Eyes on the Horizon
The first thing they teach you at Airborne School isn’t how to jump. It’s where to look.
Under a canopy, the ground rushes up at you, and every instinct says to watch it and brace. That’s exactly how paratroopers get hurt: you reach for the ground, land stiff, and break something. So, the instructors drill one lesson until it becomes reflex. Eyes on the horizon.
I served 12 years in the Army, from enlisted infantryman to Airborne Captain, then spent more than 25 years in contact centers at Equifax, Target, Fifth Third, Avon, Milacron, FTD and now Fellers. I think about that lesson almost every day, because most of us in customer engagement live staring at the ground: service level, handle time, today’s queue, tomorrow’s staffing gap, peak season.
It feels responsible. It feels like leadership. But if all you ever watch is the ground, you will land hard, and so will your team.
That Was the Job
For years I asked why I always got the broken ones. My first Army command was the worst-performing platoon in the unit. My first civilian contact center ranked 23rd out of 23. Later came FTD’s rebuild after bankruptcy, and now Fellers, modernizing a business that ran on little integrated technology.
Then it hit me: that was the job. It always was. That Atlanta center went from last to second in the company in 11 months. If you’re in the hardest assignment of your career right now, that isn’t bad luck. It may be the best thing that ever happens to you.
Getting through it takes three shifts in perspective, each borrowed from the military:
- Step Back
Every Army mission ends with an After Action Review. Rank stays at the door; only the truth comes in. Four questions: What did we plan? What actually happened? Why the difference? What will we do differently next time?
When did you last run a real one on your contact center? Not a QBR or a dashboard review, but one where the honest answer might be about you?
Every time I’ve stepped back from that struggling platoon to broken teams inside billion-dollar companies, I’ve found the same thing. The people weren’t the problem. The systems, processes and culture around them were. Most customer pain is an execution failure, not a frontline failure. Coaching agents harder to fix a broken process is asking soldiers to march faster on a bad map.
Stepping back also means owning your misses. Fail fast, fail early, fail small. The only bad decision is no decision.
- See Ahead
Every military order carries Commander’s Intent: the “why” behind the mission, understood two levels up. Plans always break. When the radio goes down, the soldier who knows the why still makes the right call.
Most contact center leaders know their metrics cold and don’t know their CEO’s intent. Yet every number we own translates into enterprise value. Contact rate is cost-to-serve and a signal about your product. First contact resolution is retention. Empowered agents drive lifetime value. Voice of the customer is enterprise strategy, if anyone is listening. Speak in contact center terms and you get a budget conversation. Speak in enterprise terms and you get a strategy conversation.
At FTD, we consolidated eight agent systems into one workspace, put AI to work across voice, digital and agent assist, and moved from transactions to relationships. Customer lifetime value more than doubled. We didn’t just fix the queue; we changed what the contact center was worth to the business.
But the moment I’ll never forget was a 91-year-old D-Day veteran who sent his wife flowers every month. When we let him down, a compassionate agent turned that failure into loyalty. She didn’t have a script. She had permission, a leader who trusted her and a system that let her act. Our customers aren’t contacts. They’re moments that matter, and so are our agents.
- Redefine Your Role
Lieutenants lead soldiers. Captains lead leaders. Every jump in my career was a different job, and the hardest part was letting go of what had made me successful.
Our profession has the same jump, from operator to value creator. The operator manages the queue; the value creator manages the customer lifetime. The operator reports handle time; the value creator reports retention, revenue and cost. The operator handles contacts; the value creator eliminates the reasons for them. The operator waits for a seat at the table; the value creator earns it with data.
Nobody will promote you into that role. You have to see your job that way first. And nobody makes the jump alone. Every new lieutenant is paired with a seasoned sergeant. Mine told me, “LT, you move fast. Don’t forget to look back over your shoulder and see that everyone is right behind you.” I still hear it. Find your sergeant and be someone else’s. For me, that means mentoring veterans moving into corporate careers.
Start Monday
Here’s what I’m asking. Not someday. Monday.
- Step back. Block 60 minutes every week and run your own After Action Review: plan, reality, why, next.
- See ahead. Tie your top three contact drivers to one outcome your CEO already tracks.
- Redefine your role. Name one mentor and one mentee in the next 30 days, then write your roadmap down.
This week the ground will rush up again: the queue, the forecast, the fire drill. When it does, lift your eyes. And if the hardest assignment is on your desk right now, remember what took me 20 years to learn.
That’s not bad luck. That’s the job.
John is a Customer Experience and Service executive currently serving as CCXO at Fellers, where he is leading an end-to-end customer experience transformation. Most recently, he spearheaded the post-bankruptcy CX transformation of floral gifting company FTD, implementing AI across voice, digital, and agent channels. With leadership experience spanning automotive, banking, logistics, manufacturing, and retail, John has led customer service transformations for both public and private companies. A former U.S. Army Captain and paratrooper, he also serves on multiple CX and AI advisory boards and was recently named one of the “100 Leaders Transforming Customer Experience.”
