Today’s interview is with Jan Kodadek is the Digital Lead for the Sexual Wellbeing category at Reckitt. Jan joins me today to talk about the massive shift to digital that has taken place over the last year, the leadership lessons that have emerged for her, what this has meant for a FMCG company and how we can build our understanding of customers and build better relationships with them, particularly when dealing with a potentially sensitive area.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Crushing complexity and keeping customer outcomes front and centre – Interview with Don Schuerman of Pega — and is number 387 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

NOTE: A big thank you goes out to the folks at SugarCRM for sponsoring my podcast this month.

SugarCRM, the provider of the #1 rated Customer Experience platform, is trusted by thousands of companies in over 120 countries to help them achieve high-definition CX. Recently they released their new CRM and Sales Impact Report which surveyed 1,000 sales professionals from around the globe on what’s driving (or stalling) revenue and customer engagement. The report also asks a provocative question: Are companies on the cusp of a customer relationship crisis. To find out the answer check out and download the report here.

Here’s the highlights of my chat with Jan:

• Companies are finally starting to focus on operating in a world that is digital.
• The last year has really embedded digital into people’s lives in a way that it hasn’t before.
• The pandemic has really forced some of the more resistant consumers to see new possibilities and adopt new habits.
• For people who are in denial about what digital means….ask them to hand over their mobile phone and to go without it for two days! The concept is crazy to them. But, when you then say to them that is how consumers feel about their mobile devices and about their computers and about being able to be online then suddenly a light bulb goes off and they start to get what you mean by digital.
• Many people are looking to organisations increasingly as their agents of change and want them to exercise agency on their behalf.
• People tend to be attracted to those kind of businesses because we are, as people, attracted to people with integrity.
• As a FMCG company when the pandemic hit we took an ecosystem approach that included everything from making sure that consumers could get our products even if they’re not physically near a store, how we communicated with our consumers and how we built our understanding of consumers based on the information and the data that they make available to us.
• During the pandemic, people’s sex lives changed quite dramatically.
• We did real time research and real time understanding on our consumers to really try to understand how the pandemic was affecting different people, their sex-drives and also not to make them feel pressured.
• Given the physical distancing impact of the pandemic, we saw there was a really amazing opportunity to encourage people to explore masturbation, for example, something that’s always kind of been on the sidelines or hidden.
• That’s incredibly personal and sensitive data so you need to develop a really deep level of trust in order to do that.
• For any business to do a really great job of serving consumer needs, they need to understand deeply what those needs are and have a real grasp on people’s realities.
• I think we need to help consumers understand that there is a benefit for brands having that data and protecting that data at all costs.
• You don’t need a lot of data. If you just ask consumers what they want and then deliver against that then you end up on step one of the trust ladder. And, then you ask for more and deliver again and so on and so forth.
• I absolutely disagree with the mass harvesting of data. We just don’t need to do that. Not only do we not need to do that from a privacy perspective, but we also don’t need to do it from a data storage perspective.
• Here’s some stuff that I have learned over the last year:
  • Digital can no longer be an afterthought. It really needs to be at the core of your initiatives. And, to certain degree, that also means that certain businesses may have to rethink their business model.
  • You need to make digital everyone’s job.
  • Purpose is really important. But, it needs to be authentic.
  • We need to deal with our diversity, equality and equity issues.
• Jan’s Punk CX word(s): Impact and Empathy.
• Jan’s Punk CX brand: Dove – a brand that is truly focussed on their consumers reality as it is today.

About Jan

Jan Kodadek is the Digital Lead for the Sexual Wellbeing category at Reckitt. She is passionate about how technology is changing the world and empowering businesses and brands to realise new opportunities created by this evolution. From developing digital-native business and customer experience strategies, collaborating to imagine a new future for business, brands and CX and helping businesses realise this vision through cut-through ideas and rapid, iterative, effective execution, she aims to help her partners leverage the power of digital for a sustainable competitive advantage.

Check out the Sexual Wellbeing category at Reckitt and feel free to connect with Jan on LinkedIn here.

Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay