Secrets of Omnichannel Success
Melanie shares her exciting career journey at Fabletics, her shift from B2B to e-commerce, and why omnichannel strategies are a game-changer in today's market. Get the scoop on using AI for customer interactions, crafting seamless user journeys, and boosting customer loyalty with smart return policies and personalized experiences.
(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,
marketing space, and everything in between.
(upbeat music)
Welcome back to another episode
of The Juice With Me, your host, Jess.
I don't know why I just repeated my name,
but that's what I did.
(laughing)
This week, I am in my hometown, Chicago,
and I am joined by my new homegirl, Mel Cummings,
who is VP of product and digital at Fabletics.
Welcome.
- Thank you.
Appreciate you having me on.
- Tell the homies about your journey.
- Yeah, I've been at Fabletics about eight and a half years.
VP of product and UX.
Oh, next.
Yeah, it's similar, but different design.
It's fine.
(laughing)
I actually started in our retail business,
opening up our retail stores,
so kind of like our manager of retail ops,
really enjoyed that.
And then about six years ago,
had an opportunity to jump over to the website,
I've been managing that in addition to our mobile app,
and our retail store technology as well.
- Cool.
So I'm super excited to bring you on,
because my journey in CX really started
from like more of a product side, like in B2B.
And how Mel and I became friends
is we actually met at E-tail West at a customer event,
and she was waiting in line to get a tattoo.
And a tarot card reading.
- Sorry.
- Beautiful tattoo.
- Shout out to our events person,
Alexandra, customer.
- She did great.
- She did great.
So anyway, so we met in line,
and we were just vibing,
and then we started talking about your path, right?
Like what you do,
and then we just started nerding out about user journey stuff.
And I think that it's really important as we talk about
e-commerce, and we talk about digital experiences,
even product, product design,
whatever portions of the actual product
and like the selling of your product,
there is a whole user journey behind that.
Customer experience.
- Isn't Jeff, oh, hold on.
One second.
- Oh.
Can you still hear me?
- Yeah, good.
(laughs)
- Okay, well, I got that out.
So I think that customer experience
isn't just about support, right?
There's so many other areas that are covered in that.
This is specifically why I will like,
really want to turn out about this to you.
Before we deep dive into user journey stuff though,
like I'd love for you to tell the audience
kind of your background,
and how you worked at Oracle,
and you were in customer success, cool.
(laughs)
Tell those peeps.
- Yeah, I've had a pretty eclectic journey,
which I think a lot of people in product have,
'cause at least at the time,
it wasn't something you went to school for,
you just kind of fell into,
but I started marketing, realized marketing
was not like my personal journey,
but I'd always been in digital and technology.
So I had the opportunity to jump over to a startup,
which I love, just based on Indianapolis called Compendium.
They're actually a content marketing startup,
so it was really in the content marketing space
as that was like emerging.
We had a tool for people to create content and manage it,
and put it out on their sites,
and then that actually got acquired by Oracle.
So I was working there for a couple of years
in customer success,
just helping people understand our technology,
how to leverage it, how to maximize it,
and really, really enjoyed that.
And then kind of coincidentally,
had a very random experience with an old boss
who didn't know I was looking for a job
when I was kind of apothetically looking for a job,
and they were opening up the retail stores at Fabladex,
and he was like, "You should come join us," and I did,
and it's been great.
- Yeah, that's so crazy.
Wait, I wanna double click into your content marketing term.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Because, okay, so I'm a CX-er,
but I really am a marketer, right?
And this is why I love it,
and I do, content marketing is just,
so this is content marketing.
This moment right here is content marketing, right?
News letters are all our content marketing,
and I think that it's like,
even when you think about e-commerce brands,
or you think about B2B brands, or companies,
content marketing is like,
such another user journey pathway,
and I think it's so interesting.
It's like a different way to kind of like,
sling your product, you know?
- Oh, for sure, yeah.
- I'd love to talk to you,
or I'd love for you to kind of double click into that though,
like, tell me about, okay,
so you were a customer success manager in this role,
but tell me about that user journey within that tool.
How did you map that out?
From a B2B perspective, right?
- It was a very different experience,
'cause it was also as content marketing
was still kind of emerging.
Social was a thing, but it was just not nearly as engaging
as what we're used to today.
So a lot of people were like,
okay, I wanna get more people to my side.
I think there's this SEO play ear here.
What do I do with it?
So a lot of what I would do is talk with people about,
what are you doing natively, organically,
within your business, and just talk about that, right?
And we had a pretty basic tool
where they were essentially writing blog posts at the time,
but it supported video, it supported images,
but just really telling other people
what was going on with their business,
and it proved pretty successful.
- Wow, that's awesome.
I think that's cool.
Did you, okay, one question, this is kind of random,
but a lot of people are combating today AI, right?
And I don't know much about this tool,
or the Oracle path, right?
But I'm curious, in that timeframe,
is there any sort of AI,
not necessarily the generative type,
but intent-based in that tool setting?
- There was some suggested content,
it would help you a little bit,
but a lot of people were trying to outsource the content
at the time, as opposed to being better
about creating content internally,
which I think was actually a big problem.
The outsource content never had the right voice
and brand distinction that people really needed
to feel connected.
And I think if we'd had AI more at the time,
as we do today, and you could train it in brand voice
and being more connected, it would have been more impactful.
- Yeah, totally.
I think it's really interesting, the AI question,
the reason I asked you that is because a lot of people
are like, oh my God, AI today, but I'm trying to prove
a point that we've been utilizing some form of AI
for a long time.
- I mean machine learning, I mean, so many,
so much content recommendations and product recommendations
come from that.
- Totally personalizations.
- Exactly.
Okay, let's go down this journey.
We're on a roller coaster right now.
So continuing down your journey, so then you left Oracle
and then you went to FabLetics,
and I know that it was an exciting opportunity
at that moment, right?
But tell me about your B2B switch to e-commerce
in user experience specifically.
- It was very interesting, 'cause I think going
into FabLetics at the time,
the brand was still pretty new.
It wasn't a huge team.
It was based in LA, which was very different
from where I was in the Midwest, but what was nice
is a lot of really scrappy people trying to figure stuff out.
We don't always have huge teams of people.
It's a small group of people trying to do
a lot of really exciting things.
And I think for me, I was really used to building
one-on-one connections with customers
and understanding what they needed
and really trying to put a path together
for how do we help grow your business, right?
- Yeah.
- And with FabLetics, the transition was nice
because I was still building those connections,
and I actually had a really exciting kind of ease
into the brand because I started with retail.
So I was in the stores talking to customers,
learning about the product,
learning what they loved about our product,
and that reinforcement and that one-to-one connection,
when you then go to Econ, you actually sit there
and you're thinking, okay, what is this human
at the other end of this machine gonna do?
It feels so much more personal
because you've had that connection in person.
- Totally, totally.
I mean, we talk about a lot of like NCX teams.
You get a lot of analytics
and you get a lot of feedback loops
and all these pieces of it,
but I think a very underrated is when we talk
about omni-channel brands specifically, right?
So like FabLetics would be an omni-channel brand
'cause they're available in store,
then you're available online.
And what's interesting is that you have insights
and touch point from the brick and mortar piece of it, right?
Like the retail piece of it.
And then I love your journey
because you basically apply that to the econ.
- 100%, yeah, like you build that,
you take all of those learnings
and then you basically scale it, right?
How do you do this for more people?
And we actually still try to keep that connection
with our associates and digital teams.
We have in a program called retail experience
where like everyone goes into a store for a day,
does comp shopping, talks to the associates,
talks to customers.
Like you can't fabricate that,
like just having that one-on-one moment.
But I think it's really interesting
when you try to like, like when people try to go the other way,
it's harder muscles to build, right?
Like it's so, it's actually easier kind of going B2B
to retail to web because like you're just scaling
your connections essentially,
whereas people trying to go the other way.
Like you're so used to thinking at like at a huge scale
when you try to get down to the one-to-one,
it's a whole different mindset.
- It's so, such a different mindset.
I mean, you know, my past, right,
and econ like started from like more D2C
and then went into retail.
- Yeah.
- And I think like you lose that first party data.
Like so, wait, all right, I'm an econ, great.
I have like first party data 'cause it's like,
I know the touch points of my customer.
I can like do all these things.
I can survey them.
And the analytics for my customer experience team,
like all these pieces of the pie,
but then when you go into retail, you lose that, right?
- Yeah.
- And so how do you get them to work together
and like really complement each other?
- Yeah.
- I think a great example too for us
is we have a lot of situations where you're like the data
will kind of like suggest something,
like maybe a trend with like a product's not fitting
or something like that.
We actually just talk to the retail associates
and ask what they think.
And nine times out of 10, they know the answer.
- Dude, it's fantastic.
- If you are a brick and mortar store,
I just wanna say this, if you're a brick and mortar store
or you're in retail, you're considering retail,
do not underate your retail employees because they know
your customer better than you do in econ.
Like straight up.
- They do, they really do.
And they know that people come to the stores all the time.
Like they understand the trends that are coming in.
I think it's such an underutilized like component
of the business 'cause you think,
oh, well they're just selling,
but they're doing so much more.
And I think if you have the right retail leadership,
they can embody the brand in a way that's so authentic
and so real and really amplify the brand for you.
- Yeah, because like it's that human connection.
Like you're literally there.
And I think that retail experience pathway too,
of like if you are an omni-channel brand,
like having that like retail experience is so important.
So not just like, like y'all do that,
but Glossier also does that.
- That's great.
- Glossier like also has like a retail experience
where you go in like you work at the store
for like some time because it's like,
there's such valuable touch points.
Granted, you're both companies that own brick and mortar though.
You own that like retail experience.
So it's like, it is a little bit harder
for like an e-commerce brand that's maybe like going
into Walmart.
- 100%.
- Right.
- It would definitely be more challenging.
- But from your like product and like UX,
like just knowledge, right?
Like what's a hot tip that you would give to a brand
that's like entering retail, right?
And maybe like is it completely different?
Like in a scrappier way, like what,
what would you suggest to a brand to like capture
some sort of like data or survey touch points?
- Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,
we talk about omni-channel a lot
and we always talk about like you have to meet
the customer where they are.
And it's like, it's easy to say,
but it actually really is true.
And we found it's really impactful to like acknowledge
where the customer prefers to shop and meet them there.
And also like make sure the journeys
are gonna talk to each other.
So like we have some technology that we built
in our retail stores where like if you go
into the fitting room, we actually like add your account
and we scan you into the fitting room
and we know what you're trying on.
And like that just then, it's like a huge feedback loop, right?
- Yeah.
- And I think there's these little moments
that are like natural within a store
that people kind of forget about when you're thinking big
econ, but like you have to kind of break those moments down
in a retail store and think about those interactions
and how you can like really create
like a nice tight feedback loop for the customer
and for the brand.
- Yeah.
- Man retail experiences are like when you own
the retail experience and you can like do some crazy stuff.
I recently went into, I think it was Abercrombie
'cause Abercrombie's making a comeback.
- Oh yeah, they are.
- They are making a comeback, my friends, okay?
But I recently went into Abercrombie
and this is like nothing to do with data.
But I went to go try on clothing and in the dressing room,
they had like a hole where you could set the mood,
the lighting, you could charge your phone.
- I mean, if I'm in the dressing room that long,
I'm a little wickin' stern, I'm not gonna lie, right?
- But I think just like that retail experience
is just such a different type of customer experience.
- It is, it is.
And I think we often think about it.
Like obviously your associates have to be fantastic
and like the store has to feel fantastic.
Like those are givens, but I think how you can leverage
technology to amplify the experience is like people
are starting to do it more, but I think it's just such
an untapped opportunity.
- RFID opens up so much, I think that's been a huge unlock.
- Yeah, for the people out there who don't know what RFT is,
can you break that and I really don't know.
- Yeah, I don't know the acronym actually,
which is really embarrassing.
- Man, do I Google it?
- Yeah, you can Google it.
(laughing)
- Don't worry, for the people listening,
we will definitely put this in the show notes
or at the Acronem.
Essentially, RFID technology, it's like allows you
to have an individual digital code on every product
or skew in your store, so you know where the product,
like if you have the right beacons in your store,
you know where the product is, you know
if they've tried it on.
- Yeah.
- You can track product around the store.
- Talk about a user journey though.
- You can get so much interesting data.
- So much interesting data.
- Okay, okay, wait, can we break this down a little bit more?
Okay, 'cause I'm more of like an e-comp girl, right?
Like you have way more retail experience.
I mean, trust me, I worked at Best Buy,
the returns calendar when I was like 19.
I like dealt with some angry customers my day.
- Okay, I'm sure.
- But not like on these like levels, right?
- Yeah, yeah.
- But I think that's really interesting,
like that user journey of like all the, like the tracking,
it's like, it's so different.
You go to a website and it's like,
there's a pixel to tell you the journey, right?
- Right.
- But in store, it's like you gotta like physically figure
that out, right?
- Well, like think about it, right?
You have a product on your front table, like super cute,
customer picks it up, they walk around the store with it,
they go into the fitting room with it,
they come out of the fitting room with it,
but then they don't buy it, right?
Like what happened?
- Why did they not buy it?
- How do you find that out, right?
So like those are things that we're asking and answering
because we wanna understand what's going on with our product
and like what the gap is.
So we actually, a couple of years ago now,
we actually found a really bad fit issue
with one of our products based on fitting room conversion data.
So essentially people in like a certain size range,
we're converting at a really high rate,
but our smaller sizes weren't.
And we found it was just a great issue
on the bottom of the legging
where just didn't quite fit, right?
- So interesting.
- Yeah.
- So interesting.
Okay, well let's, like, I wanna keep talking about retail,
but I also wanna like kind of like talk about the user journey
into like e-commerce, right?
So like what do you guys do at FabLetics
to kind of like gather like from a feedback loop perspective,
gather information from your like customer experience teams?
Like when analytics are you like utilizing?
- We have a very robust partnership with our analytics team.
We quarterly get like quarterly trackers.
We ask customers how their, you know, brand sentiment is.
It really helps us identify like spikes or trends.
So if like something really jumps out at us
like a quality issue,
we can investigate that really quickly.
We also have a really good connection with our,
what we call global member services, our GMS team.
We meet with them every other week
and they really do a great job of surfacing up trends
of like complaints or concerns or feedback from customers.
And what's been great is obviously it alerts us
like if there's a bug or something, you know,
on the site that we have to look at,
but they've also alerted us to like this flow is just off.
Like this is kind of like a dead end.
How do we improve this experience?
And I feel like it makes all of us better
because a like we're listening to the customers,
we're taking their feedback,
we're making their experience better.
But like then we are informing our partners on,
okay, we're going to make this update.
You can let the customers know.
Like it's a really nice like holistic partnership
that I hope every brand has
because I don't know how we, what we would do without it.
- I know.
I think, and I know we're talking about like enterprise brand
right now, but I think that like there's a lot of lessons
to be learned from even like a smaller brand too.
Like that feedback loop is so important
because it informs your user journey on website,
in your product, like everything.
Like especially if your subscription program too,
like why are your customers turning out?
Why are they repeating like and doubling down
on those areas, you know?
- It's very real.
- Is your CX team, so like tell me the flow
into like conversations like, I'm just curious.
- It's like, so you like retail, right?
But then you also have like subscriptions
and like all these other like e-commerce pathways.
But like do you have, how is your team structured
in the sense of like, is there some sort
of like omni-channel team subscription?
Like tell me about that breakdown.
- Yeah, so we're a little bit functionally oriented internally.
So we have our global member services team
that takes all of our customer feedback
and it every it's that, we have our member insights team
that's doing more like proactive research.
We also do events at our corporate office,
office called Meet the Member,
where we actually like bring customers in
and we like interview them, talk to them,
get their brand sentiment.
Which is hugely helpful when you're doing
an English show. - Experience for marketing baby.
- It's stellar.
And like usually like I think it, to tangent a second,
the Meet the Members are fantastic
because the customers are so excited about the brand.
Like they love the brand as much as we do.
And it's like just such like a buzz, like a good vibe
when they're like juiced on the brand,
just as much as you are.
Which is really just empowering to see that.
- Yeah.
- So yeah, we have our member insights team,
our global member services team.
And then we have like essentially a retail ops team
that'll help facilitate and field stuff.
And then obviously our technology team.
And we're just kind of like all circularly connecting
as much as we can on the right topics.
- Yeah, God.
I mean, I love that breakdown.
I mean, granted, I know,
this we're talking about enterprise here, right?
But I think there's so many lessons to be learned.
Another brand that kind of breaks down like functionally.
- Yeah.
- Like smaller is called Sundays for dogs.
It's a dog food company, my home girl Madison,
she's her episode's coming out this week.
She runs the member services or member experience team, right?
So it's similar to like the global and like your global team.
But she's very specific to the subscriptions, right?
Whereas like the additional support team is very specific
to like general support or like other avenues.
And I think doubling down from like a function level like that,
especially if your subscription service is so important
because those are your VIP customers
and like those VIP customers and like treating them very well,
giving them that kind of like VIP experience
is going to play into retention.
- Right, it does.
And I think we talk about that internally because like for us,
the membership is almost part of the product, right?
Like the membership is such a value that you get,
you know, when you shop with Fabladex.
It's hard to disassociate it and like it's weird.
You need to have like a focus on it as a company.
So like maybe you need to have a human,
but you really need everybody internally to understand it,
adopt it and be thinking about it
because if you don't make, that's the biggest thing I've learned.
If you don't make the decisions that make the sense,
most sense for the membership and for the customer,
they might be great e-comm decisions,
but membership has its own mechanics.
- Totally.
- And it's really hard and especially when new people come in
and they've never done membership before,
they could be the best e-commerce marketer, whoever.
But if you don't understand their mechanics and membership,
it's really, really hard to make the right calls.
- I mean, absolutely, it's a completely different user journey.
- It's such a different user journey.
- And like I see this very often in a lot of like e-commerce brands
of like understanding from like a retention marketing perspective,
like, okay, like I want to understand like my,
like how I can upsell like in subscriptions,
but like I also want to understand like why people are turning out
and what I, and a trend that I always see
across like multiple different types of brands, right?
Like it doesn't matter if you're athletic leisure
or you're, you know, a chocolate brand, right?
- Yeah.
- What I see often is they always fall out around the month three.
- Oh my God, yeah.
- Right?
- Yeah.
- Why is that?
Why is that?
- I mean, we actually, we've recently updated our loyalty program
to actually get more benefits for staying three months or more
because that is such a 10-day-night.
- Yeah, yeah, that's funny.
- That makes sense.
It's always that 90-day mark.
I mean, granted every brand is very different,
but there's something that happens
in the consumer psychology at 90 days.
- I mean, I sometimes wonder, is it like you lose kind of
the excitement and the hype and there's so much else out there
that you just kind of like you're onto the next?
Like I feel like there's a piece of it that's like our culture
is like there's so much like next, next, next, next.
Is it just people are ready to move on?
I don't know.
I think it's a little bit of that,
but then I think also you,
you know when you're like on a subscription,
you just kind of like forget about it
and then you remember when it charges you?
- Yeah.
- I think it's that, it's like 90-day mark
when I'm actually looking at it.
I'm making saving and I'm like, oh, that's Stitch Fix, huh?
- There it is.
- Yeah, I remember, dude, I actually remember one time,
I was like a part of Stitch Fix.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Sorry Stitch Fix.
- Hell geez.
But I was a part of Stitch Fix and I was so busy in my life,
I kept forgetting to cancel it.
And it was probably like a good six to nine months actually.
I was their best customer because I just forgot to cancel.
- You're obviously great.
- I know, and then like I would like get to,
I would get the box and then I'd be like,
I would never really look at the clothes
and I just keep sending it back.
And I don't know why I just didn't get online and cancel it.
- Oh yeah.
- Talk about a user journey.
- Yeah, that's, but why didn't they catch you?
Like I feel like they should have caught that you were doing that.
And like they could have proactively paused you
and it would have been such a better experience for you.
- I know, but do you think that they didn't catch me
because they're so large in the sense
that they are like probably not doing that pro activity?
- I mean, potentially, but like those are things you can query
and they have to have a bucket that they're looking at.
Okay, here they're people who are like passively engaged,
they're getting a shift but they're not buying
and we're getting their $20 whatever every month.
- Right.
I don't think it was $20.
I think it was more than that.
(laughing)
- I think it was even sometimes where I forgot
to send things back and then I would get charged.
- All the glowers.
- You just have piles of ditch bags.
You know what I'm trying to do?
- Dude, dude.
Oh my God.
Talk about like membership services though.
Like on like completely outside of subscriptions,
ESOs has like a whole membership service
where you can sign up and you get free,
like you get quicker shipping, like two day shipping or whatever.
So that's another one that I would be like,
I order all the things that I knew I'd get them in time
for that event, right?
And then I'd forget to like return them
and I'd end up with like a closet full of ESOs
and I'm never worn.
(laughing)
Just like as a consumer behavior,
I'm like the worst one for subscriptions.
So now that I'm grown and I've worked in e-commerce,
I definitely have grown up a little bit.
- Yeah.
- I cancel the services.
- Good job.
Good job.
- I will say that like for our customers,
we wouldn't go in the retail store.
Like I've had a social tool just like remind the customer
like put it on your calendar right now.
- Yeah.
- Like just do it.
Like remember to the shopper skip, it's nobody deal.
I know.
And make those journeys easy.
Like that going back to what I was saying too
is like I probably didn't cancel it
because I was probably like,
didn't want to go through the daunting step
of like remembering my password to go into these things.
And like, and I get that you don't want people
to turn out, right?
But still make it easy.
Like if you make that user journey easy to skip,
cancel or whatever,
you're more likely to be able to keep those customers.
- Right.
Right.
Or they're going to be happier with the experience
and they're going to be want, they're going to come back.
Like that's what we find.
Like we have a pretty healthy reactivation program
of people who like bought a bunch of stuff,
canceled and then they come back because like,
I can understand it, right?
You only maybe need workout clothes,
like so many workout clothes for a period of time, right?
And then, okay, you're good.
And then you come back and we're,
welcome them with open arms.
They're welcome.
- Yeah, like come back.
- Yeah.
Well, that's actually a good segue
into cause we didn't even talk about it.
Like tell me about phabletics.
Like it's not just phabletics,
it's not just the brick and mortar.
Like tell me the different brands
that actually sit under you.
- Yeah.
- So, phabletics, women's,
which is our first big brand that we launched.
We also sell men's wear now.
So that's a really big component of business.
We also have scrubs.
And then we have kind of a sister brand Yiddy,
which is included in the membership,
but that's shapewear, which is a huge success
in the sense that that was the number one product
our customers wanted from us.
So we offered a new membership with a shapewear.
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How did you guys do the research and insights
into understanding that?
I know, was it like surveying touch points
and then doubling down more?
Yeah, we did a lot of investigation on it.
So, I mean, I've been on the leadership team
for a couple of years and shape where it consistently popped
in our normal surveys of what else
would you wanna see from public edicts consistently shape where,
which there's an associated product garment fit
that makes sense.
I can see why that would pop.
But then once we started talking about it,
we did more surveys to understand
what they actually want from us.
So one of the things about Fabletics is like,
we're cute, fun, activewear.
We're not like, you know, just the blacks and grays and beige.
Like we have a lot of fun prints and fun colors
and we realized that that's what she wanted applied
to her shaper as well.
So we're like, yes, of course we have your basics,
but then we also have really fun, vibrant things
that customers are really excited about.
And we found out that nugget from a lot of the research
we did before we launched the brand.
Cool, I love that.
I love that.
I think it's really important again,
surveying your customers, doubling down on insights,
feedback looping, like I don't know how many,
this is the feedback loop episode,
like seriously, like use the analytics from your team.
Okay, your CX team, I guarantee has a lot of info for you.
Right.
Yeah, I think that's really interesting.
I think it, how long has Fabletics been around actually?
About 10 years.
Wow.
Yeah.
It's been 10 years.
Yeah, I know.
What?
(laughs)
That's so wild.
And you've worked there for eight of those.
Yeah, like eight, yeah, like eight and a half.
It's wild.
That's so...
We were babies and now we're grown up.
Don't you love that, like watching your little baby company
grow up?
It's lovely.
It's really beautiful.
Mat toddler than a teenager.
And then they're like just the pain points.
Well then it's like you have new humans to do new things
and you're like, oh my gosh, we have people to do that now?
Yes, and you're so excited.
What number employee were you?
I actually don't know.
It wasn't that early on for me to count.
Yeah, but how many employees are, is Fabletics now?
Roughly, it doesn't have to be.
It's probably like 500-ish.
That's like corporate.
That's not including the field and our fulfillment center.
So yeah, it's pretty decent size.
And you guys are on your own fulfillment?
Yes.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I think you have to at some point, right?
Like when you become like enterprise, like...
Well, we actually have a whole, we have a very interesting
approach to that.
So we've built a ton of our own technology internally,
including our fulfillment center technology,
our retail technology, and obviously our website.
And then they all kind of talk to each other.
Like the way I used to describe the retail tech is it was
essentially the baby of our warehouse and our website.
They came together to handle the, you know,
in store fulfillment pieces,
plus obviously selling the product.
And I think that's really helped us in a lot of ways
because we can be so much more nimble and flexible to the needs
of our customers and our membership and adapt and change
in a way that I think if you had kind of off the shelf stuff,
it's sometimes hard to do.
Yeah, I agree with you.
I think I totally agree with you.
I think that at some point, like, at least your users,
your customers journey, like some things,
like it can't be a Shopify app.
No, it's just, it's not flexible enough, right?
Yeah.
So like if you, like for example,
we recently made some updates to our loyalty program,
did a lot of enhancements there.
And there's pieces of that that flow through the system.
And I think if we had tried to do that, you know,
with a bunch of partners, it would have taken so much more,
so much longer, been so much more complex
and probably wouldn't have like hit,
like it needed to hit for the customer.
Yeah.
You know, tell me about the breakdown.
I actually have quite a few questions, right?
But I want to go back to that loyalty comment.
Yeah.
Tell me about the breakdown from like,
okay, so you have your membership,
you have your subscription,
then you have your loyalty, right?
Yeah.
And a lot of people like talk about customer loyalty,
not just from like a feedback loop perspective,
like, or doing things for like personalization,
for your customer, but like loyalty program, right?
Yeah.
How did you guys approach going from subscriptions to loyalty?
It was challenging.
So we had a version of the loyalty program
that was like, it was kind of independent
of the concept of membership,
which the perks were great.
It was a good program,
but it didn't, it was too much for the normal consumer
to understand about the brand.
Like, I had to understand the mechanics of membership
and then wait, I have to understand how loyalty works.
Like, we needed to figure out how to make them talk together
and that's what we've done recently.
So for example, in the way we've updated the program,
we actually have tied the perks to your tenure
as opposed to like some sort of spend threshold, right?
Which makes a lot more sense
because we want to encourage longevity,
we want to encourage people to stay longer,
so let's give them more benefit
for staying that extra period of time.
Yeah.
And then we still offer additional like benefits, right?
So as you purchase, you do get points,
but then you can redeem them for free product.
So it's like, we're kind of continuing
to keep that cycle of like, try new things,
buy with us, but like the core of it
is more about longevity now,
which I think makes more sense
in the concept of membership.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And I think I really like that approach.
I think like when a lot of people think about like loyalty
versus subscription and like putting that all together,
like how do you think, so when you think about like
giving the free product, is there a certain,
and I don't mean like, and I mean your opinion,
it doesn't have to be like fat bloodaches,
but like, is there a certain threshold of cost?
Like it needs to be good product.
Right, it needs to be good product.
Cause it's like, listen, we can break that down
to like what the margin is and all these other things, right?
But it's like, I've seen, you know,
companies out there give a free product
for like a water bottle and it's like a really crappy
plastic water bottle.
So underwhelming, yeah.
It's so underwhelming, exactly.
And then people get complaints about the free water bottle,
right?
Yeah.
So it's like, how do you approach like saying like,
okay, I wanna give this like, I wanna give you like loyalty
and you earn your rewards and all these things
and I give you free products or I give you discounts,
but like, how do you approach which product
to even give them?
Yeah, it's, I mean our merch team does a really good job
trying to think proactively about it
because there's a lot of different lenses
with which we're allocating like kind of special product.
So we have, if you remember with us a certain amount
of time or longer, you get exclusive product,
then you have the product in your loyalty shop,
then you have the product that we're just launching
on a regular basis.
But in the loyalty shop specifically,
we try to do stuff that's like,
that's gonna be beneficial and like valuable
to the customer, but maybe it's something
they haven't explored before.
So one of my favorites that we had in the reward shop recently
was this dash bra.
It's like a really cute kind of low impact bra
with like really strappy back.
It actually was a top seller when I first joined.
So like in our first like couple years of business,
it was a huge hit, we kind of discontinued it.
And then we brought it back as part of like an exclusive
10 year anniversary.
And then for the, like we added to the reward shop as well.
So it's like we're really trying to like build
that brand story, like we talked about it kind of from a
loyalty, I mean from a anniversary perspective,
but then putting it in the reward shop,
like it adds more value to the shop
by having products like that
that people like genuinely really want.
Yeah, and it's understanding like the product
that the people genuinely really want, right?
And it's not, you don't got to go out
and like reinvent the wheel, right?
But it's like taking those analytics and like that data
of like what your customers really like.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I mean listening to the reviews.
Oh, for sure.
Oh yeah.
We're huge on reviews.
Yeah.
You're huge on reviews.
Cause people will review their free product.
Oh yeah.
They will share an opinion.
Oh, they give you all, all the tea.
Like excuse me, this was free for you.
Oh yeah.
I like, I've seen brands like the free water bottle thing.
I've like seen the brand in particular,
I'm not going to name names,
but like I've seen this brand get really negative reviews
on water bottle that was free.
And I'm like, excuse me.
Can you like review maybe the product
that you got in your box?
Not the water bottle.
But I think that's the thing is like
for the normal average customer, they don't care.
They don't care who bought it.
They don't care that it was like a vendor supplied thing.
Yeah.
It stands for your brand.
It has your logo on it.
It needs to be a good product.
Right.
I'm just going to stand behind it.
Well, that talks into like the entirety
of like brand experience, right?
It's like every piece that you're doing
isn't just about you just putting out like,
okay, I'm going to put out like a great user journey
and a customer experience or a great product, right?
Every piece, even the free stuff, even the technology,
like this, that and the other thing
have to be an exemplification of your brand
and the brand experience.
And again, this is why customer experience
isn't just customer support, right?
Right.
You really have to like be very holistic
and how you approach it.
I mean, we think about that from, you know,
for our new customers, they go through like a quiz
when they first get started.
And we get a lot of information about that customer.
And like, it's the first touch point.
It has to be great.
Like if you, it has to communicate, deliver value,
and that's something we're really sensitive to.
And I think it's often forgotten
how much all of those things will connect over time, right?
Like that customer took that quiz at the very beginning.
They've been with us for a while, but they're like,
oh wait, will you guys already have my sizes?
Because I took the quiz.
Like you reinforce the behaviors that you wanna see.
Right.
Because you're asking me the right info
and you're thinking about what they need.
Right, absolutely.
Going back to quizzes now.
'Cause listen, everybody out there,
we got a user experience designer up in this podcast.
So I'm gonna break down the consumer psychology
and like just use our journeys and everything you're saying.
But like, walk me through the quiz, right?
'Cause I also find a lot of brands like,
like, oh, I'm gonna do this quiz, right?
And they pop it on because yes,
the information that you get about your customer.
But how do you approach the questions actually being asked?
Yeah, it's a good question.
It's a combination of what's valuable for us as a brand
and then what makes sense for a customer
to wanna engage with, right?
So we're actually kind of in the midst
of doing some testing on different types of questions
and we're gonna kind of explore it in more depth.
But when you really break it down,
there's so many variables that can drive
how a customer perceives a quiz
or even just a question within a quiz, right?
Like, does the image resonate?
If the images aren't great,
that they might not be tuned in, right?
Is the copy correct or confusing, right?
How do they navigate through it?
We found there's so much variation
in each of those elements
that you kind of have to be intentional about how you test.
But for us, it's like, we wanna get the information
that's gonna help us provide a better experience back.
Right.
So it's like that, it's that balance, right?
You don't wanna go too much and like ask them the farm,
but you wanna get enough
that you can inform their experience.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's a really great approach 'cause like I said,
like I see a lot of brands doing these quizzes, right?
And I think that's really great
and like you're gathering data,
like it's a good way to like,
but it's not just like slap it on the website
and like, okay, great, like, now I've quizzed my customer
and I'm gonna like personalize some recommendations, right?
I mean, and then actually that's a whole other piece.
Like how, like you guys probably have,
how many skews do you have?
Do you know, roughly?
A couple thousand.
Yeah, yeah, right.
It's not a huge catalog.
Right, but you have more variety
than like a company who might have like 10,
you know what I mean?
Right, right.
So like, if I'm a company who is like 10,
like think about it in a scrappy way,
like how would you approach the like personalize
recommendations, like would you like catalog them,
like or create them into collections?
Like what would your approach be?
I think I'd probably wanna explore like,
like the education of the product and then matching that.
So like, if you were to do a quizzed example,
probably more about like product attribute,
like data to inform a recommendation
as opposed to like more generic to narrow down,
like it's supposed to like a filtering down a set.
It's about choosing within the set that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that makes, that makes sense.
I like that approach.
I wanted to talk also about journey mapping
because I think that's a hot topic
in customer experience, right?
And I think like you would have so many tips on that.
Like actually, just in my like CX group chat the other day
with like one of my home girls, she was like,
who has a template for a customer journey map?
And I was like, I just Googled this
and this is what I use.
You're right, you're right.
But what would like, so if somebody came to you
and was like, what's your approach
for customer journey mapping?
Like, is there a template?
Like what would the suggestion be?
It's a hot tip.
Like we are huge white borders and we use Miro
very often for like digital whiteboarding
and that's hugely impactful for us.
Just like, it's important to think about
the whole soup to nuts experience.
I think it's really easy and I even find this sometimes
with you know, folks on my team like,
okay, it starts here on the website
and then it's gonna end here.
And it's like, but what happened around it?
I think that's sometimes what we often forget.
Yes.
There's more going on than just like your little sliver
of focus.
And I'm a big like collaborator.
So like we were very cross-functionally collaborative.
So like we'll pull in people from different pieces
like parts of the business to like validate and fact check
pieces that we might have forgotten.
Like, oh wait, you're gonna forget,
GMS is gonna get that contact.
So like this how it could circle back.
I think that's super, super helpful.
It's very hard to do it effectively in a silo.
I think it's much better done when you collaborate with group.
That's more of a hot take, okay?
Like absolutely because like I often see this, right?
Like I often see this where it's like,
okay, I'm in the CX side and I'm gonna go and like build
a customer journey map, but nobody else does it, right?
Like marketing doesn't get involved,
fulfillment doesn't get involved, all these other avenues.
But like these are all touch points that we're talking about.
Like start thinking about it from like a collaboration.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Like I think, you know, it's very easy to get like focused
in your day to day focused on what you're doing.
But I feel like it's, you're gonna be like 99% better
if you ask a few people and you include more folks.
It's like people aren't comfortable doing it sometimes.
I'm a huge believer in like you should be vulnerable,
be comfortable saying what you don't know,
be comfortable asking for help
because you're only gonna do better work
if you can approach kind of your work with that mindset.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'd love to like kind of switch gears
and talk about AI again, right?
Like so I know we talked about it in the beginning
of like AI usage and like your previous past
and like content marketing, right?
And like, you know, proving the fact that we all
before using AI.
(laughs)
But what's your approach to AI today though, right?
Like how are you thinking about AI and like
just anything that you're like,
that you're doing in your field?
Yeah, so I think there's two angles.
And I think you've talked about this previously.
There's like the internal experience
and kind of the external experience for the customer.
Internally, my biggest hot take,
if you're not using an AI note taking tool,
you are doing the wrong work.
100%.
Like, oh, that's a hot take that I might need to do.
You have to do it.
It is life changing.
Like once here.
Once it's, no, it's like,
I find that you're so much more engaged
once you have those on, like you're not trying to like
furiously take notes and like keep up with action items.
Once you trust the tool that you use,
it just you show up so much better.
So like that's my biggest AI win,
I think in recent memory is the meeting tools are great.
We're also big proponents of finding ways
to do more more quickly internally.
So like there's obviously like, you know,
chatbots with GMS, you know, we are big on how do we write
our requirements and do some of our discovery work
in partnership with like a chat GPT.
Yeah.
Because there's no like, I don't need you as my product manager
to write every line of the requirements.
You just need to understand
what the requirements supposed to do,
leverage a tool to help you get there.
Right.
From a customer perspective,
I think there's a lot kind of coming in the market
that's pretty exciting.
One thing I'm looking at right now
is potentially integrating kind of like an AI chat bot
potentially on our PDP.
Yeah.
So the customer can like ask questions about the product
and like get more information.
It's still really early,
but I think that could be super, super helpful.
It's just like help us understand the details on a product.
Dude, I did this with Feastwills.
I think this might be a workshop session right now.
(laughing)
No, I did that with Feastwills.
I took, so you know, I was trying to solve a problem.
So not that you're interviewing me,
but like just how I like approach this, right?
When we started with Feastwills,
we didn't know anything about our customer, right?
So like I had to approach CX,
like the support function and the community function,
like the digital experience function,
from like a perspective of like,
I think I know what I know about my customer,
but I'm gonna like put this on to like launch it.
So that's how I approach the chat bot of like,
I think I know what they want in the sense of like,
okay, they wanna like know about Mr. Beast,
I gave them product information and all these pieces, right?
And then my finding was that people started really interacting
with the chat bot a lot more, right?
And so I was like, oh, this is really sick.
So then how do I approach the same thing you're talking about,
putting it on PDPs?
And then so like, how do we actually make this
into like a sales bot?
- Yeah. - Essentially, right?
Like into like an always on experience
that you don't necessarily have to like reach out
through email if you like have questions about the product.
And so then like I changed that chat bot
for the external customer to like only on PDPs
would be like, okay, if they were sitting there
for like a minute or whatever, I'd be like,
hey, looks like you're looking at, thinking about it
and looking at this chocolate bar, I don't know, right?
And so then like it would prompt them to have a conversation
and then they would have the conversation
and then they would lead them down
like the little salesy like bot path.
So, and this is really cool.
I can't give the exact number,
but I can tell you this piece, right?
This bot contributed to about four to 6%
of our launch revenue.
- Oh. - Which is massive.
- That's amazing.
- And this is what I was saying,
it could be like a workshop moment, right?
So if I'm looking at it from like a athletic leisure,
right perspective, right?
Like or just phabletics, right?
Like taking that concept of like being a little salesperson
and you don't necessarily even have to use the generative AI,
you can make it intent-based to like understand pathways
a little bit and then build the generative.
- Right, right.
- You know?
- I think that's a super interesting application.
And I think for us, what we've still been trying
to kind of crack the nut on is like,
how do you have a great chat experience
that blends membership education,
general support kind of questions and like product selling?
Like I think that's a nugget.
I actually don't know if I've seen anybody do it super well,
combining all three of those.
- Yeah.
Yeah, well, I mean, this is a plug to customer,
I'm gonna be honest with you,
because like the way customer approaches this
is service doesn't start at, I need help,
it starts at like hello, right?
And so it's like taking that concept,
but I love saying that quote because that's my CX philosophy
as well, like answer the questions before
they become questions, right?
And so it's like taking that tool, right?
And you know, for anybody listening out there,
it doesn't necessarily have to be customer specifically,
but if you're thinking about chatbots,
think about it from that perspective of like,
your service starts at like,
I'm browsing the website,
let me build a conversation and engagement pathway
for my customer to always be and always on thing, right?
Let me be informative, but also you can take it
a different way, like how I would approach it.
Again, this is Yeti, or not Yeti, I'm sorry,
this is a workshop moment.
So Yeti, for anybody who doesn't know,
is a brand by Lizzo, right?
And Lizzo is an experience, Lizzo is like a whole moment, right?
I would even approach that, like your different brands,
like your core FabLetics brand, your Scrub brand,
and like Yeti and anything else.
And I would approach them as all different
like engagement experiences.
So like, specifically Lizzo is like the most,
like stands out, right?
So it's like people who probably are coming to this site
because one, you're interested in the product,
but two, you probably are a fan of Lizzo, right?
So offer some sort of like, product information,
but also maybe fun facts about Lizzo.
- 100%.
- How she came up with the name.
- 100%.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Like, the name is great, it's her childhood name,
which is so adorable, her childhood nickname was Yeti.
- I love that.
- And that's the name of the brand, it's great.
- I love it, but that's a fun fact, right?
Like, so that's an engagement piece,
and like the same thing with FabLetics, right?
Like there's no reason why you couldn't like,
build like some history into it.
- 100%.
- It's like, build it to like have a conversation.
So it's like your service isn't starting at like,
I need help.
- Yeah, yeah.
- It's starting at like, hello, I'm a new customer.
- Right, right, right.
And I think that like, it really speaks to how much
education goes into selling product nowadays.
Like, I think people are so much more invested in brands,
they wanna understand the brand better,
they wanna know what they're buying,
they wanna understand the mechanics of a program
if it's a program of some sort.
And I think it takes a lot more to be intentional,
to communicate that information now,
than it used to be.
- Yeah.
- Like, it used to be so much more transactional,
I feel like we're kind of in a different era right now.
- Yeah, well, this kind of goes back
to the beginning of our convo, right?
We talked a lot about like retail experience, right?
And I don't know if you're noticing this
with like consumer behavior, but like I'm noticing,
I mentioned Abercrombie, Abercrombie's having a comeback,
right? - Right.
- I don't think like malls are necessarily gonna have a combo,
like overall comeback.
I would say like it's like, you know,
Abbot Kinney and Venice, you know, type of like comeback,
like brick and mortar stories on like a street,
an outdoor mall moment.
But my point of my point of coming circling back is that,
what I'm noticing is that consumer behavior and e-commerce
is like, like people aren't really buying online anymore,
they're wanting to go and store, you know?
- We see it too.
- Right?
- And we see that like our most valuable customers,
our customers who shop with us on all platforms,
like we're, they really are engaged with the brand everywhere.
But I mean, that's partially when we opened our retail stores,
like what was so exciting, we had a, you know,
members who shop with us online,
they had a bunch of member credits,
they had a bunch of money to spend with us.
They'd come in the store and like,
say before they'd only bought the leggings,
they see all the other product that we offer
and they just kind of go crazy.
Like they're so excited, they get to touch and feel it.
Like there's like a, like a tangibility piece
that I think kind of coming out of the COVID era,
like people want more experiences,
they wanna touch things, they wanna feel things.
- Right.
- And a retail store does that in a way
that you really can't do any content.
- I know, I know, I mean,
it's really interesting to watch that behavior,
like switch and I think, and I think you hit it.
I think we're all coming off of COVID
and wanting that like interaction in person
because like we missed it for two years.
- We did, yeah, and you only bought online,
it's like you were only like connected to your screen
and now it's like, how can I like really validate this
before I just click buy, right?
- Right, right, and it's like,
like going back to that ASO's example,
I bought all these clothes because like,
I wanted to try them, like I wanted to feel them,
but then I have the intentions of returning them.
- Yeah, yeah, you never were actually gonna keep those
like seven pairs of shoes.
- No, but I did.
(laughing)
- I just returned them, gotcha.
(laughing)
- Oh man.
- That's like a whole nother thing though,
and this is like just totally random, a little bit off topic.
I don't understand why like return policies
are so rigid at stores.
Having a generous policy builds so much more goodwill.
- Well, builds loyalty.
- It totally does.
Like why would you, like, like,
why die on that hill?
I don't understand it.
- Yeah, okay, going back to ASO's real quick.
I will tell you that like, they're,
I know this is like e-commerce more,
but like they have like a, I don't know,
15 day, 30 day, whatever it is, right?
Policy, but like sometimes I would forget
to return the things, right?
And then I would like remember when it was like too late
and a few times, sorry, so I've done this.
Like I returned something like three to six months later.
- Oh no way, did they take it back?
- They take it back?
- They take it back?
- That's stellar customer service.
That's such a good experience.
- I know.
- Yeah, I know.
And so it's like take that example of like,
it's kind of a Costco example.
- Yeah. (laughs)
No, it's true.
Honestly, that's how our retail store,
like our return policy is 90 days,
but like so it's already quite generous.
But like if you come in store with a product,
like our associates are never gonna turn you away,
they're fine.
It will take it back.
- Because you want to build the loyalty to your brand
and that affinity to it, you know?
And it's like, like if you're rude,
or I wouldn't say rude, I get it like,
like-- - You can call us the A, right?
- Yeah.
- But I think there's a piece of like,
it's like that empathy piece of like,
we understand you as a human, like,
you got busy, something happened, like we got you, right?
I think that's like what builds that connection.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Mel, I had to tell you this,
but we're at the end of the road.
- No way.
I know.
- This has been great.
- I'm gonna miss you now.
- I'm gonna miss you too.
- It's been so fun.
- Yeah.
- It's been so fun.
I feel like you and I could like talk for 20,000 hours.
- Yeah, we could keep it rolling.
- So maybe we'll do around two of this.
- I love that.
- Here for that.
Tell the homies where they can meet or see you, meet you.
- Find me?
- Find you.
I am a horrible, not frequent LinkedIn poster,
but I am on there, Melanie Cummings, you can find me.
But she is a responder to DMs.
- I will respond if you hit me up in the DMs for sure.
- Maybe, don't over inundate her on the DMs.
(laughing)
We'll see how much I can handle.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I was like, I really set that expectation real high.
- So I had to like, backtrack it for a second.
- I gotta level up the expectation.
- But we'll put your, you will put a link in the show notes
to your profile and I really appreciate you coming on.
- Absolutely my pleasure.
- I can't wait to do this again.
- Yeah, thank you.
- And to everyone out there, I really appreciate you tuning in
for another episode of the Juice.
Please tune in next week, as well as sign up for our Newsy.
We're dropping the hot takes on a weekly basis
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So you can sign up at juice.customer.com
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