Customer Experience: The Mark of Success - Julie Roehm

Point of View
5 min readDec 13, 2022

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I was recently featured in an article by Mass News to discuss my role as Chief Experience Officer and how we worked toward making the entire party-planning process a joyous one.

A heavy dose of adulting can hurt anybody’s psyche when planning a party or event. It doesn’t matter if the occasion is a 50th anniversary or Oyster Day; planning it can leave a person feeling frazzled and seeking peace.

Such a frantic predicament is not only a customer’s nightmare; it haunts the dreams of any chief experience officer. It’s the CXO’s responsibility to use predictive and analytical tools to ensure the shopper at a company enjoys experiencing its website or store.

Julie Roehm fulfilled dual roles as the CXO and Chief Marketing Officer for Party City, the top party goods and Halloween specialty retailer in North America according to revenue. Within 60 days of arriving, Roehm and the customer experience team tinkered with their website and other marketing touch points to help ensure the customer experience is joy-filled

“When you think about what most people have to do when getting ready to throw a party, it’s a long list, and it can be stressful,” Roehm says. “It’s like, ‘Did I forget something? What if I didn’t invite somebody? What if I forgot the cupcakes or the favor bags?’ There are so many things that could go wrong. And it can be very stressful. Our job is to deliver quick tools to make it easy for people so that it isn’t only the celebration that is joyous, but the whole process is joyous.”

New CEO Streamlined Operations Via Vertical Integration

In 2019, Party City’s new CEO, Brad Weston, promised to deliver a streamlined approach to operating more than 850 stores. Weston vertically integrated Party City so that it continued to manufacture and sell party products. Still, he set a higher bar for the shopper desiring a one-stop shopping experience so customers can plan events, from invitations to balloons, in stores or on the website.

Julie Roehm chatted on “The Marketing Stir” podcast from Stirista, a digital marketing technology company, to explain how customer and journey mapping helped Party City improve the customer experience from start to finish.

Digital and brick-and-mortar businesses depend on the customer experience going happily because the alternative — shoppers’ alienation and bad reviews on Yelp — can poison the well. Unhappy customers can create learning opportunities for customer-facing teams, but no company wants them.”

You can read the original article here.

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Julie Roehm is a global CXO and CMO. She is an innovative customer-centric marketer known for strategizing profitable corporate turnarounds with fast revenue growth via capturing stories that resonate with clients. She was named Marketer of Year” by BrandWeek, Brand Innovators Top 50 Women in Brand Marketing, the Tri-State Diversity Councils Most Powerful and Influential Woman”, an Automotive News Marketing All-Star” and one of Working Mothers Top 25 Women”. Shes on the forefront of new marketing ideas, and being result-oriented, she uses her vast marketing experience in all facets of business strategy and marketing execution to help deliver the message of the brand.

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