FROM FRESHWORKS AND FAST CO. WORKS: What is the future of the employee experience?
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Hi, I'm Josh Christensen, Executive Producer of Podcasts at Fast Company. Today we have a special bonus episode for you from our partners at Fastco Works and Freshworks. Hope you enjoy!

I'm Abigail Bassett, and this is the Future of the Employee Experience, a custom podcast from Fasco Works and Freshworks. In this episode, we'll hear from an industry expert about the future of the employee experience and how companies are navigating these work culture shifts. We'll also learn how business leaders can reimagine their employee experiences to meet the needs of their workforces and how that ultimately translates into better customer experiences.

Joining me now is Stacey Epstein. She's the Chief Marketing Officer at Freshworks. She's also a veteran software executive in the field of marketing services related to customers. Thanks for being here, Stacey. Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. The global pandemic has fundamentally upended the way we work and the way we expect our employees to work. Many leaders are having a ton of trouble adapting to this space. What are some of the key takeaways that leaders really need to take to heart from the last three years?

Yeah. I mean, it's been a really tumultuous and completely changing few years for us. And I remember the beginning of the pandemic thinking like there's literally no one in the world that's been through something like this, that has a blueprint for here's how it's going to go. And here's what leaders should expect. And here's what you should do. We all were

Just trying to make the most of the situation. I think for me, being a very talent-focused leader and someone who really is always thinking about the people behind the business, I think it really taught us about agility and how to think about employees as you're going through major overhaul, change, transformation, conflict, trauma, challenge,

I think a lot of things that we took for granted for the last century changed, right? We sort of took for granted that employees will come to the office and they will do their work. And as long as they have a good setup in the office, you don't really have to think about, do they have what they need to get their job done? Can they communicate? You know, you think about industries where people were in inherently in-person roles, right?

like a field service technician and having to think through how does my employee get their job done in a completely changed environment. And I think that for me, the biggest takeaway is that it forced empathy. It forced the ability to think about not just like, hey, is my employee happy or inspired or motivated? It forced us to think about, can my workforce do their job and

And do they have what they need in order to do their job? And it really forced us to get into their situations and put ourselves in their shoes and figure out, do they have the technology? Do they have the means to communicate? Do they have an environment that

that they can be productive where they are. And I think that's really one of the biggest benefits coming out of such a challenging period is that it's forced empathy. It's forced us to really think about the employee and are they set up for success in their role. And employees continue to be the key linchpin for business leaders and business owners in terms of making sure that their customers are being met where they're needed.

How should business leaders really rethink some of the tools and resources that they offer, especially in this weird hybrid space, to better engage their employees and better support the customers that they have when they need it? Yeah, I mean, going back on what I was just talking about, about like, are they set up for success to actually do their job? And I think a lot of people, when they think about

workforce motivation and performance. And before three years ago, people were going straight to, what are perks? Can they bring their dog to the office? And do we have a ping pong table and summer Fridays? And that was classified as, what am I doing to inspire and motivate my workforce?

And all that went out the window when we had to figure out, again, do they have what they need to actually get the job done? And if you look at employee motivation, am I more inspired by a ping pong table and having my dog at work with me? Or do I just want to be empowered to do what I need to do to meet the needs of my customers, especially if I'm a customer-facing employee?

and get my job done in a frictionless way where I can be successful. Much more important to most employees is to have the right tools to perform in their jobs. And when they're done, they have, they can look back and have a satisfying, you know, a satisfying experience in their day. If their tools are hard to use, clunky, you think of legacy software. And I, let's take the example of a

customer service agent, right? Super hard job, right? Most of the time you're listening to issues, you're solving problems. A lot of times you're talking to people who are frustrated because they've got an issue that they need help with.

If all you want to do as a customer service agent is you want to help them quickly solve their issue. And imagine if all day, every day, it took you five seconds to solve their issue. Or maybe if there was an AI bot that could solve the rote easy ones, and you only had to really spend your time focusing on the hard ones, you're probably

going to have a lot more career satisfaction and fulfillment in your job. Like at the end of the day, yeah, I made everybody happy. If it's a challenge for you and you're like, I knew the software's clunky. It takes me 50. I mean, how many times are we on the, on a call? And it's like, I'm sorry, our software's down. It's going to be another 20 minutes before I can help you. Like it's hard for us. It's also really hard for that agent to have to tell you that. And they're the ones like screaming at the computer, right? So

I think, again, one of the benefits of the pandemic and the forcing people to work from home and figure out how do they have the right tools is that lens of, I just want to give my employees a frictionless way to get their job done every day. And that's the most important thing is that people feel like they're making an impact in their role. They're successful in their job. They can be successful anywhere.

I think we can all agree there's a lot of legacy software and hardware and tools that are just friction full and challenging. And,

And the more we can focus on making sure our employees are equipped with what they need, I think the more successful we'll be both in employee engagement and satisfaction, but also in overall company performance. Right. And when we talk about company performance, of course, we have to talk a little bit about the retention of employees, which is key. We hear a lot of talk about the great resignation and all of these people looking for new jobs. What can business leaders do to really help workers in all spaces feel like they're part of something that's important?

How should business leaders continue to retain crucial components of the business to ensure that the company moves forward? As consumers, we've seen the impact of employees realizing that they didn't really like their job.

And, you know, you see it a lot in service industries, right? I mean, over the summer, going, taking little short trips or going to restaurants and seeing like, oh my God, service has really taken a hit because they just don't have the staff. You know, I know there's, there were several vendors in my town who closed because they just couldn't keep up the staff.

And why is that? It's mostly because people realize like, I don't want to go back to that. That was hard. That was challenging. And if I can do a job that is more frictionless, is easier, I'm valued more, it's easier for me to perform, I'm going to do that. And I think that led to this great resignation and people wanting a change and wanting to find something, not because they were looking for something easier, but because

inherently we all want to do a good job at what we're doing, you know, regardless of what the role is, the thing that brings us the most satisfaction is being successful. It's not like how much do I, you know, again, do I have a ping pong table and can I bring my dog? Like, and not to knock those things because, you know, those are very important to many people. But ultimately, the ultimate job satisfaction is success in your career and the ability to advance. And

I think a lot of people said, you know what? I can't be successful. It's too stressful. There's the work is too hard. The hours are too long. I'm not set up for success in my job and I just don't have to do it because I have figured out how I'm going to do something different. It,

teaches us a lot about understanding how we can help employees perform in whatever it is, whether they're a food server or they're a customer service agent, or, you know, they're selling, they're doing work from home in any sort of a capacity. It's, it's really thinking about how can I help make them successful?

Right. You know, you mentioned earlier this shift in business, this idea of incorporating empathy into it, which tends to be at odds with bottom lines and making sure that everybody's turning a profit. Why do you think that empathy in business is so crucial right now? Yeah.

I mean, there's two sides to empathetic marketing. And I already talked a lot about empathy to employees and empathy being really the ability to put yourself in their shoes and get an understanding of how they think, feel, and what's important to them and leverage that to motivate them. But I think empathetic marketing takes that forward through to how do you communicate with your customers and your audience and your buyer, right?

and what resonates for them in order for them to take action and make a purchase or a buying decision for you. And I think so many times marketers are sort of

taught spewing messages about maybe it's the feature of the product or it's sad how rare it is for marketers to focus on what's the outcome for the customer and resist that ability to sort of brag about how great the services versus understand what's the outcome the customer is looking for and then tell them that that is possible with what you're selling.

And it's just a much more effective way to market. And you literally can't do it unless you understand what the customer's motivations are, what is the outcome they're striving for. It's dangerous because if you start talking about outcomes that don't matter,

You know, it's funny, I being in my role, I get calls from recruiters all the time about, you know, CMO jobs and sometimes CEO jobs. And nine times out of 10, the first thing they want to tell me is how much money I'm going to make in this new job.

And every time I just want to laugh because I'm like, you didn't take a moment to understand me. It is not my number one motivation. And I get a lot of people are very motivated by the zillions of dollars they're going to make, but you didn't take a minute to listen to me and ask me three questions about what am I looking to do next? What do I care about in my next role? Um,

And in some ways it's almost off-putting because I feel like you never took the time to understand me. That's empathy. That's taking a moment to ask three more questions. And when you're selling to a full market versus just a single person, it's harder. You've got to do research. You've got to talk to customers. You've got to talk to your salespeople.

you know, it takes a lot more effort to really have that true empathy, but just taking that moment to say, Hey, the outcome, you know, who knows, maybe I want to completely change my career maybe. And I'm saying this hypothetically, I'm not changing my career right now, but like just that moment,

step of understanding, you can even frame the same, the same offering can be framed in a way where I'm like, oh, I can't wait to engage in that opportunity because that's exactly what I'm looking for. But if you come right at me with something that is not an outcome I care about, I probably am going to quickly move on. And it's true with how we market anything. So that's empathetic marketing to me.

It sounds a lot like you can take those lessons that are grounded in understanding of what problem the customer is trying to solve and also apply it to your workforce in terms of what problems are we trying to solve collectively as a business. In theory, the goals of a workforce shouldn't be at odds with the goals of your customers. Can business leaders apply the same empathy to both their customers and their business? Is it the same across both sides of the game? It is a...

fairly major shift though. And I, I mentioned how sort of rare it is, especially in business to business marketing. It's more common in business to consumer marketing to be empathetic. Um, I think you're sort of forced to in business to business. You're typically, you're not selling to one person, right? You're selling to a company, you're selling to a whole buying unit, which might incorporate selling to multiple people within an organization. But again, nine times out of 10,

I'm positioning what I'm selling in the frame of what that executive buyer wants. And I'm completely neglecting to look at what does the user want?

And at the end of the day, and let's stick with that customer agent example, because I think it's a really powerful one. At the end of the day, what does the customer service agent want? They want to solve customer issues as quickly and as frictionless and as completely. That's all they want. Right?

right? They just, they're like, if I can solve all my tickets in, in, you know, two minutes or less all day long, I am going to freaking love my, in fact, I'm going to be feel so great because I'm just making people happy left and right. That is not at odds with what the company wants at all. That is pure benefit and performance for the company. But I think what happens is that

That customer service agency, like what really makes for a frictionless solution to their problem?

gets lost in all the layers of management. And when you start talking to the CIO, the VP of procurement, what they come up with is their RFP that's 30 pages long and all these features that I think I need, because I want to make sure I capture these 18 fields. Every time there's a

interaction because I want to report on those fields so that I can make sure I'm hitting my key metrics. And if I don't have those fields, I don't have the data. And then what you have is you have a two year long implementation and you've got your agent using this bloated, clunky software that may or may not even collect those 18 fields that no one ever is even looking at anyway. And so you've lost both that ability to

and empower your agent, but you are also risking your business goals because what you don't realize is that you're slowing down their ability to service customers. So it's really fundamental to, and I'm, you know, I'm in tech, right? I work for a software company. So I think about this through the lens of software technology and features, but it's true for everything.

You can't get too distant from the person that's actually interfacing directly with your customers. You've got to stay close to what's really happening on the ground and understanding how is that interaction with that point of sale with that customer to make sure that you're doing the things that are going to

drive performance for those individuals. Cause they're the ones that are, you know, we like to say at Freshworks, we empower the people that power your business. Um, those are the people that are selling and marketing and solving issues and building things. And if you're too busy in your corner office, just thinking about the 18 different fields you want to report on, you're going to get away from the impact that those people can really make.

Yeah.

Yeah, I have high hopes. I think we've learned a lot. I think empathy was forced upon us and understanding of employees was forced upon us. We have no choice. I hope that we continue it at Freshworks. In our business, we have a hashtag, love your software.

You know, we're sort of mission driven to make it a place where people have the tools they need to to friction in a frictionless way, get their jobs done. But I hope that that takes off in every industry and that we can all learn to really get in the minds and hearts of our employees and our customers.

and use that as the driving force for how we lead our businesses. This sounds a lot like we've got an empathy revolution on our hands, which is actually pretty exciting because it means thinking about creating a collective of businesses and consumers who are just a little bit more compassionate towards everyone else. It's both easy and hard. It's easy because really what it takes is just conversations, right?

And that learning mindset of, I really want to know what's going on on the front lines. And I'm going to, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to talk to customers. I'm going to talk to my frontline customer service agents or my salespeople or my marketing people. It's not hard. It's empathy is not hard. It's about having a listening muscle. What's hard is prioritizing it. And I can even speak for myself. You

my days are full, right? My days are full with, I got a board meeting I got to prep for, and I've got an executive team meeting, and I've got my leadership team meeting, and I'm speaking on a podcast, and I'm going to a conference. And three weeks later, I realized like, wow, it's been a really long time since I've taken that time to ingest what's happening on the front lines, either with customers or

or with my frontline employees. And I think it's, it's just, you, you have to build it into your routine and you have to make sure that you're making it happen. Certainly there's research that can be done. There are surveys that can be done. Um,

And that's also helpful and important and we should do those things. But at the end of the day, it's like, when is the last time you talked to a frontline employee in your own organization or on the sales team or on the marketing team? When's the last time you took 30 minutes to hear from a customer? We have something at Freshworks called voice of the customer once a month.

We spend our entire executive team meeting listening to three different customers. And, um, you know, sometimes we get the really happy ones and we're all like, Oh, aren't we great. It's so nice. You know, I feel so good. But most of the time we're trying to listen to the ones that are unhappy and it's, you know, I, we joke that, God, it's not the best way to start your day because you could get really down on it. But what comes out of it is we all hear it together and

We all can face the improvements that we need to make and we can put action plans together to do them. But if you don't do it, that stuff never bubbles up, just doesn't. So it's hard and easy. It's easy to do. It's hard to make the time. So I think it's just a matter of prioritizing it as leaders.

Right. And when you do the check-in, when you look back and think about, okay, well, it's been 30 days since I've had a conversation with either an employee or someone that's on the front lines of your business. Are there certain questions that you ask yourself that you're like, oh, right, I should check in and make sure that I'm still thinking about it in this framework or I'm still in this empathetic mindset?

Are there tools that you use in your day-to-day work that you can share with us that might be helpful to other people who are looking to incorporate this practice into their business? Yeah. And there's one important thing to mention that I think maybe isn't obvious, but it's worth bringing up is creating a culture where this is the norm. I think in a lot of companies, there's this sort of hierarchical view of

I talk to my direct reports and they talk to me and maybe occasionally I'm talking one level down. Right. But there's this like defensiveness around. I don't want my boss. You know, my boss is the CEO. Right. You know, he's like suddenly calling people on my team. Is that like a red flag?

Like, is he looking for like, is Stacy doing a good job or not? And I think that happens a lot of just like, no, if you need to know what's going on in my organization, you should talk to me. Why are you calling my frontline people? Is there, you know, and you got to just get rid of that. You got to say, you got to make everybody feel comfortable that like I can talk to anybody.

I'm going to talk to salespeople. I'm going to talk to people across organizations. It doesn't mean it's, I'm seeking understanding. I'm not like looking for something that might, but you'd be surprised or maybe you're not, but in a lot of organizations, it's kind of looked at as like, what's going on? Are they looking for a smoking gun? So that's one thing is make sure in your organization, you have this culture of openness that at all levels,

It doesn't matter. We're going to talk to whoever we're going to talk to. Just because I'm a CMO and I want to reach out to you doesn't mean like you're in trouble and I'm searching for something. Right. So culture is important, a culture of openness and seeking understanding. And, you know, it's it's interesting. We did this thing called Coffee Chat and we have a pretty thriving women's network at Freshworks.

And during the pandemic, we just set up this thing where we said, hey, we're going to do this every Friday coffee chat and we're just going to draw names and we're just going to match up women. And we've got 5,000 people at Freshworks. So, you know, you could be paired with

some random person outside of your team in India, right? And I loved doing it because I would just get on and there was no agenda. There was no like, these are the five questions. You just get on and you'd spend 30 minutes talking to some woman that you probably had never met in your org.

And for me, it was like, you know, yes, a great break in the day to meet somebody new and have an, a personal interaction, but like, it just spills out of people. You don't have to have your list of like, how was your week? What are you struggling with? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your tool? You know, it's,

It just, people want to share what's going on in their life and, and they want to usually be constructive with things they're struggling with or things that are really enjoyable. They want to like tell a personal story that helps you get to know them. So again, it's hard to make the time for it. When you make the time for it, it's pretty easy. I would say if it's not flowing, some easy questions are, um,

I always like the opportunities and obstacles question. What opportunities do you see for us to a make your job easier? B help you be successful. C as a company perform better. You get so much out of opportunities and it encourages people to think outside the box of like,

hey, if we just did this, you know, those are the ideas come from those people. They're close to it. And then the flip side is obstacles. What are the obstacles that you're seeing that, that make it hard for you to do your job? What obstacles do you think we face as a company that we should, we should do better? I mean, if we had some magic button, we could,

press that would download every employee's view of opportunities and obstacles. Like that's your roadmap for how you run your company for the next five years, frankly. All that knowledge is within your customer base today. You just got to go mine for it. Right. And it sounds a lot like we've shifted more towards this interpersonal relationship with both our customers and our employees.

in a way that will continue to help boost the bottom line for companies, regardless of what they do. Stacey, I want to thank you so much for your time. It's been such an incredible conversation. I think there's a lot of value here. So thank you for all the knowledge. Thank you. Thanks for asking and listening. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed it. That's all for our discussion on the future of the employee experience. This custom episode is produced by Fastco Works in partnership with Freshworks.

I'm Abigail Bassett. Our producer is Avery Miles. And our editor is Nicholas Torres.