Jay Ollero:
Hello, I am Jay Ollero, and welcome to the CX Espresso. This microcast features leading customer experience experts who share their thoughts on trends, tools, and best practices in customer experience. CX Espresso are single shots of hot CX topics served to you by Aucera. This very special episode is a tribute to longevity and teamwork. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mary Johnson, who has been with Aucera for an incredible 37 years. We discuss her journey from the early days of manually dialing customers to her rise through the ranks as a supervisor and trainer. Mary highlights the value of mentorship, teamwork, and the unique culture at Aucera that has kept her engaged and growing for nearly four decades. I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I did having it. Everyone, hello, I am Jay Ollero, I am the senior manager of Employee Engagement for Aucera, and I am joined today by Mary Johnson. Mary, thank you for joining me today.

Mary Johnson:
You're welcome, my pleasure.

Jay Ollero:
So Mary is enjoying 37 years of experience here with Aucera. I want to congratulate you on 37 years, that's an incredible milestone. It's something that we appreciate, especially we take pride in our culture here of having people stick around. So 37 years is truly remarkable.

Mary Johnson:
Yeah, it's still unbelievable. You come in every day and you do your job and you go home and the time flies, it actually flies.

Jay Ollero:
What do you remember about the early days of working with this company?

Mary Johnson:
The early days with this company, it was definitely carbonized leads as well as actually dialing a phone to reach customers. The leads were provided to you at the beginning of the shift, and as you made calls, you would fill out the bottom part of the lead. At the end of the shift, you would turn in your packets to the supervisor, and that's how you were paid.

Jay Ollero:
Over those 37 years, I saw that you had at least 18 supervisors since the computers were brought into our system. I imagine the number is much higher than that. But what can you remember about the interactions with the various supervisors that you think of fondly?

Mary Johnson:
I've been blessed that I've had managers and supervisors that were happy with my production, that two months after being on the phones, I was promoted to supervisor, later trainer, and then ending back up on the phones again up until now actually. I think if you are open to learning and accepting criticism and mentoring from a supervisor, I think that's a foundation for developing a good relationship. Don't be afraid to go to your supervisor and say, "I'm really not getting this, can we listen to some calls? Can you give me advice? Is there someone else I can listen to to see what it is that I need to do to improve myself?" And that begins to lay that foundation that you need to develop a good relationship with your supervisor.

Jay Ollero:
Again, we've talked about it a few times, just the tenure of this company's employees, how would you describe Aucera's culture and what do you think is our secret sauce?

Mary Johnson:
Number one, nowadays, there's a lot of emphasis on diversity. This company has always had that diversity. You come in and you meet so many different people from so many different backgrounds. I know it can always be cliche to say it's the people, but I have to admit for me it was the people. Coming from my full-time job to this company in the evening, it was a big change, but it was a change that I enjoyed. Here, I came in, like I said, did my job, when I became a team leader, working with my reps, treating them the way that I would want to be treated as a rep as well, and how I was treated as a rep. Yeah. Everyone deserves respect, we all work together because when we work together, we do produce, and you're more successful than being on an island by yourself.

Jay Ollero:
I couldn't agree more, which is why I'm always grateful for this company because I was a young supervisor where helping people and working as a team, it's built into our DNA. So I would go off and when I've worked in other industries, that doesn't exist everywhere. A lot of places, it's every person for themselves. But here, it's so ingrained, that I missed that, and that's ultimately what brought me back to this company is the teamwork and the camaraderie and the people.

Mary Johnson:
You become a family of sorts, you become a family. Those people are people that you will never actually forget. Never will.

Jay Ollero:
Thank you again for joining me in this conversation. Thank you for the 37 years you've helped this company and helped share our culture and the energy. And congratulations on 37 years to you.

Mary Johnson:
Thank you so much for having me. And thank you, I appreciate the congratulations as well.

Jay Ollero:
Well, that's a wrap for today's special episode of the CX Espresso Podcast. If you'd like to submit CX questions or topics for consideration, please email us at cxespresso@aucera.com. And if you'd like to learn more about Aucera, please visit aucera.com. Aucera is one of the nation's largest privately held contact center companies. Aucera provides bespoke cost-effective customer services and solutions headquartered in Mahwah, New Jersey. Aucera's customer engagement services are available at onshore USA, nearshore, and offshore locations for a wide variety of industries.