CXperts by Pathlight

This week’s episode: Alexander Kvamme meets with Ben Segal, Senior Director of CX at Pair, to talk about how he quickly scaled Pair Eyewear’s CX organization with the help of technology solutions, BPOs, and a great internal team. Ben shares tips on how to start a QA program to improve team performance and discusses the future of customer experience. Ben is a renowned CX leader with a track record of helping direct-to-consumer companies scale CX with complex operational models. Ben is also a volunteer CX coach at Zendesk for startups.  Pair Eyewear designs and sells glasses with customizable tops that customers can take off, changing their look daily. Since being funded on Shark Tank, Pair Eyewear has seen tremendous growth, with annual revenue growing 10x year over year since 2020. Their team has scaled from five people to over 220 worldwide, 150 of whom are customer experience (CX) team members. To fuel their growth, the company also raised a $60M Series B funding round in 2021.

Episode 11: This week’s episode: Alexander Kvamme meets with Jen Burton, Head of Customer Support at Digit, to discuss her incredible career and how she wins over people and leads teams with her curiosity, data-driven approach, and passion for creating great experiences for both employees and customers. Jen has spent the past 20+ years building great teams and has a transparent leadership style that builds trust and creates dedicated employees and loyal customers. Jen is also a volunteer CX coach at Zendesk for startups.Digit is an automated savings app that analyzes what goes in and out of your checking account. Then, it periodically moves funds from checking to savings in amounts its algorithms believe are safe to save. Digit has helped members save over $7.6 billion. At the end of 2021, Digit was acquired by Oportun, which offers affordable credit to people excluded from the financial mainstream.

Episode 10: This week’s episode: Alexander Kvamme meets with Diane Domeyer, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Managed Creative Solutions at Robert Half, to discuss how to create exceptional employee experiences to ensure great customer experiences.  In the wake of the pandemic and changing economic conditions, Robert Half conducted research on the factors driving fundamental shifts in worker sentiment. Future-Proofing Your Workforce: An Employer’s Guide is designed to help company leaders craft a blueprint for adapting to current and future workplace shifts. Robert Half is a global leader in talent solutions and business consulting in a variety of disciplines, with strong experience in customer experience and technology initiatives, and was named one of FORTUNE’s “Most Admired Companies®”.

Episode 9: This week’s episode: Alexander Kvamme meets with Richard Smith, VP at Therabody, to discuss building successful CX teams at hyper growth companies, becoming a leader, the importance of EX in CX, and how he’s planning for the holiday season Richard is the VP of Customer Experience at Therabody, an innovative wellness technology company that focuses on recovery, physical therapy, and natural solutions for everybody. Richard has worked and lived around the world including the US, UK, Australia, Africa, and completed a 2 year expedition of Antarctica. Previously he was VP of member services at WHOOP, spent over six years at Uber in various operations and CX roles, and consulted with Bain & Company. Richard  has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. 

Episode 8: This week’s episode: Alexander Kvamme, Pathlight CEO and Co-Founder, meets with Brett Frazer, VP at Sunbasket, to discuss prioritizing and focusing on the metrics that matter to agents and the business, making adjustments in realtime, and driving agent satisfaction.Brett is an award-winning CX leader and frequent speaker on the subject. He has spent the past 20+ years helping multi-national organizations and start-ups like Microsoft, Sutherland, Adobe, and more deliver against this customer promise of the best basics. Regardless of role, position, or organization, the focus and passion of his work has been to create experiences that not only keep customers coming back, but that lead them to recommend others to join them.

Episode 7: Ramon Icasiano meets with Matt Price, SVP at Zendesk, to discuss using continuous conversations to drive successful customer interactions, versatility as a manager, and measuring success for remote teams.   Matt is a SVP at Zendesk, a service-first CRM company that builds software designed to improve customer relationships and connects more than 100,000 brands with hundreds of millions of customers over telephony, chat, email, messaging, social channels, communities, review sites and help centers. Matt has 20+ years leading marketing and customer service teams at Zendesk, Troux Technologies, and ATG.

Episode 6:  Ramon Icasiano meets with April Campbell, Stripe, LinkedIn, and SAP Ariba Alum, to discuss different partnerships when evaluating business systems, integration strategies, and delivering performance intelligence to front line employees.  April is the former Head of Go-to-Market Systems at Stripe, a financial infrastructure company and payment processor.  April has 15+ years building exceptional, inclusive teams and business systems for companies like Stripe, LinkedIn, and SAP Ariba .

Episode 5: Ramon Icasiano meets with Ahman Shabazz, a community and customer experience leader, to discuss the evolution of leadership, balancing your personal and professional brand, and how customer experiences in the metaverse may evolve. Ahmad is the former Head of Global Community Operations at Snap, a camera technology company that integrates AR photography into communicating. Ahmad has 20+ years experience leading customer experience at companies like Snap, AirBnB, Facebook, and Google.

Episode 4: Ramon meets with  Colleen McCreary, Chief People, Places, & Publicity Officer at Credit Karma, to discuss strategies to expand your team’s potential impact and uplevel people’s capabilities, especially during unpredictable market conditions.  Colleen is the Chief People, Places, & Publicity Officer at Credit Karma; a free financial tool that provides financial progress and resources to millions.  Colleen has 20+ years of experience leading HR and People at companies like Vevo, Twilio, Zynga, and was an advisor on HBO’s “Silicon Valley”.

Episode 3: Ramon Icasiano meets with Melissa L. Brown, a global Learning and Development leader to discuss recipes for CX success and operational insights on how leaders and trainers should navigate the new norms.Melissa is AVP Knowledge Management at Sutherland, an experience-led BPO. Sutherland’s mission is to deliver exceptionally engineered experiences for customers and employees. Melissa has 20+ years of experience in call center quality and training for companies like Conduent, Xerox, and TD Ameritrade.

Episode 2: Ramon meets with Michael Kuenne to discuss the tremendous changes and challenges in the hospitality industry and how winning brands are leveraging new technologies, data, and feedback to offer the best possible customer and employee experiences.Michael is Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Experience Officer of Extended Stay America. With over 650 hotels and approximately 70,000 rooms, Extended Stay America is the largest integrated hotel owner/operator in North America and the leading brand in the mid-priced extended-stay segment.

Episode 1: Jim Farnsworth, a well-known thought leader in CX and sales, discusses how customer experience roles are evolving. We dive into the skill sets needed for CX teams to be successful in the future.Jim has 20+years of experience in innovation, service, and leadership. Jim was a senior executive with SYKES, one of the world’s leading business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, and is now an advisor and business development partner for Dallas Venture Capital.