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Customer Obsession: A Conversation with Mailchimp's CCO Carine Roman

She shares her thoughts on customer focus, culture, and creating trust

As Mailchimp’s busiest retail selling season of the year ramps up, peeps have two words on the brain, “customer obsession.”

While the company has recently dubbed its Q4 as “Marketing Success Season,” a time usually focused on product and resources, Chief Customer Officer Carine Roman and the Customer Team remind us that this fall (and every season) is all about our customers.

“The marketing team has launched an excellent plan to prep our customers for the busy quarter, and our team’s biggest challenge lies in resolving customer issues and ensuring they have what they need to succeed,” says Carine. “We’ll be there every step of the way from removing blockades that could slow down our chats to resourceful planning and volume forecasting. We will give our customers our undivided attention.”

Known for her empathetic and compassionate leadership, Carine joined Mailchimp as CCO just over a year ago with more than 2 decades of experience leading teams focused on global strategy, product innovation and operations.

In her last role, she served as Global Head of Customer Success - Talent Solutions at LinkedIn leading a team of over 500 employees worldwide.

Carine shared what customer obsession means to her, how her department prioritizes talent and culture, and why creating trust is so important.

Q. What initially attracted you to the Chief Customer Officer role at Mailchimp?

C. Empowering the underdog. In my career, I’ve worked for companies that service mid-market and large accounts, and enterprises, but with Mailchimp, I’m intrigued by the opportunity to work for a company all about growing communities with entrepreneurs, small businesses (SMBs) and mid-markets. It all felt powerful because Mailchimp possesses a genuine sense of purpose, and that is very important to me. Also, my conversations with Ben, Dan and the executive leadership team (ELT) around transforming the Customer organization and the impact our team could have on millions of users, felt extremely inspiring.

Q. You’ve described yourself as a “customer-obsessed” leader. What does customer obsession mean to you?

C. Customer obsession means keeping the customer the driving force behind every decision I make as a leader and every action we take as a team. The questions I’m always answering are, “What’s in it for the customer? How does what we do today impact our people tomorrow? What does this mean for them?” For me, it’s about leading and building my team’s strategy around the customer’s needs.

Q. When you think about the investments we’re making for our customers, what would you say is our “Biggest Bet” right now?

C. Only one? There are quite a few that I’m excited about! One that’s top of mind is how we show up internationally for our customers. We have a good amount of users that are based outside of the states. How do we show up for them? It’s a tremendous opportunity.

Also, for our partners, we’re investing in a thriving ecosystem and we’ve seen excellent traction with our Service Partner Program, but I think we can do more for this audience, and we plan to. And, of course, with the Customer Care team there’s always room for growth in the way of service to our customers. We’ll do this with a better combination of the right tools and the right intent to empower our users.

Additionally, I believe in the power of AI and data to help us automate the user experience. This will without a doubt attract more customers who will grow and scale with us. Wouldn’t it be amazing if customers could come to our platform and it guides them every step of the way to create a seamless marketing journey? So for me, a lot of our big bets rest in the future of data science, business intelligence and AI.

Q: The Customer Team has evolved so much since you’ve joined. What are you proudest of from your first year?

C. There are so many things I’m so proud of. The commitment around our culture reset and the actions we’ve taken as a leadership team are my proudest moments. The hiring and investment in my leaders and in turn how they invest in their people is very big as well. There’s a saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” And culture’s made up of what people bring to the table. I can’t say enough how proud I am of the investment in people on our team. We still have a lot more to do, but I’m impressed by how much we’ve accomplished. We’ve had a great number of new hires, transfers, and promotions, and we’ve established a team of customer-obsessed individuals who have done so much for our users, and that’s a good thing.

Q. Recently you hired three new leaders. How can these new VPs help the Customer team to achieve its vision?

C. One tagline I’ve shared around our vision is, “Services motion with a sales result.” In order to do this, we need the right people, role, function, tools, processes, and resources. It all begins with bringing together a team of very talented leaders who combine tremendous knowledge and experience through a variety of functions and domains, to make sure that as a team we build for our customers and not only for one specific function. We have many creative solutions thinkers on our teams, trying to solve the same problems from their vantage point without duplicating efforts. Sometimes, we are duplicating efforts instead of combining resources and initiatives to get to bigger investment and larger impact.

Instead of having just a couple of voices in the room, we now have 3 to 4 times more brain power with diverse backgrounds and experiences to tackle the challenges and problems at scale. I’m very excited about where we’re headed. This team is very special!

Q. Can you talk about your hopes for this newly formed Customer Care team?

C. Customer Care has the most impact on our customers. They are a big deal. This is where customers go when they’re stuck, and this is our chance to help them. Ben and I talked about how Mailchimp and other companies have gone through product-led growth. This means that the product is so powerful, it grows organically. Some companies need to keep that, but also focus on service-led growth. DIY doesn’t necessarily work anymore. Service-led growth presents a huge opportunity, and taking care of the people who take care of our customers is our top priority. We’re bringing in lots of resources to support Customer Care, and we believe this group is on track to transform the organization in such an unprecedented way.

Q. This time next year, what do you hope you’ll be able to say we accomplished together?

C. I want to say we invested successfully in our talent and people. The way we treat our people impacts the way we treat our customers, and I want to treat our people and customers beautifully. So a year from now, in addition to saying we have the most inclusive, trusted, fun, and innovative culture, I want to say that we are the strongest mid-market, SMB, and marketing brand in the world. That’s it.

Q. What can you say about Mailchimp’s next chapter in joining Intuit? What are you excited about?

C. I feel emboldened. I joined Mailchimp to be on the journey to become the biggest, most-loved marketing brand for SMB and mid-markets. With Intuit, I’m confident that we will be just that. Period. I feel really good about what’s to come. Also through the conversations that I’ve been having with our Intuit colleagues, the focus on people, talent, and culture is so apparent that I have no concerns about the culture, especially given our recent focus on the culture reset. I believe this change will make us better, and that makes me feel great.

In all, I’m very optimistic and hopeful for the future of our brand and its impact on our customers and people. Sometimes I’m anxious, because with larger territories come greater challenges, and there’s going to be some change management. Overall, I’m feeling really grateful to be a part of such a great company at an incredible time.

Q. What should we have asked that we haven’t yet? :)

C. One question would be, “What’s the one thing that you participated in at Mailchimp?” My answer would be”I participated in creating trust.” For our peeps, for our customers, if I can create trust, then I believe my work is done!

With customer obsession at the forefront of their business, Carine and the Customer organization are sure to grow and go above and beyond for Mailchimp’s customers and partners. Interested in joining the team? The department is expected to fill more than 50 positions by the end of 2021.

Head over to mailchimp.com/careers to see the open Customer roles.

See open roles

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