Melody Laney builds a career around growth and customer experience

Melody Laney, a Phenix City, Alabama enrollment consultant, is being recognized for a 25-year career spanning customer service, operations, training, and business process improvement. Her story highlights how coaching, education, and entrepreneurship are shaping her next chapter in helping small businesses improve the customer experience.

Why it matters: - Melody Laney’s career shows how long-term professional growth can come from combining workplace experience, education, and entrepreneurship. - Her work focuses on customer experience, a core factor in how small businesses retain clients and build trust. - Her message to women entering the workforce centers on not postponing personal goals indefinitely.

What happened: - Melody Laney, based in Phenix City, Alabama, has spent 25 years building experience in customer service, operations, training, business process improvement, and professional development. - Laney currently works as an Enrollment Consultant with KaPar Innovative Services and also serves as an Enrollment Consultant at Aflac. - Her background at Aflac includes roles as a Customer Service Specialist, Claims Specialist, Consumer Markets Lead Qualifier, and Training Specialist. - Influential Women recognized Laney as part of its platform highlighting women who share perspectives and create empowering content. - Laney’s profile includes a link to her Influential Women page.

The details: - Laney says a key career lesson came during a coaching session at a call center when a supervisor told her, “You can do better.” - Her supervisor’s point was simple: “There’s always room for improvement.” - Laney says the experience helped her see that strong performance metrics are not the same as full professional growth. - She says she had been focused on her own calls and numbers without fully engaging with her team. - Laney now sees coachability and team participation as essential parts of career success. - She earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Human Resource Management from Strayer University, graduating with high honors. - Her undergraduate experience included academic honor societies and peer mentorship. - Laney is pursuing a master’s degree in Instructional Technology and Design through the University of North Alabama Online. - She says that education strengthens her understanding of learning systems, people, and organizational processes. - Laney credits her children, husband, and inner circle with helping sustain her progress. - She says her children motivate her to keep moving forward and serve as an example. - Laney also says she has learned to give herself credit for the work she has done, not just the support she has received. - She encourages young women to take themselves seriously and avoid treating sacrifice as a reason to delay their own goals forever. - As a mother of a daughter and a son, Laney says she sees how quickly children grow into independent lives of their own. - She advises women to weave their goals into their current responsibilities instead of waiting for the “right” time to return to school, start a business, or pursue meaningful work. - Through her small business, Laney helps small businesses improve their customer experience. - She says one challenge is presenting that service without making business owners feel criticized. - Laney is focused on building value through her brand and helping clients understand the process of improving customer experience. - She says some business owners understand their customer journey but may not see where their own responsibilities fit. - Laney is also researching pricing so her services stay competitive without undervaluing her time and expertise. - She is exploring more self-paced offerings that would give business owners resources with less hands-on involvement. - Laney describes herself as a woman of her word and says honesty with herself has become increasingly important. - She says she has learned that pulling back too far can create its own internal conflict. - Her guiding view is that growth requires movement. - Laney said, “I hope my children notice that mama doesn’t have it all together; sometimes you have to build the plane while flying. You don’t reach new heights without movement!”

Between the lines: - Laney’s story is less about a single career pivot and more about layering experience across roles, education, and personal responsibility. - Her emphasis on coachability suggests a broader lesson for service-based careers: performance metrics matter, but adaptability and collaboration matter too. - Her small-business work also reflects a practical challenge many consultants face, which is proving value while asking clients to own part of the change. - The focus on self-awareness and accountability gives her message a personal-development angle that goes beyond business advice.

What’s next: - Laney plans to keep developing her platform for customer-experience services. - She is working toward more self-paced offerings for small business owners. - Her ongoing graduate studies suggest she will keep blending training, instructional design, and business support in future work.

The bottom line: - Laney’s career story centers on steady growth, not perfect timing. - Her message is simple: keep learning, keep moving, and do not wait for every condition to be ideal before pursuing the next step.