Emily Gabriele’s fascination with technology and love of people led her to customer success. In her work with multinational corporations, she realized the idea that the “customer was always right” could cause more harm than benefit. She also saw that, for customer success employees to succeed without burning out, they need the right kind of resources and support. 

In her current position as customer success manager at Airtable, Emily helps reps get the support they need to be proactive rather than reactive. She advocates that what is best for the customer is the right solution, but not necessarily the one they think they want at the start of the call. 

Key takeaways 

• Great customer service includes a mixture of curiosity and listening. 

• Everyone has their own unique perspective. Anytime we get into a stance of right versus wrong, we assume our viewpoint is the only valid or nuanced one. Listening and curiosity help us understand the other person’s viewpoint and more about what they truly need and want. 

• No one walks away from a conversation where someone tries to understand their viewpoint, thinking, “that person really stinks because they tried to understand me.” 

• Customer service reps face ridiculously high burnout rates. They need work-life balance and appropriate work boundaries to succeed long term. 

• An employee’s well-being is powerfully impacted by company culture. 

• Truly effective customer service includes the time and presence of mind to think proactively and reactively. Sometimes, that’s as simple as leaning into a pause. 

• Customers are strategic partners to a company. Customer service needs to position itself as a strategic partner to a customer. If a customer is upset or disgruntled, it’s essential to remember that it is transitory. Of course, the same applies to a happy customer. Every interaction counts. 

• Airtable offers its customer service reps supportive benefits, including mindfulness apps, professional coaching, and therapy. Reps have someone to listen to and be curious about them, just as they are to the customers. Talking about situations has also been hugely helpful in relieving stress and uncovering solutions. It strengthens the muscle they use to do their work well. 

• Another way to improve employee happiness is to simplify their tools for basic and repetitive tasks, like timecards. Airtable reduces employee stress and improves their happiness by making all of those functions easy and accessible through one dashboard. 

 

Quote of the show: 

5:35 “It’s helpful to slow down to speed up. And what does that mean? Well, a customer can come to you with these fast and hard deadlines, which may not align with what you can produce or provideare capable of producing or providing in that short turnaround time. And if you go outside of your advised timeline and the customer is pushing you to do so, then maybe you end up with a band-aid fix instead of a fully functioning and appropriate solution.” 

 

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-k-gabriele/  

Company Website: https://www.airtable.com/ 

Emily Gabriele’s Music Website: https://www.egmusicnyc.com/ 

 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music — https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

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