In this interview, Jonathan Shroyer talks with Mission Matters about the growing importance of customer experience and the trend of decentralized work.
Listen to the complete interview of Jonathan Shroyer with Adam Torres on the Mission Matters Innovation Podcast.
What mission matters to you?
Driven by a mission to empower smaller communities, Shroyer says the question that keeps him awake at night is, “How do you give people opportunities, no matter where they live in the world, to have purposeful work to be able to uplift the economies where they live and also to have fun with their families?”
“I grew up in a small town in Texas,” he continues, “and one of the things that I noticed early on was there just wasn’t as much technology service and other job opportunities in those small towns. And so, our mission has always been: how do you bring those economic opportunities through business to those small communities?”
How did you get started as an entrepreneur?
“I started my career in large enterprise companies and never really envisioned myself as an entrepreneur,” Shroyer says. “A few years ago, I came up with this idea around a decentralized network of CX (customer experience) workers and thought, ‘this is what the future of CX is, in a decentralized network of profit-based workers,’ and decided to try it out.”
Two years later, his firm, Officium Labs, had earned $10 million in revenue. With resilience and grit, Shroyer was able to maintain his core purpose while pivoting from the specifics of the original idea. That process, he says, informs his advice to industry newcomers.
“To have a successful startup business, you must have a problem that you’re trying to solve, have a different way to solve it than anyone else has done, you have to be able to monetize it, and then you ought to have the passion to really go after it,” he says.
Can you explain in a nutshell what customer experience (CX) is?
The minute you buy a product, Shroyer explains, your customer...
