INTERVIEW
Clear Thinking From Joe Pinto
With Joe Pinto – CXO, Pure Storage
Joe Pinto reflects on his years at Cisco and the transition to his role as Chief Customer Experience Officer at Pure Storage.
Joe Pinto already had a storied career at Cisco as the SVP of technical support before he joined Pure. But now as the Chief Customer Experience Officer of Pure Storage, I believe Joe is redefining what it means to deliver customer experience that’s not just good. It’s extraordinary.
Under his guidance, Pure Storage boasts an impressive, and I have to say completely legitimate NPS that’s greater than 80.
But the story doesn’t just end there with a great score. You can make a case that Pure is still pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
Richard Owen
You had a long and illustrious career at a company that was obviously phenomenally successful and went through a lot of growth. What were the things you took away from Cisco that you either chose to apply on or leave behind when you got to Pure?
Joe Pinto
Yeah, look, a couple of things. I was fortunate enough to be at Cisco for 27 plus years and really learned the value around customers. But in order to have that, you got to have a foundation really built upon your employees, right? And we did a great job of not only recruiting good people and rewarding them, but also training and educating them so they can be successful in their jobs. That would eliminate burnout, it would lead to a better experience.
Many of those people went on to become executives or founders at startups in and around Silicon Valley, which I’m very proud of. So those are some of the early takeaways I think from my time at Cisco, which has carried me through to my time here at Pure.
Richard Owen
And we’ve talked in the past about training. And so, I want to focus on that a little bit. Because focusing on employees and training, it’s kind of a throwaway statement. Everybody says it. But the impression I got was that training at Cisco and by implication of Pure has been a very, very fundamental commitment. And what have you done to make it real? Is it just a matter of putting it on the priority list?
Joe Pinto
Well, a couple of things. So, at Cisco and now here at Pure, we’ve done a couple of things. First of all, we fund education and training. I mean, a lot of places people talk about it, but is it funded? Two, we put meaningful metrics in place. For example, here at Pure, we are now standing well over 90% of our people having at least one level of certification. And the goal is to get to 100%. And eventually the goal is to get to multiple certifications as well.
Why? Because look, at Pure we’ve gone from a few hundred customers to 12,000. In order to maintain the NPS that we’ve enjoyed, which has been above 80, which is really something, we’ve got to make sure that everyone that’s touching a customer is prepared for that moment. And being prepared for that moment is a systematic approach to training and education.
Richard Owen
Is it also the case that, you know, it’s motivational, I would imagine, right? At the end of the day for people, look, everyone, they love their companies, but they care about the career progression, right?
Joe Pinto
That’s right. That’s right. They really do. And we back it up. We give them incentives. We give them rewards. We tie it into promotions. We tie it into spot bonuses. Recognition is a big thing. Right. And that and what happens is kind of builds a certain momentum on its own if you will as you get started.
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Richard Owen
What else do you, when you, when you, when you look at the two companies, is there anything you’ve noticed that’s really different? I mean, obviously somewhat different, somewhat different businesses, though they are different businesses, right? I mean, technology, the manufacturers, large software component, but how would you characterize the differences?
Joe Pinto
Yeah.
Well, you know, in a nutshell, when I got to Cisco, it was very small. When I left, it was very big. I mean, you know, 50, 60, 70,000 employees. Pure is roughly, you know, a fraction of that, right? Um, so obviously size. The nice thing about coming over to Pure was the following. One, our leader, Charlie Giancarlo, who I worked with previously, really believed in around customer success. You know, a lot of CEOs talk about it.
But I knew that he really believed in it and executed it from what he had been doing at Pure. That’s important to me because I wanted to continue to work, but I wanted to work in an environment where the wind is at my back in order to execute on customer success. That’s an important element. Two, when I was at Cisco, we supported dozens of solutions and one of them was the Pure solution in a flash stack configuration.
And I knew the quality of Pure’s technology based upon the number of escalations and or phone calls I would get on different solutions. So, I already knew about Pure before coming. Right. And then lastly, you know, I had a choice of where I wanted to go after my time there. And one of the reasons I went to Pure in addition to Charlie is around the focus around customers.
The Net Promoter Score, which I knew keeping it high would be quite a challenge because look, it’s one thing to keep it high when you got 50 people touching a customer. When you’ve got a lot more people than that touching multiple customers, it becomes a lot more difficult. And I will say there’s a certain focus by the by the employees here, as well as a very robust technology, which is, you know, for example, we literally enjoy upgrades that are hitless.
Richard Owen
Yeah.
Joe Pinto
And in my prior experience, upgrades were anything but hitless. But over here, they literally are hitless, which is, again, keeps what hair I got on my head still on my head.
Richard Owen
I want to pick up on the conversation about leadership and the whole idea of a tailwind, which I think is a big deal. Charlie followed on from Scott, right? So, he’s only the second CEO, I believe, in the history of the company. And Scott kind of started the company with this idea of being a great customer-facing company.
Which obviously helped a lot. Do you feel that legacy in the company? Is there a sense that this has always been the way in which Pure rolls and its sort of the culture there?
Joe Pinto
Yeah, I mean, look, the best example I can give is that when there is an escalation, I have had the response we get from our partners such as in engineering is so consistent and such high quality and so fast that I can’t remember the last time I picked up a phone. And that’s saying a lot, right?
Because trust me, in my life, I’ve picked up the phone many times. I’ve been in the middle of a lot of escalations, as you might imagine from my background. And so that philosophy has carried through over the years, which is not an easy task because again, more employees, more customers, more complexity, more environments that are not greenfield, which, you know, arguably a greenfield environment to put your technology in.
Makes it a little more predictable than an older environment where you’re displacing other people’s equipment. So that has carried on in more ways than that. It’s carried on with the quality that’s architected inside the technology. Uh, it’s carried out by the fact that in a lot of cases, I don’t have to spend a lot of time educating people about the customer they already understand.
Right? That makes a difference. And lastly, there’s a tremendous focus when there’s a customer situation here at Pure, we use the phrase that everyone loves to run to the fire.
Richard Owen
I think there’s a lot of companies and people, in my experience, executives would say this about the company. And I think people sort of roll their eyes and sort of say, yeah, of course, we hear this story. I mean, the data suggests it’s very true at Pure and I’ve certainly from firsthand witnessing the progress of the company over the years, it certainly seems to be the case. I wish I could put my finger on why it is, right? I mean, you hear a story like this. And it’s tangible in the company, but it’s hard to say to somebody who doesn’t have this in their company how the company came to be this way. There’s a little bit of an element of, well, we’re born this way. And you’re like, well, that’s great, but there’s not, can’t do much about that, right? Is there something you’ve seen that is essentially a sustaining effort that, you know, really makes the difference?
Joe Pinto
Sure.
Yes.
Yes, a couple of thoughts. One is truly we talk about a significant lower cost of ownership, 50 percent. And in many cases, our existing customers that own Pure and somebody else will say it’s even better than 50 percent. That means there’s less administrative overhead, there’s less moves and changes, there’s less truck rolls with a field engineer to replace a part because there’s less failure.
So, you have all those things that begin to add up into a very good experience. Products that are never obsolete. We talk about evergreen, what does that mean? Not only we’re gonna keep the technology evergreen through technology software updates and upgrades, but every three years we’re gonna replace the controller in a non-disruptive fashion to keep that array in operation. The strategy of Pure, you should only call Pure when you need additional capacity, that for the arrays that you’ve already have purchased, that through the purchase of an evergreen subscription, we’re gonna keep that up to date. And therefore, literally, the arrays we have sold over seven, eight, 10 years, 97, 98% of them are still in operation. So, you can see where there’s an inherent advantage that we have in some of the ways that this high NPS materializes if that makes sense.
Richard Owen
Right.
Yeah, but it’s circular. The things you do to the product create good outcomes. The good outcomes reduce the cost of service. And you get this, you know, I always think of this at Pure, so through the lens of the Maytag repair man, right? You know, the, probably a reference that is probably lost for Europeans listening to this, but there’s an iconic American manufacturer here that makes washing machines and their kind of PR angle was that their repairman had the easiest job in the world because he basically just sat around all day doing nothing. And if you think about contemporary version of that from a hardware company, this idea that you’ll never have to call us unless you want to expand, that’s it. It’s the Maytag repairman brought real for a tech company, isn’t it?
Joe Pinto
Yeah, yeah.
Well, to some degree, yes. And I think another thing is because of the early vision of our founders, there was a lot of intelligence built into the arrays of machine learning and AI. What do I mean by that? Um, this is a pretty amazing statistic, but I grew up in a world where in most cases customers were calling you. I now live in a world where the majority of the time there’s a good chance my engineer is calling the customer in an outbound phone call based upon what the arrays are telling us as they call home. That is a very powerful advantage that we are truly acting in a proactive fashion versus a reactive fashion. And I think that’s one of the key separators that we have differentiators.
Richard Owen
Yeah, so I think one of the things you’ve been talking about is the way in which the product strategy has always been in some ways paying fidelity to the idea of creating good customer experiences, good field replaceability of product, or even no need for field replaceability. So, there’s almost been this product strategy that says, the customer is going to own this a long time. We want to make the ownership experience absolutely phenomenal. And we’re going to build in, we’re going to engineer in a superb ownership experience and reduce the friction points. And I think I told you the story, former CMO from Pure stood up at the conference of mine probably a decade or so ago and had a photograph of the competitors stack of manuals that they would ship to them on a palette. And basically, and then showed Pure, you know, had a pamphlet or I don’t remember exactly, but it was a visual prop that conveyed instantly to the audience what it meant to engineer a product for customers, right? Because instead of having to process this massive amount of printed material to understand the product you bought, you basically, that was just not necessary. And so, it seems like the engineering of the product has been pretty central to the idea of how to create a good customer experience.
Joe Pinto
No, we’ve got a great tight knit loop between the customer data that we get based upon our interactions with the customers, our conversations with engineering about how the intelligence is constantly modified inside the array. Are they causing true alerts that we need to take action on or are they causing noise, right? And that is a flywheel that’s been created since before I got here, to be honest, which has created a very powerful effect, if you will, around the combination between the customer experience tied right back into R&D and engineering.
I now live in a world where the majority of the time there’s a good chance my engineer is calling the customer in an outbound phone call based upon what the arrays are telling us as they call home.
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Richard Owen
Well, you mentioned this earlier. I mean, Pure has gone through an enormous rate of growth, a sustained rate of growth as a business, and it’s managed to sustain, I think objectively it’s managed to sustain a very, very high level of customer excellence. So as a problem, that’s generally something that a lot of companies struggle with, because the idea that when you’re a new entrant in an industry, you’re the upstart.
You’ve maybe got some natural technology advantage at that stage because your competitors haven’t really even gotten going yet. They’re underrating you. And you’ve got a relatively small team of people who are pretty evangelistic and pretty dedicated. And then typically people will say, oh, that’s great, but wait till they’re a billion dollars of revenue or heaven forbid, you know, as big as at Pure, a couple of billion, wait till they get to that scale and wait till they have thousands of employees, they’re not going to be able to sustain that culture. There’s this reversion to the mean and everything’s starting to competitors will twig and everyone will catch up. Have you found it to be, are there different tactics required to sustain this as the company grows? How do you solve that problem of being able to double in size and still have that core idea, which seems relatively easier to execute at small scale?
Joe Pinto
No, that’s true. This is about scope and scale. It’s easy to do a good job when you have one customer, a little harder at 10, and a whole lot harder at a thousand or 10,000, et cetera. So, a couple of thoughts, right? This is about scope and scale. And I would say it’s the following elements, right? It’s about the use of people, process, and technology, right? It’s about interface with product management because the documentation and how you position the technology has to be appropriate, right?
It’s about the, you know, the flywheel effect with engineering, where you’re constantly trying to make the technology quality continuously improve. It’s a foundation of simpleness that our customers and partners really enjoy. We really try to keep things simple in terms of the administrative overhead, how the arrays are set up, you know, and how to use them. Right. And I think all those elements come together in order to create that scale. Now, as you go forward,
You do face additional challenges because then you’re dealing with different types of customers, either by segment or by geography. And matter of fact, that’s one of the other things we do. We break apart our NPS core by theater and by segment because I want to examine what is the variances so we can take action based upon any variance, because we want to be a consistent company to all. Consistently good.
Richard Owen
Yeah, and I think, yeah, it’s, it’s almost hard for people who don’t have this in their company to understand it, because it sounds in some ways so simple. And I was struck by, I saw a quote the other day attributed to Einstein, I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, is the different levels of intelligence, and there was sort of intelligent, genius, and simple. And I thought it was brilliant as an idea, because to make something that simple actually is incredibly hard.
That is the ultimate sign of intelligence. And I kind of feel like at Pure storage has somehow embodied this idea of simple, and simple implies scalable. If it’s simple, you’re gonna be able to double it in size, right, if you’re an executional model. Or I think it was the late Charlie Munger said something about you should invest in a company that any idiot could run, because sooner or later an idiot will be running it, right?
Joe Pinto
Ha ha ha!
Richard Owen
And I think they’re all pointing to the same basic idea, which is businesses that are simple to execute have elegance designed into the way they operate in their products and technology and how they service customers are scalable, frictionless, and not suggesting run by idiots, but could be run by idiots, right? You don’t need phenomenally talented people at every part of the company every day to make the whole thing hang together.
And it seems like that’s part, you know, at Pure, I never thought about this, but you got to, you know, the name at Pure in some ways almost feels like it’s calling out the simplicity of the model.
Joe Pinto
Well, you know, it’s very true because then what happens, because of this high-end PS, which is a representation of customer loyalty, you get very good feedback because your customers are incredibly loyal to you. And then taking action in that feedback helps us to maintain the bar based upon feedback of the channel and customers about, hey, look, you should be aware of this or that. And again, the ability to create that listening device and to successfully follow up on it. Because look, I always tell people, don’t survey your customers unless you plan to do something about it, right? Then where I go, if you’re not gonna do anything about it, don’t survey them because that’s gonna be just a bad practice.
Richard Owen
How is the Pure management team or even in your function, because you have a lot of responsibilities around digital transformation, which you could argue is a continuous job. There’s no, there’s no starting or ending point to it. What’s what is there an impact now from AI based technologies? Is this something I see it showing up in the products at Pure, right? It’s part of the product. Is it also affecting the way in which you’re going to service customers?
Joe Pinto
Yeah. So, a couple of thoughts and look, we’re on the, you know, AI is, uh, has the opportunity to be, you know, I’ve been through different moments in my life, networking in the nineties, uh, mobile then cloud. Here we are with AI, right. To give people a sense of history. Right. And look, I think it’s all about the data you put into the tools in order to get a good output, because if you don’t have good data, right, it kind of destroys itself.
And I think also to me, it’s always about increasing value. I think too often when new technology comes out, people immediately wanna go to our course play and then people feel like their jobs are gonna go away. And I always feel like that’s a mistake. Look, we’ve got these incredibly trained engineers who do an amazing job with this amazing gift of actually interfacing with our customers. My goodness, what an opportunity. So, to me, it’s about more customization of the personalization of that experience.
And if we can truly have good data and AI can help our engineers that are supporting our customers do even more, that’s where we’re going to go. And that is certainly the plan. I think, look, course is always kind of an interesting topic, but what’s really fascinating is to really drive that experience that becomes more customized, more personalized, it’s the same reason why I love going to a family Italian restaurant that’s been open since 1957.
I go in there, they say hello, they know my family, they know my friends, and the same thing, we all want that experience.
Richard Owen
So, the co-pilots, AI is a co-pilot, right? I think the media dramatization of AI is going to either take your job or kill you, or kill you and then take your job, makes good science fiction movie stuff. But in the real world, sounds like the opportunity is to enhance people’s productivity, right? How do we make people more successful? And given the focus and emphasis on training and development of personnel…
Is this the big opportunity? How do we give people better and more productive jobs?
Joe Pinto
Well, that’s right, because look, in a recent survey, the top investments planned for IT buyers, no surprise for the next five years, is AI, 52% of them, right? You know, no surprise there. In another survey, 90% of IT buyers stated that the digital transformation agenda led them to buy increasing amounts of infrastructure.
Um, uh, you know, no surprise there, right? So, I think this is, and by the way, we’ve been selling AI use cases at Pure for quite a while to some of the biggest names in the industry. So, this is nothing new to us. And again, I think you’re spot on. This is about a richer experience. And, and, and again, people really train and pay a lot for their people to interface with customers. What an opportunity to make that exchange richer to learn more to deal with churn and to add value into the equation. So again, I’ve always been a big proponent around the use of technology. You know, I remember early in my career, I have 50 support engineers with 60 openings. And I remember at that moment in time, I said, gee, if I try to do this with headcount, I’m never gonna survive next year. And then I began to think about technology and the use of process very differently.
Richard Owen
Right.
Joe Pinto
And look, there’s a labor shortage that’s not going to get any better anytime soon. So again, this creates a real opportunity for AI to help people modernize their workforce, recraft the skills they need for their customers going forward. Because everyone has learned, whoever takes care of their customers best, very likely wins the game.
What an opportunity to make that exchange richer to learn more to deal with churn and to add value into the equation. So again, I’ve always been a big proponent around the use of technology.
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Richard Owen
Yeah, and you’ve been the front line of this because you’ve been running large teams of people who are there to service and in high growing companies. But ultimately, as you said, we can’t keep playing this game with just adding headcount. There won’t be enough people. It’s too expensive. And as a nation or even as a global society, we need to improve productivity. Productivity is the fuel for economic growth and people’s standard living improvements.
We’re at this inflection point with the technology industries that have grown through headcount growth, where the next 20 years or 30 years is going to look a lot more like reduced rate of growth for headcount and significant improvements in productivity. So, we end up with businesses that are twice as large, you know, for a third, the increase in headcount. I mean, it’s got to be the winning formula because otherwise we’re just going to, as you say, run out of people and run out of money.
Joe Pinto
Well, that’s right. Look, there’s going to be a much more focus upon process. That means black belts, right? Because that’s often ignored. There’ll be a lot more focus on the effective use of technology. Too often people use technology, but are they are effective using that technology? Do they have the right measures to measure the output of that technology? And look, if you look at cyber, they talk about at least a million openings in the US.
That number has been thrown around for years now. And that number probably is getting worse, not better. So that whole issue is going to have to be solved through different means, through productivity, through AI, through architectural validation of designs and other aspects. So, this is an issue that’s not going to just go away, but probably actually get more accrued.
Richard Owen
Yeah. So, one last question here, really important one. You’re, as people have probably figured, you’re not from California. But you’ve been working in California a long time and somehow you haven’t gone all California on us yet. There’s no hippie. What’s the key to remaining in New York after a long career in California?
Joe Pinto
Well, you know, I’ve been very blessed. I think the key is, first of all, when you’re raised a block and a half from the waterfront, you are who you are with generational parents that lived through the depression, went to war, and came back and took on really tough jobs. I never forget the sacrifice that family made in order for me to go to school. And that kind of keeps you humble, right? I think also I just remembered my roots.
And then I would say the crowning moment is a pretty amazing wife of 40 plus years who’s had to put up with me.
Richard Owen
Well, you know, when Charlie Munger passed away, they asked him, who was the one person you want to credit most for your success in life? And he said it was my second wife’s first husband. Because he said after being married to him, I seemed like an upgrade. And it seems as though all successful people sooner or later figure out that it’s the family, it’s the parents, it’s the spouse. That’s a big part of it.
Joe Pinto
And it’s keeping things in perspective. I mean, look, we have real problems to solve, but these problems in the face of what the world is after is going through, you know, that’s why you got to keep balance. And by the way, when you keep balance, you’ll do a better job of solving the problem.
Richard Owen
Yeah.
Okay. Well, Joe, you’ve been part of a two phenomenal enterprise in your career. That’s saying something. I’m sure the correlation runs one way or the other. You can take the credit there. But you’re part of a genuinely amazing company. And I think that it’s an absolute pleasure to hear your story as well as that of Pure Storage. And I’m a huge fan of the company.
ABOUT THE CX ICONOCLASTS
Joe Pinto joined Pure Storage in 2019 as Chief Customer Experience Officer. Joe is responsible for leading the Global Services teams and the Pure Performance, Education, and Knowledge (PEAK) training and certification program. He also oversees the continued scale and evolution of Pure’s customer experience model. He is responsible for spearheading digital-first capabilities around automation, migration services, and customer success while supporting Pure’s industry-leading NPS score of 83.5. Prior to joining Pure, Joe was a Senior Vice President at Cisco, where he oversaw the Technical Services team. During his 28-year tenure at Cisco, his team developed Cisco’s first Technical Support website and created an industry-leading solution support offer for global customers and partners.
Richard Owen is celebrated as a leading figure in the Customer Experience industry, primarily known for his contribution as CEO at Satmetrix, where he and his team, along with Fred Reichheld, developed the Net Promoter Score methodology, now the globally dominant approach to customer experience measurement. His efforts further extended to co-authoring “Answering the ultimate question” with Dr. Laura Brooks, establishing netpromoter.com, and initiating both the NPS Certification program and a successful conference series. Owen’s diverse 30-year career has seen him drive technology-led business transformations at Dell, lead software companies like AvantGo to a Nasdaq listing, and Satmetrix to acquisition by NICE Systems, while also engaging in venture investment and board roles. Today, he spearheads OCX Cognition, leveraging machine learning for real-time NPS and customer health analytics.
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