Charles Coaxum, The Fundamentals of Lasting Customer Satisfaction

Episode Summary

In this episode of Automox Insiders, Maddie Regis interviews Charles Coaxum, the Senior Vice President of Customer Experience at Automox. They discuss Charles' role in maximizing customer satisfaction and his passion for exceptional customer experiences. Charles explains why he chose to work in customer experience and why he joined Automox. He also shares his insights on keeping customers happy, emphasizing the importance of building genuine relationships and delivering value-added solutions. The episode concludes with a fun game where Charles responds to negative customer reviews for unrelated products.

Episode Transcript

Maddie: Hey everyone, this is Maddie Regis, account based marketing manager here at Automox. And I'm bringing you another episode of IT Insiders, which is Automox's podcast that introduces you to the people behind the product. So with me today is Charles Coaxum. He's our Senior Vice President of Customer Experience at Automox. And this month is all about happiness and the end user. So we're going to chat about his background, his time at Automox and how he makes happy end users every day. So great to have you Charles.

Charles Coaxum: Awesome, thanks, Maddie, Great to be here.

Maddie: Okay, so tell me a little bit about your role and then also the name you'd give our company if we weren't called Automox.

Charles Coaxum: Sure, sure. So, well, my role is to ensure we maximize our customers' investment in Automox. It really revolves around ensuring that every touch point our customers have with either our product or our services leaves them feeling satisfied and valued. And I like to think that I work for my team versus them working for me to ensure they have all the tools and the resources they need to be most effective. And customer experience here at Automox encompasses customer support, professional services, customer success management and enablement in operations teams. You asked me if it weren't called Automox I'd probably go with something like, this is going to be corny: "Present." because through AI-powered IT automation, we give back the gift of time. Clearly, you see why I'm in CX and not in Marketing.

Maddie: No, I like it. I think that's an important thing to highlight. It is definitely something that improves the lives of the people that use it. So I think it's definitely a gift. I would agree with that. Cool. Okay. So give me a little bit more background. Why did you end up getting into the customer experience world?

Charles Coaxum: Yeah, sure. That's a great question. Um, you know, I've always liked the philosophy, the approach of servant leadership and my own personal journey into the world of customer experience really stems from a deep seated passion for understanding and meeting the needs of others. And I've always been fascinated by the impact that exceptional experiences can have on loyalty, trust and satisfaction. So for me, it was just natural to transition into the customer experience realm. It was just a natural progression.

Maddie: Awesome. And why Automox? How'd you end up with us?

Charles Coaxum: Yeah, Automox stood out for several reasons. First, it has a really innovative approach to modernizing IT operations. And it really aligns with my belief in leveraging technology to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Second, the company culture, prioritizing customer success obviously resonates deeply with me and we have prioritized that from, you know, the board, CEO on down. And then...

Finally, I'd say the opportunity to be part of a really dynamic team that's solving real problems in the IT landscape, like the combination of all of that was really irresistible for me.

Maddie: Yeah, that's awesome. I love to hear it. And yeah, we definitely appreciate our entire CX team. We know they're working really hard to make sure that our customers are getting the best experience possible. So love that. Okay, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit with kind of a broad question about happy end users, happy customers. But what do you think is the key to keeping your customers happy regardless of, you know, whatever product or service you have?

Charles Coaxum: Yeah, that's a tough one. It's a great question. I think the key to keeping customers happy, it really transcends the product. To me, it's all about, are you fostering genuine relationships built on trust, communication, and empathy? Do you take the time to understand the customer's pain points and actively listen to their feedback? And are you trying to constantly deliver value-added solutions? To me, those are like the fundamental aspects of lasting customer satisfaction. Ultimately, regardless of the product or service, it's also about making a customer feel valued and supported through their journey. And that's really important for me, and it's really important for what we do here at Automox.

Maddie: Yeah, I know we definitely value customer feedback. I know the product team really tries to integrate that into, you know, the roadmap and everything. So.

Charles Coaxum: Absolutely.

Maddie: All right, gonna put you a little bit on the spot one more time. I don't know if you've listened to this podcast before, but we do like to wrap with a little game. So I figured I would tailor it to your experience. And I've got a couple of pretty negative customer reviews and I wanna see how you would respond. And this has nothing to do with IT. These are just random ones that I pulled off the internet. So let me grab the first one here. Okay, so this first one is a one-star review for a Mexican restaurant.

It says "Bolt in my Food: Went through the drive-through and bought fajitas, took it home, was pouring pica de gallo on my fajita and a bolt fell right into the fajita. I was shocked, complete disbelief. Called the restaurant and no one answered. So I'm leaving this review here. I still can't believe it." So, uh, how would you respond to that Charles?

Charles Coaxum: Wait a minute, I missed something here. What fell into the pico? Like, what fell into what here?

Maddie: A bolt, like a bolt, like a little metal piece, something for machinery it seems like. It just fell right into this guy's fajita.

Charles Coaxum: Oh, I checked the car to make sure there's nothing falling apart on the car for us. No, I'm joking. I would reach out to the customer and acknowledge that they had a bad experience. And I invite them to come back in and see if we can improve on that and give them a better one this time around.

Maddie: For sure. All right, I think this one might be a little harder. Personally, I think it's really funny when people review national parks, and a lot of times there's actually a lot of one-star reviews on national parks. So this one is for Yellowstone. I'm curious to see as someone in CX how you respond to this. So this one is Yellowstone. "Smells like rotten eggs. Everywhere you go, there's this lingering smell of rotten eggs. You'd think for the $35 entrance fee, the park people could install some airwicks or something."

Charles Coaxum: Well, I wonder if they're anywhere near to Old Faithful, whether we're sending that message over there. I might have to send over some information, kind of educating them on geysers a little bit, perhaps.

Maddie: Yeah, that one actually for once in history might be on the customer. I think Yellowstone's pretty great.

Charles Coaxum: Yeah, that was a good one. I didn't know there were a lot of one-star reviews for national parks. Now I'm going to go in a rabbit hole here reading this stuff later.

Maddie: Okay, cool. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, the listeners definitely, it's hilarious. There's a bunch of articles from, you know, like the Washington Post, they've even summarized them. It's really interesting because I personally, I don't know, it's just I think every single one's beautiful so I'm shocked that people can find something to dislike so strongly but never know.

Charles Coaxum: Somebody's probably upset with all the trees.

Maddie: Yeah, yes, yeah, trees, too much sand, you know, all that kind of stuff. But not something we have to worry about with our product for sure. So, Charles, thank you so much for coming on. I'm sure people can find you on LinkedIn. I don't know if there's anything else you'd want to plug before we wrap up here.

Charles Coaxum: No, just appreciate taking the time. And hopefully for those that are customers hearing this podcast or seeing this podcast, if there's anything you need, reach out to your customer success manager or me directly.

Maddie: Absolutely. And I'm just going to wrap up with a little discussion question for our listeners. So what's a customer support tool you or your organization appreciates having in your tech stack today or one that you wish you had? And if you'd like to chime in on this discussion, visit the Automox community where we will be posting this to discuss. And yeah, both Charles and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Charles Coaxum: Awesome, thank you.

Maddie: Thanks so much, Charles.