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The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Here’s a question for business leaders: When was the last time you or someone on your team had a frustrating experience as a customer? Perhaps you were shuffled between departments, asked to repeat information multiple times, left feeling like no one grasped your specific needs, or that the information changed depending on who you talked to. Now flip the scenario. How many of your customers might be experiencing that same frustration with your company right now? Most well-intended, talented teams can have blind spots with their own customer service. Its like sleeping in the guest room at your house to truly understand what your visitors experience. Even the most gracious hosts might not realize just how lumpy that mattress is, or how loud the dining room chairs are overhead. The truth is that delivering a seamless customer experience is one of the most significant challenges for B2B companies. Despite our obsession with customer satisfaction metrics, most organizations still prioritize internal structures over customer needs. I see it constantlythe customer lifecycle journey fractured across marketing, sales, customer success, and renewals, with each department guarding its own territory and creating an inconsistent customer experience. The hidden cost of fragmentation This fragmentation is more than a customer annoyance. Its also a business liability. When departments operate in isolation, several things happennone of them good: Decision making becomes slower and more reactive Customers waste countless hours repeating themselves to different teams Valuable context gets lost in departmental handoffs Inconsistent messaging and experiences create confusion and erode trust Opportunities to anticipate customer needs vanish into the gaps between teams When departments operate in silos, the silos have a real and substantial impact on customer trust and loyalty. By flipping the traditional marketing structure on its head, youll gain a new and valuable perspective. You and your team will have the advantage of seeing things from the outside-in, and reap the benefit of turning customers into partners and champions. Lets discuss how to do it. Build bridges, not silos The shift toward a unified customer lifecycle cant be done at a surface, optics-only level. A cross-department meeting or two to share ideas isnt going to cut it here. True unification means ripping off the Band-Aid and totally rethinking how we structure, measure, and reward our organizations. It sounds intimidating, but its possible. Ive lived this shift. Ive spearheaded this shift. And it is so, so worth it. Here are three key practices that make the biggest difference: 1. Establish cross-functional ownership Breaking down silos starts with shared accountability. Consider experimenting with creating cross-functional teams responsible for specific segments of the customer base. These teams might include representatives from marketing, sales, customer success, and technical support who each own a specific part of the customer experience. This approach ensures no customer falls through the cracks during handoffs between departments. It also creates natural collaboration points where team members develop a deeper understanding of the entire customer journey and can identify common pain points more quickly. 2. Align metrics that matter Disconnected metrics breed disconnected experiences. Marketing teams traditionally focus on lead volume and pipeline contribution, while customer success teams track retention rates and satisfaction scores. These separate scorecards create invisible walls. The shift requires developing shared, customer-centric metrics that every department contributes to. Net retention rates, customer satisfaction scores, and customer lifetime value provide more holistic views of success than departmental vanity metrics. This enhances accuracy and reduces overlap and rework, while eliminating dangerous knowledge gaps. 3. Leverage integrated technology Metrics are critical, but you also have to inform those metrics with the right data. This might sound like the same thing as number two, but metrics are about asking the right questions, and data is about getting the right answers. A unified customer experience requires unified data. Without a single source of truth about customer interactions, teams operate with incomplete information and fail to make data-driven decisions. This doesnt have to be done manually, and probably shouldnt be. Integrated technology with a high-powered platform is critical to making this unification streamlined and accurate. If you continue using individual, specialized tools, they must share data seamlessly. When marketing automation, CRM, support ticketing, and product usage analytics feed into a comprehensive customer database, everyone gains visibility into the complete customer picture. Make the change real I know the kinds of results that can happen when an organization commits to unifying the customer experience: Reduced time-to-resolution for customer issues Increased customer retention rates and enhance customer trust Higher expansion revenue from existing accounts More accurate prediction of renewal outcomes Improved employee satisfaction across customer-facing teams By breaking down silos and ensuring smooth handoffs between departments, unification can eliminate friction points that often lead to customer frustration and attrition. Who doesnt want to see positive results in key performance indicators like these? Lead the change This wont happen on its own. As executives, we must champion this approach from the top. The process starts with: Modeling collaborative behaviors across your leadership team Creating clear customer journey maps that span departmental boundaries Redesigning incentive structures to reward collaboration Investing in technologies that enable seamless information sharing Measuring success through the customer’s eyes, not internal metrics The first step is often the hardestacknowledging that our existing structures may be optimized for our convenience rather than our customers’ success. The competitive advantage Ready to figure this out? Ready to spot opportunities earlier, solve problems faster, and build deeper customer relationships that competitors struggle to displace? One of th biggest reasons for making this shift is creating an environment where employees can focus on delivering value rather than navigating internal complexity. Teams become energized when they see the direct impact of their work on customer success. And happy employees = happy customers. The trust and loyalty you cultivate with your teams has a direct impact on the trust and loyalty your organization benefits from with your customers. When customers trust their vendors, they become more aligned, viewing you as a partner, not an adversary. I believe the business landscape is quickly moving toward prioritizing unified customer experiences. Clinging to fragmented approaches will put organizations at a disadvantage as customer expectations continue to rise. Why not start now? Melissa Puls is chief marketing officer and SVP of customer success at Ivanti.
Category:
E-Commerce
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting and killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance division, in New York last year. In a statement, Mangione’s lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo called the decision to seek the death penalty “barbaric.” “While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” Friedman Agnifilo said. Mangione, 26, has pleaded not guilty to New York state charges of murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses. He could face life in prison without parole if convicted in that case. New York does not have the death penalty for state charges. Mangione faces a parallel federal indictment in Manhattan federal court over Thompson’s killing, which is where Bondi said prosecutors will aim for the death penalty. He has not yet been asked to enter a plea to the federal charges. If Mangione is convicted in the federal case, the jury would determine in a separate phase of the trial whether to recommend the death penalty. Any such recommendation must be unanimous, and the judge would be required to impose it. Thompson was shot dead on December 4 outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, where the company was gathering for an investor conference. Luigi Mangiones murder of Brian Thompson – an innocent man and father of two young children – was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America,” Bondi said in a statement. “After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trumps agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again,” Bondi said. The brazen killing of Thompson and ensuing five-day manhunt captivated Americans. Police officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, found Mangione on December 9 with a 9-millimeter pistol and silencer, clothing that matched the apparel worn by Thompson’s shooter in surveillance footage, and a notebook describing an intent to “wack” an insurance company CEO, according to a court filing. While public officials condemned the killing, some Americans have cheered Mangione, saying he drew attention to steep U.S. healthcare costs and the power of health insurers to refuse payment for some treatments. He is currently being held in federal lockup in Brooklyn. Bondi lifted a moratorium on February 5 on federal executions imposed in 2021 by her predecessor Merrick Garland, the attorney general under Democratic President Joe Biden. Doina Chiacu and Luc Cohen, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at ending price gouging for live entertainment tickets, with musician Kid Rock at his side in the Oval Office wearing a bright red, white, and blue bejeweled suit. Anyone whos bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 yearsno matter what your politics areknows that its a conundrum, Kid Rock told reporters. Trump said while he didn’t know much about price gouging, “I checked it out, and it is a big problem. For decades, musicians have been feuding with ticket sellers like Ticketmaster over the high fees they pass on to fans, going back to 1995 when Pearl Jam canceled their tour after a dispute with Ticketmaster, over what they said were excessive and unfair fees. Here’s what to know about the new executive order. What does the executive order do? The executive order is designed to stop price-gouging by middlemen, and orders the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ensure price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchase process” and work with Attorney General Pam Bondi to better enforce the 2016 Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act against companies and individuals demonstrating unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct, like using bots to buy concert tickets in bulk and then resell them. It comes after the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation Entertainment last May, arguing their monopoly over live events in the U.S. has eliminated competition and driven up ticket prices. Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Golden State Warriors fans also experienced price gouging Another notable price gouging case occurred in 2015 when ticket seller StubHub sued rival Ticketmaster and the Golden State Warriors basketball team, arguing they unfairly required fans to resell game tickets on Ticketmasters platform, which increased ticket prices. However, the most publicized example is when Ticketmaster fumbled pre-ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in 2022, after the site crashed, leaving users logged out or frozen and causing “Swifties” hours of frustration as they attempted and failed to buy tickets. (In 2023, those tickets eventually reached between $11,000 to $22,500.) On Monday, Lady Gaga fans experienced something similar as they attempted to buy tickets for her highly anticipated The MAYHEM Ball tour, when dynamic pricing, which raises prices in real-time, drove tickets sky high with the help of bots and resellers. Now, many angry “little monsters” (the name given to Lady Gaga fans) are weighing whether to shell out thousands of dollars to see their favorite artist. Angry fans took to social media, where one X user complained tickets for Lady Gaga’s New York show were already “$1,770 for good lower level tickets . . . Just disgusting.” Meanwhile, another X user recalled Ticketmaster’s most infamous fiasco: “Like be for real . . . 1066 to be front row . . . like what in the Taylor Swift are these prices!?”
Category:
E-Commerce
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