Philippe Mesritz, Chief Customer Officer and former General Manager at Community Brands: Navigating Career Growth and Customer Success Strategy

Scott Smith: All right, I’m excited to welcome Philippe Mezitz, who is a fractional chief customer officer who has most recently been general manager at community brands known for transforming SAS organizations and boosting retention. One of the things I noticed, for example, in his background is he had increased the MPS of one of his companies by 40 points, which is incredible. he’s a two-time CX leader of the year finalist.

Scott Smith: 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.

Philippe Mesritz: Thanks, Scott.

Philippe Mesritz: I love these conversations. So, I appreciate you having me on here.

Scott Smith: And again, 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 a big testament presumably who you are and what you care about.

Philippe Mesritz: No, 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 customers experience and it’s really how it all started I think.

Philippe Mesritz: And it’s always been an interesting space and I love growing people and understanding what customers really love to do.

Scott Smith: I would love to kind of delve deeply into that,…

Scott Smith: that comment around the web design, the beginnings,…

Philippe Mesritz: Yeah.

Scott Smith: where did Philipe 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.

Philippe Mesritz: So I guess the origin story for me is in college 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.

Philippe Mesritz: But I started doing web design and…

Philippe Mesritz: 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 textbased games of all things and hosted them and it instilled in me this need to Yeah.

Scott Smith: Just really quick to I want to focus.

Scott Smith: So textbased games help us understand maybe somebody’s never played one of those. I’d love to hear more about it.

Philippe Mesritz: So textbased games are multi muds and mushes 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.

Philippe Mesritz: to do that on dialup and it would be how do you communicate and so you had to have 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

Philippe Mesritz: more throughput 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. 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 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.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 the factory, the action that was required, how they position themselves for their websites so that the farmers and everybody that needed their grain or selling or buying their grain really got involved.

Philippe Mesritz: And it kind of gave me this idea of manufacturing is a place that it’s Customer success exists in all different areas. And I think people think about it as a SAS B2B thing, but it’s all over. And if you just pay attention to it, it really just becomes this core component of almost every business out there.

00:05:00

Scott Smith: Yes, absolutely.

Scott Smith: I totally agree. I think it’s really interesting like you said, 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 and then same with the delivery at this sort of green space. I worked at Nordstrom and their whole thing was customer experience above all else and they always give this example of

Philippe Mesritz: Yeah. Exactly.

Scott Smith: 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 the point that you’re making of how, the customer doesn’t come in, if they don’t love your product, they’re not coming back.

Philippe Mesritz: I mean, it’s how Costco’s built their brand. And there’s all these stories of people who are 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?

Philippe Mesritz: But they’ve grown so far on this whole thing of customer experience. Nordstrom’s exactly that same scenario where when they started they were this small organization and they really built it to say bring us we want to help 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. the strangely enough I canceled a customer and…

Scott Smith: I think in the software world people would say it doesn’t scale, but are there times that you can remember where you did something so over-the-top ridiculous to help a customer?

Philippe Mesritz: it’s yeah so in this particular scenario it was this customer that had bought the product and…

Scott Smith: Okay. that’s a super interesting one as well.

Philippe Mesritz: the product was meeting all of their needs on a microcosm level.

Philippe Mesritz: they were being very successful, but then they wanted to go global and it was this concept of they needed 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. We had spent almost as much in the first year as they were paying us. And that wasn’t including the whole back-end server.  It was like our PS team trying to solve for this problem. And we ended up turning around and telling them 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.

Philippe Mesritz: 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.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 build this really good relationship that was a half a million dollar a year account.

Scott Smith: Man,…

Scott Smith: I feel like I would be totally freaked out to have to do that.

Philippe Mesritz: It was painful. and I wasn’t seuite 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, how do you build this customer experience?

Philippe Mesritz: But I think that there’s also value in thinking about it when you end a relationship that customer experience is just as important for the long-term reputation that you have,…

Philippe Mesritz: the long-term success you have, and so forth.

Scott Smith: Yeah, I think this is actually a really good insight that I haven’t heard anyone really bring up in the past.

Scott Smith: I often think about, the process to have to let somebody go to fire a customer.

Scott Smith: Each one of these are all these touch points where maybe they’re going to come back, maybe they’re going to, 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…

Philippe Mesritz: Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Smith: being asked to leave and maybe the timing wasn’t right but everybody remembers those kind of final moments.

Philippe Mesritz: 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.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 he was a events shipper. Basically, he would take equipment and he would ship it out to an event and then he would receive them. And I was 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. 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.

00:10:00

Philippe Mesritz: 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 how you’re shipping, receiving things matters. But 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 they can turn into fans even if they get fired by you, laid off by you, quit, whatever that situation might be. Sure.

Scott Smith: I think that’s a good opportunity to talk about sort of one of the next topics that I was wanting to get into which is basically building a high performing team. So I think you’re highlighting what a very important element of building a high performing team…

Scott Smith: which is eventually there’s going to be people who you hire who you made the wrong choice or…

Philippe Mesritz: Absolutely. That’d be a lot longer than this conversation probably.

Scott Smith: they’re just not. So let’s talk a little bit about what are some of the things that you think through or do to build that team? 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. Yeah.

Philippe Mesritz: But I think for me I have this triumvirate of things. 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.

Philippe Mesritz: They’re the ones that will make or break whether your company succeeds. ELT is there, great. they set up 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 not expected, what 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.

Philippe Mesritz: 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, Phipe. I need your answer and I’m not going to do anything.”…

Philippe Mesritz: until you’re ready to go. And I think that really builds it across an in-person team. But those three things really drive success.

Scott Smith: I love the transparency part.

Scott Smith: I do think that there is a little bit of a challenge, not always, but sometimes with transparency because I think you can run into folks who when you share too many details, it freaks them out. it’s like here’s how much budget we have or…

Scott Smith: here’s the revenue path and they’re like, what does that mean for me? Does that mean both, sort of spiral? have you kind of had experiences like that where sharing too much or sharing enough it goes in a different direction than you expected?

Philippe Mesritz: Yeah, actually it was funny.

Philippe Mesritz: 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.

Philippe Mesritz: you’ve worked with me and so forth, but immediately turned into, why him? So, yeah, transparency can create some havoc at times, but that’s…

Philippe Mesritz: where that clarity comes in play and answering questions. I am a fan of having open Q&As’s and it’s 30 minutes on the books every whatever two 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.

00:15:00

Scott Smith: Yep. Yeah,…

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

Philippe Mesritz: Yep. No,…

Scott Smith: have you kind of found the same? Yeah.

Philippe Mesritz: I think that’s absolutely accurate. What’s there’s the sales tactic where you have to hear it seven times before it captures. I don’t think it’s any difference with employees. And you think about when you are an individual contributor and you’re just starting your career out. As soon as you understood what and 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 what and 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.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 two 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,…

Philippe Mesritz: come on, I don’t have to tell you again.” But that’s because you’ve talked about it for two months and they’ve talked about it for what, two hours?

Scott Smith: That’s a great point.

Scott Smith: Yeah, you’re totally right. Yeah.

Philippe Mesritz: 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.

Philippe Mesritz: And so how do you help the rest of the team follow that along so you get repetitive to do so?

Scott Smith: Have you found that the transparency,…

Scott Smith: clarity, vision? I liked how you called the triumphirate. that was pretty cool. have you found that the remote work I don’t know how much you’ve done remote in person,…

Philippe Mesritz: It’s the same…

Scott Smith: but what’s the biggest difference? Is it basically the same or are there adjustments you’ve had to make?

Philippe Mesritz: but there are definitely adjustments. Right.

Philippe Mesritz: So the concept ex 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, it’s 9:00 And so sending your messages at the same time every day on a truly global team makes people who are on the other side of the world feel like they’re not as important…

Scott Smith: Right.

Philippe Mesritz: because you’re sending it at midnight their time every night. And so I believe that you should have rotating meetings for that hit all time zones. So do something at 9:00 in the morning your time and then sometimes you’re going to do something at 9:00 in the evening so that’s 9:00 a.m. 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.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 people say, in person versus remote. I’m like, I haven’t had a fully inerson team, quote unquote, I don’t know, in 15 years…

Scott Smith: Right. Yeah.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 So for me, they’re remote 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.

Scott Smith: I think you said it in a nicer way, but you also drive people crazy. for a while I worked in Menllo Park and my boss is actually based in London. And so it was really interesting…

Scott Smith: because if I went to visit London, the amount of work that I felt like I had to do was two days worth every day…

00:20:00

Philippe Mesritz: Yep. Yeah,…

Scott Smith: whereas for me in Melo Park it was like I can only catch him for two hours a day. It’s impossible to connect. So, it’s really interesting to I guess understand and then sort of empathize to your point 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.

Philippe Mesritz: Because I mean I think about it 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. we all know the fact is if your boss sends you an email, 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, “Cred, it’s 10 o’clock at night and they’re not supposedly working.”

Philippe Mesritz: So, I started to try to be like, “Okay, schedule send 1:00 a.m. my time, 9:00 a.m. 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.

Scott Smith: So how do you balance the need for balance and then also the performance that is clearly required to be on an executive level team a sea suite etc.

Philippe Mesritz: Okay.

Scott Smith: And maybe there’s two different ways I’m looking at this. One is for you, how do you manage the stress? And then how do you deliver some of it but maybe buffer your team a little bit?

Philippe Mesritz: Strangely enough, work stress has not always been my Achilles heel.

Philippe Mesritz: I don’t have that much of a challenge with the work stress side. probably because I’ve got a whole bunch of personal stress with illnesses and stuff from the family. And so I’m like work that’s just chill. So it’s a little bit of a different word world. 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. 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. for example, my wife and I, she’s a night owl. I get up in the morning.

Philippe Mesritz: So, I can work at 7:00 a.m., no problem, and she’s still sleeping because she doesn’t go to bed till 2:00 a.m. 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 hand handle things. So, how do you balance it? It changes based on your life cycle. And I think people need to remember 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.

Philippe Mesritz: So trying to do that in a way that it is less stressful and deflecting it and taking it in a humanentric 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 better, do whatever. I think you have to remember they’re still human. So you have to figure out what works for them. I’ve had people where I can tell them go get this done now and that’s the way to get them to perform.

Philippe Mesritz: 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.

Scott Smith: Yeah, that definitely resonates.

Scott Smith: 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 three kids under five maybe something like that and so to your point I didn’t feel like I had any work life balance. It was basically work hard during the day, go hard at night with my kids and maybe not sleep. but I remember feeling some stress about it as an individual contributor and my talking to my boss about it and he’s to be honest I don’t have any balance either and that’s just how I work and I thought it was really interesting nobody admits that but that’s reality. It’s like there’s a lot of people who just like to work or work a lot like you said but a lot is I guess specific to whoever you are.

Scott Smith: So yeah, that’s a really interesting point.

Philippe Mesritz: Yeah. I mean,…

Philippe Mesritz: my dad 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. 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 Friday on 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 I have to be super balanced.

00:25:00

Philippe Mesritz: 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 work life balance now is different than it was when you had three small kids and things evolve. Sure.

Scott Smith: Yeah. …

Scott Smith: so speaking of evolving, earlier today I was watching a video was this politician talking about AI and what they hope the AI landscape looks like and I think 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, all these kinds of things in your world? Yeah.

Philippe Mesritz: common answer of that’s the thing that’s going to change my world right and 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 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

Philippe Mesritz: the intelligence to make sure that they don’t get electrocuted effectively all the way to the conversations where people are like there will be a billion dollar company with one employee…

Scott Smith: Perfect.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 in terms of answering your question because if I could answer AI we’d talk about that forever but 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 commercialowning customer success manager, then your job’s going to go away. And I believe it’s going to be somewhere in between.

Philippe Mesritz: So we 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 supportive player in all this but we’re still humans selling and working

Philippe Mesritz: 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 a Terminator I don’t know but 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 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.

Scott Smith: Yeah, I think this is a really interesting point, the relationship element, the working with humans part. I think a great example of, a few companies who historically have basically been hard to talk to somebody. You think about Facebook, you think about Google,…

Scott Smith: it’s like your account gets deactivated. You have to go through your whole network to find the one friend who worked at Facebook 10 years ago. then they have to do their back channel paying and that whole thing is crazy. and…

Philippe Mesritz: Yeah, Yeah.

Scott Smith: if I go to Nike and I just walk in and I don’t know what I want. so for example, I guess the better example would be Nordstrom Shoes. I mean, their whole thing is you walk in, they bring you seven pairs of shoes, it’s kind of crazy, 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 rearchitect 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.

Philippe Mesritz: I mean, I think it’s like Amazon trying to return something in Amazon is super seamless, right? You don’t talk to anybody, it works great.

00:30:00

Philippe Mesritz: The problem is the second it doesn’t work great, there’s no customer experience after that that is driving 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 getting that help because they try to automate everything. And I think that’s too far 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.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 engagement factor because I don’t know, maybe that’s just me, but I believe that that engagement and the human centricity over top is what’s going to make those companies stand out from the noise.

Scott Smith: GBT 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 we have to go through this whole process to have it be a little bit more like me and then I feel a little more calm at least until the next model comes out and then I’m freaked

Philippe Mesritz: 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 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 AI is going to replace you name it.  And I said, ‘Okay, a hundred 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, how do you adapt in the world to leverage what is replacing you to do better.

Scott Smith: Yeah, absolutely right.

Philippe Mesritz: for sure. Yep.

Scott Smith: 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. so, thinking back to some of your early examples, we talked about building a server for your game and making it good enough that folks basically were happy.  And then we talked about this green space company and try to think about all the logical operational components to make sure folks are happy. and then I think I’m trying to remember which company it was that you had highlighted this but you were able to help improve net promoter score NPS substantially and presumably that was a function of looking at user flows and helping people communicate with you and a whole bunch of stuff.

Scott Smith: And so I’m kind of curious as you think about building a great product, how do you figure out…

Scott Smith: how to make sure that 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.

Philippe Mesritz: Yeah, I think understanding…

Philippe Mesritz: what the problem is that you’re trying to solve and making sure that that vision is established and 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.

Philippe Mesritz: They look at their competitors and they go 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 one of the things I told my product team at 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.

Philippe Mesritz: And if you think about what you should be doing by talking to your customers, by using AI to gather feedback,…

Philippe Mesritz: by looking 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, 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. Yep. Right.

00:35:00

Scott Smith: It is really funny…

Scott Smith: so often the best response here is talk to your customers because 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. you’re instead of just following them blindly, talking to your customers certainly helps. and I think that’s especially true in the context of AI. It’s like there’s these general purpose models that can effectively do anything, but 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 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.

Philippe Mesritz: 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? 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. So because bluntly customers don’t always know everything that they want and they’re going to want 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. it’s that concept.

Philippe Mesritz: 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…

Philippe Mesritz: what it could be. how do you blend those things? And that’s really how you can drive forwards in a successful way.

Scott Smith: Yeah, absolut absolutely right.

Scott Smith: 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 we all need to identify is like you said,…

Philippe Mesritz: Nope. Absolutely.

Scott Smith: some of the things that our customers share, they’re not really the problem. and you kind of have to figure out what the 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.

Philippe Mesritz: It’s funny as a product leader, you want to solve the problem and the pain and then I think about a support leader hat in the CX space.

Philippe Mesritz: 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,…

Scott Smith: Yeah. Heat.

Philippe Mesritz: “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.” 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. they don’t want you solving your problem, how do you help them either talk it out or…

Philippe Mesritz: how do you just go, I’m really sorry that that happened to you.

Scott Smith: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Smith: That it’s so hard to do. I’m so inside just agitating like I can really do something here, but really I’m not quite that skilled.

Philippe Mesritz: Yep.

Scott Smith: I can do a lot of things, but yeah.

Philippe Mesritz: I’m a fixer at heart, so I hear you for sure.

Scott Smith: I have, one kind of final question for you, and it’s more just like as you think about,…

Scott Smith: folks who are looking to navigate a career path that is as cool and as interesting as yours. what are some of the things that you 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?

Philippe Mesritz: I would say there’s nothing wrong with roaming.

Philippe Mesritz: Don’t limit yourself to the straight line career. up kind of isn’t always better. 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.

Philippe Mesritz: My first real job was delivering newspapers and then I worked at KB Toys which doesn’t even exist anymore…

Scott Smith: I loved that place.

Philippe Mesritz: but right so I was shelf stalker and then I went into web design and then I went into server farms and then I went into consulting then I worked for a startup doing software point of sale 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

00:40:00

Philippe Mesritz: I database 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 this is where I want to be. I’ve always wanted to be a chief customer officer. and…

Scott Smith: Yeah.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 I’ve run success PS teams. it’s all in the customer experience space.

Philippe Mesritz: 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 one, level two, level three, se senior manager, director, VP, all in one organizational type. You lose that flexibility and the malleability.

Scott Smith: way college where it’s two years associate 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 such a great insight and so we’ll just wrap up and I just want to say thanks again Phipe for joining us so Philippe Mezitz if you …

Scott Smith: where can folks find you if they’re interested in following anything you’re having to say LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram.

Philippe Mesritz: Best place is LinkedIn for sure.

Scott Smith: All right,…

Philippe Mesritz: I post a newsletter there so feel free to subscribe. I’m happy to have conversations. Always open to talking. And Scott, thanks for the conversation. love thinking about these things because it gets me out of my box.