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The CX Survival Guide: How Emily Elvey Turns Chaos into Loyalty | #571

• Nathan Bush • Episode 571

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After years leading CX and customer service teams at M.J. Bale, Meshki and ZeroCo, Emily Elvey’s built a reputation as one of Australia’s sharpest voices in ecommerce experience design. In today’s chat, she’s joining Bushy to unpack what’s really driving customer satisfaction, retention and sanity during peak season.

Today, we’re discussing…

  • The three fixes to make before Black Friday - and why your policy pages are killing conversions
  • How to use CSAT data the right way
  • Why taking your customer service team out for lunch might save your peak season
  • Planning for worst-case scenarios: how to roster, resource and survive inbox overload
  • The psychology of returns and the tension moments that make or break loyalty
  • Turning customer service into a sales engine, and training teams to upsell with empathy
  • How to build AI agents that actually sound like your brand
  • The link between employee satisfaction and customer retention
  • How to glue all your customer data together for one source of truth

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SPEAKER_00:

Historically, we will see all of that marketing go live, all those orders go out the door, and then our teams will end up in this giant backlog where they're overwhelmed and don't quite know what to do. In terms of styling and saying, like, okay, I don't want to wear black because it doesn't look great on my skin tone. So I'm not really sure what colours to wear. Is the AI agent going to answer that? Absolutely not. I would take your customer service team out for lunch. They are about to experience effectively 12 months in a three-month period of time.

SPEAKER_02:

Hey, it's Nathan Bush or Bushy, joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. Let's be honest, by this time of year, you are probably BFCM'd out, and it hasn't even been BFCM yet. There are so many webinars and podcasts around preparing for Black Friday through marketing, through product, and through technology. But there's one team that always gets ignored, and I want to put the spotlight firmly on them, and that's our customer service team, who is often left holding the baby, that is Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and cleaning up the chaos. Today I bring you the person that I think is one of Australia's leading consultants when it comes to retail customer experience, and she's going to spill the beans on everything we should be doing to make sure those customer service teams are empowered, this BFCM. Today I am going to be talking with Emily Elvey, who is the founder of Emily Elvie Consulting, a customer experience and service consultancy. Emma has worked with leading Australian retailers, including MJ Bale, Meshke, Zero Co., and a bunch of international fashion brands to help improve their customer service. She is insanely customer focused, even to the point where she's held two jobs, one in a retail store and one in a corporate head office for a point of time just to stay connected to the customer. But she leads with an empathy-led, data-driven approach, meaning that everything she's doing, it is for a great customer experience, but also for strong commercial results. She helps teams understand what customers really feel and turns that into measurable business growth. Today on the podcast, we cover a bunch of practical customer service tips that you can implement immediately in your business. We talk about the difference between customer service and customer experience and why treating them the same could be costing you repeat revenue. We talk about CX Systems and the data stack, from Shopify to Gorgeous to Clavio. What sits where? Where does your single source of customer truth fit? And how do they all work together? And then we talk about how to prepare your service team for Black Friday from CSAT audits and visibility and returns to protecting team morale when the tickets flood in. Plus, there's a whole bunch of practical quick wins like using Shopify tags to auto-prioritize VIP customers and using AI agents with your brand tone of voice that don't make your customers end in a rage fit. A big thanks, as always, to our sponsors, Shopify and Clavio, for supporting this episode and all our Add to Card episodes. We love having you on board as our leading e-commerce partners. Now, let's get into it. Here's Emily Elvie, Customer Service and Experience Extraordinaire at Emily Elvie Consulting. Emily Elvie, welcome to Ad to Cart.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02:

It is delightful to have you here. We've been talking about this for a long time. You are my go-to person when it comes to everything customer experience and customer service. And I couldn't think of a better time for us to be having this conversation than just before Black Friday. How are you holding up?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, good. It's um getting pretty hairy out there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. But I think this is a good conversation to have because there is so much chat out there at the moment around marketing, which is fair enough. There's a lot of marketing dollars going in. A lot out there about conversion. But if I feel sorry for any team at Black Friday, it has to be the customer service team. Am I right?

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. It's probably why you've not heard about it yet. Because historically we will see all of that marketing go live, all those orders go out the door. And then our teams will end up in this giant backlog where they're overwhelmed and don't quite know what to do. So we're usually the tail end.

SPEAKER_02:

So what are you doing? Top three things to prepare a retailer right now, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, number one would be auditing your policy pages and the footer at the bottom of your website. So there's different types of research that come out, but all of the results sit between 40% and 80% of consumers will look at those returns and shipping policy pages before they check out. So regardless of what you read, whether it's the 80% or the 40%, that's still a really big percentage of clients. It's huge. So if those are incorrect or there's aged information or it's no longer relevant, that could harm a conversion, or it could encourage one and then create a really bad customer experience later.

SPEAKER_02:

Gotcha. Are most do most retailers have something wrong in there?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I would say there's usually a spelling error or it was updated five years ago and you know you no longer use that service, or your same-day delivery actually now goes to a whole bunch of other postcodes that you're not mentioning that you could be mentioning, or shipping prices have changed. Absolutely. There's so many different versions of them, especially if you've got multiple sites across multiple regions. That's where I see the most errors because someone will update something on one site and then they won't remember the rest.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Okay, great tip. Number one, what's the second thing?

SPEAKER_00:

Number two would be look at your CSAT if you have that implemented. Most retailers that have a customer service desk will have that almost automatically implemented. And CSAT stands for customer service satisfaction scores.

SPEAKER_02:

Almost got you then.

SPEAKER_00:

If only.

SPEAKER_02:

How do you get them?

SPEAKER_00:

How do you get them? You send them out as a survey. So they definitely come back to you, but that's kind of where it generally stops. So not only just turning them on, but having a look at them in the last 30, 60, 90 days. What is it that's created bad satisfaction? I don't care about the good ones. What I want to see is the really bad ones and see what happens when that hasn't gone well. Those are the little gaps you should be trying to plug as quickly as you possibly can. You may not be able to get that in before peak hits, but if you could get one out of three, then that would still set you in really good stead.

SPEAKER_02:

And in your experience, where is most of the negative feedback clustered?

SPEAKER_00:

It's generally around returns and not just a I want to lodge a return, but more the visibility of the returns journey back. So, you know, you've gone onto a portal, you've said that you want an exchange or a refund or a return of some kind, you lodge that, you send it off, and then there's a bit of panic that ensures. If we looked at that from a psychological perspective and we looked at the different emotions someone's experiencing, it's the highs when you order, it's the lows while it's shipping, it's the high once it arrives, it's the low once it's returned back again. So they're experiencing this real tension moment, especially if it's international, where they don't know if their money is coming back. So we need to provide visibility on that journey. And if you do, fantastic.

SPEAKER_02:

And are you looking at CSAT scores? It's really hard to say. CSAT scores. It is. It's like CSAT should be selled by the sea shore. Are we looking at them from Black Friday last year, or are we just assuming that was fixed and that should be sold by now? And we're just looking at the last 30, 60 days.

SPEAKER_00:

I'd hope it was fixed and that we learned our learnings. I would look at the last 30, 60, 90 days because that'll show you your most current problems in the business and also your most current markets. You may not have shipped to the US back then, or you may have shipped it a different way without or with a 3PL. So there's definitely things that will have changed in markets since then. So I'd just be looking at that more recent period of time.

SPEAKER_02:

Great. All right. So we've got policy pages, we've got CSAT scores. What's our third thing we're looking at?

SPEAKER_00:

I would take your customer service team out for lunch. And I'm not kidding.

SPEAKER_01:

No.

SPEAKER_00:

They are about to experience effectively 12 months in a three-month period of time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I saw a retail trainer that I really love refer to it as we've just asked them to run a marathon and we're about to ask them to run another marathon in three months' time. And sometimes we forget them. Like it's sometimes the information they have we don't love to use, we don't love to lean on and we don't want to know. It's like the ugly duckling, it's you know, that uncomfortable part of our business that sometimes or more often than not is negative. So we we sometimes don't invest in it in the same way. And if you're about to ask them to pull extra hours, maybe work on a weekend, you know, go through a really stressful period, acknowledge that rather than acknowledge it after it's happened and go, oh yeah, by the way, you did a really good job. Like they know this is coming, you know, they feel tense, they feel overwhelmed. And if you can get ahead of that and say, you know, we really value you, we know this is going to be really hard, but we're here for you. And we want to take you out ahead of time, you know, run a training session, take them out for lunch, you know, buy them a pizza, like whatever it is that just shows them that you really value them in a way that works for your business, that would definitely be what I'd be doing.

SPEAKER_02:

You're filling up the bucket before it starts to drain.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

What are you doing for your customer service teams during Black Friday? How are you ensuring sanity prevails?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. It's a really tricky time because it's deeply emotional. Like speaking to someone, having an emotional connection with someone, serving someone is really taxing on you as an individual. It's like if we had a full day of meetings, you go home and you think, oh, I'm so wrecked. Like if my husband tries to talk to me, I will go into the other room, close the door. Like I you just can't give any more that you can give. And that's often the space that they end up in in these periods every single day, even worse at this period of time, because they may have done hundreds and hundreds of tickets for a day. And then they they look at the number that's still in the inbox, and there still could be thousands and thousands of them, and they think, oh, I didn't even make a dent. I'm not making a difference. So I would definitely encourage you to phase and roster across the period that's conscious of that. So, for example, someone may look after live chat 90% of the time, but they'll need a break from that because it's very intensive, it's very high energy, it's really urgent, it's really quick. So we need to then give them a break and give them something that's a little bit more mind-numbing. That could be clearing through social media comments, it could be like, you know, going back and liking all of the stories if you have your social media connected to your customer service team. There's a whole bunch of different ways, but make sure you roster them so they have high energy tasks, but then they also have low so that you're helping them decompress.

SPEAKER_02:

So variety of tasks is actually better than having someone dedicated to this channel, this channel, this channel.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes and no. I'd say just don't do it in the same day.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So just make sure they're bucketed to certain things, but across the period, don't just give one person one channel because they will burn out really quickly. And they'll get really over it. It's like if you did the same thing all day, every single day with no variety, we would get really over that too.

SPEAKER_02:

Are you seeing your clients extend their customer service operating hours in the lead up to BFCM?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I am. And I'm also seeing them kind of plan for worst-case scenario and team members in other teams that can help as well. I think that's really important. If shit does hit the fan, you know, that team's going to be overwhelmed. So who can we preemptively know that we can borrow from other teams, whether that's e-commerce, if you sit in the marketing side of customer service, or if your team sits in operations, maybe that's team members from the warehouse once they see their peak drop, maybe it's your operations manager, you know, whoever it is, maybe it's your founder. Doesn't matter. Like that would just put people on the ground. There was this big moment when I was working with Zero Co. And we had thousands and thousands and thousands of orders all off the back of them relaunching their new product. And we had these hours of power, and it was like every Friday afternoon for three hours at the end of the week, everyone would just churn through. And this was about a month that we did this, and we would just spend all of this time collectively as a whole business and a whole team clearing through tickets. Because at the end of the day, that is the priority is making sure that your customers are there. They feel heard, they feel looked after, because otherwise they're not going to come back. And all that marketing that you spoke to before isn't gonna mean anything. Yeah. Because you're not gonna keep them.

SPEAKER_02:

When you said planning for worst-case scenarios, can you give us an example? What's a worst case scenario in your head?

SPEAKER_00:

A worst case scenario to me is when you are like two times your KPIs. Like let's say your KPI is getting back to someone in 24 hours and we're at 48 hours. Now we're at 72 hours, now we're at five days, now we're at seven days. That to me is worst case scenario.

SPEAKER_01:

We don't have to knowing when to ring the alarm.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. And you can see it's starting to get to those points quite quickly. And if it does, and if you're a customer service manager, I would highly recommend just say something. You know, you can't control the volume coming in, but you can control the output that you are working on as a team. So, you know, it's part of it that we go through a ups and downs and backlogs and then, you know, smaller periods of time, but you just don't want that to blow out for a really long period of time because that's when it affects things. I think honestly, Aussie consumers are are pretty good, like in the grand scheme of things, especially internationally, where we're pretty generous in our feedback.

SPEAKER_02:

A research that came out last week around that, and it was something like 90% of Australians consider themselves pretty patient when it comes to customer service. And it's like an expectation of our culture that we're nice to the other person on the other end of the phone.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

But then when it comes to GPTs or automated messages, it drops to like 56%.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. That doesn't surprise me. I guess, especially if you've got international clients too, you can make sure that you're, you know, routing markets where you know that that's not the case, where there are, you know, different expectations in different markets because that's the reality. There is different expectations, different SLAs in different markets. And you can also look to make sure that when you do have that experience, that the clients that you're talking to are your VIPs or you know, you're segmenting them out so that you can attack those, you know, high-value, long-term, high CLTV customers first and then getting through the rest.

SPEAKER_02:

How are you doing that? How are you making sure that you can identify high-value customers in your customer service team and prioritize them?

SPEAKER_00:

This is one of my favorite things. This is where I get really nerdy and love all the back of the customer service desk. You love nerdy. Right? Podcast for nerdy.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

So Shopify tags, big commerce tags, whatever you've got, you can definitely pass those through, especially with the native integrations in whether it's a ZenDesk, a customer, a Gorgas, you know, whatever the system is, you can pass those tags through. So let's say, for example, in Shopify, you're tagging all of your high-value customers with VIP. That tag can then pass their way through to Gorgeous.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's an automated tag based on when a customer might reach a threshold of X over 12 months.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, absolutely. And you could do that with your Shopify flows to tag or untag if they have or they haven't. Once you've got that firing, then you can set up kind of the opposite version of that in Gorgeous. So it would read the Shopify customer tag, add another tag that's a Gorgeous tag. Say you could use the same tag, so VIP, VIP, and then you can route them into a view, which is just really like a folder of all of the customers that have that tag as view, and then attack those from the top down and make sure that you've got them first. That's one of my favorite quick wins.

SPEAKER_02:

That's a great quick win.

SPEAKER_00:

It's really easy. It's just something that some sometimes we just don't do, but it's it's really easy to do. You don't have to have a loyalty program. You don't have to have tiers.

SPEAKER_02:

You could just You're gonna piss a lot of people off if you keep talking that way. I like it though, but I think it's smart because you just treat your best customers right. That is loyalty.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely, yes. And, you know, it could be every single person in those top top layer of tiers. Or if you did have a loyalty program and one of your perks effectively was to have VIP customer concierge service, then do it that way.

SPEAKER_02:

Are you looking at any other data other than transactional data when working at your VIPs, like influence or anything else? Or is it purely transactional value?

SPEAKER_00:

Honestly, nine times out of ten, it's just the transactional value. It can get really heavy really quickly if you start adding all of those things in. And there's definitely a time and a place to add all of those other customer experience elements in to get a single source of truth for the data and the customer data. But in terms of like segmenting that as VIP or not, I would inevitably say dollar value.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And are you aiming for a certain percentage as your VIP? Like 10%.

SPEAKER_00:

I always say that 20% brings you 80% of your revenue. So I would I'd be going for a 20%.

SPEAKER_02:

You're gonna stick to the old 20%.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I'm gonna stick to the old 20% because when we really look at it, it still is that. You'd think after all this time it would have changed for a percentage, but it really hasn't.

SPEAKER_02:

I love it. All right. And when we're talking about channels, what are the most popular customer service channels at the moment? What kind of mix are you seeing? Are you still finding that you need agents on the phone?

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Love a phone call. Personally, I'm a huge caller. Much to the dismay of all of my friends. I will just call rather than texting back. So very sorry.

SPEAKER_02:

You're that person.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I am. It's the like late millennial in me, just kind of stop ringing.

SPEAKER_02:

I've got so many games of phone tag on the go because I just don't pick them up.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, so that's why you scream my calls. Is that what it is?

SPEAKER_02:

I'll wait for the voicemail. And so what's the mix? So you mentioned how time-intensive live chat is and that it's real time and it's quick and it's firing all the time. How do you structure a team between that email phone calls?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so the first thing is look at your customer and your customer base. That's gonna tell you, especially about the phones too. Like if you have an older demographic, they want to get you on the phone. If you have something that's quite complicated, or you've got, you know, a subscriptions program that is looking at revenue and has saving someone's car details and is like quite, you know, potentially tension building in the customer journey, you're gonna need a phone line because you need someone to hear that you are a legitimate person and that this is a legitimate brand and that you're not taking their money for nothing.

SPEAKER_02:

And there is something about having a physical phone line in either the header or in the footer to make a business look legit straight away.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And honestly, it can just be routed through the desk. It doesn't matter where your agents are taking those phone calls from. So it doesn't mean that if you have an international team, you can't take those. It just means that you have another avenue for those people. If you think about it from a different point of view, we all talk about being visual learners, being auditory learners when we're at school. So that lives on with us. And that's when we start to look at each customer as an individual. Because if someone's an auditory learner, then they're gonna be more keen to give you a call for their customer service needs than someone who would prefer a written format. They're gonna send you the email or they might jump on live chat. So there's definitely an element of that that goes into this as well. It's not just your age demographic.

SPEAKER_02:

What's your view on turning customer service channels into customer sales channels? So instead of just answering queries, being able to guide them on a shopping journey.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I think this is really key because if this person were standing in a physical store, we wouldn't expect them to not upsell or cross-sell or turn that return into a bigger sale. Our expectation will be that they can do that. And all of the customer service team members that I've trained and worked with over the years, the most successful ones have come from physical retail shop floors first and then been able to translate that into digital customer service. So absolutely, there should be an element of that. And, you know, thinking of taking a return from a bad return to a good return or a holistic experience, not just a customer service interaction, that's where this becomes really meaningful and you can build a relationship with someone if it's virtual. It doesn't have to be physical.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And it's a lot more memorable, isn't it? Like if you think even in our own experience, how many times have we had those customer service interactions where it's like, where's my order? Customer service agent answers it and goes, please wait on the line and then rate my performance. You're like, yeah, that was great. But if it was actually a conversation and a journey, like, why are you returning this? What's going on? Are you enjoying your experience?

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And that's where you can really see those CSAT results and find those gaps. So this would be a great example in your AI agent or bot or the self-serve at the beginning. There may be some gaps that are creating a lot of friction where you are then leaving a poor review, even though it had the best of intentions to just quickly give you a tracking number. That didn't work in that situation. So you've had a poor experience. If it had worked successfully, you would have had the best experience ever. And we'd be talking about it in a very different light.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. All right. And you've given us some tips straight out the gate that I think anyone can take and implement for this Black Friday, Cyber Monday, whether that be updating policy documents all the way through to isolating your VIP customers and triaging them to the top of the service list. So there's plenty there. But I want to take a step back for a moment. You've had some really amazing experience, retail organizations, leading teams at MJ Bale and Meshki. For a lot of people, the natural progression would be to go through e-commerce and go into marketing or tech because that's the sexy side. You've gone into customer experience and customer service. What was the moment that made you go? Actually, this is the part of the retail and e-commerce experience I want to focus on.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't talk about this very often, but for the majority of my early career, I worked two jobs. One of them was that full-time nine to five leading a customer service team or growing customer experience. And then on a Thursday night and a Sunday, I would work on a shop floor in a retail brand. And I don't tell people that sometimes.

SPEAKER_02:

Can you say which one?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they don't exist anymore, probably because I'm not there.

SPEAKER_02:

Famous footwear.

SPEAKER_00:

Famous footwear. Well, it was famous footwear. It was footwear. It was part of the Monroe footwear group. So it was wanted shoes. They like collapsed it into their bigger branded group that obviously still exists now. I did this for years and years and years. And everyone would say, like, why are you doing that? Like, that's crazy. Like, this is insane. Like, why do you work six days a week? Kind of seven. Why are you doing the Thursday night two? But I got to this point where I realized I'm doing this because I actually really love this. And I actually really love spending time with these customers and talking to them and getting to know their lives and creating VIPs. And I kind of figured that I got to this point where it was the thing that filled my cup and that I felt so much joy from doing that I didn't want to change that and I didn't want to give that up. The flip side to that is that I'm a bit of a dog with a bone. And if you tell me no, I'm going to tell you yes, and then push you until I get what I want. So there was this funny crossroads where customer service had existed for so long. And then there was customer care. And then this buzz term customer experience started coming up. And it was almost as if we were changing HR to people and culture all over again. Except something was happening in the background, and that was COVID. And that was that we needed to look at an experience as a holistic thing because we couldn't have one-to-one service like we used to that sort of glossed over all those other elements. And that really excited me. There was like heaps of opportunity. This was this new thing. You know, there's so many e-com manager roles out there. There's so many marketing lead roles out there. But this was kind of new. It was a little bit niche. And I thought this sort of sounds like me. How can we do this in a digital space? There looks like there's opportunity here. So I just sort of went for it and it's never really gone back.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. You've only got one job now though.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know, maybe. About 50.

SPEAKER_02:

Well done. So customer experience. You said it's a buzz term. Do you still see it as a buzz term? Like where does it start and where does it stop?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I still see it as a buzz term. And I think that's because there's a lot of misconception between the difference of customer experience and customer service. I often, when I get to a client and we go through our first like kickoff workshop day, I have a big section where we talk about customer experience versus customer service. And for anyone that doesn't know what that difference is, in my opinion, customer service is that one-on-one interaction you have, whether it's physical, whether it's digital. The customer experience is every other element that your customer touches. So that could be your returns portal. It could be your loyalty program, it could be your social media, it could be the Australia Postman that drops off, you know, the post to your house every single week and you know his name. All those things collectively go towards creating your customer experience and what you deem the customer experience of the ex-brand to be. Okay. Gets a bit complicated because we have to layer in consumer psychology in there. And every customer is going to experience that experience slightly differently because we all have our own sets of bias and we all go through different reasons for purchasing something. So that experience is individualized. Yes, we work on it at a scale and plug gaps in those departments at scale, but it's very individual. And that's that big difference. I still don't see a lot of true, you know, CX manager roles, head of customer. Like if I look at a CX manager role, that's really a customer service manager, but we're just titling it differently. And I think there's still a lot of work to do there. And I think that's why I'm so passionate about this. Because until we look at that psychology and we look at those customers as individual, I don't think my work in this space can be done.

SPEAKER_02:

Then what about user experience? Where does that sit? Does that sit alongside or is that part?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say that sits alongside it. That's the digital version of that or your physical version, you know, for the ability to get through a store. You know, how wide are the racks? You know, is that friendly for multiple abilities, physical, you know, mental abilities? That's to me as a side of that.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. All right. I think that's clear in my head. That's good. Then when you talk about you being a dog with a bone, I could imagine that you have a lot of conversations with CEOs and founders trying to convince them that they need to invest more in customer experience and customer service. How do you tie it to commercial outcomes? Because they've already got the customer.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

How do you convince them that they'll get a commercial outcome from further investment?

SPEAKER_00:

It's tricky because things like this can take a period of time to see the results for. And I guess that's probably one of the first things I talk about. There is going to be a period of time where we need to wait to test effectively and then see the results. So things like your customer lifetime value should go up. The frequency in the purchasing of orders should go down. The CSAT results should stay stable, if not increase if they were low previously. And then even things like your employee satisfaction should increase and your retention of your customer service team should increase if you do invest in this area. We see really closely linked employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. It's sort of like they layer down into each other. And when everyone in your brand feels like they are successfully contributing to a good customer experience, then their experience as an employee is rated higher because they feel like they're doing a great job.

SPEAKER_02:

And you're talking about employee satisfaction, not just for the customer service team, but the overall team?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the whole team.

SPEAKER_02:

That's pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_00:

Because inevitably, we all should be working towards customer experience satisfaction. We should all be looking at the customer experience. Every single department that touches a customer. Effectively, the finance and HR teams are maybe the only two that don't really. Everyone else does.

SPEAKER_02:

So why are retailers not prioritizing it?

SPEAKER_00:

To be honest, it's because sometimes the information we find is not all sunshine and rainbows. It can be hard, you know. As human beings, feedback can be challenging, especially when it's not nice.

SPEAKER_02:

It's definitely not a gift.

SPEAKER_00:

No, it's definitely not a gift. I hate that saying. I asked someone for feedback today, actually, and it was all good. So I thought, oh, this is a gift.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, thank you for my gift.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

You can take your other gift somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the rest can go. It's not nice. You know, what if you said, like, oh, well, this is shit, you make it in China, and you've just spent hours, days, weeks, months of your life preparing this thing, building this thing. You think it's the coolest thing you've ever made. Like, especially as a founder, you've invested your whole life, you know, potentially remortgaged your home, all those things into this product and this brand, and someone doesn't like it, or someone thinks you did a bad job. Like, that's gonna sting. It's like all feedback. We get that fight or flight, and you have that feeling in your chest where something is bad, something is wrong. And that's what you're dealing with when you look at the bad elements of customer service. So sometimes we just like to bury our head in the sand because it's easier.

SPEAKER_02:

Especially if we feel we've got no control on the outcome. So, for example, where the product's made. There's a hell of a lot of teams that have no control over where products are made.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's when we look at making this about the holistic experience. Because you don't pull those things out if everything else is working well. If you felt fully satisfied as a customer, you wouldn't be picking those sorts of holes.

SPEAKER_02:

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SPEAKER_00:

Okay. I love this question. I also love this because it changes so quickly. If you'd asked me five years ago what I would have said, it would be quite different. So for anyone listening to this in five years' time, please just send me a message and ask if that's still true. So today, I would say, great, we're on Shopify. Then you cannot ignore the rest of the tech stack that Shopify invests in. And when you're looking at new tech, please make sure you're looking at what they're investing in. And one of those things for customer service would be gorgeous. They've obviously spent a lot of time. The integration between the two is next to none and it's constantly being improved to the extent where it can basically run an AI agent for you and read your entire product catalog just because the integration between the two is so strong. And you want to be in a place where that is so good because it gives you opportunity and creates ideas and you know lots of brainstorming and fun things that you can create off the back of it if all of that is just happening. Prime example is those tags we talked about before. Like that's just passing through. You're not having to do anything there. It's just going from one to the other, and vice versa as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

That's what I'd have there.

SPEAKER_02:

And your customer data, is that being stored in Shopify as the source of truth?

SPEAKER_00:

This is where it gets a bit interesting. So to me, I would then say we can't just look at this one piece in isolation. I'd want to be looking at something like a returns platform that also integrates deeply into both. At the moment, I would say that's a loop returns or a Postcode 360. They're really great. And then off the back of that, also what you're using for CRM. So Clavio is obviously next to none. We're both huge fans. And all of these integrations will work back collectively, where they're all passing all parts of the data that you need so that you can create a single source of truth. Because if we don't have our, you know, our website and our customer service desk and our returns and our emails all together, then there's no way that we can actually get that single source of truth. From a where is it housed, where do I read it perspective, I would be reading that in Clavio with their analytics tools because I think they are fantastic. And the recent updates in those systems and their specific analytics pro act is really, really fantastic. You can get a lot of data and pivot a lot of data and then push things back the other way as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And Elephant in the Room is Clavio moving towards being a customer service tool? How do you see that playing in?

SPEAKER_00:

I knew you were gonna ask me this. I will be honest, I've had a lot of conversations with the team recently, and I probably am thinking about this in the same way that I used to feel about Gorgeous. I would have said to the Gorgeo team here in APAC for a long time that I wouldn't buy their product because it wasn't ready. You know, they didn't have phones integrated for a long time. They they had social media, but they didn't have other platforms and Zendesk did. So I couldn't justify taking clients to Gorgeous because they didn't have all those BAU features. So until Clavio and the case of a suite have those BAU features, it's not something that I would advise to small, medium, to big business. I'd say small, small entrepreneur, absolutely great. It's really good that you can lean into some of those features. But at this point in time, I don't feel like it's ready.

SPEAKER_02:

We're keeping an eye on it, but it's not.

SPEAKER_00:

You never know. You never know. You never know. Yeah. That's why this is exciting. It is, isn't it? For so long I was so resistant to those AI agents too. Now I spent my whole life building them every day.

SPEAKER_02:

All right. Well, what's the secret to a good AI agent that doesn't piss people off?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. First thing is make sure that you are linking a tone of voice document to it. Whatever your brand team and marketing team have built from a tone of voice document, upload that as a PDF in the background. Okay. Yes, you can say, like, is it friendly or you know, professional or whatever, but that's not enough. Like it's not gonna sound like you and your brand and the terminology that a team would use if I was standing there physically with you in a store until you give it that information. So definitely that number one. Number two is don't just set this thing and forget. Like it's learning, like we're learning, and you've got to keep at it. It's sort of like your flows in email marketing. You can't just set them one day and then leave them. You've got to go back and you've got to keep going. So definitely say that.

SPEAKER_02:

Is your approach there? Invest some of the time that you used, that you saved in answering queries and continually training the machine.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Your customer service manager should effectively own looking after it, like it looks after every other team member that you have in your business. That one just doesn't talk back.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Doesn't have sick leave.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely not. You have a one-on-one with it every week and make sure it's still working and look at its results in comparison to your wider team. And, you know, is it handling certain types of queries around returns better than your team? And if so, what can we learn from it and implement that into the wider team, or vice versa? You know, the team's doing something, you know, maybe slightly out of policy, maybe slightly differently, in a different order. Great, let's go back, let's retrain, let's sort that out. The next thing I'd say is it can't do everything and don't expect it to, and nor should it. There's things it's going to be really good at, but there's absolutely moments where you need a human and human interaction.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So what are the things that you found that AI agents are really good at and what can't they do yet?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say those simple things, like the track my order, lodge a return, not just send me a link, like actually lodge the return for me, provide me with, you know, sizing information. You know, what's the length of this dress in a size 10? What bust measurements should I get if I'm this size? Like it can house that information. It doesn't even have to be shown on the website. It can house all of that in the background to give that information out. But when it comes to that sales side, and before we talked around, like, can you turn this team into a revenue driving engine? Yes, you can. So let the team do that. There's definitely recommendations it can provide, but in terms of styling and saying, like, okay, well, I'm going to this event and it's black tie, but you know, I'm going for work. So, you know, I maybe want to cover my shoulders and, you know, I don't want to wear black because it doesn't look great on my skin tone. So I'm not really sure what colours to wear. Is the AI agent going to answer that? Absolutely not. You know, that's a meaningful conversation that you're going to have with someone where you can provide them options, they can feel really confident and powerful in their apparel, and then off they go. And that's a great relationship you've had.

SPEAKER_02:

So just to challenge that thought, if we've got customers using GPT or other engines to ask those questions, and we're saying that our agents can't answer them, are we missing an opportunity?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it's still very much so in its infancy phase. Like it's it's not at the level where GPT is, to be honest. And even so I'd expect it to do what it can do. And even if it's got GPT stashed in the background, it's still not leveraging it all in the same way because then it's also reading your whole product catalog. So it's still getting stuck on certain things. Even if we look at GPT this weekend, I asked it to help me find a tennis necklace in gold that was like actual gold, waterproof, not too long. And I just got sent the same three recommendations over and over. And then when I said, okay, like great, but what about this? I still kept getting the same recommendations and then the same recommendations. So before what I said, like it's constantly evolving, it's constantly changing. You know, the tech I loved back then is not the tech I love now. This is the same. And that's why you can't just leave it because there's going to be more layers.

SPEAKER_02:

And if you think about it the other way, the data that it has access to, not just from a product perspective, but from that customer's perspective, past purchases, addresses, even maybe browsing behavior.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

You can go deeper on that personalized level rather than the external data, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. The amount of things you can plug into the background are phenomenal. So I've worked with a client recently and they often restock their products. They're a fast fashion women's apparel brand. And we were finding that products were selling out, and about 30 to 40% of their inquiries on a weekly basis were when is X product being restocked? Crazy. There wasn't a way of us getting those dates anywhere, like in Shopify, anything. We could get them at a product meta field level, but they were changing too quickly and it was too much for someone to update. So what we have done is we've exported out a list from their system that the buying team supports and uses, run all of those dates, and then it gets uploaded to the AI agent each week on a Monday. And look, it's not every day, it's not a perfect system, but it reads the products, it reads the dates, it reads the sizes and the colors, and we've set it up so that if someone says, What date is this thing being restocked? It will read through all of that in a PDF format, tell someone a date, and then add information on either side. So let's say the date was the first of February. Yeah. It would read that. And it we say, like, if between the first and the 14th, say the start of February, if between the 14th and the 31st, say mid to the end. And then it provides mid to the end for the MLE dress to the customer.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's kind of going back to what you were saying at the start, right? Is work out where your most common queries are and then have those solutions, even if they're not perfect.

SPEAKER_00:

No.

SPEAKER_02:

But if you can knock out a good proportion of them with what you've got, then that's a huge win.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And then that's our job. You know, like my job is to have a constant dialogue with the tech partners. Like that's why it's so beneficial for us to be partners for the tech brands, because then I can say, hey, this is something that we have built. This is the impact it's having for a brand. What if we built, you know, a little bit more into this in this area? You know, what if it could read the product meta field so we didn't have to go through this uploading, downloading thing? Then how would that look?

SPEAKER_02:

You know, and then wave your magic wand as a request for a customer service team at the moment. On behalf of customer service teams all over Australia, what are you wishing for? The market is shifting. Costs are climbing, and the pressure to do more with less is very real. But when resources are tight, you can rely on Shopify, the platform that's consistently fur with new capabilities. Shopify invests significantly in RD and drops more than 150 updates every year, evolving with you and absorbing complexity so that you can focus on what moves your business forward. From AI-powered insights to the world's best converting checkout, Shopify is designed for the next year of commerce, helping you sell more, scale faster, and future-proof your brand. Build for what is next with Shopify. Visit Shopify for Enterprise to learn more.

SPEAKER_00:

At the moment, I have a bugbear that you can't clone AI agents in most of the platforms. So you've got to build them individually on individual sites. So if I have a US instance, an AU, a rest of the world, and the UK, I've got to build your four, which is fine. But it's not great. Yeah, yeah. Or if you can clone an email onto a different CLADEO account or you know, if we should be able to do that too.

SPEAKER_02:

As you're building out these agents with the teams and the team need to be involved, how do you manage that with a customer service team who I could imagine a lot of them see the writing on the wall that they will either be replaced or redeployed as a lot of the manual work in customer service doesn't become as needed. How do you manage that? Because you need them to help you build it, but at the same time, you want to assure them that they've got a role and they've got a part to play.

SPEAKER_00:

Honestly, monitoring it and managing it and updating it is a full-time job in itself. And that's great. You know, there's definitely a path in the future where in a customer service team there is an AI agent manager that their whole job is exclusively around looking after that agent. Because you can spend all day in there doing that. Especially if you've got multi-instances, you know, that's four bots rather than one or ten or however many you've got. So it's definitely a world in which those roles and a customer service manager exist as well. But like we said at the beginning, having that phone call with someone is still really impactful and really meaningful. There will be certain verticals in the market that use more AI than others. There'll be others that don't, you know, things like personal care, home care, you know, disability care, hospitals. There's a lot of areas where we still need to have conversations with someone or that the AI doesn't quite land just yet. So there's always going to be a place for this. I don't see a world in in which it doesn't provide that.

SPEAKER_02:

Has it significantly impacted the move to offshoring, especially for Australian businesses? Are you finding that less companies are relying on offshore or is offshore as important as it always was?

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's as important because, you know, there's no two ways about this. It is financially responsible for a business to have a split team from a cost perspective. If anything, it's probably reduced the number of agents offshore that we need. And, you know, that's a difficult conversation to have, but that is the reality of it because the processing times are so fast and so quick. But if you are expanding your business and going international, there's always going to be an element of the AI agent can handle so much. And it is absolutely scalable and great for businesses that are growing because it does scale with you. But we also then need when it can't handle and it does hand off, who's there for it? That we still need someone in each of those time zones. So our offshore teams will still be applicable. You know, it doesn't need to be offshore in the Philippines, it can be offshore in Kenya, it can be offshore in the UK, it can be offshore in the US. You know, there's definitely huge elements to that team that still need to continue overseas.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Okay. And then speaking of overseas, you've worked in brands that have, you know, you mentioned it before, have four websites for different territories. We've spoken about Australians being fairly relaxed and polite with customer service. Are you finding the same in other markets? Especially, I'm most interested in the US and the UK markets, because that's where most of our listeners seem to be looking at or expanding to. What are the key differences between these three markets when it comes to customer service expectations?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, the US, let's start there. So in the US, their expectation is that everything is overnight. Like two-hour Amazon, overnight delivery from wherever, like a lot of the three PLs are based out of, you know, southern states like Texas and beautiful places in the south. So the expectation is that it's there the next day. So if we say the terminology express shipping here in Australia, and that's expressed from here to there via DHL as an example, that's not express in the US. Express is next day or two hours. So being really conscious of things like that, like terminology that can get you in hot water really quickly, is really true. So that's probably the biggest bugbear for our US customer is shipping times and expectations. They grew up with Amazon. So that's what you're competing with. Sometimes we talk about competing with it here in Australia, but it's nothing to the extent that it is in the US.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

The other thing I would say for the UK is their regulations around returns, refunds, and like the Consumer Regulations Acts, which we obviously have here with the ACCC, but there it's at a whole nother level of detailed and heightened. And those policies get thrown around quite a lot with the consumer because they have them and they exist and they're pretty prevalent in the state. So I would say, you know, if you're not a brand that offers refunds at the moment here in Australia because we have different regulations, that's okay. But make sure that you know that you have to over there and that you have a plan to segment those two parts of your website if it's the same one you're using markets, or you know, how are you going to personalize that so that you don't end up in a situation where different information is, you know, seeded across the site? That's definitely important. And that will be the what your majority of interactions from the UK will be about too. So really interesting how different they all are.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, amazing. I want to pick your brain on returns and refunds. We've obviously seen huge shifts. I I think it's gone under the radar how big the shift has been on returns and refunds in the last 24 months. We're talking post-COVID, we're not even talking COVID. I think I saw a stat at the start of the year, around 90% of Australian brands no longer offer free optional refunds, as in change of mind policy. Yep. That would have been unheard of pre-COVID. It was just kind of one of those things, just like free shipping was an expected thing 10 years ago. Like, why would anyone pay for shipping? Now it's like, why would anyone pay for refunds? And here we are. What's your view on that in terms of charging people for change of mind refunds? Do you think it's a business necessity or do you think it's an impediment to conversion?

SPEAKER_00:

Honestly, I think it's a business necessity at this point in time. I just don't think that there's a way that we can get around it. I've seen some brands like Crop Shop Boutique does free change of mind purchases for their first order with their customer. And I think that's a really good way of creating rules that work for you, but also really conscious of your consumer. Because if someone's never purchased with you before, you know, there's a whole myriad of reasons they may not like it. And, you know, it's their first time. So let's be a little bit more lenient with them. And that can just be set up from the get-go. It doesn't need to be something that then the team, you know, offers manually. That can just be set up from a rules perspective. I do think I don't actually see a large amount of pushback around those fees. And that's coming from me being in the tickets. Like when I work with a client, like I'm writing back to a customer service ticket or I'm standing on the shop floor because I have to experience the customer and their experience to understand how we can make that different and make that better. So from everything I'm reading across so many accounts, across so many shop floors, I'm not seeing a huge amount of pushback. So if someone is sitting there not quite sure if they can pull the trigger on that, yes, there'll be, you know, some. There's always a few, but the large majority, you know, are not phased. I think our, especially here, like our consumer that we talked about before, they're pretty understanding. They get that, okay, well, I'm doing an exchange or I'm doing a credit note, so I'm not being charged. But if I'm asking for a refund, then I will be charged. Like, I get it.

SPEAKER_02:

I saw something really interesting on the booty checkout today, in that they've got an add-on at checkout, which is$2.95 up front, free returns.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh.

SPEAKER_02:

So you can kind of pay up front a nominal amount, knowing that you can have that change of mind refunds, or you can pay a larger amount afterwards.

SPEAKER_00:

Interesting. I'd love to see what the uptake on something like that is. Like how many people are clicking that box.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. It's just a different way of thinking about it. It is. Changing direction entirely, Em. I put a call out for people to join me and the Thread Together team on a technology advisory. And you put your hand up, and thankfully you did, uh, to help out. And you stood out amongst so many people in those applications because you were so customer focused. And even though we were talking tech, we had a lot of nerds, a lot of very smart people putting their hands up saying we can fix systems and we've got some great people on the team who can do that. But you you stood out from a customer perspective. Why is that organization so important to you? What do you get out of it?

SPEAKER_00:

I just think that it's the right thing to do. I just can't separate myself from that. And it's really rare that as someone that works in retail, that we are largely consumers and consuming goods, you know, like whether you work for a B Corp or whether you work for a sustainable, eco-friendly brand, we're still creating waste and we're still consuming. And we love consuming, otherwise we wouldn't be doing this. But there's a way that we can do that in a better way and service a market that's in need. I think the way that Thread Together go about what they're doing is really meaningful. There's a lot of empathy in the way that they work. They're really conscious of the end user, as we would call it, or the actual human at the end that gets that t-shirt or that pair of truck pants or that pair of leggings and the impact that that makes on someone is really key. When I decided that I wasn't going to go and find another retail brand to work for and that I was going to step out on my own and have my own business, one of the reasons was because if I worked for one business and we had 200,000 people in our Clavio account, I could only impact 200,000 people. Whereas if I worked for 10 brands that each had 200,000 people, the impact I could have was a lot more meaningful. And that's what makes me do this. Like it's because I truly believe that we use a retail good, whether that's apparel, whether it's beauty, you know, whatever the actual product is, we use that to create something meaningful for someone. And we may not realize that it's meaningful, but it is because if you look at it from a psychological perspective, the reason that someone's purchasing is a lot more than just, you know, I need a new lipstick today.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Oh, well, you're making an incredible contribution already. We're only, gosh, three months in. And we've gone deep into customer tagging already, which is I had a little sly smile on my face when we were talking about tagging VIP customers because we've been talking in a lot of depth around that recently, and your expertise has just carried over so well in bridging that gap between customer experience and in this case is customers who are maybe uh domestic violence victims, homeless, flood victims, whoever's in need of a wardrobe for a bit of dignity, your knowledge and experience and care is just so important to making sure that people get the right clothes. So it's an incredible impact that you're making. So thank you very much for your efforts there so far.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks.

SPEAKER_02:

To wrap us up, if I'm a founder or an e-commerce manager listening to you, and I'm hoping that they've got a notebook of tips and ideas that they can action straight away. I'm sure they do. What would be your advice to them, things they could do immediately to get a better view on how their customer is feeling about them right now?

SPEAKER_00:

If you've never done any customer journey mapping, I would highly recommend that. And when I say customer journey mapping, I don't just mean, you know, signs up on website, gets email, gets follow-up email, starts getting campaigns, maybe purchases, maybe gets another one. What I mean there is what are the channels and avenues where someone finds you? You know, do they find you from shopping in a supermarket? Do they find you from social media? Do they find you from a referral? You know, what are those avenues? And what is someone feeling when they then get referred to you? And then they go through the purchase journey and the sign-up journey, but then what are the feelings that they're going through at those points in time?

SPEAKER_02:

I love that. Because customer journey mapping, people are like, oh, go into the data and then I only do it at a high level. I'm I'm not as detailed as you. But when you quiz people to go, oh yeah, cool, this all makes sense. This is the journey. What's your customer feeling here? People are like, no. They almost get a freak out face.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Of course they do, because that's could be uncomfortable if we're thinking, oh, they're they're not happy, they're upset, or you know, the thing got crushed on the way there. You know, that's not a good experience. So we we don't maybe want to talk about that as much. So definitely say customer journey mapping, but from an emotional perspective. The other thing I would suggest is making sure that your entire team has some kind of KPI or soft KPI around the customer. Is it that everyone's actually responsible for NPS or CSAT, whatever it is, and how they are going to impact and improve that metric? Because as I said at the beginning, all of those elements of the customer experience go towards the retention of that customer. So that means every department needs to be responsible in some aspect. Yes, your customer service team is the gatekeeper of that experience, but they're not the be-all and end all.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I'm a big fan of people being KPI'd to spend a day, a half a day in the customer service team every quarter half, whatever works for your cadence, but actually getting in there and answering queries.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that was going to be my last thing. Oh, don't be sorry, it's great. Spend some time on the shop floor. Like, go to the shop floor. I recently started working with a menswear client and we talked about me going to be on the shop floor as part of our auditing process. And I'll never forget the look on the board members' faces where they said, wait, you go and like on you go on the shop floor. I said, Yes, because like how will I know your customer if I'm not on the shop floor or I'm not standing there peeking and packing the orders, or especially as the businesses get bigger, you know, like once you hit that, you know, 90 to 200 mil phase as a founder, you can become quite removed from the daily operations. And that's natural and that's great because that's part of growth. But we need to kind of take ourselves back there every now and then.

SPEAKER_02:

It reminded me of a time that I was working with a very large retailer and they were designing their brand new office. And I looked at the plans and I was on their management team at the time, and I looked at the plans, and I was like, they had their customer service team, but it was hidden way out the back and in the corner of the office. It was a lovely building, it was nice, like it wasn't bad, but it was right in the corner of everything I said. Pick up that customer service team and put them right in the middle of the room where everyone has to walk past them every day. Because I think it's just such a great thing for people to get exposed to the noises and the rhythm and the chaos that's coming out of a customer service team because it says so much around the mood of customers if you get that vibe every day.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And all those things I just listed could just seem like anyone listening, like, oh, that's so basic. Like, where's the real meaty stuff? But are you actually doing it? Yeah. Like it does seem basic, but are you spending the time to actually do it? Would be my next question. And if you are, well, you're above most. My next layer to that would be how are you gluing all of your customer data together from all of those elements of the customer experience? Like, yes, you might be looking at your customer reviews data, you know, if you're using a reviews platform. Yes, you might be looking at your customer service tickets, but how are you actually gluing those together? Like you can use a whole bunch of free data tools that glue things like customer service tickets and reviews and returns all together so that you can see, you know, someone left review, then created return. Like you can see that in real time and look at that because that is the true single source of that customer and what they're experiencing. And you'll notice patterns pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And we have the tools to do it in retail because there's nothing that shits me more. The companies with the most money, the Telstras, the banks, that don't do it, the insurance are the ones that don't do it. They have no idea who you are every time you call up and you're starting from scratch every time.

SPEAKER_00:

I know. And isn't that funny? Because they're the only businesses that have like the C CO, like the chief customer officer, and like the head of customer, and like they're the businesses having those roles out there for your customer service manager that grows into that role one day, yet it's still so disjointed.

SPEAKER_02:

And as retailers, we always scrap it together, don't we?

SPEAKER_00:

We always do. We cut above the rest, I reckon.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, thank you so much. Next 12 months for you. I know you're consulting with some of the biggest names in Australian retail at the moment around improving that customer experience and customer service. Where's your focus going to be?

SPEAKER_00:

For me, it's perfecting AI agents. They're good. And the ones we've been building over the last six months are very good, but there's still more to go. So I'm really focusing on like perfecting those to the nth degree and keeping an eye on that new tech, you know, like shout out to gorgeous, I love you, but somebody's coming for you. So like I want to keep my eye on the prize over there and like just keep up to date with that tech, you know, even if you're just watching from the sidelines and you don't use customer service tech day in, day out, like I do, that's still interesting to watch because that's us progressing as an industry. And that to me is exciting, you know. Regardless of the outcome, that is amazing that there's, you know, two businesses going for it and that they're really trying to innovate in the space. That can only mean good things for us.

SPEAKER_02:

So good. And we didn't even get a chance to talk about some of your other reports, everything from the report that you did on tariffs that you presented at Retail Fest all the way through to your articles on Labooo Boos. Uh, if if people want to stay in touch and learn more about what you do, what's the best way to do so?

SPEAKER_00:

Definitely reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love a chat, as I hope is blatantly obvious.

SPEAKER_02:

Just be careful, she'll call you straight after you leave. She will.

SPEAKER_00:

But not leave a voicemail, very different. So definitely message me on LinkedIn, like jump on the website, feel free to book some time. Like, I'm always here to chat. I think that's something that I really value in our space is making sure that we can connect over whatever, wherever, whenever I like to make. Trying to be back as much as I possibly can. So anytime you can reach me, please feel free.

SPEAKER_02:

You're amazing. Thank you for joining us on Ed DeCard.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, if you weren't nervous about Black Friday Cyber Monday now, then maybe you will be. Most of us, we've done it multiple times, right? Been through multiple Black Friday Cyber Mondays. We know what to expect. We know that the chaos is coming, that the tickets are coming, that the customers are coming, hopefully, and we need to be prepared to be able to serve them effectively. I have no doubt that you've got two or three tips out of that episode with Emily to empower your customer service team and make sure that your customers get the best possible experience at this crucial time, especially those customers who might be experiencing your brand for the first time. All right, here are three lessons that I think were the most important to take away from this conversation with Em. Number one, go back and review those policy and returns pages before peak. It is probably the most boring tip out of any of them from this episode, but they're pages that just get overlooked. But when you think about it, they're actually on every page of your website. And as Em said, up to 80% of your customers will read your returns and shipping policies before checkout. It may be that there's just silly stuff in there, like some spelling errors or some missed addresses that actually don't have a huge impact. But there may also be some big things such as timeframes on delivery, costs of delivery, and some key policies that could really shoot you in the foot if you haven't updated them in the last 12 months. Make sure you go back and review them because they are really, really important documents when it comes to setting the expectations for customers, especially in this peak season. Number two, ensure that your customer service team have a clear view on your VIP customers and a way to prioritize their queries. If you've got a standard tech stack, M laid this out pretty clearly. Make sure that you tag them automatically using Shopify Flow. Maybe take those top 20% of customers, customers who have spent more than$300,$500,$1,000 from you in the last 12 months, apply a tag and then feed that through your customer service platform, where then they will create their own tag to be able to create a view of those queries from those customers that you need to action first. That is such a strong tip to make sure that those people that have a lifetime value with you get service first. If you're not doing that, M's giving you a really, really clear path forward. And thirdly, the last thing that I want to emphasize from that, and it's not innovation, but take your customer service team out for dinner. Maybe pause for a bit of cake for morning tea, get on the barbecue, cook them up a lunch, whatever it is, just show your appreciation before peak season starts. All of these things add up, and I can bet that your customer service team probably feel like they're the last ones thought of constantly. Think about what they're doing. They're the face of your business every day, all day. They're at the front line with your customers, defending your brand, making sure that customers leave happy. They do an extraordinary job. Make sure you are constantly elevating them, acknowledging them, and holding them up as the important team members that they are. So if you haven't shown them a little bit of love lately, get out in that barbecue and do it before peak season kicks in. All right, if you enjoyed everything that we talked about today around customer service, make sure that you go and join our Ad to Cart community because there we have over 500 e-commerce professionals who are in the community who love talking about customer experience and customer service. You can ask any questions, especially around those tech sacks and maybe how we set up tagging and ask others how they do it. So if you want to join, head on over to add to cart.com.au. Join the community. It is free and available. Now we would love to have you in there. And of course, if you're listening on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple, make sure you hit that subscribe button. If you're feeling really generous, leave us a review. But hit that subscribe button so we can come and give you more episodes like this every week to help you and your e commerce business grow. See you next time.