Tune in as we share real-talk conversations between women working in CX and those influencing the CX agenda from the periphery too.
Clare Muscutt talks with Sarah Curran-Usher MBE about the evolution of retail customer experience
I think it’s really important that I stress that, you know, particularly when we’re talking about profitability… and sometimes, I think there’s this unfair assumption towards female leadership that we’re focused on all the sort of exciting and cosy stuff, the warm staff that kind of creates this loyalty, but actually that therefore we’re not looking at the bottom line. And that’s not the case because actually, particularly if you’ve got a low average selling point, protecting your operational margin and operational profits is even more important because you haven’t got much to play with. But then, it’s about driving that repeat customer through strong loyalty, strong retention. It’s about maybe purchasing less inventory and stock so that you’re actually selling more at actually full price versus having to constantly give out discounts to incentivise people to shop.
Clare Muscutt talks about CX Insights and Women in the Workplace with Kantar Insights CEO Amy Cashman
I think it’s really important to be clear what your red lines are in an organisation. I’m very clear there’s things I won’t miss: I have never missed one of my children’s assemblies; I’ve never missed sports day; I’ve never missed a parents’ evening. I just won’t miss stuff like that. And I’ve had occasions where it’s clashed with an important meeting and I’ve consciously chosen to explain, ‘I’m not at that meeting because I’m at a school assembly.’ I haven’t tried to hide it and say, ‘I’ve got a medical appointment’ or anything like that because that’s how you get the message that that is okay and that is normal. And that’s not always felt comfortable, to be truthful. I’ve come to that, I would say, over a period of time. It wasn’t something I would have done straight away when I got back from maternity leave, but I hope by doing things like that it just makes it…
Clare Muscutt talks human Centred Design, Inclusion and LGBTQ+ Womxn in CX with Lara Husselbee
“For me, inclusion is thinking beyond the mass and looking for minorities and those intersections where actually some really amazing golden nuggets and stories lie that you can improve people’s lives, and that comes back to the empathy.
And maybe why I was drawn to this career is the idea that we can improve it even if it’s just one point in someone’s life – obviously sounds so idealistic – but same kind of thing as you don’t know who you’re walking past and what they’re experiencing, so a smile might help. Well, why not do the same for minority groups when you are in a privileged position?
Clare Muscutt talks about CX in IoT and FM with Sharon Boyd, CXO at MKL Innovation.
“I think one of the things that stuck out for me was there didn’t seem to be very many female role models, and I always just felt that that was a bit of shame. That was a challenge for me because I really wanted to grow. I wanted to get on, and I’ve always been quite self-aware, but I always just wanted to get feedback from other people, especially those women above me who’d done really well, and just kind of grow.
Clare Muscutt talks with Anita Siassios, about Women in Cyber Security & building female communities
“But cybersecurity is huge. It’s involving. A lot of organisations have now moved to becoming digital, you know, they’ve transitioned from the paper forms to being online. There’s a lot of operational efficiencies in becoming digital.
However, there’s also the implications that if things are not actually set up securely, databases can be accessed, and they can be broken into. So, there’s lots of opportunities for customer data to be breached and accessed by malicious …”