CXChronicles Podcast 184 with Jean Patrick, CEO at ScaleUp Edge

Hey CX Nation,

In this week's episode of The CXChronicles Podcast #184  we welcomed Jean Patrick, CEO at ScaleUp Edge based in Denver, CO.

The ScaleUp phase is the shortest phase of a company’s growth and has different value drivers to the early-stage startup and scaled enterprise phases. The ScaleUp Edge team is maniacally focused on sharing the logic behind the ScaleUp phase and to provide right-sized resources to help create value to all things ScaleUp.
 
In this episode, Jean and Adrian chat through how she has tackled The Four CX Pillars: Team,  Tools, Process & Feedback throughout her career + shares some of the tips & tricks that have worked for her across her own customer focused business leader journey.

**Episode #184 Highlight Reel:**

1. Building your business foundation to be ready to scale as your grow!
2. How you decide which people investments to make + not hiring for titles
3. Understanding what you're solving for before building your tech-stack
4. Connecting your customer journey map to your analytics
5. Spend time with your customers listening & learning above everything else  
 
Huge thanks to Jean for coming on The CXChronicles Podcast and featuring her work and efforts in pushing the communication and process optimization space into the future.

Click here to learn more about Jean Patrick

Click here to learn more about ScaleUp Edge

If you enjoy The CXChronicles Podcast, please stop by your favorite podcast player and leave us a review today. This is the easiest way that we can find new listeners, guests and future business leaders to join our customer focused community!

And be sure to grab a copy of our book "The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business Now" available on Amazon +  check out the CXChronicles Youtube channel to see all of our customer focused business leader video content + our past podcast episodes!

Reach out to CXC at INFO@cxchronicles.com for more information about how we can help your business make customer happiness a habit!

Transcript

CXChronicles Podcast #184 with Jean Patrick, CEO at ScaleUp Edge

Adrian (00:00:10) - All right guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the CX Chronicles podcast. Super excited today, folks. I have one of my, one of my friends joining the show today, Gene Patrick, um, CEO and founder at Scallop Edge, based out in the Boulder, Colorado area. So, Jean, why don't you say hello to CX Nation. 

Jean (00:00:26) - Hey. Hi everybody. And Adrian, thanks for having me on. I was looking forward to this. It's always fun to, uh, have conversation, uh, working with you, um, uh, and really focus around the customer side of things. 

Adrian (00:00:38) - Hundred percent. And guys, Jean has got, um, we were, we were just literally joking before jumping on today's, uh, episode. But like Jean's got a very interesting background, similar, similar to me selfishly, where she gets to work with a lot of different founders, a lot of different startup teams, a lot of different startup executive teams. And she's really spent so much time thinking about what goes into not just leadership. And Jean, I'm pumped to get into the, into all the knowledge and all the incredible experiences you have in leadership. But what goes into building a business? What goes into building a company, a product to service? How do you even think about getting customer excitement before you can get employee excitement? And she spends a ton of time thinking about that. So Jean, I'm pumped, I'm pumped to get into, into your story today. Why don't you start us off? Why don't you spend the first couple minutes just setting the stage for our listeners. Um, Jean, how did you get into this entire world? What were some of the, the stepping stones that, that, that you kind of, uh, had to go through before, um, starting scale up edge and getting into the work that you do today? 

Jean (00:01:36) - Yeah, thanks. Uh, you know, I have, um, it's interesting to think back to how you get to where you are today. Cuz I will tell you, I never said, Hey, I wanna go and work for a startup. I wanna go create a startup. I basically, my career has been, I've been working with a lot of different industries. I've worked with telecom, legal services, services, um, you know, a number of different, um, areas. And then I could even tell you that I've, uh, uh, carried a lot of different, um, hats. I call it, uh, different roles along the way. And I think, um, probably the common denominator for me is, is I tend to not be afraid of, of, of working through the hard, the hard problems. And so, um, there are many times that I'll, I, I tell this to people I sit at, uh, used to sit at my kitchen table probably once a month and go, Who I don't know about this one, This problem's gonna be tougher than the last one that I worked through. 

Jean (00:02:27) - And I'm going, and all I have to do is just take a breath and, and work through it. And I think, um, the, the key has always been to really stay focused on what are you trying to solve and, and, and, and having the communication and, and connection with your customer, whether it's an internal customer or external client of what you're, what you're trying to solve for them and stay in constant communication. So, um, yeah, it's, uh, how did I get here? I was, uh, I was um, uh, really a good mentor of mine, really strong mentor of mine, came to me a couple years ago and said, you know, uh, she used to work for a venture capital company and she used to travel the world, and actually she still does that, but she, uh, has, has moved on in some different areas. But she said, you know, um, I kind of say the same thing over and over again when we go in to work with portfolio companies. 

Jean (00:03:19) - And what I'd like to do is to look at it for a way to kind of package, um, package up and set the foundation for people that, uh, companies that I work for. So she asked me to, uh, um, be part of this startup. Um, since then she's moved on. So I kind of have taken the, the wheel and, um, looking for ways to provide for skill up executives, the ability to find what they need, when they need it, and how they want it delivered. And I say that in, in, in a way to go, you know, I, with the digital age nowadays, um, things change so fast. Yep. And, um, learning from each other, like I learned from you Adrian, every day we talk, um, you know, just little nuggets of gold that help you kind of, uh, you know, carry through to, to help you solve that next problem. So that's really how I got to where I am. 

Adrian (00:04:12) - I love it. I, and Jean, you're right, it's, there's a couple things. Number one, just learning from other people's mistakes. Not rebuilding the wheel, understanding what worked, what didn't work, understanding who, who, who's gone on that type of a journey or who has not. That's like guys, whether you're building a CX or a CS team or whether you're building a sales team, an ops team, a DevOps team, you know, that's one of the easiest tricks for any leader to be able to kind of get a little bit of a, of an advantage. And then the other thing too, and Gene, you never literally just joking about this, it's how you build a community of people, guys, right? This is how you build a community of people who are subject matter experts across all these different walks of life and all these different industries and all these different like backgrounds, right? Just even hearing genes, like stepping stones, that is one of the easiest ways that you can really start to.

Adrian (00:04:57) - Um, just expand your knowledge, expand the thing, even knowing who, who some of the people are that know the things that you need to maybe tap them from time to time. So I love that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, Jean, the other thing too, that, obviously, this is why guys was saying, Jean and I have a very similar type of background. So you're working with a bunch of different startup companies and you just said you wanted to help to kind of package or to curate some of the common examples or the common questions that just kept coming again and again, sounds a lot like, uh, some of the stuff that we're doing at cxc Gene with, with some of our CX and our CX focus folks. But, um, what was some of the, what was like the, the, um, the, the, the birthing ideas of this? So you, you mentioned the friend that was working at a VC group, but how did you start to test or iterate this gene? Was there, how'd you find the first couple companies that you wanted to kinda put some of this information, put some of these ideas, put some of these different best practices in front of, to see if you had something on your hands there? I just outta curiosity, I wonder how you, how you sort of vetted and, and got some, um, general interest in some of the first folks that you started working with at Scalloped? 

Jean (00:05:54) - Yeah, so, um, I can, there's a couple different areas. So, you know, you, I kinda, I go, I'm a startup like everybody else, right? So you find your product market fit, you find what is the market that goes along with this? And, and so I had, so, so before I go into that one thing, I'll say really quickly, um, with what you just mentioned, you know, what your network is so important with your, um, as you start up a company because it's, it's who you know is leveraging that network. It's, it's, you know, people, people don't think that they're a subject matter expert, but you know what, there are things that you've experienced that have worked or didn't work for you that could probably work for me. And so, and, and it's interesting how people wanna give back. So, um, I, uh, there was a couple different avenues that we did with the startup is, uh, we worked with, um, so there was a number of, uh, uh, within our network where, um, executives, uh, couple of 'em, I can tell you for example, uh, left corporate America, large company, corporate America, and they moved and they basically wanted to move into the C-suite. 

Jean (00:07:01) - And, and to do that really quickly, I don't, shouldn't say quickly, but the, the chances of of moving into a CC quickly is really through SaaS tech companies because there's so many of these companies starting up that need really strong leadership. So we've worked with a couple of our, um, uh, network, um, folks that moved to that startup scale up, uh, area, and they were used to running within a big company. Sure. And so as you know, in scale up as you're growing your company, you don't have as many resources. You don't have as many, um, you, you have to pay attention to cash flow, which in large company I've been there too. You have to think about your p and l as well, but you have more resources to pull from. Definitely. So, um, in working with these, uh, executives, it's really kind of focusing them to focus on prioritization data and prioritization. 

Jean (00:07:57) - You know, what, what, what are the areas that are important to kind of grow, um, your company and get your arms around it? You can't do everything, even though you have done it as an executive in large company. You have to really have that focus. So, so we worked with some of the, some of those executives and also, um, uh, worked with, um, actually a large organization, um, uh, uh, a province up in Canada where they were investing into, uh, looking to diversify within their, um, uh, their province into more of a SAS technology environment. And so, okay. Uh, we were fortunate enough to work with, um, a handful of, of companies there to really help them jumpstart not only we created a community for them, but also, uh, that they could learn from each other. But also what we did is we created, um, kind of a packaged up based on certain topics of how they can grow and learn from each other, as well as learning from some of the global resources that I have within my network. So there's two different ways that we kind of started down that path. 

Adrian (00:09:02) - Uh, so super cool. And then, and guys, you know, full can or Jean even, I had the pleasure of Jean introducing me to a bunch of these awesome, uh, companies coming out of, out of, out of Western Canada. And, uh, she's right. I mean, some of the things that are happening are pretty amazing, but Jean, some of the stuff that you, you were doing for them with scalloped and the packaging and the compartmentalization and the ization and the, um, I mean, honestly just having a robust wealth of knowledge and assets that you as a startup, this stuff's hard guys for people that, for, for some of our listeners who haven't had the pleasure or the luxury of, uh, of starting a company, um, it is, it is one of the hardest things you could possibly do. I don't care what you're selling, I don't care what space you're in. I don't care if you're awesome at sales or terrible at sales, it is the hardest thing that you could possibly do. There is so much truth to the, um, the analogy of a roller coaster. There's ups, there's down, there's twist, there's turns. You're ready to be a deck a millionaire one day, and you're ready to go back to washing dishes the next, And it is, it is what it is. But Jean, you and your team at Scallop did an incredible job of packaging this and really helping some of these different startup founders.

Adrian (00:10:04) - Understand where to go find information, where they can, um, utilize some of the resources that you guys did, some of the content, you did some incredible work on the content side. Um, so, so all all super awesome things. Gina. I'd love to, I'd love to dive into the first pillar of team. I'd love for just to hear you talk about, so couple things. Number one, you've personally worked at all these different businesses. You've consulted in a number of different companies, and then with, with Scale Edge, you've been able to work hand in hand with all these different founder or startup executive teams. Spend a couple minutes talking about that first pillar team. What are, like, along your journey and along all the different things that you've been able to do, what are some of the, the, the key themes or some of the main focus areas that you think our listeners should really be kind of be thinking about when it comes back to how they can build and scale and manage their team in effective way? 

Jean (00:10:50) - Yeah. Um, you know, I have this, uh, story that I've told a number of people. So I started my career many, many years ago. Uh, at one of the things that I did was I coached high school sports. Nice. And yeah. And so, uh, 

Adrian (00:11:04) - What sports gene? 

Jean (00:11:05) - I did, uh, um, actually it was basketball was my, my go-to sport. I played that through college, but um, I also coached, uh, uh, volleyball and fast fish softball. 

Adrian (00:11:16) - Awesome. Nice. Very nice. Any championships to boot here or what? Anything? We well, 

Jean (00:11:20) - Yeah, we had, we had a few, right? We, we, we were, we were pretty successful in high school and, and also in college. So, um, but it wasn't big division one. I was in a division two school, but it was, uh, it was really, basketball was my life for a long time. So, um, team is really important to me. And so I can tell you this story that it really resonated with me and I, I I is like this light bulb went off, is I was coaching this high school sport, high school basketball team. And um, uh, the year that, um, we had an incredible, uh, player. She was so good, so, so motivated. She was like the superstar superstars. And I was coaching a JV team at the time, and what was interesting that year is we won three games. We only won three games with this. 

Jean (00:12:10) - She was amazing. Um, the next year she moved up to the varsity level and I had average team players, right? Average players, and we only lost three games that year, <laugh>. So what it really made me think about is, you know, um, the, the need to have that team cohesion and be able to have each, because what happened was the team, when we had the superstar on the team, they relied on her for sure to do everything. And so then the next year they had to really find their strength and be able to work together as a team to be able to, to, to build on that. And um, I know it sounds a little corny, but I will tell you I've carried that story with me forever because when I build a team or when I'm part of a team, You know what, it's nice to have a superstar, but you have to have the team that is filling in the gaps for each other. 

Jean (00:13:04) - So when I build a team, I know some of my gaps, some of my areas that I need help with, I will hire for that. So, yep. So that's, um, and, and, and I think I've, uh, you know, we've had, I've had some pretty incredible teams. You know, we have our issues and our challenges, but I will tell you, um, even one of my last teams that I worked with, um, prior to scale badge was just amazing. Like, they were rock stars and, and, and if you took them away from each other, they were really strong team members. But you put us together as a whole, I tell you, we couldn't be stopped. So in Scaleup, what we do with, with companies that are starting up or scaling, you obviously as I said earlier, you know, you have only so many resources. 

Jean (00:13:51) - So when you get to that, where you have grown, you have market product, market fit, and now it's time to add somebody to the team, that's a, that's a, that's a big investment because if you don't invest wisely, it's costly and it could take you months to, to get through that and to that mistake. And, uh, in, in scale up, as you know, Adrian, you don't have a lot of time, you know, so you have to move quickly and make decisions along the way. So, So what I really tell people is don't hire for a title. which is really interesting. Is, you know what, you know, I have people calling me up, Oh, I think I need a chief technology officer. Well, why is that? What is it you want them to do? What what I do is I say, say, basically say, um, Get focused on what competency you need to add to your executive team. What are the areas that as a team that you have an opportunity to to fill? with? Um, cuz you know, people like you, Adrian, and, and me and a lot of people who listen to these, uh, podcasts, you guys have worn many hats, you know? So when you tend to hire for a title, really pay attention to what else they have done in their background that they have done well and how does that add to the team? 

Adrian (00:15:10) - I love, I, first of all, I think that's a brilliant piece of advice. It's, especially in today's world, I know that there's a lot of different people that think titles mean everything. Um, look, the bottom line is, it's like you going back to your first point too, like culture is truly one of the most imperative, um, factors in all this, right? You need to, you need to bring someone on when you're at the point where you're ready to bring someone onto the team. And even if you're a huge company, by the way, even if you're a massive company, right? Bringing up 5000th employee, right? Um, making sure that you understand what type of person, what type of traits, what types of factors, uh, are gonna equal your ability to have people that can hopefully, uh, only lose three games instead of only winning three games, Right? 

Adrian (00:15:50) - Right, right. That is, that is huge. The other piece too, for our startup founder friends, like Jean, I couldn't, I couldn't agree with you more in terms of like, Sometimes too by over focusing on these titles, over focusing on trying to slam a circular object into a square  hole, you absolutely can trip up some of your organizational growth and some of the natural momentum that might occur if you just focus on some of the actual activities or the tasks or think about the things that actually drive your business forward, right? Finding new customers, having awesome activities that equal awareness where people know who you are, know what you're doing. Um, Obviously a product having an awesome product built by, even if it's a small team and if it's a simple thing, but like focus on the stuff that matters, right? 

Adrian (00:16:33) - And I think the other thing too is you're right, there's been so many times I know with similar to Eugene, we work with a number of different venture capital back startup companies. Like there's been so many times where by, I call them false start hires. When you have a false start on a hire and you bring the wrong guy or gal into the business where maybe you give 'em a wrong title or maybe you don't necessarily create picture perfect bulls eyes around what their focus areas in their ownership areas are gonna be, or the areas of accountability and responsibility and authority that you're giving them, that's where you can easily start to kind of deviate from the initial mission or the initial core values or the initial driving driving factors that you're kind of aiming your ship towards, right? Cause once you get these boats out into the ocean, you gotta, you gotta kind of at least know what direction you're sail so that there's gonna be a lot of blips along the way. Well, you gotta at least know what direction you're going in. And Paul, a falls started on the wrong type of leader, the wrong type or adding the wrong type of role early can have devastating effects down downstream. So I think that's, that's really awesome advice. 

Jean (00:17:30) - You're right. Both culturally, financially, and, um, really impacting your customers as well. You go along the way. Um, you know, I, uh, I tell this, you know, I, I think I have a 17 year old son, he's in high school, and I tell people, you know, by the time he gets out of college, the title that he's going to have get his job is probably not even created yet different than when I started, um, yours and New Years ago, right? Um, titles tend to stay the same, but I really focus on what are their core competencies. You know, you know, you talk about communication and you know what, um, you know, I, I look for people that can learn quickly and they have stories to tell that can speak to that with their experiences. So yeah, it's, it's, it's important. It's, we're in a people business, you know, one way. I mean, people go, you know what, well, don't you build product? Yes. But you know what, the product could be the shiniest little, you know, uh, tool out there. But if I can't, you know, get people rallied around it, you know, um, go after the vision and work with customers with, from a people perspective, I don't care how good the product is. That's, that's where I look at it. 

Adrian (00:18:42) - Totally agree. Jean people, people buy products and services from other people. Yeah. And the products and services are built by people, Right, right. All day long. I love that. Right. Um, Gene, let's dive into the second CX pillar tool. So this is kind of, this is cool. I was excited to chat with you about this cuz, and you and I have talked about this in a bunch of our conversations over the years, years, but like, you get to see, well, number one, you get to see a lot of different tools being built, right? A lot of the customers and a lot of the clients that you're working with are building these incredible, you know, new pieces of technology and stuff that, that are gonna drive companies into the future. Um, but then you probably use a bunch of different tools yourself to manage scale up edge and, and, and just to keep all the different things that you guys are doing, I'd love for you to spend a couple minutes talking about tools and, and really how along your journey you've kind of seen, um, certain executive teams or certain founding teams do a dynamite job of managing their tech stack and managing the technology that they're investing in. 

Adrian (00:19:33) - And then I'm sure you've seen the opposite where you've seen other, other companies where like, what are you guys doing and why are you spending all this money, like drunken sailors? So like, yeah, for you to spend a couple, couple minutes talking about tools. 

Jean (00:19:43) - I had a, so I, um, boy, I could talk a lot about this, uh, because there's so many tools out there and there's, they're all good. They're all good. And, and I say that, well, I shouldn't say all of them. So you know what, the majority of the tools out there are amazing.

Jean (00:20:00) - Know, you've got a lot of people that have great ideas. Um, I had a company come to me about a month and a half ago that said, Okay, what's the best community out there? And you know, here, you know, I'm looking at these different kind of systems and, and I said, Wait a minute. You're, you're, uh, you're moving too fast. Don't buy don't buy the system and try to figure out how to put it into your business. What is it you're trying to solve? What is it you're trying to do with, with this? Um, what is your processes and what's the best way to do that? So I said, If you don't understand the process ahead of time, what your needs are, go in and buying a tool, you, you, it could be a hit or miss. You know? And I said, To tell you the truth, if you're chasing after that shiny little ball that's going out there, that little toy, that little tool out there, I said, Next week there's gonna be one that's even better. So you gotta really focus on that piece of it. Um, and I think that really resonated with them. I start, I was part of a company prior to Scallop Edge that, um, you know, I was, uh, their chief transformation officer. And uh, um, one of the interesting things with them is that they had about 400 different systems, and it was a midsize company. And what was happening was people in their different business lines were buying a tool that they were used to 

Adrian (00:21:17) - Okay. 

Jean (00:21:18) - In their prior life to use. So, and, and it was all good, but nobody was paying attention to what is it we're trying to accomplish cross-functionally. Yeah. And so that, that's the, that's probably the, the biggest tip that I would say to you, um, from that perspective and, um, is to really understand when you're, if you're chasing software, think about first what you need to do. Um, are there good tools out there? Absolutely. And, and I would tell you some of those good tools that I've used are the ones that I have experience with. You could probably say the same thing. Totally. Yeah. With what you've used are good tools. So, so I would say, think about that, but I would also, um, the other thing going back to what we talked about earlier is the learning from each other. You know, I, I would not be afraid to, to pick up the phone and call one of my, um, uh, people that, uh, within my network and say, Hey, I'm looking for a customer experience tool. What, what do you use? What do you see best about it? What's going on with that? And, and know that getting a couple, um, people's insight from that, from your network, uh, from the community is I think as important as you trying to figure out what you're trying to solve. 

Adrian (00:22:30) - Could, I could not agree more. Jean, I think it's funny that you're right. There's, there's almost like, uh, this piece of like, um, not putting, you know, the car before the horse here where, and you mentioned the process, and we're gonna dive into that a second. But like, you're right. If, if, if, if you're not taking the time to delicately or, or to carefully map and understand all the different use cases, all the different needs, all the different feature sets that could theoretically apply, not just to marketing, not just the sales, not just the ops, not just the finances, but the many. Um, and then more importantly, like everybody knows, you know, good data and bad data out. And I'd say a lot of companies, especially, especially in the venture world, right? Where, to your point, once a company raises some capital and once a company starts to be able to hire guys and gals that have been there, done that, they've already got exactly like they, they already know inside of their playbook, which three tools they're gonna come in and ask for on day one, so that they can start doing all the things that you're asking them to do with leading their, their, their area of expertise. 

Adrian (00:23:26) - You're starting to, uh, number one, fragment all of this information across the customer journey. Um, number two, on the employee experience side, uh, whether you realize they or not, you are putting your team in an same position because then they're, they're stratifying a lot of the customer data and a lot of the new findings and learnings and the things that are happening within your portfolio, which makes a totally separate mess for your data science team, your analytics team. Um, the other piece too though is this is where even in a, in a world that's supposed to be incredibly collaborative, building an open, working with each other and, and really trying to build across a, an incredible customer experience, you're building silos and you're building different, like tranches of department and team early into the DNA of the business. And that's crazy. The last part is this, and this is just as like the founder and me, the brass tax guys. 

Adrian (00:24:11) - Like the minute that you start to go from having three excellent primary tools that can effectively manage 95% of the things that you need to do at this level right now today mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and you start getting into the world of having 400 solutions at X dollars a month. Right? I'm gonna, it's gonna be hard to find a CFO that likes that whole story, Right? That's not, that's not a good place to be. But the, but the last part too is I just think over the last three years with Covid and just with the great resignation and all these new stories that are leading around different ways of thinking about CX and ex, I've got, we've worked with a number of different companies at cxc. Gene, were a huge part of the employee consternation. It is actually fueled, and it derives from what we're talking about right here, meaning they already know that there's 400 tools. They know that 80% of them are wildly underutilized if used at all. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then the other part is because they're sitting in that seat. Every single saw Terry Day, they see the fragmentation and they see the lack of being able to tell one story or one view across the business. And that's kind of right there. Like how some of the, how some of the ex stuff can start to creep into the CX.

Adrian (00:25:13) - Stuff, right? Cause you've got a bunch of people that aren't thrilled to be there and you've got a bunch of people that are kind of annoyed that they've already given all this incredible feedback around how you could optimize, iterate, and innovate, right? Nobody's taken it and you're just going to buying another tool instead of giving someone a raise, right? That's gonna be pretty old pretty quick, right? That's not necessarily a fun place to be. 

Jean (00:25:30) - Yeah. I will tell you that company that had the 400 systems, uh, it definitely was, uh, an easy way to kind of go, Okay, what, what should we do from, you know, how should we lower that cost? Cuz it was, it was a, it was a huge cost, but what we did, and I probably gonna get into the process stuff, but what we did is, let's still 

Adrian (00:25:48) - Into it. Let's dive that process. 

Jean (00:25:50) - So what we did is we said, Okay, let's go through and understand the customer journey. So we went through from sales order all the way to that customer experience success side of things. And we went and we mapped it out and, and we also identified what systems were enga were involved in that customer journey. And, um, it was interesting for, so we took separate, um, groups of people and we said, Okay, what do you do? What comes, what's the input and output and what systems do you use? And so when we put it all together for the team to come back to look at it from an end to end perspective, um, you know, there were a lot of people that were saying things like, I didn't realize you did that too. Yep. Too t o, right? Yeah, yeah. Duplication. Um, oh, you, you pull that from that system. 

Jean (00:26:37) - That's the same stuff we pulled from this other system. So you know what it was. Um, and it wasn't because people are bad or trying to do the wrong thing. It's that what happens and what happens, and I see this is companies grow so fast, they grow so quickly and they hire, they'd have to hire quickly and they have to bring people on. And you know, at startup scale up companies, you know, you tend to not have a really strong onboarding. So people do what they think is, you know, what is best. And, and, and so that company got to a place because they grew so quickly without, um, you know, connecting dots. And that's really we did as a team is as a group of people, we then connected the dots and said, Okay, here's the issue here. Let's solve this from a customer experience perspective. Because it goes back to what you said is not only is it, uh, employee experience that was challenging and manual and you know, people were working like crazy many hours, but also that customer experience, it was growing so quickly that we were starting to, to feel the impact. We were starting to see the impact that we were we were making to the customer. 

Adrian (00:27:47) - Yep. I look, I think Gene, it's funny when people, when when people think about process and people start talking about journey maps, whether it's customer journey maps, employee journey maps, product journey maps, I continue to be, and again, I know I'm, I'm lucky cuz I have a lot of these conversations every day. But like I continue to be blown away by how many teams they misunderstand the value of doing that mapping. Meaning when I first, first of all, when I think about a customer journey map, for example, one of the, one of the correlating bars that I would think about while we're working with our customers is literally understanding not just like the different mediums that you're using and the different needs and likes and dislikes, but I also think about the data management piece, right? I think about mm-hmm. <affirmative>, especially when you're a growing company, cuz this is when it's actually technically easier to build some of the stuff in earlier and have it baked into your dna. 

Adrian (00:28:39) - Obviously as you raise more funds, as you go sell the next 5,000 customers, you can obviously afford different types of solutions and things like that. But on the process side mm-hmm. <affirmative>, there's not enough companies that think about their customer journey map. And then alongside it, think about the different analytical steps or the different things that you're already measuring accounting or think about some of the different performance metrics and KPIs that theoretically you already know what's important say in the, in the awareness and the consideration phase. A lot of companies getting excellent in understanding onboarding. They know that the better that you can run a customer through onboarding, the higher the probability that they're gonna be sticky, they're gonna be engaged, they're gonna be promoters cause they're gonna see the value of your product or your service right outta the gate. And then you get into the account management world. 

Adrian (00:29:17) - What do you do to retain people? What do you do to upsell people cross sell people. My point here is, is like for people that wanna say that some of these journey maps are, are, are useless or they're not, they're not really helpful. I don't think you, you maybe have seen how they're done properly and I don't know that you maybe had the right people around the table to help create a complete picture. Cause you just said connecting dots. I think about journey MEPS almost as blueprints. I think if they're done properly and if, if they're done really well, again with the right ES around the table, not just a bunch of CXRs, that's not gonna work, right? Sales, you gotta have ops, you gotta finance, you gotta have tech for sure. Then you get CX and CS for the color and then you gotta have executive sponsorship, uh, built into that. Right? If you don't have executive sponsor or two yes, take into this, nothing's gonna happen. And then you're basically starting from scratch. But I love it 

Jean (00:30:00) - And it's a lot, it's a lot of work and time that you take out of somebody's, uh, day if you don't have that sponsorship. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Exactly. Well, you, you know what the other thing, um, I will tell you, um,

Jean (00:30:11) - Uh, prior to this role that I, I was experiencing that I, the customer journey piece prior to that, I will tell you, um, some of the bigger companies, we would talk about journey maps and it would take, um, it would take months and months to get it completed. And I will tell you that customer journey mapping when I started my career was a, was like a year long process. And by that time, I don't know what, what it was, but I had this really negative connotation about journey mapping, customer journey mapping. But I will tell you, I have grown through my, uh, experiences and understand the importance of it. And really what I do, anytime I I go about any kind of a process to help out, I always start what is the as is process. So when you do a customer journey map, in my world, uh, in my thinking is you're kind of doing the as is experience of that customer. 

Jean (00:31:06) - What is a customer gone through? What are they experiencing? And, and, um, boy, I think it is probably one of the most important things to understand so that as you think you're making some good choices and changes along the way, as you grow, you're taking in consideration how is that gonna impact that customer journey. Yeah. Yep. And, and so it's, uh, yeah, it sounds like big business. It is interesting. Uh, when we did it in that company that I referred to, I had a couple of people say, Oh, this is gonna take forever. We got it done in a week. Yeah. Um, but we, we rolled up our sleeves and really worked hard at it. And that's why I think what you guys do at your company, Adrian, was what you guys do, I think is so critical for a lot of these companies that are scaling through the process is pay attention to that. 

Adrian (00:31:49) - Jean, I'm, I'm glad that you said that because hearing you say it like that, like I think it's almost like trying to watch a movie over when you mentioned the one example, it won't potential path at like a large organization. I get large companies, it's harder to do anything, but if you're gonna take 12 months to watch a movie, how good's that movie gonna be, it's probably gonna, people are gonna see it in different doses. There's gonna be like, whereas if you can, if you can watch that movie and the two hours it was intended to be watched. And, and I'm glad that you call this out because um, at ccc some of the, some of the customer journey mapping work that we do, we try to fly through it. Number one is to get people excited about all of the opportunities cuz right, you're literally documented and defining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats you're giving people oftentimes, especially at these venture companies, you're oftentimes giving them the first time that they can actually look at their business or look at their journey in one, in one place, right? 

Adrian (00:32:37) - One view. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And lastly, um, and selfishly you're teeing up the CTAs on the spot. You're literally seeing up calls to action required to, even if it's just the low hanging fruit, even if it's the quick and dirty stuff that you can bang out and you can kind of see some quick wins and some quick results. But like, that's one of the reasons why we try to fly through our stuff, is get people cranked up and motivated and almost as fast as possible, show them how quickly we can identify and bring you right to a CTA place where we can start doing prioritization, we can do delegation ownership. Uh, ROI is another big piece. A lot of, especially in the startup world, when a, when an executive team, a younger executive team especially, can sort their CTAs by roi, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And you can see literally which, which calls to action are, require the biggest, they're gonna have the biggest bang for your buck or the biggest return for your investment. 

Adrian (00:33:20) - Why wouldn't you follow that type of a methodology? But again, there's a lot of different ways of doing this. And even with our listeners right now, I bet you're some listeners listen and go, Dude, I don't do like, that takes me a month to, to bang out a journey and I've gotta, you know, I've gotta do all my stick notes and I gotta do all the different sessions and I gotta have all the different SMS come in at different. So like, I get it. There's a ton of different ways you can do this. But, um, I'd love to dive into the last, uh, the fourth and final six pillar feedback. And I was excited to chat with us about you. And this is a good segue, but I'd love to kinda hear some of the things that have worked for you along your journey with ways that you've kind of really tapped into getting and using customer feedback and ways that you've tapped into your teams and your employees and how you've been able to use some of that feedback, that feedback to drive innovation. 

Jean (00:34:01) - Yeah. I, uh, so you know what it, um, don't be afraid to ask your customers, you know, um, and listen to what they have to say. So, so one of the companies that I used to work for a few years ago, um, they brought me in as a general manager for one of their, um, a third of their, um, uh, uh, revenue stream. Um, and, and, and it was a healthcare vertical that we were supporting. And it was, um, you know, a speech analytics company. So, uh, they had, um, so it was really, really interesting. We had some very large healthcare companies that, uh, were part of our client base. And when I started to go out and, uh, and it was, it was a SaaS technology company that we, um, supported, uh, their, their call centers, uh, around, um, customer satisfaction. And so when I went out and identified all the customers and I went out and visited them, they said, You're the first person that has visited us outside of sales. 

Jean (00:35:04) - And I said, Okay, well let's, let's talk about things. And, and I will tell you, um, eight out of 10 customers that I was talking, that I was talking to, they were going to, um, not renew Wow. Their subscription because you know what? They, they didn't know how the product needed to be used. All they were getting were new, um, you know, upgrades and, and things just weren't happening as well as they, and they were getting, they were having turnover at their executive level, so they didn't understand what the product did for them. So, so pay attention to cus your customer base of their, not so much turnover, people getting, you know, promoted and moving back. You know, you're getting new people coming in pay attention to that because they have a different set of, um, kind of experiences with what your product is that's coming into it that, that they're coming into. 

Jean (00:35:58) - But so long story short, we um, we paid attention. We saw, uh, quite a few gaps that we needed to feel along the way. A lot of it was just really, um, educating them as to the value and what, and, and, and understanding what their, their gaps were. Um, and to be able to bring some solutions and work with them to, to get things going. So, so some of the things I do with, uh, customer experience, I, I've ran customer success teams. I was part of a company that had two people <laugh> that were uh, um, really driving the customer retention group, which was crazy. Um, and, uh, they couldn't even connect with, uh, their customers and be able to work with them. So, uh, we put in place, you know, some automation that made sense to be able to get more feedback. So get feedback, know that you can't fix for every customer out there. 

Jean (00:36:54) - Yep. But what you can do is you can, um, understand what are and prioritize and what are the biggest gaps out there, but communicate not only the first time, but give feedback back to the customer. I, uh, I ran a very large, large call center for telecom, um, many years ago. And, uh, it was a tier one technical call center and, uh, my boss at the time said, Gene go out to, and it was out, you know, Ohio and they, and he said, you know, their customer satisfaction scores were like in the toilet, you know, go out there and assess to determine should we shut it down, should we keep it running? And so one of the first things I did is I went to the team and I said, I know you probably wonder why I'm here. And they knew they weren't doing well. 

Jean (00:37:37) - So I said, Let's figure out how we're gonna solve this. Um, so we did a so, so get your team involved in understanding, cuz everybody wants to do, you don't go to, you don't go to work and say, Okay, I'm gonna do a bad job. <laugh>, they knew they were do not doing well. Yeah. But they they wanted to fix it. Yeah. But one little thing I'll just share with you, and this is the old school way is, so we had some very large customers that we supported their, their, uh, network. So when their network went down, whew, that was not good. So we would work, we put some SLAs in place, but we would send them my, my, it was a recommendation of my team, send them a postcard to say, thanks for being a customer. You know, you know, it was, it was, uh, you know, we'll keep an eye it, whatever they wrote, it was a handwritten note, just short. 

Jean (00:38:23) - I know that's old school. We mailed it to the customer and they loved that. But you know, this day and age, it's more probably digital that would go along with that. But it's just, but, but if you think about whatever that medium is is it's really about communicating and following up and, and, and, you know, following your sword. If it does, if it didn't work, you know, just be on open and honest and just work with your customers on that. Cause they're the ones that they want you to succeed too. They don't want you as, as a company to fail because your failure is their failure. Hundred percent. So, so they want to, they wanna figure that out. Some customers are harder to work with than others. You know, that's just part of the, part of the job that 

Adrian (00:39:06) - Is definitely part of the job. And that is something that I very much guarantee you. Our listeners are probably thinking about some of their examples of some of those difficult customers. But again, difficult customers do help us with driving innovation. They help us with understanding what, where future investments need to cover on future hires. They help us with understanding what tools or what processes need to be adjusted or reinvested in. And, and, and, and frankly they keep us on our toes, right? And I know that they can be difficult and it's never fun to, to get smoked with a, with an irate customer. That's, that can be difficult. But you do grow from it. You do get better from it. And then on top of it, there's ways of, of creating separate processes and separate systems for even managing that. So Gene is, that's all awesome stuff. 

Adrian (00:39:44) - One last one last quick comment on your, um, your, your example there of the handwritten notes. Be creative with different mediums guys. Cause Gene spot on or even in a digital world and even in a world where so many of us are focused on building digital experiences with our products or services, the way that you even engage with your customers, be open to different mediums. We've even had past guests, Gene on the show who literally are, are running a multimillion dollar business helping do handwrittens for people who have huge customer portfolios. Cause it still work and people do still like getting different modalities like, like, like a maller here or, um, different tangible things that can get sent to a, People still love that stuff. So like 

Jean (00:40:22) - I do, don't you, I mean you love it. Do 

Adrian (00:40:25) - A little surprising delight. Everybody likes to surprise at a delight. It's a nice, And then the last, at the very least, any customer, even the griest of customers, they're gonna say at least they tried, This is interest. Try. They did something different. And people like, they like the try, right? They like what we're trying to be creative and stay ahead. So Jean, um, before we let you go, first of all, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. Um, where can people find out more about you if people wanna learn about Scallop Edge, if they wanna learn about some of the awesome things that you're doing, um, where can people find you? 

Jean (00:40:54) - Yeah, we have a website@scallopedge.com scale, you know, S C A L E E D G E all one word.com. And, uh, what we do is we focus, uh, we're basically, uh, you know, we're creating a leadership development platform that delivers, uh, um, through a SAS marketplace to help, uh, scale up executives to grow and learn from other successful scale up executives. So it kind of fits into what we've talked about today where learn from each other, build the network. We have, um, content, uh, packaged up for people to learn what they need, when they need it, um, and how they want it delivered, but also, um, we help grow that community and that network. And so our goal is, uh, creating a, a digital platform that opens up that, uh, ecosystem for scale up text. 

Adrian (00:41:43) - I love it. Well, Jean, it's been an absolute pleasure having your show and obviously I will look forward to our next chat. Um, and thank you so much for coming on and joining the Seeks Nation today. 

Jean (00:41:51) - Yeah, you bet. Thank you so much for having me. I always enjoy, uh, conversations around a customer and I learned from you every day that we talk. So let, let's keep it up. Take.