This article comes from Sarah Wylie’s insightful talk at our Customer Marketing Summit in San Francisco in 2024, check out her full presentation.

Empowering teams for sustainable transformation starts from within. 

I'm Sarah Wylie, Customer Marketing Manager at 6sense, and I've worked a lot on refining strategies that remove internal friction, scale personalization without losing human connection.

Too often, companies focus on external messaging while struggling with internal misalignment. But the truth is, a seamless customer experience begins with how we operate behind the scenes. 

In this article, I’ll share some key strategies we’ve developed to empower teams, scale advocacy, and create impactful customer moments—without forcing them. 

The myth of the goldfish attention span

We've all heard the infamous stat: humans now have an eight-second attention span—allegedly shorter than a goldfish. But here’s the truth: we’ve been fooled. This so-called "goldfish stat" is nothing but a myth.

There’s a big difference between actively trying to pay attention and deliberately dividing your attention. Think about binge-watching. A Deloitte report found that 73% of people have binge-watched a show, often consuming five or more hours of content in one sitting. 

So, where does the misconception come from? 

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It stems from misunderstanding how we divide and shift our attention. 

For example, when you listen to a podcast while driving, you’re alternating your focus between the road and the conversation, maintaining a low level of selective attention to both. 

When you scroll social media with the TV on in the background, you're primarily engaged with one thing while passively consuming the other. Advertisers rely on this divided attention, using tactics designed to interrupt whatever you’re focused on and redirect it toward their message.

But here’s the key takeaway: our brains crave immersive storytelling. We naturally latch onto narratives that feel familiar and engaging. This is where customer marketers thrive—by using relatable storytelling and reducing friction, we create memorable customer moments that last far beyond eight seconds.

Removing internal friction

The first step in building these moments is removing internal friction. 

At 6sense, one major friction point was our Customer Success Management (CSM) team. Balancing human connection, scalability, and efficiency was a challenge. When your CSMs are the sole source of communication with customers, it can create bottlenecks. And if you know anything about CSM teams, they can be a little...protective.

You can’t just walk in and expect them to immediately embrace a new way of doing things. Change requires trust. We started from the top down, ensuring that leadership aligned with our vision, and that trust trickled down to the team. 

As a result, they became willing to shift certain responsibilities, allowing us to improve efficiency without sacrificing relationships.

So how did we do it? Here are the six core strategies we implemented to drive sustainable transformation:

  1. Simplify program enrollment 
  2. Utilize intent data
  3. Make MOPs (Marketing Operations) your best friends
  4. Create impactful events and communities
  5. Listen to your customers online
  6. Never neglect the power of one-on-one time

Each of these strategies plays a role in creating authentic, memorable customer moments—ones that last well beyond an eight-second attention span. 

Let’s dive into each of these in more detail.