Rick Denton (00:23)
Hey there, CX Passport listeners. I've got a treat for you today. We're going to get into customer experience in a place you might not expect. The world of architecture, engineering, and construction, or AEC for short. That's where today's guest, Alyssa Statz, has carved out her career. Alyssa comes from a marketing background and has built her reputation as the person who can shape and lead marketing teams for AEC.

What makes her stand out is how she brings this idea of customer experience into an industry that's often viewed as purely technical or even commoditized. She knows that when the work itself can look interchangeable, the experience becomes the real differentiator. And here's something fun. When Alyssa was 13, she spent an entire summer living in Norway with her aunt and uncle. That kind of perspective, seeing the world in different ways shows up in how she approaches her work and her view.

of CX. Alyssa, welcome to CX Passport.

Alyssa Staats (01:24)
Thanks for having me, Rick. I'm excited to be here.

Rick Denton (01:26)
This is going to be fun. It's

going to be fun. Hey y'all, this, this is really fun because I listened, I met for the first time in person. So as part of a CXPA event, we got to meet each other in person and realize this is an episode that we wanted to get on CX Passport. So Alyssa, I mentioned that marketing background. What first pulled you into customer experience, especially in an industry like AEC where honestly people just don't talk about CX.

Alyssa Staats (01:51)
Really, it was the internal customer I was focused on. So in my career, I've just been fortunate and sometimes cursed with being tasked of starting marketing departments and marketing functions in primarily construction companies and skilled trade companies. So HVAC plumbing, those types of things. And so just one, being able to connect with my internal customer who is that technical expert.

Rick Denton (01:56)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (02:21)
is maybe a field person and being able to accomplish what the company has tasked me to do, but also pulling out their expertise, their knowledge, their experience. So I had great content for marketing. So my focus started internally.

Rick Denton (02:29)
Mm-hmm.

That makes sense, right? We hear lot about, we talk about employee experience or your internal customer, and especially in large companies when they're siloed out like that. Walk me through that evolution from when you were talking about the internal to thinking about the external as well.

Alyssa Staats (02:58)
Yes, so if I could win the internal customer, I could better serve my external customer. So what winning my internal customer meant ⁓ was getting great case studies from a technical perspective, not from a marketing perspective, or being able to drill down into their individual resumes so that we could use that to sell more work for the customers. So understanding that somebody has talent with specialized refrigeration

Rick Denton (03:05)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (03:27)
systems for data centers is very different than somebody who knows how to build redundant plumbing systems for hospitals. so understanding those nuances and then being able to translate that and really make my internal customer, my fellow employee, the hero of the story, ⁓ was a better service to our external customers. That meant that we understood the scope of the project that we're pursuing. That meant that.

Rick Denton (03:38)
I'd say so. Yeah.

Alyssa Staats (03:57)
We understood their needs because it's not a cookie cutter thing on construction as much as it might seem that way.

Rick Denton (04:01)
Mm-hmm.

Well, and especially, I'd love that you mentioned that because to an outsider, you know, if I'm driving around and I see commercial buildings and I see the HVAC on top, you know, I don't associate brands with that. I don't associate with an experience with that kind of service. And just like you described there, the difference between data center and hospital plumbing, all of that makes a lot of sense to me as we're talking about it. I know that though there's other folks that are just like me that see it as commoditized. How then are you able to create differentiation?

when the actual work can just look so similar across competitors.

Alyssa Staats (04:41)
⁓ for sure. And the systems themselves, because of code, technical specs, whatever it is, best practices of the industry, methods, materials, are virtually identical. So for a competitor, our final product may look the same. We certainly don't brand it with our company logos or anything like that. So that differentiator becomes the experience to install, commission.

Rick Denton (05:04)
All right.

Alyssa Staats (05:09)
test and then deliver that. And many times ⁓ the experience is really delivered when things go wrong as they tend to do in construction. know, ⁓ we've got to have a high focus of course on the budget and the schedule, but safety is a huge part of it. Many of our projects here in North Texas are extremely high profile. We've got a lot of investment coming here. There's a lot of major manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, data center, all of these

Rick Denton (05:19)
right?

Alyssa Staats (05:39)
wonderful developments happening in North Texas that are very high profile for the community. you know, even how we conduct ourselves on that job site too is a differentiator.

Rick Denton (05:45)
Mm-hmm.

Okay. I like that you brought safety into this because when I think of safety, especially when you're describing, you know, of course I'm visualizing things that are so simplistic and so stereotypical, right? You know, somebody out walking on a steel girder or those kinds of things, but there's elements of safety in all of this that are probably pretty regimented. And some of it is defined internally. Some of it's defined regulatory. Some of it is industry best practices, but it's the drawings. It's the spec. It's these long project cycles and these specific processes.

How can you personalize an experience when honestly it sounds pretty rigid and processed?

Alyssa Staats (06:28)
There is a place for process, there is a place for procedure, but one thing I think that the construction community has really come a long way is developing the notion of safety culture and going a step further delivering their company culture through their safety initiatives.

Because if you think about it, we're basically hundreds and thousands of highly distributed workers. We're all remote workers, right? So how do you feel connected with your company and even your customers company? A lot of times that's done through safety and it's it's all the little things. It's the type of ⁓ safety equipment that ⁓ people receive, you know, is it an innovative new helmet style hard hat or is it one of your more traditional style hard hats?

Rick Denton (06:56)
Yeah. ⁓

Alyssa Staats (07:18)
You know, what kind of hydration stations do you have? What kind of safety celebrations and recognitions do you have in place? So a lot of that ⁓ has been driven I would say in the in the construction industry for a better worker experience and when your workers are happy then they do great things for your customers and so it's kind of a roundabout way to deliver that client experience.

Rick Denton (07:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I like that that even something again, you're we're talking about an industry that I wouldn't think about helmet design as an element of employee experience. And one, I'm sure there's a style, right? That may matter, but I imagine even the comfort and in a place as hot as our summers are the cooling aspect of that. like you said, the hydration stations do your. Well, I'm going to ask this in a very awkward sort of way. So take this how you want, but do your end customers notice this?

And if so, how did they notice that? How are they made aware that, look, these employees are actually kind of digging things and it's making you the customer, your experience better as a result.

Alyssa Staats (08:52)
It's twofold. Some of them say, hey, we've found great technology. They roll it down to us. We implement it. But many times it's in those small interactions. And I'll give you an example. Someone who's in a sales marketing role like myself carries a stop work authority card. So if I'm happy to be on a job site and I see someone standing up on that top rung of a ladder and I have done it.

Rick Denton (09:16)
Really?

Alyssa Staats (09:20)
I will say, excuse me, I'm going to need you to get down because I care about your safety and I don't want anybody to get hurt. And I've got several stories that have been in this industry for more than 10 years now of ⁓ me, little old sales marketing, me going in and advocating for somebody's safety. Right. Because our greatest asset are people and their technical expertise and what they do. But most importantly, we want everybody to go home in

Rick Denton (09:45)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (09:50)
in the state that they arrive to the job site. And when our customers see that, hey, we pay attention to the little things. Do you have extension cords running through puddles of water? How's our housekeeping so that there's no trip hazards? You know, is every single person on your crew, with sometimes crews of over a hundred people on the job site, all wearing their safety goggles and the right type of ⁓ gloves and, you know,

the right type of attire for the time of year. You mentioned our hot, hot summers. I think about some of our rooftop technicians. It's 139 degrees on a rooftop in Texas and they're working on your HVAC systems, you know. ⁓ But those are all little signals, little signs to our customers that, hey, we care about the details and the devil's in the details. That's how we deliver that project. So we're not going to miss

Rick Denton (10:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (10:45)
these little things because we don't miss it for our crew either.

Rick Denton (10:50)
⁓ Ooh, ooh, ooh, that really hits. The idea of, you can trust that whatever, I have, trust me, I'm way out of my depth here, and whatever piece of equipment, the little nuance is going to be done right because look how we handled our safety gear. Ooh, that's a great ⁓ connection between that and what the customer is going to expect. You mentioned culture, and we're also talking about humans here. Humans make up a culture.

Alyssa Staats (11:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rick Denton (11:19)
Have you had instances where that either stop work or just a focus on safety was met with resistance? And how did you help that person, that team, that crew realize what the culture could be for their own benefit?

Alyssa Staats (11:33)
I can talk about ⁓ my service technicians that I've worked with in the past who essentially drive service vans or service trucks or as I call them rolling billboards. And ⁓ with that, know, we implemented a safe driving program. We implemented the principles of Smith driving as well as having

Rick Denton (11:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, uh-huh.

Alyssa Staats (12:00)
video cameras internally facing and externally facing and, lots of resistance. One, I, you know, we've heard every hesitation of I've been driving for 40 years and I don't get into accidents like so and so, so don't worry about me, worry about them. Or I don't need you creeping on my conversations when I'm driving down the road, getting to the next job or whatever that is, you know? ⁓ so

driving school, if you will, ⁓ able to win a few hearts and minds because people realize, you know what, this was some good information, but who I'm really going to implement this with is my 16 year old daughter who's just learning how to drive. And so let me be a little bit better of an example, but let me teach her what I've learned. And you know, kind of subtly gets ingrained in you. As far as cameras in our trucks, ⁓

Rick Denton (12:33)
You

Ha ha ha!

Alyssa Staats (12:58)
It really had to come down to time where we could point to specific examples of, Hey, this random person on the, on the road just called our number, whooping and hollering said you cut them off, but you know what? We checked the camera and, ⁓ you weren't in the wrong. Maybe they did a crazy maneuver, whatever it was. And once it was like, ⁓ the company is looking out for me. They're looking out for my safety. They're you start to, you win people one.

Rick Denton (13:17)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (13:27)
one at a time, It really starts to turn the tide with the team. And they feel like they have been heard in safety and in culture and that they have a voice. I tell people all the time is, you know, I'm in sales and marketing.

I, my job is to support you to elevate you because without you, there is no me, so you're the hero of every story that I write, you're the person when we stand in front of a customer doing a presentation that I highlight you for, for making the impossible possible. Tons of stories of that, of just incredible.

Rick Denton (14:01)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (14:05)
grit and determination from field people and they have my unending respect. And that's why love my job.

Rick Denton (14:20)
Alyssa, I love that. There's so, so much woven into that. Even just a simple thought of the culture shifts when someone realizes that this thing that was pain was actually for me. And while I'm an empty nester now, I do remember teaching both my son and daughter about driving. And yes, I can see how applying some of those principles might do quite well as I hand that off to instructing them those many years ago. Alyssa, I want to take a little break here. ⁓

This is a chance for us to stop down in what I call the first class lounge. We'll move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Alyssa Staats (14:58)
⁓ it's Norway. It's Norway. I just loved my few months that I got to spend there visiting my aunt uncle. was the first time I'd really left the U S and experienced Europe and other cultures. And it was so shocking to me how things like the grocery store closed at three o'clock in the afternoon so people could go enjoy the lake and be on a boat and

Rick Denton (15:01)
Ooh.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (15:25)
have dinner parties during the week. It's just a wonderful, just friendly place and just beautiful. So that was dream.

Rick Denton (15:33)
Boy, it

sounds like it takes some planning too, right? If it's closing at three, I better make sure I get my cheese, my bread, my beer before I head out on the lake. So I like that. I do like the idea of a slower pace that you're describing. What about the something looking to the future? What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Alyssa Staats (15:40)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

I would love to visit Japan. It's just such a dichotomy of the very old traditional and also the super modern techno cutting edge. So you get to visit the past and the very very far future all in one spot.

Rick Denton (15:54)
Mm.

Yeah,

it's a great place to be. definitely would recommend going there. Something that I love about having been in Japan for 10, I've only been there once, was the food. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Alyssa Staats (16:24)
That's such a hard question, Rick, because I'm in North Texas and any type of cuisine I could ever want seems to be here within just an easy drive away. So ⁓ can I say all of it? I love Japanese food, love Chinese food and all the traditional forms and Mediterranean food and of course, Tex-Mex and barbecue. Yes. Good.

Rick Denton (16:26)
Mm-hmm.

You most certainly can.

We will allow all of the above as an answer to that. Yes, we will. What

about the other way? were forced, what was something you were forced to eat growing up that you hated as a kid?

Alyssa Staats (16:57)
liver

and onions.

Rick Denton (16:59)
⁓

It's funny you mentioned that, Alyssa. We were with our friends ⁓ last weekend. We were talking about the old Luby's cafeteria, if you remember Luby's, and wondering why our parents would get liver and onions. And so for you to say it was a thing you were forced to eat, got some challenging memories of those days?

Alyssa Staats (17:10)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yes.

And you know, I'm a first generation American, my Fin Asian family. And so it, it was always like kind of the two dish, two cultures coming together in one dish. We would have KFC and also have white rice with it. So liver and onions and steamed rice, just a weird combination. All right.

Rick Denton (17:44)
I'd be the kid to be just filling up on that steamed rice for sure.

Alyssa, sadly, it's time for us to leave the First Class Lounge. When you're traveling, what is something that you will not leave home without, not including your phone and not including your passport?

Alyssa Staats (18:00)
Probably sunblock.

Rick Denton (18:13)
Alyssa wisely chosen there. It gives me flashbacks to the famous graduation speech where the one tip that was provided was wear sunscreen. So you are, you were channeling that famous graduation speech and it is true. Nothing's worse than a sunburn on a trip. I want to go back. You had actually said something about customers really desiring that they're, they're focused on the cost. They're focused on the timelines and the materials.

Alyssa Staats (18:28)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Denton (18:39)
You're in this role as a customer experience leader, and I know it's internally focused, it's also externally focused. How do you bring humanity to the relationship with a customer when the customer isn't actually asking for that humanity?

Alyssa Staats (18:52)
It's an odd place to be in construction where projects are sold based on our relationships, but we have almost no focus consciously of customer experience. So we live in a strange middle ground ⁓ where our customer says, here's the specs timeline budget and what's the goal. And it seems very regimented, but in those small

Rick Denton (19:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (19:22)
interactions, those change orders, those scheduled delays, or a few years ago, all of the ⁓ long lead times due to COVID and all the equipment delays and material delays, all of that. how we communicate those delays, changes in scope.

Rick Denton (19:33)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (19:41)
and make sure that we advocate for our customer, we advocate for our company, and at the end of the day, we advocate for the end user, the people who are going to be occupying or working in that facility at the end of the day, the owner, if you will.

Rick Denton (19:57)
Okay, that, I like that the idea of the humanity is, you know, it's not necessarily the property manager, but it's the employees that will really appreciate that nice air conditioning when it's August in Texas or whatever that might look like. Well, okay, so let's talk about that. Cause there's a brand promise that's woven into that. We will deliver this. We'll either deliver it on time and budget, but also deliver it in a way that satisfies the end users of that. Delivering on that promise, especially in this AEC world,

Alyssa Staats (20:05)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Denton (20:25)
You're having to rely on a lot of different functions that are outside of your control. Operations, the trades, contractors that aren't even officially employees. How do you see your marketing role connecting that promise to then the actual delivery?

Alyssa Staats (20:41)
Well, I'm seeing more and more the delivery model of design assist where the designers, the architects and engineers are paired up with the contractors or the constructors, if you will, so that design and constructability come together early on in the process. ⁓ It results in a better experience again for those end users where we deliver on the safety

quality and comfort that they expect from their facilities. It's an increasingly more collaborative model ⁓ and it's less of a, my chapter closes, your chapter begins, handoff, right? You're in constant collaboration, constant communication from the beginning.

Rick Denton (21:13)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (21:34)
So it does allow for more channels of communication to address potential road bumps early on. know, I've looked at enough blueprints in my time and by no means am I a technical person at all. Sometimes I'm just seeing grid lines and you know, someone's got to walk me through it. But there are times too where even I'll ask the question if it's an existing facility with an expansion.

Rick Denton (21:43)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (22:03)
You know, how are we going to plan for parking? We've got 200 contractors that have to come to this facility every day. Have we addressed that at all? Or where are we going to have our material lay down yard? So those are questions that contractors, we think about, well, how, you know, how's it actually going to get done in the real world? You know, how are we going to make sure that

Rick Denton (22:08)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (22:28)
Our electrical conduits don't intersect with our HVAC ducting in the real world, because on a blueprint it's all flat. ⁓ That design assist model, of course, aided by technology and 3D mapping and all these wonderful platforms that enable us to do this collaboration at scale, have really helped, in my opinion, in delivering a better product for our end users.

Rick Denton (22:34)
Right.

Yeah.

Alyssa Staats (22:57)
And then of course our customers, because we're just, we're a trade contractor delivering to the general contractor. And so my role in marketing is to be able to take that web and, and come up with a story or a narrative because it's too easy to fall into the trope of, wow, we had an aggressive schedule. had a tight budget and we all had to move quickly and safely with quality. Or we could say things like our.

Rick Denton (23:23)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (23:27)
Field foreman identified an opportunity to redesign ductwork that would save on materials and be able to prefabricate it on an offsite location. ⁓ those kind of nuances, those kind of things really make the difference in my role to tell the story that my customer and owner, the end users would really understand from our trade.

Cause I've been primarily in HVAC and plumbing. So it's all in the ceilings and behind the walls. People don't typically go, wow, look at those beautiful VAV boxes. You know, people don't drive by cooling towers and go, wow, that was so and so contractor, you know? So how do we, again, make my field people the heroes of that story?

Rick Denton (23:52)
Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, that's what I'm hearing is I heard kind of two big, there's probably a lot of themes and the two really stood out to me and that's the idea of, we're going to do this together. It's not the handoff. Cause I think in my mind, I really think of construction and this kind of work being very handoffy. Architect does, designer does, trades does. And this idea of design assist makes a lot of sense to me. And then making them the hero. And it goes back to that culture that you were describing, not just the safety culture, but

I imagine a lot of contractors and a lot of places feel overlooked and instead making them the hero of the story. I imagine a lot of that is how you become known as this person that can build marketing teams in AEC. Now you alluded to, I'm not overly technical and you're describing very hyper technical elements here. So what's the secret? What's the secret to creating those design assist teams that bridge the technical side of the industry?

with this real focus on customer experience.

Alyssa Staats (25:15)
comes down to obviously having the technical knowledge to execute but then having the right mix of personalities. Like I said earlier, it is relationship based without us being conscious of that because if you think about it, you're going to be on this construction project with the same project team for two years. If it's design assist, sometimes longer.

Rick Denton (25:30)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Staats (25:41)
You have got to enjoy being in the same room in a tiny job trailer with this person. And so sometimes it just comes down to people dynamics and how I ended up starting marketing departments and being able to speak at some technical level is limited as it is, is

Rick Denton (25:41)
Yeah.

Hahaha

Alyssa Staats (26:00)
so that again, I could speak the same language as my internal customer. So that I don't just walk into a job site and go, look at all this shiny stuff. What does it do? And sometimes I still have to ask that question. But if I can point at things and go, okay, now talk to me, you know, why we designed it this way or why we're using spiral duct instead of square duct or what type of hanger are we using and how is that affecting the project? Then I get to break the ice a little bit faster.

Rick Denton (26:07)
Yeah.

Alyssa Staats (26:30)
And build the trust internally and of course externally because I'll be able to again use the same language My external customer is speaking. How do you get there Rick? You basically say no to nothing and work a heck of a lot of hours so anytime

Rick Denton (26:35)
Yeah.

Well, I love that

element of it. I also love what you said earlier, and that is you're speaking their language. And this goes back to almost the very first thing you said, which was your focus was on the internal customer. And I imagine that there's a lot of respect that's gained when you do come into a job site and you don't just go, oh, look at the shiny things, but rather...

I'm not even going to pretend to say that in other phrases, but to have an intelligent conversation with the folks on the ground there at the site. Alyssa, this has been intriguing for me. If folks wanted to get to know a little bit more about you, AEC, the approach to customer experience in this unique industry, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Alyssa Staats (27:32)
Well, I'm on LinkedIn, Alyssa Stats. Please connect with me there. I love to share things about our industry. I love to talk about customer experience, sales and marketing for AEC. ⁓ And if you're a member of the Society of Marketing Professional Services here, I sit on the board and I'm very active there.

Rick Denton (27:55)
Awesome. Well, I'll actually get links to both LinkedIn and to that, ⁓ the society that you described in the show notes. Alyssa has been a, an interesting conversation, one that I didn't quite know where it was going to go. And you took me some places that were pretty intriguing. And that's to me, one of the best episodes that it can possibly be Alyssa. Thank you for being on CX Passport.

Alyssa Staats (28:13)
Thank

you, Rick.