#30 Philippe Mesritz, Chief Customer Officer and former General Manager at Community Brands: Leadership, AI, and Building High-Performing Teams

Welcome to another edition of Inside the Workflow, the workplace productivity podcast where we talk to industry experts to get their strategies and tactics you can use to create an incredible workplace and 5-star customer experience. This podcast is sponsored by Zyte, a screen recording and screen capture service that gives your workplace all you need to communicate with your team and customers with clarity. Learn more at zyte.com. Alright, I'm excited to welcome Philippe Mesritz, who is a fractional Chief Customer Officer who has most recently been General Manager at Community Brands, known for transforming SaaS organizations and boosting retention. One of the things I noticed, for example, in his background is he had increased the NPS of one of his, uh, one of his companies by like 40 points, which is incredible. Um, he's a 2-time CX Leader of the Year finalist. He's passionate about building high-performing teams. And also helping exceed customer experiences and expectations. So I'm excited to welcome Philippe. Thanks for joining us today.

Thanks, Scott. I love these conversations, so I appreciate you having me on here.

Yeah, and again, like, I think one of the things that was really cool that really stood out to me about your background is just how many different companies you've worked with, worked on, and helped guide towards excellence. And I think that's That's a big testament to, you know, presumably who you are and what you care about.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think customer experience has always been that area that I'm focused in, that I started back in college. I was doing web design and back then it was how do you help deliver the best value for your clients and you're thinking about their customer's experience and it's really how it all started, I think. And it's always been an interesting space and I love growing people and understanding what customers really love to do.

I would love to kind of delve deeply into that, you know, that comment around the web design, the beginnings, you know, where did Philippe start? Why did he get into what he got into? Tell me a little bit about the origin story. I'd love to hear some of that.

Yeah, so I guess the origin story for me is, in college, um, I was not a good student. And look, I failed out of college. I then went to another college and said, I'm going to earn my way back in. Did that. Went back to the college that I failed out of and then quit because it wasn't the place for me. I learned quickly that I wanted to be out in the world learning things and doing things. And so I ended up getting my degree 20 years later, but I started doing web design, uh, and interacting with consultancies and clients and really learning how to do that. Then I moved into system administration for my own company, and I ran text-based games of all things and hosted them. And it instilled in me this need—

actually, just really quick, to— I, I want to, uh, focus. So text-based games, help us understand, maybe, maybe somebody's never played one of those. I'd love to hear more about it.

So text-based games are multi— are MUDs and MUSHs, multi-user dungeons. Basically think about World of Warcraft or League of Legends in today's world, only all based in text. And you're typing back and forth with people, and all the things that you're doing in text nowadays, we used to do that on dial-up. And it would be, how do you communicate? And so you had to have multi— a server farm basically where you were hosted and I would run that host, and we ran hundreds of games that different people had with different themes. And it wasn't at the size and scales that any of these newer businesses have, but it did instill the fact that I had to help our customers be successful. And so how do I make sure that it's stable? And what do they need? Do they need more throughput or, or help with coding or whatever? And so that's kind of where I started with things. And I think it's gone throughout my entire career. Um, I remember this time where I was doing this consulting for— after I'd been laid off for an IPO company back in early 2000s, and I had gone back to doing consulting on web design and e-commerce. And one of my clients was this commercial grain company in California. Look, like, doing e-commerce for a company that sells to commercial spaces was kind of weird, so we built a whole website around what they did. But I was there and I was looking around and you saw these huge corn silos and the trucks coming in and out, and that made me think about how everything had to be seamless to deliver everything on time and how everything's intertwined from every piece of that factory, the action that was required, how they position themselves for their websites so that the, the farmers and everybody that needed their grain or selling or buying their grain really got involved. And it kind of gave me this idea of manufacturing is a place that it's important. Customer success exists in all different areas. And I think people think about it as a SaaS B2B thing, but it's all over. And if you just pay attention to it, it, it really just becomes this core component of almost every business out there.

Yes, absolutely. I totally agree. I think it's really interesting. Like you said, you know, first you built this server farm and you had to make sure that the customer experience was good enough that presumably they didn't get pissed off and yell at you. Yep. And, and then same with the delivery of, uh, at this sort of, uh, green space. Um, I worked at Nordstrom and their whole thing was customer experience above all else. And they always give this example of like, if somebody comes in with a tire to return it, you have to allow that return. And I remember thinking, this is so ridiculous, but it was sort of trying to stress the importance of, of the point that you're making of how You know, the customer doesn't come in if they don't love your product, they're not coming back.

Exactly. I mean, it's how Costco's built their brand. And there's all these stories of people who are like grills that are rusted through and people return them after they've been using it for 10 years. And Costco's like, all right, here's your check. And you think about how do they stay in business? But they've grown so far on this whole thing of customer experience. Nordstrom is exactly that same. Scenario where when they started, they were this small organization and they really built it to say, bring us, like, we want to help you. Buy from us, don't buy from us, but we want to help you. And that's how Nordstrom's built their whole reputation. So I think it's a very interesting paradigm.

Are there times that you can remember where you did something that was so, you know, I think in the software world, people would say it doesn't scale, but like, are there times that you can remember where you did something so over-the-top ridiculous to help a customer?

Um, the— strangely enough, I canceled a customer.

Um, oh, okay, that's a super interesting one as well.

Yeah, so in this particular scenario, it was this customer that had bought the product, and the product was meeting all of their needs on a microcosm level. They were being very successful, but then they wanted to, to go global, and it was this concept of they needed a a local conversation point in every zip code across the country and across the world. And we had spent time, energy trying to help this customer be successful, and we had spent almost as much in the first year as they were paying us. And that wasn't including the whole backend server. It was like our PS team trying to solve for this problem. And we ended up turning around and telling them like, look, for your ability to do something. We aren't the right product for you. We cannot meet your need. And it turned into this very interesting conversation. They paid the rest of the contract out. This was their choice. Um, they paid the rest of the contract out and said, if you ever have this scale, then we will be interested in coming back because you treated us the right way. So it was kind of one of those treat people in the right way, even if you're firing them, quote unquote, as a customer, and you get— you build this really good relationship. That was a half a million dollar a year account.

Oh man, that would have been— I feel like I would be totally freaked out to have to do that.

It was painful, um, and I wasn't C-suite at the time, but I walked my Chief Customer Officer through it, and I'm like, here is the only option we have is to spend half a million to more than that every single year, or be like, look, it's not the right fit for you, so we need to kind of part ways. And there's all of those conversations about what people did to save things, right? Like, how do you build this customer experience? But I think that there's also value in thinking about it from a— when you end a relationship, that customer experience is just as important for the long-term reputation that you have, the long-term success you have, and so forth.

Yeah, I think this is actually a really good insight, um, that I haven't heard anyone really bring up in the past. Um, I often think about, you know, the process to have to let somebody go, to fire a customer. Each one of these are all these touch points where maybe they're going to come back, maybe they're going to, you know, try your product again, maybe they're going to work with you. I actually have a bunch of people on my team who have come back either after leaving or being asked to leave. And, you know, maybe the timing wasn't right, but everybody remembers those kind of final moments.

Absolutely. I have people who I've laid off, yet they came back to work for me because of the way that we treated them. I had an employee back, I don't know, it was probably 2012 or so. I remember having this conversation with him before I was taking a trip to our headquarters. And the conversation— I sat down with him, and this was— he was an events shipper. Basically, he would take equipment and he would ship it out to an event, and then he would receive them. And I sat down with him and I said, hey, something's not working here. You're not getting things on time. You're not filing them. Think about what that looks like and think about what your future here is going to be. So I left and I came back And before I got back, he had quit because he knew the next step was going to be parting ways anyway. About 6 months to a year later, I get this random note from him on LinkedIn, and the note says, "Thank you for putting me in my place." He is now a program manager and been a program manager for a number of large gaming companies. Because he learned that being on time, being accurate with what you're shipping, how you're shipping, receiving things matters. But it— he couldn't handle the physical side, but he was much better with running the games. So he shifted his career. But it's one of those things, like, if you can figure out how to tap into an employee in the right way, to your point, I think you turn into— they can turn into fans even if they get fired by you, laid off by you, quit, whatever that situation might be.

Um, so I think that's, that's a good opportunity to talk about sort of the next, one of the next topics that I was, uh, wanting to get into, which is basically building a great team, building a high-performing team. So I think you're, you're highlighting a very important element of building a high-performing team, which is eventually, you know, there's gonna be people who you hire who you, you made the wrong choice, or they're just not So let's talk a little bit about like, what are some of the things that you think through or do to build that team? Like, how do you start? How do you get them onboarded? How do you train? I mean, you don't have to go through everything, but would love to hear a little bit about that.

That'd be a lot longer than this conversation probably. But I think for me, I have this triumvirate of things. I think about transparency, I think about clarity, and I think about vision. So for me, the transparency side of things is making sure that you're coming across honest, sincere, you're bringing everything that you possibly can and talking about it to your teams. I am a fan of talking about the finances, about how the company is working and doing that across every level because your teams really are the ones that are doing the work. They're the ones that will make or break whether your company succeeds. ELT is there, great. They're— they've set a vision. But it's the teams that matter. And if they don't know why they're doing it and they're not set up to know what's happening and the impact, they're not going to get anywhere. I think clarity is the second piece, and that is being clear about what's expected, what's not expected, what our goals are, what our, what our challenges are, and realistically thinking about that as one big function effectively to say, okay, are you clear on what you're supposed to do? And then finally, in line with both of those, is that vision. Set what you're trying to do. Set the North Star. Because you're not in every room as a leader, and you can't speak. So how do you make sure that when you're not in the room, people know what they're trying to accomplish? That they know they're going to take something that they are being asked to do, that they're not sure what to do, and then they can put it up against that North Star because they've heard many times from you what you're trying to do. They know what your financials look like, they know where you stand, and then they can go and execute without having to pick up the phone and go, hey Scott, hey Philippe Mesritz, I need your answer and I'm not going to do anything until you're ready to go. And I think that really builds it across a global team, across an in-person team. But those three things really drive success.

I love the transparency part. I do think that there is a little bit of a challenge Not always, but sometimes with transparency, because I think you often run into, or you can run into folks who, when you share too many details, it like freaks them out. You know, it's like, here's how much budget we have, or here's the revenue path. And they're like, whoa, what does that mean for me? Does that mean, you know, this sort of spiral? Have you kind of had experiences like that where, you know, sharing too much or sharing enough, it goes in a different direction than you expected?

Yeah, actually it was funny. I took on a professional services team a number of years ago, and in that conversation I had a strong reputation, so it helped because I was being transferred from internally. And in the first meeting I said, my experience with professional services is limited in managing the team, and that just went the wrong direction. What I meant to say is, you all know more about PS than I do on an individual basis. I understand how to run an organization, how to improve the processes, how to take customer experience and make it better. You've worked with me and so forth, but immediately turned into, well, why him? So yeah, transparency can create some havoc at times, but that's where that clarity comes into play in answering questions. I am a fan of having open Q&As, and it's 30 minutes on the books every whatever, 2 weeks, month, whatever amount of Cadence is right for you, but come and ask whatever question you want so that I can be clear. Because to your point, if you spiral, the reason you're spiraling is because you're not seeing something. Most of the time you're not understanding something. So you have to give them the grace to process and then the grace to understand and ask the right questions. So you have to be there to be able to do that.

Yeah, I definitely agree. I, I, I like the word grace. Um, So, so like in the case of the vision part, one of the things that I've noticed, you know, I worked at Facebook where we had a weekly all hands with Mark Zuckerberg and he was fairly relentless about, you know, hey, here's our goal, here's the direction. And in some ways I often was like, why does it seem to be so consistent and the same? And I think as I became CEO or, or a leader, C-suite, whatever you want to call it, I've noticed that you, you kind of have to be so rigorous about repeat repetitively saying the same thing over and over. Have you kind of found the same?

No, I think that's absolutely accurate. What's— there's the sales tactic where you have to hear it 7 times before it captures. I don't think it's any difference with employees. And you think about when you were an individual contributor and you're starting your career out, as soon as you understood the what and the why, you are now much more willing to be involved and push the limits and make decisions on your own. If you don't understand the what and the why, You just sit there and you go, I don't know why I'm doing something. And so I think that that vision lets you formulate that. And if you're not all on the same page and you're not consistently reinforcing that, it's so easy to get off track. And I think people often believe that, especially at the ELT level, this is something that I've kind of run into with the more senior I got with leadership. You're having so many conversations and it's clear in your mind because you've talked about it for 2 months and then you turn around and you tell your team, hey, we're going to go do this thing and it takes them a little bit to understand it. But you're like, come on, I don't have to tell you again. That's because you've talked about it for 2 months and they've talked about it for what, 2 hours?

That's, that's a great point. Yeah, you're totally right.

And so I think that repeatability, I believe that repeating your vision over and over again isn't actually as often as people think it is. It feels like it's a lot more because they're having the conversations in one-on-ones and public and with the ELT and the board and other people. And so how do you help the rest of the team follow that along? So you get repetitive to do so.

Have you found that the transparency, clarity, vision— I liked how you called the triumvirate. That was pretty cool. Have you found that the remote work— I don't know, you know, how much you've done remote or in person, but what's the biggest difference? Is it basically the same or are there adjustments you've had to make?

It's the same, but there are definitely adjustments, right? So the concept is pretty much identical. I think the adjustments that you have to think about is I think people's tendency is to think about whatever time zone they're in. Naturally, right? Oh well, it's 9 o'clock. Okay, well, 9 o'clock where? And so sending your messages at the same time every day on a truly global team makes you— makes people who are on the other side of the world feel like they're not as important because you're sending it at midnight their time every night, right? And so I believe that you should have rotating meetings for your— that hit all time zones. So do something at 9 o'clock in the morning your time, and then sometimes you're going to do something at 9 o'clock in the evening So that's 9 AM for India or Australia or whatever. You can schedule your emails and your Slack messages so that they're not always at the same time, and you can adjust that to be more time zone related. And I think there's a lot of little things that you can do to bring a global team in more. And I always think it's funny when you say, when people say, well, in-person versus remote, I'm like, I haven't had a fully in-person team, quote unquote, I don't know, in 15 years, because I've had people in the UK or in India or Australia, Bulgaria. They're not all in person, even though they're in person in their office, they're not with me. So for me, they're remote anyway. So you have to think about how do you hit them when they're awake, when they're ready to engage. Otherwise you're going to get crickets.

Yeah, I, I think also, you know, uh, I think you said it in a nicer way, but You also drive people crazy. You know, I, for a while I worked in Menlo Park and my boss is actually based in London. And so it was really interesting cuz like if I went to visit London, the amount of work that I felt like I had to do was like 2 days worth every day. Yep. Whereas for me in Menlo Park, it was like, I can only catch him for 2 hours a day. It's like impossible to connect. So it's really interesting to, I guess, understand and then sort of empathize, to your point, like you kind of have to start to adjust your mindset and hopefully align more clearly with theirs. Otherwise, you're a jerk and you drive people crazy.

Yeah, exactly. Because I mean, I think about it like nowadays, everybody puts the line in their email signatures that says, I'm sending this at my time, you don't have to respond. Okay, well, we all know the fact is, if your boss sends you an email, Yeah, I don't care what that signature says, they're going to want to respond. So you have to do your best to think about that. And so I would send something to India and I'd be like, crud, it's 10 o'clock at night and they're not supposed to be working. So I started to try to be like, okay, send, schedule send, 1 AM my time, 9 AM theirs, or whatever time zone depending on where you're sending it. So you have to think about it from a global perspective instead of a me perspective. And I think that drives better engagement across your team.

So how do you balance the, the need for balance and then also the performance that is clearly required to be on, you know, an executive-level team, a C-suite, etc.? So maybe, maybe there's two different ways I'm looking at this. One is for you, how do you balance, how do you manage the stress? And then two, how do you deliver some of it, but maybe buffer your team a little bit?

Okay, um, strangely enough, work stress has not always been my, my Achilles heel. I don't have that much of a challenge with the work stress side, uh, probably because I've got a whole bunch of personal stress with illnesses and stuff in the family. And so I'm like, work, that's just chill. So it's a lot— it's a little bit of a different word— world. Um, but I think it is important to make sure that you balance what makes sense for you. And I think people talk about work-life balance and they make this assumption that 40 hours for you is balanced. Like, well, maybe it's not. Maybe 50 hours or 60 hours or 90 hours is balanced for you because it works for your life cycle and the way you work or the way you sleep or whatever. Like, for example, my wife and I, she's a night owl, I get up in the morning, so I can work at 7 AM no problem and she's still sleeping because she doesn't go to bed till 2 AM. And so our work-life balance is I'll spend the time in the evenings with her and I try to stay off the computer, and that's how we handle things. So it's really a— how do you balance it? It changes based on your life cycle, and I think people need to remember that. That whatever works for them is what work-life balance really is. And then your second half of your question around how you deflect it from your teams, I think your job is to own the majority of the stress while putting enough pressure down to get things done in the way that it needs to get done. So trying to do that in a way that it is less stressful and deflecting it and taking it in a human-centric way and remembering that the person that you're trying to pass things down to, you're delegating to, that you're pushing to go do more, do better, do whatever. I think that's— you have to remember they're still human, so you have to figure out what works for them. I have people— I've had people where I can tell them like, look, go get this done now, and that's the way to get them to perform. And then other people, it's like, hey, could you please work on this over the next 24 hours and that's the way to get things done. So you have to kind of change it between how that person will receive it in the best way.

Yeah, that definitely resonates. I think one of the things that I remember, and this was earlier in my career when I was— so I think at the time I had 3 kids under 5, maybe something like that. And so to your point, I didn't feel like I had any work-life balance. It was basically like work hard during the day go hard at night with my kids and maybe not sleep. But I remember, you know, feeling some stress about it as an individual contributor and talking to my boss about it. And he's like, you know, to be honest, I don't have any balance either. And that's just how I work. And I thought it was really interesting. Like, nobody admits that, but that's reality. It's like, there's a lot of people who just like to work or work, you know, work a lot, like you said, but a lot is, I guess, specific to whoever you are. So yeah, that's a really interesting point.

Yeah, I mean, my dad, um, he worked for an international bank and his job was travel all the time. And in looking back at things and having conversations, I always felt like he was gone all the time because he traveled so much. But when I talked to him, he's like, yeah, but I made it home for every single soccer game. Every— I was there Friday nights. I took the latest flight home Friday night so I could be there Saturday morning., and I took the latest flight out on Sunday so I could spend the weekend. And so it's kind of figuring out how to make all of those things work. And I don't think it's easy. And so it's always interesting when people talk about, well, I have to be super balanced. I'm like, life is messy and therefore balance is messy and you have to decide what works and it might change. You were saying your 3 kids, your work-life balance now is different than it was when you had 3 small kids. Yeah, and things evolve.

So, so speaking of evolving, um, I, I earlier today I was watching a video, um, you know, it was just a politician talking about AI and what they hope, you know, the AI landscape looks like. And I think, uh, we're obviously at an interesting time. There's been many cycles of technology growth like mobile, social, cloud, and right now I think we're in the midst of AI. So I'd love to talk a little bit about what you're seeing amidst all this chaos and what are some of the opportunities, things that you're excited about with emerging technologies, AI, all these kinds of things in your world.

I think AI, I mean, AI is the most common answer of, oh, that's the thing that's going to change my world, right?

And it is.

There is no question in my mind that AI is going to drastically change the landscape. In almost every role out there, from if you are a construction worker. I recently saw a video where the trades, um, and is starting to use AI to make sure that they're like an electrician using it to make sure that they're hooked up to the right panels and leveraging the intelligence to make sure that they don't get electrocuted effectively, all the way to the conversations where people are like, there'll be a billion-dollar company with one employee because they've done everything else via AI, right? And so I do think that it's the obvious top answer is AI, but I want to break the mold a little bit.

Sweet, perfect.

Answering your question, because if I could answer AI, we'd talk about that forever. But I think the— in a customer experience and CS space as a whole, I think the big thing that's going to change is how companies and people interact. I think there's been this concept historically where customer success and customer experience is all about the relationship, and then we're now in this swing to everything needs to be commercial, and if you're not the commercial-owning customer success manager, then your job is going to go away. And I believe it's going to be somewhere in between. So we've got this pendulum swing that's happening right now. That will, in my opinion, land in the middle where you have to be commercially focused but relationship-driven. And by pulling all of that together, you now have a way to transform what is going to happen. And I don't know what tech is going to be the, the supportive player in all this, but we're still humans selling and working with humans. And until we get purely AI-oriented companies that don't have any employees and humans don't matter— maybe that'll happen, all the Terminator, I don't know— until that happens, you still have humans working with humans, relationships with humans, and you have to figure out how to blend those two things, how to have the right conversation at the right time. And I don't know what the answer is. But I feel like we've swung one way, we're swinging the other way too far, and we're going to have to figure out that right balance. And that's really where I'm really interested in seeing what we're going to do.

Yeah, I think this is a really interesting point, the relationship element, the working with humans part. I think a great example of, you know, not too many, but a few companies who historically have basically been hard to talk to somebody. You think about Facebook, you think about Google, it's like your account gets deactivated, you have to go through your whole network to find like the one friend who worked at Facebook 10 years ago, then they have to like do their back channel ping, and that whole thing is crazy. Um, and like if I go to Nike and I just walk in and I don't know what I want, so, so for example, I guess the better example would be Nordstrom Shoes. I mean like their whole thing is you walk in, they bring you 7 pairs of shoes, you know, it's, it's kind of crazy, but and then they just help you figure it out. They talk to you. If I just walked in and my shoes arrived, it would be a very different experience. And I think the whole company would have to like re-architect itself in a way around, I don't know what, maybe cost cutting, but it's very, very, very different. So yeah, your point is super interesting.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's like Amazon, trying to return something at Amazon is super seamless, right? You don't talk to anybody, it works great. The problem is the second it doesn't work great, there's no customer experience after that that is driving, um, something that you can do. It takes forever to go talk to someone, and you have to figure out exactly where in the links you got to follow to get to that, getting that help, because they try to automate everything. And I think that's too far, um, towards the AI side of things. But the more AI becomes more humanized, I think it will become better. And I do believe that that'll help. But again, it goes back to even when AI is doing things, I think there's still going to be a human that helps drive the emotion in it, that drives the, uh, engagement factor. Because I just, I just, I don't know, maybe that's just me, but I believe that that engagement and the human centricity over top is what's gonna make those companies stand out from the noise.

Yeah, I think that one's especially interesting. Every time I get a little bit worried about, you know, how quickly am I gonna get replaced, I just go to ChatGPT and ask it to help me write an email, and it's like this Victorian English gentleman in writing an email, and I'm like, dude, the tone is totally wrong. And you know, we have to go through this whole like process to have it be a little bit more like me. And then, and then I feel a little more calm, at least until the next model comes out, and then I'm freaked out.

Yeah, no, it's, it's evolving super fast, right? I mean, I think it's, it is going to be a very interesting evolution to see how people really adopt and learn how to leverage AI to do better versus to replace. And I think it will replace certain functions in exactly what the function is now. And I had this conversation a while ago with someone, and we were talking about, well, AI is going to replace you name it. And I said, okay, 100 years ago farmers still used horses and pulled things, and now they push a button and their vehicle drives, and they're doing one entire field with one vehicle and one farmer, and other farmers are now doing other things. And so it's not a question of are you going to be replaced, it's how do you adapt in the world to leverage what is replacing you to do better.

Yeah, absolutely right. It seems so weird and unfortunate that the more productivity tools I get, the more work I do, and then the more time I have to do more work. It's sort of like this infinite circle.

For sure.

So, you know, like thinking back to some of your early examples, we talked about, building a server for your, your game and making it good enough that folks basically were happy. And then we talked about this green space company and, and try to think about like all the logical operational components to, to make sure folks are happy. Um, and then I think— I'm trying to remember which company it was that you had highlighted this, but, uh, you were able to help improve Net Promoter Score, NPS, substantially. And presumably that was a function of like looking at user flows and helping people communicate with you and a whole bunch of stuff. Um, and so I, I'm kind of curious, like, as you think about building a great product, how do you figure out how to make sure that, um, what you're building continues to be the right thing and that you're delivering it in the right way? Because I do think that's a big part of customer experience and success.

Yeah, I think understanding what the problem is that you're trying to solve and making sure that that vision is established and you know where you're going, I think it's really important. And I think a lot of times companies that veer from that do that because they're comparing themselves to others. They look at their competitors and they go, well, they are doing X. And there's a philosopher, his name is Jordan— philosopher, psychiatrist, I'm not sure— Jordan Peterson. And he says, don't compare yourself to others, compare yourself to who you were yesterday. And it's this idea of— it's a self-help statement, but I think it applies to products and companies too. And the more you compare yourself to your competition, the less you are going to think about what is it that I and my customers really believe the right answer is. And so I think having that, it's, um, one of the things I told my product team in my last place was stop worrying about what this other competitor is doing. What should we be doing? Because if you chase them, you're always behind the ball. And if you think about what you should be doing by talking to your customers, by using AI to gather feedback, by looking at it at a macro level, you can now leapfrog the ball that you would have otherwise be chasing by doing the thing that's right. And otherwise, every— you're going to have one person who's always being chased and no one will ever be better than that. And so I think there's a way to really think about that.

Well, it is really funny how so often the best response here is talk to your customers because like if you, if you, and it's sort of awkward to talk to your competitors, but if you were to talk to your competitors and they were honest with you, they would probably just share the insights from their customers. So instead of just like following them blindly, Talking to your customers certainly helps. And I think that's especially true in the, in the context of AI. It's like there's these general purpose models that can effectively do anything, but like they also really can't do anything super well yet. And if you build a tool, and I think we're seeing that now, if, if we build a verticalized specific product as opposed to using an AI, it's like we're building a product for a customer because of their problems. That's when it becomes really valuable. It's like that whole customer understanding loop build for them, listen to them over and over and over?

Well, I mean, it's kind of funny, right? So if you— the concept is solve the pain, right? So I think it's whether you're in a job search and you're trying to get a new job, and it's like, solve the pain for that company. Whether it's a new product, solve the pain for your customers. Whether it's your customers going, I have this pain, so you can jump to solve that particular problem. Whether it's I mean, I hate to say it, but in your personal lives, your friends, your family, they've got a pain. Can you help them? Like, figuring out what that is and solving that allows you to be successful in a way. And sometimes that pain is just listen, and you're like, I'm not going to fix that because your real pain is over here, so let's go do that, right? So, because customers don't always know— I mean, bluntly, customers don't always know everything that they want. And they're going to want, like, Henry Ford's— I'm not even sure it's the real statement, but If I ask my customers, they just want a better, faster horse.

Yep.

It's that concept. It's like your customers have input, but you as a business owner or a product leader or a CSM leader or whatever, have a vision of what it could be. So how do you blend those things? And that's really how you can drive forwards in a successful way.

Yeah, absolutely right. I think I started to laugh as you were talking about this, but I was thinking about My sisters occasionally will be like, dude, I don't need you to solve my problems right now. I just want you to listen. And I think that's a great insight that like we all need to identify is like you said, some of the things that our customers share, they're not really the problem and you kind of have to figure out what the root, you know, main, main root issue is. And that's actually a lot of work. And I think it makes you excellent if you can figure that out.

Absolutely. It's funny, as a product leader, you want to solve the problem and the pain. And then I think about like a support leader hat in the CX space. Support leader can't solve everything at all times, but a customer just wants to be heard. This isn't working. And so a good support leader will take the time, listen to the venting, as it were, and then say, I'm sorry, that's not something we're going to be able to fix now. They're going to vent some more. And then over time, it'll be like, okay, thank you for listening. Like, that's the end result. And you've not had to fix the problem because you're fixing the macro by your product being great, your whatever. And so I think you have to think about your sisters, uh, they don't want you solving your problem, right? It's how do you help them either talk it out, or how do you just go, I'm really sorry that that happened to you.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's, it's so hard to do. I, I like, I'm so inside just like agitating, like, oh, I, I can, I can really do something here, but like, really, I'm not quite that skilled I can do a lot of things, but—

Yep, I'm a fixer at heart, so I hear you for sure.

Yeah, well, I have, you know, one kind of final question for you, and it's more just like, as you think about folks who are, you know, looking to navigate a career path that is as cool and as interesting as yours, what are some of the things that like you think are really critically important at that early and kind of middle stage, as sometimes it feels like you're roaming and maybe you're actually on the right path?

Um, I would say there's nothing wrong with roaming. Don't limit yourself to the straight line career. Um, up kind of isn't always better. In the, in the short run, it feels like you're going to get a little bit more money, you're gonna get a little bit more title or recognition, but that growth path is following a path you may never have thought about. Uh, my point, like, my first real job was delivering newspapers, and then I worked at KB Toys, which doesn't even exist anymore.

Oh, I loved that place, right?

So it was shelf stocker, and then I went into web design, and then I went into server farms, and then I went into consulting, and then I worked for a startup doing, um, software point of sale. Like being able to meander throughout this career gave me a broad background. And at this point I can sit in a room with a DBA, database administrator. I can sit in the room with a Salesforce admin, a developer, an engineer. I can sit in the room with a government official, with executives, and I can adapt to it because I've had this meandering career. And you have to be able to think about broadening how your options look like through roles or companies you didn't expect.. And I think being open to it, but still having an idea of like, this is where I want to be. I've always wanted to be a chief customer officer. Um, and that's been— that was always my goal for the last 20 years. Get my MBA, be a chief customer officer. Neither of those I hit in the time frame that I wanted, to be blunt. But I've run support teams, I've run success teams, PS teams. Like, it's all in the customer experience space, um, but just the experience allows you to have better conversations and think about things in a different light than if you were like, I'm level 1, level 2, level 3, senior manager, senior manager, director, VP, all in one organizational type. You lose that flexibility and the malleability.

I think that's great. I mean, I grew up with a similar— sounds similar to you actually— with a banker dad who, you know, there was sort of this path after you graduate college where it's like 2 years associate or, you know, 2 years associate, MBA, MBA to PE, and blah, blah, blah. And it was like, I literally could not fathom and imagine doing that. And I did not. And I was more like you, but, um, Such, such a great insight. And so we'll just wrap up, and I just want to say thanks again, Philippe, for joining us. So Philippe Mesritz, if you, uh, where can folks find you if they're interested in following anything you're having to say? LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram?

Best place is LinkedIn for sure. I post a newsletter there, so feel free to subscribe. I've also, uh, I'm happy to have conversations, always open to talking. And Scott, thanks for the conversation. Uh, love thinking about these things because it gets me out of my box.

Thank you for joining us today. Again, this podcast was sponsored by Zyte, a screen recording and screen capture service that gives your workplace all you need to communicate with your customers and team with clarity. If you'd like to learn how we can help your business increase clarity of communications, visit zyte.com.