Inspiring Women In CX

“It's true that one of the biggest fears is when you decide that you want to do things differently, you don't want to be in a system where you're stuck to two walls, especially when you become freelance and you say, from now on, I just depend on myself.”

 

In episode #607 of the Inspiring Women in CX podcast, Clare Muscutt talks to Sonia Etxebarria, Founder and Strategist at Akuyari, about…

 

👭 How she made her way into the Women in CX community and went on to found her own customer-centric design agency, Akuyari, collaborating with other members to do so

 

👩‍💼 Working in Telco and Logistics before making the leap from corporate to entrepreneurship and doing things her own way

 

💪 The importance of recognising the value that you bring and playing to your strengths to win in business

 

🗣️ Challenging the negative connotation around ‘selling’ and self-promotion, particularly as women

 

🎨 Her passion for service and experience design, the importance of research and discovery, and fashioning her own methodology

 

💬 Why it’s critical to conduct qualitative research to understand feelings and motivations and use quantitative research to validate findings

 

For more information on joining the world’s first online community for women in Customer Experience, head over to www.womenincx.community/membership

Chelsea Costelloe, the Chief Excitement Officer at EXCO, joins Clare Muscutt on the Inspiring Women in CX podcast to talk about co-founding the Caribbean’s first all-female-led CX consulting agency, the positive shift in the region as more CX titles are appearing, facing scepticism as a young, female director, gender equality in the Caribbean, experiencing sexist comments in the workplace and how, if ignored, these ‘blurred’ lines can become much more insidious and utilising journey mapping as a tool, as opposed to a goal in itself, to spur action, inspire your teams and avoid the dreaded journey mapping ‘burnout’.

 

Listen in as Chelsea talks about…

🤝 Co-founding the Caribbean’s first all-female-led CX consulting agency, EXCO

🙋‍♀️ Being a ‘Chief Excitement Officer’ (and what the role entails)

📚 The state of CX in the Caribbean and her personal mission to drive CX awareness and education in the region

🗯️ Gender equality, gender-based violence and experiencing sexist comments in the workplace

🛠️ Journey Mapping as a tool to achieve your goals, not a goal in itself

😩 Journey Mapping “burnout” and how to avoid it

 

For more information on joining the world’s first online community for women in Customer Experience, head over to www.womenincx.community 

Serena Riley, the Vice President of Experience Management at SkySpecs and the Founder and CEO of Joy & Moxie joins Clare Muscutt on the Inspiring Women in CX podcast to talk about starting out in IT – a typically male-dominated environment – her role as the VP of Experience Management within a start-up and navigating the scale-up phase, building her personal brand, Joy & Moxie, her mission to empower women to design for the future that they want, becoming a role model for her young daughter, removing the barriers that she faced for the future generation of female leaders and leaning into your own power by being who you truly are.

 

Listen in as Serena talks about…

💻 Starting out in IT before “maxing out” and needing something to reignite her fire

📞 CX and customer support in a tech start-up and the scaling-up phase

👭 Stumbling upon the Women in CX community on LinkedIn and feeling immediately aligned

🙅‍♀️ Being a “people-pleaser” and beating her perfectionism

💪 Becoming a role model for her daughter and being able to help her to get where she wants to go “quicker and easier”

♀️ The differences in the way that we parent owing to gender and the impact that this has

✨ The importance of being yourself and acknowledging that you have the power to design the future that you want

 

For more information on joining the world’s first online community for women in Customer Experience, head over to www.womenincx.community 

Gemma Colby, the Head of Customer Experience at YELL UK, joins Clare Muscutt on the Inspiring Women in CX podcast to talk about her route into CX, recognising only in retrospect that she’d been doing it all along, putting theory into practice as she ran a contact centre, her own experiences with great leaders and how these shaped her approach and, in her opinion, the key skills and capabilities necessary to be a successful CX leader driving changes and improvements that impact the business’s bottom line.

 

Listen in as Gemma talks about...

🔮 Being ‘predestined’ to work in CX, realising only in retrospect that she’d been doing it all along

😊 Starting out in operations and wielding her passion for people to make customers feel special

🙅‍♀️ Combatting her Imposter Syndrome and redefining what success “should” look like

🧠 Adopting a growth mindset and how creating a sense of “interconnectedness” is key to being a great (CX) leader

💬 The importance of trusting ourselves and recognising what “drives and drains us”

 

For more information on joining the world’s first online community for women in Customer Experience, head over to www.womenincx.community 

Sarah Curran-Usher MBE joins Women in CX Founder and podcast host Clare Muscutt to discuss the evolution of retail customer experience from bricks-and-mortar to pure-play online stores over her 20 years working in the fashion industry. From the importance of getting the basics right to the opportunities presented by the latest data and technology advances, this podcast highlights what it takes to 'sell' CX to senior leaders by balancing the emotional and commercial aspects of CX initiatives, and vitally discusses the need for more women at board level who appreciate the balance required to support decisions that value people as much as numbers.

Tune in to hear more about:
- The moments that shaped Sarah's career
- How she embraced her 'disruptive' nature
- Using her different thinking to fuel success as an entrepreneur
- The highs and lows of starting, scaling, and selling her own business
- Becoming an 'entrepreneur in residence'
- The dangers of CX 'gimmicks'
- Acquisition vs retention in retail
- How to get C-suite onboard
- The differences in female leadership
- Balancing customer, brand, and commercial priorities
- Using behavioural customer data to drive better decisions
- Developing your own resilience 
- Sarah's advice for women in CX

You can find out how to join the world's first online membership community for women interested in CX by visiting www.womenincx.community

Amy Cashman, CEO of Kantar UK's Insights Division, joins Women in CX Founder and podcast host Clare Muscutt to discuss the importance of establishing 'red lines' to create work–life balance, challenging the perception of female senior leadership to set positive examples for women in the workplace, and how brand values impact both the customer and the employee experience.

 

“Lean into who you are and don’t feel that you have to change to be successful.”

 

The conversation also delves into…

• The evolution of CX insights

• How brands can amplify or undermine women’s confidence

• The creation of proof-points to deliver on brand promise

• How Amy reached CEO level

• Using CX to create (and to prove) ROI for organisations

• How to create environments within which women thrive

• How evidence of D&I is more important than brand statements

• The importance of authenticity

 

Visit https://womenincx.community/ for more inspiring content, and to find out how to join the world's first online membership community for women in customer experience.

 

#womeninbusiness #ceo #customerexperience #research #insights #kantar #womenincx #womenincxpodcast #inspiringwomen #inspiringwomenincx #femalelead #leadership #cx

‘There are no ‘women of colour’ in Africa’

 

This week’s Women in CX Podcast guest, The CX Queen of Nigeria, Debbie Akwara came on the show to share her career story and share the moments that shaped her into the formidable woman she is becoming.

 

Including her shocking recent and first ever experience of being referred to as a ‘woman of colour’ when she dared to challenge the status quo of how the CX community functions in the West.

 

Whilst being well known across her home continent for years, in the last 12 months she broke through to become globally recognised as a thought leader. And earned her place at the table.

 

Yet as a woman from Africa, she was made to feel her voice was deemed as less valuable.

 

More women all over the world are rising up to take their rightful place on global stages, being better enabled by the digital communications and collaboration revolution.

 

I’m proud the women in CX community is here to amplify the voices of women who are ready to be heard. And those who aren’t ready for us, best get set. As women like Debbie, will not be ignored.

 

Tune into the podcast to hear:

- More of Debbie's fascinating backstory

-The African CX perspective

-Technology and CX growing pains

-The similarities with Western CX challenges

-How she started her first CX projects

-The importance of business focus in CX

-Finding the right business metrics to aim for

-The lessons she learned from her mentors

-Finding your confidence -Owning your success

-Dealing with racism as she broke through in the West

-The secret to her unstoppable girl power!

 

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🧁"You are the cupcake, everyone else is just the sprinkles"🧁

 

Launching today’s podcast with a backdrop of uncertainty about the US election, Corona deaths rising again, whole countries returning to lockdown and facing heightened terror threats, I wanted to focus on something lighter.

 

I met the CX pocket rocket, Head of CX and Employee Engagement and Schindler, Founder of DoingCXRight and all round rising CX star, Stacy Sherman, earlier this year and when she told me this piece of advice passed down from her stock trader mom, it was not only delightful, but it really stuck with me.

 

As women we are so often guilty of prioritising others, building our lives around partners and careers that we sometimes lose sight of the fact that WE are the cupcake. 

 

Wherever you are today, whatever is going on around you, put yourself first and ensure you only invite people, jobs, relationships, friends and co-workers into your life who add value to your experience.

 

We can learn a lot from the ‘Stacy’s Moms’ of the world who struck out in pursuit of the lives they wanted to lead. Tune in to hear us talk about more of the lessons we learned from our mothers, Stacy’s metric rise to CX fame and her advice on female leadership now.

 

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Who you work for makes all the difference.

 

Strike it lucky with a true leader who endorses, champions and supports you gives you all the confidence in the world to go out there and reach for new heights.

 

But if you have the misfortune to work for someone who micromanages you to the point of distraction, it can leave you doubting your own abilities and if anything, curb your ambition.

 

For every tale of awesome female leadership, we all have one story of a fellow female who made our lives HELL and in some cases, even bullied.

 

Thankfully these examples are few and far between. But bouncing back after such an experience isn’t necessarily easy once the damage to our self-confidence is done.

 

What we need is a community of women who network, support and inspire each other to succeed and as my guest on the show today, Cultivate CX founder Katie Stabler demonstrates, support one another to rise up.

 

I was thrilled to have Katie on the show to hear her career story, find out how she introduced CX to some very unexpected places in a highly male dominated environment and share our experiences of women supporting women.

 

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“And the feedback that I got was that I was a bully”

 

Despite our intentions, the way we communicate has a profound effect on others and their perception of our character.

Depending upon our level of self- awareness, negative feedback can come as a shock. It can rock us to the core. But how we react and bounce back from it is a far more powerful statement about who we are.

In this week's episode, Janelle Mansfield shares her experience of being an ‘Alpha Female’ and how this has served her during her career. From her directness being an asset in male-dominated environments to having to re-learn how to work with women, Janelle’s is a story of courage, truth, and authenticity.

You’ll also hear about making her way up the ladder from humble beginnings at Burger King, how this experience fuelled her passion for a future career in CX, how you can harness commercial acumen to transform your CX influence and how she is using digital tools to make remote CX workshops transcend the current barriers we are experiencing with face to face ways of working.

 

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