"Always get out of your comfort zone and go where you are not expected"
The editors of Relation Client Magazine present the Election of the Customer Personality of the Year 2023. Discover the selection of the ten leaders who have worked to promote customer relations over the past year. Vote until 6 June for your 2023 Personality. Today: Cécile Bianconi, Customer Experience Director, Elior France.
"Improving the experience again and again" is a mantra for Cécile Bianconi, who describes herself as insatiably curious and appreciates challenges. "You can learn all the time and from everyone. I have a passion for the collective and I love to get out of my comfort zone to seize opportunities. She started her career as a press officer for Toyota, and became sales manager for the Lexus brand. "I was only 23 years old at the time and I was coordinating the actions of older and more experienced sales people. This experience in the world of luxury was fundamental.
She then joined a new private day care company: Kids'up (since bought by La Maison Bleue). "I knew nothing about childcare, but the desire to be at the heart of an entrepreneurial adventure was too strong. She went ahead and for four and a half years built the company's brand territory and developed its activity. She then joined the Elior group. "I was given the task of developing the loyalty of our client Renault (32 company restaurants in France). For 18 months, we worked to respond to a national invitation to tender, while involving the 350 employees involved in the project. With the contract renewed on the day of the loyal saint, she decided to capitalise on the energy and know-how developed on this project to obtain the creation of a customer experience department within Elior.
The desire to deploy the best methods
Between 2019 and 2023, the Customer Experience team grew from 2 to 20 employees. When she became a mother in 2020, and still in the grip of her desire to learn, she resumed her studies at ESSEC in 2021 and prepared a master's degree in organisation management. "I dedicated my thesis to the customer experience. I went to meet the players in customer experience to try to identify the best practices. This in-depth work is now feeding into Elior's customer experience roadmap. "In four years, we have managed to establish Elior as a customer-centric brand", notes Cécile Bianconi, who considers her nomination as Customer Personality of the Year to be one of the highlights of her career. "It's recognition of the work done by the teams and of the company's commitment. We live this collective adventure every day".
Considering that customer experience is a demanding job, she emphasises the positive impact it can have. Quoting Ghandi, she is convinced that "every great achievement, large or small, has its periods of struggle and triumph; a beginning, a battle and a victory". Giving meaning, getting the teams on board to achieve the useful objective of customer satisfaction, "we are in a service business that is exciting". Making things simple for the customer, arousing emotion, managing complaints well... These are the three levers of the customer experience for Cécile Bianconi. To achieve this, she is working to develop the use of data to make the right decisions, to give meaning to the teams and to reinforce customer satisfaction. "The biggest challenge is to measure the right digital contributions, to dare to take a step aside when we are wrong and to keep the taste for freedom to create unique experiences and surprise.
Biography
2007: After a year as a press officer at Toyota, she becomes sales and events manager for Lexus
2010: She accompanies the birth of the Kids'up network of company day care centres.
2014: Cécile Bianconi joins the Elior group as Development Manager.
2019: She creates the customer experience department and structures the customer strategy of the Elior Entreprises division.
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