How CMOs and CXOs can work together to optimize outcomes

JULIE KNIGHT:

The data that is important is the data that really isn't about how they're engaging with you. It's how they're engaging out in the worldwide internet. What are they looking for? What are they reading on? What are they searching on? Because you can have a customer that you think, wow, it's a boulevard of green lights. Not a problem in the sky. But you know, you don't always have the full insight of what's going on in the four walls or in the C-suite. So that's incredibly important data.

INTRO:

You're listening to CX Confessions, brought to you by Khoros. I'm Spike Jones, General Manager of Khoros Strategic Services.

And I'm Staci Satterwhite, Chief Customer Officer at Khoros. In each episode, we'll share the customer experience stories and insights you need, straight from the sharpest minds in CX, so you can better connect with your customers.

And make them customers for life. Let’s start the show.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Welcome back to CX Confessions. Super excited about, of course, always, the special and famous Spike Jones, my co-host, and we have a great guest today: Julie Knight.

But to start, Spike, How are you today?

SPIKE JONES:

Famous! I'm looking around for another Spike Jones. Is the director here? I can't find him. I can't. He must be in here.

I'm, you know, I'm doing great. There's a lot of stuff going on these days with the company, with our industry, with summertime. Man things are busy. But as you mentioned, I am super excited about our guest today too. She actually is in Las Vegas. Do you like going to Vegas, Staci? I mean, people have very mixed — what I like about Vegas is it's like Texas. It's like a strong brand. People love it or they hate it. There's really no in between.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

I love it and I love what it's evolved into. I love that it's evolved into a place where you can do all kinds of things. You can get great restaurant scenes and great shows. And obviously the gambling. But anyway, I happen to love it. I do love it in small doses though.

SPIKE JONES:

Yep, yep, that's key. That's totally key. Yeah, I love that. It's like it's so American because it's like, oh, look, desert. What do you want to do? Let's build a huge adult playground. Oh, that sounds great. Let's do it. But yeah, you're right. And then in small doses. I like three nights. It’s like my ideal. And then it's time to go for sure. Because I can't tell when it's daylight outside is probably the biggest thing too. Anyway.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Totally agree.

SPIKE JONES:

But shall we get to it?

So as you mentioned, Staci, we have an amazing guest today. She is the CMO of Unit4, which is an enterprise software suite including finance management, accounting, ERP FPNA, and a lot of other acronyms that I don't understand, but we're gonna learn about. She previously held CMO roles at Topia and Reflective and marketing leadership roles at Zendesk, SAP, and Cisco. Some huge, amazing experience, right?

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Yep.

SPIKE JONES:

In her own words: “Most of my career has focused on people and the technology that drives people, performance, and development. Our customers understand that the way people experience technology is critical as they fight to retain the best talent. I’m a people-person and a true believer in the power of diversity.”

Can't wait to have this conversation.

Welcome to the show, Julie Knight.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. It is an absolute pleasure to be here. I'm excited to have the conversation.

SPIKE JONES:

The pleasure is all ours and I'll hand it over to Staci to jump right in.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Yeah. Wow. Julie, again, thanks for joining us today. You have a really incredible background and lots of really great experiences in marketing. To start, let's actually start with where you are today.

Do you mind telling us: how did you land your current role as CMO at Unit4?

JULIE KNIGHT:

Well, I have had the good fortune of working with the CEO, Mike Ettling, over the past couple of years either as part of him being on the board of a few companies, or our introduction came when we were both at SuccessFactors.

So when he came over to Unit4, he said, “Listen, there's an absolutely fantastic opportunity here. We're looking to really redesign, from the ground up, the marketing organization. We're also looking to do a rebrand. We're looking to build demand gen. We're looking to do a website and we're looking to do a million things. Do you have some free time and are you excited for the opportunity?” And that's really how it came together.

It was an opportunity to really reshape the company and the feeling that he had was, and at the time our board, which was a largely comprised of members of Advent International, which is a private equity firm, and, you know, for those of you who are vegetarians or vegans, what they were looking for was a little sizzle on the steak and they thought marketing could add to that so my apologies, but maybe sizzle on the tofu.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Love the analogy. Hey, can I ask you a little bit about when you joined? I have a similar experience here that I joined Khoros kind of right when the pandemic was getting started. Sounds like you sort of joined before it did. Have your priorities and focus changed, or what changed about your role with the pandemic?

JULIE KNIGHT:

Oh boy, a lot of things changed. But if I were to sum it down to two items, number one, you know the company having been in business for 40 years and really comprised of a lot of different acquisitions, very much region-focused. The number of physical events was really off the charts.

The second piece was really our role, internal communications, and working with our People — then People's Success team, of now HR team — on how do we start that cadence of communications, really change up the communication so it wasn't simply reporting the news, but how are we taking both the feedback that we would gather through, you know, discussions with teams or through feedback from our employee engagement surveys, so on and so forth, best practices out there. And we played a tremendous role in helping both shape what internal communications became, but also in making sure that there was a regular cadence of communications across all teams around the world. And Unit4 has a global footprint in, you know, a number of countries across EMEA, North America, Asia Pacific. So yeah, it became a very, very important part of the day-to-day lives of our communications team. Really, you know, everybody else in marketing.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Sounds like a lot of change. Nice job adjusting.

SPIKE JONES:

Absolutely. It's been interesting to see how different companies have positioned themselves especially, but it's great to hear about the employee communication. I'd love to talk about your customers. By the way, not going to offend me with sizzle on the steak. I grew up on a cattle ranch in East Texas. So I'm all about the sizzle.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Okay, you got it.

SPIKE JONES:

All about that. But yeah, let’s switch to talk about your customer. So talk to me a little bit about the power of the tech stack when it comes to connecting customers with the brand.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Yeah, well, I think it's twofold. Number one, you do need to have a tech stack that enables you not just to communicate through one channel, but through various channels. And we've been very fortunate. We started this in June of 2019. Starting to build a lot of the infrastructure that would allow us to be able to gauge intent. So before a customer ever became a customer. The other thing that we were able to do as part of this is we stood up tools like Terminus, obviously, we enhanced Marketo. We put in a tool called Webio which allowed for greater personalization. And, you know, on one particular site that we have almost 700 different types of personalizations.

But I think the important thing is, you know what we were able to see is just a higher level of engagement because, you know, people were coming there, and they were able to really find what they were looking for, the messages were really relevant, and the terms were really relevant.

The other thing that we spent a lot of time on developing was not just hey, here's a cohort of customers. And these customers are interested in this type of industry, like non-profit, we were able to to take a look at, you know, departments roles, levels, personas, so you know, it's all sort of motherhood and apple pie type of stuff that you would expect any marketer to do, but we really spent a lot of time doing it. Because if you think about Unit4 as a marketing organization, because marketing really got a firm restart, or hard restart, in June of 2019, a lot of this was really new. On the customer side, if we take a look at the infrastructure, we stood up Gainsight, we stood up ServiceNow, and of course, our Community4U on Khoros.

And that was really important because it became the place where customers could go to learn, they could go to network. And finally, there was a lot of ticket deflection that was handed through that because they could find a lot of the information either on their own through the knowledge base, or they could interface with people, you know Unit4 badged employees, to get their issues resolved.

So there was a lot going on, and then in concert with that, a lot of content that was being delivered through a myriad of online channels, through email. So that they were constantly being kept up to speed and found ways to engage. So it was something that, again, it's, these are the things that you would expect any marketing organization to do. We were relatively new at it. But because of the pandemic and the fact that you really didn't have the ability for the account managers to get face-to-face, go meet at a Starbucks or go have a dinner, these online channels and continuous ways to access and get help in the way that you want to do it in your timezone became absolutely critical.

SPIKE JONES:

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, I was gonna follow up about talking about how you build trust, but it sounds like through those peer-to-peer forums that you set up through the one-to-one that you can have with the Unit4 employees, it sounds like that's a great way to start building trust.

But any other ways or advice you could give to customers? Or I'm sorry, other people out there, other marketers, on how to build trust with their customers?

JULIE KNIGHT:

We did two things during that time period.

Number one, we stood up our first global customer conference. So you know, as I explained at the top of our discussion, Unit4 really grew up through its regions and through a myriad of acquisitions that many occurred at regional or very local levels. And we put together a global customer summit and of course, that had to be virtually done.

And so we were able to serve up a lot of the content that they were looking for. Everything from best practices, customer references, to roadmaps, and finally, the ability to go to a help center to get that type of information that they needed and that could be used immediately.

So that became very popular for them and especially for those customers that were used to getting that information when they met face-to-face.

The other thing we did is we put together SIGs, or Special Interest Groups. And that was really important because as I mentioned, as a company, we go to market vertically or by industry. So SIGs are very common for public sector, for nonprofit, higher education. And we also sell into professional services and then within professional services, there's a number of sub-verticals that we sell into. So those SIGs became really important and very valuable because they really brought the birds of a feather together. Not only in terms of what they did, and the type of customers that they would serve.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Certainly, a lot has changed in all of our worlds. And I would be remiss, even though this podcast is not about Khoros, truly I'd be really remiss if I didn't say thank you for being our customer. We're grateful to have you as one. And how thrilling it is for me, the Chief Customer Officer, to hear a Chief Marketing Officer talk about the importance of ticket deflection and the role of the tech stack in that. So wow, that was fun for me. I love that.

JULIE KNIGHT:
Hey, I dropped the CX ticket deflection word!

Yeah, and that's the benefit of being at Zendesk because I really did learn quite a bit during my time there about, you know, support platforms and in the variety of channels that customers, you know, in the early days weren't using but they found, you know, when you look at how we communicate today in our personal lives of the very many importance of things like chat, that was just natural as you were moving over into the B2B world and then, of course, Khoros has – has been, you know, a long-standing leader in communities. And remember we used a Khoros platform at SuccessFactors and it really was a differentiator for us then and it's a differentiator for us now. And especially in the vertical space, you know, people are very much drawn together. And so this type of online platform, when done really well with a lot of very useful information so people can get the answer and very quickly get to a resolution or meet others that can help is really the winning ticket.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

So Julie, really great to hear that about your success with Khoros at other companies and now, and obviously you're sort of reading our mail, if you will, from a standpoint of the customer journey, and that there really isn't a beginning or an end, it's all one journey for a customer. And therefore from our standpoint, those touch points and that engagement wherever and whenever the customer wants to engage is so important.

Which leads me to the next question which is: how do you as the CMO interact with your peer, the CXO, the head of CX, the CCO and how do you keep that a cohesive experience?

JULIE KNIGHT:

Yeah, so there's a number of touch points between my role and my team's role in that of the Chief Customer Officer. And a lot of that comes down to the fact that you know if you take a look at marketing's responsibility, and I would say for marketing teams, especially in SMB, you'll find, wow, it's really about top of funnel, it's about converting, it's about new business. Because of Unit4’s long history, 40 years in the business, we have a very rich legacy business. So those customers are ones that we continue to work very closely with and our chief customer team, in ensuring that they're happy, but they're also thinking about what's next. How am I moving from on-premise to cloud? How am I thinking about onboarding or expanding my Unit4 footprint from just basic ERP at the time to also maybe FPNA, human capital management, or even breaking that down further into talent management or compensation planning?

So, you know, if you think about just the monetization of the relationship, the interlock between the two is really, really important.

But the other thing, and I think the thing that's really been such a focus for us and it's why we've been so happy with the build-out of the Chief Customer Office, customer success managers, it's allowed us to really get a lot closer with our customers. And by this, I mean through a reference program, through customer advisory boards.

So we used to have industry advisory boards, and that was very product-oriented, but it really wasn't getting into the depths of trust, relationship, best practices, how do we really grow with you? And then the other thing for us is realizing that Unit4 isn't the only game in town and you know, really what makes a house a home is the broader ecosystem that is very, very critical for all of these customers across all of the verticals that we serve, and making sure that we bring that together so that they have a landed solution that works for their business and is right for their business.

But the other piece is, they are an incredible input to what we do, actually both in new business and existing business, is we have a fantastic Chief Customer Officer in Michelle McCarthy who has been a wonderful spokesperson, not only for the product, but the evolution of customer service support, customer care, and really explaining journeys to our customers that you know, perhaps in the past, it wasn't something that they really thought about. They thought about, well, I have this problem to solve, Unit4 has this solution that can support us, and I want you to implement it, and then you know, as things go on, we can continue to enhance it or if there's challenges that we face, that Unit4 can assist.

And that mindset has shifted. As I like to talk to my team about this, Michael Spain spoke a lot about competing on customer experience. That is the true differentiator. We all have products. We all have services. But ultimately, how are we able to differentiate ourselves on customer service, and ultimately, how do you get a council in the UK, or a non-profit in the US, to be able to differentiate to their students and that's equally important.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Love it. Absolutely. Love it, Julie. Really appreciate that perspective. For sure. One of our tenants is the same: relationship economy: no longer transactional, experience will make or break you.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Yeah, absolutely.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Okay, Julie, one of my favorite questions that we always ask here on CX Confessions and that is: what is a commonly held belief or industry practice that you passionately disagree with?

JULIE KNIGHT:

Oh, wow. Well, it perhaps is a fairly simplistic one, but I think nonetheless is an important one. And that is that marketing is just responsible for leads.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Love it, love it, and I agree.

JULIE KNIGHT:

But you know, it comes up a lot in times when you have a lot of market headwinds. It's like, where are my leads? Where are my MQLs? And our point of view is, well, all of these things create a strong foundation. It's really us working together across all sources of pipeline to ensure that we have enough there that is of quality and is of value to ensure that we can keep the train running.

And you know, to me, that is something that even as you're moving down-funnel, that information is very critical to bring upstream. That allows you to refine, it allows you to educate your marketers. It sort of puts the hair on the back of my neck — it’s like ah, you’re responsible for the leads. And it's like you know, if you look at the world that way, then it would just be well, the customer success and service manager is responsible for the customer relationship. What a horrifying and just utterly depressing thought that would be.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Yeah, exactly.

JULIE KNIGHT:

[They are] really, really good at their jobs. But you know, it just means that they really have a very big mountain to climb and so we all own it, and we all own the importance of making sure the education flows up and downstream to make the whole thing a better, not only a more efficient funnel but also a better experience for our customers because that information that you gather is applicable to both.

SPIKE JONES:

Yeah, I love that idea. That concept of everyone owns it. That makes life a lot easier, but it also makes that responsibility. It spreads it across the entire organization. And you already talked a little bit about information, how it flows up and down. But specifically, you know, we live in a world now where data is everywhere. And we have so many data inputs coming from all these different, amazing tech stacks.

But for you as a CMO, what's the data that's most important for you when it comes to your customers?

JULIE KNIGHT:

The data that is important is the data that really isn't about how they're engaging with you. It's how they're engaging out in the world wide internet. What are they looking for? What are they reading on? What are they searching on? Because you can have a customer that you think, “Wow, it's a boulevard of green lights, not a problem in the sky.” And then all of a sudden you, through intelligence, are able to see, “Wow, you know, their contract is coming up. Maybe they're taking a look for…” You know you don't always have the full insight of what's going on in the four walls or in the C-suite. So that's incredibly important data.

The second piece, obviously, is engagement. And engagement, not only we, you know, pull that data from our community for you, you know, we see engagement metrics in Gainsight. We see engagement metrics through our own data. But all of that is really important.

And the final piece of customer satisfaction. We don't try to only look at NPS because NPS is just one number and we actually look at numbers, you know different types of NPS. But the other thing that you know we take a look at SoftwareReviews, InfoTech, so sort of the sentiment that is out there. What are the other measurements that you can gather about a customer that perhaps just looking at was my experience and how my issue was resolved, was that good? Or would I recommend you as a vendor? So we try to pull a lot of different pieces together in order to take a look at the health of the customer.

And then finally, it's the reference program. And again, it's not about, “Will you jump on a call and be a reference?” [Or] super important, you know, “Will you do a case study for us?” But I think the thing that's important for us, and we do a lot of this by nature of the different channels that we work with, is that some of those surveys that they do and those reports that they do, it's anonymous, right? It's, they're not customers that we provide so what do they say about you when you're not in the room?

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Absolutely. Okay, Julie. Again, the name of the podcast is CX Confessions, and it's confession time.

What's the hardest lesson you've learned on this journey with your customer?

JULIE KNIGHT:

The journey itself and that ultimately, if you were only focused on one phase of the journey because that's your responsibility, then you ultimately won't be successful. Because that's not how customers operate. It's not how humans operate. Like you don't go buy a car just based on one set of things.

There was a great quote out there: “You buy based on your last best experience.” So I could buy a car, and my expectation may be that I had the most awesome experience when I bought a beach house. The realtor, the people who I bought from, the furniture, you know, the whole thing. It was just to the nines. But then I take all of that and I pair it against well now I'm buying a car. Well, it's fours and fives all the way through. Absolutely terrible experience.

You don't know how people are coming up with, “What do they think is the best experience and what is the bar for them?” So I learned that lesson painfully. I've thought about it only in the context of my little world of marketing and you just think it's as easy as getting a bunch of leads in and pipeline. I think you're just doing a disservice to your customer and you're really not getting the big picture.

SPIKE JONES:

All right, so Julie, so insightful. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Oh, most definitely.

SPIKE JONES:

But also, before we leave, we want to get to know Julie Knight the person. So welcome to Quick Fire Confessions. We're gonna hit you with about five questions about you as a person and then we'll go from there.

So first off, Julie, what was your first concert?

JULIE KNIGHT:

My first concert which is definitely dating me, but was Pat Benatar.

SPIKE JONES:

Ohh!

STACI SATTERWHITE:
I love it!

JULIE KNIGHT:

I know. At UC San Diego.

SPIKE JONES:

Nice.

JULIE KNIGHT:

I was in high school and it was, and they were, I mean they were known but they were still doing the college circuit.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Nice. Sounds like you set the bar high on that one.

JULIE KNIGHT:

I did. I did. I have to say, she really had the group going so yeah, it's been a tough bar ever since.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Next question: what profession, other than your own, would you attempt or even do well if you could?

JULIE KNIGHT:

Professional organizer.

SPIKE JONES:

Ohhh.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Oh my god. I am a complete Home Edit fan. I do love it and you know it's something that you know it just over the years I've really really enjoyed.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Love it. I think I could use you.

JULIE KNIGHT:

My services are there.

SPIKE JONES:

There you go. There you go. I may or may not have spent too many hours in the Container Store. So a person after my own heart for sure.

How about your first job? Like your first paying job and then like your first job-job?

JULIE KNIGHT:

So my first paying job actually was working at a gardening store, gardening center, and, you know, out there rearranging the plants.

SPIKE JONES:

Organizing things.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Doing all of that. Yeah, it was good. And actually, I would tell you that fast forward many, many years, the pandemic really kind of maybe, you know, fired that up again and my husband and I really enjoyed planting, growing veg, all of that. So yeah, we really, really enjoy it and now that we've moved to Las Vegas, it's a whole, obviously a whole different thing.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Whole different ball game.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Really. Yeah. So really learning about that. But we do really enjoy it. But yeah, that was the first job. I mean, aside from the myriad of babysitting jobs, which I think everybody's had that job.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Exactly. Okay. What's your biggest indulgence?

JULIE KNIGHT:

My biggest indulgence, well, I'll have to say anywhere we go we always love going to great restaurants so you know we don't go super-saver. We really do try to enjoy the best. And I have to say though we have to put ourselves on a bit of a budget because there's a lot of fantastic restaurants both on the strip and off The Strip and you know, we can easily never hit the kitchen and always go someplace great for dinner. But we enjoy good food and just a great ambiance. And having a good time. So that's, I think that's our thing.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

I feel like you're a good reference source for some restaurants there in Vegas. I'll definitely ask you.

SPIKE JONES:

So speaking of Vegas, which is where you are now, but if you had to move somewhere other than Vegas, where would it be?

JULIE KNIGHT:

Well, I love golf. So I think any place that would allow me to play a lot of golf for short periods of time, maybe North Carolina for a while, maybe back to California there's always great golf there. May even go to Kohler, Wisconsin, they’ve got a whole thing going on there. Just none of it in the winter.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Not in January. I was just gonna say that sounds like a great way to sum up Julie on a personal note. I'm getting a golf and good food vibe. Sounds great actually.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Yeah, it is. We do try to enjoy our personal life. So yeah, that's the ticket.

SPIKE JONES:

That's great. Well, Julie, thank you, again, so much for spending some time with us, sharing some about your history and your experience, and especially your time now as CMO at Unit4. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.

We thank you for sharing and we hope to have you back again someday.

JULIE KNIGHT:

Oh, thank you so much. I really do appreciate the time and the conversations on a topic that I really love. And I've had the opportunity to work at a lot of really great places where I've learned a lot on customer experience and just how important and often isn't always top of mind for everybody. So yeah, it's been good.

SPIKE JONES:

Aw Staci, that was great. That was great. She was, there's a lot of nuggets in there. Like so many things that we could have gone chasing, but what stood out to you?

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Yeah, there's so many, right, directions we could have taken with that. And I think overall for me, it's just so exciting to see marketing individuals who have a real belief and vision and version of the customer experience as a whole. We used to think a little more historically at like the pre-sales events with a customer or prospect and then the post-sales events. And obviously, now it's just it's all one journey. It's only one experience. And so the engagement that we have with our prospects and customers for how we each make decisions as humans, she really seems to understand that. And honestly, I thought that was inspiring, and then double inspiring by her knowledge of the tech stack, and how they can use technology to really kind of drive that journey and understand where their prospects and customers are at all points in that journey. I thought it was kind of inspiring.

SPIKE JONES:

Oh for sure. And I also loved how she talked about: everybody owns the funnel, which is refreshing because a lot of places it's like people point fingers and go oh it's not my job, that's your job – marketing. You go do that. But to think about we all have a piece, we all have a piece of ownership, we all have a piece of responsibility when it comes to the funnel and where's my place in it and how can I help facilitate others and their places in it as well? I love that concept because that's really about locking arms and approaching this thing together. Right?

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Yeah, and you know what, I think those two things are probably kind of intertwined.

SPIKE JONES:

Totally.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

We all own the funnel and we kind of all own the funnel because it's all one experience now.

SPIKE JONES:

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.

STACI SATTERWHITE:

Yeah, really great conversation with Julie. Loved the time with her, and Spike, as always, so much fun to be with you. Appreciate you today here on CX Confessions.

SPIKE JONES:

It's always my pleasure.

KHOROS:

Now more than ever, your customers expect to be understood on a personal level. Their likes or dislikes, their history with your brand, and their communication preferences. But so many companies struggle to connect the dots of interaction across their own teams and channels, which can lead to customer experience challenges and disasters. That's where Khoros can help. The award-winning customer engagement platform was built to turn those siloed interactions with your customers into enterprise value.

Khoros works with more than 2,000 of the world's leading brands powering more than 500 million digital interactions every single day. Learn more at @khoros.com.

Thanks for listening to CX Confessions brought to you by Khoros. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app and give us a rating.

See you next time.