Charli Rogers is Vice President of International Client Services at brand management platform Yext.
Econsultancy caught up with her to find out why being a people person is essential to her work, how she measures success, how she came to work at Yext, and why exploring new avenues is important for a marketer in 2019.
Hi, Charli. Please describe your job: What do you do?
Charli Rogers: I lead the Client Success team in EMEA. My role in the business is to enable my teams to effectively support our customers in using our technology. As a team, we aim to tell the story of our business to our customers, and to show them how our technology can be used to underpin the needs of their business.
Our company mission is to empower our customers to provide perfect answers everywhere and in doing so, prepare them for the paradigm shift in search from chaotic results to verified answers. We believe that a business is the ultimate authority on the facts about its own brand. Yext helps companies to structure their data so that their information is surfaced to meet customers at the moment of intent.
Whereabouts do you sit within the organisation? Who do you report to?
Charli Rogers: I lead our EMEA Client Success team and report to Wendi Sturgis, our Chief Client Officer, and CEO of Yext Europe.
What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?
Charli Rogers: Being a people person, paired with humour and a tendency to challenge the status quo are essential! I perform best when I’m interacting with others on a regular basis so there will be very few instances where you will find me at my desk for longer than 20 minutes. As long as I can map the time spent to the outcomes and goals I am driving towards, I never consider it to be time wasted.
Tell us about a typical working day…
Charli Rogers: A typical and successful day for me always involves people – lots of people! It will be a healthy mix of client engagement, employee one-to-one meetings, and, whenever I can, time for me to reflect on priorities and key goals for our team and business. Humour, a degree of challenge, and coffee(!) are all essential components!
What do you love about your job? What sucks?
Charli Rogers: Most of all, I love working with my team every day. Their talent and drive inspires me and encourages me to give each day my best. I am fortunate to have had some great managers in my career and I want to pay forward some of the lessons I’ve learned and the experiences I’ve had to the team I manage.
On the flip side, aspects that aren’t as easy tend to centre around time; I never have enough hours in the day. This brings certain challenges, but also reflects the fact that I am working in a business that is moving so quickly and experiencing hyper-growth. It makes for an exhilarating experience, but one that sometimes leaves a few extra hours to be desired.
What kind of goals do you have? What are the most useful metrics and KPIs for measuring success?
Charli Rogers: The key metrics that I rely on to gauge and drive success within my teams are the retention and growth of our people and clients. We measure these in a multitude of ways, but KPIs include engagement surveys and NPS scores. I ensure that my team focuses on devising strategies to drive continued adoption of our technology across our clients, and encourage regular collaboration to build relationships.
As a manager, my ultimate goal is to support my team as much as possible to be successful. I make this clear to my teams by being transparent about expectations, supportive of their ambitions, and candid with my feedback.
What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?
Charli Rogers: Work-wise, we rely on Gainsight and SalesForce heavily. By extension, we also use Zendesk to help us to manage our requests. Personally, I can’t live without my messenger apps, like Google and WhatsApp, to help me stay connected. I also love Spotify and using music to fuel my day, and I rely on Evernote for productivity.
How did you end up at Yext, and where might you go from here?
Charli Rogers: Prior to joining Yext, I spent 10 years working for Sprinklr, Adobe and Efficient Frontier, which taught me a lot about the martech and technology industry. If I look at my life and job today, I’m far from what I thought I’d be doing when I was at University. After I graduated in English Studies, I thought book publishing was my calling, but here I am.
Even though there were parts of my life where I wasn’t sure what my next step would be, I’m not surprised at how my career developed. And isn’t that the beauty of life – not always knowing where it will lead?
Which digital or brand experiences have impressed you recently?
Charli Rogers: As a consumer, I love the Nike experience, plus I’m a huge fan of several of the many businesses that have launched via Instagram. Big brands can learn a huge amount from these small, emerging brands who have no choice but to put customer experience at the centre of their proposition.
From a B2B perspective, I have followed Slack closely (their recent IPO is a great outcome for them!) – I think that of all of the collaboration tools, their platform is the best. I am also intrigued by Gainsight’s long-term plans and what their next innovations will be.
What advice would you give somebody who wants to get into marketing in 2019?
Charli Rogers: Marketing is changing all the time. In the era of intent marketing, don’t be afraid to explore new avenues, especially if you have a head for data and the capacity to layer human insight on top. Sometimes you don’t know where they will lead, but these experiences will make you smarter.