The power of incredible customer experience - Jamie Domenici, Klaviyo

0:00Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Now, one topic I am very passionate about is customer experience. It is something we do not talk enough about and we really need to. So in this episode, I'm joined by someone that really knows all about how to create a good customer experience. Jamie Domenici, the CMO of Klaviyo. Now, they provide fantastic customer relationship marketing platform for retailers. And they're helping lots of businesses make sure that their customer experience is on point. So in this episode, we're talking all about how to do that and why it matters. Here we go.

0:39Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. And I'm joined by the incredible Jamie Donomici. Welcome to Uncensored.

0:45Jamie Domenici:Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you. This is good fun. So you come from San Francisco. I come from London. And here we are in Sydney. I mean, where else would we meet? Exactly. It took a flight to Sydney for our agendas to cross over. Now, let's go back to the beginning, because I think you've got one of the most unusual first jobs I've ever come across. Tell me where your career started. This always comes up. Yeah, it was a strange first job. My first job, I was a mortician or I worked at a mortuary, I should say. Yeah. So I was the teenager in high school who drove a hearse.

1:18Jamie Domenici:Very odd. Do you actually drive a hearse? Yeah, I did. Did you? Wow. You would see me on the freeway. uh but but there's a reason i wasn't just like applying to be a mortician it is my family's uh business so our family was four generations in burlingame of uh yeah running funerals wow yeah so what kind of preparation for life does that give you i'm just intrigued to know well one great it's a great story yeah so it's interesting um but all jokes aside it's a really hard job you really are with people when they're in their most um sad moments so i feel like it gave you gave me a deep understanding of being compassionate and really understanding my customer and being there to support them in different times in their life uh also it made me realize i did not want to go into that field so here we are i'm in tech like complete change but it was it was an it was a good starting point right of understanding your customer and being supportive of people well i mean you're in the business of customer service now aren't you and delivering great customer experiences and i guess you you know you started out in probably the hardest ever position to be in where you're dealing with people going through trauma so So, yeah, it must have put you in good stead for what you do now.

2:24Jamie Domenici:Yeah, tough job to start in, for sure. Now, talking about great customer experiences, I thought I'd ask you for your best and worst experience of great customer service. Okay, let's start with a positive experience. So one of the brands I love interacting with is Aloe Yoga. One great product. They have great drops, great advertising. But what I love most about them is they have a lot of tall, long pants. I'm six feet tall, so I'm a tall lady. And they have tall pants. And what I love about them is they know that about me. So anytime that they have a drop or they have a sale, they notify me right away and let me know, oh, we have a new inventory, tall pants.

3:02Jamie Domenici:This is for you. So I think they know you. They have a great experience. And because of that, I have probably 64 pairs of really tall aloe yoga pants, every color. So that's a great brand. Negative experience? Oh, man. I've been having some trouble with my cable company. Have you? Oh. You know, which is unfortunate because I really like TV. I watch a lot of TV. I'm a big Bravo fan, a big Housewives fan. Do you have the Housewives? I know. I know what they, apparently something I learned as well talking to NBC is you even have Bravo Con, don't you? Oh, I've been to it. Have you been to Bravo Con?

3:39Jamie Domenici:Oh, not only have I been to Bravo Con, I went with two other CMOs. No. Three CMOs at Bravo Con. It was an incredible experience. Yes. Could talk about that the whole podcast, but it's very fun, very deep into reality TV. but back to cable i haven't had a problem with my bill and i called and tried to get a hold of someone no one answered i was talking to an agent they didn't know me they definitely didn't know my love love of bravo and i just had a terrible experience i finally got through to someone i was on the phone for two hours you know i couldn't change my bill and it just ruined everything to the point i had to cancel my cable so my children no tv it's sad we're gonna figure it out but it was a terrible customer but this is the thing isn't it because like brands you really care about you then feel more annoyed about when you get let down i mean i had um one of my favorite uh cycling brands right that i think they'd make amazing cycling clothing yeah i got sent a voucher at christmas and i thought oh i'm going to spend a bit more than i usually would because i've got a voucher that's going to cover some of the costs so i went for a really expensive item and then um the voucher code didn't work and i was a bit weird so i tried and tried and tried so so i emailed them okay oh my voucher code's not working they sent me the instructions and i said no that's exactly what i did yeah and then um so what i did is i then filmed me doing it and said look here you go i've just followed the instructions doesn't work and then they said i'd got it wrong and i should follow the instructions and so like three times and they took about five days each time to get back to me so the course of three weeks yeah this kept coming back telling me i was wrong and i was like so i had to write back and go you tell me what i should do in this situation i've tried three times i'll send you the video i've sent you the evidence now what now what happens and then the third time the customer service person comes back goes oh sorry we've just changed their IT systems over and the voucher code is not working.

5:18Jamie Domenici:Oh, no. I was just like, oh, you're kidding. So what did you do? Did you keep it? Did you return it? In the end, I was so far in. I felt like I've put so much effort in. I want to get it now. And then they sent me like a£50 voucher as a kind of compensation at the end. Now, it's a£300 item of clothing. So it was a percentage of the overall thing. It's not that big a discount. I would have given it to me for free. I agree. Because, yeah. I also appreciate that you kept it. I think I would have got so mad I might have. I was on the edge. I was on the edge. But I'd got so sort of emotionally attached to this item.

5:50I was thinking, having gone through the pain, I really want this item now. Yeah, okay, that's dedication.

5:53Jamie Domenici:I like that. I'll tell you a good story of actually a really good one. So producer James and I fly around the world recording this podcast. And for the first time in his life, I mean, he actually missed a flight. Now, I will say it was not his fault. Anyone out there go, you know, what happened? He got stuck in traffic on the M25. And M25 is like the busiest kind of road in the UK. And I was at the Virgin kind of check-in going, right, what's the latest he can check in? And they gave him an extra 10 minutes because we're gold card customers. And then I'd talk to the security and I'd warn them that he's going to come in and we'll fast track him through security straight to the plane.

6:27I was actually sat on the plane and they knew about it. So the head crew came up and said, oh, you're Mr. McKinbin's kind of colleague, are you? Have you any update on him? Because we're kind of holding the plane ready for him to get there. They'd done the whole thing. Now he then he was 10 minutes late, right? so he actually missed it but this is the brilliant bit they there was no more flights to miami that day so they routed him to new york they got an internal flight from new york to miami so they got him there for the morning entirely on their expense wow yeah that's good they didn't have to right they could they could have gone you missed it your fault you know you're going to be paying for a new ticket but they sorted it all out yeah and it took a really stressful amount i mean you know what it's like when you i think i've only missed a plane once i mean we all sort of miss a plane once in our life i think so but it's it's horrible feeling isn't it it's stressful and I mean, with podcasts, we've got guests turning up the next day.

7:15We've got studios booked and it's a very stressful situation. So helping people out in their moments of need, I think, is so powerful, isn't it?

7:22Jamie Domenici:Yeah, I think so. And I think things like if you travel a lot, airplanes, I'm a loyalist to both my airline and my hotels. And because of that, I feel I have different treatment and it's very loyal about it. And I think good experiences are going to make or break that. Totally. And you remember them forever, don't you? And you then tell other people about it. It becomes absolutely key. I came across this theory the other day that I know we were chatting yesterday at KCID about this because it turns out that the sort of dopamine hit you get from good and bad experiences isn't the experience itself.

7:58It's relative to your expectation of the experience. And it's really kind of I found a really fascinating insight that, you know, as marketers, we build up this expectation, don't we, of what people can experience. But whether you can over deliver on that expectation, under deliver is everything.

8:12Jamie Domenici:Yeah. In terms of how, you know, then the surprise you feel and how you kind of create the emotion in the audience. Well, and I think, well, I know we talked about it yesterday, but I love the ability to surprise and delight. I think that's what marketing is, honestly. Marketing and customer service. But those things are blending because they're all about how you make your customer feel. That's what they're going to remember. They're not going to remember what you said. They're not going to remember every detail of the demo that you showed. but they're going to remember how they felt about when you were with them, how you interacted with them and the experience that they had.

8:39Jamie Domenici:And I think that's what differentiates the sale, how you win the deal, how you lose the deal, how you keep the customer 100%. Yeah. Now, one thing that really strikes me about roles you've had in the past is most marketers are in the demand generation side of the equation, aren't they? In fact, I did some research recently that showed 90 % of CMOs only manage the promotion P. They don't manage the other P's. And I know at Salesforce, you went into customer success, didn't you? So having done products and demand generation, you went into customer success. What did that teach you when you suddenly had the responsibility for the whole customer journey, not just the first bit?

9:11Jamie Domenici:Well, first of all, I probably should explain what was I doing in customer success? Because whenever someone sees you, they're like, wait, what? What is that? How did you get there? But I was at Salesforce for a decade. And so in the first seven years, I had done every job in marketing, which I always say to anybody who wants to go into marketing. How do you get there? How do you get to your job? I say you do everything. Demand gen, operations, analyst, product marketing. I'd done it all. and then after seven years I was like okay what's next and the head of customer success had come over here and run adoption at scale like that's kind of weird but then I eventually went over and I realized oh pre-sales marketing is exactly the same as post-sales but you're not selling a product you're building onboarding a customer they're getting them to use your product and I'm using the same things I'm thinking about emails I'm thinking about nurture tracks I'm thinking about groups, bringing people together.

10:01Jamie Domenici:So it's so interesting. It was like, oh, all the principles of marketing apply on both sides, which was great. So I got to build something new. And the second thing I realized is this is what's making me a much better marketer. I was so close to the customer. I understood their pain points. I had so much more empathy, but also such a deeper appreciation for their entire experience that I could bring that back in to the marketing itself. And so now I think, oh, that's like a huge unlock when you actually understand the customer across that entire journey. You can do way better marketing pre-sale, which is good.

10:36Jamie Domenici:And then, too, like selfishly, I'm also a marketer who likes to make money. And there's a lot of information and a lot of data and a lot of inputs that happen after the customer buys that if you tap marketing in, you could also use that as an upsell moment. So it was a great part of my career that made me a better marketer and really helped me get closer to the customer. I think I think every marketer could learn from that. I mean, that's so say I love the point that it keeps you close to your customer and experiencing your product as well. So we sell the dream on the one side and then as marketers, we kind of hand it off to someone completely different to then deliver the dream.

11:11Jamie Domenici:and point yeah well actually i think it's a trend we're seeing in my my current role i have the ability to market to b to c companies so i work with marketers and what i'm seeing is a trend actually i'm seeing more and more of this you know traditional cmo who's owning both marketing and the support and so it's coming into one owner typically like head of crm ahead of digital but i see that becoming more and more of a trend because the reality is you have to understand the entire life cycle to really understand your customer yeah i'm seeing the same actually i I mean, I know we're on the panel yesterday with Mim, you know, from Suncor.

11:42That's exactly what she does in insurance is managing not just the promise, but also delivery of it. And that makes you such a better marketer. Yeah. Yeah. Now you're at 10 years at Salesforce. Salesforce is one of the kind of like, you know, success stories of the last kind of few decades. Yeah. What did you learn there about, you know, how they managed to grow the speed they scaled at?

12:01Jamie Domenici:Oh, my gosh. I learned a lot. It was like a PhD, you know, at work. And when I started, it was 2010. So it was one product, sales cloud. They sold a really great product. We were moving up market. So when I left, we had 10 products. We'd gone international. So I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. But I think one of the most important things, not to be cliche, is really about how you focus on the customer. And you really, like, they did a great job of bringing that into everything that they did. If I go into, like, what did I learn in marketing? I learned a very important thing.

12:35Jamie Domenici:Salesforce was brilliant at launching. And Mark Benioff in particular, he was so strong at launching things before, maybe before they were ready, right? A little bit early. But what I learned was when you think about bringing a product to market, you have to really get the market ready. So we would tell the market about it. We would enable the field. And then we would release the product. And by the time the product was released, everybody was ready. You were comfortable selling. You wanted that product. So it created this demand, which is something I've brought kind of with me on my career. Now, another thing, of course, they're very famous for is Dreamforce.

13:09Jamie Domenici:Oh, yeah. Which is an incredible event. You know, like, why was that so pivotal to the growth of the business? I have to tell you, putting on Dreamforce, being a marketer at Salesforce and bringing Dreamforce to life was really hard. And it was insane. It was really hard. That's the conference when it's over. You go home and you're like, I need to sleep for three days. But I think that what was so incredible, one, it's still one of the best tech conferences in the world because it is fun. Like you go there and you see things that you've never seen. One year back in like 2012, we launched a new product.

13:47Jamie Domenici:And I remember I purchased the world's largest screen, like a million dollar screen. Wow. And covered like Moscone so you could see our new analytics product. and these are just things you don't like you don't get to do everywhere and companies everywhere don't invest in at the same level so i think it did a great job of building community surprising and delighting the customers they really set the bar high for what it's like to build an incredible customer experience i think it's a really good example of great b2b marketing because one of the things i've learned doing what i've done recently is create as much value as you possibly can for your customer yeah and they put on an incredible show you just can't get that anywhere else and the kind of speakers you got just next level you know former presidents all sorts you know you've had on stage oh it's hard and i did a lot of those presentations i'll have to tell you also that's like boot camp like to learn how to present in a high stakes environment you had to be interesting if you weren't you weren't getting in that slot so it also created um i learned a lot about public speaking from working there too hit me with your top tips then what what are the key What's the key to a great keynote?

14:50All right, I'll tell you mine.

14:51Jamie Domenici:You tell me yours. Okay, all right. One, practice. I know it's so silly, but some people think, oh, you're just a great presenter. It's like, oh, no, I practiced in my room, in the mirror, a hundred times before I got up here. Two, I never use notes. You have to really learn. And people who know me, I never say the same thing twice. So sometimes when I come on, I say, wow, I didn't know you were going to say that. I didn't read it either. But because you just know your content so well, I usually tell people to go early. and why you can actually meet the people in the stands. And when you know the people in the room, it kind of changes your dynamic a bit.

15:25Jamie Domenici:And I think the most important thing, and I learned this from a great speech coach, his name was Danny Slomoff. The most important thing you do is how you start. So I never come on and say, hi, I'm Jamie from Klaviyo, I'm the CMO. You'll never hear me say that. I always come out with a strong line and try and capture the audience from the moment that you start. That's amazing advice. What are yours? Well, I love your starting strong because I always try and come out to my favorite soundtrack. Oh, I like that. So for me, it's Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen, which is the theme tune to the podcast.

15:57Jamie Domenici:Yep. Because I now associate that with a great experience and high energy. Yeah, I like that. Because I come on feeling great. Yeah. Somehow I'm relaxed. There's no nerves. And I just, it just lifts me, you know, another kind of 20, 30%. So I think that'd be my first thing. But would you ever change your song or do you always do the same? Always the same one. Okay. Because in my mind, it's a, well, my second favorite soundtrack, this is quite funny, is ACDC Thunderstruck. Okay, well, that's my walk-out song. There you go. There you go. That's mine. That's my kind of in the car, need some energy, about to go and do an important meeting.

16:26Yeah. Thunderstruck is like the perfect one. So they're my two, right? Yeah. So that would be tip number one. The next thing I do is exactly the same as you. Never, ever use notes. Because all you're doing is thinking about what you should have said. Yeah. And you've missed a sentence or you've forgotten to say something. And so your mind goes into panic rather than relaxing and just engaging the audience. So, again, never use notes. Next thing I do is I address one person in the room. I look for the most smiley face. I got this happened yesterday, by the way, at your conference. I just spotted someone in the front row that was beaming.

17:00And suddenly I felt good. I'm like, oh, someone's paying attention. So I kind of find a couple of reference points in the audience that are smiling at me. And I take my energy from them because they'll be reacting to what I say. and I use them as kind of, I imagine I'm talking to one person.

17:13Jamie Domenici:Yeah. Kind of thing. It's nice. It's great, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It changes. It changes the way you interact with the crowd. It matters. And then the other thing I've learned to do is to talk in statements and to talk at about two thirds of the normal pace. Oh yeah. And not to fear a pause. Oh, I think you have to pause. You've got to pick your pause, I like to say. And I always try and train my team when they're going to present, pick two pauses and make them like uncomfortably long because then people will lean in they'll listen that's what no one realizes right because when you pause people are actually absorbing what you've just said because if you talk it constantly no one's capturing anything yeah you pause and ask a question like i don't know i asked a question the other day what would you do if you weren't afraid and you need the pause because everyone's going to go oh that's a good question oh wow and then suddenly that sinks in doesn't it see you You need to allow that kind of opportunity to sink in.

18:09Something else I've done as well is I think it's always good to thank the people that put on the show. And so I started doing this about three years ago where I'd go on stage. And because backstage, there are so many people helping you. You know what I mean?

18:24Jamie Domenici:I put on events. Yeah, now I've put on my own event for the first time as well. I now see the amount of work that goes into it. And those people don't always get recognition. So I tend to go, I just want to thank everybody behind the scenes and let's give them a round of applause. And then not only is that nice, but it also buys me some time because in that little moment of applause, I'm thinking about what's the big statement I can drop next or, you know, like you say, what's the kind of hard hitting thing that I can do? So little moments that buy you the little time to think about who you're talking to and to set up the next next thing.

18:58Jamie Domenici:You know what? Well, one, I love that I'm going to steal that. but two uh i sell software for a living and i remember my my current ceo andrew by lucky he came to a um a kickoff and he's like he got and he walked in and he's more of a you know founder he's more on the product side and he's like i don't know this hype like how do people get so excited about you know selling software like what are you what are you talking about i don't get it i was like okay i'm gonna go present and i'll come right back and i went and presented we repositioned our company it was a big moment and storytelling and gave everything i got and people were like clapping and excited and i came back and i'm like no people love this they do you just have to relate to them and um people can get really excited about it if you're passionate and that comes across when you present and if their job depends on you know using that software to make them better at their jobs of course they're going to care you know if you're giving them something you're giving them a tool that's going to make them better yeah the the other the other top tip often give people is you've just touched on it about storytelling is the audience should be looking at you not your slides i think the slides are for me i i consider the slides to be wallpaper pretty much that they're the backdrop to conversation you're having with me because if you put if you reveal everything you're going to say in your slide which so many people do literally all their points and they read through them yeah you might as well just be reading the slides well i call those slides wall of texts and i do not allow them in our presentations and you'll see me usually the night before being like take the words out take the words out less is more um i completely agree with you well it goes back to what we started talking about like people won't remember what you said they won't remember what you did they'll always remember how you how you made them feel yeah that quote isn't it and that's what you got to think about think about what emotion do i want to leave in the room and how can i do it um another thing that your team did this brilliantly yesterday is i i'm going to steal this as well by the way this is such a good idea we're just like stealing each other yeah i know this is amazing um so i was trying to land the point about surprise and so you'd left like prizes under chairs like stuck to the bottom side of the chair and you allowed me to use it in my in my talk i thought it was very kind of you so we got to the point where i was explaining the power of surprise and i said to them under your chair some of you will find a free gift you know and then you look at the reaction of those oh i've just got a 500 voucher and they're just seeing the excitement in the room and the element of surprise doing something unexpected in a presentation is just guaranteed to land yeah people love people love free stuff and merchandise i didn't realize it's the other thing that i love that we do we have so many great customers that are selling great products so whatever event we have we only always give away our customers merchandise which is great it's our customers are benefiting we're promoting our customers and it's kind of a nice um that explains the quality your merch game yesterday i noticed some amazing kind of baseball caps and socks and t-shirts Hydro Flask.

21:50Jamie Domenici:We have a lot of great customers. A lot of great products. So it's nice to showcase them and we can kind of bring that into our experience. Yeah. Now going from one extreme in terms of like, you know, free stuff, you joined Klaviyo at a very, very interesting time just before an IPO, didn't you? Oh yeah. So how was that experience and what was your role in the IPO? Well, yeah, I joined and I was, this is fun. I was trying to take some time off. I had this whole thing. I had a hashtag summer of Jamie and I had like a whole Instagram thing and I had this whole plan. It was amazing. And I wanted my first trip.

22:25Jamie Domenici:I remember I was in Santa Barbara. I was on the beach having a margarita and Calabio called and they're like, we, you know, we really want you to come. And I was like, no, I'm taking this time off. Like, we'll just meet us fast forward. They're like, we need to just start like now. So summer of Jamie was out that hashtag never, never had the fun that it was supposed to. And the reason I had to join immediately, cause we were going to IPO. So the role of the mark, the role of the CMO is pretty important. You're helping write the 10k. You're helping, you know, how you're positioning it in the market.

22:55Jamie Domenici:But there's this other side of it that CMOs have to think about, which is like the video that they use. How are you going to show up at the stock exchange? What are you going to do on that day? So this was, let me be honest, I had to join and I had 30 days to figure it out. Now, like, hey, we don't know what we're going to put on the stock exchange itself like what should it say if you ever look you probably don't notice that but what i was like oh you guys don't know they're like no no that's why you're here i'm like oh okay so um so we moved fast and we took over the whole city of new york this is like the biggest moment in your company's your company's career so this is every eyeball is going to be on you so we moved fast we had media we took over new york and then at the end of the night this is another really fun thing about IPO, you have an incredible party.

23:41Jamie Domenici:And then the entire company came together in Boston and celebrated. And it was an incredible day. That's amazing. Do you do the ring the bell thing? That's the thing, isn't it? The whole team got there, ring the bell and you see the ticker. If you ever get a chance to do this, you have to do it. There's a whole day you go behind the scenes, there's a pump you up video. And what's really cool is you get to bring your team with you. So there's people who get to go inside, there's people outside, there's a whole thing. I got to stand on the balcony ring the bell yeah yeah what an amazing what amazing start 30 days into your career it was it was a little stressful uh not gonna lie but it was an incredible experience that um it was a once in a lifetime experience i would like to do it again maybe one day but i was really grateful to be part of it i probably would have liked more than 30 days to do it but we did a great job amazing now also when you started clavier you also did some positioning work, didn't you, on how Klaviyo's positioned the market.

24:35What was that and what change did that create?