Brett Charobee has spent over two decades leading CRM, loyalty, personalization, and MarTech initiatives for consumer-driven brands, including Subway, CVS, Fanatics, and StockX. He has focused on turning fragmented customer data into experiences that feel personal, relevant, and trustworthy at scale.

Most recently, as Vice President of Global Personalization & Guest Affinity at Subway, he led enterprise CRM and loyalty transformation across more than 20 markets, unifying data, channels, and technology into a single operating system for customer engagement, driving measurable gains in acquisition, retention, and lifetime value.

In this Q&A Spotlight, Brett unpacks the moments that shaped his conviction that CRM is not a tech stack, it’s an experience strategy. From uncovering hidden customer intent in purchase behavior to closing the long-standing gap between marketing and customer service data, he explains how empathy scales only when information flows freely across the organization. His experience reveals what happens when CRM becomes connective tissue rather than a channel, where emotional context informs decisions, loyalty becomes predictable, and customer experience is designed with intention instead of assumption.

Execs In The Know (EITK): Every CX leader has a moment where customer behavior, data, or an interaction exposes something bigger. What was that early moment for you that shifted how you viewed the customer relationship? 

Brett Charobee: Early in my career, I was trained in databases, structured query language (SQL), and systems design, but I didn’t yet understand how technology translated to human experience. That changed when I joined ProFlowers. I was a customer myself, so I finally understood how data could improve something deeply personal like buying flowers for an anniversary, a birthday, or a holiday.

That’s when it clicked: customer data wasn’t just operational, it was emotional. Occasions, urgency, and intent mattered as much as transaction history. From that point forward, I stopped thinking in terms of campaigns and started thinking in terms of people.

CRM wasn’t about managing customers. It was about understanding them and using that understanding to drive better business decisions.

EITK: Looking back, what was the first role or project that made you realize, “This is CX, and this is where I want to build my career”? 

Brett: At ProFlowers, we were running broad email campaigns featuring red roses, but as I queried our campaign conversion data, I noticed that a meaningful share of customers were clicking and buying plants instead. We dug into the data and realized something bigger: we weren’t a one-size-fits-all company. We were serving multiple, invisible customer missions.

That insight led to the launch of ProPlants.com.

That was my “aha” moment: data wasn’t just describing behavior, it was revealing untapped businesses and customer needs inside the company, with real revenue and growth implications. I realized CX wasn’t a support function; it was a growth engine.

Promoting a product and driving a purchase are not the same thing. When teams focus only on incremental orders as a KPI, they often miss the more important signal — what customers actually buy when they convert. Product-level analysis reveals hidden patterns in intent and behavior, unlocking more precise segmentation and more relevant contact strategies.

EITK: You’ve led CRM, loyalty, and personalization at brands like Subway, StockX, Fanatics, CVS, and more. When you look back, what were the key moments that shaped how you think about customer experience today?

Brett: Across industries, the same pattern emerged: Data tells the truth unless you ask the wrong question. At Fanatics, we believed women primarily purchased youth apparel for their children. A senior female leader interrupted and simply said:

“I buy youth apparel because it fits me better than women’s sizing.”

Two others immediately agreed. That moment reframed everything: Data without human context creates false confidence, and false confidence leads to poor strategic decisions at scale. Context without data creates gut-driven risk.  True CX lives at the intersection. This is why I’m a firm believer in anchoring customer intelligence with three foundational data pillars (Transactional, Demographic, and Qualitative) before layering in more advanced signals.

EITK: Many leaders still treat CRM and CX as separate motions. When did it first “click” for you that CRM could actually be the engine of modern CX rather than just a marketing channel? 

Brett: When customer service teams started driving outcomes without marketing knowing it. At one company, we discovered customers were redeeming promotions that CRM and Marketing hadn’t sent. The root cause?  Customer service agents were issuing appeasement offers, but the data never flowed back to marketing.

Meanwhile, CRM and marketing teams unknowingly kept sending promotions and messaging to customers who were frustrated. Both teams were working in silos and were talking to the same customers. This resulted in customer confusion and frustration, and ultimately led to a decline in our retention rates.

So, we built a two-way data bridge:

• CRM data to customer service.
• Customer service data back to CRM.

That’s when CRM stopped being a channel and became the connective tissue that aligns experience, revenue, and enterprise decision-making.

EITK: At Fanatics, you had hundreds of customer attributes, but they weren’t connected to the service experience. What did it take, organizationally and technically, to finally close that data loop between CRM and customer service?

Brett: We had an executive whose order was delayed, and they’d contacted customer service about it. The package was delayed by three days due to a major storm in the region. The customer service team knew of the issue, but marketing didn’t. The CRM team continued to message the executive:

“How was your order?”

“Buy again.”

This was a horrible experience for a customer who hadn’t received their product.  This experience became the enterprise-level catalyst — highlighting how disconnected systems silently erode trust, loyalty, and lifetime value.

Technically, it required:

• Shared identifiers
• Data normalization
• Real-time syncing

Organizationally, it required:

• Executive alignment and prioritization

Once leaders felt the pain personally, alignment followed quickly, centralizing customer attributes and integrating them across all customer-facing channels.

EITK: Once you connected marketing data with customer service data, what did you see in the numbers that surprised you most about new versus loyal customers? 

Brett: New customers were the most fragile and, therefore, the most economically important to protect. They churned at dramatically higher rates after customer service interactions, not because they were harder to please, but because they had no emotional reserve bank. Loyal customers assume a bad experience is an exception. New customers assume it’s the norm.

So, we redesigned our customer service strategy:

• Dedicated agents for new customers
• Personalized scripts for certain customer segments
• CRM-based appeasement journeys

We stopped treating all customers equally and started treating them correctly, which materially improved early-life retention and long-term loyalty.

EITK: You built tailored routing and playbooks for new customers calling into customer service, then mirrored that with nurturing and win-back journeys in CRM. How did that approach change retention and brand trust in practice?

Brett: The retention rates for new customers who contacted customer service increased by 25% in the first year of implementation, and our net promoter scores (NPS) started to increase. This initial improvement really shone a light on the fact that we were sitting on all this rich customer data, and that if we could centralize, normalize, and integrate it across our channels, we could dramatically improve the user experience.

EITK: You’ve said that “customer service data is emotional data.” How do you explain that idea to executives who still see service interactions primarily as cost or operations, not as a core part of the data strategy? 

Brett: Because it records moments where trust is tested — moments that often determine whether a customer stays, leaves, or expands their relationship. Unfortunately, most companies treat service data as operational telemetry:

• Tickets
• Resolutions
• Average hold time (AHT)

But in reality, service data answers far more powerful questions:

• When are customers anxious?
• Where is trust breaking?
• What moments create churn risk?
• What triggers loyalty?

Customer service data is customer truth at the most human level. And CRM without emotional context is incomplete intelligence.

EITK: When you stepped into your role at Subway, leading personalization and guest affinity, what was the state of the organization, and what mandate were you given around loyalty, CRM, and the MarTech stack? As you look ahead, which emerging MarTech platforms or analytics approaches feel most promising, and which give you pause?

Brett: Like many brands, CRM was treated as a broadcast channel. The mandate was bold: “We don’t have millions of SKUs like Amazon. Prove personalization could drive measurable guest engagement, frequency, and revenue in a QSR environment.” We didn’t start with technology, which is where I see many companies fail.  They think plugging in a new email service provider (ESP) or customer data platform (CDP) will solve the problem.

We started with the customer.

I built a customer data mart with hundreds of attributes, then integrated CRM systems (ESP, CDP, etc.), and rapidly moved the team from:

• Batch-and-blast → behavioral segmentation

The return on investment (ROI) followed quickly.

Technology doesn’t create personalization: Leadership and data discipline do.

EITK: When you look across your career, what through-line connects the wins you’ve had in loyalty growth, retention, and revenue impact, even across very different brands and industries? 

Data is the only neutral referee inside an organization.

• When opinions clash, we test.
• When strategies stall, we test.
• When egos surface, we test.

This is why I prioritize building a test-and-learn methodology and process. CRM maturity isn’t about software; it’s about intellectual honesty and the ability to rapidly optimize your strategy for growth and incrementality.

EITK: What’s the mindset shift you want readers to make before reading Parts 2 and 3 of this blog series?  

Brett: Stop treating CRM as infrastructure.  Start treating it as a strategy and the nervous system of your customer experience. CRM is not a delivery system. It’s a decision system — one that informs revenue growth, retention strategy, and enterprise prioritization.

If you want personalization and artificial intelligence (AI) to work, the foundation must come first:

• Centralize your customer data into a single source of truth.
• Choose one meaningful customer problem to solve.
• Design a disciplined test-and-learn plan.
• Execute with focus and velocity.

CX doesn’t scale from tools. It scales from clarity, alignment, and leadership intent.

Closing the data loop between CRM and customer service is not a technology project; it’s a leadership decision.

When customer service data becomes part of your intelligence system (not just your operations dashboard), personalization becomes responsive, retention becomes predictable, and experience becomes intentional.

CX transformation doesn’t start with tools. It begins with truth.

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll move from foundation to execution and unpack how winning CRM teams scale personalization across channels and turn insight into action. Stay tuned.

About Brett Charobee

Brett Charobee is a senior marketing executive and customer growth leader specializing in CRM, loyalty, personalization, MarTech, and omni-channel strategy for consumer-driven brands. Over the past two decades, he has built and scaled customer-centric growth engines for global organizations, including Subway, CVS, Fanatics, and StockX. Most recently as VP of Global Personalization & Guest Affinity at Subway, Brett led enterprise CRM, loyalty, and MarTech transformation across 20+ markets and hundreds of millions of customers, unifying data, channels, and technology into a single operating system for customer engagement that drove meaningful gains in revenue, acquisition, retention, and lifetime value.

As a Chief Customer Officer–caliber leader, Brett is known for integrating customer experience, data, and commercialization into a single strategy. He transforms fragmented marketing, product, and data teams into integrated growth organizations—evolving CRM from a channel function into a predictive, AI-enabled revenue engine. His work centers on building omni-channel experiences that feel personal at scale while delivering measurable business impact. A frequent speaker and advisor on personalization, loyalty, and customer experience, Brett helps brands move from reactive marketing to customer-led growth.

The post Laying the Groundwork for Scalable CX: Q&A with a Former Subway Executive appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog written by Lauren Kindzierski, VP of Solutions & Capabilities | Global Growth Strategy & Marketing Team, at Hinduja Global Solutions. Learn more about HGS by visiting their website.

Your customers are texting. Do you know how many are already texting to your company toll free line? At our March 23 webinar, How to Launch Text Message Customer Service, we provided some key insights into how to provide this customer service channel to meet, and exceed, the raised bar on today’s CX expectations.

– For our poll regarding “What is the status of your brand launching text as a customer service channel,” we noted that 64% are thinking about launching text as a service channel.

– The second poll, “How are you currently using text for your customer service?” revealed that 79% of respondents are considering options. A total of 15% of attendees are using one-way notification and alerts, while 3% are using two-way text to interact with customers and resolve issues, and 3% are using both.

According to our webinar attendees, a good sampling of companies across verticals, today’s businesses are increasingly turning to text as a channel to reduce customer effort and meet the demand for optimized CX. Here are some of the questions brand leaders from across North America had regarding launching a text solution:

Q1: What should the average response time for text be?

A: When a customer is texting a business, they are definitely going to want a response within seconds, if not faster. When texting friends and family, the average response time for a text message is 90 seconds. Therefore 90 seconds is a really good starting point, because that’s what consumers have come to expect.

Q2: If a customer is in the CRM and is marked as “opted-out,” can a rep still text the customer? Is there anything that stops the rep from texting an opted-out customer?

A: In our system, if a customer has opted-out, the rep cannot text the customer. The customer would have to re opt-in through the legal disclosure process.

Q3: How do you recommend hours of service if customer care is generally offered Monday through Thursday 8 to 8, for example? What happens during off hours?

A: We have the ability to set after hours automated responses. For example, with one of our clients, if someone texts outside of regular business hours, they receive a response that says, “Thank you for contacting brand XYZ. Our business hours are x to x. We will get back to you first thing in the morning. In the meantime, please visit our self-help portal page or Frequently Asked Questions here.” You can then provide a link to the website.

Q4: How many texts can one CSR handle simultaneously?

A: Text is very similar to the chat channel. Typically, two to three texts is average, especially if it’s a new channel and a new agent learning things. As time passes, agents become more efficient. It’s important to recruit agents who are good multi-taskers and are text savvy. This is a good rule of thumb. And when beginning a pilot, take your existing call center volume and anticipate 20% of that being converted to text. The 20% rule is a good industry best practice. This will help you gauge how many people you need for the pilot, and with 20% it would be two to three conversations by concurrency.

Q5: If 20% of contacts are received via text, is that percentage a replacement for other contact channels or is it incremental volume?

A: Typically, 10% is a replacement for calling the 1-800 number and pivoting from IVR into text, while the other 10% is incremental.

Q6: You mentioned a 77% response rate with post transaction surveys. Did the scores increase or decrease based upon additional surveys being returned versus the traditional email replies with a 9% response rate?

A: Usually, you find a positive response rate with text surveys. With text, because everybody does it on a daily basis, and you have told customers that it’s only going to be two questions, they are more willing to respond. You will find that text surveys are more positive and have a higher response rate.

Q7: Does the affirmative consent requirement responding “Yes” lead to any attrition among text users?

A: You might get a couple of instances of attrition, but it’s typically not a problem.

Q8: What are standard response rates after hours, nights, and weekends? Do they vary?

A: If your contact center is open Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, it means that when agents come in on Monday morning, they may have to tackle a few that have come in over the weekend. This may be more volume than they can get to. Therefore, you might want to consider staffing heavier on Mondays, if you have those business hours in place.

If you have further questions about text message customer service and to hear more about this topic and others like it, join us at Customer Response Summit Austin, September 18th-20th, 2016.

The post 8 Great Questions Answered on Providing Text Message Customer Service appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following is a guest blog written by Sara Wright, Marketing Director, at Dialog Direct.

Last week we shared the first post in this two part series “Uber-Channel Shifts: Lessons Learned From the 2015 Holiday Season.” Get all caught up on the first two “lessons learned” by reading the first post in the series!

At Customer Response Summit Phoenix a one-of-a-kind panel involving customer experience executives from three of retail’s biggest competitors came together on the stage.  The panelists shared their firsthand experience in retail’s hottest trends, innovations, wins and lessons learned.

Here is what we learned:

3. Social Media Brings Delight and In-Store Insight

The speed of growth and change in social media, and the way that it is transforming the expectations of the customer, will continue to revolutionize the way retailers market, sell and communicate with their customers.

The most common way that retailers are engaging with their customers on social media is through two-way social media communication. The debate, however, is about who to prioritize the communication strategy around – influencers, detractors, or do you proactively reach out to all to delight? It depends on who you talk to, but the majority seem to prioritize reactive communication to the detractors or those that have an issue to resolve. One large online retailer, however, spoke up at the Customer Response Summit and stated that they believe in using social media to surprise and delight, not just react. Use vines, photos and video, not just text, to engage with a customer to create an over-the-top experience. Many retailers rely on an outsourced customer engagement partner to help monitor, engage and delight customers, especially during peak times or after hours. It has also been found that social media predictive technology can increase operational efficiencies by nearly 41% by prioritizing the most impactful conversations.

<Read: Going Above and Beyond to WOW on Social Media: Real-Life Case Study>

Other ways that top retailers are using social media is to provide store-level customer experience insights. For example, a brand can capture social media interactions made about particular stores or specific store employees and brings them back to the store. For example, if you love the customer service that Kathy Smith from the Boise, Idaho, store provided you and you tweet about it, there is a good chance that Kathy will see that recognition. If you are upset about the fitting room mess at the Shelby Township, Michigan, store, again, a good chance that the store manager from that location will be aware and take action.

The third way that retailers are using social media is to increase sales through posting about specific products with a link to purchase. It was stated that this strategy is fizzling for them as social sales only contribute to about 1%, significantly down from 2014.

4. Customers Don’t Care About Your Silos

In spite of being recognized as one of the biggest barriers in creating a seamless customer experience, departmental silos haven’t gone away. Brands are working toward breaking the silos by first identifying the silos and understanding how customers interact across them.

In the retail space, there are a growing number of channels and departments that must assume a holistic online-offline perspective; everything from physical store interactions, to marketing and customer service interactives, to departmental credit card initiatives. It was mentioned that to help create a seamless multichannel experience, retailers are integrating a CRM system that houses all departmental and channel interactions. This will give the right team member’s access to the most up-to-date customer data, eliminating some of your customers’ most frustrating experiences such as high-effort engagements and non-personal interactions.

If your brand has not yet completed the journey by tying in a robust CRM system, you may find it beneficial to rely on a customer engagement professional to help. Many outsourced customer engagement professionals have the integrated tools and processes that help bridge the CX and systems gap, helping to create a more seamless experience.

5. Customers Are Still Experiencing RAGE

In conversation over the 2015 “Customer Rage” study, the top conversation was around annoyance with customer service catchphrases. While it was agreed upon by all that the phrase “That is our policy” should never be stated in the call center or on the retail floor, the No. 1 most annoying phrase, as cited by the study, was still being used very frequently. That phrase? “Your call is important to us, please continue to hold.” 50% of all surveyed believe that is the most annoying phrase, while 17% actually want it banned completely.

One of the most controversial topics discussed regarding the Rage Study results? Whether or not to apologize to an unhappy customer. The Rage Study says that 75% of unhappy customers want an apology while only 28% received it. What do the retailers and the attendees of the Customer Response Summit think? Do you apologize or do you not? Well, that is still the debate. Some believe you do own up to the issue and apologize while others believe it comes off very insincere to say that you are sorry. Whether you apologize or not, it is a fact that complainant satisfaction will nearly double (from 37% to 73%) when a non-monetary remedy is applied with a monetary remedy.

It is important to consider that to avoid Customer Rage, it is essential to always be available, personal and effortless. This can be more difficult during high peak-volume times such as holidays and the launch of new programs when your call center is already experiencing a high volume of calls. Consider looking into an outsourced call center partner to help ease the pain of high call volume or to assist with after-hour needs.

Want even more content?

– Join a free webinar on “How to Craft a Strong Customer Service Recovery Program on May 19th. Register Here (expired).

– Interested in what was learned at the Customer Response Summit in Seattle during September 2015? Check out www.dialog-direct.com/media-room/article/crsummit-2015-6-things-we-learned/

The post Uber-Channel Shifts: Lessons Learned From the 2015 Holiday Season – Part 2 appeared first on Execs In The Know.