The Total Experience Playbook
by Larry Mead, Kate Kompelien and Kurt Schroeder
Director, Managed Services
Customer Experience is the reason I actually came to this company. I’ve been here for almost 20 years and customer experience wasn’t really on anyone’s radar at that point in time. But the way I look at customer experience is delivering an impact and making an impact on our customers by using our ability to understand their business and how that applies to technology. Let me tell you a story about how I ended up here. I fell into two different job opportunities. One was a small start-up(Avtex) and one was General Mills! The reason I chose to come here was because on a daily basis I could have an impact on a customer’s business. To me, it’s having an impact by using our skill sets.
I think it’s top of mind because the world has changed a ton over the last 30 years and we’ve gone away from less of a widget-specific, product-based environment. We are still buying products in person but now it’s about how you buy and the way the customer feels while making that purchase. You never know who you’re dealing with on the other side of the line and you want to make sure that every experience a person has is a good one.
It’s direct customer interaction. One of the things I really enjoy doing is going out and meeting with our customers and understanding who they are on a personal level, a professional level, and then how we can help them. One of the things that we do on a regular basis is quarterly business reviews with our customers. So we want to understand what their needs are going forward and also reviewing what we’ve done. That is one of my favorite parts of my job: being able to sit in front of a customer, look at them eye to eye and ensure we are meeting their needs.