Aligning Marketing with Customer Experience

Amazon is stepping up its game with the new Customer Journey Analytics tool. It is under Brand Analytics! This feature offers a highly visual and intuitive way to understand how customers interact with your brand—from awareness to consideration, intent, and finally, purchase. The data spans across all ASINs at the brand level, showcasing branded searches, store traffic and highlighting where in the funnel customers are dropping off. It’s an incredible way to pinpoint bottlenecks in the customer journey and identify areas for improvement. Now imagine the possibilities if Amazon provided granularity at the category and ASIN level within this graph! While we do have some granularity through Brand Metrics in the advertising dashboard, seeing this level of detail visually within this tool would be amazing. For example, identifying funnel drop-offs for a specific ASIN or category could help brands take laser-focused actions. It’s exciting to see Amazon providing this level of clarity in such an accessible format. I’ll be sharing more thoughts on how to leverage tools like this and what combinations could truly be impactful for advertisers. Stay tuned!

🎯 The Customer Journey Isn’t a Checklist—It’s a System Customer Success leaders say they “own the customer journey.” But here’s the reality: Most are owning tasks… not outcomes. ⚠️ And that’s where the biggest mistakes happen. Here are the top pitfalls when managing the end-to-end journey—from onboarding to renewal to expansion: 🔻 1. Over-Indexing on Onboarding -> Nailing onboarding is important. But many teams treat onboarding like the finish line. It’s not. It’s the starting pistol. -> CS isn’t there to get users live—it’s there to get customers successful. 🔻 2. Disconnected Touchpoints -> Every stage (onboarding → adoption → renewal → expansion) is treated like a different department’s problem. -> Customers feel the seams. -> The journey must be orchestrated, not siloed. 🔻 3. No Data-Driven Milestones -> You can’t evolve what you can’t measure. -> Many teams operate on intuition instead of tracking actual value moments. -> Where’s the drop-off? What triggers expansion? Which moments lead to churn? 🔻 4. Playing Defense Only -> Too many CS orgs focus just on retention. -> But the best CS leaders engineer the journey to create demand—paving the path for natural expansion. 🔻 5. Forgetting the "Why" -> CS isn’t about delivering service. -> It’s about delivering outcomes that align to customer goals. -> If your journey doesn’t evolve with their evolving needs… you’re replaceable. 💡 Own the system, not the stages. -> Great CS leaders design journeys that earn renewal and expansion—not chase them. Where are you seeing friction in your customer journey? #CustomerSuccess #CustomerJourney #CSLeadership #Onboarding #Renewal #Expansion #B2B #Growth #CustomerExperience

🔎 UX Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize User Experience? When we talk about UX, we know that good decisions must be data-driven. But how can we measure something as subjective as user experience? 🤔 Here are some of the key UX metrics that help turn perceptions into actionable insights: 📌 Experience Metrics: Evaluate user satisfaction and perception. Examples: ✅ NPS (Net Promoter Score) – Measures user loyalty to the brand. ✅ CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) – Captures user satisfaction at key moments. ✅ CES (Customer Effort Score) – Assesses the effort needed to complete an action. 📌 Behavioral Metrics: Analyze how users interact with the product. Examples: 📊 Conversion Rate – How many users complete the desired action? 📊 Drop-off Rate – At what stage do users give up? 📊 Average Task Time – How long does it take to complete an action? 📌 Adoption and Retention Metrics: Show engagement over time. Examples: 📈 Active Users – How many people use the product regularly? 📈 Churn Rate – How many users stop using the service? 📈 Cohort Retention – What percentage of users remain engaged after a certain period? UX metrics are more than just numbers – they tell the story of how users experience a product. With them, we can identify problems, test hypotheses, and create better experiences! 💡🚀 📢 What UX metrics do you use in your daily work? Let’s exchange ideas in the comments! 👇 #UX #UserExperience #UXMetrics #Design #Research #Product

In customer experience (CX), the closed-loop feedback (CLF) model has been a cornerstone for over two decades, originally designed to ensure responsiveness and adaptation. It's time for a change. With the advent of artificial intelligence, it's clear that merely adapting this model isn't enough. It's old tapes. It needs to evolve. Here's what's next: Real-time Interaction Management: Traditional CLF reacts to feedback after the fact. And, traditionally, closing the "inner loop" requires a human to follow up. AI turns this on its head. Imagine a system that adjusts the customer journey in real-time based on predictive analytics, reducing friction points before they affect the customer experience. Large Action Models: We all know that AI can dive deep into data lakes to instantly identify patterns and root causes of customer dissatisfaction. This rapid analysis allows companies to not only close the feedback loop faster, but also implement more effective solutions. This will come in the evolution of Large Language Models, or LLMs, to LAMs, or Large Action Models. Continuous Learning Systems: AI transforms CLF from a loop that ends into continuous cycle of improvement. These systems learn from each interaction, constantly updating and refining strategies to enhance the customer experience. This means that the feedback loop is ever-evolving, driven by AI's ability to adapt to new information and complex variables, seamlessly. CX leaders have to embrace AI's potential to redefine our foundational practices. It's time to innovate beyond the traditional CLF and leverage AI to deliver personalized experiences, and at scale. How are you thinking about adaptive, predictive, and personalized CX strategies? Your answer can't be to hire more people to close more loops. #customerexperience #ai #journeymanagement #survey #CLF

The way consumers shop for products has evolved drastically in recent times. Back when I started Rubans Accessories, it was more like - customers walk in, take a look at the products displayed, make a decision and purchase. Over the years, shoppers have become more informed and tend to do their research prior purchase. In fact, 81% of them do online research before making a purchase. And more than half of them start their buying journey with a Google/search engine or visiting a brands page. Why is this important for us business owners? Most of our consumers are online now. Understanding their journey gives us a peek into their decision making process which can be used to make strategic business decisions. Only if you are an omni-channel, chances are you can track the process, analyse and draw insights to cater to your consumer journey. But what happens outside your website? Particularly marketplaces? At Rubans, this is how we head to the battle: - We ensure our website provides a seamless browsing and purchasing experience, instilling trust and confidence in our customers. - We actively engage with our customers on social media platforms and leverage user-generated content to build trust and authenticity. - We communicate our value proposition effectively to ensure our customers understand what sets Rubans apart in the industry. - We try and establish a strong presence on search engines and marketplaces where our customers conduct their research. - We ensure that our website offers detailed and accurate product descriptions, high-quality images, and informative videos to help our customers make informed decisions. - We focus on delivering exceptional customer service throughout our customers’ shopping journey! Gaining a deep understanding of how consumers shop has helped me unlock valuable insights that can shape our strategies, elevate our brand experiences, and drive business growth. Are you able to see a change in customer buying trend? What are some solutions you swear by? #customerinsights

It is so important to understand and utilize the voice of your customer (VOC). The VOC is esentially the feedback, opinions, preferences, and expectations of customers about your product, service, or brand. We are taught very early on in #leanmanagement about the importance of understanding and integrating customer feedback, needs, and preferences into the product or service development process. Why? Because VOC helps ensure that products or services align closely with what customers truly want and value, reducing waste, increasing quality and increasing customer satisfaction. Many companies collect data...lots of it...but leave out the crucial step of analyzing this collected data, identifying patterns, and drawing actionable insights. Also, they collect data far too late, often after the work has been done instead of getting input at the start of the creative process. So, here are a few guidelines to help you make the most of your customer voice: 1️⃣ Gather VOC at every critical stage: pre-development, during development, post launch and at critical touchpoints. 2️⃣ Identify Patterns and Prioritize Issues: Group similar content and determine which issues or suggestions are most frequently mentioned or have the most significant impact on customer satisfaction. 3️⃣ Contextualize Feedback: Consider when, where, and how the feedback was provided to better interpret its significance. 4️⃣ Quantify Feedback: Assign metrics or scores where possible to quantify feedback. This helps prioritize improvements based on the magnitude of impact. 5️⃣ Root Cause Analysis: Dig deeper to understand the root causes of recurring issues. Sometimes, the stated problem might not be the actual underlying issue. 6️⃣ Link Feedback to Action: Connect the feedback directly to actionable steps. Develop strategies or changes that directly address the issues raised by customers. 7️⃣ Continual Improvement: Use feedback not just for immediate fixes but as part of an ongoing process for continuous improvement. Regularly revisit feedback to track progress and make further adjustments. What other tips can you add?? #voiceofthecustomer #lean #qualitymanagement #customerfeedback #customersatisfaction Image Source: Lucidchart

Segmentation is a powerful tool in data science—by grouping entities with similar characteristics, companies can tailor experiences, drive growth, and better meet the needs of distinct customer or supply groups. In a recent blog post, Airbnb’s data science team shared how they built a structured framework to segment their global supply into distinct “supply personas.” Rather than using traditional approaches like RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) analysis, they grounded the segmentation in the platform’s unique business dynamics—especially calendar-based behaviors that reflect how listings are used throughout the year. The team began with exploratory analysis and identified four key behavioral features: availability rate, streakiness, the number of quarters with availability, and the maximum consecutive months of availability. These signals were then fed into an unsupervised clustering model (k-means) to group similar listings. To make the results interpretable and usable at scale, the clusters were used to train a supervised model (i.e., a decision tree), allowing for consistent and scalable persona assignments. This framework enables Airbnb to apply a shared language around supply—supporting decisions in personalization, experimentation, and beyond. It’s a nice example of how thoughtful segmentation can bridge human intuition, modeling techniques, and operational needs. #DataScience #MachineLearning #Analytics #Airbnb #Segmentation #MLInterpretability #SnacksWeeklyonDataScience – – –  Check out the "Snacks Weekly on Data Science" podcast and subscribe, where I explain in more detail the concepts discussed in this and future posts:    -- Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gKgaMvbh   -- Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gFYvfB8V    -- Youtube: https://lnkd.in/gcwPeBmR https://lnkd.in/gBu4gKpz

90% of marketing efforts fail to deliver on their promises. Curious how the other 10% succeed? Let me introduce a powerful approach: The Performance Promise Framework. This model emphasizes the alignment of promises with actual performance, ensuring trust and credibility with your audience. A) Understanding Promises: ➔ Brand Promise: Defines what customers can expect from your product or service, answering “What do we stand for?” ➔ Customer Commitment: Articulates the dedication to delivering value, reflecting the relationship you build with your audience. ➔ Value Proposition: Communicates the unique benefits your offering provides, answering “Why should they choose us?” B) Enhancing Performance: ➔ Operational Excellence: Focuses on optimizing processes and resources to fulfill customer expectations efficiently. ➔ Continuous Improvement: Encourages regular assessment and enhancement of services and products to meet changing market demands. ➔ Customer Feedback Loop: Utilizes insights from customers to refine offerings and improve satisfaction continuously. C) Measuring Success: ➔ Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Establishes metrics to track promise fulfillment and overall performance effectiveness. ➔ Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Gathers feedback on experiences to gauge the success of your marketing efforts. ➔ Brand Reputation Metrics: Monitors public perception to assess alignment between promises and delivery. This framework empowers marketers to: 1. Clearly define their brand promises. 2. Align operational performance with customer expectations. 3. Measure success through relevant metrics. Remember, successful marketing thrives on the integrity of promises and performance. Are your marketing promises truly aligned with your performance?

Every company says they listen to customers. But most just hear them. There's a difference. After spending years building feedback loops, here's what I've learned: Feedback isn't about collecting data. It's about creating change. Most companies fail at feedback because: - They send random surveys - They collect scattered feedback - They store insights in silos - They never close the loop The result? Frustrated customers. Missed opportunities. Lost revenue. Here's how to build real feedback loops: 1. Gather feedback intelligently - NPS isn't enough - CSAT tells half the story - One channel never works Instead: - Run targeted post-interaction surveys - Conduct deep-dive customer interviews - Analyze product usage patterns - Monitor support conversations - Build customer advisory boards - Track social mentions 2. Create a single source of truth - Consolidate feedback from everywhere - Tag and categorize insights - Track trends over time - Make it accessible to everyone 3. Turn feedback into action - Prioritize based on impact - Align with business goals - Create clear ownership - Set implementation timelines But here's the most important part: Close the loop. When customers give feedback: - Acknowledge it immediately - Update them on progress - Show them implemented changes - Demonstrate their impact The biggest mistakes I see: Feedback Overload: - Collecting too much data - No clear action plan - Analysis paralysis Biased Collection: - Listening to the loudest voices - Ignoring silent majority - Over-indexing on complaints Slow Response: - Taking months to act - No progress updates - Lost customer trust Remember: Good feedback loops aren't about tools. They're about trust. Every piece of feedback is a customer saying: "I care enough to help you improve." Don't waste that trust. The best companies don't just collect feedback. They turn it into visible change. They show customers their voice matters. They build trust through action. Start small: 1. Pick one feedback channel 2. Create a clear process 3. Act quickly on insights 4. Show results 5. Scale what works Your customers are talking. Are you really listening? More importantly, are you acting? What's your approach to customer feedback? How do you close the loop? ------------------ ▶️ Want to see more content like this and also connect with other CS & SaaS enthusiasts? You should join Tidbits. We do short round-ups a few times a week to help you learn what it takes to be a top-notch customer success professional. Join 1999+ community members! 💥 [link in the comments section]

Last week, Layers team and I aligned on these 4 customer service values that are absolutely non-negotiable: 1. Empathy > Everything No matter how tough the situation is, every customer deserves empathy. They deserve the same care - regardless of where they’re from or how much they’ve spent. Because the moment we start labeling customer issues as "small" or "unimportant," we’re doing it wrong. 2. Satisfaction > Profitability We spent ₹25 lakhs fixing issues with existing products that customers had already purchased. It wasn't profitable, but it was right. Our support teams also have the freedom to go over budget if that means delivering a better customer experience. Because sometimes doing the right thing costs more. But the goodwill earned stays for decades. 3. Treat humans like humans The internet doesn’t need another brand sending bot replies with human names. At Layers, customer support should be like an honest, helpful friend with professional boundaries. 4. Proactiveness > Reactiveness Our first launch taught us the hard way. Delays happened. Updates didn’t. And customer anxiety went through the roof. Now, we solve problems before they become complaints. We communicate before deadlines hit. We reach out before follow-ups happen. Bottomline: We understand that building a product is just one part. Creating an experience that makes our customers feel heard, understood and valued is the real deal.