June 5, 2025 • 31 mins
Note: This is Part 1 of a 2-part series
What does it take to create an onboarding experience so powerful that clients can’t imagine working with anyone else?
For executives and customer experience leaders, the onboarding process is much more than an administrative formality—it's the first date, the pivotal moment when a client decides whether to pursue a deeper relationship or walk away. In this episode of the Delighted Customers podcast, Mark Slatin sits down with Lisa Schwartz, COO of Mathematica, to unpack the psychology and structure behind onboarding experiences that build trust, foster loyalty, and drive business results. Lisa draws from her unique blend of research expertise and executive experience to reveal why onboarding is critical for long-term client engagement and how intentional, personal touches can transform a standard process into lasting advocacy.
Why listen to Lisa Schwartz? With a PhD in psychology from the University of Maryland and two decades at Mathematica, Lisa bridges academic rigor with operational excellence. She’s led the company’s customer experience transformation since 2019, skillfully adapting evidence-based practices to real-world client relationships. Lisa's passion for humanizing business, her practical analogies, and her research-backed strategies ensure takeaways for leaders seeking meaningful change in their organizations.
Here are three provocative questions Lisa addresses in this insightful conversation:
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Why does the typical “welcome email” fall drastically short of what true onboarding should accomplish?
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What are the most common myths and pitfalls organizations fall into when designing onboarding experiences?
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How can customer experience leaders use psychological principles—like trust building and emotional “deposits”—to foster client relationships that last for years?
Don’t miss out! Listen to Lisa’s episode of the Delighted Customers podcast and subscribe to get every new insight. Find the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or on any of your favorite podcast platforms.
Meet Lisa Schwartz
Lisa Schwartz, Ph.D., is the Chief Operating Officer of Mathematica, a leading research and data consulting firm committed to improving public well-being through evidence-based solutions. With academic roots in developmental psychology (PhD, University of Maryland, College Park), Lisa spent years progressing from project leadership to executive management at Mathematica. Since 2019, she has driven the company’s customer experience strategy across all divisions, spearheading initiatives that blend data-driven objectivity with a client-centric approach. Lisa’s expertise lies in translating academic research into actionable, scalable business practices, all while championing relational trust as the cornerstone of every client journey.
Catch Part 2 of 2 with Lisa on Episode #139!
Connect with Lisa Schwartz on LinkedIn.
Show Notes and References
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Learn more about Mathematica: mathematica.org
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Explore the Gottman Institute’s work on emotional bank accounts: gottman.com
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Read about the Trust Equation from “The Trusted Advisor”: trustedadvisor.com
Meet
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm excited to dive into today's conversation on the Delighted
Customers podcast with my guest, Lisa Schwartz.
Lisa is the coo, Chief Operating Officer for
Mathematica. Mathematica is a leading research and data
consulting firm and Lisa has a broad
background in research. She actually has her
(00:21):
PhD in psychology from actually a
fantastic school, one of the best schools in, in the entire country.
We all know it, we all love it. Go Terps. Go Terps.
University of Maryland, College Park. Yes. I didn't quite go as far as a
PhD. I just got my bachelor's there. But welcome to the show,
Lisa. Thanks, Mark. It's great to be here. I'm excited to be here and talk
(00:42):
with you today. So much fun to talk about research and how important
it is to have the academic side support what we're
doing in the business world, particularly in the world of customer experience
management. And I'd like you to share with the audience if you could.
I mentioned your background in psychology, but share a little bit about your background
and what you're doing today. Sure, I'd be happy to. So yep, I am
(01:05):
a trained psychologist, which has its benefits
for sure, and there's a through line here. But I went
from academia to working for the government doing data
collection and then moved to a research firm. And 20 years ago I came to
Mathematica. I started in a project lease role
and was very fortunate. I was able to progress up to executive
(01:27):
leadership where as you said, I'm now the CEO. I run business operations.
I lead key strategic initiatives. And since 2019
I have been leading, designing, implementing,
refining our customer experience program. So you might
be wondering, like why, why is that the job of the coo?
I think there's a little bit about Mathematica's background in our
(01:50):
history that's important for your audience to understand.
Mathematica started in 1958 when
a Princeton professor our headquarters are still in Princeton, New Jersey.
A professor at Princeton had the great idea that he could start a business that
would combine the 1958 era power
of computing with the rigor of research methods
(02:12):
to solve complex social problems. That was his dream.
About a year later, a few more accomplished academics came over
and Mathematica took off with a mission to improve the
lives of people, initially in the United States and then over time
around the globe by providing policymakers
people who run social programs with evidence so that they can make
(02:34):
better decisions. Those programs could be better and the people who
benefit from those programs could attain self sufficiency, have better lives.
That's the mission of the organization, none of that has changed.
So it's still our mission. We still believe in harnessing the power of
data and computing to solve social problems. And so
that's what we do. And I think that the academic
(02:57):
roots that are very deeply embedded in the company
have real implications for how we've had to think about
evolving as we move towards a much more client centric, customer experience
focused company. So if you think about
the academic model, there's I think
a few things that are really important. Most academic researchers
(03:19):
get funding to pursue research that is of interest
to them and the goal of that funding
is to deepen the knowledge of the field. So there's a field
of study and that's what you're contributing to. There's not really a
client in that model. There's the, they're the funding organization,
but they're going to be pretty hands off provided you have a good track
(03:42):
record, those sorts of things. So there was this distance
sort of from the customer sort of built into that model and there was
also this autonomy built into that model. Pursue what you're interested
in. Both of those facts held true for us for
a very, very long time. We're an employee
owned company. Our employees are our shareholder. We make
(04:05):
decisions about the types of work we want to
pursue largely based on what our staff are interested in
in terms of they want to harness their passion, they want
to dive deep into business development, they want to write a winning proposal. That's
how those decisions get made. So there's still that level of autonomy.
And Since I joined 20 years ago, we've been sort of gradually moving away
(04:27):
from the notion that objectivity, which is important
in research is not the same thing as distant
from the client that you're working with to try to solve the
problems on their behalf. So in 2019, when I jumped in and
started leading this, we had expanded our markets so we work for state
and local governments, the federal government, commercial entities,
(04:50):
philanthropic entities, and expanded our offerings beyond research
to data and advisory service, a whole host of other technical
kinds of solutions that we can bring. And so to became really
important that we bridge that objective distance and
recognize that we're not working on problems because they interest
us. We're working on problems because our clients
(05:11):
have a need that they are trying to meet or a problem that they're
trying to solve because they too have a mission to improve public well
being. So I have been spearheading this effort since
2019. 2019. So just about six years, yeah.
And what types of clients you mentioned? Government at different levels
and now commercial and so forth. You mentioned global. Tell us a
(05:33):
little bit about how you're structured. Yeah, so we're structured. We have
one big business unit, but it's structured by division. And then
those divisions combine health and human services across
those markets. So across federal. Except for state and local,
that's separate. So federal Health and human Services,
Philanthropic Health and Human Services, we have a global division and we
(05:55):
have a state and local division. And then I sit outside of
the business along with my other administrative colleagues running
across the enterprise to bring client centricity and
client experience and other things to have it consistent or at
least understanding where it needs to be different across the business unit.
Nice. Okay, so we're still matrixed, still matrix. And that gives us
(06:18):
a lay of the land of how you're structured. You know, you and I talked
about understanding the customer journey and in particular,
one area that I found it often doesn't get a lot of attention,
to be honest with you. We're going to be talking about customer onboarding,
client onboarding. And I just think that's so critical.
It's the old adage like, you know, the first date, you only get one
(06:40):
opportunity to make a first impression. The first date goes bad,
good luck with the rest of it, you know. Yeah. And think,
think there's probably, and we're going to talk about this a little bit, but this
idea of sticky onboarding that creates lasting relationships,
that there is, it just makes common sense that when they come and I
found, come on board in a positive way and their experience
(07:03):
is good. And to be honest,
what I've found is that sometimes even the referral in matters, the fact that
you're coming in as a referral. Right. But even if you're not and you just
come on and you have this really good experience, you're going to
probably be more open to trying out new products.
Right. You're going to stay longer, you're going to be a more profitable
(07:25):
customer and you're going to engage with us. Whether that's digital digital,
whether that's, you know, doing reviews and liking us,
sharing, sharing referrals, sharing knowledge about us and
advocacy and so forth. So what are we talking about when we talk about
onboarding and why is it so important
to a topic to business leaders, not just CX leaders?
(07:48):
Yeah, it's a great question and I agree with you. I think it does
get short shrift and I think when we do think about it,
we tend to think about it through a fairly transactional lens
around how easy was this. So if you think about, you know, you
went to a hotel and then they're going to send you a survey afterwards and
ask you how easy was the registration process. That's sort of a
(08:11):
version of what I'm talking about. How easy was it to use this particular
product? That tends to be where most, I think, people think about
onboarding. We'll come back to the. It's a welcome note or welcome
email. I'll come back to that because you and I talked about that before, too.
I think about it very much the way you just described it. So I think
about it as the first date, where the
(08:33):
date is our first engagement together and what
I'm. And that can be a week, that could be a month, that could be
a year. However long that first engagement goes, that's what I'm going
to think about as our onboarding experience. And I'm going into
it trying to create a relationship with you
that makes you want to stay. So I'm going to have a. I'm going
(08:55):
to build a relationship with a person, and through building that relationship with a
person, they're building a relationship with my company. I happen to
be the face or the representative of that company, but it's about the
relationship that we're going to build together. And so
I'm going to keep probably coming back to dating analogies, which are going to fall
apart at some point, but stay with me. So the first impression,
(09:17):
for sure, there was an impression of the company before we ever
engaged together. There's whatever you knew about us from what you've heard about
us, what you see on social media, et cetera, there's other people who can control
that part of it. I'm going to talk about the engagement piece. So when you
show up for a first date, so this might be a first meeting,
how do you want to show up? Do you want to show up as
(09:38):
somebody who talks endlessly about yourself? Chances are you're not going to get
a second date. Or do you want to show up as somebody
who's warm, relatable, and really genuinely
interested in getting to know you? I think that's true. Whether it's
a first date date, whether it's the first time you're doing something with a new
friend, or whether it's the first meeting with a client, I want that client
(10:00):
to feel like I want to understand where you're coming from. I want
to get to know you better. And hopefully you leave that first
leave with the first impression with the things that I said. She Seems nice.
And that was a very good conversation. I felt like she was getting to know
me. I want her to keep getting to know me. That's what I want you
to leave with. And then the next part, I think is really
(10:22):
critical. So now we've gotten past that. We're working together.
And aside from all the sort of normal stuff that happens in trying to adjust
our working styles, it's so important early on
to show that you're consistent. So in
relationships of all kinds. Right. Consistency is what starts
to build trust. So. So I want you to know
(10:43):
that if I say I'm going to do something, I'm actually going to do it
when I said I would. I'm not going to cancel on you at the last
minute. You can count on me to do those kinds of things.
And I need to keep doing that over and over again. I need to
keep showing up as that warm, relatable person who's
curious about understanding you. I want to keep doing that
(11:04):
until it starts to feel like there's some trust between us.
And the length of time that takes is going to vary with who's
across the table. From some people. It might be faster. Maybe we just
click other people, maybe not so much. And I'm going to have to keep
earning your trust. But that's part of the goal in
the middle of middle beginnings of our relationship.
(11:26):
And then I think the next part of that onboarding experience is where we
start to introduce some gradual intimacy. And that's the
place I think for people can get a little bit nervous. But if I think
about it again from a dating analogy, I'm not going to
tell you my deepest, darkest secrets really early on in the
relationship. Or if I do, you're probably going to be like, well, that's too much
(11:48):
information. And I'm also not going to probably ask you
deeply personal questions early on. But we
need to start building more of a two way street. Right. I
need to be willing to be a little bit personal, a little bit vulnerable.
That can be as simple as like, hey, Mark, what did you do last weekend?
What'd you do? For real, Say again? What'd you do last weekend? Oh, yeah, it
(12:09):
could be. What'd you do? Yeah, last weekend? Honestly, I watched a little bit
too much of the PGA Golf Championship. I didn't know you were a golfer.
What do you love about watching golf? I love people doing something
that I find so humbling, so they do it so well.
Yeah, yeah. I had a somewhat similar experience, except it was me
dancing. Right. So I Just did that just because
(12:31):
you want to introduce a little bit of that. Give and take a little bit.
It gradually over time. And then I think
what I, you know, what I'm really looking for is at the end of that
initial engagement, we have built a relationship
that leaves you feeling like you would rather
work with me, meaning my company, because you're associating it
(12:53):
with me. You would rather work with me on your next thing than
anybody else. Because the experience was on the whole
positive, centered on you and that over time
we built the kind of relationship that
lasts hopefully for many, many years. That's how I think of
onboarding. It's that whole first period. Yeah. That's great. When you're
(13:17):
talking, of course, my antenna are popping up. I have to ask you
because I'm gonna riff on this just a little bit. Sure. Ask you. Are you
familiar with the trust equation? I am, and I love the
trust equation. I show it to everybody.
A deeply academic, data driven organization having an
equation that can break down trust, which should we just. I'm sure your
(13:40):
audience knows it, but should we break it down for them? Yeah, why don't you
take the lead? Sure. So the one that I. So I. Hopefully there's not.
Hopefully there's only one equation, but who knows? Yes. So I would describe it this
way. And I actually think of it as the trustworthiness
equation. Right. What makes you trustworthy so?
Credibility. Credibility is. I am actually expert
(14:02):
in the thing that I say I'm expert in. Presumably because we
win new work by writing proposals. Presumably I
established that credibility in the proposal or you probably would
not have come back to me. But I can't rest on that. But I am
expert in the thing I say I'm expert in credibility. Reliability. That's
the consistency part that I was talking about. You can count on
(14:23):
me. You can count on me. You can count on me. You can count on
me. I'm going to show up the same way. I'm going to do what I
say. And then the last piece is intimacy, which we were just
talking about. How do you gradually make the other
person feel safe with you? And some of that comes
from being vulnerable. And you can be perfect in all three of those.
(14:43):
However, the denominator in that equation is self
interest. And that's really our self orientation, they might call it in the official one,
I think. And that's really. Am I engaging
with you for my benefit or am I engaging with you
for yours? And we can all smell self interest
when we encounter it. Yeah. And it is
(15:07):
you know, our typical project will run about two or three years.
So we're talking about a long onboarding period. And
for sure, there are going to be times where I'm going to feel
frustrated with you as my client, for sure. And what
I try to help our teams understand is that
when I'm feeling frustrated and thinking like, oh my God,
(15:29):
he can't make a decision, or he keeps changing his mind, or he keeps not
showing up for our meetings, whatever it might be, whatever's frustrating me, that
frustration is my body's way of telling me, you need to
look at this from the other perspective. You need to slow yourself
down. It's true that you need to keep the work moving. Right. You have all
sorts of pressures, but when something's going awry and there's friction in the
(15:51):
relationship, try to try to look at it from their perspective and start
to ask more questions to understand what's happening on
their side that I don't know about. And because I
don't know about it, I am somehow missing the mark. And if I can
flip from frustration, which is self interest, to what don't I know
about that might be going on on your side, that's other interest.
(16:14):
And now we're becoming trustworthy. Yeah. I love your,
your explanation of it. And this is something that is near and dear to my
heart. The listeners of the show know I offer a trusted guide
roadmap masterclass for CX leaders who want to do change.
And part of that was built based on the fact that I work with
the. Charlie Green is one of the authors of the Trusted Advisor
(16:36):
and I became certified in his program. I worked with Charlie for a couple of
years, 15, 16 years ago. What I'm interested in, though, is you did a
beautiful job of explaining the equation is you have
a PhD in psychology. Right. So the three authors,
Maester Galford and Charlie Greene, were not psychology majors. None of
them. They were management consultants. They were Harvard MBAs.
(16:58):
Three of them were roommates together, and they wrote that book. But you do have
a PhD. How does that line up with the
academic work and research that you did
from a psychological standpoint, does it line up and how
do you feel about. I don't think I've ever asked that question. So it does
on two levels. So my background is also is in
(17:20):
developmental psychology across the lifespan. And so if
I think back to our earliest
relationships. Right. Earliest babies and their parents,
attachment theory would emphasize that
consistency piece. Babies and parents bond
because parents over time get to understand the different cries
(17:43):
that their babies make and so they can meet that baby's need, who doesn't have
any other way to let that need be known. So that makes total
sense from like an attachment theory lens. For me, the other
piece of this that resonates is everything
we just said. Again, it applies to any
relationship, any relationship, because it's about
(18:05):
what people need. And so there's a, you know, there's
a fundamental piece of, of what we need that is just at the.
If I think about the hierarchy of needs,
right. Safety, basic food and water. Got it. Right. Shelter.
Got it. Safety is really, really important.
And our brains can perceive any type of social threat
(18:28):
which could be. You're afraid. You got a big project. This is
your first really big project that your boss gave you
and you contracted with me to get that project
done and done well. So if I am not
making you feel safe and certain that this is going to go well and
you're going to look good in front of your boss, you're not safe and you
(18:51):
might get really micromanagy. Who knows what you might do. But this, it makes
sense from the standpoint of human beings, but it also makes
sense from the standpoint of, I don't know if you know, the Gottmans who do.
It completely makes sense. Also if I look at it through a Gottman lens.
Right. So through a Gottman lens, one of the things that I think
about, I don't know if you're familiar with their work around the emotional bank account,
(19:14):
but. Go ahead, share some more. The emotional bank account
is basically you want to put in more deposits, things that
build positive experiences between you and your partner, you and
your friend, you and your client. Right. You want to put in more positive
experiences. In this sense, I think of it as more trust, trust
earning, trust building experiences. Then you're making withdrawals.
(19:37):
So a withdrawal is going to be in terms of a
client experience. It could be something that eroded trust. Maybe I was late with
that deliverable. Maybe I made a really big mistake
and I didn't tell you about it and I just tried to fix it without
letting you know and it came back and bit us in the butt. Right. Like
those are trust eroding. Those are withdrawals. Well, what do the
(19:59):
Gottman say you should do? I just want to. Well, go ahead and finish that
thought and then I want to come back to what we. Sure. Yeah. So you
want to make repair. And I think repair depends
upon your ability to own the mistake that you made
and then sit side by side
to find a better solution. And maybe Some preventative step that you
(20:20):
could take. And what we tend to do with clients is something's
gone wrong. We get our talking points together. Right.
We get our talking points together. Now we want to make sure that we have
sort of the whole story is straight talking. When I'm getting talking points together, which
I'm not saying you shouldn't know what you're going to say, but it starts to
put that distance. You're on that side, I'm on this side. And it
(20:42):
gets us into a place where we want to be right as opposed
to I want to be trusted. And so if I want to make repair, I
want to own my mistake and then sit side by side with you to find
the solution. So where did you want to go? Sorry? You're like, there are threads
everywhere. I know. Right? Exactly. And Charlie Green often
says being right is overrated. Right. Anyone who's right can be
(21:03):
really costly. It could be really costly to be right. It just
psychologically. And why companies who give these
stock answers when things screw up. You know, in my class right now we're
going through service. The service recovery paradox, which is. I don't
think I know that. Yeah. So it's a study that was done a while ago
that essentially says that when you mess up as a
(21:26):
company in the experience that if you respond
well, that following that mess up the
actual loyalty, customer loyalty or satisfaction
level levels actually rise above where they would have been on the
trajectory. I believe that because
you're going through something tough together and that's where there's an opportunity to build trust.
(21:47):
The word of caution from people in the industry
is you don't want to try and design
service failures in so that you can show recovery chance to
do it. Right. Right. Because there's only a point to which like you talk about
consistent. If you keep doing it, then your response
becomes questionable. Well, and who. It's the denominator
(22:10):
again, whose interest is that in. If you're designing failures,
it's certainly not in your customer's interest. Yeah. I mean, hopefully they
wouldn't be onto it. But it just. It just bad. It's a
rich conversation we have at the. @ MSU in the class
because, you know, people. People say,
well, you shouldn't have service failures. Well, that's impossible. It's impossible
(22:32):
to avoid. Right. No matter whether you're a surgeon
pilot or an airline, your hospitality,
delivering proposals for government, everybody messes up, makes mistakes.
Yeah. Yep. And so there's a certain level of understanding. But to your
point about trustworthiness I. I love how you describe
variables in this, and I'd like to talk to you a little bit more about.
(22:56):
Well, first, about where. What
are some of the myths that companies have about
client onboarding in their approach to it, or lack of
approach to it? Yeah, I mean, we did talk a little bit about
that, sort of. It's a very narrow window of a transaction, and I
think that's a. That's a myth. I think we're going to talk about one of
(23:18):
my favorites, which is the welcome email, which I
think people think like, that's it. I have very mixed feelings about
that. I don't think. I think if that's all you do, it's insufficient
for sure. Again, it's something that, if it can come across as
genuine, it can be really powerful. When we talked last time,
I told you about this postcard that I got from a company
(23:40):
that I worked with when I worked with them for the very first time.
That was bright yellow, big thank you
handwritten on the back from their CEO. Very
brief, but just like genuinely expressed
excitement to be working with me. It was such a small
gesture. Such a small gesture. Another Gottman thing
(24:04):
just reminded me, and yet it meant so much to me. No
one had ever. I've hired tons of consultants. No one
had ever done that before. I still have the postcard,
and I show it to people to remind them of what a personal
touch can mean. So I think when done well, the welcome email is
important. But that's not all it is. I think the other
(24:26):
myth or misconception can be that it's sort of like one size fits all.
This is what we do for everybody. I'm not a fan of that at any
part of the journey because, again, it's
a relationship. There's not one thing that's
going to work for every single person that you meet. So you need to
be able, especially if you're thinking about it as a slightly larger window,
(24:48):
there's more opportunity to sort of tailor that personal
gesture to who I think you are. And then
the worst is probably if our services are great, if our
product is great, you don't have to worry about that.
And to me, that signals you don't
particularly care if I'm your customer as long
(25:11):
as you have a customer. Right. So those would be my big three. That I
would say. Those are some common myths. Yeah. As you were
talking about the onboarding process and the dating piece and
how we're trying to make customers feel at that stage of the journey with
us, I had on my show recently, Lou Carbone,
who wrote, Clued in and wrote a number of the
(25:33):
pioneering articles that went into HBS that really came to
describe customer experience. He had a quote that I'm going to
paraphrase, which is, you cannot not have a
customer experience. It's a question of how random or well
managed it is. And my question to you, given your background,
which Lou shared, and I want to just see how this fits in
(25:55):
and what your thinking is on it. And it might be a gem to listeners
to listen back to this and hear what Lisa has to say about this.
Most companies from a strategic standpoint, try to make
customers feel good about their brand, really want to feel good about
Microsoft or Hilton or Disney.
And what he says is really what we should be thinking about, is how we
(26:16):
can make customers feel good about themselves. Mm. Love it. Love
it. And then the association with your brand
is that when I engage with this brand, I feel
good about me. I feel confident. You know, it depends on what your,
your goals are. But if, if I'm providing data
and evidence to a policymaker who's going to take it up the line
(26:39):
and try to make changes in the world or in their community or wherever
with it, boy, I want them to feel confident. Those are
high stakes decisions potentially. I want them to feel
confident going to their boss. I want them to feel
well prepared to talk about what the limitations might be. Right.
I want them to feel like they have command of
(27:02):
what they are about to talk about. That's what I want. And so I
couldn't agree with Lou more. It's about how they feel. I also think your
brand, your reputation is only as solid as each
individual customer experience that you create.
Especially in this world where your brand can be tarnished on social
media in a minute. We never know where our customers are going to be working
(27:24):
next and who they might know and how they might talk about us. All these
things matter. And I would much prefer that a
customer just said, oh my God, I loved working with them. I loved
working with them. I would love that more than their report was really
insightful. I mean, good, yes, the report should certainly be really insightful,
but if you loved working with me, boy, that's,
(27:45):
that's the goal. Yeah. What do you want to leave them saying, thinking,
feeling, the empathy map, saying, feeling, thinking, doing at the end of the
conversation, then reverse engineer the experience to that
feeling. And that requires a lot of critical thinking. It does. And
I confess that I am one to trust my gut too much on
these things because you can put a lot of
(28:07):
analysis into it. But if, then this might go back to clued in.
If you're not being really observant and really
listening actively throughout, you're going to miss
clues that your analysis never would have detected
that are important clues for making adjustments. And so
it's a balance. It's a balance. We are not nearly as rational humans
(28:29):
as we would like to pretend that we are. I want to come back to
that. I want to dive a little bit deeper into
how this plays out like a prac, some practical applications.
And what I, what we're going to do here is break this into a two
part episode because this is way too rich and too much
information. We had to lay that background for what we're going to share and when.
(28:50):
My hope is that when people are listening to this, they put themselves in
their own situation into play when we're
sharing. But for right now, we'll come back in part two of a two
part episode with Lisa Schwartz, the COO of Mathematica.
Well, that's wonderful. A two parter.
I'm excited to dive into today's conversation on the Delighted
Customers podcast with my guest, Lisa Schwartz.
Lisa is the coo, Chief Operating Officer for
Mathematica. Mathematica is a leading research and data
consulting firm and Lisa has a broad
background in research. She actually has her
(00:21):
PhD in psychology from actually a
fantastic school, one of the best schools in, in the entire country.
We all know it, we all love it. Go Terps. Go Terps.
University of Maryland, College Park. Yes. I didn't quite go as far as a
PhD. I just got my bachelor's there. But welcome to the show,
Lisa. Thanks, Mark. It's great to be here. I'm excited to be here and talk
(00:42):
with you today. So much fun to talk about research and how important
it is to have the academic side support what we're
doing in the business world, particularly in the world of customer experience
management. And I'd like you to share with the audience if you could.
I mentioned your background in psychology, but share a little bit about your background
and what you're doing today. Sure, I'd be happy to. So yep, I am
(01:05):
a trained psychologist, which has its benefits
for sure, and there's a through line here. But I went
from academia to working for the government doing data
collection and then moved to a research firm. And 20 years ago I came to
Mathematica. I started in a project lease role
and was very fortunate. I was able to progress up to executive
(01:27):
leadership where as you said, I'm now the CEO. I run business operations.
I lead key strategic initiatives. And since 2019
I have been leading, designing, implementing,
refining our customer experience program. So you might
be wondering, like why, why is that the job of the coo?
I think there's a little bit about Mathematica's background in our
(01:50):
history that's important for your audience to understand.
Mathematica started in 1958 when
a Princeton professor our headquarters are still in Princeton, New Jersey.
A professor at Princeton had the great idea that he could start a business that
would combine the 1958 era power
of computing with the rigor of research methods
(02:12):
to solve complex social problems. That was his dream.
About a year later, a few more accomplished academics came over
and Mathematica took off with a mission to improve the
lives of people, initially in the United States and then over time
around the globe by providing policymakers
people who run social programs with evidence so that they can make
(02:34):
better decisions. Those programs could be better and the people who
benefit from those programs could attain self sufficiency, have better lives.
That's the mission of the organization, none of that has changed.
So it's still our mission. We still believe in harnessing the power of
data and computing to solve social problems. And so
that's what we do. And I think that the academic
(02:57):
roots that are very deeply embedded in the company
have real implications for how we've had to think about
evolving as we move towards a much more client centric, customer experience
focused company. So if you think about
the academic model, there's I think
a few things that are really important. Most academic researchers
(03:19):
get funding to pursue research that is of interest
to them and the goal of that funding
is to deepen the knowledge of the field. So there's a field
of study and that's what you're contributing to. There's not really a
client in that model. There's the, they're the funding organization,
but they're going to be pretty hands off provided you have a good track
(03:42):
record, those sorts of things. So there was this distance
sort of from the customer sort of built into that model and there was
also this autonomy built into that model. Pursue what you're interested
in. Both of those facts held true for us for
a very, very long time. We're an employee
owned company. Our employees are our shareholder. We make
(04:05):
decisions about the types of work we want to
pursue largely based on what our staff are interested in
in terms of they want to harness their passion, they want
to dive deep into business development, they want to write a winning proposal. That's
how those decisions get made. So there's still that level of autonomy.
And Since I joined 20 years ago, we've been sort of gradually moving away
(04:27):
from the notion that objectivity, which is important
in research is not the same thing as distant
from the client that you're working with to try to solve the
problems on their behalf. So in 2019, when I jumped in and
started leading this, we had expanded our markets so we work for state
and local governments, the federal government, commercial entities,
(04:50):
philanthropic entities, and expanded our offerings beyond research
to data and advisory service, a whole host of other technical
kinds of solutions that we can bring. And so to became really
important that we bridge that objective distance and
recognize that we're not working on problems because they interest
us. We're working on problems because our clients
(05:11):
have a need that they are trying to meet or a problem that they're
trying to solve because they too have a mission to improve public well
being. So I have been spearheading this effort since
2019. 2019. So just about six years, yeah.
And what types of clients you mentioned? Government at different levels
and now commercial and so forth. You mentioned global. Tell us a
(05:33):
little bit about how you're structured. Yeah, so we're structured. We have
one big business unit, but it's structured by division. And then
those divisions combine health and human services across
those markets. So across federal. Except for state and local,
that's separate. So federal Health and human Services,
Philanthropic Health and Human Services, we have a global division and we
(05:55):
have a state and local division. And then I sit outside of
the business along with my other administrative colleagues running
across the enterprise to bring client centricity and
client experience and other things to have it consistent or at
least understanding where it needs to be different across the business unit.
Nice. Okay, so we're still matrixed, still matrix. And that gives us
(06:18):
a lay of the land of how you're structured. You know, you and I talked
about understanding the customer journey and in particular,
one area that I found it often doesn't get a lot of attention,
to be honest with you. We're going to be talking about customer onboarding,
client onboarding. And I just think that's so critical.
It's the old adage like, you know, the first date, you only get one
(06:40):
opportunity to make a first impression. The first date goes bad,
good luck with the rest of it, you know. Yeah. And think,
think there's probably, and we're going to talk about this a little bit, but this
idea of sticky onboarding that creates lasting relationships,
that there is, it just makes common sense that when they come and I
found, come on board in a positive way and their experience
(07:03):
is good. And to be honest,
what I've found is that sometimes even the referral in matters, the fact that
you're coming in as a referral. Right. But even if you're not and you just
come on and you have this really good experience, you're going to
probably be more open to trying out new products.
Right. You're going to stay longer, you're going to be a more profitable
(07:25):
customer and you're going to engage with us. Whether that's digital digital,
whether that's, you know, doing reviews and liking us,
sharing, sharing referrals, sharing knowledge about us and
advocacy and so forth. So what are we talking about when we talk about
onboarding and why is it so important
to a topic to business leaders, not just CX leaders?
(07:48):
Yeah, it's a great question and I agree with you. I think it does
get short shrift and I think when we do think about it,
we tend to think about it through a fairly transactional lens
around how easy was this. So if you think about, you know, you
went to a hotel and then they're going to send you a survey afterwards and
ask you how easy was the registration process. That's sort of a
(08:11):
version of what I'm talking about. How easy was it to use this particular
product? That tends to be where most, I think, people think about
onboarding. We'll come back to the. It's a welcome note or welcome
email. I'll come back to that because you and I talked about that before, too.
I think about it very much the way you just described it. So I think
about it as the first date, where the
(08:33):
date is our first engagement together and what
I'm. And that can be a week, that could be a month, that could be
a year. However long that first engagement goes, that's what I'm going
to think about as our onboarding experience. And I'm going into
it trying to create a relationship with you
that makes you want to stay. So I'm going to have a. I'm going
(08:55):
to build a relationship with a person, and through building that relationship with a
person, they're building a relationship with my company. I happen to
be the face or the representative of that company, but it's about the
relationship that we're going to build together. And so
I'm going to keep probably coming back to dating analogies, which are going to fall
apart at some point, but stay with me. So the first impression,
(09:17):
for sure, there was an impression of the company before we ever
engaged together. There's whatever you knew about us from what you've heard about
us, what you see on social media, et cetera, there's other people who can control
that part of it. I'm going to talk about the engagement piece. So when you
show up for a first date, so this might be a first meeting,
how do you want to show up? Do you want to show up as
(09:38):
somebody who talks endlessly about yourself? Chances are you're not going to get
a second date. Or do you want to show up as somebody
who's warm, relatable, and really genuinely
interested in getting to know you? I think that's true. Whether it's
a first date date, whether it's the first time you're doing something with a new
friend, or whether it's the first meeting with a client, I want that client
(10:00):
to feel like I want to understand where you're coming from. I want
to get to know you better. And hopefully you leave that first
leave with the first impression with the things that I said. She Seems nice.
And that was a very good conversation. I felt like she was getting to know
me. I want her to keep getting to know me. That's what I want you
to leave with. And then the next part, I think is really
(10:22):
critical. So now we've gotten past that. We're working together.
And aside from all the sort of normal stuff that happens in trying to adjust
our working styles, it's so important early on
to show that you're consistent. So in
relationships of all kinds. Right. Consistency is what starts
to build trust. So. So I want you to know
(10:43):
that if I say I'm going to do something, I'm actually going to do it
when I said I would. I'm not going to cancel on you at the last
minute. You can count on me to do those kinds of things.
And I need to keep doing that over and over again. I need to
keep showing up as that warm, relatable person who's
curious about understanding you. I want to keep doing that
(11:04):
until it starts to feel like there's some trust between us.
And the length of time that takes is going to vary with who's
across the table. From some people. It might be faster. Maybe we just
click other people, maybe not so much. And I'm going to have to keep
earning your trust. But that's part of the goal in
the middle of middle beginnings of our relationship.
(11:26):
And then I think the next part of that onboarding experience is where we
start to introduce some gradual intimacy. And that's the
place I think for people can get a little bit nervous. But if I think
about it again from a dating analogy, I'm not going to
tell you my deepest, darkest secrets really early on in the
relationship. Or if I do, you're probably going to be like, well, that's too much
(11:48):
information. And I'm also not going to probably ask you
deeply personal questions early on. But we
need to start building more of a two way street. Right. I
need to be willing to be a little bit personal, a little bit vulnerable.
That can be as simple as like, hey, Mark, what did you do last weekend?
What'd you do? For real, Say again? What'd you do last weekend? Oh, yeah, it
(12:09):
could be. What'd you do? Yeah, last weekend? Honestly, I watched a little bit
too much of the PGA Golf Championship. I didn't know you were a golfer.
What do you love about watching golf? I love people doing something
that I find so humbling, so they do it so well.
Yeah, yeah. I had a somewhat similar experience, except it was me
dancing. Right. So I Just did that just because
(12:31):
you want to introduce a little bit of that. Give and take a little bit.
It gradually over time. And then I think
what I, you know, what I'm really looking for is at the end of that
initial engagement, we have built a relationship
that leaves you feeling like you would rather
work with me, meaning my company, because you're associating it
(12:53):
with me. You would rather work with me on your next thing than
anybody else. Because the experience was on the whole
positive, centered on you and that over time
we built the kind of relationship that
lasts hopefully for many, many years. That's how I think of
onboarding. It's that whole first period. Yeah. That's great. When you're
(13:17):
talking, of course, my antenna are popping up. I have to ask you
because I'm gonna riff on this just a little bit. Sure. Ask you. Are you
familiar with the trust equation? I am, and I love the
trust equation. I show it to everybody.
A deeply academic, data driven organization having an
equation that can break down trust, which should we just. I'm sure your
(13:40):
audience knows it, but should we break it down for them? Yeah, why don't you
take the lead? Sure. So the one that I. So I. Hopefully there's not.
Hopefully there's only one equation, but who knows? Yes. So I would describe it this
way. And I actually think of it as the trustworthiness
equation. Right. What makes you trustworthy so?
Credibility. Credibility is. I am actually expert
(14:02):
in the thing that I say I'm expert in. Presumably because we
win new work by writing proposals. Presumably I
established that credibility in the proposal or you probably would
not have come back to me. But I can't rest on that. But I am
expert in the thing I say I'm expert in credibility. Reliability. That's
the consistency part that I was talking about. You can count on
(14:23):
me. You can count on me. You can count on me. You can count on
me. I'm going to show up the same way. I'm going to do what I
say. And then the last piece is intimacy, which we were just
talking about. How do you gradually make the other
person feel safe with you? And some of that comes
from being vulnerable. And you can be perfect in all three of those.
(14:43):
However, the denominator in that equation is self
interest. And that's really our self orientation, they might call it in the official one,
I think. And that's really. Am I engaging
with you for my benefit or am I engaging with you
for yours? And we can all smell self interest
when we encounter it. Yeah. And it is
(15:07):
you know, our typical project will run about two or three years.
So we're talking about a long onboarding period. And
for sure, there are going to be times where I'm going to feel
frustrated with you as my client, for sure. And what
I try to help our teams understand is that
when I'm feeling frustrated and thinking like, oh my God,
(15:29):
he can't make a decision, or he keeps changing his mind, or he keeps not
showing up for our meetings, whatever it might be, whatever's frustrating me, that
frustration is my body's way of telling me, you need to
look at this from the other perspective. You need to slow yourself
down. It's true that you need to keep the work moving. Right. You have all
sorts of pressures, but when something's going awry and there's friction in the
(15:51):
relationship, try to try to look at it from their perspective and start
to ask more questions to understand what's happening on
their side that I don't know about. And because I
don't know about it, I am somehow missing the mark. And if I can
flip from frustration, which is self interest, to what don't I know
about that might be going on on your side, that's other interest.
(16:14):
And now we're becoming trustworthy. Yeah. I love your,
your explanation of it. And this is something that is near and dear to my
heart. The listeners of the show know I offer a trusted guide
roadmap masterclass for CX leaders who want to do change.
And part of that was built based on the fact that I work with
the. Charlie Green is one of the authors of the Trusted Advisor
(16:36):
and I became certified in his program. I worked with Charlie for a couple of
years, 15, 16 years ago. What I'm interested in, though, is you did a
beautiful job of explaining the equation is you have
a PhD in psychology. Right. So the three authors,
Maester Galford and Charlie Greene, were not psychology majors. None of
them. They were management consultants. They were Harvard MBAs.
(16:58):
Three of them were roommates together, and they wrote that book. But you do have
a PhD. How does that line up with the
academic work and research that you did
from a psychological standpoint, does it line up and how
do you feel about. I don't think I've ever asked that question. So it does
on two levels. So my background is also is in
(17:20):
developmental psychology across the lifespan. And so if
I think back to our earliest
relationships. Right. Earliest babies and their parents,
attachment theory would emphasize that
consistency piece. Babies and parents bond
because parents over time get to understand the different cries
(17:43):
that their babies make and so they can meet that baby's need, who doesn't have
any other way to let that need be known. So that makes total
sense from like an attachment theory lens. For me, the other
piece of this that resonates is everything
we just said. Again, it applies to any
relationship, any relationship, because it's about
(18:05):
what people need. And so there's a, you know, there's
a fundamental piece of, of what we need that is just at the.
If I think about the hierarchy of needs,
right. Safety, basic food and water. Got it. Right. Shelter.
Got it. Safety is really, really important.
And our brains can perceive any type of social threat
(18:28):
which could be. You're afraid. You got a big project. This is
your first really big project that your boss gave you
and you contracted with me to get that project
done and done well. So if I am not
making you feel safe and certain that this is going to go well and
you're going to look good in front of your boss, you're not safe and you
(18:51):
might get really micromanagy. Who knows what you might do. But this, it makes
sense from the standpoint of human beings, but it also makes
sense from the standpoint of, I don't know if you know, the Gottmans who do.
It completely makes sense. Also if I look at it through a Gottman lens.
Right. So through a Gottman lens, one of the things that I think
about, I don't know if you're familiar with their work around the emotional bank account,
(19:14):
but. Go ahead, share some more. The emotional bank account
is basically you want to put in more deposits, things that
build positive experiences between you and your partner, you and
your friend, you and your client. Right. You want to put in more positive
experiences. In this sense, I think of it as more trust, trust
earning, trust building experiences. Then you're making withdrawals.
(19:37):
So a withdrawal is going to be in terms of a
client experience. It could be something that eroded trust. Maybe I was late with
that deliverable. Maybe I made a really big mistake
and I didn't tell you about it and I just tried to fix it without
letting you know and it came back and bit us in the butt. Right. Like
those are trust eroding. Those are withdrawals. Well, what do the
(19:59):
Gottman say you should do? I just want to. Well, go ahead and finish that
thought and then I want to come back to what we. Sure. Yeah. So you
want to make repair. And I think repair depends
upon your ability to own the mistake that you made
and then sit side by side
to find a better solution. And maybe Some preventative step that you
(20:20):
could take. And what we tend to do with clients is something's
gone wrong. We get our talking points together. Right.
We get our talking points together. Now we want to make sure that we have
sort of the whole story is straight talking. When I'm getting talking points together, which
I'm not saying you shouldn't know what you're going to say, but it starts to
put that distance. You're on that side, I'm on this side. And it
(20:42):
gets us into a place where we want to be right as opposed
to I want to be trusted. And so if I want to make repair, I
want to own my mistake and then sit side by side with you to find
the solution. So where did you want to go? Sorry? You're like, there are threads
everywhere. I know. Right? Exactly. And Charlie Green often
says being right is overrated. Right. Anyone who's right can be
(21:03):
really costly. It could be really costly to be right. It just
psychologically. And why companies who give these
stock answers when things screw up. You know, in my class right now we're
going through service. The service recovery paradox, which is. I don't
think I know that. Yeah. So it's a study that was done a while ago
that essentially says that when you mess up as a
(21:26):
company in the experience that if you respond
well, that following that mess up the
actual loyalty, customer loyalty or satisfaction
level levels actually rise above where they would have been on the
trajectory. I believe that because
you're going through something tough together and that's where there's an opportunity to build trust.
(21:47):
The word of caution from people in the industry
is you don't want to try and design
service failures in so that you can show recovery chance to
do it. Right. Right. Because there's only a point to which like you talk about
consistent. If you keep doing it, then your response
becomes questionable. Well, and who. It's the denominator
(22:10):
again, whose interest is that in. If you're designing failures,
it's certainly not in your customer's interest. Yeah. I mean, hopefully they
wouldn't be onto it. But it just. It just bad. It's a
rich conversation we have at the. @ MSU in the class
because, you know, people. People say,
well, you shouldn't have service failures. Well, that's impossible. It's impossible
(22:32):
to avoid. Right. No matter whether you're a surgeon
pilot or an airline, your hospitality,
delivering proposals for government, everybody messes up, makes mistakes.
Yeah. Yep. And so there's a certain level of understanding. But to your
point about trustworthiness I. I love how you describe
variables in this, and I'd like to talk to you a little bit more about.
(22:56):
Well, first, about where. What
are some of the myths that companies have about
client onboarding in their approach to it, or lack of
approach to it? Yeah, I mean, we did talk a little bit about
that, sort of. It's a very narrow window of a transaction, and I
think that's a. That's a myth. I think we're going to talk about one of
(23:18):
my favorites, which is the welcome email, which I
think people think like, that's it. I have very mixed feelings about
that. I don't think. I think if that's all you do, it's insufficient
for sure. Again, it's something that, if it can come across as
genuine, it can be really powerful. When we talked last time,
I told you about this postcard that I got from a company
(23:40):
that I worked with when I worked with them for the very first time.
That was bright yellow, big thank you
handwritten on the back from their CEO. Very
brief, but just like genuinely expressed
excitement to be working with me. It was such a small
gesture. Such a small gesture. Another Gottman thing
(24:04):
just reminded me, and yet it meant so much to me. No
one had ever. I've hired tons of consultants. No one
had ever done that before. I still have the postcard,
and I show it to people to remind them of what a personal
touch can mean. So I think when done well, the welcome email is
important. But that's not all it is. I think the other
(24:26):
myth or misconception can be that it's sort of like one size fits all.
This is what we do for everybody. I'm not a fan of that at any
part of the journey because, again, it's
a relationship. There's not one thing that's
going to work for every single person that you meet. So you need to
be able, especially if you're thinking about it as a slightly larger window,
(24:48):
there's more opportunity to sort of tailor that personal
gesture to who I think you are. And then
the worst is probably if our services are great, if our
product is great, you don't have to worry about that.
And to me, that signals you don't
particularly care if I'm your customer as long
(25:11):
as you have a customer. Right. So those would be my big three. That I
would say. Those are some common myths. Yeah. As you were
talking about the onboarding process and the dating piece and
how we're trying to make customers feel at that stage of the journey with
us, I had on my show recently, Lou Carbone,
who wrote, Clued in and wrote a number of the
(25:33):
pioneering articles that went into HBS that really came to
describe customer experience. He had a quote that I'm going to
paraphrase, which is, you cannot not have a
customer experience. It's a question of how random or well
managed it is. And my question to you, given your background,
which Lou shared, and I want to just see how this fits in
(25:55):
and what your thinking is on it. And it might be a gem to listeners
to listen back to this and hear what Lisa has to say about this.
Most companies from a strategic standpoint, try to make
customers feel good about their brand, really want to feel good about
Microsoft or Hilton or Disney.
And what he says is really what we should be thinking about, is how we
(26:16):
can make customers feel good about themselves. Mm. Love it. Love
it. And then the association with your brand
is that when I engage with this brand, I feel
good about me. I feel confident. You know, it depends on what your,
your goals are. But if, if I'm providing data
and evidence to a policymaker who's going to take it up the line
(26:39):
and try to make changes in the world or in their community or wherever
with it, boy, I want them to feel confident. Those are
high stakes decisions potentially. I want them to feel
confident going to their boss. I want them to feel
well prepared to talk about what the limitations might be. Right.
I want them to feel like they have command of
(27:02):
what they are about to talk about. That's what I want. And so I
couldn't agree with Lou more. It's about how they feel. I also think your
brand, your reputation is only as solid as each
individual customer experience that you create.
Especially in this world where your brand can be tarnished on social
media in a minute. We never know where our customers are going to be working
(27:24):
next and who they might know and how they might talk about us. All these
things matter. And I would much prefer that a
customer just said, oh my God, I loved working with them. I loved
working with them. I would love that more than their report was really
insightful. I mean, good, yes, the report should certainly be really insightful,
but if you loved working with me, boy, that's,
(27:45):
that's the goal. Yeah. What do you want to leave them saying, thinking,
feeling, the empathy map, saying, feeling, thinking, doing at the end of the
conversation, then reverse engineer the experience to that
feeling. And that requires a lot of critical thinking. It does. And
I confess that I am one to trust my gut too much on
these things because you can put a lot of
(28:07):
analysis into it. But if, then this might go back to clued in.
If you're not being really observant and really
listening actively throughout, you're going to miss
clues that your analysis never would have detected
that are important clues for making adjustments. And so
it's a balance. It's a balance. We are not nearly as rational humans
(28:29):
as we would like to pretend that we are. I want to come back to
that. I want to dive a little bit deeper into
how this plays out like a prac, some practical applications.
And what I, what we're going to do here is break this into a two
part episode because this is way too rich and too much
information. We had to lay that background for what we're going to share and when.
(28:50):
My hope is that when people are listening to this, they put themselves in
their own situation into play when we're
sharing. But for right now, we'll come back in part two of a two
part episode with Lisa Schwartz, the COO of Mathematica.
Well, that's wonderful. A two parter.
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