June 24, 2026
Why Customer Satisfaction with Brand Communications Is Falling and How to Fix the Strategy, With Scott Draeger
A strong customer communications strategy requires three things: consistency across channels, clean data governance, and a governance model that treats regulation as a floor rather than a ceiling. Smart Communications’ Scott Draeger argues that most organisations are failing on all three; and that technical debt, not intent, is the primary barrier to improvement.
Customer satisfaction with brand communications is falling, and the culprit isn’t poor copywriting or bad design. According to Scott Draeger, SVP of Vertical Marketing at Smart Communications, it’s something far more structural: decades of accumulated technical debt that stops organisations communicating consistently, coherently, or at the speed customers now expect.
In this new video interview, CX Editor Kieran Devlin sits down with Scott, a certified customer experience professional with nearly thirty years in the industry, to unpack what Smart Communications’ benchmark research is revealing about the widening gap between customer expectations and organisational reality.
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The findings are striking. Asking a customer for the same information twice signals poor data stewardship and, increasingly, raises security concerns. Fragmented channels mean brands shift tone without realising it. It could be warm at acquisition, cold at billing, and warm again at renewal. Customers notice, even if they can’t articulate why their trust has eroded.
On AI, the picture is nuanced. Confidence has dipped, but customers aren’t opposed to AI. They want transparency about when and how it’s being used. Eighty-six percent believe organisations should disclose AI use in any process they interact with.
Scott’s prescription for CX leaders? Start with governance. Regulations are too often used as a scapegoat for inertia. They set a floor, not a ceiling, and ugly communications, he argues, are always a choice.
