Customer Experiences With Kat Kennan on PR Patter!

Good morning, everyone. I’m Julie Livingston from Want Leverage Communications. It’s great to be with you here again today for another edition of PR Patter. I have a great guest this morning, and I did want to just remind you to go to my website and download Make Your C suite Stand Out OnLinkedIn, which is a free tip sheet that we provide with great tips about making yourself more visible on the LinkedIn platform Okay, so without further ado, I’d like to introduce and welcome my guest for today.

Her name is Kat Kennan. She is a best-selling author, disruptor, and marketing powerhouse. As CEO of Radical Customer Experience, she’s leading the charge with empathy-driven, inclusive marketing solutions. Her company, RCX, is the force behind BVSCORE, which is AI-driven, psychology-based customer insights.

She’s proudly certified as a disability and woman-owned business. Um, welcome, Kat. Great to see you.

Kat:
Good to see you too, Julie.

Kat’s Background

Julie:
I thought we’d start by having you share a little bit more about your backstory, how you got into this field, and how you got started.

Kat:
Yeah, absolutely. I think my journey into customer experience and marketing started way before I knew that, that’s where I was headed. Right. I had an Early job at Estee Lauder in corporate, supporting the head of sales for the Americas, and was exposed to strategic DMA decisions hand in hand with marketing and market week. That drove my love of brands and customer experience. I remember back then, occasionally getting a phone call from a customer who somehow got through to me. They would be like, you just discontinued this shade of lipstick. My life is over. And I mean, I understand that very well.

Julie:
Right.

Kat:
Bringing the best to everyone you touch was always our slogan. And, um, and we did. I’d call the manufacturing plant, and I would say send me every shade you can of that lipstick and then I’d send it to the customer with a handwritten note.

Julie:
Wow, that’s pretty awesome.

Kat:
Yeah, and so you know my formal move into marketing didn’t come until I don’t know seven years later, but really early experiences really cemented for me what marketing and what customer experience should look like.

Why Do You Think 70% of Customers Experience Leaders Rethink Their Customer Journey?

Julie:
Wow, that’s a pretty powerful story, and I wish I was that customer. I think you probably made her brand loyal for life after that. So I read somewhere that 70 percent of customer experience leaders are rethinking their entire customer journey. Why do you think that is?

Kat:
I think that customer experience, the way it’s traditionally been viewed, is just going from the wrong perspective. And I think most leaders recognize that something’s not working, but perhaps aren’t sure what. And so they’re rethinking and. Perhaps I don’t know which direction to go. When I think about customer experience and the current metrics that we’re using, such as net promoter score, customer satisfaction score, it really is brand to customer, right?

We’re looking at our metrics and asking very specific questions that suit our metrics. Well, that’s not customer experience, right? That’s the brand. That’s a brand to customers. If you’re really driving customer experience, you’re starting with a customer and going back to the brand. And yeah. And the great thing about that is, you know, maybe contrary to popular opinion, like, how do I do that?

How will that affect my metrics if it still increases business? It increases loyalty. It makes your brand stronger going forward, and is the only way that customer experience can move.

Why do You Call Net Promoter Score or NPS a Relic?

Julie:
Well, that begs the next question. And because we talked a little bit before the show went live, why do you call Net Promoter Score or NPS a relic?

Kat:
It is a relic. And I think sometimes I’ve been known to use stronger language, but let’s just start with the science behind it. Any kind of polling, you know, which perhaps is particularly relevant this morning (the day after Election Day, 2024), needs at least three questions to be scientifically valid, right? That’s something I didn’t know until the last year or two, but NPS (net promoter score) is one question. “Would you recommend us to a friend,” right? And more than that, NPS ignores the entire middle of the spectrum, right? It views nines and tens, and it essentially views ones and twos, and much of the middle is just completely ignored.

So that’s one. And then, you know, I don’t know about you, but I get that. Would you recommend us to a friend once or twice a day? And I do too. Yep. And we all do right. And whether we’re marketers or not, I don’t know about you. I choose a different number depending on what my experience with that brand is, has been in that given moment. And so, how is that even scientifically valid if it’s kind of meaningless? It changes, could change from moment to moment, right? And there’s a lot of scholarship about this, that, you know, there’s really no connection to long-term results from that promoter. So is that one of the reasons why you would say that CX is currently kind of broken and going in the wrong direction?

There are Other Metrics

And you know, there are other metrics, like I mentioned earlier, whether it’s customer satisfaction or customer effectiveness. I think that they’re all well-intentioned, one or two questions, but again, you know, how fast are you responding to a customer? Is that really the question that we’re talking about?

It’s how do you make your customers feel? Do they feel like you care about them? Right. Do they feel seen and heard, or do they feel ignored? Yeah. Can they trust you? Right. Right. Those are the questions that we have to ask. And they’re tough questions, right? Like, do they trust you as a company? Like, you know, I think as, you know, as bad a rep as marketing can get, right?

For the most part, we’re all well-intentioned, you know? We’re good people. We don’t sit around conference rooms. coming up with campaigns, thinking about how to ruin a customer’s day. I hope not anyway. I hope not. Even, even the most misfired campaigns where, you know, it’s like, how in the world did they come up with that?

And obviously there are always egregious examples, but still no one was sitting around a room saying, you know, let’s mess with people. Let’s upset them. That’s not realistic.

What Does Customer Experience Mean in Today’s Climate?

Julie:
I think you answered my next question. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit about what, what does customer experience really mean in today’s climate?

Kat:
Absolutely. How do you make your customers feel? And it is about inclusivity, but that means something different than how we normally talk about it. It doesn’t mean that you’re inclusive of absolutely everyone. It means being inclusive of everyone that’s relevant for your brand.

And it can be little things that, you know, what size models do you feature? What sizes do you carry? Of course, that’s a piece of it, right?

Julie:
It could be your return policy.

Kat:
It could be your return policy. Absolutely. Yeah. And some of those big brands – Amazon comes to mind – have completely flipped their return policy. They’re making it more difficult now. Yeah. And to the customer’s detriment. If we’re not putting the customer first and thinking about how they feel,

Julie:
I just had an experience recently where I bought something off of Instagram. Yeah. And which is like, you know, just sucks you in. And I ended up buying things there sometimes from brands that are kind of unknown. So it’s sort of, you know, I’m taking a chance and I got something and it wasn’t. You know, the quality that I expected, and I wanted to return it, and it cost me so much money to return it that it totally turned me off from the brand. I will never shop from them again, and they have other nice merchandise. It was just this particular item I think that just wasn’t right, but it cost me so much that it just, it put the kibosh on that relationship.

Kat:
And we never forget those examples. I know I have so many and it’s like brands that I will never forget.

Julie:
And you know, you’ll hold that grudge, right?

Kat:
That one where airlines frequently come into play. But, here and there, there are surprising customer experiences where like, wow, they really see me. Right. And. You know, and those are the ones I definitely share as well.

And sometimes I feel like that particular brand should be paying me because of how often I tell that good story. Right. It’s true. You could be one of their ambassadors, but that’s another reason why they should be doing things like that and keep the customer top of mind. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it ties into the influencer game, right? So often it’s a celebrity or someone with a huge following, and they’re getting paid, right? Now, everyone deserves to get paid; however, if it’s not based on a true customer experience. They haven’t gone through the whole journey. Yep.

What is Strengths-Based Marketing? How Does It Go a Long Way To Creating Positive Customer Experiences?

Julie:
What is strengths-based marketing and how does it go a long way to, you know, really create positive customer experiences?

Kat:
I’m so glad you asked. So I think maybe it’s easier to talk about the opposite, which is fear-based marketing. And the reality is that when we send messages that are creating this urgency, that it’s a limited quantity, limited time, you have to keep up with the latest influencer, which is, you know, today’s keeping up with the Joneses.

Dating myself a little, but sending out those kinds of messages. It is detrimental to the customer, and we’re bombarding them constantly. Like, every single message we send out, whether it’s Instagram or X or, you know, or Facebook, advertising, emails and that causes damage over time. And there’s a lot of scholarship in the psychology space on how damaging that can be. So, flip it, right? You want to create urgency. I think the holiday season that we’re fast approaching is a good example of that.

People Want to Get an Inch Up Every Year on Holidays

Julie:
I was looking at holiday decorations three weeks ago. I mean, it was crazy. Every retailer wants to inch up a lot this year, it seems.

Kat:
Yeah. It’s, you know, sometimes it’s like they’re up before Halloween, it seems. But, thinking of the holidays, that last six weeks of the year is usually over a quarter of the revenue, right? And so as that brand marketer, it’s like we have to be urgent, right? But the reality is that you can use positive examples like when we see, you know, those emails or messages like these are our customer favorites.

That’s strength-based marketing because you’re not saying you better get it while the sales are on, right? You know, there’s something different there. And you know, I use the word strengths a lot. It bleeds into something I somehow sometimes call trauma-informed marketing, which is when we bombard the customer.

This is usually at specific times of the year and holidays are a great example, whether it’s, you know, end of year holidays or Mother’s or Father’s day, not all of us have pleasant associations with those things; it’s family and family’s difficult, or, you know, with Mother’s or Father’s day, maybe someone’s lost a parent or, you know, are estranged from them or vice versa with their kids.

Other Ways to See Major Dates

Julie:
Or maybe it’s swimsuit season, and maybe that just conjures up a lot of body image issues.

Kat:
Or, you know, I hadn’t thought about this before, but a colleague brought it up to me, that July 4th can be difficult for people in recovery. All of the commercials are about, you know, enjoying things with an adult beverage or seeing and or hearing fireworks. Noise is really upsetting for a lot of people. I happen to be one of those people. You know, think about it, you log into your email and you get three or four emails in the day from the same brand, sometimes more.

It’s a lot. Every single commercial. Don’t forget mom, don’t forget dad, and don’t forget. Right. And then there’s all the mail that you get, you know, the hard copy, the mail that you get every day is, it’s even more. It can be really upsetting. I mean, you know, I know I lost my mom a few years ago and mother’s day still is not a happy time.

What About This Current Fraught Time for Many?

Julie:
It could be a very fraught time for many people. No, I get that. So what is the role of because employee experience plays a big role, I think, in customer experience. Can you talk about that?

Kat:
I think they’re pretty much one and the same. You know, it’s your internal customers versus your external. But you know when customers or when employees feel seen and heard, they feel like they can trust you, they feel like you’re putting your money where your mouth is, then they go on to be happier employees, more efficient employees, employees that when they’re relating to customers, have an additional level of empathy because they feel like, you as a brand, as a company, you’re empathetic towards them.

You know, we have a blog on the website now where customers write to us with their experiences.

Julie:
Oh, how great.

How Kat Can Help

Kat:
Please, please, for any of those stories, whether positive or negative, please submit them to us, because we will grade them and we’ll come up with a response. Someone wrote in recently, I know I talked about airlines earlier, about a JetBlue flight to Central America, and how the flight attendant spilled water all over them. Which would be terrible anyway, right? But what made it even more egregious is that the flight attendant didn’t even acknowledge it.

Julie:
Oh my goodness. Wow.

Kat:
And then it gets worse and worse, because later in the flight, the same customer actually went to the flight attendant to get water to drink, this time, and was also ignored. He got a big sigh, like the flight attendant was being really inconvenienced, and, you know, our response after thinking about it is that such behavior is never excused. Right. But, you know, it brought about the question: do the flight attendants themselves feel seen and heard, right? Or do they feel like the airline doesn’t care about them? Because that comes out in how they treat customers.

How does AI and Online Purchases Impact Customer Experiences?

Julie:
That’s very interesting. Whenever I am dealing with companies online, because we make so many of our purchases online now, or even on my phone um, you know, we’re all being impacted by the use of artificial intelligence by AI. How do you see that as impacting CX?

Kat:
I think, like a lot of new tech that comes about, it’s like it can be used for good or evil, right? Technology is just technology. There is no underlying intent behind it. It’s, you know, about the users and understanding or misunderstanding. It’s not even the users who are like, yes, let’s be evil today.

Julie:
Right. Um, uh, I hope not at least.

Kat:
I don’t know. We need some levity, I think, today; it is something that’s not going away. It is something that is going to impact us sort of forever going forward and is a huge part of the customer experience. It’s like, can you make those models learn empathy, you know, or can you train that model to look like they have empathy? And show that the company policies behind it do have empathy?

Examples

Julie:
I have this all the time with a program – I’m a LinkedIn expert –and there’s a program I use to measure LinkedIn metrics called Shield. It’s an app. And I think they’re based overseas somewhere. And every time you ask a question, you know, you have to interface with the bot. The bot often doesn’t have the answer, which is a problem. And then they won’t get back to you until like 24 hours later. So. That has just caused me so much angst and frustration that I’m ready to move on to another platform as a result.

Kat:
I’ve had similar experiences recently with my email marketing system. You know who you are – some plans or companies were really well known for having an amazing customer experience. And be right on it, and you would chat with a human being right away, they’d answer right away. Didn’t matter what kind of account you had; they would go above and beyond. And that’s no longer the case. You’d think that you’d think that would be one of the first things that small companies would invest in because that’s how you build that loyalty. Yeah, absolutely. But you know, technology is expensive.

Low Tech Options

And you know, it’s a barrier to entry for up-and-coming brands. But, there are ways to do it in a low-tech way, right? How, how do you respond to emails? How do you respond to messages when there’s just maybe a handful of you, right? It’s how you choose to set up the company.

What are your root beliefs? And then as you grow and perhaps as you get funding, and you know, what startups are all hoping for. Is, you know, we want to, we want to sell in five, maybe seven years, maybe less. Um, and. There’s a lot of outside pressure, but does that change your DNA of a company?

Julie:
You have to really abide by those core values that you set up the company around and make sure that you carry out those values at every juncture.

Do You Admit & Apologize if You Make a Mistake for Customer Experience?

Kat:
Absolutely. And if you don’t, your customers don’t trust you. So, if you make a mistake, do you admit it? And if you apologize, do you mean it? And so when we go back to maybe an egregious campaign, Zara comes to mind, we’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of that campaign.

Julie:
Maybe you could elaborate just a little bit for people watching.

Kat:
Yeah, so two months to the day from the Gaza conflict breaking out, they put out a marketing campaign that showed the model sort of in a white dystopian scene, and she literally had a wrapped body over her shoulder, and it really looked exactly like the scenes that we’re seeing from Gaza. You know, um, and their way of apologizing, or and this is not the first time Zara has been.

Julie:
Yeah, it’s not the first time Zara has been totally tone deaf either.

Kat:
Apologizing was that we’re sorry people were upset, and these are all the reasons it’s not our fault. So, you know, as a company, even if you think we’re not at fault. We didn’t mean to upset people, and that’s your gut reaction. It doesn’t matter.

Julie:
Take ownership of it.

Kat:
You know, and we’ve seen other examples like, you know, what was it? Three years ago, Walmart put out Juneteenth ice cream. And I’m sure they were sitting around that room. It was well-intentioned. I hope so. Right. But that’s completely, it’s fundamentally a misunderstanding about what Juneteenth is. Right. You know, triggering this huge group of people, you know, millions upon millions, billions of people, right? So, a huge backfire.

Thank you, Kat!

Julie:
So interesting. Wow. Well, Kat, thank you so much for being with me here today on PR pattern. Really appreciate your great insights on customer experience. How can people get in touch with you?

Kat:
Yeah, absolutely. Uh, head over to bvscore.ai. Um, you can always grab me on LinkedIn, just Kat Kennan. Email me, [email protected].

Julie:
That’s great. And everyone else, if you like what you saw today, head over to wantleverage.com and download my free tip sheet, Make Your C Suite Stand Out On LinkedIn. I’ll see you next time on another episode of PR Patter. Thanks everyone.