Clare Muscutt talks with Hayley Pugh about graduate careers, digital transformation and omnichannel Customer Experience.
Episode #403 Show Notes
Clare Muscutt:
Welcome to the third 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 objects, I'll be your host, Clare Muscutt and in today's episode, I'll be talking to one of our members, a young woman just starting out her career in CX. Let me introduce you to today's inspiring guest based in London in the UK, she studied Spanish with social science and languages and graduated with first-class honours. She began her search for the dream graduate role and found it at Kantar, where she spent placements in multiple departments, including CX, where she recently returned to take on her first official role within the customer experience team. She's now a specialist in helping clients shape their customer experience strategy, and measure the impact of change on commercial performance. Please welcome to the show. CX Sister, Hayley Pugh.
Hayley Pugh:
Hi,
Clare Muscutt:
Welcome to the Women in CX podcast. How are you today?
Hayley Pugh:
I'm very well. Thank you. How are you doing?
Clare Muscutt:
I'm good. I'm good. I hope everybody listening along at home is feeling great today too. So Hayley, just to start getting us warmed up, do you wanna tell me a little bit more about yourself and how you found your way to customer experience?
Hayley Pugh:
Sure. so I currently work as a Senior Research Exec here in the CX team at Kantar. So I've been here for about two years now. I started off on the graduate scheme, so I kind of applied after university. Didn't really know what I wanted to do, but kind of like a great opportunity to just start off my career and kind of explore different options. And it seemed like super interesting as well. So I started off in the CX team on kind of on the grad scheme and then I moved to innovation and brand as well. And then I kind of chose my permanent role in CX because it's what I enjoyed the most. It resonated with me and I love the team as well, and I just wanted to learn a lot more about the CX industry. So that's kind of how I ended up in my role today.
Clare Muscutt:
And I know having spoken to you previously, we had a really interesting conversation around the experience for young women. Especially, you know, in the university times and considering what our first move into careers are or is. So yeah. Can you tell me a little bit more about that final year at uni? What was that like for you?
Hayley Pugh:
Yeah, so final year, obviously it's always a lot of pressure, isn't it. I went on a year abroad as well, that was part of my degree and it was, it was really fun. And I went to Granada for a year and I came back and it sort of suddenly everything hit me and I was like, oh, it's my final year now I need to really do well. And obviously I had a job at the same time and I was conscious of applying for other jobs kind of post university. So I definitely felt the pressure of being in the final year. And it, it kind of, it can get to you when you have lots of different things going on at once. But I think it really set me up for my career because I learned to juggle lots of things at the same time. And I also learned how to prioritize what's most important as well, which I think is super valuable just in life. Isn't it. And kind of when I started Kantar I could really see how that experience had shaped me into the person I am now. And it really helped me to, yeah, it just, just helped me in general.
Clare Muscutt:
Yeah, I just remember thinking back to my final year, I was actually studying equine studies, which is horses for anyone who doesn't know the term, my first degree. And I'd had a year working in industry before I came back to do my finals, which is a lot of coursework and exams and everything, isn't it. Yeah and I had a really bad riding accident at the start of my final year and it meant that I was never gonna be able to be a professional horse rider. So for me, my final year ended up being like, thinking, how am I gonna be able to make this transition from horses into business? Because my degree was balanced with business management and marketing. I was actually really good at that. So I went off and managed to get a 2:1 by the skin of my teeth and went to the University of Birmingham and the academic level and rigor that was there. That was nothing like I'd experienced in the agricultural world. And I just remember like being really kind of surprised that there's this whole other kind of subculture of red brick universities, where it is all about getting on a graduate scheme, isn't it? And if you don't, to some extent, it feels like you failed. I dunno if that was something that, that you experienced too, obviously mine's going back 20 years, yours is much more recent.
Hayley Pugh:
I can't imagine how hard that that must have been for you to be honest, it's not something that you'd expect and you kinda have to think about, okay, what's next for me and it's the uncertainty, isn't it that can really get to you. But yeah, I, there is a huge amount of pressure at university where that, you know, there's a lot of competition you're aware of that and you, you just want to do the best that you can that, you know, you've got a lot of things going on at the same time and yeah, there, there is pressure kind of, if you're at university it's, everyone applies for graduate schemes and there's kind of the, the thing to do. It feels like it's the best option, but it isn't necessarily. I'm very lucky to have got onto a grad scheme. But yeah, the pressure is definitely a lot.
Clare Muscutt:
Mm. And I suppose that being my older self, now I can look back and think how much it felt like that decision was gonna steer the course of the rest of my life. And I had to make the right choice. Cause if I didn't, what would that mean for my career progression? But you know, being able to kind of see back on when I spent 15 years in corporate that actually wasn't the case and I meet so many women, who's first degree or the thing that they said at uni is never, you know, the thing that they ended up doing later down the line.
Hayley Pugh:
Exactly.
Hayley Pugh:
Well, you know, you don't have a, some people go to university knowing exactly what they do want to do afterwards, but that wasn't the case for me necessarily. I studied sociology in Spanish because that's what I was interested in and I didn't really have a set career in mind. I just wanted to do something I enjoyed. Right. So as well, it's, it's difficult. You sort of worry sometimes that I don't know exactly what it is I want to do, but I think it's actually best to embrace that uncertainty. And I think it will all, always, it always works out kind of, I'm happy where I am today. And I, I didn't know that I, I would end up here if that makes sense. I sort of just embraced the uncertainty, enjoyed it and just kind of developed myself where possible and tried different things to find what I really enjoyed. So
Clare Muscutt:
You had a few little placements then in different areas. So you say product innovation was one. How was that?
Hayley Pugh:
Yeah, that was fun. It was more so a lot of the work we did was concept testing for different kind of products, whether that was, you know, testing new packaging or kind of propositions. Yeah, I did it for kind of, lots of mainly FMCG which was really fun. It was super fast paced and quite creative as well in terms of like what you were to kind of consult the client on and it's kind of, yeah, a lot more creative. So that was, that was really fun. I enjoyed every, every rotation, which is good and I think it's best to explore and embrace it so that you can, cause you'll always learn something along the way. And the more knowledge you have, I think the better essentially.
Clare Muscutt:
And I think graduate schemes have a really important role to play in being able to make that transition. So kind of like learning something out of a textbook and then going to experience it, like in real life, there is just no comparison. Is there, like you learn the theories, don't you, I suppose at uni or like, I did business and marketing in the kind of master's time you come, came from sociology and Spanish. So this kind of whole new world of FMCG, which is one of their most fast paced, incredibly research and insight based, very precise, isn't it? When you get into the nuts and bolts of what actually drives people's behavior, but sociology must have like helped in some way with understanding things like psychology of consumers.
Hayley Pugh:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what led me to kind of one of the main reasons I applied for the job, because I remember the job description kind of saying, you know, if you are interested and curious about human behaviour and what drives decision making, which was exactly me why I studied Sociology that just understanding humans, why they behave the way they do, why they make decisions is, is like a passion of mine. And obviously that's what I'm doing every day in, in my job. So that's kind of what led me to, to apply. And it is completely different. Like you say, like learning the theory, but then actually applying it to the real world and seeing that pan out is yeah, completely different but super interesting.
Clare Muscutt:
So obviously Women in CX is a start-up, so we're a tiny little business in comparison to Kantar but two of my team came in through the internship route. So they came, one of them came from a university who have like a paid programme for graduates and Meg, if you're here listening, you're absolutely incredible. But for her, she'd done like English literature as her degree. So this was like her first experience in business. But being able to watch her in the space of the year grow, become our Community Manager in such a short space of time has been absolutely wonderful to see. And her feedback to me is always like, you know, just this hands on practical learning experience, being able to make mistakes actually, and feel safe and be supported because the, the learning experience that comes from that is, is so much greater.
Clare Muscutt:
So I have like a massive passion for that, how to get young people from education into businesses, whether through its internships or through graduate schemes and being able to give people as much real responsibility and real practice. Because I remember that the internships when I was, when I was a girl it was basically you get like pushed into like the worst possible, like admin tasks and just get used as a resource when it came to the, to, to internships. And I think it still happens a lot now. So people aren't really necessarily interested in giving the young person great experience. They're interested in getting paid to have them inside their organization, because there were lots of grants and funding available and then just using them as a bit of a an assistance. Definitely. I dunno. Have you, any of your friends experienced anything like that with internships or been mistreated?
Hayley Pugh:
I don't think necessarily mistreated, but I definitely, definitely the point you made around feeling like resource and doing kind of those admin tasks and feeling like just, just a grad, if you like, rather than kind of a, a valued like member of the team. I think that's super important and something that I've really appreciated kind of on my grad scheme, there's a lot of, I kind of got thrown in the deep end sometimes, but it's what kind of made me grow and develop. And like you said, when you make mistakes or you're thrown in the deep end, you actually learn a huge amount from it. And I think it's really important. You're not really learning anything, if you are stuck on admin tasks, are you, I know that's obviously going, it's, it's going to be there. You're gonna have to do it, but I think making sure a grad and someone who's starting their career gets the opportunity to experience different things and have some responsibilities, really important for their development.
Clare Muscutt:
Yeah, yeah, totally agree. When I was on the corporate side it was, we didn't have much budget for resource within customer experience cause it was still quite new at the last company I worked at. So I would always have a rotation of the grads. So these are like the top minds that have been recruited in and they'd be like really excited about like commercial. Like that was the thing. Everyone wanted to go and do, go and do the buying in supermarket and marketing in different placements and getting the grads in for, for customer experience. It was amazing cause literally the smartest cookies in the landsuch great ideas and super, super, super keen. And, and again, so it's like similarly to watching my own interns kind of grow and flourish now. Yeah. And seeing them to go on to do amazing things in such a kind of fast accelerated way. So within like a few years, having got to like a senior position because of, you know, being really well set up within the organization. So I think it's really important place for those. So what's kind of like really sparking your interest now you're in customer experience. What are you really getting into now?
Hayley Pugh:
I'd say I'm very interested in digital experience, so kind of digital user experience. I think because you know, just seeing digital adoption really grow since kind of the pandemic which, you know, the pandemic really accelerated digital transformation and we as consumers interact with brands a lot more through digital channels. So it kind of made me think, how are brands delivering kind of the same experience through kind of their websites or mobile, all these different digital channels because obviously an important aspect of kind of brand loyalty is that human interaction or face to face interaction with a customer. The emotional elements I thought, how are you kind of building that loyalty through digital, ensuring that you are kind of offering a, a seamless customer journey when you've got all these different channels now that a customer can interact with you? I'd say that's what that most, what most interests me at the moment, I think.
Clare Muscutt:
Mm. And now there are so many pure play digital experiences that are digital from start to finish, right? Like when I look at my bank statement at the end of the month, how many subscriptions I now have to purely digital services where I never meet a human or interact with a person. But still kinda built,
Hayley Pugh:
Sorry,
Clare Muscutt:
Go
Hayley Pugh:
You just said banks there just made me think of course neobanks where the experience is purely purely digital, you know, I, I have a Monzo account. That's, that's the, how I manage my finances. The most is through my, my neobank where I'm not interacting is purely digital and that's really disrupting the market in terms of financial services sector.
Clare Muscutt:
So I agree. I agree. I agree. And I think the, the, you know, word, you said the digital transformation, the organizations that have struggled with it the most are the ones that have made the biggest transition in terms of the channels they offer. So traditional bricks and mortar and people based businesses have really, really struggled to go digital. Whereas in the last 10 years, so many, businesses have been built on digital foundations. They've really changed consumer perception of what digital's about. Right? So take Amazon which grew from, you know, a pure digital space and is now going into bricks and mortar, which is interesting have like set the expectation of how fast things can be delivered, how easy it will be to resolve problems. Whereas those organizations, particularly that have legacy systems technology and cultural challenges have really, really found it difficult to, to create not only those seamless journeys, but to, to make that transition with the customer journey that actually delivers value and loyalty, as you said. So yeah, I'm interested to hear a little bit more about that. Like, so what are your thoughts on how businesses can deliver more seamless journeys online?
Hayley Pugh:
Kinda I think the most important sort of pillars to think about in terms of delivering kind of a, a seamless omnichannel experience is, you know, consistency, efficiency, personalization, these kind of pillars are really important and kind of, you briefly mentioned it, how the main challenges of brands are those changing consumer expectations. You know, because of digital, we now expect brands to, we, we now expect like constant support and personalization, ease those kind of things that brands really have to live up to those expectations now. And I think by making sure that, you know, you're maintaining consistency across those channels is really key, not only in terms of kind of your, your brand, so your brand personality, it's really important to make sure it's consistent in terms of, you know, building your loyalty but making sure that you are offering that seamless experience across all of those channels.
Hayley Pugh:
So I think putting the user at the forefront and the heart of your strategy is probably the most important thing. It needs to be a user centred and customer centric process you know, because each of those channels need to meet different needs. So I might be using my phone to browse a website, but, you know desktops actually go through the purchase journey and, and, and buy a product. So making sure that you are meeting those customer intents across, across the journey is really important as well. I think, you know, more and more consumers are using their mobile now to interact with brands. So making sure that you've optimized your website for mobile usage as well is really important. We're so kind of impatient as customers now because of digital, you know, to the point where there's, there's some amazing stats on, you know, if your page speed is one second more, it'll have a huge impact on your sort of sales and conversion. It's those tiny kind of marginal gains that you can have. And making sure that, you know, got a, an experience that is optimized for mobile, that is quick kind of thinking about UX design principles, making sure it's enjoyable, equitable, it meets their needs and it's useful is really important. Yeah,
Hayley Pugh:
So I, I was gonna say a huge part of offering that seamless omnichannel experience is understanding your customers experience at every touchpoint. So, you know, mining different data, so operational data or experience data, wherever it may be from just integrating as much as you can into a single platform, so that you've got kind of a single customer view and you understand kind of have a 360 degree view of your customers that you can really personalize the experience for them and engage with them appropriately at, at each of the right touch points in terms of customer feedback, you know, identifying kind of where the experience gaps are across your channels and being able to respond to customers even so more like before they even reach out to you offering support at the right places.
Clare Muscutt:
Yeah. It's like, hyper-personalisation is kind of one of the things people talk about now, isn't it. So it's moved beyond kind of like first name on an email or like segmented marketing messages to, as you say, things like at kind of more proactive service, looking at patterns in an individual's data in order to make recommendations to be useful and helpful. I can think in the industry, I'm seeing a bit of a divide really between how genuine that really is and how much it's there to drive sales and selling as opposed to experiences. So there are a few companies out there employing very innovative technologies and doing an incredible job. But I think one of the sad things I'm seeing is a bit of a, a copycat movement to try to replicate what other businesses are doing, but perhaps not having invested quite so much in understanding their users or their customers, the specific needs and journeys that that are required within their own individual context.
Clare Muscutt:
So they just kind of think, oh, we could just switch on, I dunno, the service channel and use chat bots cause everyone's using chat bots now, but not have actually taken the time to do the machine learning stage. That means they can actually be helpful. And for customers it's actually really disruptive because you know, it's so much easier to, it still feels to, to a lot of us when we meet bad digital channels. It's so much easier for us to just want to pick up a phone and speak to a human, because the digital setup of how that service has been created actually makes it harder. And you end up speaking to a human anyway, you just have to jump through a million hoops, wait for half an hour. And
Hayley Pugh:
Yeah, exactly. I think that is the sad thing where you see companies kind of using digital to, you know, cut costs and reduce effort and CX isn't necessarily their main driver when it, it definitely should be. And if that's said beforehand, the customer should be at the heart of everything you do, rather than any of those other drivers that, that, because yeah, like you say, the customer is gonna have to seek support elsewhere, whether they call up or, you know, making sure you really meet their needs across each of the touch points is, is really important.
Clare Muscutt:
Just doesn't make any sense to me why organizations don't though, because when we're talking about technology investment, we're usually talking millions of pounds, right. Or even like investment in data and analysis and insights yet to come at it pure from an operational perspective and about cost saving rather than, you know, maybe spending a little bit of time also doing discovery around customer and user, the decisions you could make in the implementation of those technologies would have a far greater value to your end user and therefore a greater return on things like loyalty and keeping customers in journey and not losing them out of a leaky funnel because they have a bad experience with a chat bot, for example. So that doesn't makes sense to me why it's not something that is is, is more prioritized and the, the comparable cost of investing in understanding the customers in discovery, in comparisons to the cost of actually buying these technologies or integrating them, it's miniscule. So for a little tiny, more bit more investment the likelihood, but even like, you know, you were talking about kinda UX and stuff with testing, like how often I see, even as a customer things that have been implemented clearly without ever having really tested it with somebody. Yeah.
Clare Muscutt:
So like, you know, talking about kind of things like button placement, or even like where you land on a page or even page speeds or loading speeds, and it does put people off because there's so much great digital out there that we're used to having these really super fast, super intuitive, awesome experiences. So digital done badly is kind of worse than no digital at all in some to some degree.
Hayley Pugh:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's very important for obviously brands to understand that and make sure that, you know, that they're kind of using digital surveys to understand and kind of intercept on kind of those crucial moments of, of the journey and making sure that, you know, they're offering support and have even if it's like a feedback button to make sure that they're there for their customers and they can understand where those kind of barriers are in the journey and always kind of actioning them and to improve the digital experience. And like you say, testing beforehand is so important.
Clare Muscutt:
I think an important word there as well though. It's action. Right? So a lot of the time again, another thing that I'm seeing is all the data in the world, all the insight in the world, but because so much investment has gone into mining this information, there's limited funds and resources left for people to actually take, take action and fix the problems or respond to the signals that, oh, maybe we need to be moving in a slightly different direction on this element of customer experience. And yeah, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is, there's still, there is still a necessity to put more focus on action and humans than there is, and research and understanding customers than there is on actually delivering the technology itself. So it's been awesome to chat to you today and yeah, just to kind of round off, like, is it, is there any advice that you'd have, especially for young women in CX or women who are considering their graduate moves or careers in customer experience?
Hayley Pugh:
I would say kind of use this as an opportunity, like while you're still young and you're still figuring things out to just explore different paths. So, you know, I joined the graduate scheme, my first rotation was CX and I loved it, but I kind of made sure to rotate to other domains just to see, you know, what else was out there. And it is a really, it is a perfect opportunity to understand and, and learn and just figure things ouT, what you enjoy. And there's always so much that you can learn and, you know, you might not be following the path you, you think you are, but it always kind of, you always end up in, in the right place and doing something that you will enjoy. So just, just embrace the uncertainty and just learn as much as you can. I'd say,
Clare Muscutt:
Love that, love that. And as somebody probably heading towards 20 years in advance of, of your age I couldn't agree with you more and actually the big turning points in my career, weren't really things that I'd planned. They were opportunities and you know, kind of random things that came along that as you say, you know, piqued my interest and I wanted to find out more and sample more of that were always the things that led me in the right direction. And I know we've kind of touched on this, just you and I talking earlier. But yeah, not quite feeling so much as we have to have these like planned moulded career paths where it looks like taking steps and steps and steps up a ladder. I think I hope the world's changing to the extent we're actually being able to follow what makes us happy. And what we enjoy is equally rewarded and respected and yeah. Is, is your own definition of success. Ultimately, isn't, it is the most important thing to go after.
Clare Muscutt:
So thank you so much for joining me today.
Hayley Pugh:
Thank you for having me. Thank you.
Clare Muscutt:
And thank you to everybody who listened along as well. We'll see you all next time. Bye for now. 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 joining the world's first online community for women in customer experience, please check out womenincx.community and follow the Women in CX page on LinkedIn. Join us again next week, where I'll be talking to another awesome community member from Denmark about squiggly careers and how to fix a broken CX industry. See you next time.
