Shaking Up the CX Space: Officium Labs

“We have helped dozens of organizations improve their customer interactions, enhance the workplace environment, and produce significant ROI associated back to customer experience improvements.”

In the previous article, Focused on Decentralizing Wealth and Shifting Great Customer Service Jobs from Large Cities to Smaller Communities Worldwide, I stated that “reputation matters more than we think.” Here I expand on that statement, clarifying how “talent management is the most pressing issue in customer service and the customer experience (CX) today.”

Why do companies make decisions based on what is best for them, not what is best for their customers? It occurs when a company is entirely focused on its own future, even though its customers feel neglected. Addressing a customer pain point does not interest such organizations as their inadequate talent management hinders their customer engagement. In other words, poor talent management hampers an organization’s growth and innovation.

To highlight and further understand how talent management impacts an organization’s customer service process, I sat down with Jonathan Shroyer, CEO of Officium Labs—a global collection of industry leaders and experts building the future of CX. During the interview, he constantly spoke about how an enhanced talent management process is the secret sauce to avoid customer dissatisfaction. Below is an excerpt.

He cofounded Officium with Scott McCabe two years ago. Since its launch, the company has accelerated rapidly, reaching profitability in the first 20 months.

“It's been a tremendous month: Officium has just passed $10M in revenue, taken a first official step toward offering cryptocurrency, and filled two critical positions in the executive cabinet. We have more amazing things coming up right around the corner.”

“One such thing coming soon is our new CX Lab facility in San Francisco. This will be a place for the CX community to engage with innovative workshops, hear from top experts, A/B test a CX problem, or just get the creative juices flowing.”

“Moreover, we’ve launched a blog series and podcast that is helping to equip and educate CX professionals in all industries.”

Officium creates incredible customer experiences through its Connect, Transform, and Innovate brands. Connect is a network of on-demand, best-in-class customer service resources. “We bring great people together with great brands to achieve outstanding service even during peak volume spikes.” Transform brings Officium’s unique CX methodology to life through consulting, coaching, training, and its award-winning Foundational Services Workshop. Innovate is a technology platform that helps companies achieve enhanced results through analytics and operational tools.

Helping leaders move from a “cost center” view of customer service to a “profit center” view is a large part of what Officium does.

“We’ve helped organizations both generate and protect upwards of 3M-4M dollars with a 1M dollar investment. When customers are happy, they will spend more and attract other customers to engage with your brand.”

By attracting the top talent and creating a working environment conducive to maximizing their potential, Officium continues to raise the bar on CX services. Importantly, the company has developed a culture of authentic caring between its people; support each other immensely, and often collaborate even when it is not required.

“This allows us to enhance everything we do for our customers. The company offers many ‘Officium Holidays,’ which is essentially a mental health day to ensure we are taking care of ourselves and finding a harmonious work/life balance. By being energized and refreshed, we can bring our full selves to customer projects.”

When it comes to emerging trends, Officium Labs continues to lead from the front. “We were experts in remote and decentralized work since the origin of the company in 2019. Besides, we have infused the organization with a solid cultural foundation, as represented by our over 100 eNPS score in February 2021. A staff of this dedicated can accomplish remarkable things, no matter what surprising challenges the future may hold for us.”

Officium Stands Out: Leveraging its Points of Difference

Again, the previous article paints a vivid picture about Officium’s patented framework: ServiceStack^TM — a framework for building an outstanding customer service operation that includes best practices, a technology platform, and a network of human capital.

Officium helps service leaders to both generate and protect revenue through the ServiceStack™ approach. By correlating the impacts of excellent service to the effects on the organizations’ financial performance, the company is able to demonstrate the strategic role CX plays.

“ServiceStack^TM concept helps our clients provide world-class service to their customers and generate measurable ROI.”

“I invented the ServiceStack^TM to help companies realize the immense value of their customer experience and journey. The goal was to help people think differently about the power of their service experience.”

A few ServiceStack^TM client wins include WFM saves 24 percent in BPO spend, White Glove MVP protects $5M, Agent AI Assist decreases BPO spend by 25 percent, Connect Burst scaled 100 resources in a few weeks to meet volume demand, CXAAS transformation drives 55 percent increase in customer satisfaction, to name a few.

Moreover, Officium connects on-demand talent with the companies that need CX staff. That’s where TalentPlace comes into play. TalentPlace is often referred to as “the uber of customer service” due
to its real-time capabilities and flexible nature. “Our TalentPlace capability is certainly a differentiating factor.”

“We have helped dozens of organizations to improve their customer interactions, enhance the workplace environment, as well as to produce significant ROI associated back to customer experience improvements.”

TalentPlace is a decentralized network of people and currencies, creating a remote workforce model that improves work-life balance and shifts wealth from large cities to new communities worldwide.

“Officium facilitated our best-in-class strategy workshop and now runs our customer service end to end. Their expertise and capability made a huge difference for my startup company. It was truly turnkey.” — Jeff Poffenbarger, COO at Mythical Games

“We used Officium Labs to help us set our structure last year. They came in and created this amazing, fun CX audit to understand the capabilities that we had as a CX organization and gave us a roadmap to help us create the right strategies to move forward in delivering amazing experiences for our customers.” — Brett Frazer VP Customer Service at Sun Basket

“We will continue to design incredible customer experiences using the most innovative techniques available. Importantly, we will continue to find ways for our clients to win and stay on the cutting-edge experience design.”

According to a recent estimate, poor customer service is costing companies $339 billion a year globally. “To fill this gap, we founded Officium Labs intending to help companies regain the $339 billion a year they are losing and, in the process, upgrade the customer experience across the globe by 2030.”

The Resilient Leader Upfront

Jonathan Shroyer has been a customer service professional and leader for over 22 years, leading large teams at established companies such as Microsoft, Monster, Symantec, Autodesk, and startups like Postmates, Kabam, and Forte Labs. A thought leader in the industry, Jonathan can often be found speaking at CX conferences, participating in podcasts, and writing about his passion—the future of customer service and the CS marketplace.

Jonathan firmly believes customers are the heart of every company and that the longevity of a company is directly tied to its customer success. His leadership and consulting ethos is built upon five key business principles: people do business with people, loyal and engaged customers build the company, communication makes things happen, adoption and usage deliver real value, and increasing customers success is a company’s lifeblood.

Jonathan is currently serving as the CEO and Co-founder of Officium Labs. He founded Officium in 2019 on the concept of a decentralized network of people and currencies, creating a remote workforce model that improves work/life balance and shifts wealth from large cities to new communities worldwide. This ends up helping companies realize the value of a flexible, on-demand, best-in-class global workforce, which, in turn, enables the customer service and experience teams to turn from cost to profit centers.

Jonathan is based in Palo Alto, California, with his wife, Kristen. They both enjoy traveling immensely and have lived in more than 30 places and visited over 20 countries.

“It's been a tremendous month: Officium has just passed $10M in revenue, taken a first official step toward offering cryptocurrency, and filled two critical positions in the executive cabinet. We have more amazing things coming up right around the corner.”

“The ServiceStackTM concept helps our clients provide world-class service to their customers and generate measurable ROI.”

“We will continue to design incredible customer experiences using the most innovative techniques available. Importantly, we will continue to find ways for our clients to win and stay on the cutting-edge experience design.”