PRACHI GORE:
Probably the single most reason why go-to-market programs don't work is because there isn't that collaboration or alignment between sales and marketing. It is like one of the most critical pieces for success is like to be tied to the hip with your sales leader. And in our world, you know, in the product, lead growth world, I'm going to add product teams and customer success. So it's like a four-legged stool.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Welcome to this episode of CX Confessions. I'm Staci Satterwhite, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by one of my favorite people on the planet: one Ms. Natanya Anderson. Welcome, Natanya.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
Thank you so much, Staci. I'm thrilled to be here.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Natanya, as our listeners may or may not know, has been on my team here at Khoros the entire two-and-a-half years I have worked here, so I've seen her in a variety of positions here at the company.
Let me tell you a little bit more about Natanya. She's a customer-facing communications and technology professional with 20 years of experience. That experience includes digital marketing, content, social media, and community disciplines as well as professional services, customer success, and overall P&L management. So, folks, that's quite an extensive background. And again, I feel very fortunate to be able to work with Natanya.
Natanya has helped companies both from the purchasing side and now here at Khoros on the vendor side, she's helped companies innovate and operationalize the way they engage and support the success of their customers, from consumers to Fortune 1000 brands. Natanya’s focus areas include strategy, innovation, planning, team management, as well as scaling operations and overall running a business to strong performance against defined KPIs.
Finally, I just want to say Natanya is a very experienced manager as you can tell by all the things I just said, and she recently moved into a new role for her here at Khoros. And that's the General Manager of Strategic Services, an organization that's also new to my world here and my new role as COO, and I'm thrilled to get to discover that organization with Natanya’s leadership, and she's doing a fantastic job. So welcome again, Natanya. Thank you for joining us today.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
Thanks so much, Staci. So glad to be here.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
You're a couple few months into this new role here at Khoros, your new General Manager of Strategic Services role here at Khoros. How's it going?
NATANYA ANDERSON:
So it's going great. There is a lot. That's what I say to people whenever they ask me because the team does so much and getting to know all the different kinds of work that we do, and quite frankly, all the ways that this team functions inside of Khoros, which is really different from my previous team which was much smaller and much more focused. So not only am I learning about the team, but I'm actually having to learn some new skills inside of Khoros that I had never really had to flex before. So I will say that I sleep really well at night right now because there's just a lot. So I wake up every day, and I've got some energy and I go to bed and so it's like, so it's really good. And I'm reminded that even though I've been doing this for a long time, there's always something new to learn every day.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
So today, our guest is Prachi Gore. Prachi Gore is an accomplished marketing leader with a passion for innovation, strong team-building skills, and consistent high performance. Prachi has 15 years of experience in marketing and consulting, driving demand generation, brand adoption, and growth. Prachi also brings a proven track record in delivering high-impact campaigns while driving operational efficiencies and increasing ROI. Prachi has many specialties, some of which we will learn more about today. Some of them include global web and social marketing, lead gen and online marketing, SEO, obviously, search engine optimization, and many more, including customer insights and team building and management.
Well, Natanya, I'm super excited to welcome Prachi Gore to the show today.
Prachi, welcome. Happy to have you.
PRACHI GORE:
Thank you. This is a pleasure. This is a topic that excites me a lot, so I'm excited to talk to you guys today.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
I'm so excited to have you here as well and learn more about Checkr. So what we would love to do is really dive in and understand what's unique about Checkr?
PRACHI GORE:
I'll start with two things if that's okay. But I think the number one thing I will say from just other businesses is its mission and how the mission is to build a fairer future and it's deeply ingrained into everything we do. Like it's in the DNA of the company. So that is just magical, not just of course for marketing and what we do, but also how it's built into the product and how we do our own hiring. So I love that, and it's very unique.
And I think from an industry perspective, you know, we are kind of innovating in a very laggard industry, I would say. So it's like tech first, API first. It's all product led. It's very unique, and you know the perspective of Checkr is we want to screen candidates in. Like just how we think about background checks I think is unique. It's all about tech first. We want to screen people in, not kind of make background checks a roadblocks on hiring. So those are my favorite aspects about Checkr.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
That's awesome. I think in a space where that's constantly evolving, but there's such this human component hearing you talk about the integration of tech, and people is really interesting. And one of the things I'm also curious about is you mentioned APIs, right? And really thinking about how APIs and AI are playing. What do you think about what you're seeing in your current role and just more broadly, like what do you think the future APIs and AI are as you've learned?
PRACHI GORE:
Yeah, I mean, I think API — I'm going to split those two because they are two different things — but I think APIs, in my mind, are kind of how the future of businesses, tech, architecture is going to be, right? Every day, they're gonna be like, building blocks of your infrastructure for anything, any processes, any business workflows and processes. So APIs play a critical role because they give you scalability, they give you control over the experience you want to drive on the front end, so they're just like that is going to be the future of FinTech architecture. I think.
AI, on the other hand, is different, right? AI is used at various levels in different businesses at SmartRecruiters, where I was previously, that was a different play on AI.
At Checkr, we use AI primarily for automation and efficiency driving in terms of two aspects. So we do natural language processing because lots of counties have different codes for tagging, you know the same. So it's kind of like just giving it, making it, like consolidating the different codes and making it super easy to read reports and understand what is happening in someone's background. So we use machine learning natural language processing in that way, and then just application to a lot of automation on the process side. So it's not really used for decision-making or any of those things, but it's really used for standardizing how records are viewed and then automation.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
How cool it is for me to hear a marketer talk about APIs and AI. We've come a long way.
PRACHI GORE:
We have our favorite buzzwords, and that's why you know, I've also —
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Yeah, but intelligently talk about them. Prachi, I forgot to give you credit for intelligently talking about them and not just like as a buzzword, but like really actually understanding.
PRACHI GORE:
Yeah, no, it's cool. I think that's the future of technology. So.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Very, very cool. Okay, so you also mentioned one of your former organizations, SmartRecruiters. I think you previously led marketing at SmartRecruiters and demand at Service Source. What did you learn about customer experience from these roles? And how can you help our listeners understand the customer experience elements of your role?
PRACHI GORE:
Yeah. So I think kind of just over — my first interface for the value of customer experience for our business was when I worked for a company called SunPower. It was a consumer as well as SMB and large, and we had all sorts of businesses there. But we had a very sophisticated Customer Experience Program that touched everything from the top-of-funnel-like website to customer experience. And I saw that operate and it was, it's just amazing to see what a difference that makes and how different functions think about kind of the customers first.
So that was kind of like where I opened my eyes to a new way of doing things. And then over time, I think I've carried that with me and what I've learned, honestly, is that creating value for your customers is and probably should be the number one priority for any business. Because if that is not the case, like no matter what amazing marketing you do and demand gen you do, and whatever you do, like that's not long term. Like it's not going to, you know, sustain your business, so I think that is the biggest lesson or like biggest learning for me over the years is, no matter what functional area you own within a business, creating customer value is probably your number one priority.
So I just carry that with me. I think as a marketing leader, you have a lot more say and you know input into how you want to deliver the marketing experience. As a demand gen leader, it was a little bit different or used to be different, but nonetheless, you know, when I thought about big events and demand gen plays like it was always like using our customers as the salespeople I guess for the company, but it doesn't happen unless you know your entire company strategy, your product, everything's delivering, you know for that customer value experience.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Prachi, you had me at value. For those of you not – not watching but listening on the podcast, you can see both Natanya and I break into very large smiles the moment you said it's really about creating value for your customers. You had me at value, Prachi. Thank you.
PRACHI GORE:
Good, good. Yes, that is, that is it.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
That's what we hear from Staci all the time, right? Is value and outcomes, and value and outcomes, and it's not really that I ever doubted it, but it's nice that we hear it someplace else, right? And to be fair, as a former customer and purchaser, right, it was always for me about so much more than just does the software work. That's a table stake. It's more about how is my partner helping me do more in my world and creating that value for me. So I am also a big believer, but it's just, I hear that from Staci I think multiple times a day.
PRACHI GORE:
And I feel like that is kind of, that is easier understood by businesses on why you know why they need to invest in customer experience. Because it, you can tie it back to then business outcomes versus customer experience sometimes could just be like this very big, you know, amazing aspirational cloud concept that becomes hard to execute unless you tie it back to what are we really trying to do here? So which is why I positioned it that way.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you know, I think one of the things, as we think about obviously all that you've learned in your different roles, is I think it's really interesting that you've worked both in sales and in marketing right and when you think about working on both sides, where do you find the most appreciation for collaboration and communication between sales and marketing? You know, what are those opportunities that are created that you see because you've worked in both spaces?
PRACHI GORE:
Yeah, I mean, I think I've rolled up into kind of the larger sales arm in many places as a demand leader, not really carrying the bag, if you will, as a salesperson. I've owned SDR orgs at pretty much you know, many of the companies that I've worked for, and so I understand the sales role, but I will say I think probably the single most reason why go-to-market programs don't work is because there isn't that collaboration or alignment between sales and marketing. It is like one of the most critical pieces for success is like to be tied to the hip with your sales leader and in our world, you know in the product lead growth kind of world, I'm gonna add product teams, and customer success. It's like a four-legged stool in my mind. It's like you have sales and marketing like 100% for new logo acquisition, all of that but you need product equally owning the exact same numbers, and you need customer success right there with you for absolute go-to-market success. So, in my mind, it's become broader than just sales and marketing with kind of self-serve and product lead growth opportunities. At least at Checkr we've had that.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
And when you think about the importance of customer experience that might actually even help define why you need all four legs of that stool, right? Because if you only focus on one piece of the customer experience on the continuum, that obviously then I would imagine that leaves the customer in a spot where like, wait a minute, I had this great experience up until I bought, and then like it all, you know, maybe disappeared, so that's not okay. But I put words in your mouth there just a little bit. Maybe let me just ask you. Why is it more important than ever to create a frictionless customer experience today and how do you ensure it is holistic from that customer journey standpoint?
PRACHI GORE:
Yeah, I mean, customer experience needs to be consistent from top-top of funnel right through, you know, the continued stay of the customer with you, right? So consistency is critical across the journey, but I think more so than ever today, which is your question, why is it critical? I think because as the buyer, expectations have changed, I mean, just us as consumers, like we're so used to eCommerce and apps like everything is so easy to buy, that has become customer expectations, so businesses have to deliver on customer expectation. I think that in my mind is like the number one reason but then some other reasons are like the buying power has changed. And you know, I've been like maybe even like five, ten, eight years ago, IT and procurement, there were teams that had a lot more buying power within a company, and that business users just have to take whatever was decided. That's different now. Business users and business users at different levels in the company are making purchasing decisions or buying decisions to just license and start using product.
And so I think the buying power is way more distributed at user and functional levels than it was just not that many years ago, honestly. And so that changes expectations and delivery of what you would do to design a frictionless customer experience, but I think that's the second thing.
And then maybe the last thing I would say is just access to information through review sites, and you know, blog, the blogosphere, like if you didn't do that, it would be a known fact very quickly. And so you cannot, from a brand reputation standpoint, you just cannot afford that as a business, and so I don't know, those become, I mean, I think those are kind of the top reasons why.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Yeah, wow, there's so much to follow up there on, but since Natanya is our General Manager of Strategic Services and she's all about brand, I'm not even gonna try to ask a follow up question that's reasonable or meaningful. That's Natanya’s deal.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
You know, I do think it's really interesting though, and I was really struck by the distribution of the purchasing power because some days I feel like everybody can buy and then some days I feel like nobody can buy and it's like, do you know and like, if you can't get to the exact right person, I watch our sales, our sales colleagues trying to figure out who has the power in any particular transaction. And I think that it's so different that it makes it incredibly difficult and then it also makes it difficult then I think to figure out what the customer experience should be because it's just not homogenous anymore. From a buyer-user perspective.
PRACHI GORE:
100% you're serving so many different personas that all, you know, are important at some step in this journey, and it's become harder to design for it. But if you think about it as the lots of different entryways into how the customer experiences you and if you keep a consistent experience irrespective, so like not one person gets a highly white glove treatment, and the other one is kind of like not getting it.
So if you have like this is our table stake expectation on the type of customer experience we want to deliver across the board at every single entry point into your funnel no matter who they are, and then of course you can take it a notch up for like you know, you can take it multiple notches up for the touch points that you want to influence in different ways. I do think you can solve for it that way otherwise you would you know run into. I mean, there's only so many custom journeys you can design for.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
Right and only so much money you can spend right like I think that the scale, the scale piece of it becomes incrementally interesting and keeping the brand consistent as it's experienced by those personas. I'm also really curious when I think back to considering customer journeys three, five years ago, much less more than that, I think expectations are just really different now, right? I think we talk about it a lot in the B2C space where we're thinking about serving consumers, but my observation is that business buyers have also changed their expectations of the customer journey. What have you seen in your career about how the expectations have changed for the experience from the business consumer?
PRACHI GORE:
I think the biggest change I have seen is that they don't want to be handheld. So it's like, or in other words, they want the ability to self-serve as long as they possibly can. And I think that is one of the fundamental shifts that I have seen. And so when you think about campaigns and marketing content, or even education content and product content, you’ve got to think about it very, very differently from a marketing lens at least because they want to be able to self-serve. They want to be able to kind of decide their method of engagement with a business versus forcing everyone down a forced sales funnel. So it's just I think that to me, is kind of one of the biggest differences I've seen.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Yeah, and I think you probably know this data off the top of your head, Prachi, but the amount of decision-making that happens before you ever actually meet your prospect is incredibly high, right? They've gotten X percent of the way —
PRACHI GORE:
I think like 60% was, last time I checked, the fact, but you see that everywhere.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
It's a lot, right? It's sort of intimidating to think about how the power or the onus then is on their ability to self-serve accurately versus leading them through a journey. So that puts a lot of pressure on someone like you, Prachi, to be candid.
PRACHI GORE:
It does, and I think the other thing — it does, right, it changes the role of you know, of marketing often in terms of what you do at a business. I also think the other change in – in the buyer journey or expectation is that they just want kind of like straightforward, clear, transparent communication.
You know, so many buyers that we interface with today or you know, have or sell to, they don't want to be sold to.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Yeah.
PRACHI GORE:
They want to be educated. They want to know more, they want to learn, they want to have an exchange, they want to, you know, hear about different ways like innovation, talk leadership, like they want all of that they want to consume that. They don't want to be sold too. And so any kind of fluff, any you kind of, you know, all of that just becomes like the wrong way of communicating.
And so like that's the other change I've seen is like, poetry is fun, and we should use it. But it's like most of the times they want, like simple, clear communication, and so that's that's fun.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
“Poetry is fun, and we should use it but maybe not in this context.” A great quote from Prachi Gore today.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
I was thinking about that actually because I was. You have me ruminating a little bit on some of my favorite sales experiences where I feel like I got a lot out of the sales experience itself that made me better at my job before I even purchased or became a partner. But what I will tell you is that creates a preference and quite frankly, a hard, hard bias. And so like I remember when I bought the Khoros platform 11 years ago, the very first sellers that I talked to were from Khoros. And they set my expectation for how to think about the space and how to think about social media at scale. Everybody else had to live up to that expectation, and just about everybody else failed. And that's one of the reasons that I selected them as a partner, and now you have me sort of thinking about like, certainly I check boxes when I'm trying to buy, but I think it's that value, right, of making me a better partner even while you're trying to still sell to me that can make a real difference in today's world.
PRACHI GORE:
I agree. Yep. Comes back to customer value.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
I feel like Staci's gonna be like, hello to all of my team, please listen to this. Like required listening inside of the customer organization. I love it.
So we're not afraid of a little bit of controversy here at Khoros. You should hear us in our daily stand-ups on Staci's team. And so we're really curious, is there a commonly-held belief or industry practice that you just passionately disagree with? You’re like, all of you are wrong?
PRACHI GORE:
I mean, I think well, I'd say that marketing exists to make things pretty is wrong.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Natanya’s doing raise the roof. She’s like, I hear you.
PRACHI GORE:
I would say marketing is a revenue driver and can own a revenue target and beyond just top-of-funnel metrics, like leads are a metric of the past. Of course, we track everything, but I want to own the revenue number, and I want to go drive that for the business. And so I do think it is a change because of the type of marketing we could do today. But it is still often a commonly held belief that marketing exists to make things pretty and that is just annoying to me.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
I think it should be annoying, actually, because you're so much more. In fact, let me translate that a little bit to the next question about what kind of data about your customers is most important to you, especially as you think about what you just said. Look, marketing’s not here to make things pretty. We're revenue drivers for the business. What's the data you need in order to be successful doing that?
PRACHI GORE:
Yeah. So I would definitely say sentiment or NPS maybe is a way to calculate it. I think that's important. It kind of, it's not a leading indicator often but can be towards all sorts of issues that are happening in the business and problems you want to fix.
I would say usage and behavior data, at least you know when you have a product that is used by lots of different people. I like usage data because it leads to prediction for churn — so churn prevention campaigns — it can give us opportunities for lots of upsell campaigns. So a lot of behavior usage data is important.
But at the end of the day, what data about customers is important is like if they are using your product as you envision for them to and if they’re liking, liking doing that, right? So the sentiment and the actual usage patterns will tell you a lot about the customer experience at least on the product, and with other touch points you have going on.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
You know, we're called CX Confessions for a reason. So it is confession time, as it were.
What's the hardest lesson you've learned on this journey with your customers, right, like what was unexpected or just really a tough thing to take in?
PRACHI GORE:
I think this is a learning over time, but I think it's a critical one. And it was a hard one probably when it happened many years ago. But, customer relationships cannot be fake, and they're just like any other relationship you have. And so inauthentic ones just won't work, and so you know the customers can see through that. And so I would say you know, bring your authenticity, bring authenticity into everything you do: your marketing, all customer exchanges, and have their best interest at the center of whatever it is that you're doing, and communicate that clearly and transparently.
So I think maybe sometimes you just want to find a shortcut to deliver something and that probably is not a good way to do it. So that I would say is the hardest lesson, is like you can't fake it. It has to be real. There has to be intention.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Really hard to do probably from a top-of-funnel standpoint to get like you're not faking it right.
PRACHI GORE:
Exactly. I mean I think that's what I've learned is sometimes you just want to go fast and make it seem like you care, but you actually have to want it to work.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Cool. Well, we're gonna take the last few minutes before we sign off to get to know Prachi just a little bit more. We do this thing we call Quick Fire Confessions. And they’re five questions to help us get a glimpse of the real you. I'll start us off.
What was your first concert?
PRACHI GORE:
Concert? It was Bryan Adams. I remember it, and now I probably am giving up my age.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
We’re about the same age. I think that puts it in the right timeframe for me too.
PRACHI GORE:
It was so much fun. I mean, I was like at an age where any concert could be fun, but I love Bryan Adams, and so that was my first concert.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
Following along on that theme: if you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life. What would be?
PRACHI GORE:
Ooh. Well right now I'm listening to a lot of Ed Sheeran, so maybe one of those songs, but I can't listen to the same — like that's a hard one. It's gotta change out seasonally, but for a long time now I’ve been listening to Ed Sheeran.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
It’s okay to say I would never do that, actually.
PRACHI GORE:
Yeah, I don't think I could ever do that.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Okay, all right. Next question.
What profession other than your own would you attempt if you could?
PRACHI GORE:
Hmm, I think theater or just like something to do with dance and performance. I used to do it through my college years and at one point I thought that was gonna be my career. And then of course, yeah, so I haven't done it in a very long time. But it's often something that I wondered if I should have tried. So I would say theater or dance. Some sort of performance.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
For sure. That's the fork not taken, right?
PRACHI GORE:
Exactly.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
That's the major thing in life that you didn't go down, and now that's not a path that’s available to us.
PRACHI GORE:
It's still a great hobby to kind of dance and do those things.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Oh good, so we’ll see you in an off-Broadway performance.
PRACHI GORE:
My second career.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
Switching gears a little bit. What's your favorite app on your phone?
PRACHI GORE:
I don't know if it's my favorite, but I couldn't live without it, and it's Amazon, and maybe Instacart is a close second. Like I am so, everything that comes into our house, you know for routine utility items, come through those two apps.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
I'm certainly with you on the Instacart thing. Placed an order this morning for emergency coffee.
PRACHI GORE:
I mean, we use it a lot. It started as a pandemic, you know, habit. It's hard to get rid of.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Totally get it. Right there with you. Love it. Okay, and then finally, what's your biggest indulgence, whether it's food, music? Obviously, you have a thing for the arts. What's your biggest indulgence?
PRACHI GORE:
I would say dark chocolate.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Oh, nice.
PRACHI GORE:
Maybe followed by red wine, but mostly dark chocolate.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Preferably together. That's like my Friday night cheat night routine — red wine and dark chocolate. It’s the best.
PRACHI GORE:
Ideally together, but I would go for dark chocolate any day. Maybe every day.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Love it. Natanya, do you do a little wine and some dark chocolate, or no?
NATANYA ANDERSON:
I do. Oh yeah. That's one of my favorite things. Although what I will say to you is as unexpected as this is if you've ever tried a really great dark chocolate with a really good blue cheese. I know that it sounds totally not something you want to do. But it turns out that they complement each other and they make, the dark chocolate’s just a little bit sweeter, and the blue cheese is a little less sharp, and it's a really unexpected experience. So I have a friend who's a cheesemonger who made me try that one so if you're ever looking for — and then you throw a little bit of red wine in there, and your mind will just be blown.
PRACHI GORE:
Okay! That is on the menu for this Friday,
STACI SATTERWHITE:
That is on the menu for this Friday. I totally agree with you.
Well, Prachi, really genuinely how lovely it's been to spend this time with you here today. We certainly wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors and how much fun it's been to have to have you on CX Confessions today. Thank you.
PRACHI GORE:
This is great, Staci, and go create that customer value.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
We will, and you too.
PRACHI GORE:
Thank you for having me.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
We were mentioning earlier about going out of the season with a bang here on CX Confessions. I think, well, we didn't nail it, but Prachi nailed that. We could probably do a whole other episode on the summarizing of what Prachi just said, of course, starting with value and outcomes.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
Yeah, it was really funny. I was like, Oh, this is just like talking to Staci any day of the week, which is fantastic because I think it just reminds us of these really well-established, but so critical, foundational ideas, even as the world around us is moving forward with innovation, we have to come to these basics of creating value and outcomes.
And then I think also when we were talking about CX and CX being this really nebulous thing that can be “markety,” the marketers can get a hold of CX and run wild with that. But if we can't tie our CX efforts back to actual outcomes, including things like generating revenue, and driving critical business KPIs, it's sort of all for naught. So I really appreciated that she re-grounded us the importance of these, these sort of business foundational ideas.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Yeah, of course, you know I loved it. And especially, like you said, tying CX back to those value and outcomes. It's actually one of those things that I think it sounds easier than it actually is. To your point, about we innovate, there's all kinds of exciting new things we do. We can't forget to just kind of come back to the basics there. From a why-do-customers-engage-with-each-other standpoint, especially as an enterprise B2B software company.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
No, I totally agree. And you know, that’s the other piece of this conversation that was so interesting to me. I mean, the whole thing was, but this idea of the buyer being so much more distributed now, and how we, especially as we are thinking about enterprise sales, how it used to be and how it is today is really different. And one of the things I appreciated was how she talked about not trying to have a million different journeys, but instead what is that really core journey.
And the other piece too, for me along with that is this idea that people want to self-serve more than they maybe use to so you have to be ready for them to sort of jump into an in-person conversation, potentially having self-served a whole lot of other information and so I think it creates new challenges, but also new opportunities for our go-to-market teams in a way that, and then also for our teams that are trying to work with our existing customers to do more with them. Like I just think she articulated that so well.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
No kidding. And then at the end of the day, I love when you asked her questions about like what are the things that are – are important to her and what are the lessons she's learned. And the one really about being authentic. That's at every point, right? And even, you can speak to this because you've been a marketer, at some point maybe in our lifetime and in our history marketing was about, to use Prachi’s word, making things pretty. It certainly isn't now, right? It isn't about that. It's about establishing from a, you know, revenue-generating standpoint, but from a customer experience standpoint, you've really got to get that integrity, and that trust and that authenticity right from the get-go and that's probably something you have a lot of experience with.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
You know when I think about marketing, in the end, we are fundamentally creating connections through story and communication. And if you think about the stories that resonate most with you, even if it's a work of fiction, which marketing is of course not, but there's the route of connection consumers can tell you if it's not, they've always had a voice, but now they have a way to share it with you. Customers are able to tell us about how important authenticity is, and they will call us on it when we're not being authentic. And in the past, they would do that they would sit there and be like, oh, that commercial. That doesn't make any sense. But they could only share it with like the people who are in the room. Now they can tweet that, and now they can tell it to you on social media. So I think authenticity has always been critical. But now the feedback loop and the calling out when we're not authentic. The customer's voice is so big that you can't afford to not be authentic. And so I think for people who have always taken that approach, it means that they're just accessible for people who may not have before. It's a relearning of how to show up as a marketer.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Yeah, exactly. It's relearning, or maybe there's some exposure that wasn’t expected, but now there's some behavioral change that's needed. Well, I'm gonna, Natanya, oh my gosh, how much fun this has been for me to do this with you, especially as our final episode of CX Confessions this year. Thank you so much for all it is that you do for Khoros and thank you for being my co-host here on CX Confessions today.
NATANYA ANDERSON:
Thank you so much, Staci. This was so much fun. I really appreciated the time and can't wait to hear and share the final outcome with everybody.
STACI SATTERWHITE:
Thanks to our listeners, as well. Signing off for now for CX Confessions.
