Clare Muscutt talks with Gita Samani about CX and Digital Transformation, Perfectionism, and Beating Burnout
Episode #303 Show Notes
Clare Muscutt – host:
Welcome to the third episode of the third series of the Women in CX podcast, a series dedicated to real-talk conversations between women in customer experience. Listen in as we share our career stories, relive the moments that shaped us, and voice our opinions as loudly as we like about all manner of CX subjects.
I’ll be your host, Clare Muscutt, and in today’s episode I’ll be talking to a woman who’s led digital transformations for some of the world’s best-known retail brands.
Let me introduce you to today’s inspiring guest. She started her career on the frontline service desk before progressing into IT and business analysis at House of Fraser. She then became a consultant specialising in e-commerce and led digital transformation efforts for brands including Selfridges, The White Company, New Look, Debenhams, Michael Kors, and TM Lewin. As an expert in the field, she now sits on the executive team as Strategy Director at Astound Commerce. Please welcome to the show CX sister Gita Samani.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Hi Gita.
Gita Samani:
Hi, how are you?
Clare Muscutt – host:
I’m good. How are you doing?
Gita Samani:
I’m good, thank you.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Awesome! Great to see you today… and your cat tower! How’s the cat?
Gita Samani:
The cat’s fine, thank you. She’s hiding under the bed.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah, mine always hides whenever there’s anything noisy going on. So yeah, hopefully won’t make an appearance just now. So, I’m going to warm you up with a gentle question to introduce you to the women in CX podcast, just to tell us a little bit about yourself and your connection with customer experience.
Gita Samani:
Thank you. My connection with customer experience… So, I think we’re all customers, to start with, so it’s not difficult to have a connection with customer experience, but I guess my first foray into this was more than 20 years ago when I started working for House of Fraser in retail. So, when you’re working in retail, customer experience is at the forefront of everything, every decision. Back in those days – I say, ‘Back in those days’ – back in the 90s, all pre-digital; customer experience was about what was in store and how you supported that.
But not only is it about that; it’s also about internal customer experience, as well. And I didn’t necessarily have an outward-facing role, but I did have an internal-facing role, and one of my roles was to support… it was on the help desk. I started with, you know, on a help desk. And customer experience of being on a help desk is actually you’re servicing your customers. So, you know, it’s been inherent in me from, I guess, one of my earliest roles. And ever since then, I’ve moved in that space, in retail and then into digital and e-commerce. And with every iteration of my career, customer experience has obviously played a big part in that, not just for the end retailer or the end consumer, I should say.
What’s important to me about customer experience… so many things. How do you want your customers to remember you? How do you want your people that you interact with to remember you? And that’s just the start of it. It can be anything from how you receive a package to how you greet someone at the shop door to how you respond on a telephone or an email. And there’s just so many different ways that customer experience can be brought into your day-to-day world, that it is now inherent in everything that we think about. Sorry, I know it was a bit of a long answer.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Interesting! That’s fine. We love long answers at Women in CX. But you had like several roles in digital transformation, director of digital transformation, lots of contracting roles where you would come in and kind of re-engineer online retailers in their entirety. You worked at… Michael Kors, wasn’t it, was one? The White Company… so many amazing brands. In terms of kind of like taking that step from the retail world, servicing internal customers, and then going into very technical roles as a woman in technology, I just wondered if we could chat a little bit around digital transformation. Because for me, it’s problematic to customer experience a lot of the time because what I see happening frequently is technology-led decisions that are made to answer operational or business problems, but seldom are the technologies selected and organised in a way that delivers more value for customers and employees. I just wondered, as an expert in this area, if you could give us some insight into how we can challenge that and ensure that customer experience isn’t just an output of a range of technologies and is something that’s designed to deliver value.
Gita Samani:
Absolutely. It’s really interesting. I think my career – starting with the help desk – my career, it moved me actually into IT, and I was a business analyst. A business analyst is somebody who takes a business’s requirements to then outline technical solutions for them. And that’s where I think I probably really gained that real interest in making sure that we were delivering solutions that were right for the business and ensuring, thinking about what the business needs are, what their objectives are, in order to ensure the technology matches as opposed to thinking, ‘Here’s the technology. How can we make it retrofit to what we need because IT have made a decision?’
And I think that evolvement of my thinking and my career in that space has really helped me in all the roles that I’ve done. And I’ve worked alongside tech in every role that I’ve played. I even married one of them, who I met at The White Company. He was, you know, he was my architect and my business head. But they do come hand-in-hand, having the hat on of the business and the consumer is so super important when thinking about CX, ensuring you have the influence and acumen to be able to drive those decisions with technology because they do have a strong voice.
I’ve found in my career, which has spanned over 20 years, that it used to be very, very tech-led. It then got very business-led. And it’s now going into that tech-led again with headless and, you know, those types of different types of technology. But do they deliver against a business need, or do they deliver against a tech need? And these are questions that I love to delve into with clients where they say, ‘Oh, we’ve selected this platform.’ I’m like, ‘Hold on. Take a step back. You selected something. But tell us what your business problem is or tell us what you’re trying to achieve, then let’s see if that technology is right for you, and your business, and your team, and how you want to operate.’ Because that is so important in digital transformation.
So, I guess it comes with experience. In every role that I’ve done… I have worked at The White Company, which is where I met my husband…
Clare Muscutt – host:
We’ll come back to that shortly.
Gita Samani:
… at Michael Kors, where I was the director of e-commerce and operations as part of a project team to implement the European digital experience. And that customer experience spanned from fulfilment to marketing to customer service. And we were launching, you know, the US had… North America had a US site and a Canadian site, in English and the Canadian one was in French. We were launching, you know, five sites or six sites in five different languages, six different currencies, something like that. But then, how do you ensure that the experience that you want to drive as Michael Kors actually is reflected in all the customer touchpoints that happen? Whether that be if you phone up call centre and, you know, you respond in German or in Spanish or you receive your packaging and all your packaging information is in German or Spanish because that’s how you placed your order. All those touchpoints of ensuring that proposition is met with the right experience, I strive for that in all my engagement.
Clare Muscutt – host:
That’s great.
Gita Samani:
Sorry, another long answer.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Stop apologising! It’s all good. I was just thinking I wanted to unpick a couple of things that you said there. And first of all, I was going to ask you a question around when it comes to the business or the stakeholders, you know, when you’re kind of challenging, ‘Well, why that technology?’ what is it that’s driving them to pick a technology first rather than think about the business challenge or the customer experience that they want to create? Why do they do that?
Gita Samani:
Sometimes it’s… I mean, to be honest, I don’t really know. I mean, when we’re doing, you know… historically when I’ve been involved in doing platform selections or anything like that, I’ve always made sure that understanding the people doing the job, who are going to use the platform, have the input required as opposed to the e-com director or the IT director that are making those decisions, where they’re never going to use the platform. They’re not going to come out of Monday trade and say, ‘Right, we need to do this promotion, or we need to drive this,’ and actually someone has to execute on that. So, ensuring that the right people are in the room is so important. And therefore, you know, your point around, why do you think it is so tech-led? There are so many advances in tech and tech companies, you know – Uber is a tech company, but actually it’s a cab company, but it’s a tech company – but so many tech companies are driven by the tech. And therefore, when you get someone in front of you selling you the tech, then you think, ‘Okay, that’s great, but let me really go back inside to my business to understand is that right for my business?’ And that’s what’s super important.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah. I think it’s super interesting because as you said, you came from that business analysis route originally, so that grounding in kind of collecting requirements based on business needs has really obviously meant that as you’ve moved through the levels, you’ve been able to maintain that perspective on it. Do you think… I think it’s sometimes like the next shiny thing. So, I know of a lot of examples – not going to mention them – but where the kind of IT-level directors and that side of the team are looking at capabilities that they want to employ, so like machine learning, advanced artificial intelligence, all that kind of thing, but actually the customer experience challenges are so, so much more simple than that that needs to be resolved before they think about how they can use artificial intelligence to drive superior experiences. You pointed out, you know, kind of call centres, fulfilment, packaging; you gave loads of examples with the online retail experience. So, I think it’s sometimes like it’s the shiny distraction, isn’t it, of this all sounds like capabilities we need for the future and we could do with that, but actually, is it what you need right now? And is it going to…
Gita Samani:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s also with, you know, the drive to, ‘We need to be more agile and therefore we need to have, you know, this type of team set up in order to be able to do agile. And we need to have this type of technology to enable us to be able to do that,’ and it comes with that kind of thinking. But you’re right: it is about the next new shiny thing, and there are so many new shiny things. But when you find, you know, a technology that is going to be right for your customer, then it is a bit of a gamechanger, actually. It makes a huge difference to how a business will operate when a technology can support all elements of the business, not just technology.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah, I completely agree: it’s an enabler and an underpinning of what you’re able to do, isn’t it? Not the other way round. But for some reason, I think because as you say, the advances and everything is moving so rapidly, it has become the lead on some of these things. And as a result, the integration challenges that businesses experience that have another knock-on impact on the customer, and sometimes the length of time it takes to implement some of those transformations… by the time they actually get there, it wasn’t what the customer needed or wanted in the first place.
Gita Samani:
So many things a bit… ‘We’ve gone with MVP. Stuff’s been descoped. Really can’t go live with that.’ You know, are you set up as a business to ensure that you’re ever evolving that customer experience through the technologies that you have and optimising them? That’s all part of digital transformation: not just getting the product in, but evolving it, learning, testing, learning; always evolving that whole experience and capabilities for the consumer. Ultimately, it’s all about retention of the consumer and your customer experience.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah. And I loved the fact that you said, you know, even as a digital transformation director, you were thinking about, ‘Well, what is this end-to-end customer experience? And even though we might be changing a piece of technology that impacts communications and fulfilment, actually how does that translate to the vision we want to create as an experience across all of those touchpoints and channels?’ I’d love to hear more digital and transformation directors talking about that kind of thing. So, thank you for that.
Gita Samani:
Well, I wasn’t a digital transformation director; that wasn’t my title.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I’m sorry, what was it?
Gita Samani:
Yeah, I was director of e-commerce and operations at Michael Kors, whereby…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Sorry!
Gita Samani:
No, but it’s fine. You know, it was a huge transformation programme. The US had delivered what they needed to do, but the European platform and experience was an 18-month project to get it right. And they take time. They take money in terms of expense to get the right team in place. You know, you can’t expect business-as-usual teams to undertake a digital transformation, and you need that top–down buy-in to ensure that your business is bought into actually what your end goal is. And that end goal was to extend reach into Europe, but it needed all those tick boxes, all those exercises, those points of, you know: definitely have top–down buy-in; definitely have the right team in place; wasn’t a business-as-usual team because you would not succeed with doing that because it’s unfair and that leads to burnout and therefore you don’t get the right results, you’ll end up sacrificing on something. And therefore, it’s so super important to have, you know, the right structures and right… outline the plan ahead of time to ensure that you can cover what you’re biting off before you could chew.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I get you, yeah, and having an agile way of working means it has to sit outside of the BAU team, doesn’t it? And get people brought together especially to do this project so they can focus on it and make these changes happen. You mentioned a word there: burnout…
Gita Samani:
Something I’m familiar with.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah, I know, because you and I, we’ve known each other a little while now because this is the fourth time we’ve tried to record this podcast. And last time we spoke, you and I were both in exactly the same place of burnout, weren’t we?
Gita Samani:
We were.
Clare Muscutt – host:
We met and we were like, ‘Right, let’s do this,’ and both of us were like, ‘I really can’t. I just don’t have it in me.’
Gita Samani:
I think I tried to fob off my tears or my runny eyes with hay fever.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Well, no, it’s good because we were able to be honest with each other about how we were feeling. And I know on that day, you know, being able to recognise the same symptoms in one another, but to see that reflected back was really powerful. Because I think like in my internal world, I sometimes feel like I’m the only person in the world that feels the way that I do and works the way I do, but I don’t really know another way to be because I’ve always worked that way. So, yeah, I just thought it’d be good for us to kind of bring this out into the open.
Gita Samani:
Great. I think it is great. And, you know, you cannot underestimate… one, I mean, I think this is probably synonymous with the way that I’ve operated throughout my career, but you cannot underestimate this last 18 months that we’ve all had, and the whole world has shared in this. You know, the whole world has actually… it’s not, you know, the whole world will talk about ‘the pandemic’. You know, it’s not something that just hit certain countries. And what that means is, you know, we’ve all been working from home. We’ve all been, you know, where a conversation in the office could just be had in a corridor, you’ve all of a sudden got a half an hour meeting booked in your diary to have something that could just be like a very quick five-minute conversation. And then all of a sudden, your diary gets back-to-back, and you don’t have time to go to the bathroom, and you don’t have time to have lunch, and it becomes overwhelming. It really does.
And I think I’m probably… what’s the word? I can’t think of the right word, but you know, it’s probably my own fault that I’m like that because one, I probably like to be in the know of so many things and keep my finger in many pies ensuring that we’re trying to do the best that we can in everything that we do, but there is a limit to how much you can do that and then actually do work at the same time. When I say ‘do work’, actually physically produce deliverables and drive certain initiatives forward. And I think it just got too much for me at the time. It really did. I couldn’t control my diary. And yeah, it was just all a bit much.
And I think when we spoke, as you said, you recognised it in yourself, as well, when we both sat here and we’re like… and we just literally breathed. We just breathed. And I think that was so important to realise that it’s not just yourself; there are other women out there or people out there – not just women – there are people out there who are feeling this way because they are striving for so much. And, you know, I do think it’s a symptom of my own making that I am a bit of a perfectionist and I like to make sure that everything is right, and everything is done properly. And I do get slightly irritated when it doesn’t happen, and it’s something I have been pulled up on. But sometimes, you just have to let the small things go, and you have to look at the big picture, and you have to say what’s really important.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah, I’ve battled with perfectionism my whole life. We won’t go into kind of where these things come from, but it definitely happens, I think, at a very young age where somehow you’re conditioned to think that the results and the hard work that you put in and the reward you get at the end is what you push yourself so hard for. But just picking up on some of the language you use there, I’m the same, like internalising it: ‘It’s my fault I’ve done this to myself.’ But then that’s like punishing in its own right, isn’t it is?
Gita Samani:
It is.
Clare Muscutt – host:
That’s another example of why we end up pushing ourselves to the point of burnout and exhaustion because we can’t take that step back and go, ‘Actually, you don’t need to do this. It’s all going to be okay. You don’t have to go to the point of exhaustion.’
And for me, I just wanted to share an experience of just the last week. Obviously, I’ve been leading a start-up for the first time in my life and have spent six months pretty much working seven days a week, 15-hour days, and it’s unsurprising that my physical and mental health suffered. And at the point you and I had that little moment of ‘I can’t do this,’ it was a couple of weeks ago. And I realised that actually the only thing I can do in that situation, when I feel like that, is actually to stop, literally stop. And yes, there’s a huge fear, ‘The world will crumble if I’m not doing all of this stuff,’ but what I’ve discovered is it doesn’t. Actually, things carry on quite normally without such a big input from me. And actually, being able to just prioritise a smaller number of things or priorities, and just say, ‘We’re just going to do these things,’ or ‘I’m just going to do these things really well.’ So, it means I have really untidy house when I’ve got a deadline to meet, but that’s okay. Whereas I think before, I was just trying to do everything perfectly all of the time. But it is important to raise this and share this, that actually you’re not alone if you’re…
Gita Samani:
You’re not alone.
Clare Muscutt – host:
… feeling perfectionism. You’re not alone if you’re feeling burnout. But the key message: stop.
Gita Samani:
Stop. Definitely stop. Take time out. Take some me time. And it’s been so difficult for people to have me time in lockdown because where do you go?
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah.
Gita Samani:
You know, it’s like the shops weren’t open. You can’t just go and have a mooch around Selfridges. You just couldn’t do that, which is what I like to do.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Have a mooch around Selfridges? Ah, don’t we all?
Yeah, I suppose for a lot of people – and I think you’re right with that connection with lockdown actually – I think many of us… I mean, I did, you know, took on bigger projects, or… yeah, I started a whole new business during a pandemic. I know other people that started, you know, ‘I’m going to write a book at this point,’ and I think it was, you know, a bit of a distraction from the reality of being locked down, with the world seemingly going to hell in a handbasket. And that additional pressure, as you pointed out in the middle of this podcast, was that, yeah, everything isn’t okay around us, but as perfectionists that put ourselves into work, probably, when we’re already under pressure, it kind of multiplies the impact.
Gita Samani:
It does.
Clare Muscutt – host:
We can only keep focusing, like you said, for so long until eventually something has to give. And unfortunately, on that day it was…
Gita Samani:
For both of us.
Clare Muscutt – host:
… for both of us, yeah, the little emotional straw that broke the camel’s back. So, just to bring us home, then… I talked quite a lot there, and this is your podcast episode. Apologies for that.
Gita Samani:
No, no, not at all. I think that the point is that it’s great that, you know, we’re able to share these experiences because we are not alone. And I’m sure it’s absolutely normal when people will listen to this, that they’re thinking the same.
Clare Muscutt – host:
So, for someone who’s like suffering similarly to me and trying to find these ways of stopping, I go and ride my horse. Actually, this week, I volunteered for three days to just go and do like mucking out for other people and look after their horses because having that time away from this, you know, the desk, the office, it re-energises me and changes the way I feel. Yes, it’s something else to do, but it changes the whole dynamic of my day by going and doing something else, not just trying to sit here and keep hammering through. What are you doing to help yourself?
Gita Samani:
Well, there’s a couple of things, actually. And I think, you know, my husband and I, we definitely love our holidays. We really do. And we’ve really missed that during this time. And it’s been very difficult in terms of, you know, like I said, having me time. But that day that we last spoke about when I had my little…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Me too!
Gita Samani:
… challenge, when I had my little challenge, you know, I literally took time out. I just stopped. You just have to stop. And you do. You have to take the time out whether or not that’s, you know, sitting, reading a book, or going for a walk, or whatever it is. But in terms of longevity, you know, making sure that you always have some time for some me time and non-work thinking time. I’m very driven by what I do and love what I do, but I know I have to switch off, and I know that going on a spa day, or going on holiday, or whatever it is, is going to help that. And I have been getting out and trying to do some more walking, but I went through a lot of winter literally just sat at my desk and not getting out, and it’s very difficult. And you just have to take a step away from your desk and think about yourself. Be a bit selfish.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah. It’s selfish but in this like strange way that I felt uncomfortable being selfish for some reason – I don’t really understand it – but it’s not being selfish; it’s caring about yourself. And if you don’t prioritise that, you can’t be there to serve everyone and deliver amazing projects and change the world.
Gita Samani:
Definitely can’t.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I don’t know why I’m today years old and just realising this, but as you said, we’re not alone.
Well, anyway, Gita, it’s been awesome to have you. If you could leave the women in CX that are listening one piece of advice, what would you say that would be for them?
Gita Samani:
Always think about the customer but remember yourself. You are a customer to someone somewhere. So, what does customer experience mean to you? Think about yourself. And I don’t mean that in a selfish way; I mean that look after yourself in that way. Because we get to where we are and what we can achieve because of where we’ve come from. And you should never forget that because, you know, this body and your mind has brought you to where you are. So, never forget yourself.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Love it. Well, I know you’re going to a spa this weekend, so I’m very jealous. I hope you have a lovely time, and yeah, keep looking at yourself. Thank you everyone for…
Gita Samani:
And you, too! Get some more riding in!
Clare Muscutt – host:
Get some more riding and some rest. Thanks ever so much for joining us today, and I’ll see you soon. Bye!
Gita Samani:
Bye.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Thanks for listening to the Women in CX podcast with me, Clare Muscutt. If you enjoyed the show, please drop us a like, subscribe, and leave a review on whichever platform you’re listening or watching on. And if you want to know more, please join us at womenincx.community, and follow the Women in CX page on LinkedIn.
Join us again next week where I’ll be talking to a woman who is leading customer experience at Uber and discussing the evolution of platform-based business CX. See you all next week!