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Delphine Merlot
Director of Customer Experience and Engagement at Catalyst Housing Limited
Professional Background
Delphine Merlot is a dedicated professional with a remarkable background in customer experience and engagement. Currently serving as the Director of Customer Experience and Engagement at Catalyst Housing Limited, she has built a career that showcases her deep obsession with customers and her enthusiasm for creating memorable experiences. With an expansive tenure at various high-profile organizations, Delphine has consistently demonstrated her ability to innovate and transform customer service paradigms, earning her a reputation as a thought leader in her field.
Before joining Catalyst Housing Limited, Delphine held multiple significant positions at The Guinness Partnership, where she served as the Director of Customer Experience. Her contributions there focused on enhancing customer satisfaction, streamlining service delivery, and embedding customer-centric methodologies across the organization.
At the Rail Delivery Group, Delphine was the Head of Innovation & Partnerships, where she spearheaded initiatives designed to foster collaborative partnerships and implement innovative solutions to improve customer engagement within the rail industry. Her previous experiences at Eurostar further solidified her expertise in customer service delivery and innovation, where she held various leadership roles, including Head of Customer Service Delivery & Development and On Board Customer Experience Manager.
Delphine's professional journey has been marked by her commitment to challenging the status quo, ensuring that customer and employee experiences are prioritized in every operational aspect. She meticulously balances logic and intuition to make informed decisions that positively impact overall engagement and satisfaction. Her forward-thinking approach has led her to successfully implement change management strategies and emotional engagement initiatives across organizations.
Education and Achievements
Delphine Merlot's academic foundation is rooted in her studies of Lettres Modernes at the prestigious Université La Sorbonne in Paris. Her education has provided her with not only a strong command of language and communication but also a keen understanding of cultural nuances, which she applies in her professional endeavors.
Throughout her career, Delphine has been recognized for her outstanding contributions to the fields of service design and customer engagement. Her work has consistently led to improved customer satisfaction and operational efficiencies across several sectors, notably rail and housing. She is passionate about coaching and mentoring others, advocating for cultural change programs that resonate with both employees and customers alike.
Delphine's leadership style emphasizes transparency, collaboration, and empowerment. She promotes a culture that values customer and employee feedback, leveraging insights from the voice of the customer to drive strategic decisions. Her commitment to emotional engagement ensures that both customer and employee experiences are enriched and valued, setting a gold standard in service delivery.
Notable Achievements
Delphine's career is punctuated with significant achievements that underscore her capabilities as a leader and innovator. As Head of Customer Service Delivery & Development at Eurostar, she played a critical role in revising service protocols, leading to enhanced customer experiences and elevated brand loyalty. Her strategic approaches to service innovation resulted in award-winning customer service that set benchmark standards within the industry.
During her tenure at The Guinness Partnership, Delphine pioneered initiatives that integrated feedback mechanisms, enabling the organization to adapt swiftly to the changing needs and preferences of its customer base. This adaptive approach not only improved customer retention rates but also fostered a sense of community and trust within the organization.
At Rail Delivery Group, Delphine's leadership led to the successful establishment of partnerships that enhanced service offerings and improved the overall travel experience for customers across the rail network. Her ability to identify and harness opportunities for collaboration reflects her strategic mindset and commitment to delivering outstanding service.
Overall, Delphine Merlot’s impressive background and her passion for customer experience culminate in significant advancements in customer engagement strategies. Her multifaceted expertise enhances organizational capacities, delivers customer satisfaction, and ultimately contributes to sustainable growth and success across sectors.
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Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
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- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
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Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
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Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.