Speaking Engagements

March 2023

SX Live City Tour: Austin. Featured Panelist. Support Executive Panel: The Future of Support: Unlocking Customer Insights

Looking to elevate your customer support experience? In this session, our expert panel will discuss how companies use AI and machine learning to gain deeper customer insights, creating a seamless and integrated support experience across various channels.

You'll leave with actionable strategies to improve your customer's experience and stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing digital landscape. This is a unique opportunity to glean firsthand insights from experts with deep industry experience and engage with your own personal experiences and questions.

Salesforce Women’s Network of Austin, Texas: International Women’s Day Event. Featured Panelist: Building Your Brand Workshop

For International Women's Day SWN Texaswill host an in person event with panel speakers with our leadership, do speed networking with attendees and provide professional headshots. This event will provide attendees a chance to: - connect with leaders to hear about career development - connect with other to grow their network - provide headshots to grow their professional network (LinkedIn, Salesforce ecosystem).

We welcome you to join us for an engaging workshop where you will walk away with:

Deeper understanding of the power of personal branding for your career
Opportunity to network and get to know fellow SWN members and allies in the Austin office
A personal brand map to drive self-advocacy
Plus, a new headshot for a fresh start as you finesse your own personal brand!

October 2022

TSIA World Envision, Las Vegas. Featured Presenter in Culture Track. “ Parenthood And A Tech Career - Thriving (Not Merely Surviving”

As if life isn't challenging enough, technology companies' most demanding career progression often corresponds to the time when we raise children. Blending parenthood with tech careers can be daunting. We hear about work-life balance, choice, integration, and self-care. Can everyone or only the lucky some "have it all?" Do we even know what the "all" is or can be? In this session, we will discuss parenthood, gender roles, and tech careers from three cultural perspectives: North American (US/Canada), Asia-Pacific (India), and European (United Kingdom). Unlock the secrets to thrive, not just survive, supporting yourself and your team.

May 2022

TSIA Technology and Service World, Orlando. Featured Presenter in DEI Pathway. “Increasing Diversity in the Support Center to Improve Critical Support KPIs”

These recent pandemic years have solidified just how important diversity, equity, and inclusion are in the support center. DEI doesn't just improve the employee experience and retention, it also improves customer outcomes.

Why? Because customers want to be understood and understanding does not lend itself to a one-size-fits-all approach. Having an agent workforce made up of diverse experiences, cultures and mindsets, allows them to empathize with customers on an entirely new level in every support interaction.

As a service leader, you probably know that DEI benefits top-line company business outcomes - Is it possible to validate that DEI directly improves your Support Center metrics?

Marlene Summers, VP of Global Support at Salesforce, as she discusses why DEI in the support center is critical to improving Support KPIs, how service leaders can create a culture of inclusivity, and how to lead with a memorable approach to diversity that is genuine and thoughtful.

October 2021

TSIA Technology and Service World, Las Vegas. Featured Panelist. Panel | Collaborative Swarming: An Industry Perspective

For as long as anyone can remember, organizing customer support around “tiered” models has been the default organizational construct in the technology industry. In fact, 7 in 10 support organizations still utilize tiered support models. Unfortunately, these models result in lower employee satisfaction, higher employee attrition, lower contract renewal rates, and lower gross margins than single tier, collaborative, swarm-based support. So, why aren’t more organizations making the move to collaborative swarming?

MAY 2021

TSIA Interact Spring 2021. Featured Presenter. “Please Assign My Support Request to an Intelligent, American, English-Speaking Resource...”

Is this session title cringe-worthy? What is your response to this request? How would you handle feedback such as the following:

“Why do you force your Chinese employees to use English names. You aren’t tricking me”
“They must have really low standards in India”
“You must be an emotional, un-American woman to suggest that I need to work with your global resources.”
"You are so dumb, even for a girl."

Given that most support and service organizations employ "offshore" resources, we need management strategies for balancing customer expectations for on-shore technical resources with business pressure for cost efficiency. I trust the attendees of 2021 TSIA Interact expect our respective companies and customers to embrace the indispensable principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. In this session, we will cover how leaders can handle these types of statements and address other commonly faced scenarios involving race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation in the workplace. Let’s explore how you can be a steward of workplace equality and not simply a passive observer waiting for HR to step in. Equip yourself to be a change-agent and builder of a better world for today's global workforce and future generations to come.

March 2021

Salesforce on Salesforce: Support Best Practices. Session Co-Presenter. Collaboration & Swarming with Slack

Marlene Lee Summers, an early adopter and 6 year user of Slack, will walk you through how you can transform your support delivery organization from reactive, escalation-based tiers to proactive, swarm-based collaboration suitable for technically complex products. You'll learn how to obtain the keys to the kingdom, unlocking with a simple formula: Speed + Accuracy = Customer Satisfaction. Hear from Tamara Carpenter, Sr Manager of Business Operation, as she walks through the current Slack Swarming pilot as Salesforce Support gears up to go all in on Slack.

AUGust 2020

Community (re)Focus Virtual Summit 2020. Featured Presenter. Predicted Rise of Community and Fall of Traditional Tech Support

2030 Headline: "Community Eliminates the Need for Traditional Tech Support”

In the past thirty years, we've experienced disruptive innovation and technological advancements that have reshaped our lives. Some embrace these changes and wonder how we ever survived before them. Others express fear and anxiety with these purported progress. Within each decade, the software industry shifts and creates our new norms.

In this session, Marlene Summers, a recognized industry leader in enterprise software customer service and experience, predicts the elimination of traditional technical support organizations through the rise of Community. Are you skeptical or curious? Come check it out and join the discussion. Your job future may depend on it.

April 2020

Breaking The Glass. Featured Virtual Panelist. Remote Work & Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Within the Diversity & Inclusion space, remote work and flexible hours are widely suggested tools among DEI professionals on how to make your workplace more inclusive. While offices can provide a sense of community, it’s common for offices to be full of distractions and have inaccessible commutes and core hours.

Remote work is a great solution for parents, care givers, people with disabilities, or people that prefer a more controlled work environment. Additionally, the flexibility leads to more creative, transparent and productive teams. Join our panel of experts to hear about how remote and flexible work has positively impacted their organization.

FEBRUARY 2020

Vlocity Lunch and Learn Seminars. Featured Presenter. Vlocity Evolution to Technical Swarm Support Teams

Fifty years ago, the traditional 3-tiered support organizational structure was implemented during the mainframe era to provide product maintenance support for perpetual software.

In 2020, Vlocity customers expect and require a rapid, high quality response, identification and resolution to every issue.

Vlocity is evolving their support model to meet these greater customer experience expectations.

Vlocity Global Product Support has started our transformation to technical swarm teams. Come learn why this matters to you and how our swarm teams are helping you succeed!

JUNE 2019

Voxpro Effortless Experience Summit. Featured Presenter. Building Great Digital CX at Scale

The subscription-based economy requires organizations to attract new prospects while simultaneously selling to and delighting existing customers. And today’s hyper-connected customers have higher expectations and more power than ever: They prefer self-service online, want an immediate response and hold you accountable.

With multiple digital channels, how do you create a consistent and integrated customer experience – one that allows you to reach and convert prospects and customers in a way that’s authentic and scalable?

Zuora's community is its primary social media engagement hub, guiding all customers to discover the information most relevant to their needs while providing a single destination for customer-facing exchanges. It achieves our vision of seamless communication between customers, partners and employees in a manner that is helpful, authentic and effortless, so that we can truly become a world where we are all connected to each other.

CX for Startups: How Company Culture Impacts Customer Experience. Featured Panelist.

Company culture is the core of what your organization boldly represents. It is also the catalyst for creating a customer-centric movement within your startup. Our latest event, Women in Startups: “How Company Culture Impacts Customer Experience”, from our CX for Startups MeetUp series discussed how company practices and employee behaviors, like empathy and compassion, impacts customer experience outcomes.

may 2019

Gainsight Pulse 2019. Featured Presenter. How Zuora Built a Customer Success Team that Celebrates Racial, Ethnic and Gender Diversity

As a 40-year-old executive in Silicon Valley, I am confronted daily with the stark statistics about women and underrepresented minorities in the tech industry. At the current pace of change, gender parity is decades away - race equality isn't even projectable. Born and raised outside of New York City, my childhood was immersed with experiences which fostered a passion to change the world. In building our global customer success organization from inception to IPO, I’ve come to absorb so many more insights about race, ethnicity, nationality and the application of gender roles woven throughout cultures around the world. Join this session to experience my personal journey throughout the last four decades in dealing with social change and building a diverse customer success team worthy of celebration.

NOVEMBER 2018

Opentalk 2018: Featured Presenter. From Inception to IPO: The Art of Scaling your Customer Service Organization through Storytelling

As customer service leaders, it is our job to make our organization grow-ready and resilient against the popular traps that companies fall into when scaling. In 2010, I started at Zuora as a first-line manager with four support employees in two office locations. By the time of our IPO in April 2018, I had over eighty technical customer support, content professionals and customer engineers in eight of Zuora’s global offices and the VP title. Beyond the reports and metrics, effective storytelling transforms good managers into inspiration leaders. Come to this session and learn how to tell stories and create the desired destiny of your customer service organization.
Featured Panelist: Women in CX Panel
Featured Panelist: A Blended Approach to Captivating Experiences: Integrating Automation & Human-Assisted Support to Create CX Magic Moments

OCTOBER 2018

Lithium CX Live San Francisco: Featured Case Study Presenter: Extending Your Community Platform with Social Events

At this one-day event, hear from fellow Lithium customers and talk through the challenges and opportunities so many of you face. Also, learn from Lithium leadership about what we’re up to and where we're heading, including demos of our newest offerings.

June 2018

Support Driven Expo Conference: Featured Workshop Presenter. From Inception to IPO: The Art of Scaling your Support Department through Storytelling

Have you ever been asked: “Do you really need more support headcount?”
Have you ever said: “If I only had more headcount, I could do X, Y, Z.”

What if I told you that I have genie powers - I can grant all of the headcount that you want, simply show me the plan... today. Do you have a plan? What is your plan? Will people believe in and follow your plan? In 2010, I started at Zuora as a first-line manager with four support employees in two office locations. Today, I have over eighty technical customer support & content professionals in eight of Zuora’s global offices. While some find my career rise and story impressive, I didn't start with a plan - I was in a stereotypical survive and thrive mode in the early years.

As a support leader, at every stage of your company’s journey, there are questions and decisions you need to make. It is our job to ask these questions and direct the desired outcomes. Effective storytelling will create the outcome that you believe is best. I know this now and I want to share my thoughts with you.

Come to this session and create your plan for scaling the support organization at your company.

Subscribed Institute @ Zuora Subscribed 2018: Table Moderator

Zuora’s inaugural Subscribed Institute— an invite-only, strategy forum for executives looking for actionable insight on how to grow & transform their organizations. Attendees will leave with new connections & next steps for step-change improvements in subscription business growth, customer experience, and organizational strategy.

May 2018

Executive Think Tank: Next-Gen Contact Center Technology: Bots, AI, Big Data, and Analytics: Featured Panelist

We will discuss how innovative companies are integrating chatbots, Intelligent Virtual Assistants, IoT, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), AI, Big Data, Analytics, and other next-generation technologies into their contact centers and larger enterprises. When implementing these technologies, how are traditional contact center KPIs affected? What benefits - and challenges - are common at implementation, and how can companies ensure maximum positive impact with minimal drawbacks? What are the technologies of the future that will enable fast-growing and established companies alike to win the CX game?

December 2017

Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech Industry: Panelist

The Colgate Professional Networks were created to provide opportunities for alumni and parents to connect/network with one another and to engage with students who are interested in pursuing related careers. Thousands of alumni, parents, and students have engaged with the Networks by attending regional, on-campus, and online events. The Professional Network program has three goals:

Provide opportunities for alumni engagement and professional development
Provide on-ramps for students through job and internships and networking opportunities
Garner financial support to Colgate.

OCTOBER 2017

TSIA Technology Service World (TSW) Las Vegas: Featured Presenter: Community: Delivering Great Digital Customer Experience at Scale

Return to Work You Love Conference: Featured Presenter. The Real You: Consciously Craft and Customize Your Message

There’s no single, black-and-white version of you. There are many facets to your persona and you can – and should – pick and choose which aspects of your life to bring to the forefront of conversation, based on with whom you are speaking.

In this workshop, you will learn specific skills and techniques to describe the version of yourself which is best applicable for the situation, whether it be an interview, an unexpected encounter with an executive, or a large meeting. We will practice and develop your personal action plan, fostering confidence necessary during career shifts and transitions.

Frost & Sullivan Customer Contact West: Thought Leader for three sessions - Deriving Real Business Value from Your Digital Strategy: Attaining ROI through a Reimagined CX, B2B Nuances in Customer Care & Bonding with Your Customer: Making Emotional Connections in a Digital Age

This event is a hub of ideas, inspiration, and industry connections for customer service and customer contact executives who strive to innovate the customer experience. Customer Contact West will prepare you for the future of customer care by providing pragmatic real world experiences, insight, best practices and tools for embracing an accelerating digital transformation.

SEPTEMBER 2017

Digital Customer Experience Strategies Summit: Featured Presenter. Unifying Your DCX Processes Through “Hub” Initiatives

Ownership of the digital customer experience has become complex due to a shift in the traditional customer lifecycle. Clarify your DCX initiatives with “community” approaches the engaging with your customers. Adopt best practices to:

Collaborate with your customers to incorporate their insights
Ensure responsiveness and accuracy by activating your entire organization
Grow your end-to-end solution capabilities to retain customers

Bridge your DCX process with your customers to increase positive customer experiences.

Building Diverse Teams Event @ Lob. Panelist.

Join Lob for an evening of storytelling with successful leaders of Diversity & Inclusion within Tech. We've gathered four trailblazers: two Heads of Diversity & Inclusion, a Head of Operations, and a VP of Customer Support & Community representing some of the most intriguing fields in tech today. Come learn about the resources they use to build diverse teams & grow inclusion within their communities. We’ll be taking a deep dive into what is involved in building a diverse team, what role inclusion plays in that, and how to know when you’re doing it right.

June 2017

Lithium London LiNC Conference: Panelist. Digital CX is the New Playing Field

Digital CX is the New Playing Field It should come as no surprise that your digital customer experience is now more of a competitive differentiator than your product and service offerings. In fact, customer experience is where brands will win in terms of customer acquisition and retention. Brands must lead or be left behind. It’s no longer a question of why we should provide a great digital CX, but how do we optimize the way we deliver it. Join our panel and hear how these top brands are transforming their digital CX with both community and social media management.

May 2017

Gainsight Pulse Conference: Featured Presenter. Own the Outcome: Optimal Ownership Model for the 3’s: Success, Support and Services

Does this conversation sound familiar? Your Support, Services, and Success leaders get together and carve up who owns what customer outcomes metrics. But do they have the right system? It's not arbitrary. Zuora has a scientific ownership model for who owns what between Success, Services, and Support.

April 2017

National Customer Service Association Conference. Featured Presenter. How to Glow As You Grow: How Continuous Transformation of Your Customer Service Organization is Essential to Foster Customers for Life

Congratulations! Your company is making money and thriving! You have a product or service that people want and need. Your customer base is expanding rapidly. You feel fortunate to have the ability to hire more and more employees, from 10 to 50, 100 to 300and beyond. Now that you have more people, will it be easier? Is it time to rest of the laurels of your hard work? You figured out the formula to pave the road for future success, right? Nope! Guess, what? How you ran customer service in your small company won’t work as you grow. In this engaging session, you will learn practical and proven growth strategies from Marlene Summers, an award-winning Silicon Valley software executive who built her technical support team from 3 to over 40 experienced support professionals while maintaining and even increasing customer satisfaction at a software start-up which is poised to IPO. Marlene will share everything that went right and wrong in her 6.5 year tenure at the Zuora, Inc.

Open Talk Conference: Panelist. Establishing and Securing Customer Trust in Financial Services

When it comes to financial services, customers have unique service expectations: their information needs to be secure, service needs to be available around the clock and customer service instances have an increased emotional element. These leaders discuss the level of service required to build customer trust in this competitive industry and suggest tactics for retaining customers. You’ll learn how their companies measure customer trust and how which actions they take to improve that KPI.

March 2017

Support Superheroes Meetup: Featured Presenter. Developing Confident Customer Presence

There’s no single, black-and-white version of you.There are many facets to your persona and you can (and should) pick and choose which aspects of your life to bring to the forefront of conversation based on who you are speaking with. Zuora Vice President of Customer Support & Community, Marlene Summers, will speak about the different ways to represent yourself, and how to cater your persona to your audience.

February 2017

Zuora Global Kickoff: Featured Presenter. Diversity - The Art of Thinking Differently Together

October 2016

Zuora Silicon Valley User Group: Featured Presenter. 2016 Best of the Best in Customer Success

Learn about four initiatives shaping our team this year:

Developer Center and 100% REST API coverage
Go-Live certification and critical care
Customer Advocacy Program
Updates from the Community

September 2016

Zuora Boston User Group: Featured Presenter. 2016 Best of the Best in Customer Success

Zuora New York City User Group: Featured Presenter. 2016 Best of the Best in Customer Success

June 2016

Lithium’s LiNC’16 Conference: Panelist - B2B Understands Lifetime Value

The Aberdeen Group recently found that high-tech firms that build and manage online communities attain superior results in creating happy customers, reducing service costs and driving revenue growth. This session will explore the data behind how B2B high-tech brands can reduce churn, cut service costs and drive revenue.

April 2016

Zuora Subscribed 2016, San Francisco: Featured Presenter. Introducing the Zuora Community

March 2016

New York City Zuora User Group: Featured Presenter. Introducing the Zuora Community

Subscribed Stockholm. Zuora Community: Featured Presenter. Introducing the Zuora Community

January 2016

Customer SuccessCon West: Featured Presenter. Case Study: Zuora Implementation and Success

Veteran Customer Success professionals know all too well that when the customer has a poor implementation experience, things can get problematic very quickly and have long-term consequences to your relationship. A year ago, Zuora launched Z-GRAB, Zuora Go-Live Review Assessment Board, and have dramatically reduced the incidence of launch disasters, significantly improving the transition from Services to Customer Success.

January 2015

Customer SuccessCon West: Co-Presenter. Best Practices Processes between Customer Success and Customer Support