Situation / objectives and key results
The group objective, cascaded to all in the turnaround team, was to save the business. My first official “key result” was to deliver a transformed business user experience on the three chain websites in time for Christmas peak trading.
My team successfully relaunched the ecommerce platform, leading to enhancements in basket sizes and purchase frequency. The team not only remained intact but thrived, with leads capitalizing on the empowerment and autonomy granted to them. I did this successfully and at the same time established processes elsewhere in the business that are still driving growth today.
My role
I was recruited in year two of a four-year transformation programme to join a senior management team designed to turn the ecommerce part of the business around. In my role as Head of Customer Experience, I commissioned agencies, recruited and led analytics, UX, graphic design, content, social creation and social moderation teams.
Leadership tasks
- Landing the narrative for transformation
- Team building, focus on retention
- Process troubleshooting
- Budgeting, planning and commissioning
- Creative direction (internal & vendor teams)
- Supplier management and negotiation
Team and culture rehabilitation:
I set about fostering a resilient and progressive culture among the 35 professionals split across three teams. I had to overcome some initial resistance from a segment of the team, but I eventually gained commitment from all hands to start climbing the accountability ladder.
I inherited very strong leads who had been undervalued and prevented from really delivering.
It didn’t take much to set them free and watch them shine:-) With strong leads in place I was able to bring teams closer together, creating cohesion between service design, content design, ui/interaction design, User research, and a remote front-end development studio in Paris.
With my core delivery structure in place, I worked to build bridges with other silos in the business:
- Leveraged a dotted-line relationship to integrate customer insights, attitudinal research, and a digital marketing studio into my plan
- Merged quantitative and qualitative research approaches, synthesizing user research with marketing’s attitudinal insights to drive evidence-based service enhancements.
- Implemented agile delivery processes, dismantling silos particularly between ecommerce, marketing, and the Paris development unit. (I made good use of my native French speaking capabilities and my tech background, to bridge communication and process problems with the dev team)
Some success measures:
- 18% savings in routed calls in Q4-year1
- Saved 450k on external agencies in Q1-year2
- Continual improvement of customer satisfaction index
- 7% uplift in sales with algorithmically-driven merchandising
- I deployed an integrated analytics platform including Foresee Results, Site Catalyst and Adobe Test & Target
Feedback?
My Social and Content Design Lead had some nice things to say about working with me. He may have over-egged the recommendation a bit but he’s a lovely man:-)
Dug is far and away the most inspirational and engaging manager I have ever worked for. His passion and creativity in creating the perfect customer experience is infectious and he entirely remodelled the way I, and everyone in our team, thought about eCommerce. He is also one of the coolest guys I have ever met and I consider him to be an incredible visionary, manager, mentor and friend.
Can I help you solve a similar problem? dug@goodlookslikethis.com