The Customer Success Playbook 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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