Episode 57 / Schuh / Sean McKee / Director of Ecommerce and Customer Experience

“He gave a mind-blowing lecture on how he was passing electricity through pickles” this quote comes from Sean McKee, Schuh’s Director of Ecommerce and Customer Experience this week on the Shiny New Object podcast.

This story comes from Sean’s self-funded sabbatical at MIT where he almost drowned during a team-building exercise. 

Sean hopped across the pond for schooling at one of the Ad industries’ most talked about Academic Institutions. That’s not something you hear about often in our game. He returned with a new mindset to internal communication. And since then every month his team come together for a “Show and Tell”, which promotes exposure of hidden talents and interests. 

“Tech adoption isn’t linear...If you’re throwing the kitchen sink at something, what’s the opportunity cost? What could you be doing that might be a better way to spend time and resources?” says Sean. In Sean’s department, they focus on investments that could “move traffic, conversion, basket size or some way that helps people get down the funnel”. Sean’s exposure to new tech every four weeks has kept him clued up. But, whilst learning about innovations such as Augmented Reality he keeps a laser-guided focus and persistently asks “What’s the point?”

With Facebook recently announcing their crypto-currency Libra. Sean and Tom discuss how when, and most importantly if new tech should be introduced. Sean can see why Facebook is releasing this but cannot see how it provides benefit to people. Sean talks about how crypto-currency could help small communities. But Sean is sceptical of Facebook’s intentions, warning that it is anything but philanthropic.

Being a director of Customer Experience, it is no surprise that Sean’s ‘Shiny New Object’ are some of the biggest and best apps out there. He sings the praises of Whatsapp, Uber and Airbnb valuing the ease of experience, communication and transparency of these services. His passion lies in platforms that are consumer-centric and truly disrupting those which came before them. 

Even if this means nearly drowning in a pool whilst expanding his mind at MIT!

You can hear more from Sean in person at the brilliant www.madfestlondon.com/picnic on the 10th of July.

Written by Jack Mitchell

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