Q&A: Multi-dimensional Customer-centricity with Carlos Yniguez, Chief Digital Officer at Jochen Schweizer and mydays

Customer-centricity isn’t a “one and done” prospect — rather it is an ongoing state of mind. That’s especially true when your customers aren’t a monolith. Multi-dimensional customer-centricity requires a special kind of dedication to putting your customers at the center of every aspect of your business.

We recently talked to Carlos Yniguez, Chief Digital Officer at Jochen Schweizer and mydays, about how his company approaches this particular challenge. Carlos is responsible for the entire online business and revenue as well as for the product and portfolio strategy. He has accompanied the development of the experience powerhouse for more than five years and has helped shape the transition from a pure start-up to the largest player in the experience market in the DACH region. He previously worked for NASA, Deutsche Bank, and the start-up Westwing.

Below you will find a very abridged Q&A with Carlos, as well as a video of Carlos’ full interview with MobileGroove’s Peggy Anne Salz. Carlos also joined us for The Great Marketing Debates Panel on May 19, which you can now watch on demand. Read on to get a sneak peek into some of the insights he shares during the discussion and take a deep dive into the idea of customer-centricity.

Q: How do you define customer-centricity?

A: I think it’s an extremely broad term and kind of a buzzword by now. I think I define customer-centricity as a question you have to ask yourself if you’re responsible within the business. And the question would be ‘How’s my strategy, my goal setting, and actually, my doing within the teams impacting my existing, but also potential customers?’ I think if you’re asking yourself this question continuously, then you’re on the right path to customer-centricity.

Q: What is the business impact of understanding the customer and knowing the customer journey, and how can it best be measured?

A: Yes, I think you’re talking about more or less the Holy grail. And I split this into two perspectives. I think the first perspective is understanding the customer. And this has a lot to do with understanding the desires and finding a specific product-market fit, which is obviously fundamentally important for your entire strategy.

And let’s say you’ve got this first perspective, right? If you think about the second perspective — that is knowing the customer journey. And I think that’s a whole new ball game and talking about indicators for measurement. Obviously, you have satisfaction indicators such as the NPS.

You have repeat purchases, and then you’ll soon be talking about CLV and LTV and rationally speaking, obviously, you’re really talking about what it cost to acquire this specific customer? And all of these performance indicators highly depend on the business model.

Q: What is the biggest mistake marketers make on the path to achieving greater customer-centricity in their marketing and messaging?

A: That’s a good question because I think that one of the main mistakes would be only to focus on marketing in the messaging because your customer will learn to notice if your, for example, product development or your HR department, or even your finance team does not work in a customer-centric way.

Q: This is a year like no other. What is the biggest change you have seen to your business, and how are you preparing to harness this transformation to drive a positive outcome for you and your customers?

A: Our teams did a really good job at rapidly adapting to the situation. We had to think of it from two perspectives. We sell experience vouchers. So we’re connecting consumer demand with smaller suppliers and interact with two parties. So looking at the supplier side we had to focus on digital education — explaining tools, such as Zoom or Google docs through webinars and really educating.

From a customer side we had to ask ourselves what is really on their mind right now, what are they thinking? What is their mind occupied with? What was clear, immediately, was that their interaction with their loved ones was reduced due to COVID.

So, we sent them a prepaid postcard that they could write to a person they were currently missing, and not able to see. And we got a very positive reaction concerning this, but also, obviously from a customer side, we strongly focused on the development of digital experiences.

Q: What information, examples or advice are you the most excited to discuss or share during our panel?

A: Well, I think we’ve got very interesting panel participants with very different, exciting backgrounds. And what I’m interested in is when we talk about customer-centricity. Is it interpreted differently from industry to industry and from business model to business model? That’s something I’m really interested in. And at the same time sharing, our business model is very specific. So we interact with suppliers and consumers at the same time. Plus we have gift buyers and redeemers, so customer centricity immediately becomes multidimensional for us. And I’m really happy to talk about that.

Q: If you had to design a billboard ad to keep marketers inspired and motivated as they address the chief challenges and opportunities in the year ahead, what would it say?

A: That’s a fun question. I think I have to quote one of my favorite artists, J. Cole “ there’s beauty in the struggle, ugliness in the success”…because I think, as we have seen, uncertainty will always be a part of life and we should become comfortable dealing with it.

To hear more from Carlos, and his fellow panelists watch the first in the series below, to find out more and register for the upcoming panels visit The Great Debates.