Episode 084: Stakeholders Satisfaction with Christine Rogers

Welcome to the Fleet Success Show.

3, 2, 1.

We are a podcast dedicated to talking about the fundamentals, standards, and best practices that empower today's fleets to achieve fleet success. Let's get into the show.

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Jeff Jenkins. Guess what? Today got another special guest for us. Pretty stoked. I know I say I'm like usually excited when we have our guests on because everybody's just got this vast knowledge and, you know, these different areas to where they're experts where I'm deficient. So I learn a lot. But today, um, and I like to tell her, and I think she gets embarrassed sometimes, but I like to tell her she's probably one of the smartest and nicest people that I know. Christine Rogers, thank you, thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Jeff.

So Christine is the President and COO of Aspireship, and Aspireship is a SaaS sales customer experience training development coaching company. Is that probably a good overview?

Yeah, it's good. It's kind of where learning meets recruiting, enablement, all of those good things.

Yes. Yeah, perfect. So we've actually gotten several of our salespeople, our account executives, and some SDRs from Aspireship. Very good, very good company to use. Um, but Christina's got quite the background. Um, she's done very well for herself when it comes to being a thought leader and, you know, how she manages and teaches people. So I just want to ask her at this point to go ahead and just give us like a brief summary, I guess, of her professional history so that everybody understands kind of where you're coming from.

From? Okay. Um, why should they listen to me?

Well, yeah, why, why exactly should they listen to you? Well, you listen, don't take Jeff's word for it.

No. No. So I think probably because I have such a varied background. So had my own business for a while, which was, um, really challenging. It was a retail store. Um, then moved into kind of the corporate world and worked my way up and, um, Through that, had a totally different experience with shareholders and investors and different people that I consistently had to work through the priorities of the company and also what we were trying to do revenue-wise and all of the good stuff and the bad stuff that comes with running big organizations with lots of people and varied priorities. So then moved into this startup world. And that has been an entirely different type of learning, where it's challenging in its new ways. And it is about having to look at all of the people involved, both your customers and your employees and investors, and take everybody's opinion into consideration and also making the best decisions for your company, which is really, really challenging.

Yeah. So one of the other interesting things, Christine, about you is you have had a lot of experiences being pretty much the only woman executive, senior-level person in a male-dominated industry, right? So you've had to navigate some of those issues as well, which we're not really going to dig into right here, but definitely if some of our listeners are out there and they're wondering how to, to approach and face some of those challenges, Christine would be a great resource.

Well, I'm happy to help wherever I can.

That's what we love about you, always happy to help. So Christine is going to speak at the Fleet Success Summit and she's going to talk about stakeholder satisfaction, which is very, very wide and far-reaching as far as a topic. But we were talking a little bit before we started recording, and Christine takes exception to the word satisfaction.

I do. I do.

Kind of give us a little bit about that.

Well, you know, I was just saying when nobody really talks about experiences that they're satisfied with. So I think about, you know, like, okay, you ate lunch yesterday. You probably don't even remember what it was because you were just satisfied, right? And I think about my experiences that I have as maybe a consumer. And if it just meets my expectations, I'm not really going to talk about it at all, probably. I mean, I talk about bad experiences and I talk about ones that happen to delight me. But kind of in the middle. I just don't love satisfied that much, right?

So if it's average— yeah, you think that's— you think that— you think satisfaction is an average word?

I do, I do. Yeah, I think it's kind of like just meh, kind of okay.

So what would you use instead? I know you said delight.

One of my favorite people, Elizabeth Pitt, when we worked together, um, when Keep was actually Infusionsoft, she created the customer you know, success experience department, and she changed it to be called customer delight. And I really loved that. And at first everybody was like, this is so foo-foo and stupid.

Right.

And I kind of agreed at first. I'm not gonna lie. I looked at her like, oh boy, this is gonna be a big one. But then we started understanding that she really knew what she was talking about. And as far as being a thought leader in that space, she was right that people talk about just experiences that absolutely delight them, that kind of cause an emotional experience or a relief or something like that where they're just like so exuberant that they can't not say anything, it's a different kind of experience.

So I kind of get where you're coming from.

Oh, okay.

Right. And here's the example that I would use.

Sure, go ahead.

I went skydiving about a month ago or something like that.

Sure.

Whatever it was. And I would say that it was a delightful experience, so I would talk to people about it. Um, however, if that experience was just like, eh, right? And I was like, okay, you know, I guess I was satisfied while doing it. There is a big difference. And I probably wouldn't have told anybody about it. I probably wouldn't have said anything, right? Hey, I went skydiving. How was it?

It was all right, right? But you not only told people about it like verbally, you actually like socially told people.

Oh, absolutely. Because it was a great— it was good. I enjoyed doing it.

So you were actually promoting it.

Well, yeah, yeah. So apparently I'm delighted, not satisfied.

That's right. Yeah. And if you think about the— if you think about that a little bit further, there are probably different ways that that experience could have been a little bit more meh. Like, okay, cool, it was fine, but they probably went a little bit above and beyond, or maybe took a little bit more time, or, um, or, you know, added some opportunities at the end for you to have, uh, like special photos done, or something that was unique about the experience that you were not expecting at all that created of like a euphoria, just you had an emotive response.

Right. Yeah. So like my, my, my, I guess it's diving instructor is hilarious, right? I mean, he honestly, he made the experience fantastic.

Yeah.

Did a really good job. But if we go and we do take this further and we're talking about stakeholders, right? And we talk about stakeholder satisfaction, you said something that I want to dive into. And what you said was people don't stay if they're just satisfied. Right, right. So when you talk about your stakeholders and you're talking about this, the satisfaction with them, do they truly stay if you just satisfy them or if you give them an average?

I think people are open to different opportunities, whether it's, you know, a customer that we're talking about and they've just had, you know, average, you know, mediocre experiences with your team or, or with, you know, your employees or different people like that, and that they're open when something new and exciting might come their way. They're open to change. And I think that, that is also the case when you think of your employees. And right now, more than ever with what we're seeing in the market, I think it's really important to take it a step further with the people that work with us because they will not stay. Somebody can promise them more, but it is about how they feel. It's about how they're respected. It's about how you're in tune with what's important to them and not just being in tune, but taking action.

Right. So how do you find out and be more in tune with individuals? Because people think, oh, we got to keep work, personal separate.

Yeah.

Right? So you don't dig too deep into the personal side because you're not at work to make friends, blah, blah, blah. A lot of different sayings that go on about this. But you're right, you know, people, they want to feel important. They want to feel like, you know, they make a difference. They want people to care about them. They want to, you know, advance, all these things, right, that are involved with employees.

Yeah.

So how do you get to that point to where you're finding out what's important to people, right, and making that not necessarily a priority, but making it a focal point of the human interaction with employees?

So I think you brought out— and you guys have talked many times, I've listened to this podcast multiple times— you talk about one-on-ones and really understanding people's motivations and different things like that. I think one of the things that we miss as leaders is observing our people. And when I observe them, I'm looking for anomalies. Okay, so for instance, if everybody is supposed to put these work orders into this bin but nobody's doing it. And only there's one hitting it every once in a while. We don't generally ask like, why is this not happening? We're just frustrated that it's not happening. But there's always a reason why there's workarounds that people are doing. And our employees do this constantly. And we don't do a very good job of like putting a lens in front and going, now this is frustrating for me. I don't know. Why they're doing it like this, but I'm observing that this behavior is odd. And I think sometimes we miss it. I'll give you a real-life example. Okay, so at one of my previous companies, we were rolling out different, um, time slots that people needed to be there in the sales team. Nobody wanted to take the later time slots. Everybody was wanting to come in at 6 AM. 6 AM, I mean, that's pretty early.

Yeah, most people are like, I don't know, but read me in at 8.

Yeah, so we were wanting coverage from 6 to 6. And we were going, why won't anybody do the later shift? So everybody is frustrated saying, you know, this is just because they're being crazy. And what they were actually articulating was that like they would need— they wanted to be there early so they could leave early.

Of course.

Okay.

Yep.

Actually what the problem was, was after watching and watching and thinking, I don't understand, and listening to them, they were talking about the parking. So they were actually saying they don't get a parking spot. They don't get a parking spot. And the old— the only place that we could park other than that was across, it was like along a long road that was next to a golf course. So not only were you risking getting your car hit by a golf ball, one of our guys got hit by a golf ball. I'm not making this up. So all of a sudden we were solving this problem called the sales team. They're just, you know, so entitled and such a, you know, pain in the ass because they, nobody wants to work the later shift. And then when we said, We actually just purchased, you know, some additional parking spaces. That solved it. We were solving the wrong problem, like 100% the wrong problem. And they weren't even articulating the problem well. They were just like, well, I gotta get here early. And it was like, why? Why do you have to get here early? You know? And we just kept asking, but watching their behavior, it's like, oh, I know why they're here early. They're fighting for the parking spots. And as soon as we solved the parking problem, the scheduling problem went away. And that alone, that made— they were so happy because they'd complained over and over about the parking, but nobody was really listening until we realized like, this is actually becoming a business problem. It was fascinating, but it was like we're solving the wrong problem.

That's interesting, actually, that all that— well, what I find interesting is one, that it was overparking, right? But two, that someone couldn't articulate it well enough to where you didn't have to observe to figure that out. Out.

All I'm saying is I think some people get into their own experiences so deeply. We get into the way that we solve the problems when there are workarounds or people are doing weird things in systems. A lot of times we'll do this as well, like in a, in a system that they're using, they're not using certain things that we need people to use. So whatever that looks like for your specific organization, um, you have to ask yourself why. It's probably not just because they don't want to click 6 other buttons. There's probably a reason why. There's— if there's a around, I guarantee we're solving for a different problem that is probably underlying. And when you actually pay attention to those, those go so far, it's incredible. Like, when you can fix actual irritations that have become more than just a pebble in your shoe, but they've become accustomed to it, they are so relieved that you actually paid attention enough to say, all right, we're going to solve this little pebble in the shoe because I know it's going to make your life a lot easier. Those little things go a long way.

So I like, I like the fact you bring up workarounds because everybody, yeah, has a workaround.

We all do.

Yeah, right. Most people are going to find the shortest, easiest, least stressful way of doing something.

Sure.

Even if it's not the right way or there's some kind of negative results. So when we talk about managing people and taking care of people, right, when you find out someone's doing a workaround, you usually ask them, why are you doing it this way? Okay. And a lot of times the answer ends up being, well, that's how I was taught.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Well, that's how I was taught to do it. Okay, well, who taught you? Well, so-and-so. Okay, well, let me go ask them. Well, that's how I was taught to do it. So what's fascinating to me is that, like, we have these processes and procedures in place and we talk about them and we teach them, but then the people we have doing the training do the workarounds, which means everybody else ends up learning the workarounds. So you've never even cut that off from the head. You've allowed it to exacerbate and get bigger because you didn't correct it at the beginning.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. It becomes— it, it becomes just the things that we all do. Like, that's just what we do here, you know? And one of those where it's like all of a sudden you're like, why was this something we can't change? When did this become a sacred cow? We don't know why. We don't know when that tribal knowledge became same capital T truth. And it's, it's usually for silly reasons that can be for sure fixed and enhanced and improved.

Like, there's so many— like, I've just— I'm sitting here, you're talking, and I'm thinking about all the workarounds I've personally used, especially in my trucking career when I was like dispatching and doing all that stuff. I would— I mean, I worked, I worked around the shit out of everything, right? Because I was trying to like bust my ass to get as many miles and as much revenue on my trucks, trying to make sure my drivers were getting home, right? That our customer loads were serviced. And so there were all kinds of shortcuts I would do, but I didn't even realize what some of those ramifications of those were.

Well, and, and again, like, when we're looking at the anomalies, like, you can find amazing things that you can create processes for if you're watching for— if somebody does something way, way better than everybody else. And it's, you know, I always look for that they're either doing something that is a workaround that's probably not going to be healthy for the company, or they're doing it much faster and better. I mean, I, I have a— my youngest son is the kind of kid that like he naturally looks at and solves problems differently. And so when I need something done, I'll give it to him and watch how he solves it because I know he'll do it differently, right? Like, and, and it's better, you know, his, his workaround often is better. So then it be— that becomes the process. Where we put the garbage can is better because I can, you know, lift the lid from without having to go around the side gate. And he's the one that put it there because he's lazy enough to take the garbage out. So it's perfect. So not all, you know, not all the time are we trying to, you know, um, take a workaround and, and, and get, get away from it. We're trying to solve it because I'm telling you, you get enough pebbles in the shoe, you ask somebody why they left a company, they're not gonna tell you the 6 things that irritate them to no end. In the end, they're gonna tell you, oh, this is a better company for me, I'm going over here because I'm really passionate about this. But really, so many of these frustrations became the general sentiment that they became dissatisfied. Dissatisfied.

That word's okay, right? Yeah, we can use that. It's just not satisfied. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I relate everything to trucking in most cases.

Yes.

And I Driver turnover in trucking is a big issue. It's been a big issue for a long time. And I think there's a lot of reasons behind that. But whenever we would do our exit surveys with our drivers, the reason we always got was pay. Right? I will tell you, though, when you actually had an honest conversation with them, it was things like, you're not getting me home when I'm supposed to be home. I miss my kids, X. I didn't do this. You're not giving me enough miles. I can't make enough money. My truck's always breaking down. There are other things that typically go into that that we don't really think about, right? Because they're just giving us, hey, well, I'm getting paid more money going somewhere else. Okay, let's increase our pay. You increase your pay and you still have the driver turnover problem. Well, what is it? And the thought always goes to, well, let's pay them more money. Money doesn't solve all problems.

No.

Right. And we've talked about that on the podcast before too. There's a lot of things that are a lot more important than money, right? And having a life, personal commitments, those sort of things are one of them, right? And being able to like come to work and not hate the idea in the morning, right? Right. That's one thing. Like, I, I had one job where every morning when I'd be driving there to go to it, I was like, man, I do not want to go to work today. Like, I don't— I do not want to see Jim. He's an asshole. Like, none of that, you know what I'm saying? Like, he's Anyway, so, but that feeling like made me want to not be there and quit. And I think a lot of people go through that, right? So when you talk about your stakeholders in this instant, you're talking about employees and you're talking about things that they, that you can do to help them create efficiencies, not necessarily to be satisfied, right? So that they enjoy and that they're delighted in the things that are going on at work.

Yeah. And I think we as leaders, tend to— it's, it's if I don't really want to hear, I don't really want to hear when somebody is leaving that it's something other than pay. Let's be honest, because pay, I can throw my hands up and say like, see, we're just not the top, right? We all, we know the things that are okay to say, but also then I have to look at it and go, well, the number like one and two thing that people would complain about at most companies is where they have to park and where they sit. And those are the— like, when you look at it, is that an honest thing?

Like, for real?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Like, where they park and where they sit matters. And, um, I remember one of the times when we were trying to figure out what to do, we upgraded everybody's chairs. And, you know, it was a very small thing as far as what it— what it seemed like. Now, they were nice chairs, and so it was kind of a cost, you know, but we upgraded everybody's chairs, and that really mattered. And then we allowed people— this is shocking— to actually— we said, like, here are the spaces you could sit. Would you like to show, you know, choose, uh, where you sit? And guess what happened? People were ecstatic. Yeah, they actually wanted a choice on where they sat. It would seem so silly that these types of things matter, but treating people like adults, treating people like, like you actually value their opinion, they're never going to complain and say, I quit because I didn't like my parking situation and I didn't like where I sat. But Those are the things that we as leaders don't wanna hear cuz we can solve those problems. And if we don't, we're not doing a very good job, but we can throw our hands up in the air and say, pay, see, it's just pay. And kind of, we all kind of do a little sigh of relief because it's nothing that's about us.

We've been— I'm good.

I'm good. I see, I knew we were below market, you know, and it's just not true. They, it's just not true. We talk about this all the time. It's almost always the little things.

Yeah. So how would you define a stakeholder, or how would you define stakeholder satisfaction?

I think a stakeholder is someone who stands to win or lose, or gain a loss, I guess, from the company's behavior or performance. That's how I would define it.

Okay, so that's a very wide-reaching—

it is, because I would also say it has to do with like vendors, it has to do customers, it has to do with investors. You know, all of those people have a lot to say and have a lot of feelings about how a company behaves or performs.

Yeah. So in the Fleet Success Playbook, in this chapter, which you may or may not fall asleep during it, I don't know. Just kidding. We actually outline it as, you know, you have your primary stakeholders, which are going to be, you know, your employees, right? Your customers. You know, the people that are directly, like directly impacted by your business. And then you have your secondary stakeholders, right? Which are family members.

Yep.

Right. People that rely on the primaries. And then you have your tertiary, which is everybody else. And when it comes to fleet, we talk a lot about like, you know, people on the roadway, right? That kind of thing. Making sure you're safe so you're not putting people in danger. That's like your tertiary. Yeah, stakeholders. So we, you know, we label it as three, as three different tiers when it comes to that. And when you look at it like, that's a pretty all-encompassing number of people, right? Because you think about a company and the size, and then you think about everybody that deals and does business with them, and then you think about all them and their family members, right? I mean, you're talking like hundreds, thousands of people depending on the size of the company.

Sure.

And you are never going to make sure everybody's satisfied, right? But what you can do is you can concentrate on your primary, and by taking care of the primary, you're hoping that the secondary, tertiary, right, gets taken care of as well.

Yeah, I think that's right. I would agree with that chapter in the book.

Holy crap, Tim, write this down. Christine just agreed with me on something. I just want to make sure it's noted for later. One of the questions that you've got to ask yourself, right, when you're talking about stakeholders is what are your actions doing that are affecting those around you? And it's a big question, right? Whether it's as an organization, a company, whether it's as an individual, right? We talk about the little pebbles in the shoe and why people end up leaving and going somewhere else, right? But I also wonder, those people that have the pebbles in the shoe, do they take a deep dive and look at themselves internally and see if there's anything that they could have done differently or do differently in order to eliminate some of that roughness.

I think that's right. I mean, we all have to take personal responsibility for the things, right? And if something is agitating or irritating and we make a responsible request around it, I think that that's our part is to ask, you know, make a request. I find it very frustrating and have been on the other side of this when I've had employees leave or You know, I get a call from a customer that's frustrated and we've never heard the complaint, you know, and here we are, you know, parting ways. And I've never heard this complaint once. That, that is that, that to me feels very— I wouldn't say— I mean, unfair sounds petulant, but disingenuous. Yeah. Well, it's just, it's just not helpful if we're all going to be doing this dance together called we're in business or we're working together or we're partnered in some way. Like, I would expect that communication is free-flowing. As much as possible so that we're able to come to the objective, which is we're all doing well, we're managing our moods. I mean, like, when you really think about it, most of this has to do with mood management. You can tell, like, a lot about your employees, you know, a lot. It just— watch how people do. Yeah. Like, your energy is high or low. What are, you know, what's going on that impacts everybody downstream, your customers, your drivers, all of those things, you know, all of this, all of it is interconnected. But I think it's our responsibility to ask when we are in the positions of leadership. It's my job that I didn't ask, you know, when I noticed the mood. And I'd prefer actually not to have that conversation right now when I noticed these workarounds or anomalies and, and I'm not taking note. Those are my— that's my job to look at.

Yeah. So mood management, that's funny that you say that. Like we actually have been talking about in our morning standups just about the power of positivity versus negativity and how you're trying to make sure that you stay positive throughout the day regardless of what's going on. So, uh, back in 2016, I think it was, I decided I was going to do a bodybuilding competition, right? And I was going to train and I was going to bulk up and eat a ton of food and start taking steroids. I mean, I was just gonna beef up, right? And just like, just be this muscular man. And I gained like, like 45 pounds, okay, over this, over this year that I'm prepping to do this. This competition. And then it's time to start preparing for the competition. And there's a 16-week period that you start cutting weight, you know, getting rid of your body fat. And I actually started at 18 weeks, not 16, because I thought I needed a little more work, right, and a little more prep. Here's what I'll tell you is that I was probably the biggest jerk to my employees because of those outside factors, right?

Yeah.

Because of the fact that I was limiting the amount of food that I was getting, my sleep wasn't that great. And I recognized it. Okay, I didn't lose— no one actually ever quit and said, hey, I'm leaving because of your attitude. But I recognized coming in there after probably about half that time, so probably about 8 to 9 weeks, I recognized that my poor attitude was affecting everybody else around me. Like, you could just tell the mood of the whole office had changed. Yeah, it's because I was short-lived with my responses, right? I had a very, very quick temper, right? And I've worked on that hard, right? So I was very disappointed I went backwards. But anyway, I had a very quick temper, and you could see that. And so by recognizing, I was like, oh shit, I've got to change that. And so I tried very hard to get so much better on my attitude, and then you could see the change again, right? You could see that people were starting to actually be like, oh, okay, well, the mood got lighter. People were laughing, right? It was a lot more— you could feel less tension in the air. So I think that's something that don't talk about a lot. Yeah, right, is what you're talking about, mood management, because that has a huge effect on your stakeholders.

It does, right?

Everybody you interact with.

Well, I mean, you say the fish stinks at the head, and the, the, the mood of a space will follow the leader. So if, you know, we all know the difference too. You walk in the room, and if you as a leader do not want to talk to anybody, we all know you kind of look through people. You look above their heads, you look around, so it looks like you're smiling at everybody, looks like you're kind of nodding, moving along, but you're, you're actually not connecting to anyone. And you're doing it intentionally because you're— and it's sending a very clear message. And whether you're saying something or not, it's sending the message called, I do not want to connect with you right now, at the very least.

Yeah.

And at, at the worst, it's You're unimportant to me. You don't matter. And any one of those communications isn't going to work for even satisfying, let alone delighting anyone. So yeah, I think it's something to consider for sure.

Well, and keep in mind too that most people, they go right to the bottom, right? They go to worst case scenario.

I don't matter.

Yeah, you don't matter. And that's what you get. And it's all because of you're just in a bad mood, right? Yeah. Perfect. You have anything you want to add?

No, I've enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to talking about it more.

It's been good. Absolutely. Well, we thank you for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

Appreciate you. Christine had to drive 53 miles to get here.

I did. By the way, a little jaunt.

Yeah, it was long. It's a good thing she's got her Tesla.

I, I don't want to talk about EVs with this group. Holy—

thanks, Elon. Well, perfect. Well, thanks everyone for joining us. Just a couple reminders. Um, We do take feedback and we do do topics that you want to talk about. So if you have any topics you'd like to hear us discuss, please reach out to us at podcast@rtafleet.com. Also, Christine is going to be at the Fleet Success Summit. You're not going to want to miss her in March in Las Vegas. Visit fleetsuccesssummit.com to see the details. You can also email us podcast@rtafleet.com and we get back to you as well. Finally, our book. If you don't have your copy, Reach out to us, same email address. I'm going to say it one more time. The last time, I promise. podcast@rtafleet.com. And we would love to send you a free copy to hopefully help you and your fleet in your journey towards success. Until next time. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you like the show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us on social media at Fleet Success. See you next time.