The “Meat and Potatoes” of B2B Marketing, and Assuring Customer Experiences in the World of AI

In this edition of Beyond the Brief, we sit down with Janet Vito, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Cyara. A veteran of the Austin tech scene, Janet has navigated the industry’s evolution from the “Mac clone” wars to the rise of SaaS and AI. Now leading marketing at Cyara, the global leader in CX assurance, she is tasked with a unique challenge: category creation in a landscape where “CX and AI assurance” are just beginning to emerge.

From her early days at startups like Power Computing to transformative leadership roles at Accruent and uShip, Janet brings a pragmatic, “meat and potatoes” approach to modern B2B marketing. She joins us to discuss the complexities of the enterprise buyer journey, the risks of Agentic AI in the customer experience, and why, despite all the technology, the sustainable moat for any brand remains its humanity.

Q: Janet, it’s a pleasure to have you. To start, you have a fascinating backstory that’s uncommon for a tech executive. You’ve mentioned before that your upbringing as a “service brat” shaped you. Can you share a bit about that?

Janet: It definitely shaped my life. I grew up in an Air Force family; by the time I was 10, I had lived in three different countries and three different states. But the lesser-known fact is that my parents met while working at the CIA. My father was a U-2 pilot, the first American to fly over Moscow during the Eisenhower era, and he met my mother while he was in the CIA and she was the head administrative assistant on the project.

That experience of constantly moving and adapting to new cultures shapes you in a very interesting way. It teaches you how to connect with people even when there are barriers, which is a skill that translates surprisingly well to marketing and leadership.

Q: Your career path seems just as dynamic, spanning from mechanical engineering to marketing for Mac clones. How did you find your way into the driver’s seat of B2B marketing?

Janet: It wasn’t a straight line. I actually started as a mechanical engineering major at the University of Texas before they successfully “weeded me out,” and I switched to business. I fell into tech somewhat randomly through an internship at a small startup called Technology Works.

That era was the “wild west” of high-tech. I eventually joined Power Computing, a maker of Mac clones. It was a venture-backed rocket ship that went from 40 employees to a couple of hundred practically overnight, competing directly with Apple until Steve Jobs returned and shut down the clone market.

Later, I moved into SaaS with MessageOne, right as marketing was undergoing its digital transformation, we literally went from stuffing envelopes for direct mail to using early marketing automation tools. But I’d say my time at Acruent was the most transformative for my leadership skills. It was my first private equity-owned, B2B enterprise SaaS role, and we had to build the marketing function from the ground up while acquiring eight companies and messaging 16 products.

Q: You also took a detour to teach sixth-grade English. That’s a sharp pivot from enterprise software.

Janet: It was. While I was at Dell, I earned my master’s in education and briefly left the marketing field to teach at a Title I school. While I realized within about three weeks that it wasn’t my calling, I stuck it out for the year. I don’t regret my time as a teacher; it was a huge learning experience because presenting to a classroom of sixth graders has more in common with managing a team or presenting to a board than you might think.

Q: Let’s talk about Cyara. You are in a unique position, effectively building a category around “CX Assurance.” How do you approach marketing when a Gartner Magic Quadrant doesn’t exist for what you do yet?

Janet: It’s a challenge, but also an opportunity. We are the market leader, and often our biggest competitor is simply “do it yourself”. There is no “magic quadrant” category for what we offer. Before the big analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester cover a space, they wait until there are 10+ competitors, which makes sense for what they are trying to accomplish.

So, our strategy is to engage with smaller, niche analyst firms in the contact center space and utilize platforms like G2 to build credibility. We are seeing the terms “CX assurance” and “AI assurance” emerge, which helps.

Q: With the explosion of Generative AI, you’ve recently launched an AI Trust Suite. What specific problems are you solving there?

Janet: The introduction of LLMs and Agentic AI into customer service brings new risks. You don’t want your chatbot hallucinating or the “Chevy chatbot” telling a customer to buy a BMW.

We are seeing customers deploy “Agentic AI” voice bots that perform complex actions, like changing an order or making recommendations. Because these conversations are unscripted and infinite, unlike a traditional Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, they require a completely different approach to testing and validation. Our software tests these bots by generating hundreds of intent variations, including accents, background noise, and other factors, to ensure they perform as intended and remain compliant.

Q: In terms of your marketing mix for 2026, you’ve described your approach as “meat and potatoes.” What does that look like in practice?

Janet: We focus on the fundamentals: the right message, to the right person, on the right channel. We are leaning into a digital-first framework, optimizing for SEO and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). On the events side, we avoid the massive trade shows. We focus on smaller, high-quality events where we enforce strict MQL standards; it’s not just a badge swipe, it has to be a meaningful conversation. We’re also increasing our investment in regional events and dinners this year. In enterprise sales with long cycles, face-to-face interaction is critical for building trust.

Q: Finally, Janet, you’ve said that customer experience is the only sustainable “moat.” What do you mean by that?

Janet: Operational or product differences can eventually be duplicated. But the culture, the consistency, and the humanity of a brand cannot be easily copied. The number one reason people leave a brand is poor customer experience. Our enterprise customers use Cyara to help ensure a flawless customer experience, so they can maintain their brand reputation and retain and attract more customers. Regardless of the technology, whether it’s AI or the next big thing, those core human principles remain essential.

Q: Janet, thank you for sharing such great insights with us. For those who would like to reach out, what is the best way to connect with you?

Janet: I’m very active on LinkedIn and would be happy to connect there.