The Customer Journey: Why Empathy Is Key to Success

Empathy in the customer journey is what separates a business people buy from once and a business people bring their friends to. In this episode of The Bliss Business Podcast, hosts Stephen Sakach, Tullio Siragusa, and Ash Maher walk the whole path, from a tow truck call that lasts four minutes to the roughly 800 touchpoints Stephen watched Google map out for a single car purchase.

In this episode we explore:

• The five stages of the customer journey, and the pre-awareness stage most brands skip
• How to build a customer persona that goes deeper than demographics and psychographics
• Where design thinking adds curiosity and continuous improvement to the standard five steps
• Why empathy wins B2B deals, not just consumer ones
• What the second and third moments of truth actually decide
• How to flip the whole journey inward to win buy-in from your own team

Ash opens on the persona, which he calls "probably the most important part of the marketing journey," and then pushes past the traditional version of it. Knowing which magazines someone reads is not the same as knowing their pain points. Tullio takes it further with design thinking, adding curiosity at the front and continuous improvement at the end of the usual five stages, and lands on the line the rest of the episode hangs from: "Don't fall in love with the user, fall in love with the problem."

The stages get walked in order. Awareness (the zero moment of truth), consideration (Procter and Gamble's first moment of truth, illustrated with Warby Parker's home try-on), purchase, experience (the second moment of truth), and loyalty and advocacy (the third, and the one that matters most). Tullio's hospital example makes the whole argument in miniature: two surgeons with identical technical skill, and the one who acknowledges that your family is frightened too is the one you choose.

It works in B2B just as well. Tullio walks through five software vendors who all sound alike to a CTO, and the one that wins by naming what the CTO actually wanted in the first place, which was a loyal in-house hire they could not find. As he puts it, empathy will always win when everything else is apples to apples.

The same principle drives advertising that people welcome instead of skip: campaigns built on what a customer is actually feeling at that stage, which is the kind of empathetic paid media Zero Company builds for its clients.

Key Takeaways

• (2:21) Ash Maher on where every journey starts: the customer persona is “probably the most important part of the marketing journey,” and the traditional version of it barely scratches the surface

• (3:27) Tullio Siragusa on the early Mac, technically subpar to the PC, winning anyway because Steve Jobs sold membership in a creative community rather than a computer

• (3:27) The hospital test: two providers with identical technical skill, and the one that says “we know how hard this is on everyone, including your family” is the one you book

• (12:27) Tullio Siragusa: “Don’t fall in love with the user, fall in love with the problem.” Passion for the problem is what attracts the customers and the employees who care about it too

• (24:55) Stephen Sakach on the purchase stage, quoting Jeff Bezos: “We see our customers as invited guests to a party and we are the hosts”

• (30:45) Tullio Siragusa on B2B: five vendors sound identical to a CTO until one names the real problem, and “the company that has the highest empathy, that resonates best with the client, that makes them feel like they’re understood, they’re going to win every time”

• (35:33) Tullio Siragusa reframes the CMO role: the job is not just owning external marketing, “it’s also owning the internal culture that supports that customer base”

• (48:45) Tullio Siragusa: think like a village, where every opinion travels. “We’re all in the people-to-people business”

FAQ

What are the five stages of the customer journey?
Stephen Sakach walks them in order: awareness (the zero moment of truth), consideration (the first moment of truth), purchase, experience (the second moment of truth), and loyalty and advocacy (the third). He also adds a pre-awareness stage, where someone meets your brand before they have any need at all.

How do you add empathy to the customer journey?
Tullio Siragusa says start by interviewing real users instead of validating an idea you already had, and design for the emotion behind the need, not the transaction. His shorthand: fall in love with the problem, not the user.

Does empathy work in B2B sales?
Yes. Tullio Siragusa's example is a CTO choosing among five identical-sounding software vendors, where the winner is the one who understands the CTO really wanted a loyal in-house hire they could not find. When everything else is apples to apples, the most empathetic vendor wins.

Part of the Producers BLISS series. Previous: The Work From Anywhere Debate. Next, as Stephen teases at the close: Business with Purpose: The Conscious Capitalism Journey. Read the companion post, Empathy: The Beating Heart of a Transformative Customer Journey.