like, they can tell you there's so much like, informational gold that the social and CS team have that no one taps into.

SS: Well, it gets lost in the fog of war. And I think the other challenge, and this is across the board as far as CX goes, is the inability to connect or summarize or capture the sentiment, if you will, or the degree of loyalty in a way that they can see the correlation to company performance. Like, that's the missing … you were a math teacher. That's the missing formula.

CG: Yeah, but there is a formula for that. There's absolutely, like, I have that formula. So on social, we talk about how, like, social, great social runs on vibes. And it does. It absolutely runs on vibes. But if you say vibes to leadership, they think it's like, woo, woo. It's, that's, like, you don't really think that. There's no data to support that. So I wrote a post on LinkedIn like a week or so ago talking about, like, if you're a social media manager and you're like, my work runs on vibes, these are the vibes. And leadership is looking at you like you're insane. You have to translate to leadership. Leadership was not going to translate it to you. You have to translate it to leadership.

So what you need to do is there's two, there's two formulas basically. You need to treat vibes like sentiment. So instead of saying vibes say sentiment, and then you're going to pull social listening data, you're going to pull market share, you're going to pull the data that supports. So instead of saying, like, the vibes are off, you're going to say, like, sentiment is showing that we are going towards a more negative or neutral, like, brand sentiment on these channels, or we're seeing a spike in negative comments on these channels.

What you're seeing is what you're calling vibes, but you have to translate that to words and vernacular that leadership understands. So you've got to switch from vibes to sentiment.

The other formula is you can absolutely track emotion to the KPIs that leadership cares about. But you have to like. But it's a very long formula and you have to do the math for them and it goes back to rage bait. Rage bait is an easy way to do it. If I can make someone angry, if I can post something, if I can say something, if I can do something, it's going to make people angry, then they're more likely to do this behaviour. Comment, repost, do, click, do whatever. If I can get people to feel this way, they're more likely to do this behaviour. This behaviour is more likely to lead to this behaviour, which is a leading indicator. This is our leading indicator.

Now if I can continue to make them feel that way and make it very easy to repeat this behaviour, this leading indicator starts creating behaviours that turn into this lagging indicator. So if I can make you angry, then you're more likely to click. If you're more likely to click, I'm going to get more attention. If I get more attention, I'm probably going to get earned media. If I get earned media, I'm going to get more brand mentions and more market share and more people are going to be talking about us. Because of that I'm probably going to get more website traffic. Okay, that's a leading indicator. If I get more website traffic, we're probably going to see more conversions. That conversion is going to be my lagging indicator. But you have to do the formula for them. Leadership is not going to do the formula.

But that's what it is, it's emotion. And all of that leads to behaviour that leads to revenue, that leads to net new retention, that net new revenue, that leads to retention, that leads to all of the things that leadership cares about. And same thing with NPS. NPS leads to future revenue retention, churn, all those things. But if you don't see it as a signal for that, if you, like you said, they just see it as customer satisfaction. They don't see it as like this is the fire, this is a smoke before the fire of what we're going to see in like two quarters, then it's wasted exercise.

SS: Yeah, I mean when Fred Reichheld goes about and shows, hey, higher NPS companies are higher value in the stock market, there seems to be a shrug of the shoulders. I think some frustration with Fred trying to convince managers over his length of his career. And he wrote the defining book called “The Loyalty Effect” back in the mid-90s around all of this, which still holds up today by the way. Just seems that corporate management is obsessed with certain numbers and can't make the connections or marketing hasn't been able to make the connections. I want to move the conversation in a slightly different direction which is sort of looking forward a bit. And I'm certain you and everybody else has read a lot about agentic commerce over, over the last little period. The feeling generally is that as that concept grows and becomes more widespread and I think it's even hitting Christmas shopping now letting, letting bots determine what the best Christmas gifts should be. People think that it's going to weaken brand loyalty because it'll become an intermediary, that it'll disconnect the brand from end customers certainly from their messaging. What do you see? You don't deal with a lot of it in the book simply because you talk about AI, certainly toward the end, but all this is fairly recent. What's your perspective on the implications for marketers as agentic commerce starts to become really a more permanent aspect of how people go about looking for products, buying products and shopping, etc. What's your perspective on that? (50.49)

CG: So I think AI is definitely going to create a lot of tech parity and that tech parity is going to mean that the humans in the world are more priceless because that becomes the differentiator. Because if everyone's using agentic commerce, they're using tactics, they're using chatbots, or using personalization tools, then there is no differentiator.

And I think right now what we're seeing is it's one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. I think that agentic commerce is fine until you know that that's what it is. And then that is going to separate people between the people who are very pro that and want convenience and want personalization and kind of want some somebody to make the decisions for them and then the people who are completely against that and they want to shop small and they want to go analog and they want to do that.

So there's always going to be a part of the market that is very early adopter and that is their entire personality. And if there is a tech component, they are going to go all in regardless of, of the use case. There's going to be people who buck that and then there's going to be the people in the center who decide whether or not that matches the kind of experience that they want. I do believe that we're going to see more and more of the need for the two stack where you need the people stack and you need the tech stack. And there's going to be a world where people want convenience and personalization and they don't care.

There are going to be other people who are like, this is really special. And I like, I don't want an agent to tell me what my wedding ring should look like. You know, I'm saying? There's going to be certain things in your life. You're like, I don't want a bot to decide this. I want this to be very me. I want this to be very specific. I want to take the time. And I think we've also lost a lot of convenience. There's a lot … there's quite a few articles I've read this year talking about how we've kind of put … so everything is so convenient now that there's like, no one is bored and there's no friction. And because there's no friction, we're not really. Nothing is really giving you the dopamine that you used to have from it because it, it doesn't have the, you didn't, like, you didn't overcome anything. You didn't have a scavenger hunt. You didn't Indiana Jones your way through Amazon. Like, you just, you pick the first, you click the first button. And so I think that over time, we're going to see more and more consumers get sick of that.

So, like, I think that there are powers that be that want us to be in Wall-E and be those people on scooters. And that sort of thing. I think there's a lot of humans that are going to absolutely reject that life, that do not want that life, that are going to shop small, that are going to go to like a local brick and mortar store because they want the personal experience. And I, I think AI in general, not just in commerce, is going to do that. I think you're going to see an uptick in … I think more people are going to want to go to the theater, not just the cinema, like the actual theater, to see plays and musicals because they want the real.

More people are going to want to read, like actual books, like in their hands. More people are going to want to go to coffee shops. More people are going to want to go to concerts. More people are going to want to meet real people because the Internet is not, is not giving that dopamine anymore. Because you have the dead Internet theory. You have, you have less and less … like, a lot of community has been commodified, but people still have an ancestral need for connection, and AI is not going to change that. If anything, AI is going to make that need even stronger because the usual suspects are not going to feed us the way they used to with that connection.

SS: Well, as Cory Doctorow writes, it's the “enshittification” of the Internet.

CG: Spot on. Yes.

SS: And GenZ’s flight from the big social media platforms to more private online spaces. Again, something Sara Wilson talked about in our interview. And I accept everything you're saying, but certainly Brand Marketing will have to change because people will be walled off from their messaging. And whether that's through social, digital ads or whatnot, people are beginning to say that brands need to become more like TV networks now. So there's a couple of things. One is they have to become more like TV networks in order to draw in audiences. And the other, other aspect of this is that, uh, the product no longer is the battlefield. It's really the adjacent services, the augmented part of the relationship that will matter going forward. What's your perspective on either of those things? Brands needing to become more like TV networks in the sense of knowing what their audience likes to see, wants to see, et cetera, and serves that. And then on the other side of it, the need to push the value proposition, stretch the value proposition beyond the product itself, itself. (55.06)

CG: So the thing is, is that brand marketing is always going to have to shift because they basically play the game until the consumer understands what's happening. And then they have to shift to something else. They have to shift to something else. The, it's, it's kind of like the, they say, like, the best ads are the ads that don't look like ads. That's what brand marketing continues to chase. That's, that's what it keeps doing, is once the tactic is revealed. And that's what we've seen with a lot of influencer marketing. People know influencer marketing when they see it, even if it's not marked as an ad.

So that tactic does not work the way that it used to. In fact, we're seeing a lot of people buck influencer marketing because it's no longer relatable. Like, I don't need to see your Hermes haul. Like, we're good. Like, I don't need to see this again. Because of that, you have to switch. You have to shift.

And so I would argue that brands need to really kind of sit down and think about what they're willing to chase and what needs to stay evergreen. Because human psychology isn't shifting. We're still doing what we always do. We're still reacting the way we always have. Now the stimuli changes, and that is what they're having to adapt to. But the behaviour is still very much the same. And so brands need to figure out from like, an evergreen perspective, who are they to humans? How do they become a part of that? How do they showcase that … they get how human brains actually operate and consume and things like that, and then how do they operate from a stimuli perspective? And I think if you think about it from that perspective, then brands can stay true to themselves.

What I'm seeing a lot of brands doing though, is they just focus on the stimuli. They don't focus on the human psychology. That's why you see the same brands … like, you'll see a hundred brands do the Spotify wrapped thing, like, jump on every, like their entire strategy is to jump on every single trend. Like, that's, that's the strategy, the beginning and the end. And it's because they're so focused on the stimuli, they have no idea what their audience is actually paying attention to because there's no way your audience is paying attention to every single trend.

Now, if you pick the trends that are only relevant for your audience, great, do it. Do what you got to do. But there's no way your audience and cat … like, the only way that's true is if your audience is made up of social, like chronically online social media managers. Unless that's your target audience, unless that's your ICP, I can guarantee you no one is paying attention to every single trend. Nobody. It's just the online.. it's just the chronically online social media managers who are paid to know what's trending.

SS: And to create a niche audience. A lot of dramatic change going on right now, everywhere, all at once. It's leaving marketers feeling in a state of future shock, needless to say, not that they've managed, haven't been able to manage change over the past 20 years. They have, they've adapted, become multidisciplinary, adopted social, etc. Still haven't done a good job really, of breaching the corporate ranks and earning a spot on the boardroom table. That aside, going forward, and you're now, you know, a dedicated marketer and teacher, if you're in front of a classroom of potential marketing graduates, what's your message to them? Is this a good time to be in marketing or should you be thinking about maybe a career change?

CG: I think there's nothing safe. So you should never, you should never make a choice based off of like, is it safe or not in the market? Because the market could change anytime. And so I would say, if you are deeply passionate about behavioral psychology, if you love consumers, if you love consuming content yourself, if you love deconstruct, if you're a deconstructionist, I think that's really great.

I think my advice to them would be, instead of looking at the market, look at yourself. And the one thing I wish all students would do is what I wish all marketers would do is you need to find your own product market fit. Because marketers, especially in this world, if you're trying to get hired, you are a product. Whether you're trying to be an entrepreneur or you're trying to be in house, you are a product. Your knowledge, what you have to offer, what you can do is a product.

So you yourself, you need to figure out what is your product market fit and that exercise is going to pay dividends. What kind of content should you create? How do you differentiate yourself? How are you like, who's your ICP? Who are the people that are most likely going to get the most impact from you? Having that knowledge and being able to figure that out and then beat that drum and let that be your own personal messaging is going to be huge. Especially in a world where everyone's trying to build a personal brand. There's AI slop everywhere. Don't be a niche, be yourself. But you have to figure out, how to figure out how to do that messaging for yourself. So find your own product market fit. That would be my advice.

SS: And certainly the way you went about it, clawing your way into the marketing business, getting, uh, the attraction of HubSpot and earning a role, that's pretty … a casebook study of how to, how to go about it. So. And the passion, I mean obviously the passion.

CG: And being curious intellectually, like intellectual curiosity is priceless. Like you have to, you have to be hungry.

SS: That's the advice I give that separates the great marketing account people from the, also rans, is passion for the business and who doesn't like to be passionate about marketing. It's a fabulous discipline. It's constantly interesting, constantly changing. And your book is a great guide to how marketers should go about it today. So congrats on that.

CG: Thank you. I'm so glad you liked it.

SS: Do you have another book in the works or are you thinking about another topic to tackle?

CG: I am. This one's gonna be a bit more negative, a little bit more sarcastic. But I started a Substack called Canary in the Brand Mine because a lot of the work that I've done when I've been at a brand is I've turned into the canary. And I keep seeing, especially this year, I've seen a lot of brands do things and I'm like, I just, I need you to know that you're doing this wrong. I need you to like, I need to warn you. And so it'll probably be a bit more sarcastic version of transforming customer, brands, relationships, but from the canary.

SS: So there's the potential book, but also the Substack. Uh, when does that start?

CG: I have three pieces. I launched it last week. So there's three pieces on there. Yeah, I wrote about, um, you'll like this. Everyone's trying to scale the work, but a lot of really good CX doesn't scale. It compounds. And so, we really need to think about, like, not only how do we do the work, but how do we message about the work. And it's not like, you can't scale absolutely everything, but you can absolutely grow in other ways. And so that's, I wrote that piece. I shared that last yesterday. And so that's a new piece on the Substack.

SS: Well, as soon as this is over, I'm going to go … thank you so much. This time has just flown by. I've had a bunch of other questions that I didn't get a chance to ask. So maybe we'll set something up when you come up with your next book and we'll chat again.

CG: That sounds lovely. Thanks for having me.

That concludes my interview with Christina Garnett. As we learned, brands need to humanize their relationships with customers. In this new epoch of agentic commerce, it will be the only way brands can skirt disintermediation and be seen as true partners by customers. But that will take a sharp departure from past brand building practices. It will mean listening a lot more closely to what customers are saying in the marketplace. It will require taking greater responsibility for closing the gap between customer expectations and their lived experience. And it will demand greater effort to foster communal spaces, online or offline, where customers can feel a sense of belonging and kinship – of being part of something larger, a movement even. That place, which Christina labels “brandom”, is where brand building and relationship building intersect. Brand managers will be able to tap into that hive to get a read on how people feel and what they think. They will also be able to encourage a participatory culture where brand enthusiasts are free to generate their own content, meet on their own and create their own “fandoms”. That is the future of brand relationship building, she believes, one that is, in her words, unapologetically human. 1. Small Business Development Center 2. "The Next Web" a global tech media company. 3. ICUC is a social media and community management company. 4. The HubSpot Advocacy Program (now known as “HubSpot Community Champions”) enables a community of evangelists to share their expertise and knowledge, for which they gain exclusive access to events, networking opportunities and the chance to contribute content. 5. The INBOUND Correspondents program is a special program for the most engaged members of the HubSpot Community invited to provide their perspective on the annual HubSpot INBOUND conference.

Stephen Shaw is the Chief Strategy Officer of Kenna, a marketing solutions provider specializing in delivering a more unified customer experience. He is also the host of the Customer First Thinking podcast. Stephen can be reached via e-mail at sshaw@kenna.