The CXChronicles Podcast #235 with Stephanie Crase Moritz from American Dental Association
Adrian (00:00:00) - All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the CXChronicles Podcast. Super excited, guys. We are here at Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas, and we have an awesome guest with us today. Stephanie Moritz, say hello to the CX Nation.
Stephanie (00:00:16) - Hello, CX Nation, and thank you so much for having me.
Adrian (00:00:19) - I'm pumped to have you here. So guys, Stephanie had an awesome conversation last week leading up to the event, and she's got an incredible background. So number one, I'll let you tell the story, but she's the Chief Customer Innovation Officer and the Chief Marketing Officer at the American Dental Association, an organization that every one of us better know about if we're doing ... I think I'm joking with Stephanie the other week.
Adrian (00:00:40) - As long as we're doing our annuals, right, we better know about the ADA. But she's got this incredible job in this incredible organization. Steph, spend a couple minutes just kind of doing the setting of the stone story. How did you get into this type of world, and how did you get into this type of role that you're in today leading customer innovation and customer marketing at the ADA? Thanks.
Stephanie (00:01:00) - Well, I have always enjoyed communication, and out of school, I was fortunate enough to start my career at Disney. And Disney, I worked in youth markets, and then the Disney Institute just was opening. I'm like, ooh, I need to work there. So I did. So that was fantastic, and I'll tell you, I still leverage ... talk about experience, the masters of experience. The mouse is the master of experience. So I was able to pull that through, and from there, I've been fortunate to have just some great opportunities really across ...
Stephanie (00:01:33) - I love a breadth and diversity of different organizations. So I've had the opportunity to be a press secretary for the Illinois House. I also did high-tech PR before the bubble burst in 2000, not to age myself. I have had the pleasure to work at Jim Beam Brands, where that was another very experiential brand. And then communications marketing grew that, and then I was recruited out to Hershey, and then ConAgra Foods, and now I'm with the American Dental Association.
Stephanie (00:02:04) - So you might say, well, wait a minute, what are you doing at the American Dental Association? Well, I usually look for organizations and am brought in when they're looking for a disruptor, a catalyst, someone who can come in and convene, who is that empathetic servant leadership who could shake things up and change it. I am a ... I'm literally a transformation agent. It's exciting to be with The Dentist, and we're doing some phenomenal things.
Adrian (00:02:29) - I love it. I love it. So number one, your background is incredible. You've done ... First of all, these are all household names. People know every one of these companies you talked about, so you've clearly been doing something very right with your customer and your employee experience game, in general, just to be able to be at companies like this that are doing incredible things. But Disney, this is a funny one. You are ...
Adrian (00:02:48) - It's almost like I should start to carve out my little laundry list of CXC guests that at somewhere in their career came from Disney, because you guys are ... You mentioned it. Mickey Mouse is one of the ultimate experienced curators or experienced ... But some incredible customer-focused business leaders cut their teeth, no pun intended here, at Disney, right? It's one of these places that you learn from with Walt and with Walt's brothers. What was Walt's brother's name to you?
Adrian (00:03:15) - I just had a guest on recently who told me all about Walt Disney's brother.
Speaker 4 (00:03:18) - I know.
Stephanie (00:03:19) - He has a fantastic, fantastic scenario.
Adrian (00:03:21) - It was the two of them.
Speaker 4 (00:03:21) - Yeah.
Adrian (00:03:21) - It'll come to me later. But these are businesses that have just made so many people think about experience curation, experience delivery.
Speaker 4 (00:03:28) - Yes.
Adrian (00:03:29) - Super, super awesome. But now you're at ADA. I am. Let's start off just giving the listeners ... Talk a little bit, Steph, about what is your day-to-day like? What are some of the guys and the gals that are on your team? What are some of the different roles or some of the different focus areas or departments that roll under customer innovation and customer marketing today at ADA? Yeah.
Stephanie (00:03:49) - It's pretty exciting. I'm really fortunate because I oversee a few different areas, and I have the best folks in the business. They are amazing. If I can just say, I'm the lucky one. I have folks that came from Oprah, folks that have worked in restaurant industries. You name it. So it's really a passionate group of individuals. So what I oversee, one area would be, I would say, integrated marketing. So oversee integrated marketing, social media, advertising, messaging, and really in our world, it's member recruitment and retention.
Stephanie (00:04:21) - So what is our brand? How are we building that? How are we making it magnetic? That's one side. Another side is really around our customer innovation, and that is all about the customer. We take a page out of design thinking and really put the customer first and center. It's about creating with, not for. So it is about finding out their greatest problems, their greatest pain points, and.
Stephanie (00:04:53) - So really, what we're doing, it's created by dentists for dentists. So this is really inspiring. Another area also I oversee within marketing communications is certainly the corporate communications realm. So here we are, you know, addressing issues, but we're also protecting our amazing brand. And we're working with leaders to have that great executive and employee communications. I'll also say that digital is another area that I oversee. So here, we're all, I think, going to be in a never-ending movie of digital transformation.
Stephanie (00:05:27) - We need to constantly move. So it's really a diverse set. One other hat that I wear, I am the portfolio lead for our direct-to-dentist customer group, which really entails all dental professionals. And in my world, you know, it's working with them. This is their organization. They are the most amazing, passionate, just unbelievable human beings. And the good that they do to help, you know, make the public healthy, it's just unbelievable. So there, I oversee kind of an end-to-end customer journey.
Stephanie (00:06:02) - So as we're working with students, early career dentists, dentists across practice types, you name it. And as we do more down the line with direct-to-consumer, et cetera, it's just really exciting to determine, ooh, what are the products, the right experiences? Oh yeah, I oversee experiences too. Oh, just add that to the list. Just add that to the list. The experience is fun.
Speaker 4 (00:06:21) - Add that to the list.
Stephanie (00:06:22) - But I'll tell you, it's my amazing team, and they are curious, and they have leaned in, and we're constantly iterating and innovating. And that's what makes us so exciting.
Adrian (00:06:31) - That's amazing. So wait, a couple of things. Number one is just, I remember saying this to you last week when you and I were getting some time together, but very rarely do you have some of these customer-focused business leaders that truly have that end-to-end experience or journey map that we kind of talked about. And so you just laid out a bunch of different things. You laid out the marketing, the awareness, the magnet piece. How do you pull somebody close to a thing to even know that it's there and know that there's a potential attraction?
Adrian (00:07:00) - And then you mentioned the other part of just portfolio management, and then there's marketing curation just to be able to get the portfolio excited or engaged or just even aware of all the different things. Then the last thing you just said is the students, right? So guys, I didn't think about this, but when Stephanie was explaining to me the whole ADA way, a big part of it is you start getting folks aware of the ADA and all the things that it's going to bring and all the things that it can do to change your practice and your career at dental school.
Adrian (00:07:25) - And I was like, Stephanie, I've never even thought about that. So you think about just how massive this experience journey is that you're responsible for. It's really, really cool.
Stephanie (00:07:34) - Thank you. It is. It is so exciting. And that's one of the threads or similarities across everywhere I've worked. May it be houses of brands or here, it's really looking at that end to end. So from the very beginning, all the way through retirement, it is exciting. And with the new generations coming in and all of the changes with technology and everything else, it's just really an exciting time to be in dentistry.
Adrian (00:08:00) - Yeah, 100%. So one other thing I want to call out, because I think it's important for people. I think about this every time I hear ADA, and I know you kind of laughed at me the other day when I brought it up, but Kevin McAllister and Home Alone, is this ADA approved? I mean, that is the type of cloud, that's the type of just credibility that your organization has been bringing for decades. So the fact that you guys are continuing to do that so well.
Adrian (00:08:23) - The other thing too, is I joked with Stephanie the other day, guys, every time, I'm actually a very good boy, I told you, I go at least twice a year.
Stephanie (00:08:29) - So I'm like on top of my- That's why I can sit here. If not, we would immediately have an ADA dentist take you away stat.
Adrian (00:08:36) - I'm like this Adrian guy, out of here, get a new dentist. But I told you, Stephanie, I was dead serious, our dentists, they give us our packet of stuff every time we leave the cleaning and everything, or the checkup, and it's all ADA stuff, right? So it's another example for our listeners around, think about the last time you went to your dentist, think about the last time you went for your cleaning. This is what Stephanie's team is doing, it's the customer portfolio management, engagement, and just general activation, I think is another way.
Adrian (00:09:01) - I think about it when you get some of these younger people that will eventually take these practices over and become some of the ADA champions, or the future champions, whatever you guys are calling them, but I think it's so, so cool, the work that you guys are doing.
Stephanie (00:09:13) - Thank you, thank you. And yeah, Home Alone was amazing for us, and we still talk about it, because think about it, how many associations as a consumer do you know?
Adrian (00:09:22) - Virtually none.
Stephanie (00:09:23) - It's one of the areas that makes ADA so unique, and since ADA has both the B2B, as well as you know, D2C, we also work closely with many different manufacturers for our ADA sealed product and just other programs. So it's really exciting to have that full circle from daily care to dental chair.
Speaker 4 (00:09:42) - Yep. Yep.
Stephanie (00:09:43) - So all the way through.
Adrian (00:09:44) - Stephanie, I don't know if you want to talk about it, but I remember you telling me, like even right now, some of the governmental placement or just some of the things you're doing, like even with ADA's involvement with Washington, as far as to expand on kind of what you're saying, like literally setting rules and setting laws and helping to set governance and regulation around how we continue to be really good with our dental and our oral hygiene in this country. Pretty big deal.
Adrian (00:10:08) - Like talking about like lobbying in Washington and like federal involvement. That's a pretty big deal.
Stephanie (00:10:13) - It really is. So I'm fortunate to have a great individual who works public affairs who work very closely with our governmental affairs team. And yeah, they are active on the Hill, you know, really putting the consumer and the patient first and our dentists, because, you know, at the American Dental Association, we believe in making people healthy. And so that, I'll tell you, that's where the Hill is really important. What's also really cool about the ADA, think about all the standards, all the guidelines that come out.
Stephanie (00:10:45) - You may not know, but ADA is working on that. We're working with our members, we're working with scientists and experts and just amazing dentists, so that as the world changes, like when COVID happened, we literally were working across the entire enterprise to set what are the new PPE rules, as well as lobbying on the Hill to how can we ensure that oral health was considered essential, because it wasn't at the beginning of COVID, but we were able to ratchet that up so we could get PPE to keep the offices open to be able to help and serve patients.
Stephanie (00:11:16) - So it really is, it's a very exciting world.
Adrian (00:11:20) - Yep, it 100% is. Stephanie, I'd love to kind of move into the second pillar of tools a little bit. I joked with you the other day and you said, easy, Adrian. I've got more tech than you realize, big boy. But basically I said, Stephanie, what does an organization like the ADA, what does a tech stack look like for you guys? How are you thinking about the management or the customer relationship management of all these different dentists?
Adrian (00:11:40) - Then you're talking about the sprinkling or almost just like the planting of the seeds where you got to also know about leads that are right now, maybe in dental school, but are gonna be tomorrow. What does a tech stack look like at ADA? Or what are some of the primary tools or the primary pieces of technology that you guys have had to invest in to be able to manage all this work that you're doing at the ADA? Well, the question is so timely because we are in the midst of implementing Salesforce. Oh, nice.
Stephanie (00:12:03) - Like many organizations out there.
Adrian (00:12:05) - Do we need to get them in this room right now?
Stephanie (00:12:07) - I was just gonna say, I know, Salesforce. Exactly, so we're in the process. But I'm really excited about that because again, just recognizing personalization, it's table stakes, as well as the need to be even more hyper-connected is going to be critical. So that's a key piece. But I'll tell you, we partner in marketing. We are just hand in glove with technology. So we work very, very closely together because it's not only about the backend, but it's also about the front-end member experience.
Stephanie (00:12:37) - So it's everything from our Coveo search that we have or our Sitefinity. How are we creating these various platforms and our tech stack and DevOps and everything else that we need? And it's something that we're gonna continually look at and evolve. But I'll tell you, Salesforce is definitely, we're excited to have that live very soon.
Adrian (00:12:58) - Awesome, that's fantastic. And then just a question as far as, so if Salesforce is how you're managing the bulk of the customer relationship management, with some of the marketing or some of the, just the other, the magnet piece that you talked about, how you're pulling, and then you've got all these different things. Like you just laid, I heard a bunch of different segments that you just laid out. There's the governmental piece, there's the manufacturing or the producer piece, the people that are making the toothpastes and making our toothbrushes.
Adrian (00:13:24) - Like how do you, how does some of the marketing tech kind of play into this? Is there a handful of tools that you're using or is there anything that you're leveraging? Or is there anything that you're excited about being here at CCW right now that you're trying to explore, you're trying to learn more about that is going to help to achieve some of these goals in the future?
Stephanie (00:13:39) - Yeah, I'll tell you, just like everyone, we are all learning about just gen AI and what can we do with that and chat GPT. And when you think about it, the ADA, we have just, we're all about science and evidence-based. So you think about the data and the quality of the information. So we're really looking at what's that opportunity when you think about dentistry to be sure that we're starting and we're starting with our content because without starting with that quality content, you could really veer in many different directions.
Stephanie (00:14:10) - So we are, we're looking at co-pilots, we're in the process, I'll say, of testing and experimenting right now with a lot that's going on behind the scenes.
Adrian (00:14:19) - Wait, can you talk about the podcast though?
Stephanie (00:14:21) - So yes, I can.
Adrian (00:14:22) - Because you're on a pod, I gotta bring this up. I told you I thought that was so damn cool when you told me about this.
Stephanie (00:14:26) - Thank you. Well, again, I have to thank my amazing team and the amazing hosts, as well as the amazing dentists because this was all done through co-creation. So just in terms of better understanding how to engage with our members, our dentists, and the newer dentists and students, like, oh my gosh, you need the podcast. So we have Dental Sound Dental Sound Bites, please check us out.
Stephanie (00:14:50) - For dentistry, but not only for dentistry, because it's really about sticky situations and those topics- everything from mental health to dealing with patients and things that are on individuals' minds- and how that came about- is we co-created? We heard from our dentists that they wanted not one host, they wanted two hosts, they wanted a cross-generational host and they wanted it to be entertaining. So and they've. They're literally. We're crowdsourcing and discussing what are the topics based on what they're most interested in.
Stephanie (00:15:24) - So for us, we're leveraging the data in terms of what you know, what the dentists are looking to talk about across our findings. That's also where we scrape with Sprout Social. We're trying to pull in all of that data to help guide us, in this case with the podcast or with our other marketing, as we're being iterative and trying to do more of what works and less, of course, of what doesn't.
Adrian (00:15:47) - But check it out and thank you for sharing that out.
Speaker 4 (00:15:48) - Guys.
Adrian (00:15:48) - I was just telling. I was telling Stephanie last week like you think about it, like I was when she was telling me this. I was thinking about my personal experience. I have these super hip younger dentists that we go to. They have this. They have... they have literally one of the only dentist offices on Lake Erie in Buffalo, New York, where you're sitting in your dentist chair and you're staring at the lake.
Adrian (00:16:07) - So, like most people don't love the dentist, this makes it a little bit easier to just sort of calm down and maybe have like a little bit less anxiety. But one of the things I told Stephanie is like that is brilliant.
Adrian (00:16:16) - You've got this group of people, this group of professionals that, essentially, monday through Friday, for 30 to 40 years, they're you know where they're at, they're in their place of business, they're helping their customers, they're working with their dental assistants or their hygiene staff or just even the office, and so you've got this group of people that want to hear how other- just like what we're doing right now with Customer Contact Week, where you're trying to go meet with other customer-focused business leaders, learn how they're doing things, what's working, what's not working, what tools work great, what are these partners or these solutions providers out there on the floor today, for example?
Adrian (00:16:45) - Which ones should we kind of be thinking about? Like, as far as our short list of things, because there's so much stuff going on in today's world, but I thought that was so neat.
Stephanie (00:16:52) - Yeah, I'll tell you that's why I'm here. I'm here because there is so much to learn. I believe that we all are perpetual students. So here I'm, the perpetual student who's really understanding. Okay, what's the future of Call Center? What's the future of Gen AI? How are folks leveraging? What tools are they leveraging? And how are they also balancing with the human connection? Because in the age of technology, if you think of the news, all we hear about is the technology, but technology also, you need humans. So what uniquely do we bring?
Stephanie (00:17:25) - How is this changing our roles? Because it's gonna change dentistry, it's gonna change all of our professions.
Adrian (00:17:32) - Yep, yep, stephanie. I'd love to kind of dive into the process pillar. You've got so many different things going on in your world in the day-to-day. How do you, can you spend a couple minutes talking about how do you, or how does your team, or how do some of the leaders in your team kind of wrangle a process?
Adrian (00:17:51) - You've got all of these different parts of the journey that you guys are fully responsible for, but when it comes to tribal knowledge or living institutional knowledge of all the things that are going on, and then you've got this expansive type of space that you're dealing with, where you're dealing with all these different cuts of knowledge. Just spend a couple minutes talking about how you guys even wrangle process in this type of world. How do you capture it? Are there tools you're using?
Adrian (00:18:15) - Are there people that you just you kind of push that ball right onto them and they kind of manage it, but, like, spend a few minutes talking about process.
Stephanie (00:18:20) - So at the ADA, I'll tell you, when I got there, it was a lot of bringing best practices from outside in. It's one of the reasons why I joined and they were seeking someone who came from the consumer, packaged goods and other entertainment type industries, so we were able to write the processes as well as really cross-train train the trainers, bring the team up, so we could be a current marketing communications organization. What's exciting is, I'll say, in the last few years we actually have adopted Agile. So Agile is really that is how we're working.
Stephanie (00:18:55) - So we have Scrum Masters, we have Pals, we leverage our Trello, we leverage Teams and for us, what this does for an organization that has a lot of individuals we're working with. We have many, many products, many services. It's really important to make the work visual. So Agile has allowed us to do that- stories, epics, laying all these different things out- and that way we're able to connect the dots. So in a past world where you could have a very siloed division, now it's we're all about customer centricity.
Stephanie (00:19:27) - So here for the student, what's end-to-end, regardless of where you sit, or that early career dentist or the public or the profession, it's really looking end-to-end. So for us, we have Agile Teams.
Adrian (00:19:40) - Had you used Agile before, Stephanie, at some of these past companies that earlier in your career? Was that ever a thing? Or was this one of the first organizations you had the opportunity to see how that works inside of a company this size?
Stephanie (00:19:50) - Here's what's interesting, I feel like. As a marketer, we've always worked in an informal Agile way, like I have always worked in a matrix environment where you are constantly looking, working, curating and constantly iterating things. So it felt like, okay, it now has a name and it does have. I love the various celebrations that it has with it, the ceremonies, and what it's given us is a common language across the entire organization, because you can imagine being a marketer who's not a dentist coming into an organization.
Speaker 4 (00:20:22) - Yeah,
Stephanie (00:20:23) - There are fewer of me totally- and so being able now to work across, where we have dentists and different styles and different skill sets, for us to have common taxonomy, common language and now a common universal process- now this takes a lot of friction and a lot of questions out of what we're doing, so we can focus on the customer and get things done, have shared goals, shared objectives. So I'd say not formally, so now it's fun to actually have that official, that official training and a really amazing team.
Adrian (00:20:53) - I love that. It's what hearing you say that makes me think about even some of the work that we do at CXC with their clients, and even all the folks that are out here today talking about voice of customer, talking about how you're gonna- how you're gonna- not just aggregate data, but then how you're gonna take action upon data, and then everybody out there's talking about generative AI and how that relates into this.
Adrian (00:21:09) - But, like you just nailed this piece, which is one of the simplest gains that you get from establishing a voice of customer task force or whatever you're calling that. Somebody earlier today, john, John, spot us would see CEO of Jerry. They called them their tiger teams. Everyone's got their different terminology for this stuff but like you just nailed it, it's creating, it's taking sales language, marketing language, operative language, product language, maybe a financial language, maybe some of the executive language.
Adrian (00:21:35) - That's it on a different level than some of the other you know, extended leadership or even boots on the ground and it's helping to frame stuff. It's like putting things in buckets, it's it's like puzzle piece. I like I'm thinking about with my daughter, for example, like taking different colors of the puzzles and putting them in little little piles and then making it kind of going from there and then putting the damn thing together according. But like that's one of the biggest gains you get from this stuff.
Adrian (00:21:57) - It's it's creating an understanding and awareness internally so that a group of folks can actually go and collaborate together and like do a really good job of building with their different various subject matter expertise.
Stephanie (00:22:08) - Exactly. It takes the agendas out. It takes the agendas out, takes the divisions out. Instead you're purely focused on that customer together and here it allows everyone. I'm very big on bringing your superpowers. I brought disc, I brought strength finders, the organization- and this allows everyone to be able to bring what they're best at. Yeah, because at the end of the day, that helps to build morale.
Stephanie (00:22:32) - That's better for organizations and we all have unique skill sets, so here it's not competition, it's about that collaboration and the cohesion of great. We're focused on this shared problem to solve, and here we're able to solve it together, yeah, and then the results just speak for themselves, because you're it's literally creating that surround sound as a team. Yeah, so for us that has been a game changer. I'll say, just like any organization, we're still learning, we're still onboarding folks, but that's become our language.
Adrian (00:23:04) - I love that you say that, because there is a huge employee experience- part of what you just said. So like, while you are simultaneously building and being extremely pragmatic and thoughtful about how to design an incredible customer experience, you're getting the wind of having some of your best and your brightest and some of the awesome guys and gals that literally, otherwise, you're gonna have a hard time retaining them if you don't keep them engaged. You don't keep them. You keep them active.
Adrian (00:23:25) - You give them these big opportunities where they want to be involved in some of this big organizational like strategic stuff. That's what people are talking about, guys is where you're killing two birds with one stone. Stephanie, I'd love to, I'd love to kind of jump into the fourth and final pillar of feedback. What I've been asking most people today I'd love for you to think about, like maybe one story or one example of that.
Adrian (00:23:45) - Well, and it doesn't even have to be at ADA can absolutely be a day, but, like, I'd love a customer feedback story that you kind of think about throughout your career that just really sort of jumps front and center where you were able, by hearing a certain thing or learning a certain thing from a customer, you were able to have some big change or some big, you know, optimization point or some big pivot, whatever that might like. But and then same question, but on the employee side.
Adrian (00:24:07) - So let's just kind of hear you spend a couple minutes talking about feedback- awesome.
Stephanie (00:24:09) - Well, I'm thinking about conagra foods comes to mind. So at Conagra foods, social media was in its infancy and I'm really proud that I. I worked with other brands outside of organization to learn it and to bring it in so that we could really understand it. Yeah, it's crazy to think social media that's new, right, but it was new at one point in time. So with that, one of the things that I always remember- I wish that didn't exist yet- was: how can we get out there. We need to listen first, ask and engage.
Stephanie (00:24:40) - So we did a lot of listening, a lot of asking and then with that we were able to find key themes or key trends, moments like the milestone thing.
Adrian (00:24:49) - You get it again.
Stephanie (00:24:51) - Yes, so it's that as well as problem solving. So in this case, I remember healthy choice. Healthy choice, we were hearing from calls that were coming in feedback on social media. We looked across without the technology to really help us do that. A little more analog, but asparagus- asparagus was a problem at the time. There was a problem with the asparagus. So we heard multiple people saying this.
Speaker 3 (00:25:14) - And by hearing that and seeing that quickly, we were able to take action.
Stephanie (00:25:18) - So actually, Healthy Choice switched out its vegetable for a little while. So, but it is.
Adrian (00:25:22) - What was people's problem with asparagus?
Stephanie (00:25:24) - So, you know what, there was something wrong with, it was, asparagus just, it was, I don't know if it wasn't in season or it wasn't quite as good, but it wasn't living up to the expectations that we had set.
Adrian (00:25:34) - There's a lot of people that have strong opinions about asparagus out there.
Stephanie (00:25:36) - Yes, who knew? You never would know this, but it's very exciting. You asparagus people, I got you. So again, it's looking at that. It's also an opportunity to really be able to listen.
Speaker 3 (00:25:47) - Another key aspect that I did at ConAgra, now we're doing with the American Dental Association, is really surprise and delight.
Adrian (00:25:54) - Love it, yep, yep.
Stephanie (00:25:55) - Because if you think about it, it's that human to human connection.
Speaker 3 (00:25:57) - So we've recently, the team's done a great job identifying, great, some new dental babies, sent out onesies, we've sent out Stanley's, you know, we've sent out a lot of different elements.
Stephanie (00:26:07) - So it's an opportunity to problem solve, to identify some new opportunities.
Speaker 3 (00:26:12) - And again, in ConAgra's case, this was really good that we found this early. So manufacturing and production was able to make a shift.
Adrian (00:26:20) - That's awesome. So I love it. And then on the employee side, what's like one or two things that kind of maybe, because you told me some awesome stories last week, but like, what's like one or two things you're doing on the employee side to make sure that every single day, every single week, every single quarter, you're getting some of that gold from some of your A players that are just kicking ass every day? What about that EX side?
Stephanie (00:26:39) - Yeah, well, part of it, it's empathy. So it's asking questions.
Speaker 3 (00:26:44) - So as I have regular meetings, one of the things I do, I have an ask me anything session where once a month you can ask me anything and we'll put out different topics. So it's meant to really create that trust and that transparency.
Stephanie (00:26:56) - I also do chats with my team in groups, people that don't normally work together, as well as across the organization and one-on-one when you're new to the team to really listen and understand them. Because people, people come first.
Speaker 3 (00:27:10) - So understand their aspirations, their strengths, their dreams, their talents, because then as I zoom out, I'm able to help connect folks. So we did that.
Stephanie (00:27:20) - And one of the things I remember, we were going through a lot of seismic change. And I remember I'm like, okay, I feel like there's something more. There's just, things are a little bit bumpy. I'm seeing it in the organization.
Speaker 3 (00:27:33) - Let me ask my folks. And I remember it was maybe, it was a few summers ago where I put out a survey. I asked, and here's the point.
Stephanie (00:27:41) - The point was we had created such a level of trust.
Speaker 3 (00:27:44) - They were really honest with me. And it was a gift.
Stephanie (00:27:48) - Part of it was hard when you hear about the organization, but it was a gift because they know when I hear something, I take action. It's about actionable insights. And because of what they shared, was able to work with different individuals across the organization to help address some of the questions. And let me tell you, they had some of these elements. It helped other leaders and other employees really feel seen and heard.
Adrian (00:28:10) - Yep, I love that. I think you just said what I say constantly, but feedback is literally like, it's gold. It's almost like its own currency. There's literally like a value on feedback. If it's taken, especially some of the companies that are here today with like, you start getting into the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars a year of transactions and customer and employee thoughts, because it goes both ways. Like think about some of the payrolls and some of the folks that are on the floor today. But like what you just said is spot on.
Adrian (00:28:34) - It's like treated like gold, treated like a currency. And then most importantly, if you take any type of action on it, you're going to see improvement. You're going to see slight improvements, slight iterations. You're going to be pushing the stones forward into the future. So I love it. Stephanie, before I let you, this has been fantastic, but before I let you go, what, a couple of things. Number one, where can people reach out to you or learn more about the ADA? And then I know that you're speaking at the event.
Adrian (00:29:00) - I want to make sure that you drop that today so people know that you're also going to be contributing and you're going to be doing some awesome presentation work at CCW this week. But share a couple of those things with our listeners. Before I let you go.
Stephanie (00:29:10) - Absolutely. Well, LinkedIn, it would be wonderful to connect with you.
Speaker 3 (00:29:13) - I'm stephaniecracemaritz on LinkedIn. So that would be my favorite one. Certainly you can find me at slmaritz on Instagram. And I literally, I'm all about how can we truly understand our talents and leverage our superpowers and really tap into the amazing neurodiverse talent that's out there. So in terms of what I'm speaking on, I speak a lot about curiosity.
Stephanie (00:29:41) - So I'm going to be talking about the human side that we can't forget with all of this technology coming our way.
Speaker 3 (00:29:47) - And by being curious and leveraging questions and tapping into that humanity, really being able to utilize that as our strength and superpower to balance and complement technology.
Adrian (00:30:01) - I love that. I think curiosity, the power of curiosity is incredible. And the bottom line is this, people that ask lots of questions, number one, they're probably listening to you. Because if they're asking a lot of questions, you're unlocking other parts of their brain or their thinking. But like the other thing too is just like, that is what has made all the change in our human race since the ages. Like asking questions, getting better, pitching, pivoting along the way. So Stephanie Ritz has been absolutely awesome.
Stephanie (00:30:25) - Thank you so much for joining us on the CX Chronicles podcast.
