The CX Files #2 - Sarah Caminiti
===

Hello and welcome to the CX Files. Today's guest is Sarah Caminiti, the head of U. S. customer service at Abcam, a leading biotech company, and the host of the Epical Growth podcast, which is about to end its first season. She's a popular voice in the CX community, and she will be speaking at Elevate CX London on November 8th.

I'm your host, Ben Foden. I've been working in customer facing roles for over 10 years. Many of them at my current company, Helpfield, where I'm the regional director for North America. Take care. So listen on to uncover the mysteries and understand the secrets of great customer experience. The CX Files was started to investigate the challenges of customer experience together with industry leaders who've seen it and done it.

So Sarah, what's one thing that you've experienced in your CX journey that was mysterious or downright surprising? [00:01:00] Oh, that's a great question. I think that something that was mysterious or surprising in the CX space is How incredible of playing ground for understanding how to communicate with others this CX space is and through that.

It's, it's just back and forth with people, you get to experiment, you get to have wins, you get to have failures and recover from them at rapid speed. And that has helped me through my career of, I guess it's getting rid of some naivety and not thinking that everything's going to be perfect the first time around.

And, and. Knowing that it's okay and you can still have a great conversation with someone, even if you flub in the beginning. Um, but, uh, but it's a very powerful space to grow and explore and have an impact. And, um, I don't think it gets enough [00:02:00] credit for the possibilities that live within this space.

Absolutely. I agree. And I think it is kind of a, it's almost a hidden industry, isn't it? It is. It, you know, a lot of businesses, they don't, they don't trumpet the successes of CX. They don't put that on the front page of their marketing, so to speak. Um, you know, maybe if they have a great sales leader or if they have a great developer or, you know, a great scientist or something like that, that person's going to get, you know, front page coverage.

But, but CX and service is kind of a little bit, you know, behind the scenes and I think that's a shame. I agree. I agree completely. And it's really pretty funny when you think about it that it is not the front and center thing to celebrate because we are front and center. We are the people that everyone is talking to, um, after you have sold the product.

If you want to continue to prove the [00:03:00] greatness of what it is that you're offering. You have to pour your heart and soul into an incredible customer experience, and that takes work, it takes time, that takes patience, and it takes skill, and the customer experience field is filled with that. With some of the most skilled human beings that I have ever had the pleasure of coming into contact with and I've learned that through my podcast.

I've learned that through mentoring. I've learned that through just asking questions and seeing how people. Everybody in this community is to help and be thorough and thoughtful in the way that they help. And that just shows what they do every single day without thinking. They just are so thoughtful.

And the customers feel that every day. Absolutely. I mean, this field is, it's a filter for people who are thoughtful and who are [00:04:00] caring and who, you know, want to help. Right. Um, so I want to, I want to ask a little bit about your experience, um, at Abcam and a little bit about your work background. Um, when you first started working at Abcam, I see, um, you know, that you've been there a little bit less than a year now.

What was the biggest surprise you got when you, when you started working with the first customers there? And is there a story you can tell us? Well, Abcam is a very different space than what I'm used to. I am from startups, I'm from SaaS, I'm from bootstrapped companies, really, really small global teams.

And I joined Abcam for a couple of reasons. My boss, H. J. Cohn, is a gift to this world, and I am so honored to be able to learn from her. Um, but also it is a large corporate company. And I wanted to test some theories about leadership in a different setting. And I wanted [00:05:00] to get out of my comfort zone and see how things operate so I can better connect with others in the CX space when I'm having conversations with them, when I'm coaching them, when I'm mentoring them.

And, uh, I wanted to see what it was really like in, in this sort of an environment when everyone is not talking to each other all the time, because there's thousands of employees instead of, of a couple. Um, and, uh, also I wanted to see what would happen if I didn't have to wear a million hats. And that was, I think, the biggest surprise.

It is, uh, it is being in a space where your role is so defined. Your goals are so defined and the opportunity for, for change is there, but it's much slower and having to [00:06:00] pause and really plan and really communicate, um, is something that I'll be honest, I'm still adjusting to. It is, I'm used to brainstorming, coming up with an idea, seeing what happens, tracking the impact, and then deciding do we need to have this evolve or do we need to pivot, uh, or let's just see how it goes.

And when you're dealing with such a large corporation where you're, when you're dealing with as many customer interactions a day that, that we're dealing with, um, That can't happen because there's a lot of different people that even just in your direct team. I mean, I have about 30 people under me and I come from a company of 30.

So it's a, it's, it's a big adjustment there. But another. Another thing that wasn't really a surprise, but a pleasant reminder is that a customer is a customer. It doesn't matter where you work. It doesn't matter what [00:07:00] product you're, you're, you're trying to support. It doesn't matter the type of people that you're interacting with every day.

The basics are the basics. And it is really easy to forget that You're doing the same thing. Your skills are so transferable across industries when you work in CX. I'm coming from a bootstrapped sass about DNS and domain management. Something, honestly, I still know very little about. Uh, cause that is a complex world.

Um, But, uh, then I'm coming into biotech, where we're creating antibodies for cancer research, something I also know nothing about. But I do know how to ask questions. And I do know how to put together Information for a customer that's easy to digest. And I know how to teach people to feel empowered and safe to have the kind of customer [00:08:00] interactions that the customers and the employees deserve to have.

And so it was just a nice reminder that we're all, we're all on this journey together and, uh, you can paint a package for a different kind of product any way you like it, but still those, uh, those touch points remain the same. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, humans are humans. And, um, as much as we're different, um, there's also a lot of similarities, you know, same with companies, right?

I think, um, a lot of the points you've touched on, you know, my experience personally is definitely more on the, uh, the former, um, company that you mentioned, um, the, the DNS provider, I believe, um, but, uh, yeah, I think, you know, with a big company, there's a lot of challenges. There's a lot of inertia. Right. Um, but there's also some, some opportunity to focus and get really, you know, get really dialed in on what you're doing.

Um, so, um, before I talk to you a little bit more about, um, AppCAM, I'm just curious, uh, as a [00:09:00] customer or providing customers, uh, service or providing a customer experience, either side of that interaction, is there one experience in particular that's really memorable to you? I think I have to go back many, many, many years to when I worked at a clothing store when I was in high school, and it was My second retail job, and it was always a very comfortable space for me and, uh, I had, it was a slow night.

I grew up in rural Maine. And so this was like one of like three clothing stores in the area. Um, and it was considered like a city. It was not a city. It was a small town. Um, but, um, so I was working in this clothing store. This woman came in, she was a new mom and I remember it like it was. Yesterday, and it was 20 years ago.

Um, and I just acted like her personal shopper. I gave her all of my attention. [00:10:00] I was honest with my feedback. I was excited for her when I could tell that she felt beautiful. And I gave her. my time and showed her that I valued her enough to devote my time and energy to making sure that she feels awesome when she left the store.

And it wasn't intentional. She was a lovely person. I had a blast when I was doing it. It was a heck of a lot better than folding jeans in a corner for seven hours. Um, but, uh, but about a week later, my manager pulled me in. To her office and, uh, and she said, I got this letter and it was a letter from the CEO of the clothing company from Maurice's.

And the woman that I gave, you know, a couple hours of personal shopping to had figured out a way to contact the CEO of this large [00:11:00] clothing company and tell them about her experience and how meaningful it was. And, um, And then the CEO got back to my boss and, you know, it was a, it was a really lovely exchange.

But that was one of the solidifying moments of how much of an opportunity we have to make people's days, weeks, years, sometimes, depending on what it is that you're doing, better. And to remind them that they deserve. To have a special interaction and that's carried with me forever if I can just laser focus on someone and make them feel special for a little bit of time, something that I didn't think too much about after it wasn't like this whole planned thing.

Think about how amazing it is to have 20, [00:12:00] 30, 40, 50 opportunities for that every single day. And if I can teach my teams to see. the power of thoughtful interactions, purposeful and intentional and value driven interactions with these customers, where we do close the loop and we say thank you after they reply to us.

We don't just close that email or we do ask follow up questions because we're not trying to get that response rate down to one. We're trying to actually help the customer. And, um, understand the customer and we're not making assumptions, which is what my talk in Elevate CX London is about, to stop making assumptions because it's one of the worst things that we can do in CX, but to learn and to explore and to just give our time to these customers.

And, uh, Yeah, I think that it's something that is easy to forget when we're in the thick of it, when we're [00:13:00] in the queue, when we're stressed about how we're not getting the information we need from other teams. We have an opportunity to do great things so many times in the day and there really isn't another industry, especially in the tech space.

I mean, sure, if you're working as a doctor and you're saving lives and those sorts of things, you get many, many opportunities for that. But within the tech space, when you're, when you're talking to people, you're changing how their day goes. It's a big responsibility and you've got to take it seriously, but you also need to celebrate it too, because we don't give it, we don't give ourselves enough time to celebrate the good things here in CX.

I think you're right. And, and I, one of the themes for me and CX that keeps coming up that I really, I really love is this idea that. Normally, you know, not always, but many times when people come into this flow, a [00:14:00] customer comes in, it's usually because something is wrong or they have a problem or they have a challenge.

There's some negative impetus, right? There's some negative motivation. They want to fix something. And if, if you have the opportunity, if it's a new mother shopping for clothing or if it's You know, uh, a lab tech looking for a reagent for whatever experiment they're running or whatever. It's a person coming in that needs some, some help of some kind usually and they're usually feeling some kind of stress or some kind of distress.

They're in some kind of concern or they're in a state of need and the Unfortunately, many times I think they assume that that's going to be a bad experience, right? That they're not going to get the answer that they want, they're not going to find a good solution, they're going to get brushed off, you know, they're going to get, you know, a, uh, a too over optimized interaction.

Right for efficiency and time savings and so on and it's not going to be good [00:15:00] and then we have the opportunity to to divert that or not divert that but um to transform that from A negative into a positive and now their negative expectation has been You know many many many times exceeded and they have a big smile on their face And they're so motivated that they you know, write a letter to the ceo or something, right?

Yeah and that transformation is is magical. I mean, it feels great. It's wonderful, right? When we're expecting to have a bad rainy day and then the sun comes shining, excuse me, that's, that's a great feeling. Yeah, it is. It is. It's, that's such a perfect way to put it because you're right. People don't reach out to support because they're wanting to talk about this cool trick they taught their dog.

They are talking to support. They're reaching out support in a moment of vulnerability because You have to be vulnerable to admit that you can't continue on independently. Uh, you don't know what [00:16:00] kind of stressors are on the other end or pressures they're feeling on the other end. And, They have probably been burned by other customer experiences in the past.

And so, yeah, they're going to assume this is going to suck. They're going to assume that this is going to take so much time that they are not going to meet their deadline now that the person isn't going to understand, or it's going to be an, a chat bot that is going to take them around and around and around and around.

And, uh, and it is sad. That, that is the, the initial vibe that reaching out to support provides. But, uh, when you can have that positive interaction, it's, it's one of my favorite things about CSAT. I am not a big fan of performance based metrics. If. You have hired a group of people that you have trained, given them the tools to be successful, and you trust because, I mean, [00:17:00] why are you trying to track and make assumptions about stuff within the interaction, uh, off of something as broad as time or, or Um, uh, I don't know, some angry person's review of something that the person that they are angry about or angry at had nothing to do with at the end of the day.

But the cool thing about CSATS is it gives you the opportunity to see those teeny tiny quick interactions, how powerful they are. And with. With the, the increase of AI communication and don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm going to be on a panel later this week talking about AI and CX. I think that there is so much incredible opportunity to optimize internally with AI, but it's when we aren't thoughtful with how that reaches the customer, [00:18:00] that's where there's the problem.

And it is, uh, It's one of those things with, with the conversation of you're trying to take away all of those, like, I forgot my password type of, uh, emails or touch points. And I do see the value in, in reducing that because you're bringing the answer in a much more clear way to the customer. But some of, sometimes it's really important because you set the tone.

And. those CSATs when you get that super high score. And then I used to go through every single CSAT and in my newsletter, I would explain what the situation was for every single CSAT score that we got. So you could see the actual story behind it instead of just a number and one sentence. And, uh, and to see the team beam with pride when they would [00:19:00] have High score.

I don't, I can't remember what the number system is for CSAT. I feel like it's different everywhere, but whatever the, the smiley faces, thumbs up stars, whatever you want to call it is for CSAT. The highest one for helping someone with their, with their forgotten password. And they really just, they sent them a knowledge based article.

They maybe asked a question or told them that they were, uh, thankful that they reached out. Like. And the person was so happy that that happened in the way that it did, that they took a moment to pause and celebrate it. And, We have to celebrate that, too, because those little tiny things plant the seed for the customer to then feel safe to ask more questions or to give feature requests or to say, hey, this doesn't feel right.

Am I doing this right? Instead of just trying to Like MacGyver, the product to, [00:20:00] to fit their needs. Cause they're too nervous to reach out and, and ask questions. And what a shame that is that too often we don't embrace those small, quick exchanges, and we don't embrace curiosity from the customer because.

We're too stressed for time that we miss this huge opportunity to create advocates for our product, to create contributors to the narrative, and, uh, And it's in a tangent, which kind of is my, is my brand, I think, nowadays, uh, but, uh, but there's just, there's a lot of opportunity, there's a lot of opportunity, and it's, it's really a special space to learn if you let yourself learn.

Absolutely, yeah, no, and I follow you on the rant, though, and I think you're hitting on a lot of, a lot of points here that, that people feel. [00:21:00] intuitively, but it's kind of hard to sell sometimes internally, right? Um, and it's kind of leads me into my next question here, which is that, you know, we know that service and support contribute to revenue growth.

It's more than just a cost, right? And that's kind of intuitively, it's obvious. But it's so easy to measure the cost, right? We can say head count is this much tools are this much. Those are very easy to put on a profit loss statement and you're done. Right. And now it's just a number to whittle down, and unfortunately that happens a lot.

Yeah. What is one opportunity or a chance that you see to more concretely connect these experiences, these great CSAT scores, these great moments to connect that service and support with revenue or with the positive that comes from it. Oh, that's such a great question. And it's such a timely one too.

It's so sad to see the conversation continue to skew towards CX as a cost center. And with the [00:22:00] rise of AI, it has opened up these really exciting conversations where these companies are like, Oh my gosh, this AI can do all of these amazing analytical things. And everyone in CX is like, we've been doing that manually for years.

This is just how we operate behind the scenes, but no one really has given us the opportunity to share this information. And so I think that the best way to connect revenue and growth to customer experience is by listening. And you have to be loud. You have to play the long game. It's butting up against each other, but you have to make sure that the noise that you make as a CX leader planned.

You can't just make noise all the time because then no one's going to be listening to you. But gather data. Use data as your driver. For all of your conversations [00:23:00] because in CX, I think a lot of The lack of inclusion in, business decisions and conversations, it's because they think that we're feeling based.

And, we also don't have a lot of confidence because we've not been given this space to explore and experiment on, like C suite level or, or business decision level, because we've been told we're replaceable. We're a cost center. It doesn't, none of this stuff matters. And it does matter. And so use the data to track the trends, use the data to understand what actually is happening in every single customer interaction.

And see if you can get AI tools that let you do that without taking up all of your time. I mean, I used to manually QA. every single interaction that came into the queue. And it was the most powerful thing that I could have done. I became a much more confident leader because I knew exactly [00:24:00] what was going on.

I wasn't QA ing for agent performance. I was QA ing for what is going on in the customer journey that is preventing them from being successful. Because often that first question that they ask is not the actual question. Often that is what they think the question is. And then You dig into it and you realize, oh, there's this whole other thing going on.

And if you start tracking that whole other thing, you start connecting all of these dots. And that leads to people canceling their subscription. That leads to them being passive about the product and, and not, uh, not using it to its full extent because, they don't really care about it. They've got all these other things that they've used to kind of fill in the blanks and eventually they're going to move because their toolbox is overflowing with additives that we probably might have or could have if we actually paid attention.[00:25:00] 

And so the opportunity for impact is to be at the center of every single business decision. Product should be coming to us and, and asking for our information on customer interactions. What are they talking about? What do they like? What do they not like? What are they hinting at? That's a struggle. We should be one of the first people that are doing the, the UX testing because we hear what the customer experience is.

We actually feel what the customer experience is. Having someone that used to work somewhere in something customer related but is now a developer to be the person to do the UX stuff for the initial testing is a horrible idea. They, they don't feel it the way that we feel it. We can use data to drive change, but we can use our feelings of knowing what the customer [00:26:00] experience is to actually advocate for the customer.

And when we get to do that. We then can say, okay, so we have this new product that we're releasing, or we have this upgrade or change. Who are all the people that mentioned this to us? Okay. We have all of this tracked. I'm going to reach out to them and I'm going to let them know that because of them, We are releasing this enhancement feature feature or we're fixing this thing and celebrate them do it publicly post something on LinkedIn about how these are the people and what a differentiator you make yourself in by making that pivot from we came up with all these great ideas as a company because we are brilliant and that is why we are releasing all of these different things to know.

We are a collective, and part of this collective is our customer, and we listen to you so much that I'm going to say the [00:27:00] name of every single person who has hinted at this being something that was a pain point, and we fix it for you, and that is the revenue driver, because People are going to share that.

People are going to tell their friends, oh my gosh, did you know that this service that I use, this little thing that I didn't even really think too much about, they listened to me and they made a change to their product because of me. I'm just on like the 2 a month plan and they listen to me. How special did you just make them feel?

That is the exact same thing for that customer in the fitting room that wrote to the CEO. It is. You told them that I value you enough to listen. Mm-Hmm. and your profits will explode if you do that because companies don't do that. Right. Right. I couldn't agree more. And I, I think the, um, the, the word that I'm thinking of is VOC, right?

Voice of the customer. And I, I think, um, [00:28:00] everybody who's listening to this probably already knows this acronym, but, um, the, the VOC data is kind of the key. I see that unlocks all of these different opportunities. And if you, if you, you know, if you elevate that, if you amplify that, that connects to marketing, like you're mentioning, right, here's an opportunity to share a great story, it connects to sales even, right?

Here's a customer who's more likely to, to buy a new product or to buy more services in the future, right? And so I think, and that, that also elevates your position in the company, because now you can say, look, if we are a customer focused company, here's what our customers are actually saying, right?

Here's the data, here's the numbers. You know, I should be in this conversation. This department should be leading this conversation. You should all be asking us questions. It should be pull instead of push. Right. Um, so I just want to cap off our talk today. Um, with, uh, a little bit of advice from you. So, just in a few [00:29:00] words, if you think about this industry, if you think about other practitioners out there, people who are trying to advance their craft and really get better, what are, what are, like, a few small things that people can do, um, just, just like rapid fire one or two things?

Yes. Uh, I think the first thing is to celebrate yourself. You are so much more powerful and gifted and skilled and wonderful than you give yourself credit for. And I think that we all need to be better about celebrating ourselves and then celebrating the people that are around us. Um, Because we're great.

We are an awesome group of people and we deserve to be celebrated. Um, if you are new to CX or if you are trying to navigate CX, Lean into data. Figure out ways to lean into data. If it means doing it manually for a little while until you can prove that you deserve to have a budget for this, to get the tool that will let you do it.

Um, I think the last piece of [00:30:00] advice is to join Elevate CX Community. It is a group of people that have been on the ground floor building what we know as CX today for years and they are ready to share their information, um, with others and help them be successful.

Um, I host a masterclass every other Friday for the most part there where we talk to different leaders, um, within the CX space and answer those questions and people can ask questions during the masterclass. We've got awesome conferences. It is, it is a place where you find your people. You feel safe. To ask questions, you feel safe to answer questions and it has changed my life in ways that I cannot even explain because, uh, validation is, is necessary to, to want to explore and grow and to know that you are with like minded people, feeling the same things, questioning the [00:31:00] same is, um, is, is very important.

So, so don't, uh, Don't think you're not ready to join a community. You are ready. We want you there and, uh, and join elevate. It's a special space. Absolutely, yeah, and I'm following Elevate, and I haven't joined myself yet, although I think I'll become a member very soon. Um, so, yeah, thank you so much, uh, for talking today, this is your chance to shout out what you've got going on, what you're working on.

If you want to, um, you know, share a link to your podcast or anything else that you'd like to promote, um, now's your chance. Wonderful. Thank you so much for this. So, as we've mentioned, I am the host of Epical Growth Podcast. It is a podcast that came out of nowhere. I'm just finishing up my first season, and it is a place where I celebrate great people doing really incredible things.

I'm doing incredible things quietly and I want to be loud about it and I've had the opportunity [00:32:00] to be gifted with the time of so many remarkable people. And I cannot wait for season two to start because I'll actually have a chance to think about what I'm doing instead of just being thrown into the lion's den.

Um, and, uh, as wonderful as those lions were, um, I, I like to be organized and I think that, uh, that'll be a, a very nice experience. Shift for, for season two, but we've got 25, 26 episodes of season one. Act with tons of key takeaways on how to be the leader. You always want it to be, um, and how that impacts the customer experience.

So please check out Epical growth. Um, you can also find me at, uh, epical operations. com. Um, I have. Uh, blog there where I've been posting a lot of content. I've been doing a lot of work, um, learning about core values and how they align to [00:33:00] your purpose and finding the right role for you. And, uh, and I've had some really great beta testers working with me on this project.

And so if you have questions about whether or not you're in the right space or you're feeling like you're stuck, or you're just curious to see if you, What your core values are and what that means for, for the value that you bring to a company, please reach out. Um, I've been taking on some coaching clients as well through this journey, and it's been really beautiful to watch them answer hard questions and ask hard questions.

Um, and, uh, And, and see what they're capable of, um, but, uh, find me on LinkedIn, talk to me. Don't be a stranger. I, I am new to this public facing space. Um, have only really been doing it since March of this year. Tomorrow is my birthday. And so I will be going into a new year of being totally all in on Owning my skills and my purpose and, [00:34:00] uh, I'm really excited for that because I think we all deserve to live in a world where we are able to articulate our value and celebrate our value.

And if I can help anybody do that, then I think that I have. I have done a good deed for, for my life. Um, so I'm pretty pumped to be in a space where I am today and helping customers explore and grow and helping people too. Sarah, great. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much for joining today and sharing your thoughts and your feeling with everybody.

Um, your passion and your, your enthusiasm really comes through. And, um, you know, I'm, I, for one, I'm, I'm really excited, uh, to see what you're going to do in the next year. And, uh, and I'll definitely be checking out Epical Growth, uh, as well. And, uh, yeah, thanks again and, um, have a great day. We'll, we'll see you guys soon.

Thank you so much. Have a great day, everyone. Tune in next time for the CX files podcast.

Thank you. [00:35:00] Bye.