Our People

Kate Kompelien

Director, Customer Experience Solutions

Kate is a Customer Experience leader, focused on coaching and educating across the design process. She pioneered a first of its kind CX Design process (insights, mapping, behavioral research, design and measurement) for a major retailer. She hired and trained the talent to deliver exceptional work back to the organization which has proven to drive significant revenue growth. Kate understands the importance for companies to differentiate in this highly competitive environment. Change management comes from listening, communicating and collaborating while delivering exceptional output that results in increased revenue, improved customer loyalty and aligned decision making.

Kate has over 20 years of insight experience at Fortune 500 companies within food service, consumer packaged goods, retail, digital and services. She is known to be a realistic and collaborative partner in the world of business which has budget, time and resource constraints. She is futuristic and can stage complex projects while ensuring the customer always drives the solution. Kate can synthesize insights across multiple sources of data and tell a story that drives actionable plans and strategic business decisions.

As a Customer Experience Professional, Kate holds an MBA in Marketing with a focus on research from St. Thomas University and a MS in Grain Science from Kansas State University as well as a Bachelors Degree in Food Science from the University of Minnesota.

How did you find your way to Avtex?

When I left Best Buy I wanted to start my own consulting business and I went to an Avtex sponsored conference the day I left and ended up meeting Kurt Schroeder. At the end of the conference I was talking to Kurt and we had a lot of common experiences and later grabbed a coffee. A few months later we met for lunch and he mentioned he had a job available but I was still enjoying having my own consulting business BUT through more conversations, I ended up coming to Avtex and I’m very happy with my decision.

How does what you do in your role impact Customer Experience for our clients?

Well, that’s exactly what I do. We have a Customer Experience process. What we hear back from our clients Is that it helps organizations align around a common goal and it helps organizations work differently. Many organizations are in silos today and they realize through the process we take them through, what a huge benefit it is to work together across functions. They realize if they don’t do that they create a ton of pain points for their customers.

What parts of your job do you find the most satisfying?

Building a team and coaching. With the newer people coming in getting to watch them grow and learn about CX and seeing their excitement and passion around it is probably my favorite part.

What are some words you would use to describe Customer Experience?

I think this is actually really confusing for a lot of people. Some companies today are talking about offering CX but they are offering a bot which is not CX. A lot of time people only think of CX as the voice of customer surveys but that isn’t what it is either. CX is really an end-to-end process that helps a team understand the current state, as a team ideate on those problems that lead to a future state vision and then has to end with execution.