“Every customer used to have a notecard in a box. We used to punch holes in the cards to denote that they’d paid for the month. If you were still in the box, you were delinquent. I kid you not.”
-Stephanie Tucker
So much about working in tech is about building a better tomorrow for your customers. When envisioning solutions for customers, it certainly helps to have the perspective and experience of yesterday, which plays a critical role in building a winning solution for tomorrow. Stephanie Tucker has seen it all.
Stephanie Tucker started her career at ABC Financial (Now ABC Fitness) in 1994. She grew her way up through the company, learning how key business functions worked, seeing how technology would change them and ultimately coming to redefine how those same processes should be managed. When it came to billing, her team would literally punch a hole in a notecard to keep track of whether a check had been received or not.
Customer Success, or “Operations” as it was simply referred to back then, was a role where Stephanie’s self-described “Southern Hospitality” enabled her to shine. “There’s something to be said about just being fast and friendly, about using good manners, calling people back when you say you are going to call them, even if you have to deliver bad news, but you do it with kindness and empathy. When done in this way, it’s easy to maintain those very intimate, personal relationships that engender fandom and loyalty for your brand. The basics go so far in this industry, even now.” This mentality is the one she brings to hiring and she looks for similar traits when building her teams.
“As you scale and grow an organization, customer interactions can become more robotic. It can be difficult. Outside investors entering your business may make it harder. But hiring the right people is really a big part of making it work. Combine great people with rock-star processes, and your organization can go far. But it’s finding those people who have an inherent desire to serve, to serve the customer, that makes it all possible.”
-Stephanie Tucker
Tucker believes hiring is the start, but then how you manage your team after they’re on it, is what allows first-class customer service to thrive even as an organization grows. “As you hire more people onto your team, it’s essential that you give them a framework with guidelines for how they should perform, with the flexibility to impact that customer personally.”
“I don’t tell my team, ‘you’re going to go do A, B, C and D. I want to inspire them so that they’ll do A, B, C and D, and also E, F and G.”
-Stephanie Tucker
Stephanie’s approach to people allowed her to rise to the ranks of Executive Vice President before her life was turned upside down in 2018. A breast cancer diagnosis, 8 surgeries, and months of intense chemotherapy made fitness and wellness an even more personal mission.
“When you’re going through chemo, even getting up off the couch becomes extremely challenging. Too many people take their health and wellness for granted. I feel so fortunate to be in a position with Hapana where we’re helping our customers help millions of people commit to their own health and wellness over the long term.
The future of health and wellness is personal for Stephanie, and when she met the Hapana team and CEO & Founder Jarron Aizen, she saw something being built that she wanted to be a part of. What excites her the most, is the hybridization of service delivery that is not likely to be going backward, certainly not post COVID.
"I was never a gym rat. But having the connectivity to offer wide variations of opportunities to get healthy and stay healthy, whether that’s in-home or in a studio big box, to do all of that and manage that, that’s ‘ownership of my own experience’. We’re delivering that to our customers, who are in turn changing the lives of their customers.”
When Stephanie isn’t over-delivering on customer needs or managing her team in a way that creates inspiration over perspiration, she might be enjoying a Game of Thrones book, which she was into long before it was ever a hit series on HBO. “I have no problem being goofy, being a nerd when I’m with my family. I love Spaceballs, Ace Ventura, that kind of hilarity.
Above all else, Stephanie values her ever-growing family and time away from technology at one of the many lakes that make Arkansas great. “Family time at the lake is how I decompress. We have a 15-person boat. We love to grill and cook in a big yard. Arkansas is one of the best-kept secrets in the world. Little Rock is a big town, but it’s called the Natural State for a reason!”