Carine Roman, Chief Customer Officer at Mailchimp, talks influencing & driving culture change from the Chief Customer Officer’s seat

Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another week of Be Customer Led super special guest for us this week. Carine Ramon is the Chief Customer Officer at MailChimp. Now she’s got a really cool role. She oversees the company’s award-winning customer support team, VIP services and the service partner program, just to make sure that the customer is successful and they have an outstanding experience. Nobody knows this because I’ve never said this on the show, but I am actually a customer of MailChimp’s. I use MailChimp for the show and the be customer led platform generally [00:01:00] love what MailChimp is doing.

And when Carine said, yeah, I’ll come on the show. I was like, floored. I was over the moon. Can’t wait to have you Carine welcome to show it’s so great to have. Thank

Carine Roman: Thank you Bill good to be here with

Bill Staikos: Awesome. So Carine, the first question I always ask everyone of my guests is to share your journey feel free to go back as far early as you’d like you have this really incredible career.

Across digital, across ops, account management, et cetera, which probably really sets you up for success, frankly as the chief customer officer, our MailChimp, would love to hear what led to this role for you.

Carine Roman: So let me go back to my childhood. I had two, two passions writing and photography.

So I thought I wanted to be a photo reporter and I studied language and loved it, but I was also very good at math and science. Cool. Back in the days if we’re good at math and science, that’s why. [00:02:00] That would position you to more career opportunities and talking the eighties. I studied Marine science in way, and I had to make a choice about higher education.

My parents said, Hey, you’re good as called. Just do the best. School out there. So I went to business school but I still drawn to writing and media, so I went to advertising and. Sales Dave, what’s called Colleen test. That was like the hardcore up like peak of newspapers. At the time I would look at who has their, I would call a cold call them pretty hardcore but that gave me direct sight into customers.

And it didn’t take long to realize that building trust and relationship with customers. Why is my success to return? And getting ongoing revenue instead of chasing revenue every month. So I moved [00:03:00] up into my career, started hiring actually sales people and then the operation that came with it.

So grid progression. I was top of my department and I was very comfortable. I had very large customers Knew the industry very well. I was very comfortable. So my brother was like, you’re way too comfortable. And she was in New York. He was like, get over here get out of your conference zone and come here and get an MBA.

I didn’t even know what an MBA was. A business school in France is very different for an MBA. Sorry. It’s not too excited about it, but my brother was, and he started really calling me every Multaq. So MBA, I want to play and I’m going to fail and never got to talk about it again. And my lack I’d make it my lack of confidence with my.

Highly competitive [00:04:00] nature. So I studied like crazy G mat applications for business schools and got accepted to Columbia in New York. We have a full tuition, so it was a little hard, a full tuition scholarship was little hard to say no to that. So I can tell you, and I loved it. It was an amazing experience and stayed in New York.

Went to a media company and we’re still in my path to media, but I thought now that I have that degree, there’s a few things that I don’t do well. And I don’t know. And I need to master and I was finance business management and then products. I even manage engineering. Two months, which was really a bad idea.

But I built that foundation to understand really how corporations work and then started looking at how do we serve our customers. And you mentioned account [00:05:00] management. That’s something for me. That also allowed me to. Invest in relationship with customers. And that’s naturally where I started.

She leaned more affinity towards customers. So I did ad operations, account management. Then I joined a startup to learn some of the, all the actual names in programmatic advertising. That was fun for a couple of years and really helped me realize technology. customers. And people where my drivers, so that naturally led me to limiting where I spent several years in account management, ad operations role, and then to MailChimp, where I got closer to the customers by having every ownership.

Of the interaction with our customers. So that’s my journey on the customer

Bill Staikos: line.

We started off in the same path. I remember working for [00:06:00] Smith Barney, which was an old financial services company, but I was making four to 500 phone calls a day cold calling for brokers. It was the worst experience, but it was also the best experience.

You really get tough skin doing that. You learn that it’s okay to fail fast and keep moving forward and execute love that story. So one of the things that. W when we have chatted, before and one of the great things to have you on the show and start talking about is, from a chief customer officers perspective, how do you influence and drive culture change?

And that’s really where, we’re going to focus the show a lot, but, before we get into some of that, you’ve been now I think September is your one-year anniversary. In the seat with MailChimp. W, what do you think are some of the, and this is a little bit of a different role maybe than you have in the past on some level too.

Are you flexing different muscles than you have in the past? What do you think makes chief customer officer success?

Carine Roman: I think there’s a a few things that. I’ve learned over the years and I’ve been fixing and I’m fixing more. So [00:07:00] today at Mailchimp, mostly because our customers like are Anywhere from your main street Mom & Pops to entrepreneurs, small businesses, sophisticated marketers and partners.

So that, that variety of customer 50% being global. So I have to have. Even more empathy for customers. So that’s something I’ve built over time, but I think out of dial up my empathy since joining Mailchimp. So that’s one. The second one is given the amount of users, 14 million users. Wow.

I need to be very conscious about the intersection between. The experiences that we provide our customers and the experiences that we provide, our people, especially people who are engaging with customers. [00:08:00] So investing in talent. Has always been something that is very important to me, but that’s gone up even more given the intersection between the customer experience and the employee experience.

And the last thing given that I am at the C-suite level, the ability to influence. My peers or their teams and be that voice of the customer and that voice of the employee in almost all conversations that we’re having at the leadership table. So

Bill Staikos: that’s a great, so thank you for teeing up one of my questions.

It, that is one of the challenge, most challenging things. For anyone in your seat, how do you influence other leaders with maybe sometimes even competing agendas and objectives? What’s your approach? What is your style like, how do you, especially, given you’re relatively new in the seat, any tips, tricks, any stories maybe that you [00:09:00] can even share about how like successfully influencing, your peers across that level, because that really is.

Everybody wants to do right by the customer, but that doesn’t necessarily translate that way all the time. And in different companies, not saying it’s at MailChimp obviously, certainly at some point,

Carine Roman: I think having a French accent helps,

but not more seriously. It is actually something that is always on my development. At least one of the skills that I’m always like spending more time. There’s two things that I consistently try to learn to better and keep making mistakes influencing and being an inclusive leader. These are my comments.

Constant that need to do better, need to do better. So how do I do it? It starts with trust and with that establishing a relationship of trust with my peers. There’s no influencing going on [00:10:00] and trust is really respect and consistency. Over time. I’m gonna say what I’m going to do. I’m going to do it.

And you keep going. So it’s really influence comes after some time. So trust is number one. The second one is very. Transparent agenda. I worked for the customer. I don’t work for myself. I don’t work for my team. I work for the customer. It means that, of course, I’m going to take really good care of my people, of course, but I worked for the customer and anything that decisions that I make recommendation asked or driven.

By making our customers successful. So there’s very transparent [00:11:00] agenda and goal that I’m trying to accomplish. And the the last thing I would add Schumer I knew, I think Maya Angelou said, people will forget what you said. People will forget. What you did, but they would never forget how you made them feel and people feel good.

Squinty laugh. Yeah, of course. So it’s also a way to I take my job very seriously. I don’t take myself very seriously. So I think trust like customer obsession and transparent agenda and Schumer have helped me influence, but don’t get me wrong. And still I’m still not there.

Bill Staikos: I think even though CEO level, right?

You’re never there, but you still need to develop those influence skills. You still need to develop those trust-building skills. Those are lifelong honing, areas of focus, just constantly working on them. I love, and I love that. I love the transparent agenda [00:12:00] piece cause that also in itself builds trust.

That will, when people understand. What your motivations are, where you’re going, what you’re trying to achieve. And it’s out there in the open for people to see. There’s no hidden agenda. That’s just there. Like they can relate to it. I am curious though, do you give trust first or do you expect it to be earned?

Cause like this is a topic I go back and forth on a lot. I’ve the last couple of years I’ve been giving trust first. You haven’t explicitly just it’s yours. Other people have said to me, thank you for that, but you still have to earn mine, which is fine. That’s you know, it’s okay. I’m curious as to, I’m curious, just your perspective on

Carine Roman: that

I am envious of your giving trust.

I aspire to, to be like you

I always want to No, I tell my team just assume best intent and give people the benefit of the doubt. But they are there’s still some situations in the past that haunted me, where I was giving that [00:13:00] trust. And they didn’t that was not a good idea. So I try very intentionally to assume best intent.

And to give trust. But it’s not as natural as you describe you are doing so. It has to be intentional.

Bill Staikos: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And it takes getting used to right when you can just let go and give that trust. There have been times when I’ve been burned, that bucket of trust just gets spilled and then it’s okay, now you have to earn it back.

I’ve been there too. But it is a, it’s an uncomfortable feeling. That’s something that. Just for me that I always try and work on as well, but I always try. And to your point as well, I’m always trying to work on those influencing skills cause I need it in my day job. Also in this work on some level and that trust-building too let’s change gears for a little bit.

And let’s talk about in a culture change more broadly, something that is very difficult to do Some may argue Korean that it’s not the chief customers [00:14:00] officer’s job to maybe drive culture change. Others may argue absolutely it’s within that remit. How should leaders just generally even be thinking about changing an organization to be more inclusive?

And putting the employee at the center of everything they do. I know that’s a topic that’s near and dear to your heart. So I’d love for you to share your perspective with our listeners.

Carine Roman: Sure. And so for a little bit of context, I joined Mailchimp because of what I saw, what I heard, what I felt, and that was that passion for our customers.

That brands that have such a human capital we often saw consumer brands having such a human capital but not really B2B. And that’s really strictly, I would say MailChimp, MailChimp people would be like, oh, I love MailChimp. [00:15:00] And the people I met with and I talked to and I was like, wow, this is an amazing company, amazing culture.

And that really drawn me to join MailChimp. And then when I started and talk to employees and digging to employee engagements or. It was not what I was expecting. And I realized that there were things that we had done very well and there are things that we hadn’t done well, culture wise and MailChimp is a company that.

Was really easy, really product driven. We can where we are. We almost know salespeople. It’s pretty

Bill Staikos: amazing. It’s an amazing story. It really is

Carine Roman: really amazing. But as we grew as a company and we introduced some complexity in the product, [00:16:00] we didn’t focus enough on the. So my role, which was a to drive a culture, a cultural transformation became how do I help weave a culture reset, which is very different.

So to answer your question, what’s the role of the chief customer officer around culture is the role of any leader at a company to drive culture change and, the scene culture eats strategy

Bill Staikos: for breakfast.

Carine Roman: So that’s the realization that we, that the right culture with that taking good care and then empowering and inspiring our employees, we can deliver and execute on our strategy and you cannot empower.

And care and invest in your employees with that diversity inclusion [00:17:00] and droning in mind. So it is absolutely my role, like diversity inclusion, belonging. Sure. It’s an HR function, but it’s a commitment and a behavior that should be inherent to any leader. I mean that I went on my own journey.

That’s not something that we learned at school

Bill Staikos: a hundred percent. That’s right.

Carine Roman: Yeah. So I did my own I did my own research, but I was also very fortunate to work at companies where it mattered and that invested in us as leaders to educate ourselves to. And understands the strategic power of being an inclusive leader.

So a lot of learnings on that journey, but I, it is the function [00:18:00] of every leader.

Bill Staikos: Yeah, I would even argue it’s the responsibility of every individual. We all have to think about, we all have to think about that. Is there you talked about, other companies, you worked at Carine where it was a priority where there was investment.

What were some of those differences maybe that you saw there? What do you defines an inclusive culture?

Carine Roman: Creating an environment that feels safe, where people can bring their authentic self. To work and thrive. One of my former and still mentor, my favorite mentor introduce d to me the concept of belongings years and years ago and the way she described it was diversity is being invited to the party.

Inclusion is being invited to dance and belongings is dancing that [00:19:00] no one is watching. And that quote has followed me for eight, nine years now. And that’s that that feeling of I belong, someone cares about me. And that’s how you create a culture of inclusivity by having belongings really on the radar.

We’ve not only your employees, but your customers and understanding that there’s work to do this personal development, need to be aware of. There needs to be commitment. There needs to be intentional work on your own, understand your own unconscious biases, know your blind spots. There’s a series of tactics and techniques that we can invest in as individuals that these companies had were fully invested in.[00:20:00]

And then you have employees who would climb on. To make to make the company and our customer successful, because

Bill Staikos: I love your example of belonging, being able to dance. No one is looking right. Just a completely safe space where you can be yourself and not be criticized for that in any way, or look different, looked at differently for that.

That’s really hard to do to create that kind of environment. That takes a lot of. That I feel does take time for sure. And that’s where that’s, for me, that’s where like that trust component really comes into play from a leadership perspective. But I love that example.

I’ve heard the first two parts of that. I haven’t heard the belonging piece, so I’ll have to I’ll have to put that in my own repertoire as well. Very cool. So yeah. I’m really curious just to get your advice and I get pinged on this actually, just personally on LinkedIn and otherwise just from maybe, I look doing this one time you achieve a level of success, yet people always are asking me what does it take to get there?

I’m just curious. [00:21:00] What advice do you have for other leaders that maybe are not, maybe aspire to be a chief customer officer, whether they’re male or female. Personally, I do think that there is there is in the broader customer experience or customer success space.

I do feel like there is an element of lack of gender an ethnic and racial diversity. I am really encouraged to see a lot more female leaders in customer, a chief customer officer roles, or chief experience officer roles. Similarly. What advice do you have for folks that are looking to reach a similar level?

Carine Roman: That’s a great, that’s a great question. So I think that there’s there’s the business skills. That apply to any leader. And for me, it’s understanding not just the role of the chief customer, where she served, but as importantly, each of the other functions. So I think the reason why that I know I’m where I am today is because of the diversity of my own [00:22:00] experience.

I mentioned finance product, et cetera. I think that helped me understand. These functions coming together can make us all successful. So I would say spend some time in sales, understand what a P & L is. How do you acquire customers? How do you bill customers? How I think that variety of experiences really helped me very well having, I mentioned one of my mentors having.

Mentors sponsors advocates, especially. If you’re in one of the aspect of diversity or minorities is extremely important and I’ve had various challenge, but sponsors and, the notion of sponsor or ally. Coach talk to you a mentor talks with you, a sponsor talks about you, right?

So it’s having that [00:23:00] person in a room when there’s opportunities being discussed and not in the room. And they’re going to be like, I’m going to put my chin down to what that person I would say, I can make sure that you have people around you who might be no white men. And who would it be? Your advocate and your sponsors, and then paid forward.

I want to be now the sponsor and the ally that will help people grow in their careers. And have the opportunities that they might not apply. Like when I told you I started in sales and that I ended up more in a general management role, I was the only woman, the youngest and the only woman at the table

Bill Staikos: that must’ve been so hard for you that,

Carine Roman: You’re not like I was thinking about it.

And I was so like determined [00:24:00] to never be judged. Because of my gender that I never paid attention to it. And that’s my own transformation on that inclusion journey where I was like, I still wanted to be treated the same as my male counterparts that I didn’t want to be seen as different.

So almost like putting all these are more like neither cry at work, don’t show that you care yeah. I had to unlearn a lot of leadership training that goes into this. Oh

Bill Staikos: my gosh. And that must, that’s hard to do, if that’s how you came up in a corporate setting in those formative years, And now you’re saying that’s not really who I am and it’s not my authentic self.

And I’m not able to bring that to work all of a sudden, not only are you not delivering your best? Cause you’re not bringing your whole self, but you’re also setting an example on some level for other leaders to say, I want to emulate that. But I love that [00:25:00] you’ve unlearned it. It’s a great way to put it actually as well.

And I love that you used that word. Because there is a lot of unlearning still to be done. When you think about D E & I and I wonder how two things, one, I wonder how comfortable people are with unlearning. But number two, do leaders have the stomach to unlearn. I think I challenged myself a lot on that as well.

Do I have the stomach to unlearn the things that are the, the patterns and behaviors that I’ve gotten over the years? Like, how do I, which I’ve looked at and said, I don’t want to be that person. That’s tough to change. But you have to do it very intentionally. No doubt. What what advice do you have for allies?

So I’m a white middle-aged male. What advice would you give to me to make sure that When I’m in, when I’m in that conference room. And maybe I’m around other, a lot of other white middle-aged males as well. Like how, what advice do you have for allies? What should we, what should allies be [00:26:00] doing more of same less of et cetera, to make sure that We’re being as inclusive as possible, and we are being sponsors for the right talent to be in the role.

I

Carine Roman: love that you asking that, that question deal and I’m not I’m not an expert, so I’ll

Bill Staikos: speak.

Carine Roman: So I think the first thing is there is no lack of excellent research that. Talks about unconscious biases. Folks about how, in some conferences, when a woman speaks and a man speaks, then the credit goes to the man.

So just like knowing all these things so that you can actually raise your hand and say, actually, no bill, that wasn’t bill. That was Corinne, who said that for her? So it’s really just having the courage to peak on [00:27:00] some Jerry common behave, like totally unconscious. And be the advocate and call it in the moment or look around and say, actually, we haven’t heard from.

And Tommy’s an introvert, so it doesn’t like to speak in public. So you might have the best ideas, but if we don’t give him the opportunity, so et cetera, et cetera. So there’s first do your research. There is no lack of white papers, webinars, learnings. There’s plenty of accident content. Around how to be an ally and an inclusive leader.

Mentorship, look around. Who are your mentors? Who do they look like? Your LinkedIn network? Yep. My LinkedIn network is very wide. And. Oh, I’m not happy about this. So [00:28:00] what do I do about hiring? I just hired three VPs and we were like, there was a clear goal needs to build a diverse team.

It was no option in my mind. I cannot serve my customers if I don’t have. That is as diverse as our customers. So it was okay. It’s going to take me longer. So you go to your boss and say, I know you want to hire, you want me to hire fast, but it might take me longer. Not because there’s lack of talent, by the way, there is no leaks of pipeline.

There is plenty of amazing diverse talent, but again, If I want to go fast, I’m going to turn to my network and my network looks like me. So you have to take more time, build these network, build these relationships. [00:29:00] So series of education and then commitment. And you mentioned that it takes a little of a little bit of courage and it does you mentioned that actually you actually, you

Bill Staikos: mentioned courage. No. You were giving me advice. You were just giving me advice to call it out. Actually, you mentioned courage. I’m going to give you the credit for that. But yeah, no I hear where you’re going. It’s I totally listen. I am it’s something that I’m always working.

Always working on and actually doing this show for a year has turned me into an incredibly better listener than I was in the past, which I’m grateful for. In fact, this show has been a great learning hack for me, more than anything. And being able, obviously to meet great people like you. But th but that the point around.

You’re hiring of making sure that was absolutely the agenda. And I was just having this conversation at work yesterday. It’s not so much just the diverse talent, but the diverse slate of interviewers as well. Who in the company is going to interview this diverse slate of talent that we’re going to [00:30:00] have.

It’s so important to make sure that whoever’s in that chair interviewing for the role, sees other people like. So they can talk about their experiences and how they might be different. So

Carine Roman: we also made sure that we had a diverse interview panel for sure. That’s a great, that’s

Bill Staikos: a great so important.

I know you’ve got you’ve got a busy day ahead of you. So I would, I don’t want to keep you too much. This has been a really inspiring conversation on a number of different levels, by the way. And I’m grateful for you to be on the show. I’m really curious where you get your inspiration from, and by the way, this is one of my favorite questions to ask guests because I get inspiration from it myself.

I’ve been turned on to so many new things, just, you talk to, over 50 people over the course of a year, new people that you’ve never known. You get so many really interesting responses to this. I’m like, where do you go for your inspiration?

Carine Roman: I like the question and I hope you are going to like the answer.

And my inspiration is really [00:31:00] from people telling stories and I am an avid podcast listener. From, how I build these to the, to image in life and let just people, ordinary people, genius people,

whoever story for me is inspiring. I love stories. So that’s where I get my source of inspiration is. To a variety of different people all over the bolt telling their stories.

Bill Staikos: So I’m not disappointed in that at all, by the way. That is where I so little I’ve said this on the show before, but I, be, and then you’re a New Yorker.

So you know, that. But Greeks owned diners. It’s just like a joke in the Northeast, right? That’s, Greeks emigrated from group, from grace, they came to the New York area. They all worked in diners. It’s an easy job to get as a survey or server, you work your way up. You want to, you buy a diner.

My parents owned multiple diners [00:32:00] growing up and I would work in those diners my whole life. And the thing that I love about diners is everybody goes to it. Or everybody can go, and whether you’re a CEO, whether you’re a truck driver, it doesn’t really matter. You can go there and eat and enjoy food, enjoy the company, et cetera.

And one of the things as a. I really loved is to learn people’s stories. I think, frankly, it’s why I’m in this work today that I do, but I get a ton of inspiration from that. And that’s why, I love doing this show is these conversations are really inspiring, but I that’s a great answer and I love that.

But I share that. For sure.

Carine Roman: I’m definitely grateful for what you do because you bring these stories to to us. And that’s something that I start my day with stories and I end my day with stories. So thank you for what you do,

Bill Staikos: Thank you. That’s you to say your current, thank you so much for coming on the show.

It’s been wonderful to meet you to speak with you. I’m raging fan of MailChimp, [00:33:00] actually. Like I really it’s. It actually helps me improve my life because I have a day job, but I do this on the side. And it actually makes it simplifies my life. And there are not a lot of products out there that simplify your life.

And I’m grateful to that end I hope, we can stay in touch in the show and I’m looking forward to seeing your successes at MailChimp.

Carine Roman: Thank you, Bill. I enjoyed I enjoyed talking with you today and I’ll make sure that the team hears your love for for MailChimp.

Bill Staikos: Thanks so much. All right, everybody. Great show this week, we’re out. Talk to you soon.

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