How Brands Are Meeting New Consumer Communication Expectations

Summary

Laurie Badger, Customer Experience Efficiencies Manager at Joybird, joins Kustomer Director of Research Andrea Salerno in this webinar on new consumer communication expectations. The participants discuss the use of integrated knowledge bases and chatbot capabilities to improve customer service efficiency as well as the importance of maintaining a focus on employee happiness and retention while ensuring streamlined customer communication. A major discussion point was how that streamlined communication unfolds, including a shift to customer service agents providing pre-purchase consultative support, the importance of fitting into the customer’s schedule for effective communication, and how customers prefer immediate responses rather than callbacks at a later time. Both speakers share personal anecdotes and experiences related to customer service and communication.

Main takeaways:

1. Efficient Customer Service: Integrated knowledge bases and chatbot capabilities can significantly improve the efficiency of customer service, providing immediate responses and solutions to customer queries.
2. Building Customer Relationships: Establishing strong relationships with customers is crucial for customer retention. When customers feel a personal connection with a brand, they are more likely to remain loyal.
3. The Changing Role of Customer Service: Customer service agents are now expected to provide pre-purchase consultative support, acting as experts to guide customers.
4. Timely Communication: Fitting into the customer’s schedule is essential for effective communication. Customers appreciate immediate responses and may be put off by delayed callbacks.
5. Employee Happiness and Retention: While focusing on customer communication, it’s also important to maintain a focus on employee happiness and retention. A satisfied and engaged customer service team can contribute to better customer experiences.

Transcript

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining this webinar, exploring how brands are meeting new customer communication expectations.

Following this discussion will have some time for q and a, so please take advantage of that. You don’t have to wait until the end to submit questions, you can add them at any point during the session through the questions tab on the go to webinar platform.

Everyone registered will also get a recording of webinar in their inbox tomorrow. Should you miss anything or want to revisit any part of the conversation?

Today’s guests are Andrea Salerno and Lori Badger. Andrea Salerno is head of content and research at customer, which is now a part of Meta. Lori Badger is the Joy Bird senior customer experience efficiencies manager and has been at the company for six years. Helping grow the company and the culture through dedicated work and enthusiastic silliness.

Her work focuses on ensuring streamlined customer communication while maintaining a focus on employee happiness and retention.

And with that, we’ll get started. Andrea, please take it away.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Hey, everyone.

Thank you for joining us for what I hope will be an incredibly interesting and valuable conversation today.

As was mentioned, my name is Andrea Slerno. I am the of research here at customer for those of you that don’t know what customer is. We are a leading customer service CRM, We were recently acquired by Meta. And today I am joined by a very special guest, one of our customers, Lori, who works at Joybird. Hi, Laurie. How are you? Hi, everybody.

Happy meeting here. So we will spend maybe the next thirty, forty minutes discussing essentially new consumer expectations and how the way that customers like to communicate with retailers is shifting.

So without further ado, Lori, I think we can dive in. Maybe before we get into the meat of things, I’d love if you could.

Potentially talk a little bit about Joybird for those that are not super familiar and maybe a little bit about your role and your team within the organization.

Sure. Absolutely. So Joybird is a direct to consumer furniture and home decor brand. We’ve been around since twenty fourteen.

Started as a really small little company, just five employees, and every year we’ve been growing and expanding our base. So we make custom customizable furniture so you can pick your fabric, pick the size, things like that.

And it really has been great, especially for the COVID crowd who has been spending so much time in their homes. We’ve really seen a lot of people just wanna dedicate and pour into their homes, the place that they’re spending so much time.

And I joined Joy. Sorry. Go ahead. No. Go ahead. I joined Joybird about six years ago as a customer service agent and then just sort of started growing my role there by writing email shortcuts, looking at where we could build efficiencies, making a knowledge base for the team, things like that, who just grew my space here, but also improved the team’s efficiencies here so that we can continue continue to have a small nimble team rather than basically just throwing people at a customer question and CRM problem.

I’ve always found that having a smaller team kind of means better agent retention, and just overall happiness. When you’re in a really big crowd, you don’t feel like you get that sort of special attention from your company.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for all that background. I think maybe we can start at a very high level How would you sort of describe your philosophy when it comes to customer service and the customer experience at Joybird?

Sure. So we want our in the agents to be very, like friendly and knowledgeable, but also speak to our customers as if they are knowledgeable as well. Most people aren’t making a thousand dollar or greater experience on a whim. Like, this is not late night Oh, add to cart experience for most of our customers.

They’ve been doing a lot of research. They’ve looked at a lot of companies. They’ve looked at a lot of brands. When they come with questions, they’re asking those questions because they’ve seen information that makes them curious about that or really makes them want to know like specifics about what’s going into their home.

So phthalates, flame retardants, things like that. Those are things that our customers come in with like a high level of knowledge. About and we want to talk to them as equals and not talk to them.

Awesome. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I feel like particularly for your industry that makes a lot of sense, but I think just in general, you know, treating customers as human beings versus just, you know, ticket number or transaction is incredibly important in terms of building relationships with customers and building trust with customers, so I couldn’t agree more.

So obviously a lot has shifted.

In the past few years. That’s understating things, both in our day to day lives, but also how we shop, how we communicate, I’m wondering what you have been seeing when it comes to consumer preferences and expectations.

I’d love to hear sort of about your buyer in particular and how their preferences have changed over the last few years.

Sure. Yeah. So when we started, our customer base was largely baby boomers.

Really giving that, like, not seen it in person, furniture buying, they’re, the first chance, like, all of these people would have been going to a retail location sitting on the furniture and making that decision and maybe taking it home that day. And so when they move to Joybird, that is a completely different experience for them. They’re giving us, like, their first chance on that.

But our consumer base has really changed and shifted to be more Genx millennial audience. And so we’re looking at, like, thirty five forty five, mostly women who are buying, like, those core pieces, and then coming back us for refreshes on their home, things like that. So it’s really been interesting to watch people go from, like, I’m not so sure.

About the Internet to people who are just like shopping directly off of Instagram, directly off of Facebook, and really just diving in and being willing to trust the online shopping experience a lot more.

Yeah. I think that that was sort of something that we noticed heavily during the pandemic as well, just like, it’s because it was a forcing mechanism. Like, you know, any brick and mortar store you guys obviously had a leg up because you were always direct to consumer. But every brick and mortar store sort of had to instantaneously turn it into an ecommerce brand overnight.

And along with that, you know, we saw consumers I would say, like, comfort in terms of the way that they shop. Just sort of kind of transform overnight. Like, the digital transformation of companies and also the digital first nature of shopping and communicating was just like instantaneously change as a forcing mechanism due to the pandemic, but it’s interesting to hear that your customer base also sort of change in terms of demographic and preferences.

Yeah. I mean a lot of millennials were buying homes or really wanting to, like, fix up their apartments during the pandemic. So we’re seeing, like, that sort of a shift as well.

Yep. And our retail locations turned into virtual stores. So they’ll do, like, a virtual consult with you if you want, where they’ll just, like, walk around the store on video, sit on things for you, so you have that experience as well. And I am anticipating, like, video calls to be sort of something that we’re just seeing really increase and that integration being more and more important to customers, especially in an online marketplace.

Yeah. I actually was having a conversation with another customer couple weeks ago, priority bicycles, and they are currently doing sort of video chat in terms of how they communicate with their customers, and they told this incredible story of, you know, it’s Christmas morning, and someone’s bought a bike for their their kid and they don’t know how to assemble it properly, and it really can make such a huge difference to have those one on one conversations and, you know, help someone when they can’t be there in person. So I think it’ll only become more important in the future.

When we do those oh, sorry. No. Go ahead. It’s like a slight leg. I’m I apologize.

When we do those, like, virtual consults, we feel like a huge conversion rate. It’s something like ninety two percent of people who do a virtual call with us, a video call will purchase. Versus chatting with us, talking to us on the phone, just shopping on their own, that conversion rate goes way, way up. Even higher than a retail store experience, because in person, sometimes people are like, I’m gonna go home and think about it. It’s something about virtual experience, that one on one, like, very customized experience. Really does drive that sale.

It’s been very interesting to see that.

Yeah. And I also think that’s something that we did some research during the pandemic around, like, sort of the changing role of customer service, and that was something that really stood out to me was this more full funnel approach in terms of the customer service agent where a lot of individuals needed that pre purchase consultative support if they couldn’t be there in person, And that’s just sort of reinventing the role. It’s not like, oh, you know, my package was damaged or some post purchase like issue happened. It’s almost like coming to a customer service team as the experts to get this consultative to support. And that’s a very easy way to tie customer service to actual revenue generation, which I think is huge because traditionally customer service has been thought of as sort of a cost center versus a profit center. But we all know that that’s not the case.

We do know that’s not the case. And we’ve actually built a full sales team to sort of document that — Love that. — since this actually, we just started this year. Because we were noticing, like, hey, like, we’re converting a lot more.

We’re having these phone sales a lot more than, you know, maybe would be typical. Before people wanted customer service for a problem. And now they want it, like, for the experience — Yeah. — of being a customer of Dwight Bird, which is really been fun to watch because, of course, because an agent, you don’t wanna know that every time you pick up the phone call, like someone’s gonna have a problem.

Yeah. You wanna have those calls where you get to have fun and, like, talk about your favorite color for sofas and stuff like that. Yeah. Absolutely.

And that we just recently actually ran some research.

It was, I think, three thousand global consumers on sort of their preferences and how they like to communicate with brands. And, you know, I think the channel preference is very interesting to me as you were talking about before. There was a direct correlation with younger generations wanting to use more instantaneous messaging channels like text messaging or social messaging, and older generations still very much prefer more traditional methods like phone or email. You know, I don’t think that they would they feel as comfortable dming on my end on Instagram to ask a question.

But that being said, you know, there are so many channels and they keep growing almost hour by hour. I’m sure before we know it will be. Chatting with customers in the metaverse, which actually would be kinda cool for a furniture company. But I’m wondering how do you sort of juggle servicing customers on a plethora of different channels. How is that scalable for you?

So one of the things that I’ve really enjoyed seeing is the customers who are just wanting, like, those quick help They do reach out to us on social. We have a community manager who is just awesome. Like, on top of it, quick to respond, like, she’ll just kinda check-in even at night to make sure, like, nobody’s having, like, a major emergency.

And then expecting, like, a response at like, eleven o’clock at night, which, you know, maybe might be a stretch, but we definitely don’t want someone, like, hanging, especially on social media where there is that sort of expectation of, like, quick response, action from the company.

But we’re also like really not seeing a downturn in phone or email volume at this time. We’re just seeing an uptick in social. So — Sure. — our social community manager started as our social media manager four years ago.

And since that time, our volume tripled on social. Wow. It used to be really rare. Like, she would just sit tell CS, the customer searching the k, Customer one, two, three, four, five, like their order number has a problem like can you help, and now she is doing the helping.

And it’s really building a better relationship with those customers where they’re not of saying being told, hey, customer service will reach out to you. They’re being told here’s a solution to your problem right now. And so instead of that, sort of Twitter impulse to just rage tweet. They get a solution and then, you know, maybe they don’t praise sweet, but at least they’re not rage to anything.

Yeah.

But we do still have those customers who just want everything in writing. And if it’s in writing, it’s email. Like, they just don’t trust a DM to I I don’t know, like, that disappear. I’m not really sure, like, the barrier on that but it’s like an emotional barrier. Right? Like not a realistic barrier at this point. But I don’t see anything but growth for our social media side.

As time goes on, especially, because it really is helping improve brand image like it changes our brand image when we respond, when we’re the ones who say, like, hey, we saw you posted a picture of your sofa. Like, it looks so cute. We send you throw pillows to?

Or we saw you have a problem, and that doesn’t make us happy, like we want to fix that. Yeah. It really does change the discourse on social media, where somebody might be having a bad experience. But then when we’re responding right away, any other person who’s just coming to check out the photo we posted can see pain, joybird’s on it. They’re not just ignoring the problem, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, Social is a very interesting use case because it really can be a PR nightmare in some scenarios, so when it’s not.

When it’s not handled properly, that can be a slippery slope. So I think it’s, as you said, as the volume starts increasing, on those channels, it’s going to be more and more important to ensure that, you know, you’re delivering an exceptional experience across all of the channels that you’re servicing customers on. And it is about meeting your customers where they are. Right?

So like — Exactly. — your customers are still phone based, then, like, that’s absolutely something that you still wanna be able to to deliver on. And I think that juggling all the channels is somewhat difficult.

Do you communicate, you know, differently on different channels in terms of, like, how you approach a conversation, like quick answers, long answers, explanations, things of that nature? Abs absolutely. Yeah. I would say our social media voice is much more just like positive, quick, no long explanations.

Nobody wants — Yep. — to scroll for an answer in a comment. Like, that’s Oh, hey, that’s our sofa, blah blah blah sofa, and blah blah blah fabric. Like, that’s pretty much the extent of like what we’re giving people there.

Whereas, when people are People kind of know that too. Nobody is asking, like, a five part part question on social media. They know that that’s maybe not where they’re gonna get the best support, and so they are calling, or emailing, and then they can also go back over that. So if you email me a five part question about the construction of a sofa.

I’m gonna give you a five part essay on the construction of a sofa via email. Whereas on social, I’ll probably just say, oh, we use Kill dried Hardwood.

Like, if you have, like, a specific question about, like, blank, blank, blank, I’ll give you that, but I’m not going to, like, get into, like, what kind of joinery we use?

And — Yeah. — whether or not, like, our phones are all have all been tested by third party groups for Thheli. It’s like, yes, they have, but maybe we’re not gonna talk about all of that on social. Especially, we’re just going to answer the question you asked on social.

But we try and anticipate the questions you might ask for via email because we’d have that time. And we have that luxury — Sure. — to sort of say like, hey, this person seems really worried about, like, flame retardants. Like, let’s talk about VOCs while we’re at it.

Things of that nature, so that they’re not gonna have to come back to us. Like, oh, you said you don’t use flame retardants. Now, can you tell me if you use, like, x, y, and z? Because our quest like, sometimes it’s so specific we really can’t, we have to ask.

But — Yeah. — for the most part, like, our team does know that information as well.

Yeah. I think that’s a a great point. It’s like you sort of mimic how you would converse with friends or family on these different channels.

Right? Like, I, of course, if I’m catching up with my aunt or something. Like, I’m gonna write a few paragraphs on email. When I text my aunt, I write three words.

When I you know, DM someone. I’m not putting paragraphs and paragraphs of text in there, so I think it’s very much sort of conditioning as to how we like to communicate. And that’s actually something we saw in our research as well when we were looking at how often or how quickly consumers respond to business messages on various different channels. They responded much more often on channels like text and social more quickly because I feel like we’re all conditioned when you see that little red dot that you have to answer.

Right? Yeah.

It don’t melt I get a notification once a day that I have run out of space on my email because I have hundreds coming in the promotions tab every single day. So It is this more quick, efficient, conversational communication method. But, again, that doesn’t always work for every problem. It’s just sometimes preferred.

And I think that, you know, at seventy I think it was seventy eight percent of gen z consumers said that they stocks doing business entirely with a brand that weren’t available on their channel of choice. So Again, it’s meeting your customers where they are and and how they prefer to communicate. So — Yeah. — super super important.

And we do really drive home with our team like tone matching.

Yep. It’s super important or, like, tone deflecting. So if someone comes in all caps screaming, like, Obviously, don’t reply like that. Yeah. But feel free to use your empathy to try and, like, turn that back around to them and give them a better experience. Whereas in social, like someone’s like, cute. We go, heart emoji.

Yeah. Because that is a regularly accepted way of responding on social media, which we would I would be really shocked if any of my agents just sent a hard emoji to someone on an email. Like, that’s just not really how anyone’s expecting to be responded to on email. So that sort of, like, matching the platform is really something that we’re trying to, like, drive home.

Like, the more professional tone is used on, like, a phone call versus a chat, where it might be a little bit more casual. So, yeah.

Yeah. And I think that’s a great segue into another question that I had, which is around what customers really value the most. Right? You were talking about using empathy. Your agents able to use empathy to gauge a scenario.

But have you seen what what customers value transforming at all in the last few years? Do you think it’s still like speed is is it? Or Is it empathy? Is it personalization? Is it more consultative support? What would you say is the top line what customers value the most today?

Top line, like consultative support, and just that ease of transaction, and so. You’re on Instagram and you see a sofa and it says shop now, you better be taken to that sofa, you know? If you’re on Facebook and you’re we have an integration with a company called Paloma that’ll ask you questions, like, do you like? Neutral tones.

Do you like blues? Things like that to help you shop, and then it’ll take you to customized feed of options that you might like based on those answers. And so even when we’re looking at something like an AI experience, That sort of, like, warm empathy is what they want, but still just, like, knowledgeable, consultative support is really where we’re seeing, like, the most growth, like, in terms of customer interaction and outreach. They’re not so much wanting, where is my order?

Right? Because we have a for them to look at that, and they can kinda figure it out on their own. They wanna know about the product.

Yeah. That’s what they’re nice.

I think that that’s something that has shifted so much, specifically due to technology. Right? Like, a lot of these low level inquiries, like, where is my order, those things we now have technology solutions. To, whether that’s a dashboard, that they can track something or a chat bot that can automatically pull that up.

Like, those are things that an agent doesn’t necessarily need to, like, mindlessly handle as much anymore, and now they’re taking on a much more important, but a little bit more challenging role, which is this more consultative support. It’s building relationships. It’s you know, reflecting brand values. It’s also just a I think, you know, especially now post pandemic, a lot of customers don’t care who they’re talking to.

So to speak, we don’t care if it’s the marketing team or the sales team or the customer service team. They just want their questions answered, and they don’t really see a dichotomy like that. And if as you said, if they get served an ad on Instagram, they want to seamlessly continue that conversation without having to jump through barriers. So I think convenience is a huge thing.

And building connections with a brand. There were when we did our research, I think it was eighty three percent of consumers expect customer service reps to sort of reflect the brands’ ethos and values and be able to talk to them in friendly conversational manner.

And I I think it was sixty percent of consumers actually said that they want to have a personal one on one relationship with a brand. So it’s not just I’m buying a product from you. It’s I want a full experience end to end, and the customer service team, especially in a digital first environment is really.

Sometimes the only, like, human contact as with the brand. So I think that’s hugely important.

Yeah. And, you know, it’s really interesting. Like, when you get those customers, they stay with you. The ones who really, like, you build that relationship with, I think, like, everybody knows the, like, Zappos, like, eight hour call.

Like, that’s — Mhmm. — you know, customer service, like, gold right there. But, like, you know, when I started out as a customer service agent, we had a customer. Her name was Joan.

I still like, I still talk about Joan. We all talk about Joan. We know everything we don’t like. We know her dog’s name, you know, And that sort of experience as an agent makes you more passionate about what they’re doing and your job.

You nobody wants to be that sort of, like, your order is coming in this day. Your order is coming in this day. That data input kind of answer isn’t that’s just, like, not fun. Like, you know, when I say that I, like, lead the team with silliness, like, we wanna, like, gamify this.

Like, we want this to be fun. We want you to enjoy talking to customers.

If it’s not fun like, I get it if you don’t wanna be here. I’d I like fun.

So, finding those channels in that way where we can even get, like, agents who are specialized to do those things, like our sales team is built with people who love to skating the phone. We love talking to our customers, and so that sort of experience can really just be, like, refined in that way.

In it’s just it’s fun to watch them get excited and to share, hey, like, I got a sale, or hey, like, this customer how cute is this? Like, she sent me this picture of her kid and her dog and myself felt like those sorts of experiences for our team, like the CS experience enhances the CX experience.

Make sure the customer is having a good time because the team is having a good time. And that means they’re gonna come back to our brains. Like, we don’t want them to say nobody helped me and everything was hard.

Yeah. Yeah. And I love talking about that with with retail brands of how closely connected the end customer experience is with the agent experience. Right? The easier you make it for agents to deliver an exceptional experience and build these relationships, the more likely that a customer sees that and appreciates that. So I’m I’m wondering how how are you investing in that agent experience at Joybird?

So this is gonna sound like a ad for customer, and I don’t mean it to. But aren’t we used to work with a different CRM platform, and, like, our numbers were always high. Thousands of tickets It didn’t matter how many agents we threw at the process. It was just it was high, and we couldn’t get the right team to answer. The the emails would just come and it would be like, well, I’ve never answered a warranty question, but I like, I guess I have to.

And just the ability correctly get that ticket to the right team the first try makes the, like, all the difference. Because if the right person is answering the question, it’s a one touch ticket. It’s not a ten touch ticket. It’s not like Yep. I don’t understand your problem.

Can you tell me twelve more things? It’s just like, oh, I’ve seen, you know, I’ve seen this before. I know what you need. Here you go. Like, here’s the best place, like, case solution.

And, like, we want to solve that fast for them. You know, are customers who have, like, let’s say, a warranty problem.

They actually become our biggest promoters when we can turn it around for them really quick Yep. And so that experience of, like, hey, I had a problem, but they fixed it the same day really does turn it around for them. And then, like, the workload got lighter because the right person was answering the question. And so we didn’t have all this back and forth. And we didn’t have people asking, hey, like, just a silly question that really like, if they just knew if they had been trained on that team, they would never have asked that question.

And so our numbers are way down. Our team morale is way up. You know, like yesterday, we had just gained time for an hour because numbers were good, and we just played — Love that. — the dictionary for an hour.

And so that sort of thing, like that sort of experience when you’re doing the work you know how to do and you are trained to do instead of just getting a surprise every time, it takes the dread away, and it just means, like, hey, like, I know how to do this. Like Laurie set a goal for me. Like, let’s beat the goal, like, aimify the system, and it’s just easier. Like, customer’s service team stays now.

Which is huge, you know, especially in this economy when you can leave and just get another job almost immediately. Like, Keeping the team and keeping the team happy is one of my main things. And, of course, like we do other things too to keep the team happy, but if your day to day work isn’t making you happy, why should you say? Like, if I say, like, hey, we’re gonna play games for an hour, but the work you do for the other seven, you’d read.

If you’re having anxiety to do that work, why why would you want to? And so, like, knowing you have the solution really helps, like, mitigate that and makes your job absolutely. Easy. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that’s huge.

Especially, you know, sometimes customer service roles can be a thankless job in a lot of ways, especially sorry. I’m having internet difficulties. Okay. There we go.

Especially if everyone’s coming to you with issues versus quest as we were saying post transaction problems that that get brought to your attention. But we I was talking actually to a customer about holiday preparation recently, and they were saying, like, we had it so well figured out.

We had everything intelligently routed. We had our knowledge base integrated.

So we had, you know, answers instantaneously.

We we upped our chatbot capabilities.

They, like, sent home their customer service team early — Yes. — during Black Friday cyber Monday because they were, like, This is usually the worst time, but feel free to leave. We got it all figured out. We’ve done that on our last two major sales now.

It’s just a game changer. It’s a game changer.

That, like, routing ability and just, like, getting you set up to win it’s I really I I have, like, exact numbers. I’ve given them for, like, a different project I’m doing, but it was something like an eighty percent reduction in, like, repeat.

Like, every everything else was a one touch ticket. So That’s amazing. It’s pretty huge for our customers and our team. Yeah.

Exactly. And it’s those two things go hand in hand. Like, they’re when a customer service rep is having difficulty, the customer experiences that and vice versa. So it’s all about building a positive experience on both sides.

Yeah.

Well, this is an amazing conversation.

Mhmm. I think we can sort of wrap things up by talking about the future.

You know, a lot of this research that we just did was with the intention of looking towards the future, looking sort of what the future holds. And for me, the easiest way to predict that is like looking at the youngest generation aka gen z.

Because probably in ten, fifteen, twenty years, that will be your customer if you plan on sticking around. So I think it’s a good sort of gut check as to what might be on the horizon.

One thing that we saw was that I I think I mentioned this before, but gen z, they prefer much more instantaneous communication. They prefer more social first brands. They’re more likely to, you know, respond to offers and promotions on social, and they wanna carry on conversations on these sort of channels, whether it’s text message or social or WhatsApp or whatever, that they use to connect with their family and friends every day because it’s just a convenience y factor.

So I’m wondering what you think, what joybird thinks in terms of what the future holds.

I we’re anticipating, like, like I mentioned previously, like, growing that sort of video support, maybe growing it in more key support, not just sales support.

But just also just transitioning channels. That’s still a little bit of a sticking point, but certainly improving now that we have Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram all integrated into customer, so at least hate like I can see him. Looks like they’ve been talking to us on Facebook. Look.

Let me check if we’ve already answered their question or why they’ve also emailed. That’s sort of — Yep. — just like double touch point is really changing the way that we’re able to make sure that the customer is like getting the complete end to end experience. And one of the things that I’ve been, like, just trying to drive home to my team and also to, like, our company as a whole is that, like, it starts when they first hear from us.

And it doesn’t end until they’re using our product, and everything should sort of match up. So if they’re getting an experience on Instagram that doesn’t match what’s going on on our website, let’s say, Our product pictures on Instagram are so dynamic. And then all we had were just like flat laid white background pictures on our website, like, It’s hard to believe that a flat white background is gonna translate into your home in the way that that Instagram picture did. So those lifestyle photos and things like that are part of the customer experience and part of the customer journey into getting that piece in their home.

And so, like, Right now, my main focus is like, the delivery team has to be part of it too. Like, we need the delivery team to be on our side. We need the delivery experience to feel like a joybird experience, because like we don’t own that company, but we can talk to them about what we want that to look like so that by the time they’re just sitting in it on their home, like They’re just like this is just like Instagram. Yeah.

And they put it on their Instagram feed or they put it on their Facebook feed or they make a TikTok really about it or whatever. Like, that sort of, like, starting point learning about the brand to endpoint is just every year I can see it getting more and more important. And people are really looking at that and saying like, Well, that influencer got a good experience, like, why is my order late? Or, like, you know, why is there global supply chains affecting me?

And just making sure that we’re aware of that and integrating that experience so that like customer support and customer experience become more seamless, unless like, the experience the customer has is outside the support control.

Yep. Totally. And I think that customer service plays such a central role in just improving the overall business. Right? Because when a customer reaches out about a problem, the problem isn’t with customer service. It’s with another part of the organization, whether that’s shipping, logistics, transportation, maybe UX experience on the website or payment or whatever it is and understanding, like, what those trends are and why people are reaching out can very much improve the end to end customer experience even though it might not be within your realm, I think gathering that data and sharing that data with the larger organization is so valuable and something that not enough brands do in my opinion.

But I think that that it can make all in the world.

Well, thank you so much, Lori. This was a great conversation.

I absolutely love joybird and everything that you’re doing both on the customer service side and the agent experience side. So thank you so much for your time. I’m gonna turn it back to Christina for q and a. Thanks, Andrea. That was that was fun. I love having a chat with you.

Thank you, Andrea, and Mori for that terrific discussion.

So we do have some time for questions Again, as a reminder, to everyone listening, you can submit these via the questions tab on the platform.

So to get started, we can start with the first question we have. Is do you think channels like phone or email will ever go away?

Sometimes I wish they would.

But I just I really can’t see that happening in the near future, especially because of how much, like, detailed immediate support you can get with a phone call. Like, if, let’s say, like, the carrier is coming and they dropped yourself off the back of the truck.

If you call us, we can explain to you, like, hey, if it’s usable, please accept it, and we’ll fix it. But, like, don’t go with no sofa. But if you, you know, even if you reached out on social, that might take just long enough that the carrier needs to go to their next stop, that sort of thing. And so, like, especially phone calls, like, I just think for those sort of more urgent moments, I just can’t see that leaving anytime soon.

Same thing with email, like I mentioned, some people just really want it in writing. Like, even if they call us, they’ll say, now email me everything you just said. And so for those folks, like, while I do see it sort of diminishing, especially for younger generations, like even, like, my peers as a millennial. Like, I I’ll see that mail app, and it’s like, the number is, like, six digits long, and I’m just like the anxiety alone of seeing that as someone who runs, like, a CRM platform day to day.

But, yeah, like, yes, millennials don’t want to email as much, but there are going to be circumstances where that’s just going to be what has to happen, especially as we grow. I’d love to see some of that sort of fade away, especially with automations or just being better about giving that information upfront. Like, you have to email me something that you could have found on the website? Like, I don’t — I don’t feel good when I — that happens to me if I have to ask a bunch And then now it’s three days later, and maybe the sale ended or whatever, you know.

So we try and make sure that we’re giving those customers, like, a fast answer. Instead of making a wait.

But yeah.

Yeah. I think that I think that I I concur with you. I think the volume will shift significantly in the future, but I don’t think it’s unless phone just goes away in the general future. I don’t think that that Just phone but on the chested camera. Yeah. Exactly.

I don’t think that that is going to change. One thing that we actually saw when we did research at the beginning of the pandemic, like, a month and we were asking customer service professionals like what had shifted for them, how the pandemic was impacting them, And they saw a huge spike in phone inquiries in particular because of there were these, like, urgent requests when everything you know, was hitting the fans at this peak, and people didn’t know safety precautions or why they were delayed, like, they wanted their answers right away, and that oftentimes can feel like the channel that is most likely to get you your answer right away, but I do think the volume will shift. And I loved your point, Lori, about sort of this proactive support, so to speak, like getting ahead of problems will probably prevent a lot of that.

More intense conversation that needs to happen if you’re able to, you know, provide information on your website or send a bulk message to all of your customers that are impacted by something just to ensure that they’re aware and they’re not reaching out to you, I think that can make a huge difference in terms of the shifting landscape.

Yeah. The one thing that I think I’ve heard over and over, this isn’t my only job as working customer service, but the one thing customers constantly say is just like if you would have just told me, got it. I wouldn’t mind waiting if you would have told me. And so that proactive experience, I I really can’t like emphasize that enough.

When we send out an email saying, hey, it looks like our supplier may be late getting the fabric you selected. There are some options for you. You can wait. You can pick a different fabric.

We can offer you some sort of, like, compensation for your trouble. All of these things are available to you instead of waiting until they figure it out when there’s no shipping notice when they expect it. And then, of course, we’ve had you know, it’s I don’t know, like I don’t have kids, but I know my mom used to be like, if you would have just told me, that you broke the glass instead of hiding it, you wouldn’t have gotten glass in your foot, you know? So that sort that’s sort of just like upfront transparency means a lot to customers. They would rather we be honest than hide it or just not tell them about it and make them figure it out on their own. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Absolutely. All great points. Be perfect.

Awesome. And then another question we have is how do you manage chronic inbox fatigue when it comes to communicating with your customers?

So there’s a couple I have, like, so many thoughts on this, so I’m gonna try and keep myself brief. One of the things that we’ve been doing just internally is if a customer, let’s say, we did have to tell them, hey, your order is late, we’re removing them from our marketing emails. Because the last thing you want is to see something similar to what we said like, hey, you can’t have, being sold to someone else, because it doesn’t feel good. It feels like we’re saying your thing is late, but other people can have their orders.

And like, that’s not really what we mean, but that is sort of how it comes across. And so just being able to we don’t even flag it. The system knows, hey, we told them their order is going to be late. Let’s don’t tell them about our current sale.

Or, hey, this person has a warranty issue. Let’s don’t ask them to post a picture on Instagram.

Just, like, sort of, really intuitive things like that are built into our system. So that way they’re not seeing, like, joy, or joy, or joy, or joy, or joy, because it’s infuriating. Like, if your order is late and then we’re just bragging about our sale or whatever, like, that’s it feels bad for everybody. And so being able to build those tools in has changed everything. Because when I first started, people would be like, How’d Aaron?

Yeah. When you’re telling me you’re having a sale when you’re, when my sofa like it’s broken or whatever. So those sorts of things really change it up for their customer.

Yeah. I totally agree with that. And then they come when they see an email from us, it’s important because it’s about like a solution to their problem, and they shouldn’t ignore it. It’s not just a sale.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s really huge. I think the over communication can sometimes be detrimental. And it’s also, like, we we hammered this home a million times during our conversation, but it’s really meeting your customers wherever they’re going to be most likely to engage with you.

And sometimes that is email.

But if, you know, the response times are incredibly long on the customer side on the email front, then, like, maybe that’s not their preferred channel. Maybe that’s not how they like to get their messages. Maybe if you need to send a proactive message to your customers and you know that they prefer text or they’re more likely to respond on text or they have as specific channel preference, then that might be those insights are super super valuable in order to ensure that you’re communicating the most important messages to them. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Perfect.

Awesome. And then I think this might be the last question we have so far.

What would be your top tip to make customer service more convenient for the retail consumer. Interesting.

So We’ve built in a lot of systems for our retail teams because we do have brick and mortar stores to reach our customers on or reach our customer service team on the customer’s behalf. So let’s say you come in and you say, I don’t know. I wanna change the fabric on my order. Like, I I changed my mind.

And that person either doesn’t have the ability to do it or doesn’t have the time to do it, they can submit a ticket, which then we have a ticketing system for them, and we give them like a promise of a quick response so that that customer knows that not only are they being taken care of in person, someone on the customer service team can also help them next time. So that They don’t need to just keep coming to the store. Because some people, if they purchase from the store, they think I have to go back to the store. But we’re a couple we’re a brand and we’re a company as a whole, and so we’re all helping each other out.

And so that sort of experience where, like, oh, like I need to return it, like, don’t need to go to the store for that. In fact, please don’t please don’t try taking yourself to the store. The store doesn’t want it. They can’t take it back they can’t refund you, you know, all of those sorts of things like driving them back to the customer service side so that, like, they’re getting that better experience and letting retail just be retail, you know, be there for sales and that sort of support.

But then we also do have like our virtual sales team. So we consider that part of our retail as well.

And because they are sort of more integrated with customer experience and customer support, the customers sort of kind of understand, like, hey, we can we can reach them anywhere. And so that retail experience doesn’t have to remain within that store.

I mean, obviously maybe it’s not feasible for every store to build a ticketing system, but it’s really worked great for us.

Yeah. I love that. I also just think that not, you know, not making customers jump through hoops in any way. So — Exactly.

— not making them, you know, repeat information or have to track something down or have to switch channels to get their question answered, like, just ensuring that you have the full picture right away.

Is so so important.

I feel like, you know, one thing that I I was doing a little casual survey of all of my mom friends in terms of, like, they’re so strapped for time. They’re working. They have kids, like, what they like in customer service, and they were like, I I need you to fit into my life. Like, I don’t wanna have to fit into your like that, there’s nothing that makes me more mad than having to, like, you know, waste my time figuring out how to get something done. Like, I want it to be as click and convenient as possible. So like I know that if I’ve already been engaging with you on this platform, whether it’s your website or social or whatever, that I’ll be able to seamlessly ask you a question, you’ll have all the context, and then be able to answer it right away. So it really is that the full picture, the full context no matter what channel you’re on, no matter what part of the buyer journey you’re in, I think, is is really huge.

Yeah. Speaking on that, one of the things that we really try and drive home with our team is like If they seem confused or if it seems like they’re frustrated, just pick them up. Worst case scenario, you get a voice mail and you still email them. That best case scenario, like, you can just email talk to them and explain everything, like, in a way that makes sense to them. Because maybe they’re gonna ask you a question you didn’t expect or you know, maybe just knowing that you’re willing to just immediately help will change their experience for the better. And then the only the one thing that, like, I I think probably every company struggles with is, like, leave a note.

Yeah. Write it down. What did the customer tell you? So that the next person who picks up that call can just look at the order and see, like, oh, hey, this customer was having a difficulty with this.

Like, let’s check. Let’s ask. Is that resolved for you? Can I help?

Jennifer’s not here today. Can I help you with that while you’re on the phone? That’s sort of just making sure that they’re touching base on the previous problem too.

Really helps the customer know that they’re not just a ticket. Like, they’re not just a number that they’re somebody who we care about and whose information, like, we’ve been taking note of. And — Yeah. — yeah.

It just it changes everything. It really does. Yeah.

I love what you said about fitting fitting into my schedule because that’s I mean, I don’t know kids, and that’s how I feel.

Yeah. Same. I’m calling you now. I don’t want you to call me back in two hours old machine.

Absolutely.

All of these are fantastic points. Well, I think we will wrap it up there Thank you, Andrea, and Lori for your insights today. And I’d like to thank everyone for listening and submitting your questions.

Have a great rest of your day. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks so much.