Our Head of CX, Nat, shares her honest take on why most customer experiences are easy to forget, and what it actually takes to be the brand people keep coming back to.
Let’s get honest.
Some brands are out here wining and dining their customers. Remembering their order, anticipating their needs, making them feel like the only one. Others are ghosting after the first purchase, blasting the same email to 200k contacts, and wondering why retention is tanking.
The difference? One is building a relationship. The other is just chasing the transaction.
No emotional connection. No memorable follow-up. No real reason to come back.
The modern CX problem: Why you keep getting left on read
Most customer journeys today are optimised for conversion. That means faster checkouts, less friction, more automation and better acquisition. Great, right?
But very few are designed for emotional loyalty. That’s why so many experiences feel efficient but forgettable. Personalised but impersonal. Convenient but easy to replace.
And forgettable is dangerous, because when customers don’t connect with you on an emotional level, they compare you on price, speed or convenience instead.
From situationship to commitment
The strongest CX strategies don’t stop at the first purchase. They focus on the second interaction, post-purchase confidence and consistency across the entire journey.
Creating moments that reduce anxiety. And giving customers genuine reasons to return. Because loyalty is rarely built in one big moment but through repeated proof that your brand understands people.
Attention is easy to rent. Loyalty is much harder to earn.
Read more: Nat wins MVP
What the platforms are telling us
The tools are catching up to this thinking, and the direction of travel is telling.
- HubSpot’s Spring 2026 Spotlight is built around using context before it goes cold. Smart Deal Progression now analyses meeting transcripts alongside deal history, emails and notes to suggest CRM updates and surface next steps automatically after every call.
- Klaviyo, meanwhile, has expanded its Customer Agent so that order edits, returns, subscription changes and loyalty lookups are handled out of the box – the unsexy post-purchase moments that determine whether someone comes back.
- Dotdigital is tackling consistency – one of the most underrated drivers of trust. Their new Brand Voice feature lets you define your tone and style once, with WinstonAI applying it automatically across subject lines, campaign copy and more.Â
- Mailchimp’s latest release addresses one of the most common CX blind spots: disappearing between channels. A revamped omnichannel dashboard now unifies email, SMS, automation and ecommerce events in a single view, making it harder to accidentally go quiet on the customers who are still paying attention.
The common thread? Every platform is investing in what happens after the first touchpoint. The brands winning long-term will be the ones using these tools to go deeper, not just broader.
The “where is this going?” test
Here are 3 quick questions to ask yourself to see if you’re ‘relationship material’:
- What actually happens after a customer converts?
- Would customers genuinely miss your experience if it disappeared tomorrow?
- Are you building relationships or just transactions?
Attracting customers is one thing. Giving them a reason to stay is something entirely different. If you can’t answer all three with confidence, you’re not in a relationship. You’re just someone’s type.
More about Nat
Nat brings over 15 years of experience managing end-to-end e-commerce strategy for small and large brands alike.
Nat has built meaningful CX strategies for businesses of every size, from Harrods, Coty and Elemis to a long list of brands she’s helped scale from the ground up. Her speciality: turning situationships into something that lasts.
Keep your eyes peeled for the next instalment, where Nat will get into what ‘relationship material’ CX actually looks like in practice.
In the meantime, if your customer experience needs a little less situationship and a lot more commitment – let’s talk.
