Episode Notes
In this new episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Muhlethaler interviews Customer Experience Specialist and consultant, Helen Baynes.
Want to grow your business? “If you have a long-term ambition for your business, take your customers on the journey with you.” offers Helen.
Anne and Helen met through a close common friend and more recently had a chance to work together, as both of them are consultants who share some specific values, in particular around empathy and customer centricity.
Helen is a Customer Experience Consultant and Strategic Advisor, based in the UK. She has worked in and around fashion retail, starting her career in management training at Harrods, before moving into online retail, in the very early days, with Net-A-Porter, where she stayed for over a decade. In her current role, she supports various companies, from fine jewelry, champagne, to MPowder, a menopause supplement which is is very passionate about; for all of them, Helen is pioneering the digitalisation of traditional retail service values to meet the rapidly changing needs of increasingly digital consumers.
The two discuss the meaning of key principle in customer care such as experience design, the importance of recruitment, to have happy staff and customers, and how to measure lasting relationships with your brand through retention.
Helen also shares her favorite authors, talks about the one person we should all know about, before finishing to talk about what brings her happiness. Enjoy!
Selected Links from Episode
You can find Helen at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-baynes-030b791/
Experience Design – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience_design
Service Design – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_design
Forrester, the consultancy – https://go.forrester.com/
Nex Generation Customer Experience – https://nextgencx.wbresearch.com/
Read Tony Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivering_Happiness
Net-A-Porter – https://tinyurl.com/wr2sx2h3
Worldnet – https://www.worldnet-intl.com/
MPower – Menopause Supplements & Wellbeing – https://mpowder.store/
Anne Sebba – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Sebba
Griselda Pollock – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griselda_Pollock
Full Episode Transcript
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hi, hello, bonjour and namaste. This is, “Out of the Clouds,” a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness. And I’m your host Anne Muhlethaler. Today, my guest is customer experience specialist and consultant Helen Banes. I was lucky enough to meet Helen via our very close common friend, the one and only, Lupe Puerta, her mentee and a fantastic entrepreneur herself.
Anne Muhlethaler:
When I met Helen, it was like there was a recognition of sorts. You know when you see someone that you want to spend more time with, get to know, potentially work with them? And fast forward a few years with Helen and I both becoming consultants, we were able to put some projects together. Which led me to appreciate her knowhow, her expertise, and her ethos, even more. So whether or not you understand customer journey, as she says, if your customers deliver your revenue, what’s not to care about? Yes, that’s Helen right there, she does this thing where she mic drops all the time. So I hope you appreciate as much as I did, my wide ranging conversation with Helen Banes. Enjoy.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So Helen, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Out of the Clouds.
Helen Bane:
It’s a pleasure to be here.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So can you please tell our listeners where you are in the world?
Helen Bane:
So I live in lovely Brighton, on the south coast of England. I live about 50 yards from the sea front, I am very privileged, so I get to see the sea every day of my life.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, you just reminded me that you sent me a gorgeous picture, that you was very, “Out of the Clouds.”
Helen Bane:
That’s right, yes. And that was the view of my walk home from school run one morning, where there was an incredible moment of the sun bursting through the clouds. Yeah, it’s amazing how different the sky and the sea are every day. It’s definitely a really big part of quality of life here for me, so.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Amazing. So I had the pleasure of asking you a few questions, I think it was back in early November, I did a mini interview of you for my consultancy website for ABM consulting, which I’ll put in the show notes. And I was delighted to discover that we have very similar roots, when it comes to our careers. Roots that are steeped in our love of shoes and retail.
Helen Bane:
Indeed.
Anne Muhlethaler:
But so I thought, why don’t I let you tell our listeners your story, about who you are and what you do.
Helen Bane:
Of course. So, I guess I wanted to work in fashion since I was about 10. I grew up on The Clothes Show, the television show in the eighties, presented by Karen Franklin. And that really sparked my interest in fashion, really. And I was creative and I loved doing art at school and I spent my whole time at school, just wanting to do textile design really, and to do the creative side. And then when I actually got to that stage of academia, doing my art foundation course, I realized that actually I really missed using the academic side of my brain. And I ended up doing history of foreign induction of arts. But throughout my time as a student, I always kept my passion for clothes going through, working in retail and running the wardrobe for the performing societies and designing costumes and sets. And that was how I kind of kept my balance going.
Helen Bane:
So I’d worked in retail since I was 15, as you mentioned, started in shoes, worked for Waitrose, worked for Next and I remember distinctly being on the shop floor one Sunday at Next, where I worked weekends. And just thinking, “Someone puts all this together and I know that I could do that.” I just remember having this thought, and this was what sparked my whole interest in terms of moving into retail and specifically, fashion retail after graduating. And as a result, I ended up at Harrod’s on a management training program, which was called “The Executive Training Scheme,” at the time, which I loved. And I got to work my way all around different areas of the store, which was incredible. I do remember the feedback on my interview, was that they hired me for my customer centricity, but ultimately I really was very single minded. I wanted to work in ladies fashion and I did get there eventually, in my first year of working for the business.
Helen Bane:
Then I worked my way around ladies fashion floor and I started in plus collections, which was just the most amazing grounding, because of the way the team worked. And they were really established, experienced, sales people. So, I think my Saturday girl was in her sixties and I was there and there as a 25 year old manager. So that in itself was quite a challenge, to be respected by people who really know a lot more than you do in many ways. I managed that through building relationships with the team and I think leading a successful stock take when the manager was on holiday. I think that was the thing that sealed the deal and really created the confidence.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That would do it.
Helen Bane:
But ultimately, it was an amazing department to work in because of the staff and the way they looked after their customers, differently. And that really has been, the three to four years that I spent really working in ladies fashion, had been really foundational for me in terms of learning what good looks like and how I have taken that. I applied that through my many years at Net-A-Porter, it really was the core part of the grounding. And it’s something I still refer back to frequently, was really instilled in us culturally. Customer is truly at the heart of everything at Harrods, right? The way through to everyone you work, sort of across the business. I worked in the warehouse for a while and worked in all different areas of the business and you could really sense that, it was always about going above and beyond. So moving on from there, I then went to work at Net-A-Porter from the very early days I joined when the business was less than two years old. So Net-A-Porter, was one of the first multi-brand eCommerce luxury fashion websites. It started in the year 2000, I joined in 2002. And at the time I joined, I remember we had brands such as Jimmy Choo, they were pretty early onto the site.
Anne Muhlethaler:
We were on, Louboutin was on.
Helen Bane:
Were you on in 2002?
Anne Muhlethaler:
We were, because in 2001, Leslie [inaudible 00:07:20] was visiting my office, which was like a dismal dungeon, little basement under the sidewalk of Markham Street.
Helen Bane:
Ah, yeah. Similar environment to the office under the stairs, that I was sitting in.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I remember very well when she came in Serjin in toe and I was thinking, “Damn, I can’t believe that’s where I’m showing the collection, but that’s fine.” They worked out in the end.
Helen Bane:
It definitely worked out. I suppose my lasting memory of working with Louboutin, was the shoe that was worn with the galaxy dress, with the Roland Mouret galaxy dress. I can’t remember the name of it, but I can see it in my mind’s eye. For me, that was around the beginning of the Louboutin moment, that went on for quite a while.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So there you are, fresh out of Harrod’s and you’ve toured around the entire store. You’re dedicated to ladies fashion and you land on a website in 2002. How interesting was that for you?
Helen Bane:
Oh, it was the most refreshing thing ever, I loved it. I just thought it was so exciting and I think interestingly, when I look back, one of the projects I’d had to do when I was going through the graduate recruitment programs, but one of the projects I had to do was around eCommerce. So that would’ve been in like 1998. So I kind of had my head in that space, I’d always been interested in what Harrod’s was doing online. Because even though they didn’t really invest it in a big way up until that time, they were present and figuring out, I suppose. So yes, I just found the whole environment of working in a small business, just so refreshing, actually. It was about building something new and there was an openness to having conversations about improving things. Well, maybe not even improving things, but trying new things, that was so exciting.
Helen Bane:
I started in customer care and then I ended up setting up personal shopping function. I guess my first observation with customer care was in the early days, we were focused on resolving operational issues. So it is either making sure that customers got their delivery, which obviously incredibly important, but it was very manual, the process around receiving returns and generating refunds, which was obviously important as well. But what we didn’t do, was reply to the sales inquiries, and I just found that completely perplexing. And I think that was just an opening conversation, that it opened the door and it turned out that one of the other team members was running a waiting list, special orders function. And it was for people who wanted specific items, either because they sold out or we were hadn’t received them yet, what have you. And that became the basis of personal shopping. There was a list of VIP’s from the very beginning and there was this functionality, to create special orders for customers.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Can you explain EIP’s to people?
Helen Bane:
Of course. So EIP is the Net-A-Porter version of, “Extremely Important person.” And a special order, was the ability to reserve an item to a customer’s account. It was very manual, but we had the ability to do it. So if you had been my client and you were looking for a specific item that was coming in, I would be keeping a manual waiting list in the background. But then once the product came into the business, I would be creating a special order, which would show up on your account when you logged in. And I would be contacting you, to let you know it was coming and when it was available and then you could go through and buy it. So, that was all there from the very beginning. And it was this way of working, which we sort of evolved into this multimillion Pound department within the business ultimately. And it all really was centered around meeting customer needs.
Helen Bane:
Very early on, I realized that I was working with a client who, was a very early adopter in digital and also very early adopter in the fashion circle. And she would be looking at the slideshows on Style.com and contacting us, to see which looks we might have bought. And it was just really understanding, who this client was and how invested she was in wardrobing. And that really was what started to open up all the wonderful conversations over the years. And that was something that we really continue to build on as the business scaled and is still at the heart of the way, person first access is really core to the way the EIP program runs at Net-A-Porter today, for those who are part of it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So it sounds like, it was an incredible experience and having been relatively close to the business, I know that it became a huge, huge success. You left Net-A-Porter a couple of years ago now, and you are consulting, I think your title is “Customer Experience Consultant.” So while I understand, and I think many people understand, the concept of personal shopping and meeting the customer’s needs, I would love for you to tell us what is important about the function of experience design.
Helen Bane:
So experience design is about putting the customer at the heart of everything that you do. Every experience that you create for them big or small, really, the principles sit really within design thinking. And experience design uses a lot of different design thinking methodologies, but it really depends on the problem that you’re trying to solve. To really know the problem that you are trying to solve, you need to have been listening to your customer. Whether it is literally listening to them one on one, right? The way through to understanding patterns that are going on in your data or in your customer service team, to understand where the bumps in your road are. Experience design can work in many ways. It can be pretty granular and really rooted in service design. Which thinks about, what’s going on with the customer, what are they experiencing with your brand, where are they experiencing that with your brand and what’s required to enable that behind that experience behind the scenes? Forester, who are big consultancy in customer experience and have really defined this whole methodology around customer experience, they would say that your customer experience vision, should map to your brand vision. A customer experience vision is around how your customer feels about your brand.
Helen Bane:
It should be three or four words that are unique to your brand and that you should be able to identify those feelings through essentially, listening to your customer and understanding their behavior. So it’s essentially knowing, whether your brand is creating the feelings in your customer that you intend, whilst experience can be very granular and running along the bottom. And it can be a lot of ironing out the bumps, filling in the potholes in your road, which quite often easier said than done. Equally, for that to be actually really successful, experience needs to filter down from the top, be tied into the vision, be believed in by the leading figures in the organization and really become part of your culture and its successful experience is where your business is rallied around the customer.
Helen Bane:
In my current role as a consultant, it can stretch right away from, thinking about this overarching, approach within a business or a brand and what that looks like, right the way down to, “Okay, customer care’s falling apart. What do we need to do to fix that?” It’s really interesting actually, when you go to talking to different teams in different businesses and some of it is just actually about helping them articulate what their vision is for their customer experience and helping them define that. And quite often, it exists within the organization, it’s just that they’re running at such a speed that nobody’s actually taken the time to sit down and define it.
Helen Bane:
When I took on customer care at Net-A-Porter in 2008, that was the first thing that I did, was I had a team that was just running in all different directions. I needed to unify around, “Right, what does the customer expect from us? She’s really engaged in our brand, how we meeting on her expectations? What does that mean in really real terms as well?” We called it the “Standards for Excellence.” And we used that as a governance piece throughout, to guide us through everything we did as we went through very rapid growth over a period of five years. And we rolled out teams across different businesses, different continents, different languages, really rapidly expanded to meet the ever demanding needs of the eCommerce audience, essentially.
Helen Bane:
It’s really critical, especially in a customer care environment. Where there are times of the year when you are bringing in temporary heads, because you know, you’re going to have an uplifting volume and actually, how can you do that in a way that’s efficient, but it also is effective? And by effective, it still delivers the best possible experience to the end customer, in a way that’s consistent with no matter who they’re speaking to in the team. Now, clearly that’s not necessarily as easily said as done, but to have this overarching, “This is what we are out to deliver here. This is how we deliver it. This is how we onboard our employees into the team.” Setting an expectation, it just puts everybody working towards a collective goal in the right direction. So I’m a massive believer in that.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I am very interested about the last points that you were just describing, because I think once you have such a clear goal, it’s much easier to get the buy-in from the team. I was about to ask you, how important is the recruitment piece in order to actually deliver on the customer journey expectations?
Helen Bane:
Yeah, the recruitment piece is really important. First of all, if you’ve got happy staff, you are much more likely to have happy customers. And especially for any function that is customer facing and on the frontline, because it’s hard, it’s really hard. You effectively pick up the mistakes for the rest of the business and that’s not meant in an accusational way, it’s just a fact of life and of eCommerce. If it’s eCommerce that you are in, it’s always a challenge educating the business around the knock on effect that running a campaign in a certain way can have on the customer. For example, recruiting a team who are aligned with your approach, because some businesses just find customers annoying. And I’ve-
Anne Muhlethaler:
I’ve noticed that before.
Helen Bane:
Yeah, exactly. And I guess, it can be at times. We’re people and I think this is the piece ultimately, right? Everybody’s a person…
Anne Muhlethaler:
I don’t know what you mean, I’m charming always.
Helen Bane:
We all have bad days and you can get it from a customer for something that’s really…Well, We used to have this phrase when things were a bit crazy, where we would be like, “We’re not saving lives here.” Keep it all in perspective for all of us, when we’d have somebody who was driving us crazy and there so many anecdotal stories about all of that. People are amazing in their extremes. So yeah, to be able to hire people that can embrace it and can act with empathy, is incredibly valuable. You also need to hire a mix of skill sets. Because some people are incredibly brilliant at problem solving and that’s what they really thrive in. Others are much more commercial, love to talk to clients and build relationships with them remotely and generate sales and create loyalty.
Helen Bane:
And then you’ve got others who are quite happy being in the middle, who are much more all-rounders. And certainly from my experience, that was what we used to see within the team. And I think one of the most exciting things was, as the team grew, was how we could develop our employees into different areas of specialty within the team and retain them. And even migrating them into other areas of the business and we became a bit of a pipeline for some junior sidestepping roles into other areas of business. But we really placed a heavy emphasis on recruitment and I think one of the reasons for that, certainly back in 2008, was that something I have realized laterally. That nobody was doing what we were doing and it meant that if you hired from a call center, someone will be coming from a bank or real traditional call center environment. And we weren’t that, we were trying to recreate the luxury shop floor experience, through our customer care team, ultimately. Actually to begin with, we hired from retail and we hired shop floor and we invested in training people to work the systems and what have you. Because we found it came with the right attitude, which is something that you can’t really train, whereas other skills you can. So really it was focusing on where we needed to focus our energy, to achieve the results that we were looking for.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s super inspiring. Now, I want to link that back to your early retail experience. I believe that you have that attitude and I worked on the shop floor, I think I have it too. What do you think this shop floor experience really teaches to people once to get into the business?
Helen Bane:
I think its very related to the environment, that you’ve come from shop floor. So either you’ve worked in a smaller environment where you’ve been empowered and have had autonomy, or if you are coming from a bigger retailer, where you’ve got a really established onboarding program into the business and you’ve been there for a while. It can give you really good grounding so that when you’ve been in that intense, customer facing environment where the customer is literally there in front of you within luxury retail, the expectations are high. We looked for people that could demonstrate their customer centricity, through their experience and could really give good examples, based on the training and the experienced that they’ve had previously before coming to join us. I guess that’s how I describe it, really.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. That’s really interesting, businesses seem to forget that there’s a real human being on the other side.
Helen Bane:
Oh, absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Very often and I think for those who are in the customer care centers, they’re either taught that they should consider the human being or they are taught not to. That’s a dichotomy that we’re going to see, I think continue.
Helen Bane:
Yes, I really agree. And it’s a risk as businesses get big, because customers become numbers, they become numbers on their eCommerce numbers. They become numbers through their contact center numbers and numbers can be amazing. Sometimes you discount the small numbers, who are just as important as the bigger numbers. And that comes through patterns of insight. It’s very easy to forget that there’s an individual on the other end.
Anne Muhlethaler:
The UK is, I think one of the more established countries in terms of customer service, I think in Europe.
Helen Bane:
Yes. It’s interesting, isn’t it?
Anne Muhlethaler:
I think it’s closer to the US, who are very highly customer centric and I’m finding Switzerland, not at all customer centric. I wonder how do you imagine the rest of the world and the rest of Europe is going to catch up?
Helen Bane:
Yes. And Net-A-Porter was always global.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yes.
Helen Bane:
We ship globally and we spoke to customers globally. One of the things that becomes really important as you grow, is to A, ask your team questions about customers and B, to encourage them to feed back to you. And as we saw different markets emerge globally, there would be business conversations going on about those markets. And then we would be starting to look about what actually what’s meaningful to them from a service perspective. It was really fascinating, the different trends that would emerge over time. In terms of how the rest of Europe catches up, I guess a lot of it will end up being consumer led. The more businesses that operate globally, depending on their starting point and the experience that customers have from shopping from them, will start to form their localized expectations.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I have a feeling that newer businesses run by younger people, are going to find it much easier to pivot. Because I had an experience of really difficult interaction with a business and I had bought myself an item for my office. But then, do you know what unlocked it? I got on the phone to someone who actually listened to me and I also happened to be in a really good mood that day. So I was in RC, I said, “Listen, I understand, I contacted your team before Christmas. I’m sure it’d been terrible. I know you were in lockdown.” And I meant it, I wasn’t trying to be tactical.
Helen Bane:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
But then that meant that the exchange was very different and then the end, she made the order for the replacement purchase and then there was a whole bunch of other problems down the line. But, that human bit really is what solved it, because there was someone on the other line who listened to me.
Helen Bane:
Yeah, and I think it’s something for us all to consider as consumers as well, to be honest. We all have to think about how we behave and how we get the best out of any frustrating situation. And there are just some days when the frustration overrides and the person at the other end of the phone is the way of expressing that. Sometimes it’s the thing that gets you what you want, and other times I think it blocks you. Yeah, kindness goes a long way. Right?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Helen Bane:
We can’t all be there necessarily every day, as much as we might like to.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, but what we can do is we can pass it forward. I wrote about this a few months ago and I may have told you that story, but in doing the Ulta BA with Seth Gordon, he created a sort of a semi-prompt. I think he called it, “Catching people doing right.” And so the idea for two or three week period is that, every day you have to catch someone doing something well and either compliment them or tell their manager.
Helen Bane:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And I have to tell you, just thinking about it makes me emotional. I remember doing that on the shop floor itself, which was a couple of years ago. Oh my God, the poor girl when I said, “Do you mind if I speak to your manager?” The manager arrived on the lady’s shop floor thinking,” Oh God, what’s going to happen to me?” And I basically gushed about how amazing this Italian girl was at the Stella McCartney concession. And she looked at me as if, I don’t know, I’d thrown some cold water at her. So, did you have a system in place to help your team also feel good about the work that they did? Because like you said, they are putting out the fires for the business every day.
Helen Bane:
Absolutely.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What can we do for people who are looking after our customers?
Helen Bane:
Well, it all starts with gratitude, right? Saying thank you to people. Recognizing when they have gone above and beyond, I’ve always believed in thanking your team. If it’s only just saying, Thank you for your hard work today,” as they leave at the end of the day. Customers like to feel thanked too, works both ways. It’s incredibly important for your team. We did have to monitor performance, because you do have to monitor standards of performance. It’s really great to have categories or awards that you can nominate individuals for. And even if it’s just celebration within your own team, especially as you get to become a bigger team. To make sure that you celebrating people, who are exemplifying the standards that you want everybody else to try and achieve. We used to call it engagement, actually, employee engagement. It might be that we would buy everybody pizza for lunch on Fridays at the end of the first week of the sale. I don’t know, sometimes it’s just those gestures. But for those teams that are working really hard, are really meaningful.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s lovely. So monitoring employee performance is interesting. Because you and I have talked a little bit before about how we not only help make our teams happy, but also make the customers happy and monitoring that in between. And you had shared with me how inspired you had been, by Tony Hsieh, who was famous yet Zappos, and that you read his book and you had gone and seen the Zappos head offices in Las Vegas. Do you want to tell me a little bit about how that inspiration has moved you and helped you along the career that you’ve had so far?
Helen Bane:
Yeah, absolutely. I used to attend a conference in these states called “Next generation customer experience.” And speaking of the US being streets ahead in terms of customer service, actually. Just their overarching level of customer centricity, is a good five years ahead from us. And that was really formative for me in terms of how I viewed customers strategically within the business. I think specifically to Zappos, I saw different members of the team present a number of times and then was fortunate enough to get to go to the head office. And I think one of the things that was so striking about them and they were very unique in many ways, but was how they really embedded the customer into their culture, business wide. I do remember going to the headquarters and all of the customer care teams, their workstations were all…I won’t say decorated, it’s not quite the right word, but they were all themed. And there was this huge amount of visual creativity, where each individual had made their workstation an expression of themselves.
Helen Bane:
And it was quite incredible to walk around, especially compared to our black and white offices that were very minimal. So it was quite stark contrast. What really impressed upon me was their abilities, a business to embed the customer in their heart of their business culture. And for every function in the business, to embrace that Tony’s book, “Delivering Happiness,” is incredible. The story that he tells of where that came from, and it literally came from point of the business, nearly not being in a position to continue. Really articulates how they did that and it’s really inspiring to read. And I’d actually forgotten that I had the book, I remember discovering it in my time off and getting really engrossed in it before I read. Yes, it’s a really inspiring read. Highly recommend it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I haven’t read it yet, but I was very thankful for some of the concepts that you brought to me. And I did read a 15 minute snippet on Blinkist. It’s my new favorite thing, I love Blinkist. I remember you telling me that Tony Hsieh had described three groups that you need to keep happy.
Helen Bane:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Do you mind speaking to that and how that’s mattered to you so far?
Helen Bane:
Yes, absolutely. And this really feeds into customer experience methodology as well. Where that your consumer is one group of your customers, your employee is another group of your customers. So we’ve just talked quite a lot about the employee and how happy employees, help create happy customers. And then the third group is your business partners. So they could be your logistics provider, it could be the brands that you sell and how your relationship with those is really important in terms of delivering a positive experience for your own consumer. So if you think about it from, if you are a retailer, that stocks brands. So there’s a whole supply chain thing, is it that you want to get the stock first, you want exclusives? Creating that really strong relationship with your brands for a consumer that’s very product orientated and that kind of environment can be incredibly powerful.
Helen Bane:
If you think about it from a carrier partner perspective, operational carriers are generally all managed around KPIs and around delivery, first time delivery and failed deliveries and all the rest of it. If you actually build the relationship with your account manager, you can get way better results in their KPIs, just simply because they want to help you. It’s actually all relationships with people, ultimately is what it comes down to. And people that matter to your business, because it’s about delivering that end experience to the customer. And to me, that’s always made perfect sense, because my perspective has always been around how the business needs to work as this well machine to deliver on meeting customer needs.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Have you ever worked with World Net? Does that ring a bell?
Helen Bane:
World Net?
Anne Muhlethaler:
It’s a small, but great shipper in the UK.
Helen Bane:
No, I haven’t worked with them actually.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, they do a lot of bespoke shipping. I will always remember Tina, the account manager at World Net. You can pretty much get anything done, once you speak to Tina. That’s that’s the way it is. One day, I can’t remember if I was in Stockholm or Copenhagen for work, and she had my mobile number and I had bought a Chanel purse at the Chanel sample sale, the infamous Chanel sample sale at Claridge’s, the one time I want. And I didn’t buy myself a purse, I bought my mom a purse. Gold star, right? Except that, obviously the Swiss customs were refusing to let it through, because they didn’t believe it was 150 Pounds. Anyways, Tina put it through, she just worked her magic. So, always helpful. I do agree with you, I believe that everything that we do in life is about relationships. And I try to help my customers and people in and around me, to consider being more collaborative with all of the people who touch their business, however closely.
Helen Bane:
Yes, couldn’t agree more, collaboration is key.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh yeah. So, where do you find is the biggest pain point, in businesses that are trying to upgrade in their customer experience? Where do you see the biggest problems?
Helen Bane:
They are generally linked to growth actually, where they’ve not got the foundations quite right. And not necessarily due to any fault of their own, what they were doing before has served them well. And they’ve maybe just not got the right person in place to lead the growth of the team or know what systems that they need in place. I suppose I’m referring more to customer care as a whole. So your standards can drop, your service levels drop, it just becomes a bit of a vicious circle in any business that’s becoming volume led. The minute your service level drops, your response time drops, you create more inquiries for yourself. It’s understanding reasons behind those service levels changing, that’s quite often the challenge. Businesses will generally look to the team, rather than to understanding the reasons behind the higher volumes, and what the drivers for those are. So that can be quite challenging, when everybody in the business is generally under a lot of stress at a time like that. So, collaboration is not always at its best.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Stress and collaboration are not the perfect friends? I don’t know what you mean.
Helen Bane:
That’s quite a classic scenario, when you’ve got a lot of pressure coming, that’s either generated by growth or desire for growth. Means that businesses can make decisions that are not great for customer experience quite often, to be honest. It might be great for their bottom line, but maybe looking at a one and done customer, as opposed to a repeat customer.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah.
Helen Bane:
And for me, it’s about the long term. Keep them happy, keep them coming back, retention.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Let’s explore retention, tell me more about that.
Helen Bane:
Well, retention is your measure of a lasting relationship with your brand really or a lasting commercial relationship, I guess. So certainly in retail, you should be looking to retain a core group of customers. There will inevitably be some people that just shop with you once, for whatever reason that may be. But it’s really important to understand the reasons that you do retain your loyal customers, so that you can go on to find more customers that you can retain or equally understand why you don’t retain people. This is where customer insight is incredibly important. Having an insight program set up and running, whether measuring customer satisfaction, should really be measured in parallel to retention, so you can understand how the two ebb and flow together. Retention is a longer term view on business and it doesn’t always work hand in hand with business needs, when you’ve got to hit a target that someone has set. It’s a difficult one to balance out at times.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah, I feel like I’ve had this conversation in different businesses, that there’s always that tension between the voices in the brand or in the company that want long term results of a certain type. Like loyalty and retention and internal retention as well of staff, right? Lower turnovers.
Helen Bane:
Yes, exactly.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And high sales targets, so with certain people who are results driven and only at that level. We discussed last week with Todd Lynn, in the fashion industry in particular, we discussed how in the good old days, as I think he could call them, 2006, 2007.
Helen Bane:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
All of the department stores and the multi brand stores had so much cash and they were buying and buying and everyone was trying to scale. And he was telling me how he remembers being pushed to scale without necessarily understanding how that would be beneficial, for him and his vision and the values that were behind his brand. And young designers nowadays are not going to try and do that. I remember that you and I had talked about how for the first year of having a new person as a personal shopper on your team, you were always keen on having really low targets. Because you didn’t want someone to push sales onto new clients and you were all about building relationship.
Helen Bane:
Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Do you maybe want to talk to that?
Helen Bane:
Personal shopping should be around a long term approach to sales and building one-on-one relationships. And that was something that we really focused on at Net-A-Porter. So build this really close relationship with an individual, it comes from a place where they’re already loyal to the brand. So they’ve been shopping for a certain amount of time, they’ve spent a certain amount of money, so they’re bought into the experience that the brand delivers. And then when you can tap in that sort of personal relationship on top of that, that’s really where the gold lies. It’s also a risky strategy, because if an individual leaves, then the kind of relationships can become very intense. So it can mean that it can be very difficult to migrate them onto someone else. We try to mitigate that through having our top sellers partner up with an assistant within the team.
Helen Bane:
So the client will get to know two people, so therefore, should your top seller move on to pastures new, then the client wasn’t left high and dry and having to start again with someone else. So that was one approach that we took, as we started to aggressively grow personal shopping of course, we were first in the space of digital, personal shopping. In the same way, as growing customer care to hire from contact centers just didn’t make sense. We weren’t able to necessarily just hire from like for like. So you were there again, it was that process of identifying the right attitude and skillset and experience that you felt. Someone could come in and then we could translate it through to digital and digital personal shopping is a lot harder than seeing someone in the flesh.
Helen Bane:
It’s very different, there are pluses of minuses to both approach. When it really comes together, when you have established that relationship with a client remotely, and then you get to see them, that’s that moment of joy that can really take the relationship to the next level. I remember when I was looking after clients, where I would’ve just met a handful of them, because they’d happened to be in London. And it would be somebody I’d spoken to for, I don’t know, two and a half years or something, and then I’d meet them. And then all of a sudden it just sort of made everything, click together, meeting that person in person. The person in person. So, yeah it was really important to allow an individual enough time to come in and understand, and learn this way of working. Almost like, this sale should grow as they engage more and more clients. We knew that it was the way to make new personal shoppers successful.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I remember you, me, Lupe and I think it was Holly, were chatting about this and we all were on the same page. Because I think we’ve seen tremendous success, when people are allowed to spend time to build relationships, rather than push sales. And obviously very much to your earlier point, you sometimes lose a client and they only come to you once, if for any reason they are pushed towards a sale of something that they might not actually want. If we’re too hard and that word push is interesting, because I never really used the word push until I got into PR. And later on into PR the word pushing, press releases, pushing campaigns, pushing sales. And I really don’t like it.
Helen Bane:
Yeah, it doesn’t work for customers.
Anne Muhlethaler:
The reason I wanted to explore this with you, is because I had this tactic on social media and lots of fights about it, of making sure that we never ever use Instagram to try and sell something. Tell the story, show the stuff you have. And then if people want to know more, they’re going to say, “Oh, I like that. Can I find out more?” I am obviously convinced about the people that you hired, amazing personal shopper, your protegee, as we’d like to call her, Lupe Puerta. So there’s a long line of fantastic customer service people and personal shoppers, walking around and claiming to be your mentees. How does that feel to have inspired so many people?
Helen Bane:
It’s lovely, actually. I think one of the most exciting things about the way I’m working at the moment, has been reconnecting with so many people that I’ve worked with before and working with them in different ways. And actually, it gives me an immense sense of pride to see how people have grown and evolved and where their careers have taken them, when you know where they started. And that you’ve taken a punt on them effectively, by bringing them into business. Because you’ve seen something in them and how they’ve gone on to evolve and progress. And yeah. Yeah, it’s amazing. I love it.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s wonderful. I wanted to ask you now, about a new program that you’re working on with a relatively new retailer specializing in fine jewelry called, “Your Once.” And I understand a little bit about what they do, because through the consulting side, I’m already in touch with the team at Once and your name came up and I was like, “Huh, well, there you go.” It’s a kind of pioneering new platform. Are you able to talk about it?
Helen Bane:
Yeah, absolutely. So Once has been testing the waters as a fine jewelry marketplace and as part of their journey, they’ve been exploring what the role of the personal shopper means in find jewelry, I guess. And it’s been part of their journey of understanding how key it is in making those high price point sales and understanding the lead time that can be involved in that. That has really evolved to, “How can we connect with more personal shoppers that are working independently, to connect them to the brands that they want to sell to their clients?” So almost making that match, that was the very start of the conversation. Essentially, what we’ve done is, we’ve used a taken a design thinking approach through exploring a hypothesis. And started off by understanding through insight, through speaking, getting some quant insight from independent personal shoppers.
Helen Bane:
So we’ve talked to people in house and working independently, quite organically through extended networks really, to understand what are the problems that could be solved through tech. And where we’re at right now, is the beginnings of establishing a professional community, a closed community for personal shoppers, whether they work for a business or independently. One of the key insights that came up was, around sense of community. Being able to share experiences, the sense of camaraderie, we’re looking at whether it would work to have as a membership model and what would be involved if you remember. Because one of the other areas, when you are in house, you have the advantage of in house logistics and services. When you are not, it makes life harder and the reality is overarching all of this, personal shoppers are striving to meet customer expectations that are constantly rising. I
Anne Muhlethaler:
I was about to come to that point, yeah.
Helen Bane:
So, from access to product being hugely key, right the way through to being able to deliver the product to them, through that increasing demand, that’s been expedited through Covid, essentially. So I guess that’s the overarching landscape of where we see this could be really interesting to explore.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And it’s interesting that it’s a tech platform. I don’t remember the co-CEO of Your Ones, but I remember Michelle telling me that it was someone who came from a tech background, digital tech. So obviously I understand how this becomes a possibility for them, that would not necessarily be something that other businesses would consider so early on in their life. Now let’s talk very quickly about the expectations nowadays of the consumer. You just said it, we want more, we want faster, we want it yesterday morning. What can brands do to help support the client needs?
Helen Bane:
Well, it’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Yes, we’ve got a speed expectation that has been set by that less known business, known as Amazon. I think in many ways, brands need to own what they can do well. Communicate it clearly and set the right expectation possible, because there is a customer that’s fueled by speed and access. But equally, most people, for something that they really want, that’s where there’s a much longer decision making process, where it’s not so instantaneous. There’s an acceptance there, for things to be delivered at a different pace. And it’s really about how you manage the communication, which is not always as easy for everybody as it could be. If you can manage people’s expectations about when they’ll receive their drop and they can be confident that they are going to receive it as they expect, which I think is also the other thing that’s really key.
Helen Bane:
So I’m not going receive my gown crumpled up in the bottom of a box, or I can be confident that my beautiful piece that I’m investing in, is going to arrive protected and secure and it’s going to give me the unboxing wonder that I’m expecting. Those kind of things are really key. What’s really underestimated is, the customers really most engaged with your brand, it’s not the point of payment, that’s when the curve shoots up. It’s that hockey stick effect, right? So you’ve gone through your decision making process, so maybe you’ve had this peak because it’s that it’s for something, this instantaneous. Where it’s a slower burn, the tilt on the line, the gradient is much less severe. But then once you’ve made the decision and you’ve committed, that’s when the anticipation curve kicks in. That’s why there’s such a communication opportunity, to manage customers expectations. In that window.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You are currently consulting for brands and businesses, you are working with other consultants, including me actually, but with other people who are also taking oftentimes, that long view in order to really better service customers. Is there any work in particular that you’re eager to get your teeth into, any business or brand of different sizes, that you think you could really make a really big difference to?
Helen Bane:
I would say I’m in the privileged position at the moment to have a lot of work and not have really been thinking about that. I’m working with so many different sectors at the moment, so the fine jewelry project you mentioned, I’ve also been working with clients in interiors and champagne. I’m also working with an amazing menopause brand, MPowder, we are addressing women’s nutritional needs as they change, as they go through the different stages of the menopause through supplements. I am a supplement skeptic, I have to be honest. When I met Rebecca the founder, her story is really amazing. And it’s really, I guess, touching, or relatable on such a personal level. The experience that she wants to create through her direct consumer experience, is so much more than just buying the product. The brand is inspiring, the messaging is inspiring, it’s empowering as well. It really appeals to my inner feminist, which…
Anne Muhlethaler:
It’s connecting to my inner feminist, thank you. I can feel that spread communicating via zoom.
Helen Bane:
Exactly. Actually I think for me, it’s amazing working with them, because I am constantly learning so much. And I think that’s the most important thing for me now, is you’ve got to constantly feel like you’re learning. And I love the ability to adapt. You can get pigeon hold when you have a level of expertise in a certain area. Because, people want you to recreate what you’ve already done. When you’ve done something that’s been successful that I guess, intensifies that desire. But actually on a personal development level, that doesn’t really do so much for you as an individual.
Helen Bane:
So I guess working with MPowder has been an extension of my interest in the beauty space, that I cultivated during the time I was with Cult Beauty. I realized I’d been a beauty person since I was in my early teens, because fashion had always been my dominant driver. And it was a real awakening where I was like, actually, this has been really important to me my whole life. And actually I feel like MPowder is the next extension of that. It’s really Important about how as women, we look after ourselves as we are moving into our later years. And the education isn’t there, around how our bodies will start to change, but some of us are affected more than others. I really love working with empowered women and passionate female founders and it’s a brand that comes from place of purpose. It’s about boosting women who are in it right now, but equally it’s about raising the conversation and the awareness earlier in our lives, so that we know what we may be going into. So yeah, it’s been fascinating.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome, I’m so glad that you got to talk about it. I can feel your energy is so high about that project, it’s amazing.
Helen Bane:
Yes. There are also a great team which also helps doesn’t it?
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, well, yes.
Helen Bane:
It’s lovely to be involved in something where you are really, so we’re a team of five and we are defining something from the ground up. So I have been shaping our whole customer service proposition, and we made our first hire at the beginning of the year and the role is customer hero. So that really is about being very consciously, intentional about the role that we want, who we were hiring. We were hiring the person into setting the expectation from the work, in shaping the job description, so that they understood. And actually she is the customer hero and part of is down to her and her experience. But I also know that part of it is down to the fact that we’ve been really clear on, this is the role that we want you to play in the business and that we’ve onboarded her in a way that has empowered her to be able to deliver that role.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Interesting, because last week you may or may not have seen, that I did a blog post on the power of words. And it looks like the words that you’re using to build that team, to build the job description, to convey the concepts of that customer journey, also have a superpower.
Helen Bane:
Absolutely, words are really important because you use them intentionally. They set an expectation, they create a goal, they can create unity.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Beautiful.
Helen Bane:
It’s not always that easy to find the right ones, as we know. It’s having a consciousness about it, is incredibly valuable.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Last question, before I hit you with my super hard end questions. Why should anybody listening right now, care about their customers if they don’t already?
Helen Bane:
Well, I see it as pretty simple, black and white. If your customers deliver your revenue, what’s not to care about? There are so many stats out there about it being more expensive to acquire, than to retain and the of it, which is true. If you have a long term ambition for your business, take your customers on the journey with you and keep them close, listen to what they want. It may not always be what you can give them, but it may inspire something that they didn’t even know that they wanted. That’s the power of listening. I struggle to understand people that don’t put the customer on the top of the pedestal.
Anne Muhlethaler:
You just mic dropped again. I think twice, I’m going to have very high expectations for any conversation I ever have with you. Thank you so much for that, that was really wonderful. And I think that sometimes it’s in simple words and asking that simple question that we also sort of raise the bar of understanding. That looking after each other actually is also really good for business.
Helen Bane:
Absolutely, yeah. On every level.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Now’s let’s migrate a little bit, as you are familiar with the podcast, I like to tie in mindfulness and wellness into business and branding conversations. I’d love to find out from you, what has worked for you, did you have a practice of any kind of rituals that you followed before we got into this beautiful pandemic times? And what has kept you grounded and sane at home with your lovely husband and two kids over the past year?
Helen Bane:
Well, I think you’ve always got to look for the silver linings, haven’t you? Really, in every situation, I think that’s what can carry you through. It’s really easy to get bogged down in what you can’t do, what’s not worked. And I think for me personally, having commuted to London for so many years, the family time gained back from not commuting, has been really life changing. I commuted since 2010, and I was just so used to doing it, things in family routine in terms of having dinner together at six o’clock. So more family meals, more quality time together as a family, that’s been really a massive bonus from this time. I know actually that for me, commuting also had many positives. So I used to use my time on the train, really constructively as part of my day. Also, I wasn’t necessarily renowned for being very good at leaving the office early.
Helen Bane:
It was a bit of a die hard habit for many years of working in a startup, where we all worked long and hard. Actually, when we moved to Brighton, I soon realized if I left the office later than a certain time, which would mean I would get home later than a certain point. Then actually my capacity, the following day was really impacted, because I was really tired from not having enough downtime at home. I’ve also been quite aware that, that was positive routine that I had to adjust to. Being able to work remotely without a problem at all on all of the projects I’ve worked on. Also, whilst I was still working for Cult Beauty, I think that’s been really life changing. And actually the time gained from not being on the train, I actually really embraced the half an hour’s exercise allowance that was what we were allowed at the beginning of lockdown really positively. And made sure that I just got outside and reaped the benefits of living by the beach, which I wasn’t able to do before.
Helen Bane:
That was a real positive. And I think the other thing, the other positive habit that I’ve managed to sustain is, I’ve enjoyed yoga for a while. I have a really dear friend locally who teaches a great class and I was able to do her yoga classes more regularly. And I was able to support her by doing them on zoom and I started practicing on my own as well. And I have to say that maybe ebbed and flowed a bit with the chopping and changing between different lockdowns and homeschooling and all of that. But actually, as I mentioned to you earlier, I had a great start to the day, Monday morning yoga on the beach at half past eight. Since she’s been able to start teaching again, I actually bookend my week with yoga on Monday morning and Friday morning. So it’s been a really positive habit to be able to make. So yes, that’s how I’ve managed to transition into this different way of living.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s beautiful, I’m so glad that you were able to support your friend as well, enjoying the classes on Zoom. I find that there’s amazing teachers of lots of different kinds, whether it’s personal training or all of these things that have really made everybody else feel more grounded and connected to themselves.
Anne Muhlethaler:
So a few quick fire round questions. What’s your favorite word?
Helen Bane:
When I was a student in Leeds, in the early nineties, we would go out because the club scene in Leeds was amazing. So there was this incredible night on a Saturday night called “Speed Queen.” Except that I think originally when I started there, it was called “Vague.” And it was this amazing that night had a lot of cross dressers attending, it was really incredibly flamboyant. And you had to line up to get into the club and get past, I think the door lady’s name was Madame Jojo. And you’d have to queue for hours. So it was that whole picking from the queue thing. And I remember being really nervous about going and planning the outfit for ages and this would’ve been the first time we went. And just being like, “Oh my goodness, she’s going to ask me.” She had a reputation for pulling people out of the queue and making them perform and all the rest of it. And that to me is just my worst nightmare. Anyway, we got of the queue, and I can’t remember exactly how she phrased it, but she asked us for a word. It was me that answered with the word, which I’m pretty sure was, “Unequivocal.” Which is quite-
Anne Muhlethaler:
Amazing.
Helen Bane:
…Quite true to me really, and I was doing my History of Art degree, which frankly was like learning a new language because of all the postmodernist phraseology that I’d had to decipher. I’m pretty sure that, that was the root of the word. It is a word, that is quite true to me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Fantastic story, you’ve just like bulldozed everybody else I’ve asked that to. Tell me what song best represents you.
Helen Bane:
Okay. So I have to confess, I’m shocking at remembering names of songs or people that sung them. So I grew up on Madonna, I grew up loving Madonna, wanting to be Madonna, wanting to dress like Madonna, knowing all the words to every song from my teens, which I still know. I don’t know if there’s a song that necessarily best describes me. I’ve never actually managed to see her live in concert, either shamefully.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I so want to.
Helen Bane:
Yeah. Well, I’m there if you get tickets, I’m there. I’ll go anywhere in the world. So, I think, it just brings back so many memories from teenage years. So I don’t know that I could particularly pick one out that describes me. She’s just really evocative to me and inspiring.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. I have to tell you, I was thinking about her today, because last week I wrote about the US cover of Vogue and the British Vogue cover. So we have Amanda Gorman on the US Vogue and Billy Eilish in latex corset in the UK. And I thought it was very interesting to look at two young artists’ self representation.
Helen Bane:
Yep.
Anne Muhlethaler:
But that obviously brought lady Gaga in my mind and Madonna.
Helen Bane:
Yes, I was reading the Billy Eilish piece and maybe it was Edward’s introductory letter. Maybe I haven’t got through to actually reading the piece yet and why it was important to her. And I know my initial thought when I saw her the cover, was it just reminded Madonna’s corsets.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Yeah. They were great corsets. So, the reason she was on my mind is, I remember I was washing the dishes at lunchtime. I remember being 12 or 13 years old and I had bought “Papa Don’t Preach.”
Helen Bane:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I didn’t speak a word of English, okay? And I was singing along that throughout the entire house. My parents could speak English, so how they let me get on with that, I don’t understand. Because like, ” Papa don’t preach, I’m keeping my baby.” Can you imagine my dad is a gynecologist, can you imagine your 12 year is running around going, “I’m keeping my baby.”
Helen Bane:
That’s so funny. I can remember, “Like a Virgin” being on top of the tops. And I can remember, I would’ve been about eight, because I remember it was in our old house or nine. And I can remember asking my mother what a Virgin was. I don’t remember her answer. I always, I remember that conversation.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s so much fun. So anyway, she’s been on my mind for a while, but I’ll just read you that one extra little story. So as I started loving Madonna and George Michael and Michael Jackson, this was my trip deck.
Helen Bane:
Yes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
In teen magazines of the time, the lyrics were printed in English and I was learning “Live to tell.” And I could figure out some form of the sentence structure, but not all of it. And I did not understand, “I will live to tell,” I was like, “What is the will thing?” Like I did. And I remember being in my bedroom and just reading those lyrics going, “But what is that a verb? Is that something else?” Anyways, funny story.
Helen Bane:
Amazing.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Madonna. So let’s move on. Who or what did you want to be when you were a little girl?
Helen Bane:
Well, if we’re talking about a little, little girl, I fell in love with ballet, the romance of ballet, probably the costumes and the shoes. I would imagine ballet shoes.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And the tutus.
Helen Bane:
Yes, from a very young age. So I think that was my first aspiration. But as I mentioned, by the age of 10, I knew that I wanted to be a fashion designer. That was my aspiration from the age of 10 and that evolved over the years when I decided not to go to work college.
Anne Muhlethaler:
What would you say to your younger self, if you could send yourself a message?
Helen Bane:
Oh, be kinder to yourself when you’re young, be less self critical. I think it’s really hard and it all comes from a place of sort of insecurity and figuring out who you are. When I look back and I think, why did I used to worry about wearing this or that, when I was in my late teens or early twenties. I think, be kinder to your self perception of body image what I would tell myself 20 years ago.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Thank you. What is advice you’ve given?
Helen Bane:
Well, I guess there are two things that spring to mind, one was before I got married. And I remember Natalie [inaudible 01:10:16] saying to me about making sure you take a moment during your wedding day to just mentally step back and consciously observe everything that’s going on around you. Which I did and have passed onto many other girls I’ve known who were getting married. The second one that stands out to me, was a conversation I had in Florence many years ago, when I’d gone for the weekend with I say my aunt, but she’s actually my mom’s cousin who I’m really close to. We have a kind of mother daughter relationship, but it’s more verging on a friendship and it comes from a place where she has boys and craves the female camaraderie to a certain extent. Anyway, we’re in Florence and we are having dinner and there was a guy sitting on the table adjacent to us.
Helen Bane:
And I don’t really remember how the conversation started, but he was evidently in Florence on business and he worked for a brand. I’m pretty sure it’s an American brand called Adrienne Vittadini, I think it was a shoe brand as I recall. And I remember we ended up talking to him and at the time I was working Harrod’s, and I remember him saying about the experience of working for a big store like that. How in that environment, you can be the small fish in the big pond. And then as you learn from your experience there, how you could take that forward to go on to be the bigger fish in the smaller pond. That’s something that’s just always stayed with me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s fantastic, thanks for reminding me. That’s a powerful analogy. what book is next to your bed or on your desk?
Helen Bane:
Actually, I don’t have any books on my desk at the moment. I normally have a stack of customer experience books that I’ve dipped in and out of. And equally by my bed, I have a stack of books that I’ve started reading and not finished. I tend to read nonfiction these days, some of it can be in the customer experience space and now I’m going have to remember one of the titles.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s okay. You can also just give me your favorite book all times, if that’s easier.
Helen Bane:
I don’t know if I have a favorite book of all time, actually. I’ve always a reader, I don’t read as much as I would like to these days. And I think that’s something that’s decreased since having family really. And I try and read it at bedtime, my mother and my grandmother are incredible readers. Some of my favorite books actually are Anne Sebba’s biographies.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I haven’t read any,
Helen Bane:
They are wonderful. And funnily enough, so when I first met Anne Sebba, Amica brought her into the office and she needed an outfit for a book launch, I think. And so just in talking to her and she sort of said to me, “Oh, I don’t expect you’ve read any of my books, because I write these historical biographies.” And I’m sitting there and I’m thinking about it. And I’m thinking Anne Sebba. And in my mind, I can visualize this book on my shelf in my bedroom at my parents’ house, “Laura Ashley,” by Anne Sebba. And I had read her biography of Laura Ashley, for my A level textiles project. And I had done work experience at the Laura Ashley textile design studios and I’d written my whole, A level dissertation study project. I don’t remember what it was called then that was sort of combination of the work experience and reading her book and understanding the history behind founder.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s really fantastic. Just to explain for our listeners, Anne was the wife of Mark Sebba, who was for a long time the CEO of Net-A-Porter, who sadly passed away a few years ago. How wonderful to meet someone whose book you’ve read and that was so meaningful for you.
Helen Bane:
Yes, it was incredible and I’d gone on to read, I think every book that she’s published since. And I normally get it and read it and then I hand it around the family, so my mom or my grandmother both loved them as well.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Oh, that’s awesome. You’re right, I should rephrase this question sometimes as “Who’s your favorite writer,” because I’m not sure I can name a favorite book, but I have a couple of favorite writers, so good point. And who’s the one person that you think we should all know about?
Helen Bane:
That’s a good one, I might have to give that a bit of thought. Well, actually, no. So somebody who was really formative in my time at Leeds, was a professor called Roselda Polluck. She is phenomenal. She founded the feminist Cannon of Art history and this was all very new to me. And I guess this is where, when I talk about my inner feminist, it came from her teachings and her lectures. But essentially, when she was a student at the Courtauld Institute of Art in the 70’s, she sat there and said, “Well, the traditional Cannon of Art, which goes from the beginning until today, talks about white men. Where are all the women and the non-white people?” Essentially, she wrote the history of female artists. She’s very well known and renowned within her field, she’s an incredible, incredible force, really incredible woman. And yes, I went on to do her feminist art history courses in my final year. And she informed my take on fashion and my dissertation was inspired by what I had learned through studying under her.
Anne Muhlethaler:
I am super fascinated, I just looked her up. That sounds amazing, wow. Thanks. See, that was a good question.
Helen Bane:
That’s a great question.
Anne Muhlethaler:
And now for our last one, and of course my favorite, what brings you happiness?
Helen Bane:
Many things, but probably happy family really. Happy children, means happy parents these days. That’s what brings me happiness, I guess it’s changed over time, according to phases of life. Holidays in Ibiza bring me a lot of happiness. So yes, bit of hedonism can bring a bit of happiness. Family time can bring happiness, two complete extremes. Yeah.
Anne Muhlethaler:
That’s wonderful. Well Helen, thank you so much for the time you’ve given me today. It was such a pleasure, such a joy to talk to you. Where can people find you, if they would like to talk about customer design experience and customer care?
Helen Bane:
I would say, look me up on LinkedIn and connect and drop me a message. That’s probably the best place to find me.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Awesome. I will put the link in the show notes and I’m going to thank you and wish you a wonderful rest of your evening. Thanks so much for everything Helen.
Helen Bane:
That’s a pleasure, it’s lovely to talk to you as always.
Anne Muhlethaler:
Hey, friends and listeners. Thanks again for joining me today and thanks to Helen for her time and the wonderful conversation we just had.
Anne Muhlethaler:
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Anne Muhlethaler:
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