In this episode of the Revenue Cafe, Breadcrumbs co-founder and Chief Product Officer Gary Amaral is joined by Ferha Mirdawi, Vice President of Customer Experience for Lending Tree, the largest online marketplace across lending platforms, to discuss how to revamp and enhance your customer experience.

Ferha Mirdawi has more than 20 years of marketing and product strategy experience with several prominent consumer-focused companies, pioneers in their respective industries. At Lending Tree, she establishes the Customer Relationship Management strategy for the nation’s largest online lending marketplace today. 

Lending Tree is the largest online lending marketplace headquartered in the US. The Lending Tree platform allows potential borrowers to connect with multiple loan operators across the country to find optimal terms for loans, credit cards, accounts, insurance, and the like. 

Key Takeaways

1. Asking the right questions, gathering information, and taking actions are stable for customer success. With the changing digital access and marketing climates, many companies have explored budget transparency to connect with potential buyers.
2. Having the humility to know when you fail is just as valuable as having the courage to try again. Customer success and communications are not without their trial and error experiences. The ability to respond appropriately and adapt to customer’s needs are core pieces of a customer’s success. 
3. Communication is everything. Communication between marketing, consumer needs, and the product is crucial to the trifecta that gives us satisfied customers. Repeat customers and customer expansion rely heavily on your existing customer success. These transparencies help build trust with relationships with the consumer. 

Some topics we discussed included

• Ferha’s experience overcoming the restrictions of the corporate target by focusing on the customer’s experience and the importance of communication.
• The power of being a consumer-driven brand. I.e., how the hotel chain Four Seasons focuses on customer experience to reinforce relationships. 
• Ferha explains the importance of thoroughly understanding customer concerns and happiness and how it reflects on your customer success.  
• Ferha relates how she admires and learns from successful businesses changes to evaluate how her company can improve. 
• Ferha tells us how she is able to connect with a core group of customers that isn’t always as vocal on surveys by evaluating their behavioral analytics. 
• Detailed and quantitative data allows you to properly evaluate the solutions to the seemingly inevitable detractor comments you will receive. 
• How Informed Customer research aligns with marketing and sales, allowing the approach of potential customers based on existing experiences. 
• Gary tells us about his own and Breadcrumbs’ approach for customer-based marketing. 
• Overcoming when a marketing campaign misses the mark and what tactics to evaluate how to drive it back to consumer needs. 
• How to ‘bridge-the-gap’ across marketing, product and customer needs to secure success.