Welcome to the Asos Tech podcast, where we're going to be sharing what it's like to work at an online destination for fashion loving twentysomethings around the world.
You may have bought some clothes from us, but have you ever wondered what happens behind the screens?
Hi, I'm Lewis. He him, and I'm a principal software engineer at Asos.
Hi, I'm Nat. She her associate web engineer.
Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening. Depending on what time you're listening to this Asos Tech podcast, as you'll know, our wonderful tech team created this podcast to showcase the people behind the screens behind the Asos Digital Experience. My name is Jordan. My pronouns are he, him. I work in people experience as asos's diversity, equity and inclusion advisor. I am really excited to be joined today by Asos's Digital Experience Manager, Mimi Maesh. Would you like to introduce yourself?
Hi, I am Mahesh, more commonly known as Mimi. My pronouns are she, her, and I am based in the leavestone Asos office in the Customer Change team. I've been with Asos for a little over five years now.
Wow, quite a while. I didn't realize she'd been at Asos for that long.
I've had three roles so far over the five years. Yeah.
So, Mimi, where are you at now? What are you doing at Asos?
Yeah, I'm in a new role, actually. I've been only in this role for maybe a little over a year now. I can call myself quite fancy. A digital experience manager. And what we really do is we shape the customer care experience to be one that's more innovative digital by implementing best in class capability, including technology, whilst keeping the focus on the customer and the resolution when they contact us. My team, we together have delivered the six Virtual Assistants in the last eight months, and it's currently live in key markets. So if you go to the Customer Care help pages, you'll find the Virtual Assistant there. We're key in delivering the Asos Customer Care strategy, which is all around delivering best in class capabilities, reducing customer effort, and keeping a good focus on resolution.
We know here asos the customer experience is so important, and I guess you're rolling out the first ever Asos Virtual Assistant. Could you tell me a little bit more about what the Virtual Assistant does, what the benefit of that is, how it could be a game changer for us here at Asos?
Yeah, the Virtual Assistant is the front door for help if you need help on the back of an order. Previously, you had to go through quite a friction full journey going through multiple clicks on the site. So we've actually reduced the total clicks to get help from 19 to somewhere between eight to nine. The Virtual Assistant enables our customers to self serve information without the need of human intervention in some of our journeys. But we also understand that there's a lot of value where our live advisors play. There are times that the Virtual Assistant might escalate a contact into the Life Advisors. It's all about creating self serving opportunities for customers through a digital experience and that's what the Virtual Assistant does.
That is so cool. And that stat you gave of the clicks decrease from was it 19 to nine? That's so great. Making it an easy process for our customers if they do need to get in touch with us to be able to. Awesome. So I guess rolling out a brand new project, massive like that, you said six VAS across the world at this stage. What has that experience been like?
It's been one that's completely new with our team, myself and my role. Only doing it for less than a year and it's something that I haven't done before, comes from a very operational background. And now I use my operational knowledge to integrate technology and people. What it also does, it creates skills development and shaping careers for the future. We are a tech company, we are innovation led. So it's really important that the care experience that we provide our customers are equally on brand and equally on point. And we've got the latest technology, so the overall shopping experience matches the care experience, so we're seamless throughout.
Nice. And I imagine with that in mind, in rolling this out, each day over the past year has never been the same. Could you maybe talk me through what an average day would look like for you, Mimi?
Yeah, sure. In my day to day, actually, I've got the privilege to work with bucket loads of people. I've learned from so many people. This is from everyone in the Digital Squad to the senior Digital Program Manager who I have the delight reporting into an absolute boss lady karen to senior leadership team, the language localization contracted vendor. So working with third party company Be, working with the live operations because it's very important that we keep a focus on the customers and their needs and their wants. And who better to tell us than the conversational experts in the customer care frontline? Also, we worked quite closely with our asos machine learning scientists as well. We just had a celebration and we had about 150 people supporting us with the deliveries of the Virtual Assistants.
Wow, with 150 people, that sounds like it probably is one of the biggest forms of transformational change as seen in the past year. Nice work. Mimi, do you have any interest in call outs or stats that you can share on the success of the Virtual Assistant so far? How well is it performing?
Yeah, it's performing really well. And of course there's always opportunity. We still like we work in the sprint process in a really agile manner. So we working two weekly sprints and so far we've delivered a total of 17 sprints and 157 sprint changes have made it to Life production. And if you think about all of our customer journeys we've spent over 300 hours mapping all of those customer journeys. So the virtual system and customers come through, can pick up the questions and the queries that the customers are asking because we've got mapping behind it and flows behind it with the relevant and dynamic content. So, yeah, it's been a really busy year.
I'm going to put you on the spot, Mimi. We have a global audience on this tech podcast, so anyone around the world could be listening. Which countries is the VA now live in?
Yeah, we've got six VA. So we've got our UK, French, German US and rest of Europe and rest of world virtual assistants.
Wow, that covers a very wide base there, doesn't it, Mimi?
Yeah, yeah, definitely global.
Definitely global, which is definitely our focus, being the number one online destination for fashion loving 20 somethings. Mimi, you've been on the journey in the past year and I really think it was for people listening to this podcast who essentially haven't had that conventional journey into a tech role. People were looking to have new experiences within their professional remits. And I'd like to ask you a little about how you specifically got into tech. Talk me about that journey prior to Asos and during those years in customer care where you were given this opportunity to roll out such a fundamentally important project for Asos.
For me, it's been quite a journey. Like I said, I come from a very customer focused operational background. I do not come from a technical background and actually, the majority of our squad, we come from a non tech background. None of us have actually worked in tech before, but yet we managed to deliver six virtual assistants to go live and 157 optimization changes. So, me, I do not pretend to be a tech snot or extremely difficult concept and super intelligent config because by no means I'm not an expert. But I think when you talk about success as a team, the biggest advantage that we've had is that we know what our customers want, right. We speak with them day in, day out. We know exactly how they behave, what language they use. So, yeah, the majority of the teams do that day in and day out and that's really helped us shaping how we split up content using the virtual assistant. We are the conversational experts. We own our own database of how customers interact and want from us and that has been key in delivering the right type of change for our customers.
Sure. And you mentioned before that you've used a lot of your customer experience background and working in the operational side of that over to your tech role. You've worked in loads of roles here at Asos, in fact. What do you love about working at Asos? What keeps you here? What keeps you motivated to continue driving such things for Asos?
As a brand, we're very fast paced. I'm a bit of a nomad myself. I love change, I love people. Today is not the same as yesterday. So I love the fast pace of the business and also the diversity as a business, I think we've got a really strong brand, we've got great people working for Asos and that gets role models every single day. I feel like, yeah, I'm a bit of a nomad, so I like a lot of change, I like trying new things. So that's what I love most about Asos.
Yeah, amazing. I love whenever I speak to anybody who works at Asos, one of the things they'll always talk about is the people. But then also that fast paced environment. It's something that like you say, makes no day the same and also keeps things exciting, which we always want. Do you have any advice for, like I said before, someone who's not currently in a tech role, listening to this podcast and thinking I see myself getting into a tech career in the future but I'm not sure where to start. They might be keen to do it in the future and you might have some good advice to share. What would be your top tips, Mimi?
That's a great question, Jordan. Actually, like I said, I'm quite new. But for me to start intact and to drive transformation in tech, I think you just need to have two things. The first thing is endless curiosity. Be nosy, try new stuff, learn from people. For instance, like I've got a role of being the product owner of the virtual Assistant, but I'm not a certified one. However, I have picked up very quickly by not minding my own business constantly and being extremely nosy. There is a lot of knowledge out of their internal Asos as well. External as well. So we've got amazing learning and development platforms in Asos and there's a lot of cool people doing really amazing stuff. Just try to be curious and try to pick up and learn new things. The second thing I would say, not to be hard on yourself, the reason why I say this is absolutely necessary to fail because when you're failing, you understand. In my instance, customer behavior is better, you'll find new data patterns that will help you then solutionize and iterate technology doesn't. I don't think it comes in a one size fits all out of the box, out of the factory packaging. It is constantly changing and super dynamic. So yeah, don't be afraid to fail because that's where you learn the most nice.
I love that. And I think especially with that first point about endless curiosity it makes me think quite a lot about one of our ace of values in the power of being comfortable with the uncomfortable, throwing yourself into those situations which you may feel uncomfortable with at first, but the value that you might gain from the things you'll learn is you sometimes can't even measure how impactful that could be. Really great advice and suggestions for people interested in getting into tech for sure. You said that a lot of people within your current team have also liked you, not had that background in tech. Tell me a little bit more about the rest of your team that work on delivering the VA. First of all.
People are going to hate me after this, but that's okay. Sometimes you make friends and sometimes you don't. But it's the best team I've ever, ever worked with. They are amazing people. I work very closely with Jade, who's like our Scrum Master. But my team is incredibly passionate. They are very dynamic as well and diverse. And being diverse, I think that is our biggest strength as a team. We are real tribe. There's a real sense of belonging and there's a lot of pride associated as well, being part of the digital team, the new team, and customer care and constantly talk about how technology is ever so changing. But I think the people delivering the technology are, if not more adaptable, more ever changing. And personally, actually, Jordan, I really relate to this. I'm a second generation migrant woman working in tech. Right. I'm also super passionate about all things the eni, so very active in the space of the part of various network groups, including the raceheads and the focus group. So there's things that are very similar when you talk about technology and Dei.
Absolutely. And I think you've started to talk a little bit about DNI. And one thing I guess I want to say in terms of you've been able to operationalizing the VA, give the opportunities to so many others to get some experience with Vin tech, but you've also been quite intrinsic to my own journey. Mimi, just this time a year ago, I was a customer care advisor lining in to Mimi, for those of you who don't know, and through her mentorship and I guess overall sponsorship as one of my senior leaders, she supported me in getting me to my position today. Mimi, I know you have your own thoughts on the importance of sponsorship. Can you tell me, and of course, those listening, why that's important to you to help others on their journey and what the benefits are of having someone who's more senior than you support you on your professional journey?
Wow, jordan, after all that, you are 100% one of the most amazing people I've ever, ever met. And I have the pleasure knowing. Going back to the question, I think there are similarities to be drawn when I reflect back on my own personal experience, like I said, and my lived experience as a migrant woman. And one key similarity, I think where the two worlds meet is the one of change and innovation. I think when I reflect back through my upbringing, I lived in a very small town in the south of Netherlands. The first generation migrants having to learn not one, but multiple languages, learning a brand new culture and customs and behaviors, but also trying to find my place in the world that has created a mimi that is composed of multiple variables and conditions. Right. This journey has enriched me as a person. It innovated me and allowed me to look through multiple lenses and not have a singular lens. I think that's really important. And as a child and my parents were still getting on terms and trying to learn the language. Dutch isn't an easy language, it's quite complex. When I was very young, I translated key pieces of information in order to come to a mutual understanding between two parties. That's not very different to what I do on my team does today. Right. Diversity delivers new ideas. It challenges us to think differently and think richer. And for me, that's beautiful. And that's why I think I love DNI and technology and they're ever so similar.
They are. They're almost intrinsically linked to a degree, aren't they? Mimi, you've done a lot of work in the DNI field, working with me and the wider Di teams since mid 2020, I think. Let's go into talking a little bit about some of the things you've been able to drive so far. I know that you're a part of the Race and Equality Heads group. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Yeah, part of the race equality heads group. Also the hearts group. This is all a place where we steer guidance. We're like an informal formal steering group and we ensure that we drive diversity inclusion from equity from a race and ethnic minority background perspective as well. We've done some really good things there and we've had, like, different departments and asos and when they talk about their DNI agenda or strategy, come back to us and present ideas and added some really cool work with studios around. When we talk about modest fashion and the edit that we provide as part of our product range, what the guidelines should be, Just talking to the people who are part of that community to then create guiding principles and sensitivity to those cultures and people. I've also had the pleasure to work in the All In series and learning program, which is an amazing learning program, all about diversity, equity, inclusion and what are those key things in terms of behaviors or how can things land in the right way. It challenges people to have difficult conversations in the right way. And actually we've had amazing conversations in customer care. And through all of this focus, we've also launched a customer care at the United Focus Group. And actually two members of our senior leadership team are sponsors and the white privileged Mill. That's who they are and that's what they call themselves and they're fully aware of that and they've been sponsoring us as well. I'm so proud of everyone in the DNI space at Asos. I think it's been an amazing year and I look forward to all of the amazing stuff that we're going to unlock further.
Absolutely. If I think about some of the key things that you've been able to deliver. The work with studios in driving the Modest Guidelines was super important, especially when we were launching one of our more recent South Asian clothing lines, because we want all of the models who feature in the clothes that we have on site to be really reflective of the cultures and the communities that we're intending to serve. Being able to have Yummy, who is from the South Asian community, specifically being able to drive the change and the actions that you think will really benefit the consumer as well as Asos is so valuable. And then the all in Learning program, as you mentioned before, I think you mentioned really nicely about the fact that the purpose of the program is to encourage those complicated and sometimes uncomfortable conversations around De and I and encouraging everyone to be whoever they want to be. But I think one of the really important things in the Hero film, for example, that you took part in, was the fact that you were able to share such personal lived experiences that will really translate to our people. When we looked at doing the all in Learning program, we thought about how we could make the most impact and we knew that free featuring our own Asos rather than external guests and by really bringing to life the experiences of our said Asos, it will have a real impact. So I just want to say thank you, Mimi, for being so vulnerable and comfortable and sharing.
Do you know what, Jordan? It's very strange, but I always manifested that I was going to tell that story because it impacted me so much throughout my young life and adult life. And it's amazing to help give perspective to how when you go through an experience of racism, how it impacts and shapes the person. Again, it's a privilege to be part of that conversation and to bring my story to life because it's so important that we educate ourselves and we create an open and honest forum where everyone can take part in conversation and action is followed.
And it's like you said before as well, it's a journey. There is almost no destination with the it's always evolving and we will always be able to learn from each other, but also from what's going on in the world. Thank you.
MIMIA, what else would you like to hear about from Asostech? We want to hear about the topics that interest you.
Send your ideas and feedback to Tech podcast@asos.com and we'll try and cover them in future episodes.
Do you have anything that you envision asos going after the next? When it comes to De and I, is there anything that you think we should be focusing on?
I think there's a couple of really cool things that we've already achieved, but I would definitely like now that everyone has gone through learning and having open and honest conversations. What are the outputs of that? The outputs are there should be zero differences between the communities, between the people at Asos. Right? I'm a numbers girl, so I'm quite focused on the outputs and outcomes and they should be measured through not feeling any differences, whether that is from the amount of resources in the senior leadership team level, from a minority background, or it's the amount of women we have at exact level. I think let's start focusing on the output and drive our key objectives. What I wanted to say. Also like when we talk about a zero difference between demographics and where I am a migrant woman delivering tag and the two worlds are so aligned and probably very similar. Diverse people driving change. It's important because we've got multiple lenses to look through to create great outcomes for our customers and great concepts. I think personally, if I reflect back on the outputs and the evidence of this, I think we are making good steps with this and we are making the way as a business, when we talk about representation, we aiming to get 50% female representation and 50% ethnic minority representation across the combined leadership. I have seen the outputs and the evidence because I'm not white and neither is my boss and we've got lots of great women working in the team and other people from different backgrounds. So we're quite a small team as well. So I have definitely seen great outcomes of this where new diverse teams are being created and helping us delivering technology and innovation. So yeah, I think my team definitely.
Examples that I know that you've mentioned your team being super diverse. I guess it's also something that we're working on within Asos in terms of improving the representation of females and ethnic minorities in our leadership teams. So by the end of 2030 we are hoping to have that achieved for tech specifically, which is super exciting. Also in terms of trying to ensure that in terms of our culture here at Asos, that we're allowing and encouraging an environment where everyone can be whoever they want to be, but also an element of consistency where the experience that people have is similar and to as much of a degree the same.
Yeah, I think the other thing I wanted to add maybe is real accountability to drive our KPIs forward. If we want to increase our representation, this should be championed by leadership teams. Right. And in customer care we've got an entire Okr based on driving zero differences between the demographics and the customer care team. So it's really important that you make it tangible and you take action and you drive forward and also you make yourself accountable in doing that. And I think that's important and I would like to see other departments doing that as well.
Absolutely. Because we know representation is so important and drives a true diversity of fort, which, as we can see through the VA being rolled out, having that diversity of fort rolled out involved in the program really helps bring to life some real successes. So thank you, Mimi, for sharing some really great points and great experience around your role in tech, around De and I, around customer care. I guess I want to close with a little bit of an icebreaker. I know normally you start with an icebreaker, but I thought, no, let's start with your tech work. Let's start with the VA and then let's close with your icebreaker. So it's this or that. I'm going to say two things and you have to, as quickly as you can, just say the first thing that comes to your mind, thing that you like the most. So cats or dogs?
Dogs.
Morning owl or night owl?
Morning owl.
Google Maps. Always Google Maps. City or countryside. A bad haircut or a bad coloring? Slash dye job?
Bad coloring. Your hair is going to grow back. You could color over it.
That's a very good point. Just Redey it. Love that logic. Glass hustle or glass half empty?
Glass hustle.
Do you prefer to sing or prefer to dance?
Oh, I can't do neither. So maybe dancing then.
Love that. And I have one final one that is tech related and probably quite controversial, actually. iPhone or Android?
Oh, dear. iPhone for sure.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Mimi. I know that there will be a lot of people who might not be in a tech role and will be interested in learning about how they can get involved in a constantly evolving and growing industry. Tech grows by the day, as we can see, and there are so many opportunities. So it's really useful to have someone who hasn't had that traditional, conventional journey into a tech role to be able to share how their journey has been and also the things that have helped them on that journey. Thank you, Mimi. Is there anything you want to say to the audience and to the listeners before we close?
It's never too late to step into tech. You don't need to come from a tech background needs did I? And keep your curiosity alive and take opportunities to learn from others. That's why I did. Really. Honestly, it's been such a pleasure to come and talk a little bit about myself and the team. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
Thank you, Mimi. And thank you to the Asos Tech team for having us. It's been a pleasure.
Join us next time for more stories and insights from behind the screens at asos Tech.