Don’t let the sun set without talking to your customers.
Sunset Boulevard is considered to be one of the best movies of all time. But it was almost an abject failure. What ended up being a saving grace to the creators Billy Wilder and Charles Bracket was going directly to their viewers and hearing their feedback. And in their case…it was brutal. But going straight to their customers was their saving grace—and it might be yours too.
Today’s guest, Ruben Harris, is the CEO of Career Karma, and he knows the secret to great CX is engaging directly with customers. In this episode, he’ll share how Career Karma is revolutionizing people’s lives, building trust with users, prioritizing customer input, and much more.
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“If you're trying to rehaul your CX, you have to take calls yourself and actually talk to your users.” - Ruben Harris
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Time Stamps
* (0:00) Lights, Camera, CX
* (5:12) What is Career Karma?
* (7:54) How Career Karma helps people
* (10:31) Putting trust at the center of CX
* (14:24) The importance of speaking with customers
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Sponsor
This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.
Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives
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Links
Connect with Ruben on LinkedIn
Narrator:
A full crowd sits in silence as the movie begins.
Onscreen, dead bodies in a morgue. A narrator begins to tell his story – how he became one of these bodies.
It is as ridiculous as it sounds.
The audience roars with laughter.
Actually, the audience was laughing more. I’m talking the kind of laughter that haunts you in your dreams.
Yeah. More like that.
The director and his writing partner – Billy Wilder and Charles Bracket – sank in their seats.
Because the audience was not supposed to be laughing.
The movie they were screening? It was called Sunset Boulevard.
And at that moment, Billy and Charles were wondering if it would be the last movie they’d ever make.
Welcome to Often Imitated, a podcast about remarkable experiences from the past, and how they inspire people to create great customer experiences today.
This episode is about how customer feedback is at the core of great CX. How Billy Wilder and Charles bracket learned this lesson the hard way in the development of Sunset Boulevard, and what CX leader’s can learn from them today. In this episode, we’ll hear from Ruben Harris, CEO of Career Karma, about how Career Karma builds trust with its customers. But first, a word from our sponsors.
Often Imitated is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
OK. If you’ve seen or heard of Sunset Boulevard, you know that Sunset Boulevard is regarded as one of the great movies of all time.
It tells the story of Joe Gillis, a has-been screenwriter, and his ill-fated relationship with Norma Desmond, a silent movie star who’s fallen from grace.
And you definitely know its most famous line:
“Alright, Mr Demille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
If you don’t know, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett were two of the kings of Hollywood.. They were legendary collaborators. Their most successful movie before Sunset Boulevard was a movie called The Lost Weekend. They won an Oscar for writing it…and a little award called Best Picture.
Billy Wilder also went on to write and direct some obscure movies no one has ever heard of – Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Sabrina, The 7 Year Itch…
I’m just kidding.
Here’s what you need to know.
These guys were big deals.
But at that test screening, they definitely didn’t feel like it.
But maybe they just had a strange audience that thought dead bodies were hilarious.
They tested Sunset Boulevard two more times. Both times, the audience laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
Billy and Charles didn’t find it that funny. Neither did their studio, Paramount Pictures.
So they gave Billy and Charles the money to figure out something new.
Billy and Charles went back to the drawing board. They wound up creating a brand new opening scene: police cars rushing through Hollywood – only to find our narrator Joe Gillis floating dead in a pool.
It’s one of the most famous opening scenes in movie history.
And it all happened because Billy and Charles went straight to their customer to make sure their film would work.
That’s the purpose of the test screening process. Filmmakers want to gauge an audience’s reaction. To see if they cry when they’re supposed to. To see if the thrills are as thrilling as they need to be. And if their bravura opening scene isn’t unintentionally funny.
And if something isn’t working, you get the opportunity to ask. Maybe they fill out a survey. Maybe you poll the audience after with questions.
Or maybe you just listen for that ill-timed laughter that haunts you in your dreams.
If you want to build trust with your customers, then you can’t just hope for the best.
You’ve got to get out on the front lines and talk to them.
Sometimes, that’s the simplest way to ensure that your CX is effective – by asking.
Whether it’s polls, customer feedback, or even using your own products, it’s critical to collect that feedback.
That’s the secret to CX at Career Karma. They hyper-focus on building trust with their customers. And then they do everything they can to make sure they keep it.
Career Karma is a platform that connects tech job seekers with job training programs, coaching, mentorships, and a lot more.
Building trust is central to CX. Whether you’re trying to entertain someone for two hours or help them on their career journey,
Ruben began our conversation by describing what differentiates Career Karma from other career platforms.
Ruben: So career come is a career navigation platform. We are the easiest way to find a job training program online. We match workers that are looking for career advice, and they're not completely sure what they wanna do, uh, to the best job training programs that help them reach their desired career goals in the amount of time that they're going for.
Once our software recommends the best schools for them, we actually group them in live audio rooms so that they can speak directly with other people that have completed the training and gotten jobs. So that they can speak with schools directly, or they could speak with people that are applying so that they can have a community of people that can help them overcome any psychological roadblocks that they're dealing with.
And then finally, we have a bunch of companies that we work with as well, uh, so that people can connect directly to employers, um, and, and to people that are working so that they can help them through the job search. So we, we match people to schools and companies, so they can get jobs in a short amount.
Narrator: If you’ve ever considered changing careers, you know that it isn’t the easiest thing to do. In a way, it’s like throwing out that amazing scene you thought worked but actually didn’t. It’s daunting, and it’s scary to figure out what can come next.
Ruben: a lot of people will ask themselves where they'll say, Hey, what do I do next with my career? How do I find a new job? Or how do I know what's right for me and everybody and everybody will give you a different answer.
Historically. It might be go to LinkedIn, go to indeed, go to Glassdoor. And, and so on and so forth, but pretty much every platform before career karma was oriented to a worker that has already completed a job training program that is in the job search life. Now that career karma exists is if you wanna make a career switch, you don't know what you wanna do.
Go to career karma because they will help you figure out what training you actually need. And then when you're done with that training, we can also connect you to the right companies and help you through the job search. , this is very, very important because we wanna be the single point of contact that people go to whenever people wanna make a career transition.
And we are positioning ourselves to be not just the number one destination for career vice on the internet, but the, the, the world's largest community of career transitioners online. So we wanna. Uh, a very simple way to think about it is we are the front door to the tech industry. If you're lost walk through this door and we will, we will, we will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Narrator: Every great business is built on processes. So what’s the process like for joining Career Karma? And what resources are they connecting you to?
Ruben: When people go to career com.com/apply, they're going to go through a very short series of questions, uh, that will ask them. A little bit more about where they currently are in their life. So not just, let's say that it'll show you a bunch of different career paths, but you don't know what career path is interesting to you.
You could just say, I'm not sure. Um, it might ask you about, like, what is your level of experience, um, have you started learning how to code or have you, do you have any retail background, you know, things like that. Um, what is your desired salary? Uh, what is your current salary? You know, what's your time. Uh, and so on and so forth.
And once all those things are, are filled out, we actually recommend different schools that you could check out and we give you different career guides, admissions to follow so that we can break down the steps that you need to take. Some of those steps include getting out of your comfort zone and sending messages to other people within our app.
Some of those missions include joining. A room just to listen to what people have to say and asking a question. Some of those missions include getting the courage to set up an interview with the school. Some people get intimidated by the word interview, not realizing that it's more like a consultation where you can get to know their school and the school can get to know you.
Um, so that's, that's another thing, uh, so that you can evaluate whether you wanna go there or. Um, the other, the other thing that, um, that can be done with these, with these different, um, individuals is after you have spoken with schools and you have asked questions, you know, you can work with our coaches in our moderators, in our room to, um, to narrow it down to what school you're gonna choose.
We also have directories. where you could read reviews, you could upload projects, you can see the outcomes about what companies people work for from the different schools. Um, and once you have enrolled into a school, we'll have people that will address different issues that you face while you're in a program to make sure that you always have somebody that can answer your questions.
Narrator: At that test screening in Evanston, Billy Wilder lost the trust of his audience. They weren’t willing to follow the exciting twists and turns of a classic movie – all because the opening scene didn’t work.
Career Karma’s customers are looking for resources to help make some of the most important decisions of their lives. That’s why Ruben and his team put building trust at the core of their CX.
Ruben: Number one is making sure that our users trust us as soon as you damage trust. Everything's over with. If you are recommending people to go to schools and they're not getting outcomes and they're not getting good jobs, they're eventually gonna say that, you know, you're not sending people to the right places and everything collapses.
And so making sure that people, people trust you is number one. Um, number two, assuming that you have generated that trust you wanna track. Are they applying to schools that are effecti. Number three, are they actually enrolling in those schools? Um, number four, uh, you gotta start working with those schools to understand, are they graduating from the schools and getting jobs? So it's, um, trust applications, um, enrollments graduates, jobs. So those are like those, those are like the key things you wanna be thinking about, uh, when it comes to building trust with users
Narrator: Career Karma has a lot of competition. There are job placement services, career centers, guidance counselors, and competing platforms. But their biggest competition is a user’s family and friends – the most trusted people in their lives.
Ruben: if you think about the number one career guidance counselor, it's not a career center, it's not a career coach. It's not a college coach.
It's not even career com. It's your family and friends. Right. But if your family and friends haven't been exposed to the current opportunities, and what is being created, and they're only informed on what they've been exposed to in the past. Then the information that you're receiving from your friends and family is either not helpful or non-existence because they will tell you themselves that they can't guide you.
So career com is now serving as a function where if you don't have that guidance, Either from your family or friends, or if you do have that guidance from your family and friends, it either serves as a second opinion or your primary source of information for what career paths currently exists. What career paths are being created, how to get the training, who can help you and what types of companies will hire you, what kind of conversation you would receive, what skills you would develop that prepare you for your future that is aligned with your future purpose
Information alone does not lead people to make these like huge life changing decisions.
Um, think about it kind of like a personal trainer, right? People come to career common, not just for career advice. They're looking to be told what to do sometimes. Right. Because they don't have anybody in their life to tell them what to do. Right. With that said, that doesn't mean you're going to lead by giving them statements and saying, do this.
You can ask questions that lead people to take action. But, um, similar to what you said about a people are seeking a lifeline, you know, you're looking for a lifeline so that people can give you advice on what you should do.
Yes. We have plenty of people that figured out what career had to offer. And after coming to career and hearing what we had to say, they. Created a schedule for themselves that they didn't know was possible, cuz they thought they, they could only go to school full time, um, and were able to make big life changes.
Narrator: When movies are test screened, the filmmakers will sometimes ask audience members about their reactions. This is not always easy to do in a growing organization. But even though Ruben is the CEO, he has made it a point to directly engage with customers. He’s literally answering the customer support line.
Ruben: I think if you're trying to rehaul your CX or customer experience, you have to take calls yourself. Um, I think that's important. You're gonna have to like, actually talk to your users. Like we, we did Y Combinator and one of the two things that Y Combinator tells you to do is to, um, write code and talk to users and, um, what's cool about us, not just up until this point or before that it's like, I've always had a way to speak with our community.
Right. If you're talking about B2B, you might have to go through the whole voicemail inbox and just like listen to all the pain points. But then, you know, once you have a sense of like, you've done some calls yourself, you gotta listen to how your team talks. Let's see what's going on. You have to see how your team interacts with people.
You gotta check your onboarding flows, check the user flows, download your app yourself and see what it feels like. And literally audit every step of the process and give feedback to your team. Something you wanna be careful about is in this case, telling people what to do, because you wanna empower your leaders that you put in place in order to, um, lead your UX or, or your, your, your, your customer experience and, and things like that.
And so you have to share your feedback in a way that empowers your leaders to overhaul the process that's in place, so that eventually you can scale yourself
I've done at least 4,000 calls personally. And I just had a call with my community team, talking about how, um, how we need to get back to that where myself, my co-founders, um, are actually intentionally putting time to talk to our users on it. Cause it's the basis. We just did a really cool bootcamp.
Fair. Um, Last week with about thousand people showing up inside of our audio rooms. And we, we were actually hosting rooms ourselves, uh, with panels on our, on our stages. And that worked very nicely, but we try to, we try to do it at least once a week, but, um, it's, it's a, it's a daily type of thing.
Narrator: What if Sunset Boulevard really had been a bomb? Would Billy Wilder have ever recovered? We don’t know. But that’s why he held those test screenings. Because when it comes to your brand, your reputation is everything.
Ruben: if we're talking about schools, it's important for all of us to be on the same page that. Workers care about outcomes. And so what's most important is do people get jobs? Um, if that's the case, uh, we wanna make sure that, um, workers, schools do right by workers and by potential students.
And in order for them to do that, they have to understand. So it's important for us to make sure that if we're working with our schools, that they fully understand the pain points of our users, um, which is important because sometimes it's not always the school's fault that they don't know what's going on with the worker or our users, because they don't have that family tied with them to get them comfortable.
Sharing what their pain points are, but since we know what the pain points are, we can share that information with the schools to make sure that the schools can of alleviate the pain for the, the student with our directory is very important. You can think about directory, kind of like the, eventually like the better business bureau for schools to where we can measure effectiveness through that.
Um, but it's very important for schools to recognize that your reputation. It's not, what's gonna make your brand. The content that you create is not, what's gonna make your brand. You have to get in the trenches, working with them. That's why you're starting to see big brands like Wingstop and. Wendy's and McDonald's like getting active with their social media games.
And actually talking to people is hilarious with some of the things that they're doing. Some of the memes that are being generated and how they're talking to the users directly on Twitter and Twitter spaces or hosting rooms to, to talk about stuff. So if you're worried about dropping enrollments, like college enrollment has dropped in the last two years.
It's not it's clear. It's not just gonna be marketing dollars that you spend. You have to talk to them. You have to get involved, which is why it's. It is really, I I'm really happy that we have a platform where you can talk to users directly. You don't just have to rely on zoom or, or disc record or slack.
Narrator: It’s one thing for businesses to sell a product. It’s another thing to help your customers change their lives. That’s the power of the trust Career Karma builds with their customers.
Ruben: we have a really awesome story of a lady named Iris Nevins. Who we helped get a job at MailChimp. She has a story on our YouTube, where she talks about how she moved from Miami to the bay area. She went to a bootcamp, came up with the formula from listening to our podcast on the breaking starts podcast.
Um, how she found her job at, at, at MailChimp, but now eventually bought her house. And now she has her own business, um, leveraging NFTs and, and crypto. And she's making a lot of money. Um, it's cool to see that, you know, we have stories of people like he lake that has also done the same thing where, you know, on her, on her podcast that she did with us, she talked about how, when she was learning, how to code her daughter was saying that she just wanted to her to, or her children were talking about how they just wanted her to be able to buy her some joy, buy them some Jordans.
And so not only was she able to buy them some Jordans, she was also able. also purchased a home and, and things like that. And so, um, we have people like jar Warren who, when he was going through coding, he had a, he's a single father. Um, he had his child break his arm while he was going through the transition.
He didn't have insurance. So he had to rely on his baby mothers to, to take care of it. But now he's making over 145,000 a. and he can afford whatever he needs to for his child. And so it's, it's really, really cool to see these people alone. Do that
Narrator: Finally, here’s some career advice from the man himself. If you want to work in tech, Ruben recommends you consider CX. In his view, it’s only going to grow more important.
Ruben: I think that customer experience is not only one of the most important roles in an organization. It is one of the most lucrative roles in, in organization. it is one of the most overlooked roles in the organizations, but it's also one of the most fulfilling roles in the organizations. I think that when you think about career transitions, for most people, a lot of people working like manufacturing or, or retail jobs, a lot of people have worked as a bartender in a restaurant or a call center.
If you have worked in a restaurant or a call center or some type of a service job like that, Customer success and customer experience is actually one of the fastest roles to, to break and detect, um, and continue leveraging not just the experience that you develop, but also, um, really understand how the world is changing from a technology perspective.
Um, I think there's over 250 million desk jobs that exist globally with customers, um, success experience being, uh, one of them. I think that non-technical roles are gonna be bigger in the future work than they are today.
Narrator: When we think about CX, it seems so simple. How can you give your customer an amazing experience at every touch point?
But the story of Sunset Boulevard is proof that a great filmmaker can lose his audience. And so can a great business.
So this week, think about how you can do your own test screening – of sorts. Maybe you’re like Ruben, taking calls from frustrated customers. Perhaps it’s just a simple survey. Or maybe use your product to figure out your own pain points.
But collect that feedback. Because you don’t want that maniacal laughter haunting you in your dreams.
Trust me.
This podcast is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
Thank you for listening to another episode of Often Imitated. If you like what you’re hearing, tell one friend. This podcast was narrated by me, Meredith O’Neil, written by Rex New, and produced and edited by Mackey Wilson, Callen Turnbull, and Jon Libbey. You can learn more about our team at CaspianStudios.com.
Seriously. Trust me. Mackey, can you turn that off? Is that just me?