Interview with Connie Tortorici, Director of Customer Success

Welcome to today’s Meet the Team interview with one of our most colorful and energetic team members.

We recently sat down with our Director of Customer Success, Connie Tortorici, who manages business relations with our strategic customers for our Network and Product Catalogue solutions. Connie shared what she loves about her position at InterTrade and the first place on her must-visit list once it’s safe to travel again. Keep reading for all the details.

What does your professional background look like?

I come from a retail background. I have over 17 years of experience within the retail industry, where I literally started from the bottom up. I used to work for Sears Canada and was able to grow completely vertically within the retail industry. When they closed, I went back to school and continued in the e-commerce field.

How and when did you discover InterTrade?

When Sears decided to shut down their operations in Montreal, a very good friend of mine who also works with InterTrade, Frantz Duverseau, introduced me to the company. [He] asked my opinion on certain things that were going on with the retailers they were working with, and it really went from there. It has been an amazing experience.

How would you explain your current role at InterTrade in a single sentence?

My goals are to make sure our customers get the most value from our solutions and to keep a finger on the pulse to address new needs and challenges as they arise.

What aspects of your job do you enjoy the most?

The problem-solving part of it. I am a true people person who has retail at heart; it’s never left me. Being able to use that quality in the job I do today is the most inspiring thing.

How do you measure success in your current role?

We feel like we succeed when our customers succeed. The role I play is really listening to our customers and their needs, figuring out how we can help, [and] delivering what we say we will.

Has your job changed since the start of the pandemic earlier this year? 

It has. Our focus became figuring out how to help [our customers] survive, whereas before, it was all about growth. We immediately took action to see what we could do. I always say retail will be around forever. It’s how we market it that will be different. I’m a firm believer that retail will always exist. I think the major thing that we had to work through was getting other people to see that retail was not dead.

What kind of feedback are you hearing from retailers about their business? Has that changed, too?

There are two major focuses for retailers. Number one is the loss of expertise. Because of the pandemic, many of them had to lay off or furlough a lot of their employees who had expertise. Number two is, they need to figure out how to generate online sales and differentiate themselves. Those are really the two struggles that I hear about from a lot of the retailers that I speak with.

Looking ahead, how do you think the industry will evolve with the long-term effects of the pandemic?

I don’t think the in-store experience is going to go away. I believe that it will exist, just in a slightly different form. [But] I do think it’s going to move more toward ecommerce. That’s where I see it going forward.

When it’s safe to travel again, what vacation destination is at the top of your list?

It was a dream of ours to go to Jamaica this year. When we’re able to and when things are stable with our customers, we intend to soak our feet in the waters of Jamaica.