Customer Experience Secrets with Michal Bair
Join Jess and Michael as they explore the intricacies of chatbot management, customer touchpoints, and the evolving customer demographic. Get inspired by Michael's insights on data-driven decision-making, the value of customer interactions, and the importance of leadership that prioritizes customer feedback at an executive level.
(upbeat music)
- My name is Jess Servion,
and I'm super excited to bring you my new podcast,
The Juice With Jess.
This podcast is gonna be about everything
in your customer's journey.
We're talking acquisition, awareness, making that purchase,
retaining that customer, bringing them back around,
and everything in between.
This is gonna be all about delivering dope brand experiences
and talking to some really amazing people
who are in the customer experience space,
and marketing space, and everything in between.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome back to another episode of The Juice With Me,
Jess, your host.
This week, I am in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
home of the Eagles.
- Go birds.
- Go birds with my friend Michael Bear,
who is SVP of customer experience at Figs.
Michael, tell the homies who you be.
- Oh, okay, hi everyone, I'm Michael Bear.
Yeah, so I'm SVP of customer experience for Figs.
I lead two teams, I lead our customer experience team,
which is like our customer support team,
or customers through email, phone, chat, SMS, social,
and then I also lead our B2B sales team,
which helps larger healthcare organizations
outfit and uniform their team into Figs.
- Wow, that's so interesting to do like both sales
and customer support.
- I have so many questions on that.
Well, I have one question.
- Okay.
- So you know how like in customer service,
experience, whichever one you wanna put it, right?
Everybody's always like, we don't want it to be a cost center.
Do you think with like having B2B sales
and customer support, you've like,
or do your customer support people
have any sort of like revenue goals?
- So my customer experience people currently
do not have revenue goals.
- That's good. - Yeah, which is good.
Yeah, their only job is to make customers happy
and serve them and that's what they're supposed to do.
Traditionally, I have, so you know,
I've run, my background is like seven years
in financial sales, doing true inside sales,
and then I moved over to the customer experience space,
but always kind of like leading retention teams
for mainly subscription businesses.
So they had large, you know,
they had big portion of their role
was retaining customers on subscriptions.
And so they definitely had revenue targets.
I would actually say this is the first role I,
I haven't had a lot of epiphany.
This is actually the first one I've ever had
where I'm leading a customer experience team
that does not have some kind of like revenue or sales target
'cause I've always led customer success or subscription.
- Yeah. - Yeah, definitely my B2B sales team.
Like they're all revenue focused.
- Yeah, I mean, of course, right?
B2B sales, right?
I think it's really interesting.
Okay, so fun fact, Michael and I both come from B2B.
- Mm-hmm. - Before E-com.
- And then even before that.
- Even before that, we worked at Wells Fargo.
- Financial sales. - We'll build
financial sales, which, let's just even start there.
'Cause actually, we're gonna take the audience
on a big old ride, okay?
So let's talk about Wells Fargo.
- Okay. - What did you do
at Wells Fargo?
- Okay, so yeah, that was my first job at college.
I was lucky enough to get recruited my senior year
and started there literally like two days after I graduated.
- Yeah, I did consumer lending.
So I worked at a branch and then I eventually moved
into one of our HQs which had like 3,000 people in it
when I joined in 2005.
And then like, I was there for seven and a half years,
which seems wild 'cause people don't state jobs
for seven and a half months anymore.
But yeah, it was my first job for seven and a half years.
I did it in site sales and I was a supervisor
and then I ended up being like a call center manager
for the sales team there.
- Yeah, wait, what city were you living in then?
- I was in Philadelphia.
- Oh, what? - Yeah, so I originally
worked at a branch in Ohio 'cause I went to school
right on the border and then got transferred to the HQ
which is here in Philadelphia and that's how I came to Philly.
- I did not know that Wells Fargo had an HQ here.
- Well, I worked-- - I was out of San Francisco.
- It was, so I worked for Wells Fargo Auto Finance.
Auto Finance in the site quarters was here.
- Yeah. - Yeah, so we had 3,000,
I mean, a little history.
We had 3,000 people when I first started.
By the time I left in 2011,
so that was right after the mortgage crisis,
the banking crisis and everything,
I think the place the location I was at had 300 people.
- Whoa. - So it just shrunk so much.
- It's so crazy, man.
Like that working in the financial industry
was such a wild ride, but I also think that it's like
the core of, like, well, for me and I don't know for you too,
like, of my customer experience journey.
- Yeah. - Because when you're dealing
with people in the finance industry
and, like, as your customer,
it's like the most sensitive subject in somebody's life.
- Yeah. - You know?
- Oh, yeah. - Yeah.
- Yeah, I can remember so many conversations
with customers where, yeah, it was like,
if they didn't get this loan or they didn't get this product,
like, it was not gonna go well for them.
- Yeah. - And also, I think the other thing
it did, and I don't know how close you were to this,
but, like, that was where I learned, like,
debt-to-income ratio and LTV, which has learned a value,
not lifetime value in our world.
- Yeah. - Um,
you had to relearn all of that.
But honestly, that was where I learned,
I was like, oh my gosh, there are people that, like,
have 60% of their gross income going out to their bills.
- Dude. - And I grew up, like,
pretty poor anyway, so I was already, like,
pretty scarcity mindset. - Yeah.
- But going there and seeing just how much
of the general public live paycheck to paycheck
would be, like, an understatement, but, like,
literally live in negative if you did their bills for them.
It was pretty eye-opening because I was, like,
I don't wanna be in a situation.
- Yeah, yeah, I learned for myself, like,
during that time period, 'cause, so,
when I worked at Wells Fargo, I worked in the branches.
- Yeah. - I was, like,
what's the role was called when you're, like,
half a personal banker and half a teller?
- A PB. - It would know,
but it's, like, the step before that.
- Yeah, I forgot to say. - It's, like,
a customer-something rep. - Yeah.
- And then I was a PB-8, PB-1, and then a PB-2.
Personal banker, that's what PB means.
Anyway, but I remember I worked in Wells Fargo
while I was in college and, like,
kind of, like, was on that trajectory because
it's also, this is aging us, but,
there was a during a time where, like,
you would live paycheck to paycheck
or you would just live above your means
because, like, financial, I don't know,
society around you was, like, here's a loan for that.
Here's a loan for this, you know?
- I could tell, we could sit here for an hour
and I could tell you stories about lending policy
that would explain a lot of what happened in 2008,
2009, 2010. - Yeah.
- It was just, yeah.
But I think, yeah, ultimately, it's very,
yeah, you, working at a bank,
if nothing teaches you a lot about personal finance,
and that personally was quite valuable.
- Yeah, no, I agree.
I mean, I think it changed my entire projection on it.
Oh, and you made one comment, you were, like,
seven and a half years, I definitely worked
with a bank for, like, five years.
- Did you? - Yeah, that's well.
- But in a lot of different branches.
- Oh, yeah.
- I actually, this is, like, going really deep,
but I worked in, like, and this is in California,
but I transferred to, one of the last branches
I transferred to, I actually experienced, like,
I was robbed. - Oh, no.
- I don't know, I don't know how to say this, right?
Yeah, I was robbed, but-- - Oh, my gosh.
- But it was, like, with a note, there was, like,
no, like, weapon or anything like that.
But in those moments, it's so interesting,
'cause, like, you know, you go through all this training
and you're supposed to say, like, green bag or something,
right? - Mm-hmm.
- And I literally just, like, backed away
from the teller thing, and I was like,
I'm being robbed right now. - I feel like I'm more,
I'm walking out. - Look, I gotta go.
Yeah, that was the end of my Wells Fargo career.
- Was that your last? - Yeah.
That was like, I'm gonna go work in an office, so.
- Yeah, yeah. - Anyway.
- Yeah, working in the branch, I only did it for one year,
but yeah, the volatility of people walking in is very high.
- Yeah, yeah, I know. - Yeah.
- What an interesting time.
Okay, so we're on a journey.
I do wanna talk a little bit about working
in a call center, though, because it's something
that we actually don't really talk about that often.
I think we're, like, in your career where you are today,
and where I was, it's like, we're all in this digital world,
right, but like, there are these call centers still, right?
And I think, I remember, Philly, Go Puff.
- Oh, yeah. - Big headquarters here, right?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
I remember interviewing for a role from them years ago,
but for like call center with hundreds of agents,
all this stuff. - Oh, well.
- What are, like, tell me about working in a call center.
Like metrics are so different, so this is so different.
- Well, so first, I'm clearly old.
Look at me. - I'm very old.
- I get graduated college in 2004,
started at Wells Fargo right after that,
and worked there for seven years.
- You know, at that point, like,
most contact centers were call centers.
And the role I was in was pure sales,
so like, we use digital marketing
and whatever it was back then.
And direct, a lot of direct mail to drive calls to my team
to then try to generate revenue for the business.
So, so we definitely had traditional call center metrics,
like abandonment rates and service levels
and handle times and stuff like that.
But honestly, it was like mostly like close loans.
- Yeah, all they cared about. - Close loans,
generate revenue, cross-sell, upsell.
In this day, like, you know, whatever happened with,
whatever happened happened with Wells Fargo, whatever it is.
I'm super grateful for that experience
because I learned two sides of the business.
I learned like a, you know,
kind of traditional customer experience,
contact center metrics.
And I learned traditional like sales revenue targets.
And I used both of those,
and I've used both of those almost every single role
I've been in and still to this day.
So it's a different world.
I mean, it's like, you know,
if you've never worked in a call center,
you know, where there's like 50, 100 people
and phones are ringing off the hook and everyone's talking.
Like, it's just like a very different experience.
But like to this day, some of my best friends were with that.
Like I had some people over to my house on Saturday.
One of the managers from my team was there
and him and I still kind of joke about,
he had this thing where he would like kind of lean back
and his chair and talk super loud.
And he's like this very loud New Yorker.
- Yeah. - And it was just
the funniest thing in the world.
There's just like, you know, some of this happens
in contact center culture anyway,
but it's just like when you have 50, 100 people
sitting around doing more or less the same job,
it's fun. - Yeah.
- It's like, it's a, it was a really--
- You're like in the fucking trenches, man.
- Oh yeah. - Yeah.
Yeah, all those people, like, I mean,
especially like when I was there, you know,
we kind of had like opened OT and I was poor
and I wanted to make as much money.
So I would have worked 10, 11 hour days
to the point where I'd like lose my voice every single day.
- Dang.
- That was the only way I could pay for my bills.
- Yeah. - So, but yeah,
you become very close with all those people.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Do you wanna know a fun fact?
- Always. - That I've like never
have said this to anybody?
My first job was in a call center.
- Yeah.
- I worked for AT&T. - Mm-hmm.
- Wait, I'm pretty sure it was Bell self.
- Was this in high school?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
It was like 14. - Wow.
- I bet that could be wrong.
- 14, 15, somewhere around there.
Anyway, living in Louisiana,
'cause I grew up in Louisiana.
- Right. - First job.
And I worked for AT&T, but it was Bell self then.
- Yep.
- And selling, selling phone services.
I was fucking terrible at it.
I was so terrible at it.
- I would imagine most 14 to 15 year olds
would terrible at that.
- Dude, I don't know what was wrong with Louisiana,
like employment. - That's very young.
- Let's not even go in there.
- I had a paper out when I was 14,
but no one's putting me on the phone with like adults.
- Yeah, I don't know how I even got this job.
- Yeah. - Dude, I do not know
how I got this job, okay?
But like, how crazy, like I know what you're saying about,
like those call center environments,
if you're a little cubicle in your headset
and like, you connect to your calls
and it's just constantly, constantly, constantly.
- I would do 78 calls a day.
Most of our calls work 20, 30 minutes long,
'cause you're like financial loans.
- Yeah.
- You have to like talk through it, 70?
- Oh yeah.
- To 30 minutes each.
- I was on all day. - Doing that now.
- All day.
- Oh my God. - Like all day.
- These jobs that shape your core, my friends.
- I know, it's like, yeah, I've teamed now
and they're like, "Oh, I don't wanna do 10 calls."
I'm like, "I don't really have much sympathy for that."
But okay.
- You're like, "You should really get on the phone."
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Yeah man, that was my first job.
I didn't last very long.
- Yeah.
- I think I lasted like, maybe two months.
- Yeah, I was, you know, I'm not a good sales person.
I kind of tell people all the time,
like I'm not good at that.
I'm really good at process.
I quickly figured out like being organized,
having trackers, holding myself,
like I had little tickers about how I would do everything.
- Yeah.
- Made all of the difference in the world.
- Yeah.
- When did you decide that you were really good
at process though?
- I think,
I think it was my second job.
'Cause when I was at Wells,
because I had been working there for seven and a half years,
and this was part of the reason I wanted to leave
by the end of it, I was like,
I just know this like the back of my hand.
Like I knew everything there was
in that very confined thing
to that part of consumer lending.
Like it just felt really, really confident.
It wasn't until I went to my second job,
which was the most amazing experience of my life.
I had the most amazing boss.
She's the kindest woman in the world.
I think I've told her a million times,
but I'll tell her a million and one times.
But that was the first one where I was like,
and then I was good there.
I wasn't like, you know, I wasn't the right away.
It took me a long time.
It was energy, so it was completely different.
But that was the first time where I was like,
hey, actually like the task oriented side of me,
the, you know, I have a pretty strong A type personality
that actually has a serviceable use in that.
Like I'm pretty organized and I'm pretty good with process.
Like in, I can think about things very linearly.
So that was probably the first time I noticed it.
- Yeah.
I didn't realize it was good at process
until I got fired for my job.
(laughing)
I worked as an office assistant and I was so bad at that job.
There's a lot of jobs that I was just like really good at
for like people and like empathy and like really could
just talk the talk, right?
But like, and I don't mean that in like a BS way.
I mean like literally just like I'm a good gapper, right?
And I, but office manager was not my jam.
- Because it wasn't using your process skills
or what was it?
- Yeah.
- It just like wasn't using, it was a little chaos.
I remember like at my desk, like I was supposed to be
filing paper and then I would like procrastinate
and never file the paper.
So then it just became this like a long stack,
just little things, you know?
But the pivotal moment was actually maybe fired.
- Yeah.
- And then I got good at process.
- Did they tell you, hey, you're not,
were they like, this isn't for you?
Or how did they know?
- No, it wasn't even, it was literally like
I planned this whole off-site.
You know, I'm now gonna name names,
but if this woman is out there and--
- If you happen to listen to the Jews.
- If you happen to listen to the Jews
and you see me on LinkedIn
and we make this a social clip.
- She's just like, wow, she really turned it around.
- Because I wonder, I actually think back,
I'm like, do these people wonder?
Like, is there actually on my LinkedIn?
- Oh yeah.
- Anyway, so I planned this whole off-site
and then I remember, I think the last straw
was like a reservation was wrong at a restaurant,
which actually wasn't my fault.
It wasn't even my fault.
- All the things, right?
- Yeah.
- That wasn't even the one.
- That was not even my fault.
And so a reservation was wrong.
And then like the next Monday,
I like get called into the office.
(laughing)
And I don't get told like why or anything.
It was just like, we're gonna let you go.
- Oh.
- Which--
- But were you like, resecally like,
yeah, this is probably for the better.
- No, I was really upset.
I had never been fired for a job.
- Yeah.
- But now looking back, I was like,
no, that was probably for the better.
- You know.
- I learned my lesson.
- Yeah, yeah.
I have a lot to say on that,
but I think if you've never been fired
or never been laid off, it's like,
it hurts the beginning,
but you, I think with a little bit of time,
a little bit of healing,
you kind of quickly realize like,
look, some of that stuff is not your fault.
Like, I don't know if that was exactly your situation,
but like some of that stuff is just like,
you're not right for the company.
- Yeah.
- Right?
And the company's not right for you.
And if you're not thriving there,
you gotta find something where you're gonna thrive.
- Yeah.
Well, ironic here, okay.
So a job that I did thrive in was actually my first startup
and reporting to the head of business ops
because I didn't wanna get fired.
So I like knew I had to like shape up,
you know what I mean?
And so I didn't, so I like got really good at like process then.
But this leads me to like actually a question
I wanna ask you.
So we haven't gone through your entire career yet,
but what is, if somebody's out there listening,
what is one of the biggest lessons you've learned
in your CX career that you would wanna share with somebody?
- In my CX career.
There's so many.
- What's the one?
- I don't know, there's one.
You're gonna edit out all these arms.
- Yeah.
- You know, I would say the one thing that I feel like
that I do differently, or at least I really try to focus on
is Reed Hoffman has a saying that you listen to anecdotes,
you make decisions with data.
And one of the really nice things
about working in customer experience is you have data
for everything.
There's a scoreboard for everything.
CSAT is a number, service level is a number.
Net Promer score is a number.
You should have, you can have numbers for everything.
Individual performance, team performance.
You should be able to measure all of that.
Even like the qualitative stuff,
you can really, you can start to like, you know,
put some measurements there.
And I really have always tried to hold myself to the extent
where like the last two CX management teams I've led,
I title our Slack channel with that topic.
Because I have always really tried to hold myself to like,
I don't wanna trust my gut.
I don't honestly think I'm that,
I'm definitely not that smart.
I'm not good at just like kind of like coming up with stuff
off the top of my head.
So I really try to have data in front of me
to make decisions.
'Cause honestly, there's a lot of things
that customers will choose,
particularly like depending on what customer,
if you might be serving a customer,
is that that is not you.
That's not your preference.
And I think that in customer experience,
you find a lot of people that talk,
like they talk about their strategy or their initiatives.
And it's like, that is your preference.
That is not the customer's preference.
So I really try to use data.
And I think like we sit on the wealth of data, so use it.
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If you're not already familiar with the community,
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See you there.
(upbeat music)
We're probably gonna get like,
eatin' alive for this one.
But I don't think that customer experience is all,
like I think it is data, for sure, right?
Data insights to lead you to the decisions,
to like, you know, test out your hypothesis.
If your strategy is correct, right?
But I also think that a lot of times,
people are looking at the wrong metrics.
- Totally.
- I was asked a question today.
I just shout out to my friend, Zach Cox.
He sent me this, I don't know,
like video of Jack Bezos talking about customer service
in Amazon.
And he asked me for my opinion.
He was like, it was customer service in Amazon,
but what Jeff was talking about was like,
I'm calling Jeff, you know,
Bezos was talking about metrics.
He was like, if you're only looking at the metrics,
you're never actually looking at like the customer service,
right?
And I actually do believe that.
Like I feel like data and insights will inform you
and will like prove your hypothesis right or wrong, right?
But I also think that we have to be flexible
in the metrics that we're looking at, right?
That's the video where he's like,
the numbers were saying one thing,
they were saying we had really good service,
but then customers were telling us
so he just pulls out his phone and he calls the number
and they wait on hold for like 12 minutes
before it gets answered.
- Yeah.
- And yeah, to me it's just like,
well, that just seems like they were,
I mean, it seems like they were like cherry picking numbers.
And a lot of people certainly will do that.
And honestly, I understand why,
because most people, it's like, you know,
if your performance is measured on these numbers,
you're gonna certainly try to pull numbers
that make it look like it.
But if you're the leader of something
and you actually care to make the customers' lives better,
then you can't be cherry picking numbers
that just make it look better if it's not actually.
- Right, right.
And it's like, and I think those metrics are really good,
like especially in like call center
or the digital world of it, whatever it is,
because it's like, yes, like,
average handle time, the amount of tickets,
like all of those things,
those metrics are like good for you to know
of like what's coming in.
But I think that that also tells you
what is how are you doing in React?
- Mm-hmm, totally.
- It doesn't tell you how you're doing pre-viewing
when you go act it.
- Well, this gets to like, that's why it can't be the whole
store, it can't be, that's why customer service,
customer support is not just customer experience.
Because like the three things that I primarily like report
off of are for sure customer experience tickets,
'cause we have a really wonderful customer base
that will tell us straight up what they love,
what they don't love.
We also have like garnered so much,
and I think this is a key part of this,
we've garnered so much trust with our community
that they know we listen to them.
We actually have things on our app that like
reinforce that point, we certainly have that
with our policies that are in place.
But then we also, you know, we infuse just as much
social listening, we infuse just as much serving.
And once you combine all three of those,
you know, outside of like micro phoning,
you know, doctors and nurses walking around a hospital
and hearing their feedback and when they say,
"Hey, talk about us."
I feel like we have a pretty good sense of their voice.
- Yeah.
- And yeah, if you just, in silo, I mean, it's just similar.
Like if you just picked just social,
or if you picked just one survey,
if you just picked one data source
to tell you the customer experience in air quotes,
well that's gonna be misleading.
- Right.
- That's why I have to use all three.
- Right.
- I mean, hopefully I have more.
- I agree with you, I think that's why you have to use all three,
and this is gonna be a bit of a hot take,
but like you and I have been in like executive level CX roles.
I also think that this is why there should be
executive level CX roles in the world.
'Cause I don't think that,
and this, I know this is leading down
like a little bit of a different path,
but like there's not a lot of executive level CX roles.
Like your senior vice president, I was VP of CX,
Kate from Terra Cafe, CXO, right?
Eli was senior director at Jones Road,
and like, but the reason I'm naming all of these like positions
is because a lot of times people look at,
especially in e-comm CX as CX, just CX managers,
and they only look at the one layer of it,
then like if you're looking at your brand
and you're looking at your brand strategy
and all these other pieces,
you should be like, you have so much first party data
within this team that like,
if you're never leveling your CX team up
to like strategically think on like that executive level
or even share those conversations
or like the insights that are coming through this department,
like you're not really advocating for your customer.
- Something that really comes down to like,
what does that organization want
their customer experience to be?
If you want it to just be like to get it back to your like
your cost center or ID or your cost center comment,
if you want it to just be customer service,
you just like, we don't want to hear about these problems,
just take care of them like, you know,
at one time I heard someone make an off-handed comment
about my team, this is a long time ago,
which is like, he needs to just shut up
and go answer emails.
- What?
- And that, and like, I was just like, that person has,
and like, you know, part of me is just like,
I have probably not done a good job
of like evangelizing to that person,
like the value that we provided the organization.
I've worked a plenty of organizations,
otherwise that really do value.
And it's like, some of that is like cultural,
some of that is like, what do you want
your customer experience to do?
Do you actually want in fairness,
like the person who said that worked at an organization
where I don't think they really wanted to hear,
they really wanted to hear what customers had to say.
- Yeah.
- But if you do care, if you do care about your community,
if you do care about customers,
if you do believe that their value,
or that their feedback can actually make your product
or service better, well then you better have someone
in the organization that's actually like,
like senior enough to take that feedback
and make it happen.
- Yeah.
- And I think that's like one, you know,
very lucky in the role that I have,
because you know, the CEO that I work for,
no one cares about customers more than she does.
And she really listens to like what I share.
Not because she thinks it's my voice,
but because she knows that I really care about customers
and that I really care about making our product
as great as it can be,
and therefore making customers as happy as it can be.
You know, I feel for people that work in organizations
where the highest CX person is like a director.
And that's, this is no shot at a director.
- No. - That was a director at one point.
That was a thing.
It is just really hard if you've got to go through like a COO,
or you've got to go through a CMO.
That's usually one of the two people that they report to.
If you report to a CRO, you're definitely not.
It's just really hard to get your feedback heard.
- Yeah, I agree with you.
I think it's really just like giving CX a seat
at the table too.
So it's like, you know,
and not every organization can like have a CXO or a VP level.
And like, I completely understand that,
but I think it's really valuing what comes into the CX team
to bring it across the table.
You know, it's like at festivals and like everything
that I've done in my core of like just,
not even just festivals, like every organization,
like evangelizing for the team, advocating for it
and no matter what level I was,
I mean, like that's probably why
I've probably pissed off a lot of people.
'Cause I'm like, oh, okay, you don't want to listen to me.
I will go find somebody to listen to me.
Don't you worry.
- Yeah.
- You know, but anyway,
I think it's like having CX at the table,
allowing CX to come to the table,
and not just like being like,
okay, give me a weekly report.
Like no, like, and CX also I think is,
I think it's not just what's happening amongst the tickets
that are coming into you,
but I think it's the overall website journey, app journey,
like checkout journey, like all these other places,
but I even think even it's even one layer deeper,
like especially in like products,
whether it's like food and bev, apparel, all these things,
investing in consumer insights too.
- Yeah, yes.
- 'Cause that's your CX, right?
- Yeah.
- Quick question, since we're on this subject,
how in like in your ways, like what tactics have you
utilized to not, I don't know if it's like bringing
customer experience to the table,
but like advocating for the CX within an organization?
- Yeah, I think two things that I've tried to do
pretty consistently over my career.
One is hire the best people and be okay
that they might, that most of them
probably won't stay in customer experience,
but they'll go work in other departments.
So that people that actually know how to talk to customers
and who actually know what customers love
or don't love about the product are in the organization.
So, I worked at a company 10 years ago,
that one where I worked for the most wonderful person,
we had tons of people in other places.
I've taken that kind of same philosophy,
I have this thing where I say I only hire people
with PhDs, passionate, hungry and driven.
Like I look for a very specific type of person
that I know, maybe they'll be able to grow into a CX role,
but honestly when you hire some of these CX associates,
there's only so many manager and director roles,
they're gonna have to go to other places.
And that is certainly real.
So that's one.
The second is trying to communicate
that the value that we create in the organization
is not to just shut up and answer emails.
There are tons of like financial metrics
you can monitor, post call or post contact LCV increases,
post contact, repeat purchase rates.
If you have programmatic things like surprise and delight,
seeing how that changes the financial profile
of those customers, try to be honest with yourself
and look for the places.
'Cause sometimes you're actually gonna find like,
hey, I thought this was moving the needle more than it is
and I love this program, but it doesn't actually move the needle.
But try to find the things actually to prove
that it actually does matter.
And if you find out it's not, then you just gotta keep peeling
the onion back to figure out like,
okay, so that stuff you're doing for the customers
by answering their call and 10 seconds
or answering their email in one minute,
actually it doesn't matter.
You could actually like have it be 10 times as long as that
'cause they want something else.
So try to find the things in your processes,
try to find the things in your service levels,
try to find the things in your channels
that actually meaningfully make that customer more valuable.
- Yeah.
So you said one metric though, like post,
it was like post conversation like post contact.
- Post contact, yeah.
- Post contact, repeat purchase.
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't remember the tool name,
but Michael from HexCloud is starting to like track this
for like the actual. - Yeah.
- But I'm curious of like, what is your like techniques
or tactics to do that like scrappy without a tool?
- I mean, you don't need a tool to do it.
I mean, if they are still, I'd love to see it.
But you literally just take all the customers
who have ever contacted you and look at the,
what does she use if you wanna do repeat purchase rate,
repeat purchase rate of people of contact you,
people of not. - Right.
- You do it by channel, people have called you,
people have not, people have texted with you,
people have not, and then do it by the number of contacts.
Now you have to also like, there is some,
I forget the term, but like,
customers that contact you by their nature
are probably more engaged.
So you do have to like some,
you have to keep that in mind as you go through it.
But you look at customers that have contacted you one,
two, 10 times. - Yeah.
- And see their journey.
Because one of the predominant things
in customer experience is like,
how do I get these people to stop calling or stop emailing us?
That's what like someone who doesn't know anything about it
will say, well, what if you found out
that actually every customer who contacts you
is actually more valuable?
And after they contact you,
so if you have a LTV trajectory of $100, $200, $300
of a non-contacted customer,
but then you look at a customer who has contacted you
and their LTV trajectory is $1,300, $600.
Well, wouldn't you want every one of those people
to start contacting you? - Yeah.
- Because the $3 it cost you to pay for them to contact you?
- Yeah. - It's probably worth
the extra couple hundred dollars of LTV.
- Yeah. - And I think,
yeah, there's a tool that can do that, right?
But you can also just do that pretty,
I mean, it doesn't work in early stage startups
where you're like, you know, very on.
But if you've had a business where it's been around
for years, you can look at that.
- Yeah.
Well, I wanted you to break that down
because I think that sometimes people are like,
science. (laughs)
You know what I'm like, it's not that hard, you know?
You just gotta put out, yeah, I mean,
there's probably like, I don't know,
half dozen different like core metrics
that I'll look at around that area.
And yeah, you wanna have some financial,
you wanna have some revenue tied to,
like to prove that like,
customers actually like doing more business
with your business when they interact with your CXD.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I think you also just challenged everything
that I even talked about,
like deflecting the amount of tickets.
- Well, so I'm curious, so I think deflection is obviously
because of like what's going on in the last like three months
or six months or whatever, deflection has gotten
in it because I do think like what you did with a chat bot
where you made a channel for someone,
that's not deflection.
Deflection to me has a negative connotation
because it's inferring that like,
oh, this person didn't, they still contacted you.
That's still a channel.
Like if your chat bot, your chat bot,
is still a channel, it's still a contact.
No, a human didn't have to deal with it,
but you still paid for that chat bot.
So it's like you made a paid a dollar for that contact
versus $3 to a human, but you still paid for it.
- Yeah, well, I think it was like also a different scenario
with the chat bot.
- Yeah, you were doing it 'cause you don't have people
being like, hey, bro.
- Or I love Mr. Beast, 5,000 times a day.
- Time to day.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But I mean, that's why like we had to build it
into a channel, but which was a fun channel.
And that's also just knowing the audience.
Again, going back to consumer insights, right?
And understanding the customers,
like we knew that customer.
And so built something based off of that customer.
If you take that same theory of like doing a chat bot,
you can still make your chat bot worthwhile, right?
But it's like make it educational.
The same thing you do in like retention and life cycle, right?
Like you said all these emails to be like,
hey, here's my candy or here's why you want these scrubs, right?
Do that same thing when the person's on your website
and looking for the information.
There's like nothing wrong with that.
- Yeah, I'm so interested to see like where
this whole thing goes because there's so many companies
with seemingly chat bot products now.
And they all seemingly tout the same value propositions.
- They're all layer onto like.
- And I'm not sure how many times you got the article
or the press release from, what was that payment company
that like deflected?
- Oh, Clara.
- Clara, I don't know how many times you got that sent to you,
but I got that quite a few times.
And I'm just like, you know, I've a pretty,
I think I have a pretty informed opinion on this kind of stuff.
But it's just so interesting.
I mean, like no one, the thing I'm always like,
do you like interacting with your app bots?
And everyone's like, no.
And I'm like, so you want to put this in front of customers.
Why? - Yeah.
- It's just interesting how, you know,
people in a business suddenly, you know, to go,
I guess I'll contradict myself, to go counter to what I said,
how quickly people will ignore their own personal preferences.
And also just like what most mass surveys say
that most customers do not like, you know,
Gartner has tons of studies that say like 80, 90%
of customers do not like interacting with chat bots.
- Yeah. - Yeah, chat bots.
- Well, I actually think this is really interesting.
- Yeah. - Now we're in.
- We're gonna fight this out.
- Okay, so I did see the clarinet thing, right?
And I do agree with you that like a lot of people do not
like interacting with chat bots.
But what I think is really interesting is that
there's a new generation coming onto the market
where like of purchasers, right?
And I don't even just mean like Gen Z
'cause Gen Z now is like,
they're too close to millennials where we're like--
- Gen Z's are 30 now. - Yeah, dude.
I didn't, dude.
I just didn't math the other day.
- I was like two, the year 2000 was 24.
- Oh my God. - There's a guy.
Okay.
- My wife and I are like rewatching Sex in the City right now.
- Oh, good. - Which I know, Gen Z,
you're just like, what is that?
And it was like this amazing show that came out in the early,
late 90s early 2000s.
- Carrie Bradshaw. - Carrie Bradshaw.
Fashion icon.
And we're just like, oh my God.
This was 'cause, you know, it ended right
as I was graduating college.
And I'm just like, oh, I missed this time.
- Yeah, dude.
I, with my fiance, Alex,
we just watched all of the spranos.
- Oh my gosh.
- Yeah, we--
- Oh, so good.
But same thing though.
It's like so simple. - It was like
the 90s early 2000s. - Yeah.
Razor phones, blackberries.
- Yeah, yeah. - You know?
It just, yeah.
So, okay, so going back to the thought though.
So, going back to the clarinet thing,
yeah, so I do agree.
Like, I do agree with you that I think that like,
a lot of people do not want to interact with
but I think what's so interesting though,
is that I see like this Gen Z and this Gen Alpha,
they do like interacting with them.
Not all Gen Z, I mean younger Gen Z, right?
And Gen Alpha because going back to like,
my Feastables theory of like those individuals,
like the amount of interactions that this chatbot had
opposed to email and elsewhere was so insane.
Like, I mean, the chatbot alone would have anywhere
from like 30,000 to 90,000 interactions in like a week.
- And when you built that, that wasn't Gen AI, right?
Like you guys, you guys scripted most of that, right?
- It's all in tempeh, yeah.
Yeah, so, which is also interesting, right?
Like about, you know, the--
- I mean, I think this is one of the coolest things
you ever built, like to build out that many workflows
for that many comments and that many reactions,
like it's incredible.
- Dude, so insane.
Well now I consult with people to tell them
how to do these things.
But, okay, so, okay, going back to that though,
so like, yeah, it's like all intent base
is not generative AI, right?
Which I think will be, and then going to specifically
the clarinet article, I personally think that like,
as the generations continue and we evolve
and we involve all these technologies,
I actually think that it's an opportunity
to create more jobs for CX departments though,
that like people are no longer,
can just not just be ticket takers,
but also like have a hand in retention,
have a hand in other places.
That's why I'm like, I do like it,
but I also think there's a fine line
when your bot's out there hallucinating
in your social comments, you really need to back away
and QA that bitch, okay?
- Well, I mean, you guys, I'm sure you can speak
to this way more than I can, but like,
if you've ever set up a bot, the volume of work
that it takes to set it up and then daily maintain it.
- I mean, it's just like, it's just like, you know,
having a team of people, like they need to be told what to do,
the bot needs to be told what to do.
Unless you're like free range, like just gen A,
like whatever it's wants to reply,
it's like most of the AI is on the inbound side,
meaning it can read the customer's inquiry
and figure out its intent,
you still need to tell it what to do back.
And in, I don't think you just want to let it
say whatever you want.
- Yeah.
- So, you know, that is going to take a lot of work,
it's going to take people managing it.
- Absolutely.
And I think that's also an opportunity for jobs too.
- Yeah.
- Right?
'Cause I've implemented a lot of different bots, my dude,
and like--
- It's programming.
Like it's workflows, it's, you know, triggers,
it's automations.
- You have low expectations.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
'Cause like what you see in your demo,
I guarantee it takes a good four to six months
to get there, you know?
- 'Cause it's got to, I mean, yeah, it takes a long time.
- Okay.
So, I've talked about my favorite initiative
and strategy that I've implemented,
which is these silly little bots.
- Yeah.
- What is looking back on your career,
like not just figs, like other companies that you worked for
'cause we haven't even gone on that journey.
What is your single most favorite initiative
that you've ever implemented?
That's a hard one.
- Yeah, it is.
You know, it wasn't necessarily a single initiative,
but I would say the thing that I am the most proud of
or the thing that brings me the most joy
is kind of what I was talking about earlier
is like the hiring philosophy that I was able to solidify
a good 10 years ago,
where I really figured out what type of person I wanna have
joined the team, which would be an asset to the whole company.
And to see those people, I mean, at this point in my,
I'm an old man, so it is very long standing career.
The people that I had an opportunity to hire 10 years ago,
11, 12 years ago, and to see what they are doing now
is incredible.
And I knew some of them.
Like, I can tell you, I mean, I don't wanna put these people,
'cause I don't know if they listen to it,
but like there were people named Anya and just like,
so many people that I'm like,
this person's gonna be really good.
Like, you know, I got the chance to hire them
when they were 22, 23 years old
and they were gonna be really, really good.
And that makes me more proud than anything.
And to see some of them now,
they're like leaders of companies,
they have their own consulting firms,
they are leading CX at organizations across the US.
That's, it's really rewarding.
And I'm still like really, I know, not all of them,
but some of them really good friends with some of them.
And to hear about their successes is just like super rewarding.
- Yeah, I think despite all like the nitty gritty
and the tactics and the strategies, right?
I think the most rewarding thing about being a CX leader
is actually leading people.
- The people stuff.
- Yeah.
- It's also the most heartbreaking because I can tell you,
you know, there's not a single person that ever resigned to me
that, and it was like,
it's always for like so many different reasons,
but it's heartbreaking.
It's like, you care so much about these people,
you see so much potential in them.
And it's just not for everyone, right?
Like, I kind of accept that like,
just because I think, like, you know, I'm an not liar,
I was able to turn a CX agent role into like,
you know, a pretty good career.
I know everyone's not going to be able to do that.
But yeah, you don't, you know, I remember all of them.
- Yeah, I remember all of mine too.
I also, I remember a few people where I've hired them
for one place, and then I carried it on to somewhere else.
- That's the best.
- And then I've cut, they've come with me,
but then not all fucking fit.
- Really? Oh yeah, 'cause the organization
just wasn't right at that place.
- Yeah, and like, and I think that's something
I learned in my leadership though, you know,
is like what you were saying, right?
Like you have your like three core, right?
I think like, over time I also learned
like my three core like qualities,
and one of them being flexibility and adaptability,
which is the same.
- I will say, I don't have many regrets in my life.
One of my regrets is I've had an opportunity
to work with someone that I really respect
and really cared about and really thought the world of
and didn't take it, and that's still like somewhat
like sits in the back man, I'm like, I should have done that.
So, you know, even if those people didn't work out,
you know, I think you taking them
and showing them a different experience is still like,
you know, it's still really valuable and really rewarding.
- For sure, there's like one individual,
I'm not gonna put this person on blast, but at all.
Like it didn't work out at like the second organization,
but they have found great success
where I like got them placed for the third,
and like they're crushing it now, right?
It was just like a different environment for them, right?
- What's also really cool is, and I remember this when I left,
I left a role a couple of years ago,
and I had the best management team,
like the team that reported to me is just like,
there's some of the most wonderful people,
and I was like, I would take all of them with me if I could,
and what I started to realize was like, as time went on,
I was like, they're all gonna outgrow me.
Like they're all gonna be me.
And like now, yeah, now this is like years past,
like they can all, I don't know if they can get my exact role,
hopefully not, but they can all go get a really high level role,
like I don't even report to me, and it's sad,
but it's also like, it's just super impressive that like,
they're all just like so, so great.
- Yeah, and rewarding though, sad, but rewarding, right?
Like I think that's the biggest thing just in leadership
is like leadership isn't just about you
like leading the individuals, it's allowing for people
to like upscale themselves above you, right?
And like also delegating things to them,
so they can upscale above you, right?
Like the teams that I lead, like,
I'll just use the Feastables example, right?
Like when I left Feastables, my position wasn't replaced,
but the gal that I put in as the like CX lead,
like in my tenure there is now running the show,
and she's like crushing it, and I like talk to her all the time,
and she's just like, she still asks me for help
on like some things are like opinions, right?
And she's like crushing it though, that like after this,
like she'll go and do something really amazing,
because during my time there, like I might've been
the VP of CX, right, but I like, I was like in the trenches
showing people how to do the things
to become a strategic thinker, and I think that's important.
- I have the exact same situation, I will name here.
When I was at Inspire, I left and the,
yeah, she's, I mean, I'll just say she was the best people
I've ever worked with in my life.
Emily is just like one of the smartest, kindest,
most emotionally intelligent people you meet,
and I keep in touch with her here and there,
but like I would hear some of the stuff that she put in,
and I was there for four years,
so I think I put in a decent amount of stuff,
but some of the stuff she put in place,
I was like, yeah, that was the good idea,
she was right, I'm like, she's just running this better than me.
- Yeah. - She's better than me.
- Yeah.
- So, and it's like, yeah, it's like,
it's just so rewarding 'cause you're like, you know,
especially when you were at a place for a long time,
that company, I was like, I was the first CX person
there, I was employee 12, I put almost everything in place,
I hired every single person on that team,
so I was like pretty concerned out of the trailer,
but like how it'd be left, but I knew Emily would do,
and she did better than I thought.
- Yeah, oh God, it's not the fucking best, though.
- She's the best.
- When like-- - If you're listening,
Emily, you're the best.
- You're the best, so shout out to Emily,
I hope I get to meet you.
Okay, one last question before we hit the road,
what is the best thing about working in customer experience?
I know we named a lot, but--
- The people, right? - Yeah.
- Isn't it?
I think it's the, yeah, I mean, it's like,
they're the, I think just if you work in customer experience
work, you're probably like outgoing,
you're not gonna find many introverts.
- You're, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(laughing)
Yeah, most of us are like,
will you waste all our extravertedness, add jobs,
and then we go home and are like,
just let me read my book.
But like super empathetic, super kind,
great communicators.
Yeah, I think they're just like good, like good people.
- Yeah, good people, for sure.
- Yeah.
- Dude, we've hit the end of the road.
I know, is that crazy?
- That blows by.
- I know, I feel like we don't need a whole other house.
I'll come back to Philly.
- Yes.
- It's a football season.
- Yes, go birds.
(laughing)
Go birds.
- We'll tell the homies where they can find you.
- Yeah, all the normal places I'm on LinkedIn,
Michael J. Bear, I'm on Twitter, Michael J. Bear.
You know, if you wanna see pictures of my kid in my house,
I'm on Instagram, Michael J. Bear, so all the above.
- We'll link his LinkedIn.
- Yeah.
- And some of the socials, okay.
In the show notes.
And just as a reminder, if you love tuning in,
please subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Juice.
I will talk to y'all next week.
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