Clare Muscutt talks with Alexandra Acosta about data analytics and living with eating disorders.
Episode #501 Show Notes:
Clare:
Welcome to the 1st episode of the fifth 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 seriously brave community member from the United States. Let me introduce you to today's inspiring guest. She is a CX Analyst & Strategist specialising in the retail sector. She started her CX career as a Consumer Insights Intern, where she built an entire Voice of Customer and CX program from the ground up and now, with her experience in many facets of customer analytics and research, strives to help businesses to understand customers from a holistic point of view – using quantitative data to tell stories and help stakeholders see the value of CX. Her personal story is one of incredible resilience and I am so proud of her courageousness in sharing it with us today. Please welcome to the show, CX sister, Alex Acosta.
Clare:
Hey, Alex.
Alex:
Hello. How are you?
Clare:
I'm wonderful. Welcome to the Women in CX podcast.
Alex:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored.
Clare:
And welcome to everybody listening along as well. I'm super excited to have Alex in studio today because we have been spending quite a bit of time together of late haven't we?
Alex:
We have.
Clare:
In the community. Alex has been on two panels with me in the last month, talking about transformation and digital and also, yeah. Prepping for your masterclass on data.
Alex:
Yes. It's been a busy summer with WiCX.
Clare:
Yeah. Busy summer. And how have you found it so far?
Alex:
Absolutely love it. Just super grateful for the opportunities. And also it's awesome to even do it. Like, I don't even think I ever pictured myself, at my age, doing this stuff and kind of being like a voice that people go to for questions around CX, like it's really done wonders for my self-esteem <laugh>
Clare:
Oh, I love that. Love that. Well, that's amazing. But also just like recognizing actually you are a super bright voice in our community and you have a depth of expertise around customer experience and data that I think not many people do. So actually you bring so much value with those responses that you give around those questions because you live and breathe how to use data to tell stories and influence senior stakeholders in a massive organization. And not many of us really understand how to do that. So, I think that's a great kind of place to start is to tell the listeners a little bit more about how you found your way into CX and where you are today and working for this massive organization.
Alex:
Yeah, sure. So I pretty much knew I wanted to do market research, consumer insights from my first market research class in college. I was a marketing major and you know, there's a million different ways you can go with marketing. So I interned a ton from freshman year all the way up until senior year and just did a bunch of different things, PR, social media, like anything you could think of in the marketing space. And none of it really ever like struck me as something that I would want to do for the rest of my life or make a career out of. And I got super lucky applying to an internship that was going to be the summer after my junior year. And it was a digital marketing internship. So you think like SEO, things like that. And they kind of switched it at the last minute.
Alex:
And I went in for my interview. First person I sat down with was like, Hey, just so you know, we're switching this to a consumer insights internship instead of digital marketing. And so since I already had in my head that I wanted to do consumer insights market research work, I was obviously thrilled to hear that. And I was like, that is no problem at all. Like, I actually love that way more. So I got that internship and I did that over the summer and it was like an internship program. So, you know, a group of people, we were all in different areas of the business, but that was at a smaller, fast fashion retailer. I did that throughout the summer and stayed on part-time throughout my senior year. And then I got offered full-time to stay there as soon as I graduated. So I started working one week after graduation. I gave myself a week to move to a new apartment and that was about it. And then I've been working full time ever since then.
Clare:
Wow, how old are you now?
Alex:
I'm 26. Yeah, so that was when I was like 22, 21, 22 is when I started so about five years of experience now. And I stayed there for about three and a half years, almost four years and a bunch of different disciplines that have to do with CX, consumer insights, personalization, CRM and really just started exploring different areas. So I have a specialty with data and analytics and it's really interesting to be in the community, honestly, because there's so many different facets of CX that I never even thought about because I've just been all data all the time and like storytelling and doing strategy based on insights and stuff. So I've been able to learn a lot, but yeah, I had some experience with CRM personalization, so like email marketing, SMS marketing, direct mail based on customer behavior, doing a lot of consumer analytics that have to do with our actual databases.
Alex:
And then when I started at Dick's Sporting Goods about two years ago almost, I was brought in to the ship to home fulfillment team under the e-commerce umbrella as like a strategist that they basically wanted to hire me on to bring the customer lens to what that program was doing. So like, does it make sense for us to offer same day? Does it make sense for us to offer these different fulfillment options? Like what matters the most to our customers when they're ordering from us online? And I kind of wanted to work at Dick's. So I was like, perfect, I'll come in and do this. But ultimately had my sight set on the CX team and consumer insights team. And so my leaders were amazing and helped me kind of move over after a year into the role that I'm in now which is a Quantitative Analyst on the CX team. And I handle pretty much digital eCommerce and fulfillment. So by online pickup, in store, curbside pickup, ship to home pick up and then the digital browsing experience on the website primarily, but we're collaborative teams. So we all do everything.
Clare:
So many things resonated with me there. In terms of career journey. So I did a Master's in marketing and it, I had a really similar moment which was the consumer behavior module that all the aspects of marketing I thought I really interested in, but that was the one I was like, wow, <laugh> mm-hmm, <affirmative> it was the one I got the best mark in because I guess I was also so interested in it. And, for me, I think my term of customer experience, perhaps as I know it to be today, began with thinking, oh, if you can really understand consumers and their needs and their behaviors, actually you can build things like propositions and services, to actually, you know, meet those needs. And the resulting behavior has this like really positive impact on business.
Clare:
And I just found that fascinating, but also really similar that I didn't do an internship, but I worked my way through college university as it's called over here too. And I started as a waitress at this big company and just loved serving customers. Absolutely just, it was, you know, this other thing, I think, which was a [inaudible] that sparks my love of what I do today. And I worked my way up to be a deputy general manager. So, I graduated from my master's and the graduate schemes came up. They offered me to stay on, in a similar way. So I ended up walking straight into a general manager's job at 23 as a graduate. And yeah, just fascinating how the paths that we take kind of serendipitously can lead us to where we are. And I just love the bit of the story where they made a mistake or they swap you know, I wasn't even supposed to be interviewing for this, but it ended up being the thing that you really wanted to do, yeah, that's a bit of magic, isn't it?
Clare:
That's a bit of alchemy.
Alex:
It was, it felt like fate for sure. And I definitely agree with you about like the serving customers thing as well. Like I worked in retail all throughout high school and stuff, and I loved being a stylist for people and just like making people feel good about themselves and actually serving customers. Like I love doing that. I worked in one restaurant as a hostess and I absolutely hated that. It was just not the service aspect that I really, really loved. And yeah, just seeing things kind of all mashed together. And I'm just such, I'm just that type of person that really values human connection and that type of thing. And really wanting to actually, what sparked my passion for it was literally reading comments from customers at that internship and being like, we've got to do something about this. We are not serving them correctly. And that led to me literally building their entire CX program as an entry level associate and doing all of that myself and then being able to see all of that stuff actually come to action and, you know, changes of processes, changes of the customer service model and what we're training people to do inside of stores. It was just amazing to see how feedback that you give to companies they're doing it correctly, can inform all of these things and actually, you know, pay off for everybody
Clare:
OMG. So, literally this is pretty much the same story I have. So my first job in the head office was in data and insights, first one off the bat. And I wasn't so good with the numbers the way that you are, because I don't think I was built to be an analyst, but what I could do was tell the stories and spot the root causes. So when I was doing reporting for the executive team, this massive company, you know, board of directors, I'd quite often get things like the numbers, the wrong way around, but what I was saying about why <laugh> what we needed to do differently about it to fix these problems for customers, because I had operational knowledge and understanding as well meant that what I had to contribute as someone working in data and analytics was, you know, more than just crunching numbers.
Clare:
So yeah, I remember one report went up to the executive team and it had got the nine and the eight the wrong way around. So they thought the mystery shopper had fallen off a cliff, but it was just because I found out I had Dyscalculia, which is like the number of, the equivalent of dyslexia, but with numbers. So I was never meant to be an analyst, but it did catapult me off into the direction that I ended up going to, which was more around how to design services and propositions. So, that's so interesting. So I'm going to just dig a little bit more around this kind of what you do and how you do it because I think the audience would love to know more about what it's like to be a quantitative analyst in a CX team. Like what kind of data do you deal with? What do you do?
Alex:
Yeah, so.
Alex:
So primarily we focus on survey data and we have so much of it. I mean we get hundreds of thousands of responses. I think it's July 20th right now. I think we're up to over 2 million responses across all of our surveys. So obviously that is a big data set to analyze and socialize. So we focus primarily on the feedback that we get from our customers. And basically just synthesizing that and telling it to, you know, the relevant teams. We kind of have a more mature program to where, you know, in my past, when I was just starting out with my CX program that I built myself, it was super easy to get these like low hanging fruit of experience that we could go and have like quick wins, you know, and just be really agile. Our program's more mature.
Alex:
So it takes data from all different places to kind of start telling a more holistic story rather than affecting change based off of one singular metric, for example. And I think that's a good thing. To be honest, I think it makes a lot more sense, especially Fortune 500 company to be looking at things from this holistic point of view and actually bringing other teams along for the ride on analytics projects and just like socializing things, reading things out and actually making a strategy based on those insights. Because it's not so simple as, you know, people who wait in line for over 10 minutes are 250 basis points, less satisfied than people who wait in line for less than five minutes, you know? So, that's something super easy. We can go and say like, okay, let's start monitoring checkout speed. Let's go talk to the associates in the stores and see how we, you know, get some more efficiencies in cash wrap area.
Alex:
We're talking about an 850 store fleet and you know, millions of dollars in sales and millions of customers that are coming to us from all different angles. And how do we start to break that stuff down and really improve experiences while also maintaining business goals and initiatives at the same time? So we pretty much, like I said, focus on survey data for the bulk of my day to day job. But for the more strategic initiatives, we are definitely pulling in contact center data and foot traffic, data credit card data from vendors, like all these different things, athlete or customer data that actually has to do with their behavior. So how often are they shopping? What's the market basket analysis on these people? Like what are their demographics that we get from, you know, other vendors? So all of that stuff is matched up to tell the holistic story and you know, we kind of are aiding and doing that. And it's really, really fun and interesting to work on for sure.
Clare:
So, just to go, kind of roll back a little bit into again, just things that resonated with me is that, you know, when you work in a massive organization, sometimes that low hanging fruit or more obvious stuff can have a huge impact, right? Because when you're talking about millions of customers, thousands of stores, hundreds of thousands of employees, being able to use data, analytics, insight, customer experience thinking to say, you know, if we do go and fix that problem over there, that we've been ignoring for a while, it's a lever that can have a massive amplified impact.
Clare:
So I remember I did a project when I was in my retail days and we were able to generate a return on investment of 4 million quid with identifying what was important to customers and what wasn't. And actually one of the service touchpoints that required a lot of labor, wasn't important. And we were over-investing in this thing that we could immediately save a whole load of money by not doing and reinvest in areas that were lacking, where customers were unhappy with things like, it's really random things like, because the queues were so bad, because of the way that they put the menus in the cafes meant that you couldn't choose what you wanted until you got to the end. So people were standing there, waiting in the line, looking up and making their decision whilst they were at the till and taking twice as long as they needed to.
Clare:
Yeah. So, move the menus to earlier in the journey or more versions of a menu and people can have already decided, speed up the queue speed. And actually there was a massive sales spike as well because people weren't looking at the queue and turning away at peak periods, because it just kept moving. Fsascinating, right? So being able to, you know, identifying through insights, data observations, qual, quant, you know, whichever way you do it. When you work in a huge organization, the impact can be massive but alsob super, super interesting stuff is, you know, back to this ROI thing you know, by fixing something, you can generate a huge return on investment, not necessarily of a CX program, but of changes in customer experience. And I think that's something that people tend to not understand.
Clare:
They're spending a lot of time trying to justify a customer experience program or a VOC program or like, you know, having this insight in the first place and not spending enough time actually implementing change and measuring it and seeing what the return on the change is. So admittedly, you need to have the ability to capture the data, but it's not everything. And what you were talking about there really spoke to me about you know, being able to pull in different sources of data, especially in retail, you know, saying, so we've got these customer metrics over here, but actually I'm not really just looking at those in isolation and trying to make drive improvement in them. I'm looking at footfall, I'm looking at basket size, I'm looking at changes in shopper behavior, looking at store performance, looking at cost, profitability of stores.
Clare:
So for me, when we did these big projects, I think kind of in the past, we'd just been thinking, oh, we just need to drive satisfaction and that will show that we've done the job that we needed to do because that's the metric that we are being measured on and our marketing division is for customer experience is this like satisfaction thing. And it didn't take me long to realize that doesn't, you know, wash with anybody. Great, great, nice. But what's the impact on the commercial aspect? So I started to do projects where I enlisted the help of people in finance and analytics that could do things like measure store performance of a store that I'd implemented a load of, or in fact sometimes, only a couple of initiatives, in and looking at the impact on all of the other things that actually the business did care about far more.
Clare:
And looking at that against a control store of exactly the same shape and size of no change and then being able to go, now you can see the impact of that improvement on loads of things. So it might have been an initiative to improve checkout experience, but actually it was through improving employee capabilities and that was the solution. And actually that increased productivity, it improved queuing, it actually meant a cost saving overall or reduction in. Yeah, so, I just think this is the future of this question that people are always kicking around. How do we prove return on investment of customer experience? It's the wrong question. It's how do you create awesome data analytics that when you are creating changes, you can directly demonstrate the impact on stuff that the business cares about. And that's a very different conversation. So not kind of asking how do we prove that customer experience is going to be a worthwhile investment and create a return. It's just too big and too broad. It's customer experience in the right place, fixing things, innovating in the right areas because you're listening to customers, measuring the impact of these smaller initiatives. That is what demonstrates the impact. What do you think?
Alex:
Totally, totally agree. And I think it's really important to like, we have a couple of initiatives that it takes a long time to even test them to your point of like, let's just get a test out and let's have two groups of stores, for instance, for us to get to significance and feel really good about the outcome of that. We have a couple of tests that have been running for a couple months at this point, you know, and it's also patience that comes along with it of like, okay, we took this insight about greeting for example. And I've talked about this to you a couple of times,
Clare:
But the audience don't know... Tell the listeners.
Alex:
So, we basically learned, you know, just by looking at a question on our survey 'were you greeted at any point during your experience?' And this is specifically for stores and you know, we're looking at the results of that and looking at people who said no, that they weren't greeted, or yes, they were matching that up with other scores that they gave us on assistance, friendliness of our associates, availability of our associates, helpfulness, things like that, and really learned that our customers that come into our stores don't just want to be greeted. They actually want to be engaged throughout the entire process and checked up on multiple times while they're shopping, offered a fitting room, help me out with sizing. They really need and value the knowledge and helpfulness that our associates can actually provide to them.
Alex:
Especially in the actual sporting goods, which we call hard lines, which would be equipment and stuff that you're buying. People have questions they want to know, like what do you recommend? And you know, some of these things can be pricey. They want to feel good about that. So we're testing out some different things with greeting specifically, and it's going to take months for us to get the results from that back. Or, you know, another, on the other hand for online experiences, we have this commitment to sustainability for our brand. And so we've been thinking about, you know, how do we reduce plastic, for example. And so testing out not putting plastic clear bags in our online orders, what does that do to the condition of the product when it gets to the person? Do they care about it from a satisfaction perspective?
Alex:
Did they even notice that we didn't have it in there? You know, a bunch of different things, but that also takes weeks for us to implement, you know, that's a process change that you kind of have to plan for and measure for a while. But it's really awesome because whenever we get that back and the testing period is over, we're looking at customer service call, like did call volumes that have to do with reshipping out orders or damages, did they go up during this time period? And was it the same orders that we took the polywaxs out of, you know, things like that, where we can really start looking at different areas to be able to prove a point, which is, you know, we either want to do this thing or we don't want to do this thing. But it definitely takes patience and a lot of collaboration. And I think that's one of the best parts about starting with an insight from the CX team is like, okay, now the really fun stuff starts where we can actually bring in all these different teams and get something off the ground to test and learn and really make a change. But it takes, you know, more time in some cases when you're talking about these big, like overarching strategic projects.
Clare:
Mm well, super interesting. I think the plastic bag example is a really good one. And I remember it when I was working in supermarket retailing, it was at the time that the government were gonna be introducing a charge and a levy for plastic bags and the amount of effort we had to go into, figuring out how much to charge and how to, oh yeah. How to display them and stuff, because, you know, it's back to that massive organization thing again, isn't it. But, you know, as well as the environmental benefit of removing plastic from online deliveries, think about how much that actually costs as well. Yes. So if you can tell the story that actually customers really don't care, it doesn't have a negative impact, it doesn't impact impact their overall products, perception or satisfaction with their experience and doesn't damage anything.
Clare:
Then that's the example I said about the the touchpoint I found where customers don't really care about it. You remove it, there's a massive benefit to it. But the thing about store greeters as well, I remember having a really similar question around that. Because Walmart had rolled out greetings at the front of every store and we were trying to figure out, why are they doing that? Does it really have an impact or a positive difference? And you know, trying it, because actually we thought we should because our brand was better than theirs or the customers expected more from us because we were more of a premium brand that we couldn't be out matched on service, but it didn't make any impact at all. It was pointless.
Clare:
And like you said, you know, your example, you know, you're talking about hard lines and much more emotional investment in the goods that you're buying rather than picking stuff off the shelf. That's why it definitely wasn't important to us, but you know, why waste money at the front of store when just saying hi to people, doesn't actually have any impact at all. Save that money, invest more in the employees that are on the shop floor, being able to help people make decisions because that is where it is important. So those financial trade offs that invariably happen in any business, being able to have the insight and the data to then help make those decisions again is critical. And that's another challenge that CX comes across is the trade off is just, you know, well, that's nice for customers, but we can see we're going to make a loss here or something, you know.
Clare:
You know, being able to help to balance that trade off of, well, actually there's a win-win over here. We can take something away that will deliver your cost saving, but we need to be investing more over here. So there's a net opportunity to take cost out, put a bit of cost in. You've still got a net overall benefit, but being able to show through data that that's, thereality of it is super important. And I just don't think it happens enough. And yeah, so, and I was just going to say about the time it takes to do some of these things, I guess, you know, me now as a start-up founder and you know, how scrappy I am. I was just going ti say to the listeners, not to be put off by having to do everything with belts and braces the first time, if you need to get buy in to being able to test and learn and experiment and set up, you know, data oriented experiments with resource and teams, you know, you said you that you're a mature organization, right?
Clare:
You are already pretty advanced in this kind of thinking, if your business isn't there yet. Like what I did back in the day when I was the first person with customer experience in my job title was just to set things up as in as rudimentary way as possible. So I would ask for permission in a single location and set up a set of metrics that actually were manually tracked by the store manager. Well, not the store manager because they were too important, but one of the store management team that they then report in and asking the same metrics to be tracked by one of the store management team in a store that was similar and it didn't take any analytics team. It didn't take... Just like that kind of initial stage of trying to get buy in because some data is better than none for sure.
Clare:
And that really helped me get buy in to why we should maybe expand this to more than one store. Let's put it in three stores. And then that got me the buy in to put it in a region that eventually we test and learned, and figured out what worked and what didn't and what had the biggest impact. And off we went and rolled it out across a nation and hay presto, four million pound return on investment. I didn't start out of the gate with the ability to do those things. It was a process that happened over time. So yeah.
Alex:
I love how you said that, because I think, yeah, it's so important to start small if you have to, you know what I mean and be okay with that because I do think a lot of us, especially in the community, we are ambitious girls and we just wanna go, go, go. And I think it's okay to just say, it's going to take some time. It's not a failure by any means on anybody. It's not something to, you know, be upset about. It really is just like, let's be grateful that we can even do this one store or these couple swim lanes on our website. You know what I mean? Just see what happens and then pivot. And I think that's so important, especially in CX. I mean it's pretty new, it's a pretty new discipline to everyone and I think everybody's still learning. And I think it's just the more you can learn, the more data, the more insight you can, you know, get your hands on, the better and any progress is good progress.
Clare:
Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. It's hard though. Right. And maintaining the resilience to keep going when you know, what we really, we really want to do. And again, to anyone listening, I'm sure you'll identify with this is, I want to fix the whole end to end customer journey. And I've got this tool that we've paid a fortune for,that's giving us the data and in order to justify that investment, I need to fix everything. But even in that situation, it's still, pick something, start small and scale and yeah. Just stay scrappy, yeah. And find a way. Hmm. Yeah. I don't really know where to go from here. I think, you know, it's challenging, it's challenging. It's challenging the fact that CX isn't really a discipline anymore. It was for a short brief moment in time, probably about five years ago where you could take a framework and apply it.
Clare:
And it would work in most places because I think industries have changed so much, consumers have changed so much, technology has reshaped everything. The way you have to approach even defining what customer experience means in your organization is different now everywhere. And being part of this community, I think is really showing me the reality of that. And you know, where the power core sits in the organization, what the key metrics are that they're trying to drive. It is more like, I think becoming a creative problem solver, becoming an awesome leader who can influence and basically building up this really diverse set of tools. For me, if I think about my practice, you know, I said I started off doing data and analysis. I know how to do research. I know how to do business cases.
Clare:
I know how to design project plans and deliver. Project management things, like this isn't CX, this is general skills that are useful everywhere. I know about digital technology. I understand how agile works. Actually, the CX leaders of the future aren't these I-shaped depth experts about customer experience. They're these T-shaped leaders who know a little bit about a lot of things and can apply themselves and have the depth in understanding what different tools and approaches are available to take this customer experience lens and shine it in different places. And, as I said, that's why I really value your contribution and think you're so special because you've got this depth in data analytics. And that would, to me, be one of the things that we all need to get better at in the future, even understanding how data and analytics work, or even not you being an expert personally, but being able to find a team who can do that for you and, you know, enlisting them to be part of your projects or your program is the key to change.
Clare:
By the way, I could geek out with you on data all day and on customer experience more broadly and wax lyrical about what needs to change, but we had a second purpose. So, if you think that was kind of part one of the podcast was your career story, and I'm talking about CX, data, retail, all kinds of interesting things. I think this is a very definite part two of the podcast. And the reason this came to light was that there's a question I always ask all of my guests, listeners, regular listeners will know is, was to tell me about a change, a challenge or barrier you had to overcome to be the woman that you are today. And when we create these podcasts, we spend time with our guests in advance and we kind of kick around these questions. And what you told me in our initial podcast pre-meeting was something that I knew that we needed to talk about in front of an audience, because it is just so important. So I'll leave my positioning there and kind of just ask you that question that I asked you in our pre-meeting and let the conversation go wherever it's going to go today of what was the challenge or barrier you had to overcome to become the woman you are today?
Alex:
Yeah, thank you. So I had a pretty tumultuous childhood <laugh> and I think, you know, one of the major things that I've overcome, or maybe two of them if you think about them as kind of one long string of things is overcoming abuse in my childhood, which then turned to an eating disorder that I was actually put into intensive outpatient treatment for when I was 16. So 10 years ago now I graduated from treatment 10 years. And that's kind of crazy to think about. But I basically, I underwent some grooming during the abuse that caused me to gain weight as a kid, and basically made me terrified of living in a larger body because I associated that with the abuse that happened. And so through that, I developed anorexia pretty badly and pretty subconsciously. So my parents would bring it up because I would be sick every single month and go to the doctor and I would be losing like three, two or three pounds every time I went to the doctor and this was monthly.
Alex:
So the weight was just like dropping off me. And obviously at that point I'm like 15. So same height that I am right now. And by the time I got put into treatment, I was about 108 pounds, which is severely underweight. And it would've definitely been a lot less than that if they hadn't have intervened on me. But I really didn't even consciously count calories or be super restrictive with what types of food I was eating. It was more so a control thing of like, I'm just not going to eat until dinner. And then we had dinner every single night as a family around the table. There's no excuse. We were all there every night. And so that was kind of the one meal that I would eat in front of my family beause I didn't want them to know that I was struggling with this.
Alex:
And I honestly didn't know about the link to the childhood abuse trauma until I was in treatment. And, you know, I remember the first day I got there, I was obviously pretty mad at my parents and my doctors for forcing me to go and just not fully understanding how detrimental I was being to my health at that time. Or even really fully understanding that I had an eating disorder. But I remember, you know, my therapist that I met with the first day was like, just so you know, you're not going to be discharged out of here until you're 128 pounds. And I burst out into tears the second she said that, and I was just full of rage. Honestly, I wasn't even sad. I was really, really angry and scared to ever be 128 pounds, which now thinking about is just so insane <laugh> to feel that way.
Alex:
But that's how I felt. And I was really, really terrified to even have to face the abuse. It was one of those things that, you know, I never really got therapy for prior to being in treatment for my eating disorder. It was nothing that I really ever discussed with like a licensed professional. I talked about it with my family, my mom sometimes, but even then it was kind of just like something that I kind of wanted to move on from and I didn't realize how much it was affecting other parts of my life until the eating disorder came about. And I had to go to treatment and actually kind of figure that part out first. So came to the realization through a lot of therapy within treatment that, you know, the trigger for the eating disorder was because of the abuse and because of the association of living in a larger body to the abuse that happened to me for years.
Alex:
And so once I graduated from, I call it graduated, but I was discharged from treatment. I felt really good. You know, I felt really positive about things and I was still a relatively skinny person. I was like 120 pounds. They let me out, you know, when I was 128 and I was on this really insane regiment when I was in there where we were eating like 3,500, 4,000 calories a day. So it was, you know, hospitalization like trying to get you back to healthy weight and like teaching us how to feel about food and get away from fears and stuff like that. But obviously eating 4,000 calories a day is not sustainable for most people. So I kind of, you know, was up and down with my weight and really, I felt good about myself. I felt good about where I was at that time.
Alex:
And didn't really struggle with it too much, but I always had disordered behaviors, even if I wasn't necessarily restricting to the point where it was a relapse and trust me, I've had relapses before. But it was things like I developed orthorexia instead. So in trying to get some semblance of control after this treatment I became obsessed with clean eating quote, unquote, whatever that means, checking the ingredients on every single piece of grocery that came back in. When my mom got back from the grocery store, being really, really crazy about not having preservatives and stuff like that. And just really being hard on myself and being super controlling to the point where it was affecting my family as well. I was talking to them about stuff that they were eating and making them feel bad about their choices with food and exercise, because I was so crazily obsessed with health, which is obviously, you know, not being that healthy at all when you get to that level of obsession.
Alex:
So gradually kind of got through that by being in outpatient therapy, like once a week with an eating disorder specialist and really learned a lot through that. And then I kind of transitioned into vegetarianism and veganism as a way to restrict what I was eating further down the line. So I was vegetarian for like four years and then I was vegan for four years. And so I was pretty much always since I got out of treatment restricting something or exhibiting some sort of disordered behaviors around food until COVID hit. And actually I met my boyfriend and I stopped being vegan a couple months before I met him. And it was really nice to be in a new romance where you go out to dinner a lot, you go to the movies, you get popcorn, you get ice cream.
Alex:
And it was nice to just not be vegan and be able to eat. Literally I was letting myself eat whenever I wanted for the first time in my life, pretty much. And then the pandemic happened and it was really tough on me. We had just moved into a new house, just moved in together. So my first time living with a significant other, just moved into a new house a week before the lockdowns happened. And then I was struggling a lot with PTSD from the abuse because I just really had never dealt with it. And I was just starting to see how it was affecting my brain. So obviously within treatment and the intensive outpatient I was mostly focused on the eating disorder. I got, you know, some insight into what the abuse did, but not too much deeper into the abuse besides that.
Alex:
And so I was dealing with PTSD. I was definitely dealing with a little bit of struggles with drinking. I think a lot of people were during the pandemic when we were locked down, it was just like, what else is there to do but drink? And I gained a lot of weight and that has been really, really hard for me. I've honestly never lived in as big of a body as I am right now. And so it's kind of forcing me to think about my lifestyle, my relationship with food, my relationship with exercise, my relationship with alcohol. I mean, just everything it's been, you know, a struggle, to be honest, to just try to navigate through all these different things that are happening. And so I went to CPT therapy during the second year of the pandemic. So 20, 21 I started that and really focused on healing my PTSD.
Alex:
And with that, I kind of learned a lot of very valuable skills around just changing your thoughts and not blaming myself for the weight gain, not blaming myself for the issues with alcohol, not blaming myself for all of these things, because I had these tools after I got discharged from that therapy program to where I could start to rethink what those thoughts actually would turn into from a behaviors perspective. Like, what am I going to do now that I've just thought this terrible thing about myself? So, it's obviously still a work in progress. But I think that those two things kind of linked and combined, and then dealing with the pandemic, which has been really, really hard for all of us on top of working, never taking any breaks from work and going through these really crazy life changes that are really huge, to be honest, while trying to navigate relationships with co-workers and people that you probably don't really want to know as much about your eating disorder or trauma that you've been through and child abuse and all of that stuff. It's something that I'm still working on to this day, but I definitely feel like a stronger person because of it. I definitely think that I value my own perspective a lot more coming out of CPT therapy and just realizing all these things that I've kind of had to navigate through. I mean, really since I've been like six or eight years old, it's been pretty much my whole life. So yeah.
Clare:
Wow. I'm so proud of you for telling your story and the way that you told it. It's just so inspiring. I love the fact that you say graduated, because you did. And, you know, I think being really honest about recovery is a long and bumpy road, right. And relapses happen and just the tenacity and healing that you've shown during this time that, you know, we started this podcast, telling us about this amazing career story of internships. You know, you were going through all of this at the same time or like around it. Right. So it's a real story of hope for anyone listening, who struggled with trauma or eating disorders or are on the road to recovery that, you know, you really don't know what is happening for someone else, especially as you said in the workplace or what's going on in their lives or in their past, or the stuff that they're trying to struggle with. And you know, being high functioning with an addiction or an eating disorder or PTSD, there are multiple reasons that people might be acting in ways that you don't understand. And I think this is a really important conversation, not just around the food and the body image stuff, and it's super important eating disorder aspects, but also giving people, grace and compassion and patience that you really need to give people a chance to.
Clare:
I can't even think how to describe this because it's none of your business, right. Or someone who's going through, but just bear it in mind that maybe what you think, or the assumptions that you're making around someone and their behavior, aren't the case at all. And to act with compassion and unconditional positive regard that, you know, that's the case.
Alex:
I totally agree with you. And I also want to add in there, leading with empathy too, you know, not even leading as in like you're in a leadership position and you're a leader of others, you're a manager or something, but just, if you notice something, like something has changed with someone's personality or something might be a little bit off, they're not acting how they normally act, lead with empathy and just ask, Hey, is everything okay? I've noticed you're not really yourself lately. Instead of turning it into like, you know, a negative thing or, you know, something where it's kind of shutting people down, I think is really, really important. And I know, especially as women, we try to compartmentalize our work life and our personal life to the extreme, to the point where it's like, you get work Alex, and you get home Alex.
Alex:
And those two never really mix. And I think through just the recent PTSD therapy program that I went through, I kind of have let myself relax off of doing that a little bit because I no longer see the value in not being vulnerable with my co-workers because I just realized that it's not worth it. You know, it's not worth it because people are willing and most of the time will be willing to help you out, take some things off of your plate at work, or just be a friend to you, even if they're co-workers if they know that you're struggling with this stuff, and I've never asked for help, the PTSD issues that I was having with the COVID and I was super, super depressed and I was acting, I mean, my behaviour was just ridiculous to me.
Alex:
And I said to myself, I'm going to enrol myself in therapy. Nobody told me to do that. I didn't ask my family or friends for help. That's just how I've been my whole life. And so it's hard for me to kind of start letting the line blur a little bit between work Alex and home Alex. But I think it's invaluable to, you know, not go into details, but let people know, I'm going through something right now. I really need a little bit of time with, you know, less capacity on my plate, or I really just needed you guys to know that I'm going through this thing. And if you could keep it in mind, don't worry. I could still get all my work done, but I'm just not feeling like myself lately. I think that goes so long <laugh> with people that yeah. And they just, they really just, I think people appreciate it. And I think that they feel better about saying it about themselves too. If you start to create this culture of, we can be open and honest to the point that we're comfortable and realize that it's not going to be a negative stain on our reputation, or it's not going to change people's perception, there's not going to be judgment because everybody's leading with empathy and thinking about where someone else is coming from.
Clare:
Yeah. I couldn't have said it better myself, but I just, the fact that authenticity is one of our community values. I think you've demonstrated what that really means is, you know, not having to compartmentalize and be a work person and a real person, being able to feel comfortable in spaces where those lines blur and you are just showing up as yourself. There's a real, I think, onus on organizations, being able to create those spaces of safety, psychological safety, inclusion, belonging, where people feel like they can really show up as their full selves. And it still feels like a rare thing, doesn't it <laugh> because that isn't the corporate culture. So, for people who've been through trauma or any other manner of impact on mental health, workplaces can feel very excluding where they're not led with empathy.
Clare:
And actually we are missing out on some incredible human beings in the workforce because adjustments aren't made to help them feel included and show up as themselves and be authentic. And I think you made a really important point. There's a role modeling aspect to this, where we need to see leaders showing up as themselves and saying, you know what, I'm having a really difficult time at home at the moment. So, just so you know, I'm going to have to just drop my capacity a little bit, or I need to go and be there for my sick dad, or I need to go and take care of my mental health by starting to go to therapy appointments. The only way that any of this stuff is going to become normalized is if we normalize it, right? And the responsibility of leaders in being the first ones to be authentic.
Clare:
If that is, you know, something that you believe in as being a way of impacting the future of your organization and the world and creating more happiness, then you know, if anyone's listening to this <laugh> who can influence that and show up as themselves a bit more today, I would encourage you to do that too, because that's how it makes it easier for people, like us, who have had a difficult time and sometimes our behavior is crazy, but it's because we've been triggered by something, not because we are crazy or we're bad or we've got attitudes. And you know, I don't want to have to just volunteer information about my past or my history or what I'm going through, but if you ask me with empathy and let me know, I was safe to tell you, then you would experience it very differently. <Laugh>
Alex:
Yes. I absolutely love that you said that because I totally agree. It's intimidating and a little bit backwards for the onus to be on the individual contributor and that the person that people think is acting differently or whatever to voluntarily offer that information because sometimes people just don't know how, or even know if it will change anything or even know that people have noticed a change in their demeanor at work. Yeah. You know what I
Clare:
Mean? Or feel safe to share that kind of information. Right. Especially if like trust is something that's impacted by whatever's happened or happening mm-hmm <affirmative> so, yeah, so, right. So, I just wanted to finish on this point because I'm sure our listeners will be thinking they have got to... That's it's been an amazing episode without doubt, but I just wanted to quickly say, and I know I told you this before we started recording today, which was through our conversation that we had last week, I opened up and I shared stuff about my issues with food that I have never shared with another human being that date back to my teenage years where I didn't get diagnosed with anorexia, but my eating, my disorder eating started way back then. And you made me feel safe to be able to show up as myself in that moment.
Clare:
And to be able to tell you that and the conversation that went on that I didn't even know that Orthorexia was a thing. And it helped me to identify that the way that I go full tilt with dieting and programs aimed at losing weight and obsessively weighing myself, I hadn't even considered that that is that pattern repeating itself in what could be considered, as you put in inverted commas, a more healthy way, but it is still disordered eating. And then Alex pointed me to a book that if anyone struggles with food in any way, I've also experienced binge eating disorder over the pandemic, which resonated with me when we talked the other day and today that was a really difficult time and for me, I turned to food and as someone who had issues with my own body image and weight and being in a larger body, to find myself coming out of the pandemic 15 kilos heavier was emotionally really difficult for me too.
Clare:
But this book is called 'Intuitive Eating'. And for me it was a complete game changer because you know, being comfortable in the bodies that we have here and now, and today is the key to sustainable happiness in our bodies. They change, they don't stay the same. We're not going ti be the same size that we were before we had children or when we were at high school or whatever. And eating intuitively is about being able to know your hunger cues, know when you're full, to give yourself this thing, I'd never heard of unconditional permission to eat. And when you were talking about going for ice cream with your boyfriend, I was just like, oh my God...
Alex:
I didn't, that was the first time I've given myself unconditional permission.
Clare:
And I recognized after reading this book, and I told you that at the weekend, I've been cutting carbs and being ravenously hungry most of the time. Because I'm on this orthorexic health program again, or the way that I was treating it was, when it isn't about that. I was doing it my way, because my brain was then telling me that carbs are bad and the most important thing is a weight on the scale. And I gave myself unconditional permission to eat for the first time and I think forever, because I can't remember ever doing that, where I listened and I tuned in and what my body really was craving wasn't the things that I would think like Chinese food and chips, which is my normal go to thing when I binge eat, it was actually yogurt and granola and fresh fruit compote.
Clare:
And I had this bowl of deliciousness and I savoured it and I enjoyed every moment and it just felt good to eat. And I knew when I'd had enough and it was just what I wanted. And then the next meal, deciding to go to the farm shop and I just started picking the things that I wanted to eat and it was avocados and salad and fresh chicken. And I was like, hey, mozzarella, and normally I'd be like, no, no, no, that's way too fatty. I wouldn't have that in a salad. It has to be plain and bland and boring and really unenjoyable. I came home and I made this salad and the joy that I felt at giving myself unconditional permission to eat. I know that this is just a few days of having a life changing experience, but I just wanted to really thank you for that.
Clare:
And, you know, if you'd not shown up as yourself that day when we had this pre-conversation, felt safe to talk to me, because I guess the culture that we've got in the community is a safe space, you wouldn't have had that conversation with me. I wouldn't have discovered this new thing that I didn't know about myself and be experiencing joy right now. So I think all the messages that we've talked about in the podcast kind of round off to that point, you know, the proof is here. And yeah, creating safe spaces, showing up as ourselves, being willing to be vulnerable can really impact other people's lives. So I'd just like to thank you for today. Thank you for this. Thank you for everything that you're doing in the community and keep being yourself and showing up because I think you're freaking incredible.
Alex:
Thank you, Clare. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And also I'm just honored that you shared all your, you know, experiences with me too, as being the first person that you've shared stuff with. I feel just a supreme amount of honor, so I really appreciate it and I'm happy that we could do this, and I really, really hope that it can help others. I know that there's so many different aspects of this and so many different, you know, just things to consider at work, at home, just wherever even with ourselves. And so to have the opportunity to talk about it and hopefully, you know, help other people just really, really means the world to me.
Clare:
We already have, I'm the first. So, thank you.
Alex:
You're going to make me emotional.
Clare:
Oh, I know. I'm super emotional as well, but keep being the role model, keep being the change you want to see in the world. Can't go wrong with that, Alex, like I said, incredible, inspiring woman in CX. That's it for this week. We'll see you next time, bye. Bye for now, Alex.
Alex:
Bye.
Clare:
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 about becoming a member of the world's first online community for women in Customer Experience, please check out www.womenincx.community and follow the Women in CX page on LinkedIn. Join us again next time when I’ll be talking to another awesome community member about leveraging data and metrics to drive decision-making and evidence ROI of CX initiatives, see you all next time!
