Experience Strategy Podcast: People Helping People: How CEO Lee Roquet Leads with an Experience Mindset

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In this episode of the Experience Strategy Podcast, we are joined by Lee Roquet, the CEO of Finch, e-commerce marketing company. We talk about

• What Lee has learned in the shift from Chief Customer Officer roles to CEO roles- and what he now wishes every experience strategist knew.

• How to lead companies with an experience mindset

• How to lead teams with a people-first approach.

Don’t miss this powerful and inspiring conversation!

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now, here are your hosts, experienced nerds, Dave Norton and Aransas Savas.

Aransas: Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast. I'm Aransas Savas, and you will notice some really exciting voices on our show today, but you will also notably notice One voice missing.

If you listened to our last episode, and if you didn't do, uh, you heard that our Fearless Co-host Dave Norton was off getting hitched. Well, friends, now he's off on his honeymoon, so we have the great gift of being joined by Stone Mantle Chief Consultancy Officer Mary Putman, as well as Lee Roque. CEO of Finch.

So Lee, welcome. First of all, to begin, tell [00:01:00] us a little bit about Finch and its mission. Yeah.

Lee: Well, first off, thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm always so excited to talk to people about customer experience and how it shapes our world. Yeah. For me, I'm like you said, CEO at Finch. Finch is a, 16 year old company focused on some pretty clear outcomes for growth.

We're basically an e commerce growth agency for brands. We help brands acquire more business, but most importantly, we focus on the retention and love of customers and really making sure that the customer journey. The customer experience, revenue operations are all things that we can talk about. If you're going to go out there and pay hard cash and money to go acquire new business, we hope that you can also retain them and wow them and get them to be your advocates for continued referral and growth.

So that's kind of where we, and that's my passion is making sure that every experience leaves some type of. memorable one so that you can build on that and, and grow your business. I love it.

Aransas: And as we were chatting before the show, we were [00:02:00] talking about the fact that you moved into this role from an experience role.

You had been the head of customer experience. And so one of the things we've been excited to talk to a number of our guests about recently is what it means to transition from a CXO role to a CEO role and both the benefits and challenges of that transition.

Lee: Yeah, that's a good, and it's. been a, I've been in the current CEO role for six months, so I'm still kind of learning the ropes and it has been a very eyeopening experience.

It's I think in my past experience, I've spent 20 plus years in, I would say, post sales focused roles, whether it's growing up and sharpening my teeth and call centers, and then moving up into managing call center teams and then customer success teams. And then I spent 10 years as a chief customer officer, which at that C level, you're at the table.

But boy, when you, when you get the CEO title, it definitely changes the way you look at your business. I guess my eyes have been opened a bit more on how your role is pulled. And I mean, every department wants a little bit of the CEO, but I think the, [00:03:00] depending on the structure of your organization, that the people who write the checks or the financial backers, your board, I didn't realize I would be spending so much time with the people outside of the organization, making sure they're happy. And the finances are in a way that is making sure that everybody's getting what they are desiring or wanting to get out of the relationship. So that that's been the piece that's been the toughest. And so for me, like coming in with my CX hat going, we're going to do all these awesome things and great things.

And then I'm having to kind of put things in the right buckets and then trying to get. People to understand and shift the culture has been, I think the biggest thing for the last six months is yes, I want to make sure that the end of the day, everything that we do is, is driving kind of an experience management mindset around team, customer, product, and brand, but man, there's a lot of things that pull you outside of your comfort zone every single day.

Aransas: Yeah, I bet. I bet there's a real buck stops here. Mentality in that role. What tools and frameworks from your experience life [00:04:00] have you brought into this?

Lee: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I'm a, I'm a super fan of, uh, the experience management from Qualtrics certified in that a few years ago. And so that, that mindset of just focusing on your team and the team, understanding what their jobs are and they have the tools to be successful.

Their joy and happiness will go right towards the customer experience. And then you have your product and your brand. And so those four pillars are typically what I tend to focus on. I've also worked with a company called, uh, CX chronicles, Adrian over there is, I'm a super fan and we've worked together at a couple of companies now, just, he has a similar kind of four pillar approach with looking at team tools, process and feedback.

And so I kind of tend to blend the two of those together because I do feel that I think for, for me and my experience of building customer teams, trying to unite an organization around the experience and making sure that every department feels. It's tied to the metrics that drive success. The one piece that I'm always trying to put in place is [00:05:00] that this is the feedback.

So, so the team feedback, the customer feedback to validate and drive doing things better or not doing that anymore and making changes. So being able to have a good, healthy voice, the customer program in place. And then I think a friend of mine who's unfortunately no longer knowing with this, he left a big impression on me with common.

And he used to tell me he was a marketing master and he just. We were talking about customer experience about 10 years ago, and he just said, you know, everything leaves an impression. And so for me, I've always kind of looked at that as kind of like, okay, if what you're doing and what we can do, regardless of process and where you're at in the company, if you can drive more memorable impressions, then we can start building on on that.

Feeling for the team and the customer and then honestly, the product brand loyalty, I mean, got to do the standard things, but that stuff tends to just kind of come along with it as well. So yeah, I think those are the two kind of pillars that I tend to focus on. Of course, data is important and measuring the right metrics and then tying everybody to an OKR or the outcome of the company.

So [00:06:00] I love blowing up silos and I love turning everything horizontal. So everybody's tied to the revenue path. That is aligned to the customer journey that is aligned to the feedback journey. And so that's kind of how I tend to start really looking at the health of an organization or a team is how connected are you to the revenue and the joy of our customers and team.

Mary: And Lee, I love that. And I'm really interested in if there are key metrics, when you talk about measuring the joy of the customer. A lot of organizations choose to use net promoter score, but have, and we talk about time well spent and looking at how do you measure time well spent and is it enjoyable?

Did you feel cared, depending upon the experience, do you feel cared for? Have you found metrics that particularly work well to understand the joy that the customer has with an experience?

Lee: experience? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. NPS is all, I mean, I think it has its place and I love it and I'm a huge Ryan Field follower. And I think how you go about building your voice of [00:07:00] your customer and team programs, there's certain, I tend to break everything down into kind of the moments that matter. So I'll look at the customer journey and I'll think if we can improve and I've had the situation or the experience to be able to have like journey mapping room with colors and stickies and everybody has a pen and you get to do that whole program.

And that's unfortunately typically not the reality of most. Teams and companies, like you have like a short window to get some things going. So I always tend to kind of really focus down to the moments that drive a kind of either the winning of a sale or time to value or renewal. And so I kind of have like four moments.

And so what I try to do is I look at the performance and the metrics to get to and past those moments that matter. And so for me, at each one of those moments, there's an opportunity to isolate. If you're, if there's an upstream or downstream process problem, but there's also a great period to, to validate feedback from your team.

Was that process easy? Did we get the needed information? Was the handover from maybe sales to CS? Was that a positive one? Can we replicate that? Can we reduce the time to value in the next phase? And so gathering feedback from the team at each one of those [00:08:00] moments. And then on the flip side, I tend to.

Try to capture that feedback from the customer as well, so that we can validate that we're not just drinking our own Kool Aid. I think NPS, I mean, I like to mix it in. I don't like seeing it used for every single like a ticket closure rate. I think that's not the right use case. So I think for me, NPS is important, but at certain levels of the journey.

And then I like, yes, I like to. Tell me if it was easy to work with my team because that focuses on friction and I like to remove friction and make it easy. We have enough blockers in the world with running businesses and personalities and all that. Remove process friction. It's easy to do. And then one thing that I've been really focused on is it goes along with the NPS.

But it's the referral revenue links to customers who are either coming back to you or referred from a current customer. So earned growth rate. And so that way I can kind of see, are we increasing, are we retaining our customers? That's probably our number one, right? If so, are they willing to speak positively of us?

And then are you generating new business [00:09:00] from the relationships and brand and Product loyalty and experience that you have because that's a huge bonus that people are talking about you outside of maybe your, your realm. And so those I think three are kind of the things that I kind of look at to try to start sparking either ideas of change or let's keep doing more of that.

I don't know if I answered that one well enough for you, but. Yeah, I think that’s great.

Aransas: And ultimately, humans are motivated by both ease and value. And so for us, I agree. I think managing friction, making things accessible, making them fit with people's lives is incredibly valuable. And then under is incredibly important, and then making the product service incredibly valuable is ultimately what differentiates us because, frankly, anybody can make things easy. They don't, but they could. But being meaningful and valuable and making good use of people's time and delivering on the time they spend with them, that to me is the, the make or break, and that's been focused on it so much.

I'm curious for you as a B2B leader, how you think about [00:10:00] being accessible. Experience led in a B2B business. What does that even mean?

Lee: Yeah. I mean, I think I always kind of try to boil things down to make it super simple because the day seems to go by so fast, but I tried to get a couple of concepts with my teams as we're dealing with prospects or customers first and foremost, we're in the people helping people business.

Like that's what we do every day. So regardless of process and things and we all got to hit our numbers and keep the lights on and all that. But at the end of the day, you're, you're dealing with people. And so the relationship, it always shocks me or it is getting on calls with prospects or customers, but just stopping and going, Hey, how's your day?

Like what's keeping you up at night? How's your business running? What do you need to do to make yourself feel like you're the hero? Just asking simple, direct questions about the people you're working with, I think are. It's so important. And I think that it's kind of not a lost art, but people can do it really well.

It's great. And I think everyone's been so focused the last couple of years on efficiency and automation and AI and don't have to talk to people, just shoot them a whole bunch of emails and [00:11:00] Pick up the phone and just say, I'm not understanding what can I do to help you? You know, and those, that kind of, I guess, personal relationship is really important to me.

And then, so I really make sure everything we do, I always say it and people are getting, I think they have a drinking game within the company. Now, whenever I say we're people helping people, so, you know, as I think that's. That's one of one piece. And then I think for the experience side of it, I just think we're getting to a place, especially in the e commerce space where many companies have who will need to outsource.

And that's, I mean, the main purpose for an agency is you're either bringing someone into outsource knowledge to help you scale and grow or outsource resources, because you just don't have the largest team. And I think in the e commerce space with a, especially with agencies, there's an agency fatigue. I think people tended the last couple of years or the last five or 10 years.

It's been super easy to kind of over promise and maybe. Deliver, but I think the experience that it tends to happen with agencies in the e commerce space is you over promise and you under deliver, and now there's a agency fatigue. And so I think being able to really be focused on the outcome that you can [00:12:00] deliver, because that is the memorable experience that is going to retain your business or grow your business.

And so for me, it's, yeah, keeping it real with people, helping people and then focusing on, yeah, if, if everything leaves an impression, then every moment you can elevate an experience or add a plus one or be the hero for the person that you're working for, then you're going to help your opportunity to keep moving forward.

And I guess that's at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do with all of our customers.

Mary: Yeah. I'd love to know. I love that. You know, the, the impression that you leave behind being the hero for, for your, for your. So people that you're helping. So the people helping people, have you implemented ways to recognize and celebrate the people in the organization that do that, that you feel like, yeah, they've been the heroes for your clients.

Lee: That is awesome. Cause I mean, again, going back to, if you kind of are embracing a experience management kind of mindset, I mean, the first pillar is your team. So with things that we tend to do is we do a lot of shout outs. We're a distributed global e commerce company, and I've got teams in Dublin and the Philippines and all over the U S so it's, and [00:13:00] honestly, that's one thing.

Incredibly miss is not having a team in an office and I work at home now. And I saw that personal touch of just being able to overhear something and go, Hey, that was really well done. You did a great job on that call. So I think we, we tend to the leadership team here, we tend to praise in public and address any issues in private.

And so we do things and we have an end of month call. We always call out who the. Heroes are that have done gone above and beyond. We really do try to call people out publicly a lot in, in chat rooms and in examples of just like, Hey, you did a really good job on that meeting. And we do like read AI, all of our meeting notes.

And so it's able to, to share like, Hey, these comments were really strongly done and really well done. And this is what we're, this is what it means to be elevating the value in return. So I think being able to just share when we get it right. And then really on the flip side, because we're not perfect and we'd make mistakes.

And I think being able to just. Have a safe place where we can go, look, this, this is not how we want to be. It's not you. It's soft on the people, hard on the issues and really focus on how do we get better and [00:14:00] learn from this together. And so really creating an environment that people feel like they go, Hey, that was me, I messed up, but here's what I'm going to do to change it or a colleague.

Feeling that they can bring it up to and go, Hey, can I help you with this next time? So we do this, this and this, and this is the outcome. So, I mean, those are the little things that we're doing and we're trying to do a better job of getting people together more often in the regions and just celebrate just again, building relationships with our own teams.

I mean, it's just as important to build a relationship with your customers, but the team relationship, the trust. Realizing that like all of us have lives and all of us get stressed. And if I come in and I'm in a bad mood, like don't assume that I just hate you, like stop and ask me if I need help or if I just need to talk.

So I think that's the kind of culture we're trying to work on. I'm sure we could do things better and I hope so that we get feedback. One of the other things we do. For every monthly call is we ask people in the company for their feedback. We have a survey we send out, like, what do you want us to talk about?

What do you feel you maybe don't want to ask, you know, for the 55 people on a phone, but what would you like the leadership team to share and are [00:15:00] there other topics? So that way it kind of trying to just open up the communication. And then also we ask them, who do you want to call out as the hero for the month?

And then we just share that a lot.

Aransas: So meaningful. And. What I really hear in that is both a recognition of these humans, but also really an activation of your customer focused motto, which is people helping people. So really thinking about the human side of this experience because it's not machines delivering your service, right? There are people teaching machines and right there, I'm sure plenty of engineers involved in this offering and ultimately engineers are humans too. So I'm curious what, again, going back to this idea of B2B leadership, because it is infinitely more complex. Then maybe a B2C model where you're talking directly to the ultimate customer.

So I'm curious for you what you most wish you understood about your client's needs and desires. It's

Lee: an interesting place to be. I mean, [00:16:00] I think especially for us, so we're an agency that helps people grow their business. Our understanding of their needs and we have to kind of think about, okay, you have business needs, but then you're also got your go to market strategies on your, who you're going after their problems to solve.

And so we have to kind of understand two levels of strategy and issues and our ICP is not theirs. And so, but we, and again, that's why I tend to try to keep it simple for my own needs. But again, I. For the team, I tried to create an environment where we're thinking about not in for us. It's a, we, we kind of started off 16 years ago as a paid media focused company.

Like we will help you grow your business in Google and social and this and that. But now the shift in the space is that, well, that's great. But how is it impacting the health of my business and the experience for my customer and customer lifetime value? We don't know anything about it. Like we got a whole bunch of emails and all these people that we've sold stuff to, we don't ever talk to them.

So, you know, kind of thinking about. being able to speak to that as a business thing and then being able to then [00:17:00] work with them on, well, then how do we actually talk to your customers in your voice to acquire and retain? It's multi layered and it does take a certain type of customer success manager or account manager to be able to not only be able to Consider the strategy for the business that working with, but also understanding that that the drivers on maybe the C level for that business is different than the marketing manager trying to sell more products.

So then kind of trying to balance that out. But I think when you boil it all down again, people were, there's three things that you kind of do to run a business, acquire more, retain more, and then. Manage your costs. So if we kind of just keep that in mind, like everybody's trying to do that at the root of, you know, and then how you can do each one of those more efficiently or effectively is really kind of the focus.

So yeah, it's, it's a tough one. And I'm still learning the ropes. I'm definitely not, I'm not a seasoned expert. I've been spending a ton of time following quite a few people in the space and just reading a lot. And, and I've got an amazing team of people, which is great, who. Been in agencies for years. And I [00:18:00] think the nice thing is I'm coming at it with some fresh eyes going, why are we doing this and what's the outcome and what's it cost to do that versus.

And what's, what's the experience that you're trying to have rather than just. So, so that's been kind of nice. I've been able to say, let's stop doing that. And it's not helping us move the business for,

Mary: um, actually that sparks a third question for me, but I'll start with, I'll start with two, someone's one.

Aransas: You've said you've been reading a lot lately. What have you read that you've really liked?

Mary: That you've read recently, mostly

Lee: I've been reading blogs. I follow the current, which is by the trade desk. I think that they've done a great job. I I'm a huge fan of the leadership team over at common thread collective.

So they, I follow their podcasts and read their blogs. And there's a couple of other just AI teams that I'm focused on. And then the book that I just finished, it was fall in love with the solution. Not the problem. From is it live in and he was the one who launched wise, the traffic product. Anyway, he's an investor.

And, and, but I just thought that that was such a great book because I mean, it really goes heavy, heavy into taking a [00:19:00] product to market. One thing that I've learned just from the shift and just dealing with some friends who are, who are founders of businesses and where I think I'm coming at things a little differently now that I'm CEO of the businesses, founder of the businesses have a different passion.

It can be damn the torpedoes. I believe this is the right thing to do. We're all in until we're not. And so that passion for having, I guess I'll just say like having or falling in love with that problem without really truly putting in the customer experience legwork of asking the space, does anyone care?

Is someone going to pay you? And are they going to pay you again to actually do your product? Like I'm coming at things with, I mean, the, I love, I love the team here. I love this, the company I'm, I'm, I'm all in, but I'm also like. I'm not married to things that aren't working, and if it's not driving an experience that is elevating our team, our customer, our product, and our brand, then I'm great at ripping stuff apart and changing and challenging my team to go like, that ain't working.

We're doing something different. And [00:20:00] I think that's, that's probably, I got a little off tangent from your question, but I think that ability to, to look at things with data or from the customer experience side and trying to find And the only way to find the solution is to be a person trying to help somebody, listen to what their problems are, and then try to solve that repeatedly.

Mary: I mean, Lee, we talk about the jobs to be done, which are the needs that your clients have that they're willing to pay you to do for them and really understanding those. those jobs, then you can create solutions that meet those jobs. But it's, yeah, it's really understanding that.

Lee: That is so amazing. And again, that kind of gets the root of customer experience, right?

Is really figuring out understanding your customers, understanding what the job is and what the pain points are and solve that problem. But if you don't keep asking, cause things evolve and things change and you might have a problem. And if you're not keeping up with your customer experience program, that's like asking for feedback and then having a whatever advisory board and really.

Asking your top customers why they're staying and why the ones are [00:21:00] leaving. That's the hard work of a customer, a truly good customer experience program that not a lot of people are doing. I mean, sending out a survey. I don't know how many companies or things that I talked to. We send out stories all the time.

Like, well, then what do you do with the data? Do you even look at it? Are you driving initiatives off it or are you just asking data to waste everyone's time?

Mary: Well, and part of the problem is, you know, is that people send so many surveys that people have survey fatigue. Like we'll do co creation design sessions and we'll ask about the surveys people get in their eyes.

Just roll. Cause it's, and net promoter score, which you talked about earlier, that has a place it's being asked about, are you willing to recommend the company? It's not about. The customer and their experience. Was it easy? Like you said, were you able to get done what you were hoping to get done? Was it enjoyable?

Those things show more care about time well spent than net promoter score, which has a place for benchmarking. But you have to be cautious, as you said, about using it all the time.

Lee: Yeah, I typically only do NPS twice a year because I tend to lean more on the real time [00:22:00] feedback. And I like CES and asking a question.

Is it, was it easy for you to get, did you like working with us? If you didn't then ask more questions, but I agree. I think there's way better ways to gather feedback, to understand if you're solving a problem and, and you should be looking at your standard, other standard metrics, just around performance and what closure rates for your requests or satisfaction or return rates on products and things like that.

Aransas: Yeah. I got an email today from the CEO of a service. That I used to subscribe to and canceled the subscription because it wasn't valuable and its competitors offered a great deal more value for a lower price point. And ultimately they made my cancellations very easy and on all fronts. They didn't add any additional value, they didn't get curious about why I might want to leave what might be available to retain me as a customer, because chances are they had elements of their product that I wasn't taking advantage of that might have added benefit, but I didn't know about them.

[00:23:00] And so the, the letter today was really simple. It said, Hey, you used to be our client and so did a lot of other people. So I'm reaching out now to just. Just try to understand why people leave. And it was the only question I wanted to be asked because I want, I was in relationship with these people and it was logistically challenging for me to go and build a new relationship with someone else.

I would have liked to have stayed had they made it in any way their concern to stay in relationship with me. And I think that's really what you're talking about here.

Lee: Yeah. Applaud them to, you know, after the fact, trying to figure out why, but I think a lot of what I've learned too. And just. When I was in my other role as chief customer officer, I mean, we got really heavy into the cost of acquisition and really understanding your numbers.

Like in coming from software space for, for many years, you know, our year two is kind of when we broke even. And so that first year renewal was our major success mark because it was, we didn't make any money the first year. And so multi year agreements were celebrated and really understanding [00:24:00] that time to profitability.

And really understanding once you pass over from sales and you get onboarding takes two weeks longer than standard, well, that your time to profitability is now pushed out more. So as you look at that and understand those trigger points for success, I think it's incredibly important. And so be asking those questions.

Cause I think Gardner had a, I always use this, but like, I think that, and I think it holds true today, but this was probably five or six years ago where the research was showing, if you could. Expedite the time to value for a customer during onboarding. It had a 70 percent likelihood of a renewal. Any period after that just eroded your ability to renew that customer because they didn't get their value quick enough on, especially on a big software investment to make it valuable.

So it's ultimately all about time.

Aransas: Time and experience.

Mary: Lee, the other question that I had for you, we were talking a little bit beforehand and you said you're surprised how much you have to say no now. And I love to know more about the kinds of things that are surprising you that you have to say no to.

But more importantly, like what helps you say yeah.

Lee: That's a great question. And I'll be, uh, I'll be honest [00:25:00] here. I think I have to tell myself no more than anything I've ever done in the past because I've always, I guess, had a little more freedom and I guess understanding the budget and kind of being able to just kind of get things done on that backtrack the angles. I think the part about saying no is just, I guess, having a clear understanding of the business health and what is actually going to be driving. And I'm only six months in the CEO role. So there's a lot of things that I'm looking at with regards to rebuilding the team. We have a product division and our agency is getting rebuilt and we have.

Partner networks, and we're spending a lot more money on, on marketing and training. And so there's certain things where, I mean, I'd love to just be able to go gangbusters and bring in some help to get my experience management program going across the whole organization. But those are things I have to put on the phase two.

So when people come to me about travel, okay, well, what's. That's great. We're going to go to a show and we want to send five people. Well, what's the return on that? Maybe we should send one and, and figure out. So it's really [00:26:00] just kind of having, it's those questions that, that tend to come up to me where we're like trying to figure out, do we spend money in this region or not?

And okay, well. If we do that, that takes the budget away from my other passion projects, which would be the experience programs. And so I have to kind of be able to balance what the most important and critical things are, which going back to, are we driving value? Are we people helping people? And does the team have the tools they need to, to give a great experience?

Are they happy? So those are, I'm kind of trying to. Make sure the team solid and the experience that they can do today is at least one that we can build on. And so that's one thing. And then I think, what was the second part of that?

Mary: The second part of that Lee was around what helps you say yes. Like, what do you need to know?

Like, what's your advice to people when they're coming to you to say, Hey, this, this would help me say yes. And I suspect some of it already has to do with, is it around the teams? Is it around the things you cover important? Yeah.

Lee: Is it, is it, and I kind of tend to tell people like, is it going to help us?

Is us retain business? Is it going to help us land new business? Is it [00:27:00] going to differentiate us? Are we going to see a value return quickly? Like as I'm asking my teams, like put the time in, put your business hat on and put the time in to put together a really good case just because you want it doesn't help me make a better decision or the team.

I tend to try to pull my core team in and like, okay, here's the. Here are the three requests that we got to spend this in these areas. What do we, what do we do here and how do we prioritize them? So I think just thinking about, I think for anyone who's like, maybe just new to being a manager or mid level or even, you know, realizing there's a lot of things happening within the organ, within an organization.

I think one of the things that I'm, it's hard to run a business and, and there's a lot of luck in, in that has to happen. And a lot of smart decisions and even companies that make all the right decisions. Don't work out. And so I think realizing that there's, there's a lot more than just maybe your department need or, or division need, like really thinking about, okay, if we're going to do this, really think about what's the return and the benefit and put your, put your customer hat on.

What's the experience we're going to [00:28:00] be able to improve. How are we going to help the team get better? Are you going to be able to help the team customer product and brand like experience? And if, if so great, if it kind of ticks those boxes and I think for anyone in leadership, like help your team out with here what I expect, like, think about these things.

And if you can answer these questions, damn, we're going to try to figure out how to do it. And so

Aransas: I think it's great wisdom for certainly anyone making a transition from an experience role to a general leadership role, whether it be a GM But I also think it's a great piece of advice for anyone. In an experience role, trying to lead experience up, and to see that, that contextual impact there, and to be able to tell those stories.

What does this mean for the organization as a whole? Because you said, sort of laughingly, well, you know, in a CX role, we learn how to back channel things and just get it done, right? And that resourcefulness,

And ultimately, to have the biggest [00:29:00] impact, it really is that broader view of the total context. Yeah.

Lee: And I think that's probably the thing that I, I was fortunate to have a really good mentor. When I first started, when I was 25 and took over the manager role of a 20, it was 25 person call center and, and, uh, trying to get initiatives.

Cause that was, I've always like, I'm always like trying to be cutting edge and early adopter. And I'd come with, I'd come to my boss with like, we got to do this, this, and this, and he'd be like, go back and put the, uh, business case together. I'm like, Oh, okay. So then, you know, and so I think that that worked though, helped me realize like tie your initiatives.

To the health of the business. I had a friend of mine who she just took over as I think she's president of a, of a software division. And she was struggling with how to get her CS teams to realize we can't just fix everything. And so basically I think for, for what I told her and what I told the. Uh, or Hershey to, you know, helping kind of build a process.

I said, tie your backlog, take it 80, 20, take your top 20 accounts, take that [00:30:00] backlog and tie the backlog and the dates and then all that information to the revenue of your top 10 accounts. So then once you start looking at your top 10 accounts and you look at God, if we lost one of these accounts and they have.

I'm going to say 35 backlog defects. You probably want to start prioritizing based on what's the impact of losing that account. So then start putting your business case together and your process where you have your teams come together and go, okay, we got to prioritize the, we can only do 50 of the defects this month and there's 500, how do we, well, break it down by the, the retention and, and also the renewal impacts.

So start thinking about, I guess, tactics. In the way of how it helps the business retain and grow business or, or land new business. So anyway, she, she like thought that was really helpful and she was able to really create a really nice program that brought the CS team into the process of helping prioritize.

And then they were able to better understand like, okay, I get it. This may be one customer who's the squeaky wheel. It isn't going to matter if they don't get their defect this, this month [00:31:00] or in six months, but the one, the customer that's paying us a million dollars a year, who really is going to be the one that's going to hurt us the most.

Let's do those. And that just a little change of bringing the team kind of closer to the process got them to realize about the business impact. So I don't know. Things like that, I think are, are important to think about as you're, as you're moving up your. career projective is help the senior team make those business decisions because you put your business case together or thinking about the business health, not just your department.

Aransas: Such great advice. And really, I think this field, the experience field attracts people who want to help people and It's easy to forget that ultimately we have to fund that work and that we're running businesses. And one of the things I see junior experienced strategists struggle with the most is quantifying those impacts and really understanding the data that supports this human need to help.

And so I think just such an important lesson.

Lee: I think that's such a key point because I think, uh, and I looking back at. [00:32:00] My roles and I, I would get the, I'd be so mad that something wasn't done. And this senior leadership doesn't care and you get mad and you're like, but then, okay, one, there's a communication issue there, right.

And something we have to help with making sure. But I think getting the understanding that just because it's no, it doesn't mean it's not because we don't care. It's because maybe there's just. That next level of information on what the business needs. You might be having a hard time financially. You might have to, I might be going into a big product launch and things have to change.

So I guess understanding and communicating, and I think making sure that all levels of the organization. And that's why I really tried to make a transparent my, in my, my philosophy is transparency, break every, all the silos, turn them on their, onto their side. So everybody's focused on the customer and journey and experience and the revenue operations to make sure everybody knows.

The numbers, because I think when, I mean, I know I've been in situations where I've just had to tell people like, like, we're going to have a hard time making payroll this month. So that's why we're not going to do this, this and this, but we're here to, as a team to tighten the belt so that we can fight another day.

And so when you kind of can share that [00:33:00] information and it can be scary. And some people are like, I'm out of here. And some people are like game on, but that those situations where you're like, that's why we can't do this right now. It doesn't mean we don't care. It just means. We as a team have to come together to figure out what's the most value right now that we can do for ourselves and our customer.

Aransas: Well said. And ultimately, so much more motivating for the employees because it is really easy, I think, especially for people in experienced roles, to get into a victimized place, to feel like it's all happening to us, or certainly in service orientations, people can feel like we are at the mercy of everything that's happening outside in the organization.

Lee: I think, you know, this right being in the roles, like the art service teams are customer experience managers, the people that are dealing with the people in the front lines, they tend to have to unfortunately get, they tend to get all the bad stuff that tends to happen. And so that, that wears on, on people.

And I think being cognizant of that is, and again, going back to, I think what Mary, you said earlier is like, how do you thank people? How do you appreciate that? How do you acknowledge that? And [00:34:00] then. As a business, how do you, I mean, even if you just fix one friction point that reuses 10 calls a week, I mean, that's a huge win.

That's like a first step victory. We're listening. Let's keep that momentum going.

Aransas: Take credit for that, right? Like let's own that those improvements are happening because part of that. victim mindset that can deepen in the culture is a result of not acknowledging progress either.

Lee: Oh, I think that's such a great point.

And I just closing the year off, right? I always try to look back and go, what were the wins and what did I learn? And I think teams don't do this enough, which is like celebrate the little things. Cause everybody's always like, Oh man, the big thing. And then like, we're going to change the whole organization's culture.

Like, yeah, but it starts with one day, one item and everybody rally and cheer and send up some confetti on your group meeting. It's those things that matter. The little moments roll up to big ones.

Mary: Lee, I love that you said that because even when you think about experiences that you're creating for, whether it's clients or customers.

Merging B2B, B2C. And [00:35:00] we've looked at what makes for elements of meaningful experiences. And one of the top ones is little things. It's twice more likely than the big things to, to make a difference. I think because it's unexpected, it brings some joy to the day. You can see why that you're not so much asking, like, why is the business doing it as tangible?

And so, yeah, those little things can make a huge difference. Like don't hesitate to celebrate the little things.

Aransas: Yeah.

Lee: And just a little gratitude. It goes a long way. I've noticed when you don't have much, like if you're, you know, financially in a situation where you're just trying to meet payroll or keep the lights on is like sometimes just honest people sharing their gratitude goes an amazing, amazing distance.

And I think also thanking your customers the same way.

Aransas: Exactly. I mean, and I think if we were to try to boil this. It's down into a single message from this episode. It would be little things, whether it's cultivating client relationships, it's meeting the needs of your client's clients, whether it is managing your team.

It all comes [00:36:00] down to these little things, these little moments of human acknowledgement and understanding that ultimately are the drivers of. All of the value and retention that we're all trying to achieve.

Lee: We're people who enjoy to be acknowledged, who like to laugh and share, who want to do good things.

I think most everyone that I tend to work with, I like to always take a positive spin of like, we're just good people trying to do a good day's work and, and go home and spend time with our family. And so I think just acknowledging that that's the life we're all in and, and, in trying to find ways to celebrate, yeah, the moments that matter.

Aransas: People helping people. Well, for those of you listening, thank you people. We hope this was helpful to you. Lee, thank you for sharing your experience, your wisdom. It'll be exciting to see this journey as it continues to unfold. And for all of us, wherever we sit within organizations, I think this reminder that we have greater agency and impact than we may believe.

And ultimately that it [00:37:00] isn't. the, the big changes or the big rewards or even those big wins. But it's the little moments of interaction and engagement amongst our teams and with our customers that ultimately have a big impact for organizations. So thank you for being here. Experienced strategy listeners.

Thank you for trusting us with your time. Reach out to us at stonemantle.co. There's no M there. Just a Co. Just to keep you on your toes. And you'll find lots more tools and resources and please reach out to us there. We love to hear from you.

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