“Leading in Times of Turmoil with Erin Horvath” Show Notes
Early last year, the pandemic threw our world into crisis, and we still haven’t reached the other side. The upheaval of “normal” working conditions has led to rapid, high-pressure innovation and transformation across all industries, all while dealing with new risks to peoples’ health and safety. We spoke to Erin Horvath, Chief Transformation Officer at AmerisourceBergen, and got a firsthand look into the challenges she and her team faced as they worked to maintain their vital healthcare supply chain. During the interview, she also gives insight into potential solutions for improving healthcare outcomes for disadvantaged communities and discusses how to mentor and support women at work to help them rise into leadership.
About Erin Horvath
As AmerisourceBergen’s Chief Transformation Officer, Erin Horvath partners with businesses across the enterprise to find new inflection points of growth, greater levels of scalability, and new go-to-market strategies. In alignment with the organization’s five-year strategy, she drives the execution of strategic and innovative initiatives and investments.
Show Transcript
Erin Acevedo:
This is Customer Obsessed, the show that dives into the nitty-gritty challenges of entrepreneurship and genuine customer connection. In this episode, we're talking to Erin Horvath, Chief transformation officer at AmerisourceBergen. In our interview, Erin shares stories of how she and her team rose to the occasion during the pandemic, overcoming tough challenges that threaten to disrupt their life-saving supply chain. She also gives insight into potential solutions for improving healthcare outcomes for disadvantaged populations and discusses how to mentor and support women at work to help them rise into leadership.
Eric Berridge:
Ready to get customer-obsessed?
Erin Acevedo:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Customer Obsessed. We are joined today by Erin Horvath who works for AmerisourceBergen. And you have worked with her in the Salesforce ecosystem for a really long time. And so, I would just love for you to tell our audience a little bit about Erin and what it is about her and her approach that you think makes her customer-obsessed?
Eric Berridge:
Yeah, and you'll hear it in a second here, folks. She's an enthusiastic leader. And she speaks from her heart, and she is very collaborative and has the perfect balance of empathy, but precise, managerial skill. Empathy is such a powerful and popular word nowadays, you got to show empathy to your people and customers. And yes, you do, but you also have to get business done. And Erin just has always struck me as someone that gets the balance of those two things probably better than any customer I've ever worked with. I'm so excited to have her on. And as you'll hear, Amerisource has just been in the heart of what's been going on for the past year because they distribute drugs, that's their business, and it's a vital supply chain to our country. And Erin's going to tell us about how they kept it going throughout the crazy last year.
Eric Berridge:
So, Erin Horvath, welcome to Customer Obsessed.
Erin Horvath:
Well, thank you, Eric, thanks for having me.
Eric Berridge:
I haven't been with you in a while, we've done a few things together over the years, right?
Erin Horvath:
Absolutely. I was trying to recollect our last engagement, and I think it was like walking the streets of San Francisco at Dreamforce, pouring down rain, and we were going to take the main stage because that's what we do, Eric, that's what we do.
Eric Berridge:
This is the main stage. That's true.
Erin Acevedo:
Yeah, you're now on the main stage for Customer Obsessed, and we're so excited to have you here.
Erin Horvath:
What a great stage it is.
Eric Berridge:
So, I'm going to pay you a couple compliments here so don't blush, although this is not a video so no one can see. You've just always struck me as one of these leaders that has balanced your life in a really positive, healthy way. And you have this effusive sense of positive energy and enthusiasm and you're obviously really successful and bright. And that's why we wanted to have you on. This has got nothing to do with Salesforce or CRM. I do want to talk about customers and I certainly want to talk about Amerisource because I think the Amerisource story, when I last checked in with you at Dreamforce probably three years ago, you were telling the story about how vital your company is to the supply chain of medicine in this country, and we didn't even know a global pandemic was coming. Unbelievable, right?
Erin Horvath:
I know, totally.
Eric Berridge:
In our show notes, Erin, we should share the link of the interview that Erin and I did together because she does a great job of telling the Amerisource story, which I want you to tell again. But I've just been thinking about you for the last year going, how are they doing, this must have completely been a tsunami for your business, both good and bad I would think, right?
Erin Horvath:
No doubt. So AmerisourceBergen, we're a healthcare delivery company, really focused on delivering pharmaceuticals to customers. In a variety of also kind of downstream services for our manufacturer partners. So just a breadth of a portfolio. But as I think about the pandemic, holy cow, certainly a real proud moment for the organization. As organizations, we talk about purpose, your why, and those things being important. At AmerisourceBergen, we say it is our purpose to create healthier futures. We are united in our responsibility to create healthier futures. You really want people to care, and we have a very fortunate culture that is very patient-minded. It just was amplified during the pandemic.
Erin Horvath:
You kind of quickly pivot to, we have our customer service associates that are now working from home. The IT team just did an incredible job of outfitting all of our customer service associates with laptops. And then you have the distribution centers where they get to keep coming to work. Nothing has changed for them. We're taking their temperatures, they've got the masks, safety protocols, the break rooms are all different. But they're still coming to work. When most of us are working from home, nothing's changed for them other than all these safety protocols. They're the superheroes of the pandemic for AmerisourceBergen, and the nurses as a part of our team in Canada, they're our frontline associates.
Erin Horvath:
And what they have done for AmerisourceBergen to ensure that the healthcare supply chain has remained uninterrupted is nothing short of phenomenal. Phenomenal. And it's because they're so committed, they understand that everything they do touches a patient. I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here, Eric, so let me just pause and see if you have any questions. But I just wanted to, I want to tell you a story about a kind of a defining moment for me as a leader during the pandemic. I'm talking a lot here, so let me pause.
Eric Berridge:
Let me just say two things. Don't forget your story, I don't want to get you off track. We're on a roll here, which is good. It's easy to get Erin on a roll. She's the best. Scale. For our audience, give us some numbers. I mean, you guys are freaking massive. This is not some little trucking medicine company. Give me scale numbers.
Erin Horvath:
We have 1000s of customers across the US and the globe. Again, we have this very diverse portfolio of businesses, we have a huge global business called World Courier, in 52 countries, and they focus on the clinical trials process. You think about what that means during the pandemic. So they had their own amazing stories. I would say, on the US side, even in the diverse businesses we have in the US side, and I'll take it even a little bit closer to home in terms of distribution services, we have 50 distribution centers between animal health and human health across the US. AmerisourceBergen, we have 22,000 Associates. And we are serving 1000s of customers in healthcare settings, academic medical centers, independent pharmacies, long term care facilities. Folks that you drive past on the way to the grocery store.
Erin Horvath:
As we think about the pandemic, it was really the hospitals and the health systems that were really at the tip of the spear in treating patients during this time. So, just as we think about customer-obsessed, we were so focused on having daily conversations with our hospitals to see how they were doing, how are their clinicians doing? Do they have what they need to treat patients? I've never felt so close to our customers and the government at the same time.
Eric Berridge:
And I think you probably had that, I know Salesforce went through this, you had that, and you probably still do to a certain extent, that moment where we're not talking about business anymore, we're talking about how are you doing? What do you need? How can we flex here for you to fill a gap or solve a problem? Things were breaking down I'm sure, but the fact that our medical supply chain did not break down in the middle of this thing is actually unbelievable.
Erin Horvath:
Absolutely.
Eric Berridge:
Most people walk into a Walgreens and pick up a prescription or pick up a bottle of aspirin or whatever, and just take it for granted that that shit is always there. We forget that that is a privilege of being in this country, and having companies like Amerisource that have created this incredible infrastructure and culture and motion that allows this stuff to happen. It doesn't get there on its own.
Erin Horvath:
And part of this dynamic is assuring the government to have confidence that this infrastructure and this capability is best in class. And they believed, thank goodness, and trusted all of us as distributors to be that distribution capability so that they didn't have to worry about how to get medications to patients.
Eric Berridge:
Have you been amazed at how quickly we were able to, I mean, just being in the medical community and being so close to it, were you amazed at how quickly we were able to come up with these vaccines? Was it a surprise to you or did you think this is going to happen fast?
Erin Horvath:
Being in the industry, you have a lot of confidence that the scientists are just amazing people. I would say we were pleasantly surprised or we're pleasantly surprised and just cheering on all these companies. Moderna, Pfizer, J&J, all of them, AZ, everybody who's in the mix, cheering them on from the sidelines and supporting them in whatever way that we can support them.
Eric Berridge:
So tell me your story, you had a story teed up. You didn't forget it, did you?
Erin Horvath:
Yeah, let's talk about the leadership moment. There's two pieces of it now that I'm thinking of it. So, let's talk about the pandemic. We're in early April. New York City is literally on fire. Again, spending all day on calls with government agencies and with customers, and they are on the brink of tears, these large health systems that support New York, Manhattan, in the state, and they're just on the brink of breakdown, and in fact, heard people break down.
Erin Horvath:
And so, at the same time, keeping a close ear to our team. And so, one of my team members, one of my leaders that leads the distribution centers in the northeast, we call it the Atlantic district, calls me and said we have an associate that tested positive. We have two distribution centers in New York, one on Long Island, one in Newburgh. And an associates tested positive in [inaudible 00:10:27]. And so, we were like, oh my God, game on. The director of operations handled it beautifully. Then we've always committed to being really transparent. Of course, we don't say to our team members exactly who it was, but we're always been very transparent.
Eric Berridge:
It wasn't like, Bob's got COVID.
Erin Horvath:
Right. Right. And so, there were a couple ahas for me in that experience. One, our first associate, English was not that person's first language. So we were just contemplating like, okay, let's make sure that we get an understanding of what's going on here. And of course, that all went great. Okay, great, fast forward a week and then associate tested positive in our distribution center in Newburgh. So okay, great, we've done this, we know we're communicating, blah, blah. Eight hours later, another associate tests positive.
Eric Berridge:
Same place?
Erin Horvath:
Same place, same Newburgh, associate tested positive. Okay, talking to director of operations, everything's under control, we've got the team, blah, blah, blah, we're good. Another eight hours, an associate tested positive. So, you can see where I'm going with this. Within probably a two to three date period of time, we had about five associates test positive, and I could tell by the sound of the voice of the director of operations, he was losing his team.
Erin Horvath:
And I thought, I am not doing this to this team. I want them to know that AmerisourceBergen is here for them, and I want them to know that we are incredibly passionate about their safety. I want our associates to feel proud and safe at AmerisourceBergen. So we huddled, we talked about as a resilient supply chain, how do we direct orders to our distribution center in Pennsylvania. So we came up with a game plan, we do that all the time, to be honest, weather events and things like that, we'll [inaudible 00:12:16] for that. That's not an anomaly for us. We get the orders over there, and we close the Newburgh distribution center. And we close it for, I want to say about five days.
Eric Berridge:
How many people are up there just roughly?
Erin Horvath:
About 250 people. And we did that to put our associates at rest. I knew we were at the height of the pandemic there in New York and they needed those products. But I was confident in our supply chain, I was confident in the team in Pennsylvania to be able to get those products to New York without a hitch. Now, we follow DEA regulations as we should. There's control substances, there are products, controlled substances that you need to use to intubate patients on ventilators. A little glitch there, but we figured it out within six hours and we've got those products flowing across state lines and transparency with the DEA. Certainly not perfect, but it was as a leader, this moment of customer-obsessed and a customer need, but also taking care of your team, and wanting them to feel protected. And so just making that call.
Erin Horvath:
And then I would say too to kind of carry that forward, you have the pandemic and then you fast forward to the social injustice. And as a leader, inviting that conversation in a very open dialogue with associates across the world, I facilitated many of the leaders, we facilitated conversations. I had a woman from World Courier, she was in Germany on my call in talking and having an honest conversation about the injustice that was going on, that goes on in the United States. We've never had conversations like that in a very open, corporate facilitated conversation. I tell you, it was the highlight of my leadership career.
Eric Berridge:
Really.
Erin Horvath:
And associates that I visit, I had a woman from Sacramento reach out to me, I do a lot of traveling and she reached out she goes, can we talk? Let's talk. And the stories we talked about her experience being with the organization, and she's the only daughter and her brothers and just not being in a financial situation to support her parents. And just the stories we shared as I reflect on the last six months or a year, has been through some of those social injustice conversations as well. So it's not all about the pandemic.
Erin Acevedo:
So I do have a follow up question there for you, Erin. We all know that there's implicit bias and racial disparities in healthcare, and I just want to know what the patterns are that you've seen and are there any ideas out there about how we can disrupt them to ensure better care for everyone?
Erin Horvath:
Yeah, absolutely. I have the very fortunate opportunity to be on the board of a not for profit called Healthcare Ready. And Healthcare Ready liaises between the public and private sector. They specifically get involved in terms of emergency preparedness, disaster recovery, so that patients can get their medications during usually a weather event. But in the case here, they've been very much at the center of the pandemic and very focused on underserved communities. And they have been doing, we as Healthcare Ready have been doing a lot of work with a Walmart Foundation. And I give the Walmart foundation a lot of credit. This is way before the pandemic, they were looking and wanted to understand the impact of the natural disaster on the communities that are underserved.
Erin Horvath:
And so, as Healthcare Ready, had a lot of that information and used that to inform conversations with the government to ensure that we're bringing to light the underrepresented communities to ensure that people were focused on them as well. So it's just an amazing amount of work that again, give a lot of credit to the Walmart Foundation to bringing that forward. They've been awesome in that they're not looking to use it just for Walmart. They want the information to be shared. And so, I'm certainly not an expert on that work, but I do know that Healthcare Ready was able to leverage that information and the knowledge they have around underserved communities, and bring that into the conversation as we're talking about treating patients during the pandemic.
Erin Acevedo:
And then just in a more general sense, I think no matter your situation, we've all experienced aggravation when it comes to healthcare as patients ourselves, I'm pretty sure that everyone has some sort of story around that. I would love to hear your opinion on where you see the biggest opportunities are for transformation in terms of the patient experience and in your relationships there if you have any insight.
Eric Berridge:
This is like right into the sweet spot of your new role that's coming up. You're going to be the chief transformation officer at AmerisourceBergen, which I want to dig into as well.
Erin Horvath:
As with many things, a lot about it is education, and it's hearing from corporate folks about being that voice, being that voice of the folks that maybe don't always get heard, and amplifying that voice. That's the opportunity. I'll just share a quick story. Walgreens was doing some innovative work, specifically in the Gainesville area. And they were piloting things. So we were down there to talk to them, and I was observing, in this particular store, I would say service an underserved population.
Erin Horvath:
And what I was really amazed by is the pharmacist, how much time that he spent as I was standing there talking to patients about ability to afford the medication. And I could hear a mom and how she responded in the look on her face about a choice that she had to make. I don't mean to open a can of worms around drug pricing or any of that because that's a slippery slope to be honest. But it's real, it's the humaneness of how do we ensure people that can't afford medications can. I saw it with my own two eyes, and it reinvigorated me to be an amplified voice for ensuring that we're doing whatever we can do to support those patients, those communities, and what they're trying to juggle as humans.
Eric Berridge:
My mother has stage four lung cancer, and she's doing great, and she is on a medication that has just kept her alive for the last four years, and she's going strong. I think you may have met her at Dreamforce one year, Erin.
Erin Horvath:
I did.
Eric Berridge:
She's amazing. We can talk about mom all day long. But she was on this drug called, she's on a drug now called Trogarzo. And I don't remember if her experience was with Trogarzo or with Tarceva, which was the first drug she was on. But her insurance after a period of time basically said, you're going to start coming out of pocket for this. And when I first heard her tell me that, I was like, whatever, we'll come out of pocket, no big deal. Until we realized that it was like $13,000 a month. And mom was like, we can't afford that. But she's also a highly educated individual, has her PhD, went online, started looking into it, got in touch with the drug company, found a program. Dug deep into this system and found a way to get this drug at almost no cost.
Eric Berridge:
The social injustice is most people can't go down that path. They can't figure it out. They don't have time or access to information or aren't as educated, and they're basically stuck on the sidelines without the drug, and now lives are at stake. Do you see a lot of that?
Erin Horvath:
What we really do is we really count on the providers. And actually AmerisourceBergen has a business called Lash, and it's a patient assistance program where we partner with manufacturers to offer their products to people that cannot afford them. And it's really leveraging the providers to inform the patient that there are programs out there for people that can't afford them. That's the good news is that education to let people know.
Erin Horvath:
The other thing that I would just add is, I was in another conversation earlier this week as we were thinking about kind of the impacts and the accelerations of things through the pandemic, and we talked a lot about healthcare technology. That's the place where you want to invest. And there's a lot of it and a lot of innovation and creativity. I believe the future in connecting with underserved communities is through a mobile device. It's really making easy, simple, accessible information for them, for all of us to really make sure that at their fingertips, they can get the care that they need in an easy, simple way. And to me, that's how we reach those communities.
Eric Berridge:
So, you're going to be the chief transformation officer.
Erin Horvath:
Right.
Eric Berridge:
Right? And you're currently the president of distribution. These are big jobs in a big company. First of all, how did you get there? I'll just call it out, you're a female leader. There's no secret, we need more of you. We need this gender gap to get crushed in the next five to 10 years. I have very positive viewpoint on that, I actually think we have a tsunami of amazing female leaders that are about to topple this whole challenge.
Erin Horvath:
I agree, 100%.
Eric Berridge:
I just see them coming out of the woodwork.
Erin Horvath:
Me too.
Eric Berridge:
But I want to hear your story. How did you get there? What was your journey?
Erin Horvath:
Prior to AmerisourceBergen, I was in consulting for six years. I had my first child. I wanted to get off the road. And AmerisourceBergen had been a client so I was, I'm a culture person, so I want to be attracted to a culture, so that's what led me to AmerisourceBergen. And I joined in the IT organization and I had the fortunate opportunity to work for a leader who was very passionate about talent development, and kind of gave us the tools and said, hey, give this some thought. Well, I'm goal-oriented, I was a competitive swimmer all the way through college. So nothing more, I love a good goal and goals.
Eric Berridge:
I never knew that about you, by the way. Where do you swim?
Erin Horvath:
George Washington University. So I really took it seriously. As any good consultant business person, I put together a PowerPoint, and I charted my life, I charted my hopes and dreams, I put my husband on there, I put his hopes and dreams, my kids, when they're going to be out of elementary school, middle school, high school. And I had optionality in there. Opportunities that I saw for myself at AmerisourceBergen, and things outside of AmerisourceBergen. And never thought I'd been with the organization, it's been 16 years, but I thought about three or four years, and I'm out.
Erin Horvath:
But the culture has continued to draw me in, and I've just, I'm naturally curious, I love going into, it's the consultant that comes out in me. I've worked in so many different parts of our business and just with all and curiosity and understanding, the customers that we're serving in that capability, our manufacturer partners, and just wanting to deeply learn. It took me 10 years to get my MBA, and I always am like, why did it take so long. Because of life, three different grad schools. But then I realized, I'm a learner, I love to learn. And whether that's in an academic environment or in a business environment, I love it. And so that has served me well. And of course, you got to kind of make some quick discernments, you've got to take action and be decisive, and you've got to work well with others.
Erin Horvath:
I think if I look more recently, one of the things that I find myself getting to the woman thing, up until probably a month ago, I was the only woman direct report to my boss.
Eric Berridge:
How many direct reports did he have?
Erin Horvath:
Let's say seven. And honestly, at AmerisourceBergen, we do a nice job. Somebody might say otherwise, but we do okay, let's say that. We're a humble group.
Eric Berridge:
You're not scared by it. You can confront it, right?
Erin Horvath:
Yeah, absolutely. Right. And so the conversation sometimes what we have is like, oh, we don't know how to coach women and blah, blah, blah. And I say, guys, timeout, this is what you do. They're all listening and perked up, I'm going to tell them the key to losing weight or something like that. I said, listen, it's real easy. You have to encourage and you have to be supportive, and listen, that's it. That's all you have to do. It's not complicated. Encourage, support, and listen, and amazing things will happen.
Eric Berridge:
You know, the most important one of those I think, is listen.
Erin Horvath:
Absolutely. And you're a great listener, Eric. I know because I work with women that have worked with you for many years, and it is your strong suit.
Eric Berridge:
So since I jump back into the workforce in December, I'm working at this big company that we all know called Salesforce. And they are like, I would say probably similar Amerisource, not perfect, trying hard at this topic. It's from the top down, we all talk about it. But my lesson that I've learned so far is that when you get a bunch of dudes on a Zoom and there are only a couple of women there, it's incumbent upon those dudes to shut up. And I don't know if that's a gender thing or not or if it's wired, or if it's science or isn't science, but we have a tendency to be these aggressive in your face. I've been on so many calls where I'm like, just shut up because we have other people here who have a different perspective that we need to hear from. And so as leaders, I think we have to make sure we're hearing from everyone. And this isn't just a gender thing, bring in diversity of thought into your conversations.
Erin Horvath:
And I'm very fortunate, my boss, he's an introvert, and he's very reserved. And because of that, and also it's just his style, he creates this space. And he adores his sister and thinks very highly of women in the workforce, a lot of his strong I'll say advisors are women. And he creates this space, which is awesome. So my conversations are a little bit more with my peers, with my male direct reports and female direct reports at that matter to create space for all voices to be heard.
Erin Acevedo:
Erin, just as a follow up onto that, there's a really fascinating article that came out recently on imposter syndrome. And the authors, Jodi-Ann Burey and Ruchika Tulshyan, they make the argument that imposter syndrome stems from racial and gender biases that are rooted in a working environment that was built for white men, and that can lead to feelings of discomfort, exclusion and inadequacy. And I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that and what we can do to break that down.
Erin Horvath:
Erin, there's truth to that. And I would say it's trying to have confidence, because I've had moments, and I'll say those moments are a little bit more recent than earlier in my career. But then I've had these kind of aha moments as a part of that I'm like, you know what, I was right. And it's not that anybody's been aggressive towards me about it, we'll have a conversation, somebody comes across that's super confident, and I'm like, I don't think that's the case, to be honest, whatever that person's point of view is. And then I'll of a follow up conversation, I'm like, I'm not too sure that was, they were like, you know what, you're right, I kind of really didn't know what I was talking about. I'm like, what the heck.
Erin Acevedo:
Then why did you say anything. The overblown confidence thing is just ...
Erin Horvath:
Yeah, I was like, dang. This is something that I think about. Golf is a good example, not so much the imposter syndrome, but it's like outgrowing what happens on the golf course, and we won't get into all this male and golfing because, Eric, I know you're a golfer, so no disrespect here. It's that you're creating a forum where only people who can play can be a part of some of those conversations. And most women don't play golf. And this is not a new phenomenon. That's coming down.
Erin Acevedo:
But it's a really good example of what happens to create exclusive spaces where careers can be made.
Erin Horvath:
It's not ill-intended. It's not like, we don't want women as part of this. No, it's like, let's go out and have fun. And then we happen to talk about business on the course, great. It's not meant to be exclusive. It's not. But just by the nature of it, it is. But I'll tell you, years ago, I saw this quote from Shonda Rhimes that just really resonated with me. And she said, "Nobody has it figured out." And I say, amen, amen. No matter how somebody shows up, no matter how much swagger, nobody's got it figured out. And it's true.
Eric Berridge:
And we're all about the same.
Erin Horvath:
That's right. That's right.
Eric Berridge:
And it's how we interact, and it's how we, our good friend Olga, who I'll give a plug to because we wouldn't know each other without Olga, Erin. She said it to me the best about two years ago. We were talking about something and there was something going on in the business and there was someone that was causing problems or whatever. And she goes, "People just want to be loved."
Erin Horvath:
Amen.
Eric Berridge:
It's literally all we actually strive for. And if you can figure out how to show empathy and where people's "superpowers" are and where their superpowers aren't, and then you can shower love around that, they're going to perform and they're going to want to work with you. A lot of organizations struggle to figure that out, and they get so transactional.
Erin Acevedo:
Just going back to the listening thing one more time as a part of that and making room and making sure to open up space, I think it's just as important to hear, or to be aware of what is not being said and who is not getting a chance to speak.
Eric Berridge:
Totally.
Erin Acevedo:
Or who might speak and nobody else hears them. And that's another huge thing that happens, especially for women, I myself had an experience like that recently, where I was talking about something in relation to my stargazing business. And I had just read a book on this subject, I had just read a book on it, and I was talking about it, and everything that I had learned. And I was challenged on one of the points and I had to keep repeating, no, I literally just read a book on this subject, this is the correct thing. I had to really fight for it. And the person I was speaking to was a man, and that was so frustrating to me. And I left the conversation wondering if this person had had that same conversation with another man, would that have happened?
Erin Horvath:
Eric, you had made the comment earlier, there is this tsunami of women, and I see it too. And I'm like, these dudes better watch out, because these women are out there killing it, killing it. I have a lot of conversations, how do I have a family and work too, because they're so passionate. We talk a lot about that because there's the desire, there's the ambition. And it's not for money, it's because they want to contribute, and be a part of something bigger. And they've got a voice and they want to be heard. And I tell you, what I love about the younger women coming in, they're going to take that dude by the ear, and they're going to say, listen, just like what you did, Erin, my generation, okay, you're a little, okay, you take your toys and you turn around and you go back to wherever you came from. No, these women are bold, and I love it. I'm like, you get it girl, get after it.
Eric Berridge:
I will say this, I can't give people personal advice and I'm not a therapist, but if you feel like you want to have a family, have the family. Work is going to sort itself out. Don't think that I can't do that because of my job, you'll figure the job out. Things work out. [crosstalk 00:32:16].
Erin Acevedo:
So related to that though, this leads me into another question that I would love to hear both of your opinions on. There have been studies coming out very recently about the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women in their careers and how do we help women in our companies bounce back from that, because the burden of care primarily fell on women shoulders?
Erin Horvath:
Yes, I had two really good friends who left the workforce. And they both had elementary school kids. And it's trying to ensure that they get the education, and that was their focus. I also have two friends right now, and actually a couple other friends that either had babies or expecting. And that pandemic's been great for them. So I think that as we think about these women who have left the workforce, it's having grace when those ladies want to come back into the workforce. It was kind of like, for a while, it was really hard for women who left the workforce for, let's say, 10 or 15 years to raise their children, and then want to get back. It was kind of hard for women to do that. And my husband was a stay at home dad for three years, he had no problem getting back into the workforce. I was like, why is it so easy for you and not easy for women? I think we're making a lot of progress.
Erin Horvath:
But I'm hoping through the pandemic, that employers and leaders have grace. That as these women want to come back into the workforce, they are going to be welcomed with open arms. Eric, what do you think?
Eric Berridge:
I agree. I always felt like, particularly women that have families, we have to be really careful to make sure that the work life balance pieces of our days are really respected. I had a boss at IBM who would schedule calls at 7:30 in the morning, and he didn't have kids either, by the way. And it's like, dude, you can't do that. It's not even just women, it's like kids are going to school, their lunches are being made. We waste so much time in corporate America with nonsense meetings and conversations. If we're smart about that and if we make the right decisions about where we're spending our time, there's plenty of time to do all of this stuff. But I think male leaders have to be especially cognizant of that.
Erin Horvath:
I've seen a lot of change.
Eric Berridge:
I have too.
Erin Horvath:
I really have.
Erin Acevedo:
One last thing around this, outside of the corporate world and leadership's responsibility to make room for women to come back and still advance, which I think is incredibly important, I think there's one final thing there that just as individuals and as a society, we also need to address the fact that the burden of care in home lives still falls on women shoulders for the majority of things. I know that those are intensely personal conversations to have within your own groups. But as a society, we also need to be aware of them and to be talking about them, and to start saying, hey, this is not okay, how do we change this so that there is a more equal division between men and women at home? And I just think that it's such an incredibly important piece of this conversation.
Eric Berridge:
I agree with you, Erin, and I'll also say this, nothing replaces mom. It's pretty hard. And I don't know if you agree with that or not, Erin.
Erin Horvath:
I would agree because I make my kids lunch and I have never done that because I'm all supportive of the public school lunch and what they offer. I'm lucky my husband does laundry, he does cooking, and it's because his dad did the same. So he had a role model. But I see it's more 50-50. Hey, you know what, Erin, I got to run and pick up my kids from school, blah, blah, blah, a guy. Great, go do that. I see us getting better. I think women can also continue to be strong and saying this is my expectation as being your partner.
Eric Berridge:
I agree with that. And laundry and being mom, those aren't connected. Guys should be able to do laundry.
Erin Acevedo:
That's what I'm saying. Just an equal division of seeing at home. My husband and I don't have kids, but it's still a conversation that we have around responsibilities in our household. It's all of those conversations, not just around kids.
Erin Horvath:
Absolutely, you're right.
Erin Acevedo:
So Erin, our final question for you, always around literature and books and creative endeavors, we would just love to hear from you about one work of fiction, play, poem, novel, that has made a really big impact on you.
Erin Horvath:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to give you two answers here. One is Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. It is such a blend, it speaks to me about changing the soul of Microsoft. I just ate every single second of it because it was so human in how he talked about the transformation of Microsoft. So that is the one that sticks out to me.
Erin Horvath:
Now, here's a confession moment, and I would just ask that this is a judgment free zone, is that my favorite periodical, which even saying periodical dates me, but I'm just saying it because I'm being, I'm just being honest here, is US Magazine. So, I read that from cover to cover and I still keep hardcopy. Now, one of my favorite quotes is from Tyra Banks that I saw in US Magazine, I'm just saying it, in that, "The mic is always hot." And I've taken that to heart as a leader. No matter what you say, somebody is listening. And there was a time in my life where I could say whatever and nobody would care. And so I kind of thought that that was true as I grew, and it's not. You've got to be careful what you say, just like I got to be careful what I say here. Whatever, we all do. We want to be authentic, but whether it's Satya or Tyra Banks, I love them both.
Eric Berridge:
Wow, that was great. The mic is always hot. It's true.
Erin Acevedo:
Your words matter. They're important no matter who you're talking to.
Eric Berridge:
And they can be misinterpreted, and they can be, you have to be really thoughtful, you have to think about the dominoes that are going to fall as a leader when you ask your organization to do something.
Erin Horvath:
Absolutely.
Erin Acevedo:
Yeah, it's about empathy.
Erin Horvath:
That's right.
Eric Berridge:
Erin, it was so great to have you on Customer Obsessed, it was so great to connect again. And hopefully we can do it again in the not so distant future.
Erin Horvath:
Absolutely, absolutely. Erin and Eric, thank you so much for having me. It's just been a bright spot in my week to have this conversation with you guys. So thanks for having me. I'm just super thrilled to have the opportunity. Thank you.
Erin Acevedo:
So Eric, you know what I've really loved about this interview with Erin?
Eric Berridge:
No, I don't, Erin, what did you love about it?
Erin Acevedo:
It's that she focused entirely on people. It wasn't on the technology, the distribution systems at Amerisource. She always took it back to the people who make the work possible.
Eric Berridge:
Yeah. I said that in our intro, she has this amazing sense of empathy that's grounded in the realities of business, and I think that came through in this interview. And you could hear her get so excited about some of the things that have happened over the past year and how they were able to pivot and how they took care of people first.
Erin Acevedo:
Right. I mean, the story she told about having to go in and stop work at one of their distribution centers because so many of the employees had caught COVID, and to do that kind of shifting on a dime pinpoint, everyone relying on each other as a team, was pretty incredible. You have so many other stories, unfortunately, during this time where employers decided to not do the right thing, and just continue to keep things open and put people at risk. And so, it was pretty amazing to hear that story about putting employees first as you hope that everyone will.
Eric Berridge:
And I think there's a certain genuineness to it. This is a massive company. This company does 10s of billions of dollars a year in revenue, they have an incredible supply chain. She's the president of distribution, yet she is reaching into the organization and helping at the personal level, which I think makes for engaged employees, and obviously makes her engaged customers, which is our theory and thesis around Customer Obsession.
Erin Acevedo:
One of the other things I wanted to touch on though, and again, this is something I think that Erin in particular does really well is that focus on people. But I think that we're also realizing that we are more technology dependent than ever before, and there are new ways of engaging with employees and engaging with customers and kind of bridging that gap between needing to be in person and being virtual. And you have a lot of interesting things to say on people over technology, and some of the missteps I think that entrepreneurs have made over the years in prioritizing technology over people. And what's some advice you have on how leaders can avoid doing that?
Eric Berridge:
You have to do both. But you have to start with the individual and the customer and your employee and your stakeholders, and you need to work backwards from their points of view, because what ends up happening is, if we build technology for technology's sake, typically where we miss is we're not taking those points of view into account at a deep enough level. We all need technology in our lives, and we get pissed when it doesn't work. We're livid when something doesn't download or it's too difficult to navigate, and now it's costing us more time than if we had just gone the manual route.
Eric Berridge:
So, we're living in a digital age, there are high expectations from customers and employees and users around what technology is going to deliver to them. But if you start with people and if you start with human interaction as your basis, you'll typically deploy the right technology. And I see this all the time, we see companies that are like, we're going through a digital transformation. Well, great. What does that mean? We're actually working with a customer right now and we're helping them to deploy a new chat feature on their website. And in our early discussions, they wanted to push the chat user into a series of FAQs. And we raised our hand and said, you're better off not doing it because if you're going to push your customer into a bunch of FAQs, it's going to frustrate them, and they'd rather just call you. I look for, what's the saying, water finds the lowest point, or what is like, we used to have a leaky basement, so it was always like, well, water is going to find the lowest point.
Eric Berridge:
Your customer is always smart enough to find the quickest way to get something done. So give them technology to enable that. Don't give them technology that is actually going to get them off the path, and is going to frustrate them, and then they're going to pick up the phone and be pissed off anyhow. So we advised this customer, we said, you know what, if you can't automate the chat piece, push them towards an 800 number. Pick up the phone on one ring. Now is that going to cost you more, yes. So invest in the automation over time, but don't frustrate your customer in the meantime.
Erin Acevedo:
Thanks for listening to our interview with Erin Horvath. We'll share the resources and books we mentioned in the show notes at customerobsessed.net, and don't forget to sign up for the Customer Obsessed newsletter to stay up to date and get bonus clips and exclusive content. If you're a fan of the show, don't forget to leave us a review and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a Customer Obsessed moment.