When Your "Customer Experience Strategy" Is Just Beige Sadness (And How to Fix It)
When Your "Customer Experience Strategy" Is Just Beige Sadness (And How to Fix It)
Breaking news: most of you are boring your customers to death.
There. I said it.
You spent six figures on your tech stack, hired a "growth hacker" (whatever the hell that means), and your customer retention strategy is... checks notes ...sending quarterly emails that look like they were designed by a robot having an existential crisis.
Cool. Cool cool cool.
This week I sat down with Vance Morris—a guy who went from guarding birth control factories to working at Disney to going bankrupt to cleaning carpets to building a customer retention machine that actually, you know, WORKS. (That career trajectory alone deserves its own Netflix series, but I digress.)
And Vance dropped some truth bombs that made me want to burn down every boring-arse "customer success playbook" I've ever seen.
Your Customers Don't Remember You (And Why That's Your Fault)
Here's the thing that's gonna hurt: It's not your customer's job to remember you. It's YOUR job to remind them you exist.
Read that again. Cross-stitch it on a pillow. Tattoo it on your forehead.
Because while you're over here playing the "set it and forget it" game with your customer relationships, thinking one good transaction is enough, your customers are out there living their actual lives. They've got 47 tabs open, three Slack workspaces screaming at them, and a kid who just finger-painted the dog.
They're not sitting around going, "Gee, I wonder what MedTech SaaS Company #47 is up to these days!"
Entertainment > Education (Sorry, LinkedIn Thought Leaders)
Vance hit me with this absolute gem: "We pay Kim Kardashian more than high school teachers. Who's more valuable? The teacher. But society prioritizes entertainment."
And before you clutch your pearls and start typing an angry comment about how your B2B buyers are "serious decision-makers who want ROI metrics," let me stop you right there.
Your buyers are HUMANS. They laugh. They scroll TikTok. They want to be entertained.
Vance's carpet cleaning newsletter has a section on stupid criminal stories. Know what happens? PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ IT. They look forward to it. They share it. They remember the company that made them laugh while they were learning about local community events.
Meanwhile, your "Monthly Product Update Newsletter" has a 2% open rate and makes people want to claw their eyes out.
The FedEx Test: Are You Serious or Serious-ISH?
Here's where Vance absolutely destroyed me: He sends $50K proposals via FedEx. While everyone else is hitting "send" on another forgettable email, he's sending Mickey Mouse plushies and video cards and Amish cookies (yes, really).
"But Vance," his clients whine, "I can't afford FedEx!"
His response? "How much is one customer worth to you?"
If your answer is "more than nine dollars," then SHUT UP AND SEND THE FEDEX.
This is the difference between being a commodity and being a partner. Between racing to the bottom on price and building unshakeable relationships. Between being forgotten and being unforgettable.
Disney Doesn't Own a Monopoly on Magic (But You'd Never Know It)
The Disney principles Vance talked about aren't about building roller coasters or hiring people in furry costumes (though if that's your vibe, you do you).
It's about understanding that waiting sucks and doing something about it.
Disney calls it "line-tainment." You call it "the awkward silence between proposal and decision." They compress time through engagement. You compress time through... well, you probably don't.
What are you doing during that week between "I'll send you a proposal" and actually delivering it? Crickets? A single automated email? Or are you sending videos, updates, value-adds, ANYTHING that shows this relationship matters to you?
Your silence isn't professional. It's lazy.
The Real Talk Nobody Wants to Hear
We're all in commodity businesses. Your MedTech solution? There are 47 others. Your SaaS platform? Cool, so does everyone else.
The ONLY thing that separates you from the pack is the experience you create and the relationships you build.
Not your features. Not your pricing. Not your "proprietary technology" (it's not that proprietary, Karen).
Your humanity. Your personality. Your actual give-a-damn.
And right now? Most of you are running relationship management like it's a checkbox on a Gantt chart. "Did we touch base? Check. Quarterly email sent? Check. Random act of marketing? Check."
That's not a system. That's corporate performative nonsense.
So What Now?
Stop being beige. Stop being forgettable. Stop treating customer relationships like a transaction log in your CRM.
Create experiences that make people say "You won't believe what happened when [YOUR COMPANY] showed up today."
Build a SYSTEM—not random acts of marketing vomit—that keeps you top of mind every single month.
And for the love of all that is holy, ENTERTAIN PEOPLE. Make them laugh. Make them feel something. Make them remember you exist.
Because in this economy? In this market? With this much noise?
The companies that win are the ones that remember business is human-to-human, not human-to-revenue-target.
[Watch the full episode with Vance Morris here] to learn how he turned carpet cleaning into an art form and why stupid criminal stories might be the key to your retention strategy.
Your customers are waiting. (And probably being bored to death by your competitors while they do it.)
Make them wait entertained.
P.S. If you read this whole thing and your first thought was "but our industry is different," you're exactly who needs to hear this most. Also, Vance literally sent an 18-inch Mickey Mouse through the mail to land clients. If that doesn't convince you to try something different, I don't know what will. Maybe just keep sending those quarterly update emails and wondering why your churn rate looks like a hockey stick. Your choice. 🤷
Karl Pontau hosts The Human Connection Podcast, where we talk about the stuff that actually matters in business: the humans running it. Because whether you're B2B or B2C, it's really H2H, human to human. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode where we probably say something that'll make your HR department uncomfortable.
