201: Creating Authentic Customer Connections in a Digital World: The Power of Integrating Empathy and Technology with Tom Martin Navigating the Customer Experience

Tom Martin is the CEO at Glance, a CX and contact center strategist, product lifecycle expert, and partnership builder. Tom has led Glance through a successful “pivot,” transitioning from a small business screen share tool to a provider of omnichannel visual engagement solutions for some of the largest enterprises in the world. 
Since that pivot, Glance has experienced multiple years of 70% year on year growth. Prior to joining Glance in 2013, Tom spent over a decade at Verizon building and managing strategic partnerships. Outside of the office, Tom is an avid backcountry skier, mountaineer and competitive cyclist.
 
Questions 
•  We always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey, how you got to where you are today.
•     Now, could you tell our audience a little bit about Glance and what it is that your company does?
•  Can you share with our listeners a little bit about how it is that you can still integrate personal experiences or personal connection with emotion even though we have so much of our connectivity being done in a digital space.
•  What is your view on empathy? And do you believe everyone has the ability to exercise it? And if not, what are some tools that you believe can help to strengthen that particular competence in a team member?
•  Can you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
•  Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently.
•  Could you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
•  Where can listeners find you online?
•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or demotivated, this quote will help to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?
  
Highlights
Tom’s Journey
Tom shared that he’s always been fascinated with people which drew him down the path of really understanding what people like, how people buy, he cuts deep into sales and marketing early in his day. And no matter what he was doing, he was always interested to understand how to connect with other people. And the part of like connecting with other people, as you realize that as we have moved from business where we were always together, like you walked into a store you connected with people, you learned a lot of information when someone walks through the door. If you're in a clothing store, you could size them up and be like that person's this size jacket. And you could also recognize all the other cues. 
It could be like Valentine's day or the day before, and a gentleman walking in and he's in the women's section. There's all that context that you get. So, you understand, like the challenges that businesses today have when you start to move, sometimes completely into the digital realm. 
And so, it's sort of been an area of focus of his, throughout his career, just understanding people. And in today's landscape of customer experiences, where the battleground is no longer a product, it's really the experience that people have.
  
About Glance and What Your Company Does?
Tom shared that they are a in-brand collaboration platform that brings real human beings into a digital space, to be able to provide that personal connection at just the right moment. And that translates into thinking about any type of a journey that a customer is doing, where it could be better served by bringing a human being in, so many people have become more