I've always been anti-silo. I generally work in small orgs – 20-150 people – and do a lot of work to improve cross team communication. Silos hide information. They show up in your product. They slow projects. They create friction for customers.

We already know that customers don't think of any company as a bunch of teams. We are our logos to them, regardless of the title of anyone they talk to. When they talk about their experience with a product, the sales process, the support process, or even our social media presence, it's all just AcmeCorp to them.

But we don't act like it. And it's making everything harder on everyone.

AI is making this pain more glaring for customers, and it starts with awareness (socials and ads), continues in Sales (can they even get a demo booked? If not, do they know why?) and carries on to support. I'll let the top of funnel folks weigh in with their expertise there, so let's chat support.

It sucks slimy pond scum right now, y'all.

As a customer, I've already read your onboarding docs. I've searched your knowledge base. I asked my LLM and Google. As a final resort, I've reached out to your team. Maybe because I figured I could get a faster answer that way, or maybe I don't want to "bother anyone" or possibly just because I'm afraid my question is super stupid and the team is going to save my question and paste it in Slack to laugh at all day. Regardless, I've already typed my question up at least 4 different ways, read everything you've written on the topic, and a lot you haven't written but someone else has, and I'm finally coming to you because I'm out of options.  

The first thing I get is a request to write my question again, introduce myself, explain my use case, and get into my entire product experience with your team.

W. T. F.

Before you can finish asking your questions, the customer has already started to research your competitors. By the end of the quarter at least 3 execs will be pointing fingers to direct blame on the disappointing churn numbers.

We are using AI all wrong. We're deflecting and writing, and optimizing and resolving. But we don't know jack all about the person who is exhausted from their search for an answer and just wants help.

There are a dozen (at least) tools that promise to do just this, but there is just one problem: They compile data that exists in the tools you give them access to, for the benefit of other bots. Who is watching out for your humans? And the humans they talk to. Besides, no one wants to (or should want to) give full, unfettered access to every system of record. You need humans having the tough conversations in a room or a zoom, asking hard questions. You need humans running the check of “Does this really matter for OUR customers? And does this collection of data make is feel hopeful or completely squicked out?” I’ve yet to meet a bot that can run that check.

Instead, please get your teams together to find out every scrap of data you possess, or could possess, about your customer. Imagine a world where a support rep knew everything about the person in front of them in the queue before even typing 'hello'.  

Does this sound like a daunting project? Oh yes it is. Very much so. Is it more daunting to have a 30% churn rate you can't explain? Oh definitely. So I'm going to give you a free project plan for this. Yay! Free stuff!

Dumpster-Dive Your Org for Customer Gold: Building a Customer Data System That Actually Works • Buttondown

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If you use this, I would love to hear how it goes. If you think it sucks completely, tell me that too. But use your nice words, please. I’m not into being yelled at on the internet. If you copy it and sell it, I hope your bacon always burns and the faucet closest to your bed always drips. But if you do try it and it works and you credit me, I want to shout you out and celebrate you!