In this call, we’re back with another leader from Indonesia’s leading logistics-first ecommerce enabler Shipper. In past episodes, we’ve had the pleasure of going on call with CEO Phil Opamuratawongse, then COO Budi Handoko, and most recently CTO Marvin Arif and VP of Engineering Agus Daud. Now we’re introducing a retail, supply chain, commerce veteran who has just joined Shipper in the past few months and has taken up the helm of Chief Customer Officer, Craig Wheeler. He shares on call what he’s bringing to the table for Shipper, his own views on Shipper’s growth trajectory and the rapidly evolving Indonesian ecommerce market, and his approach to leadership and customer service.

Timestamps and Highlights

(01:04) Paulo introduces Craig Wheeler;

(02:01) Bringing 20+ years of retail and commerce expertise into Shipper customer-centric business; “Whereas here [in Indonesia], what we’ve seen is a market that’s been based on speed, making things fast, making things grow, being value-driven, and focusing more on the economy of things…how do we make customer experience a differentiator through supply chain?…there’s not that differentiation. And I think that customer experience will become the playground as [that] develops.”

(09:50) Maturing “Need for Speed” Ecommerce Market in Indonesia; “The biggest thing is speed…[the] ability to deliver that and deliver that continuously well, even into late hours is something that Indonesia is really ahead…[Another] unlearning is also that big thing in Europe is digitalize everything and put machines in everywhere because labor costs are so high…automation’s good…but we automate to a point where it’s efficient and not beyond it, where it starts making life complex.”

(15:28) Commerce Digitalization from On the Ground Listening to Full Stack Tooling; “We have our ear to the ground better than many of those ecommerce enablements…We’re a technology-led business, but we’re a technology-led business [that’s] actually always managed the core of doing the dirty [work]…many businesses are in ecommerce only learn about one way of doing things. And when you have everything from automotive to F&B, every one of those industries brings great learnings across…leveraging tools across technologies from different use cases is something that we are a little uniquely empowered to do.”

(20:44) Beyond enabling better logistics to enable better long-term business growth; “One of the things I don’t see across most ecommerce enablement providers which are mostly software based at the moment is they don’t spend enough time helping people grow…So our approach is if we’ve got somebody there selling a hundred orders a day, how do we get into 200? And if you just say here’s software, that doesn’t get you to 200, you’ve gotta be willing to come and do some service that’s on top of that…”

(25:52) Navigating Leadership in Indonesia; “There’s no one size fits all in anything you do in life, but you come to a country like Indonesia, you can see that people are incredibly hardworking, very loyal, passionate about learning, want to do things fast, want to do things well. And the sense of ownership here is incredibly high people really do take pride in what they do in their team and in their business. It makes it a lot easier as a leader.”

(27:55) Rapid Fire Round;

About our guest

Transcript

Bringing 20+ years of retail and commerce expertise into Shipper customer-centric business

Paulo: To kick things off, since you’ve just joined Shipper a few months ago, would love to know, having come from Kanmo prior to that, and then even before that, you were working mostly in Europe and the US, what were you doing prior to Shipper? And then how did you eventually decide to join? What attracted you to this company in particular?

Craig: As you say, I’ve had over 25 years of supply chain, ecommerce and digital experience, and that, particularly as the digital environment grew, I’ve gone from mainframes to PCs, to laptops, into the world of ecommerce, [building my] first website back in 1997. 

So been around the ecommerce side for an incredibly long time, been lucky enough to manage that across multiple countries, multiple industries, many cultures working in offices throughout Europe and the US, and also managed to set up [selling] to over 120 countries. So it wasn’t the first time when I moved here that I’d sold into Indonesia.

I had sold ecommerce products cross-border to Indonesia before, but certainly, Indonesia offers a few barriers in doing that, so very glad to come here. So as you mentioned, I moved across to Kanmo, a few years back now. And the reason for moving to Indonesia was just the speed of the economy out in this part of the world.

So I saw two things coming in, one [is the] change and speed were high here. I think in Europe, things [have] slowed down a little bit and I enjoy being in that exciting journey of a lot of things happening and happening very quickly, but also Kanmo and retailers in this region offer a different type of experience because they all run multiple brands.

You have many different customers from not just a customer side, but also from the brand side. So it gave a good opportunity to see [these]. And I moved to very different markets. So, [my] reason for choosing Shipper following that is I’d spoken to Shipper for quite a long time.

I was a customer. One week into joining Kanmo. I had a meeting with Shipper and I was signing the contract for using Shipper. So at that state, I didn’t know who Shipper was and I thought it was [literally] just a shipper. I realized that actually, it’s the business that was offering us a carrier aggregator opportunity, which is pretty unique in Indonesia.

I probably chased Shipper them for months before joining. I think I first spoke to Pak Budi back in July 2021 saying, “Hey, I can see what you guys are doing. It’s quite exciting. And maybe it’s the right next move for me.” 

And that was based on the business. It seems to have a vision that fits. It has great values. It’s definitely already customer-centric, but I could also see the opportunity within the space, both the digital space and the supply chain space. I felt that Indonesia hasn’t maximized or optimized what’s possible in this space and having shipped my first product out of a warehouse nearly 30 years ago, [I had] the idea that I could come in and help transform that space and fit into a space probably often forgotten about in Indonesia. 

There are a lot of entrepreneurs. There are a lot of shop owners. There are a lot of business leaders, but they often don’t think about what they consider the more boring bits, which is how do we get products to the right people, offer that customer experience, and really drive what can be delivered to the customer and it will become a game changer. 

Today, it might not yet be, but it will become a game changer. So I felt that Shipper was there. They were already doing a lot of this, but I felt in talking to — especially when I talked across a group of people, a similar list to what you’ve just given us that you’ve already interviewed, there’s a huge opportunity for me to bring my learnings, especially my learnings of the things that have worked badly, so we don’t make those mistakes, [and] to bring that focus into the supply chain, especially digitally enabled supply chain within a country of this scale with so many people in such a large land mass. 

It was a really exciting chance to deliver something quite special, and I think we’re on that journey.

“…there’s a huge opportunity for me to bring my learnings, especially my learnings of the things that have worked badly, so we don’t make those mistakes, [and] to bring that focus into the supply chain, especially digitally enabled supply chain within a country of this scale with so many people in such a large land mass.”

Paulo: There’s something that I usually write about and it’s how a lot of these startups try to hire their customers. And I think literally that happened in your case, having first encountered Shipper as a potential partner or vendor for Kanmo, and then eventually joining the company now as Chief Customer Officer. 

And this role in particular is not something that you see very often. And I think mainly because being customer-centric is something that should be embraced by everybody in the organization. But maybe for those who aren’t so familiar, especially within the context of Shipper, as you mentioned driving digitally enabled logistics, what does it mean, for you to be a Chief Customer Officer?

Craig: Our core value in the business is always to start with the customer. And when I was talking to the team about why I came in, and what I came in to do, we talked about really starting that primary value. That’s how the title came around. It was one that kind of just was born out of that. So the core elements of the role are to lead the commercial team, lead the marketing team and drive our services across the whole business.

So [it’s about] taking that customer feedback and being customer centric in everything we do, and really bring a special focus to listening to the customer and building the solution rather than going, “Here is a solution. Take it.” We’re much more inclined as a business to go, “Okay. what is it you’re looking to do? How do you need to grow? How’s the economy changing?” 

And obviously, in the last couple of years, it’s changed a lot through social commerce, ecommerce growth, and [we’re] making sure that we deliver what customers are after. So the role in its core essence is leading the commercial element but with special focus and we’ve changed our structure a little bit to suit that of really being service centric.

So what are the services we should offer? What does a customer want and how can we deliver that effectively and where possible digitally? So it becomes a little bit easier than following paper trails. When you’re moving boxes around the country, you can often get lost in very basic solutions. And what we are certainly trying to make sure is we’re always digitally enabled and really giving easy to use, clean, powerful solutions to our customers.

“So [it’s about] taking that customer feedback and being customer centric in everything we do, and really bring a special focus to listening to the customer and building the solution rather than going, “Here is a solution. Take it.” We’re much more inclined as a business to go, “Okay. what is it you’re looking to do? How do you need to grow? How’s the economy changing?””

Paulo: It is really exciting to see that Shipper is taking that to the next level with your role as Chief Customer Officer. And I’d like to dig a little bit deeper into your past experiences in retail and e-commerce across the US and Europe. And you mentioned also you were already doing a lot of these like cross-border global transactions with Indonesia included, how have those experiences impacted the way that you’re approaching your work in Shipper?

Craig: The biggest difference between the two markets is that within Europe, what we see is a customer experience led market. So if you go back 15, 20 years ago, it was very much let’s do the basics and let’s do them right. Let’s make sure we have good sustainable logistics solutions.

Let’s make sure we [can] answer a telephone or answer an email or answer a chat, but where the market changes — there’s a lot of good players in the market. There are a lot of great brands and customer experience has become the change. And the way to empower a lot of that customer experience is of course the last mile delivery and how quickly you get the product, how well it’s packaged, how well it’s tracked, and the whole element of the supply chain, making sure [it works] and empowering that.

Whereas here [in Indonesia], what we’ve seen is a market that’s been based on speed, making things fast, making things grow, being value-driven, and focusing more on the economy of things. I think that change will come here. 

So probably the biggest thing, and again, [this] touches on that customer title, which is, how do we make customer experience a differentiator through supply chain? Instead of at the moment, probably everybody thinks it’s just being delivered by a courier. It doesn’t matter which courier it is in, doesn’t matter if you buy it on a marketplace like Tokopedia, or a branded website, or the ones I used to look after, there’s not that differentiation. 

And I think that customer experience will become the playground as [that] develops. And that’s something that you already see. I think Indonesian customers are already quite demanding. I think what we will find is that demand of expectation of what comes especially as now ecommerce and social commerce have grown a lot through COVID. 

We’re already starting to see people asking, “Can I return products? Why is it easy to return products? Why do I not get everything delivered from a warehouse as close to my house, if it’s tier two or tier three city? Why am I having it delivered out of a warehouse in Jakarta that’s more expensive? It costs more money. Surely it’s not right to do that.”

We’re starting to see that. And I think that change will come and that’s where a lot of the best practices can come from Europe, that’s really where they’ve been focused.

“Whereas here [in Indonesia], what we’ve seen is a market that’s been based on speed, making things fast, making things grow, being value driven, and focusing more on the economy of things…how do we make customer experience a differentiator through supply chain?…there’s not that differentiation. And I think that customer experience will become the playground as [that] develops.”

Maturing “Need for Speed” Ecommerce Market in Indonesia

Paulo: So you’re definitely seeing the ecommerce customer and also the industry, in general, is maturing. Definitely, that’s where the learnings can come in. But at the same time, are there things that you have to sort of unlearn coming from Europe or coming from the US that, “This might not actually work here in Indonesia.” Anything that’s uniquely Indonesian with how you’ve seen the ecommerce market mature here? 

Craig: The biggest thing is speed. It means speed in delivery. Instant delivery is clearly an absolute key definer in this market. Whereas in Europe, next day, two days, three days long as you know when it is [coming], it’s fine as long as it gets delivered okay. 

But here, I think there’s an instant requirement, “Why can’t I have it now?” and [the] ability to deliver that and deliver that continuously well, even into late hours is something that Indonesia is really ahead, so that’s definitely one of the key things here. 

[Another] unlearning is also that big thing in Europe is digitalize everything and put machines in everywhere because labor costs are so high. Labor costs are a lower economic cost here, and that means that we can do things simpler. So often digital technology doesn’t make things easy. Often digitalization makes things actually more complex and harder to deliver, but it’s been a requirement [in Europe] cause there wasn’t sufficiently trained labor before.

Whereas here [in Indonesia] actually there are lots of good people they’re available and you can use manual processes. I ran a warehouse a few years ago that delivered around half a million orders every day. And that warehouse, to make that really run, I ran over 70% of the volume through a manual pick in Europe. 

So because it actually — often compared machine robot picking, auto sortation, and all that, actually, the people were picking quicker than any machine could pick and their ability to recognize products and make decisions versus all the automation was smoother and quicker.

So automation’s good. And we obviously have a lot of automation within our business. But we automate to a point where it’s efficient and not beyond it, where it starts making life complex. 

“The biggest thing is speed…[the] ability to deliver that and deliver that continuously well, even into late hours is something that Indonesia is really ahead…[Another] unlearning is also that big thing in Europe is digitalize everything and put machines in everywhere because labor costs are so high…automation’s good…but we automate to a point where it’s efficient and not beyond it, where it starts making life complex.”

Paulo: I think also the automation technology itself I guess hasn’t reached that point where the efficiency is worth the cost both in getting the technology and the other cost that you clear from using it. 

A follow up question to that is how do you see sort of this uniquely, I’d say like simpler and perhaps a little bit more labor-driven logistics operation long-term for Indonesia? Do you see it becoming more sort of a mainstay in the market or do you see this changing in the long term?

Craig: I think there are different areas in there. So if you’re talking about enterprise clients, we have some very large clients in our group, businesses like Kanmo…or Matahari that we look after, but in organizations with that scale, automation clearly has a long-term benefit because there’s a huge long tail of products.

I mean, [we] could be talking a hundred thousand different products in a warehouse. If you barcode products improperly and put automation in, you absolutely can drive efficiencies and drive 24-hour working, which again — not everybody wants to work at 24 hours a day — so you can gain some real benefits to that, but you need high-quality warehouses that you [can use] — incredibly high quality.

Every floor has to be perfectly flat. The temperatures need to be temperature balanced in such a way because technology is a little bit fussy about the temperature. It doesn’t really like the heat out here. 

But I think when you talk about a big part of our market, so the small merchants, the MSEs that are the mainstay of the Indonesian economy and a key part of what we believe in supporting. The best way is the most efficient, easy, simple way to deliver. So I don’t think we’re gonna get away from seeing manual processes, or small, efficient warehouses. We have skilled people who learned the products that they’re handling and find efficient, quick ways of doing it.

It’s easier and higher quality to wrap products, for example, a dispatch stage by hand, than it is to do it by a machine which tends to want to leave empty space in because you can’t have every size. So I think that it’s here to stay. 

I think that there’ll be a balance. I think we’ll see the big enterprise customers become more and more automated over the next five years, but for the 70 million SMEs, I think we will find that more manual solutions will be here for quite some time.

“So if you’re talking about enterprise clients…organizations with that scale, automation clearly has a long term benefit because the there’s a hugely long tail of products…But I think when you talk about a big part of our market, so the small merchants, the MSEs that are the mainstay of the Indonesian economy and a key part of what we believe in supporting. The best way is the most efficient, easy, simple way to deliver.”

Paulo: It’s like more than 90% of the Indonesian economy, so it’s still definitely a huge market to tackle for sure. For these long-tail sellers, what does it mean then to digitally enable them if the more efficient way may turn out to be more offline than online?

Craig: I think that there’s a whole range of things from enabling them to selling on marketplaces — we have some digital technology to help that is utilizing the information we get and the power of [business intelligence] and learning, so often that small seller is too busy choosing his next product or what their next promotion is with Shopee.

But what you can do is you can create the intelligence underneath. You can help make sure that you drive efficiencies. Seller store ratings on marketplaces are really important. Make sure that everything gets shipped on time in the right way. You can help them find the cheapest and most efficient way to ship their products.

So through our shipping aggregation tool, we are gonna be able to allow you to choose [vendors] recommended by Shipper, which will allow you to choose, is it a certain delivery time, you’re after? Do you want the cheapest route to market or actually do you want the best quality delivery? Do you want to choose that delivery company that hit a hundred percent delivery level area or that one that delivers at 98%? Sadly the delivery market isn’t perfect yet. 

So I think there’s a lot of things we can do around the information we have, the talent we have, and the automation. Being able to ship by three different shippers and being able to hold your product in a shared warehouse, gives you efficiencies as scale that’s then digitally controlled and allows you access to all of that information to make decisions and make it easier, is definitely a key part of what we want to do.

“…often that small seller is too busy choosing his next product or what their next promotion is with Shopee. But what you can do is you can create the intelligence underneath. You can help make sure that you drive efficiencies.”

Commerce Digitalization Begins with an Ear on the Ground

Paulo: There’s really two key points from what you’ve mentioned — the flexibility plus the data that you amass from all these customers that enables that flexibility and things like warehousing, that makes it a lot easier for these sellers to just focus more on the products that they’re selling.

So given these SMEs that you’re enabling, plus the enterprise customers that you have, what do you think are the factors from your perspective that have helped and continue to help Shipper to balance, adjust and adapt to these different types of customer profiles that they serve.

Craig: Number one thing is listening and learning. we, as a business have always collaborated with our partners. So we have a huge range of partners. We spend a lot of time talking to them, a lot of time listening to them, and taking that approach of collaborating with them.

And then also collaborating with the service partners we work with. So whether that be the carriers, whether that be packaging companies, whether that be warehouse landlords or technology enablers, we sit in a nice pivot point that we enable the small guy to talk to all the big guys with a little bit more power, and that will increase as we grow out our ecommerce enablement features. 

So we’ll talk to Shopee for these guys. We’ll talk to Tokopedia for these guys. We’ll help them have a little bit more power and also help them engage with that through [us]. So I think that it is a constant listening and learning. 

With our bigger customers, it is very much a partnership. So I mentioned Matahari earlier, we’re a partner. Every time that they’re thinking about solutions we are talking to them about opportunities and they’re talking to us about requirements and it’s a very harmonious relationship.

I think if you’ve got a business that keeps its founders involved and you talk about Pak Budi, he’s very much involved in talking to our customers still on a regular basis. and when your founders are still involved in your business, they still understand what’s going on. They still have [their] WhatsApp that they’re getting from customers, keeping them in touch.

So [we’ve] got an ecosystem and a business that hasn’t just built a hierarchy that’s about positioning and solutions. Actually our whole business mantra is keeping in touch with the customer, keep that listening and keep that learning. And yeah especially for me as an expat, the biggest thing that I do is make sure that I’m talking all the time to my local team members every day I learn something new.

I either learn something new about customers, or I learn something new about the solutions or the environment we’re in. It’s one of the things I enjoy most, that this business has been fantastic, so I’m constantly evolving myself, in how I’m trying to work with the business to derive those solutions, because I’m getting constant feedback.

And just yesterday I had a survey put in front of me from 500 of our customers, both those we’d successfully converted and those that sadly we didn’t successfully convert, both the feedback from that and the learnings from that is huge. So, we continue to listen and learn.

“So whether that be the carriers, whether that be packaging companies, whether that be warehouse landlords, or technology enablers, we sit in a nice pivot point that we enable the small guy to talk to all the big guys with a little bit more power, and that will increase as we grow out our ecommerce enablement features.”

Paulo: Listening and learning. And it just goes to show — I think a throughline in our conversation so far is really that digitalization is really more than just tech, especially in a market like Indonesia, it’s really about the customers and the relationships that you build with them as well. 

And so Shipper is also going beyond logistics, and in our conversation with Marvin and Agus, they talked about, at the time recently launched atoor.com, helping SMEs get more active in terms of going into digital marketplaces and all of that.

Even as Shipper is expanding its ecosystem, you’re also seeing a lot more enablers across industries, across market segments, appear in the Indonesian landscape. So how would you say Shipper really stands out and how does being rooted in logistics enable it to build a stronger moat compared to the landscape, and more sustainable operations down the line?

Craig: We have a unique position in that we see where people ship. We’ve got a huge number of people already utilizing our warehousing. Our salesforce and our account management team talk to customers all the time. So [we have] our exposure to the sellers in Indonesia. 

And obviously, we are also working on other segments outside of ecommerce in a lot of additional industries as well. But within that ecommerce sector, we have a huge amount of exposure to them. Obviously, my background and the relationships I’ve also brought in from being in the retail spectrum, being in Indonesia has helped as well in that broad sense of understanding their needs. And we also partner with a lot of other ecommerce and aid businesses already.

So what was taken from that is the difficult thing is how to grow at speed when the experience still is lacking the market. So the opportunities within marketplaces from understanding how to best create a product name or how to drive SEO, or how to drive digital marketing, or how to localize services, which is one of the things that I think really is missed in Indonesia as a whole. There is a real Jakarta-centric focus in ecommerce as a whole. 

But what we’ve been looking at is, say speaking to everybody, gathering their needs, gathering their requirements. What we’re working on now is how can we build quicker? And the more that we are building perhaps isn’t the same as anybody else. It’s a little bit more based on what we have heard. I think we have our ear to the ground better than many of those ecommerce enablements, especially as we’re in Indonesia, and many are outside of the territory.

And those who are within are often very technology-led. We’re a technology-led business, but we’re a technology-led business [that’s] actually always managed the core of doing the dirty [work], of you will, moving the goods around, [with the] relationship we’ve already built. And the “hearing” we constantly have is enabling us to probably build a slightly unique approach, but definitely that ecommerce enablement is key, but also learning across industries.

I think many businesses in ecommerce only learn about one way of doing things. And when you have everything from automotive to F&B, every one of those industries brings great learnings across, and they bring learnings in how to do things, learnings and practices, learnings in how to better build the technology.

So we’ve been building a forecasting tool for our B2B customers, but actually that forecasting tool’s perfect for helping small sellers work out when they’re gonna be out of stock and how many they should top up with. So leveraging tools across technologies from different use cases is something that we are a little uniquely empowered to do.

“We have our ear to the ground better than many of those ecommerce enablements…We’re a technology-led business, but we’re a technology-led business [that’s] actually always managed the core of doing the dirty [work]…many businesses in ecommerce only learn about one way of doing things. And when you have everything from automotive to F&B, every one of those industries brings great learnings across…leveraging tools across technologies from different use cases is something that we are a little uniquely empowered to do.”

Beyond enabling better logistics to enabling better long-term business growth

Paulo: I think one thing that we’re definitely seeing is eventually we’re gonna have, these like full stack, all that compassing sort of enabler software platforms for Indonesian commerce, and certainly Shipper is heading, towards that direction building on top of its its logistics network. What do you think is the biggest, challenge moving forward for Shipper and, how do you see, the company overcoming that in, in the next few years?

Craig: I don’t think there are any huge specific challenges. I think there’s always a desire to be fast. That’s the Indonesian desire entrepreneurs have. Here everybody wants everything now. It’s a cultural thing. So I think that building at speed and also finding the right quality engineers to build the best tools, keeping it easy, keeping it clean, keeping it simple. I think there’s gonna be a big change in the ecommerce market in the region as well.

We clearly [see] a lot more growth to come, and that will come more in brand.com, social commerce tools obviously starting to boom. I’m sure Line will end up out here. And WhatsApp sales are still on the increase as well. So I think that what we’ve got is a big space outside of the marketplaces. And I think those spaces will continue to grow as people own their brand more and value their own customers more. 

So thing is how do you help [them] in that, which the full stack technology you talked about is something we talk about an awful lot. Probably our challenge there is to pick the right partners and to pick the right things that we build. So there are a lot of tools that are out there that are probably too complex or too over the top for what users need.

So keep things simple, build what people need rather what you can charge more for. We’re not about charging for stuff that people don’t need. We wanna build the right technology for the right users and not reinvent the wheel, if somebody’s already done something really well, and we can partner with them and collaborate with them, let’s do that.

But where we think we can bring some unique value let’s put that in place. We’re trying to work our way through how we can provide an ecommerce enabling solution that allows the users themselves to be doing the core piece of the work, but actually really guide them through the whole service.

So make it easy, sign up and build websites or build social selling approaches, make it easier for them to direct consumers, make it easier for them, and I think it’s quite important, where possible, to be Indonesia-centric. We are an Indonesian company. We are very proud of being an Indonesian company and there are a lot of great Indonesian technology businesses here, and partnership with them is critical.

“So keep things simple, build what people need rather what you can charge more for. We’re not about charging for stuff that people don’t need. We wanna build the right technology for the right users and not reinvent the wheel, if somebody’s already done something really well, and we can partner with them and collaborate with them, let’s do that. But where we think we can bring some unique value let’s put that in place.”

Paulo: And you brought up another interesting point, which is, as you’re being customer-centric and for a lot of these businesses, especially the SMEs, Shipper may actually be their first encounter with a digital enabler or a digital tool.

And so there’s a lot of education involved and making sure that they’re guided into how to best make use of what Shipper has to offer. So what is your mindset on that whole education piece and guiding [SMEs], like how hands-on should an enabler be when it comes to these kinds of things?

Craig: That’s probably where I would say we differentiated our mindset from some of the existing businesses out there. You can go onto a website, you can buy some software, and here’s a help guide. We definitely are taking our journey in a very different direction. That you know, we’ve not been that in logistics and supply chain.

We don’t want to be that ecommerce enablement either, but we want to be somebody that’s there through webinars, through direct support. We’re just about to offer the whole host of 360-degree ecommerce reviews for customers [that] we can do for a bunch of our existing customers, free of charge. 

So we can give them a true review of how have you set up your marketing. If they’ve got a brand.com or social selling, how are they doing that and we give them some true help on that. I think there’s a way to bring best practice learnings from what experiences we have in the business and relay them and replay that out without having to do the job for somebody. They can still run their store.

But for a regular basis of review and training, we do a huge number of webinars and a huge number of events. We are very engaged for our community. Our community’s huge and that view of being continually talking is part of our way of learning. 

We talked about your atoor product with just a whole load of video guides on top of that, but actually our next step is, with the people we have on board, is going to be actually offering a very distinct help — how can we help them grow their sales? 

One of the things I don’t see across most ecommerce enablement providers which are mostly software based at the moment is they don’t spend enough time helping people grow in Indonesia to help this economy grow and to really champion the local businesses here. Shipper is very passionate about that. I’m very passionate about that. 

So great alignment there, but we’ve gotta do that by helping train and educate. And that’s something that we have a very big team already doing. We do [it] very successfully, we have huge numbers that attend our events. And the feedback and follow-up from that just continue to improve.

So our approach is if we’ve got somebody there selling a hundred orders a day, how do we get into 200? And if you just say here’s software, that doesn’t get you to 200, you’ve gotta be willing to come and do some service that’s on top of that, helping them review their performance, review how they’re selling, perhaps sharing with them, “Hey, do you know other sellers that sell a similar product with you are finding it really successful in another city? Maybe should open up to that as well.”

“One of the things I don’t see across most ecommerce enablement providers which are mostly software based at the moment is they don’t spend enough time helping people grow…So our approach is if we’ve got somebody there selling a hundred orders a day, how do we get into 200? And if you just say here’s software, that doesn’t get you to 200, you’ve gotta be willing to come and do some service that’s on top of that…”

Navigating Leadership in Indonesia

Paulo: It is definitely going a level beyond just asking, do you need help with your logistics to how can we help you with your end, north star metric or to get to more customers, which may not just be limited to logistics kind of value add?

Before we head into a rapid-fire round, I also wanted to talk about being, an expat and then coming into Indonesia leading very much an Indonesia-centric organization as you’ve described, how would you describe your leadership approach here in the market and how has it compared to, having led other organizations in other markets?

Craig: Ultimately people are very similar all around the world. The key thing is everybody’s slightly culturally different, but I think every individual is different. We’re unique in our ways. So my approach to leadership has definitely been, as an expat coming into a country, I definitely was certainly not coming in and going, “Hey, here are the best practices from all over the world. let’s implement them.”

I think you spend a lot more time learning about what’s been done well in Indonesia, how to motivate people, where decision making like — to see how matrices work within a business and how the culture works in the business.

So I have worked in two businesses, and now I can tell you the two business work very differently. There’s no one size fits all in anything you do in life, but if you come to a country like Indonesia, you can see that people are incredibly hardworking, very loyal, passionate about learning, want to do things fast, want to do things well.

And the sense of ownership here is incredibly high people really do take pride in what they do in their team and in their business. It makes it a lot easier as a leader. Actually, it just means your job is to make sure that you are sharing, that you are guiding, that you are mentoring and you’re really helping the business understand where that north star is that you just talked about.

What is our north star? How do you make sure that the teams are all [heading] in the right way and how you make sure that vision that we have [from our] two great founders is really rolled out and [those] values set through the business. So it is probably one the easiest countries to actually [lead] in, cause I think the culture here is built around pride and a lot of humility.

I mean, this is not a country you come to and hear a lot of politics in business. This is a country where people go, “Can we do that together?” And that makes it much easier. So long as you build out the right frameworks, you build out the right structures, it’s pretty easy to build out here, I think.

“There’s no one size fits all in anything you do in life, but you come to a country like Indonesia, you can see that people are incredibly hardworking, very loyal, passionate about learning, want to do things fast, want to do things well. And the sense of ownership here is incredibly high people really do take pride in what they do in their team and in their business. It makes it a lot easier as a leader.”

Rapid Fire Round

Top 3 traits of a great Chief Customer Officer? 

Craig: Definitely to listen and learn from customer colleagues. Keep things simple, deliver easy-to-use solutions. And for me, probably the first one is don’t try to be everything to everybody. It’s a common mistake made by many. Focus on delivering for your customer, not adding features that people don’t need. Focus on what our customers need. We don’t sell to every customer in the world. We sell to Indonesia and we sell to a group of customers within. 

I’d love to sell to all 70 million businesses. I can recruit the extra salespeople, no problems. So if everybody wants to come, we’ll service the whole country, but we’re not servicing 70 million customers sadly. Second, everybody start building lots of redundant stuff and directions. We have a direction we know who we are.

Favorite book / podcast / resource to learn about commerce?  

Craig: So I love a guy called Ken Blanchard. He did books like One Minute Manager. And my favorite book of his is Raving Fans, which is about customer service. You won’t be surprised to hear it in the context of the US. It’s a really good reminder — very Americanized, which I don’t fully enjoy reading but it’s a really good reminder of how to keep things simple and what’s important. And so he’s got a huge suite of books, but my favorite two are One Minute Manager and Raving Fans.

What digital technology/innovation excites you the most today, apart from what you are working in Shipper? 

Craig: AI technology and WhatsApp and Line selling. I think there’s a huge opportunity for AI learning in social selling. It’s something that I was working on in my previous role. And it really did excite me there. And I think that if it can be really got right and it can be properly based around machine learning as well as the AI element, I think that it’s exciting, especially in a market like this, when I ask most customers, “What do you want to do? How can I make ecommerce more exciting for you?” They said to me, “Make it easier for me to buy on WhatsApp, not make it easier on your website.” And then I said, “How do you like to look at the products and they say, “Go to the website.” “Okay. So you want WhatsApp, we link to the website. So you need both.” But I think that the more that can be AI-driven the better. Because I think that when people want to talk on WhatsApp at midnight, sadly, most sellers are offline. AI could help fill that gap.

Advice for global professionals like yourself looking to plant roots and play a leadership role in one of Indonesia’s startup ecosystem? 

Craig: My advice to anybody who’s looking to come to Indonesia is every society’s different.

Take your time to learn about it. Learn about the culture, learn about the people here. People are in entrepreneurial, hardworking, loyal, as I mentioned, but you can’t just come here and then book best practices. What you have to do is come learn and then apply the right best practice in the right way and build on the localized benefits that there’s so many things that done better in the market here than elsewhere in the world. 

And don’t think that everything’s better from elsewhere. So if you’re coming into Indonesia, you come in, you learn about it. You take the best parts of Indonesia, and there are many of them and then transform those best practices to fit this market. Not just go one size fits all. This is what we should do here. Anybody who wants to come over and who does that, they are lucky enough to come to Indonesia. It’s a great place to be.

Most memorable class / course? What did you learn? 

Craig: The very best classes I’ve experienced a few times is when I’ve been a coach. I’ve done quite a lot of coaching throughout my career and I’ve particularly enjoyed coaching customer service team lessons. So when you get together a customer service team, you talk about how to empower them and how to get them working better.

Because the learnings you get back from them, face-to-face time with customer service teams in, especially when they’re allowed to come away from the phones or come away from the email log chat and just share when you’ve opened up their minds, you learn so much. I mean it’s just eye-opening. Pretty much every time I’ve done a major session with the customers I’ve left with probably 20 actions I need to go and do, either changing a customer offering or improving the way that we relate to our customers. 

So my favorite things to do, I haven’t done one with Shipper yet, so looking forward to our new training facilities. I’m really looking forward to going and doing a session with the people on the ground.

Favorite activity to de-stress? 

Craig: [Having] a quiet time alone with my wife. So in life, if you’ve got a fantastic partner, it’s a great place to be. She allows me to recharge my batteries, and take my mind off work. My mind’s always buzzing into work, so to be able to shut down and not think about work for a while means that I recharge my batteries and really come back. So it is quiet time, watching a movie, doing a Netflix series in a day is something that really is my favorite. I really like that quiet time away from the hustle and bustle.