Where do I come from?
Work Experience
Shopify
December 2020 - Current
Multilingual Support Specialist and Youtube Host
Shopify ticked several of my boxes:
- IT and Technology Sector
- Great Mission:
- Remote work
- Canadian-born company
Since starting to work from home I've been a lot more productive and, being an introvert - INFJ-T, my social battery is a lot more recharged these days, and I can invest more time in family and friends.
If you ever worked in the corporate world, but you were not based in the same country/timezone of your HQs, you can understand the feeling you might get when decisions are taken before you even start your working day, so working for a Canadian-born company, but still being able to work from anywhere and built on asynchronous communication first it really helps feeling included.
Shopify's mission is to Make commerce better for everyone, but what makes them different is that they put people first: you feel at home (not just because you're based from wherever you call home) because the culture is very strong: it doesn't feel like a "corporate family" (which is sometimes toxic), but rather more an environment where we can get work done and to collaborate and work with like-minded people that are strongly involved in their role and in the success of the company.
In my role of Multilingual Support Advisor, I mainly help Italian-speaking merchants to succeed in their business and I was also given the opportunity to be a host on the Italian Shopify Channel (take a look at the second video, that's me!).
If you think you never used a Shopify store, think again! You're on a Shopify online store right now!
Booking.com Customer Service - London, UK and Toronto, Canada
May 2015 through September 2020
Instructional designer, Trainer, Training Champion, Ethics Ambassador, Customer Service Specialist
At Booking.com is where I "officially" entered the L&D world. After few months as a Customer Service Specialist, I made the jump as a Trainer. I had experience on a 1:1 level of explaining and simplifying difficult processes in a personable way and how to adapt my communication, but here I learned how to manage big groups of people and how to make sure to change my communication style and define my training style to satisfy all learning styles.
When I joined the Training and Quality team, the office was around 250 employees, and in a year we had more than 600 employees, I'm still not sure how we managed to trainer successfully so many people in such a short time!
I have been highly involved in multiple projects above and beyond my role including first roll out of New Hires Blended Learning (especially using e-learnings in class and/or online trainings through Webex), Teleopti (workforce support tools) training and employee enagement in this and other new tools.
After 2 years in London, my Booking.com was about to end as Luther (my husband) and I were moving to Canada, but Booking.com suprised us with opening an office in Toronto! Needless to say, I reached out to my network to get more information and get in contact with recruiters on this side of the world.
I was chosen to move to a new country and open our first Customer Contact Centre in Canada! We had already 3 contact centers in the USA, and we had awesome people coming over and help us getting ready to hit the ground running.
In a very short amount of time I had to re-learn a lot of things about customer service: not really about our systems or procedures (as they were all standardised), but more on customer service as a concept. Customer Service in North America is very much different from what I knew, and this reflected in how my training participants would behave and react to activities. Day by day, I was able to understand more certain steps and how I could improve their day without going away from the training curriculum.
I was able to explore the Instructional Design skills that really let me succeed as a facilitator, and I fell in love with the ability of being able to create content that would shape the work life of thousands of people and not just the people that would be in my class! I was briefly introduced to Adobe Captivate and from then I was able to work on different projects
Russell&Bromley
November 2014 - May 2015
Retail Sales Associate
With R&B I moved to a different part of town and to a different type of clientèle, more high-end and looking for more refined items, as the store is located on Old Bond Street, off the famous Oxford Street.
Here is where I could practice my first steps into training and facilitating learning for others, by gaining and sharing knowledge on all the types of shoes. I knew that I wanted my sessions to be awesome, and I strived to be as interactive as possible, as most of the staff was more tenured than I was, but I wanted them to be involved in the exchange sessions too.
Russell&Bromley I really mastered my sales and coaching skills, and how important is for learners to be ready to learn and how I can make others feel comfortable in learning new things everyday. Delivery day and Stocktake days were still my favourite days, but the exchange sessions were really what made me understand that I wanted to persue a career in helping others learn.
Massimo Dutti
June 2013 - November 2014
Retail Sales Associate
At this point I decided to switch to retail to see a different side of customer service. Here I worked on my retails sales skills, helping customers to find the best outfit all year round; all while helping increase sales targets YOY for 3%.
At Massimo I could improve my coaching and training skills by helping new and existing part of the team in learn and improve how they worked, by sharing best practices and help them to be more efficient by sharing best practices.
My favourite days were Delivery day and Stocktake day, as I could get a sneak peek of what's new coming into the store, what we are running out and what's left. This knowledge helped me to provide correct information to customers and peers, and sell items that we didn't have enough to display on the main floor.
Here I learned the importance of knowing your products inside out, how pivotal mastering the systems used is in order to support you in your work rather than slowing it down, and how to fold clothes properly (I still organise all the clothes in our home with techniques learned by the awesome visual merchandisers!).
Frederick's Restaurant
January 2011 to June 2013
Senior Waiter and Receptionist
Frederick's was my first "adult" job. I moved to London, UK at the beginning of December 2010, and without any waiter experience, the management was impressed on how fast I learned and how enthusiastic I was to be there. They took good care of getting me up to speed, and there I made my way to Senior Waiter and as Receptionist.
At Frederick's I learned valuable skills, improved my english and spanish, coached and trained several new hires in all parts of their waiter role and lots of experience with Opentable (funnily enough it was my first experience with the Booking.com family even before working there).