WALL OF FAME

In each issue, the Wall of Fame section introduces Dufry employees who have done something exceptional, who pursue a fascinating hobby, or who have experienced something remarkable.

Sherrie Cardozo, Bvlgari T5 Sales Associate, London Heathrow (UK)
In busi­ness in gen­er­al, but es­pe­cial­ly in the lux­u­ry busi­ness, any­body with a loy­al cus­tomer has a piece of trea­sure in hands. How­ev­er, in an air­port with as much pas­sen­ger traf­fic as Heathrow, keep­ing track of all pass­ing cus­tomers is not an easy task. This was not an is­sue for Sher­rie, who found the use of tech­nol­o­gy to be her best ally for en­gag­ing a very par­tic­u­lar type of cus­tomer.

When cus­tomers vis­it our store, they some­times pro­vide a lot of in­for­ma­tion. There­fore, Sher­rie was wise enough to record all this in the Cus­tomer Re­la­tion­ship Man­age­ment tool (CRM). Nev­er­the­less, this was not the only thing that made this cus­tomer spend over 60,000 pounds in less than a year. By check­ing in on this cus­tomer reg­u­lar­ly and keep­ing in reg­u­lar con­tact with her, Sher­rie man­aged to clear­ly un­der­stand this cus­tomer´s pref­er­ences and dis­cov­er what she liked, in or­der to ul­ti­mate­ly build up a real re­la­tion­ship with her. This in­valu­able in­for­ma­tion was use­ful to the staff in store to en­sure that they stocked her pre­ferred col­lec­tion “Ser­pen­ti” at the time she was vis­it­ing our store.

Thanks to this re­la­tion­ship, Sher­rie knew this cus­tomer would be in our store in June and in­vit­ed her for lunch at the best ta­ble at Gor­don Ram­sey´s Heathrow restau­rant. This reg­u­lar cus­tomer of Bvl­gari in Bond Street and Sel­f­ridges was over­whelmed and de­light­ed by the treat­ment re­ceived, which she found su­pe­ri­or to that pro­vid­ed by the Lon­don high-street bou­tiques.

This cus­tomer´s last tick­et is from late Au­gust – for the Ser­pen­ti neck­lace in PG Mala­chite Sap­phire, with a price tag of £ 12,000. This is an ex­cel­lent ex­am­ple of re­tail ex­cel­lence, su­pe­ri­or cus­tomer ser­vice and the val­ue of tech­nol­o­gy. Con­grat­u­la­tions Sher­rie, this is World­Class!

D2 − Stella Poghosyan, Terminal Manager, Armenia

Stel­la joined Dufry Ar­me­nia at the age of 19 whilst still a stu­dent in state en­gi­neer­ing at uni­ver­si­ty. She joined the com­pa­ny as one of the first Sales As­so­ci­ates in 2003 when duty-free shops were es­tab­lished in Ar­me­nia. The com­pa­ny has be­come her first and up to now the only work­ing place where she has made a suc­cess­ful ca­reer, as well as built her hap­py fam­i­ly.

Cur­rent­ly Stel­la is a Ter­mi­nal Man­ag­er, a wife and a moth­er of two love­ly daugh­ters. She has a pet and many hob­bies. But her fa­vorite hob­by is her work, which feels like a sec­ond home and fam­i­ly! In spite of her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at home and in her job, Stel­la also finds time for do­ing sports.

D1 − Veronica Saapunki, MAC Makeup Artist, Helsinki Airport, Finland

Veron­i­ca has re­ceived su­perb feed­back on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions from our cus­tomers and from our Finnish land­lord, Fi­navia. She has the abil­i­ty to make our cus­tomers feel spe­cial. Veron­i­ca has nu­mer­ous pos­i­tive feed­back notes from cus­tomers ex­press­ing grat­i­tude and con­grat­u­lat­ing her for the VIP treat­ment giv­en to them – in­deed, some of them were sur­prised at the stan­dard of ser­vice and treat­ment they re­ceived as – in their words − they were “just or­di­nary cus­tomers!” Veron­i­ca takes the ONE­DUFRY prin­ci­ple of mak­ing our cus­tomers feel spe­cial in our store as her main prin­ci­ple … and this pays back! Not just in recog­ni­tion of her work, but also with the loy­al cus­tomers that re­turn to store, even if it is just to meet Veron­i­ca and wish her a nice sum­mer. Well done!

D4 − Natalia López, Country Customer Service Specialist, Montevideo, Uruguay

Na­talia start­ed work­ing at Dufry in 2004 as a Sales As­sis­tant, and in 2011 her vo­ca­tion for the client led her to move up to the po­si­tion of Cus­tomer Ser­vice.

Cur­rent­ly Na­talia works as Coun­try Cus­tomer Ser­vice Spe­cial­ist, em­pha­siz­ing that what she likes about her job is “deal­ing with clients and the dai­ly chal­lenge of solv­ing new queries” as well as “the en­vi­ron­ment in which we work and the un­der­stand­ing na­ture of the man­agers.”

Na­talia has been a vol­un­teer at the Kan­ga­roo Foun­da­tion for nine months, where she pro­vides emo­tion­al sup­port by ac­com­pa­ny­ing ba­bies from zero to three months who are in a sit­u­a­tion of fam­i­ly vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

We are very proud that Na­talia is part of the Dufry team, and we hope that with her big heart she will en­cour­age more peo­ple to col­lab­o­rate and vol­un­teer in sup­port of dif­fer­ent caus­es.

D2 − Michelle Travis, Beauty Consultant, Melbourne, Australia

Qual­i­ta­tive mea­sures, in­clud­ing eval­u­a­tions based on cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, groom­ing, re­tail op­er­a­tions and team spir­it, and rec­om­men­da­tions from the re­tail and ed­u­ca­tion teams, as well as quan­ti­ta­tive mea­sures (in­di­vid­ual counter per­for­mance) were all part of a per­for­mance eval­u­a­tion for Michelle, who was a can­di­date for Shi­sei­do’s Best Beau­ty Con­sul­tant of the Year awards. Out of the 1,500 par­tic­ipants in the com­pe­ti­tion, Michelle was one of the nine lucky win­ners! Se­lect­ed as the Best Beau­ty Con­sul­tant in the Fra­grance Cat­e­go­ry in Asia-Pa­cif­ic, Michelle, to­geth­er with the oth­er win­ners, will have the chance to vis­it Tokyo in Sep­tem­ber 2019. This is an once-in-a-life­time op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it Shi­sei­do’s head­quar­ters and learn more about the DNA of the Shi­sei­do Group, ex­plor­ing Japan to­geth­er with Shi­sei­do, as well as ex­pe­ri­enc­ing Japan­ese art, beau­ty, cul­ture, scenery and cuisines. We are very proud (and a bit jeal­ous!) of you, Michelle. Well done!

D1 – José Javier Gamonal, Administrative Staff, Hudson Madrid, Spain

Fast track. That is what de­scribes José’s per­for­mance in our com­pa­ny. A for­mer mem­ber of La­gardère staff (for­mer op­er­a­tor of some con­ve­nience stores award­ed to Hud­son in De­cem­ber 2016), he quick­ly found his way and pro­gressed with­in our team. José worked as Spe­cial­ist Store­keep­er for over 12 years. At the time the La­gardère staff were trans­ferred to Hud­son, José was pro­mot­ed to an ad­min­is­tra­tive man­age­ment role, in charge of press, books and sand­wich­es for the op­er­a­tion. With no knowl­edge of our in­ter­nal pro­ce­dures and ways of op­er­at­ing the busi­ness, José took the fast-track route to very quick­ly learn and take con­trol of the new re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and to­day is one of the best per­form­ers with­in the Hud­son op­er­a­tion in Madrid.

José’s se­cret pas­sion how­ev­er is or­nithol­o­gy. He en­joys work­ing as an ex­pert ban­der for some of the most promi­nent or­nithol­o­gy as­so­ci­a­tions in Spain and con­tributes to many pro­grams with his work and re­search.