Why Companies Fail at Customer Engagement | Appcues CEO Ryan Barry | EP.22

SHOW DESCRIPTION

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Every company insists they're customer-obsessed. Almost none of them can point to proof beyond a slide that says so.

Ryan Barry has built two companies around closing that gap. As CEO of Appcues and former CEO of Zappi, he's spent his career sitting between customers and the leadership teams trying to serve them, and he's watched most of those teams mistake activity for connection.

What he's found is both simple and uncomfortable: most B2B companies aren't losing customers because of price or product. They're losing them because nobody inside the company is actually listening and the ones who still trust last-click data over what customers plainly tell them.

In this episode of Return on Reputation, I had the chance to talk with Ryan Barry to dig into why brand and reputation, not lead generation, are the real long-term growth engine, and why the way you treat people still beats any technology advantage.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Why most companies fail at customer engagement, and what actually earns trust instead

How Ryan builds credibility fast walking into a company he didn't found, without leaning on "how it worked at my last company"

What self-stated attribution is, and why it beats last-click marketing data every time

The real reason B2B has spent years chasing MQLs while B2C has quietly figured out brand

Why SDRs are the most overrated growth tactic in SaaS right now