Hubert Reynier, founder and president of Visconti Partners, welcomes today Aurélien Henry, CEO of Velvet Consulting, Velvet Consulting, Velvet is a leader in supporting companies in their customer orientation. It is a consulting company that has grown by 20 to 30% per year.

The theme of this podcast is about resilience.

Who is Aurélien Henry?

Aurélien Henry has been passionate about customer advice for twenty years. He has experienced it in various business sizes and structures, for different customers. After falling in love with consulting, he was seduced by Velvet and its integrated model, which brings together people who are passionate about the customer, with data skills, consulting, and boundless creativity, all accompanied by a very particular mindset.

More personally, Aurélien has a teaching father and a psychotherapist coach mother, so the subject of transmission is particularly important to him. That is why he so appreciates advice and coaching, which he enjoys so much. Aurélien is committed to ensuring that his teams have as much fun as he does on a daily basis.

What is Velvet?

Velvet is the only firm in France that has developed its model around the client, using a multidisciplinary approach. Its mission is to transform businesses by allowing them to create unique and sustainable experiences. Using a customer-centric approach, Velvet helps businesses build brand strength by delivering consistent and inspiring experiences across channels.

Leader in terms of “customer-centric” experience, their daily job is to design unique experiences and journeys, aimed at retaining customers over the long term.

This requires ingenuity but also to think about the orchestration of all the speeches and to coordinate the creative, data, technological and consulting dimensions.

It's Velvet's job.

Velvet addresses all industries, and focuses these transformations on B2B, such as B2C. However, the company has a few preferred sectors, such as luxury and beauty. Customer experience story.

Indeed, Velvet is a company that caters to all sectors of activity, but which has made luxury and beauty its first area of expertise. In recent years, luxury has undergone a major transformation by focusing more on the customer experience.

For one of its customers, Velvet worked on the distribution experience by setting up systems to allow consumers to pre-select information from a catalog, make an appointment with an advisor, and receive personalized care or advice during their in-store visit.

The objective is to combine the advantages of data and digital technology to offer personalized shopping journeys that meet the individual needs of each customer.

In the luxury sector, for example, there are many players who had a detailed knowledge of the job of store consultant and the preferences of certain customers. But thinking beyond this relationship and thinking about following up on the website or app was difficult to orchestrate.

Velvet grew by self-financing and then had the chance to join WPP, the world leader in communication, what did this transition mean?

The Velvet project was born nineteen years ago using an avant-garde approach. Very quickly, the Data Science activities were launched, then the Technology activity. These were the first steps in a process of including different skills in the service of the customer experience. Three years ago, they wanted to strengthen this multidisciplinary project on new dimensions. Almost 3 years ago, Velvet joined the WPP group. This was a great opportunity to accelerate this industrial project, which was extremely aligned with the original project.

This integration took place over a period during which the ability to create a direct link with people and to see teams was hectic. Here we can talk about resilience but also about agility. Aurélien believes that the nature of a firm such as Velvet, which was built around a multi-sectoral, multi-functional approach, gave them the ability to bounce back and be agile, allowing them to get through these two years strongly, but also to have facilities to accelerate synergies with WPP agencies.

In 2033, what will customer marketing advice be?

On their first website it was marked that Velvet was “an expert in customer marketing”, which was actually their starting point. Marketing has an important place within businesses around the ability to deliver experiences. Over the years, Velvet has strengthened its expertise, well beyond marketing, with a capacity to support all actors who contribute to implementing customer experiences.

They went from a company that worked 90% with marketing directors to a company that works with all operational departments that contribute to the customer transformation plan. Over the next ten years, Aurélien and his teams will be even more present on major dimensions:

- Data and the innovative force that accompanies it. The subject of the algorithm, of data and the question of the fluidity between human actions and the algorithmic contribution.

- The CSR dimension. This means thinking up new economic models, and setting them up in a sustainable vision... The topics on which Velvet is working are: the valorization of sustainability, especially in luxury, repair in electronics, monitoring and traceability in textiles... They are moving towards a sustainable transformation of the customer experience. They are very committed to these subjects and this corresponds to the demands of their customers, but also to the deep conviction for which the employees join Velvet.

Speaking of collaborators, what does it mean to run Velvet?

Managing Velvet represents a lot of pleasure and pride for Aurélien. The greatest asset is its team. All employees have committed themselves during these last years of transformation. The team is passionate and exciting. They are in the place where they are learning about the customer experience and things that are not taught in all schools. Because there are constantly new practices that can only be discovered in the field.

And on the other aspects, what does it mean to be a leader?

Work on the coherence of the project. Through what drives us on a daily basis, working with a Management Committee, all this time spent building what makes sense, involving teams..., we must ensure that the project resonates with the actions. It is therefore necessary to take a step back at a regular pace to verify that what has been decided is consistent with the experience of the teams. You also have to know how to remain humble, recognize that everything will not always be consistent, be able to correct it if necessary and trust the teams. The job of manager is a job in which we seek with the rest of the organization to progress, adjust and build the most solid project possible.

From a more personal point of view, what has changed about Aurélien since he started Velvet?

For Aurélien, taking on leadership responsibility means maintaining a balance and taking the time to recharge. He understands its importance in daily work management and strives to take regular breaks to relax.

It has also put in place mechanisms to gather team feedback and identify opportunities for improvement. For him, this leadership position is an opportunity for continuous learning and he sees Velvet as a space where everyone can contribute to shaping their profession.