Leader Spotlight: Creating a ‘choose your own adventure’ experience, with Peter Sucher

Peter Sucher is Senior Director of Digital Product Management at Girl Scouts of the USA. He started his career at DGA Security as a project manager and worked his way up to becoming Head of Product. Peter then transitioned to American Express, where he served as Director of Operations & Product Development before moving to Girl Scouts of the USA.

In our conversation, Peter talks about how he works to build a “choose your own adventure” experience for the Girl Scouts he serves — specifically in terms of how much they want to express themselves and engage their customer base. He shares how feedback from Girl Scouts and other stakeholders creates innovations around the digital cookie-selling experience, and talks about the complexities of catering to a new cohort of Girl Scouts, caregivers, and volunteers every year. Peter also shares the importance of diversity in teams and his approach to promoting an inclusive environment.

Enabling Girl Scouts to find their voice

You’ve made the point that your primary goal isn’t to sell the most cookies. Could you say a bit more about that?

In my position, it’s about more than just creating products that customers want. My customers, ultimately, are the Girl Scouts, their caregivers, and the volunteers who help make Girl Scouting possible. Because of that, it’s about listening to what those folks want and imbuing the Girl Scout brand and culture into what I offer to them.

I have to follow two main principles in my job: making our products easy to use — because we serve people of all different ages, skills, and technical proficiencies — and making the experience fun and energetic. Of course, I focus on making sure that the functionality is sound and that it does the jobs it needs to do. For example, can a Girl Scout set up her cookie site? Can she set a goal for herself and an intention about what she’s going to learn from that? I also try to add some fun to it. Once she hits that goal, how can we celebrate that? For example, I’ll add a firework effect on the screen so that she knows we’re celebrating this milestone.

We’ve also done things like creating a celebration, or “cheers,” functionality, which allows Girl Scouts to cheer each other on and for customers to send good luck wishes on reaching a goal. Many learning and programmatic elements go into my work. My job is also to coach and push our Girl Scouts to be entrepreneurial and to find their voice in that experience. It’s interesting to me because it’s so multifaceted and also so rewarding for that reason.

How long does it take, on average, for a Girl Scout to set up her site?

Minutes — it’s pretty simple. Of course, it depends on the Girl Scout and what she’s looking to do. There are some core elements they have to do to set up the site. For example, they have to set a goal for that sale, talk about what they’re going to use the money for with their troop, and what they’re hoping to learn from it. They can choose either a default image or they can upload a picture of themselves. They may also choose to record a video of themselves talking about what they hope to do in the Girl Scout cookie sale.

A lot of Girl Scouts decide to go beyond the basic site setup, and in the case of those videos, the cookie customers are energized by watching that. It’s like a “choose your own adventure” in terms of how much the Girl Scout wants to express herself and try to engage her customer base.

Measuring digital engagement

Do you have any stats on cookie sales against the engagement of the website?

There are so many factors, so it’s hard to say. The sales themselves are so geographically diverse. Girl Scout cookie sales have been going on for almost 100 years if not more than that. This is a scrappy group that originally baked the cookies themselves. They engage in a lot of different ways with our digital selling option.

For example, in New York City, most of the girls don’t have a lot of space to store the boxes of cookies they’re going to sell. So, they do a lot more digital sales compared to girls in more rural settings.

Of course, creating a better site generally means that a Girl Scout is going to be more engaged in selling cookies online. I’d say there’s a potential correlation without causation there.

When you’re trying to add fun to the site, how do you go about determining what your young demographic — the Girl Scouts who are building their own sites — actually find fun?

That is where that celebration functionality comes into play. We actually did a huge project last year, which was the first time that all of the Girl Scouts and purchases went through a single frontend website. That meant that the caregivers and the Girl Scouts themselves were dealing with their own version of that frontend to publish their cookie sale sites.

We built that cheers functionality, and later in the season, we were stunned to see that there were over one million cheers sent throughout this website. And this is not a sophisticated cheer — it’s a little GIF or image with a customized message. We saw huge engagement with that. That told me that Girl Scouts were excited to log in and see what their cheers were, as well as to go back in and cheer their friends.

What metrics do you rely on to measure that engagement?

We rely a lot on data analytics from external tools and analytics aggregate software. We also do a fair amount of polling and group conversations with Girl Scouts, their caregivers, and volunteers. We have a whole operations arm of the company that has face-to-face meetings with our councils.

For example, we ran a CSAT survey for our customer buying experience within the last year. That was more focused on the customer rather than the Girl Scouts. This is because a Girl Scout has a reason to come back year after year, but the customer is only as good as that last cookie-purchasing experience. They don’t necessarily have a reason to come back digitally. They can say, “You know what? I’m going to pick up those cookies from the stand downtown next time.”

That customer experience was something that we were really interested in and engaging with for this last season. We’re going to be expanding that in the coming years as far as having more surveying directly through the website. In terms of customers, we put a lot of stock in their purchasing experience. How positive was it and what issues did they see? We want to have open text fields for people to share these things so we can address them.

Innovating and evolving the cookie-selling experience

How do Girl Scouts foster innovation in their selling? Do they have ways to customize the selling experience beyond what you offer them?

Yes. We offer different methods to purchase Girl Scout cookies. Customers can use the website or mobile app, or they can buy at a stand in person. Also, we offer more delivery methods on the website: a customer can get cookies shipped to them, they can order cookies for a Girl Scout to deliver to them, which comes with no additional shipping and handling or delivery fees, and they can also pre-order from a booth.

The girls market these options pretty heavily and it’s great. They can email their cookie site to a customer list, and that list follows them year after year. Something else that I saw an entrepreneurial girl do in my neighborhood was to print out the website QR code on cardstock with some messaging on it and post it around the neighborhood. She secured some big sales for that season.

The Girl Scouts can be a part of someone’s life from childhood to adulthood. How do you see that journey evolve in the people you serve?

We see it all the time. There comes a time when a Girl Scout is an ambassador. She’s going off to college, maybe becoming a Gold Award Girl Scout getting — the highest level — and transitioning into the alumni phase of Girl Scouting. There is a practice in which a Girl Scout may pass their customer list to a younger Girl Scout to say, “Hey, here is my customer list, and I’m not going to be marketing to them anymore.” They can pass their list to anyone they choose, and it’s a practice that I’m always impressed by.

They’re so collaborative and willing to help one another, and that’s one of the things that I find inspirational about working for this company.

Catering to new user cohorts every year

Are there any specific features or innovative technologies that you’ve added to make the cookie-selling experience more engaging and rewarding for Girl Scouts?

We introduced a technology last year that sits on the user interface layer and walks people through some of the more complicated steps of setting up a cookie site. It highlights the steps they need to do and where they need to do them. This initiative was prompted by the fact that even though I can make the site as intuitive as possible, every year, we get a new crop of Girl Scouts and their caregivers, and they all vary in terms of tech savviness.

Some folks may use a smartphone to set up their website, while others use a desktop computer. I see the gamut of it as far as ability. So, we created these onscreen visual guides to walk people through these operations. We saw huge adoption of it — tens of thousands of people — and it’s been very exciting.

You’ve worked at companies such as American Express where the audience doesn’t change significantly each year. In those instances, how do you balance innovation with usability/user familiarity when designing new digital experiences for customers?

Interestingly, there is a through line in all three companies I’ve worked at: making sure that the product works 100 percent of the time. For example, when I worked in a security system company, there was no room for error as to whether or not an alarm needed to go off. And for a financial services company, there is no room for error on when that site or app can go down.

That same sense of stability applies to the Girl Scouts too. I look at stability and usability first and foremost, and then innovation has to lag a little bit behind that. Because, if I don’t keep those core principles in check, the Girl Scout ecosystem won’t care much about a fancy thing — they need it to work well all the time first.

Covering a diversity of experience

What’s your approach to developing and retaining talent in a very competitive space?

Ensuring that I cover a diversity of opinions, experiences, perspectives, and skill sets, is important to me, as well as hiring people that I feel confident in letting fly free. How can I help them thrive? How can I empower them to be the best employees that they can be? How can I give them the freedom to do what they do best?

I look to hire people who excel at specific functions of their job. Of course, there are some aspects of any job that people may not be as passionate about or experienced in, so I try to remain flexible in what the individual job duties are. I want to make sure my employees can thrive in their job functions. If someone hates doing something, often I can find someone else on the team who enjoys that task and transition it over.

We have to feel good about the work that’s in front of us. We have to feel good about what we do in our day to day. Are there some elements of everybody’s job that leave something to be desired? Of course. But where and when I see opportunities for someone else to thrive or to take something on, I’m absolutely willing to do that.

In your opinion, how do diversity and inclusion impact initiatives in the workplace culture, as well as business outcomes?

I’ve served a diverse audience in all companies I’ve worked at in terms of age, geography, demographics, sexual orientation, race, etc. Reflecting the diversity of the customers that you serve helps each person bring their own unique experience to the table. It also helps you better serve your target audience.

I am someone who’s always been about promoting that and making sure that my team feels welcome. For example, I’m gay. I have a husband. And I do my best work not when I feel tolerated, but when I feel accepted and promoted for who I am. I have always felt that it’s really important to make my employees feel appreciated for who they are as individuals.

This philosophy also helps you build a better product. You’re hearing that diversity of point of view and tackling the way that you’re building things through that lens. That helps you build a product that serves a diverse audience, and that’s something that’s always been close to my heart.

The importance of good storytelling

When you’re interviewing folks to join your team, do you have a particular question that helps you identify if they’ll be a good fit?

Something that I do during each of my interviews is have someone walk me through the story of their career. I want to understand what they did, how they did it, what challenges they faced along the way, and how they tackled those challenges.

In doing this, I’m also looking to see how they tell a story. How do they express themselves? How do they communicate what those skills are? If I ask someone to tell me the story of their career and they read three bullets off of their resume, that tells me that’s probably how they like to communicate. In product management, you must have thorough communication — whether you’re talking to engineers, business stakeholders, marketing, or executive leadership. It’s important to know how to tell a story and convey an idea.

Lastly, do you have a favorite Girl Scout cookie?

That’s really tough, and my favorite changes over time. But, Tagalongs are an old faithful that I will always love because I’m a big peanut butter chocolate person. For example, my wedding cake with my husband six years ago was a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. But, a cookie that I find myself drawn to more recently is the S’mores, which is like a graham cracker with chocolate and marshmallow inside. I just love the texture and the flavor of that cookie. I enjoy them all, but those two are my favorites.