How Craig Window Is Turning the Office Into a Place People Actually Want to Be

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest spent six and a half years working as an assistant golf professional at a country club before ever setting foot in the corporate world. That time in hospitality turned out to be less of a side road and more of a foundation.

It shaped a conviction that how people feel at work matters as much as what they produce there. That conviction would eventually collide with a much bigger moment. When the pandemic fundamentally broke the social contract between employees and offices, Craig found himself at the center of a question every company was asking. Why would anyone choose to come in?

Craig Window is the country president of Circles, a Sodexo company that has spent more than 25 years building workplace hospitality programs for employers across 40 countries. Under Craig’s leadership, Circles earned a spot on HR Tech Outlook’s top employee engagement solution providers list and now serves clients ranging from biotech firms to global financial institutions.

He oversees all sales, operations, finance, and people strategy for the U.S. market. But before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency. Listen, if you run a business, you are likely stuck in the cycle of rising insurance premiums. You’re paying more, but your team is getting less, and many people can’t afford coverage at all. We do things differently.

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See if you qualify today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the US president of circles, Craig Wendow. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Craig Window (02:22)
Absolutely, thanks for having me, Anthony, and good to be here with you.

Anthony Codispoti (02:26)
All right, so Craig, you spent six and a half years as an assistant golf pro before moving into what we’ll call the corporate world. Walk me back to the moment you decided to leave that path. What was actually happening in your life at that point?

Craig Window (02:40)
Yeah, I mean, I was, I was really lucky growing up. My, my parents loved the sport. So I had been around golf for a very long time and about 15 years old, I started working at, at that course. was a natural next step for me when I could start earning some income. And, ⁓ that would be waking up at 5 a.m. closing the shop down at 9 p.m. and it helped me pay my way through college really was the, ⁓

was the single job that I had all the way through university. And at that time, after graduation, it was to make a decision time, right? Whether to continue on that path or to pursue another career. And I had studied business in college and decided to break out into commercial real estate. And from there, I really didn’t see myself. ⁓

wearing a shirt and tie every day, looking at spreadsheets all day. And I knew I wanted to help people. And that’s when a friend introduced me to Circles, which, you know, sounded like interesting to me and something where I could still help people, but more in a corporate setting. So ⁓ I thought I’d be there for a couple of years and now it’s 18 and a half years later and I’m still there.

Anthony Codispoti (03:56)
So what did you start out doing when you joined Circles?

Craig Window (03:59)
Yeah, so I was like an entry level research analyst helping individual employees myself. ⁓ That was at the very, very beginning. And then quickly a couple of years after that, we were actually acquired by Sodexo about three years into my career at Circles, which expanded the opportunities because we joined this huge organization. And then from there, I made it into ⁓ client management and

some contract negotiations, then some inside sales. ⁓ And then my career path kind of took off from there as I took over global sales and then moved into my new role recently as of 2023 leading the US business.

Anthony Codispoti (04:44)
So you said you started out as a research analyst helping employees. Were you helping the circles employees or were you helping the employees of your clients?

Craig Window (04:52)
⁓ yeah.

So because we work in a B2B structure, organizations will purchase our services to give to their end employees. So I was working with actual our customers, our end employees who were requesting services for various different things, right? From travel to dining reservations to ground transportation to researching ⁓ service vendors for their homes and things like that.

So I spent a few years actually on the front lines working closely with our members.

Anthony Codispoti (05:24)
Okay, so and this is a great segue into understanding better what it is that you guys do because before coming across circles, I hadn’t really heard of this concept before. Break this down for us. A client comes to you, you guys get paired up, and what is it that they’re looking for? What’s the problem that you’re solving for them?

Craig Window (05:42)
Yeah,

at its basic level, right? We’re partnering with organizations really to help their employees with any tasks that may compete for their work day, whether at work or at home in their personal life, and trying to improve their experience in the office, right? So it could be planning a major life event. We have a employee that’s moving across the country and they need help with finding movers, finding storage for their things, finding

cleaners to clean out their old home and then getting them settled into the new home. It could be, I’m getting married and I need a venue, I need a DJ, I need floor arrangements, I need caterers. Can you help someone plan that for me? We also do things more, I would say hands-on with employees. So it could be helping them coordinate services during their workday, like running errands.

could be grabbing ingredients for dinner later that evening or dropping something off at the post office or even helping them plan a family vacation. And then I think we also, we create experiences on site for employees as well. So this is about bringing people together in a workplace setting. Could be team building, could be helping plan company wide events like social hours, like volunteer days or.

more seasonal things like a Mother’s Day pop-up event or a gift wrapping day or on the holidays, the things even like yoga and wellness days for employees as well. So I think for our clients, their goal is simple when they work with us, right? They are trying to create a workplace where employees, feel supported, they’re less stressed, they have more time back, right? And they can focus on work.

and what really truly moves the business forward versus all of these other things that maybe take up space or time during the work day.

Anthony Codispoti (07:43)
It part of it sounds, let me see if I’m understanding this, Craig. I’m sort of seeing two buckets. There’s one bucket that sort of sounds like a personal assistant on demand for any of the employees of your clients. There’s another bucket that sounds like, Hey, we’ll come in and put together these employee events to get everybody sort of interacting on a social level to kind of increase bonding.

Craig Window (08:09)
Yeah, that’s a great way to put it. mean, basically when we’re on site, we’re supporting employees, but we also could be helping with engagement, improve morale and improve culture as well. ⁓ And for those clients that are looking for just a better workplace experience, We ⁓ can help support workplace operations with reception, front of house services. ⁓

that support a better experience while you could be having clients come in or for employees that come in or could be coming in once a month to be able to support that workplace. So in that last aspect of really the engagement piece and the better workplace experience really took off right after things lifted from COVID late 2023 when employers really needed a reason to make employees come back to work.

Anthony Codispoti (09:05)
Okay, say more about that. What were some of the reasons that you were helping to give these employers to bring their employees back in?

Craig Window (09:12)
Yeah, mean, you probably know as well as I do in late 2023, I think executives, company leaders, they wanted employees back to their offices that have been vacant for three years, but they weren’t ready to do the mandates yet, right? Or to say you have to be here ⁓ because it was, the period was still unknown. We had just come out of three years of everyone being the opposite at home.

And so they really wanted to make the workplace, okay, how do we make it a magnet? So people actually want to come in. We call it ⁓ earning their commute, right? ⁓ So how can you be having them stay at home all day? And so some of that was, let’s really think about the experience onsite. What are we offering to them? Who’s supporting them? And how can we make it easier for them to come to work physically?

Anthony Codispoti (10:03)
Can you give me some specific examples?

Craig Window (10:06)
Yeah, it could have been, you know, hey, we want to give a lot of people went through refreshes in their office spaces during that time period. Right. So they came back and it was different. Or over those three years, you had new workers coming into the industry had never been into a company’s office before. ⁓ so it could be our personnel that’s welcoming at the front door. We give them a tour of the new office, show them how the new conference room technology works.

how food services is changed in different ⁓ or just add general acclamation to their new space or their new ⁓ neighborhood or desk booking system. And then on the convenience side, Because employees that were working from home also got used to ⁓ being able to watch their pets, be able to run an errand down the street during the day. And if they were gonna go back from that, maybe we add convenience.

So could be we put an errand, a circles errand runner at your site that can take care of all those personal tasks for you during the day while you don’t worry about it and can be productive at work. ⁓ So those are some of good examples. We’re bringing on amenities, right? Like, you know, it’s funny, we saw, you know, a of, a lot of companies ask for things like car detailing, washing, refueling for vehicles, there could have been dry cleaning and laundry services.

which kind of went away was starting to come back as a more popular service. So just interesting things like that to make their everyday life a little bit easier.

Anthony Codispoti (11:39)
So as I think about the value of what you’re providing, in order for it to make financial sense for the company to do this, it occurs to me that the employee base is probably highly compensated, white collar, very high dollar value type of service that they’re providing. Am I understanding that correctly?

Craig Window (12:02)
None.

Well, I think for the most part, the larger enterprise organizations that we work with generally do have higher, you know, revenue to employee ratios and a little bit more discretionary spend to put into things like benefits. You’re, you’re a majority of our clients are in fact, you know, a thousand plus employees. They’re, they’re bigger.

But that doesn’t mean that they only offer it to a certain level of employee. We see actually see the opposite. A lot of them want to offer it to everyone ⁓ as an equal benefit to them. So I would say, yeah, we do, you know, the biotechs, the law firms, the financial services companies. But we have other other clients as well that that may be do manufacturing or ⁓ or offer other services that don’t really fit that same mold.

Anthony Codispoti (12:57)
And so they would offer this same kind of ⁓ personal concierge service to their blue collar folks working on the manufacturing.

Craig Window (13:05)
Yeah, and in fact, mean, you know, it’s hard to talk to a CFO about it, but your person on the manufacturing floor that gets a 10 minute time break and a 30 minute lunch, they probably need support more than the the worker that can come and go during the day is less tied to actual, you know, producing something or we talk about call center folks a lot, right, that they’re they’re really tied to their phones and their desks and they have short breaks and lunches.

when they really need it the most. ⁓ And so when we talk to HR leaders, they certainly understand that and get it. ⁓ And then we use that positioning to also present to the CFOs and the financial decision makers about what is that cost of lost productivity or distractions during the day or employees being generally just burnt out, right?

Anthony Codispoti (14:01)
Are you able in those presentations to show at least a hypothetical ROI to them?

Craig Window (14:06)
Yeah, we absolutely are, right? I think we’re not only showing them the satisfaction, the average usage rates, and how that equates, and the time saved, and how that equates to a return on investment. know, doesn’t pass the muster test of every, you know, CFO of a large major company. It’s a softer ROI, right? But they certainly know the cost to replace.

⁓ a worker, right? That’s something that everybody knows from HR to CFOs and especially, you know, ⁓ in law firms or in professional services, that cost that obviously goes up tremendously or in healthcare. And so they understand that and that’s how we rationalize it with the ROI, but also telling the story ⁓ about how we make a difference. And I was talking about this with a colleague of mine the other day.

And a lot of our clients, you know, they’ll have brand new building that they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars on. It’s furnished with the nicest furniture you could ever imagine. And, you know, there’s art on the walls and every lighting’s perfect, but no one’s, you know, no one’s using the space. They’re not thinking about how is the employee going to interact with this? What’s, what’s attracting them back to this besides being a nice building?

And I think it needs to be the opposite, right? How do we design ⁓ the services, the support, the space for employees, not just so it looks great.

Anthony Codispoti (15:45)
So you go into a prospective client, you show them all these different services that you can offer. You talk about how this is good for employee engagement, satisfaction, retention. How many of them ever look at this and say, wow, this is a great idea. We’re going to hire a handful of people to do this ourselves.

Craig Window (16:05)
Yeah, I think that comes down to it and we’ve seen it happen before, right? But it’s not core to their business, right? Unless they’re in outsourcing. Generally, they have other things they can focus on. And there’s oftentimes ⁓ a culture leader or someone that’s responsible for, you know, connecting employees together, but it’s a voluntary title, right? They’re doing this on top of their day-to-day roles and they’re not focusing on it.

There’s no technology behind it. There’s no strategy behind it. And so they don’t really know what they want to get out of it. And ⁓ for that limited, we think, investment, right? There’s a good, strong ROI, especially for those organizations that are really concerned about keeping a strong culture and bringing their people together.

Anthony Codispoti (16:56)
Okay, so that makes a lot of sense to me what you’re saying Craig because you guys you know all these different things You know how to provide the services you’ve got a whole menu of this for them to go and hire somebody They got to create their own program They’ve got to hire their own team under them and train them on how to deliver it. You guys are just sort of plug-and-play

Craig Window (17:15)
Yeah. And you know, the, how to train, they have to then train people, they have people turn over. there’s, there’s also hidden costs within the cost. It just, you know, to make sense to bring in a provider like us who has the expertise. We have also done this for other clients that we can reference. We know what people are asking for. We can bring them, you know, ideas around service delivery or events or operating models that work really well at other like-minded clients.

and then tweak it for them culturally or for their population. It just, it makes a lot more sense than trying to do it yourself.

Anthony Codispoti (17:54)
So of all the services that you offer, what do you find is the most popular with employees? What do they love the most?

Craig Window (18:00)
⁓ right

now the most popular is, is like the errand running service. So the ability for anybody to run personal employee errands from a point a to point B on their behalf while they’re working without a doubt. It’s the most popular right now. ⁓ I just think, you know, no one’s getting more time back. And I feel like you could probably attest to it. Like I can, if I could have one more thing, it would be an extra hour a day, no doubt, right. To spend with my kids or.

with my family in general. So, and I think people know that as well. And that’s what they’re finding value in, right? Leaders aren’t always convinced of that, but it, you know, the numbers don’t lie. That’s where we see our most requests by far from our employee populations.

Anthony Codispoti (18:49)
I want to go back to the ⁓ CFO conversation that you were talking about before. If my notes here are correct, there’s data showing that 92 % of employees feel valued when circles is in place at their employer and 100 % of the clients are able to report some kind of ROI. Talk me through how you talk to a prospective CFO about those numbers.

Craig Window (19:15)
Yeah, well, we survey our members who utilize the service. And one of the questions that we’ve asked and have for the last 15 years is how much time did you save on this request? And over the last 15 years, that average is 3 and 1 hours. Now that could be everything from a

⁓ you know, one hour up to 10 hours, the average across all of our scores is three and a half hours. And so we really use that metric as a strong ROI generator, meaning how many requests did we complete based on the average hours saved? And then we back into a head count, an average head count based on, you know, their average annual salary.

Again, it’s softer for CFOs, but in most cases, even if you take that number and divide it by two, cut it in half, the ROI productivity is positive, meaning we’re saving more employees time than the program actually costs them.

Anthony Codispoti (20:21)
Is, are there limited geographies where you guys are able to offer your services? Because it occurs to me that you would need a certain density of clients in a geographical region in order to kind of set up an employee base there.

Craig Window (20:36)
So yes and no, we do offer our services digitally. So not all the time that we’re actually physically on site, right? We have large enterprise clients that have employees in all different states. And for those clients, maybe they choose to put people at their five biggest locations.

And then they want digital for the rest. So we have a population of about 80 people that work remotely that just support ⁓ our clients digitally. But yes, the major metros are where we work best because we already have populations there. Boston, New York, Raleigh, North Carolina, Miami, San Francisco, ⁓ Denver, Dallas, but

in general, ⁓ we were able to support them anywhere across the US.

Anthony Codispoti (21:28)
So let’s say hypothetical circles employee on a Tuesday, they show up at work, they’re going to one of your client sites. And what does it look like for them? They’ve got sort of this task list laid out for them. know, Bob needs his dog walked, Susie needs, you know, laundry picked up, like kind of that kind of thing.

Craig Window (21:47)
Yeah, it varies based on the client, right? But a typical day can cover a lot of different things. So it could be, you know, we have a important executive coming in from another country. We need you to help welcome them, right? Give them a, get them checked in, show them around the space, get them set up with wifi, maybe have their favorite beverage or coffee waiting for them when they come in to out. ⁓

out running an errand on behalf of an employee to then when they get back, they’re ⁓ meeting with a department head to plan their team meeting later that week. So it really can be a lot of different things. And that’s what I think is interesting is that the people that we hire, the backgrounds that they have, they need to be good at multitasking and prioritization. And generally a lot of them have

training in customer support and service. ⁓ They could have come from high-end retail. We have a lot of people that have worked at Disney and Ritz-Carlton that take these roles that are looking for something a little bit more 9 to 5 versus crazy hours and weekends. ⁓ And so they all have this unique ability to really make people feel welcoming ⁓ and to be proactive too when they’re with our clients.

Anthony Codispoti (23:13)
Yeah, I’m glad that you went there because it was occurring to me while you know, these folks, these frontline folks working for circles, they’ve got to, you know, be accustomed to wearing many different hats. Kind of like you have over the course of your career at Circles, you know, you briefly touched on it. Let’s see, Key Accounts Manager, Global VP of Sales, Country President. And I think that role came during, you know, kind of the early middle part of COVID. Do I have the timing right on that?

Craig Window (23:24)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, 2023. Yep, in January. Right at the beginning. Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (23:46)
So what is it about this place that’s kept you there for so long?

Craig Window (23:50)
Yeah, I said this earlier, but I’ve been lucky. ⁓ well, you know, I think that opportunities have opened up for me, but I’ve been vocal, right, about wanting more challenge and wanting more opportunities. I’ve also had great mentors throughout my time here, people that push me to do more. And that’s probably one thing that I would say to other.

individuals looking to take on the next step in their career is like, you’ve got to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, right? In order to break through to that next level. Never once did I ever regret doing something that was uncomfortable for me in like a business setting, right? Whether it’s public speaking or, you know, a week’s worth of training in Spain, like all those things may seem daunting, but they’re all worth it in the end. And so I would say that really helped me.

during my time at Circles to put me in those positions to take on the next opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (24:49)
If you care to call out one of your mentors and how they’ve helped you along the way.

Craig Window (24:54)
Yeah, I would actually say the, my, the individual who I took over my previous boss, about a broken up, ⁓ was exceptional at that. He not only, you know, gave me good guidance, ⁓ and offered advice. He also gave me the room to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes, right? Which is, ⁓ uncanny, I think, in a good leader to be able to do that. ⁓ had a lot of trust and he was.

very transparent in terms of, what he was working on, what he’s motivated by, ⁓ what he’s working on in the business. And he kind of gave me, ⁓ a good seat in position to, learn from him on these different areas of the business that maybe I wasn’t, ⁓ that close to previously, whether it’s a large technology, ⁓ contract that we’re negotiating for our people to use or

being part of a transformation process that didn’t have to do with sales, but he knew that I had interest in those areas. So yeah, I would say that’s someone that helped me very much so along the way.

Anthony Codispoti (26:06)
And Craig, you rattled off a couple of examples of putting yourself in uncomfortable situations so that you could grow. Can you pick one and kind of go into a little bit more detail of it and talk about why it was so uncomfortable in the moment?

Craig Window (26:21)
Yeah, we, Sodexo, the company we’re a part of, our parent company, we’re a brand underneath them, but you know, there are 423,000 employees across the US and prior to COVID, they got together their top thousand leaders from the organization together every year to kind of kick off the new year. What are we working on? What’s all the departments have in store for the upcoming year, but also a chance for leaders to connect and.

We as a circles, as an organization got an opportunity to have some stage time at this conference with a thousand leaders from across the world representing 62 different countries. And, ⁓ my boss asked me if I wanted to have the stage time, right? So I’m used to talking to clients and going to see them and speaking in front of a board in a conference room, but in a setting where you’re on stage, where you have a thousand people looking at you and you’re mic’d up and.

⁓ everything’s revolving around what you say and what you do. can be extremely uncomfortable. so for that, right, just preparing, ⁓ and putting myself in that position to, ⁓ to, to go up there and represent our brand. Well, ⁓ again, very scary, but good, great opportunity for me.

Anthony Codispoti (27:42)
And actually I want to stay here for a little bit longer because I think there’s probably a lot of people listening who are like, I want to advance in my career. And I show up and I work hard every day. And, know, I, you know, put in the extra effort, but you know, in a big organization like you’re in to really get noticed and to really, you know, be the one who’s chosen to kind of lead the whole thing. I think there’s gotta be an extra, extra level of effort that takes place. And you’re kind of smiling.

Can you say, ⁓ like you agree with me, can you kind of say more about that?

Craig Window (28:12)
I 100

% agree with you, especially if your organization is matrixed, right? And sometimes leaders don’t overlap as much. Again,

making sure you have the right connections. And it could be through a mentor like I did it at first, right? Who was able to introduce me, but it’s getting outside of, so getting outside of your functional department, right? So if you’re in sales, you know, going to learn more and talking to maybe marketing leaders or to finance leaders or a CFO of another department, bridging those relationships.

And what I’ve learned is that those things will always come around, right? When you need something down the line or you need to ask for a favor, maybe you’ve crossed paths with them before. And it just makes doing business a little bit easier. Even if you’ve only talked to them once, two years ago, that’s a reference point that you could point to. in our organization, it happens all the time because of how big we are.

Anthony Codispoti (29:14)
So what I think I’m hearing you say is you weren’t waiting for somebody to tell you, hey, Craig, get up off your tush and go talk to somebody over here or go do this thing. You were taking the initiative. You were looking for the opportunities to have these extra conversations without somebody nudging you.

Craig Window (29:33)
Absolutely, yeah, that’s spot on, right? And you have to be your own best advocate if you’re looking to take that next step. Not only putting yourself in uncomfortable positions, but making introductions, creating relationships. And because I was also in sales, I was used to that, right? Just better understanding and… ⁓

how businesses work and how they function led me to kind of want to learn more about all parts of the business. And I always approached it from that perspective. So I just want to learn more about what you do and what your day to day is like, right? That’s the formation of every good relationship, right? So ⁓ I think that helped a lot.

Anthony Codispoti (30:17)
And so what did it actually look like for you to do one of these unexpected outreaches? You’re reaching out to somebody in a different department than you work in. Why are you reaching out? What’s the reason that you connect with them to say hello or to ask a question? What’s going on?

Craig Window (30:32)
Yeah,

always easier to have some sort of warm introduction, right? Whether it be, I met someone that we were mutual connections with, or, you my boss mentioned that you’re working on this project. ⁓ So finding some sort of common linkage and just saying, hey, want one 15 minutes to pick your brain, right? And that’s another good token of advice is, you know, I want to, I want to kind of bounce an idea off of you. Any good.

individual in general, but leader who hears that is going to take the time, especially for somebody maybe that’s coming up in the organization to listen to them and to hear them out and give them their perspective. And once you can do that, it’s about forming a, ⁓ that will form a longer term relationship that you can use.

Anthony Codispoti (31:22)
Okay, so you were acquired by Sodexo. Remind me the time period. What was the year?

Craig Window (31:28)
Yeah, it was 2017.

Anthony Codispoti (31:32)
And your role at that time was what?

Craig Window (31:34)
⁓ I was sales in a BDR inside sales role.

Anthony Codispoti (31:41)
How have you seen that acquisition impact the growth curve of circles or the services that are offered or the structure of the company? What have you seen sort of transformed since that time?

Craig Window (31:55)
Yeah, I would say interestingly enough, when we were first acquired, we did a lot of work with financial institutions for their high net worth customers, like American Express, Chase, and Citibank. And Sodexo was really focused, they do food, outsource food and facility management services. They’re really focused on all of the employees that they can support, right? Interesting tidbit for you.

⁓ Sodexo serves more people food every day than McDonald’s does, right? Which is the leader, fast food leader that everybody knows in every country. And so that just goes to show you the scale of how big a company like Sodexo is. You know, we like to say it’s the biggest company you’ve never heard of because, you know, we’re always white labeled in a client uniform or not branded, but it’s our people usually doing the cooking and the feeding of the food.

Anthony Codispoti (32:28)
Okay.

So quick sidebar then, Sodexo is providing cafeteria style services to a lot of companies.

Craig Window (32:58)
Yep, cafeteria style services to not only companies, but to hospitals, to ⁓ universities and education. lot of people, that’s where they reference, ⁓ so they fed me in college, right? But they also do large stadiums and ⁓ event venues. And then we also have outsourced facility services. So.

You need a big building or a big campus or a university. have someone that fixes your electrical, does general maintenance, clean the floors, ⁓ does the plumbing, cleans the grounds when it snows. Sodexo does that across the board.

Anthony Codispoti (33:36)
Okay, so the acquisition takes place and you guys started doing a lot more work for companies like AMEX financial services companies.

Craig Window (33:44)
Yeah, well, we started to actually focus more on all broad employees. We were really focused on high net worth prior to that acquisition. And they thought this would be great if we could touch all the consumers that we serve every day, not in the physical location where we operate. So they could be at home, a third place on the weekend. That was the idea behind the acquisition. And then obviously introducing them to all of their other

⁓ their bigger client B2B relationships that they had at the time.

Anthony Codispoti (34:18)
Okay, and how has it continued to unfold since then?

Craig Window (34:22)
Yeah, it’s been an interesting journey. We’ve grown globally since the acquisition, right? So our other, we’re in 40 different countries serving people, but the three biggest are France and the US and the UK and Ireland. So that’s been in support mainly of Senexo’s growth in those areas and those countries because they had clients that wanted or needed the service or was the right profile for us. And then obviously,

Being a part of a larger company like Sodexo and the brand, it helps for conversations with larger organizations that they really want to work with larger organizations that have the structure, the compliance, the protections of another large company. And so that’s really helped bridge some gaps in relationships for us with bigger organizations.

whether it be large top five consulting and auditing and advisory firms to larger healthcare organizations ⁓ and things like that.

Anthony Codispoti (35:27)
I want to talk about the digital transformation of the business that you like, because you’ve got a certification from Rutgers in this area. can you tell us what that digital transformation has entailed?

Craig Window (35:34)
Hmm.

Yeah. So that, digital transformation, was the one from Rutgers was a, like a crash course, very intensive, ⁓ week long transformation, but really it was about how do you disrupt your business and think about it in terms of not what’s happening tomorrow or next year, but three, five years down the line. ⁓ and when I started, was mainly phone and email were the main primary source or face to face of requesting something. And so.

We were very immature from a technology perspective. So what we really focused on at that point was how do we adopt the right technology to deliver a seamless experience for a consumer, ⁓ but also so our people behind the scenes can understand our consumers better, ⁓ capture their preferences, their likes and dislikes and their ongoing requests.

So we went through ⁓ a long two year project working ⁓ with Salesforce to then develop like what our technology of the future was going to be. And so really the output of that was consumer website, mobile app that was directly connected to a backend CRM where, you know, we could capture what people were doing, what their likes and dislikes were, what their preferences were. But more importantly, really have

the analytics behind decision-making for clients, right? So where’s their friction in your day-to-day workplace experience? What are your people asking for? What matters to them? ⁓ And then for us, it was how do we optimize the operation? And then of course, over the last couple of years, we’ve really integrated a lot of ⁓ AI and automation into how we’re doing it. I think an important point to make on that is,

You know, we place a lot of emphasis on being a people first organization, just based on what we do. We don’t, we will not ever lose that. And I think we’re being very cautious and careful about how we deploy AI without using the losing the human.

Anthony Codispoti (37:49)
Can you give me an example of how you’re using AI to support that human element?

Craig Window (37:54)
Yeah, I’ll give you a good example because it’s top of mind because we just finished a wrap the project on this. But because we do a lot of work digitally and not on site, we get sometimes requests from an employee that may say, I want to go on vacation. And that’s all they send us. Right. I we’re happy to help. No, no, Like an employee that we do work for at an organization who has access to our services, they’ll just tell us,

Anthony Codispoti (38:15)
one of your employees, not one of your clients.

Craig Window (38:24)
I want to go to, I want to go on vacation somewhere warm and you might know where they work, but doesn’t necessarily mean, know, what airport they’re flying out of, if there’s anyone else involved in the trip. so, ⁓ with that, there can be back and forth, right? So for us, the obvious use case was let’s, let’s build up, ⁓ automation to respond immediately, to make sure that we’re asking the right questions to that person.

And maybe we don’t have a phone number on file for that individual either. And so the back and forths could sometimes take days because then they’re in a meeting or it’s late in the evening. So you’re not going to hear back until the next day. Now AI and automation could take over and make sure we’re asking all of the right information right up front. Never needs to be touched by a circles employee working on it until we have it back from that end consumer.

Anthony Codispoti (39:22)
That makes so much sense. Yeah, because you could lose, like you said, days of that back and forth. They send you a question, you know, your circles employee maybe doesn’t see it immediately. So takes them a few minutes to get back to it. And then by the time they respond to that question, you’re just but if the AI is right there and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, then by the time the information gets handed off to your circles employee, they’ve got all the information that they need to start to get to work and you know,

Craig Window (39:24)
Yeah.

Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (39:50)
kind of deliver that white glove service that you guys.

Craig Window (39:53)
Exactly. And to ask the right questions does not take a human because we’re feeding it the what questions to ask anyways, right? So if we could take that part out, they’re not, they’re not producing the actual results, but our real people are. it’s saving them, would say, ⁓ and focusing, saving them time and focusing on, on, on the right aspects of their job, which is like delivering the actual service itself.

Anthony Codispoti (40:18)
What are some other tech or AI initiatives that are in the works?

Craig Window (40:23)
Yeah, we have a couple actually. Another big one that we have is ⁓ like we call it preferred vendors project, but basically because of, you know, we’re supporting over 500,000 people a year across the U S we have endless amounts of information and for certain services we use ⁓ preferred vendors, vendors that we work with a lot could be a flower and gift basket company.

It could be a hotel chain. It could be a, you know, local courier service. And so we’re serving that up now. If a request matches geographic location and type of request, ⁓ where that preferred vendor can, can operate, they’re being pre-populated into the results section of that request. And so our people know right away, okay, this is the vendor we should recommend first.

either because we get discounted rates, they offer better quality of service, or they become highly recommended. It’s just speeding up the, again, the process of completing that request a little bit.

Anthony Codispoti (41:37)
Craig, when a client renews with circles, what do they usually say was the thing that made the biggest difference?

Craig Window (41:45)
I mean, think, I think metrics do matter. Like how satisfied are people who use it or how many people have adopted it or engaged with you. But I ultimately, I think it’s the stories, right? ⁓ just this past week, I was, ⁓ meeting with clients locally in Boston and we received feedback from a biotech client. That was.

They were in the process of recruiting a new CIO. And this came up from their executive recruiting team who shared this feedback with the client. So they’re recruiting this new CIO and had been for a long time. They had their top candidate who they brought in for a visit to a site where our team manages the entire front of house experience. So we have concierge, we have reception there. And because it’s HQ, it’s high profile. After the visit,

the candidate came back and told that executive recruiter about the reception that he received from the team there. Of course, we knew that the team knew he was coming on site, right? So they, put out no stops and all the bells and whistles, but about the ease of check-in, the environment of the office, he, we gave him a tour of the main like amenity floors and how things work. And he said that that type of service and attention actually contributed to his decision to accept the role.

And so things like that, when the work becomes really, really visible, especially to ⁓ important executives or leadership, it’s quite incredible. It’s not only about just, you know, it influences talent decisions too. So that’s one that’s top of mind.

Anthony Codispoti (43:27)
Yeah. And so interesting part about several interesting things. First of all, great that, you know, your services helped to get this CIO landed for that company, right? Like this ⁓ high draft pick that they’re going after. And, know, you want to score that. ⁓ But the other interesting thing is you guys take care of the whole reception service there, not just on a special occasion, but like on a day to day basis. It’s the circles.

Craig Window (43:41)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (43:58)
team members that are manning the phones, they’re the face that people see when they come off the elevator. Am I understanding that right?

Craig Window (44:04)
Yeah,

in this certain instance, that is absolutely the case. Yes. In our, in our ideal client that we, we own that entire experience, right? And that’s maybe not for every client because we do so many different things. ⁓ but it’s that premier level of service that people in the, and in headquarters kind of expect. ⁓ and, and ultimately that’s what drives, you know, outcomes. Like I just mentioned, it’s, don’t get that from having someone at security, someone else at reception. ⁓

someone else, you know, doing the building tour because it’s all integrated in the same team. can deliver a really cool experience.

Anthony Codispoti (44:42)
Okay, say more about that, because I was thinking that was more of an outlier for you guys to take over that whole, I call it reception front desk kind of experience. But you’re saying, no, like we want that. We want all of these sort of elements. anybody who walked, yeah, say more about how you guys sort of coordinate what that orchestration looks like between your team members.

Craig Window (44:56)
Yeah.

Yeah,

I probably wouldn’t say that it’s, you know, 50 % of our business, but right now it’s 30 % and it’s growing rapidly, right? Because that’s the, that’s the differentiator for a space, especially a high profile one. I think it just makes a lot of sense. And a lot of the relationships like the, like the biotech one that I mentioned, it was a legacy client that we’ve had for 13 years, right? That knew us for our traditional concierge. We delivered on that for them. Great.

And then we brought it more on site and we were able to show that we could actually do that, gain the trust and take that over. They actually self-operated it prior to giving that program to us. So they felt that strongly that they wanted to run it at one point, but we were able to convince them that, you you should be outsourcing this experience and yes, we can deliver on it. So that’s what I’d like to see from all of our legacy clients. Actually, that would be great.

Anthony Codispoti (46:02)
And okay, so you gave us the one example of recruiting the CIO. Give us another example of sort of the upgrade in the experience that a client would notice by handing over those front desk reception services to the circles team.

Craig Window (46:18)
Yeah,

for our onsite programs, we have what we call kind of our hospitality operating system. It’s more of a behind the scenes tech, but it’s used by our staff to, you know, understand Craig’s favorite beverage or the room that Anthony books weekly for his team meetings. So it gives our team some ability to capture these more workplace preferences that really help drive a better experience. So, you know, we’re not just,

Yes, sir. No, sir. It’s Mr. Window and the experience becomes a little bit better. And so ⁓ that’s one of the reasons as well. We also have a proprietary training platform, Circles Academy, that’s all focused around hospitality. And I’d like to say, you know, it’s for our onsite people, which it is designed for them, but everybody goes through it. I went through it last year. My senior leadership team goes through it.

It’s basically, you know, understanding what drives the needle from a hospitality and customer service standpoint. And when it comes to that, it’s not just once, right? You need to do it on an ongoing basis. So all of our people, especially frontline go through various different types of hospitality training on at least a quarterly basis. And then we have self-learning tracks where they can do it themselves, but everything’s always. ⁓

moving on and to the next thing. you know, we spend a lot of time and resources on, on training our people to be the best and deliver the best service.

Anthony Codispoti (47:53)
Hmm. Yeah, lots of focus on customer service training. So Craig, you’ve been in this industry for nearly two decades. What do you think a lot of companies are still getting wrong about the employee experience?

Craig Window (48:07)
Well, ⁓ I think I may have mentioned it earlier, but I think one thing that’s still staggering to me is that the amount of money that people put into something, you know, it’s like, we will build it, they will come type of situation. We’ll build a beautiful building. We’ll put it in a really nice city where everyone wants to be. We’ll give people the best views, but they don’t think about the reality of the everyday employee who’s…

you know, maybe trudging in an hour there, an hour and a half home to actually come to that space. And, know, the amenities are good. They have new, you know, four computer screens, a sit stand desk, and they have all this nice furniture. ⁓ they can show off, but they really need to be investing in like, what’s the, what’s, what’s the point of the employee coming in here? How do we make it better for them easier to come here to work and again, make it magnet, magnetize.

the workplace, so people actually want to come in there. We don’t have to tell them to ⁓ do that. And so I think most organizations, they get the resourcing wrong, right? They’re spending the money on the things they probably are overlooking, right? Just think about the employee first and what they want, and then design those things, right? So maybe scrap the HQ and build

you know, four different smaller collaboration hub offices, right? Where people can go, but ⁓ maybe you get more sense of team camaraderie and collaboration in those versus what you’re going to get in a, you know, 25 stacked floor building.

Anthony Codispoti (49:50)
So do circles ever get involved in those building planning stages?

Craig Window (49:56)
For certain clients, we absolutely have. Yes, a lot of times it’s for existing clients that are moving to new spaces and we suggest maybe what that looks like. ⁓ A lot of times if it’s existing, we’re coming in and suggesting how we can play a part in the service design. But again, we’re not seeing a lot of leaders think about the actual service before the asset is built. It’s still…

one of the things that hasn’t caught up yet. It’s usually the afterthought, right? It’s like, let’s build it and then we’ll figure out how people will use it or how we’re going to staff it to be functional, right? In another good example, a couple of weeks ago, I was with a large client. They built out, refreshed the floor, the 20th floor of their big, their building, HQ. You go up to the floor and it’s wide open, right?

but there’s nobody staffed there. And we walk over, the iced coffee is out. You don’t know how to ⁓ book one of the shared rooms in there. ⁓ And so that design element is simple. It’s like, you just need to have someone here. If it’s gonna be a general floor where there’s no offices or desks, people are coming there to collaborate. Someone’s gotta watch over.

you know, the things that are in here and it’s brand new and you have no one welcoming you into the space to show you where you can meet, how you can use it. Just, you know, that’s a good example of a miss in my eyes.

Anthony Codispoti (51:34)
Mm.

Craig, what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to overcome personally and what did it teach you?

Craig Window (51:43)
Yeah, it’s a good question. I lost my grandfather in 2020 right at the beginning of COVID. And of course, at that time, it was severely locked down. And so I wasn’t able to go see him as much as I had toward the end. And so that made it a little bit harder that you didn’t, wasn’t able to say like a proper goodbye, but he was a fixture in my life growing up.

He taught me how to play golf, to fix things, how to play cards. But he was a big family man, right? So he spent a lot of time at home with his kids. He was a man of faith, And snogging his religion. But he also had a really good sense of humor. So I got a lot of those traits, I think, from him. But I think when he passed away, more importantly, it was just like time.

Time goes so fast, right? And you can’t wait for the right moment in life for things. ⁓ You gotta go take that chance. Do the uncomfortable thing, as I said earlier. Really trying to like live the life that you want. ⁓ Nothing’s gonna fall into your lap, right? Maybe sometimes, but it’s hard to come by. So it was just a good reminder of that. And I think about them often, so yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (53:11)
What was his name?

Craig Window (53:12)
Jim James but yeah Jim Guiled he was my mom’s father yeah they were close by and yeah he was just ⁓ he loved kids too he had seven so he he liked grandkids as well

Anthony Codispoti (53:13)
Jim window, James window. Okay. Yeah.

And so you weren’t able to see him as much there towards the end. Was the family still able to come together to mourn his loss or did COVID kind of put a stop to that?

Craig Window (53:38)
Eventually we did we did bring all the family together It took a couple of years But we’re able to remember him and I actually got to do the eulogy And his services which was real nice Yeah Yeah, yeah, and then we celebrated them at the golf course like he would want it afterwards and had all his friends say something it was really nice

Anthony Codispoti (53:57)
Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that.

Yeah. Craig, as the country president of circles, what do you hope to most be remembered for in this role?

Craig Window (54:18)
Yeah, I think, you know, if you asked me that three years ago, my answer would be different if I wasn’t in this role, but I would say the opportunities that I was able to create for other people, right?

And maybe the fact that I lead with transparency or I try to do as much as possible. So I want everyone in the organization to know what we’re working on and know that they can ask me questions. And I want to make sure that people can grow at circles very much. the next generation is really looking for, ⁓ you know, what’s the value of the organization I’m there for and can I grow there? And so I think.

organizations succeed when their own people can succeed. And so if I can create that type of culture where people feel like they can grow, they’re not afraid to ask questions and get answers and innovate, that’s, know, and I want them to feel proud of what they’re doing, but that’s really the biggest thing for me. I think it would be a good legacy if I could remember for those things.

Anthony Codispoti (55:22)
So how is your answer different now than it would have been three years ago?

Craig Window (55:26)
Yeah, well, you know, I think in a sales role, even in a sales leader role, you know, probably thinking more individually than I was as a bigger team, it’d be, ⁓ I would probably be financial. I’d say I want us to be X amount of millions of dollars, right? Instead of the people. But when you, yeah, when I took on that role, you have to, you realize the business doesn’t run through you, right? Like you have to enable and empower others.

to do the work for you and you realize really quickly you’ll never succeed unless the people below you succeed. Right. And so that’s something that, that very much shifted for me is, you know, I need to see other people feeling good about working here and doing good things. And I need to help them, whatever it is, resources, time, new roles, to be able to succeed. think that will help us all. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (56:23)
like it.

Craig, I’ve just got one more question for you today. But before I ask it, I want to do three quick things for the audience. First of all, anybody who wants to know more about Craig window or circles, lots of options here. circles.com is their website. Couldn’t get any easier to remember than that circles.com you can also find them on all the social channels circles is their handle. And you can find

Craig window on LinkedIn, just look for Craig window in circles and we’ll have links to all these things in the show notes folks. And if you’re enjoying the show today, please take a moment to subscribe wherever you’re listening. It also sends a signal that helps others discover our podcast. So thanks for taking a quick moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, you can get your hospitality employees access to therapists, doctors and prescription meds that.

counter intuitively actually increases your company’s net profits. Real gains that can change how a business is valued. Contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. So last question for you, Craig. A year from now, what is one very specific thing that you hope to be selling?

Craig Window (57:32)
know you said one, I might give you two quickly. I ⁓ organizationally, I want to see us continue to win, help new clients, see people internally get promoted, or even like helping someone that is an employee today find their dream job, even if it’s not at Circles.

Again, I want to just see people succeed. And then I think on a personal level, I’d love to look back and say that, you know, I was present for my kids, for my family, for my wife. Like I said before, you know, life goes by so, so fast. And if I could, you know, be there with them and really feel like I’m present and thriving in the family life, it makes work and everything else ⁓ much, much easier.

So I think that’s what I would say would be success any year from now.

Anthony Codispoti (58:26)
How old are your kids?

Craig Window (58:27)
My daughter just turned, my youngest turned seven and my oldest is 10.

Anthony Codispoti (58:33)
Okay, and what are they into right now?

Craig Window (58:35)
⁓ youngest, well, we just, was her birthday last weekend. She was in the Stitch in Lilo. That was the theme of her party. ⁓ and my older one is into, ⁓ Ulta and makeup and skincare routines and, ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Scary how quickly it happens. No, but she was just in a play actually last night for, for, for school. And it was a total like proud dad moment. She did amazing.

Anthony Codispoti (58:50)
Already at 10, huh? Okay.

Craig Window (59:03)
remembered all her lines, hit it well, and it was just like, wow, was very, very proud of her, I am, so that was nice to see. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (59:12)
That’s fantastic.

Craig Wendow from Circles, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Craig Window (59:19)
Yeah,

I appreciate you having me. Thank you. It was a lot of fun and very engaging. So thanks again, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (59:26)
Absolutely. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.