Driving Change: Turo’s Trailblazing COO, Julie Weingardt

This episode features an interview with Turo’s Chief Operations Officer, Julie Weingardt. Julie brings with her 30 years of operations and contact center experience and has held executive operational roles at Startek, Sitel, and Sykes. Her expertise is in transforming customer touchpoints into powerful relationship- and brand-building tools through the use of highly efficient business practices. And in this episode, Julie and host Larry Fleischman discuss having a mindset of continuous improvement, fostering a customer experience that doesn’t require contacting support, the importance of female mentorship and much more.Quotes*”As things mature, there's always opportunities to challenge what's being done and to ask, is there another way, a better way, a smarter way to do something? Just because it's been done that way over and over again doesn't mean that you can't challenge it and see what other ways there might be to do it better or smarter.”*”Let's face it. Consumers just want a product that works. No matter what it is, you don't want to have to contact support. So first and foremost, keeping that as the mission, when we continue to release new features and things, it just needs to work. And we need to test for that all the way through.”*”Being a female in a male dominated world, so much of mentorship and business conversations at that time happened on the golf course. So, when we went to corporate events, while a lot of spouses who were female went and did spa days, I went to the golf course.”*“It’s not only females who need female mentors. Males need female mentors too. How else are they going to understand the differences in what's needed in the world of business from a gender basis? Not only are females not good at asking for it, they're not good at offering it up to be mentors either. And so we have to continue to foster that type of mentorship and make sure that all of our young professionals are getting a good relationship from both males and females in their professional careers.”*”We really know that how we're going to continue to win and dominate as we've been doing in this space is to just continue to win one customer at a time. It is always about iterating and reiterating over and over again on what we do and how we do it because it's about making that next customer experience even better.”Time Stamps[0:39] Meet Julie Weingardt, Chief Operations Officer at Turo[2:31] How did Julie get her start in CX?[7:41] How did Julie’s experience in ranching shape her leadership style?[14:47] What was it like working for a BPO in the early days of CX?[17:06] How did Julie become COO of Turo?[21:47] What is the customer experience like at Turo?[26:48] How do they solve a CX issue at Turo?[28:15] How did business change through the pandemic at Turo?About our guest, Julie WeingardtJulie Weingardt is an operations executive who believes the most important customer interaction is the one that happens next. Julie strives to transform customer touchpoints into powerful relationship- and brand-building tools through the use of highly efficient business practices. With 30 years of operations and contact center experience, she is particularly skilled at developing and executing omni-channel operational solutions using combinations of internal and outsourced teams. Julie’s career background includes executive operational roles at Startek, Sitel, and Sykes. She attended the University of Northern Colorado and holds a certificate from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management in Executive Leadership.Thank you to our friendsThis podcast is brought to you by HGS. HGS is a digital customer experience leader dedicated to delivering winning customer interactions at scale that are prompt, personal, and positive. We continuously transform, optimize, and grow enterprises to exceed ever-rising customer expectations. HGS provides our clients with the right talent and technologies needed to champion every moment. Learn more at hgs.cx.LinksConnect with Julie on LinkedInLearn more about TuroConnect with Larry on LinkedInCheck out HGS