What 16 Years in Customer Experience Taught Me About Leadership
For more than 16 years, I built my career in customer experience, service operations, and leadership.
I worked behind the scenes of a global sports organization where the customer experience had to perform whether it was an ordinary Tuesday or one of the biggest moments of the season. I led teams, managed global partners, navigated high pressure situations, introduced new technology, improved operations, managed multimillion dollar budgets, and supported hundreds of thousands of customer interactions each year.
But when I look back at those 16 years, the most important lessons were never really about contact centers, metrics, technology, or processes.
They were about people.
Customer experience taught me how I want to lead.
1. Leadership Starts With Listening
Some of the best information a leader can receive comes from the people closest to the work.
Frontline employees hear what customers are frustrated about before the reports show it. Managers understand where processes are breaking down. Partners often see operational challenges from a completely different perspective.
I learned early that leadership is not about being the person in the room with every answer.
It is about asking better questions.
What are you seeing?
What keeps happening?
What is making your job harder?
What are customers telling us that we are not paying enough attention to?
Listening does not mean agreeing with every suggestion. It means creating enough trust that people feel comfortable telling you what you need to hear, not just what they think you want to hear.
That kind of environment makes organizations stronger.
2. The Numbers Matter, but They Never Tell the Whole Story
I have spent a significant part of my career looking at numbers.
Service levels. Handle time. Abandonment. Customer satisfaction. Staffing. Forecasts. Budgets. Containment. Productivity.
Metrics are important. They help leaders understand performance, identify patterns, and make better decisions.
But there is always a person behind the number.
An increase in handle time might mean an employee is struggling with a complicated new process.
A spike in contact volume might mean customers are confused by a product change.
A poor customer satisfaction score might reveal a much bigger issue than one interaction.
Leadership requires knowing when to look deeper. Data can tell you what is happening. Good leadership asks why.
3. Empowered People Create Better Experiences
One of the things I am most proud of from my career is not a project or a metric. It is the people who became leaders.
I have watched employees grow into supervisors, managers, and stronger professionals because someone gave them an opportunity, challenged them, coached them, and trusted them with more responsibility.
That taught me something important.
Your success as a leader cannot only be measured by what you accomplish while you are in the room. It should also be measured by what people are capable of doing because you were in the room.
Leadership is not about creating dependence. It is about building confidence, judgment, and capability in others.
I want the people I lead to eventually need me less, not more. That is growth.
4. Calm Is a Leadership Skill
Customer experience has a way of introducing you to chaos.
Systems go down.
Volumes spike.
Something launches incorrectly.
Customers become frustrated.
Executives want answers.
Teams need direction.
Stakeholders don’t agree on a solution
And sometimes all of those things happen at once.
Those moments taught me that leadership is often less about having an immediate solution and more about creating stability while the solution is being found.
People watch leaders closely during difficult moments. If the leader panics, the room often panics. If the leader becomes defensive, communication shuts down.
But when a leader can stay focused, establish priorities, communicate clearly, and move the team toward the next best decision, everything changes.
Calm does not mean you are not concerned. It means you are disciplined enough not to let your emotions become another problem the team has to solve.
5. Customer Problems Are Usually Organizational Problems
One of the biggest lessons customer experience taught me is that the customer service department cannot create a great customer experience by itself.
Customer experience touches everything.
Product.
Technology.
Marketing.
Operations.
Commerce.
Policies.
Training.
Communication.
Leadership.
When customers repeatedly contact an organization about the same issue, the answer cannot always be to make the service team better at answering the question.
Sometimes the better question is:
Why do customers have to contact us about this at all?
That mindset changes customer experience from a department into a business strategy.
The strongest leaders understand that experience is created across the entire organization.
6. Technology Should Make People Better
Over the years, I have watched customer service technology evolve dramatically.
Automation became more sophisticated.
AI became part of the conversation.
Self service expanded.
Customer expectations changed.
I have had the opportunity to implement tools and strategies designed to improve both front line efficiency and the fan experience.
And my philosophy has remained pretty simple.
Technology should solve the right problems. The goal should never be to introduce technology simply because it is available.
The question should be:
Does this make the customer journey easier?
Does this help employees do their jobs better?
Does this remove unnecessary work?
Does this allow people to spend more time on interactions where human judgment, empathy, and creativity actually matter?
The future of customer experience will absolutely include AI.
But the organizations that win will be the ones that understand how to combine technology with humanity.
7. People Remember How Leadership Makes Them Feel
Customers may not remember every policy.
Employees may not remember every presentation.
Teams may not remember every operational decision.
But people remember how they were treated.
They remember whether you listened.
They remember whether you respected them.
They remember whether you advocated for them.
They remember whether you disappeared when things became difficult.
They remember whether you gave them credit.
They remember whether you made them feel like their contribution mattered.
Leadership leaves an emotional footprint.
That is something I think about much more now than I did early in my career.
8. The Best Leaders Stay Curious
Sixteen years is a long time to work in any industry.
It would have been easy at some point to decide that experience meant I already knew enough.
Instead, the longer I worked in customer experience, the more questions I learned to ask.
What has changed?
What are fans expecting now?
What are employees experiencing?
What are other industries doing differently?
What can technology improve?
What should we stop doing simply because we have always done it?
Curiosity keeps leaders from becoming too comfortable with yesterday's answers.
Experience gives you perspective. Curiosity keeps that experience relevant.
9. Leadership Is Ultimately About Stewardship
Leadership gives you responsibility for more than results.
You are responsible for:
People.
Resources.
Budgets.
Relationships.
Culture.
Opportunities.
And sometimes someone's confidence in themselves.
That responsibility should be treated carefully.
There were moments throughout my career when I was managing millions of dollars, hundreds of external support professionals, an internal team, complex partnerships, large customer operations, and multiple priorities simultaneously.
But some of the most meaningful leadership moments happened in much smaller conversations.
Encouraging someone who doubted themselves.
Giving someone their first leadership opportunity.
Helping a team work through a difficult moment.
Advocating for resources.
Recognizing work that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Those moments rarely appear on a performance dashboard. They still matter.
10. Your Legacy Is the People and Systems You Leave Stronger
After 16 years, I have plenty of accomplishments I am proud of.
I am proud of the operations my team built.
I am proud of the efficiencies we created.
I am proud of the technology we introduced.
I am proud of the customer experiences we improved.
But I am especially proud of the people who grew.
The leaders who emerged.
The processes that continued working.
The ideas that outlasted the meeting where they began.
That is what leadership has come to mean to me.
Not simply achieving something.
Building something that can continue to create value after you move on.
The Lesson I Carry Forward
My career in customer experience taught me that leadership is not about having the biggest title or being the loudest person in the room.
It is about creating clarity when things are complicated.
Listening when others need to be heard.
Making decisions when the path is uncertain.
Using data without losing sight of people.
Embracing innovation without abandoning humanity.
And building people strong enough to lead without you.
Sixteen years taught me a lot about customer experience.
But more than anything, they taught me the kind of leader I want to continue becoming.
One who leads with purpose, stays curious, helps others rise, and leaves every team, organization, and community stronger than I found it.
Because ultimately, leadership is not just about the work you accomplish. It is about the impact that remains.
With Bri, it's a vibe.
Lead with Purpose • Explore with Curiosity • Elevate Yourself • Live Intentionally