Customer Success Playbook Podcast S3 E53 - Katie Smith - Building the Bridge: Aligning Marketing and Customer Succes

 Back for part two with Katie Smith on the Customer Success Playbook, and this time we’re tearing down silos. In this Wednesday edition, host Kevin Metzger guides a conversation focused on how to bring marketing and customer success into harmony. Katie—founder of Wild Path Consulting and fractional CMO—shares a blueprint for unifying teams, streamlining customer journeys, and turning internal collaboration into a competitive advantage.

Detailed Analysis: This episode is less about theory and more about execution. Katie Smith gets candid about why alignment between marketing and customer success isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s the lifeline of sustainable growth. Her argument is clear: the closer these departments work together, the more seamless and authentic the customer experience becomes.

Katie emphasizes that customer success is the closest link a company has to real-time customer sentiment. And yet, too often, that feedback gets lost in the shuffle. Her proposed fix? Cross-functional meetings, shared goals, and a top-down commitment to break the silos. She outlines how marketing can use insights from customer success to better tailor messaging, avoid overpromising, and reinforce consistent value.

The conversation gets practical with ideas on how to structure interdepartmental communication, including:

• Setting up regular syncs between CS and marketing
• Reporting loops where both sides share qualitative and quantitative insights
• Shared definitions of success, ideal customer profiles, and journey checkpoints

Katie also urges organizations to think beyond marketing and CS. Sales, product, ops—even the loadout teams in a manufacturing company—all contribute to the customer experience and need to be part of the marketing ecosystem. It’s a holistic view that turns internal collaboration into customer satisfaction.

And if you’ve ever felt the pain of over-promised marketing and under-delivered onboarding, Katie’s advice on co-created alignment is a must-listen.

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You can find Roman at:
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Transcript

Kevin Metzger: 0:05

Customer success. Alright, welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook podcast. It's Wednesday and we've got the one big question today. I'm Kevin Metzker. Roman again is unable to join us this week, unfortunately because of some other work commitments. But we are joined by Katie today, the queen of the customer journey. And Katie, before we tackle the main questions question of the day, the one big question, let's have a quick, quick round of, uh, personal questions to help our audience get to know you a little better. Does that sound good?

Katie Smith: 0:41

Sure. Sounds great. Alright,

Kevin Metzger: 0:43

so if you could travel anywhere you haven't been yet, where would you go and why does it intrigue you?

Katie Smith: 0:50

One of the trips on my bucket list is going to Rwanda to see the, uh, gorillas. So I just think it, they're such an incredible, impressive animal and, uh, to be in such a different part of the world, I think it'd be a, a real adventure.

Kevin Metzger: 1:07

That's, um, it's not one we've heard before on the show, and definitely, um, that's, that'd be, that would be an exciting, an exciting trip. I imagine it's something you probably really want to go for a couple, couple weeks to immerse yourself in.

Katie Smith: 1:22

Yeah. Yeah. That's why it's a few years out.'cause you've got a plan to have all that time off and, you know, as a, um, a solo person in business, it can take a lot of planning to take that time.

Kevin Metzger: 1:35

You live in Montana? This is, it's, that's one of my dream locations to, actually, I haven't visited Montana yet, but I, I. I want to go to Glacier National Park, which is just one of the places I really wanna visit. But if I were to visit Montana besides Glacier National Park, where would you recommend? I, uh, I, I go.

Katie Smith: 1:56

Oh my gosh. Well, there's so many incredible places. Um, so if you were to start in Glacier, then you could travel down to around Missoula and visit the Bitterroot Mountains. Um, they're beautiful, really incredible to go for a hike and see some bear grass, which is this really cool, and it, it's like this big white. Tufted plan. It looks like it belongs in a Dr. Seuss book. And then if you come across my way, I live, uh, just north of the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Um, so there's a lot of great hiking. Yeah. I live right close to the Yellowstone River, so spending the day fly fishing on the Yellowstone is. Pretty iconic. Um, and then any of the hiking and, and checking out all the wildlife and the geysers in Yellowstone is definitely something that you should see at least once in your life.

Kevin Metzger: 2:49

I actually got to do a tour, a bus tour when I think I might have been, I. A freshman in high school, um, where we went through, we started in South Dakota and kind of went all over the Rockies and, uh, we did spend some time in Yellowstone. Got to see the glaciers. Um, but it's something I'd love to go do again as well. So, yeah, that's a great recommendation. Uh. And, uh, outside of work, what's your favorite activity or interest that helps you rest and, and recharge?

Katie Smith: 3:24

I've sort of even built in hiking or cross country skiing into part of my work, um, when I need to solve a problem or solve something, just getting out into the mountains and, um, going, doing that rhythmic nature of walking or skiing really helps me solve, um, just. Figure out problems solve things. So I always try to get out, but definitely cross country skiing is, is my absolute favorite.

Kevin Metzger: 3:50

That's, that's awesome. That's awesome. I, I, I'm a big fan of skiing. Um, I did mostly downhill where I grew up in Pennsylvania, but the process, the cross country process, just the, it's it, the rhythmic, it's rhythmic. It's, it's almost like a tranch. You get into.

Katie Smith: 4:08

Yeah. Yeah, it definitely really helps recharge and um, and just gives you a different perspective.

Kevin Metzger: 4:16

Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. I think I'm a little bit jealous of where you live.

Katie Smith: 4:21

It's, I'm, I'm pretty happy here. I really love it.

Kevin Metzger: 4:24

Yeah. You're from, from there originally?

Katie Smith: 4:27

No. I actually grew up in New Hampshire.

Kevin Metzger: 4:30

Oh, wow.

Katie Smith: 4:31

I came out one

Kevin Metzger: 4:32

I in New Hampshire too.

Katie Smith: 4:33

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I, I moved out to Montana for one season to teach Nordic skiing maybe 15 years ago, and I never left.

Kevin Metzger: 4:42

Oh, wow. That's amazing. Let's dive into our key topic for today. I. How can customer success and marketing teams align their efforts to provide continuous long-term value for both the customer and the company?

Katie Smith: 4:55

This is such an important question, and I think the, the problem that we see is when marketing or other departments operate in a silo. What happens is you miscommunication, you, you miss what's happening with a customer. You know what they're feeling, what their needs are. You can't act fast. And then everybody's kind of working for towards a different goal, and that's where you get all these breakdowns. There's wasted time, there's wasted money, and then that company culture just isn't enjoyable to work in. So, um. What we really need to do is have these teams have consistent communication, two-way listening. It's really important when marketing needs to understand that customer success is one of their, um, it's a direct link to, to the customer. It's, that's the closest you're gonna get. They're hearing feedback, they're like your eyes and ears on the ground. And so thinking about your partnerships that way, understanding the insights that customer success is seeing, and then coupling that, mirroring that with, um, the marketing techniques that you're using, the data that you're pulling from your marketing techniques, sharing that with customer success, making sure that you have shared. Goals. You know, I think the biggest problem for customers is, you know, they get told one thing during that discovery phase of marketing, then they make it into, uh, the sales cycle. And sales may be promises something different. And then by the time they get to customer success, there's all these promises that may or may not. Be able to be fulfilled and customer success has to do a lot of educating. They have to do a lot of, you know, wiggling around a promise that can't be fulfilled. And so then that makes it harder for the marketing team to try and get re-engagement. You know, it just, it's just a, a breakdown all the way through. So we need to have a consistent plan. Um, we need to have meetings together. We need to know what, what everybody's saying. We need to understand, you know. What we can deliver to a customer so that sales gives the right, the right recommendations and marketing and setting things up. We need to create a consistent environment throughout the entire process. And, um, you know, we're seeing that the teams that do that are the ones who are the most successful. Um, they spend the least amount of amount of money they get the biggest ROI. So it's really thinking about. This whole team, it's really like this full marketing operations, thinking about every single person in the company is on your team and you can gain valuable insights from them. You can create a plan together that's actually going to work, um, and it's going to serve the customer in the best way. So it really has to be this line of open communication and uh, and everybody kind of coming to the table. Having a structure of ways that you can communicate up and down that chain effectively.

Kevin Metzger: 7:59

Yeah. Uh, I, I so agree about the, the difference between having an organization that runs in silos versus having an organization that is trying to work together and really leverage, leverage the teams cross teams. Do you have any good suggestions for how to help ensure that, I mean, I have some thoughts on it, but I like to hear what.

Katie Smith: 8:24

So that has, it has to come from the top, you know, it has to come from the C-suite, um, top down because we're dealing with different, different people's jobs, which they have emotional and ego attachment to. So, uh, it can't be, you know, it, this isn't really something that you can, you know, teach up that that kind of order and structure needs to come from the C-suite. So that's number one. And then, um, you, you know, what's the risk of. Of just having meetings without really any clear, um, you know, clear direction. It just gets people frustrated. We have to not just listen, but do something with that. So it's really creating a structure, you know, what are the things we wanna learn from each department. How, what is the information that we're trying to get? What are the kinds of questions that we'll ask, and then what does the sharing look like So you can work together to create that, you know, the heads of these departments should get together and align. Um, and then create that, that meeting structure and that reporting structure. Your report, you know, marketing needs to report down about. What they're seeing is working, bringing people in, what kinds of people they're bringing in. And then, um, you know, customer success needs to report back up to marketing about what they're hearing for the people who are getting them to marketing and sales. So, so you need to create, and it's all, you know, it all depends on your company. Who are the people in your company? Um, the good thing is that you can build that up to, to work within. The way that your unique team is, you don't have to just shove people into boxes, but it's, it needs to be top down and then there needs to be a structure that's created, and it's going to be hard at the beginning. Creating change and creating new habits is gonna be hard, so I. All the directors at that director level, that high level, everybody needs to be committed and everybody needs to have some kind of buy-in. So it could be, um, everybody's working together to, for a specific outcome and there's a reward. You know, we need to kind of figure out what will motivate our people and then create some goals around that, um, some incentives so that we can help people. You do work that is valuable for them and also just build these new habits.'cause it is a new, it will be, in some companies, a very new way of working, especially if you're coming from a very siloed organization and you're trying to create an integrated, um, you could also work with like a, a leadership strategist or coach who can kind of help help people come together. Bringing in extra help is always good.

Kevin Metzger: 11:03

Yeah. Yeah, and I guess it's not just, it's not just aligning on the goals and objectives, but it's really even I aligning on like the ideal customer profile, what that customer journey should look like.

Katie Smith: 11:16

Yep. Then

Kevin Metzger: 11:17

identifying where the break points are and what's, what's happening as it's designed versus what's actually happening. Um. I had a guest on earlier this year who was talking about the actual cur customer profile versus the ideal customer profile. It's, it's interesting, you know, you're mentioning marketing and sales and customer success, and they're all part of the selling process or the reselling process. But in addition to that, you know, one of the. Biggest things in customer success in that I found is, um, really the alignment with product so that product knows, hey, this is what our customers are asking for to help drive their business better. So bringing product into that discussion and then even making sure that there, there's ops, uh, from a support perspective saying, Hey, you know, it'd be great if we offer the new. Bright, shiny feature, but if we don't fix this fundamental flaw now, it's interesting'cause I think in customer success you kind of sit and end up having a lot of those conversations coordinating and driving to make sure that everybody's on the same page and getting what they need to out of those conversations. And that the communications flowing properly is when it works. It's beautiful. It doesn't, everybody feels it. You feel it across the, every organization within the org, within the business feels it and has a much harder time achieving their, their objectives and the growth objectives of the company as a whole.

Katie Smith: 12:53

Yeah. Now we're seeing a lot of fractional CMO. That kind of cross company communication really can fall under that umbrella. I think of every department as on the marketing team on my team. Um, you know, one of my clients is a metal manufacturer and we a lot of. What we've decided is we want a lot of repeat customers. So the guys who are in, you know, they're the ones who are doing load outs. They're the ones who are interacting closely with the customer after the sale has been made. They're on my team. Um, I talk, hear from them. They're the ones who are creating an experience. So, uh, you know, we talk with them, we get insight from them. They're on my team. I think of everybody within the company who has. Any kind of customer facing role, even if you're in manufacturing production, that's on my team. I need to know what I wanna get ahead. Is there something happening where we can't get product for a while? Do I need to get ahead of that and let people know that lead times are gonna change? Do I need to know, are we getting like a big order coming in? How much can we get? You know, I need to know what production can do so that I can start that promise in the marketing phase, and then sales can bring that through to the, the sales phase, and then customer support can and service can deliver that. So. We all need to be working. I need to know what's going on, which is, you know, I think that's really important. Marketing needs to, you know, be working close with the CFO. With finance. We need to understand what products are selling well, what products aren't. Is there seasonality? Uh, we need to understand what. Where the opportunities are in that realm. We need to be talking to operations to understand what kind of experience and promise we wanna cultivate from the very beginning. If everybody can work together in this full communication team, just like you're saying, then we can create, we can create an expectation, and then we can meet or exceed it at every step of the way. And that's, that's the goal. That's really the goal.

Kevin Metzger: 15:03

Yeah, it's, it's great. When it happens, it really, it, it feels good. You can, the business is humming and, and it, it's, uh, it, it just grows. The business grows with it. So, Katie, thank you for your insights. Thanks for shedding light on how these two critical teams need to work together in harmony. And on Friday we're gonna talk AI and market

Katie Smith: 15:27

excited for this.

Kevin Metzger: 15:29

Me too. AI Friday is one of my favorite days. We're gonna talk about how you can leverage it without losing brand authenticity. If you're enjoying the series, don't forget to subscribe, share like, and we'll see you on Friday. Until then, keep on playing.