Francesca Grillini of Reckitt On The 5 Ways To Create a Wow! Customer Experience

As part of our series about the five things a business should do to create a Wow! customer experience, I had the pleasure of interviewing Francesca Grillini.

Francesca Grillini is eCommerce Activation Lead at Reckitt, where she is part of the Brand Experience & Design team. She leads the application of Reckitt’s hygiene and home brands in ecommerce, providing Reckitt’s customers with a consistent and engaging brand experience.

Prior to this, Francesca worked at Philips in Amsterdam and Philips-Saeco International Group in Italy. Born and educated in Italy, Francesca is now based in Amsterdam at Reckitt’s home and hygiene HQ.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I always dreamt about a career in business — for a big organization. More specifically, I wanted to become a manager within the marketing sector and travel the world. So, I chose to study marketing and economics at the University of Bologna, the city where I was born and grew up.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

I started my career at a big international company in Italy — Philips-Saeco, in its small domestic appliances business unit. My post-graduation internship placement was in the ‘full-automatic’ coffee machine department. I really wanted to do a good job and prove myself. So, as soon as I arrived, I set about getting to know the technology of these coffee machines.

The first time I tried to make a coffee (usually the most intuitive thing for me), my initial question to a colleague was, “Where should I put the coffee capsule?”. Unfortunately, full-automatic coffee machines do not work with capsules, they work with fresh coffee beans — one of the main features of the systems.

Embarrassingly, this showed my ignorance of the core technology of the product. I used to be very shy and introverted, but this mistake gave me the push to ask more questions. It made me speed up my learning and venture out of my comfort zone to make amends as quickly as possible.

None of us is able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I’m particularly grateful to a very special colleague of mine, Martina De Marinis, who I worked with at Philips within the coffee department. I started supporting her as a content assistant and along the years we grew together within the team and the company. We also both moved from Italy to Amsterdam. In total we worked side by side for eight years and we are still very close friends, even if our careers went in different directions.

From a professional point of view, she has been a very important role model to me, helping me to make my first steps in the company. She has shown me how to be a structured and detail-oriented marketeer, by bringing passion, preparation, and a professional approach to every piece of work and meeting, every day. She is a strong manager who never gives up, even faced with difficult moments and challenging projects.

Thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main focus of our interview. This might be intuitive, but I think it’s helpful to specifically articulate it. In your words, can you share a few reasons why a great customer experience is essential for success in business?

Business provides users more than just products, we build services and solutions to problems. If you don’t know who your users are, what their needs are, and how they search for something, how can you offer them what they need? This goes beyond the product and the “object” we might sell.

The essence of great UX is to craft a personalized journey for users, across relevant channels, by using relevant content to trigger a meaningful conversation with them: the product offered is just one piece of this rich and exciting journey. We want to ultimately build and nurture a real, long-lasting relationship between the brand and the user, starting before the purchase, and one that keeps on evolving in the long-term. We are like tailors who need to understand their client’s tastes and needs, and who craft a perfect personalized suit for them. If our users are happy, they will love their experience, and will come back to our brand.

We have all had times either in a store, or online, when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive, and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?

There is still a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what CX stands for — and its potential. A good customer experience requires audience insights, incremental content and an active presence across multiple on and offline channels. This in turn needs incremental resources and budget; all investments whose ROI might be visible only in the long run.

Not all companies have the mindset ready to embrace something that might appear to be “not essential” and not directly driving sales in the short term. Moreover, even if the potential of a great UX is fully understood, not all companies have the appropriate resources to invest.

Do you think that more competition helps force companies to improve the customer experience they offer? Are there other external pressures that can force a company to improve the customer experience?

There is no doubt that the examples and the actions from competitors have a powerful effect of increasing a sense of urgency and prioritisation in any company. In business, we all want to be best in class and do better than the competitors. But there is also an increasing care and attention over CX due to a natural evolution (or revolution) of purchasing patterns and users’ behaviours; and digital is a key part of it.

Users are connected almost 24/7 and exposed to tons of options, content, and information, with freedom to randomly switch from one channel to the others. In such a dynamic, fast, and almost chaotic environment, all brands have less and less time to get users’ attention and engage with them. In such a competitive setting, knowing your user and building a narrow CX, is becoming more of a genuine need; a business needs to invest where it really matters, on the right channel, and with the right strategy.

Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience. Please share a story or an example for each.

Know your people and be user-centric: this is a mindset that can be applied in any field of the company, from the development of a product or service to the setup of marketing strategy and brand experience. This is required for a data-driven mindset as well, and the ability to track and measure users’ preferences and behaviors. It’s like building a real relationship of friendship with your users and get to know them: only when you know who they are, what they need, how they behave, you can communicate successfully with them, and provide them with successful solutions and product that REALLY meet their needs. It’s like changing point of view, by shifting from what the company wants to sell and provide the users with, to what the users are actually looking for on the market and provide it to them.

Digital…digital, and digital again: Digital is an essential part of users’ lives; therefore, it becomes essential for any company. Regardless of whether it is to engage, to trigger consideration or to sell a product, digital channels are increasingly representing a relevant incremental source of business. To craft a ‘wow’ UX, digital is a suitable place to test innovative ideas and learn, a place to explore new trends, a space to rule. Let’s think how often any of us check the smartphone every hour, how often we navigate on social media, websites, emails, ecommerce, and even use a smart watch. There is no doubt that offline and online are now so interconnected that is almost difficult to differentiate among the 2 experiences. All these digital channels are an essential part of the way we all communicate and receive information. And the beauty of it is that… not all the territories have been fully explored: digital space is like a dynamic growing animal that is evolving every day with new technologies and with new trends popping out… if we are good enough to detect these new spaces before the others, we might get a very competitive advantage.

Expensive comms does not mean winning comms: It’s important to really understand what the consumer journey looks like and build a well-integrated multichannel experience. For example, if your audience mainly uses social media and digital platforms to engage with brands, why invest on expensive above-the-line campaigns? A proper marketing mix built with the user in mind, and with no gaps in the journey, might drive rewarding performance and result in a more mindful investment.

Be fast, not always perfect: these days, being fast and acting quickly is crucial. Interacting almost real-time with users, and “to be the first movers” is critical to get a competitive advantage. Imagine being the first company commenting on socials about news that is very relevant for your target audience — most likely the interaction with your brand will see a boost. This requires very fast reaction that might sit at odds with long internal approval flow; sometimes to grasp the opportunity you need to be a bit less perfect, but a bit faster.

Equip your company with the right competencies and infrastructures: to bring to life and activate a proper brand experience, the team and the infrastructures are critical assets. For example, a proper mix of marketeers, designers, strategists, IT specialist and data analysts is needed. One-size-fits-all does not exist unfortunately; any team structure and skillset needs to always evolve and reflect any emerging business (and user) requirements.

My particular expertise is in retail, so I’d like to ask a question about that. Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise retail companies and eCommerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?

A global market brings global opportunities, but it comes with higher pressure and competition. It is hard to give an answer to this question. If I had the answer, I would be a millionaire. But I feel like there are some territories that might be worth exploring, and not surprisingly these are related to user experience.

Premiumize your service: to compete on pricing by providing a “cheaper and cheaper” product or service will not make businesses’ lives any easier in the long-term. I would rather suggest optimizing and premiumizing the service provided instead, by delivering higher quality that users will be happy to pay extra for.

Build an experience, do not just sell products: switch from a “selling products” mindset to a “360 experience” mindset; this can be conveyed by delivering a premium experience, enriched by services tailored to your users, and programs optimized for your audience. A more valuable experience will justify a higher price among the community you’re looking to reach.

Differentiate your portfolio: build a portfolio different from the one of your competitors. This can be quite difficult with aggressive competitors operating on a global scale. But sometimes, by focusing on a specific audience or market, you might be able to identify and fulfil a very specific need that other competitors, maybe bigger or less focused, are not able to address.

Bonus question: If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I would love to live in a more respectful world, and sometimes we are so focused on our daily life issues that we lose the contact with all the problems that human exploiting is bringing to our planet. I feel myself very close and sensitive towards the protection and respect of all the animals on our planet. Animals have the same right of living in peace on our beautiful planet, but more and more often we have seen entire species oppressed, and wildlife brutally extinguished. They don’t have a voice… but what if they COULD TALK? What if they could say aloud how much pain and injustice, they face every day? I would love to give a powerful voice to all the animals of our planet, and make sure human would listen. Maybe one day, thanks to an increased technology we will be able to “translate” their voice, who knows… but, for the time being, we all can be this voice and stand for all these wonderful animals, creatures that in many cases do not have apparently even the right of living their own habitat.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

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