The Conversation Gap in Modern Marketing
By Paula Catoira, Rival Group
Marketing teams have access to more customer information than ever before. Campaign performance, social engagement, first-party data, customer feedback and behavioral signals generate a constant stream of information about how people interact with brands.
Yet many organizations still struggle to answer a basic question: What are customers actually trying to tell us?
Part of the challenge is that the systems used to understand audiences haven’t evolved as quickly as the way people communicate.
Over the past decade, communication habits have changed dramatically. People move between messaging apps, social platforms, voice notes, videos, comments and group chats throughout the day, often carrying conversations across several formats at once. Reactions happen quickly, conversations unfold in fragments and context develops over time instead of through long, carefully structured exchanges.
Many organizations, however, still rely on customer feedback approaches built around static interactions and predefined formats. That disconnect can make it harder to capture the nuance, context and evolving perspectives that shape how people actually experience brands.
The way people talk has changed
Most organizations built their customer feedback processes around efficiency and scale, with surveys designed to standardize responses, simplify analysis and make reporting manageable across large audiences. That structure still serves a purpose, especially when companies need measurable feedback across broad customer groups, but people rarely communicate in such predictable ways anymore.
Conversations are often emotional, nonlinear and shaped by previous interactions, with people changing their minds midstream, contradicting themselves or circling back to explain what they actually meant later in the discussion.
I see this same behavior in my own house as well. My kids rarely use email, and many of their conversations happen through apps and channels that feel completely natural to them but unfamiliar to many adults. They move constantly between platforms without thinking much about where one interaction ends and another begins. Those expectations around communication and interaction do not suddenly disappear when people engage with brands.
What people expect from interaction today
The shift toward mobile communication also changed how people expect interactions to feel.
People are used to conversations that continue over time, pick back up later and shift naturally depending on the situation or environment. That expectation carries into customer interactions as well.
When feedback experiences feel overly rigid or disconnected from normal communication habits, participation often becomes more transactional. Responses get shorter, nuance disappears and important context never surfaces.
Brands are beginning to revisit the same customers over time rather than treating every interaction as a standalone event. Product launches, customer communities and loyalty programs all create opportunities to continue conversations as people gain more experience with a product or service.
Without the ability to continue those conversations, important context can often remain incomplete.
Understanding rarely comes from a single response
None of this means organizations should abandon surveys, structured research or quantitative measurement. Those approaches still provide an essential view of customers and markets. At the same time, companies are recognizing that customer understanding rarely comes from a single response viewed in isolation.
A comment that initially seems minor may become much more important after a pattern starts emerging across other conversations. A survey response may raise new questions that only become visible after teams have had time to reflect on what they heard. Customer sentiment itself can shift depending on timing, environment and previous experiences with the brand.
The more room organizations create for follow-up and ongoing dialogue, the easier it becomes to capture context that might otherwise get missed.
Making room for conversation
Some organizations are already experimenting with ways to keep conversations going beyond a single survey response. In many cases, the most interesting questions don’t appear until after someone has answered the original question.
People don’t always know exactly what they think the moment they’re asked. An initial response can be valuable, but some of the most useful context emerges later, when there is an opportunity to reflect, clarify or expand on an idea.
Customer understanding develops over time. Giving people opportunities to revisit, clarify and build on what they’ve already shared can reveal context that a single interaction never could.
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