Scaling Global CX with Local Impact with Rob Grierson

Rob shares how Specsavers connects 10+ markets under one strategic CRM umbrella, while still giving each region the freedom to act fast, test what works, and meet customers where they are. The result? A global CRM function that’s consistent, but never copy-and-paste.

Together with hosts Chantelle Casey and Mark Clydesdale, Rob unpacks:

• How to map a universal customer experience journey that respects local differences

• Why personal relationships (not just processes) are the glue that holds global CX together

• Specsavers’ “Steal with Pride” mindset and how it accelerates success across regions

• How to build testing frameworks that create trust and transparency

• The role of global leaders in championing community, not command

• What true CX collaboration looks like across strategy, data, and marketing ops

Whether you’re leading customer experience at a global brand or scaling regional wins into something bigger, this episode offers a playbook for doing both—without compromise.

Listen now on your preferred platform:

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Chantelle – 0:23: Welcome to the CX equation, a podcast by TapCXM.

Mark – 0:27: We share actionable insights and real world case studies to equip you with the tools you need to drive loyalty, engagement, and sustainable growth.

Chantelle – 0:34: We’re your hosts, Chantelle Casey.

Mark – 0:37: And Mark Clydesdale.

Chantelle – 0:51: On today’s episode of the CX Equation, we’re delighted to welcome Rob Grierson, who is head of group CRM customer analytics and innovation at Specsavers. Rob has spent more than two decades shaping customer engagement strategies at one of the world’s most recognisable and trusted retail health care brands. From marketing analytics to CRM and analytics leadership, Rob has built frameworks that unite Specsavers’ global teams whilst ensuring local markets thrive with autonomy and innovation. In today’s conversation, we’ll explore how Specsavers fosters a global community of CX collaboration, drives unified change across regions, and balances creativity with practical execution. Welcome to the podcast, Rob.

Rob – 1:31: Great to be here.

Mark – 1:32: I’ll dive straight in, Rob. So you’ve grown your career at Specsavers starting in analytics and now leading global CRM. How have you kept yourself inspired and challenged at the same company for twenty years?

Rob – 1:47: This is a great question. I ask myself quite often actually in terms of is where I’ve worked, actually, my whole work career. And actually what keeps me motivated is if I think back to, what, 2003 when I joined, Specsavers were in three markets. There’s UK, Ireland Netherlands. Since then, we’ve grown and we’ve grown. And I think as, also I think as business grow, technology grows. The way we work grows. I think for me, that’s really kind of how I, I guess, what I’ve enjoyed within my career in terms of growing in new areas, and I haven’t sat still. So I’ve I started off in location analytics. So really understanding how and where customers move around our stores, where can we open stores, to understanding more about our customer behaviour in terms of what do, our customers do, how does it support trading, what are our sales figures. And then I got my first touch in terms of CRM, and really understanding, in terms of from a customer perspective, how do we really engage with them, how do we remind them about coming back to us. And as we’ve grown as our regional teams, I’ve then moved into a global role, and not just in CRM, but thinking about digital. So learning new areas with, like, a lot of companies, had to evolve the way we work. And I’ve been, I’d say, lucky enough, fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time and to really grow my career in those areas and expanding my knowledge beyond analytics to understand about the customer, understanding digital. Actually, where I am now is having that real think around what we think about globally and working with a great set of people across the globe who are really key, really I guess, they really understand their area of CRM analytics and those spaces. So it’s really helped me keep motivated by how we, as a business, are are growing, moving forward and keep that innovation.

Mark – 3:33: I had something similar. I actually worked for Morrisons for a while, and I thought about it because you talked about the location planning element. Our customer services team used to call it bomber command because we always had maps up of where stores could be located and things like that. But I thought I could be at Morrisons for my whole career, because it was just so interesting getting to see how trading worked, how retail operations worked, how merchandising worked. Unfortunately, I got made redundant, but it worked out for me at the end. But I do think a company has to have a good culture as well, and you have to enjoy working there if you’re gonna stay there for that long.

Rob – 4:15: Yeah. I think definitely. I think with Specsavers, there’s this whole thing. We are a family run business. And, actually, you see that from ’20 even 22 years ago when I joined, a lot of it was based out of Guernsey, and I’m based out of Guernsey. But as we’ve grown, there’s been a lot of effort of how do you carry on that family feel when you’re in Australia, you’re now in Canada, you’re in Northern Europe, and you’re more widely across The UK. And there’s a lot of effort that goes into trying to continue that feel of what is good is very small islands, and where you’ve got quite a lot of really talented people who are part of this business. So I think, yeah, that being in place creates a want to be here.

Chantelle – 4:54: Yeah. And just on Specsavers culture, as a brand, Specsavers is well known for its care and quality. What does within that mission, what does a customer experience personally mean to you?

Rob – 5:05: Well, I think, again, for me, if I look around that care and quality, our purpose is to change lives through better sight and hearing. And I even think, actually, for me personally, but also when I’ve recruited people in the past, that whole mission in terms of it’s not just about the money. It’s not just about going ‘where are we growing to make profit at the end?’ Yes. That’s important, but we make a difference in people’s lives. So we start thinking about that customer experience. To me, It’s such an honour to be part of that, within a business to actually you are making a difference. Every part of our business does. And my perspective, with the focus on CRM, is that we’re doing our bit to remind people, to encourage people to come back in to care for themselves, to care for their sight and their hearing. So I would say customer experience for me is so important to kind of how people can look after themselves in the future. Because as I said, being able to see and hear is part of your life, and doing our bit for that makes you feel quite, as I said, quite honoured to do that.

Mark – 6:07: Awesome. When one of the things I didn’t have at Morrisons that you have, Morrisons was a UK only business. Since I’ve been a consultant, I’ve got to work with lots of international businesses, and I always find that kind of global local split fascinating. Specsavers operates in, did you say, 10 countries now? Each of those countries has their own market dynamic. Often, you’ve got different languages. So how, as in a global role, can you create kind of commonality between those regions and and unification in what they’re doing while still allowing them to kind of respond to their own local challenges?

Rob – 6:47: For us, Specs, there’s probably a lot of companies. It’s not straightforward, to do. We, as a business, have grown. So a lot of that growth has come from, actually, in our region organically taking what’s part of the brand, but trying to move as fast as you can to grow the business and create that, I guess, that better, change their lives through better sight and hearing. But there’s different dynamics. If you think about basic level, the customer experience isn’t that different. Such what a customer needs, it is common. And what we kinda say is there’s probably about 80% of these experiences across our markets, which would say are fairly similar. So you can book an appointment. You probably need to have some sort of communication to remind yourself to come in. You have your appointment. You’ve got something happens afterwards. So, again, how do you care for a customer, afterwards in terms of remind them, in terms of how best to use a product they’ve bought, how to remind them they’ve got a prescription they haven’t bought, or just set themselves up for the next time. And then we’ve got one of our biggest areas is recall. And, again, all the markets have to have a position where it works for us to remind customers to come back in for the appointment every two years. So even though there’s different dynamics, at a really high level, the customer is going through similar, experiences. So if we think about that, and if I think a bit outside of, in our markets, our retail systems are different. But the challenge is to think about what are the actual unifying, what are the similarities. As you focus on those, you focus on similarities, you don’t get too distracted on, ‘but we’re different here, we’re different there’. Because if if it’s that 20% that’s different, you’re missing a big opportunity. So the way we look at this is going, how do we best think about that from our customer journeys, the way we work across the teams, and to have you best use the platforms we have in place today. I’ve probably got a couple of examples that we’ve, I guess, as a global team established over the last, couple years. So one of those is a global testing framework. So, again, how do we create a global base baseline for how we test with CRM to create a bit of, I guess, if we’re going through different places different, if we’re operating in different markets, but we’re testing similar areas, how do we make sure we build trust across the regions that what we’re testing could be applied in other markets? And another area is we’ve got a global approach and platform for email deliverability. So, actually, this is really complex. So, actually, to have to think about how our emails are reaching inboxes, and the landscape around us has changed so much in the last few years. For this to be looked at by our three or four different, regional hubs takes a lot of time and effort, and you get quite different slightly different approaches. So for us creating a global approach and bring our colleagues from our markets along the process, that creates a really great local understanding. And to again, to your point around how do we make sure we respect that local, what we do locally, those people are the key bits to go. What can we do that’s common? And what do we make sure we’ve allowed for and considered that is purely a local piece of work or a local approach? So I think there are challenges in doing this, but if you focus on the challenges, you won’t get it done. Focus on the things which are similar, and then you can start driving some of those opportunities in that space.

Chantelle – 10:11: So for instance, you’ve mentioned the example of a test and framework there, a global test and framework. I can imagine local innovation versus shared global learning. There’s a lot of obstacles involved, and you sort of go ahead with each other sometimes. What can you share a little bit about how it actually worked in practice and some of the challenges you came up against and how you combated some of those challenges?

Rob – 10:37: In creating, I guess, a testing framework, it’s not as if we weren’t doing testing across our regions already. So a lot of these things are identifying. We’re all doing testing in two different scales depending on the size of the regional business. But how we’re doing it, wasn’t as consistent as it could be. So one of the challenges we were trying to work with is if something’s been tested in market a, market b, market was really interesting. Actually, what are the results from that? How have you got there? How did you implement that? And then we look into how it’s been done. They go, oh, we do it differently. We do it a different way. Can you just take that approach? So what we wanted to do is identify what should a baseline for a testing framework look like. So, how do we build knowledge? How do we look at the tools we’ve got for testing? How do we build confidence? And how do we build a kind of support around that to kind of create something like a gold standard of testing. And we looked to kind of develop three areas, develop a common testing knowledge across the whole teams, learn how the CRM testing framework, tools work that we have in place, and build conference across the group. And we started thinking about the words of how can we get people to, or work with people to have a little hook. And the team who did this within, my team, we’ve got Tammy and Vijaya. They did a great job in terms of building out all this training, and getting a hook line of have you had to talk about we know, not what we think. We also have a challenge within, I guess, lots of businesses who aren’t close to how you test is, can we just do x, y, z? And in that, you’ve got to go, well, we test it. We understand, is it gonna work? So is that that mindset of thinking is we know, could have worked out, we’ve tested it, and takes away the think the doing something because of we think it should work. So I think what I I guess, where I kinda look at this as well is part of driving this forward was having that common language. So when you are speaking with a another colleague in another market, you kind of you’re talking about the same things. You’re not talking about what you think is the same thing, but you have a different meaning. And we like to use the word steal with pride. So if you can test something in one market and you go, we wanna take that to another, we wanna steal with that. And we wanna then go, there’s a pride behind that and not feeling ashamed that you instill something. We’re all trying to work to a common angle or a a common next stage. That’s still what we’ve got. We haven’t got the time to be doing things, as I said earlier, three, four times. So it was building that and linking it to our community that we have in place to make sure they have the most and also ensuring post training, they have a place to go. They can speak with other people. They can share. So it is a lot of work, but it has value. And we’ve had some really great free feedback. I think one one bit of great feedback I kinda take is, during the summer, I guess, across The UK, you’ve got the I think it’s the email conference, advanced email conference, and we had Vijaya and Nicola from our UK team, present together what they did in this space. So having both a region and the group global team talk about the success and how it’s working, I think it’s a great achievement of actually getting into market and wants to be able to then share that with the wider community outside of Specsavers.

Mark – 14:01: Yeah. Testing is such a fascinating one for me. Because I started as an analyst as you did, Rob. Chantelle’s a fellow maths nerd. It’s easy to come up with something you want to test, but saying, this is how I am going to test it in a way that you are then confident that the result that you drive is going to be meaningful. You can conclude that your hypothesis is correct or not. That’s one of the complicated bits, and I can very much see how I’m assuming when you’re talking about tools that we’re giving regions, the way of calculating control groups and measuring statistics significance and all of those key things are in there.

Rob – 14:40: Yeah. So you’ve got that. So the things we still cover in that space are, as you said, how you test significance, how you log in terms of your ideas, and how do you create a knowledge base at the end. So those kind of it’s almost like a three factor way of thinking and working to create and these are basic. If we start off basic, we don’t start to over complicate things. But by just having these places where the calculation is done in a common way to prep, make sure you know what you’re gonna test and you’ve got the right volume. That’s a big thing for all of our regions to understand. And at least, as I said, talk in a common way to each other. But the the bit we wanna work towards, and this is even actually within a market, is how do we have that knowledge bank? Here’s what we have tested. Here’s what’s been successful, and here’s what’s not being successful. They’re all learnings. And they have to share that with other regions is also key. Because actually what’s not worked might help a region go, what’s not worked for x, y, z reason. Do we want to test that? Because you might have something else that might be a positive factor on it. Or do we go, actually, that’s not on the top of our list anymore, if it’s not worked elsewhere? We’ve also gotta be aware. Just because it’s worked in one one market doesn’t mean it’ll work in all, same as the other way around, but it gives us a starting point to work from.

Chantelle – 15:55: So I guess it makes it a lot easier for people to share their wins as well. Like you say, maybe, for instance, if they did an A/B test on, like, a banner or something in the UK, and they got really good results on the open rate, really good uplift, then it would be easy for them to share the results and the using the same language with A and Z. Maybe they wouldn’t implement it right away because they have different demographic of customers, but like you say, it would be a starting point for them to pick up and gain some success that way.

Rob – 16:22: Yeah. Definitely. And that’s all part of that in terms of we are a global community. So how do you make the most of what you’ve learned, for each other, within that process? And one thing just to add actually, within my wider, responsibility, I also have our experimentation we’re doing with the website. So we have a more established centre of excellence within that in terms of working with our regional teams. And one of our learnings is going. We’ve got CRM on one side. We’ve got web testing on another. They have their nuances of what’s different, but they have a lot of commonalities. And one of our, I guess, opportunities is going, especially for our, stakeholders in our regions, is coming to this also in a common approach. So we’re not doing things too differently. And that’s still a bit of work in progress in terms as we kinda go, They start getting closer or start becoming more joined in their way of working. But, yeah, what we do on web, that’s what we do in CRM, have nuances, but similar to before, so many commonalities which we wanna share our approach with.

Mark – 17:19: You just used the term global community. So what do you think makes a great global community? And then how do you keep that cohesion in a, a retail market that’s always changing?

Rob – 17:32: I’ll start with CRM. They’re not straightforward things to set up and move forward. As I mentioned before, we operate in 10 markets. We got some very established markets. And, actually, one of the big drivers for our global community was COVID. And I think what COVID actually created was well, actually, what we’re doing now. The fact of being on a screen, more easily, more accessible, with each other. Teams exploding in terms of how it’s been used to have the platform where it’s easy to share with the other areas. But we started pre COVID of, having our what we’ve got as a Head of CRM in all of our regions. So on a regular basis, actually weekly, we actually come together. And this started pre-COVID. And amazingly, we still came together over that time. And I think it’s really I guess, it says a lot about that community to start with our leadership level that we come together, talk, have something to talk about in a regular basis. But how you get beyond the leadership and to everyone within our teams is the bit of going, okay. We’ve got Australian members of our team who, who part of our role is to be part of global conversations once a week, could join late afternoon, early evenings, as part of that. But getting that commitment for a whole range of team members is quite challenging. So I think what we’ve done, I think, really in that space is how do we create using a Teams channel and starting to foster of going we encourage people initially going, oh, we’ve done this bit of work. How about sharing it on our Teams channel and with our colleagues across the globe? We have, in the CRM space, pure CRM space, probably got about 50 people across the globe in CRM. So to be able to find a colleague doing something similar and showing what you’re doing is actually really exciting if you’ve saw in Australia or Northern Europe and didn’t realise there’s someone doing exactly what you’re doing. Or you probably thought there is, but not seeing it. So having, a space where it started off with us doing a bit of prompting, a bit of what you put there. We now have a community of, again, probably over a 100 people who are either in CRM or touching CRM, who can see what works going on every market because there’s always someone publishing, here’s a latest test result, here’s a new activity we’re doing, here’s what we’ve learned. And other ones going, oh, we’re doing that. And so that bit of it has a bit of a snowball effect over time where partially, we can sit back a little bit in a global team or this path and go ‘it’s now organically happening in that space’. So keeping that momentum is key, but also thinking you can’t just stay with what you’re doing. You’ve got to think, what else can you do to build communities? What common programmes of work are you doing? And how do you get people that work with people who are doing the do each week every day to be in contact with each other on a monthly basis through a Teams channel, and build their relationships. Because it’s about them building their relationships within their network, which I think makes a big difference, in this space. But as I said, it’s not, it hasn’t come overnight. It’s come with probably a lot of effort. But in the mindset of if you do it right and you evolve, you learn, you test what works, doesn’t work, that community will start to thrive more as we go. To even point where a lot of time, our CRM community across marketing is used as a gold standard. We have platinum standard in terms of how things could work when you’re trying to think what other areas there are commonalities, which there are plenty across our marketing teams.

Mark – 21:03: I think it’s very interesting, just talking about tools like Teams. So I was working in, business redesign before COVID, and anyone that was going agile across functional. Co-location was this key thing. All of the consultants were turning up and saying, you must be co-located to make this right. And I went into a big telco. I didn’t believe them, by the way. I definitely see the benefit of people being in the same place, but is it a requirement? And I went into a big telco that had offices all over The UK and offices in India and other offshore centres. And they said, no. We don’t need to be co-located. They had Teams and Slack and Confluence and all of these tools that made it very easy for people to communicate with each other without having to be sat next to each other. And I think you’re right that then COVID accelerated everyone’s kind of, taking up of those tools. But if you give people the means with which to communicate, and give them a reason to communicate, and once they start realising that their colleagues are pretty smart as well, right, and the stuff that they can steal with pride, you will find people start to bond and work together and and collaborate more.

Rob – 22:20: Yeah, definitely and we’ve seen that. I’d always… there’s always a bit of me that always goes ‘as much as it’s great in terms of you’ve got these online online platforms. It’s, at times, also still doesn’t replace those moments of face to face, in terms of where you build that, especially with people from another market’. I’m fortunate enough that I’ve met most of the people across our markets, whether they’ve come our way or I’ve gone their way. And, actually, when you’re building relationships and actually trust, those calls you have, and that’s the example with Australia, is you have a moment at the beginning of your day, at the end of their day, and both of you have very different mindsets of what’s happened at that point. If you don’t give the opportunity, and not everyone can do this, but you don’t give the opportunity to build something outside of that, then when things aren’t easy and you’re not agreeing, and that also will happen in any business. It’s then harder than you’re only working for pure working relationship. Not that bit of extra on the outside where you’ve got to know each other a bit more to understand where your, I guess, where your behaviours kind of merge, diverge in that space so you know what you might need to act differently or do things differently about in that space.

Chantelle – 23:37: Remotely, sometimes may it just looks different building relationships. Right? Like, you have to maybe make an extra effort to jump on that call one to one with someone where, as in the office, you might overhear a conversation or, whatever it is. It’s just it just looks slightly differently, but it’s still about, like you say, carving out that time, to build the relationship and and build the trust amongst people, not just ringing people up when you’ve got a complaint or when there’s, like, a very specific piece of work that needs, doing or you need information from them.

Rob – 24:07: Yeah. I always goes about investing. So we’ve all got a job to do. My job being in that in that global space where my job is to foster this global relationships. So I’ll I’ve always tried and look, how do I put the effort into doing that little bit extra? So that’s gonna make everyone’s lives easier down the line, in terms of actually what you’re trying to achieve.

Chantelle – 24:28: I think just on that, so you spoke a lot there about the sort of global community and fostering and encouraging people to collaborate, on all levels. But I imagine when you are implementing global programmes or want to implement global CX programmes, you have to get the buy-in from local leaders, and they have competing priorities that maybe don’t align with your sort of strategic goals. So how do you engage with local leaders and try and get that buy in?

Rob – 24:55: The ongoing challenge. I think the challenge actually is positive in a way because as Specsavers is, we are successful as a business, and all of our teams have got amazing, well planned annual plans. And I think one of the things I’ve learned over the years and this is definitely an evolution of your learning working in global roles of you think you think you’ve got a great idea that is gonna benefit everyone, and it might. And in some cases, it definitely would, but not for everyone at that point in time. And I think over time is learning in terms of actually being really working close with those people who are, again, you’re trying to influence and understand in terms of where they are with their prioritisation, what do they really need, and how can we start fitting into their plans. So as a business and, I guess, in a global function, we’re not in a position where what we say goes. I mean, we wouldn’t want to be. That’s actually it’s like of our stores, we’ve got partnerships. It’s partnerships across the business in terms of we’ve all got a common business goal we’re working towards. But where we all sit within those plans can be different. So spending time to build what that influence, to understand in terms of how are you trying to build that influence, that circle of influence, and really to understand in terms of what we’re trying to move is key. So if you can start aligning the work, building the buy in, building the awareness and acceptance. It’s not acceptance, but the awareness that the project is of value to them, and more also help them to deliver some of their plans, it makes a difference. In that, there’s a thing to consider in terms of globally. It does take longer to do certain things, to bring things along. So even though you might have agreed things at a certain point, when you come to give the end goal of that, then people’s priorities are moved. So I think one of the other challenges to always keep on top of is how do you continuously stay on top of where people’s priorities are and where they’re shifting and making sure that you’re iterating your plans as you go. As I’ve said before, I think global roles are really exciting. They’re also just as frustrating, in terms of thinking of how you move things forward and thinking, oh, we’re in a great path against that direction. And something out of anyone’s control comes along and you go, they can’t quite do it then, and then it moves everyone out of sync. And then you’re trying to think how do you bring it back together. So I think my main thing, again, to repeat myself is keeping close to your stakeholder, the ‘heads of’ in the region, and making sure they’re up to date with where you are, so that even if you’re working with our teams, priorities can flex. And you know you would need to flex as a whole community where needed. And there’s also a bit of give and take. So are we doing a piece of work for the greater good,i.e. globally for everyone? And it might benefit me as a region slightly more than another region at this point in time, but later on, it could benefit them more in certain ways. So that’s kind of how I’d assist the starting point of the learnings over the years of be a lot closer to spend as much time as you can to understand their plans and where you fit in and build a trust in what you’re doing is gonna benefit them.

Mark – 28:29: And then going back to what you said earlier, that’s easier if you’ve managed to form those personal relationships as well and establish that trust where you can just have a friendlier conversation. Right?

Rob – 28:41: We’re all people at the end of the day. And then as people we’ve all got our own personalities. We all want to succeed in what we’re doing. What success to everyone is could be slightly different based on what’s currently in front of them, but we’re all there to make sure we’re heading in the right direction. So as long as you’re all as long as we’re all I think there’s a lot we do in the space to go. We’ve got trust to go and challenge each other. ‘Guys, just not quite ready for us’ or chat back at why isn’t it ready for you? And then have a better understanding, that makes a big difference.

Mark – 29:16: I think Chantelle’s definitely happier challenging me since we’ve got drunk and sang karaoke together. So, striking those personal bonds helps.

Rob – 29:24: They are.It’s about being relaxed isn’t it? In front of people.

Mark – 29:31: Yeah, our previous company is now with us. Mark all the time there. Yeah. Absolutely. We’ve got some closing questions for you, Rob. These ones are a little bit more personal, but, so feel free to answer however you want. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to CX leaders trying to roll out a global initiative for the first time?

Rob – 29:51: Yeah. I think it’s similar to what I’ve said before, around actually, really understand who you’re trying to influence and why it’s important to not just yourself, but to them and what you do. So if you could build that with a ship, so you can have that trust and you understand their needs, it can actually make those 10 those initiatives tangible and a benefit to them, and the business as a whole. So, yeah, that’s where I would kind of really focus my time and effort, in those. It’s not even about the idea to start with. It’s about knowing that whatever idea you’ve got, it won’t land on Satis purely on not having that relationship in place.

Mark – 30:27: Outside of Specsavers, are there any other brands that you look up to or admire and think, yeah, they do a great job globally while still being relevant to their customers locally?

Rob – 30:42: I look at the things like both Disney or Netflix in terms of and they’re pretty common for lots of people, but in reality they’re everywhere. And, actually, whether this is how they’re working locally or pure their use of data to make it feel like they’re working locally, in terms of how they really understand the need of the people in wherever they are, whatever they’re watching, whatever that they’re recommending, I think it’s quite, as a data person as well at heart, it’s how they use information, that’s relevant no matter who you are is I think it’s really that’s just really exciting to see. And, obviously, that’s evolved a lot over the years. You think it started the net the Netflix in terms of what we kind of expect there to now every platform.

Mark – 31:25: Netflix is a great one, though, because one of the things that Netflix has done is got people used to watching things with subtitles. So shows like Squid Game or award winning movies like Parasite, they’ve they’ve they’ve got people used to watching things with subtitles. Whereas if you weren’t used to that with so much content being in certain languages, you could only keep your own language in your own region. But by getting us all more used to watching things with subtitles, we’re happy to watch something that’s in the wrong language and have subtitles on. And so now they can take their global content pace and put it in in all places.

Rob – 32:04: Well, I’ve even noticed personally, because I think this is quite funny where I think my we’re watching Disney, and myself and my wife, we share an account. And sometimes I was watching something, I kept turning off the subtitles for me at certain points, and she went, stop turning off. I want it on. And then I just now got used to it. And it’s just there. So I don’t know. I don’t know.

Chantelle – 32:24: Titles. I’m with you.

Rob – 32:26: Going back to accessibility and just getting used to it, these things being in place you go. In the past, you think, am I watching something in the wrong language and it’s being dubbed or whatever it might be to now going, okay. Okay. That’s just there. I also think in a multi screen world, where if I think about social media, whether that’s a TikTok, whoever it might be, a lot of time it’s got the sub basically the words there so you can read what’s happening and watch something on another screen. Don’t know why we do it, but it becomes more second nature now, I think.

Chantelle – 32:58: Who’s been the greatest professional influence on your career, and what did you learn from them?

Rob – 33:02: It’s quite one one to think about. But I think we had a few influences, especially in recent years. There’s one I kind of call out from about five or so years ago, where there’s a previous leader of  our team. And there’s something he said to me once. And this is when we were going through a lot of change within the business, and I was being asked to be part of some transformation programmes. And me being quite a person that likes to know what I might get involved in, what that might mean, is this programme had a lot of unknowns, but a lot of opportunity. A lot to kind of go, and it’d be great to be involved in how we might change where we do things in the business. And in my questing of always going, what does it it involve? How am I get what’s it gonna mean to me? A bit of advice he gave to me was, “have a think about how you’d be comfortable in being uncomfortable”. And in a world of change that always happens around you, you can always try and spend your time trying to think of what it means. But if you spend too much time thinking about that, you get stuck of not doing the do and not being involved in it. So for me, it’s something I’ve taken forward into a lot of what I’m thinking. And I’m trying to kind of portray to my teams as well is never know what’s happening, but go along with the ride. We as Specsavers have grown as business significantly, and part of that has been a lot of unknown. So just being comf… and that and things being unknown is uncomfortable. But if you can have a set of I can a part of you that goes uncomfortable with that, and that can be for a lot of people. And was for me, it was a bit of a, oh, I’m not sure. But, yeah, it’s being comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s something which is a thing I never thought. About ten years ago, I’d say I’d be happy to do.

Mark – 34:51: Good advice.

Chantelle – 34:52: That is solid advice. I’ll take that away with me.

Mark – 34:57: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time, Rob. And, yeah, thanks for joining the podcast.

Rob – 35:03: Oh, thank you much. It’s been great great great talking. And actually, really great to kind of talk around the subject because really kind of passionate in terms of what we do in this space at Specsavers and what I’ve been doing over the last, what, pretty fast, eight years in this specific space. But, yeah, thank you for having me.

Chantelle – 35:17: Thanks, Rob. That was a great conversation with Rob. It was really lovely to see his passion come across. That’s how he spoke about fostering a global community and the notion of stealing with pride. I thought that was really nice, a nice way to capture the fact that they’re trying to move towards the same target, and it’s about teamwork, and and not, and moving towards a shared objective.

Mark – 35:39: Yeah. Not competing with each other. He was talking about, actually, the customer journey is common everywhere, and I thought that was a really great thought. Because I suppose when you are thinking if we were talking to clients about building a good customer journey, you’re trying to think about all of the different reasons that a customer might interact with you or why you would interact with them, and then it’s about making sure you’ve got an experience to serve at all of those times. And so if he’s then creating that into a global framework, it means you can go to each of those regions and say, you need to know how you’re gonna help a customer if they’re making a booking, or they’re coming and picking up their contact lens subscription, or they have a query. You need to have built an experience for that. It doesn’t mean that every region has to build the same experience for that, but you can at least say to everyone, you need to have these things in place to do a good job for a customer. And I really get how that could work as a global framework that then allows the regions to respond to it, in their own way.

Chantelle – 36:43: Yeah. Exactly. Encouraging that local innovation. Obviously, not every person’s gotta be the same in Australia versus here, but they’re gonna have that same experience with spec savers. So whether it’s tailoring the content or or, making small tweaks to the campaign, that’s the local innovation part. That’s also important. Thanks for listening to the CX equation. Please like, subscribe, share, spread the words. We’ll see you next time.

Mark – 37:10: Thanks very much. The CX Equation is brought to you by Tap CXM. To find out more about what we do and how we can help you, visit tapcxm.com.

Chantelle – 37:18: And then make sure to search for The CX Equation in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you usually find your podcast. Make sure to click subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes.

Mark – 37:28: On behalf of the team here at Tap CXM, thank you for listening!