Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Table Service podcast where we'll dish on all things support, success and beyond with the people and companies building the future of customer experience. Table Service is presented by Tableau Consulting and I'm your host, Jordan Hooker. Brandon Owen is the founder of Customers and Culture where he helps companies build stronger teams, exceptional customer experiences and cultures that work. He spent over a decade building and leading teams for software companies in a variety of stages and industries, from well established publicly traded companies all the way to early stage startups still getting off the ground. Brandon has been described by peers as a world class culture builder and organizational change agent, proven capable of turning around broken teams and turning them into winners and the kind of leader to get in place for overcoming the hardest challenges or complex problems. Brandon, welcome to the table.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Jordan, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: So glad to have you here. Really looking forward to this conversation. I think this is a really critical conversation for customer experience leaders of all stripes. So excited to spend some time on this topic before we get started, further into the conversation for our listeners who may not be familiar with you, would love to hear a little bit more about you. Let's, let's hear the story.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah, so I mean you hit on a lot of it. But you know, most of my background has been building and leading client facing teams. Whether that's been customer support teams, customer success teams, account management teams, typically been earlier stage in terms of whether that's smaller companies or building a customer success team within a really large company. But when I started I only had one person and grew that up to 15 people. And so about a year ago this time I had this realization that every business has two things. Every business has customers, every business has culture. And there's a forever link between the two of those things in terms of how well a company does. And so that's what led me to start Customers and Culture. And so I'm doing some fractional customer success leadership and consulting for software companies and then also helping some construction companies with their culture leadership operations. And that's been been really interesting as well.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks for sharing those details. We'll certainly link more to the work that you're doing right now down in the show. Notes that I'm sure we'll talk about here in a little bit as well, just so our listeners can find you. So in that, that vein, I know a lot of our conversation today will be around both of those things, customers and the way we work with customers and then culture. So let's start on that culture topic. Can you Talk with me just a little bit about how company culture shapes the customer's experience.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And there's a quote, I can't remember who it was by, but the basis of it is that your customers will never be happier than your employees are. And happy employees are made by creating a great culture. And a lot of people think culture is let's get the ping pong tables and get all the perks. But in reality, culture is a place where people feel safe and people know they can grow. And when we create those sorts of environments where people feel safe to take ownership and make mistakes and fail, knowing that the leaders around them are going to support them, then all of a sudden they feel empowered to go take really great care of their customers and create really great customer experiences that probably couldn't be created. There wasn't a culture behind that that empowered that employee.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: So let's think about a company that potentially, let's say early stage startup. You and I have spent a lot of time in this kind of environment. If we want to do this right from the get go. What do you think are the building blocks a company needs to put in place to be successful in this from early on?
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think, and I kind of touched on this, but oftentimes early stage companies get this idea in their heads that like, creating a really great culture is expensive and we've got to have all these fancy things to create culture. But that's really not what culture is. It's a, I think, a misconception. Building a great culture does take time and effort and work to build, but it doesn't cost a lot of money. It just takes the work of learning how to be a great leader. And the building blocks of that culture, I think, are, one of them is curiosity. Are you building a place where your employees can think outside the box, where they can come up with new ideas?
Thinking about customer support specifically, nobody knows about customer support more than the person that's on the front lines, that's actually on the phone or on the, on the other side of the chats with customers. And so creating a culture where that person feels empowered to go to the leaders and say, hey, this part of our product isn't working, or this part of our process isn't working. And I know that because I'm the one talking to the customers every day. So curiosity is a big one. Creating a place where it's safe for people to fail and then they can take ownership of those failures, knowing that they're not going to get in trouble. But they're going to be coached up and given an opportunity to improve.
And then I always talk about candor. Can we give open and honest feedback up and down the chain of command? And what all of that does is creates a really connected group of people that are all running in the same direction. And again, to what I said earlier, when you have all of those building blocks in place, your customers are going to be cared for because your employees are going to feel the freedom to take ownership and go take care of those customers the way that they know how to do that best.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Just thinking about how companies like this communicate, what do you think are some of the key elements of how communication should be handled and organizations that want to do this? Well, either early stage from the get go, or perhaps a company that's really trying to change course and change direction. What do you think some of those key components are?
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that honest honesty almost feels like a. A cliche thing to say, but unfortunately it needs to be said because honesty isn't always present. And so there's this idea that if we have a great culture, everything's always going to be sunshine and unicorns and everything's going to be great. But no matter how great your culture is or how great your company is doing, there's always hard conversations to be had, whether that's around an employee that's trying to improve or an area of your product that's not.
And so being able to have those open and honest conversations is really, really critical. But the this that you have to have to do that well is the trust and safety that people know, hey, this is a hard conversation. But at the end of this conversation, we're still on the all on the same team. We're still all running in the same direction. And this hard conversation, this honest conversation, isn't because we're all mad at each other. We just have to untangle a mess sometimes and we have to work together to do that. Yeah, I think that's the best way that I would explain it.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: A few more thoughts on this particular topic. Let's say you've got a customer support, customer success, success, customer experience leader that gets this, but they work in an organization that doesn't. What do you think are the really critical things for that leader to do within their particular part of the organization for the benefit of that part of the organization, but then potentially even to expand that out to other parts of the org?
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Yeah, man, that's a, that's a really hard situation to be in.
And the way that I'VE always thought about that is, you know, if I'm a support leader, a CX leader, I have the autonomy, I would hope typically to lead my team. And so I'm not going to get pulled into all these other teams, but I'm going to lead my team the way I know that they need to be led.
In an ideal scenario, what's going to happen is all of a sudden your team is thriving, you've got a great culture on your team, customers are happy, and other folks around the organization are going to see your team and start asking questions like, what's going on over there? That this team is different and how do we replicate that across the organization? And if you're the one leading that team, then hopefully you're going to have the chance to affect that change across the organization by taking what worked at your specific team level and moving that out into the rest of the organization. But trying to do that in the opposite way of, hey, let me try to go change the whole company's culture, and then hopefully my team culture changes alongside of it is a much, much harder thing to do.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Let's stay on that topic of leadership a little bit. You've written a LinkedIn post that we'll make sure to link in the show notes, particularly around leading like Ben Rector. For those familiar, we'd love to hear a little bit more about that from you and those thoughts as we contemplate this idea of what does leadership look like in an organization like this? Let's talk about that a little bit more.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I went to a Ben Rector concert with my wife a couple years ago now, and I only took one picture, that entire concert. And the picture, if you don't know who Ben Rector is, it. It doesn't show a whole lot. But if you know who Ben Rector is, the picture is interesting because Ben Rector is actually side stage singing background vocals. And the guy who is center stage on the mic is one of Ben's background vocalists. And there was this point in the show where Ben gave his background vocalist a chance to take center stage, sing a song, start to finish. Ben went and sang background vocals for him. And it was as I'm watching just a moment that I just thought about what makes a great leader. And that Ben, of course, is an awesome guy because he's comfortable to take the background vocals for a while and give one of his guys a chance to shine. But bigger than that, there's no one in that auditorium that is a bigger fan of the guy at center stage than Ben Rector, ultimately, if the guy at center stage falls apart, forgets the words, doesn't know what to do, it's on Ben to go get the show back, get everything back on the rails. But he's taking a back seat and letting somebody else run the show for a second. But if things go sideways, it's on Ben to fix it.
And then another thing is that there's nobody in there that knows more than Ben, what that guy should be doing at center Stage. And so it was just a. I thought, a really great moment and just kind of what makes great leadership in a photo.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: It's really, really interesting, particularly as a musician. I definitely can relate to this, having also seen some other musicians that are in that same vein do the same thing. We've seen Drew Holcomb and the neighbors and Drew and Ellie Holcomb perform a number of times, and it has not been an unusual thing for them to bring somebody up on that stage and allow them an opportunity to shine in the middle of a concert that's focused on them, but then instead saying, hey, here's someone else I want to shine the spotl on. While also, you're absolutely right. If that performance goes south when I leave there, my. My thoughts are not going to be, oh, gosh, that. That performer did a terrible job. My thoughts are going to be, well, my gosh, why did Drew Holcomb let that performer get up there in the first place? But if he stepped back up into that there and really led and really brought the show back, I'm probably not even going to remember what happened in the middle of the show for that one or two songs. So I think it's a really valuable outside of business experience to see different people leading in different ways. And I think we see that in a lot of different industries and a lot of different professions. But for some reason, I feel like we don't see that much in leadership inside of support and success organizations, at least those that. That I've experienced.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, to your point, like, another thing is that Ben Rector, in that moment, probably spent a ton of time with. I think the guy, his name was Jordy, probably spent a ton of time with him, making sure he was prepared, making sure he was rehearsed, making sure that. That he knew what to do. And so then if things do go sideways, another thing is I doubt Ben would have gotten on the mic and been like, gosh, that Jordy's such a moron. I don't know Ben Rector, obviously, personally, but I know enough about him. He probably would have come up to the mic, encouraged Jordy and said, hey, man, I know you can do this. Hey, crowd, let's pump Jordy up a little bit and let's give him another shot.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: And so if I'm a support leader and I'm going to send one of my folks on a really big client visit or let them take the lead on a client call, I'm going to be there in the background to, you know, if we need to press mute on the call and I need to give them a little coaching, I can do that, but I'm going to make sure they are wildly prepared before we go into that. And ultimately, if it doesn't go well, it's going to be up to me to sit across from our CEO, VP president, whoever it may be, and say, hey, that was. That was a failure on my part. It wasn't a failure on Bob's part. It was a failure on my part because I didn't make sure that he was prepared enough. I didn't take the reins when I should have. So, yeah, tons and tons of parallels from that little moment in the concert to how we lead our people.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Thanks for that. That little nugget of wisdom and leadership. What does it look like to prepare our people, give them opportunity and platform, but also be there to support them and to. To guard them, to be the one that when the CEO comes down the hall angry about something that went wrong, I should be the person they're coming to and having those conversations. And I think teams will find. We will find. Teams feel much safer, will feel much more able to take risk when we as leaders step into those places and. And take the brunt of those. Those challenges in those conversations.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Yep, for sure.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Well, let's zero in a little bit more on customer success, which I know is the area that you have spent a lot of your career on. Let's talk about what growing a forest teaches us about customer success, which is this really interesting concept that I'd love to have you flesh out.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. This is one of my favorite analogies. And, you know, if you think about a tree, just think about, like, a really, really large oak tree just standing by itself in a field. And it's. It's huge. It looks like nobody could ever take it down. Like, it would take several people to take this tree down, but in reality, that tree by itself is really susceptible. It's alone. And so it can be. Actually can be taken down by a pretty good storm.
And you contrast that with, if you have a forest of trees. Now, actually, they, like, help create the weather, like the Amazon rainforest. And relating that to customer success, you have to protect your trees. You have to grow the branches of your trees, and you have to deepen the roots of your trees so that they can't be cut down. And so that relates to the three Rs of customer success, retention, relationships, and revenue. And so no company can be successful with just one really big customer. You have to have a lot of. Of customers. You have to have a forest of customers. And to do that, you have to protect those trees. You have to have somebody at every single client that you have. You need somebody there who relies on your product so much that if the CEO came and said, hey, I don't know what this thing is, but we're gonna cancel it, somebody would rise up and say, over my dead body, because I use this every day, and it's really, really important to me. So that's retention. That's protecting those trees. You need trees with deep roots, and that's relationships. That's whether it's the account manager or CSM that has a really deep relationship with that customer. They know the ins and outs of their business. They know when their daughter's birthday is. They've sat across the table from them at their office and talked about the problems that your product solves for them. And as soon as you start to like, if that person leaves, you've got to find the new person that you need to build a relationship with. And then the last one is growing the branches, which is revenue. We've got to, whether that's through upsells or cross sells, growing those accounts so that our revenue's increasing. Obviously, no business can survive without revenue. So those retention relationships, revenue, protect the trees, deepen the roots, grow the branches, and then what you end up with is a company that is very large and has a lot of impact in the industry that it's in, as opposed to a small company that's really susceptible to the changes in the environment, Whether that's the macro environment, like the economy or the environment within that specific industry?
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Sure.
So as a customer success leader who has been number one for customer success in a small organization and then grown that. What would your advice be to new customer success leaders who are stepping into that role for the first time, either building a team from scratch or inheriting a team or potentially even being promoted inside of that team, what, what would some advice you'd give to that leader be?
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think when you're coming in with no team or a really small team. And the intention is for that team to grow. That first hire that you make is so, so important because that's going to typically is going to dictate kind of how the team goes as you grow. And so if that first hire can be somebody who you know personally that can like, they think the way that you do about customer success. They've done this before. They know how you're gonna lead and all of that, that one, it makes your job a whole lot easier because you've got somebody that now, yeah, I need to train you on our product and in our industry, those things. But the baseline of how we do things here, I don't have to train you on because, you know, we've, we've already got that kind of background. So typically, if I can, I'm gonna make my first hire somebody that I, that I know and have worked with before. And so that I think that's a huge one is like nailing that first hire and then kind of alongside that is never like never just hiring to fill seats.
There's been plenty of times where it's like, oh man, like we are really busy. We're a little overloaded. We've got more accounts than we probably can hand.
But I would rather have a small, a little bit shorthanded team with all the right people than have a bigger team that all of the ratios are right, but I've got a few of the wrong people on the team because that, that creates headaches for everybody. It pulls the whole team down.
So being comfortable to run at a, a little bit of an more overloaded than is comfortable while you make sure you get the right people on your team is also really, really important. Don't ever get like pressured and start just hiring people to hire them. That that's not the best thing for your team or your company or your customers for that matter.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Absolutely. For a leader who hears that thought of what would it look like to run a lean, potentially slightly overloaded team at least early on to make sure that we've got the right building blocks, the right people in place, not make a. A fast hire that ends up being not great and ultimately causes more trouble down the road. What would be your advice to them to be able to go sell that to executive leadership? Because I can imagine a few questions from senior leadership around. Wouldn't you just rather have somebody else in these seats and doing the work as opposed to building what is a stronger foundation? Be curious to hear your thoughts there.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, the first thing that comes to my mind is, yeah, I know that we're going to have more people to handle more accounts, but the trade off is we're going to lose time handling those accounts because we're going to be having to deal with the personnel challenges that come from having this person that's not bought into our culture or actually isn't good at taking care of our customers. And so now we've got actually more customer issues than we would have had if we were a smaller team. So that's one thing that comes to mind. I think the other thing is having really good account segmentation so that you actually have an idea and a feel for how many customer success folks do I actually need? Because your smallest customer, though they're important and though you don't want to lose them, you're going to handle them differently than you would handle your largest customer. And so having a ton of clarity around how your accounts are segmented so that you actually know what that right number is, I think is another really important piece of that puzzle.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Thanks for walking through that with us. I think this is a really critical conversation both for customer success and for all really early stage teams to think about what would it look like to go slow so that later we can go fast as we begin this work? Well, Brandon, as we wrap up this conversation, curious if there might be any closing thoughts you'd like to share with our listeners on these topics or anything related?
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Yeah, man. I just think that for me, starting customers and culture, and I have this tagline that business is easy until people get involved. And I think it's true. But the. The reality that your customers and your employees, which is kind of how I relate culture into it, like customers and employees, at the end of the day, they're both humans and they really all want the same thing. They want to feel seen, they want to feel heard and valued, and they want to get that from your organization. Whether that's for an employee, the value they get from your organization is a place to grow their career and use their gifts and of course, get a paycheck. So the value that your employees get from your organization is different than the value your customers get. But at the end of the day, customers and employees want the same things because they're people and they want to feel seen, they want to feel heard, they want to feel valued. Knowing that just helps a ton and goes a long way towards how do we make sure that all of these folks that we're leading and caring for, be it customers or employees have a great experience.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Well, thanks for those thoughts and this conversation. I think these are really crucial things that oftentimes I think we can breeze past pretty quickly on on our journey, not realizing how foundational a lot of these pieces can be. If our listeners wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about you, learn more about customers and culture, what would be the best way for them to do that?
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Yeah, so my website www.customersandculture.com.
lots to check out on there. And then my email is just brandonustomersandculture.com you can also find me on LinkedIn.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Wonderful. We'll make sure to include those links in the show notes to make it easy for folks to get to you if they're interested in continuing the conversation. But Brandon, thanks so much for joining us here at the Table.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Yeah, Jordan, thanks for having me. I had a great time.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Yeah, same here. Thanks, Brandon.
Thanks for listening to the Table Service podcast. You can learn more about today's guest in the show notes below. Table Service is presented by Tavalo Consulting, hosted by Jordan Hooker, music by Epidemic Sound.
