Selecting the right tools to manage customer engagement is one of the biggest challenges facing modern marketing teams. Steven Truffley, the Head of CRM at Back Market has been advocating for the growing importance and implementing a comprehensive CRM ecosystem for Back Market.
We spoke to Steven to get his insights on the new wave of CRM. He also talked about how he transformed Back Market to become user-centric and ensuring CRM is central to the company’s growth.
What’s Inside?
- Steven Truffley’s Career Journey
- About Back Market
- Implementing 6 New Wave of CRM in Back Market
- The Balance Between CRM, Sales and the Back Market Mission
- Lessons Learned
- Who is Steven Truffley?
Steven Truffley’s Career Journey
Steven’s foray into CRM began when he enrolled in an internship at Bloomy Days in Berlin, a small e-commerce company selling flowers online. The company sells a mix of single products and a subscription model. “I really enjoyed learning about CRM because of its mix of user experience and pure marketing,” said Steven.
After leaving Bloomy Days, Steven moved into the food tech industry by joining Foodora & FoodPanda. In his new role he continued to develop an understand of user experience and content, but was also exposed to data and tech, which are integral parts of the food tech business.
Following that, he joined Delivery Hero where his main responsibilities included marketing strategy and nurturing marketing programs across different regions. One year after joining he got involved with Delivery Hero’s global team, managing around 15 brands worldwide.
Steven’s interest in observing how people from different countries respond to different channels led him to a new area of CRM – communicating to the delivery staff and riders.
Today, Steven is managing a CRM team at Back Market. “This is the most exciting step for me so far. The consistent driving force in my career has been a desire to help people be of service to others,” he added.
At Back Market, CRM sits between technology and marketing, unlike at other companies where CRM normally sits with the marketing team. “This is the change that I try to bring to my team and our vision of CRM at Back Market. We need to respect the traditional methods of CRM marketing while also understanding how new technologies can further our capabilities,” he explained.
About Back Market
Back Market is a refurbishing platform leading the way in a shift towards a circular economy, with the goal of freeing the planet from electronic waste and becoming a leading global tech company.
The company delivers high-quality, professionally refurbished electronic devices and appliances to customers in 16 countries. “Our vision is to close the loop. We are fighting against the consumption of new materials, with a global vision to build a more sustainable future.”
CRM is one of the key levers in communicating how customers can use Back Market to live more sustainably. Steven is working on a smart re-purchase flow which reminds users that they can get their phone fixed for free, so that they hopefully re-consider the act of buying. “The message is very clear that if you are thinking of buying a new device, consider the environmental impact of your purchase and re-sell your old devices so that they don’t go to waste,” he added.
How to Integrate CRM Into an Organisation’s Strategy
Steven spent a lot of time evangelising the team’s mission. “We used to be a team that communicated once a month or once a week about work. We had to go through quite a few steps to get where we are today,” explained Steven. “The more we advocated for the importance of CRM, the easier it has been making CRM a core pillar of the company’s approach to customer management. There were a number of important steps we followed to arrive where we are today.”
The Balance Between CRM, Sales and the Back Market Mission
“This is something I think about a lot. I have been working hard to help the business understand that it’s a privilege to access customer information.”
“We need to serve our customers better and build sustainable relationships. If you tire your customer base with unsophisticated, generic campaigns, you’re slowly conditioning them to ignore your communications.”
According to Steven, Back Market is focused on long term strategy of targeted and segmented campaigns which has led to compound growth. “You need to be mindful when setting your main KPIs. We’ve been moving towards engagement which is essential and very unusual for eCommerce-type businesses.”
Moving forward, Steven said that Back Market would like to reinforce the idea of using CRM to build more human-to-human relationships. “I would like to get people on my team thinking about creating 1×1 relationships.”
Lessons Learned
| 1 | Always consider the relevancy of your product and message – you need to push the right product, to the right person, at the right time. |
| 2 | If you want to integrate CRM into your organisation’s strategy, you need to educate your peers about how CRM can support their goals |
| 3 | Continually advocating for CRM representation across all departments is the best way to create a customer-first mindset |
| 4 | CRM needs to have a certain level of sophistication to connect with customers. It’s important to work jointly with BI/Insight teams to make sure segmentation and 1:1 targeting is possible. |
Who is Steven Truffley?
Next steps
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