Connecting the Dots in Customer Experience

Hi everyone! 👋 coming to you with a post about connecting the dots in customer experience.

First, I want you to sit down and consider why start-up founders are more successful than large corporations!

Come on - think out loud. What do the entrepreneurs do well?

Think about it for a moment.

Let me tell you my opinion.

They have a deep understanding of the problem they’re solving and know their customers intimately—from the sales cycle to ongoing support.

As a result, they consistently deliver when it matters most. Let’s unpack this because this is important.

Sales Cycle:

Building Trust from Day One. Let’s start with sales. Salespeople often know the customer’s pain points better than anyone else—sometimes even better than the R&D teams that build the solution. They are trusted advisors, asking the right questions to ensure their selling truly addresses the customer’s needs. When everything lines up, the deal is closed, the DocuSign is done, and everyone celebrates.

But here’s where the first cracks can appear.

Implementation Handoff:

The Knowledge Gap: Once the sale moves to the implementation phase, a handoff happens, and miscommunications can start. The customer was sold on a vision of how this solution would solve their problems, but now, a new team is responsible for making that vision a reality. While the implementation team is great at managing projects and getting customers up and running quickly, do they understand the customer’s pain points as deeply as the sales team does? Not always. And that’s where the fumbles start.

Hang tight - more fumbles are on their way.

Go Live:

From Launch to Support. Eventually, the customer goes live with the product. Maybe the launch wasn’t perfect, but the system is up, and now the Customer Success and Support teams have taken over. These teams genuinely want to provide an excellent experience, but do they fully understand why the customer purchased the product in the first place? Do they know what features are critical to the customer’s success? Do they understand the priority of each issue? Too often, the answer is “no.”Why Does This Breakdown Happen?

Valuable context is lost as customers move through the sales, implementation, and support cycles.

Each team works in silos, using different tools and systems.

Even with AI tools capturing conversations in sales, that knowledge doesn’t always carry through to the implementation or support teams. So, when a customer support rep gets a call, it’s just a case number in front of them. They don’t know the full story—the customer’s goals, the features that matter most, or the urgency behind their issues.

The Solution: Align Conversations and Surface Insights

To deliver truly great customer experiences, we need to connect all these conversations across teams. Every insight gathered from sales, implementation, and support must be easily accessible. When customer support reps have a complete picture, they can go beyond just solving cases. They can become trusted advisors who understand the customer’s journey and what matters to them.

Closing Thoughts

Think about a time you had an exceptional customer experience. What did that company do? They understood you. They listened. They knew exactly what you needed.

The key to providing experiences like this is connecting the dots across teams. Conversations through chats, phone calls, and meetings need to be unified, and insights must surface at the right time for the right people.

Thanks for reading. Here’s to creating better customer experiences—because at the end of the day, we’re all customers and deserve better.