CX Tips from the Author of ‘Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships’ You Can’t Afford to Miss

Christina Garnett wears multiple hats — teacher, marketer, chief customer officer — but, more importantly, she’s someone who, in her own words, “specializes in problem-solving, program optimization, and boosting social media and community engagement to create genuine connections between brands and audiences.” This fall, she’d officially become an author with the launch of her book, “Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships: Use Emotional Connection to Build Loyalty.”

When Garnett joined us on the CX-WISE podcast, not only did she give us a little taste of what we could expect from her maiden book but also shared plenty of insights and personal stories about customer experience (CX) and engagement that could help you rethink your approach to CX.

We highly recommend that you listen to the podcast, but if you’re pressed for time, here are a few snippets that we think you might appreciate, and which hopefully will help you better understand Garnett and her philosophy of CX:

1. How can you differentiate your CX from that of your competitors?

Christina Garnett references that scene in “The Lion King” where Mufasa tells Simba that everything the light touches is their kingdom to remind us how vast CX actually is and why it’s important to think macro, not micro.

“Everything the customer touches or sees is a part of the customer experience. And I think if you look at it from that lens, you're going to catch all the missing pieces that a lot of companies don't put into their CX initiatives,” Garnett said.

Although she believes in AI’s potential in transforming CX, she strongly believes AI can’t replace humans. "...you're laying off the customer success team and thinking that you can just replace them with AI, or you're cutting the community team in half... when you are letting those people go, you are literally slicing off a layer that is intimately touching your customers. And so in a lot of ways, you're going to have to rebuild those relationships because you let go of their person,” she explains.

In the video clip below, she shares why a leading language learning company’s AI- first stance could potentially make the brand and its campaigns less human and spontaneous. And in the long run, all the hard work that went into acquiring and retaining a customer could come undone.

2. How do you establish a personal connect with your customers?

Garnett’s experience as a teacher informs her approach to marketing in more ways than one. Here’s why she thinks marketing just like teaching cannot be one-dimensional and needs to be tweaked according to the audience it's aimed at:

“I think some of the best marketers are former teachers because they have to do differentiated instruction, which means they're going to have one lesson that they have to teach and they're going to have to teach it in different ways because they understand that there's no one singular pitch that's going to work... And that's what good marketers do is they understand that they have to create content and package it in different ways because we all consume differently.”

She encourages brands to consider more than just internal gains, like process efficiency, when adopting new technology.

Instead, the focus should be on whether the customer is reaping any of the benefits of said technology. “...chances are you're using automation and AI because you want to cut cost and you want to drive efficiency... Are [customers] going to have a more efficient experience or is it just the CS team that's going to have more efficiency? And so, if you're making decisions that are only benefiting the company and you're not thinking about how that's going to impact the customer, I can already tell you that you're setting yourself up for failure.”

Watch this video to understand how game theory, specifically the prisoner’s dilemma, can “unlock all the opportunities of what CX looks like.”

3. What goes into building a successful advocacy program?

As established before, differentiation is key to flourishing in today’s competitive market.

Customer advocacy programs set your brand apart by humanizing it through authentic, relatable success stories that resonate with potential customers. Garnet suggests this 2-step approach to build an advocacy program from the ground up.

I. Start with the journalism framework (the 5Ws and 1H)

• Who is this for?
• What are their expectations?
• Why would they want to engage?
• When would they interact with it?
• Where would they encounter or use it?
• How would they use or enter the experience?

This framework helps you shape the foundational understanding of your audience and their needs.

II. Conduct customer interviews

• Speak directly with customers to hear firsthand about their experience
• Ask deep, sometimes “uncomfortable questions” to uncover insights they may not offer unprompted
• Use these conversations to surface honest, valuable customer feedback that can guide improvements

Here’s Garnett describing her work as the lead of HubSpot's HubFans advocacy program:

4. Last but not least...

According to TrueUp, there were 1,115 layoffs at tech companies with 2,38,461 people impacted (653 people per day). This year (as of May 12), there have been 288 layoffs at tech companies with 63,924 people impacted (484 people per day).

The job market is still in a slump, so, in these uncertain times, Garnett implores businesses to be a little more empathetic to their employees which in turn will allow them to do their jobs well. “In this economy right now, there's a lot of people who are facing layoffs or who fear layoffs. The people who want to take care of your customers, that changes their energy,” she says before adding, “They start doing things more to save themselves versus maybe doing those smaller micro moments because they don't have the time... your customers can feel it. They may not know what it is, but they can feel that something's different.”

She also urges brands to keep in mind that CX shouldn't be confined to a single department. And that it isn't just limited to using a brand’s product or service.

Every interaction, no matter how small, contributes to the overall perception of your brand. So, CX isn’t just the responsibility of customer advocacy, marketing or support — but the collective responsibility of all business functions.

We hope these takeaways have given you some idea as to what goes into crafting memorable customer experiences. Be sure to check out the CX-WISE podcast featuring Christina Garnett for more such tips, personal stories and real-world examples you can draw inspiration from.

And don’t miss your chance to win a copy of Garnett’s soon-to-be-launched book — full details on the podcast!