As a leader, it’s not enough to simply provide clear instructions of what you want done.
Today we’re going to talk about the need for everyone on a team to understand the business needs and objectives of the overall organization or business unit they are contributing to.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Patty Soltis, Senior Customer Experience Manager, Upwork.
Resources
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Transcript
Note: This was AI-generated and only lightly edited
Greg Kihlstrom:
As a leader, it’s not enough to simply provide clear instructions of what you want done. Today, we’re going to talk about the need for everyone on a team to understand the business needs and objectives of the overall organization or business unit they’re contributing to. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Patty Soltis, Senior Customer Experience Manager at Upwork. Patty, welcome to the show.
Patty Soltis: Hi, Greg. It’s nice to be here with you.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, good to have you back on the show, returning champion here. So always, always great to talk with you. But for those that didn’t catch the last time you were on, why don’t we start with you giving a little background on yourself and your current role?
Patty Soltis: Sure. I spent 30 years in retail. I was a vice president general manager for companies like Lord& Taylor, Marshall Fields. I spent most of my career at Neiman Marcus. And that’s where I really learned about customer centricity and how being customer centric can really drive a business because my job was to hit profit goals. And the best way I found to do that was through customer centricity. I took that with me when I left retail about 10 years ago and worked as a consultant for, I don’t know, seven, eight years, something like that. I then became a principal analyst of customer experience and did a brief foray into patient experience. And now I’m back in my role as senior customer experience manager at Upwork.
Greg Kihlstrom: Great, great. So yeah, let’s dive in here and start by talking about what I mentioned at the top of the show, why it’s so important to have this shared understanding of business. And at a high level, I think anybody listening out there, it It makes sense that there would be this understanding. It makes sense that teams will do better work if they have a better understanding of the business, but this is still not happening as often as it should. What are some of the symptoms of this that many listeners can probably relate to?
Patty Soltis: One thing I hear in particular from a lot of CX leaders is that they can’t get anybody to listen to them, that they get pigeonholed into being an NPS owner. And I just think about that and I think, you know, gosh, everybody’s job is hard. It’s not just CX people. So I look at that one really just as an excuse. But the main thing that I would say that sits out there and holds people back is really learning how to speak the language of the C-suite, really learning how to speak the language of the business leaders, of our partners inside organizations. And I think that that to me is the big thing that holds people back.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the things that are getting in the way of even leaders or you know, whoever needs to communicate this better understanding, you know, what’s getting in the way of that?
Patty Soltis: I think there needs to be just some skillful navigation by leaders, and they have to figure out where they want to go and what they want to do. You’ve got to get relationships built in the organization, and you have to make that time investment to do that. You can’t jump in and expect that you’re going to solve problems instantly. That’s a process, and it takes time, and the relationships that we build make all the difference in the world. Really important thing to do the second part to that I think is really just asking a lot of questions and asking for what you need So I would say the first part is to really build relationships ask and the third part of this for me is really just persevere You know this stuff it just doesn’t happen overnight and I look at where I’ve been in my rules in the past and I’m sure I’m By no means alone when I say this, but perseverance has so much to do with where you end up with inside of anything. So I think that’s, that is just so important because when you persevere, you get access to information, you get the ability to build partnerships with different things, you show that you have tenacity. And so I think that that is just really so important. And I think that that can help delineate some of that piece where CX leaders feel like their job is hard or that they’re undervalued. But when you keep driving through that and you find those milestones that you’re celebrating along the way, even the little ones, I think that makes all the difference.
Greg Kihlstrom: So what does this then look like when it’s done well? It’s kind of the inverse of the last question, but what does it look like when there is a shared and common understanding of strategy and business goals? What effect does this have on the teams and the work they do?
Patty Soltis: I think that there’s a lot of different pieces to this. And the first piece to this I’m going to go into is really understanding and being able to effectively communicate why customer experience is important to an organization. You know, you’ve got to get into those, the studies that are out there, the research that’s out there. The American Customer Satisfaction Index that’s been around since 2006, they’ve been looking at portfolios of customer-centric organizations. And we need to know this. We need to know that customer-centric organizations in their portfolio provided a 1930% return while the S&P provided a 530% return. Like we need to know this and we need to be able to know how to communicate that. Watermark just came out with their study. They’ve been doing this I think for 15 years now and in their 2024 study they said there’s a 5.4 times greater return for organizations that are customer-centric. And of course, Forrester. Forrester’s always putting this information out there. It’s a nice, reliable source. But their most recent information is 41% of these organizations have greater revenue growth, 49% have greater profit growth, and 51% of them have higher customer retention. So we’ve got to know these things and we’ve got to be able to articulate them inside our organization to show that there’s value. Note I said value, not ROI. I have no interest in improving the ROI inside an organization. My interest is in how to provide value inside the organization. And when we know these things and we’re able to articulate them, we’re making our case for why this is important. Once you can understand that and be able to articulate that, you have to be able to tie your financials back into satisfaction. You have to know how much a promoter’s worth, how much the detractor worth, what are your promoter and detractor shares doing? How is that impacting the company in terms of revenue dollars? So, you know, like you’ve got to get into those nitty gritty pieces. And this also relates back to that whole piece of speaking the language.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned this briefly, but I’d love for you to tease it apart a little bit more is how do you define the difference between proving ROI versus proving value with CX?
Patty Soltis: Look, I do this in my job every every day. So when I started in my job, we had a few pieces that connected our financial value for satisfaction. And, you know, it was it was a few things. We have a lot of things now because I just kept asking for it because I wanted to prove the value of customer experience and why it’s important and why it matters to our organization. So I can now tell you how much a promoter is worth, how much a promoter spends 90 days after feedback, how much a detractor is worth, how much a detractor spends 90 days after feedback. I can tell you how much and how much a new contract is worth for a promoter before feedback and how much it’s worth after feedback. I can do the same thing for a detractor. I can tell you how many new contracts are promoters open. I can tell you how many new contracts are detractors open. I can tell you what pieces of qualitative feedback cause retention and what pieces of qualitative feedback cause churn. Now, it’s taken me a year to be able to get that information, but all that information is showing the value of customer centricity inside our organization. Because quite frankly, I don’t even know how to prove ROI, but I do know how to go in and walk in with a group of leaders and say, this is why satisfaction matters. This is how it’s impacting our bottom line inside our organization. And I can speak to it from all those different areas. I can also break all that information I just mentioned into segments. I can talk about it by customer segment within our organization. So I can look at our most valuable customer segments inside our organization and tell them all that information about how much value a promoter brings and how much value a detractor takes from us. And that’s where I think you make the difference in the value versus the ROI.
Greg Kihlstrom: In a second, I want to talk more about leadership’s role in all of this. But just to kind of go back to what I’m hearing from you, at least, is I think it sounds like it takes a lot of curiosity beyond, you know, you mentioned kind of CX gets labeled as the like NPS people or, you know, whatever, you know, pick your flavor, CSAT, NPS, whatever. they get kind of pigeonholed in that, okay, well, they own the surveys that do this. But I mean, hearing you describe what you’re doing, and the questions that you’re asking, and all that, it seems like it takes a lot more curiosity than just, okay, our number went up or down or something, right? Are you continually asking new questions? And you know, what does that look like?
Patty Soltis: Yeah, Greg, that is a really good question because one of the first things I did when I came to Upwork was build a partnership with our data team. So, and I’m continually working on building a relationship and rapport with our analytics team inside the overall organization, because gosh, they have the data. And when you get that data, then you can build out on it. So part of it was, as I started in this role, part of it was understanding what we had. And part of it was understanding what I wanted to know, so that I could build that value case inside the organization. Because, you know, we all know, once again, how CX people they get pigeonholed into all these different things, but gosh when you can speak to these numbers It makes all the difference so I knew I had to prove my value and my worth and it’s funny because even Going back to my early days in retail. I always knew there was a value to my job. You know like Plain and simple profitability measure is how much each employee inside an organization? what their value is to the organization. So I’ve always thought about it from that aspect. But when I started thinking a little bit more about the customer experience side, it was how do we put a value on all these pieces that matter to my organization? And so I had to find out what were the pieces that matter to my organization. Did it matter to them where revenue was coming from? Did it matter to them who it was coming from? Did it matter to them how much? Like, you know, I had to put all these things together. And so it was a bit of a process to do it. And like I said, it’s taken a year and I feel like I’m just sitting on the tip of the iceberg, like there’s so much more to do. But the relationship that I have, understanding what those things are that mattered inside the organization, those two things, those just funneled and drove my curiosity.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and it, it sounds like you have the support as well to do that. And you know, maybe maybe it takes a little on on both sides, you know, a little proving the value of digging deeper and getting access to more data and all that. But you know, definitely sounds like there’s there’s some support there.
Patty Soltis: I just want to add one thing. And that is that I earned that support.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yep.
Patty Soltis: That support was not given to me. I earned it. So, you know, it’s not like it was a gift. I wish it was. But even through the interview process, I interviewed with one of the data people and I made it very clear how important I thought their job was in the interview process.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah.
Patty Soltis: So this was a long term thing for me to earn that.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, no. And I think that’s a great that’s a great point as well, which is. I would assume most people understand that, you know, this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but the the the need for partnerships and like true partnership. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you’ve done the legwork to, to build those and not just expect that things are going to be handed to you and stuff like that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, let’s let’s talk about the role of leadership here, because I think there’s a there is a big component. And there’s probably things that leaders can do and leader things that leaders shouldn’t do as well. When we’re talking about some of the disconnects between understanding of you know, the business and the business value, even the business potential. What should leaders do here to start overcoming some of the fundamental disconnects?
Patty Soltis: You know, the first thing is just, and we all know this, but you got to actually do it, is the servant leadership piece. We just kind of alluded to it a minute ago when I said I earned this. And it is that servant leadership piece that is so important. And I’m not saying be a doormat, but I am saying learn the business, understand the priorities. Like those two things make all the difference in the world. And then for your your support partners be able to articulate that piece of it. So my data partners that I work with inside of our customer experience team, they know why I’m asking for this data. I take the time to explain it to them. I take the time to explain to them what I’m going to do with this data. Why is it important? What is it that it’s going to do for our organization? They know all of those things. So they’re like in on the gig too, more or less. with this and it leverages their strengths with that. The other piece to this I would say is that as you know, as you work with your business units or your teams or your your organization, get into the roadmaps, the OPs, the strategies, the goals, the objectives. That’s part of learning the business right there. But you got to get into those things to see where they’re going and why. And then you just start like tying all this in together. And that last piece then as you’re doing all this stuff is learning their language. And that’s a, you know, that’s a hard thing to do. I’m going to tell you, I’m still working on that in my organization, because my language, my organization speaks tech, I do not speak tech. And I struggle with that from time to time. But I’m very methodically learning it so that I am able to understand it and get into it. I mean, you know, every organization has acronyms and each organization has different ones. You know, I most recently came from health care into tech and like, it’s a whole different set of acronyms that I’m learning, like learning how to speak that language and doing it intentionally.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Well, I mean, just overall, to me, it just keeps coming back to the need for curiosity, right? It’s it’s I mean, leaders need to build bridges of their own with their peers and stuff like that. But it also sounds like when a leader is hiring for positions, we perpetuate silos and all those cliches by continuing to hire and build these roles that are very rigid and not curious. I mean, just hearing you explain what you’re doing and yeah, not everyone is going to become a data scientist, nor should they. But understanding how to talk to a data scientist is a very different thing than becoming one. You know, so in other words, like this, this idea of just kind of staying in your lane and throwing something over the fence and all that, it seems like those days are kind of going away. Would you say that’s true?
Patty Soltis: I would say that’s true. And you know what, I think you’re ultimately talking about Greg is empathy.
Greg Kihlstrom: Hmm. Yeah.
Patty Soltis: Yeah. And we, we as CX people talk all the time about having empathy for our customers. Well, darn it. Why don’t we have empathy for people inside our organization too?
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, um, no, I think that’s a good, it’s, it kind of underscores that idea that, you know, customer experience starts with the employee experience. Right. And, and, you know, it’s, it’s kind of the center out approach of things.
Patty Soltis: Yeah. And I would even take it back one step further. I think it starts with us.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. How do leaders try to anticipate the you know, it’s it’s it’s hard to keep up as it is, but you know, how do leaders try to stay or how should leaders try to stay a step ahead of, you know, where gaps are going to be and you know, the the team on the ground, so to speak, they’re experts in their own areas, but you know, leaders got to look a few steps ahead of everybody, you know, how do you recommend that they do that in the, you know, kind of tying this idea of also always driving the idea of business value to their teams?
Patty Soltis: Yeah, and I think that the best CX leaders, they set their vision, they set their goals, and they set their strategies into place. And I’m going to tell you, I’m not the greatest at writing mine now, but I know what mine are. So, um, I recently had to write them down at work and I, it took me about 10 minutes to do it because I, I know what they are. And, um, so I know where I’m going with CX. I know how I’m trying to get there. I know who I need to be on, on my team. And I know that what I want ultimately in the end is I want to help the leaders in the business unit I work with be more certain in their decision making process. Like, that’s where I’m trying to go with this. And I sit on so much data inside of my, inside of what I do. And I think we all do as CX people. But once again, it comes back to how do we articulate that data back so that we can help these leaders be more certain in their decision making process. And that’s my vision, is how can I do that? So I think about that every day in everything I’m doing. And whatever it is that I’m doing, that’s my prevalent thought, is how am I helping them do this? And I’m leaning further and further into that servant leadership and really just listening to get to their problem. Because, you know, we talk about root causes. Well, let’s help our leaders get to root causes and figure out what’s getting in their way and what their obstacles are. When I did my listening tour, when I started at Upwork, that was one of the questions I asked is, what’s getting in your way? I didn’t get great answers at the time. But since then, I’m getting Stronger answers and I think about this and I think about probably why I didn’t get great answers at the time is nobody’s listening to them either. So you know probably nobody’s ever asked him that question and I think about all the things that everybody has to do and that’s on their plates and I think about how can I make this easier for them. I was looking at a McKinsey study about a year ago, and it said that a CEO has 16 different priorities. That’s a lot of priorities. I don’t think I could handle 16 different priorities. So I think about, how do I make that easier? I think about a CFO and the role that they walk and the fine line that they walk between trying to provide shareholder value, the balance that they have between, you know, speaking their language of finance and turning that into normal everyday language for people to easily understand, you know, all of the requests that they’re balancing all the time, like, that’s a hard job. So I think about those things. And I think that if we as CX leaders, you know, come back to what we, you and I were just talking about a minute ago and roll that empathy piece out. I think it really helps if we help to prioritize, if we don’t try and try and boil the ocean, try and try to be everything like, you know, CX is a lot of different things. You can’t do all of it and CX, find your specialty and, and dig into it. If we get in and we build those relationships and we further build them and further build them and further build them. And we do that by building trust. And you and I have a good friend, Mark Slatin, he talks about the importance of building trust all the time. And, you know, in his class, the trusted guy, what is it? The trusted guy roadmap. Yeah, masterclass. Like, he actually builds this out and helps you build it out. Like, this is the kind of stuff that CX leaders need, because this is the kind of stuff that helps them put their vision to actual reality.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and some of what you’re talking about too, you know, the, the, the empathy, the, you know, I’ll use my term curiosity as well. And, you know, you’re, you’re talking about understanding the role of the CFO and the CEO and perhaps others, you know, does everybody need a, an MBA to, you know, kind of understand, you know, to understand, how the business actually were, you know, I think it would be good if everyone, if everyone on a team understood really the the mechanics of business and, and some of those things, but you know, not everyone’s gonna, gonna do that. But like, what is a, what can a leader do to share enough of the business and the business drivers and yet not distract people from from their goals?
Patty Soltis: Yeah, and look, I’ll just be upfront about this. I went to business school twice. I got my undergraduate and my graduate degree in business. So, and I will tell you how much of it I use in my job, maybe 2%, maybe. But I think that that’s because, you know, you gotta learn your business. And when you go to get a bachelor’s degree in business, or you go to get an MBA, it’s a generic kind of program. because it’s trying to fit all shoes for all different kinds of businesses. And that’s just not how we operate. So you got to get in and understand your own business. And I think the best way to do that is to say, you know what? I own my own development. It is not your boss’s job to develop you. That is your job to develop yourself. And so I think that that’s one of the key pieces right there is just taking ownership for your own development, making the investment in it. We’ve talked about these soft skills of empathy, of curiosity. I’m going to add tenacity to that. I’m going to add perseverance to that. Those two things are super important. There’s a ton of external resources out there that are my favorite four letter word of free. And those things are things like podcasts, like yours. Mark Slatin, that we just talked about a minute ago, he has a podcast. Rob Markey has a podcast called Customer Confidential. Amazing podcasts that are out there that are free. to everybody. You can look at the reports. I mentioned the ACSI. I mentioned Watermark. I mentioned Forrester. There’s a ton more out there. These things are also free, and they are accessible. You just have to look for them and find them to make your business case. Michigan State has their CXM program, which is just an amazing program, and the work Tom DeWitt has done on that It’s absolutely incredible. But aside from the master’s program that he has, he also has monthly sessions that he does with business leaders. He also does an annual conference. He does a virtual conference with it. I mean, there’s just so much that’s out there that you can use to take your development into your own hands. And you have to do that. It has to start with you.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, Patty, thanks so much for for joining one last thing here. And maybe maybe just to kind of recap what you were just talking about, because I think you gave a lot of great potential next steps. But you know, if you’re a leader out there listening, you know, what advice would you have to them to, you know, help their teams connect the dots and, you know, get a better picture of the business, but also be thinking about how they connect their work to the value of the business?
Patty Soltis: Yeah, I mean, the first thing is realize this is a business. This is a business with responsibilities to shareholders. This is a business with responsibilities to returns for the most part. You know, most of us work for public companies. So you’ve got to realize and understand that piece of it. It’s really important. It is about money. And in our jobs is to how do how do we help support that? How do you build your case? How do you connect it to your financials? You know, how do you provide that value, not the ROI, but the value inside of that? And how are you looking at the value proposition for CX inside your organization? This is another piece. We talk about the value proposition for our customers. What’s the value prop for CX inside your organization? And I think that’s a really important consideration to take in. You also have to realize this takes time. It’s about relationships. It’s about priorities. It’s about hitting dead ends from time to time. You know, there’s not one of us that’s going to say that we don’t get frustrated from time to time. But, you know, that patience piece, let’s just lump that in with the other soft skills of curiosity, tenacity, perseverance and empathy. That’s it. It’s another really big one right there. And then lastly, I would say learn their priorities and speak their language.
