People Heroes Rising: Behind the Curtain at an isolved Roadshow with Mikela Arnette Senior Director of Marketing at isolved

Customer experience is everything!  In today's episode of People Heroes Rising, William Tincup gains valuable insight as to the process that makes isolved Connect roadshows so top-tier.  To explain this phenomena, guest Mikela Arnette, Senior Director of Marketing at isolved, is pulling back the curtain.

But what separates these roadshows from any other organizational HR event? Mikela explains that they focus on creating a fun and engaging experience for attendees, taking into account their feedback from previous years. Among other efforts, they have implemented elements like a swag room, interactive branding, and some genuine customer interaction. William mentions that every executive he asked about their favorite part of the event brought up the value of connecting and conversing with customers from all walks of life. 

isolved is an outlier in the vendor space. Despite the stigma attached to the word, this organization thrives living outside the confines of expected company behaviors. Their positive and customer-centric approach creates an engaging and refreshing experience for anyone who partakes in their roadshows. If you haven't had a chance to check out one of their events, you might be missing out on some serious organizational change.

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Transcript

William Tincup: 0:06

Ladies and gentlemen, this is William Tincup, and you're listening to the Recruiting Daily podcast. We are broadcasting from iSolve Connect in Palm Desert, Palm Springs, at the JW Marriott. And we're actually going to be talking about some of the people that are behind the scenes of this wonderful event. We're going to go there. We're just going to go there. Mikayla, would you do us a favor and introduce

Mikela Arnette: 0:26

yourself? My name is Mikayla Arnett, and I'm the Senior Director of Marketing over at

William Tincup: 0:30

iSolve. And you help out with events? You're somewhat involved over there?

Mikela Arnette: 0:34

All the pretty stuff comes from my team.

William Tincup: 0:37

So, I mean, first of all, these things are really hard to put on. Uh, they're really hard to execute. They're, they're really, and I've been to a lot of, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I've been to a lot of conferences and a lot of user conferences in particular. This is, this feels different. I mean, even than Nashville. I like Nashville a lot, but I was an analyst, you know, and I was kind of doing analyst y type stuff. This one just feels different. And I don't know what, I don't know how to attribute it, you know, I don't know if it's just the, the desert, I don't know if it's just like, I don't know. Because it's pink, it's because the desert is pink. The desert is pink. What did you do differently? What did the team do differently from Nashville to, uh, to, we'll say Palm Springs, just to make it simple for the people that, geography challenged. Good.

Mikela Arnette: 1:24

Um, so what we do every year when we plan the events is taking into account the experience people have. Every year, when they come, year over year, and in six years, we've learned a lot to make it more fun. I feel like it's not just the product that brings people here, it's the interaction with other people, with our team. Making it fun is what keeps them engaged.

William Tincup: 1:52

Well, like the swag room, you've got a room for swag, for people to kind of come through and pick up stuff, whatever, you know, like that type of stuff. You've got the colors, the brand, it's an engaging brand, it's easy to kind of interact with, it's easy to fall in love with. And, uh, and again, every executive that I've asked this same question, what's your favorite part of Connect, this year's Connect, what's your favorite part? And to a T, every single executive has said, customers, interacting with customers, just seeing them interact, which is really fascinating, and then just interacting with them, talking with them, hey, what's going on, what do you see, you know, this, that, and the other, like, that's not schtick. Like, you can tell that they, they really believe that, that's, that's really what they're here for. They are heart and soul. And, and, and again, it's unusual. I know I've worked with a lot of HR tech, work tech vendors, and uh, I'd say the lion's share, they sell a product and they run. from their customer. Right? Yeah. And, and this sounds like you just tilted your head like you, like this is a foreign concept. It is a foreign concept because y'all sell a product and then run towards the customer. Yeah.

Mikela Arnette: 3:07

It's about making their life easier. Yeah. I mean, if they're spending all their time at work doing all of the tedious tasks that they have to do day in and day out, and some of these HR administrators, they're on their own. Oh, yes they are. How do you have time with your family? How do you have friends? How do you? How do you have a life? Yeah. Yeah. So I think they go hand in hand. You

William Tincup: 3:30

have to. Well, I would tell you, out of the 20, 000 vendors that are out there, that doesn't happen. Y'all are the, what's, in stats, they call it an outlier. You're a statistical outlier, because most people, they, I mean, every vendor hates the word vendor. That's truism. Like every, you go down the hallway of all your partners, if you said vendor to them, they're like, eh, they kind of cringe a little bit. Nobody in the vendor space loves being called a vendor. Y'all truly aren't a vendor. You're a part, you're a partner. You're a part of their family. And you treat them like family. And uh, and that is really unique. And again, the uniqueness of, of Connect, getting them together, and getting them to talk, getting them to interact with each other, that's, that's unusual as well.

Mikela Arnette: 4:13

I just, there's nothing like growing, and you can't do that as a person if you are stuck in your day to day. Um, and meeting other people, learning from them, those best practices, that's why the People Heroes community is so unique, and another reason we've gamified that down there. Um, to really get them involved with other users, so that they can... No, go ahead, Fisher. No, so they can't make the best use of their investment, because it is. That's,

William Tincup: 4:41

I mean, ultimately, that's, that's what y'all are going to be judged on. What they, they're being judged on by the CFO is how much of this, uh, utility of this product actually moves the business forward. If they're not using the product, okay, there's a problem there. So you've got to then sell it to them, you've got, but then they've got to be engaged, they've got to use it, they've got to... Give them back their time so they can be strategic, like, all these things kind of have to line up, but it all starts with having a great product. It doesn't have to be perfect, no, your software is perfect, but you're having a great product and caring about the customer, like caring about the person. And you'll all back that up. I mean, it's, it's woven into your kind of, your being that you, I think you hire for it. I don't know if it's this, I don't know. I I mean, Ryan and I've been trying to figure out how you vet employees.'cause we're like, they all kinda, they all kind of have this thread that goes through them. It's crazy. But y'all that core

Mikela Arnette: 5:37

piece that we care Yeah, yeah. You care about. You're, where you're going, where the person next to you is going, because you can't succeed if the people next to you aren't succeeding, and our customers are the center of everything we do. If they're not succeeding, we're

William Tincup: 5:52

not succeeding. Again, unusual. Very unusual. Just FYI. Terrible way to put it. I'm just telling you, just telling you how it is. So swag? Because there's, there's a swag master here behind the scenes. I don't know who that person is, but I want to give them some type of reward. What's your favorite? Um, I'd say the pickleball set was for my sons, was the favorite of theirs. Uh huh. That was the favorite of theirs. Um, I got magnets today, which, which I love magnets, so I'm a magnets person, so this automatically is a win for me. I don't think that y'all, I haven't, I mean, seriously, my whole house is, I've got isolved stuff throughout my house.

Mikela Arnette: 6:30

Oh, that's so much fun to find different things. Oh yeah. That are unique. I love our little, uh, that mascot action figures. Did you see those? So much fun. Yeah. And then the little

William Tincup: 6:39

poppets. Yep. And, and, and again, you got coloring books. You got all kinds, but see, that's, again, making it fun, making it engaging. You got an engaging brand. It's a fun brand. It's easy to kind of identify with. And then you've given them great, cool things, because like, the key at Swag is not giving them things that they can just go buy themselves. No,

Mikela Arnette: 6:59

it's the things that they wouldn't necessarily use every day. And they're affiliated to their pets, their kids, their life outside of work. I mean, don't get me wrong, we still do some stuff that's within their

William Tincup: 7:12

work. That's okay. That's okay. Sometimes you need that. Sometimes they need magnet paperclips. You know, they need those things, like, okay, well, I mean, my refrigerator's got a ton of those on them. Um, two things. One is, uh, the process to get feedback and understand both from customers, executives, everybody, on what you're going to do next. You probably already have the location spotted or identified it. I'm not going to ask you about that. But... How do you go through the process of getting that feedback, coalescing it, and then going, okay, this is how we're going to make the event better?

Mikela Arnette: 7:47

We leverage our surveys, and I know not everybody submits surveys, so we try and do our best to gamify it, to try and incentivize that. I'm then talking with them throughout the conference, I think getting each touchpoint through their registration process, asking them how happy they are right now, how happy they are when they arrive, how happy they are when they leave, um, those basic questions at touchpoints that aren't an inconvenience to them. Right.

William Tincup: 8:17

A week later, what resonated? What was the thing that they remember? And I guarantee if we, if you ask that question, I guarantee they're going to say interacting with other customers. Oh, always. 100%. Always. All right. Last question. It's, I think, uh, as a recovery marketer, I think marketing is about experimentation. So I've told a lot of CEOs this bit, I'm like, go to a medical supply company, buy a bunch of lab codes, get their names and border on them, send them to your marketing team and let them just throw stuff against the wall. Some of it will work, some of it won't work, but let them experiment. If I'm right about that, what would you like to experiment with? Oh, that's so hard. No, it isn't. Come on. You want to go to different events? You want to... Build a Speakers Bureau for your customers. You want to like put vinyl on a bus and do a bus

Mikela Arnette: 9:08

tour? Like... We're already sampling that for next year. No, I'm already like throwing darts.

William Tincup: 9:16

But you know like I think that's the fun stuff because you've got such an engaging brand and engaged customer base. It's like I wouldn't do anything. What do you want

Mikela Arnette: 9:24

to do? The speakers, I'd love to incorporate more customer speakers into our content here, especially Amberleigh did that a little bit with our In Real Life sessions. I love those. Oh, we do so many different kinds of events,

William Tincup: 9:38

though. See, I know you as a marketer, you have a list somewhere. I don't know where it is, it might be digital, but you have a list somewhere of the things that you want to do. The

Mikela Arnette: 9:47

interactive, immersive things are really fun to do, um, and we did some of that at HR Tech, that we did. And I really love this wall that we're actually sitting behind. This was the one we had where they put their HR... Ideas on the back side, and that was such a cool thought, the motion walls, playing with things that incorporate them is really fun. Oh, you're putting me on camera now. No,

William Tincup: 10:14

no, no, I can't, I'm just gonna get pictures of you, that's all. I'm teasing, I'm teasing. I'm just gonna get pictures of you. Now, you've got a friendship bracelet, what does it

Mikela Arnette: 10:23

say? Oh, for my daughter, she made it for me, it says I love, I love you mom. Well, I gotta keep it. It's my good luck charm.

William Tincup: 10:30

You don't, you don't need anything else. That's all you need right there. You're done. That's great. Thank you so much for coming. I know you're behind the scenes. I know you're kind of, I know that's your bit. I get it.

Mikela Arnette: 10:39

It's great. Thank you for inviting me and chatting with me. I really appreciate it. No

William Tincup: 10:43

worries, and thanks for everyone listening. Until next time.