Navigating Customer Success in Transportation with Jasmine Martin

I am Jennifer Karpis-Romain , executive Director of the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association , which is a trade nonprofit educating and connecting marketing and sales professionals in transportation and logistics , and today on the show I'm excited to have Jasmine Martin , vice President of Customer Success at Fortune Logistics . How are you doing today ?

Doing great , wonderful , so happy to have you on the show and to talk to you about all things . So you've been in this industry for years , but in a few various roles and companies . So I would love if you kind of walk us through your career journey and what led you to your current role at Fortune Logistics .

So I went and applied and it was actually just a temp position because they were trying to get new systems and trying to figure all of that out .

So then I worked there for about two and a half years , I think , and then my now husband got a job out in the other side of the state , so I decided to move out there and follow him and I worked at Coca-Cola for a few years and that ranged anywhere from working in their vault , which means all of the money that you collect from vending machines , and all

of that . It was my job to count all of that and then record how much each machine had brought back yeah , it's real fun and then worked up to accounts receivable , working with some of their bigger customers , like Walmart and that kind of stuff , and then that slowly transitioned my way into routing for them , which .

So when you go and you think about Coca Cola . And you think about the smaller trucks that go and deliver to , like the grocery stores , the gas stations , like your mom and pop shops . Well , my job was to go and route them .

So I would go and I would say , okay , truck number XYZ , you're going to go to this customer Mondays , wednesdays and Fridays at this time and then plan it for all locations across the United States . So that was fun , son . And then at that point we had our son and decided we wanted to be closer to family because it was a little difficult .

So we moved back and I was always told that when I moved back to town , schwans would take me back , and so I immediately emailed them and said , hey , I'm coming back to town , do you have something for me ? And they said , yep , we'll take you . So went back with them for about oh man , four years ish , something like that and did a few different things .

Over there was a logistics technician where you go and you book the freight on carriers and all of that .

And then I focused on carrier performance so making sure people are picking up on time , delivering on time , taking their awarded freight that they say they're going to take , and then worked up into like a manager role , so overseeing that , and then , unfortunately , my husband got a new job . Yes , we move a lot . I'm well aware and we moved to Sioux Falls .

So then I was out there looking for a job and I saw that Fortune Logistics , who was actually one of our customers or carriers at the time . I said , hey , I am moving .

And I actually applied for an appointments position because that was the only thing that they had open and they kind of all talked about yeah , I think you're a little overqualified for this position . I was like , well , just a little bit .

So then I they created a customer success program and so since I've been there , I've been the one who's been developing it and leading it and all that fun stuff , and I've been here for three years .

I'm curious what they mean to you , someone who actually works in it day in and day out to you someone who actually works in it day

in and day out .

So I went through the list of the different things that I wanted to make sure we had and then we that , with doing those different steps , that was going to make it so we're the most successful with our customers . So we wanted we see them as relationships . We want the best as we can . In order for those to be good , they're going to have to be successful .

So we just that's what we consider it .

But for the most part I do most of the communications with all of our customers .

But at the same time everyone says brokers are bad but they do have a good place in the industry because you can't . So some of our customers have not the best locations to ship out of and they have a lot of freight that ships out of that location .

So I can't go and say , hey , I need a load from Kansas to Georgia and I'm going to have three this week , I'm going to have 16 next week , I'm going to have 18 next week where it's just never consistent which brokers are able to secure the capacities ups and downs and that kind of stuff .

Really , communication is the biggest part .

And you work with your ops , sales and marketing teams to align the strategy , which I think is really , really important , especially when we're talking about things like communication , making sure that messaging , that branding's all aligned . But I was looking on your LinkedIn and stuff .

This really helps inform your customers as well , and you guys have initiatives like Tight Capacity , tuesday and Wednesday Weather Watch . So can you tell me a little bit more about these special initiatives ?

So weather is one big thing , so we like to go and provide hey , there's a snowstorm coming up next week , or hey , there's tornadoes here , and then there's also tight capacity which will also affect them , because it means hey , if you got a bunch of stuff shipping out of California in the next how many weeks it might be a little tight with the boats coming in

. So it's just different ways that we could go and express things that would be useful to our customers .

Or , hey , like this doesn't make sense , can you reach out to the customer and find out why they're doing stops X , y and Z in this order , which it should be this order ?

So , really , in order for everything to run smoothly , you have to have good communication between all sides , and I can't go and change a date on something and just not tell the rest of my team oh , hey , like , we changed the state , they just have to magically find out about it . So communication solves a lot of problems and do you think so ?

Yep , I mean our marketing team does do stuff , but it's more of the based on the tight capacity Tuesday out to our customers and update different things on LinkedIn or different things that go on within the industry and do you find that like that appointments team that is talking to the marketing team , to making to make sure that they know what to put out into

the world ? Is that communication helpful to make sure it's kind of like streamlined through everybody .

I think whatever works for the company is what's important as long as it's working , as long as we're making sure that those communications , whoever it is um , because I do think sometimes people aren't talking to the brokers or whatever um , yeah , like , what is your capacity and is your marketing highlighting the places you have capacity versus the ones that you don't

? And because that type of misalignment is bad , because then we're promoting things we can't actually do and we don't want that at all . So I just like hearing about internal structures and how to set that up , especially when a marketing department is new . How does that all kind of fit together ?

What shifts or trends in the industry right now are you keeping a close

?

We have a little Alex that we call him that goes , scans emails with part of the team and goes through and we'll try to book freight that way so the reps don't have to deal with so many different emails . So pretty much just your automation of things is the biggest thing that we're focusing on , which I think everybody at this point is kind of focusing on .

I mean , you're , you can get high level stuff , but it won't have the true customer success stuff that I guess I look for in my team . I want everything to be extremely personable and you know when someone's birthday is so you can wish them a happy birthday .

How can we make sure , once we have that information , that it's tracked in the system so people know ? So that way , like if your customer is calling and it is their birthday , but their normal person isn't there , we can still wish them a happy birthday , because we're all looking at the page that says that .

I think that's where we can really utilize it , and I almost feel like sometimes people forget that piece and they just think about efficiency but they're forgetting about the humanity of it .

People don't care about your logo , they care about the people behind the logo . So how can we utilize them more , utilize those relationships more , but still be more efficient by utilizing tech ? And so I feel like that's what I'm interested to see , where we go .

Or , like I love I nerd out about like sentiment analysis , like analyzing the sentiment of your customers when they call in , because then you know , oh , this person's happy , so like let's be happy with them . Or , oh , no , this person's not happy , let's make sure we talk in soft , calm tones , like you know .

But I feel like that kind of stuff is cool because then you're able to better match that with your empathy , with your humanity , um , and that we wouldn't have that if it wasn't for the technology . So that's where I think things are cool and where we can utilize it , switching gears a little bit , um .

So last week you attended the tmsa elevate conference for the first time , which is really

exciting . Um , I think we are obviously primarily sales and marketing the tmsa elevate conference for the first time , which was really exciting . Um , I think we are obviously primarily sales and marketing as tmsa states .

But when we met at women in trucking last year I was like I think this could be a great fit because we talked about like what your role is and how it's evolving and , um , how you were growing a marketing department coming up in the the months and things like that .

We're definitely seeing more customer experience success teams coming into the association , coming to conference .

Like , I've been to a lot of conferences but this is the most that I actually got stuff that were relatable and it wasn't high level , like industry stuff . Yes , there was stuff that talked about the industry , but it wasn't just .

That's not all it was , and so to me , the biggest thing that I think that it brought up for me is how much more that was a really bad phrase we need to combine our sales , marketing and customer success team compared to how we currently have it built .

It made me think of different things that I hadn't thought about before and some things that we can change on our side to make things more efficient . I'd say communication making sure everyone is relaying the same message is something that we've struggled with .

So seeing all the different people talk about how important that was it made me think that we need to fix that stuff on our side . And , yeah , it just overall . It gave me a lot of different things to think about , from the marketing perspective to the different things that we can try out to see if I get surname out there more .

Yeah , there was just so many things . I had a call earlier today and I was going over and with my boss too .

They're like we see what you're doing here , like you're talking about the topics that the industry is dealing with , but you are putting a sales and marketing spin on it , like why is it important in relating it to those teams in a way that they may not have processed before , and like those are the comments that like always warm my heart because , yes , that is

in fact what we are trying to do . And just like you said , alignment like last year I did quite a few speaking topics on the alignment of these teams and I remember doing it at one conference and I just asked people from the audience to come sit on stage .

Like you don't have to do anything , promise , all you have to do is sit in these comfortable chairs behind me . I'm like I need four people . I should do that on camera . Four people and two people came up and I'm like , well , perfect , sales and marketing is here . Customer support and billing didn't show up to the conversation .

This is what we're kind of used to and so I used that to . Like that , like people not wanting to stand up to the point , but it like kind of emphasized it . Yeah , you're not going to have a unified message , you're not going to have that same quality , that same customer support , that same customer experience if all those departments aren't communicating .

So I love that that was one of your takeaways , because I think it is really important and something that we try to highlight at conference , and how to kind of take those steps to get there .

Understand that there's still value here , especially because we're trying to . You know you all have common revenue goals and you all want the team to be successful and want those messaging pieces to come out . So how do we do that ? So I was really excited for you to come , come to conference and get value from it and then talk about it . So thank you .

ask

much for coming on the show today , coming to elevate last week . I do have one more question for you . It's the thing I ask everyone that comes on the show and if that's , if you could go back in time and advise a younger version of yourself anything personally or professionally , when would you go back to and what would you say ?

Which I'm really excited about , wemos is the women in maritime operations , and so we're excited to have a full conversation around that and just to hear more about that organization as well . Thank you for coming on the show and I will see everybody next time . Thank you , thank you .