Get to know our digital customer experience director, Paul.
Q. Hey Paul, welcome back! (More on that later... read on!) Tell us about yourself, what career path led you to Very?
During my third year studying Computer Science at The University of Liverpool I was introduced to a module on eCommerce. I was fascinated and started building websites in my spare time for family and friends.
When I graduated I hit the jackpot and secured a position as a front-end developer at The Very Group and absolutely loved it…although I got a bit of a shock when I realised that the grown up digital world were using divs and not tables!
From there I progressed through the organisation over a 12 year period to head of eCommerce, where I was lucky enough to have a ringside seat for our transformation from catalogue and high-street retailer to digital pure play. From there I went to Matalan and looked after the online part of their business which was an invaluable 3 years before being given the opportunity to come back to The Very Group at the start of 2021 to support their next phase of digital transformation. I seized the opportunity with both hands!
Q. What does your team do for our customers?
The digital customer experience (DCX) tribe is responsible for defining, building and optimising the digital customer experience for all of our brands and devices. In short, our purpose is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to interact with us and achieve what they want to, and hopefully surprise and delight them along the way.
Q. What are your teams currently working on?
A lot! We are an extremely ambitious business and are always looking to improve our proposition and digital customer experience, so we’re constantly balancing:
- Supporting our colleagues on driving forward strategically important initiatives
- Driving forward our own digital product initiatives
- Driving forward improvements that we want to make to our underlying technology.
Our tribe is split into squads which align with the customer journey which ensures we’re always improving each and every stage of the flow. On top of constantly improving our customer journey we’re also embarking upon a multi-year tech transformation which will see us move away from our incumbent monolithic eCommerce application and move towards a modern MACH (Micro-Services, API-First, Cloud and Headless) architecture with a completely in-house built separated front-end.
Q. What piece of tech or app can you not live without?
How long have you got! I'm definitely a tech geek and live in a completely connected home with lights, doorbell, central heating, speakers and fans to name but a few all controllable via my phone. My poor router and WiFi struggle to get through the day, and that’s before the kids put YouTube on! My 20 month old must take after me as he thinks he can be anywhere in the world and shout “Alexa” to get his favourite song on.
Q. What was the last thing you bought from Very?
This will not be a surprise to anybody who knows me or has been on a Microsoft Teams call with me, but the last thing I bought was a pair of the new Nike Golf Air Max 270. I also bought the new Mont Blanc Explorer Ultra Blue aftershave for my Dad’s birthday and instantly wanted it for myself.
Loved catching up again Paul, sounds like you have lots to get stuck into!
If you're looking for your next career move and like the sound of what Paul and his team are working on, check out our latest tech roles today.
