Hi João, tell us about yourself and your background.
My career began as an intern in a Colgate-Palmolive R&D lab, but despite enjoying the lab work I preferred to sit at the table with analysts and help structure the company’s new projects. After that I worked through packaging development and manufacturing, where I could have contact with the best methodologies of project management and continuous improvement. With this experience gained, I changed my career and took a position to structure the continuous improvement team of Reckitt-Benckiser, a company that helped me a lot to develop skills of analysis of indicators, problem solving methods and strong leadership skills and sense of ownership.
After a while, I decided to accept a different challenge by joining Itau Unibanco, a Brazilian banking institution that added me a lot in agile methodologies, process governance and especially in the routine experience of customer centrality. Currently, I am having the opportunity to act as CX Business Improvement & Experience Sr. Specialist at 99, the Brazilian unicorn of ride sharing, food delivery and digital wallet.
How did you first start working in the CX space?
The concepts of customer centrality arose from my first job as an R&D intern. Withing the new projects, we needed to understand the consumer preferences to deliver the most appropriate solution, which in that case were toothpaste and mouthwash.
What are some of the common misunderstandings related to customer experience?
I believe that a big misunderstanding is the company using customer data to support a theory or a solution or a new product, rather than using customer data to create a product.
Another big misunderstanding within the world of cx is not separating the personas that each product has. How to deliver a product, when deliver, where to deliver, with what efficiency, with what characteristics. These are some particular issues of specifics personas that must be evaluated and questioned but many companies insist on not customizing their products.
Have you seen any interesting new trends in eCommerce this year?
The pandemic caused people to stay at home more and many of them felt the need to use this time to study and take courses. In the Brazilian market, content marketing and content e-commerce grew a lot during the pandemic. First because our users are more critical and want to learn about something before they buy, second because they are willing to pay to learn.
eCommerce boomed in 2020, and consumers started leaving more product reviews online. How can we make the most out of this momentum?
It’s the timing of the metrics! With the growth of ecommerce and consequently CRM technology and data analysis, we have been able to obtain rich information about the behavior of people, leads, consumers and loyal customers. The hard work here is not to measure, but to translate this behavior, these behavior and metrics into solutions along with the product team.
What are some CX companies/solutions you’re keeping your eyes on right now?
Lately I have been very attentive to digital identity authentication solutions such as facial recognition and electronic signature. Here in Brazil these solutions are still booming, but the technology tied to them is growing exponentially, as well as the revenues of the companies that use them. I try to capture a lot the feeling benefit from these solutions, since these solutions like face ID to pay a bill is totally out of our Brazilian reality 2 or 3 years ago. So, the point here is how much companies can adapt faster and focus on solutions to serve the customer in the best, most efficient, cheapest way and that generates the best experience for them.
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?
I believe that over the years and with the advancement of digitization, our users tend to become more critical and want to absorb more information about products before buying them. The pandemic accelerated this, forcing many undigitized people to own a smartphone and shop online. And that won’t go back.
This digitization tends to accelerate more and more, companies need to be prepared to present the best possible user experience solving their problems in a personalized and fast way. On the other hand, the user with more information, more curious and more critical.
Do you believe focus groups are still relevant in the era of eCommerce? Why?
I think focus groups will always be important. As I answered earlier, mensure actions and behaviors of the user is easier and faster. These metrics come from a quantitative research and are extremely important, although I believe that focus groups will be less frequent.
Then why will they still be essential? To make a good product discovery or even a usability test. It is extremely important to be their face to face with the user, capturing their expressions, doubts, the silence like an answer that are not spoken or perceived by video call. I believe that focus groups are still the best way to manage a qualitative analysis.
Last but not least, what is your favorite CX metric?
Hahahaha, this question is good and controversial! I’m going to talk about two metrics here, one that I think is the most important and one that’s my favorite.
The metric that I think is most important is the NPS (Net Promoter Score). I believe to be the metric that reflects the centrality in the customer, it reflects the fidelity, satisfaction and especially the customer’s loyalty on the company or on the product. It’s a metric that should be at the top of the performance press, because it’s a driving metric. It is a metric that indirectly reflects how satisfied the customer is about the company or the product. In addition, this KPI reflects the work of all areas as a single system, if one of them is not performing well, the entire company will be affected and the end customer can perceive this friction point.
My favorite metric is recipe. It is also a super strategic metric, as well as NPS, and thinking through a strategic point of view, a good NPS means a loyal and engaged customer, generating more sales that ends up generating more revenue. However, having a good revenue does not only mean this, but also spending less (but how to spend less? with lawsuits? structuring processes? reusing waste? lean methodology?), and you can increase your billing (but how? Cross sell? Up sell? New products? Innovation? Best sales and marketing team?). It’s a game of chess, a game that CEOs play every day and which I am fascinated.
