CARRIE LEWIS • SENIOR BUSINESS DIRECTORLI NDA O’GRADY • DATA STRATEGY PARTNER & BUSINE SS PARTNERHow does CX Lavender differ from other CX
agencies?
I think our offering is broader and more
integrated than most. When we present a big
transformational CX idea we know how to
implement it end to end too, either at pace or
in baby steps, depending on client capabilities
and appetite. We have strategists, connections
planners, analysts, creative technologists,
storytellers and designers all collaborating on
business problems from the beginning, so not
every challenge ends with a similar solution.What unique perspective do you bring to the
leadership team?
My background is both strategy and
commercial. As well as agency, I’ve spent time
in consulting, corporate, start-up and M&A,
including large business transformation. I
started out in communication strategy but I
think much more broadly now. That broader
perspective has helped us embrace agile and
lean working methods, develop CX Insitu
and focus on thinking beyond marketing and
communication, which just isn’t enough on its
own anymore. My role is to help bring customer
experience, tech, data, change management and
commercial thinking together.Why is data so important in the CX space?
It’s getting harder to wow with data but
much easier to disappoint. Data connectivity
is an increasingly important part of this. If
customers tell you something through one
touch point they expect you to already know
it at another. The marketing and service
layers are merging now too so that makes
data connectivity even more important.What major challenges are clients grappling
with at the moment?
There is a growing desire from our bigger
clients for in-housing to enable pivoting
and faster speed to market. That’s why we
developed CX Insitu. Clients like Westpac
Group have been blown away by the speed
to market and quality we’re delivering.
Another key challenge is the sheer volume
of content needed to drive large, integrated
digital experiences. Clients just don’t have the
internal resources and budgets to carry huge
creation costs for the level of personalisation
they want to deliver. Our sister company
CXTX has developed auto-creation software
called no_code that delivers huge productivity
gains in that space. We’ve been surprised how
big the demand for its first release has been!What does your role working in-house
with clients entail?
My role involves bridging the gap
between the creative team in-house and
our clients. This is a relatively new set-up
for everyone, so ensuring the teams are
utilised and are creating high-quality
work through the agile process is key.
On the client side, it’s working with them
to ensure the briefs are on-strategy and
ready for creative input. If not, I work
with clients to help them understand how
they get there, whether it’s utilising the
resources we have in-house or back at
Lavender HQ.
If you could work in another role in the
agency, which role would it be?
I previously worked in the Business
Management team back at Lavender HQ,
but I’m really excited by the prospect of
where things are heading at the moment,
both in-house with our clients and
through the in-housing model we’ve built.
Adopting a more nimble way of working,
evolving it as we go, and solving our
clients’ problems ‘on the ground’ has been
really refreshing. So, for me personally, I’m
really not looking longingly at any other
roles at this point in time.What excites you most about working
in CX?
What excites me (and scares me) most
about CX is the scale. CX is everything
a person or customer is exposed to or
interacts with, so its breadth is huge and
it would be wrong to feel like I have it all
covered. But that’s also what motivates
me each day, knowing that every day is
different and that we’ll never stop learning
or adapting what we do.Meet the Team