Our Why’s

Sue: Hi, I'm Sue.

Raymie: And I'm Raymie. Welcome to the Journey to Success CX Conversations podcast.

Sue: We're doing this. It took us over a decade.

Raymie: It did take us over a decade. Um, so those of you who are joining us, thank you. Uh, this is our first episode of our podcast. And we want to take you through our whys. I think it's important for you to understand who we are, why we want to do this and why we think you should listen to us. Thanks. I think that's important.

Raymie: So, I don't know. Sue, did you want to start with uh, your why?

Sue: Sure. Why am I here? Um, I am here because we've talked about this on and off for A dozen years or so, , really since we met. , and I think we're finally both in a position to do this. I feel so [00:01:00] passionately that everything I've done in my career in one way, shape, or form has been about serving others, customer service, in some way, shape, or form.

Sue: And I feel it's been a huge part of my success. And I want to help others who may be earlier in their careers, especially, , start to understand the kind of, uh, growth mindset and service mindset that we have...

Raymie: yeah, that's super important. I think that's one thing that you and I have bonded over, over the years, right? It's um, really understanding how every single person has an impact.

Sue: Yep.

Sue: A couple of years ago I was going through this amazing, uh, women's leadership program and it was the first time I experienced professional coaching. Um, [00:02:00] And my coach is an amazing woman and I explained I was a jack of all trades and a master of none and and and I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grow up.

Sue: And, um, you know, which is really funny as I'm sitting here looking down 50, um, 25 years into my career and she looked at me and and she and she said, Well, what's wrong with that? Who says you have to figure it out? Are you successful? I'm like, well, I guess. She said, then what's the problem? All of a sudden I was like, oh, It's okay to have a windy, windy, crazy path of all sorts of different jobs.

Sue: Um, it's what makes me unique.

Raymie: I think, you know, talking about our progression, right? So you know, you talked about 25 years of, of uh, professional kind of growth. And when I look back to 25 years ago for myself, what was I doing 25 years ago? Well, I was selling [00:03:00] demonstration products in malls. That's what I was doing. I was selling magic pens and the vegetable chopper, right? I was one of those annoying people in the middle of a mall in the kiosk saying, Hey, come over here and watch this. Um, but that gave me a lot of tools, I was working with people. I was listening, right? I think We'll, we'll hear a lot about that.

Raymie: I talk to, um, my teams and the people that I train all the time that there's a difference between listening to hear and listening to respond. And, um, I, I started learning a lot about that in that particular role. I started training in that role. I helped open up new locations and, and train folks how to do those things, and I really love that.

Raymie: And. Wanted to continue to do that. But I decided I probably should have get like a quote unquote real job at that point and [00:04:00] started my, my, uh, time in tech. At that point. So that's when I started at, uh, one of the big tech companies were you and I met, um, I started in sales, but I loved it.

Raymie: And then I became a coach and got into training there and really wanted to focus on customer experience and, Did customer operations, right? I did a variety of roles there. and I think rounded out my experience of learning the customer journey. Um, the, for me, the best way to impact customer experience was to learn what our customers go through.

Sue: Mm hmm.

Raymie: Instead of just figuring out, okay, here's the front end experience. Here's the backend experience, but understanding that if I knew what happened on the backend, that could help me on the front end and vice versa. And so. I love the fact that I had so many different roles, um, over the span of like 11, 12 years.

Raymie: It was fantastic. And then I took a pivot and [00:05:00] I left the tech company and I wound up working in the solar industry of all places. Yeah. I worked in solar for like six years, seven years, something like that, and had a lot of different roles there too. sales, I've worked in a sales training. I was an account manager that I'd also did training.

Raymie: Um, I ran sales teams, ran operations teams. I was a VP of business operations at one point. And landed myself back in tech as an implementation consultant and then formed an enablement team. The common thread for all of those roles was customer experience.

Sue: Mm hmm.

Raymie: Everything that I did, every role that I did touch the customer in one way or another, and having that mindset of focusing on the customer and customer outcomes, um, was a key.

Sue: [00:06:00] hmm.

Raymie: And really none of those roles did I have a customer experience title.

Sue: Yeah, just like I didn't.

Raymie: Mm hmm.

Sue: Yeah, 25 years. Well, hmm, did I? I wonder if I really did in my early days in tech, 25 years ago. It's hard to remember that far back when I was with a certain, a certain early internet company. Um, but I was in a support role, regardless of what my title was. I think they changed it every six months anyway.

Sue: The early days of the tech industry. Um, but I was in directly in a support role. Um, even with a two way pager, I was fancy in the at you. Um, but you know, and then I, I transitioned into technical documentation and training, um, because being tied to a two way pager 24 hours a day is hard when you have little kids.

Sue: Um, But yeah, I've, since then I've never had a, [00:07:00] uh, direct customer role, customer title.

Raymie: Mm hmm.

Sue: Um, and the job I had when you and I met was a lot of support. Um, it was one of the things that I did, but it wasn't even the main thing. Um, at least on paper, but it was my approach to all of that, um, that made me successful in that role.

Sue: Um, and it's what makes me successful and why I have the job I have today, um, in business operations, because it's, it's that, that people facilitation, that, uh, taking care of all the things and herding all the cats.

Raymie: And, you know, You don't have to have a customer success, customer experience title to impact the customer experience, right? Um, I was just thinking earlier today that this [00:08:00] impacts everybody in any type of role.

Raymie: It doesn't matter if you're in a SAS role in tech, you're in a call center, or you're in a mom and pop, you know, restaurant, right? Everybody. impacts. And I've always just had this, this deep passion for, for customer experience and everything that I do. I've had roles where I've been in sales. I've been in retail.

Raymie: I've,, worked for customer success. I've been in enablement roles, which I'm currently in right now. And I think the important thing for me with going through all of that is really understanding a true customer journey from the first time someone speaks to you all the way through a process. Um, and I want to help people.

Raymie: I think that's really what this comes down to, right? Is we just want to help people based off [00:09:00] of our experience. And I think what makes us all so different is that we're not in those traditional. CX or CS leader roles that most of these podcasts that are out there talk about. And there's nothing wrong with them.

Raymie: In fact, I think they're great for the message and the audience that they're trying to reach, right? I think having conversations with leaders and learning about their strategy and why they do the things they do is super important, but I think the audience is missing the people that are in the weeds, doing the work.

Raymie: Day in and day out, right? I think we're, that audience gets skipped in a lot of these. And, I just want to be a part of that and help those people,

Sue: Mm hmm.

Raymie: The everyday person that's in the weeds doing the work, interacting with the customers. Um, and I think that's why we're here. You know, I think we're, we [00:10:00] will talk about things that have, uh, that we've experienced in our roles, um, in various levels of our roles, in things that went really well, things that we've experienced that probably didn't go so well and that we probably would change. Um, but I think also just support lifting people up and understanding it's okay.

Sue: Mm hmm.

Raymie: You're gonna, you're gonna make a mistake. It happens, but learn from it, right? And you're, if you're transparent and honest, like, customers will, will feel that, um, no matter what, what level of role you have with them.

Sue: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Raymie: for me, I think that's my why.

Raymie: I just, I want to help people, and I just, I love talking about ways to empower people to do that.

Sue: Absolutely. Yeah. It, it's all about helping people. That's my, that's my [00:11:00] thing. It's what I've started doing on the side, aside from my, my day, my day job, um, which honestly, since. I was not waiting tables and in retail anymore. I have never had a customer service job title. But it's been throughout everything.

Raymie: Yeah.

Sue: I think it's a, it's an approach. It's a mindset, right? I mean, that's how we met.

Raymie: I would say, yeah, speaking of mindset, that's, that's how we were introduced, right?

Sue: Mm hmm.

so Sue and I worked, um, in a company together and I was in enablement and I was delivering a workshop on customer mindset.

Sue: Mm hmm.

Raymie: it was interesting, right? I think when we first met, it was like, oh, another all day workshop.

Raymie: What am I going to get out of this? Right. It's just another one of those things,

Sue: I think I, I had been back off maternity leave for like, Two weeks, maybe. And I was still [00:12:00] catching up and trying to figure all of that out with an infant at home and two other kids. And, uh, really I've got to do an all day training, but then we met.

Raymie: Yeah. What, what was the thing about the customer mindset training that really resonated with you? And I think that's important. And we'll talk about these things throughout our, all the different episodes that we do. But I, I think grounding on, yeah, that makes sense. This is, this is the focus.

Sue: I think for me it was two things. one, it was really the understanding of a true mindset. It's an approach. And it has to be pervasive in everything you do. and the other thing was really that it, it takes a village. And I've slept since then, because it's been a dozen years, but I really remember, and I've talked about it a bunch since then, an [00:13:00] exercise where you had us build something as a team while the person doing the building was blindfolded.

Sue: That has stuck with me all this time. Because. The ability to explain something to somebody and be clear and understood is so critical. it, it hit my background as a technical writer, and someone who's provided documentation and support, and being in that go to person, it hit me in a way that nothing ever really had.

Sue: Before. So that's what I remember the most. What was the best part about teaching those workshops?

Raymie: I think just seeing the transformation of everybody, right? You start the day, it's an all day session. What are we going to learn that we, that we don't already [00:14:00] know?

Sue: Mm hmm.

Raymie: I think that was a mindset, right? That mindset shift of, Oh. This actually really makes sense, and I never thought about that before. You know, we talked about empathy, and I think that's a common thing that you hear about when you talk about customer experience or mindset.

Raymie: But talking about empathy and then living with it. empathy are two different things. And so being able to experience that throughout the workshop and seeing those light bulbs go off. For me as a trainer, you know, I live in enablement, learning and development. That's, that's my wheelhouse. And, uh, It's a little cliche, I guess, when people ask me, what do you love about training?

Raymie: And it is, it's that light bulb moment. It's really that you're able to deliver something that people get, and it's like a breakthrough for them. And that's my favorite part [00:15:00] about any type of training, but especially doing that customer mindset training was really seeing that people learn something. Um, and that they could put it into practice in their everyday life and not just at work, right?

Raymie: And I think that's something that was learned. It's like, this is not just a, I can do this just in my job. can do it when I talk to my family. I can do it when I'm with my friends or just out and about. It's, it's that mindset, right? It's the, um, approach.

Sue: Mm hmm.

Raymie: That to me is, is the, is the, the big takeaway from that.

Raymie: You mentioned the, the exercise with the blindfolding. That exercise is really fun and the exercise is really all about interpretation because there is a set of instructions and we broke people up into I think four groups, four or five groups, and they all [00:16:00] had the exact same instructions. And the interpretation of that instruct, of those instructions for every group was different. And I think that's what drove it home is. It's, it's perception, right? So if you're talking to someone, or emailing someone, especially now, right? We're in this digital world where we communicate with people digitally.

Raymie: And so you lose tone, you lose expression, right? It's super important to be very clear with what you're doing and your instructions and where the misses are. Okay. Right? You know in your mind what you're trying to convey and you think that's what's getting across. A lot of times we've missed some fundamental foundational steps and You know, if there's a five step process in our mind, we've already talked about five steps, but we started [00:17:00] communicating at the third step in which now cause customers or whoever you're talking to are completely lost and that's where some, some troubles come in.

Raymie: And so that's what happened with this exercise. again, it's just an interpretation, but at the end, right. Everybody got on the same page, just work together as a team. it was just fun. I love doing workshops like that.

Sue: It's really fun. I actually talked about that exercise last week. and all of this really kind of hits together with everything I've been doing the last couple of years. training to be a coach. And it's really funny, last week I did, uh, Gallup coach training to be a strengths coach and my top strength is empathy, which is why all of this always resonated for me.

Sue: But we were talking about it last week, about trying to replicate that exercise with Lego. Um, cause, you know, Lego's great. Uh, but yeah, I mean it, that one exercise from that one day. has resonated enough that I [00:18:00] still talk about it a dozen years later.

Raymie: That's awesome. Yeah, I actually still use components of that in, in training that I do today, in my day job, right? I, I run an enablement team for a customer success division, so there's a lot of soft skills that, that we need to work on, across the board, um, in every company, right? But there's, we use a lot of these concepts, which we'll talk about.

Raymie: as well, but my focus is really going to be enablement and, and training and the importance of trading and teaching. that's, that's where my strengths are. so I think with my strengths of, being in enablement, working within customer success and customer experience organizations. Your experience with coaching, as well as working in operations, working in senior leadership, I think it's going to give, a different feel for folks, with what we talk about, different lens that, that we're looking at things from, [00:19:00] so makes it a little unique.

Sue: we have a similar mindset but very different backgrounds and experience.

Raymie: Yeah, absolutely. who would you say is our target audience for this in your mind?

Sue: So I've been struggling with that as we've been talking about this for what, six months now? this specific version of whatever it was we were going to do with this passion we both have. And I really think it can be anybody because as we've both shown this approach works whether you're in retail, whether you're a service provider, whether you're in internal support, customer support, sales, it is a mindset and an approach and a mindset.

Sue: It's kind of a set of governing principles almost that really work for anything. [00:20:00] And, I mean, I know I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for, you know, treating everybody like they are my best customer. Regardless of whether it's my boss, my peers, or anybody, right? You know, I've always prided myself on not being that person that is unapproachable.

Sue: And I think it's worked out pretty well for me. So, I consider really anybody, but especially people in customer facing roles, or people who struggle with putting themselves in their customer's shoes. and leading with that empathy that is really necessary to understand the customer journey and what it's like to be on the other side of that email, that phone call, that whatever, whatever connection it is.

Sue: Um, cause for some of us making those connections is really, really hard. I [00:21:00] mean, I'm the biggest introvert on the planet. I don't like working and dealing with people, but I'm really good at it. At the same time. So if I can do that, I feel like maybe I can help other people. Yeah,

Raymie: a customer, like who is a customer. And I think we, we're going to have a episode devoted to that of really defining who customers are. I think typically there is a one sided blinders approach to who customers are.

Raymie: Um, so I'm really excited to, to kind of dig in and from, from our experience, what does that mean? Right. Um, it's funny. You and I. are both fans of the Princess Bride. And I find myself, when I hear words say, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. [00:22:00] I say that a lot, and folks that know me get it.

Raymie: Um, but it's true. We, we use terms that we just use, whether we really have defined them or not. So it's gonna be really interesting for us to dig into that episode and and define that

Sue: I think that's going to be. Um, really important and, and understanding the distinctions and some of the vocabulary that we can bring, not just what is a customer, but, um, what's the difference between customer service, customer support, customer experience. There's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of connection in those different realms, um, but they're not exactly the same thing.

Sue: Mm hmm. Mm

Raymie: No, you're you're absolutely right. There there is that common thread which is the customer facing or providing something for a customer but they all have their [00:23:00] unique skill sets and unique set of tools and processes that they do , and some of it is industry dependent as well so , that that'll be fun to, to dig into.

Sue: Hmm. Mm hmm.

Sue: So what do we have upcoming?

Raymie: We have the, what is the customer?

Sue: Mm hmm.

Raymie: We have, definitions, , defining, some terms.

Sue: We also have customer experience and customer support not being so different from sales. And how the two can relate. Mm

Raymie: a, uh, an interesting conversation because there's a lot of talk right now about, Sales and CSM's doing the same, same work and they're not very different. And I think it'll be interesting to hear, our take on that. ,There, there are definitely are differences, but, I think it's important to, to understand the similarities there with, with the approach and the [00:24:00] mindset.

Raymie: There's been a lot of layoffs in the tech space and a lot of other places. And so I've been doing a lot of work with folks on resume building and interview prep. And I think that's something that we can help with, right? I've been a hiring manager. I've been, I've been on panel interviews. I've also been on the other side of that, of interviewing myself.

Raymie: And so I think we'll, we'll talk about some of those things too, from our perspective, really just to, to help people, right. It just, it's along that lines of helping folks.

Sue: Yep. Being able to demonstrate a, a customer focus and a customer mindset and that empathy can absolutely be, the key to getting or not getting a job. yeah, I've also, you know, I consider that along the lines of all the helping and the coaching and those types of things that I've done.

Raymie: Yeah, and I think that's like our experience combined. Is tackling the [00:25:00] topic of customer success and customer experience just from a different lens. And whether it's, you call it refreshing or unique, whatever indicates to you. I think again, it's just a different take that, that we're, we're giving on this.

Sue: hmm. Definitely. Definitely. And I think we both just came around to the place where all of it's making sense. And all of it's kind of coming together. So here we are.

Raymie: yeah, absolutely. And I welcome everyone to come on this journey with us as we explore, customer experience through our lens.

Sue: Absolutely. This is going to be fun.

Raymie: Yep. The journey is the fun.

Sue: So, folks, The first thing, um, I'll ask all of you to do, who are listening, is remember to be nice. [00:26:00] Just go out there and be nice. It'll get you up a long, long way.

Raymie: All right. See you next time.