Clare Muscutt talks with Ellie Sutton about customer experience & proposition development in supermarket retailing.
Episode #412 Show Notes:
Clare:
Welcome to the 12th episode of the fourth 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 one of our community members, a seriously fabulous CX queen from the UK. Let me introduce you to today's inspiring guest. She's a renowned customer experience and service design practitioner in UK supermarket retail. With over 15 years of experience in operational leadership. She spent time working in John Lewis department stores, where she developed omnichannel propositions for fashion, beauty, and home, and is currently the Senior Customer Experience Lead for UK supermarket, Waitrose & Partners. Please welcome to the show, CX sister, Ellie Sutton.
Clare:
Hi Ellie.
Ellie:
Hello.
Clare:
How are you doing today?
Ellie:
Yeah, wonderful. I am joined by the Waitrose summer fruit and berry selection.
Clare:
Oh, it looks delicious. It's making me hungry. But welcome to the Women in CX podcast.
Ellie:
Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for having me.
Clare:
You're welcome and welcome to everybody listening along at home as well. So, Ellie, we're just going to jump straight in with the first question that I always ask every guest that comes on the show, how did you find your way into CX and where you are today?
Ellie:
So, I have worked in food retail, for pretty much all of my working career. But actually, I was thinking about this, a couple of weeks ago and I should have had a sort of insight, a good, a good few years ago when I was choosing what degree to do at university and, was in a book shop and decided to pick up a book called The Anthropology of Shopping, which was all about like how brands and how retailers, basically kind of work with the people that they want to sell their things to. So as a result of picking up that book, I actually studied, archaeology and anthropology at university, which was amazing and loved the study of anthropology kind of, you know, delving into kind of how and why people think and do things the way that they do.
Ellie:
And as a result of that, moved into food retail as a graduate trainee. So I've worked for the last 10 years or so on the operations side of things. So leading branches across Southern England and then kind of areas within that of, of weight trails all the way through and then began to, I suppose, kind of understand that I had a slightly different way of approaching things where I would really kind of listen to the customers that I was talking to on the shop floor, and then get little teams of people in my branches together go, the customer's giving us this piece of feedback, like what can we do about it? What's kind of within our gift and began to realise that way of thinking wasn't quite the same as lots of my colleagues of kind of knitting that customer and operation stuff together.
Ellie:
So then began to kind of think there must be a way to do this with a bit more of a broader reach. So yeah, got a, central CX role, and moved in. I was really honoured actually to kind of move into John Lewis, first of all. And I worked with the Director of Customer Experience over in JL, which is a department store in England and worked with him as his Business Development Manager for probably about 18 months or so. And then when a CX role came up in Waitrose, to get back to my passion for food and kind of that industry, I snapped it up and that's where I am today.
Clare:
I love this story and so much resonated with me even just in the first couple of minutes. So I'd not even thought about this ever till now, that something really similar happened to me. I was doing my masters in marketing and actually wrote my thesis on the cathedrals of consumption, which was actually about retail experience. I didn't end up working in retail for like another 10 years, but there must be something that like, kind of sparked the interest, like your book on The Anthropology of Retailing. But also like coming from a retail background myself, for anyone who doesn't know, I spent five years working at Sainsbury’s, which was a competitor to Waitrose when I was there back in the day. But really very much experiencing especially the food side of retailing that the job to do was very much putting stuff on shelves, keeping things clean.
Clare:
And that was the limitation, especially back in the day of that. So being kind of like an early lead in doing things and thinking about things differently, it must have been hard because you were in an environment where most people didn't think and act that way. So props to you girl. So I'm really interested, especially about kind of having been a woman in operations at that time. I was a woman in hospitality operations, a similar age. It was hard for me, but recognising how kind of male-dominated store management was when I worked in retail, even though I was on the head office side at the time. Tell me more about kind of the challenges you had to overcome to become the woman you are today.
Ellie:
Yeah, it's really interesting looking back at it. And I, do remember having kind of moments sort of in your early and mid-twenties where I'd walk into rooms for kind of operational, you know, field outings and kind of conferences and things, and literally looking around and seeing, you know, almost trying to, you know, pick out the other women that were there because it would just be this completely male-dominated, industry at that stage and, you know, in the brand that, I've been working in primarily kind of men wearing, chinos and sort of gap polo shirts, there was differently uniform.
Clare:
Yeah. And like the women tend to be like the HR business partners didn't they really, or opposed to the operators
Ellie:
It was, it was totally kind of gender stereotypes playing out. But I also, I look back at it with almost a fondness of the fact that I think I was able to see that as an opportunity, and really kind of feel the responsibility that, you know, was on my shoulders to kind of make sure that I was bringing a different viewpoint and a different kind of way of thinking to that room and to make sure my voice was being heard at those points rather than necessarily just, you know, kind of, you know, wilting into the background of those environments. So, I think in some ways it made me become the kind of, you know, advocate for myself that I am today, kind of speaking up for, you know, in a way that I think is appropriate. So in some ways I look back at it and think it was a positive, but not one that I would ever want kind of, you know, the next cohort of leaders to have to replicate.
Clare:
Yeah. Tell me, and pick that a little bit more. So, you're saying that being in that, environment where you were the only one, it meant that you had to fight harder to be heard?
Ellie:
That. Yeah, I think so. And I, yeah, and I think, you know, men and women think differently, you know and especially in a food retail environment, the majority of people that are using those places to shop are the, you know, like it or not the women of the household kind of coming in and, and kind of choosing, that was our key audience. And yet we are running these, you know, multimillion-pound business units in some cases through a total male perspective. So I think kind of, just even things like how you would approach customer service and how you would talk to people and the kind of training that you would give people, helping mums with kids in trolleys and the thing that, those tiny little bits of the customer experience that for that mum with a newborn baby, that's screaming in a toddler that kind of demanding an ice cream or whatever it is, you know, being able to see that through a sort of female perspective and actually then empower your team to say, well, just go make a difference, whip a magazine off the shelf and give that to the toddler, because it's got some plastic tat on the front of it and you know, very much kind of move away to see the holistic picture here of all of those incremental pieces that would make a difference to the customer experience rather than necessarily…
Ellie:
And again, you know, being focused on, you know, wasted percentages or shrinkage or staff turnover, you've got to be able to take a step back in those positions. And I think women have that ability to do that and bring a slightly different perspective to it. And I'm not sure I would've got that, had I not been forced to be kind of that voice in the room and kind of feel like I could step up and give that different opinion.
Clare:
And no doubt, educate your colleagues…
Ellie:
Yeah.
Clare:
Along the way. So yeah, like I'm just going to warn all of our listeners now. I think we are going to seriously geek out talking about so market retail but like I'm thinking back to I left in 2017 and it was, I guess, the pre-pandemic landscape. And I remember sitting in our meetings initially with just thinking, and then later with Mike Coupe and we'll always be looking at kind of performance of the big four at one point in time. So as ASDA, Morrisons and Tesco, and all of a sudden there was this huge shift in terms of market share. And the discount of brands appeared and started to disrupt the classic equation of the big four. And then all of a sudden, Waitrose and M&S started to be eating away at the market share of the big four.
Clare:
And I would always be like looking up and thinking like, what is it that Waitrose are doing? Your growth was massive, wasn't it? You increased the footprint hugely, but there was clearly a demand for an alternative to traditional generic supermarkets that competed on price. And whilst the price became something that the discounters were beating the generic supermarkets on and became their USP, there was this kind of quality aspect to put the top of the tree with you guys. I was always a bit jealous actually. I mean, I always very much admired Waitrose and their customer experience. I'd go and take photos of what you guys were up to and things like counters. And there. Sorry, that little addition there. But yeah, I'm just interested to see kind of a bit more about what it was on your side, what you guys were up to and what the discounters were up to was a real opportunity for me and customer experience in the supermarket retailing lens to, help the business, see how customer experience, whether it was through online or through in-store or propositions, new propositions, things like Click and Collect could create destination stores or more seamless experiences in line with the amount of data we had.
Clare:
But yeah, I'm just curious, like, what was it like for you and during the pandemic, what was going on in the supermarket space?
Ellie:
Yeah, I mean, I think looking back there was definitely kind of probably around sort of 2015, 2017 was, the Waitrose payday in terms of we had a business strategy that was called VEG which was Volume Efficiency and Growth. And definitely, the growth element of things was somewhere, something that we absolutely nailed in terms of that strategy. And I think one of the things that was key to being able to unlock that was sort of brand assurance and exactly to what you kind of talk about. You ended up in the UK, you know, food retail market with having really assured brands at the bottom, kind of the discounters, you know, the Aldi and Lidl and what they were able to do to sort of disrupting that market. And then you had this space at the top that Waitrose and Mark and Spencers were, you know, able to kind of step into to say, well, we are never, and, and, you know Waitrose and Marks and Spencers are smaller.
Ellie:
So, in terms of our buying power and our ability to rival the big four, we were never ever going to be able to compete on price. And interestingly from a customer perspective, we have a huge amount of history and, you know, brand reputation, that I think we were really able to leverage during that time to say, we were really trying to be, to step into that best 5%. We knew that we were never going to be number five and that going after that element of volume was going to be it. But if we could grow our estate to make sure that, you know, enough of the country had access to Waitrose, and I, I guess we started with the physical and then that was sort of fairly quickly, moved into our, our kind of digital and our, you know, our DFCS and things like that and, and how we could kind of capture the online market.
Ellie:
And I think, you know, all of that time now, the kind of investment in our store so that we have this larger state across the country. And, and that's also in, sort of petrol station forecourts it's in welcome breaks. We were able to kind of find all of those sort of niche areas that we could just tap into and, and kind of put in the Waitrose brand to just be able to get out to more customers. And I, I think the other bit that Waitrose was a real disruptor in, at that point was the loyalty program and free coffee was one of that.
Clare:
Was it free coffee? Yes.
Ellie:
I remember, but yeah, that was such an interesting, you know, time in the company and I, you know, it was so interesting being part of the team when we were landing that and hearing what it was going to do from a marketing perspective. And actually it really kind of differ, you know, it, you know, it, it's an interesting element of just a completely different angle that you could take on loyalty compared to, you know, your Tesco club cards and your Nectar points, et cetera. And it really worked as a footfall driver. So yeah, a big expansion of the store estate then kind of keeping people in by giving them a free cup of coffee every time. And all of a sudden kind of you are there and your brand is getting kind of more and more notice and the quality of the product, et cetera, then kind of goes hand in hand.
Ellie:
So, but also, I think that it comes with the responsibility of the brand in terms of how we maintain that customer experience. There is, you know, we look at some of the things that Aldi and Lidl and things can get away with at the other end. So we look at things like our payment strategy and, you know, what you can get away with at that point. And, you know, in Waitrose, if you've got, you know, our customers want to go in, and if you've got, you know, one person in the queue in front of you, that's not good enough for our Waitrose. Whereas you go into Aldi and Lidle, and there's like two super two checkouts open it, and it's back through the store. And you're like, why don't my customers accept this? But you, you understand that you have a responsibility to the brand and to the expectations you've set with your customers, that that just isn't going to happen.
Ellie:
So yeah, I think it, we, we've definitely been able to create this niche within the marketplace, but it's then our challenge as a customer experience team to then figure out kind of, how do you maintain that? And, you know, in, you know, especially at the moment Marks and Spencers are flying in terms of their in-store proposition and, you know, the latest Stevenage branch and things is really interesting. So yeah, it definitely feels at the moment, like we've got some work to do. We’re the ones now going into other supermarkets, taking their pictures and being like, I want to do that.
Clare:
Fascinating. And yeah, I think it's a really important point here, isn't it. So with higher prices and quality comes an increased expectation and the brand creating that expectation alongside it that has to therefore then be consistently delivered. But the increase in operating costs that comes with, especially in-store. Being able to do that, and maintaining the margin and a sustainable business model, like we were, we had to go through like significant labour cost-cutting when things got difficult. This was kind of back in 2016, 17. Did that kind of effect you guys or was your price and your margin stable enough to,
Ellie:
Yeah, I think that is a constant, you know, challenge for us, you know, us as a business. And you know, especially when you're reading the headlines and things at the moment, as you say that the pandemic actually was, you know, one of those heydays, that golden era for shops when we kind of look back at that and especially for, for food retail, cause there was nowhere else to go. So, in some ways kind of coming out the back of that, and then, you know, everything that, you know, we're reading about, you know, cost of living crisis and potential recessions and food inflation, you know, we cannot, we cannot rest on our laurels in terms of understanding the price is a massive influencer for all of our customers. You know, you can't just say that you're going to be the, you the best 5% and you know, your customers are immune from these kinds of, you know, elements in the press and you know, everything they're talking about. So again, it's a real balance of having that responsibility for your customers to be doing the right thing in terms of, you know, you know, cost of goods and, and how much they're paying for that. And then, you know, the amount of money left over to continue to invest in new propositions and innovation that you would, you would want to be seeing us do. That's a very live conversation and challenge for us at the moment.
Clare:
And I guess digital changed everything, didn't it? But the pandemic accelerated digital.
Ellie:
Yes.
Clare:
So, being able to fulfil groceries through online, being able to provide, click and collect, non-food click and collect. I know we spoke about this earlier today about, you know, kind of integrating food and non-food in those shopping journeys. But being able to kind of join all of that together into an ecosystem with the aspect of data, because we get so much from supermarket shopping, like being able to understand, and know customers probably better than anybody because we see what they put into, into their baskets and what ranges they shop in, et cetera. But it is a really interesting time again, because
Ellie:
Yeah, it was, I mean and again from, I mean the expedition of our digital abilities and the number of slots that we had. I mean, I think outside of the pandemic, it probably would've taken a five-to-ten-year business plan to open the number of slots that we were then magically able to do. I mean, Britain loves a crisis, and we totally respond in those sorts of situations with that sort of mentality of like, yes, we can do this, we're going to get on it. And from a sort of service design and proposition development, it was you know, I kind of sat here thinking how, why can't I replicate the speed at which I was able to work kind of 18 months ago and how we were able to just kind of knock through barriers and things like that.
Ellie:
So, you know, we were really able to speed up the ability, you know, our ability to offer the digital and the online service. I think there's probably now that sort of settling period of the combination of how customers want to shop moving forward. And the, you know, there is absolutely no doubt that bricks and mortar supermarket retailing is not dead. We need to continue to invest in our store estates, but equally kind of having the ability for customers to shop online and how you knit those two together so they're not too entirely separate sort of business units because from a customer I'm like, well, it's the same brand. I just, you know, sometimes I'm having a party and I want it all delivered to me. And you should know to your point about data, you should know that that's what I like to have. And, you know, those kind of expectations of how you deliver a, a truly kind of omnichannel experience. I think that's probably the challenge for us now kind of post-pandemic to see which behaviours have actually kind of landed as being permanent behaviours or shift than just the in pandemic reaction. Because there's no other way to shop, et cetera.
Clare:
I'm intrigued, like have, do you have like too many slots available now? Has that had to decrease or is it kind of still got the uptake that it had now people have changed their behaviour? Because they got used to being able to shop online and avoid cues, even though yours are in it, one person deep
Ellie:
Yeah. Well, I can't say that they always are, but you know what I mean? Yeah, we're definitely not at capacity. But it, you know, again, it's interesting, you know, the supermarket industry has to be able to respond to those magical four days of the year pre-Christmas.
Clare:
Christmas.
Ellie:
Which, which makes or breaks a, a food retailer's kind of year, to be honest, both in terms of actual results on how you kind of leave the year feeling professionally. So I think despite the fact that actually, you know, for a lot of the time, we're not at capacity, it gives you confidence in the experience that customers can have at those times of the year that matter the most. So yeah, Christmas and Easter stand out as the biggest ones. So we at least know that we're in a good place to be able to deliver that.
Clare:
Yeah, I'm going to have to pick up on two points here. And the first one is about stores and online not being two discreet business units. Like when I was at Saintsbury retail and digital, we still felt very, very separate. And the director of operations at the time, I was constantly like rallying this call around needing to bring digital and retail together and having like a kind of unified CX and UX team to help them to do that. But it became apparent it wasn't going to happen in my lifetime. And funnily enough, I ran into him. He's now the CEO of Saintsbury and I saw him at awards dinner actually. And he was like, he saw me and he was like, Clare, we did it. We brought them together only in the last 12 months. And I was like, oh my God.
Clare:
Amazing. But that kind of challenge of historical disparity being one of the biggest challenges that, that business at the time did need to overcome in order to be able to deliver seamless Omnichannel, which was a goal personalised experiences that integrated the data together. But the second thing I have to talk about is Christmas. It was called listeners the golden quarter and, and, and as said, he said, you know, such a huge reliance on that quarter being the make or break of the end of the year, right. And the financial performance sitting with that, but also the Christmas adverts yeah, that was always a war. Wasn't it? It seems a bit less, lesser, these days. But I remember like my heyday of CX in, in food retailing was, having kind of proven CX design and proposition development outside of marketing, being able to, when we moved into marketing in one of the very many, many, many restructures that customer experience got moved around in, but actually being within that division and having Christmas, and this golden quarter is an opportunity to design propositions and services and design experiences around this kind of campaign experience, both on and offline and in contact centres.
Clare:
And the message around the Christmas advert was what we used to do. Exactly what we were talking about earlier, which was, you know, being more than just a brand statement. You know, we, we talk about live well for less all year round, but at Christmas, it was for sharing. So being able to use that as the inspiration around, designing, concepts and experiences that we trialled well before Christmas. And I ended up rolling out literally across the whole estate. And when I say the whole estate, I'm talking about like 190,000 employees, 32 million customers, like absolutely a huge scale. So I was just super interested in, in kind of for you like the challenges and opportunities, where are you taking service design, CX design and proposition development these days? Like you don't have to tell me exactly what you're working on. What does that look like for you?
Ellie:
So, I think it's a really interesting time, to be able to kind of, you know, look at what, what is that next stage in terms of, and probably the integration of kind of digital into a kind of proposition design as well. And I don't mean that in terms of the kind of super, I don't mean in that in terms of online shopping, but in terms of how do we use technology to enhance propositions, and, and equally, so with the brand that, you know, I work in, there are certain elements that kind of, you know, sit within it from a service perspective, from a kind of product knowledge and what do, what do people expect from our brand when we are looking at new propositions? So, and I, I kind of referred to it right at the beginning of one of the things that I think is, you know, I've really loved doing in this role is knitting that kind of operational execution of it, because quite often you can sit and have a, you know, a wonderful idea and kind of, you know, that understanding of what you think your customers might like, but actually, you know, food retailing is so fast-paced, you know, there are, you know, our poor partners as we call them, staff.
Ellie:
In branches that are being bombarded by, you know, 20 different things to do overly complex propositions just do not work as well as kind of really simple things. So, but equally those simple things need to be kind of, you know, really empowering and exciting for a customer to be feeling. So my current remit at the moment is, looking at our future propositions of our food service counters. So, a lot of our competitors, same breeds taking
Clare:
Taking them out, yeah
Ellie:
One of them have taping all of them out. And, for us, we really believe that our, you know, our fish counter our meat, counter our cheese and deli, all of them should be kind of our showcase platforms for experiential retailing, the best of the best in terms of product and service. So I am properly loving this role of being able to kind of say kind of, yeah, what does, you know, and you go into, you know, other places like Italy and, you know, lena stores and some of those amazing kind of, you know, more independent style retailers. And we like, how can I, how can I cherry-pick elements of those, you know, bits of proposition and put them into a, a kind of, you know, mass-market supermarket you know, idea. So that's the kind of challenge that I've been set at the moment is, you know, we think that they should be our brand point of difference, but they, you know, they need to be relevant for customers. They need to be probably, yeah, more digital and enabled than they are at the moment they should be bringing that theatre and that, you know, experience whilst, and this is the challenge still being commercially viable, viable.
Ellie:
Yeah. And, you know, delivering from a commercial perspective. So, I've certainly got my work cut out for me at the moment from a service to that design and proposition perspective, but I'm loving it.
Clare:
Oh my God. We should like totally compare notes because that was one of my major projects. Obviously, my stuff would be a bit out of date now, but I had exactly the same challenge yeah. Obviously, it didn't stick around because they will be ripped out from that side. But, but I just, I remember just like thinking about like Morrison's, for example, they showcased that market street, didn't they least still, I don't, I have not been to Morrisons for such a long time. I don't even know if they're down south, you know, I used to live north. But the theatre wall happening very clearly at the front of the store. Whereas Waitrose counters seem to be quite hidden away, don't they?
Ellie:
Yeah. I mean they tend to be kind of at the back wall of the, of the, of the supermarket. So yeah. I mean, part of it will be working. Why do they, my, my, yeah, my customer experience team has store development as part of it. So, it is really interesting to be able to kind of develop the propositions and then hand that over to our, so, you know, as, and when we are refitting or refurbishing branches, you've kind of built those principles of which the kind of proposition should be then rolled out into, across the estate. So, you never know, in a couple of years’ time, you might begin to see some funky new counters, kind of appearing at the start of a customer journey rather than kind of halfway through.
Clare:
I tell you what they like, you can take the girl out of supermarkets, but still to this day, wherever I go on holiday, or if I'm travelling, I'm still resisting the urge to pull my phone out and take photos of what's going on in the supermarket. Once it's in your veins, it's in your veins, isn't it? Well, it's been awesome to chat with you today, Ellie. Unfortunately, our listeners are going to have to go, but what would your top piece of advice or key takeaway be for women in CX listening?
Ellie:
I think, reflecting on my personal journey, the one piece that I wish I'd given to my kind of 20-year-old self was about being your own advocate. I think, you know, I knew that this was kind of the route that I wanted to take, but I think I spent kind of the majority of my twenties expect, yeah. Either waiting to be given permission by somebody or kind of expecting somebody to kind of set this magical career pathway for me. And yeah, I, I think actually kind of the penny dropped around, well, I can make this happen. It might take a bit of persistence, but I have a real passion for brands, making sure that their customers are being listened to and they're being heard. And then, you know, what we can do from a service design and proposition development to actually bring that to life.
Ellie:
And yeah, I wish that I'd kind of given myself permission to kind of tap into some of that and explore what was out there kind of a few years earlier, because yeah, I think it's amazing and you know, don't be afraid to ask for support within that. So, you know, be your, be your best advocate and, you know, reach out to those amazing people around you because you know, everybody, you know, that I've asked for help and especially joining a network, such as Women in CX it's, it's so supportive and lovely to kind of, you know, know that other people are there to help you on that mission. If you just take that gambling and kind of put yourself out there in the first place.
Clare:
And, and also I think being part of the community and the network is seeing that we've all got very similar, shared challenges as women. And actually, how rare it is for women to advocate for themselves in the way that they advocate for customers. So I think that's a really important point, to land on and yeah, we should absolutely be championing ourselves more. And as you say, you know, collaborating with other women or, yeah, well in the community for sure, to champion one another and each other's voices and ensure that we have that feeling of empowerment, that we can advocate for ourselves as well as our customers and customer experience. So that was a great point to end on. Just like to say, thank you so much for geeking out with me today.
Ellie:
Pleasure.
Clare:
Literally. I got so excited thinking back to some of those memories. It definitely was a very special time in my career for sure. And very excited to see, what you and Waitrose do next in the customer experience, service design and proposition space.
Ellie:
Thanks. It's been a pleasure to geek out with you too, Clare. I can do it anytime.
Clare:
Wonderful, we’ll definitely be doing it some more. So, thanks to everybody for listening along as well, and we'll see you all next time. Bye for now. Bye, Ellie.
Clare:
Thanks for listening to the Women in CX podcast with me, Clare. 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 membership community for Women in Customer Experience, please check out our website, www.womenincx.community, and follow the Women in CX page on LinkedIn. Join us again next time, where I'll be talking to one of our community members from The Caucasus about female entrepreneurship and striking the right balance between CX strategy and implementation. See you all next time.
