CX Weekly Live: Customer Feedback in Product Development
VP of Product & UI at Fabletics, Melanie Cummings joins Brian Lastovich to chat about how Fabletics uses all of their customer data in improve their membership experience.
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We'll get right into it, Mal, like, well, first, please,
Mal works at Fabletics, VP of Product in UX.
So first thing, Mal, like, for those that don't know a little bit about Fablet
ics, please, like, tell us a little bit about Fabletics.
And also, I find this fascinating, too, like, your role, and your case,
what you work on daily, monthly, quarterly basis a little bit.
This could take the whole meeting, sorry, about that.
Like, tell us a little bit about that.
No, no, we're getting big questions.
Yeah, for those that don't know Fabletics, we are a apparel brand.
We sell active product for men and women.
And we also have a shape where I'm lying called Gidey.
And that we sell for women, which is great.
I've been at Fabletics for nine years.
I actually just went through a bit of a role transition as well.
So I'm actually now head of product and technology.
I haven't even updated LinkedIn, because it's so fresh.
Ooh.
I oversee kind of all product UX, engineering QA for Fabletics Web,
global app, and retail tech stacks.
So quite a large swap of things.
But it's super exciting, and I really enjoy it.
I'm here for quite a while, so I must.
That's true, too, to hop on.
In time.
We've been with Fabletics.
It's been nine years now.
And I actually have, like, a weird journey.
I started in our retail stores.
I was the manager of retail ops and project delivery,
which, like, ridiculous title.
But it basically meant I handled anything that happened
within the four walls of the retail store.
But thank, like, policies, procedures, accounting, security,
inventory control.
But then a huge component of that was our technology,
which, still a city, and it was at the time,
it's a mobile application that's on an iPod.
And it's basically a merger of our Facilment Center technology
and our e-commerce tech.
We kind of pulled it together, and we have our own app
that we use to transact and help customers check out.
So I started doing that with Fabletics the way back in the day.
And then about seven years ago, I moved into a leadership role
on the web team over product.
And I've been kind of doing a version of that here ever since,
which has been great.
So one thing I want to call out now is that we've talked
a several times now.
And this is what's always intriguing and why I love talking to you
about it, which is like the customization of Fabletics, right?
Before we get into customer feedback and stuff,
tell me a little bit about the philosophy that maybe you have
as well as the company has about building as opposed to buying
sometimes, if you don't mind telling a little bit about that.
Yeah.
No, it's just a great question.
Fabletics has been around for about 10 years,
but we're part of like a larger company that's been around maybe
15 or a little bit, 15 or 16 years.
And we started in the subscription and kind of membership space
way before it was really common.
Like when I first joined Fabletics 10 years ago or nine years ago,
like the membership in and of itself just wasn't common in the market.
People didn't understand it.
You know, it's not like today where there's so many different
subscription boxes and things that you can get.
So we were kind of like speaking a new language to customers.
We were offering definitely a different type of value and something
unique in terms of our competitive advantage.
And we found that a lot of the things that we wanted to provide
were things that were like off the shelf capable with a lot of
technology providers, right?
It would have needed a lot of customization.
So from the jump, we've really taken that as an opportunity
to say, hey, if we want to deliver this core membership value as a
competitive advantage and we want to control that destiny,
it's better for us to just own that technology and be able to
drive it and manipulate it go forward.
So that was really kind of the generation of a lot of our tech
strategy.
And for a long time, we pretty much almost exclusively built it
ourselves because we had a really robust internal team.
We were able to connect a lot of our strategies to the membership
directly and we wanted to make sure that that made sense.
From the perspective that we have hyper customized experiences
based on if you're shopping with us kind of logged out or as a
lead customer who hasn't opted into the membership or as an actual
VIP member with us.
We started to shift that a little bit over the last two years,
kind of as some of the technology solutions have caught up with
where we were at.
And there's opportunities to plug and play.
Great example is with personalization.
There's some fantastic vendors out there that are doing great
things that we're starting to partner with.
But a true core competitive advantage for us really is
the membership technology that we have and our ability to kind of
manipulate that test things, change it and enhance it on behalf of the
customer.
And we'll get into again, like I do want to give in the customer feedback,
but you always bring up certain points.
So do you think that it sounds to me like there is this
little bit of shift that's like, oh, now you may be a little more
interested to kind of see what else is out there.
Is that more on the tech side, you think of like maybe more and
more new product releases, new technology now than ever before?
Or you think that reason is more on the fabric side is being open to it?
Seeing it has to be both, right?
I think philosophically we're a little bit more open because we have a
hugely robust internal technology team and you kind of start to get to that
point where you're like, I can't keep adding heads to solve these problems.
Like that is always the solution.
It's like build your team and grow it.
Let's see if it's more cost effective to partner with somebody.
But we'll say, you know, especially I feel like in the last two years,
there's been so many advancements in kind of what companies are offering
and how easy it is to integrate with them.
Great example is last year we were exploring doing like some social
proofing on the site.
So if you were shopping, you could see like extra where people are viewing or
have recently purchased this item just as like kind of a social validation of the
product purchase.
And we had like done a proof of concept internally.
It's something we absolutely could have done with the team that we had.
But then we found TagStar as a partner and the integration took like two or
three weeks. And we were alive before cyber and it was like really low effort and they've
been great partners.
So it was such a great example of like, yes, we could have done it.
But it was probably easier and less half full to go with somebody who is doing
it professionally.
And then their ability to help us kind of strategize around it has been
successful as well.
Yeah, and footnote on that, which is, I've, that's probably like the third or
fourth time I've heard it in the last few weeks or more
less like implementations, migrations.
I think that the the ability of AI right now like takes a project that might
have been 10, you know,
let's say 10 weeks of work and it does make that more of a five week or four
week plan.
And so if that's something that I've heard a lot about with implementations.
Yeah, yeah. And I think like as a technologist like up a trend, I'm also
noticing is solution providers being more intentional
about how they build their architecture for integration.
Like when I was doing this, you know, 10 plus years ago, when I was kind of on
the Oracle kind of more on the BDB side,
like that wasn't a thought. We would just kind of be like, here's our solution.
And like, implementation was almost like an app on the you could kind of upsell
And like that was part of like the business is like you could kind of get the
implementation plus the recurring revolution.
This is description. Now nobody wants to do that.
And I've seen a lot newer technologies that are smarter about how they do that
for a simple implementation.
So it just takes the pressure off.
100% agree with that.
Yeah, they think about partnerships and integrations from early on within the
within the product life cycle there.
So now I want to get into customer.
So customer feedback was I think something that I emailed you maybe like a
month ago or so.
And again, that's a previous conversation that we had with some examples that
you shared.
The first thing that I was asking when you think about customer feedback, you
know,
do you mind double clicking into that and sharing like, well, what exactly is
customer feedback in the world of fabletics?
Yeah, I mean, for us, it's it's very layered.
So obviously we're a membership program.
And I think being a membership program in and of itself creates a higher level
of expectation and demand from the customer in terms of like your
who is a brand listening to them hearing their feedback and actioning on it.
They're kind of investing in us.
So to speak in the sense that you're opting in a membership, you're choosing
each month.
If you want to get build a credit with us or not, you're coming to the site or
the mobile app or the store to check out our inventory.
And if you're not listening to the customer, like it's going to present a lot
more tone death than if it's somebody you're just choosing to purchase that,
you know, with once in a while, right?
So we take that kind of like relationship with the customer very seriously and
that's expectation.
We hold that to a really high standard because if you don't, then kind of why
would you have the membership?
I think it we lose a lot of credibility.
Is that something that you are setting the expectation yourself with the
consumer early on?
Or do you think that the consumers are already expecting that experience from
the get go?
I think it's a little bit of both.
I think again, as the market has kind of come along from a membership and
subscription perspective, I felt kind of like the pressure dial up, honestly,
you know, over time, because customers are smart.
Like they know, like they hear trends about AI, they hear trends about personal
ization, like they know what we could do for them.
And they're looking at it as like a choice if you don't.
So super great example. We do these events in person in our LA office called
meet the member where we genuinely invite actual members who are, you know,
part of our program to come to the office and talk to us about different topics
Usually different departments host different sessions that are focused on
different things.
And we did a session earlier this year on personalization.
And it was very kind of open discussion like we wanted to understand what
customers were expecting from us when it comes to personalization.
Like where's the line where gets two personalized what types of personalization
you're really looking for.
And there was one customer who I will never forget her because she was so sweet
, which was also very, very opinionated.
And she's like, I only buy pocket leggings from you.
Like why are you emailing me about leggings without pockets? Why are you
showing me on an upsell leggings without pockets?
Like I only want the pockets. And it was super honest.
And she was like almost like a little mad but she was like very energized and
like I want you to make this tailored to me.
Don't make me like hunt to find what I want. I'm giving you enough information
at this point to find it.
So I think like some of the market trends have really raised the expectation
level and we're, you know, working to make sure that we're adjusting to meet
that.
So getting into technology specifically, you just brought up the example of
like in person feedback.
What are you talking about? You have the mobile app, obviously retail,
obviously the website is well too.
Talking a little bit about customer feedback and capturing customer feedback
across other channels outside of in person. How do you do that today?
Yeah, there's a lot of different strategies that we use.
We have a couple that are kind of like our recurring. I think it's important to
have like baseline consistent, expect like consistent ways to get feedback from
customers on a regular basis.
So we would really hyper connected to what we call our global member services
team, GM us.
We talk with them every week. It was set meeting set deck format with their,
you know, providing feedback in terms of trends that they're seeing from
customers calling in or chatting about escalations.
Those are always really helpful and they actually often feed both like bug
fixes and like tweaks to the experiences, but also will inform road map
priorities.
So, you know, for example, we've had a situation where customers were asking
why are we not giving the product to them quicker.
What can we do to be more clear about that? And we actually adjusted our
shipping time expectations on site because like we just weren't setting a good
expectation on what the shipping times would be.
Right? Just good insight. Have no technology solution. Just some copy updates
right to be more clear of the customer.
So a huge fan of saying connected to your customer support team. We also do
really frequent connects with our retail field associates. I'm a huge proponent
, you know, retail employees are often some of your biggest brand advocates.
Like they work for the company. They understand the brand. They're interfacing
with your external customer every day. And you can hear so much insight from
them.
So we do monthly call hand style calls with the field to get their feedback.
And we get that feedback both on like overall brand technology stack and then
also on the in store technology that we're creating to support their experience
in helping associate.
And we also do like standard kind of broader quantitative like checkpoint
surveys, which provide really good insights and they're very helpful in terms
of identifying trends.
So I'm trying that we look out on a regular basis is the website or mobile app
improving or not improving your perception and experience with the brand. That
's a really interesting one to monitor.
Like are we adding value like is the site so great that you want to keep
shopping with us or is it like such a bummer that you don't like that's
tangible feedback and it's great to have.
Is that a question that you were asking like the mobile app or how do you
getting that feedback when do you ask it?
So during like our quarterly checkpoint surveys, which we blast out to you know
all of our members and you actually ask that same question of people who have
would lead to have an actual shop with us yet that they've given us their email
and of our VIP members.
I am totally butchered the language on it like our survey people read it much
better. But we're essentially asking like is the mobile app helping you hurting
your perception and is the website helping or hurting your perception of the
brand.
And the trend over time is what gets you really good insight to see like if you
're improving or not improving in that way. And especially when you cut it from
like an NPS perspective by detractors and promoters right if your detractors
have like a huge lift in say website issues like that's a huge.
All the action for us that we have something going on and then we really need
to dive into things well that that very point helps me or at least gives me the
opportunity to ask you kind of the follow up question here which is.
Prioritization I know that's just to say privatization but with all of this
type of feedback.
How do you prioritize of like what's most important then to take action on it
and what the action could be giving it to product or so forth.
I mean just like anybody who works in technology like the prioritization is so
challenging right like there's always way more coming at you than can ever
possibly hope to accomplish in a normal quarter or sprint.
For us we really try to walk the line and the way I talk about it with the team
there's kind of like three elements that you're going to prioritize on.
There's things that are like pure like ROI revenue base like I want to make
more money or want to get more margin or I want some more things like those are
the hard business KPI elements that you want to prioritize against.
There's things you're advocating for on behalf of the customer so it's like
yeah maybe it's not going to give us more money but we're going to feel better
about it because we're going to give the customers a way better experience.
And I think the third element is the things that are like kind of quality of
life for the technology teams or the organization at large like operational
things that improve the experience overall.
The best projects to pick are the ones that are going to hit all three right
that are going to do the work and benefit everyone.
And I do my best to try to pull the things in the roadmap that are really going
to hit all of those angles but you know there's never purity it never it never
kind of goes that way all the time.
So what we do within the product or is do our best to try to find those
customer feedback kind of moments and try to draw the correlations to how they
're going to either drive the revenue or kind of improve the brand because it
might start as just like a customer request but usually if you kind of peel the
onion on it a little bit.
And there's more to it and there's a lot more you could do with that that
feedback than just like fix the problem or fix the bug so if I could do an
example of that one we have an update coming out around how we apply and how we
work on like the store credit mechanism right now we just kind of always apply
that to your account.
And we assume that you always want to use your store credit first we've got
feedback from customers are like hey maybe I want to say that for later and it
's like oh well yeah that makes sense like you should be able to choose when you
want to use your store credit so like we're going to look to see how we can
improve that experience and of course there's going to be you know implications
to online and you know in close to customer feedback but it started with
customers being like why you always do this to me right so it's a good example
where we kind of heard people are going to make an adjustment.
Is there a balance between how much customer feedback that then kind of pushes
you to send that to product development and work on that compared to the
product team and internally saying we got to work on this or you know is there
is it all customers is a 50 50 is there a number that you try to do.
You know I try to look at it's a lot of our friends so when we get feedback
from our customer service team they're really good about telling us the change
over time in terms of if that is the feedback for this category is when up or
down right because there's like there's always a certain amount of customers
who I don't have a great example but like they're always going to have issues
like the gift card experience like they don't like how the gift card sale thing
works right and like we know that we hear you but it's like a small 0.1% we're
going to live with that.
Yeah but if we have a situation where you're seeing that rise in customer
feedback on an item that really is what is our trigger to be like okay what's
going on here.
Did we implement a change or is there a change in expectation that's driving us
to look at this more potentially go ahead and.
And I also think you know this one's a lot more esoteric and a lot right think
like the art of road mapping comes into play but it's important to kind of sit
at the beginning of each quarter and I would do this ongoing but definitely the
end of each quarter like.
What are we really trying to accomplish right we've had moments we had one
earlier this year where we really wanted to do a lot more on like member
education and building credibility and loyalty for the additional benefits that
you get as we were part of the membership program so that quarter there's a lot
of like updates that were around the customer experience adding value to the
membership program re launching the loyalty program and kind of things around
that. And that made sense with kind of what we were trying to accomplish is a larger
organization you don't live in that mode necessarily for forever but I think
being intentional about like strategically what are we trying to accomplish and
what projects do we pull in to support that is super super important and then
as long as you're kind of tweaking that as the business evolves I found that to
be an effective strategy.
Do you mind sharing if you think of anything top of mind of anything that's
trending in terms of customer experience in last six months year that you're
starting to prioritize or not and I asked that too because I know you've been
super successful at your position at Weblatics you also have quite a network of
those around you is there anything that you can share with everyone listening
and then myself that like you're starting to see the trend really shift I know
it's broad but yeah yeah.
I mean I set the cop out to say AI because I feel like it's had such a moment
and I've really like has been taught on it.
I think I think for me though it's more about what I've seen more of a trend in
is like how can we take AI strategies and technologies to amplify strategy we
're already doing.
So great example like was just a detail connect in San Diego earlier this week
and talking to a couple partners and they're using AI more to integrate into
their existing tools and like make their solutions better supposed to like
having a like here's a sexy AI tool that stands on its own.
I think I think we kind of had this weird like phase with AI where people are
trying to sell the dream unlike you stand alone AI solutions that like did
nothing and everything at the same time and I never quite could latch on to.
Versus some partners that I talked to this week I think there it's more about
how can we amplify what we're already doing that was working with AI solutions.
So that's probably one that I would I would say that we're looking at a little
bit the second which I think has been a thing for a while but I'm feeling like
more pressure on it now is like really building truly credible brand
experiences that are authentic to the brand.
I feel like there's been kind of a there's like a lot of like hot things you
can talk about for a little while but like with people feeling a little bit
like recession pressure and I think you know a little bit of purchase
contraction.
People are looking for brands that are going to be authentic and there's a
little bit more of like a call out when that's not happening I've noticed that
trend as well.
I mean I've been talking about this may been like five months ago but when we
talked about AI before you had this as an author was an idea or what you want
to move forward of like AI bots that are super personable where they can inform
you about the product right that you're looking at in that moment to get more
information. Everything there is about that product is that still in top of your mind if you
started implementing stuff like that any other comments on AI for them.
No, no, we haven't been forward with it. Not that particular solution and part
of it is because of what I mentioned about like AI having its moment I think we
had this like they were AI could talk everything it's going to be the one stop
shop but just like almost any tool out there I feel like AI is only going to be
as good as the input.
And what I've learned now is like you're always at the forefront but in this
manner that's like we're not doing crazy things out there it's still all about
the customer and like you said creating great customer experiences especially
member only customer experiences and I think you're doing phenomenal jobs so
thanks again Mel for just catching up with me here and here thanks all.