Yasmine Djouhri, CRM & Digital Communications Manager at The Beauty Makers, shares her thoughts on Careem's UX Talk.
GH: Can you tell us more about your role?
YD: I head up CRM & Digital Communications at The Beauty Makers (including Faces). It is a “hybrid role” as I like to call; combining all forms of communication to customers, and managing the loyalty program for Faces. Within my role, the CRM pillar splits into loyalty program management, communication strategy development and implementation, building lifecycle journeys, customer data analysis, customer experience development and enhancement. It also includes managing all Faces, Ghawali and any upcoming own concept beauty brand’s social media channels, i.e. building and implementing a digital and social strategy, developing content, building audiences, and running the channels.
GH: What’s one important learning you’ve taken away from the CX Academy’s first phase?
YD: This is a tough one! The CX Academy has given us a lot of insight on how to structure our understanding, and how that impacts a customer’s experience with a brand. As I must choose one, I would go with “Validate Your Data”. A lot of the time, we rely on word of mouth and assumptions to categorize our customers.
A core pillar of CX is to ensure that whatever solution we implement should be backed up with valid data. This framing helped us better understand the current data we have and how to best leverage it. With data validation as a necessity, we had visibility on today’s customer journey, while also reigning in our dream scenarios – making them credible and achievable.
GH: So we heard from the Careem team on how they tackle UX/CX issues, what are some of the key points that resonated with you?
YD: The first is User Testing. Careem do a large amount of daily user tests of customer experiences; helping to asses, analyze and adapt based on the outcome. This really resonated with me as it fits well with our mantra of “start small, scale fast or fail fast”. By running daily user tests, we can all become more agile in our responses. Solutions will be based on validated feedback; which are measured and implemented on new changes resulting in a much better customer experience. The user testing can be further enhanced by running a “4-day design sprint” – which tackles engineering, product and design elements.
The second is to Keep the Brand Mission In Mind. Careem’s mission is to “Simplify and improve the lives of people and build an awesome organization that inspires”. They continuously go back to their mission as a checkpoint to see whether the idea does indeed reflect their beliefs. This, in my opinion, is imperative for any brand that seeks to create a wholesome and sustained customer experience (especially when omnichannel is the goal). We can get lost in the world of change and end up moving too far off our original promise to our customers.
The third is to Become Obsessed with The Customer. As a CRM person, this was music to my ears! Careem put themselves in their customer’s shoes first, they listen to customers and use that data to evolve the experience and wow the customer. They also treat anything negative with urgency and loop the solutions back into their 4-day sprint; offering speedy solutions to solve the issue.
GH: What are some UX practices from Careem that you would like to implement in Faces?
YD: Using customer feedback to build new solutions that we would user test frequently. I want to find out what the customer’s real experience with us today; and continuously get their feedback as we roll out solutions. The notion of walking in a customer’s shoes would mean spending time in stores and experiencing a customer’s perspective rather than being an observer. This should be practiced by anyone who has a direct impact on designing a customer journey. With the feedback collected, I would implement a 5 step action plan of:
Defining the problem
Discovering solutions
Testing, testing and testing again
Developing the solution further based on user test results
Deliver the solutions then start all over again
GH: Anything else you'd like to add?
These talks are super insightful, thank you for organizing these kinds of sessions! It would be great to have more of these talks with fashion and beauty brands / companies that have taken risks and made major enhancements to their own CX journeys.