Latest / The CXChronicles Podcast / CXChronicles Podcast Episode 36 with Mario Sansalone, Head of CX at Grindr

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CXChronicles Podcast Episode 36 with Mario Sansalone, Head of CX at Grindr · The CXChronicles Podcast

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hi
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: and welcome to the cx chronicles podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: This is the show for customer service managers, vps of customer experience, and all of you out there every week.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: We're going to dig into topics, challenges, wins, and updates in the cx or customer service community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, Adrian, Brayden Susanna, check us out at dcx chronicle stock and feel free to reach out to us anytime.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being a part of the cx chronicles nation
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: today.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: We welcome Mario Sansa lowly, head of customer operations at grinder.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: Mario heads up the team that works with over three and a half million daily users, grinders, the world's largest social network for gay, Bi, trans, and queer people, and Grindr.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Mario and his team helped to manage and develop the organization's global customer operations capabilities, including customer support, customer insights, trust and safety content, moderation, IED policy.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: Mario's here to talk with the cx nation today about his personal story and about what it's like to work each and every day at a company like Ryder.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, Mario Santillana,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: fresh desk, everything you need to redefine your customer support, keep track of conversations, resolve customer issues, support your customer across all channels, and increase your team's productivity.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Checkout fresh desk, fresh desk.com today
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: guys, welcome to the cx chronicles podcast.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: I'm your host Adrian breaches.
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: Ana.
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: Today we have Mario sense alone on the show from grindr.
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: Mario, welcome to the cx chronicles podcast.
• 2:16
  Speaker 5: Hi Adrian.
• 2:17
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: So guys, Mario heads up the cx efforts over a grinder and today he's going to be talking with the[inaudible] nation about the company, the team, his personal cx journey.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: So it's going to be awesome.
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: I'm really excited about today's show.
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: So with that being said, Mario, I'd love for you to take five minutes or so to tell us about your customer experience.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: How did you, how did you get to where you are today leading up the cx efforts of grinder?
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: I have no idea.
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: No.
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: You know, I think like a lot of a customer experience, professionals like a, it's a relatively new field and it's not been around in a super defined way for decades.
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: And most people, uh, I certainly didn't grow up thinking, oh, I really want to be in customer support.
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: Um, I kind of fell into it, you know, I graduated college in 2008, um, and that was a really rough time in the states economically.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: And so, uh, you know, finding a job that was compelling was really challenging.
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: So I, I went with something that was more of a passion and landed at a total pet care company, um, and uh, was managing a lot of their, um, a dog walking and in home pet care and grooming and doggy daycare.
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: And so it was like, honestly, it was a fantastic way to, uh, both like play with dogs everyday but also
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: have,
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: I didn't have a dog, I was fresh out of college and so it was a having a dog and the and also supporting myself as just one step too far.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: So I didn't have a dog yet
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: made that mistake.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: Sir.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: I actually did, you were smarter than me at that point,
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: so playing with dogs is great, but also interacting with customers every day and managing employees and schedules, um, and just seeing sort of the entire process from start to finish, uh, and helping even with the marketing of it and early online social media marketing to try and drive up new business.
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: All of that was, was really formative for me.
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: So I did that initially for a couple of years.
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: Um, and then, and then I, uh, started my first customer experience a role or customer support operations role at living social and they were a young, super exciting startup and so I moved to Seattle and started helping build out that team on the west coast.
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: Um, and that was a really, really wonderful experience because they were growing so intensely every, every month.
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: Real quick.
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: Was that the first opportunity that you had to literally be given a given an opportunity where it's like, look, you got to get up and go if you want this right now.
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: Is that the first time that, that happened in your young career?
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: At that point?
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: Pretty much how did that make you feel that had to have been, that had it been, you know, a big decision for you to make it at a young point in your career like that?
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: Uh, I mean, it was fantastic.
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: You know, I was young and unattached and I, unlike you didn't have a dog had
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: or children or
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: um, you know, I made the move and was really fortunate to join a group of other passionate young professionals in Seattle.
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: And a small group of US built that team out and went through a lot.
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: Lots of trial by fire.
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: Because most of it was a, this was a brand new product.
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: I'm in the marketing space and I don't know if you'll remember, but like the daily deal you'll in your email inbox was revolutionary and a lot of people thought that was the next wave of marketing.
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: And so to drive that type of volume, uh, with major brands like starbucks or Amazon, uh, you would see a spike of like a million or$2,000,000 purchases in a 24 hour period.
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: And users related to that and the effect that that had on our customer support team and how we were going to plan to support that.
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: All of those were intense, really, really challenging, but really, really fun experiences as a, as a young professional.
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: So that was, that was my first jump into really customer support at a, at a high level.
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: That's, that's, that's awesome.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: Mario.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: And, and, and, and the one question I have for that to follow up on for that, to see that that high volume, high explosive growth type of situation right in front of you at that younger career, what did, what did it, did they prep you for that?
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: Were you ready for what that was going to feel like and look like managing the front lines?
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: Or was it, was it really, really hard?
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: Was it tough to deal with?
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: You know, like you said, a million,$2, million different purchases a day, that must have been wild volume.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: How did the team manager, how did you manage it?
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: You can try and prep as much as possible.
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: I mean, previously we had had like several hundred thousand purchases in a day and so you kind of understand what the increase, uh, support volume might be in you make educated assumptions about what that growth will be.
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: Um, but for the most part we learned by doing and so the first one really was a great learning exercise for all of us to understand, okay, what broke, what caused the most problems so that we can address that for the next time around and have really a proactive planning to try and reduce some of that volume and make it as seamless as possible for users.
• 8:05
  Speaker 5: So it was for the most part, no, there was not much, not much preparation that, that could prepare you for that.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: That's awesome.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: So then after living social, tell us about it, then we move onto from there, Maria.
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: Well sure.
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: So, so that first role at living social really was like leading a team of direct line, a customer support agents.
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: Um, and then I had the opportunity at living social to sort of grow in my role and develop and, and, and let our social media, I'm servicing strategy.
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: Uh, and then, uh, I think most importantly a really own the voice of the customer across all of our, all of our different brands in and business verticals to present customer insights and feedback from users in a really structured way, business leaders to help help them make better choices on our product offerings.
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: It's like, what were you saying, what was causing a lot of frustration for you service month over month, um, and doing that in a consistent way.
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: And so that was, that was a bit of a different roles sort of took me away from the operations of running a support team and gave me a different experience.
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: Um, but then, you know, I, I moved away from living social and I took a role with Taska, so business process outsourcer.
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: A lot of time in the Philippines working for other startups or mostly us based across lots of different industries.
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: But, you know, they had a lot of the same challenges growing really quickly.
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: How do we scale this team, uh, how do we do it cost effectively?
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: Um, and then how do we, uh, you know, not just be looked at as a cost center but start to provide insights to the rest of the business, uh, in a more regular fashion.
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: And so I did some of that consulting and um, and helping with a lot of different startups through taskus.
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: Maria, tell us about the difference between.
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: So first of all, that is, that's awesome.
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: Most people will never get that type of opportunity to just pack up and move, you know, across the world and see a totally different part of the planet.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: But what was it like going from a Seattle based customer experience and service team over to the Philippines where, you know, many of the folks that listen to the show that they're super familiar with the Philippines, they know about, um, you know, the wonderful people that help with some of the extension services that we need to provide for our customers and our businesses.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: What were the big differences that you fell into right away when he got over there?
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: Well, I guess I wasn't lucky to live in the Philippines, but it felt like I was, you know, the, I think the biggest differences that just culturally, you know, maybe the people that worked for task as to we're a little unique in this were just so warm and empathetic and committed to the brands that they were representing and the customers that they were assisting on behalf of those brands.
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: Um, you know, living social was fantastic.
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: Uh, but to compare the two, I think it was almost night and day in a sense like in the u, s frequently or you're hiring from recent college graduates who, uh, don't necessarily start their college career envisioning themselves in a customer support role or are frequently, you know, uh, doing that role in the hopes of transitioning to something else and maybe they've got a background in, uh, some other skill or copy editing or something that they want to move into marketing.
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: And it's sort of a stepping stone, um, with Taskus us in the Philippines, it's less of a stepping stone and more of a, a real career, um, that you can grow into and they have a very developed a bpo.
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: Um, and so I was just struck mostly by like how committed everybody was and how empathetic they are was really fantastic experience.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: That's awesome.
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: That is really, really cool experience for you to have.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: And then on top of it, I just, I imagine it sets you up very, very nicely when you began to move on and, and, and connected with the folks that Grindr.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: Can you tell us a little bit about how you sort of started that journey with Grindr?
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: You know, I'm a recruiter reached out and didn't initially give me the name of the company that they were recruiting for, but explain the opportunity and, you know, I was intrigued enough to take a call and I recommend everybody take the call so that you can sort of understand what the landscape looks like and also what you're worth.
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: But, um, you know, the more I learned about Grindr, the more I, uh, I loved about it, first of all, for me professionally working for an outsourcing provider and with different teams for a lot of different brands was, was energizing and exciting, but it was also exhausting and didn't give me the same kind of ownership that I, that I felt I had at living social to really impact change.
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: Um, so I was, I had been thinking about, uh, finding some other internal role and going back into operations for awhile.
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: Um, you know, Grindr was an excellent opportunity for me.
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: Um, mostly because, and you know, and maybe I need to give some background about what Grindr is to do more, please do.
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: So grindr is a, essentially a social networking app for a gay and Bi and Trans Queer people, uh, around the world.
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: So it's, it's global.
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: It's only app based on Ios and android and we have almost 4 million daily users who engage with it for almost an hour every day.
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: So it's a highly engaged community.
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: Um, you know, in places like West Hollywood or, or London or other, other major metropolitan areas that have established protections for lgbt people, um, you know, grinder functions as a hookup APP and in a way to connect into chat, but in most of the developing world to know a lot of places where it's just not safe to be who you are as a gay person.
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: Grindr is a, almost a replacement for those physical spaces that don't exist and safe places for people to connect with others like them and to find community into a, to chat with, uh, with other people who they just wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to.
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: So that aspect of grinder and the role that it plays around the world for people who are oppressed just for being who they are.
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: I'm really resonates with me as a gay man.
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: Uh, and it's, uh, I get even part of the community that I didn't really understand before I started talking with, with Grindr and working with the great people who I do today.
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: That's awesome.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: That is incredible.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: In terms of being in a position where you can work at a place where you were pushing that across the world.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: Um, I know that in our first couple of calls, you know, to, to the folks that$68 I did not even realize myself, Mario was telling me about all the customers that they serve globally and it is an incredible, incredible network.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: And, and, and, and grinders does such an such an awesome job of really trying to make, um, these safe places and spaces as Mario was talking about for their users.
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: I just think it's awesome, Mario.
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: So that is so cool.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: In terms of being at grinder now, I would love to, to kind of swing the camera over and, and, and talk a little bit about the actual team that you work with each and every day, if that, if that works for you.
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely.
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: I mean, let's, let's start.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: Let's start with the basics.
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry, the team structure and organization, common customer interactions, even like systems and tools that you guys use.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: We would love to, to, to, to have you share with the cx nation.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: Give us the, the, the background for the team that you work hand in hand with each and every day.
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: So we have a really, really committed team and that was, you know, a team that understands the mission of Grindr, um, the uniqueness of our community.
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: And uh, so what was important when we were trying to build the team for me is to make sure that we found people who could connect with our community on a deep, uh, and, and hopefully personal level, um, beyond just wanting to, uh, to have a job but see themselves easily connected to the broader mission of, of grinder and the work that, that we do around the world.
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: So we have, um, we have a team based in, uh, Central America that, uh, supports our users around the world in multiple languages that we've partnered with a, uh, an outsource provider called partner hero.
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: Um, and they have just done a really fantastic job, uh, and taking ownership of our customer relationships when they need to contact us for support.
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: Uh, so they, they help us manage a significant portion of our support operations.
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: I'm a, that's essentially a from the support side of things.
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: We have a small team here at headquarters in West Hollywood, um, who helped set the direction and strategy for how we service our users and help us implement new tools and update our language and share feedback with our product engineering and marketing and executive teams here.
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: What is the, what is the, the bulk of the day to day communication with your customers look like?
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: Are you guys typically I'm on phone calls.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: Are you going back and forth via, via email or, or text message?
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: How do you guys actually chat with your customers?
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, most of it cannibalizes all communication from users.
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: So when, when they have a question, you know, when you're using the product, the benefit of an app is that we can easily integrate with our help desk solution and we use send us, uh, to provide a pretty seamless experience in the APP and to also service or our surface are self help center to users as well.
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: Um, if they're interested in that.
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: So most of them are all, it's all written communication, uh, in APP and sometimes we know a significant portion of it is also email, but we don't offer phone support.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: Oh, interesting.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: So that's something I'd like to talk about.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: So in terms of, because one of the things I was going to ask about as we got deeper into it was what happens if and when there's instances of escalation, right?
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: A lot of the folks that listen to this show or have super, super familiar with, with either the tiered based support model or where once you get to a certain level of you're managing customer issue that's maybe a little bit above, above your scope, you know, you escalate it up whether that be to a manager or a supervisor.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: If you guys don't have phone calls today and, and that's something that you don't have to worry about.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: Which by the way is brilliant.
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: Sir, I tip my hat to you on that.
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: Um, how do you manage the rare circumstances when there's escalations?
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: How do you deal with if somebody really needs that extra layer of touch, support assistance?
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: Is that still done through written and, and how does it kind of work?
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: It is all still written.
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: We've worked really hard to empower the team to own the full resolution for a customer.
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: So individual agents have escalation flows and processes that we've built to team leads and to program manager if necessary.
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: But, uh, for the most part it's very rare when an escalation needs to be to be reviewed and usually that's a, those were like novel situations that are more on the trust and safety side of things, um, where we're interacting with the user in a very unique situation that requires special care intention.
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: But if something can be solved by one of our, uh, team leads, then, uh, you know, we've empowered them to do it and we review on a weekly basis and, uh, all of those types of decisions to make sure that we're aligned and, uh, I guess sort of fully calibrated on, on, on how they should be handling those.
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: But, um, I feel really strongly that it's important that everyone who interacts with the customer feels that they own that relationship and should be able to be empowered to make decisions to make it better for that customer.
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: Um, and so if they feel that they aren't in that position that they don't have the tools or know what the right thing to do is, then that's, that's more on me and that we need to spending more time calibrating and, and figuring out how to remove those barriers that, that, that they do feel that ownership.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: No, I love it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: And I think that makes perfect sense in terms of, you know, working with the team, working with their customer base and really kind of pushing, pushing the envelope forward each and every day.
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: That's great stuff.
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: Maria.
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: So we talked about the four, six pillars, you, you, you, you chatted with us about the team, you chatted with us about the tools and even the process and, and, and, and, and the workflows, right?
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: I'd love to pick, pick your brain a little bit about how feedback works at Grinder.
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: So, I mean, one of the big things that we talk about on the show is we try to get folks in the cx nation ideas for how do you get feedback from your customers and how do you get feedback from your internal customers, your staff, your employees, to really, really, really build for the future and make sure that you're doing everything you can to set yourself up for success.
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: How do you guys, number one, how do you collect some of that feedback today, grinder from your, from your users and your customers and what do you do with that feedback?
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: Maria?
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: No, that's a great question.
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: I think that's at the heart of like thinking about a customer support customer experience as, as much more than just a sort of a cost center which had to frequently is maligned as.
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right?
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: No, so like grinder, we, we put a lot of time and effort into building relationships with our engineering and product partners, um, and sharing information at the executive level that really shows the pulse of the customer, um, who they are, what their challenges are that week, what's driving positive impact to our company wide Kpis, what's driving negative impact to our company wide kpis.
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: And so as much as we can tie in our customer support metrics and data to larger company goals that matter to executive decision makers, that's where we're able to add additional value.
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: Um, so for us it's regularly sitting down with our head of product and engineering to share that week's trending topics and issues that we're hearing about on different channels.
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: Uh, number one, uh, like types of bugs that users might be experiencing a top drivers of dissatisfaction.
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: I'm honestly like it can be data overload.
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: And so I think one of the bigger challenges is deciding what type of information to share and to highlight.
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: And so, um, you know, to keep those meetings really valuable for, for our internal partners.
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's, that's a real good point, Mario.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: In terms of, like for, for, for, for many of our, um, our, uh, really growth focused know businesses that are just shooting up into the right every single day you are amassing loads and loads of data and it can be super, super tough sometimes to cut through the fat and understand which of that data in which had that feedback, what matters, like what's going to help us actually keep a customer happy, drive the business forward, grow the business versus what's Kinda sorta like, it's nice to know, but like what does it really do for you?
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: That's, that's, that's something that a number of folks that have been on the show recently, Mario, when we talk like that, you know, offline or before the show, this is something that people keep bringing up.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: And I think I find it really interesting because every business has a different set of kpis that lead it towards success.
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: And every company's going to set up different.
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: Ours are different, different corporate wide missions to, to, to really kind of get them to where they want to be.
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: But I find this fascinating that, uh, many of us folks that are working in the cx space, it's like you get so much at as good feedback in the form of data that sifting through it is getting, it's getting tough, but there are good tools out there that we can use.
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: But I think that's awesome and I'm glad you brought that up.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: And I think that it's something that, um, you know, folks that are listening to this show, you should be pushing your leadership teams and you should be pushing your managers and you should be pushing even the customers to be providing that feedback because it's all going to be able to lead a lead your business to the next level.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: So, great point there, Maria.
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: 100 percent to add to your point, Adrian, you know, it's not just a foundational to say like, okay, well we want to increase our user satisfaction.
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: Um, and that's one thing.
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: Those are like your internal goals.
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: But in order to really make an impact to the broader business, you have to tie it to some higher level company Kpis.
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: I think from most thinking about customer lifetime value or a measurement of loyalty is probably the first place for a that I would suggest someone start.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Awesome.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree.
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: I agree.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: It's, it's way easier to keep a customer than to find a new and.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: So.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: Okay, great stuff.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: I would love for you to take five minutes to share some advice and some tips for some of the young upcoming cx leaders who listened to this show and more specifically some of the startup founders who, you know, more you been at this for a long time.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: You've been taking care of customers your entire career.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: What is some basic advice and tips you have for those folks in terms of managing their customers and more importantly, managing their customer facing teams in the future.
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: I think my number one advice for the CDP level or startup founders is, um, at the beginning to elevate some of the kpis that really talk about the health of your customer.
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: So not just lifetime value that, uh, revenue, uh, uh, derived but others around like an mps score just as a really simple, basic one.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: And have those come, have those be wide kpis.
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: Uh, it's really, it makes it much easier.
• 26:49
  Speaker 5: I think if you start with the expectation for the entire org that this is important, that, that being a customer centric organization is going to drive growth and revenue, um, that makes it much more, uh, much easier for, for someone like me or you or those listening who worked on the, the customer experience side of things to a advocate for things that, that do improve the customer experience.
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: So I guess that's what I would say that to founders and for those that are sort of starting their career or coming up in, in customer support or customer experience roles, a continued this, this seems a little general, but continue to be curious and investigate a new tools and systems, um, and learn from others.
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: Uh, that's what I love about your podcast, Adrian.
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: It's like listening to what other people have done is it has been really, really helpful and helps meet.
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: Think about what those next, uh, next options are on the horizon to improve sort of operations that we have today.
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: I like a good example of that is artificial intelligence and machine learning for a, automating a certain types of customer interactions or thinking about new channels that, that provide that level of, um, more effortless experience for users.
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: Um, so I think a lot of it's like don't become complacent in thinking that you've done this for a couple of years.
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: You really understand how to, how to lead a team or drive down satisfaction user users change all the time and the tools that we have to, uh, to meet those user needs are also changing all the time.
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: So I think it's a really interesting, really exciting time to be in the customer experience space because of, uh, uh, things like machine learning being able to have such an outsized impact on our team operations.
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: No, I, I couldn't agree more and I think that for going, first of all, thank you.
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: So in terms of what you said about the show, that is literally the reason why we're here more, right?
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: It's like there are already so many folks across the world who've done a brilliant job figuring out the for cx pillars.
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: They've, they've, they've built these teams, they've built these tools, they know these processes and workflows and they've mastered customer feedback and employee feedback.
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: We need to learn from those folks.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: We can learn from their findings and we can share them with others and it can help everybody else grow and it can help everybody else really, really push things into the future.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: I think the other thing too is, you know, we say I say this all the time and some people laugh at me.
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: I think more and more people are starting to a 100 percent agree with me and get it.
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: Um, you know, for example, last we had shep hyken on the show.
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: Shep is one of these guys who's for 30 years he's been talking about customer service, customer experience.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: That is the key to sales.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: And I think, you know, uh, uh, to, to, to borrow some of that wisdom from Shepp.
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: I tell people all the time, customer experience is modern selling.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: If you can keep a customer happy and if you can mitigate folks leaving your service, Lou leaving your product, leaving your platform, you're helping the bottom line directly, right, and then on top of it, to your point, to your appointment, I'm already, once you get into the world of stashing LTV goals, establishing mps and seaset goals, establishing churn mitigation goals, now your company's really thinking about what it needs to be thinking about and that's like building a tribe of followers and have folks that just think you are the best damn thing that's ever happened and really once you get to that level as a company, doesn't even matter what industry you're in, you're really, really, really going to hit your path and you're gonna.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: Find your stride towards success.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: So awesome.
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: Awesome stuff.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: Awesome stuff, Mario there.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: I really, really appreciate you sharing that.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: So.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: Alright, well look, here we go.
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: We've got some.
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: I've got a fire round question for you sir.
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: We're getting towards the end of the show.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: Here's what we're gonna do today.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: I've got three numbers that you can pick from one, two, or three, whichever you pick, sir.
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: That is the, that's the firearm question that you get for today.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: How's that sound?
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: Uh, it makes me nervous.
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: One, two, or three.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: What's the number two.
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: Here we go.
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: Mario, what is the scariest customer interaction that you've ever faced and why?
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: When I say scary, it can be.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: It can be scary for you.
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: Mario is an oh boy, am I going to lose my job or it can be scary as a company representative where, you know, shoot, this is bad.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: I got to figure out how to, how to get my arms around this immediately and escalated with the proper powers that be.
• 31:33
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: Cool.
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: So I'm gonna avoid the latter option is that, you know, Grindr also as a social media company.
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: And this has been in the news a lot with facebook and twitter.
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: There are privacy concerns and trust and safety issues that arise all the time.
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: And so I'll just say that, uh, I, I've seen my share and have handled my share of truly scary, uh, for users.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: And for the company kind of concerns, um, but, uh, to give something a little more entertaining, I guess, scary on my end, please.
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: When I was at living social, um, you know, in, in the early days when things were a little chaotic and we were super stressed and stretched and um, I had a, what now is like a pretty funny lapse in judgment, but had a really a disgruntled, a guy on the phone and it was an escalation from, from one of my team members.
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: And honestly at this, I can't even remember what he was truly upset about, but you know, likely had a voucher for an experience and the experience was really, really negative.
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: Did Not meet his expectations.
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: Um, and you can imagine living social assault, things like house cleaning or diesel, that everything from the it or something.
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: So a lot of these were like really momentous things in people's lives or they should have been pretty, pretty simple.
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: Um, regardless, he was very upset and he really wanted to just like continue to talk and let me know how he felt.
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: And we were trying to say like, we're gonna provide a refund, we'll give you credit for future purchases, et cetera.
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: Um, but his anger sort of, uh, uh, you know, it's like road rage at some, some points and it's something we just have to deal with for support professionals.
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: Um, but I made the mistake of saying to him like, sir, this isn't a public utility, you don't need to use our services first that fly out of my mouth.
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: I thought, how do you like that one more yet clearly thought I was being way a really awful, awful thing to say and, and lost my composure.
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: And, and now it's just sort of a funny story that I get to tell as an example of like what not to do.
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: It leads.
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: That's awesome.
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: Well, hey, it's tough though, right?
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: It's like we'll look with our, with our positions.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, we deal with so many different things and we've got so many different curve balls getting flung at us every single day that I've heard a number of folks say, one of the reasons why they love working in customer experience is because no day is similar to that if the day before and I and for me and my career, that has just been so damn true, but you literally get these new customer things that pop up everyday that you've, even if you're experienced at customer and you've been in this game a long time, you just never heard it before and you're like, wow, that's okay.
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: Let's go to the drawing board and figure out how we're gonna manage this customer issue and then we'll try to do it the best we can.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: You know,
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: it is so true.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: So.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: Well, Maria, this has been awesome man.
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: Before we wind down the show, is there anything else that you'd like to pitch for upcoming events, conferences, books, or articles, anything that you want the cx nation to know about yourself or about Grindr?
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: About anything at all?
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: No.
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: Um, nothing coming out.
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: Uh, but I, you know, I would just offer myself up beds, a resource people can find me on linkedin if they'd like.
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: Anyone has follow up questions on, you know, I've benefited from a mentorship and chatting with others through their struggles.
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: And like I said before, appreciate your podcast, Adrian, for, for making it more of a one to many type of conversation, but I welcome any types of questions or connections from people.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: That's awesome.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: Are you.
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm definitely going to be hitting you up the next time that we are out in California.
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: Um, again, this has been.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: There's been a pleasure.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: I'm so happy you came on the show.
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: Thanks for chatting with the nation and we need to chat again soon in the near future, my friend.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: Yes, please.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: Absolutely more than thank you so much for joining the[inaudible] chronicles podcast,
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: you so much for listening to another episode of Cx chronicles.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: He sure to subscribe and share with all of your fellow cx and until next time, make happiness a habit.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: CX Station, check us out at CXC dot come.