Hi Kelly, tell us about yourself and your background.
I’m a Brazilian designer advocating for a human-centered mindset to influence business objectives and product decisions. I have a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Architecture and Design at the Architecture and Urbanism College of University of Sao Paulo (FAU-USP). I also hold a bachelor’s degree in Digital Interface Design. I currently work for Cartão Elo, a Brazilian card network company, in their CX department, where I’m a research specialist contributing to increase our agile team’s awareness of our customer behavior and latest research insights.
How did you start working in the customer experience space?
As a UX designer with over 10 years of experience and with a solid research background, my work mindset has always been focused on people — our end-to-end customers. My focus on research led me to a path where I was able to explore more strategic approaches to design, using service design methods. Now, as a CX specialist, I’m able to share this body of knowledge in a cross-functional team, spreading the customer-centric mindset throughout the company.
What do you think the top priority should be for a company that wants to improve its customer experience?
To practice “active listening” to their customers’ inputs. But not only in a passive way, they should conduct research and be careful not to overflow their customers with questionnaires. Instead, the business should focus on a clear strategy to sample the customer base based on
How can companies better listen and understand their customer base?
They should invest more time planning the research and follow a strategy with rigor. It’s also important to humbly approach the research results, in order to avoid biased research and analysis.
Many companies are currently undergoing digital transformation processes – what are your tips on a successful digital transformation?
In my opinion, it’s important to have a clear vision defined upfront and work hard on involving leaders and focusing on communicating this vision to every team member. We’re always working with people and it’s important to make sure no one is feeling left out or forgotten. My tip to increase digital transformation’s success is to focus on the company’s culture so you can ensure everyone acknowledges the weight of their efforts.
What are some CX companies/solutions you’re keeping your eyes on right now?
I’ve been observing how some Chinese companies are approaching the Latam market for some years now. I’m especially observing some efforts that Ali Express and Shoppee are making right now in the Brazilian market.
What are some of your tips for people who want to work in the CX sphere?
Don’t focus only on the numbers, follow research insights that address the cultural environment your customer is immersed in. If you work in a specific industry don’t look only at your metrics or reviews and don’t benchmark only your direct competitors. As a designer working with CX, my advice would be to look at the user journey and which kind of task or problem your customer is trying to solve or address. If we are now used to terms such as VUCA, we should know that not only does the world or environment change, but so do the people. People are complex beings that deserve a complex, constant, and consistent analysis.
So many things changed in 2020. While some things are going to return to “normal,” what are new trends and habits you think will stay with us in the long term?
This is a tough question! We have many possible futures ahead of us right now and the only thing I can think of right now is that usually top-down enforced behaviors tend to disappear quickly, while bottom-up embraced behaviors tend to stay with us longer. So, we need to address this social and political scenario while analyzing our data and coming up with patterns to our customers behavior.
eCommerce boomed in 2020, and consumers started leaving more product reviews online. How can we make the most out of this momentum?
In my opinion it’s a great time to look for accidentally doubled data entries, and also to create a “model entry” for common user actions to be adopted in new pages and new products. Before thinking about automation or the use of AI to help analyze a great quantity of data, it’s important to ensure that this data is reliable. It’s a great time to prepare our business for supporting customer-centric growth.
What is your favorite CX metric? Why?
My favorite metric at the moment is CES. It’s actionable and, since we’re living in very uncertain times, we should consider the human aspects of our customers that are probably burdened with many difficult choices. So, I believe we can contribute to making our products easier to use, therefore making them easier for our customers to choose.
