People Heroes Rising: A Business Strategy of Growth with Mike Flannery Chief Customer Officer at isolved
Nov 20, 2023Season 2Episode 3
William Tincup
How do you incorporate growth and change into your business strategy? In this episode of People Heroes Rising, William Tincup goes to the isolved Connect User Conference in Palm Springs to have some insightful conversations on HR. Our guest, Mike Flannery Chief Customer Officer at isolved, shares on how to spark growth in this insightful episode.
isolved's conferences have been a huge boon for the industry over the years, and their success and improvements are all based on customer feedback. Mike emphasizes on the importance of customers first policy, because at the end of the day businesses are nothing without their customers. Connecting one-on-one with customers is paramount to building a strong relationship that will last through thick and thin. These in-person management techniques range from expertly managing remote teams to 'walking the halls virtually' with the team.
From conferences to customers, Mike wants you to learn how to respect your customers so you can build something that will last the test of time.
How do you incorporate growth and change into your business strategy? In this episode of People Heroes Rising, William Tincup goes to the isolved Connect User Conference in Palm Springs to have some insightful conversations on HR. Our guest, Mike Flannery Chief Customer Officer at isolved, shares on how to spark growth in this insightful episode.
isolved's conferences have been a huge boon for the industry over the years, and their success and improvements are all based on customer feedback. Mike emphasizes on the importance of customers first policy, because at the end of the day businesses are nothing without their customers. Connecting one-on-one with customers is paramount to building a strong relationship that will last through thick and thin. These in-person management techniques range from expertly managing remote teams to 'walking the halls virtually' with the team.
From conferences to customers, Mike wants you to learn how to respect your customers so you can build something that will last the test of time.
This is William Tincup and you're listening to the Recruiting Daily podcast. We're broadcasting from isolved Connect, the user conference. It is in Palm Desert, Palm Springs at the JW Marriott. Wonderful location. Beautiful. Oh my goodness. Couldn't get any better. I, I thought, I mean, first of all, Nashville was wonderful last year. Really was wonderful, and it was intimate, and the hotel experience, all, everything was check, check, check, it was great. This, y'all have gone up, not just a notch, you've gone up several notches.
Mike Flannery:
Yeah, it's, it's been wonderful, wonderful experience, really enjoying it so far.
William Tincup:
So, okay, so we're day two ish. What's, what's been your favorite part of Kinect so far?
Mike Flannery:
Oh, that's, it's, that's really tough to answer, to be honest. I know, I know, because there's a lot of cool things. There's a lot of cool things, and I've had an opportunity to sit on a couple great panels. Okay. Uh, but I have to say the, the most enjoyable thing so far has been meeting directly with our customers. Uh, you know, I had five one on ones with our customers, uh, yesterday, uh, a big customer lunch, customer dinner. So it just, just getting to meet with the customers, understand how they're using the product, what they're seeing from their seat, uh, and, and ultimately how we can help. That's, that's been the most enjoyable thing for me.
William Tincup:
Well, y'all have put customers first since I've, since I've known you. Absolutely. And I think the roadshow, um, I think y'all did 25 last year ish, and 50 ish.
Mike Flannery:
25, 50 ish this year, I've attended about 30 in total over the two years. Okay, okay. You know, which is, again, it's amazing, you know, sitting in my seat, overseeing all of our customer facing operations, it's really important for me Be there with our customers, hear what's working and what's not working, you know, so I can set the right strategic direction for us and ultimately meet the customer where they are.
William Tincup:
What I love about the roadshows is you're, I mean again, we're talking about iSoftConnect, the user conference in a single place. However, this is great, um, you go out and go to cities, I mean, I know we, we went and saw you in Dallas at one point this year, but y'all, y'all just traveled around 50 different, sometimes you went to the same city twice. Absolutely. We're back to the city, and for people that are listening, there's, you know, 50, 75, 100 people in the room, most are customers, if not all, there's some prospects, etc. And they're literally asking and answering questions. So if you can ever go to one of these things, what's fascinating to me is like, They're cracking open the products. It's like, hey, um, I've got an onboarding question and, uh, you know, we want to do this. Oh, okay. Here's how to do this. Like they're solving problems in front of people.
Mike Flannery:
We encourage our customers to come to the Roadshow, bring your laptop, and bring your list of questions. Yes. And we're going to sit with you at lunch. I love that. We'll extend it. I love that. Um, and we started doing these things called power up sessions, where we give customers a little opportunity. In advance, a week or two in advance, sign up for a longer session. Yeah. We'll do a deep dive session. We're sending, you know, very discipline specific folks to make sure we know, hey, what are your problems? What do you want to dig into? What's it, what can we do to help you get the most out of the platform and ultimately help their employees? Because we know that's, that's the most important job we all have is, is making sure that employee experience is really positive.
William Tincup:
Well, and the thing is, is you have all the products and you have partners as well. You have an ecosystem around you. So in case there's something that you don't have or haven't built. You got multiple partners for that and so, you know, we've talked to, we talked to a bunch of customers, uh, yesterday, Ryan and I, and, uh, you know, they love you, like that's the craziest thing in the world to talk to software customers because usually, I mean, not isolved, but usually you talk to customers and you ask them a question, simple question, this is kind of a basic thing we always kind of do. Okay, what do you love about Company X? And what would you change about Company X? So Ron and I asked that question probably 20 times yesterday. They all struggled with what would you would change, what they would change with Company X. Like it was crazy. That's awesome. They would go into, well it wouldn't change anything, we just need to use performance or we need to use like another product, right? It isn't that they would change y'all at all, or the product.
Mike Flannery:
That's incredible. No, and actually what we've done. We've spun up a team, we call it our optimization team, and they're heavy into the roadshows, but their, their entire mission is to get with the customers and make sure they're using what they have, that they understand what they have, uh, because, you know, again, our customers, they, they all have unique challenges, they're all in different industries and portables and states and all the, everything, and making sure that the customer understands the power of the platform that they have, that's more important than, than adding on more modules. Right. They all have a need, but help us, let us help sculpt a roadmap for you. Right. And it starts with using effectively what you have. Well,
William Tincup:
the, what I love about this on several levels, and you know, not that we won't name names, but sometimes companies in our space, they'll have that particular product. So let's say, uh, Let's say it's time and attendance, let's say they have that product, but the, the customer doesn't know they have that product. So they start shopping and looking outside of that and go try to find a time and attendance product that works with their payroll system, it's like, we already have that. It's right here. It's right here. It's right here. We have to hit a button. We have to train you. But it's, you know, again, it's, I studied user adoption for years, and, uh, what I learned about user adoption is, it isn't a game of adoption, it's a game of satisfaction. You gotta get people over the hump of using it, seeing it in their lives every day, making sure that they get the most out of it, but then on the other side of that is, they love it. They love using the software.
Mike Flannery:
Yeah. And we've built our teams around helping to drive that satisfaction. You know, there's nothing more powerful than sitting down with a customer, and seeing how they do it every day, and then showing them that, did you know that this checkbox is right here? It's been in front of your face the entire time. If you just check this... All this different things and stuff happens and seeing the delight on the customer, like you just saved me three hours.
William Tincup:
Oh yeah, oh yeah, that was three hours that they were going to be slogging away, wishing they were doing something strategic, didn't have the time to do something strategic, and now it's like, now you do. Exactly. Imagine if you had the time to do the things on that to do list that you got, you know, every HR leader I know has this to do list, that's, you know, longer than what they can get done.
Mike Flannery:
We need them to focus on the strategic initiatives. How do they drive employee engagement? How do they, how do they better recruit? How do they better onboard, train their new employees? Retain. That's what things are. Because retention... It's the name of the game. You know, you don't want to lose good talent. HR practitioners need to be focused on the strategic initiatives, not the tactical. And that's where we can really help.
William Tincup:
When I talked to you last in Nashville, we talked a lot about CX, uh, but it also seems like you are making and have made a significant investment in EX, the employee experience, but also extending that out to... All of the experience for people to partner experience, et cetera. So it seems like y'all have, at least as a, as a, you know, board and executive team have decided, you know what, all of these experiences are important.
Mike Flannery:
Yeah, and they have to be connected. Yeah. There's, there's no, there's no one that's more important than the other. Right. They're so interconnected, and I'm a firm believer, both as a, as a leader, as an operations leader, as also as, you know, as a software executive here in this, this space. It really comes down to maintaining your key employees and creating a good experience. I want my employees to feel like they're creating value every day. Uh, they need to be, feel fulfilled. They need to have confidence in the company and that they have a great career trajectory. And that translates to the customer experience, to the customer's employee experience. And it's, it's this, it's just ever. Never ending flow. That's right, that's right.
William Tincup:
All connected. You know what, uh, another thing that we learned from the customers, uh, yesterday is that they, they feel that y'all are an extension of their team. So we're asking them, you know, okay, so when things go, like, you know, maybe you don't know how to log in, you know, basic stuff from support to other types of things, what do you do? It's like, oh, I just call my team. We're like, your team, what, what, you know, internally? And they're like, no, I just call my iSoft team. And so they think, and that happened multiple times yesterday, so it wasn't a, just a one to two thing. It was literally there. Customers think of you as an extension or a part of their own HR team.
Mike Flannery:
And I think we've been saying that for years. Yeah. And I really think in the last year and a half, two years, we've, we've turned that corner. Right. Where they actually trust us as part of their team.
William Tincup:
Isn't that crazy? It is. So, let me ask you a question. This is more theoretical than anything else. Because you have multiple modules, would you rather a company that's starting out with isolved use one product and go deep into like all the features functionally? Use everything? Or would you rather them use the platform but not use as much of the platform? That's a great question. And there's no
Mike Flannery:
right answer. There is no right answer. Um, and, and I have to say what... Before I answer it, our mentality is to try and make sure the customer is driving that decision. Perfect. Yeah, that's the right answer. I don't want to push the software on you. I need you to, I need to understand what your challenges are. What
William Tincup:
are your goals? Sometimes it comes down to that practitioner saying, you know what, I just want one thing. I know you have all the things, I'll get to all the things. When you're ready, we're here. We'll assume the one thing and go deep into it, and then you know what, we'll
Mike Flannery:
bring in the next thing. If you try to launch everything... too quickly, right? Usually you can't pace the organization at speed to absorb change.
William Tincup:
It's what software companies don't understand is when they make this is different but when they do a release on a product there's a whole change management thing that happens or should happen. It has to happen. It has to happen right?
Mike Flannery:
It doesn't, it breaks down in all sorts of different places. Yep.
William Tincup:
So, ok, so favorite, um, I think we've already covered that and you've got a session later on today. What's your session about?
Mike Flannery:
Um, so we're talking about funnily enough experience. So it's it's all geared around Uh, experiences, Lena Tompk, myself. Uh, we also bring in our, our chief information security officer, our CFO. Uh, because all of those different, different roles have an impact on experience. 100%. How do we select, just internally, how do we select what tools we're going to use? Right. How do we engage and make sure we have buy in across the executive team and know the direction that we're going in. And ultimately how that trickles down. Yep. Um, and it's a open Q& A format. Uh, so, you know, we want to hear from the customers, we want to hear from the folks in the room. What are the challenges you have and what I love that we did the session yesterday as well. Um, we're talking to customers with 1000 employees and we're talking to customers with 25 employees. But the concept of employee experience, it transcends segment and size.
William Tincup:
It really does. You want to treat people well. Yeah. Again, whether or not you have 1000 or 100 or 25 or whatever it is, you want to treat them well. And they want to be treated well. 100%. At
Mike Flannery:
expectation. And Lena, Lena coined it, so I have to give Lena Tong some credit here, but, um, you know, it's, it's walking the halls, right? Yes. How do you walk the halls, especially in a virtual, remote environment, where employees are all spread out? How do you walk the halls and get the buy in and understand what's, what's really going on in the organization? Yeah. So we talk a lot about that, um,
William Tincup:
you know. Years ago they would call it, uh... Managing by walking around, right? Exactly. So, how do you walk around when people are in 13 different countries or whatever?
Mike Flannery:
If 60 percent of your organization is remote, how do you walk around? And so we talked a little bit about some of the strategies there, how to drive engagement at all levels, how to get buy in at all levels, making sure that at all levels folks feel involved in the decision making and feel like they have a seat at the table. So,
William Tincup:
uh, you know, last question is, I know there's a pressure that comes with user conferences. This has been fantastic. Next week there'll be a, there'll be a discussion. Of
Mike Flannery:
course. Many discussions.
William Tincup:
Many discussions. One of which will be, how do we do it better? Exactly. Exactly. So, are you already ready for that discussion? Because you know it's coming. You know what.
Mike Flannery:
And, and you're, you know, you'll, you'll appreciate this, I think. So yesterday, Mark Duffel, our CEO, and I sat down with eight of our customers at lunch. And Mark opened up the session at lunch asking that question. One, why did you come? And two, what do we need to do? Make it better to get you to come next year. And we had an incredible discussion around, I mean, everything from the event app that we're using, to session content, to, and it was a phenomenal session. I would have
William Tincup:
loved to have
Mike Flannery:
been a fly on the wall on that conversation. Those conversations are already happening. We're not waiting until next week. Encapsulate it right now. You have to.
William Tincup:
You have to. Brother, I absolutely love talking to you, so thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Mike Flannery:
This is excellent. Thank you so much.
William Tincup:
Absolutely. Thank you, and thanks everybody for listening. Until next time.