Hi Patricia, Tell us about yourself and your background.
Specialist in the journey of consumer experience and data strategy for over 20 years. Enthusiastic about innovation, emerging technologies and disruptive business models; He started his career in the industry, and moved on to strategic consulting firms GS&MD and PwC. Today, with his data strategy consultancy, he proposes alternatives to integrate the information journey, from strategy to execution, with those organizations that wish to strengthen their customer centric positioning through a data driven culture.
How did you first start working in the CX space?
I’ve been working with customer success for almost 20 years. I started in the industrial segment, where I could work in the areas of product quality management and R&D projects, seeking to meet the needs of consumers based on retail demand and global trends. And, in this last decade, I have accumulated many stories and lessons learned, I explored my knowledge helping retail companies to better understand their consumers and serve them more and more in a customized way, stimulating the delivery of value and purpose in the relationship between brand and consumers. Today I follow the evolution of brands in their relationship journeys with their consumers, as well as working on strategic projects with those brands that want to accelerate their relationship in the omnichannel environment.
What are some of the common misunderstandings related to customer experience?
I like to exemplify two important “misunderstandings”:
A. When brands raise the expectation of their service during the stage of capturing and conquering their consumers and fail to deliver this proposal. The higher the expectation, the greater the degree of frustration in cases of misunderstanding;
B. When customers provide their information to their trusted brands and do not notice any customization in the service at repurchase times. Brands that do not have a history of relationships convey to their “faithful” consumers that they continue to be at the same level as new customers in their shopping and relationship journeys.
Have you seen any interesting new trends in eCommerce this year?
Physical retail sales dropped sharply as the pandemic forced consumers to stay indoors and brick-and-mortar stores closed. In this same period, while sales in physical retail plummeted, online retail accelerated, including for the sale of food products, which until then had been having less adherence due to the frictions that this journey presented.
This trend has been developed globally, especially here in Brazil, where the experience of purchasing perishable food was a paradigm broken in the online shopping journey during the pandemic. According to global surveys, more than 30% of food shoppers in supermarkets have migrated to the online channel. We’ve had a disruptive reconfiguration in the groceries buying journey around the world that should become more than a trend, but a new habit.
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, the maximum benefit of this moment will be to enhance the omnichannel experience, as consumers relate to brands and not channels. Exploiting the relationship by providing seamless experiences across all customer touch points should be an accelerator in the potential for increased revenue with each of these new and existing traditional channel customers.
What are some CX companies/solutions you’re keeping your eyes on right now?
In fact, I have seen the need to increasingly integrate the CX strategy into the organization’s routines, across all functions of the organization.
I have been trying to assess which solutions can help companies to create and deliver consistent experiences to their customers, in order to make it possible to measure the effectiveness in each of the stages of this journey.
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?
What is even stronger is the need to generate interest and value to customers throughout the relationship cycle. Desiring the customer in your buying journey is, above all, considering them at the center of all organizational decisions. Listening to customers and ensuring that the voice is accurately captured (through data and insights) will have even more value if these concerns, desires and needs are represented in the companies’ strategy and decisions.
Do you believe focus groups are still relevant in the era of eCommerce? Why?
I believe it remains important for some of the product and service categories. The interaction enriches the findings and confirms (or not) some premises. From online meetings, I have experienced some alternatives for sending assessment kits to participants, realizing that there is a very rich interaction in the discussions. Still, I think that increasingly these types of interactions / assessments should migrate to testing between profiles and relationships on social networks and directly in e-commerce. Many brands have taken advantage of engaging relationships to test products and try out new ways to sell among friends of their target consumers.
Last but not least, what is your favorite CX metric?
In my opinion, the CSAT best translates into which points we should explore improvements, which makes me prefer it, in most cases.
