263. Creating Human Connection within a Global Ecosystem w/ Naomi Wheeless

The chance to have an interaction with an actual human being leads to a positive emotional resonance, which leads to more referrals and online reviews. That human connection is invaluable in strengthening how people perceive the entire brand.


In this episode, we meet with Square’s Global Head of Customer Success, Naomi Wheeless, a remarkable leader who has successfully built and led a diverse team of over 1,000 employees across 10 countries for the past 6 years. We dive deep into how Square achieved a staggering 300% increase in sales by removing intentional friction and delivering a top-notch experience in a complex ecosystem. We explore the power of human connection and its impact on customer loyalty, while gaining insights into managing a massive workforce.


Join us as we discuss:

• What customer empathy means and why it’s important
• Whether or not an internal tech team is advantageous
• How Square’s remote transition has lead to a happier and more diverse workforce
• How to successfully manage a team of more than 1,000 employees across 10 countries (tips and tricks)

More information about Naomi Wheeless and today’s topics:

• LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wheeless/
• Company Website: https://squareup.com
• Naomi’s Personal Website: https://naomiwheeless.com/
• Other Relevant Link: https://www.chick-fil-a.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
The single most important thing you cando today is to create and deliver a
better experience for your customers. Learnhow sales, marketing and customer success experts
create internal alignment, achieved desired outcomes, and exceed customer expectations in a personal
and human way. This is theCustomer Experience Podcast. Here's your host,

(00:24):
Ethan Butte, building and leading aglobal team that's newly remote, increasing sales
opportunities nearly three hundred percent by removingintentional friction, delivering a great experience in
a high growth environment, complex ecosystem, and across dozens of products. Today's
guest is doing all of these thingsand much much more. She's built an

(00:48):
exceptional career as an operations leader andorganizations like Bank of America, Service Master,
and Capital One. She currently servesas Global head of Customer Success at
Square, leading the customer facing globaloperations and the company's largest organization of more
than one thousand employees across ten countries. Naomi, we list, welcome to
the Customer Experience Podcast. Hi,thank you so much for having me.

(01:12):
Yeah, I'm really excited about it. Just the level of complexity that you
must be engaged in on a dailybasis is more that I could basically comprehend.
So so I really look forward tothis conversation. It's you're operating at
a scale that we don't talk aboutas often as I think would be helpful
for folks on this show. SoI really appreciate you carven out some time

(01:33):
for this, and we're going tostart Naomi where we always do, which
is customer experience. When I saythat, what does it mean to you?
So many different things, but inshort, customer experience means the experience
the customers are having with your productto service. So at Square that really
means getting Wi clop service to allof our sellers who are strapped for time,

(01:53):
strapped for resources, and they justwant tools that are going to help
them run their business and the mostefficiently possible, and so delivering that where
you're wowing them with every interaction asmuch as possible. You're not just answering
the question that they initially called inwith, but you're always trying to go
a step above and beyond to makesure that you nailed that question, but

(02:13):
that you're always helping them U understandthe breasts of your entire product suites that
they take advantage of everything that wouldbe helpful to them. So customer experience
is really making sure that you're bringingall the various touch points within your organization
that your customers can see, touchand feel, that they all speak the
same, feel the same, andprovide a very unified, holistic experience that

(02:36):
wows each and every time. Somuch good stuff in there that was actually
densed and very nuanced. I'm gonnahighlight two things in particular. One of
them, the customer empathy that youexpressed right off the top, is obviously
a cultural component that you're bringing tothe organization. Is who you are and
perhaps shared among all the folks thatyou work with, and that is like,
these people are busy, there's alot going on for them. They

(02:57):
need something quick, they need andwe can help them. The other thing
that I thought was super interesting wasthe idea that these conversations are also an
opportunity to help them in other ways. Some people might call that cross selling.
I like to think of it aswe're in this conversation, we're in
this relationship. You seem to havethis need and that's something we can help
you with. Would you like totalk about that? And that's something we'll

(03:19):
be talking about later in this conversationtoo, So really well done. Another
just a little follow up there,When did that language come on to your
radar? Have you been using theterm customer experience? I know you've been
doing customer experience work probably your entirecareer, but when did you really attached
to that term or start using ityourself. I think pretty earlier on in
my career, because I always understoodwhether I thought about myself as a customer

(03:42):
or how'd well my parents would betreated when they're out in the world conducting
business, the experience that you create, it just matters so much more than
more times than not, the productthat you're selling is somewhat similar to your
competitors, So it's the primary waythat you can go about differentiating yourself from
your competitors and really standing out andmaking sure that your price points are worth

(04:03):
it, and that it's a differentiatingfactor in the decision making process that customers
go through when they're deciding who they'regoing to give their hard earned money too.
So I've always been really passionate aboutthe experience people have from every vantage
point, so before their customers whenthey're brand new customers, all the way
down the lawn to when they're supersenior, super tenured, and deeply entrenched

(04:28):
customers. And so that's really beensomething that I've cared a lot about since
the beginning, and I think it'sall about serving the kneed whatever they're calling
in about or coming into the storeabout, but really figure out how to
deepen the relationship with that customer ina way that feels good for them.
Yeah. Really well done. Anddifferentiation is a key, I mean,
and you also hit product parity.They're just this idea that you know,

(04:50):
we're months at best and hours atworst away from a competitor knocking off some
thing that we're doing in a functionalway. And the difference really is this
the relationships. So totally with youon that. For folks who aren't familiar,
I don't know how many of themare there are, because it's a
very familiar brand. I'd love foryou just to set the scene for folks.

(05:11):
Tell us a little bit about Square. Who is your ideal customer or
customer groups and what are some ofthe main problems that you're solving for them.
Yeah. So Square is a globaltechnology company and we exist to help
sellers small business or large businesses reallyhave all the tools they need to power
their business. So obviously, whatwe're famous for is a little white card

(05:32):
reader. That's our legacy product thatthen started off with that allows anybody to
accept credit card payments that you nevermissus sell. But what a lot of
people don't know is that our brandstretches so much further than that. We
have an ecosystem of solutions that's overthirty five products where you can do everything
from obviously take those payments, tobuilding a beautiful website, being able to

(05:55):
offer delivery service or shipping, payingyour team members through pay yere, all
setting up appointments with customers. Ifyou're like in the beauty or barber type
of industry, there's just really almostanything that you need you can get done
with Square. Most recently and mostexcitedly, you can now even offer by
now and pay later services because weacquired after pay and so really anything that

(06:18):
you need to power your business wehave a solution for. And the beauty
of that is it's it's a connectedecosystem. So these products talk to each
other, they understand your your businessas a whole, and all the things
work together and connect together seamlessly.So that's that's really what we do to
really give. We are here tomake sure that you have a three sixteenth

(06:40):
view of your whole business and thatyou're is profitable, fantastic, And you
just introduced to me in my inmy head, another layer of complexity that
I'm still trying to get adjusted tomentally. You know, when I think
of square, and I love theway that you tied that up because I
think my experience is like a lotof other people's, which is, you

(07:00):
know, the person who cuts myhair, they have the square and they
do the thing, and like soit's from kind of a solopreneur or a
small organization, but I'm sure you'reserving people in organizations as large as your
own. We started out really servingmicro consumers, micro sellers, so folks
that were, like you said,Joe Barbera who was an individual entrepreneur,

(07:24):
that's solo preneur. And we definitelystill always have a special place in our
heart for those and have millions ofcustomers in that size. But over the
years we've been around fourteen age yearsat this point and sitting in that time,
we've definitely began to push up marketand we're a servicing sellers now of
all sizes, so we have notforgotten about the little guy and definitely still

(07:46):
build solutions for them. But wehave medium sized businesses for sure, all
the way up to a huge nationalchain type businesses, including some large like
foot NFL stadium type organizations as well. We have solutions that we could offer
to franchises that have hundreds of locations, So there's really no size business that

(08:07):
we had not service. Our solutionsare customizable and adoptable to fit any needs.
Okay, so you've been with Squarefor about six years plus or minus,
so share with us a little bitabout what has changed in terms of
that product offering, like like theI'm sure a lot of this breadth you've

(08:28):
witnessed and experienced and implemented. Sospeak to either or both of these,
like, how has the offering changedin the time that you've been there and
your own scope of responsibility? Ifeel like it's probably grown with the product
offering as well, So like speakto like how much bigger, more complex,

(08:50):
more interesting, more challenging the environmentis today compared to when you started.
Yeah? Absolutely, so when Istarted, we definitely had a pretty
wide ecosystem of solutions, but it'sdefinitely much bigger now six years later.
So we've we've done things like throughacquisitions. We purchased Weebly about maybe a
year or two into my tenure year, and that really kicked off all of

(09:13):
the work that we've been to helpcustomers have beautiful websites now. I mentioned
earlier the acquisition of after pay,so when I first got here, we
didn't offer a buy now pay leaderservice. Another area in which we've really
done a lot of expansion is froma globalization standpoint. We were global when
I first got here, but we'veentered into new markets. Right now,

(09:35):
we kind of have a deep focuson on Europe and trying to conquer that
particular continent, and then we'll moveon once we have a good sense of
success there. And so it's justreally exciting to be here at a time
when there's so much growth and thephysical locations, like the geography of where
we provide solutions as sellers, butthe tooling and the scope of the ecosystem

(10:00):
and how many different problems we cansolve has just grown as well. So
it's been a really exciting thing towitness part of your question. As far
as my team, Oh my gosh, it's growing like weeds. While I
got here, I pretty much justmanage the call center. You could think
about it that way. We answeredthe phone as quickly as we could and
did a great job there. That'sstill the heart of my operation. But

(10:24):
we now have a pretty hefty technicalteam that also sits within the customer Success
organization. So there are some dataengineers, some folks that have specialization and
machine learning and now AI as well. There are some workforce management of people,
some data analysts. So there's alot of functions that support the call
center that are really important as well. Very good, can I assume safely?

(10:50):
Maybe not? I don't know correctbe where I'm assuming it correctly?
Dam me. I assumed that alot of that technology, you know,
AI, miche learning, is probablytaking over some of the easier tasks,
and that the folks in the callcenter are really being called to level up.
They're probably answering more nuanced and complexquestions that now the machines are probably

(11:13):
taking the surface level stuff, andthen if that's not good enough, it
passes on to the human being.So I'm sure there's a ton of training
and development, and there's probably ahigher level role being performed by that person
taking the call. Then, sayfive years ago, Ethan, would you

(11:33):
like to come work for me?Because you just nailed that. That's exactly
correct. Yes, So we areseeing more and more of our easier questions
being answered through different types of automation. So we're really proud that we have
one of the most effective and accuratechatbots that our customers can interact with.
I have a lovely leader justin thatowns that whole team, and he's really

(11:58):
made sure that it's as smart aspossible, to accurateness friendly as possible,
so that deflects a lot of contextand gets our sellers back to doing business
as quickly as possible. And thenthere's other things that we have, like
an amazing online seller community where it'slike a form of sellers helping each other.
We have a very large award weddingsupport center that customers can go to,

(12:20):
So there's plenty of ways over theyears that we've developed different places customers
can go to self serve their answers, which to your point means that what
is left for my humans to answerare the much more complex calls and so
we have a very robust, veryskilled training and development team that is all
about up leveling, constantly raising thebar for how much we are educated on

(12:46):
the ecosystem, but also the skillset of handling more complex conversations, because
there's a very big difference between thatand the easy calls and so Yes,
it's been a gradual shift, andI think as we begin to introduce even
more technology, like the things thatwe're thinking about from a generative AI standpoint,
that need will go up even morereally good. How important is it

(13:09):
that this tech team is? BecauseI can see people arguing in both ways.
I don't really have a strong opinionbecause I'm generally ignorant of the details
here. But how important is itto have this tech team within your team?
Who is The benefit? Seems obviouslyto be They're solving a much tighter
range of problems. They can godeeper, they can go faster, there's

(13:33):
probably less red tape, you don'thave to compete with the other teams to
get some attention to build a solution, or to address a problem, or
even to research a problem. Well, what are some of the I guess
maybe pros and cons of having thetech team within your organization rather than having
this bigger tech team that serves allthe organizations in priority order or something some

(13:56):
great question. I honestly can't thinkof any cons if you build it right.
So I am I have the privilegeof having the right size team,
with the right amount of funding,the right type of leadership that's leading that
team, but most importantly, theright amount of expertise. And so because
of that, we are able tomove just so much faster with the autonomy

(14:18):
and the empowerment that's necessary to driveforward the business in that way. And
there's just a lot of it's alsoincredibly helpful when your tech team truly understand
all things customer success. They understandhow customers think, feel, what they
like, what they don't like,what's going to annoy them, what will
they be excited about? And sothey're designing solutions that truly have the customer

(14:39):
in mind. Because they're on thatteam, they're hearing everyone, myself included
speaking about that. They hear,you know, they spend part of their
week actually going to listen to phonecalls from the call center so that they
can hear what are the things thatthe customers are calling in about. So
that they can go build automated solutions. If this team's that externally, to

(15:00):
me, those same things would getdone, but it'd be slower maybe not.
The solutions that they're building probably wouldn'thave as high of a level of
accuracy and efficiency because they are justnot people who think about the customer experience
in the way that my team does. Some could still be done, but
I think there's an immense pros atbeing located within the Yeah, very good,

(15:24):
and that qualifier off the tap whendone right, Yeah, that's the
gey to all of it. Soyou did something that I think is counterintuitive
to a lot of people, andI don't know how long ago it was,
and so I'd love for you tokind of tell the story a little
bit, like how you thought aboutit, how you approached it, and
how it's gone. I tease theoutcome in the beginning, you know,
a nearly a three hundred percent increasein you know, effective sales outcomes by

(15:48):
unlocking and giving more access to humanbeings. So you had this customer code
that was an intentional point of frictionfrom my understanding, and you removed it,
I think, and the reason it'scountertuitive to a lot of people,
as they say, gosh, it'svery expensive when a human being is going
to address a question, and certainlyit is if it's a common, frequently

(16:08):
asked question. You don't want ahuman being answering the same question a hundred
times a day. It's bad forthem, it's bad for the customer because
it's easier to deliver that answer.But I think a lot of people put
these barriers up, and I seethat complaint all the time on social media,
like you know, some hot newSaaS product and good luck ever getting
any help at all, and muchless connecting with a human And we know

(16:30):
why that gets done. It's likepart of the model. It's expensive,
it's a cost saving effort to putin some of that friction, and so
you remove that friction and it's turnedout to be an incredible positive not only
for your customers but for your prospectsas well. Yeah, exactly so,
As like you said, some historyand context there, we had a customer
code basically like a fancy account numberthat you had to enter into our IVR

(16:53):
system in order to reach a humanbeing, and it was a huge point
of contention for our customers. Wedid it for the reasons that you mentioned.
It was too expensive at the timeto just let everybody call in for
whatever reason. So we put thisfriction there and hopes that it would deter
them and pushed it into some ofthose really awesome self service solutions that I

(17:15):
discussed earlier, and that worked,and for years that was okay, But
we grew of a certain sighs whereit's time to kind of put on our
big boy pants and say, youknow what, it's time that we deliver
truly a world class customer experience toeveryone. Because we also wanted to make
sure that we weren't missing out onreally amazing conversations we could be happening or

(17:37):
having with prospective customers, people whoare trying to decide between Square and a
different point of sales system, andso by us not having a human being
readily available to speak to them,how many seals could we possibly be losing
out on and what could that potentiallybe doing to our brand. So it
was a massive effort to remove thiscustomer code. We did it about a

(17:59):
year year and a half ago.We had to hire hundreds of people in
order to be prepared for the floodof volume that was going to come in
and so it's an enormous effort,one of the largest things I've done in
my career, but it's completely worthit because the last thing you want to
do, especially imagine if you're arestaurant tour, you're running your restaurant,
you're trying to check out a customerat a table. Something is not working

(18:22):
and you can't check them out.You don't want to have to go back
to the back office and figure outwhat your code is to get through.
You're in a little bit of apanic mode and you want help right away.
So unlocking that has really just helpedus be there more readily, more
expeditiously for our customers. I'll beseeing nothing but positive feedback from them for
doing so. I love it andI appreciate it getting empathy that you offered

(18:45):
in that example, and I canjust tell that this is probably a strong
cultural component at least in your team, if not at the company. But
when I think about that, Ithink about how much more satisfying it must
be for people to have maybe alittle bit of direct human contact in general.

(19:08):
I feel like when we talk aboutthe experience, when we talk about
the differentiation, when I think andnow I'm going to speak to as someone
who is out in the world buyingthings, products and services yourself. I
feel like a lot of my impressionof a company in a brand. Yes,
it's in the actual customer success component. Am I getting what I want

(19:29):
in terms of some kind of anoutcome, whether it's an experience or a
product or something accomplished or whatever,you know, in a reasonable amount of
time with you know, a minimalamount of friction. But when I think
about what gets referred to me assomeone in conversation with family, friends,
co workers, et cetera. Andwhen I think about what I speak about
in an unsolicited manner to other people, Oh, I mean, I got
to tell you about some stuff.So much of that is driven by the

(19:52):
human to human moments in these interactions, and I think that's a very human
experience. I think a lot ofthe emotional resonance, you know, besides
maybe the relief of the restaurant touryou're talking about, it's like, oh
my gosh, I'm so glad thatcame through. That's been you know,
kind of a sore point for meor something. But this chance to have
an interaction with a human being,I think we're giving ourselves a much higher
likelihood to leave positive emotional resonance withsomeone. That results in things like being

(20:19):
offered in an unsolicited way in aconversation, a referral, an online review
that no one needs to take thetime to write, but maybe we hope
that they will these kinds of things. Any thoughts on just the idea of
allowing more human to human moments.I'm a huge fan obviously, or I
wouldn't ever removed the code. Ithink that it is one of the easiest

(20:42):
things we can do that will reallyhelp strengthen and deepen that relationship long term.
We want to make sure that we'redoing things that our customers are thinking.
You know what, I'm going tobe with Square for thirty years.
I have no plans. I'm notgoing to even consider other competitors. And
obviously have beautiful products, great lookinghardware, intuitives, apps that definitely work

(21:06):
all the time, and I havebeautiful UIs. These are things that help.
But every now and things, whenthings do go wrong or you just
have a general question, being ableto call and get service that wows you
is one of the things that canhelp push a person over to being a
true promoter of your brand. Wheneveryou call it eight hundred numbers service.
Most of us don't expect to bewow. We expect, you know,

(21:29):
we're like, oh my gosh,fingers cross. Whatever I'm calling about will
actually get resolved. Hopefully I geta nice person. But we don't want
to just have that be the standard. We want to make sure that what
people are calling to us, they'rehay up and saying, wow, that
was not painful. I really actuallyenjoyed that. Not so much of the
calling us all the time, butwe want it to be enjoyable enough that

(21:49):
it sticks in their memory and itserves as a point for them to refer
as to their other friends who maybeentrepreneurs as well. So that human connection
is is so invaluable in strengthening thethought how people think about the entire brand.
ANA will help them stick with youwhen the things go wrong down alignment.
As at thumb point, your companyis going to do something bad,

(22:11):
your service is going to go down, you're gonna have to raise prices,
you're gonna do something that customers willnot like, and so you needed to
have built up a lot of creditalong the way with them and having repetitive
great customer service experiences. We'll helpyou do that. It's the we're essentially
getting it. And I let thiscredit debit scenario of like good good experience,

(22:34):
good experience, good experience, goodexperience, good experience, bad experience,
that takes all three of the goodexperiences or four, but we're still
in the net positive. I thinklike we're buying grace for ourselves in the
future because we're all imperfect, butthis idea of doing it, doing it
the way that you're approaching it buysus some of that grace in advance.

(22:55):
How do you tear? This issomething that everyone can relate to, even
if they're not operating even a fractionof your scale. How do you tear?
How do you think about or howare you structuring your teams against this
range of customers? Right like dealingwith someone who is a micro seller to
use your language versus dealing with oneof these much larger accounts that has you

(23:21):
know, let's just say sixteen hundredfranchise locations and they're all using you in
an integrated way and maybe taking downhalf of your product offering in the process.
You know, those are obviously toodramatically different. You can't train one
person to cover both of those,I don't think so how like how many
tiers? Or like, how doyou think about it? How do you
chop all that up so that youcan get the right people to the right

(23:44):
customer, to the right person tothe right answer to the right help.
Well, the first thing we dois not force our advocates, and that's
the term we use for the folkswho answer the phone. We don't force
them to know and have expertise inthe entire ecosystem. That would be very
cruel as it's so incredibly large andfast. So what we do is we
allow them to specialize. And thenice thing is, I'm all about killing

(24:06):
two words with one, ston't it. Also doing it this way also allows
them to have natural career progression.So when they're hired off the street,
they start in our will be calledgeneral que and that's where standard questions like
how do I reset my pass?Where how do I log in? Very
easy questions go And then as theyshow a proficiency, they can be upskilled

(24:26):
to learn our various products, sothey can learn our restaurants product and if
so, then they get promoted intothat queue. Where there's a dedicated restaurants
queue that only answers questions related tothe restaurant's product. They could get upskilled
to our hardware queue and go overthere, and those people are only trained
in our hardware. So when acustomer calls in we have about seventeen different

(24:48):
queues, you're going to get someonewho specializes in what you subscribe to,
whatever your questions are about. Andso that helps make sure that the experience
is as top not as possible forthe customer, but also that the advocate
on the phone isn't having to thinkand remember thirty five different products user manuals,
if you will. So that's definitelyhow we do it. And then

(25:12):
within that particular product, as youmentioned, there's a whole range of size
of sellers, and so depending onwhere you fall, you may even be
large enough or however you came intoour company, might be a size and
account manager, or you get adedicated person that's solely your person, or
you might get bumped to the frontof the line if you are of a

(25:33):
certain size. So we have alot of different ways. As a whole
team that specializes at our routing structuresthat reports under me for called workforce management,
and their entire job is to makesure that we're answering the phone as
quickly as possible by the right people. Twenty four set so good, and
you just kind of walked me intoanother big zone I'd love to go into

(25:56):
because I know that leadership investment inpeople. I mean just even the way
that you speak, I know thatthis is true of you. But it's
a zone I wanted to go intoit, And I'm what I'm calling to
in my mind is like it wouldbe cruel. You use the word cruel
to describe asking someone to do somethingthat's beyond reason and it's just too hard

(26:18):
to do just the idea that youwould recognize it as such an express it
in that way. You're obviously devotedto building healthy culture. I love the
Pathing situation as well, Like Imight have new interests, or you might
be ready to level up in somethingthat I already have a passion and interest
in a lot of really good stuffthere, But this idea of a global

(26:38):
team of hundreds and hundreds and hundredsof people you weren't working remotely all that
long ago. There's a lot here, So I kind of want to start
moving specifically into that zone. AndI guess to kick it off with a
specific question, how did the remotetransition go? I mean, obviously I

(27:03):
think I can guess what precipitated that, but like, how did what was
the planning process and how has thatgone? And kind of what what's come
out kind of this whatever. Iwould assume that you're in an approximately new
normal aside from the growth and theglobal expansion, but how did that whole
process go for you personally and howdid that go for your team? It

(27:25):
was a terrifying one. I canremember the day I was sitting at my
desk when we were all in theoffices like the rest of the world,
and getting the big email that setsend everybody home, We're gonna work from
home now because of COVID, AndI thought, my goodness, what is
going to happen when I send overa thousand folks home and say answer the
fall from your house now? SoI had to think through everything from do

(27:45):
they all have Wi Fi at theirhouses? Do if they do, does
it you know security protocols? Andso do the you know, in the
offices, they had like three monitorsand you know, looks like they worked
at nassas or something, and theirsetups were but I'm sitting them home with
basically just their laptop, so Ihad to make sure we think through do

(28:06):
they have desks at home? Theseare folks at sometimes I have four and
five roommates and are sleeping on acouch, maybe so that you might eat.
You're not sure if they'll have theright setup to have quiet professional conversations.
So we had to put a lotof time and thought into equipment,
the technology, how we would monitorthem. And I will admit I did

(28:30):
not think that it was going togo well. I thought they're gonna be
at home watching Netflix all day.I don't know what they're gonna be doing.
I can't see them anymore. Butsurprisingly, minus a very few number
of hiccups, it has been themost amazing journey, and I hiring remote
now is just something that I hopeto always be able to do in my
career because now that I'm no longerrelegated to these same six cities to hire,

(28:56):
I am able to hire wherever ourbudget it allows, and the talent
pool is just so much wider.We're able to get a skill set and
higher frown companies that we respect thatwe know train people a certain way that
are in the original six cities,and so it's really worked out from helping

(29:18):
us be more diverse, and notjust from like a racial and gender perspective,
but from an education background perspective,in a professional experience background perspective,
and so the diversity within the teamhas increased significantly. The overall team engagement
is just through the roof because theyenjoy and they're grateful for the opportunity to
have such a great job an amazingcompany from the comfort of their home and

(29:41):
being able to care for your familiessave money on the commutant time. You
can just see all you can heara difference in the phone calls. They're
happier and healthier, which results ina better career seller experience, which is
what I care most about. Soit's been an amazing transition. I often
think back to that day when itall happened, and the sheer panic that

(30:04):
I felt in that moment. ButI went I did but I always do,
which I go into problem solving mode, and we stood up a project
around all what are all the thingsthat need to be true for this to
be successful and worked backwards from there. Okay, that alone, like if
you have a back button on yourpodcast player and it's like set to fifteen
seconds, that was that was athing right there. You know what needs

(30:27):
to be true for this to besuccessful and work backward. I also appreciate
like the fact that you were ableto summon some of that some of that
emotion and it perhaps even terror remindedme of had I had a conversation with
a gentleman on this podcast, guynamed Brian Gilman, who was Advantage.
He was on the other side ofit, and he was helping panicked people

(30:47):
figure out how to set up alltheir systems across all these people at home,
and how do we manage security andlog ins and all these things.
Like you took me back with thata little bit as well. At the
risk of asking something that's a littleno no, this is insanely well grounded
in research. We all know thatdiversity, you know, across a variety
of criteria or characteristics, and youmentioned a few of them. It's very

(31:12):
well documented that diversity is better forus, period. Just speak a little
bit more to that. And we'vehad conversations on the show too of and
it was specifically gosh. I can'tremember the gentleman's name, but he talked
a lot you like, he hiredsomeone who had been an equestrian coach,

(31:33):
he hired someone who had been achef like into these slightly complex customer service
customer support roles. So I'd justlove to hear how you think about that
now that you have this opportunity andyou're recognizing the ability to bring in a
wider variety of people all in,let's just speak a little bit more to
that from maybe some tangible benefits orsome other kind of wonderful surprises or joys

(31:59):
or discovery reason that process for you. Yeah. Absolutely, I've always been
a person that cared a lot abouthaving as much of the melting pot as
I could at work because I understandthat having the hiring, the saying type
of person is not going to getyou new skill sets. I also think
my personal upbringing has a lot todo with that. I grew up in
a very heavy military household. Mymom and dad were both in the army

(32:22):
for over twenty years. I wasin for a little bit myself. So
I grew up living all over theworld, different states, and that need
me the exposure to all kinds ofcultures and seeing how everyone's different but cares
about the same things, needs thesame things, but has different strategies about
how they go about achieving those Andso I've brought that into my professional career

(32:43):
as well. And so in additionto obviously obsessing over the maintenance that everybody
thinks of what do you think aboutdiversity, I've also stood up significantly different
initiatives to hire a lot of veterans, or try to at show that we're
hiring people who are disabled in someway, people who may have been challenging

(33:05):
some other socioeconomical way, running differentpilots to see do we really need to
have the college degree? How importantis that? Are we missing out on
a whole separate talent pool of peopleby having that requirement. And so what
we've ended up with is this massiveworkforce now that looks Nobody looks like anybody
else, nobody's background is like anybodyelse's. And it has allowed us to

(33:28):
have a lot of different schools ofthought, which means our ability to solve
problems and to think critically is justmuch different than the organization that says we
have an ideal candidate profile this iswho we like to hire. Some of
the things that we also did oncewe went and remote is we veered away
from the the way calls that arenormally hired where they go look for people

(33:50):
who have calls in there experience.Like some degree, that makes perfect sense,
but what we found is that wewould often have to break the habits
of people who've been working and callseenters forever because the way we do it
is very different. We are farmore empowering than most contact centers. We
want our conversations to feel consulative innature and not just boring, if you

(34:15):
will, and so there's a wholedifferent style of how we engage with our
customers compared to most places where you'regiven a script and you step one,
two, three and then say bye. And so because of that, we
said, well, let's throw thatout and let's just go find the best
people. So now we're hiring peoplewho used to be teachers because they've got
a good skill of teaching, anda lot of what we do on the

(34:36):
phone is teaching our customers how touse our various products, and so we're
having tons of success there. We'rehiring people who have from creative backgrounds,
designers and things that nature who arewanting to make a career transition. And
so we've also found that for ourrestaurants queue that talks about earlier, we're

(34:57):
actually hiring people who worked in restdurants, bus boys and waitresses and chefs
and general managers, and they arecoming with a whole new set of knowledge
that has to be proving to bedisincredibly helpful when they're on the phone talking
to a restaurant tour and so makingbeing open in that way has really meant
that we were able to get thevery best people and not worry so much

(35:22):
about what company they came from,what job they had last, but more
so what skills they have, whatcharacteristics they have, and what are they
passionate about? Yeah, so goodand how do you know? To me?
Part of having a diverse workforce,part of the benefit of it is

(35:43):
them interacting with each other. Buthuge team geographically dispersed. You mentioned earlier
that there's a really high degree ofemployee engagement. Where's just some practical things
that you all do to connect peopleto one another, you know, besides
like hey, let's all get ona video call and play a trivia game,

(36:06):
unless that's it. That could beit too, But like I've learned
the way do you connect lost folks. Yeah, So one of the things
I did was I actually hired someonewho made this their full time job.
So I have an engagement team withinmy organization that's now grown to two people,
and their entire job is to makesure everybody's feeling great on a daily

(36:27):
basis. So they spend a lotof time pulling together events virtual events,
but we're also starting to do somein person events as well, where people
are being enticed to come into theoffice for it to build some camaraderie.
But they spend so many, somuch effort on figuring out how to have
great virtual team building activities. It'samazing. We even have an on our

(36:52):
intranet they've built on a page calledthe Leads Boutique, which leads is what
we call our managers, and it'sa page that any manager can go to
and select their city and it's fullall the ideas about ways that you can
drive engagement in your city. Sowe're really just spoon feeding our management team.
Well, here's how to make surepeople are fun. There are ideas

(37:12):
on there for things to doom duringyour team meetings if you want to have
an external engagement only event. Hereare some different ideas, things to do
virtually, things to do in person, and so there's just so many different
ways that we're doing that. Oneof the most effective things that we've done
is something I started the week wewent virtual, and it's called the water

(37:35):
Cooler Hangout. So we use theGoogle suite of products at Square, so
our meetings are on Google Hangout,and so I'll play on that. The
water Cooler Hangout is a room GoogleChat room that's open basically twenty four seven
and you can just pop in thereif you have a break, if a
meeting ends early, or you wantto hang out in there on your lunch

(37:55):
freak. You can go in thereand just see who else is in there.
And it's our best attempt to mirrorwhat used to happen in the offices
when you go to the water coolerand bump into whoever was there, and
it's just fascinating to see the connectionsthat are being made. When somebody from
Houston jumps in there, there's somebodyfrom Taiwan in there, and they don't
know each other and they've never heardof each other, but they're having a

(38:17):
conversation out and now you met someone, and so it by no means completely
repulsates what we used to have inthe offices. But it's just one example
of ways that we're constantly trying todo our best and it's really really paying
off. Such a great example,and it sold so many of the challenges.
I mean, we're a much smallerorganization. But one of the things

(38:38):
that I missed in the short periodthat I was at home. I came
back as soon as I could becauseI only lift two miles from the office,
and that's helpful. But in theinternet here is pretty great compared to
my house. But one of thethings that I missed was not just the
water cooler dynamic in particular, althoughI certainly leveraged that. I've always been

(38:59):
a a proponent of leading and managingby walking around and just seeing what's going
on and having these hey, what'shappening on the phones today? Right,
And it's not just you know,what are you doing this weekend, although
that happens to be in that mixtoo, but you're you know, you're
just getting a sense of what's goingon. You're staying in touch with people
they know that you care, Theyget an outlet for their stories and these
stud In the course, you alsobuild personal relationship alongside that. But the

(39:22):
higher level concept that I was reallymissing in my own life was kind of
the serendipity of what happens in anygiven moment when two people meet up because
it's not scheduled, right, like, no one was just randoms. We
use zoom, like no one wasjust random zoom calling me like it's just
not a thing people do, andso everything was blocked and scheduled. So

(39:45):
I love that that occurred to youstraight away, and I can only imagine
the benefits not only to serve thespirit of the question that led you into
that, but which is how dowe bring these people in communication and connection
and relationship with one another to reallylet average to the fact that we are
drawing from a wider diversity of peoplethan we were, you know, a

(40:06):
few years back. But check somany boxes. Really good slightly personal question
for you. You have a lotof responsibility. I would assume that you
probably have a fair number of directreports, and each of those people probably
has a fair number of direct reports. There are probably people who need something
from you. All hours of theday and night when you can't you know

(40:30):
you can't honor that. I'm sureyou are probably a fantastic delegator. I'm
sure you probably trust the people aroundyou very much and empower them to make
their own best decisions in these typesof things. But like, how do
you manage such a broad range ofroles, responsibilities, needs at this scale?

(40:52):
Like how do you manage yourself?And I guess the reason I called
it personals, I'm thinking a littlebit about, generically speaking, work life
ballot. It's like how do youturn off and on? Or are you
one of those like text me whenyou need me? Like how do you
manage all of this up to,including, but not limited to obviously having
great people around you? Yeah,that last part that you just said is

(41:13):
the key. It is making surethat you've got all the right people on
the bus. It changes everything.It makes things so much easier. I
would not be able to have thegood work life balance that I do have.
Is my bench of direct reports andtheir direct reports was not as strong
as they were. But I workedvery hard to build this team and to
get to this point. It wasn'talways like that. The day I walked

(41:35):
in the door. And so Ithink in addition to having all the right
people in the right positions, that'sdefinitely number one. It's finding your own
rhythm and figuring out what is thelevel of accessibility you want to give the
organization. If you say it's nineto five and that's it, it's technically
within your rights. I'm the kindof person that I know that a lot

(41:57):
of people are waiting on me tosay what I think about something so they
know what to do next. Andthat's very much drives why I'm so accessible.
I'm probably accessible like twenty four toseven, but that's because I never
want to be the bottleneck that's holdingup teams from moving forward and being able
to progress. And so, youknow, I work ten twelve hours a

(42:20):
day like most people at my level, but it doesn't feel like it,
you know. I mean, I'min those eight hours a day of meetings,
but then I'm doing all of myactual job outside of the meetings,
but being there for my team.But I've got I've developed over my twenty
plus your career a number of tricksthat have helped me get there. So
I'll just share one of those andone of the biggest compliments I always get

(42:45):
is how do you get to everythingso fast? You're You're always just you
respond to everything seems like instantly.And the reason it looks like that is
not because I'm, you know,Superman or something. I just when I
get to an email, and againwe use Google doc so everything is a
link. Basically, I read theemail and then I open whatever the link
is, and then I end upby the end of my day, I

(43:07):
have how many tabs open, andI just have this internal rule I'm going
to sleep until I work all mytabs. And so what that means is
I end up creating this world whereI never take more than eight ish rough
hours to respond because I make sureI close all my tabs by the end
of the day. So that's justone little tip of things that I do

(43:29):
to really stay on top of everything, to be to give quick responses to
my team, which I think theydeserve outside of the obvious things like great
time management and delegation, but alot of it is also just empowerment.
The more I'm able to empower myteam and trust them to do work,
the less they are waiting on officialapproval from me, and the more often

(43:51):
I'm able to say, yep,that's the right stuff, go ahead and
move forward, versus crapping all overwhatever they built and making them start back
over, which still happens every nowand then, but the over roman majority
of the time now, because I'veput in that effort, they're already on
the right track, and so it'smore just the reassurance that they need more
so than actual approval. So lotsof things going. When you get to

(44:13):
this, welll you have you knowthis many people, over one thousand folks
all over the world. The partthat is most tricky is the time zones
and making sure that I don't showaccidental favoritism to the US folks because that's
easier for me. So that doesn'tmean I'm often in meetings at odd hours.
I really appreciate that sensitivity to timezone. It's probably one of the

(44:36):
toughest wrinkles of all of them.I also love this idea of empowering your
people and imagine that it probably leadsto fewer tabs, which is a joy.
I also appreciate that it's this boundarything, like I have a rule,
and I operate by the rule,and so you're just you're setting a
limit. It's probably you're probably doingmore than some people with it, but
you know, some people have probablyset a tighter limit than that or something.
But I also appreciate the you respectthe level of responsibility that you've earned

(45:02):
and accepted and that is going tocall for something like that. So thank
you so much from hitting this timefor me and for this conversation and for
the folks who are listening to thisepisode. If you're listening to this episode
and you've enjoyed this time with Naomi, I just want to point you to
two other ones that you might alsoenjoy. Episode two forty nine with Trina

(45:22):
Dunham. She's the North American customersuccess leader at red Hat and it's a
little bit different, but it's alittle bit similar to the story of unlocking
the customer code in order to havemore conversations with potential buyers. What we
talk about with Trina is a programshe started to train her post sales team

(45:42):
to recognize potential sales conversations and handthem back into the sales organization. That
program is in the third year ofoperation and it's on pace for twenty five
million in New rr So. That'sepisode two forty nine with Trina A little
bit earlier, Episode one seventy onewith Michelle Asowski. She's the global director
of B to B Marketing at Uber, and she also talks about offering new

(46:05):
products in a global environment. Wedidn't talk so much about time zones,
but she also has a pretty goodscope of responsibility there and is launching new
products into new markets. So it'sa really good conversation with Michelle. On
episode one seventy one, before Ilet you go, Naomi, I would
love to give you a couple opportunitiesthat I give everybody. The first is
to think or mention someone who's hada positive impact on your life or career.

(46:25):
You know, I know you're gonnaask me this, and I tried
so hard to think of a noncheesy answer, but I can't help it.
It's honestly, my parents. Theyare I'd a reflection of them.
I'm fifty percent my mom, I'mfifty percent my dad, and they are
polar opposite people, which means I'ma little bit of a mixture here.
But they really helped shape me alot of it being the military and moving

(46:47):
all over with them, and justthe way that they raised me. I
think has allowed me to have naturalborn leadership skills which has has proven to
be invaluable in my career. Soit's definitely my parent that's wonderful and there's
nothing cheesy about it, And anumber of other folks have done the same,
and it's just always like it's justsuch a beautiful reflection of what we

(47:09):
can do within our families. Howabout a company that delivers a great experience
for you as a customer. Thisis an easy one for me and my
team hears me speak about this allthe time. It would be Chick fil
A. And the reason is,I think they do the very best job
of consistency, which is the thingthat many companies struggle within their customer success

(47:31):
offerings. No matter what child filla I go to, what state I
am in, what time of dayit is, you always get fantastic service.
They never have an attitude, there'sa smile, the answers always yes,
and and I'm always talk to myteam about we've got to figure out
how to be that level of consistent. You never have to wonder when you

(47:53):
pull up to the little microphone thingyou have to drive through if you're going
to get a nice person was goingto be yes, But when you go
to the McDonald's drive through, youmay or you may not. You never
know what you're going to get.And so that level of consistency at a
world class level, really really goodcall out there. That is not the

(48:14):
first time we've heard Chick fil Ain this context, which again is a
double down or a plus up onthe on the nature of consistency. And
I don't remember the episode off thetop of my head, but we had
Elizabeth Dixon share on this podcast.She's she worked with them for years in
service design and innovation. We hada great conversation about her five keys to
customer experience. So I don't rememberwhat number that is, but Chick fil

(48:37):
A absolutely well done in a goodcall out lasting if someone wants to connect
with you, learn more about you, learn more about the vast array of
ways you can help people running almostany kind of business. Where would you
send people who got to this pointin the conversation Naomi, The easiest way
is naomibilis dot com. You canlearn all you want about me there or

(48:58):
reach out for a con type Andthen of course was linked into super I'll
link those up in the show notes. We do those at bombomb dot com
slash podcast. We also try toget as much of that into your podcast
players possible. It's somewhere adjacent tothis episode. Naomi, your time is
insanely valuable and I sincerely appreciate youspending it with us and continued success to
you. Thank you so much.I apprecake you out of me. A

(49:21):
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(49:44):
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com slash freebook. That's bomb bombdot com slash freebook. Thanks for listening
to the Customer Experience Podcast. Rememberthe single most important thing you can do
today is to create and deliver abetter experience for your customers. Continue learning
the latest strategies and tactics by subscribingright now in your favorite podcast player,

(50:32):
or visit bombomb dot com slash podcasts