Zarina Pasalic, Director of Digital Customer and Partner Experience EMEA at Cisco, speaks to us about optimising the customer journey, streamlining the digital experience and bringing diversity into the workplace.
Zarina Pasalic, Director of Digital Customer and Partner Experience at Cisco, has a history of transforming customer experience. She has over 20 years of knowledge of driving customer-centric change, optimising the customer journey and streamlining digital experiences.
Passionate about the powers of transformative tech, her biggest career achievements have been in improving operational disciplines of sales and customer experience organisations and leading teams with empathy, honesty and heart. She also has a deep commitment to developing female leaders and creating more diversity in business.
Prior to joining Cisco in 2006, she held a number of executive positions in telecommunications and IT across sales, marketing and enablement operations. Here, she talks to us about her career journey so far, how she has built a diversified culture at Cisco and the importance of the customer journey.
What has your career looked like so far?
Technology has been a fantastic field to work in. When I started, CX wasn’t a ‘thing’ and digital experience or ‘DX’ was almost regarded as science fiction, something far in the future.
However, as society has evolved and moved en-masse to digital, I saw that improving DX would make life easier for businesses, enabling them to maximise the value technology provides. We were ultimately empowering their employees to introduce their unique skills at key points of the customer journey.
Before joining Cisco in 2006, I held several executive positions in IT and telecoms across sales, marketing and enablement operations.
Throughout my career, I’ve been committed to developing female leaders and creating more diversity in business.
Tell us a bit more about CX at your company?
Cisco’s customer experience (CX) division is one of the company’s fastest-growing teams, focused on a core commercial strategy of life cycle support across products and services.
Ultimately, we want to help our customers get more value from technology, faster, whether they’re focused on optimising their current investments or making the most audacious transformations.
What are the goals of your division and how are you delivering these?
Within my division at Cisco, we are super-focused on creating a seamless end-to-end, highly orchestrated personalised, orchestrated, digital customer experience. We make sure every interaction is optimised to drive the desired customer outcomes, across business, products and through the entire life cycle.
Given the size of our company, this is a huge undertaking. We provide our customers with a self-serve service that is simple and convenient so that they can realise the value of the technologies they purchased and make the renewal process as simple as possible. Partners – typically IT channel distributors – are a vital part of the experience too.
We have a real-time data exchange platform, Lifecycle Advantage, which allows Cisco and our partners to digitally engage with customers in a hyper-personal way. This ‘scaling engine’ helps us uncover new opportunities to connect with customers, and, crucially, maximise recurring revenue.
Digital gives companies the tools and capabilities to evolve and remain competitive in the market, relevant to customers and a trusted differentiator. It also helps companies to grow in strength, agility and being proactive to face any adversities the future might hold.
I often refer back to this quote from J.B. Wood, CEO of the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA): “The number one determinant of market share in any industry will be digital customers’ experience.”
What’s the business’ approach to management?
At Cisco, we believe our edge comes from our people. All ‘Cisconians’ globally enjoy a company culture that champions inclusion, empowerment and innovation. Together we are progressing with purposeful work and making a global impact.
It’s a place of pure creativity where employees are valued and appreciated for bringing their true selves to work. There is a high level of authentic support from leadership, along with the plethora of developmental programs and community and charity-focused activities. For example, the company encourages all of us to help those less fortunate, by giving us 10 ‘give back days’ for doing voluntary work, in addition to annual leave.
How do you equip your staff with skills and knowledge?
Happiness contributes to the bigger picture and mission we are all in service of.
People in my team value the fact they will learn and grow, not stagnate. Their talents are appreciated every single day and it’s down to me to demonstrate that. I take pride in facilitating the training and development they need to fulfil their ambitions. My team is encouraged to learn from others within Cisco and to also take an active part in understanding market and analysts’ predictions. This equips them with the necessary knowledge to shape our future vision and the transformation we are collectively driving.
Serving as a leader is about supporting the individual’s performance, goals and aspirations. In that way, you’re serving who they want to be or what they want to achieve.
Why is today a great time to work in technology?
In Cisco’s words, the ‘Bridge to Possible’ represents the company’s commitment to connect people, places, ideas and things across its secure network. And we do that through using technology.
Soon everything that can be digitised will be digitised. With the emergence of smarter devices, Quantum Computing, AI and datafication, there is no escaping that many of the innovations in technology happening right now are helping to transform businesses and society. Technology powers everything and changes the way we work, live, play and learn.
It’s clear that the talented people working in technology today are as important as the stonecutters and carpenters envisioning cathedrals back in the Middle Ages. Extraordinary skills are needed to build and secure the next wave of innovation and growth.
We want every day to be a great day at Cisco and that starts with our employees’ experiences. We have incredible people doing hugely important work. Together, we are leading a transformation of epic proportions and we need to realise that our individual journeys and successes are truly interdependent.
What is your leadership advice for other members of the C-suite?
Sponsorship is essential to creating rich and diverse teams. Having a pipeline of diversity is very important for me as I believe diverse teams are the best teams. A few years ago, Cisco introduced ‘The Multiplier Effect’, which asks leaders to take a pledge to sponsor at least one extraordinary, diverse candidate in their business section and challenge their peers to do the same. We started this movement based on the desire to promote diversity in the tech industry.
Regardless of how senior a person is, you should never hold back if you have questions. Knock on people’s doors and ask for advice and insights. Even really senior people are flattered, and in the worst case, they say they don’t have the time. Some doors will open, and some will close – just be hungry and persistent.
In the face of economic and social uncertainty, it’s our responsibility to protect and advocate for people. If we want to see continued economic growth and highly-skilled workforces, we must create an environment where people feel they are supported and can thrive.
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