page title icon CX Journey

Michael Pace | Customer Experience

207: Michael Pace: Everybody is going to come to me

Michael Pace Show Notes Page

Michael Pace built the first social customer service team and became recognized as an industry expert. He used this fame to launch his own customer experience consultancy and then the reality of running a business that must deliver an exceptional customer experience became his personal challenge.

Michael was born and raised in Sparta, New Jersey. He is the oldest of three, and has a brother and sister, both still living in NJ. He also has five step brothers and sisters, all with loads of kids of their own and he’s an uncle to 12.

Growing up, like George Constanza on Seinfeld, he wanted to be an architect or an engineer. But after seeing all the math he would have to take in college, he switched his major to Sports Management. After college, Michael left for Orlando which was becoming an exciting sports town. But after finding only internships, he landed a role with a travel agency, selling trips to the Bahamas COD (Cash on Delivery for anyone less than 40 years old).

They would hand him a phone book each day, and he would call. He hated this job. It was like “Boiler Room” with corny rebuttals and canned responses. In the late 90’s, he had an opportunity to move back home to NJ and began working at Tiffany & Co. where he discovered that he truly enjoyed helping people and Customer Service.

After a few years with Tiffany & Co., Michael moved to Massachusetts to be with his new wife and started with a new division of Capital One managing the contact center that focused on selling installment loans for elective medical financing. Michael moved into an Operations Program Management role, building out this division’s telephony and case management systems.

Eventually, he took on IT projects and continued to build out Operations. In 2006, he took over all Contact Center activities for the division. In 2008, when the financial markets blew up, Capital One needed to shut down his division.

But as one door closes, another opens, and he had a unique opportunity with Constant Contact to build out the bleeding edge of Customer Service for the SaaS-based newsletter leader. His role encompassed the strategy and analysis for the group, WFM, process management, outsourcer relations, knowledge management teams, and the one of the first social customer service teams.

In 2012, he decided to start his own consultancy, The Pace of Service. Since then he has worked with companies like Citizens Bank, David Yurman, Tory Burch, Blue Nile, Rue La La, Conversocial, and a number of start-ups. He is also the President of the Northeast Contact Center Forum.

Michael is now a single dad to Brayden who loves soccer, especially British Premier League “Futbol”. They live in Foxboro, Massachusetts only a few steps away from Gillette Stadium, even though he is a Dallas Cowboys fan.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @micpace to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow – Click to Tweet 

“Successful customers and associates are what make companies widely successful.” – Click to Tweet  

“Customer service and experience should be customer centric, right?” – Click to Tweet  

“What customers are looking for is to be successful with why they are with you.” – Click to Tweet  

“Customer experience is not just about customer service, it’s about all the senses.” – Click to Tweet  

“There’s always this mix of both relationship and behaviors going on simultaneously.” – Click to Tweet  

“To get people to follow you, it’s more than just actions, you have to build rapport and relationships.” – Click to Tweet  

Hump to Get Over

Michael Pace built the first social customer service team and became recognized as an industry expert. He used this fame to launch his own customer experience consultancy and then the reality of running a business that must deliver an exceptional customer experience became his personal challenge.

Advice for others

Help people around you to become more successful.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Working on my communication. Getting my value proposition clear and succinct.

Best Leadership Advice

You have to be able to build rapport and relationships with people.

Secret to Success

Jack of all trades.

Best tools in business or life

Having great mentors and people to soundboard against.

Recommended Reading

The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization

Contacting Michael Pace

Website: https://thepaceofservice.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/micpace

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pacemichael/

Resources and Show Mentions

Northeast Contact Center Forum

Call Center Coach

An Even Better Place to Work

 

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

207: Michael Pace: Everybody is going to come to me

 

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

Call center coach develops and unites the next generation of call center leaders. Through our e-learning and community individuals gain knowledge and skills in the six core competencies that is the blueprint that develops high-performing call center leaders. Successful supervisors do not just happen so go to callcentercoach.com to learn more about enrollment and download your copy of the Supervisor Success Path e-book now.

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today who has an extensive experience in contact center customer care and we’re going to talk about a little bit more of that external effect of the customer experience and customer success. 

 

Michael Pace was born and raised in Sparta, New Jersey. He’s the oldest of three and has a brother and sister both still living in New Jersey. He also has five-step for others and sisters all with loads of kids of their own and he’s an uncle to 12. Growing up like George Costanza on Seinfeld he wanted to be an architect or an engineer but after seeing all the math he would have to take in college he switched his major to sports management. After college Michael left for Orlando which was becoming an exciting sports town but after finding only internships he landed a role with the travel agency selling trips to the Bahamas, cod cash-on-delivery, for anyone less than 40 years old. They would hand him a phone book each day and he would call. He hated that job and it was like a boiler room with corny rebuttals and can responses. 

 

In the late 1990s he had an opportunity to move back home to New Jersey and began working at Tiffany & Company where he discovered that he truly enjoyed helping people and customer service. After a few years with Tiffany and company Michael moved to Massachusetts to be with his new wife and started with a new division of Capital One managing the contact center that focused on selling installment loans for elective medical financing. Michael moved into the operations program management role and build out the entire division’s telephony and case management systems. Eventually he took on IT projects and continued to build out operations and in 2006 he took over the entire contact center activity for the division. But in 2008 with the financial markets blew up Capital One needed to shut down that division. As one door closes another door opens and he had the unique opportunity to work with Constant Contact to build out a bleeding edge customer service for the SAS based newsletter leader. His role encompassed the strategy and analysis for the group workforce management, process management, outsourcer relationships, knowledge management teams, and one of the first social customer service teams.

 

In 2012 he decided to start his own consultancy the Pace of Service, since then he’s worked with  companies like Citizens Bank, David Yurman, Tony Burch, Blue Nile, Rue La La, Comper Social and a number of startups and he’s also the president of the Northeast contact center forum. Michael is now a single dad to a 14 year old boy Braden who loves soccer especially the British Premier League. They live in Foxboro, Massachusetts only a few steps away from Gillette Stadium even though he’s a Dallas Cowboys fan. Michael, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Michael Pace:     I am ready to get help you get you over the hump, yes. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ve given my Legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

 

Michael Pace:     Sure I’m pretty fortunate guy. I get to wake up each day envisioning how I can help, create environments and journeys and actions for companies customers. I truly believe successful customers and associates are what make companies wildly successful. So my goal is to help make your company’s customers more successful and that’s how I believe I help make you more successful. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, so when you say that I start thinking of viewpoints and filters and perceptions and to me I start thinking of that that concept of outside in, is that really what you’re talking about?

 

Michael Pace:     Yes. I think customer service and experiences should be customer centric. Whether you’re talking about a new world of subscriptions and SAS a lot of that is about customer success. When you’re talking about retail, which I do a lot of work, banking any industry insurance, healthcare, what customers are looking for is to be successful either the task or the part of the relationship or why they’re with you. They’re looking for how can they navigate your website successfully. They’re looking for how can they complete a transaction successfully. They’re looking for how can they build their relationship with you more successfully. Some people think of it as sometimes it’s a little bit of a customer effort score and how easy it is for you to use a company. I think that’s part of success but it’s not the whole piece but it’s a big piece or how well you’re able to absorb or use loyalty programs and such that’s a part of customer success. It’s a slightly different way of looking at things like customer satisfaction and customer effort score or it’s a little bit more of pulling in relationship goals or how you feel about a company but also baking in behavioral results as well. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, so I think now we’re hearing a lot of information around people talking about motion. For me as you were talking about that I started thinking about that whole emotion component that customer success piece. So when you start looking at some—the measurements and metrics you have to question whether or not they’re capturing that appropriately when you start looking at it from a marketing perspective in addition to a service perspective I start thinking about all kinds of different things. I think ultimately in order for us to really detect, investigate, and interpret all of that we need to have some systems and frameworks and you started talking about a couple different aspects of this. When you’re referring to an organization working with and helping an organization, how do you essentially categorize these things so that you can move forward? 

 

Michael Pace:     For years marketing has had the quote-unquote funnel. So where people think about the awareness the consideration the intent hopefully there is a purchase period at the bottom of that funnel some folks have come along and say, we should be flipping the funnel and at the bottom of that funnel should be things like support and loyalty and advocacy programs. Looking at it almost like an hourglass instead of a funnel and that is about the customer’s entire journey the customer experience is not just customer service it’s about all the senses coming together. Things like customer support and customer success are a huge piece of that of that journey. But you can’t neglect a lot of the marketing pieces and you can’t neglect the further down the road things like loyalty and advocacy programs they’re all interconnected. But you also need to take it from a customer centric point of view, customers don’t see your company as—here’s company A and here’s company A’s marketing department and here’s company A’s customer service department and here’s their loyalty program they’re just company A that’s all they are. We have too many companies to kind of keep in mind to kind of segregate them out that way and such. Companies from a larger holistic standpoint—how do I help make them more successful in traversing that entire marketing funnel/hourglass type of thing? How is it easy for them to come into your company get to know your company have expectations set for your company making the purchase easier? How do you make the adoption of your product or service happen faster at higher value? How do you support them when things go wrong? How do you recover for when things go wrong? How do you create that immense loyalty and advocacy? Like I said there’s an emotional piece of it and how you feel about a company but there’s also a lot of it that’s behavioral. 

 

We’ll throw a quick example out to make that a little bit clearer, so I have a particular cable company, if they looked at me behaviorally would think I am an incredible customer. I have all the phone bundles and super highest Internet and what-have-you. I feel like I am just held hostage to them every single day. Now, they think of me as an amazing customer but a slightly opposite end of that think about like Pandora, who doesn’t like Pandora everyone likes Pandora it’s like your own personal radio station, will I promote Pandora? Sure, I probably promote Pandora. But I don’t pay for their service and honestly I probably remember I have it on my phone or on my Alexa maybe once or twice a year, I totally forget it, but as you mentioned before I was a single dad and I go to Costco every two weeks I have no business being at Costco every two weeks I love Costco I think it’s an amazing company I love what they do kind of for their associates I love how I feel when I walk out of there at least feel like I got a great deal I’m a successful shopper and behaviorally I go there way too often. They’re in my champion kind of quadrant there when you’re thinking about things. So there’s always this mix of both relationship and behaviors going on simultaneously.

 

Jim Rembach:     When I started thinking about some of the aspects of being able to understand that customer to a certain degree and being able to interpret and therefore make some types of decisions and some changes, I started thinking about one of the things that we often have trouble with when we start looking at determining and interpreting all of these things and that is we’ve really only know our own lens and purview. To me when you start thinking about some of these things it’s like, look an organization internally just can’t do. Where do you help organizations to understand that, look you’re good at understanding this because an extensive operational background, systems background all of that. It’s like, okay, you guys understand this but the information that you’re trying to seek here or the answers that you’re trying to get or what you’re attempting to do you don’t have good interpretation of that and that needs to be handled here, how do you go through that? 

 

Michael Pace:     You look at customer journeys, I think it’s becoming a more popular trend for organizations who understand the paths their customers go down too frequently they look at it in terms of only of their processes. Let me give you an example, like the travel industry, if you were to book travel you’ll go to a website and you will go through their process of searching and booking and eventually maybe even putting some things onto your iPhone or android phone for easier booking stuff later on or reminders what have you. And then you go on your trip, if I only looked at the customer journey through the lens of my travel company I would only be thinking about how they interact with like my website or how they interact with my payment system or were they able to download their tickets at the end of the event but in real life think about your actual journey that booking piece is only a part of things. You’re researching the location when you were booking you might be even researching the types of cars or flights the map locations of things, how you’re going to get from one place to another? When you get down to your, say you’re going to like Orlando for an example and it personally happened to me recently, I got down to Orlando and I got to the car rental place and it was all booked and all that stuff was easy and I know super easy to book and I got down to the car agency and I sat there was nobody in any line to the left of me or to the of me and it was about two or three people in front of me and I was there for 50 minutes and all I kept thinking during this entire time was, you were stopping me from getting to my vacation you are the conduit to my vacation you’re just not renting me a car your purpose your why is to help me go vacation have a great time and such. That’s where you can see late, the customer journey isn’t just linear to your individual processes it’s multi-dimensional and layered upon how a customer sees things. Having a customer be successful in our trip analogy here it’s about their entire vacation being successful. Even though you just might be the booking agent you are the conduit to that vacation there’s lots of aspects that are peripheral but or just as important to that customer for them to have a, if it is a successful vacation or a successful trip or successful working with your SAS marketing systems or whatever it can be.  

 

Jim Rembach:    I know when you start talking with this broader customer experience in the whole frustration that can be created from it both internally and externally there’s a lot of ways that we need to really focus. One of the things that we use on the show are quotes to help us focus. Is there a quote or two that you like that you can share? 

 

Michael Pace:     Yeah, I think my focus code is pretty focused. My quote is from Mahatma Gandhi its, action expresses priorities, it’s simple. I like this quote because when you think about customer service all the best customer experience is having common is, they make the quality of the experience the priority. If you are constantly balancing the cost of your experience or risk management of your experience even the timetable of your experience, if you think of the quadruple constraints of any project or initiative, if it’s not clear that the quality of the experience is the most important thing it will never show so your actions expresses priorities. 

 

Jim Rembach:    That’s a good quote. I try to also talk about how those actions and the interpretation piece on the other side especially with my kids—like, what do you think that they’re thinking about you now that you’ve done that?—trying to create that awareness. Okay, talked about your transition and going through and being in the boiler room and being with the Capital One the financial blow up and all these things you’ve had, quite an interesting journey, I’m sure there was a lot of humps that you’ve had to get over. Is there one particular story that you can share with us where we can learn?

 

Michael Pace:     Sure. In 2012, like I said, it was for Constant Contact to help build the world’s kind of first scalable social customer service teams and leveraging communities for customer service. Constant Contact was amazing in letting me go all over the country and even to China to evangelize how we built these out in the scale that we created and where this was going to. Social media now is pretty ubiquitous in our lives, even in 2012 it wasn’t that way I think my head got a little full of itself. I’m going to conferences I’m speaking in front of hundreds of people and I’m having dozens of people come up to me afterwards and—oh, I’d love to understand how to do this—and…So in 2012, I went off on my own and built the Pace of Service and I thought everybody is going to come to me because nobody else is doing this yet and they need it. It was just massively humbling to learn how to be the janitor, the marketing guy, the sales guy, the accountant everything that goes into being the owner of an individual consultancy and such. I could do the execution stuff blindfolded it seemed like but it was all the kind of all the other pieces that became involved and understanding kind of how to get your own company off the ground and make it successful that was my hump. I’d say where the getting over the hump piece was a little bit of the understanding like here’s how my pipeline needs to look, here’s the things I need to do early on whether it’s in social or blog writing or doing interviews like this that start piling up and start building a relationship with individuals to create that trust that enables me to become an organization. Most of the times I do fairly long sense of organizations typically eight months to a year. A lot of times I’m working as an interim director or vice president or something along those kind of lines while I’m going through a transition or where why you’re looking to build out what your eventual experience. That was probably my biggest hump that was it was tough.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, so I have to ask you, with that humbling experience and into that there’s a whole lot of anxiety there’s a whole lot of things that come in—doubt, so it’s like, okay turn around I need to go back. You didn’t.  What does that mean? 

 

Michael Pace:     What does that mean? Don’t get me wrong. I do think the full-time world—it’s not a grass is greener and the consultancy world versus the full-time world it’s just two different kinds of grass. I enjoy both. There is definitely something—maybe that’s probably why a lot of my consultant opportunities last for eight months to a year. Where I actually get to do things like develop associates for a period of time and afterwards I usually continue to mentor them. Or what build out larger infrastructures for them that are a little bit longer lasting then some initial short-term. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I think one of the things that you kind of what you were talking about and as you were explaining all these different aspects and all—we have the internal, the external the outside in, the inside—this is not simple stuff what we’re talking about here. To me it’s like congruent in regards to talking about that a whole long term. We’re talking about transformations here we’re not talking about fixing something that’s broken and this being up and going in a week or two it’s much longer in nature than that. 

 

Michael Pace:     Yes. I think one of the lesser known and least utilized competencies or disciplines out there is change management. Not the source code change management but how do you help people go through that up-and-down curve some people call it the curve of despair and the valley of the spare through that and come out up on top, how do you help them become aware of the change and have the desire or need for the change how to get through have the ability to get through how do you reinforce any successful—I think consultant needs to be a change management agent first and foremost. You can’t just come in here and say, here’s what I think you should do go by there’s a lot more process and discipline that’s associated with it. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Well and I think that goes for that internal person too. I think when you start talking about change in today’s environment and world I think that’s really that primary competency is that. It’s not managing the customer experience per se, I think it’s change management to be more customer center.

 

Michael Pace:     Yeah. You can imply a lot of those change management competencies, obviously, like you said to your customer. If you’re going to change your website or change your process or change whatever. You’re looking for the adoption of that change. Not only you’re looking for the adoption of that change you’re looking for the adoption at that change at the highest velocity and value as possible. So the analogy I’ll use here is, you download a new iPhone app, if it isn’t intuitive or instructional and easy to use what ends or valuable. What ends up happening? It just becomes this app that you never use on your phone again. But if you find an app where it’s easy to use, understandable, you understand what that change means you understand that the value that that change provides, and if you can get that change that value add velocity it becomes much more useful, and for lack of a better term, successful, like we talked about earlier. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Most definitely. Okay, so we’re glad you didn’t turn back and the Fast Leader Legion continue to wish the very best. 

Michael Pace:     Now before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

 

An even better place to work is an easy-to-use solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement and leadership skills in everyone. Using this award-winning solution is guaranteed to create motivated, productive and loyal employees who have great work relationships with their colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work visit beyondmorale.com/better. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Alright, here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time to do the Hump day Hoedown. Okay, Michael, the Hump day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Michael Pace, are you ready to hoedown? 

 

Michael Pace:     I am ready to hoedown. I will not also say that one of my development opportunities is to be more succinct than faster, so this will be a good test of my skills here. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Sounds good. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today? 

 

Michael Pace:     What hold me back is—I’d say I am still constantly working on my communication. Still constantly working on my public speaking so working on getting my value proposition clear and succinct as I just mentioned earlier. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What is the best leadership advice you have ever received? 

 

Michael Pace:     Best leadership advice I ever received—one of my earlier manager told me, you are all business all the time. To get people to follow you and such it’s more than just actions you got to be able to build rapport build relationships with people. Focus more of your time on building relationships than the actions that you want to take. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Michael Pace:     One of my secrets—I am jack of all trades, master of none. I could do project management, process management, change management, community management, I could do workforce management there’s all these kinds of management’s I could do but I would probably say I am not the best at any one of them in particular. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life best tools so it’s less of tools?

 

Michael Pace:     Best tools—it’s less of tools, but like I’d say, I have a great mentors and great people to sound board against. Whether it’s you have an idea or you have a passion or so you can bound things against, it’s far the reason why I love the NECCF it’s a community of customer service leaders from all over New England and he can just bounce things off and have those pure relations. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What would be one book that you’d recommend to our Legion and it could be from any genre? 

 

Michael Pace:     Okay, there’s a lot of great books but somebody was asking me about this recently and yeah I know you are a passionate man about a pivotal role in customer organizations, the supervisor. I think the best book I’ve ever read for supervisors is called the 360-degree Leader. It’s a great book it talks about both leadership leading up leading down leading sideways. It’s such an important thing for supervisors to be able to do is manage up to their managers and directors and obviously their associates and all those different peer groups that they interact with. So while there’s a lot of fantastic books I’m going to pick one, 360 degree Leader. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I appreciate that. Okay, Fast Leader legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/MichaelPace. Okay, Michael, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question:  Imagine you were given the opportunity to take your knowledge and skills back with you to going back to the age of 25. But you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

 

Michael Pace:     Going back to 25 I was a young and stupid and energetic at that point in time. What skill? Like I said I would probably go back to understanding how to kind of build and foster great relationships with people. Part of that would some of the coaching and managing people’s skills that I’ve developed. Again, I guess similar to how I think about the Pace of Service, helping people around me become more successful. I think at the time being 25 it was just how fast can I go forward. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Michael, it was an honor to spend time with you today, can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

 

Michael Pace:     Sure. They can connect with me at the paceofservice.com, obviously, also on LinkedIn. If you live or work in the Northeast feel free to join or come to one of the Northeast contact center forum events, I’m the president there and always at those events. You can go to any ccf.org for more information about that as well. You can always reach me on Twitter, @MicPace. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Michael Pace, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

END OF AUDIO 

 

 

Tim Perek Customer Experience Schneider Electric

147: Tim Perek: It was a stump the chump moment

Tim Perek Show Notes Page

Tim Perek carried his journey map and personas into a c-suite meeting with all of his research and data. He walked them through all of the ideation and through the prioritization. Then his moment of truth came when an executive asked a key question. That’s when Tim learned the key to delivering value with his customer experience program.

Tim grew up on Chicago’s north-side, on a dead-end street immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of the “city of broad shoulders”.

The oldest of three kids, Tim Perek would find his life and his career shaped by those early days. Remarkable days riding a CTA bus to St. Ed’s School and munching on Chicago-style” Vienna hot dogs “dragged through the garden”. An ideal place to observe, and study, and relish the remarkable lives and interests of the people around him. Like Mr. Rodgers would sing, it was always a “beautiful day in the neighborhood”.

Tim’s business schooling began at age 8, listening to Ed Perek, his dad, share the latest business intrigue of that day. He was guaranteed a steady stream of priceless customer stories as the two walked to the gas station after dinner to buy a gallon milk and a pack of Viceroy cigarettes.

A business degree at DePaul University would galvanize those early lessons, bringing context to his father’s story telling. All this crafted a perfect alchemy of theory and practice that Tim continues to employ as Customer Experience Leader for Schneider Electric.

One of the world’s biggest firms that no one has heard of, Schneider Electric is the global leader in sustainable energy management and industrial automation. Their deep expertise in energy management, automation, software and services allows them to integrate and connect operational technologies in ways not possible just a few years ago.

Tim currently lives in Arlington Heights, Illinois with his wife Sue. When he’s not talking to or talking about customers, Tim can be found playing jazz on any piano he can find, even airports, hotel conference rooms or in his basement studio.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @PerekTim to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Changing the culture is almost impossible, but you can change the climate.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet

“Running a company is a combination of both aspiration and operation.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“For any relationship, it’s based in trust.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“Innovation gets hampered when it has to come through the filter of closed-minded thinking.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“Running a business today takes both the left and right side of the brain.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“There’s a difference between rushing and speed.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“You have to have good perspective and clear approach to getting stuff done.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“We have to know and be clear that the impact has real measurement.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“It has to be completely clear on the hill that you’re trying to attack.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“Customer experience allows people to think about business in a different way.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“A lot of companies have given up on their CX groups.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“It’s not enough to give the context of a story, you’ve got to point to meaningful results.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“You want improvisation, but you’ve got to be on key.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“Trust yourself, but not too much.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

“We need to validate our hunches into tangible feelings and thoughts of the customer.” -Tim Perek Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Tim Perek carried his journey map and personas into a c-suite meeting with all of his research and data. He walked them through all of the ideation and through the prioritization. Then his moment of truth came when an executive asked a key question. That’s when Tim learned the key to delivering value with his customer experience program.

Advice for others

The customer knows what they need and want, and ask that extra question.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Making decisions quick, but making them good.

Best Leadership Advice

Trust yourself, but not too much.

Secret to Success

Always trust the customer more than yourself.

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

Nothing beats a personal conversation, stay off of email when you can. When you can and the time is right, pick up the phone and have a personal conversation.

Recommended Reading

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life

Contacting Tim Perek

email: timperek [at] gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyeofthecustomer/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PerekTim

Resources and Show Mentions

Developing a Better Place to Work

Increase Employee Engagement and Workplace Culture

Empathy Mapping

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

 

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

147: Tim Perek: It was a stump the chump moment

Intro Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to empathymapping.com to learn more. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion, today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today that I think has just so much energy, wisdom and excitement that when I saw him speak at the IQPC’s Contact Center or Customer Experience Executive Exchange in Chicago that I knew I just had to have him on the show and share him with you. Tim Parek grew up in Chicago’s north side on a dead-end street immersed in the sights sounds and smells of the city of broad shoulders. The oldest of three kids, Tim Perek could find his life and his career shaped by those early days, remarkable days riding a CTA bus to St. Ed’s school and munching on Chicago style Vienna hotdogs dragged through the garden, an ideal place to observe and study and relish, no pun intended, the remarkable lives and interests of people around him like Mister Rogers would sing it was always a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

 

Tim’s business schooling began at age eight listening to Ed Perk, his dad, share the latest business intrigue of the day. He was guaranteed a steady stream of priceless customer stories as the two walked to the gas station after dinner to buy a gallon of milk and a pack of Viceroy Cigarettes. A business degree at DePaul University would galvanize those early lessons bringing context to his father’s story telling. All this crafted a perfect alchemy of theory and practice that Tim continues to employ as customer experience leader for Schneider Electric one of the world’s biggest firms that no one has really heard of. Schneider Electric is the global leader in sustainable energy management and industrial automation. Their deep expertise in energy management, automation software and services allows them to integrate and connect operational technologies in ways not possible just a few years ago.

 

Tim currently lives in Arlington Heights, Illinois with his wife Sue. When he’s not talking to or talking about customers, Tim can be found playing jazz on any piano he can find even in airports, hotel conference rooms or in his basement studio. Tim Perk, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Tim Perek:   Sure, I am Jim. Hello and welcome good to be here.

 

Jim Rembach:   Well I’m glad to have you. I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better.

 

Tim Perek:   I got to tell you it’s a lover of customers. I know that sounds sort of like the five love languages but Jim it’s really true. In in all of the years of sales leadership and marketing leadership I’ve always had a passion for customers, an affinity for them and always an eagerness and excitement to learn more and if possible do it face to face.

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, so talk about—I had the opportunity to see you speak and I definitely think all that passion and all that came through but Schneider Electric is B to B, so when you start talking about customers face to face and the experience, what does that really look like for you?

 

Tim Perek:   Jim, you know at first blush you would think, yeah, it’s a lot of gray metal boxes and software but as we all know it gets back to dealing with human beings. All of these customers inside these corporations and these businesses it’s all about people and the basics of relationship. That idea of trust and understanding and sharing really is true and B2B as strong as it is in B2C.

 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a really interesting point, I think that a lot of people don’t have visibility into that. If you’re just thinking about general consumerism and you going and having relationships with the vendors that you have as a person but I would dare to say that the personal connection in a B2B environment really almost needs to be stronger than it does in a consumer space, is that a wrong assumption? 

 

Tim Perek:   No, no it’s really true. From the largest customers to the smallest in all of the ethnography work and customer journeys we’ve worked through there is one thing that’s true amongst them all, Jim and that is this—they all asked us one important thing—know me. Know me when I’m a facility manager inside of a data center co-location that gets an alarm at three o’clock in the morning that something is wrong and they pick up a phone to Schneider Electric and we tell them that we understand the problem and we’ve got it taken care of. Three o’clock in the morning you don’t want to be asked whether you have a purchase order or whether you have a warranty with them, customers big and small want us to understand and know them. Know the equipment they have in their facility, know the relationship, know how to do business, know the basics write down what’s the most important to them and what isn’t.

 

Jim Rembach:   I know that when you start talking about having that type of culture and that type of focus within an organization that could be a challenge when you’re start to talk about all the different brands that you guys have as well as when you start dealing with the different ways that you actually are connecting with, say your customer and even and end consumer. How do you keep that consistency across those brands?

 

Tim Perek:   You’re exactly right. Over the last 10 years we’ve had an incredible amount of change into this thing called Schneider Electric. So it’s 25 billion in revenue and 41percent of that is in new economies but when you think that in the last 10 years we’ve had more than 200 acquisitions. This idea of the business itself really changing from going to mature markets to new economies from a product based sort of approach to products and systems and services and software from a medium size to a large and a global business and a whole idea of globalization so it’s really difficult. In fact, it really is pointed out I think here mostly in this idea when we talk about culture and changing the culture. Well, you can imagine when you have literally hundreds of companies push together in all parts of the world you can just imagine how many cultures there are and how difficult it is if not impossible to change those cultures. So, yeah it’s quite a challenge.

 

Jim Rembach:   So as you were talking I started thinking about—when you start talking about people’s personal health they start talking about the big things that kind that are really against you, high blood pressure, diabetes, all these things. When started talking about the size of the company, the globalization, the transformation, the acquisition, I’m like, that’s like—just fall to your knees. When you start thinking about something that has really assisted you guys the most or you know some of the things that you do from a system, how do you actually get these organizations to move forward with you as one? 

 

Tim Perek:   Well, I think that first realization that you’re not Hercules, you’ve got no cape, but what you can do is have an impact on these individual pieces of the business and the countries and even the regions themselves by what I refer to as changing climate. So the changing the culture is almost impossible but you can change the climate and that climate is an idea of perspective. So, whether it comes down to your employees or your customers or your channels or anyone else your partner’s, your others that are around and surrounding you in that supply chain you can make a difference in that impact. Jim, it’s all about that, it’s agile, it’s small steps in changing and improving the perception of all of those people in your world.

 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a really great point when you start talking about perspectives, perspective taking it’s of the key elements in emotional intelligence and it does allow you to be more agile. That’s one of the things that I talk about on the Fast Leaders show is that, it isn’t about taking shortcuts, it isn’t about trying to leap over and skip steps in order to move faster it’s really kind of what you said you talked about chunking. You’re chunking things and you’re really taking perspective in order to be able to accelerate when the day is all said and done. 

 

Tim Perek:   It’s true and I’ve got to tell you that this work that we’re all invested in now and running these businesses really is an alchemy, as you had mentioned in the introduction. Because it is a combination of both aspiration and operation you have to do the tangible things, the efficient things, and the remarkable things in the day-to-day business. But with all of these personalities that we’re touching and interacting with we’ve got to make sure too that we’re aspirational and all of it and that comes to this building of trust. For any relationship whether it’s a spouse or another family member or a friend or a business it’s based in trust. 

 

And from a company standpoint there are really three pieces that I look at in that trust and that’s this, it is truly being customer-centric and we got to probably talk about what the hell the definition of that—it is innovation and the speed. Those all seem like very strong words but when you walk behind them a little bit you see a different vernacular, a different name, and that includes things like valuing the differences, understanding that culture is about not only of inclusion but that creative unleashing of innovation and that comes from a diverse group a wide range of people with different thinking about problems and empathy and all of that. The second piece that idea of being open and curious, let’s face it innovation gets hampered when it has when it has to come through the filter of closed minded thinking, so you’ve got to have that and that works into that, sort of I don’t know some people call it an innovators DNA, but it’s that key stuff of questioning and observing and networking and experimenting. The third one is this idea of time to think. And I think that’s probably the one most executives really miss is the taking a breath and really taking a look at things and allowing your brain to do that innovation work which includes things like simplifying the way you work to give you that free time and adopting some better rituals in your day to do that. There’s a whole bunch more but those are some of the key pieces, and I know they sound kind of soft Jim, they’re more of a psychology a more of the mind but running a business these days really takes both that left and right side of the brain and if you lean in on one side too hard you’re going to be in trouble.

 

Jim Rembach:   That really resonates with me and I’m sure it probably does with a lot of other people. One of the things that I was able to pull out of what you’re saying is that it also is very systematic. I can build some processes and have some structure around all of those things. For example I do have my time to think because I think most people can easily fall victim of, hey I’ve made all this other stuff more efficient so therefore I can just do more stuff. But sometimes that reflection thing—ideation does not happen because of activity associated with speed its things that require you to take multiple elements and variables and put them into a new formula and that’s how innovation occurs and you got to have time to do that.

 

Tim Perek:   It’s true. You said it well, Jim. You really have to do that. There is a difference between rushing and speed. Speed is being attentive, doing the efficient things. It doesn’t mean necessarily rushing because rushing is a different thing and that’s when it gets dangerous.

 

Jim Rembach:   Some people say, oh that’s just semantics, I think it’s much more to that. 

 

Tim Perek:   It really is. In fact, if you’d think about this—I saw a piece just had come out by Ceb 

Gardner and they talked about this thing in terms of a winning ticket and they said that when it comes down to really kind of satisfying the customer and making real differentiation through innovation. They had kind of pointed out five different things and one of them if I remember correctly was that idea of kind of personal concern for the customer and personal meaning not only with the employee but also with the customer themselves it’s about that trust that we had talked about. The second piece is this formalizing norms and processes. In what you’re saying there has to be a rhythm to this there has to be purpose. You can’t just wake up every morning just in tune with your thoughts and going wherever you lead you have to be have a good perspective and a clear approach to getting this stuff done so that’s where those norms and those processes come in. The third piece is this idea of financial impact. Because you know Jim, in every one of the meetings that we have there’s the financial guy, there’s the person running the business itself. She has one main thing in mind and that is the impact of your project and of all the other projects she has to decide on and pick. So, we have to remember, I think when it comes to this this culture stuff and CX, that we have to be attentive that we have to know and be clear on what the impact is and does it have real measurement. And of course, in order to have good measurement you’ve got to have a functional goal and then lastly decision certainty. Within those folks in the room when they’re making that decision it has to be completely clear on the hill that you’re trying to attack and at least the presence what the two or three steps are to get there.

 

Jim Rembach:   I think those are all great points. Gosh, I can see that you guys must do one heck of a concerted effort that’s very intentional in regards to having your leaders go through the understanding of all of this so that they can actually lead because like you had said we can focus on certain things that may cause imbalance the alchemy will cause some toxicity instead of the right mixture. How do you guys actually go through determining the process by which you’re going to educate and help people to be more customer-centric?

 

Tim Perek:   Jim, I don’t think we have yet. To be totally honest with you that has to be the most difficult thing for any organization to do let alone in this day of globalization. There had been a time, I don’t know 10 20 years ago when the leaders, the C-Suite, the others all sat in a room or sat in a building or sat in a town, the realization is now is that our leaders those making those big decisions their office is now an airplane and they are crisscrossing the world going back and forth, meaning with different people invested in different situations and it is an strikingly difficult to try to get all of these characters together with consensus, one thought, one mind, one message. And least which Schneider does over here is we do try to get together as a leadership group once a year it happens in different places this year we were in Hong Kong to get that done but it’s where we can kind of re-center ourselves to get focus get understanding and then, kind of like a huddle in football, and then coming out for that next play.

 

Jim Rembach:   Well, I can imagine that going through—just the activities associated with the operating of 25 billion dollar organization, the acquisitions, the, globalization all those things require a whole lot of energy and emotion to keep that focus. One of the things that we like on the Fast Leader Show’s quotes to help us give energy and focus. Is there a quote thing that you can share?

 

Tim Perek:   Sure Jim. I think it’s this—there are a lot of different ways we can communicate to each other or communicate to our customers but still the best most effective way to do it is face to face. And in that face to face conversation you may not be surprised by the content of what they say but you’ll always be amazed by the intensity that they tell you about it.

 

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s a great quote, I think that’s so true. I always talk about proximity and the importance of proximity and sometimes you have to simulate that proximity like you talked about this executives flying all over the place. You and I we’ve been doing this interview we tried to initially do it by having the video and seeing us but they didn’t work out too well so we did audio only but one of the reasons I like to do and that is because of that whole—if we can’t get actual face-to-face at least we can simulate it and I think everybody needs to think about that as a primary thing in their mind instead of like whipping out a text or an email or not showing your face.

 

Tim Perek:   Hmm-hmm it’s true. It really makes a difference and I will say that it changes the context of the audience of the person. In our work that we do I really insist whenever I can not only to use the surveys or the digital interviews, the electronic interviews, but really do that face to face if we can help it ethnography. So just like the video thing that we attempted during the call today to talk to each other and look at each other face to face the video feeds are always important and what’s so good about ethnographies is nothing beats that face on the screen looking at you. So when you are challenging or giving insight to a CEO or a CIO nothing beats that customer staring you in the face and saying what’s on their mind saying what is really bothering them where those pain points are and then that’s the important piece to it, face to face is the deal. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Definitely. I know even when we started talking about all this business and even personal and leadership challenges is that we’ve had to learn a lot of lessons along the way and there are humps that we have to get over. Can you think about a time when you’ve had to get over a hump that you can share with us?

 

Tim Perek:   Oh sure, I think it has to do is the kind of the nature of my career and that is the idea of kind of switching from leadership in marketing to leadership in sales. And although they’re very distinct there is a blend to it and I purposefully kind of worked my career out but I could kind of have a sense of confidence of the customer on both sides. But I will tell you there is a difficulty that I face now and then and that is really getting down to the operational piece of including all, let’s back up here a second and I’ll tell you about that. This customer experience customer centricity is a great thing and it allows for a lot of people to think and perceive the daily lives that we have as a business in a different way. But you’ve got to think about the different perspective of those around you, alright? 

 

Jim Rembach:   So you think about the head of customer experience like I am there are the actors the activators in IT, and sales, and product, operations and customer support and marketing and all of these different organizations. It’s not enough for you to come with your journey map to come with a persona to come with ideation with ideas but you really need to be able to speak in their terms. And as you can kind of think about it as you kind of close your eyes and thinking about each one of these different groups. They each have different needs most likely they have different KPIs and although unequivocally everyone will talk about customer centricity or being interested in the customer to them it remarkably means something quite a bit different. 

 

Tim Perek:   The hump that I have to face, and I still do to this day, is getting that insight that comes from the customer and to be able to translate it into a tangible set of decisions that all of these functional business managers and leaders can work together to attain. And I’ve got to tell you it’s one of the toughest things to do I think we’ve seen even in a lot of very, very large companies that they have given up on their CX groups to the point where they’ve minimized or reduced them to great lengths and it comes down I think at least in that ability to translate that thoughts and feelings of the customer into tangible actions that deliver revenue. So, the key to it Jim, to this hump, is taking this soft stuff that is the feelings and thoughts and concerns of the customer and translating it into actions that can cause impact and bigger still can get you to  what you really want. What these leaders want, these business leaders and functional and that is meeting their KPIs, meeting revenue goals, meeting share goals, meeting efficiency goals that’s the key to the whole game.

 

Jim Rembach:   Can you tell us about one of those times where you kind of missed the mark?

 

Tim Perek:   Well I can, it’s easy to do but I did it in style. And that is I walked in to a bunch of c-suite leaders I had all of my research and data put together there was a beautiful journey map that was probably about eight feet long and in persona pictures and all of that. I walked them through the ideation, I walked them through the prioritization but the moment of truth came and one of them it turned, I don’t know if it’s the CFO or whatever, and he said, Tim this is great and I see the direction and the things that we’ve got to accomplish. If we can accomplish this if we can do what you are showing us needs to be done what’s in it for me? What’s going to be the big difference? And I hadn’t figured it out it was early in my work in this thing and it was sort of a stump the chump moment, Jim. And it makes me realize and it does and did every day is that whenever you’re presenting, whenever you’re giving the findings of research or whatever it gets down to why should this be important to us? There are so many decisions that are being made so many choices. It’s not enough to give the context of a story like every good novel it’s got to have a finish and in this business novel writing that we do every meeting every ask of the leaders you’ve got to point it to a deliverable and to meaningful results. 

 

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s a really good point. I started thinking to that is it can’t be general nature it has to be very, very specific.

 

Tim Perek:   It does. And I think you’ve got to take into consideration to all of the other things that are going on. In this case that I had as I had created or the idea was to create an entirely different thing it was a tool for a set of customers and it was going to be a repeat and not leveraging many of the things that had already been done or were being done. So, you’ve got to really be clear as to where you’re sitting on the game on the on the field of what’s going on and be attuned to that so that in the minds and the heads of every one of these people sitting here making tough decisions. Your plan is clear and they have a clear understanding and trust of what the results are going to be if they go ahead and say yes?

 

Jim Rembach:   So when you start thinking about all this business activity that’s going on—we talked about the company size, the acquisitions, the transformation, the transitions, the pivots all of that stuff even your own personal jazz playing, you got a lot of things going on. What’s one of your goals?

 

Tim Perek:   Well I think there’s a combination of two things and we’ll use the analogy of jazz. There is an allowance for a lot of improvisation we’ll say. I try to do that and even within my teams I make sure that I don’t have the expectations and the rituals and the process it’s so tight that I’m limiting their creativity and limiting their possibilities of what they can come up with and it goes for myself as well it’s this kind of careful dance in between the two. You want improvisation but you’ve got to be on key. You’ve got to be playing together so you think of a jazz band everybody is doing their own thing but they’re also playing in the correct time, in the correct measure, in the correct tone, all of it has to be balanced out and that’s kind of the secret to this stuff. I’ll tell you what, it’s all it’s very, very easy in the idea of change and change culture to kind of come up with crazy ideas. It’s another thing to build that through that idea into a strategic actionable set of goals and achievements to get the job done.

 

Jim Rembach:   And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

 

An even better place to work is an easy-to-use solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement and leadership skills in everyone. Using this award winning solutions guarantee to create motivated, productive and loyal employees who have great work relationships with our colleagues and your customers. To learn more about an even better place to work visit beyondmorale.com/better. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Alright, here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Tim, the Hump day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Tim Parek, are you ready to hoedown?

 

Tim Perek:   I’m ready, Jim let’s go.

 

Jim Rembach:   Alright, what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Tim Perek:   Oh, the fastest—it’s making decisions quick but making them good. 

 

Jim Rembach:   What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Tim Perek:   I’d say trust yourself but not too much.

 

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Tim Perek:   Always trust the customer more than yourself. 

 

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Tim Perek:   Nothing beats a personal conversation. Stay off of email when you can and the time is right pick up the phone and have a personal conversation.

 

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, it could be from any genre?

 

Tim Perek:   The book would be Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader Legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Tim Parek. Okay, Tim, this is my last hump day hoedown question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. So, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

 

Tim Perek:   I would take back with me the understanding that the customer knows what they need and what they want and drive back into that and ask that extra question.

 

Jim Rembach:   Why?

 

Tim Perek:   Well it’s pretty simple. I think we often sit even as people within a business will sit at a conference room and we can say, hey five years ago I carried a bag I know about that customer I know what they really need but we really don’t. Things are happening in our lives and in the lives of our customers and we need to validate those hunches that we have into tangible feelings and thoughts and pain points of the customer so that we’re sure that we’re giving them the best that we can be. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Tim, it was spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader legion how they can connect with you?

 

Tim Perek:   Sure. You can get me on LinkedIn or you can just give me an email on timperek@gmail.com

 

Jim Rembach:   Tim Perik, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

END OF AUDIO

 

039: Annette Franz: Running into the same wall constantly

Annette Franz Show Notes

Annette Franz has experienced a series of humps that when strung together culminate into running into the same wall. Trying to do right by her staff and by her customers, Annette found the same people getting in the way. Listen and learn how Annette got over the hump to move onward and upward.

Annette grew up on a farm in West Salem, Ohio.

She is an animal lover through and through and, as a young girl, had dreams of becoming of a veterinarian. An intense dislike for Chemistry courses, of which six were required to get into vet school, and a serious fainting reaction to the sight of blood woke her up from that dream. After completing three years of Animal Science study at Ohio State University, she moved to southern California and completed her degree in management at California State University.

Her love of math and writing came into play when she saw a posting for a position with J.D. Power and Associates, and 20+ years of career progression through a variety of firms later, she continues to call this customer experience space home.

In 2011, she started her blog at CX Journey as a way to share her passion for all things customer experience, to help companies not only understand the importance of the employee experience and its role in delivering an exceptional customer experience but also transform their cultures to ensure the customer is at the center of every conversation. She was recently recognized as one of “The 100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider and has been recognized by several organizations as a top influencer in Customer Experience. She is an active CXPA member, as a CX Expert, CX Mentor, and a SoCal Local Networking Team Lead; she also serves on the Board of Directors.

For fun, she loves writing, working out, running, going to the movies and to sporting events, playing at the beach, and hanging out with her boys, who are 10 and 13.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen and @annettefranz will help you get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Working out has instilled a lot of discipline in me.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet

“It’s all about prioritizing and making to-do lists.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet

“Actions speak louder than words.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“If you say you’re going to do something, do it.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“Don’t just tell me, show me.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“Leadership is about a lot of different things.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“If you don’t have any followers than you are not a leader.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“Leadership doesn’t mean you have to be in a role where people report to you.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“Speak your mind…your opinions matter” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“You can only blame yourself where you are today versus where you want to be.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“Do your homework and be prepared.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“Follow your head and not your heart.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

“In the end, everything turns out the way that it’s supposed to.” -Annette Franz Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Annette Franz has experienced a series of humps that when strung together culminate into running into the same wall. Trying to do right by her staff and by her customers, Annette found the same people getting in the way. Listen to what Annette ran into, that you probably run into, and how you can get over the hump to move onward and upward faster.

Advice for others

Speak your mind because your opinions matter.

Holding her back from being an even better leader

Myself

Best Leadership Advice Received

When you come to a fork in the road, take.

Secret to Success

Being prepared. Reading, learning, always being in the know. I love having Google at my fingertips.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

Knowledge and awareness.

Recommended Reading

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Contacting Annette

Website: http://www.cx-journey.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/annettefranz

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annettegleneicki

Resources

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript:

Click to access edited transcript

039: Annette Franz: Running into the same wall constantly

 

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

“Developing your company’s talent and leadership pipeline can be an overwhelming task but your burn is over with ResultPal you can use the power of practice to develop more leaders faster. Move onward and upward by going to resultpal.com/fast in getting a $750 performance package for free.”

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright, Fast Leader Legion, we’re going to have a great show today because I have one of those folks that I’ve admired for a very long time, I think her wit is just as fantastic as her skill and expertise, her name is Annette Franz, she grew up on a farm on West Salem, Ohio. She’s an animal lover through and through, and as a young girl had dreams of becoming a veterinarian but an intense dislike for chemistry courses, and she six of those in vet school, and a serious fainting reaction to the sight of blood woke her up from that dream. 

 

After completing three years of animal science study at the Ohio State University she moved to Southern California and completed her degree in Management at Cal State University. Her love of math and writing came into play when she saw a position for JD Power and Associates and 20 years of career progression through a variety of firms she continues to call customer experience home. In 2011 she started her blog at CX Journey as a way to share her passion for all things customer experience and to help companies not only understand the importance of the employee experience and its role in delivering exceptional concerts but also to transform their cultures to ensure the customer is the center of every conversation.

 

She was recently recognized as one of the 100 most influential tech women on Twitter by Business Insider and has been recognized by several organizations as a top influencer in customer experience. She is an active Customer Experience Professionals Association member and expert and mentor along with myself, and a SoCal local networking team lead and she also serves on the Board of Directors. For fun she loves writing, working out, running, going to the movies and sporting events, playing on the beach and hanging out with her boys who are 10 and 13. Annette Franz, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Annette Franz:    I am ready. Yes, and that was quite a mouthful. Thank you very much. [Laugh]

 

Jim Rembach:    I think it was all worth it. Because you have gained, not just high but loyal following, within the customer experience based and it’s well learned, so it’s been my pleasure. I’ve given our Legion a little bit of information about you but can you tell us of your current passion is so that we can get to know you better? 

 

Annette Franz:    My current passion continues to be customer experience, but you want me to tell you outside of customer experience? I am a fitness nut. I am all about working out, growing up I ran in track and cross-country. I competed in bodybuilding about 20 years ago and that instilled lots of discipline in me through life and in my career. I still work out every day until this days, so that is my passion outside of professional life. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I know one of the things when you start talking about that passion and that exercises that diet that comes into it, tell me what’s the deal with the sushi thing?

 

Annette Franz:    I hate sushi. I hate sushi. I don’t eat fish actually, at all, I hate fish. [Laugh]But throw me a big steak and some potatoes and I’m good. [Laugh]

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, so, I know also that as a single mom all the things that you have to do in regards to work, home, exercise and all that, how do you find time to get all those of those things accomplish? Because for me, when I look at the proliferation of your writing, your social media activity and knowing all of those other things that you have to do and being a single parent, how do you do that?

 

Annette Franz:    I’m a workaholic. [Laugh]Hello, my name is Annette, and I’m a workaholic, yes, that’s it. I get up early prioritize, it’s all about prioritizing and making yourself to do less. And I’ve done—my kids are 10 and 13 and, by the way, they’re absolutely my passion as well, but I say that fitness is my passion because it gives me sanity so I can deal with everything else that happens throughout the day. [Laugh] But, yeah, realty it’s all about prioritizing and that discipline that I mentioned carries over into my life. I am very discipline person, I have this schedule and the structure that I go by every day and every week. I know when I need to write, I live by deadlines and I live by my calendars, so that’s how I get through the day. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I’ve also noticed here, I don’t know if it’s just been a recent epiphany but it’s seems to me, especially on guest on the show, when they have mentioned that they grew up on a farm, all have that kind of discipline, how is that?

 

Annette Franz:    It’s a crazy—first of all, I come from German parents, so I’ve got this amazing work ethic that is in my genes, it comes from them. But growing up on a farm, it’s hard work, we had beef-cows, we had sheep, we had chickens, and we had all of it. We had to get up in the morning and feed them –dirge, horse and at the end of the day you’ve got to come back and do the same thing. You’ve got crop out in the field, and I’ve learned how to drive a truck when I was 12 [Laugh] so, it is a hard life, it’s a lot of hard work and it really that alone instills great work ethic into you. 

 

Jim Rembach:    And it sure seems that it has and it’s so much like a brotherhood, so to speak, that everybody kind of have that discipline when it comes to a farm. For me it’s like, uhm, do I need to move to a farm to have my kids work so that their discipline would be instilled in them?

 

Annette Franz:    I wouldn’t trade it for the world. People ask me about it all the time. I think about how would my life be different had I grown up in the city? It would have completely different, I wouldn’t trade for the world that I grew up on a farm, did all the things that I did, saw all the things that I saw that most people would never see in their lifetime, so that’s pretty amazing. Maybe, yes, you should move to a farm.

 

Jim Rembach:    I think I might do that. 

 

Annette Franz:    Get the kids out there now, it’s a good time to get them out there now.

 

Jim Rembach:    Definitely. 

 

Annette Franz:    I’ve taken my kids back to visit my parents who still have the farms back in Ohio and we come back here and they’re just completely different kids one we’re there [6:35] come back here. 

 

Jim Rembach:    When you start talking about discipline, when you start talking about drive, when you start talking about structure we often have to continually remind ourselves to focus and execute, and one of the things that we do on the shows is we look at leadership quotes because they seem to help a lot of us in a lot of different ways, do have quote or two that helps you?

 

Annette Franz:    My absolute favorite quote is, “Action speaks louder than words.” It’s the mantra that I live by it’s something that I tell my kids all the time. In my professional it’s the same way, with my staff it’s the same way. If you say you’re going to do something, do it right, don’t just tell me, show me, that kind of thing. I think that’s probably my number one of my favorite quote. 

 

Jim Rembach:    There’s also a piece in there that I think for me in the past year or two that I’ve really been focusing on and that’s the word, “Integrity.” A lot of people don’t, including myself, I’m not saying that’s someone’s issue it’s mine as well.  Not really certain what that word means because when you ask folks, “Do you consider yourself to be a person of high integrity?” Their natural response is, “Yes, of course, absolutely I am.” [Laugh]However they don’t tell the truth, they backstab, they say they’ll call you back they won’t call you back, they say that they’re a person who you can trust and then they’re untrustworthy, so it seems to me like it’s really interesting how that word has so much importance for folks but they don’t know how to execute upon it.

 

Annette Franz:    Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely agree with you. That doesn’t just apply to leadership but applies to the world that you and I come from as well. The customer experience space and talking about all the things that they’re going to do—their advertising or their marketing, but what comes down to it, the experience is what you actually do for the customer do for your employees that really matters. And yeah, that all wrap up in integrity, absolutely I agree with you. 

 

There’s a slide it has five different things that starts with I on it that I like to use as a conversation piece. It has things like, of course integrity, but it has innovation, ignition and a couple of other things I can think about, it’s on the top of my head right now, and so I ask people, “From this five things that are sitting out here, they all start with I, which one is most important to you? For me, I work with a lot of contact center leaders, and apps that are responsible for customer care and contact centers, and 90% of those folks say, integrity. It’s just overwhelming but then when there’s a situation where you start talking about what they do as far as interacting with customers and interacting with employees and how everybody gets treated things like that, that integrity piece falls apart really fast. 

 

And I think that’s why it’s easy to—rather than saying integrity because I think people don’t always get what that means, like you said. When you say, action speaks louder than word, they pause and think about it for a second but then they say, “Oh, okay. Yeah, I get it, okay.”[Laugh]

 

It’s a great point, thanks for sharing it. When you start thinking about that transition and even when you had the dream of going and being a vet and then having the harsh realization that couldn’t make it through chemistry, that’s a big hump to get over.  And also you made a huge shift from the farm and move to Southern California and, I know just because of a lot of the conversations that we had in the past that you’ve had humps, we’ve all had humps. Can you think of one that you’ve had to get over that defined you?

 

It’s interesting and I like that you add that defined you because I wouldn’t call it just one hump, I would say it’s a series of humps. [Laugh] I’ve had some challenges in my career and the interesting thing is, obviously they made the person that I am today, the leader that I am today. I won’t tell you the story of each hump, just that we can protect the not so innocent, but I feel like each of them strung together really culminates in running into the same wall constantly, hitting the same wall constantly. Trying to do right by my staff, trying to do right by customers and that hump, that wall that I kept running into was the leadership above me. 

 

I was running various departments at different companies and it was really about the actual leadership above me, so we’re talking about CEO’s, and the C-suite, and sort of getting in the way and thinking that they’re doing the right thing or have the right approach to it or not supporting what I believe is what’s best for my staff or what’s best for my clients, and that’s something that I’ve run into so many times. And I would go back and then refer to them as “leadership” because leadership is about a lot of different things. It’s about caring about your people, it’s about being accountable for you it’s about inspiring others to do great things and being inspirational. And when you’re not that, “are you really a leader?” In order to be a leader you have to have somebody who’s going to follow you. And if you’re not willing to follow, if you don’t have any followers then you’re not a leader. There’s got to be those people in line who want to be part of what you’re doing. And so, that’s one of the struggle that I’ve had in my career, is the leadership. 

 

You might say, “Hey, maybe that’s your problem then, not the people above you.” 

But if you went back to look at my history, you would probably agree with me that there were some leadership issues there in some of the organizations I worked for. I think what it really reminded me of is that leadership doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be in a role where you got people reporting to you. I think leadership also means that you have people, like I just said, who are willing to follow you because you inspired them, because you do great things, because you’re doing things other want to do because they like what they’re seeing in what you’re doing or when you’re role playing being a good model for them. I know it doesn’t necessarily fall into your hump story, but it’s sort of like I’ve had string of events that made me who I am today. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What you’re talking about is a common thing. It isn’t a scenario where you’re unique from the perspective of having that difficulty in trying to get the agenda as well as maybe even calling people out and getting all of those things moving forward. Because of some of those experiences that you’ve have had, have you found that there is something that seems to help move things a little bit better than others?

 

Annette Franz:     I think the best thing is don’t be afraid to speak your mind and say what you’re thinking. And your opinion matters whether it makes a difference at the moment or not, thing might come back around and somebody later down the line may say, “Hey, you’re right” or “Hey, you know what, I’m glad you spoke your mind because that was an important part of where are we now, where we’re headed now in terms of”—those kinds of things. I firmly believe that making sure that you speak you mind, don’t let people walk all over you. You’re opinions matter always be true to yourself. And leave knowing that you said and did everything that you could to hopefully leave things in a good place and like you said, “I have something to come back later, and you know what, we thought about it and that was right.”

 

Jim Rembach:     I know even for myself that when I was younger I’m known for being blunt at times, and if you have a glass of wine or two and gets that way pretty easily—when I was younger you used to just be, Boom! This is the way it is. And I’ve tried to do a better job of that, of course with family it’s a little bit different. A professional situation and you haven’t met people a lot, you soften a little bit—have you seen that there’s been, like I use to do this and I do this now and seen that there’s some kind of different effect that happens with that an executive buy-in?

 

Annette Franz:     Yeah. Absolutely. Coming from the background that I come from, and we’ve talked about it, the German, we sit and we listen—we’re not, maybe some Germans are but I’m not it wasn’t brought up that way, we are a little bit more reserved and I’m always been the kind of person who gives my opinion when I’m asked or a situation has gotten so bad that something needs to be said. That’s where I’m coming from, ironically in the position that I’m in right not it’s a 180, I’m in a position now where I’ve been hired for very specific reason and I been told, “You’re the expert, don’t wait for somebody to ask you. What you’re thinking or if you hear something say it don’t be afraid to put your opinion out there just say it.” Which is great, I love it. I love to be in that—it’s hard for me though because they have to keep reminding me so. It’s a transition but I’m getting there. [Laugh]

 

Jim Rembach:     I would also say too that—it seems like has been earned. 

 

Annette Franz:     Thank you, I hope so. After 20+ years in this field and knowing the things that I know and have learned—I’m never the kind of person that take that as being arrogant or anything like that I’m a very humble person. So to me—yes, thank you, I think it has been earned. And finally it’s great to be working with somebody who appreciates, it’s awesome. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s a great point. I know for me, when I was a youth it wasn’t appreciated even though I have had some skills and I didn’t know better to keep quiet. [Laugh] You know that it did serve me well but now –started to fall apart [Laugh] There’s a little bit more a recognition that, “Hey, May I know what the heck you’re talking about?” and so I can appreciate that. If you’re to look at—with all that you have on your plate right now, what is that one thing that’s really giving you a lot of excitement?

 

Annette Franz:     Wow! There are a lot of things on my plate right now. The thing that always excites me the most and I think I can wrap it into a nutshell because it encompasses or embodies a lot of things that I’m doing right now is, teaching. Teaching others, sharing with others what I’ve learned. And I think that’s why I like being in a leadership position. I like being—I been a department head a couple of ties and I like being in that role because I can step in and help other people be successful, I think that’s the goal of mine. 

 

Jim Rembach:    The Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now, before we move on let’s get a quick words from our sponsor. 

 

“A dry leadership pipeline shouldn’t clog your business from moving onward and upward. Get over the hump by filling the gap between leadership development and top performance with ResultPal. Rocket to success by going to resultpal.com/fast in getting a $750 performance package for free.”

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright, here we go Fast Leader Legion, it’s time for the—Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Annette the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Annette Franz, are you ready to hoedown?

 

Annette Franz:    I am ready. I feel like I should have had my red bull this morning but I am ready. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Annette Franz:    Myself. You can only blame yourself where you are today versus where you want to be—myself.  

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Annette Franz:    When you come to a fork in the road take it.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe that contributes to your success?

 

Annette Franz:    Being prepared. Reading, learning, always being in the know, just being prepared. I love having Google at my fingertips. Just like the greatest thing, I can be in a conversation, I can be in a meeting and somebody said something and I’m like, “Oh, I can look that up, see what I can find out about it” It’s always been, always, always been, do your homework and be prepared.

 

Jim Rembach:     What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Annette Franz:     Other than my calendar because if it’s not on my calendar it doesn’t happen. I would say just knowledge and awareness in general. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What would be one book the you would recommend to our listeners?

 

Annette Franz:    I’m in the middle of reading this book. I’m almost done but I think it’s a fabulous book, it’s the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader listeners, you can find links to that book and other bonus material from today’s show and quotes that you can tweet, by going to fastleader.net/Annette franz. Okay Annette, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, so what piece of skill or knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

 There’s so many things. [Laugh] You don’t get to this age and, go man if I was 25 and knew what I knew today but I would say, I would go with, follow your head not your heart. This one is a tough one for me because I’m a big softie, I’m a very caring and a very giving person and there are times when I should have followed my head and it would have been a whole lot less painful. [Laugh] but in the end everything turns out the way that it’s supposed to and not—it’s a great advice from my dad. My dad has always said, “Things happen the way that they’re supposed to.” So, listen to your head not your heart. 

 

Annette it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

 

First of all, I’d like to say, thank you Jim, I really appreciate you for inviting me to participate, this has been a lot of fun it’s been great. I’m always happy to catch up with you and chat with you. Couple of different ways, my blog is www.cx-journey.com or on Twitter@annettefranz or Twitter@cxjourney. 

 

Annette Franz, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot! thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. 

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

 

END OF AUDIO