S2E5: How to Boost Employee Experience for Long-Term Customer Success
In this episode of 15 Minutes with Judi, Judi Platz is joined by Dr. Hui Wu-Curtis, CEO and founder of SupportU. Dr. Hui shares her inspiring journey from call center supervisor to CEO, emphasizing the importance of employee experience and the transformative power of AI in customer support. Employee Experience for Long-
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[MUSIC]
Dr. Curtis, hi. Thank you for joining me today.
>> Yeah, thank you for having me, Judith.
>> Absolutely. Hello, everyone.
Judy Plott, Chief Customer Officer for Support Logic.
Today, I am joined by Dr. Wake Curtis,
CEO and founder of Support U.
Dr. Curtis and I have had the pleasure of knowing each other for a number of
years.
We both entered the CC Women Hall of Fame as the original inductees,
and we have built a wonderful relationship since then.
So I'm really glad that you're with us today.
>> Yeah, pleasure to be here.
>> Would you take a couple of minutes and share with the audience a little bit
about your background and how you came to travel this journey to land at
support you?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
I would say, like many of us,
we never really intended to be in call center,
call center operations and stuff.
So in college, I took a part-time job in a call center,
and I think I lasted four months.
I didn't know what this thing was, and it was just weird.
I had the opportunity two years later down the road to go back into a call
center,
but as a supervisor, and I thought, how interesting.
I figured I had to manage people, but tethered to the bones.
And I ended up really enjoying the environment.
And so I, through the years,
I just kind of continued to work myself up into the call center,
working in a variety of different positions, kept moving up.
And then I thought, is this a fluke or was it really me being successful?
And so I decided to really continue to switch jobs.
And so every three to four years, I would switch different industries
to see if the success was me or just happened to be the environment.
So I had great exposure to a variety of different industries.
And quite a few years ago, I had the opportunity to,
and that led to leading a lot of great teams of varying sizes,
both domestic and international, you know, as small as 50 to upwards of 2,000
plus.
And most recently, I had the opportunity to lead an entire company,
but on the BPO side.
And I've never, I've worked without sorcerers, but I've never been on that side
And so I had a lot of my friends that are like, don't go, don't go on the other
side.
You know, it's the dark side.
But honestly, it was a perspective that I've never done.
So I thought it was an interesting challenge.
But I, myself, working with the great leadership team,
we transitioned well.
We doubled in size.
And shortly after that, I decided to kind of venture out on my own
and wanted to build a company the way that I wanted to build it myself
and saw kind of a greater purpose and wanted to build something more meaningful
And so here I am today.
That's phenomenal. Congratulations.
Yeah.
Tell me about the more meaningful part,
because I know in conversations that we've had in the past,
one of the most meaningful things to you are your employees.
Is that what you mean by more meaningful?
That you wanted a different way to lead your employees on your teams?
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, there's, especially in our industry,
there's so many really cool buzzwords, right?
And so first, you know, it was customer experience.
And I was employee experience.
And people talk conceptually about employee experience.
But I really wanted the opportunity and had the fortune to really be able
to kind of define and build an entire company around employee experience.
So as I was planning on building the company from the ground up,
it was entirely built with the employee experience in mind.
And so as we were defining and figuring out how we were going to build our
technology stack
and defining our processes and workflows,
it was built with the employees in mind.
And so as we were vetting out and demoing products and resources,
if it wasn't going to help the employees onboard and be successful
and work themselves to being productive and transition well into our company
culture,
then we did implement it.
And so everything really is focused around the employees.
And so if they have a really good transition into my company, into our culture,
and they're happy and they understand how their success translates into our
customer success,
and they're taken care of and they're well taken care of,
then that retention returns to how we're successful in the long term.
And so that was just an ability for me to really kind of define and build a
company,
kind of the right way, or at least the way that I saw fit.
Absolutely.
Let me ask you for people who are with us today and listening.
So you had a fortunate event that you were building from the bottom up,
right? So you could choose the software and you could say, yes, it makes the
cut,
no, it doesn't make the cut.
What about for an executive who's in the company?
The software's been there forever, right?
Everything's kind of built.
It would be like the number one or number two thing,
if they're really thinking hard about their employee experience and
knock on what I hope they are, what could they do if they can't build it
themselves?
They've inherited, they're not going to be making tech changes.
Do you have any advice for somebody in a position like that?
Yeah, it's always hard because everything seems kind of born there, right?
Everybody becomes institutionalized and stuff.
And part of it is I'm a huge risk taker. And when you come into organizations,
you have to be able to be willing to kind of evaluate and be willing to kind of
change either
the product or the processes in the workflows, right?
But understand kind of what your ultimate objectives are.
If your objective is to really improve customer experience,
then you have to be able to understand and take your resources and make sure it
fits what you're
trying to achieve. And if it doesn't, then you have to be willing to change out
those resources.
And is it going to be painful? Absolutely.
Is it going to take some resources upfront?
Absolutely. But think about your long term game, right?
Because once you do a right upfront, then you're going to net out the benefits,
you know, down the road.
And so, you know, doing the right thing is never going to be easy, but it's
worth it.
It is worth it. Yeah. And I like what you mentioned too.
I think one of the critical pieces is in the onboarding.
I've seen so many organizations have beautiful employee experience programs,
but onboarding is not part of that. And so that first taste that you're getting
they may not stay with you long enough to get to all these other beautiful
programs you built,
because the onboarding was what, you know, wasn't hitting the mark.
So I like that you mentioned that specifically as well.
Let's talk a little bit about AI. And there's no conversation that can be had
right now in
this industry without talking about AI. What are you seeing since you are, you
know, truly running
a BPO that's helping other customers, you know, manage their businesses,
support their businesses?
What are you seeing AI's impact on customer support is today?
Yeah, from our view, you know, I think the items that we used to do before was
really manual,
right? It was kind of the things that we used to do. We used to kind of man
handle a lot.
And now, you know, as technology started getting better, it got a little easier
but I wouldn't say that as practitioners, we were necessarily adept at
understanding
how to use the technology. And so now slowly practitioners are now getting more
accustomed
to how to leverage that technology. And so now it's mirroring now we're getting
more use of the
technology, understand the capabilities and functionalities. And now we're
understanding,
okay, now that we have it and we're starting to understand it, now how do we
really leverage it to
be more efficient or more strategic, you know, and I'll use support logic for
as an example, right?
It's you guys are taking some kind of the fundamental concepts of support and I
'll use QA
because I'm super passionate about QA instead of and you guys are doing some
phenomenal things
in terms of like automating it and using AI and making it so much easier to be
able to capture
insights and being proactive with the information and going one step above but
actually doing something
with it. Versus before we had to have a human being be smart enough to
understand the data points
and fingering out, okay, now with the data points, what do you do with it? And
so it's just come leaps
and bounds from kind of where we were, but you have to let the technology do
its work. And now
using it to really fundamentally kind of shift the way you run your call center
and
now reap the benefits of it. Without a doubt. That's the reason I wanted to
join support logic
a couple of years ago because I felt like the technology was something that
would obviously,
you know, change the way that people delivering support, you know, and that was
just before the
big rush just before the waves have come in, right? But I still see that
software is something that
first off, it can take so much out of the stack that customers have, but it can
put so much goodness
in, right? And it can actually make people's days so much better. And you know,
how could you go
wrong with software that can do that? Yeah, I mean, when you think about, you
know, where else,
you know, especially in support, we're inundated with thousands of millions of
transactions, right?
And oftentimes our jobs are so reactionary that we don't, you know, we barely
have enough time to
eat lunch. And so when you think about the challenges of leading organizations
like that,
you know, you don't have much time to really kind of sit down and much less
analyze data.
And so being able to have a tool that's going to allow you to do that much,
much easier,
it's going to give you a lot of time back into your day. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So now let's talk about something that's near and dear to your heart and
my heart, you
know, being a woman in this industry, you're a woman CEO and you've cracked
that glass ceiling,
you've broken through that. That's very not something often seen in the support
world.
Quite frankly, you are a fierce advocate for women. You're a fierce advocate
for the Asian community.
What are, you know, any pieces of advice or wisdom that you would give to a
woman looking at you
saying, I want to be, I want to be like Dr. Curtis. Well, I would say everybody
has their own
past, right? And if it's something really important to you, make the time. So
whether it's goals to
continue to climb the corporate ladder, or whether it's to continue to build
important
relationships or friendships, or whether it's to go back and get that degree,
whatever it is,
just go do it. You know, I tell people all the time, it's like, like, you're,
you can impact the
quality of your life, but you can't control the time that you have in your life
. Like, I'm not
guaranteed that I have tomorrow or next week or next month, but I can control
what I do today
or within my day. And so with women, and I'm really big on mentorship and I'm
really big on
building connections because there's so many people out there that, you know,
like yourself,
Judy, it's like whenever, whenever I have problems, whenever I have questions,
I know I can text you
or I can call you. And you're great about giving advice and guidance that, you
know,
many times we can't do it alone. And so build yourself the, you know, I call it
my little advisory
board, you know, and seek help and seek support because you're going to need
that throughout your
life. And whether it's for personal reasons or professional reasons, get that
support group,
but just go out and do it, you know, even if you're afraid, even if you're
hesitant,
just go out and do it. Like I said, it's, you know, nothing is ever easy, but
you'll be glad you did
it. And me, especially in the Asian community, it was surprising for me to find
out that even though
we're one of the model minorities and we're one of the larger minorities, we
have the least amount
of representation at the executive level. And that was concerning for me, which
is why I got involved
locally with our Asian community to really kind of help the younger generation,
build those leadership
skills. Like how do we help, you know, our young Asian career minded, you know,
young men and women
learn how to be better leaders in the future to help them get to those
executive levels. So
long winded answer, but you know, if it's something important to you, go make
the time.
Absolutely. Thank you. Well, I do think you come preloaded with like 30 hour
days. I do think
that, you know, you have that because I, you know, I've known you and I see you
on LinkedIn and
it amazes me how much you're capable of doing. It really does. And it's very,
very impressive.
Which takes us to our next topic, which is, you know, tied to this. In addition
to all that you do,
you have five amazing children. Yes, I do. How, how has being a mom and we're
just going to talk
about it. And we talk about this sometimes, right? We should talk about some of
the stuff that we
know people are wondering, right? How did you do all of that balancing? And how
do you continue to
do all of that balancing? Yeah, you know, I would say, you know, early on when
when the kids were
young, I wasn't climbing the corporate ladder. You know, my, my husband, I, we
always kind of split
the, the parenting duties, you know, pretty 50/50. He's always been the bread
winner for quite a long
time. And so in the beginning of my career, you know, we had one kid and then
we had two kids. And
my husband's all like, well, that's great. But you know, your, your job really
is just paying daycare.
So, you know, he knew I didn't have the temperament to stay, be a stay at home
mom. And he never would
have to push that. But he's like, but fundamentally, we have to do something,
you know, so whether you
stay home with the kids or, you know, go make more money. And I'm like, okay,
fine, I'll go, I'll
make more money. I'll go get promoted somewhere. And so I did. And so I
switched jobs, got promoted,
and, and really kind of focused more on, you know, figuring out kind of where,
what I wanted to do,
where I wanted to go my career and stuff. And then like every three years, I
got kind of burnt out.
And so that's when we started having kids. And which is why my kids are like
three years apart.
Right. And so that really kind of bought balance into my life because I couldn
't work, you know,
60 hour days type of thing. And so at the time I was like middle management
because it was enough
for me to balance that. Plus my kids were always a priority. And it wasn't
until they were a little
bigger that I was a little bit more aggressive with my career. And my husband
was always, you know,
did well in his career. So, you know, I always tell people it's like, there's
not a timing thing.
It's like you don't you don't miss a window to be a manager, director, VP,
whatever it is, you know,
your time will come. And you'll know when it's right. And even whatever level
you decide to do,
like being a parent was always important to us. You know, I would have my
neighbors, you know,
I would post on LinkedIn, I'm flying back from Australia. And I would just, you
know, I would
jump off of a plane from Australia and go to my son's marching band competition
, you know,
because that's what we do as parents. And so you just figure out and balance it
. And I had the
luxury of, you know, really kind of defining my travel. And I would just
schedule it around my
my kids activities. Yeah. Awesome. I think, you know, your point and all of
that is your time will
come. Just make sure you're ready when it comes, right? Because as you said,
right, you can always
always be building, always be learning, always be doing, but be ready because,
you know,
maybe when the kids do reach a certain age, and you can change roles, change
industries,
even if that's what's of interest. But don't think it all has to be linear. And
, you know,
you go from thing to thing, and it's just natural because it's not, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm going to ask you one last question. And then we're going to say goodbye to
each other for today.
you know, I had
You're someone that inspires many, many people. And we see it when we're
together at
Sandy's CC Women events and the CCW conference. Take 30 seconds, you know, a
minute. Tell me
who's inspired you recently. You know, it's interesting because, you know, most
people try to
think about some public figure or some author or whatever it is. And recently,
the luxury of going on a little mini vacation with a good friend of mine, Casey
Touloulli.
And she's a senior director over at Marriott. And the more time I spend with
Casey,
I am always incredibly amazed at her story. The adversity that she has come
from and the things
that she has had to overcome in her life is just incredible. Like, I don't know
how she's been able
to bounce back from such an interesting path. And you would never know because,
you know,
if and when you meet her, her disposition is so bright and so bubbly, and she
is so positive and
such a force to be reckoned with. And she is so good at her job that you would
just never know.
She had such kind of a path and a road that she's traveled. And so I'm always
duly
impressed with it. And so just when I think I've had certain kind of journeys,
she by far overshadows everything. And so she really just continues to
encourage me.
And she's a great cheerleader for me. She's a great sounding board for me. And
she encourages
me and motivates me in more ways than she will ever, ever know.
That's amazing. I know Casey and I smile when you talk about her because I just
, I smile every
time I see her. And I think of her beautiful smile that she shares with us. She
is one heck of a
woman. I agree with you. So thank you so very much for spending time with me
today. I've enjoyed
our conversation. Hopefully we will be seeing each other in person very soon. I
look forward to that.
And it's been a pleasure having you.