CX Leadership Lessons From Nancy Gurd of Caraway Home

The modern support center is evolving, driven by new technology and a fresh wave of leaders who better reflect the diversity of CX departments. That’s why, as part of our Women’s History Month celebration, we’re sharing the exceptional stories of women in executive roles to highlight how integral their leadership is to this transformation.

One such leader is Nancy Gurd, Associate Director of Customer Experience at cookware brand Caraway Home.

The Power of Passion in CX Leadership

During a Q&A with Gladly, Gurd shared an inside look at her career, how she leads a modern support center, and what the future of CX will look like as AI advancements continue to change the industry.

1. Tell us a little about yourself. What do you do at Caraway Home, and what does your role entail?

I started at Caraway about three years ago — three years ago to this date, in fact! When I first joined, I was just joining to run their support team, inheriting it from our director of ops at the time. It was way smaller than what it is now — I think I joined with three associates. And since then, I have not only grown the CX team and department over the past few years, but I’ve actually been able to develop a very robust VOC (voice of customer) program within the company — which is probably my second favorite thing to do that’s not customer-facing. My favorite aspect of my current role is prioritizing customer-centricity, ensuring that customers have a seat at every decision-making table within the organization — thus fostering a culture of responsiveness and customer-driven innovation.

It’s been really great. When I started at Caraway, I was like, “Pinch me — it can’t be as good as it is.” And it’s even better.

“My favorite aspect of my current role is prioritizing customer-centricity, ensuring that customers have a seat at every decision-making table within the organization — thus fostering a culture of responsiveness and customer-driven innovation.”

Nancy Gurd

Associate Director of CX, Caraway Home

Recommended Reading: Making Customer Service Your Business — A CX Leader’s Guide

2. Can you share your journey and how you got started in the CX industry?

I really emerged through the full customer experience journey starting as a retail associate and making my way up the leadership ladder. I love playing around behind the scenes of the customer experience; creating the policies and the workflows; and making sure the right people have the right information to make the decisions that outwardly affect the customers.

I started working in New York just as a floor salesperson — and because it was also a startup, I was very close with the founders. As their team grew, they said, “Hey, do you want to come into the office space and work with our customers? We love the way you interact with them. We’d love to see if you can replicate that online.” And I never in my life thought about being a CX manager, but now I couldn’t envision anything else. This is the perfect field for me.

Recommended Learning: Developing as a Leader and Manager

3. What does being a challenger in the CX industry mean to you?

Being a CX Challenger means actively questioning traditional norms and practices within the industry. And that is such a broad statement, but it includes everything I do — from how I train my team to how I set policies to how I transfer the VOC into reports other departments can understand and digest.

It’s about unapologetically being the loudest person in the room, to support something that solely isn’t financially beneficial. I mean, obviously, customers are financially beneficial — but when I go into decision-making, it’s truly what’s best for the people who are dedicated to our brand and making sure that they’re treated the best, even if it’s not within the social norm of how to handle situations.

“Being a CX Challenger means actively questioning traditional norms and practices within the industry.”

Nancy Gurd

Associate Director of CX, Caraway Home

Recommended Reading: A Practical Guide for Delivering Radically Personal Customer Service

4. How do you foresee the role of AI in customer service evolving in the future, particularly within the context of Caraway Home?

AI has definitely been weaving into our general day-to-day life and we don’t even realize it! I can definitely see AI continue to be used in my teams day-to-day. My next big exploration will be using AI to enhance our agent onboarding and training as well as leveraging this for better time management for my internal team while working on tasks and projects.

Recommended Reading: The Road to AI — Evolving and Learning With Industry Leaders

5. On top of your use of AI, can you share an example of a successful CX experiment or initiative that your team has implemented to enhance customer experiences?

A new approach to evaluating systems that I took recently was starting to add my agents to meetings. Although I want different platforms for the backend analytics, we forget that [the agents] are the people using the systems — and making sure that the workflow makes sense for them has been very beneficial [when exploring] any platform.

Ironically, we found Gladly because agents sit in on all of our CRM explorations and they really got to understand why Gladly was our top pick — they said, “Wait, you’re gonna make sure that our work is fair across the board? And nobody’s cherry-picking?” So it was very easy to get them on board with a huge change because they were aware of it and why we were doing it versus me making a decision, researching it for three months, and maybe not remembering to communicate every step of the way.

“A new approach to evaluating systems that I took recently was starting to add my agents to meetings…we forget that [the agents] are the people using the systems.”

Nancy Gurd

Associate Director of CX, Caraway Home

Recommended Reading: Impact of Using Ticket-Based vs. Customer-Based CX Platforms

A CX Community for Forward-Thinking Professionals

As Gurd moved up in her career, she developed an informed, innovative leadership style that allowed her to empathize with her team and the customer alike, fostering an environment of collaboration and transparency. With leaders like Gurd driving innovation, the future of CX holds immense promise.

Join the Gladly Connect Community today and access insights from influential voices like Gurd’s. As the CX landscape evolves, our community serves as a hub for sharing opinions and staying updated on the latest trends, as well as providing free benefits to members, such as:

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