Explore how customer support is evolving from calls and emails to AI-driven solutions with insights from industry veterans Sarah and Rohit. Learn how upskilling, tech-human synergy, and shifting generational preferences are shaping the future of CX. Leaders discuss automation, upskilling and the next era of support. GMT20250409-160415_Recording_640x360 (1) 0:04 Good morning. 0:05 Welcome to the experience dialogue. 0:06 In this conversation we have guests with very varied experience and we are just talking like friends, interrupting each other or you know, even disagreeing with each other, which is excellent. 0:20 And today I have two amazing guests here with me. 0:24 Sarah, I spoke to you first, so I'm just introducing you first for no other reason, Sarah from Concentrix. 0:30 What was very interesting for me when I talked to Sarah is she actually has spent over 18 years in the BPO industry and she has come all along and she's one of the few women in service that I've seen who have grown completely in the service side and seen things grow. 0:49 So I would love to get her experience and her background behind what she has seen over multiple decades. 0:57 Welcome, Sarah. 0:58 Thank you. 0:59 Really glad to be here. 1:00 Lovely to talk to you, Kay. 1:03 Rohit. 1:04 You have spent a ton of time in the tech industry, mostly with infrastructure, platforms, very complex products, and you have also spent the time and Technical Support side of the realm and have grown very much into the Technical Support side of the realm. 1:21 You are with data bricks right now, which is kind of right in the middle of how data comes together and how AI is processed. 1:32 So I think, you know, getting your expertise and your changes over the decades and your background from Technical Support would be a very interesting and very excellent mix with Sarah. 1:43 So welcome, Rohit. 1:45 Oh, thank you so much, Gabe. 1:46 Glad to be here and nice to meet you as well, Sarah. 1:51 So we didn't really plan for this particular discussion other than just putting down some topics, right? 1:59 So forget about, you know, and you both don't have to answer every question. 2:04 So if there is something very salient that you want to bring it up, just bring it up. 2:08 OK. 2:08 So in terms of career experience, I know I had highlighted a few things here, but it would be great to understand, Rohit, from you, what you have seen as a change that has happened since you started your career to where it is right now in terms of your career as a support executive. 2:29 That's one we will, you know, let's start that first and then we'll talk about support in itself. 2:36 Yeah, to give you a little bit of context, like before I got into the workforce industry itself, even during my academics, I was always inclined towards AIML kind of stuff. 2:45 But the AIML then was never the AIML what we see today. 2:50 You know, the vision was so much more core to a group of people who are really great experts in in the AIML field. 2:58 Even the projects that I did were very focused on real time systems, embedded systems, machines, robots and stuff, you know, may solving robots that would solve mazes by themselves. 3:10 So ML and AI were very focused in certain aspects of, of, of the industry. 3:17 But as, as we, as I, as I've got into the workforce, I joined as a real time systems engineer. 3:23 I started out as a core developer, you know, coding in assembly, CC plus plus very systems level programming, moving on to more high level languages like C# and Java and other things. 3:34 But over time what I've realized is every every two to three years we were seeing a shift whether it's, you know, in the in terms of improved high level systems and customers themselves adopting a lot of things on their end and forcing vendors to, you know, keep upskilling themselves to provide, you know, better services. 3:57 So all I've always seen that the industry drives all product innovation, customers drive product innovation. 4:03 So that's something that I learned really early on. 4:06 And moving into the support organization eventually allowed me to also see the side of how customers expect support from these vendors. 4:15 So All in all, over time, you know, being part of companies like TCS in India, Tata Consultancy, moving to companies like Subex that's purely focused on telecom application development, then moving to Hortonworks, Hadoop, the big data revolution got the opportunity to even, you know, spend some time authoring a book around it. 4:36 There was, it's been a great right so far. 4:40 And now in data bricks, it's bringing all that experience together, you know, right from the day of coding a small robot to solve a maze to using AI to solve customer problems has been amazing. 4:52 So I, I, I feel that we are in a very, very great phase of customer support timeline. 5:00 Very true, very true. 5:02 Sarah, would you like to take your perspective on the question? 5:06 Yeah, I'm really interested in, in Rohit's comments because we're really both ends of the spectrum, right. 5:11 The, the experience that I have is kind of front of house, you know, with the direct customer engagement through BPO and Rohit, you're really in the, the machine room at the back, right, kind of driving the efficiencies. 5:23 I think in, you know, I've, I've been with Concentrix for nearly 20 years. 5:27 And I think that the biggest change that I have seen is that when I started my career, everything was about having enough people to manage the customer demand, right? 5:36 And it was a very easy calculation to say number of calls times time taken equals the number of people that you need, right? 5:43 And it meant that for our people, some of our jobs were really quite dull, right? 5:49 It was very repetitive. 5:51 It was very hard to keep people engaged. 5:53 It wasn't an aspirational career and for people, so as leaders that was quite tough. 5:59 But over time, you know, with the development of technology and with the input of automation, the real acceleration of that now, you know, with with the growth of bots and with the opportunity and AI, we have seen that our jobs have become so much more interesting. 6:15 A lot of the repetitive tasks and you know, a lot of those process driven steps that we would have dealt with with a human can now be dealt with much more efficiently. 6:25 Buy a machine. 6:26 And what that means for our people is that their jobs are actually a whole bunch more interesting because they're dealing with really complex customer demand. 6:36 They're they're dealing with people who have exhausted all possible opportunities for finding answers to their question or finding the right product for them. 6:43 And, and so the skill level of the people that work for us now is just a world away from the skill level of the people who worked with us 20 years ago. 6:53 And I think that's great for the industry. 6:55 You know, it really helps us from a, a motivational point of view because it really gives people that interest in their job when they come in every day and, you know, something, something that makes the brain tick and keeps people going. 7:09 So, you know, for me, the the BPO industry just gets more exciting and, you know, with every new development that comes along, Yeah, You know, it doesn't matter whether I'm talking to a BPO leader, Technical Support leader, field service leader, customer support, customer service, all sorts of flavours, right. 7:31 I'm hearing the same thing that the people's jobs are changing considerably. 7:36 One of the interesting perspectives for both of you is we do AI agent master class where people from all levels, mostly a agent master class so far has been executives so far. 7:49 And Carrier, we do a career roundtable where we have people from all levels coming in, right. 7:55 But the interesting thing we noticed is everybody, including the executive level are now saying that the jobs are more around coding and understanding the code, understanding more about software, understanding, you know, bringing in new skill sets and stuff into the mix. 8:15 And Rohit, you're not the only engine, you know, executive that I've seen who have started as an engineer, software engineer and who's, you know, leading support, right? 8:25 So there's a lot of people that I'm seeing that are coming in that way. 8:29 And do you see that trend also? 8:31 That's question number one. 8:32 That's the easiest part. 8:33 The second thing is, how are you preparing yourself for that change? 8:38 Yeah, I mean, this this whole revolution of AI agents and agency in general is, is going in a direction where everyone wants to optimize. 8:49 They they all want, you know, how can we save, save people save, you know, improve efficiency, improve productivity. 8:58 So save in any, any factor like whether time, whether it's money, it's always about how we can optimize. 9:04 So we are seeing that shift for sure in every, every step of the way. 9:08 I mean from a very simple pull request into, into a code, you want to automate the generation of the documentation of the pull request. 9:17 It's, it's as simple as, you know, a small change is going to create a big impact over time. 9:22 So at every possible opportunity that we we try to optimize, we are trying to embed things like AI or systems or tools that actually facilitate in that. 9:35 So to build out all this, there is a lot of development and coding that happens, but we are also leveraging AI to do that development and coding. 9:42 So we're seeing a lot of influence like systems like Cursor, you know, GitHub Copilot being like used day in day out to actually build out these tools to facilitate every step of the way. 9:55 And that's that's definitely happening. 9:58 I mean, every, every leader in every org is expecting, you know, that shift to happen. 10:03 That's correct, Rohit, it's very true. 10:05 You know, we are not going to escape AI. 10:07 It's going to happen especially, you know, I think we are all in that realm. 10:12 But I'm trying to think from your perspective of decades of experience, like what is it you are doing to prepare yourself, right? 10:19 So for example, we have customers with whom they want to, they don't, you know, just going and logging, bringing out the logs takes like 10-15 minutes. 10:29 We're automating that, right? 10:30 So that's why we are a full service ecosystem. 10:33 So everything from entitlement to bringing logs, to processing logs to even bringing down manuals from the various manufacturers, all of that is getting automated. 10:46 But how can I as a, as support executor, make myself ready for this change? 10:53 I think being bringing awareness, you know, you should have some kind of evangelism happening within your team. 10:59 You need at least like I always give this example of having one engineer dedicated to be an evangelist, focusing on trying to bring the latest and greatest break things like, you know, do lots of PO CS everything is not going to be a success. 11:12 So being ahead of the curve is key. 11:15 Things are changing day in day out, doing a lot of experiments internally, Many of those experiments are not going to be successful, but there's going to be a lot of learning in each of these experiments. 11:26 So something that we do internally is we, we try to, you know, keep ourselves aware of what's going to happen next. 11:34 And you know, you know, if, if you, for example, MCP servers are something that's, you know, picking up as, as, as something in the industry, it's, it's, if you really breakdown, it's not rocket science. 11:44 It's very, it's, it's a protocol. 11:45 It can be understood, but being ahead of the curve and understanding what in our ecosystem can really fit into that paradigm and how can we leverage that. 11:55 So being that evangelist, kind of having that evangelist kind of outlook is key. 12:02 Experimenting is key. 12:04 Letting things fail is absolutely OK. 12:07 You're going to learn a lot. 12:08 So that's something that we typically do and we are looking at it, you know, from the customer's perspective and from the support engineer's perspective, not just, you know, 1 angle. 12:18 What can we do to even avoid the origination of a support ticket? 12:22 What can we do from that point, right? 12:25 I always say no ticket, right? 12:26 So the ticket itself is a flawed concept. 12:29 If there was a customer sitting with us and they hear, they are hearing that it's ticket 1234 and they're like, what is it? 12:35 Does this all they refer to us? 12:37 So anyway, agreed Sarah, your perspective on it, please. 12:42 Yeah. 12:42 So I think two sides, 2 answers to that question. 12:45 So the first one externally when we're positioning ourselves, you know, to clients and talking to clients about it, Rohit, you will love this message. 12:53 But our our first conversation is data, right? 12:55 So if you do not have structured architecture around your data, if you do not have clarity on, on what you're looking for, you will not get a good result. 13:03 So, you know, we're still in a world of rubbish in rubbish out Gen. 13:07 AI will not fix that necessarily for you. 13:09 So you know that that is, but that is our clear message. 13:12 Any Gen. 13:13 AI transition strategy needs to start from from your data architecture internally in terms of how I prepare myself and how I'm helping my team prepare myself. 13:23 Is is exactly as Rohit says. 13:25 Just just use it. 13:26 Start practicing, develop use cases, you know, understand how can I use this in my day-to-day. 13:32 That then helps me understand where it's beneficial for others. 13:35 So you know, things as simple as using, we have an internal AI platform, but using that to write an e-mail for me saves me so much time in my day. 13:44 Using it to write reports or generate insight for me saves so much time in my day. 13:48 And getting my team to think about what tasks do you do that are repetitive or are repeating and then can we get AI to replace that? 13:58 So quality checks, quality audits, anything that is assessment based that we can use our AI platforms for. 14:04 And we have forums, evangelical forums like you talked about Rohit, where we share, you know, as a team and then as a function. 14:13 Where have you used IX Hello, this week to benefit? 14:17 What did it save you? 14:18 How much time did it save you or what was the quality increase you got from using this platform? 14:24 And it just takes, you know, somebody to say, well, I used it to assess all of our coaching output and it gives me this result for somebody else to then think, oh, well, that would be relevant in my business if I adapted it in this way. 14:36 And then ideas grow and develop and some work, some don't. 14:39 But like you say, you always learn. 14:42 So I think enabling the conversation internally, having people constantly try and then sharing the use cases is really how we're driving the conversation internally, which helps us then drive the conversation externally. 14:58 Yeah. 14:59 One thing that Rohit mentioned is having somebody as an evangelist and within the team is, you know, I was recently talking to another service leader whose team was thinking they had change management issues on AI. 15:16 And Sarah, from your perspective, do you have other tools in your belt like having a person as an evangelist? 15:25 Both of you can answer this, right? 15:26 But Sarah, we can start with you. 15:29 What is it that you do to bring that change management in so people are willing to try? 15:37 I think what has worked for us is not pushing it as an enforcement. 15:44 So you must do. 15:45 This is not how we do business. 15:47 It's more bringing, bringing out the stories of look how this helped this person, you know, just by typing this in, they were able to get this result which saved them this much time in their day. 15:59 There is a fear factor associated with. 16:01 I don't know what that is. 16:02 I don't know how it works. 16:04 I don't know what to use it for. 16:07 So to help those people start to use the tools that are there, sharing how other people have found them useful has helped. 16:16 We've also developed a suite of smart assistants. 16:19 So you know, we've we've developed some already ready platforms and tools that people can just go in and they're pre pre loaded with commands that that help people. 16:30 But I think sharing the use cases where people can go off in their own time and give it a go and start to become more familiar with the product. 16:40 So finding those early adopters, because there are, there are people in every team who just always want to be the first one to use, the first one to learn and they get excited about technology. 16:51 And there are always the people who are, Oh no, not for me. 16:54 I like the way things always have been. 16:55 I'll just carry on. 16:57 So using the early adopters to share the use cases with those people who are more nervous really helps us gradually roll out the full capability and get everybody to the point where they're comfortable and becoming evangelists for the the platform. 17:14 So, you know, I think that that's that's the sort of approach that that multiplies and really starts to avalanche in terms of impact because you start with maybe 10 people who are really at it and really love it. 17:27 And then all of a sudden they have an impact on 100 people who have an impact on 10,000 people who have an impact on 100,000 people. 17:34 And you know, that that's it's kind of that cascade type sharing of information and sharing of case studies that that really helps our teams understand how AI can improve their day in work. 17:50 That's excellent. 17:50 That's very much like the cascade effect, which is the start up story, right. 17:54 So we are also looking for early adopters and sharing their their gains and their expertise into everybody else to say, hey, you know, this is what can be done and show them how it can be done. 18:06 So everybody else comes in. 18:09 Anything else you want to add, Rohit, outside of what you had mentioned? 18:12 Yeah, I think the one of the things that I'll actually give a shout out to my company as well. 18:18 At Databricks, there is this culture of, you know, you have all access to all these different tools. 18:23 The platform itself is, is an AI platform. 18:27 At Databricks, the product that we give our customers is something that we consume internally to build a lot of AI stuff, AI tools and everything is accessible to all folks within the company. 18:37 You know, whoever wants to get access to a language model, query the language model, build a tool. 18:41 The culture itself is such that you know, so many seeds and you're going to see something come up from somewhere and you know, bring it all together and try to build something that's more uniform to everyone's access. 18:53 It reminds me of a of a very similar story of, you know, Apple's Co founder Steve Wozniak. 19:00 You know, when he was growing up, his father would leave around capacitors and transistors around him and he would pick them and try to build something. 19:06 And eventually that what that's what motivated him to build the first Apple computer. 19:11 It's, it's a very similar story. 19:13 Like we have access to so many different tools. 19:15 We have the culture of sharing what we build. 19:18 We have a distribution list where we keep, you know, pumping out whatever we, whatever we build, we share it if it picks somebody's interest. 19:25 Even we have the, the CEO of the company, you know, commenting on certain of the certain, certain contributions. 19:30 So I think that culture also matters. 19:33 It's very difficult for, you know, small group to bring a big change if the company itself is providing that culture. 19:39 I think that makes a big, big difference. 19:41 Yeah, You know, we are also, we talked about the use cases along this entire thing. 19:48 So that's excellent. 19:50 You are, you know, the culture of the company and the culture that the company sets out. 19:56 So there is a recent Shopify memo that has been going around. 20:00 Where the culture is set for what we need to do with the AI and everybody else is following through. 20:06 That's amazing. 20:08 And we are actually, even as a company, we, I love talking to, you know, support executives and CI OS who have actually played around with AI. 20:20 Because when they have played around with AI and they have done those PO CS that you both have been talking about, they have a very good idea about what use cases are their priority. 20:31 And it come and they exactly know what kind of issues they will face and what are the, you know, how to evaluate a tool vendor too. 20:43 And that it is, I think, very, very, very effective. 20:47 So because you're not teaching them from the basics, but you're actually going and adding in to their learning. 20:56 So that's excellent. 20:58 We do have, you know, Sara, you talked about measuring efficiency, saying hey, the same time for this person and how do you take that expertise and how do you bring everybody up to speed, right? 21:12 And that is a way to measure efficiency. 21:15 If there is any other ways that you are thinking about efficiency, which is, you know, before and after how much time and how much time, if that's the standard, if there is anything else, please feel free to jump in. 21:26 Otherwise, we can go into the next question. 21:31 Yeah, well, I mean, I think it, it depends on the scale, but you know, for internally we measure based on simplification, based on effectiveness and based on efficiency. 21:40 And there's also a qualitative assessment, right, Because some of our AI tools are looking at, well, how good is the output, How good were our coaching forms, our coaching evaluations, for example. 21:50 And we can load what our expectations are and compare the work that our team leaders are doing and to that expectation. 21:58 So that gives us an automated quality report that would have taking a whole bunch of people and a whole bunch of teams to do previously. 22:04 But you know, we can load that data into the tool and it will give us that qualitative feedback. 22:09 So I think there are quantitative measures which are around efficiency, cost reduction and headcount and so on and time saving, all of those sorts of things. 22:19 But there are also qualitative benefits to be had by ways of, you know, measuring consistency measuring and how high quality our our outputs are. 22:28 So there's, you know, I think for me, there's the the two lenses through which we would look at our output from an AI perspective. 22:38 Yeah, consistency is a key and people tend to not, you know, remember that. 22:45 So I'm glad you mentioned it because consistency comes in two forms. 22:49 One is, am I getting the same result every time I check because that's when I can make actions? 22:54 That's one. 22:54 Second is consistency that I've also heard is if Sarah is in Belfast and Kay is in California and Rohit is in North Carolina, can they be consistent in their own actions irrespective of where they are? 23:11 Right. 23:11 So, and that is also a consistency that can be achieved with AI. 23:16 So I'm glad, very glad that you brought that in along with quality. 23:21 Rohit, anything else you want to add to what was mentioned? 23:25 I think it's a big plus one to what Sarah mentioned. 23:27 The only other thing that I could think of is the evaluation set, right? 23:31 This whole concept of how do we evaluate these new systems, these new genea systems, we are talking about building in determinism on top of a non deterministic system. 23:43 The large language models generally generally are known to be highly non deterministic and we are trying to build a layer on top of it to ensure that that we we get deterministic output. 23:53 So the key aspect of that is building an evaluation set for every project, every kind of POC that you're trying to build. 24:03 Am I really aligning to the evaluation I set out to do and on my evaluation sets, really clearing that's that's key. 24:09 And I think probably also to ask the question at every step of the way, is AI really required here, right? 24:18 Because we, we, we, we tend to pick up the new thing that's coming in and try to find, OK, everything is a, you know, I have a hammer, like, let me find a nail and everything is a nail, right? 24:28 So it's, it's very important for us to debate with ourselves to ensure that is AI really needed here? 24:34 Or can this be just automated by a simple traditional way of automation? 24:39 And I think those, those are key things people leaders should definitely remember. 24:45 Well said, very well said. 24:46 And you know, I think the deterministic system, that's a completely separate technical topic and we can talk for hours on it, which is why I always say that is just stable stakes. 24:59 So, so having said that, you know, we're finding all these efficiencies all throughout the organization, all throughout support everything. 25:09 And one of the things, you know, I've never seen that to be a issue so far because support organization, service organizations are so stretched so thin. 25:19 But people always question saying, hey, you know, what do we do with people when there is this additional capacity, right. 25:26 So your perspective on it would be great. 25:29 And Roger, if we can start with you. 25:31 Yeah, absolutely. 25:32 I think just like any other technology, even Jenny is going through an infancy stage, right? 25:39 So you need some guide. 25:41 It's like a child that you're growing along with you. 25:44 So it's first going to augment your work. 25:46 It's not going to replace your work. 25:48 So during the augmentation phase, there is a lot of opportunity for our existing manpower to upskill themselves to ensure that the AI is all sub skilled. 25:56 Accordingly, like Sarah mentioned, data is key. 25:59 I mean, if you don't have the right data, no matter how sophisticated your agent, AI agent is, it's going to give you, you know, garbage results if the garbage data exists. 26:10 So it's very important for these existing engineers, existing folks, existing personnel to work alongside with AI to make AI do some of their mundane tasks, automate some of their routine tasks so that they can focus on tasks that require creativity, high skill involvement domain, the ever changing domain importance, right? 26:34 So your product is constantly evolving and the AI is going to take some time to catch up to it to get, I'm getting complex. 26:41 Yes, absolutely. 26:42 And and the demands are also increasing. 26:44 So let's say you now have AI agents working for you. 26:47 The expectation from customers are also going to say, hey, now you have that you should be faster in your responses. 26:52 So you know what, what is now stopping you? 26:55 So there's a lot of opportunity for the for engineers to upskill themselves from where they were and, you know, offload the, the mundane, the time task, time taking tasks to systems like AI and over time become specialists in their areas. 27:11 I think there are so many avenues. 27:14 I just feel that it's, it's a revolution just like how things start improving from people doing manual work with the Internet coming on, you know, people said they don't, you know, Internet is going to take over. 27:25 Of course it took over, but it took over alongside a highly skilled set of engineers who upskill themselves to utilize the the Internet as it should be. 27:35 And I'm, I'm going to I'm, I'm very positive that the next set of engineers that are going to come up or grow into are going to be highly skilled engineers that are going to team AI to use it to the best possible way, just like how we see the Internet being used today. 27:52 Sarah, Yeah, very, very similar. 27:55 You know, I think having been in this industry for 20 years, you know, we started with telephone calls. 28:00 And when e-mail came along, everybody said, oh, nobody will need a phone because we've got e-mail now. 28:05 And then when messaging came along, everybody said, oh, we'll not need e-mail or phone anymore because we've got messaging and we still have phones and we still have e-mail and we still have messaging. 28:14 So now we have an additional capability and I think every through all of those evolutions, we've seen the role of, of our frontline team become more and more advanced to, you know, exactly as you said, the skills have increased and people have had to learn more. 28:31 We've had to teach them more, they've had to develop different skill sets. 28:34 And I think that this is just, we're still on that continuum. 28:37 So, you know, we, we have time to develop people's capability in terms of what are what are the requirements now to keep our customers satisfied given the world of AI. 28:49 So it may be we need to respond quicker. 28:51 It may be that we don't have different methods of accessing a human contact if that's what's required. 28:56 And they're yeah. 28:57 So I think it's the upscaling of our staff and understanding where, where do we fit in and where does AI augment and improve what we're doing and what does that leave us that we need to do as the, the human interface behind support. 29:14 So, you know, I, I think it's, it's opportunity for people to learn and grow. 29:19 And I think it's exciting. 29:22 It is exciting. 29:24 So if you're just going to add one more aspect, like probably usually gets unnoticed is how quickly academia is responding to this change. 29:32 If you look at all the things that are happening in colleges and courses and stuff, they're already implementing so many of these newer tech technology to be to part be part of the curriculum. 29:42 So the next work, you know, the workforce that comes out and comes out and graduates, you're going to see them already at a level where you know, the highly skilled able to use these tech to the best of its possibility, being extremely enterprising and building out newer tech along with this. 29:59 So I think we are at a phase and are, you know, very lucky to be in this generation where, you know, Internet AI, all of them are really flourishing and academia is actually responding it to it very, very quickly. 30:13 So I'm very bullish. 30:15 Yeah, that actually the support needs for this generation will be different to the support needs for me because my reaction is I want to pick up a phone and talk to somebody. 30:24 My 16 and 13 year old children do not have that response whatsoever. 30:28 You know, so how consumers respond to, you know, kind of how they engage with that technology will will drive us to to how the service industry then needs to respond. 30:39 Yeah, so this is awesome. 30:42 I will, I think it's a perfect way to end in this bullish and optimistic tone that you both mentioned for the how the next generation is getting prepared, how the existing people are getting prepared and how we are all marching towards yet another change where change is the constant. 30:58 So, Rohit, Sarah, thank you both very much for your time that you took to share your experience, your background to the rest of the service leaders and the rest of the service and the support community, thank you. 31:10 Awesome. 31:11 Thanks for having us. 31:12 Really appreciate it. 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Learn how Noelle Jones-Ramzy advanced in tech leadership using entrepreneurial thinking, critical skills, and AI-driven support strategies—success without a degree --- Transcription Leadership, Growth, and Success Without a Degree A Conversation with Noelle Jones Ranzy | Transcription Welcome to the experience dialogue. In these interactions, we pick a hot topic that doesn't really have a straightforward answer. We then bring in speakers who've been there, seen this, but have approached this in very different ways. This is a space for healthy disagreements and discussions, but in a very respectful way. Just by the nature of how we have conceived this, you will see passionate voices of opinions, having a dialogue, and thereby even interrupting each other or finishing each other's sentences. At the end of the dialogue, I just want to make sure our audience leave with valuable insights and approaches that you can take it to your workplace. And of course, continue the discourse in social media channels. What I wanted to have is there is so many other events and stuff that we will be having, and we will be actually putting that down in the comments section so that you can be engaged in. And welcome to our guest, Noelle. Noelle, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Noelle, a brief introduction of yourself would be awesome, both from a professional standpoint and a personal standpoint. Well, my name is Noelle Jones-Ramsey, and I am currently living in the East Bay Area by way of Arizona. I spent 20 years in Arizona. Before that, I spent 20 years in Utah. I like the sunshine. So the relationship brought me to California, which I love very much. And I have been in the corporate leadership space for probably 20 years now. I guess it's 2025, so about 20 years. And I am so excited to be able to just meet people like yourself that have the experience and the connections and the insights of the industry that I'm a part of and actually aspire to have the curiosity and aspire to be a part of. So I'm really looking forward to our discussion today. Yeah. Noelle, what's your job role right now? I currently work for a SaaS company as a director of customer support. Excellent. So you're always talking to customers. And I noticed that you pulled in, you know, in one of the previous interviews, you talked about hiring people and what kind of leader you want to be. And you mentioned, you know, you would like to just take the ball, hire people who like to take the ball and just run with it and come up with an entrepreneurial spirit, right? So what does it mean by entrepreneurial? You know, there are so many different backgrounds and levels of experience that I get to talk to when I'm hiring for a role, specifically leadership roles, just because of the position that I'm in. And I really look for people who talk about, you know, I like to ask things about ambiguity and how, how you, how scrappy are you when you don't have the resources or the support that you need to be successful? And when I hear things like, well, I just go to my leader and I tell them that I need help, which is fine. That's what your leader is for. But also how creative are you in those roles? What, what in your entrepreneurial mind comes up to say, if this was my business, this is how I would solve this problem. And those are really things that I, that I look for. I never stayed in my lane, which is why I think I've gotten to the role that I've gotten. And I love it when people just say, hey, I have an idea and it's, it's, it's somewhere completely different from support. Do you mind if I float this by, by you? And I get so excited about people like that. Yeah. And in a way, support itself is such a very creative role because you are never going to face the same situation because of the human element you are dealing with. So every time you're trying to be creative to address different things for the different personalities, even if it is the same kind of technical issue. So I totally get that. And what you're also talking about is that creative thinking that people have to have and critical thinking, I should say, critical thinking that people have to have. So I love that. And another thing that was very interesting for you to have as a guest here is normally in the Bay Area, especially I see people constantly, the Stanford, Google crowd, et cetera. But here you are, you have actually been a very successful executive after getting a GED. And right now you have enrolled in college and you are making honor rolls while you are preparing to weddings. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about, you know, how did you get here with the GED and then now your journey? I think it's two different questions, but yeah. Yeah. You know, thank you for the acknowledgement and the reminder that I should be going gray and a little nervous right now. You know, I got my GED in 2016 and I was already in a leadership role. I was a manager, a site manager for a contact center. And I wanted to go to Grainger, which is a Fortune 500 company, been around for almost a hundred years. And they have this great reputation and they headhunted me. But I needed some kind of, you know, at least a high school diploma. So as an adult, I was like, oh man, I haven't been in school for so long. And I did, I just, I went, I studied, I got my GED within 30 days and I got hired on at Grainger. And that's when I really thought, you know, I, if people are seeking me out, I could probably go really, really far in my career if I actually had, you know, classical education. But I kept being promoted and I remained successful. And I thought, I don't even, I don't need a degree. And I had these amazing mentors along the way in different places, the VPs and SVPs and one CEO that has amazing TED talk that I watch probably once a month on YouTube. And I remember them saying, you really don't need that degree, but I'll be 50 this year. And it's something, thank you. I appreciate that. It's something that I said to myself, you know what, this is just something that I want to do for me. I've made it to my direct role. You know, hopefully the next stop is, is senior director and VP, and maybe the sky's the limit. But I would feel more accomplished and I would feel better if I got a degree. And my intention is to go all the way, hey, I would love to have a PhD, even if I'm 60 by the time I get it. But in April of 2026, I will have my bachelor's in industrial organizational psychology. So I'm pretty excited about that. Yay, that's wonderful. So just so you know, I have a very good friend. I hope she's watching this, vice president of a very large tech company. She quit her job and went to do pre-med credentials when she was 56. So and then she wants to do medicine. And she has been like me in the tech career for over 30 years. So, you know, anything is possible. It's just a number. So when you're proving that, so that's really awesome. It's a little tough question, but one of the things that you mentioned in terms of your career and differences across the various industries that you have played in, you mentioned that tech has its nuances, right? And because you're here, you are as a person who says, I don't have to be the best person in the room and always bring in the tech person who can talk about tech while you are taking care of that executive presence. But tech always prefers people showing that expertise, number one. Number two, tech also prefers one being technical. So the question is, what did you mean by nuances? That's one. Second is, are you, you know, is that insecurity? Is that imposter syndrome? What is it that makes you think that you're not technical enough? Reality. So I'll say this. I have had, I have felt as a woman of color specifically, you know, living in primarily very conservative states, Utah and Arizona, navigating the corporate world, which is predominantly run by, you know, white men, right? So I have had to become very savvy and have a quiet confidence about myself. Now, obviously, I'm not your conventional suit. You know, you see that I have tattoos and I'm very, very authentically myself when I show up in these spaces. So I have had to learn whether the industry, you know, I've been in water, supply chain, healthcare, whatever industry it is, I have to build relationships. And that is what, that is my superpower. And that's what makes me a good leader is my ability to build relationships. Therefore, I have mentors. I have people that take an interest in me because they decide what they're, there's, there's something there. And I've been fortunate enough to have those people around me to say, I'm going to give you this opportunity. In tech, they do ask you to have, you know, SQL, Agile, you know, have this certificate, have that certificate. And I just wandered my happy self into tech and just thought, I'm just going to show you guys how to do this stuff. And I have, you know, my technical ability is have you turn it off and turn it back on again, right? And that's why, you know, like you mentioned, I had mentioned before, I hire, I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I do hire people. So while I have battled with imposter syndrome in the past, the fact is I just do not feel that I am technically enough. I'm just technically enough to be dangerous or to carry on a conversation or to be customer facing and inspire confidence and, you know, create that space for, hey, you tell me what you need, tell me what you want, and I'll be able to make it happen for you. But I'm not going to do it. So the way I've navigated the tech space is just by being a very, very strong leader. And I can lead, you know, I've led individual contributors. I now have been a leader of leaders for the past 10 years. And if I can inspire them to do things that I need them to do and hire appropriately, I remain successful. And that's how I've been able to grow in my career. Yeah, so one of the first advices that I got as a manager, this was in the early 2000s, is find somebody else who can do your job better. So you will always find something better to do. That is the best advice that I've gotten. So what you're saying totally resonates with me. But I'm still wondering, how did you navigate that tech career? And is there any advice that you would give for others? When there's so much expectation on tech? Yeah, so I remain curious, as curious as I possibly can be. I dig into cases. I do a lot of, you know, observations. I look at the workflows. I want to see what my people are doing so that I can better understand. And that's what gains me a little credibility, right? So as a leader, if you're a strong leader, you can go into any space. But you might have that respect. But do you have the credibility of, well, does she really know what she's talking about? So coming in green into a tech space, first, my focus was the people. And then once I jumped in with both feet, it really was, let me just tag along. Let me just shadow. Let me just ask questions. And I went to sales. And I went to engineers. And I went to all of my account managers and my customer success teams. And I just observed. And it's a really kind of crude or rudimentary way to be introduced to the tech space. But that is really what gave me a leg up. And right now, our company is providing certifications. And I'm raising my hand. Put me in coach. Because I think with kind of the hands-on and the observation and now the technical testing and assessment piece, I think I'll be in a much better state. You should actually write a blog. I would love to see you write a blog about, here are the things that I learned when I moved to the tech industry. And the lingos and the acronyms and everything that we try and that no other industry thrives in. So yeah. The last question. There are so many mentors who came for you when you talked about them and how they kind of came in at the right step during your career and enable you to rise up or learn or be your sponsor or whatever, right? So what would you do back for the community to be a mentor? Oh, you know, it's something that I do now. Previous Next

Learn how to attract and hire diverse talent with insights from industry experts and research on evolving employee expectations, inclusive job descriptions, and best practices for building a diverse workforce. How to Attract and Hire Diverse Talent | Transcription Kay - An introduction to our experience dialog here, in these interactions. We just picked a HotTopic.We don't have a straightforward answer and then we bring in speakers. So being there seeing this product, I broached it in very different ways. This is a space for healthy, disagreements and discussions, but in a very respectful way, just by the nature of how we have conceived this, we will see passionate voices of opinions from friends. Having a dialogue and thereby even interrupting each of their finishing. At the end of this, we want our audience to leave with approaches that you can try in the workplace and we continue the dialogue in our slank and Linkedin channels. There are three different slack channels and around eleven. Different LinkedIn groups where the questions are coming in. So as we start with it, we will start with some pride questions, but feel free to have the interactions and we'll bring those questions in and make that or comments and make that. As part of the discussion, I want to introduce us to the topic for today. Teams want to encourage diversity in all forms, including socioeconomic education, thinking, gender, race, age, and culture. The topic is very large. And with the brake Tobias team this year with the international women's day, we planned a three part series and the part that we are discussing is how to attract and hire diverse talent. Attracting and hiring diverse talent entails everything from the job description. That caters to diverse candidates. By the interviewers, the interviewing Styles, communication culture of the company onboarding, and so forth. It is my honor and privilege to announce the speakers here today. David is the chairman and president of women and technology international and they are a Global organization. They founded in 1989, and they have around 160,000 members and 300 plus corporate partners,87 percent female,and32%in leadership positions, the interesting thing, That I learned recently is participated in a glass door, sealing research in1995 that they are redoing as a 2.0, research coming up and we would be. It would be wonderful to hear a lot of insights from that research today. The other speaker we have is HarryConnick. Arica is the spp of the executive programs at witty and she's also a techie. So she has written a book for cybersecurity for project managers, she has both corporate and nonprofit experience and it will be honored to have her as a leader. But the few questions today as we are talking about the research and as we are bringing up all of these discussions, we may pop in a slide or two here but other than that it's going to be pretty much a dialogue. You could have called David pleasure, welcome. Yeah, thank you. Let me start with the first question. Why? Why is it important to even have diversity? And what benefits does it bring to the organization? David - Sure. Look, I think there's a lot of data out there. Some of which will have and I'll share a little bit more about the kernel research, we're doing, and let me go back, one of the Inspirations of witty starting back in the 80s and the mid-80s one of our big clients wasHP Labs over up in your neck of the woods. And we worked with their technology Group. And when you'd walk through the halls of labs, they have it. All these focus groups focus group rooms have doctors and lawyers. People of different genders, ethnicities, and colors. All Just looking at how technology can improve their lives and that's really when they did their work looking 10 years out on their technology. Roadmaps that reallybecametheinspirationforwitty once we decided to start it in 1989. So there's just and there's unlimited Data about just how different opinions and how do you know? Different people? Use technology differently, right? So I think it's Money Employee Engagement and serving the people. Niharika - that's great. David and I'll start with I kind of don't like to date myself. But 25 years ago, when I started my career, I was the only woman in a switchboard manufacturing plant that was way back in l&t, India, and kind of, I thought what is it? I mean, is it really kind of rocket science why it's designed by their women, not there and then I came to the U.S. in the u.s. I was managing infrastructure projects and they're also I felt myself being the Only Woman at the table and when I look back, I see that there had been diverse diversity at Time. Maybe the things that were designed would have been different because ultimately our business users are not just men. They are diverse people of all colors, races, and gender, and whatever we are doing, in terms of our business and products has to cater to all our users. Kay - I would love for you to bring in some of the topics that you have seen in the research process and witty and we can continue the conversation that way we have questions about teaching, but let's continue with the topics that you guys have researched and have a lot of data to substantiate with police. Niharika - Sure, it sounds good. So, David, you talked about witty starting in 1989, if you could share with the audience, how did we start? And where did it come from? David - Sure. So, one of the things that prompted the start of witi and my mom and I had a company called Criterion research that I started working with her in, in 1987. And what we did with Criterion research, we worked with Silicon Valley companies, and then the few companies down in, l.a. identifying people with core competencies in different areas of tech. And then we give them a report and they'd hire them from their companies. That type thing in 89, there was an article that came out of their coin, the term glass ceiling. And at the time, the conversation was about women approaching 50% of the workforce but still only four to five percent in upper management positions. So the first President Bush and then shortly thereafter, Wonder President Clinton is what our Administration started to study about. out to look at this we wanted what my mom's idea was she had been, I was very young at the time, but she was in, more interfacing with our It's that we're sharing just some of the challenges they were having and these were amazing women that were PhDs in physics mathematics those types of things. They weren't necessarily getting upset and angry about it. Groups were protesting and they had every right to do that, but they were just more disappointed because the more Junior people would go golf with the director and then they would get overlooked. So we wanted to start with witty, as people are just starting to use email and it's like how can we create this network? That's very proactive. Business Centric and supportive to help our members get any connection resource piece of information. They need to get to the next level, how we can include men in the conversation because we want them and many of them. And most of them were holding the executive roles so we wanted them to have an open book and see our amazing community. And then on the company side, just educate. Why is this beneficial to the business? Not just to check a box or try to look good or that type of thing and that's how we evolved back in 89. Things have changed a little bit since then Kay - David, it would be wonderful to hear about the glass ceiling research in itself. Could you just speak a little bit about it before? , the hurricane goes too deep into it. David - Yeah, definitely. And I had, that time in 89 I landed this company Borland that's over in Scotts Valley as a client and worked with them to grow bored with Philippe to grow Borland. Witty grew, Grassroots. And then in 1995, we had our first women in technology conference and everybody said, oh, you'll get a couple we had 2,500 of hundred people, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, so, is exciting and that word started about what we were doing, we had then been contacted by a woman named Renee Redwood and who was the executive director of the glass ceiling commission. And then you know, it's and she was, she was she had headed up this four-year research project. So they came to us and said, hey, could you help share this information with technology companies and a lot of the research had to do with, what are some of the systemic issues that are preventing women and underrepresented minorities from getting to the next level in all companies. And what can they do to not lose this opportunity? Because again, all this stuff is about the growth of the business company engagement making the shareholders happy. So we had Renee and our second conference. If you go into the conference archives on our site and think there's even a If she talked, we had, I think 40 companies in Silicon Valley, listened to technology companies, listened to the research. So, that's how we initially got involved in it. So, yeah, that's why, why 2.0, and why now, sure. So, what we were looking at is, you know, all of us have been affected by the pandemic and I think just leaving up to the pandemic. You know, we just saw a lot of Changes our members would constantly give us feedback about challenges. They were continuing to just get fed up when they got to certain levels and companies and left. And then we had talked about one of our first virtual conferences in 2020 because of the pandemic and Renee was on a panel talking about some of the things that she had implemented. Because after leaving the glass ceiling commission. She just wanted to do Consulting and was brought into companies that needed support in these areas. Now, a lot of times, the two big ones that I will talk about were Texaco and Coca-Cola. There were lawsuits racial and gender discrimination lawsuits. That prompted them to bring Renee and to look at the organization and what they were doing, she had been brought in. There's a guy named Cyrus Meter. Who's also famous for putting the Rooney Rule into the NFL and Renee was brought in, and implemented? Many of them think about the learnings from the glass ceiling report and things she had learned since and worked with the companies to shift their environments. And now we've got six or seven years of data. Texaco Coca-Cola prophets through the roof. These are staying, they're engaged stockholders are happy and David, is that segues into the question, which we are getting is whom all participated in this research. So yeah and that's so anyways. Okay, that's why I said well let's update the glass ceiling report and we're going to call a glass ceiling report 2.0. We're not 100% sure. That'll be the name that comes out right now. The pandemic I think what we've seen over the last three years now is that everything's a fast-forwarded digital transformation. How we're dealing and serving our customers is so different from how we're all working. So we thought It would be a great opportunity. Now to push this forward, take a lot of the good things and promote that from the first glass ceiling report and update. So we did. So we had about 1,000 people fill out this hour-long survey so far. We're doing many interviews, it's going to be based on qualitative and quantitative research. Niharika - Yeah, so we're getting some exciting information that I think is going to make it a better place for everybody. David - Great. Yeah. So that answers that question in the chat that it was our members and we also reached out to some leaders of the organizations to get insights. Yes, right. So I take, yeah. And Intel's one of our lead Partners on that. So they had about 200 about 20% of the people were Intel and then the rest of them were we're qualified witty members, that worked at larger organizations, either in technology companies or technology organizations within tech companies. Yeah, and I'll add here is that one of the insights they got is that 31 percent of the respondents changed their jobs last year, the great resignation here. Great. Niharika - So David we talked about that. It is so important to have diversity, but something is missing. Even if we are talking about diversity, people want to attract diverse talent, but hiring is not diverse. As we have spoken to our members, they say that they go, they apply but they are not getting a response. So what are the challenges of hiring? Managers and candidates are facing now. David - Sure. And I can speak to where I'm coming from and what I hear and speak to a lot of people every week but just being in the search business for many years kind of before starting witi, I think it's there's wait, there's a lot of automation. I think that makes it easier for certain roles and these 80s systems and just the overwhelming of just overwhelming. I think for many of the companies I think right now joining communities tail. you've created either with several other buildings. Those relationships are just key. So I'd say, if you're a person looking for your next opportunity or if you're a company that wants to engage people, I just think the days of just posting jobs and going to Career Fairs and stuff like that for most positions or over, I think it's really about, a connecting with the people and Intentionally building your network so that you're going to be exposed to jobs. And I'd say probably when I my search business, maybe 60% of the jobs. There was never a wreck. It was more. Oh, this person's available. Let's open a rack. This is an opportunity that's one and then I think n ber two is just getting your brand out there and writing a contribution. There are so many great platforms now and we are seeking support. So many of my friends and I have friends from the technology industry that I might have placed or just worked with 33 years ago that I'll still speak to once a month. So I think it's for those of you that might be watching this, that are maybe a little younger than may not have been born when he started. This is a small world, would you agree with that Kay? I think so. Right. Kay - Yeah, most definitely and, we, it's interesting. We have a lot of people who interface with customers here in what you are talking about. Things have changed, it has and I think the pandemic has brought a little bit more Dynamic into all of this. It would be wonderful to see and hear from both of you. What do you see in? The research has changed just in the pandemic times, for example. We can speak a lot about customer support. Customer success and customer experience are areas where people are not able to go even people who are servicing hospitals. We're not able to go and they have to do things remotely, education has changed considerably. As we know SAAS's business changed considerably, trying to do everything from support to Enterprise support. So I would love to hear from both of you here, how have you seen the employee expectations change during this pandemic? Give me, give us some data exhaust. Niharika - So as for those, with the report, which we did the survey, which we did. So we have some loud change demands like 49 percent of the respondents had dependent children, 22% were primary caregivers to an elder or dependent and 33% were providing financial support for extended family members. Now, these are the demands of the employees and if the companies don't understand and empathize with this, it will be very difficult for them to understand what the diverse employees need. And another thing, which we figured out, was that there was a burnout. There was a requirement in the supply chain area. So 32 percent reported burnout, and 29 percent supported work from home. Working from home during the pandemic was working out for them. So now the understanding that a working parent, a mom or dad has to be in the daycare by 4:00 to pick up the kids if companies and the hiring managers and the managers understand this, it will be easy for them to provide that flexibility, which is needed by all kinds of employees. Kay - David, it will be great to hear your, on the same question. On the plan to make, have you seen what changes have you seen from a cultural standpoint? I envy no hybrid is coming up quite a bit and to address the same data that Niharika shared: people getting burnt out, people taking care of somebody else and people living working from home. How have you, what have you seen amongst the members concerning culture change? David - Yeah. Well, first of all, I just feel like the generation coming up wants to work for companies that align with their, with their core values, right? The Earth, the planet, what's going on in society? You know, I think, when we had incidents like mine and what happened to George Floyd, and a lot of companies will say they're doing things and some authentically want to do things, some it's just stayed there trying to say the right thing. So I think companies are people going to look a little deeper. We're in kind of an open world now, right? Employees, at people laid in, you can find people, back in the day, it was just hard to find names of the people. I was trying to bring Borland Scotts Valley. So now it's like, okay, people they can leave if they want. So what are we going to do as a company? What are the important things to keep them there? You know I think the family type environment as Niharika mentioned is flexible work, Jules when she ran, she when she stated some of those numbers, most of pretty much all of the people that we surveyed were women. So the rights of women do have, you know, need maybe more flexibility. schedules are supporting Elders, kids, and whatever else they have going on, how can companies want to engage women and have more women work for them. Should be the job description and way. They're working. Look like. like, for people like me, because all the people Like me created a corporate structure for how we work and compete. You guys weren't involved yet right now. Fast forward to more than 50% of the workforce and I know that you and I might look at the same problem, you may have one way of having a solution. I may have another way but they both work, right? If companies can offer us a way we could be fully authentic and how we're working. The company's going to harness unbelievable power. They've never experienced it before and yeah. So some good things are happening now. I feel that again I think the fact that I think what happened in the past two to three years of the pandemic is now just fast-forwarded to the conversation so we can look at this right? These original Promises of the internet or finally here. Now one slot on one side Joe was just kind of a before covid. It was the right nine percent of the people who would work at home. Sorry about nine percent would work at home, 11% unlimited limited office 41%, mainly office. And the rest of 39% office, only, where, you know, then it went to 65% of the people who had to work at home. Only in the next 12 months for seeing as 20% worked from home, only 52% limited office for maybe they'll go in for a meeting or two offices. Only now has it been reduced to six percent. I think, as we move forward, it's like, what do we want, as he does? Do we want to spend our time in traffic, right? For those of us that work in Tech if we're working in customer success. Abort. Do we have to be sitting in an office? I don't know if it is right and how can companies leverage the technology to serve their companies, serve their customers more effectively. Number two, make sure they have engaged happy employees because that's just going to lead to the success of the company. Right. And I think a lot of this stuff without all the traffic and everything else is going to see some great numbers. Hopefully, coming out on the planet and how we're going to. Save our planet as well, you know. Kay - Yeah, it's, it's important, that thing that you're bringing up or even sharing some of that information with the attendees. Some of those beautiful graphs that have come up with the research and some of the information that came from the research. So it definitely Dynamics the burnout. The people working from home. Finding Talent has changed before covid to right now. Absolutely. And we are seeing that even when companies do the propaganda of looking, doing remote work or hybrid, even if they bring in some of the flexible work schedules, even if they bring in the language that's needed in the job description and also the ability to do interviews in multiple different ways. There are two ways of attracting diverse talent. So why is hiring not that diversion, , what challenges in addition to what we talked about so far bubble up for either of you? David - yeah, I feel it's, I think a lot of them, as I said earlier, Many of the racks, never get open till there's somebody they want to talk to. So they are kind of reaching out to their Network. There are a lot of opportunities now to expand your network to leverage places, like a sin, do what you guys are doing. Witty, there are tons of them out of different verticals. How do you make sure that the pipeline? , I think the company's approaches have diverse recruiters. I guess those people are going and looking for names of women or underrepresented people or something. Some things confuse me, what they're doing. I think it's, I think it's just making sure that and I think we can do this for the people that both of us serve to have them hone in, where did they want to go? What companies align with their values, and who are the people they'd be working with, they'd be working for in the next couple of years, in the next 10 years. Let's help them. And build those relationships because this is all just relationship driven, right? It's not a, it's not my tits and then they're going in, I've been single school, right? And I'm thinking, like, some of these, subspecies, several members. It's like a 20-year architect job at IBM. They're getting interviewed by a very Junior person on Facebook. I'm like, Why is this person interviewing you asking you technical questions when they should be rolling out the red carpet? Carpet for you, right? And I feel, so I just feel like that piece is out of whack and that's something. We're in the process of fixing now because I'm not, we're not going for that many more, right? Niharika - And I'll add here, as David said, that ways of hiring are still old and until we innovate until we think out of the box. So in one of the health insurance companies, I was managing the development and we wanted a tech lead, and when we first opened the wreck all the off. Res es was All on men, but we had to kind of go out of the way to make sure that we got not only the hiring person. But also, we had to post on LinkedIn to get responses from diverse candidates. So again, it's until, and unless we think out of the box until we innovate in this area, it will be very difficult to reach out to the candidates. We need it. Kay - Yeah, I would love to share. I'm sharing one of your graphs it shows a, it's this one carry it, captures the employee expectations, we talked about the employer expectations, and while this graph is here, it'll be great to understand what you guys see from a mismatch of employee expectations and the hiring manager expectations or even company culture. Any mismatch that you see is for sure. David - I think it looks right. There are some of the French shaders, who pay work-life balance supportive management, right? I think some of those are things people want, but you know, anybody can offer more money, maybe have some similar things, you know, where we see some of the opportunities is in this. I'm moving my mouse, but I realized no one can see that, but in the upper left under opportunities, right? You know, how can there be opportunities for going, we're going in. Into we're going to be going and this is what I hear from some very in the know people is that in June, it's going to be the great resignation 2.0, that's going to be much bigger than the first one, right? So, flexibility and schedule. We're getting, we're getting so much, so many comments of people, white men, white women. They want to work with diverse teams. They get it. How important this is. Is. And then I'm speaking to many of our members that might be black women or women of color and you know that we have unbelievable experiences. But when they're getting hired by some of these companies, they make it a mandate to recruit a woman for every time they are having well, that's what might seem like a good thing to do from a PR standpoint. I guess, but then it's like many of the women. They're going into these interviews where the people are half listening to them. they do get hired, they feel like they're seen as I get a token higher, so then they're not getting the props and respect that they deserve, because many of these people that have commented to me. I look at their backgrounds and I'm like, oh my God. And I see, they know people that I know from way back in the day so I can get like, so I think it's horrible. What a lot of these things have created. , when I can, but hopefully we're coming out on the other side of it, right? There's a new ISO standard now on h a capital and eei, right. We're working with some investor groups on the east, on Wall Street. That controls trillions of dollars in Revenue, right? They want to look at an investment. They want to look at what companies are doing for diversity. Is this just let's check the box. Let's, you know, try to look good when there's an incident, or did they get the business impact of these things and are putting in programs to have people be included in the solution and contribute? Because we will see so much more Innovation, which we have seen with some of the companies that get it, right? And just happier employees that want to work give 110% and can do that within the environment, right? Niharika - And the quadrant in which you shared one thing, which stood out was the opportunity. career advancement. So, women and other diverse candidates, are not just looking for flexibility in schedule or work-life balance, they want to grow, they want to learn and that's a key thing that if companies can provide that will help them attract and develop diverse talent and when we surveyed the members, also they mentioned that they are looking to learn technology. Like they want to learn technology in a short amount of time and like they don't want to spend 8 hours learning something, Sayegh, Computing. They want to just know, what does that Computing do? What are the use cases in 30 minutes also, they are looking for professional development? So, these programs provided by the companies will help them meet the objective of their career growth and advancement, Kay - So learning it's one of those things. Companies used to invest a lot into learning and building Talent from within the company and that kind of fizzled away and it was left to the individuals themselves and it feels like it's all coming back and investing in the people growing them. Teaching them new skills, giving them new opportunities But maybe, in a much faster way. Pace. Did I summarize this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, there is a question, we are 35 minutes. There is a, there are, we'll go through some questions that come in from the social media channels, and then we can go back to some of the research once. So one is, how do you create a job description? That breaks the buyers and attracts diverse Talent. David - Okay, I'll get this one. Have you prayed for a job description? Kay - So interestingly I know of a few startups that are doing and in this area, I should probably bring some of them in one act. One looks at multiple colors from a candidate and puts out. This is a personality from the psychology of this and how they would fit in and how diverse thoughts and ideas are. They would Bring it into the team, I'm sure utilizing AI. So there are things like that that are coming up in the market. That helps hiring managers look at diverse talent, and I also know certain verbiage in certain kinds of language that need to be utilized to bring in diverse talent to. Those are the That come to my mind, David, Niharika, David - yeah. Well, I think, you know, I think to look, I think some things right. There are job descriptions and at, right? And they call Headhunters, and I was like, being called a head on her. That's what I would do when I worked in that business. You have to hunt if you're fishing right now, the lake is empty. So job descriptions, you know, I think people will use them in different ways. , now that they are using these AI tools, right? So a four-year degree is a four-year degree necessary. , when I was putting together the Quattro pro team, which I'll date myself for Borland. You know, I'd have one guy that went to a community college for a year, but his parents bought a Mac computer when he was eight, he learned to program that way. Another guy, a master in computer science, who was just and equal to the team, John was Right. So I feel like, looking, I'd say to focus on what they've been working on skillswise, you know. I think, you know, I think we see that from several people or I've heard that as far as job descriptions go, just the education and the four-year degree are mandatory. I don't know if that is in a lot of spaces, especially software development, Niharika - That's great, David. And I will add here, that if I'm looking for a job more than the job description, I look at the company culture because that I can find out. So is this company supporting diverse employees? Even if they mention it in one job description. If the culture I will find out from my friends, they are our go to the glass door to see if the culture is supportive of diverse employees. So that will be. I think that should be put in the job description that this is the company and this is the culture they are supporting. Kay - I had one woman tell me, they would go into the website and look at executive teams and see how divergent the executive team is. And that's one way that they assess. If the team, the company culture in itself, promotes diversity, you are right on concerning The culture? David - Yeah, no, I think that's good. And there's so much for us to get this information. I mean, I couldn't believe it. This one company, I work with and this woman CMO, amazing lady. They were like rushing her into sales meetings because the client came in, though those usually, like big governments with two women and two men, they had there for white men. Sitting there looked like rushing her into a seat, at the meeting, she had nothing to do with it. Right? mean I just feel like, and that's it. , this is about the company getting business. I don't know if any diverse departments are involved in that piece of it. , listen. And that's what our goal is with a glass ceiling. 2.0 to move the D EI and departments or Jedi or, you know, from these vertical organizations and companies, these have to be horizontal in the DNA of that company, right? Because it's going to drive sales, it's going to help Employee Engagement. going to help communication with customers better. And just until we do that, which we're going to be doing soon. I feel like an opportunity is being missed. Yeah, it's Brinks since we've had we are talking about the high-level and Leadership roles. Brings up the Biden statement on having diversity in corporate boards and it will be a great thing to understand what kind of executive programs does witty have to enable Leadership women. Sure what we're doing. A few things. I mean, with, with the glass ceiling 2.0 initiative. And then Intel spearheading this thing called The Alliance for Global inclusion and NASDAQ is part of that. So, as we get the results are hope, you know what, we're starting to work on and what I can say, can't say, but is too, work with NASDAQ, right? We did, we did. The letter is on behalf of NASDAQ. When they requested that the SEC approve, their requests to have all NASDAQ listed companies have at least one woman and another diverse person on their board or explain. Why shouldn't it apply to them? Why did NASDAQ ask for this? Because they wanted to help the women know because they want to help the diverse people know because they understood. They want their investors to eat to invest in companies that are going to be here for the long call. You can't do that without diversity of thought. Now a lot of the nest companies weren't ready for that. So, how can we use this data just to help them understand? Right? This isn't like a witch chooses to do, bad blah, blah, blah. It's like, look, the shareholders. Now, we've been able to connect with some groups that control trillions of dollars of investment. Let's help them improve. Let's handle eyes where some of the gaps are where some of the opportunities are and, you know, help their stock goes up. So, everybody's happy, right? I mean, that's what it's all about, right? Niharika - And what does Vicki do for that? So we spoke to the executive women who are in our membership, and we asked them what they are looking for. So they are looking for a leadership development program and based on their feedback, we did a session on the story. Link as storytelling is a key skill. Everyone needs to inspire their teams and communicate the vision. So we started storytelling last week which is going to be ongoing. We have other leadership development programs like emotional intelligence, which is so much as important as regular intelligence and social intelligence, and other than that, what are other things which we are doing is that we have started these industry networks like our agile DevOps No code, no code. Everyone is talking about LocoRoco but what is it? So just come and join our program and then you'll come to know what exactly it is and again cybersecurity. So these are the things which are focusing on technology and leadership development. Kay - We also know Athena Chief they are and women 2020 boats. There are quite a few organizations that enable those. Interestingly when we talk to Corporate women, women say that they want to join boards and startups. And they always ask how do I join the boards of startups and startup Founders? Women and men founders say we have so many people who want to join the boards but they don't know what they are bringing to the table so it's a matter of what you're talking about with leadership development is right on. It's recognizing What can I contribute to what industry, and what kind of segment? How can I, how much am I willing to roll up, my sleeves to expand my experience and my knowledge, and my network to enable another company. And we see that most board advisors are the people who are thinking about this constantly and who know their strengths and What they bring to the people now and we yeah, David - we are starting to answer that question. We are still, we just launched our needed talent management program last week. We're going to have a segment on that specifically to get women on boards and have them board. Ready, we have an amazing group of so far that have participated in it and really, it's like interaction a DD on a They just left, she just left Accenture to take on a role at DCC Technologies runs, huge, huge p&l, we have many women that run, billion dollars, PLL's, that want to support other women and, you know, we're just going to do it, right? I know I've heard about 20, 20, boards, Athena and some of these other things not sure exactly what they're doing. I know a lot of these nonprofits. we started this as a profit, not that, we've been making a big one every or even one with a lot of the stuff going on in the past few years, don't donate to women, right? We have to change the whole mindset. That this is an opportunity for companies when I see when women come to our conference. So this is this multi-billion dollar company. So generous, they let me volunteer in our internal women's Network and then pay me to go to the conference. I'm like, then they've got they're playing. They're sending them to the golf course, Golf Course, memberships, everything else. We have to shift that whole thing, right? And it's, you know, no handouts, don't help the women help yourself, and that's not our official motto yet. No one stands alone as Armada, Kay - I love it. I love it. It's like, most of the business decisions and talks happened with colleagues on a golf course. That's right. The building is much more Network there rather than a 67 thousand-person conference where, you're lost at the right Lyrica time, totally right on you has something to add to it. Niharika - Yeah, that's the point, right? Especially women in sales, they come. And they tell us, that's a problem they face. Because I mean, it makes all these decisions. Taking place on golf courses, then that's a disadvantage. Itís. They have and we have to find other avenues for them to build the same. Same relationships are built at golf courses. Yeah. David - And speaking of women in sales, we have an initiative that's going to start in a couple of months and we've been doing all the data and just the performance of women and Enterprise sales and really within the whole sales ecosystem, from customer success to sales Engineers. There's so much great data on how successful women are in that space, especially in Technology. They're not getting the jobs on opportunity. So we're now creating something because we want to make sure that they're trained, ready to get those roles that we're giving them ongoing coaching throughout. You know, something we haven't talked about 2k today is just looking at a job description. If I'm a guy and I have 50% of it, I'm going to apply to women from the stats. We see. So if it's not E or 95% not going to apply, I can. So one thing we try to do is everything every week. Of course I teach on Friday is like, you know, we are, do you have Tableau experience? All these software programs, they change acronyms this and that give yourself credit for what you know and you know, right. Because you see that K A Lot in your space. Kay - Yeah, yeah. It's an I'm right now, in a dilemma. He has a lot of questions coming in from social media and I'm trying to think which one I should pick and we have 10 minutes. So I think there's a lot of interest, a lot of questions coming in, and a lot of information that's being shared where we are touching the executive program. We were touching the leadership women and we were talking about that specifically and so I'm You're right time and it sits. There are two things here, right? So, what difference do we see with women in Tech, especially since there's a lot of appreciation for the comments that need to be changed? Both covid. There's a lot of appreciation. Just so you both know. So what do we see as a difference for women in Tech versus non-Tech? And I'm struggling with this question because all of us are pretty much Basis, see don't do anything non tech. So I'm not sure where that is, how best to answer that question, but if you have any yes. Niharika - So here, I'll say that. Now, everyone is a woman in Tech because we all use this phone, which is the most amazing piece of technology. So it's kind of, if you are not in Tech, well, going to the resources where technology simplified because it's not that you have to spend a lot of time, just What this technology is and what problem is this solving. So again, and again, answering even to get on board is very important for women, whether they are in Tech or in non tech, to understand what this technology is and what problem is, solving having this idea will help because now everyone has to say even an intact. Kay - I Do some of our great hires in Ascendo, amazing marketing. And Of those experiences has been in non tech. So, we are talking to somebody who's from the film industry and it's, and it brings in a level of diversity. We are talking about David, Do you have anything to add here? David - Yeah, no. I was going to say, kind of similar to what Neha said, it's about being tech savvy, right? You're pretty or higher from the film industry. Like, that's knowledge. They're bringing I know people say they're R not Talk when they have the supercomputer in their pocket and people are intact. That always makes me laugh, right? So it's like, I think it's like leadership being tech savvy software companies have spent trillions of dollars to make things easy and have us not think about technology but just use it to do what we do faster. So yeah, I think it's just owning it being confident speaking to it just you know Don't have a computer science degree, whatever. I learned how I learned about tech. I landed Borland as a client, you know, and I was, I left school because I'm like, oh, this company is growing and I said, oh What's the printer driver? They'd go up on the board and show it to me and, and then I could understand where I needed a hug for my people right. But I just think it's like, I almost think like we have to Rebrand technology, right? Because I think people, Will sometimes get intimidated? Oh, I'm not technology. I've got to go to candidate companies at the company. It's growing up. And so we've got to look at rebranding technology, rebranding stem steam wherever you want to go. Because I feel like yeah, people are more technical than they give themselves credit for in a lot of cases. Kay - You work with 300 and soul, large corporate Partners, one of the questions. That is what you're talking to them about. You go like oh my gosh that's an awesome policy and procedure is a procedure that they have that's a best practice for somebody else. Can you speak a bit about some of those things that you saw? Niharika - I will not name but we have one corporate partner who's like unto they like 50/50 like I mean I'm just taking the women example that they have read communicated that whether it's res es higher. It has to be 50/50 and they have been kind of doing good. They have added some flexibility here and there to make sure. That happens. So again, it's coming from the top down and going and kind of expanding everywhere in the company that everyone has to make sure that the 50-50 things happened. So again until it becomes a mandate until it comes from the top and until it gets ingrained in everyone. In DNA it will not happen but our partners are making that happen. David - Yeah. And I'd probably say yeah, I mean Salesforce we worked with and I'd worked a bit with Our Benioff back when he was at Oracle and he had called me. After I left Borland, I helped him with some things and, now, what we're doing. Now, we have a whole Hub on witty dedicated to helping train our community on Salesforce technology because they want their customers to have a great pool of diverse people to kill into. And then also to, to get out their programs. They have the flexibility and work schedules, more focused. The result rather than how you get there. And I think we'll start seeing a lot of that in some of these people's leadership roles, right? Because I mean, that was, you know, if the history of Salesforce, he used to walk around like the demo conference with like, the no bozos thing for software, right? Because that whole thing, it's in the cloud, the in, back before that, with the internet with 3com, we should be able to do anything from anywhere. And that's I think that just helps us I think, I'm not, especially women, I think men want this stuff too, but companies that can move to this type of environment, we get all the great people. Kay - Yeah. And now, interestingly in product development, when I was in product development core engineering, the number of women was less than the number of women, Founders doing B2B core technology companies were even minuscule. Last statistics that we did the tides less than 1%. B2B companies are owned by females. So we do have a large gap in some areas but areas like for example, customer support and success. As we see a lot of women, we see a lot of diversity of women of people, from the various geographical regions participating in success and experienced roles. So in a way, It is wonderful, so what we would love, we have five minutes, one question, and then we can wrap it up quickly. Women back to work. We have a few organizations and a good friend of mine also doing a women back to work program. So have you seen any of those implemented within your corporate partners and if they, you know, what can the women back to work do? And that amount of world. David - Yeah. Look, I think that we've all learned which can be very agile and how we work now. So, I think it's up to the companies to create roles or just be open to people working at their pace and in their environments. I think people that are so customer-facing. Like many people listening on this call, that should be a direct route to The Boardroom. So I'd like to figure out how we support these people that might be at this stage of their careers. Now, the customer success, customer service role and make sure we work together to get them a path to the executive suites and then to the board, if that's the direction they'd like to go because I just think they're the knowledge they have is unmatched. Kay - So after Yamini from HubSpot CCV, the chief customer officer became the CEO. There is a huge trend going on, like CC was becoming CEOs mix, right? So people are recognizing the people who are talking. The customers are the ones who are in touch with the customers absolutely. Absolutely. I think it 's right on. It's been a pleasure hearing, a lot of the research, the data, and Communications and policies procedures, we touched a lot in the last one n ber we did. And, there are plenty of amazing graphs that we D has done. In glass ceiling 2.0. We will dissipate that to the teams. Any other questions or comments? We will figure out a way to get you guys engaged and participate in those social media discussions. But thank you both for joining today and dissipating your knowledge. Previous Next

Explore insights from Automation Dreamin’ 2022 on leveraging knowledge intelligence with Salesforce and Slack to enhance support and collaboration. Automation Dreamin' 2022 Knowledge Intelligence with Salesforce and Slack | Transcription 📢Our CEO Karpagam Narayanan is speaking at Automations Dreamin' - A two-day Virtual Conference focused on sharing knowledge of Automation. 🎯"Creating #Knowledge Magic with #Salesforce and #Slack" #slack is emerging as a key collaboration tool, internally and with customers. Learn how to use everyday #interactions, to automate creating knowledge, and spreading knowledge to help colleagues and serve customers efficiently. Utilize #knowledge objects in Salesforce to be able to bring value in Slack. Previous Next

Discover how AI is revolutionizing the future of field service in this exclusive interview with Maureen Azzato, Portfolio Director at Worldwide Business Research and Producer of Field Service USA. Learn about the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in AI-driven service operations, straight from one of the industry’s most influential voices. Discover how AI is revolutionizing the future of field service with Maureen Azzato | Transcription Hi Maureen, it's a pleasure to have you join us today for the Asindo AI Experience Dialogue Podcast. Usually this particular podcast, what we do is it's just a conversation and it comes up with a lot of passion. So we bring in passionate speakers like you and we're talking over each other, just like how friends are having a conversation. And it's a big message for AI in service and you are doing Field Service USA. I loved when you say that you are the producer of Field Service USA, so welcome. Thank you, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, yes. And as the producer, I know it sounds like a Hollywood role, but as the producer, my role is to create the program. I do a lot of research, we develop the program, we come up with a topics based on what service practitioners and some vendors in the community tell us is needed, where their focus is, where their interests lie, where the next five years, where do they wanna be? And based on that research, we put together the program every year and it's based on interviews with about 50 service leaders as well as about a dozen vendors. And then we also have a more qualitative research that we do here, obviously we're called Worldwide Business Research and we have a big research arm as well. So I rely very much on the information that we generate here to build a very meaningful and relevant, right? We want it to be as relevant as possible to where service practitioners are. So yeah, so I'm really excited about the program, we're only three weeks away, so. That's right, it's only three weeks away and you've been doing this for five, six years, Maureen, and you've seen things are changing over a period of time. What is changing this year? Yeah, I think there's been a huge focus on AI, of course, over the past couple of years, right? I think ChatGPT kind of, when they came on to the scene, everything was more focused on sort of knowledge capture, knowledge management, and I think also internally using AI to become more efficient, more effective on their internal operations. I think what we're gonna start to see this year is a more outward look, sort of how can we use AI to solve real customer problems, right? What are the best use cases to do that? And I think we're gonna see a lot more, a deeper look at AI for real solution enablement on the customer side. Yeah, so one of the things that you're exactly right, service leaders are looking for is consistency, safety, quality, and efficiency, productivity, all of that, right? So an AI sits right in the middle. Within AI, service leaders are looking at use cases and you have covered a whole lot of use cases across the entire spectrum in three days. So can you speak a little bit more about what AI specific topics that you're covering over the period of three days, Marie? Sure, sure. And I think, Kay, as we were saying sort of offline when we spoke a little bit a few minutes ago, is AI is really not just this one thing that sits on the side of your service menu, right? It's being integrated into everything we do. As consumers, as well as service practitioners. So it's hard to extrapolate AI and just talk about it as sort of this standalone thing, but it is running through, the theme is running through the whole event. But I can highlight a few things that we have going that I think will capture people's imagination, if you will. For example, on day one, we have a workshop by Katie Diaz, who is with Schneider Electric, and she's gonna talk about how to maximize service profit in the area of AI. Of course, there's been more pressure on service organizations to deliver more profit as there's a little more inflation and some trouble markers in the economy where people might not be spending money on, as much money on new equipment. So they want their equipment to last even longer. So that's a great thing for a service organization to hear. And service, I think, is also getting credit now for being a profit generator. So I think that's gonna be really interesting. On day two, we have a panel on taking AI- Hey, I just wanted to interrupt you. Before you go to day two, I think you are exactly right. That's this entire thing about profit generation. We did a research recently and we noticed that product revenues are tapering, but actually service revenues are shooting up and you are exactly right with respect to the profitability. And again, AI sits right in the middle of that profitability to enable reduced downtime, to make sure that preventative maintenance is happening right on time by reducing labor costs, by reducing material costs. All of that will increase the profitability and the extension of the asset in the install base. So you're right on. Sorry for interrupting. Please go on to day two. I just was like, brr, brr. No, but you're absolutely, yeah. And it's definitely, and I also managed the event in Europe and the same themes are coming up there because now the economy is even more, a little compressed, right? And a little more concerns about hyperinflation and what's happening. And service is kind of coming up and being recognized as the heroes really in profit. So it's nice because they work so hard. So it's nice to get the enterprise credit, right? As an important department within enterprises. So yeah, it's great. Yeah, yeah. Please go on to day two. You were speaking about day two, yeah. And I'll come back. We are doing the case study showcases for our AI advisory lab also on day one. And I'll explain those more when we talk about the AI advisory lab because that's sort of a very unique and new thing that we're doing this year that we're quite excited about. And that Ascendo is sponsoring. Thank you very much. We appreciate your support in kind of marching out and doing something really innovative and different to communicate the different things that AI can do in the service ecosystem. The other session that I think is really important is day two. We have a panel in the morning and it's taking AI to the next level. That's the title. And it's ensuring accuracy, speed to value and solving real customer problems, right? This is the crux of the matter. This is now, you can do all the internal work and take the cost efficiencies and become more efficient in your service operations. But now I think the industry is ready to look more outward. How can we solve real customer problems using AI? So I think that's gonna be the shift this year in particular. So I'm really looking forward to that panel. We have an amazing roster of speakers for that one. Yeah, that particular one, not just that panel, I was noticing the entire list of people who are actually thinking about all of the use cases all throughout, right? So the day two, I noticed that you actually had a track on supply chain and during the supply chain turmoil, how the parts are coming up and you're bringing in digitization even there. So you're basically covering everything from what a customer is engaging with a service team to when a dispatcher or a remote support engaging with a service team to when field service is coming with that service team all the way to logistics and spare parts and new profit, new sales and marketing opportunities that field service can bring in because they are right in front of the customer. So you have the conference completely end to end which is one of the reasons why we were sponsoring because we look at ourselves as a experienced person hired into the sales service organization because that experienced person just doesn't do one thing like regurgitate knowledge manuals or something like that. They go from customer phasing all the way to logistics to identifying opportunities. So I love that you brought in that end to end perspective. Well, great. Well, thank you. And I think this is what the industry is asking for. So as I said, we build this program based on what the industry is focused on and what they need to know and where their pain points are. So yeah, we're really excited about it. We do have a great track. It's track a D on service parts, inventory management with a global supply chain still in flux, right? Real challenging things going on, not to mention the tariffs and other issues that people are concerned about. So how that's gonna change the world, we'll see. But AI plays a role in all of these aspects of business, in the data piece, which is so important, even in labor and HR and supply chain and service parts and also integrations. I think there's gonna be some help along the way, maybe not yet, but where AI is gonna help integrate more of these platforms and apps together to make them more seamless for that front end field service agent. In a way it puts the service leaders right in center of any organization within the C-suite itself. It kind of elevates them because now they are giving all that feedback to the rest of the company about how they install basis. It's like a pulse of the customer that they are providing. So it elevates them pretty much, right? Yes, yes. No, I would say for sure. I think to what we were talking about before, I think the service department in general is getting elevated because they've done their job. They've worked really hard over the past several years to become more profitable, focusing on the commercialization of service, right? As a profit center, not just a cost center. Years ago, it was just a cost center and it was a drain on an organization. And now it's really coming into its own and getting the credit it deserves. So I'm happy to see that happening. Yeah. So if I'm a service leader of a enterprise and I want to connect with a sponsor like Acendo AI, right? How do I do that? Yeah, we have a great... Well, first of all, we have the website where you can find out everything about the event, every track, every program, it's all listed in the website so you can plan your course. You can see who all the sponsors are. We also have the profiles of each sponsor on the website so you can see what sponsors are focused on, which areas of business, so that you can plot your course even at the expo and determine where you want to go, who you want to see, who you want to meet. The other way is also using the app, which is going to be coming out in a couple of weeks, usually at least a week before the event we send that out. And it's a great way to connect with people. So I always encourage people to connect with the folks they want to meet, do those connections on the app before the event because they'll accept your invitation to connect and then you can hit the road. When you get to Palm Springs, you can begin to have those conversations and meetups and those kinds of things. So I encourage people to spend some time on the app before they even get to the event. Sounds like a lot of learning and condensed in three days. So in addition to that, yeah, in addition to that, you are also bringing in something called the AI Advisory Lab, I believe for the first time, right? It is, this is my baby, Kay. So yes, I'm very excited about it. I just, this was something that came up in our research with several practice, service practitioners, saying, hey, technology companies do this a lot, have like their labs. Why can't we do something like that for AI and make it even more meaningful for people? So we batted it around and really what we're doing, this is gonna, it's all on day three, but, and Ascendo is a sponsor and we have a couple of other sponsors as well, but you have a showcase on day one, which in 10 minutes, you're gonna explain to people what you're gonna be doing at your AI lab in your station and the use cases that you're gonna be focused on. You bring in a client with you, which is wonderful. So on day three, if you have burning questions as a service practitioner, you'll make an appointment with one of the sponsors who have stations at our AI lab and you can sit with them for 15 minutes. You're not sitting with a salesperson, I would say, you're also sitting with a technical expert from the sponsoring company, but they're also gonna have one of their main customers with them who are using AI and you can ask them anything. In that 15 minutes, you can get so much demystified by having this conversation with a practitioner and a technical expert. And you can talk to them about your business, tell them where you are, what your situation is, what your challenges are, and hopefully they'll give you a place to begin. I think that's the hardest thing mostly for people, Kay, is if you haven't really dabbled in AI yet, and there's a lot of people out there are a little trepidatious about AI, but this will give them a place to begin. Everyone needs an entry point, right? You don't have to boil the ocean, right? But just find that one use case that might have huge implications for your organization, but might not be so hard to implement. And then it's a building block from there. But we're very excited. That is very, very, very... Yeah, yeah, I'm so happy to be part of your baby this year. So I just wanted to throw in a statistic that may be very useful for the people who are listening in, right? So Anthropic, which is one of the open source AI companies, released a economic index report that talks about who are the people who are utilizing AI in general. And the fourth use case, of course, the number one is coding. The fourth use case is service and support. And they estimated 4% of the people are playing around with AI. But the real thing is only 4% of the 4%, which is 0.16% of the people have actually implemented AI in the enterprise, et cetera, et cetera. When we read about that, and when we recently had a large chief customer officer get together, and chief customer officer, chief service officer, and they were also confirming that a lot of the people are playing around with it. To your point, people are just trying to figure out where they need it to be. People are actually just playing around with it, and leaders are confused where to begin. So in that end-to-end that you're showcasing in the field service conference, pick one and start from the journey from there to go all around. That is an excellent message. And so thank you for that. Yeah, yeah. No, I think sometimes it gets overwhelming if you just look at the whole thing, you know, it's like, and it just, but, you know, that's really as simple as finding a use case. It's gonna have huge impact to your organization. It's kind of low hanging fruit, you know, take that and then grow it from there. And then you have something to show. I think, you know, all C-suites wanna see results, right? They wanna see ROI. So you wanna have a, you know, a building, you know, you wanna build your case so that they'll continue to support it. Because I think there still is some pushback, you know, from C-suites, like show me the money, show me how it's gonna work, show me how you're gonna, you know, save X, Y, or Z. So we, you know, I think service organizations have to continually prove that this is something that they need. And I think over time, Kate, it's not gonna be long, you know, I think it's pretty apparent to most everyone, no matter, you know, what area of business you're in, AI is here to stay. It's gonna, you know, hugely change how we do business. It's gonna hugely change how we live as consumers even, you know, just as individuals, as humans. So I think it's gonna be cataclysmic changes and it's gonna come really fast. So no time for navel gazing, it's really time to learn, get on the AI train and, you know, start learning and start doing. Exactly, and that is one of the reasons why we architected like AI agents too, right? So one of our customers who will be there during the conference, EDF, they're a very large energy utilities company, but they had, from the time they signed up for terms of service to the time they had the first AI agent up and running, it was 40 minutes. So they were blown away. And this is a very large company who could have a, right? So these kinds of stories are gonna make service leaders feel, hey, I can do this. And it doesn't have to be a six month effort, one year effort to see ROI, right? So it can be fast and it can be quick. The key is to pick one agent that will fit in into that one use case and then build the journey from there to the rest of the company as you're showing ROI. So no longer a humongous implementation that will take a year or two years, et cetera. So this can be fast and that's a good message that people will get. That leads to the next question, Maureen, which is, you know, one of the complaints that I hear from people is vendors like us end up standing up on stage and constantly talk about how great the product is, right? So, and as a service leader, okay, I get tired of it after three days of listening to vendors saying how great the product is. So you are actually making it different to have the practitioners speak about what they have accomplished and that actually becomes a takeaway. Can you speak a little bit more about that? Yeah, in fact, it's rare that you'll see a vendor anymore stand up on our stages and talk just about their product. We don't allow pitching from the stage. We really encourage them to show us the value. And the only way we feel that you can show credible value is to bring a client with you. Let the client show how they're using your product. How can it be more believable than that? Instead of having a vendor stand up there and say, your client is saying, here's the use cases we did. This is the results we saw, and this is what we're doing next. That's a winner. That's a winning presentation, right? So we're encouraging, and I would say 99% of vendors listen to us and bring clients with them because they understand the value of having a client speak for them. Yeah, and can you, is that how you were visualizing the AI advisory lab to be also? Yes, and I think, you know, some people complain in the expo because there's so much in the expo, right? And there's not a lot of time to go too deep on, you know, in conversations because it's kind of loud and it's a lot of all that excitement and they're getting sold, right? And they understand that because that's what expos are about. But they wanted an environment where, you know, they also can be a little intimidating if you don't understand a lot about AI yet and you wanna ask lots of questions but you don't wanna feel stupid, right? So we wanted to give them a forum where they could sit down calmly, quietly and ask those questions, those burning questions that they have about AI. And, you know, with technical experts, not salespeople from the sponsoring company and then their customer. So I think that balance of having both there will be really valuable to the practitioners who sit down at the stations in the lab and have those meetings. Yeah, you know, even as a vendor, someone who's early in the agent tech world, right? I can see that there is a lot of thought leadership that we have to give and it's a journey that we have to hand hold the service teams to. So a lot of times, you know, we also love the opportunity to not be salesy but truly understand the challenges that service leaders are facing and help them with the challenges. And I love that this is an opportunity for to be able to do that. And for service leaders to be open enough and talk to the technical people as well as talk to the people who have seen value from it and learn from that. So that's wonderful. Yes, yes, no, absolutely. And I think for the sponsoring companies who are brave like Ascendo, it's a great opportunity for you to sit with potential customers and hear their pain, right? Where are their pain points? Where are their challenges? Because you all are innovators, right? You're creating solutions and helping service organizations. And I think it'll be very valuable for you all to listen and learn with them. You're listening and learning different things, but you're learning more about their business and how you can better support it in the future. Yeah, I think it's a win-win for both sides. Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for doing this and thank you for being the producer. I just love it. So, and thank you for taking the time to come here. You must have a next, the very, very busy week. So thank you for being here. Well, it's my pleasure, Kay. Look forward to partnering with you on our AI lab and hearing your showcase and your use cases. It's gonna be wonderful. And thank you so much for sponsoring and taking the risk with us and being innovators. Absolutely, that's what we are here for. Thank you, Marie. Thank you. Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai . Go Unlimited to remove this message. Previous Next

Learn how Chief Customer Officers can lead experience transformation with strategic playbooks that align business goals with customer success The CCO Playbook Unlocking Customer Experience Leadership | Transcription Good morning, Jeb, how are you doing? Good morning, great. Kay, how are you? Very good. I'm super excited for this conversation here because this looks like a consolidation of talking to multiple CC OS all at once. Talking to you hopefully. Yeah, I think yes, that's fair. I'll try. So Jeb, you were a chief customer officer at Oracle and one of the even even before chief customer officers was a cool thing to be in and, but you chose a path to actually guide and coach other CC OS. Why did you pick this path? Well, first and foremost, it's, it's easier to coach than it is to actually do the work, which I so there's, there's one small point, but setting that aside, you know, there's a, there's a few reasons. I, I mean, I think fundamentally when I, I've talked to a lot of CC OS over the last several years, as you might imagine. And, and what I, what I found, and I'm sure this is no surprise to you, is that every single CCO goes about their job differently. I mean, literally everyone goes about their job in a different way. They have different focus, different span of responsibility, different way they measure their performance. It's all different. And if I can do a just a little bit to help solve that problem and to make it easier and more effective for people coming into this role to be able to execute quickly, I feel like I'll, I'll have done some good. I also kind of look at it that the situation from the standpoint of, I mean, I would like to help at this point in my, in my work life in a way that I could have used help, you know, so if I, I just kind of look at I, I was ACCCO for 12 years, I guess about that. And if I had somebody that could help me in the way that hopefully I'm helping chief customer officers, that would have been amazing. Also there, you know, there's, there's just this kind of goes to the first point about every CCO having a different approach to their job and different span of responsibilities and so forth. There's no playbook at all. Like if you're, if you're a chief financial officer or CMO or even a chief operating officer, there's at least a playbook that's in your head, you know, that you can use to go about your job and, and really kick, kick into gear with some, some setting of priorities and, and working with people to kind of figure out what needs to be done and what can really make a big difference for the organization. Nothing like that really exists for the chief customer officer. And the last thing is just selfishly, I mean, I, every conversation I have with the CCO, I, I learn a lot. So it's, it's fun to me for, for that reason that I'm just, I'm just constantly learning and if I can share what I learn and, and share, you know, what I've learned in different ways, either doing the job or talking to people who are actively doing the job today, you know, I, I feel good about that. Hopefully, hopefully I've made a contribution. Thank you for that. Actually, you know, I have noticed that some non traditional industries CCO is even called chief experience officers. And I, if I, if I look at the so I run this group called the experience alliance. And if I look at the members of the group today, there's a wide range of people. There are chief customer officers, chief client officers, there's a chief, there's a chief experience officer, there's a, there's a patient experience officer for a healthcare provider. I mean, it runs a broad range of, of titles. So, so even when I look to bringing new, say new members into my group, I, I, I kind of generally sort of focus on those titles, but you have to kind of look beyond that for people that just fundamentally are thinking about CX broadly and thinking about how they can really have a positive effect on their business through CX programs. So that's, that's kind of more, more of the way I think about it. Yeah. So, so it's a good point that the titles are different, the job descriptions are different, the way in which each of the Ccos are approaching their own role is different and how they measure, how they implement what they do, it's all very different. So are you, you know, in terms of what you're achieving from the coaching program, are you trying to bring normality in the sense that are you trying to define this is a standard in which somebody needs to operate? Or are you saying, you know, Jeb as a CCO is doing it this way, how can I make them better and K as a chief experience officer or a patient experience officer is doing it this way and how can I make it better? What is the approach? I, I, I think it's a combination of those things. If, if I had to come down on one side of that or the other, I would say it's more about the latter in the sense that every, every chief customer officer, every chief experience officer, they're all, they're all doing their jobs differently. And so if I can, if I can learn about how they're doing it and try to help them do it better, that's, that's great. You know, I, I do, I do try to create some, some, some commonalities and, and kind of, kind of some best practices or at least some, some frameworks for thinking about how to approach the job. I, I'm, I'm not a big believer in one size fits all for anything, certainly not for CX and CCO work. So, so I try to avoid that. But, but I do think there's some, there are some things that people can learn from others and there are some commonalities, you know, that, that, that I try to, to bring out and, and really try to, to get people to, to think about in their own context. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a little bit like, I mean, I think about the, the commonalities of, of, of the customer experience in the sense of, you know, there's, there's some basic human psychology that underlies the way that customers make decisions and, and, and the way that they perceive their interactions with the business, you know, and there's some, some basic sort of economic principles that underlie the business decisions. And, and so if you can understand those and apply those in, in your own unique business context, I think that's, that's, that's kind of a good way to go about it. So I do, I do try to, to bring some, some commonality to, to what people are doing, but, but I also try to be very respectful of the fact that it's, it's, it's very much a, a, a unique role for each person. And, and if, if I, if I can help them get better, if I can help them sort of really drive some results in the business, however they go about their job, then, then, then I've done something useful. Previous Next

Gain in-depth insights into building a Voice of the Customer playbook that drives engagement, product alignment, and actionable feedback strategies Deepdive Voice of the Customer Playbook | Transcription Kay - Welcome to the experience dialogue. This webinar is a place for healthy discussions and disagreements, but in a very respectful way, just by the nature of how we have conceived, this, you will see the passionate voice of opinions, friends. Having a dialogue and thereby even interrupting each other or finishing each other's sentences at the end of the dialogue. We want to make sure you are the audience to leave with valuable insights and approaches that you can take to your work. continue the discourse on the other social media channels. Today's topic is specific to going into a deep dive in specifically on the voice of the customer Playbook using wise of the customer data to enable us to understand that customer Journeys, which facilitates the ability to keep our customers satisfied and retain our customers to avoid treating our customer's Murmurs, we needed to set up and guarantee the level of support quality, which comes through the voice of the customer Playbook system. There are multiple levels of this Playbook and playbooks generally provide step-by-step guidance that's needed for the standard ways in which an agent, any customer success individual, or anyone who's involved in the customer journey responds in a standardized way. With that I would love to introduce the speaker today, Ashna. Ashna is an emotionally intelligent coach, who came across very well in the first decision that she had. I was also very intrigued with her background coming in from sales and she is a community Builder 4 Cs and as part of Cs Insider and would love to hear from her experience on the voice of the customer Playbook. Welcome, Ashley. Ashna - Thank you so much K. Good to be here. Excited to be here. Thank you. Kay - So we can start T off concerning. How do you see it with a customer Playbook and you know what faces, do you see that the revised estimate program? Ashna - That's a great question. So I think, now, when we talk about what to the customer Playbook, it's really about, I mean, it's kind of, in the name, it's really about that. Capturing those feedback, capturing those moments from the customer set, those expectations with the customer, and then having your processes built around. That so you know as part of your customer Journey which again it was the customer placed throughout your customer journey and as part of your customer Journey, there are many different areas now, we, when, you know, every part of it, there's Playbook But then there's Playbook Within the and these playbooks are processes and the way that voice of the customer plays around is in each of this area of your Customer Journey. How are you capturing information from your customer? And then, you know, making sure that you have Your processor built around it. So to answer your question it means there are different parts but you can start with the onboarding, you know, within the onboarding. There are multiple different playbooks that we can talk about. There's kickoff, there's sales to see as Playbook.And then, you know, as we progress with the onboarding implementation, you know, configuration and pushing the customer to long term success. That's kind of like the ongoing part of the things, then just a high level. There are some other Business Reviews. Play bulk, you know high Outscore lower Health score playbooks.So, really about the health score are asuh of customers journey. And then also, you know, renewal playbook which contains, you know, turn playbooks and even, you know, when there is an expansion and cross those opportunities. So, throughout that Journey, the voice of the customer plays, because you're capturing data from your customers, you have your processes built out so that you can Capture those data, and then you react against it. Kay - When you talk about processes, Schneider you come from a CSS background, you come in from a sales background, are you going to be covering those two specific areas so, when they hear your experience, do we look at it from those two contexts? Ashna - Yes, hundred percent. That's a great question. K. Because I believe that, you know, the success of your customer, really starts at the very beginning and also, you know, We see it starts when your customer, your prospects are knocking the door, but to kind of answer your question is that, you know, the hand of that the structure that you need to have defined a design that goes from cells to see s, it needs to be something that, you know, at that works. And you want to make sure that, you know, everybody, all parties involved, all stakeholders involved are on, you know, they understand that structure. You want to make sure that everybody's kind of on the same page. And so, Likely cells to CS handoff. That's something that even we have, you know, done quite a bit of work to implement and we continuously revise and redefine.You know what, we have just to kind of give you an idea in that specific Arena. What we have done is particularly different for a larger scale of the largest customer so Enterprise Sheedy, customers and then also different for SMB, mid market customers, there's a different type of, you know, the handoff and then the playbooks that we created there are a few changes. A little bit of a difference in those, but the sales to CS is about, you know, who's doing, what during this cycle, you know, Celsius playing some part of it, CSS playing some part of it, and I'll give you my example company, we have everything post cells is the customer. Success is handling so onboarding to up, to Renewal to some part of it. Customer success is handling it.So, the cells to see, we make sure that as soon as a prospect becomes a customer the end, CSM is a sign that to onboard that customer csm and sales members are coming together before connecting with the customer. And having that particular hand-off. Now for the, you know, midmarket and smaller team, we have just that, you know, it could just be book questionnaires that salespeople can answer for the CSM.uh What we recommend with the Strategic Customer because a lot is involved, there's a lot of stakeholders. The customer side but they're also involved. We recommend that you take that 1530 minutes on your calendar and have that proper hand-off between, you know, cells to CS. So it's a knowledge transfer session that happens between the cells and CS. Where cells are saying, you know, here's you know, how the deal went years what they want, this is the expectation, this is what we talked about, and here's the plan, here's the end goal for the customer and then CS is taking that. And then, you know, it's almost kind of like, you know, you're going into a war with all the tools and everything that you can. So see us. So that when they do get on that kickoff call, which is the next Playbook After that, they are prepared, they're confident and they know exactly, you know, how to get to the next stage. Kay - So that's the process that we have so a couple of things that I want to note down, right? So once we look at it as a joint partnership with the customer, it's not going on the water. Every experience we want to make sure our audience hears that the speaker speaks from their background and experience because we had previously, and the handoff, actually, sometimes in some companies, especially to be technically oriented starts much earlier, even at the solutioning, but space. And so the door kind of really, you know, is not a fact. They become a prospect to a customer, but even when they are prospects certain points to that because they are also trying to buy offers and everything. So, when we look at hand-offs, we have to remember the business model. We also have to remember that they support the business model. We also have to remember the product business model. Yeah. Both in mind before the hand of happens, um so in terms of, Setting the right expectations. Is this the fact that you look at it from a value-driven standpoint, are you defining the values here or you're doing it as a next step? Ashna - That's a great question and just to kind of redo what you mentioned. You're right. I think we also have some areas and some customers that we also try to, you know, do that hand off before that? So I think, generally speaking, it depends, you know, business to business, but you're right, you know, handoffs can be happening beforehand, too. And it's all about. Just make sure that you present that plan that you have in place in front of your customer and you're coming together as a team coming together, you know, from the customers and from the from your business, Community standpoint coming together as a team to Andrea, got another question, I mean, great question. I think the value proposition is throughout the journey. I think you're real, you're defining and redefining the value, you're making sure that you know, the end goal of the customers is continuously discussed and, and some help. Protective Services exactly kept kind of in the center of it. But I would say that you know, part of the onboarding Playbook as I mentioned, one of them, the biggest part is the Celsius handle, but also the kick off that you have with your customer. Now business, this could be different from the way that we have it. You know, after our hand we have ourselves reach out to our customer schedule that time. And what we're doing is we're officially handing off the customer on that kickoff call. CSM and in that kickoff, the call is all about. Here's what we know, here's the expectation, where are you in this process? Where do we need to go? Let's Build That Joint plan, as you mentioned together, and let's build out those timelines around it. And you know, you kind of go from you go further. So the main portion of the beginning, you know, at the beginning of the cycle, or when you are setting and realizing and understanding those values of your customers that ends at the kickoff level. But even before that, you know, cells, and see, we have already been talking about because cells know a lot about, you know what the customer's expectations are, what do they need, what the success looks like for them. So that's, that's been part of the conversation. It's coming together. Now, with the customer at this stage at the kickoff and you know making sure that we're all on the same page and we understand what is success for you and what's going to be the plan going forward? Kay - Yeah, I love them and always love the findings. W framework, right? So who what? Why how? And then there is a hitch there, but the interesting part in the entire hand-off is defining who is going to play? What roles are we in this together? What is it that we want to achieve but I do want to know how usually the definition of the customer does this? We do this. All of that gets defined, that's perfect. And when is very important because when are we going to achieve it? That's when the right expectations that you talked about earlier come. Yeah, play, right. So yes. When are we going to achieve something like this? And I know you had aum sample here that you would like to share with the audience, which will be there when we have the fine. um, Things. And you can also reshare it, so we will go from there. Soin then you talked a lot about health scores. So tell me from your experience. What defines the health score here? Ashna - Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, help scores could be different from company to company, business, or business. I think, there are some generic major parts of Health scores or criteria for say, you know what makes a health score, but how you wait for it, you know, how you wait for your, your score per how you know what criteria are included in the health score. It could be different based on, you know, business requirements and based on the type of products you are based on the type of customers. The way that we have it is we have a higher Health score defined and then lower Health score defined and it's just you know, the criteria that we have included in the health score includes all sorts of it, not just about CS it is as We were discussing earlier. It's also about you knowing those support areas to you because the customer is getting, you know, customers getting support from all parts of the business, you know, from the CS a little bit from the sales as well and also from the support. So we want to make sure that we're capturing all of those into the health score as well. So he'll score for us is, you know, usage adoption their main ones and a 1 is also product and marketing, right? Kay - So there is yes, well, yes, so there are experts, for example, security companies. There's usually a security person from, you know, compliance companies and stuff like that. But please continue. Ashna - No, no, that's great Great. great. Correct. Correct. Just wanted to run that. Yes, Lily. uh, That's great. But no, I think it's a lot around usage adoption for us, you know, but we're also kind of doing, you know when was the last time you had an activity with this customer? That's something that we also Target the amount of Engagement that you had with them. You know, Finance is also somewhat involved. Have they paid their views already, you know, then you have support? As I mentioned, what we include from support, is what we call bugs, and other people like we call warranties and warranty. So, you know, how do they have active warranties and effective bugs with us? That's also included and waited somehow if they have cases that many cases open with us or tickets per se and for more than you know, 30 days or whatever, it's for that. That's also defined for us and so that's and also you know main parts surveys. You know we also support doing surveys. We want to make sure that those surveys are also as part of you know what's there whatever. You know The NPS RC sad or satisfaction score sentiments. Do you know what they look like? Then we also include gum. Check, you know sometimes your health score could be high but you know your CSM or your ccsm has a feeling kind of like well I'm not too sure about this customer for this many reasons. There is that then you have you know, if the champion has left that's also involved in the health score, then you have Acquisitions and mergers. If they've gone through that, we want to also, make sure that that's involved. Another major thing that we have is competitors, you know, have they, you know, if we have some insight into competitors that they've been looking at or been working with whatever? That's also something part of them, the health score that we have. So we have waited for this differently based on, you know what we find important. And like I said, it's business. A business could be different, but most of the time, some of these are, you know, really important ones that I have a feeling that you know, a lot of the companies include these types of criteria in their health score two. And then it's just about creating processes and these scenarios and which will be called playbooks. So, what we have is, if the health Or is about the certain line of a certain number. We consider that higher if it's below that then that's lower. And we're continuously tracking those and our CSM's have, you know, Cadence's and playbooks created around those so they can continuously, you know, make that as part of their schedule and going behind them, and then we have built out resources and libraries, you know, accordingly. So that we can pull those resources also and then send it to the customer based on where they are, you know, if they have a for Sample, they have a higher Health score. I mean, that that's an indication that you could be talking about, something more that you can do with the customer. There is some more value that you can provide me. There's an expansion opportunity, maybe there is a cross selling opportunity, you know, in this area or even to help marketing with some, you know, getting some reviews for them or whatnot. And so these are the areas that we have defined, okay? If this is a scenario, this is what you do. This is a scenario, that's what you do. But then again it could change over time. So we're continuously revising and redefining You know, I'd create different processes areas where our csm'scan work. Kay - That's right. That's the client creating that knowledge, not just creating the knowledge, but also making sure understanding, of which knowledge needs to be improved. Then examined, updating that piece of knowledge as required and that goes, comes back into the feedback from them, saying, hey, this helps us didn't help this needs to. Yeah, so yeah, is it in itself a journey. Ashna - Yeah, yeah, exactly. I hundred percent and I think and it's a queen back to the topic of the hour west of the customer. It's particularly in this area. Like just imagine how much feedback you're getting, you know, from the customer with all of these. There are different criteria that define a health score but that's also a way for you to get that feedback from your customer, you know. And then you kind of have your processes built out around it. Kay - So it's I think healthcare is one of the most of the voice of the customer playbooks uhscoring should definitely. It, you know, provides a standardization that nonscoring is not right. So there is a standard way to measure everything. Yes, right? So how is the support experience? How is the customer experience? How is the onboarding experience? was so each one of those, I think scoring definitely helps concerning Sizing and looking at data from multiple angles and also doing analysis on top of it. I loved how, you know, you did touch upon the feedback. So he's right. So there's a lot that can be done by surveys, but now we are also moving towards understanding sentiment in every tourist, and then bubbling up the actual sentiment of that interaction. So, we don't have to necessarily just rely on surveys alone. So 100 on, it's amazing how where the industry is going and there is a lot that we see that's happening on the right path, right? So yeah, that's present, yeah.ThemeForest, just brought out a couple of research and we shared them with our social media, and to State how much customers support customer support experience and customer experience. And Intertwine is at the lowest level in the industry right now. So and how that presents an opportunity to make Leaps and Bounds in that area. So glad we touched upon the Health's scoring part of it in detail. So yeah. So when we talked about onboarding sales to see someone off, we talked about the kickoff process. The five wiseW'sthing.Then we talked about the health scores. Anything else that you would like to see? Have you seen the covered invoice for customer Playbook? playbooks Ashna - Yeah, I mean, I know, I think it's fun because playbooks have playbooks within them. So it's kind of like, there's just so many that could be involved in it, but I think one of the other ones that I would say is the renewal which is also kind of like, coming back to the circle of the customer's life cycle. Renewals are also really important because and you're going to capture a lot of, you know, a lot of information from your customer whether they're renewing, whether they're churning, whether they're reducing, whether they're, you know, Expanding whatever that may be at the time of renewal, there's going to be a lot of data that is going to be captured from your customer. That's going to Define how your relationship with your customer is going to progress going forward, you know. So I think renewal is also a thought important part of it to kind of give you some more into it. I mean the way that we handle Virgo is all two different parts of it. We have Auto Renewals and then we have manual renewals either way. I think it's important that you are putting enough I guess, you know, you have a process defined so that you are capturing, you know, forecasting. First of all four rules are for scat forecasting. For your customers ahead of time, but then you also kind of like, you know, reaching out ahead of time to make sure that you have enough time and customers also have enough time to work with you. But you also have time to understand where they are and where they need to go. And then you have those options to present them. So I feel like when it comes to renewables, That's why I always recommend that those parts are implemented. Well within your, you know, playbook renewals. Kay - Let's go a little deeper into this, right? So at the end of the day, support and success professionals are the ones talking to customers. They are the ones who know the gut of the customer. They are the ones who know we did. We provide them the value that we signed up for and are we continuing to provide the same level of value to the customer? Right. Soso during renewal times that value assessment comes back into play, right? So if you can drill a little bit more into tying the value back into the renewal cycle, it'll be great. Ashna - Yeah. Yeah, 100%. So like I, you know, we talked about throughout the cycle, you know, there's even at the onboarding part of the journey, there's going to be that value assessment. You can be doing that value assessment. Whether it's a, you know, one of them, one of them, one of the practices again. Is also studying whether it's a survey or just like, you know, doing a little bit of a gut check at, you know, how successful this customer is? At the end of that onboarding cycle, when you're moving them into long-term success. So, that's kind of like the value that you've taken from them. If you're going through a business review if you look at Health scores, that the midjourneymade part of the Journey of customers' Journey. When you're looking at a health score, that's also a part of the value, you know, if they're held score is high, but if they have Champion, that's Left. I mean, you know, then that's kind of an area where, you know, I would like to consider that as like, you know, I'm going to put this customer or renewal at risk. Or I'm going to put a little bit more pressure on this, or more attention to this because there might be an area where I might have to resell. We sell it to them, if I don't have the champion that I used to have, things like that, it's important. I think. So all of these areas where you capture this information come back to that rule. And so that what we do is well, we're Advanced and I think a lot of companies are Advanced. You can have triggers and things created. What we have done is based on the health score and based on other criteria that had been talked about. You know, you could have triggers created that indicate that fork at that it's forecasting. Your renewal already. So that, you know, you already have a different set of customers that you can work with. And the way that I it's, you know if the health score is low, I want to Target them at risk, you know, already. And then we're tracking those separately and we're targeting those separately already. So there is a whole different Playbook that we played with that customer ahead of time. One of the things that we also like to do is, you know, sending them out sometimes, you know, for a certain segment of our customers, not all of them, but send six months in advance, whether it's a survey or just a question, like, hey, if you had to renew tomorrow, would you renew with us? And if the answer is, yes, well, then that's your opportunity to do. Castelo Expansions, and other areas that you can work with them. If the answer is no, well, then that's your opportunity and you have six months now to work with them rather than, you know, knocking on their door about renewal 30 days or 60days in advance. So it's kind of like, you know, creating those processes in place, which can kind of help you based on this information that you're capturing based on the value discussions that you've been having, maybe you've had a business review, where you talked about some of the values and you kind of understood that maybe something's happening on the customers business side of the things that might have. Effect in the future, that's your indicator. You know, that's what you want to kind of, you know, take it separately and work towards you knowing that that's almost kind of like marking at risk or maybe, you know, that could be a best case, we're not sure yet. So I think that's a whole another playbook right there for you that you want to, you want to kind of work with them. So that's valuable. The proposition is really important before renewal and also at the time of renewal because even at the time of renewal, you are going to be learning so much from your customer, maybe they will reach out to you six. It's or 90 days in advance that they're like, hey, we're ready to renew but we want to reduce our whatever the contract that we have now, that's a type of whole other discussion that you need to kind of go back and maybe you might have to resell to them on a certain level. So it's continuously looking at the data that you're capturing. And about, you know, what type of process is what are you going to do about them? And that's part of the plate. But that's all about those processes that need to be in place. Guidelines. You know, when I say processes their guidelines because you don't want to be stuck in that kind of like this is it, but their guidelines. So at least you know what the next steps are, and then you can kind of go from there. Kay - Yeah. Hardware upselling Hardware was always with a lot of benchmarks and with a little more value-driven even decades ago, I'm so happy to see that software is also getting More value driven because at the end of the day you know gone are the days where you're just buying it for a workflow like buying a database or something like that. So It's wonderful to see that value-driven aspect in every step of the way in a customer's journey and the customer and the transparency right to be able to do that. So thank you so much for your time Ashna. Really appreciate it. Appreciate the time you took to share. ThePlaybook and specifically drink-driving around the voice of the customer. Thank you for your time. Ashna - Thank you so much for your pleasure. Previous Next

Learn when customer playbooks are most effective and how to design adaptive, evolving strategies that improve support outcomes and customer experience Customer Playbooks When is it useful and How to Create One that Evolves | Transcription Welcome to the experience dialogue. These interactions. We pick a hard topic. That doesn't have a straightforward answer. We then bring in speakers who have been there? Seen bears and approached them in very different ways. This is a space for healthy disagreements and discussions, but respectfully, just by the nature of how we have conceived this, you will see passionate voices and opinions. Friends. Having a dialogue thereby even interrupting each other or finishing each other's sentences. At the end of each dialogue, we want you and our audience to leave with valuable insights and approaches that you can try at your workplace and continue the discourse in our slack channels. The topic for today. Customers' success playbooks. When is it useful and how best to create one that is evolving? Customer success. The playbook is a series of actions that are meant to be executed by customer-facing team members to achieve the desired outcome for your customer. If a series of past events can be delegated to a group of users at different measures for the customer journey to help them. Adopt your product successfully when the, but when is customer success, Playbook is useful and how best to create one that is evolving, that's why we're going to talk about. I am. So privileged to be joining our introduction, our speaker Emilia She's a Management Consultant board advisor author, educator, and partnering with companies, to create scalable growth, and metrics, driven, customer programs, from onboarding to adoption, renewals, and advocacy. She's also the founder of a management consulting firm. Her area of expertise is building high-impact and measurable full lifecycle customer programs across the voice of the customer, renewals growth operations, customer education offshore BPO support, team management csat, and NPC initial initiatives. So, you can see it's such a breadth and the depth that she brings to the table. She is part of Gainsight top seven influential women in customer success. And as being awarded the Stevie award for customer service, so much pleasure to welcome you to this speaker event, Emilia. Emilia - Thank you for having me on your show today. Ramki. Ramki - Awesome. So just to get started I've seen your goal of the Playbook from your standpoint. The way I understand this, we need to arm CX teams with tools to manage risk and mitigate them, right? Right. So you had recently written about enabling more channels to use data to answer questions raised in those channels. When would you enable more channels can you comment on them? Emilia - Yeah. Absolutely. I believe you should start raising channels as soon as you possibly can and what does that even mean? It means ensuring that your product team, customer success, and support are aligned. So once you create a Customer Journey that everyone adheres to, and thought that is the customer Journey because remember it's not like this, it's not like this, it goes up and down all the time. So it's really important that you identify the key opportunities to engage with the client throughout that journey and understand what is the best channel to meet that client sometimes it's customer success with the more proactive and sometimes it's customer support and that is often reactive, but But the best way I can describe it is something like for anyone who owns a Tesla there no keys. There's no customer support per se. There is an app on your phone and that is how you engage with the app and the car telling you when you need to proactively engage with their customer service. Now, that is meeting a client at the client's need not when you want to engage with the client. So that's just the best. Well, you need to have channels where the client will engage with you, in a way that works for them and sometimes it's in different ways. Sometimes they want phones, sometimes they want to chat slack. So really understanding the client's journey and their needs is when you should start engaging with the client through various channels. Ramki - That's perfect. So, you kind of covered the channels from bread, and then I hope support or services to look. Proactive, you also talked about data, right? When you save data, what data are you referring to? Emilia - I'm talking about the data that you can pull from your client’s usage of the product and actions, there are so many products out there that you can interact with your product team with Customer support success sales to see, where is the Klein engaging most and where are they dropping off. So, Able to look at data by cohort. And I mean, when I say cohort, I mean by segment or by quarter, when did they sign up, maybe a new product change was implemented that increased churn or mitigated it. So that kind of data will help you better understand how to serve your customers and what are the key moments in that customer Journey that are leading to growth if you those key moments, maybe it's a decision maker, downloading a report, or scheduling a report to come to their inbox or maybe it's getting a decision maker to come to an executive business meeting, those kinds of things that they're proving that you have more adoption and engagement with the client. Then you should be using that data to make decisions for your product moving forward. Ramki - I love the way you're talking with the data, right? You don't typically either talk about all the internal events and we are, we talk about external enmity. When the customers onboard it, it is the first 90-day experience. First, 30 days of experience is kind of a thing, right? I think what you're talking about is this? Yes, you want to look at the customer journey and also see the main events that might be happening. Like product announcement products, upgrade product changes, new modules, you're trying to connect both of them and then, and then see from the customer angle. So, have you seen success or support in making this call and making the decision individually? Jointly? How does this work between success and support or I guess? Emilia - Yeah, I will tell you that in the times when one of the teams has made a decision and not informed the other, there has been a breakdown in the client experience and when I was a vice president of customer success at a previous company that had of making a product change decision failed to tell support and success. And you can imagine what happened the next morning, my WhatsApp, my cell phone, my text email exploding, and that product leader was fired almost immediately afterward because there was a breakdown. And so, what I recommend is making sure product operations, success, and support are continuously aligned with the Customer Journey, especially when you're making any product changes, communicating with the clients, and how you're servicing them. If there are any changes you need to ensure that first, your internal team feels confident to speak to those changes and then notify your customers proactively, especially if it's a massive change, you can't just announce it. You need to announce it leading up to that change, just like for anyone who uses Google. I know they're Some changes to their services. We've been getting emails about it for months so it won't be a big surprise when the change comes. Ramki - That's right. Because yes, it’s not like, depending on the changes I assume, right? Some changes you can make short early. I guess. Big changes where you need some internal time and you're saying think of it from a customer angle and not what you've done a prod complete is not enough, there is a big difference between product complete versus Product consumption. Yes, awesome, awesome. So, you mention getting feedback from all interactions. um When you say all interactions, I would love to understand what you mean by them and how you act on them. What does this mean to you? Emilia - I will give an example to illustrate an answer for you. This past week. I was stuck in my stripe account so growth molecules we have a customer Success Academy. For training, I needed to make a change in my stripe account. And the support experience asked me, would you like to chat with us? Or would you like a callback? And the Callback will be in 3 to 5 minutes. The Callback was in about 10 seconds and not only did the woman help me and stay on the phone until I was successful with my change immediately afterward an email was sent to me explaining exactly what we went through. Should I need to make a change again? And then not long after I received a support survey with a simple question. Well, 1, how was your child's experience, and 2, you did you, did you complete what you intended to complete through this support experience? I was blown away that I was able to do much in just a few minutes and that is an experience of a very proactive successful supposed support experience that you should be measuring and ensuring that the clients are happy because I could have been telling you right now, very different story. So that is one of the best in class. They're not only ensuring that the client is successful with the product. But also afterward, confirming that yes, I agreed with what the support agent had closed the ticket with. Ramki - Yeah, it's complete. Close the loop. I think what you're saying is too few things I can see, right? One, when you had the issue and reached out to them, they kind of expected it. What you were going through. , they unloaded already understood even before coming to you unassuming, right? That's one. So, he understood what the issues were too. I think they were working with you and they kind of set the right expectations and beat the expectations, right? Five minutes versus ten seconds is kind of a thing. So, they are, the first response time or quick response, time was the first thing. A, when you have a problem at least there is somebody that helps you. I think. that second one. The third one is when they were on it, they didn't make you repeat all the problems. Again, they kind of understood. They were well prepared for it and you are really in there to solve the problem at that time and that changed the game, right? And I guess closing the loop did solve the problem? Make sure that you are good and with cap problems, how do you get back? I think that's your problem with that. Fantastic, fantastic. So let's talk about switching the gear right now, Playbook assessment. So, give some examples of how support metrics are tied into this kind of Playbook: what to do, when to do it, and who is the best student? I know it's kind of a broader thing, you can split it into multiple things. So I thought I was just asking a broad question. Emilia - Absolutely. Well, I will start with just breaking it down and singing. Before you build a Playbook, you need to ensure that you understand the company, the company culture, who is serving the client, and then the client's needs. And if you're building a customer success Playbook, without looking at the customer support experiences, well, you're missing out on the key moments in the customer's Journey because a customer's journey is not just adoption and growth Shirley throughout the customer's experience. Even product LED companies that have no support and are helping the clients. Through the product, never talking to a human per se or support ticket, they need to ensure that they're including the support experience and I love examples. I love storytelling. So I'll give you an example: Ticketmaster. I recently had an experience with them. They don't have support. There's no way to get a hold of them. The tickets disappeared from my account after the concert was canceled due to covid. And I was never able to retrieve that money, and I've never been able to get ahold of them. That is the worst customer experience. I've probably ever had, and it's because they built a customer success Playbook without assessing the client's needs first. So, before you build a Playbook, and sure, you understand, how do I enable my team to use the book. What do they need to support our customers? And secondly, what does the customer need to be successful? And if there are challenges in that Journey how can we support them successfully? So they're not on LinkedIn life or Twitter or other social media saying negative things about their experiences with your product. So that's why assessments are so important. When you're Building A playbook, you need to understand the employee experience of the product. Experience and the customer's experience and build a Playbook to enable all three to work together seamlessly. Ramki - I love the way you connect because a lot of times we just think one or the other and how you have to connect them. I mean when you talk about it I was thinking of a recent example, I was in Costa Rica kind of, me and my daughter. We were doing some kind of an event. Of course, the weather didn't cooperate. We had two back-to-back events. First, one got done, some more Wee, Man. Is it true with so much pouring rain? And with a lot of lightning and thunder. So we decided we didn't want to do it and the challenge was for them, The Print office and the back office operations forces, and customer support. We're kind of originally disconnected. They did not know how to handle it. So, they have to make a lot of calls. They understood why they wanted to do the right thing, but they did not have the processes in the Playbook to manage that, while I was talking to them in life and then trying to figure out a solution etcetera. So finally, they came up with a very convoluted way and cut system. But everything got handled the next today that they had no processes to put in, from what you're talking about, I mean the internal person employee they wanted to do the right thing and they were real because it's your cue point. They also did not want to get different, not that I was going to give you any type of. You've got to be very sincere, um they wanted a good review. They wanted to help out the Back office. They also wanted to do the writing but things went all not connected. I can see how you're talking about when you do these things. You have thought about customers and employees in the process of connecting. Connecting them all. Exactly. So, I know you are a fan of the customer journey? I mean I'm just looking at your post and activities. It's fantastic. Tell me. Why does it matter in terms of mapping them, Using a mirror as doing a risk assessment, like CSM checking for a few times? how you do these things. Can you please elaborate? Emilia - Yes. So the way we do customer Journey building for clients is we bring them together so we bring together leaders, maybe up to eight people in a room on mirrors. Zoom if it's remote and then on sticky paper and big whiteboards. And if it's in a room and we're all together and what we do there is we map out the customer's journey and we include the employee. What does it take from a product? Whether it's a technology or a human touch with the client and what we have found over and over again. Are there a lot of crunchy conversations between product sales marketing, customer success, and support before we can build that Journey that everyone will align with so it isn't it is not a one-time Workshop? First, we survey all of the employees that are engaged in touching the customer experience. Then we gather that data and present it to the executives to mentally prepare them for building that customer Journey from there. We host a collaborative Workshop. It can last anywhere from two to four hours depending on the complexity of the product and then from there we go back and we gather all that data and create a beautiful Journey for them with steps for churn opportunity and growth opportunity. And from there we then present it to them. And from once they have the sign-off, then we can go and start building a Playbook on, all right? Well, if these are churn opportunities, how are we going to build battle cards for your employees to be enabled to mitigate Their growth opportunities? What are the questions? Your employees should be asking so that they can expand with upsells and cross-sells renewals with more seats. Etc. So that's the power of a Customer Journey. It's, it's kind of like me, suggesting you go see a heart doctor and I'm not a doctor and I don't know any. No, I have no idea why you're breathing heavily, it could be something related to your lungs for example. So, you want to make sure you understand the opportunities throughout and that the whole company from the top down is aligned on that before you start building and that's why I believe in customers. Journey mapping is so important. Ramki - This is fantastic. I'm also getting some live questions by the way, um this pretty, similar topic. So I'm going to just interject an Oscar that so when we talk about these playbooks at what Point, do you stop to assess how effective the Playbook is? And from there. How do you move ahead? Emilia - Yes. So when I let customer success at my last company and several of them that I've been leading, I've always reflected on the customer journey in the playbooks on a quarterly Cadence. And it's not just me, it's in a group of people where we sit down, and we look at the product map and what's changed? We look at the support tickets where they're the most challenging with the product, where's The NPS csat, wavering, and from there we update the Playbook and we get feedback from the teams as well. Because maybe we've rolled out a new way to do an executive Business review and it's at an earlier point in the customer journey. All right. Well, then we need to change the customer journey to move that Executive review earlier. And then we need to ensure that the Team has enough time to roleplay and access. The new questions were asking them to use or to feel comfortable role-playing with any rub Junctions to the new pricing, for example. So, I highly recommend at least quarterly Cadence is the Playbook the customer Journey, supporting the customer experience and the company's revenue goals. That's my advice for times a year. Isn't a lot to ask for when You think of the impact you can have on the company and the client, you'll always have a regular Cadence help site. Ramki - I mean if you just put it down and then come back to visit after say, one near 67 Monday becomes, you probably will put a lot more effort to start all over again because you don't understand what this Continuum quarterly has. It sounds real, fantastic. When you talk about the Playbook like how does one Define it? The voice of the customer in the Playbook, right? How important is product feedback to support the voice of customers? can you comment on that like the voice of customer Playbook? Emilia - Absolutely. So there's a school of thought that says NPS is irrelevant and I agree and PS was created by a CEO at a car company. And then two professors from Harvard were hired too. To analyze customer experience and create this NPS score. Now, investors, I believe do indeed, put too much focus on it. But what NPS does or customer satisfaction scores, they're different. So, you want to make sure that you're asking csat customer satisfaction after customer support experience and NPS on a more regular Cadence across the specific Target segments. For example, regardless of what the score is, the voice of the customer is important and you need a Playbook or a way to address any challenges that are uncovered. So at one of the companies, we work with and created a voice of customer program, we added all of the opportunities to experience the voice of the customer into a Slack Channel. And then on their Confluence, we created a guide. So if its product a related product has X number Of days or hours to reply. And here are suggested replies. If it's support related, this is how to address it if its customer success Etc. And through that experience, we were able to expose the voice of the customer to the executives and the employees. And suddenly the culture shifted in the organization because the voice of the customer was being heard now and the customers whom I. Because I wanted to make sure I was diagnosing and delivering the correct experience. They were so happy. They thought that one person said to me wow I thought my reply would just go into some black hole and to have a human being called. I genuinely care about my feedback, I'm taken back. So I suggest you don't just put the voice of the customer program together and say you have an NPS or see Don't do something with it. There's technology out there for you to quickly be able to evaluate and then act upon. Ramki - that's such a wonderful thing that we talked about like, for example, within Ascendo what we have done is to your point. Yeah, NPS has been a very long-standing one. Simple number. You can just get it kind, but the interactions are not at that time, right? It is that you don't want the feeling of the moment, you want to collect the feeling of the customer. So, we have Modeled, which detects that type of sentiment continuously and also on an aggregated basis. All these things are automatically done and it's given as an alert so that people can take action. So, you're not listening as I have to do this and I'm going to get and then I come back, this happens as a natural course of your day-to-day execution. Our customers are loving it. And, it's just taking the whole voice of customers to the next level. I have another question for you on this, right? um Some questions, the customer success, our support teams should be asking before they start to create the Playbook, right? One is, do you have a Playbook? Yes, you have to vacate. It's like, if people, there are some customers, early growth customers they may not have a Playbook. Would you just talk From something or do you, how do you what type of question that you may want to ask to start creating their playbook? Emilia - I would start by experiencing the customer experience. So, going in listening to calls with, from an onboarding perspective, looking at the support tickets, how they're being answered, what is the current state of affairs, and then actually interviewing the people on the front line working with customers. Honoré daily Cadence. So, looking at understanding the customer experience, looking at the data and any processes and systems that have been put into place, and building that assessment to understand the customer experience. And where's the company headed? I've seen companies create products that the customers didn't even rate high on customer needs but the CEO insisted that that was the future of the company. And It flopped drastically. So you need to, put your agenda aside and use data and the voice of the customer and your employees, the voice of the employees who are on the front line to make these decisions. So that would be my advice for this question. Ramki - Awesome, awesome. I'm going to switch a little bit. So we talked about the customer Journey. Then we went into how all the different experiences have to tie together. Then we went into the playbook and kept it. Let's talk about change management, , I mean, that's one of your passions in that topic. Talk about change management. How are they connected to measure the value? Emilia - Yeah, I don't have the exact stats but what I can tell you is changes hard and companies waste Millions. If not billions of changes sunsetting systems, implementing systems, only to experience failure. And so, transformational change with products is really hard because we're humans, we like habits, we like safety, and we fear whether it's our jobs that will fail using the new products, it may feel uncomfortable, it may not feel like it's the right decision. So prepare your employees and explain what's in it. For me it is really important and one of our clients recently hired us to do change management. Current workshop and out of that experience, I better understood doing things like breakouts. Letting people talk about the change in their fears, what they understand, the change to be, and then really ensuring that they understand what's in it for me. Because again, as humans we not only fear it but we want to know why are you doing this? Like, well will it reduce the number of employees you're going to have, is it going to have more work to mine? Wait, what are you doing with this change? That will make me more productive. So, if you put change management with that, if you implement it with that perspective and you give people time to practice, to feel confident with the changes, you will be so much more successful. And that's why we offer these workshops and why we build these playbooks to help understand, okay? This is how we used to do it. This is how we're going to do it. And here's why right? So, being able to give people time to absorb the changes is a really important part of transformational change. Ramki - Yeah, I kind of agree with you disagree with, I mean, this is such an important thing. It is not just listening and building the Playbook and keeping it current really? And a course in and to adapt yourself, people want to do this, right? They just don't want to have to do it, you want to create a Men where they want to do this. And when that happens, the magic happens. The customers get better, the experience gets better, support experience, get better. So um I think we are kind of coming to a kind of a toward the end of this, Emilia, anything else that you want to add a comment? So the team. Emilia - Yeah, I would say, don't skip out on bringing your team together for alignment, and don't assume that everyone at your company understands what the other groups are doing. This is one of the reasons we're often brought in teams working in silos. There's a breakdown in communication internally, which means your employees aren't happy, which means your customer experience is poor. So ensuring that your team's not only are in the loop of what's happening but enabling them with playbooks and technology that will help us proactively serve them is important, just giving them more work or announcing that we're adopting new technology or new playbook is Bound for failure. So we want to make sure they're part of the decision. They feel confident with it and they've had time to practice it on a regular Cadence because if you don't practice the skill, you quickly use it, especially if you're just doing quarterly reviews. For example, once in a while, you need to practice the Also give your employees time to absorb and practice. Ramki - Absolutely. I think it's all not just about learning, it's also putting the things into practice, right? And that's exactly what we worked with us in, do we bring such metrics? It makes it easier from a support perspective for customers to see them right on the leaderboard and the execution of the operational theme so they all can make those changes. So, thank you very much, Emily. This is Fantastic. Fantastic discussion, just for the audience. If you have any questions, always visit. You can also see it on Lincoln Life. Please feel free to contact us on our website. I look forward to having more of such dialogue in the future. Thank you. All. Emilia - Thanks for having me. Bye bye. Previous Next

We recently hosted an illuminating podcast with the Women in Leadership (WIL) team – and the conversation left us energized about healthcare technology’s future. Three remarkable leaders joined us from the HTM community: 🔹 April Lebo – VP of Demand and Development at Probo Medical and President of WIL 🔹 Amber Sportsman – VP and Quality Manager at MW Imaging and Treasurer of WIL 🔹 Adrianna England – Director of Inside Sales at Advanced Ultrasound Systems and Secretary of WIL Ascendo AI Podcast with Team WIL Transcript 00:00 I am actually going to go to Ami for the first time and this is going to be my first HTM conference and I. 00:08 That's something about this WIL. 00:12 And I was talking to people like Grant Hopkins and stuff. 00:14 And I said, okay, I have to really talk to these ladies. 00:17 You couldn't make it, but these three women are able to make it today. 00:21 So thank you guys for coming. 00:23 It will be great to have a introduction about each one of you. 00:28 April, maybe we go with you first. 00:30 Sure. 00:31 First, Kate, let me say thank you so much for having us. 00:34 It is a pleasure meeting you. 00:36 My name is April Lebo, and I am the VP of Demand and Development for Probomedical, as well as the president of WIL, the Women in Leadership Society. 00:49 Through that, I'm also a mom and a wife and have two beautiful, amazing adult children that have been with me throughout this entire journey. 01:00 you for having us. 01:03 Very nice. 01:03 Thank you. 01:04 Amber, you want to go next? 01:06 Yes, of course. 01:07 I'm Amber Sportsman. 01:09 I am the vice president and quality manager for MW Imaging and I am the treasurer of Women in Leadership. 01:18 Um I too am a wife and a mother. 01:22 My children are21 and 31, and yeah, I'm excited about this opportunity you've given us today, so thank you. 01:33 Yeah, and April, you are in Philly. 01:35 Amber, you are in Missouri, is a state I haven't visited. 01:39 I need to. 01:40 And Adri, please go ahead. 01:42 Hi, I'm Adri, AKA Cali Girl. 01:45 I'm from California. 01:47 um I am the Director of Inside Sales for Advanced Ultrasound. 01:52 I sit on the WIL board as the secretary and I also sit as a voluntary secretary for the CMIA, which is the California Medical Instrumentation Association. 02:03 So yeah, I've been in the industry about 18 years, going on 18 years. 02:08 I have a daughter that's 25 and I'm extremely excited for this opportunity and thanks for highlighting WIL. 02:15 It is amazing to meet women not many times. 02:19 First of all, I'm not never in a screen full of women. 02:24 So most likely next I'm going to be in an event with 200 people and I will probably be one of the five women there maybe, right? 02:34 So So it's a joy to connect with women. 02:37 You know, coming, I'm going to be there at HTM and the army for the first time. 02:44 So you guys have any tips for people like me coming in for the first time to New Orleans? 02:51 I do. 02:52 First let me say you are picking probably the Super Bowl of our industry to get your feet wet coming to the AMIE exchange. 03:00 It is an absolutely phenomenal conference. 03:04 A ton of great people that will be there. 03:07 My biggest tip is just meet as many people as you can. 03:11 Everybody in our industry is so welcoming. 03:14 and so open to conversations and networking. 03:19 So just go around and meet as many people as you can and look for the will pins. 03:27 There are so many of us now, you should be able to identify anybody that's in the Women in Leadership Society with the will pin that they will be wearing and we will welcome you in. 03:39 We can introduce you to people that you might not know, we can save youYou a seat at the lunch table, whatever it is you might need. 03:48 We've got different networking events that we do. 03:51 We've got some educational events that we're doing, but one of the reasons was really put together was to make it a very comfortable place. 03:59 four other women at these conferences, because like you said, sometimes you go and you're one of five people amongst the sea of 200 and it's not always comfortable. 04:09 So we wanted to create an environment where everybody felt welcome. 04:14 So just utilize that opportunity to network and utilize us as the WIL members to help you do that. 04:22 Ladies, anything else that you would recommend? 04:26 Thank you. 04:28 Yeah, the one thing I want to bring up, and it's only because April, you totally inspired me on your last podcast on building authentic relationships. 04:35 Kay, I'm going to challenge you because April challenged us on not just collecting those business cards, actually building authentic relationships. 04:43 You can collect 1000 business cards, but if you can't remember who's on the other end of that. 04:47 there's a problem. 04:48 So truly, genuinely have those conversations, meet and greet, and maybe have five authentic conversations versus 5,000 business cards. 04:58 So April, I am listening and I'm taking notes. 05:02 In the land of AI, that's the thing that we as students can do be better, right? 05:07 And Adri, I actually looked at one of your LinkedIn posts where you were talking about your experienceWith awesome customer service where the person treated you throughout the entire journey and was with you throughout the journey, right. 05:23 And that's so important in the land of AI to bring in the humanness and the humanity, right. 05:30 So first April, I'm going to get that pin. 05:34 That's what I'm going to do. 05:35 You know, I'm going to come and meet you and say, hey, that is my thing. 05:39 So I'll get that. 05:41 So April, but there are so many women organizations and many of them have many different goals. 05:49 There are women on boards and this, that, everything, right? 05:52 But why WIL? 05:54 Why just another women's organization? 05:59 So one of the things that I noticedbeing in this industry was kind of like what we talked about before, that you felt alone and it was very intimidating. 06:11 So not only just me personally at my company and being surrounded by a lot of men and wanting to grow and wanting to have a seat at that table, but going to these different conferences and going to the different meetings,As a woman and as a young woman at the time, being able to walk in to this networking event, to this conference, and needing to just randomly go up to older men, very educated, very knowledgeable, very technical, and try and introduce myself, it was extremely intimidating. 06:51 And so I wanted to create aan outlet for women to be able to get that support, to have other women who were going through something similar and be able to create that network where we had each other and to try and motivate and again inspire other women to be a part of this and to know that they weren't alone and that they could have somebody when they went to thesenetworking events, these conferences, these different society meetings, that they could have somebody there that could go do it with them, and also be able to help mentor them if they were having questions, if they were struggling with different things, but then also role models, because you didn't see a lot of women in our industryholding higher level management positions, and we all, and we talked about this in our very first meeting two years ago when we we talked about doing the Women in Leadership Society, it's hard to be it when you can't see it. 07:59 And so without having role models in those upper level management positions, what led us to believe that could ever be something we could do? 08:08 So we really wanted to be able to show womenthat in this industry it is possible, and that there are women that are making it happen and able to navigate this environment. 08:20 So that was kind of the premise. 08:21 I know there's a lot of other women's groups out there, but there really didn't seem to be anything devoted just to healthcare technology management, and I think it just was because there wasn't a lot of women to begin with. 08:34 So we had to really create that um environment so other women could see it,and know then that they could be it. 08:43 So that was kind of why we started. 08:45 It's beautiful because every industry brings in its own challenges, and um especially the ones that are minority in these. 08:55 So I actually have a daughter who is going to be a surgeon in two years, so I knowthat a lot of them are male oriented professionals and having mentors and guides is the best thing. 09:15 In WIL, April, can you run a little bit on started two years ago. 09:22 What have you guys touched so far in HTM? 09:27 So we started out with just this group of women right here on the phone. 09:33 We're missing Kim, who is our vice president. 09:36 But we sat in a room, and I kind of pitched this idea. 09:40 And everybody said, absolutely, this is something we needed to do. 09:44 And fast forward two years, and we now are at about 640 members, which if you would have asked me two years ago, are there 600 women in HTM, I would have said, absolutely not. 09:57 So we have been able to just through going and networking and talking about our mission, we have been able to pull in a lot of support, not just from the women, but from the men, Brian Hawkins, Danny Mobley. 10:15 So many of our male counterparts out there are so supportive of what we're doing, but as we've grown, we've instituted a mentorship program, we startedDoing our war stories, which stands for Women are remarkable. 10:30 to share the journeys of our members so other women can see what different women in this industry have gone through to get where they are at today. 10:43 We have our ambassador program, so we've expanded out to have ambassadors so that there is always somebody at one of these events that a woman who is just starting out or isn't super comfortable knows they cango with, walk around with, be able to connect with that can help them at these shows. 11:04 And then Kim started the No One Sits Alone program so that we have a spot during the lunches, during some of the educational sessions where you can always find somebody within will that you can sit with and you don't have to sit by yourself. 11:19 So we've continued to grow and expand over these two years and we're looking to grow even more in terms of our presence and the things that weoffer. 11:29 We do training, we've done some different webinars based on some of the feedback that we've gotten. 11:35 So really trying to do as much as we can to bring value to the group and help the women out as much as possible. 11:44 That's awesome. 11:45 And one other thing that's common across all three of you is, you know, you folks are working in ultrasound equipment. 11:56 GE Healthcare is a large customer of ours, along with other large ones. 12:01 So I'm familiar with it. 12:02 But what struck me, Amber, is you've been in this company for 18 years, and you actually have been in the industry for over 30 years. 12:13 And one of the terms that we use is a entrepreneur where somebody innovates within the company. 12:21 like an entrepreneur, but within a company itself. 12:23 And now I heard that you're actually helping run the business. 12:29 I would love to hear from you, your perspective on how the journey was and what you feel now that you wish you'd felt before. 12:38 Hmm That's a deep question, Kay. 12:43 Yeah, 18 years ago when I was hired to come into this position,I don't think we had a vision really at that point. 12:54 It's been a very gradual growth. 12:59 One of the things that our company has always focused on is our customer and our customer service and so um I amI am the manager that likes to sit in the background and the ladies will tell you, I'm always like, why do you guys want me on this board? 13:17 You know, what am I going to bring to it? 13:20 So I like to sit in the back. 13:22 I'm a thinker and a planner and an organizer and I care. 13:28 I care about patient safety, I care about quality. 13:32 So those I think are the things that I contributed to the company along with hiring a very phenomenal team of employees. 13:41 We have such a great team. 13:43 So the longevity that I have within this company kind of goes to what Adri was talking about earlier too. 13:51 I too did not graduate from college. 13:53 So in my early years I was afraid to leave. 13:56 I thought whoWho's going to hire me? 13:59 Who's going to want me for Amber Sportsman on a piece of paper not knowing me and giving me that opportunity because I don't have the college education. 14:09 I don't feel that way any longer. 14:12 I know that my achievements speak for themselves, but I would like that kind ofanswers your question a bit. 14:21 It definitely does. 14:22 So we did a podcast earlier. 14:26 I talked to Noel, who also had not had a college degree, but is a executive in the tech industry. 14:34 And you're exactly saying that don't let your education or your background intimidate you to reach the highest highs. 14:42 As long as you have the experience and you have theinertia and the growth mindset, which is very important for me. 14:52 You can reach to the level that you want to, and don't be stopping yourself. 14:57 That's a great message, Amber. 14:59 Thank you. 15:00 You're welcome. 15:01 Thank you for, yeah, thank you for bringing that out. 15:05 Adri, you know, we were seeing how she has this gorgeous smile and and youI started from a full sales background. 15:17 So I can tell you from coming in from a tech background and then going into sales was eye-opening for me because I used to think, Hey, I'm selling you something, whereas it's a big perception I'm helping somebody. 15:37 may have a better life or a better job or something like that. 15:41 It was a big switch that I had to do for myself coming in. 15:47 But you have been doing sales for quite some time. 15:50 Tell me a little bit more about your journey and tell, you know, what you would suggest to anybody who is in healthcare management or even not about sales itself. 16:02 I'm sorry I'm putting you on the spot. 16:04 Put my sales hat on. 16:05 That's the only one I have. 16:08 I've done sales my entire career. 16:10 I started off selling large appliances so I was learning barcodes and different manufacturers and it was a straight commission position. 16:20 So if I didn't sell, I didn't get paid. 16:22 So that's where I learned how to hustle. 16:24 I learned knowledge with power. 16:27 I learned you had to be there, you had to show up, you had to build those relationships. 16:31 So when I had an opportunity 17 years ago to come in as a sales coordinator, I took it because I knew I wanted to start at the bottom. 16:40 I wanted to grow. 16:41 I wanted to learn. 16:42 I wanted to invest. 16:43 I wanted to be mentored. 16:45 And I sat with some very professional people who let me do all the paperwork and let me do all the paper pushing and take notes in all the meetings. 16:54 And I did it. 16:55 And within two years, I became a sales Rep. 16:58 So I was an account manager and actually having the. 17:01 conversations and not just taking the notes, preparing the meetings and about five years into that I became an inside sales manager. 17:09 That's where I learned people matter and um I trained them from the beginning so when they came in I put them through a three month training program because I really want them to understand the company and who they were, who they are because you cannot sell if you don't know. 17:26 If If not you're just a typical salesman. 17:28 Well I'm a saleswoman and I wanted to give them anProvide what we had is what I was selling. 17:36 Um After that, I kind of just started learning and branching and reaching out to people like April and Amber. 17:42 And just building me and my network and realizing my authenticity is what helped me in my career and building those relationships because people buy from who they trust. 17:56 And again, with this will, people join because of who they trust. 18:00 April handpicked us to be on this leadership panel. 18:04 And it's because she knows that we have built these authentic relationships and they trust that and they know it and they see it. 18:11 So one thing that I've learned though, talking about sales is I can sell anything, right? 18:17 I can go anywhere, I can sell anything. 18:19 UhBut I was chasing a title. 18:21 So I was doing sales where my passion was, but I thought I had to continue to climb to have any sense of fulfillment. 18:31 And so I chased the title and I'm now in my director position. 18:35 When I was offered the position, I accepted without. 18:39 any ifs ands or buts about it. 18:41 And then I Googled, how do you become a director? 18:44 And I just figured it out. 18:46 So here I am three years later, hard work, dedication, constantly learning, but I have not forgot where I came from. 18:55 I still, like Amber, put in the work. 18:58 I do exactly the day-to-day that my account managers are doing now, plus sit on the wheel board, do these podcasts,put out the company newsletters, work with the leadership team, but I also am a very team-orientated leader to where I am leading by example. 19:19 That's awesome. 19:19 You know, one thing that comes out talking to all of you is that authenticity, right? 19:25 And who you are as, even though there's so many commonalities. 19:31 between but stay true to who you are, irrespective of how life has taken you. 19:37 And I think that's a precious thing that we needed to preserve. 19:42 And I truly, truly believe AI needs people of various attitudes and aptitudes, and you guys are the examples of it. 19:50 So one message that I would love to spread to the WIL audiences isto some extent, like what Amber said, don't hesitate that to march on AI, because it requires everybody all sorts of thinking into it. 20:12 Otherwise it will be very much like monotone, like how the industries have become, and then we have to change it. 20:22 Why is that? 20:23 Let's be part of it, right? 20:25 That would be my message to everybody who's listening in into this. 20:30 With that, I wanted to thank all three of you for being in the podcast. 20:35 I can't wait to come to New Orleans, get my pin and give you all a hug and maybe share some drinks. 20:45 So looking forward. 20:47 Thank you so much. 20:48 We've enjoyed this very much and appreciate you giving us an opportunity to meet you and to talk about WIL. 20:56 We're very excited about it and can't wait to see what the future brings. 21:01 Absolutely. 21:02 Thank you. 21:02 Thanks, Adri. 21:03 Thanks, Amber. 21:04 Thank you. 21:05 Thank you. 21:05 Thanks. 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Discover how Voice of the Customer insights help identify new markets and guide product development strategies for greater impact and alignment The Voice of the Customer in Discovering Markets Developing Products | Transcription Kay - The Experience, dialogue, and experience dialogue. We pick a Hot Topic that doesn't have a straightforward answer. They bring in speakers. Will be there to see that but approached it in very different ways. This is a space for healthy. Disagreements and discussions. But in a very respectful way, just by the nature of how we have conceived this, you'll see the passionate voice of opinions and between Martina and me, that would never be an issue. Friends having a dialogue. I'm looking forward to this conversation and thereby interrupting each other and finishing each other's at sentences the end of the dialogue. We want our audience to leave valuable, insights and approaches that you can take to the workplace. And we do want to continue the discoverers in our social media channels, introduction to the topic, we are going to be talking about wise in the customer and how Impacts into product growth and developing markets with that. I would love to introduce my Martina she is the famous opera of loved and how to rethink the marketing of tech products. He has also helped hundreds of companies navigate through product marketing and go to market strategy. And I've had some amazing discussions with her. When we started that often do also she's a partner lecturer advisor and a board member I am interested in going through, not just Martinez's background, but also looking at what she brings in Seminole products. His experience bringing out some inner products into the market, including her background from Microsoft, and Netscape, but also house Founders and can enable customer centricity in terms of growth. Martina welcome. Martina - Thank you so much for this. Kay - It's a pleasure. I enjoyed the book and loved I know you. It was primarily written for product management, but as the founder is that, you know, you end up doing a lot of product and you're listening to customers all the time and you start with this whole thing about is their customer curiosity and it makes me wonder that. He comes in from multiple angles and rights in the beginning. Is there a market afterward? Is their customer curious about resolving problems? Is their customer curiosity in asking for more features, is a customer curiosity and buying new modules, all of that. So could you talk a little bit about customer curiosity? Martina - Yes. Well, I think customer curiosity and helping people understand how you translate that into One of the biggest challenges for any founder, as well as for anyone that's in the product. And we talked about this a lot in the product world. You can't ask your customer to tell you what to do. You must infer from the sharing of their experience, or the observation of the experience, how your product might be able to better solve their problem and where you can add value, that is disproportionate to the work you're asking them to do and using your product. So I think it's really important for people to not be looking at customers, to tell them what they want and need. But you infer how they can better solve problems on behalf of customers because anyone that's a Founder on the product side knows. Oh, I know what's possible with technology. Let me solve this for you. I think I can find a better way and not just look to the customer to tell you what to do. Kay - Yeah. So you're bringing up the standard to be like stool which is you hear from the customer what they want. And you have the vision that you have for the product. And the third thing is what everybody in the team wants to build, which is because it's so cool, right? So, trying to find a balance across all three. If you could address customer curiosity, I have to say the product is in a state where, you know, the feature is out, people love it. People are using it, and then you're kind of debating, is it? Now is this company. Being the go-to-market is product LED growth customer glad growth. What is this, how would you differentiate the different growth cycles, and how does customer curiosity fit in those? Martina - So I am a huge advocate of using the customer Discovery process as you're building to uncover what are the potential channels for going to market. And I think for early stage Founders I think it's very different at different stages. I think in the early stages you don't know the answer and you have to run a lot of go-to-market experience. It's to understand the difference between how the market will act and behave versus what people will say. I often refer to this, as they say, do Gap and you kind of, you can only try things because and I've seen this in multiple companies that try to start with product LED growth because, of course, that's a very efficient way to grow, but they have to resort to standard top-down Enterprise practices to commercialize. So they'll find a user base but they won't be translating it. To actual paying customers. And so certainly in the SAAS B2B space, we're seeing much more of this trend toward plug, which is more of sales assist, as opposed to the primary vehicle for converting people into customers. So you have the product lead user side and then people look at that data to infer where should our high Target sales accounts be based on the usage behavior and that's used in the product. As a tool to figure out what our sales strategy might be. And so that's something that we're seeing much more on the rise on the B2B SAS side especially also for more mature. Companies that might have a more established model where they might have an established sales team or they might have started the other way being purely page. That hybrid model is something that we're seeing a lot of people, consider and move toward Kay - I know in your podcast you did give some examples of those and we've had to talk when we were talking to you, you had a few examples. I would love to hear one of the examples now. Martina - So my day job is I'm a partner at Costa, Noah Ventures. And we work with a lot of early-stage startups and one of our startups as an example is a startup called the past base and so they have something that people can immediately use and based on that the sales team, then does calls and follow up saying, hey, Hey, we noticed that you were getting some use out of this. Are there any questions that we can answer so it's a He'll sales process but they can land anyone that they reach out to typically very quickly within a week or two and there is another company that I just talked to you about yesterday? Not in our portfolio. They have a product Allegro strategy where they get 200 new logos. And essentially, they have that product out there. They have a sales force, just follow up via phone or email and they're usually typically able to close inside of a week. So, these are examples of how that shows up in various models in different types of companies. One is a web three company, and another is a data company. So the models exist in all different categories, Kay - Yeah. So when you look at the product data in itself, you know, from a customer's support customer success standpoint. We look at it as the wise of the customer, right? So that voice of the customer comes in in multiple forms in a product, LED Growth Company. And what are the Avenues that have worked best from your experience for looking at that? Customer data. I mean, talking about install base data, not just Market data alone, right both. Martina - Yeah. And I think that I'm a big Advocate and, you know, I talked about this earlier about the fact that we have quantitative data, which the world has given us, unbelievable amounts of, but the qualitative data matters just as much to and one story that I think I might have shared with. You were one of the workers, their customer's success team kept hearing in there. Conversation. So this is not something that was being captured in product data because the future didn't exist neatly. These SEC Financial professionals who are sitting in front of spreadsheets that they were getting from all across the company, have to compare and contrast data. So, for them being able to use these products across multiple screens, Mattered a lot and their day-to-day productivity. This is not something that would have shown up inside of product data, but their customer success team was heard in their conversations. You know, it would be helpful if we could have multi screen support and so, the customer success team was going to the product team saying, hey, you know, what we keep hearing is that customers need multiscreen support and the product team looking at the product data and doing all of their customers. Recovery work felt that other priorities were much more important. Hey, we have all these jobs to be done and these really important Integrations that need to be done. And so for them, it felt less urgent or important than other things they have prioritized. But to the customer success teams, great credit they said, no, we have to represent that voice of the customer. This is the number one thing we hear. We need to do this. So, the product team said, okay, we'll put in the next major release and, of course. And that next major Release the number one most talked about thing was the multiscreen support. So, that's a great example of everybody's doing their job, but it's important when the product team makes decisions to think about the different ways in which you're receiving that customer insight and to not only rely on the quantitative or just with the product, the team itself has discovered. But to listen to the front lines, customer success, team sales teams where they have to live with the customer every day and hear what they're saying and factor that into how they make decisions on prioritizing. Kay - Yeah, I'm putting some even in the Ascendo, do we enable agents and, and customers to resolve the issue faster, so they'll be called individual trees? But then, what we did is we ended up saying, why do we have to resolve one issue at a time? Why can't we do it in bulk and aggregated in arts and automatically categorize the issues so you can see them here? I wanted to solve these kinds of issues and resolve them in bulk. Interestingly customer triaging agents and people loved it from one angle but we didn't anticipate that support leader. Looking at this going like, oh my gosh, that's my product feedback. So that's exactly it. So now I can go to the product teams and say, this is why I need this, and here are all the interactions of people who are asking for it. So that's something we didn't anticipate. It came up just with the data and that inside. So thank you for that story. I think qualitative and quantitative both are very important to read. And it's so funny. Martina - You mention the bulk feature this happens in another company that I work with where they were looking at one particular. Persona, that, that needed to do bulk edit of all these things, I need to be able to take all these ad campaigns and run and basically, do one huge amount of things that one thing Huge amount of campaign. So hundreds of things and bulk edit for them. For that particular Persona was important and so it was a critically important problem to solve and they decided to prioritize it. And what they didn't know. And I think this is the thing that we all as product teams need to be open to sometimes by solving a problem. That's critically important for one audience, you open up a vector where all these other audiences can find Value. And that's what they found. They thought they were solving a problem for this one persona. But actually by having that feature available, suddenly made it more useful daily to all these other personas inside the company. So it's the same scenario that you were describing that will sometimes solve a problem that will accidentally be much more valuable to many other people that we can't anticipate either, because we, you can't, and there's just a certain amount of serendipity. Or that's just kind of nature. The nature of opportunity that gets opened up. So I think we always have to have big Clean ears on and constantly be paying joint attention to the overt signals as well as things that might be less obvious. Kay - Yeah, it's a good time to introduce a question from Ben who's asking, you know, they give you're bringing up the exact point where a lot of CFOs CEOs and so they are focused on the short term and they don't get the discovery from the Focus mindset or not paying attention to it, or not getting tune to it, right? So how to work with such people? Martina - I think the really important thing is to connect your processes and your data to the business objectives because everyone in the suite is being held accountable for their business results. How are you growing the business? And what does that look like? And how does anything you're investing in translate into the business? All of us are expecting this company to build. Toward. So I think that's the most important thing to show a connection to, as it relates to customer Discovery, that's where you need to show it to us, creating more value and coming up with better products. Here's what we're able to discover or do differently as a result of us having these customer Discovery processes. So you want to draw that direct correlation. For example, you might have put 20 different solutions out and Discovery and narrowed it down to two that are far more useful. Awful, you want to talk about all the things you threw away, and not just the two you pursued, because people won't understand. Oh wow, we considered a whole lot of other stuff and these two were the best by far for these reasons in service of this business objective, that makes a whole lot of sense. So you, not everybody in the suite, understands all of the things that product teams are doing and so drawing that connection and helping them, understand how that work translates into `` Is what's important? Kay - Yeah. You're bringing up a point where that listening has to be some sort that requests back from the customer-facing teams back to. The board has to substantiate that with data and insights. So these are the types of customers. And the other thing that I heard you say and I would love to elaborate you to elaborate on it, which is a lot of times that ends up being Either the squeaky customers. You know. Loud ones are the most Revenue generating ones that are being listened to. But what you are saying makes a lot of sense when it is for the entire larger install base, looking at the larger install base, everything from trials to the highest revenue, and then looking at that insight as a whole is that correct? Martina. Martina - Yeah. And I think you want to look again at that from the business perspective which is not just where we are today. A, but where do we need to go? Where do we need to grow? What is strategically important for us to capture and that helps you make decisions. So I was working with a company just last week, where we were doing, we looked at the company through the lens of the competition, and the competitive market situation. And what you prioritize, when you look at the companies through that lens, versus if you just look at it Bottoms Up from here, our biggest customers. Here's what they're asking for, you'll do different things and because of there, those are different battlefronts and some of them are defensive like the existing install base and you Kristin customers, that's defensive, looking at it from the market vantage point is offensive, where do we need to go? What do we need to make sure we're growing toward, and that will be less obvious stuff? But when you are considering everything you need to look at it through that lens, let's make sure we're investing in both and not one at the expense of the other. I have told you. An example, when I was at Netscape where we were putting products out fast and furious and quality wasn't what it should be for Enterprises. And so the number one complaint across the board everywhere was like, you guys need work on quality, like, stop making features to fix everything because two watches are janky and so we listened to everything that they were saying and this major release became Fix everything that's broken for customers and we were going fix everything. And so took a lot longer than everyone's expecting because things that need to be Rewritten platform, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff to probably six months longer than it needed to. And there was no innovation and in that period, our number one competitor was innovating. So we solve all of our customer's problems but we didn't innovate and that, absolutely, but us in the market, and it was the beginning of us not being seen as So that was a huge lesson learned where you can't just tend to the squeaky Wheels, the problems that you have today. You also simultaneously have to be looking toward where we need to drive the market. And what's important? So make decisions using both those as a lens. Kay - Yeah, what you're bringing up is, do we not doing something and losing the growth? I have an example of doing something wrong and losing growth. So, we were actually at son, we were building a product very similar to news and that particular product. We wanted to get it out to the market. As soon as possible. We were told, no, we have to get this many million users, you know, we have to get the performance scalability to and the that, because that's some culture, right? So we think big in the, but we haven't gotten the partic to the market. There hasn't been a single user, but we were working and we ended up having to spend six months before which I had to put. You know, go back and say, hey, the last six months, now be better Go to the market, we will face this problem as it comes, right? When we get that millions of users will come, but we don't have tens of users yet. So it's one of those things they're not doing that has to be in tune with the market, which is what you're saying. I think this is a great thing in your book. Love that there are four different ways in which you are connecting the insights. So what you talked about connecting the market and the customer Insight seems very close to the Ambassador. You're talking about the Ambassador, the strategist, the Storyteller, and the Evangelist. I'm trying to figure out if I should go. One by one, we should compare and contrast all of them. What would be the best for you? Martina - Well, maybe we give it over to you but your point. Okay, so I talked about the four fundamentals of product marketing, and I think at it, A meta level. It's important to understand that product marketing, whether it's your title or not, is simply connecting. How does your product get to Market through a series of strategic marketing activities that move toward your business goals? So, it's not just a title, or a person doing the job. It's a function that must be done by a company. So, it doesn't really matter where it lives or who owns it. The work must be done and so I try to reduce them., just the four fundamentals. So, people understood this is the work that must be done and The fundamental one to your point was the Ambassador, which is connecting customer Market insights, and that's everything that you. And I was just talking about and that can come from anywhere. If you hold the title of product marketer, it is your job to make sure that all of that market Frontline Market signal gets reflected by the product team as well as that market Insight of okay, what was our competition doing? And what does that mean? to do or respond to some of it might be purely a marketing response. Some might be product responses, but that's a slip. Someone who sits in the role would adjudicate, but all that work is going to be done as a collective effort. Number two is the strategist which is directing the products, and going to market. And that's looking at it through that more strategic lens, that we are discussing, which is okay. How much of our effort needs to be around tending to our existing Market or growing into new ones? And what does that mean? What channels should we Be more plug product leg growth focused versus top down? Or is this a place where our existing channels work, just fine, or do we need new Partnerships? So that's thinking about that from that more strategic vantage point and then all the different helping to guide, all the people on the marketing. Team Number three is the Storyteller, and that's shaping the perception of the product in the market. So it's not just storytelling and that's all the messaging and positioning work. And then Number four is the Evangelist and The key here is that you're enabling others to evangelize about your product. It's not just that you are the one that's doing the talking about your product. And I think that's a big leap and distinction between what I'd say, more modern approaches are versus when you and I were first coming up in the market which is like hey you have a product, you get to talk about it. Now there are five and a half million apps. There are tens of thousands of Solutions across three or four categories. So we're all bombarded. You don't just get to talk about yourself. Is it? Everybody on the team and I. Everybody is confused. No one is cross-pollinating us. Yeah, it's so confusing. So people won't listen to people. They trust, which is not us. Yeah, it's a colleague, it's something on social media. It's something in the Reddit forum and so, how do you enable others to be your evangelist? Kay - Yeah. Let's put this to the fullest, which is the Cinder and the strategist separately because doctors looking for signals from inside the company back into the product. Then the other two, which are to some extent. The story does Storyteller and the Angeles, which is what goes from inside to the external. People are getting the external people involved. So, on the first two, which is what we are talking about, we have been talking about the Ambassador and the strategist there is There is a question from social media in your experience. When you start creating feedback mechanisms to capture and communicate the knowledge of the customer-facing teams back to the product teams, does that have a positive motivational effect on everyone? So, I mean, in a way you answer this by saying the product marketing has to be tuned to all of this. But here, maybe it's a situation where it's sometimes frustrating. Frustrated. If the engineering folks have dull side effects, then what should we do? Martina - Well, I always look at customer Market insight as a positive thing. Not a negative, it should never be like, oh my gosh, this is distracting from the work that we need to do. This is the work that needs to be done. If your product is not in service of the customers and Market that you are in then who are you doing this for? It's never about technology for Technology's sake. Sometimes things are broken and need to be fixed, but products exist to solve problems for customers. And to be in particular markets that are trying to do things, so it's kind of the game that we're all in. So we have to play. So I would say any customer Market Insight should be positive for teams that are trying to make decisions not that it is not a distraction. Kay - If someone is providing a customer-facing team is providing back feedback back into that engineering. Think somebody is not listening. Please go ahead and share this particular life with the engineering team and say, hey, Martinez is that you have to listen. So, I am giving you installed base feedback. So that should help for this question, the, you know, listening to the customer getting the market insights as great. This is also another question that has come up when the customer talks about problems in the prob product. Usually, they're correct. But when they, Talk about solutions, they are usually incorrect. How much truth is there to the scene? Martina - 100% I should say that the vast majority of cases are two. You will always find that exceptional customer that has this Pitch, Perfect insight, and then you're like, wow, you're amazing, and always try and keep working with that person wherever they are because they have amazing product Insight. That person is rare most of the time just because they don't have As much visibility into the full realm of possibilities on the solution side, they're going to look at it very narrowly. They're going to look at it through the lens of their experience base. And so 100% listen to the problems infer, how might I see this in a way that will achieve what they want and there is some signal in the solutions that they are telling you most of the time that signal, my experience of that signal is Don't over solve or overthink this. I'm telling you a very simple way that I know how to solve the problem, and sometimes it might seem overly simplistic to TiVo. We can do this another way, but there might be some signal. They're saying, don't make this hard, don't add a whole new area. Don't, don't make this a big thing. Can you solve this in a very simple way? So there is some signal, Not necessarily the solution, but the intent behind how they want to feel. Accomplishing the task. I know that seems very subtle but it can be profound in terms of how complex we solve things and how we complexify our Solutions I should say. Kay - Yeah, it's you know a lot of times that I also say this to our teams, right? So in this iterative model that we are in, we can have the luxury of solving it simply and seeing how we are in 10th place to be able to go. Ahead and improve on it. So, there is no reason to come up with something very complex, because gone are the days where we, you know, we are not shipping CDs anymore. Martina - So, so true. And I'm so glad that you said that, like we have the, we live in this fabulous era where we get to iterate quickly. We don't have to ship it. And wait, another year before we can put out another release, we can put something out there. This is again the MVP. How do we test our thesis on whether or not this is Solving the problem of whether or not it has value to the customer week and whether or not it's usable? Let's make sure that we are doing all of that work as we build. Kay - Yeah. Me and my cofounder always talk about the know what? They know, how do they know why you write? So they know what they know, why do they know how? So how come we resolve it? The problem comes last. It's if you focus on the right intern and understand the intent very, very, very well, the solution can be very simple. Whoa, to solve that particular problem. I agree. Again. Yeah, so in terms of how an Ambassador understands, just, how are they different in a product LED Growth Company versus a customer learns? Let's take a step back. Tell us what in your words, how you would differentiate a product lid and a customer liquid company. Martina - I would say. Product LED company is one where they are looking very much at product signals to figure out where to grow and how to do things. And the product is where they manifest how they want to move the market. Whereas a customer lead might be we're listening, we're listening more to than not watching their behaviors in the product. We're listening more to the customer's voice overly, not necessarily Through their product actions. And based on that we're making adaptations that might not just be in the product. So a lot of customers LED places, might adjust the sales process, and customer success process brand. There are many other ways to be in service of customers and build a customer relationship product. Like companies tend to put all of that in the product experience, whereas I'll say customer LED ones are, well, they're all these other ways that we can serve. Connect and provide value to the customer and it's not necessarily just through the product. But product lead companies, they're like, well, if it doesn't live in the product and that value can't be experienced then we're not doing our jobs. Well enough, Kay - Have you seen a combination of the two Martina you have seen a lot of startups and I am yet to see, you know, models are also evolving as we talk, right? So because things are becoming a lot more overlapping Have you seen a combination of the two that has worked? Well for any of the companies? Martina - Well, I would not say that Netflix is a classically a product, wouldn't let in the way that we're talking about now, but I would say they were at as an organization. They are tremendous in leveraging and empowering product teams to do both of these things within their Realms. So, the team that was All the product team that was in charge of the home page, which is just one aspect of the product, which is how do we convert people that come here into trial users and then make sure that we retain them after trial. They had to make decisions on when they signaled. We're about to charge your credit card and one decision led to a huge amount of customer support calls. They wouldn't notify them proactively and it's like, okay, there's 10 million dollars worth of Alls. I'm making that number up, but a huge number of calls would come in where people like, oh, I forgot to not have my credit card charged. Can you just take it off? And so, they solve that problem by proactively notifying people in the product, as part of the product experience, was to proactively notify them that we're about to charge your credit card. So people remembered and that wound up. Costing them 50 million in Revenue. So it was a much more expensive decision but it was the right brand choice to do. Right by the customer, and be honest about what was happening. So they made a choice that wasn't the right the best quote, unquote, Revenue Choice, or business choice, but it was the right customer choice and they discovered all this through, the product forward process, they made the right brand decision and of course, this is many, many years ago, they said it's more important for us to be a trusted brand because of what we're building long term. And of course, Netflix is what it is today. And I think, as an organization, they're spectacular at Mining product signals with customer signals. Kay - Yeah, and interesting. You say that. And, you know, I'm, I'm also seeing this with, in my experience that is to say, with companies of all sizes, I recently talked to a company that's only 15 people but they have 115 thousand users using their product. And what I'm noticing is some very large companies that have, you know, Cloud companies and collaboration companies. I've also talked to where they have traditionally been product LED growth, but at some point evolved into customer LED growth for cross-selling, upselling, training product feedback, you know, the voice of the customer input. So even products like growth companies, respect the size as they get The number of users and the number of customers. And I see them moving towards this customer delayed growth for growing within the same accounts or even identifying markets. And I think that's pretty much what you are alluding to with the onion Netflix example. Correct. Martina - Yeah. And then also just exactly what you are saying, which is there. So many other ways in the modern Arena products can feel very equivalent to customers. And so if you To be a retained customer pick. People want to have a sense of affinity and relationship with the brands that they choose to do business with that stuff, is, impacted by the product, but they're all these other places exactly what you were talking about the sales process, customer supports the brand, what's on social, how the company behaves on social? Do you get hit up constantly with like hey come attend this like when you're already a customer, you get to keep hitting up for more? Tough more marketing. Or do you just feel this connectedness in this love of the product and run the company? Those things are not in the product. Those are marketing decisions, sales decisions, many other organizations, the legal team, and now how big the privacy policy is and how frequently that gets updated and put in the experience. Those are all other departments and that is what I am thinking about. What's the customer's holistic experience of us as a company? It might be primarily through the product, but all these other things have an impact too. Kay - Yeah, that's where, you know, and the more accompanied is tuned to that, the better, they build the trust, which is the underlying thing with the customers and that potential prospects. So because then the foundational value is really, you know that flywheel thing where you have the customer in the middle and literally every other department is operating for the customer and everybody is just tuned in to this customer's insight. And, interestingly, you did bring in legal but it is true. It is true every and it's not just marketing, it's not just customer support, not science, success alone, but it is, you know, and not engineering alone. It's every Department. Martina - Yeah, yeah. And I think that what often happens is in any company of any size, everyone's doing their Silo, and we're building a product, and I'm mitigating risk with this, these privacy policies, or with this compliance. Internal rules are all that matters. But from the customer's perspective, like I don't care what's going on inside your company and I want to be, I want to be treated as a human being and that my business to you has value, even if it's small but everyone wants to feel that way. Kay - Yeah, I recently had a call with a customer support person. It was a very, it was not a good situation and I wasn't unhappy as a customer and I did mention it to the support person. I'm not upset with you, but I'm upset with the company that you're not as a whole or a person thing, you know, the entire company. But just saying, this is my department. This is another department, this department. How many times are you going to transfer me back and forth and back and forth? And say, this is not your problem, it should be every one of your problems, right? So, it's frustrating as a customer to be in that position when people you are talking to From present their entire company and just represent a small portion of it. Martina - Yeah, I think that's if you think about all of your favorite companies that are brands that you go back to, I would bet most of them have you've had these positive customer experiences with where they didn't frustrate you, they didn't kind of three like, oh, that's not my thing. That's someone else that thinks about Airlines. No, no one has a favorite Airline because I was like, well that's not my problem. That's somebody else's. Problem or let me go talk to the manager and it's just so frustrating, and that's not what anybody wants. Kay - Yeah, exactly. So when we talk about an ambassador as a strategist, what kind of data is an ambassador qualitatively pulling in to get those quantitative metrics? And what kind of data is a strategist pulling in for quantitative qualitative and metrics, you can answer them one by one. It says, what? Two questions in one? Martina - Yes. So the Ambassador, so I in my Book. I talk about this woman named Allah who now runs all of the marketing across the entire do be Creative Suite. And when she came to Silicon Valley, she made it her business to know the business better than anyone. And so she went to the product teams and she represented. Well, here's what our market share is relative to others, and here's what I'm seeing in the marketplace, she made sure she brought business data, the market data, the competitive data, and customer data and that she brought it to every conversation. That the product team was having and they didn't realize that they were missing. This very important aspect of how they were making decisions until she came. And she was regularly representing those key important aspects. So that's the kind of data as the Ambassador that someone needs to bring and then they're inverse of that you're the Ambassador out, to the go to market teams of the product information. To make sure that the right product information is making it out to the goto market teams. Marketing teams, sales teams, are we talking about legal teams? Hey, we're about to add these new things that change, anything and when their privacy policies, so that's the Ambassador connecting both ends, not just one way in, and it's both in and out in and out. So, that's the Ambassador aspect of the strategist. That is, okay, now that we know and understand all these things about the product, the market, and the customer, how does that translate into the best possible? Go to the market for the product. And that is primarily Crafting a strategy that directs the goto market aspect out. So that's not bidirectional, it's bidirectional in the sense that you take input from sales and marketing teams but it's providing that guidance. So that they are for all the marketing and sales effort that it's maximally effective and strategic and position in the company. Kay - Yeah. And for that strategist, it's, you know, these days sales or I should say, you know, sales kind of is becoming synonymous to customer success. So I just wanted to call that out. So for teens that do that when Martina talks about sales and marketing, in this case, it applies to the customer success teams, who are looking into, Shifting the gear a little bit, A storyteller shaping how the world's think about the product, and evangelist helps other people to tell stories, I can see that what is, how can a founder can utilize both them? Martina - So shaping how the world thinks about product positioning is positioning your product in the market and how you do that. The Anchor Point to that is how your message and talk about it. But many other things ultimately build to the product positioning. So I do want to make that distinction that positioning isn't a one-time event where you, let's here's the sentence. We are now positioned. It's all of the Distant behaviors, that build toward that market position. So that's a really important thing for Founders to understand as it relates to messaging. I think this is also very different than what most people understand. There is messaging that fundamentally positions you as your land here. This is what we do and it's clear to the maximum number of audiences and then there's campaign based messaging, which is what am I saying, in this particular campaign to capture this audience, and you need to have those things separated so that they are not conflated with one another. And what is very effective for this campaign to data Engineers is separate from this campaign to the suite that are the decision makers you have to message different things and so that's how I you have a messaging hierarchy that lets you have appropriate messages for those different audiences. But the primary message, which most people will call a positioning statement is, how do you most simply Articulate what you do and its value, and the big thing there, I'll say is people think that it's a formula or think that it's coming up with a catchy tagline. But the most important thing is, can you articulate it? So others can understand the value that should be extracted from your product and why it might be either important or different. You can't apply a formulaic approach to get there. You have to discover your way to what is Meaningful to the market. Not just how you want to be talking about it. That's what most Founders. Don't know their actual here. The different ways which I think I won't say which is the one that that is pinging or working. It's discovering your way into like oh I'm understanding how the markets talking about it and I'm intersecting between, but I want to say and we have what they are capable of hearing. Kay - Yeah. Our audience is a lot of customer-facing teams and for the customer-facing teams, the messaging comes in from the product marketing. You also know the messaging. After all, you are so much in tune with the customers because you're talking to the customers on a basis, what is the kind of messaging that you would suggest as a Storyteller or as an evangelist That customer-facing teams can utilize to build better trust. And with relationships, Martina - I think it is super crucial for customer-facing teams and customer success sales. Anyone that deals daily with the customer to bring in what they are hearing to those that are crafting the mothership positioning or messaging. Like there's no product marketer that should feel they could do their job. Well, Without consulting those teens and it's not just you're looking very specifically for what words they use when they're talking about it because we have this tendency to talk using our jargon and in a way that presumes understanding and knowledge on behalf of our customers by listening to it, they say in real situations, either back to a sales rep or back to customer success. Rep, kind of like that work, you've example where it's like, hey, We're looking for multiscreen support. No one's asking us for this but this is how we talk about it and this is what's important to us. You're looking for that type of Market signal to Message that's resonant that lands with and is clear to those customers. And so everyone that works in that function, takes these very specific words that you hear again and again, back to the marketing teams because that's what they need to know. And that will help lift them from the habit of trying to be cute or I'll say jargony or coming up with a value statement that anybody could say. And find things that are explicitly meant to you, your company and your product, and people's experience with you. Kay - Yeah, it's funny. We at Ascendo our messaging, you know, we are a support experience platform, but then our customers relate to us saying, oh my gosh, you are an expert in every one of my agent's back pockets. Whoo, you know, that's the level of messaging that when they say hit it feeds back into the messaging itself. And it's awesome. It's like Physicians carrying his little book in their pockets, right? Martina - So, and I, that is a beautiful example of how you guys articulate. Like, were customer experience platform by the way platform. My least favorite word. And like, everyone was like, oh, for not a platform, we're not talking about what we do. Like 4:30 means nothing to anyone, anyone, anyone, it's meaningless. And if you're relying on it to communicate anything, you do not have Strong messaging of what you said. Your customer said, do you like does brilliantly? Because that was clear, it was, it was clear, a clearly articulated to him to them, the value that you were providing, and why it might be different as opposed to declaring of category or declaring the platform you are and which is what everyone's habits around. Kay - Yeah. And I would love to see your next book be for everybody else around them and seeding or the customer-facing team. Around the messaging. Not just the product Market. Here's Tina. Loud is fantastic. um, I think the other look is also going to be fascinating and would be very interesting. So I enjoyed it. Martina - Thank you. And I did write it with the intention of anyone who isn't a product marketer, would get as much value. So, the feedback that I've been getting that stood most validating is I had someone who is ahead of school read, Loved, and say like, oh, this is making me rethink some of the things that we say about our school. I had a controller in the finest Department, read it and she said, I had no idea what our marketing team was doing. And now, I have strong points of view on how these are just numbers on a spreadsheet. Now, I have a point of view on whether or not we're doing the right stuff and I think we're saying the wrong things. So it's just been delightful to hear people outside of the domains of marketing realize. Oh, I can participate in this because Sometimes because you are not in it, you might see things a little bit more clearly. So it gives people foundational tools. So that anyone even outside of the product marketing practice can learn the tools of the trade. Kay - I'm sure when you rotate, you are thinking about the technology sector and there you are listening to the market and the customer insights, even for the book and you're like, oh my gosh, people who run the school are looking at it, even though you wrote it, it comes in that feedback comes in from very many places, it's amazing. It's there is a fantastic example of customer-facing teams, listening to that market inside. So thank you. You know, one of the things we talk about is looking at the sentiment of every interaction and saying, okay, this person is very happy with the product. Is there a way we can engage them into, you know, a marketing activity? Maybe, you know, coming up with a case study. Anything else right or speaking or whatever it is? So there, is that part of engaging with the others is being an evangelist that you talk about in the book. So how are the customer-facing teams get those insides on who can be a good evangelist and what are the best ways that customer-facing teams can approach and can make that viable? um, What is the right word? How do you translate that into something? Leave. It's Mark, that creates Market momentum where it's something that you can use sweets my good woman time. Yes. Martina - So, one of my favorite examples of this was a company that would listen to customers that were like, that is who this customer is engaged? They would have someone systematically at everyone on the marketing team. This is everyone's job, at least one or two interviews, a week that they would talk to customers that were like, That and do interviews and say, hey I'd love to do a 15minute interview. I've heard that you are an engaged or Innovative customer and we love to hear your stories. So again, it's not like I want to do a case study. I want to hear your story and that they're tiny little ways of phrasing. This just makes it something people want to do as opposed to this extraction that feels like it's a burden and says, like, okay, so tell me what life was like before you were using our product. So then you're capturing a Standing more deeply, the problem surface, as well, as what, what they were trying to do better, what was the straw that broke the camel's back that made you decide to do something about this? So there is your understanding, of what is the activation force and that provides incredible. Insight to all the goto market teams going, oh, oh, this is the thing that finally makes them do it and then they start a search, or the what made them take action because that's what you're always looking to find. And thenI's heard that you're doing particularly Innovative things with our product, what are you now able to do that? You weren't able to do 24 before this helps you articulate and find those areas of difference. And then you spend these up as stories, not as case studies that everyone that is customer-facing can use in their conversations. So you have bullet points of? so the next customer success conversation, I'm having where some say, oh yeah, I've experienced this problem. I know because I read a story where someone articulated that problem by saying, oh, you know what, we have another customer experience, that same problem, and here's how they're using the product. I didn't send you a case study that sounds very structured. And inauthentic I'm sharing a story of someone that feels like they're like you. And so that's what and then people if it's shared it as a story, it's much easier for others to share. I can now share that story with one of my colleagues saying oh, you know it I was just talking, I just Had a conversation this morning and someone who experienced this problem. They solved it this way. Using this product, this very thing happened to me. I was in a product Huddle House where we brought together all of our product leaders. And someone was talking about how they were trying to measure and get the telemetrics inside of their product. And one of the customers said art with one of the customers, and one of our product leaders said we just implemented pain, and it could not have been easier. We just Implement this API, and we get me to see all the data, and we transition away from this. Somebody else in that Forum said, oh yeah, well I'm a big fan of amplitude. I'm you I've been using it for years. We to do all this setup and she's like exactly. We used to do that too, but we didn't have to do any of that customization. It was so much easier he's like yeah well I haven't used pain, do because it didn't do X Y and Z. She's like yeah, we didn't think it did that either but it does. So no one from Pain do was there, but someone was sharing their story. Someone wasn't sharing their experience and there was this can-force dialogue so that every single person that was in that call went away saying, I guess I should be looking at Penn do even if I'm a fan of these other things because somebody else had said we had this great success it was unexpected and it was this very organic dialogue. After all, they had made it super easy for them to have a direct experience with PLG that took away all of the barriers of Entry because they understood what made it hard to have an experience with I know and they solve those problems. So that's an example of it being applied. Kay - Thank you for the Insight. That is two aspects of it, right? One aspect of it is the storytelling part where the actual storytelling can be resonated. Second thing is, you know, connecting and customers and doing best practices. We tend to do it even across Industries and we have found that customers love talking to people, even outside of the industry to see how they solve their problems. And you are giving an example of product-like growth. So that's awesome.Martina I think, you know, this, this is wonderful. We had a very, very, very good discussion concerning quantitative qualitative data products. LED customers like Growth Company and we talked about the four anchors in which anybody who Messaging. Can utilize, do you, would you like to add anything else before we fully wrap up? Martina - All of us, that no matter what city seat, you sit in at an organization, all of us can help our companies are more customer and Market forward and the more companies that That the better it is for every customer and also for the market writ large. So, I would just encourage everyone to get a little more customer Savvy a little more Market Savvy and let's all do a better job of Translating that into how we act and behave towards customers so that they can make better decisions more easily and get more value from our products. Kay - Thank you very much. This is going to be very useful for all our customer-facing teams to understand articulate and respond to customer requests. Thank you very much for your time, Martine. I enjoyed this conversation with Tom professing. Martina - Great, thank you for having me. And for, for driving the conversation and having these stories, hopefully, be told with it to others. Absolutely. Thanks. Previous Next