The Loyal-Tea Talks Podcast | Customer Marketing, Career Growth & Community

Aparna Sharon Isa Dass
  • 1.0 (1)
  • Marketing
  • Biweekly

The go-to bi-weekly podcast for customer marketers, customer advocacy professionals, and B2B marketers who are done being the best-kept secret in their company. Hosted by Aparna Sharon Isa Dass, The Loyal-Tea Talks covers customer advocacy programs, loyalty programs, reference programs, community-led growth, career development, and proving customer marketing ROI to leadership. Whether you're new to customer marketing or already leading the function, there's a seat for you here. No fluff. Just the tools to take customer marketing from supporting act to main stage. 🌐 aparnasharonisadass.com

  1. Oct 27

    Ep. 25: Why the Best Communities Aren't Always the Loudest with Nicole Saunders

    What if the most valuable members of your customer community are the ones you barely hear from? The ones who log in, find the answer they need, learn from someone else’s experience, make a better decision, and quietly get on with their day. No posts. No comments. No likes. Just value. In this episode of The Loyal-Tea Talks Podcast, host Aparna Sharon Isa Dass sits down with Nicole Saunders, Senior Director of Customer Strategy at Higher Logic, for a thought-provoking conversation about why we need to rethink what customer community success really looks like. With experience spanning community strategy at Zendesk, customer advocacy, and customer experience marketing at Coupa, Nicole brings a refreshingly practical perspective on building communities that deliver value beyond visible engagement. They unpack why quiet doesn’t mean disengaged, why the familiar metrics of posts, comments, logins, and active users tell only part of the story, and how community teams can shift from measuring activity to understanding whether members are actually achieving what they came for. They also get into what makes a healthy community: listening to members, designing for different participation styles, creating conversations people genuinely want to have, and building connections that extend across the business. Because a thriving customer community isn’t just a forum with great content — it’s an ecosystem that connects customers with one another and helps Marketing, Customer Success, Support, Product, and Sales create value together. And then there’s AI. From uncovering customer insights buried in thousands of conversations to identifying potential advocates and connecting people with shared interests, Nicole explores where AI makes community teams more effective and where human connection must remain at the heart of the experience. In this episode:→ Why your quietest community members may be your most valuable and how to measure them→ The problem with using posts, comments, and logins as your primary community health metrics→ How to shift from measuring community activity to understanding member outcomes→ Designing for different participation styles because not everyone engages the same way→ How a thriving customer community connects Marketing, Customer Success, Support, Product, and Sales→ Where AI genuinely helps community teams and where the human element is non-negotiable In a world overflowing with content, connection is king. Whether you’re building a customer community, rethinking your engagement metrics, trying to demonstrate business impact, or figuring out how AI fits into the future of customer experience — this episode will challenge a few assumptions and give you plenty to think about. Pour yourself a cup of tea. Join us. Topics: customer community strategy, community engagement metrics, quiet community members, community lurkers B2B, community success metrics, customer community health, community beyond engagement, AI in customer community, community value measurement, community platform strategy, community ROI, designing for participation styles, Higher Logic, Nicole Saunders, Zendesk community, Coupa customer marketing, B2B community strategy, customer community management, customer marketing podcast

  2. Oct 26

    Ep. 24: So... You Want to Work in Customer Marketing? with Megan Wilford

    Almost nobody grows up thinking, “I want to be a customer marketer.” Most of us stumble into it, bring a suitcase full of skills from somewhere else, and figure out the rest along the way. But what does it actually take to build a career in customer marketing? And how do you go from creating customer stories to building programs, influencing revenue, and earning a seat at the strategic table? In this episode of The Loyal-Tea Talks Podcast, host Aparna Sharon Isa Dass is joined by Megan Wilford for an honest, practical, and refreshingly candid conversation about building a customer marketing career. Drawing on her experience across sales enablement, operations, customer advocacy, and customer marketing, Megan shares what she’s learned from working across different company environments, building programs from scratch, and navigating an ever-evolving profession. They get into the five skills aspiring customer marketers should start building now — customer empathy, relationship building, storytelling, data literacy, and project management — and the unexpected experiences that make you better at the job, from public speaking and event planning to simply knowing how to work with people. But this conversation goes beyond getting your foot in the door. Megan shares why launching an advocacy program without meaningful customer benefits can backfire, why shiny technology won’t fix a program that lacks internal buy-in, and how building from scratch differs from stepping into a mature program. They explore what it takes to work effectively across Sales, Customer Success, Product, and Marketing — and why understanding the business you’re serving matters before you try to build everything at once. They also get real about what hiring managers want today. It’s no longer enough to list how many case studies you created or references you fulfilled. You need to explain what happened next, how your work was used, and what impact it made. And then there’s the career advice we don’t talk about enough: advocating for yourself, making your impact visible, setting boundaries, and understanding that working late every night isn’t a career strategy. There’s a particularly timely thread in this conversation too. When they recorded, Megan was navigating a layoff and actively interviewing. Since then, she landed a new role at UiPath. It’s a reminder that careers rarely follow a straight line, transferable skills matter, and sometimes the next chapter arrives sooner than you expect. Whether you’re trying to break into customer marketing, moving across from another discipline, building your first advocacy program, or figuring out how to level up — this episode is packed with lessons worth taking into your next interview, your next program, and your next career conversation. Customer marketing isn’t just about loving customers. It’s about turning that love into relationships, programs, and measurable impact — without losing the human touch along the way. And while you’re busy advocating for your customers: don’t forget to advocate for yourself. Topics: customer marketing career, how to get into customer marketing, customer marketing skills, customer marketing career path, customer advocacy career, customer marketing job, customer marketing hiring, customer marketing interview tips, customer empathy, data literacy in marketing, self-advocacy career, customer marketing from scratch, transferable skills customer marketing, customer marketing layoff, UiPath customer marketing, Megan Wilford, B2B customer marketing, customer marketing podcast

  3. Sep 1

    Ep. 23: Every Customer Has Proof. Most Companies Never Find It.

    For years, customer marketers have been measured by what we produce: case studies, testimonials, videos, reviews, references, webinars. More assets meant more activity, and activity became the easiest way to tell the story of our impact. But what if we've been measuring the wrong thing? In this episode of The Loyal-Tea Talks Podcast, host Aparna Sharon Isa Dass sits down with Chris Dalton, Principal, Customer Marketing at Gainsight, to unpack the evolution from customer content to customer evidence and why this shift could fundamentally change how we think about the role of customer marketing. Customer evidence isn't just a polished case study sitting quietly on your website. It's the quote shared during a sales call. The outcome mentioned in a reference conversation. The review on G2. The insight buried in a customer call. The community post. The metric that proves a customer achieved something meaningful. It's happening everywhere. The question is whether we're listening for it. Chris shares why the traditional long-form case study is no longer the finish line, it's the starting point. They dig into the "content waterfall": one deep customer conversation becomes LinkedIn posts, sales slides, website proof points, customer quotes, and multiple pieces of evidence designed for different buyers at different moments. Then: AI has changed the problem entirely. Historically, customer marketers were limited by bandwidth; you could only interview so many customers. Now, AI can surface customer evidence from conversations happening across the business, identify potential advocates, and reveal where evidence gaps actually are. Chris shares how he thinks about this through tools including Peerbound, conversational intelligence, Salesforce, Gainsight, and Claude, including an AI workflow that looks at both the supply of potential customer evidence and the demand coming from sales and prospects. And that creates a fascinating pivot. The question is no longer simply: "How many customer stories can we create?" It becomes: "Do we have the right proof, for the right buyer, at the right moment?" They also tackle incentives: when does a thank-you gift reinforce genuine advocacy, and when does it turn participation into a transaction? The answer depends heavily on the type of evidence you're trying to collect — from high-volume reviews to deeper advocacy like speaking engagements and advisory boards. And on measurement: instead of relying solely on "influenced pipeline," they explore a more defensible model — looking at whether deals using customer proof close faster or win at higher rates than those that don't. Finally, they look ahead. As AI moves from assisting individual tasks to orchestrating entire workflows, Chris sees the future customer marketer less as the person producing every asset and more as the conductor of an orchestra — directing technology, agents, data, customer relationships, and internal teams toward meaningful business outcomes. But there's one thing AI doesn't replace. The customer. The relationship. The human judgment required to understand what matters, what resonates, and what should never be automated. Less content for content's sake. More proof. Less production. More orchestration. Less asking "What should we create?" More asking "What are our customers already telling us — and are we paying attention?" Grab your tea. This one is about to make you rethink your customer marketing content calendar. Topics: customer evidence, customer content strategy, customer marketing ROI, customer proof B2B, content waterfall customer marketing, AI in customer marketing, customer evidence gap analysis, Gainsight customer marketing, Peerbound, customer marketing attribution, customer advocacy evidence, customer marketing AI workflow, customer case studies, right proof right buyer right moment, future of customer marketing, customer marketing conductor, Chris Dalton, customer marketing podcast

  4. Jul 22

    Come Fix It: Welcome to Customer Review Theatre with Aparna Sharon Isa Dass

    Have you ever noticed how customer reviews suddenly become everyone's top priority — right around the end of the quarter? For eleven months, they're quietly minding their own business. Then one day, someone opens a dashboard. A number looks smaller than expected. And suddenly the entire organisation remembers that customers exist. "Can we get a few reviews this week?" Not because anyone has bad intentions. But because panic has an interesting way of making ordinary things sound urgent. Welcome to Day 3 of Come Fix It — a seven-day series about the wonderfully normal habits we've somehow made unnecessarily complicated in Customer Marketing. We've already visited the Favor Farm, where advocacy quietly becomes a collection of favours. Yesterday, we found ourselves in a Hostage Negotiation, where references inherit the urgency of sales deadlines. Today, we're stepping onto a stage. Because today's episode is about something called Review Theatre. Think back to your school days. Annual Day. Weeks before the performance, rehearsals suddenly became the most important thing in the world. Teachers who had barely noticed your dance practice all year suddenly knew everyone's position on stage. Parents were invited. Costumes appeared. Hair was combed with unusual enthusiasm. Everyone wanted the final performance to look effortless. Then the curtain opened. The audience clapped. Photos were taken. The lights went off. Life returned to normal. Sometimes Customer Marketing accidentally does the same thing. Not with dances. With reviews. The closer we get to a campaign deadline, the more rehearsed everything becomes. Customers who haven't heard from us in months suddenly receive beautifully crafted emails. Slack channels become unusually active. Progress trackers are updated every few hours. Everyone wants the final performance — the review, the applause, the screenshot, the dashboard. And somewhere along the way, the experience that should have naturally created the review quietly becomes secondary to collecting it. That's what Review Theatre is. Not fake reviews. Not dishonest reviews. Just an environment where the performance of gathering reviews becomes more visible than the customer experience that inspired them. Because reviews were never meant to be marketing assets first. They were meant to be proof. Proof that somebody trusted you. Proof that somebody succeeded. Proof that the relationship mattered enough for them to tell someone else about it. Proof doesn't need rehearsals. Proof simply needs something worth proving. Reviews are outcomes. Not objectives. When we reverse that order, something subtle changes. The review becomes the destination — instead of the customer's success. Once you can name a habit, you begin seeing it everywhere. You'll hear someone say "We need twenty reviews before the end of the month" — and instead of immediately opening a spreadsheet, you might pause. Not because reviews don't matter. But because you'll remember the question beneath the request: "What have we done that customers genuinely want to review?" That's a very different conversation. And perhaps a much healthier one. Each episode in this series has a companion chapter in the Come Fix It ebook — available to download at the end of Day 7. The podcast tells the stories. The ebook gives those stories a place to linger. Here's the one thought I'd love to leave you with. Customers don't leave reviews because we asked brilliantly. They leave reviews because we served brilliantly. Everything else is just theatre. Now let's raise the curtain on Review Theatre. Topics: Come Fix It series, Review Theatre, customer review strategy, quarterly review campaigns, customer marketing habits, review generation B2B, customer reviews customer marketing, review campaign timing, customer experience and reviews, G2 reviews B2B, customer advocacy habits, review outcomes vs objectives, customer marketing podcast series, Come Fix It ebook, Aparna Sharon Isa Dass

  5. Jul 21

    Come Fix It: Customer Marketing Hostage Negotiation with Aparna Sharon Isa Dass

    If you've worked in Customer Marketing long enough, you've probably heard some version of this sentence. "Hey... quick question." If you've been in the corporate world for a while, you already know those two words deserve their own warning label. Today's version sounds something like this: "We need three customer references by Friday." It's Wednesday evening. Everyone nods. Someone says, "Shouldn't be too difficult." And somewhere, a Customer Marketing Manager quietly stares into the distance, wondering if it's too late to become a wildlife photographer. This episode explores one of the most familiar situations in Customer Marketing: the last-minute reference request. Not because references are bad — they're incredibly valuable. Customer conversations are often the most credible way for prospects to understand what working with a company is really like. The problem isn't asking. The problem is assuming the relationship can begin the moment the request arrives. That's a little like deciding to bake a birthday cake after your guests have already rung the doorbell. Technically possible. Emotionally stressful. And almost guaranteed to involve someone apologising. The best customer references don't happen because someone wrote the perfect email. They happen because months earlier, someone invested time. Someone listened. Someone followed up when they didn't need anything. Someone celebrated success before asking for support. That's the difference between building a relationship — and borrowing one. Today we're introducing a new name for a familiar behaviour: the Hostage Negotiation. No, your sales colleagues aren't villains — they're under real pressure too. Revenue targets are real. Deadlines are real. But sometimes the conversation around references unintentionally sounds less like "Would you be willing to help?" and a little more like "We really need this by Thursday." One invites participation. The other quietly transfers urgency. And urgency is contagious. One person's delayed planning becomes another person's emergency. Customer Marketing feels it. Customer Success feels it. The customer definitely feels it. A relationship that took months to build is now carrying the emotional weight of a sales deadline it never signed up for. Here's the thing worth sitting with. When a customer agrees to speak with your prospect, they aren't simply giving up thirty minutes on their calendar. They're attaching their own credibility to your organisation. They're saying: "I trust this company enough that I'm willing to let my experience influence someone else's decision." That's an extraordinary gift. And gifts rarely respond well to pressure. If you listened to Day 1, you've already met the Favor Farm. Today: the Hostage Negotiation. Each episode in this series builds on the previous one — and each has a companion chapter in the Come Fix It ebook, available to download at the end of Day 7. The podcast tells the stories. The ebook lets you sit with the ideas. So before someone inevitably asks for three references by Thursday — let's spend a few minutes talking about why that request feels less like a process... and a little more like a hostage negotiation. Topics: Come Fix It series Day 2, customer reference requests, last-minute reference management, hostage negotiation customer marketing, building vs borrowing customer relationships, customer reference program, customer advocacy habits, trust in customer marketing, urgency in customer marketing, reference program planning, B2B customer references, customer marketing podcast series, customer marketing habits, Aparna Sharon Isa Dass About this series: Come Fix It is a seven-day special series from The Loyal-Tea Talks Podcast — a light-hearted, honest look at seven habits that have quietly become normal in Customer Marketing. Each episode is under ten minutes. The companion ebook drops at the end of Day 7.

  6. Jul 20

    Come Fix It: Customer Marketing Favor Farming with Aparna Sharon Isa Dass

    Welcome to Come Fix It: Day 01 A seven-day podcast series that's less about teaching Customer Marketing — and more about gently questioning the wonderfully creative ways we've managed to complicate it. This series began with a simple observation. The longer I spent in Customer Marketing, the more I realised we don't actually have a knowledge problem. We know how to build advocacy programs. We know how to collect reviews, ask for references, write case studies, launch communities. We've attended the webinars, read the blogs, bookmarked the templates. Some of us have probably even created the templates. And yet. Somewhere between the strategy decks, quarterly targets, campaign calendars, and that Slack message that begins with "Hey... quick favor?" something quietly changed. Not our skills. Our intention. Relationships slowly became campaigns. Customers quietly became assets. Conversations became opportunities. And advocacy started sounding suspiciously like a to-do list. That's what Come Fix It is about. Not fixing Customer Marketing because it's broken, the people in this profession are some of the most thoughtful, relationship-driven people I've had the privilege of meeting. But even the best intentions get buried under deadlines. Even the strongest relationships can begin to feel transactional if we're not careful. Every now and then, it's worth pausing long enough to ask: "Why did we start doing this in the first place?" Each episode is under ten minutes — short enough for your commute, long enough to leave you thinking. Over seven days, we'll explore seven habits that have quietly become normal in Customer Marketing. Not because anyone deliberately designed them that way. But because sometimes the things we repeat the most are the things we question the least. We'll talk about why asking for advocacy sometimes feels less like building relationships and more like collecting favors. Why reviews become urgent every quarter-end. Why referrals aren't discount coupons. Why case studies should be the result of customer success — not the reason we chase it. Why Customer Success Managers become the unofficial relationship department for everyone else. And why the biggest challenge facing Customer Marketing today isn't a lack of strategy. It's an identity crisis. Along the way you'll encounter a few phrases. Favor Farm. Review Theatre. Story Harvesting. CSM Tax. These aren't industry terminology — they're simply names for behaviours many of us have experienced but never quite described. Because once you can name a habit, you can notice it. And once you notice it, you can decide whether it's still serving you. I'll be honest: most of these observations started because I recognised myself in them. I've sent the awkward advocacy emails. I've chased the last-minute reference. I've celebrated a case study while quietly forgetting the months of customer success that should have preceded it. I've been part of the problem. Which is precisely why I wanted to have this conversation — not as someone standing outside this profession, but as someone sitting right in the middle of it. This series also has a companion. By the end of Day 7, you'll be able to download my very first ebook, Come Fix It — the podcast gives you the conversation, the ebook gives you the reflection. Together, they tell the same story from two different angles. So let's begin with a question. What if your advocacy program isn't actually an advocacy program? What if without even realising it, it's become a Favor Farm? Let's fix it. One cup of tea at a time. Topics: Come Fix It series, customer marketing habits, Favor Farm, Review Theatre, Story Harvesting, CSM Tax, customer advocacy podcast series, 7-day podcast series, customer marketing identity, customer marketing ebook, customer advocacy strategy, B2B customer marketing, customer marketing podcast, Aparna Sharon Isa Dass, ebook author

  7. Jul 6

    Ep. 22: Protecting Your References From Overuse with Natasha Owen

    Customer references have a strange problem. In some companies, they're treated like emergency supplies — kept somewhere safe, occasionally remembered, and pulled out when a deal desperately needs saving. In others, the same three customers are asked to join every call, support every deal, answer every urgent request, and somehow remain enthusiastic about doing it all over again next week. Underused or overused. Gathering dust or heading straight for burnout. Surely there has to be a better way. In this episode of The Loyal-Tea Talks Podcast, host Aparna Sharon Isa Dass sits down with Natasha Owen from Referential Inc. to unpack what it actually takes to build a modern customer reference program that sales trusts, customers enjoy being part of, and leadership can see real value in. They go right back to the beginning. What does an end-to-end reference program actually look like? When should you start formalising it? How do you stop bad habits forming before sales gets used to having unlimited access to your happiest customers? Natasha and Aparna get into the realities of governance, advocate rotation, tiering, gap analysis, response windows, and why protecting your references sometimes means becoming the person willing to say: "Not this customer. Not again. Not right now." Because your happiest advocate is not an unlimited resource. They also explore the relationship between customer marketing and sales — and why a great reference program shouldn't become the department that slows deals down. Done well, it should help sales move faster, make better matches, and access a healthier, more diverse pool of customer voices. Then: technology and AI. When can you manage a reference program with a spreadsheet? At what point does manual management become a genuine risk? What should you automate? What should always remain human? Natasha shares where AI can genuinely save customer marketers hours, from reference matching and database searches to insights and call preparation, while making a strong case for protecting the one thing technology cannot manufacture: a genuine human relationship. And because no customer marketing conversation is complete without someone asking "but what's the ROI?", they talk about proving the value of references beyond activity metrics. Deal influence, velocity, advocate overuse rates, and telling a compelling enough story that leadership stops seeing references as just another activity. They also explore one of the most underrated forces in customer marketing: word of mouth. The conversations happening between customers and prospects that you may never see, track, or neatly attribute to a dashboard but that continue influencing buying decisions every single day. No reference program should be a free-for-all.No advocate should feel like unpaid sales support.And no customer marketer should have to run the entire thing from a spreadsheet held together by hope and conditional formatting. It's time to build reference programs with more structure, smarter technology, stronger measurement, and a lot more respect for the humans making them valuable in the first place. Grab your tea. We're talking references, revenue, relationships, and why your best customers deserve better than another "quick 30-minute call." Topics: customer reference program, reference program management, protecting customer references, reference overuse prevention, advocate rotation, customer reference governance, reference program tiering, reference burnout, reference program ROI, reference matching, AI in customer reference programs, word of mouth B2B, customer marketing and sales alignment, reference program automation, end-to-end reference program, customer reference strategy, Natasha Owen, Referential Inc., B2B customer references, customer marketing podcast

    Ep. 22: Protecting Your References From Overuse with Natasha Owen

  8. May 20

    Ep. 21: The Reference Request Lifecycle: From Ask to Close with Timothy Newborn

    What looks like a simple reference call is actually one of the most complex, human, and revenue-impacting systems in customer marketing. In this episode of The Loyal-Tea Talks Podcast, host Aparna Sharon Isa Dass sits down with customer advocacy expert Timothy Newborn to unpack the entire lifecycle of a customer reference — from that urgent "we need one now" ask to the invisible moments that either build trust or quietly break it. Because let's be honest. References are not transactions. They are experiences. And most teams are still treating them like a checkbox. What makes this conversation hit differently is how aligned the thinking is. From intentionality to empathy, from matchmaking to closing the loop, both Aparna and Timothy lean into one shared belief: advocacy is not a tactic. It is infrastructure. And if you love a good analogy, you are in for a treat. From comparing customer reference matching to an arranged first date gone wrong, to thinking of advocacy managers as chaos coordinators mid-flight, this episode brings clarity with a side of wit. In this episode: Why customer references are more than deal accelerators and what happens when you treat them like oneThe invisible work behind great customer reference programs that never makes it into a reportHow poor reference experiences quietly damage credibility, relationships, and future pipelineThe art and science of matchmaking customers to prospects and why getting it wrong costs more than the dealWhy closing the loop is the most underrated step in the entire reference lifecycleHow to turn one-time references into long-term customer advocacy relationshipsIf you have ever been asked for "any customer, urgently," or struggled to balance empathy with revenue pressure, this episode will feel very real. Because the best customer advocacy programs do not just help close deals. They help customers grow, show up, and shine. And that is a much harder thing to ignore. Topics: customer reference program, customer reference lifecycle, customer advocacy references, reference matchmaking, reference call management, customer references B2B, advocacy as infrastructure, closing the loop in advocacy, customer reference management, deal acceleration references, reference program strategy, customer advocacy strategy, reference burnout prevention, B2B customer references, Timothy Newborn, customer marketing podcast

    Ep. 21: The Reference Request Lifecycle: From Ask to Close with Timothy Newborn
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About

The go-to bi-weekly podcast for customer marketers, customer advocacy professionals, and B2B marketers who are done being the best-kept secret in their company. Hosted by Aparna Sharon Isa Dass, The Loyal-Tea Talks covers customer advocacy programs, loyalty programs, reference programs, community-led growth, career development, and proving customer marketing ROI to leadership. Whether you're new to customer marketing or already leading the function, there's a seat for you here. No fluff. Just the tools to take customer marketing from supporting act to main stage. 🌐 aparnasharonisadass.com

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