Discuss Employee Spotlight – Karen

The “Discuss Employee Spotlight” is a Q&A series dedicated to showcasing all of the amazing talent at Discuss.

For this month’s profile, we talked with Karen Lindley, VP of Global Operations, who joined the Discuss team in January 2016 and is based out of New Orleans, LA.

1. Tell our readers a little bit about your role at Discuss.
   I head up Global Customer Operations, which I equate to the heart because we pump the work through the body of the organization. The two teams under Customer Operations are:
   Customer Care – which holds our Training Team, Help Desk, and Customer Care team.
   Professional Services – which holds our Live Support, Project Management, Marketplace, and Programmatic Sampling Teams.
2. Which of Discuss’ core values are you most inspired by? (Empathize, Collaborate, Obsess, Out Innovate, Excel)
   The core value that I am most inspired by is “Excel.” As someone who is extremely detail-oriented and committed to creating a seamless experience for our customers, I always strive for excellence. And, if it’s not too much to brag about, I am extremely proud of how my team has excelled in providing world-class customer support – as we see a reference to our excellent service in almost every G2 review. This year we’ve maintained a post-session CSAT score of 94%, which only comes from a team that’s committed to excelling in service.
3. Tell us about your team and the mindset (and approach) you’re instilling.
   The approach that I am instilling in our global team is, “In it together.” Collectively the operations team can do anything and have fun while doing it. We have a one-word mantra to remind each other of this, which is “TEAMILY.”
4. What project or initiative are you most proud of at Discuss?
   I am so excited that we are launching the new Asynchronous part of our application to allow clients to have three options to conduct qualitative research. Our current methodology of live sessions, an asynchronous method or the combination of both. This will give our clients more options to gather research insights. I am proud to have been part of the building and putting process to this new offering, which allows our customers to get insights from customers around the world.
   
   In addition, I’m so proud of building a remote global team with over 70 employees in 20 countries. This has taken several years and is an absolute differentiator for us that we hear from almost every customer of ours to be able to scale global qualitative research. It’s also a key reason why we’ve been so successful at helping so many organizations scale qualitative research. There’s just a million little things my team does that eliminate the many bottlenecks in the qual research process – from implementing real-time session sheets, to auto tech/quality checks and automated emails.
5. What is something unique about you (a fun fact) that few people know about?
   I love parades and in 2020 I rode on a float in a Mardi Gras parade with the Krewe of Cleopatra.