Hi, Jess, and welcome along to the e commerce impact podcast. It's awesome to have you here. Well, thanks for having me, Jessi. We have similar names there. I know, we really do. It's a first on the podcast. So do you ever get called Jessi or are you always Jess or Jessica?

I'm always Jessica if you don't know me and Jess. As soon as we have the first encounter. So  that's my preference. And then Jesse never really. So that's good. Well,  that would work out fine for us to be friends because I'm always Jesse, so it works out. Yeah. Let's go. 

So I'd love you to introduce yourself to our audience and let us know what you've been working on lately.  Yeah. So my name's Jess Servian. I have been a CX and retention leader for about 15 plus years. Previously my background was in SAS and most recently in e comm and the last couple of years I have been at the.

CX leader for feastables. But I also do a lot of fractional work in the e comm space doing fractional CXO work for other brands. And we'll dive deeper into it and the importance of CX and retention for e comm.  Yeah. Super excited to dive into this topic. We haven't actually had a CX person on the podcast before, and we haven't delved a lot into retention either.

So both topics will be awesome.   

 So tell me, why did you choose customer experience as your as your field of, of expertise or specialty? 

 Why I chose the career and customer experience is because it's the study of consumer behavior and user experience that really just gets me going. And, and it's what I apply to like all of my customer experience principles and like how I coach teams, how I help fractionally how at Feastables, like what I've built in like the CX world is like, it's.

All based on what is your user's behavior and how, how do we build a relationship with them? And how do we make them feel like they are like the dopest customer possible? And you want them to continue coming back to you.

That's such a great quote. I love that. What advice do you have for fast growing e commerce brands on customer experience? Yeah. So I think the biggest piece of advice that I have just like coming from my career, coming from who I am and like what everything that like I talk about is.

When you start a brand, like you can be very focused on like, okay, let's get this product out into the market. Let's make revenue. Let's yeah. Okay. Focus on people coming back for their, their second or third sale. But ultimately you really need to focus on the customer experience that your customer experiences.

through your brand, whether that's through the packaging, the user behavior in your website, what happens with your customer service team, what's happening with your email and SMS marketing campaigns. Really thinking about customer experience to the entire life cycle of your customer is so important because you can get that first sale.

But if you're not building relationships with your customers and making them every single one of them feel like they're VIP customers, then you're not going to retain them for the next sale. And, you know,  loyal to your brand as a whole. Exactly right. And, you know, these days, customer acquisition is more and more expensive.

And, and for a lot of brands, it's that repeat purchase that is where the profits lie. So it's super, super important. At what stage do you think, kind of really focusing on customer experience as a discipline becomes important for a brand.  Yeah, I think, you know, we'll get deeper into this, but I mean, for me and like, just the way I think about it, and maybe this is because I come from SAS before e comm, I think about the customer and the customer success with your brand and their customers  experience should actually be more of a thought.

At the beginning stages of, of your developing your brand of like getting it out into the market. And the reason why, and again, we'll like, we'll dive way deeper into this, but.  It's not. Customer experience isn't just customer support. Customer experience is also your consumer insights, your product market fit.

Customer experience is also how you're acquiring your customers from a presale perspective. Customer experience is also post purchase. And what I mean by post purchase is how are your customers receiving that product from fulfillment? How are they, you know, how are they interacting with that product?

How, what's their, what's their view of that product, right? Yeah. So, I mean, it's just, I personally believe that if you're starting a brand, your, you should be focusing on customer experience as one of the first disciplines of your brand as a whole.  And what  does that look like? Like when you start working with, you know, on a fractional basis, say with a brand, what are you sitting down and kind of like, look, what's the process?

How does it work?  Yeah. So, you know, without giving it all away, cause. Call a girl, right? But,  but, you know, like how I come into it and any brand that I'm looking at is like, okay, so yes, I'm going to deep dive into like your customer support first. And the reason I'm actually deep diving into your customer support is because I really want to look at like how your, what tickets you're, you're getting, what are your inquiries that you're getting, how you're handling those inquiries.

So not necessarily on an efficiency basis. Like, yes, we can like definitely dive into like making all of like. That like more like your support section, like more efficient, but really like the first pillar that I come in and look at is like, what are your customers saying? What is the consumer insights from your customers?

So, you know, and then the second point of that, like of doing that audit is like, then I go into like marketing campaigns and, you know, yes, of course, like, I want to look at like your click through rates and all of like those basic like metrics and like how much revenue you've generated from it, but really, I want to look into like.

What is the copy that you're putting out there for your customer? What's that brand voice and tone that you have for your brand to, to talk to your customer? And then third, you know, it's taking all of that information again, it really, the first pillar is the consumer insights, but it's taking all of that information and then developing out like what I like to call a feedback loop and like understanding like, okay, so if your customers are saying, you know,  They love these, like the quality and the taste or the texture of your food product, or they are having issues with like your sizing or the styles of their apparel, like these are all insights that we should be diving deeper into from.

From that, like fractional base, but also like you should be looking at this as, as a brand as a whole. So I mean, that's like my first and foremost thing that I'm doing is like, I'm looking into like what your customers are saying and how you're speaking to your customer.  And then lastly, you know, and this is very like tactical advice, but you can look at all the consumer insights of it and like, you don't necessarily have to go on your. 

Go and do your market research, right? And like you get, like, you're going, like, talk to hundreds of people about how they feel about the product. Your customer is literally there screaming at you, telling you what it is that they are, that they like, what they don't like, and then, but, you know, going back to my last sleep part is I also am looking at what is your.

What is your site journey? Like, if we're talking about DTC, like online, like, right, what is that user's experience coming in from going out through the website, going through checkout, going through, you know, all of the communications that are popping up at your customer, save 10%, do this, sign up for this email.

Like what does that entire journey look like? And I'm mapping out that journey and, and then breaking down each of the touch points. So we can. So, you know, when we're, we're doing this fractionally and looking at your customer experience fractionally, I'm looking at like, all right, from a post purchase perspective, but I'm also looking at that presale perspective to give you a map, a treasure map, essentially of like all of the touch points and all the optimizations that we could be taking care of.

That's so interesting. Yeah. So you're looking at like you're looking at the. Add copy itself. And then whether that's kind of like a total mismatch with the tone of voice that the customer experience people are using.  Yeah. Interesting. And what, what are the common mistakes you kind of typically pick up on with brands at this stage?

Have you got any stories of brands that were, you know, you've kind of uncovered some really,  some big messes in terms of how they were or how they were doing things when you came along.  Yeah, I don't want to say like huge misses because I don't, anybody that listens to this, I don't want them to be like, dang, that's me, but  I will,  I will say one of the biggest things, and again, it goes back to consumer insights, like I cannot reach this enough, like I will stand on a hill and put my flag at the top of that hill that Your customer is literally screaming at you and telling you what it is that they like and they don't like.

And so often I see brands say like, okay, great. I have my product reviews.  It's great. You have your product reviews, but like, are you actually looking at them besides just like responding to somebody who has a negative review? Are you actually looking at it? Are you actually understanding those trends and those insights?

And are you actually putting those trends and insights back into the company? So again, going back to like my feedback loop, but I mean, I think that's like one of the biggest things that I see. Like. You know, and just to get a little bit more granular on on like mistakes that I've made, like I've worked with a couple of CPG brands where they have all of the things set up, like put their product reviews and then even their NPS reviews, but like, and their customers telling them like, Hey, Hey, They're the quality of this particular product isn't right, and it's been going on for months and months and months.

And that particular product was on the shelves or like being sold. And there was no there was no look into like the trend itself. It was literally just replacing the product. We're not actually looking into the trend and taking that back to. Supply chain and R and D and say like, Hey, like there's an issue with this particular product.

Interesting. Yeah. So when it's done, well, are we talking like it's a monthly review of like every kind of data channel. So you're looking monthly at the customer reviews monthly at the custom, the themes around the customer tickets, the comments on the ads wherever else, the kind of feedback, the post purchase survey, and you're looking at those kind of like, is there a.

A typical cadence that you would look at that in order to pick up on it  in a timely manner, but also not be kind of like distracted by that one angry person.  Yeah, of course. So what I actually do, like one of the things, one of my deliverables that I do with like my consulting work and, you know, and I've also built this at festivals too is I create this, you know, Feedback loop, that's literally taking all of your product reviews, all your NPS, all your tickets, like all these things, all the comments in, you know, post checkout, like all like any of these survey touch points.

Right? And I like, I created like a very scrappy dashboard. Like, it's listen, it's not.  I'm not saying go out and buy a tool, okay. I'm like literally saying like, you can be very scrappy with your Google sheets and your Excel. And what, and so like, one of the things that I do with this, like with my clients is we kind of, depending on like if the client already has a CX manager or if they don't,  it's like essentially put like this person through, I put like their, their team kind of through like a bootcamp.

Wait, right, like a CSB campus, like taking all this data, putting this into like a dashboard, right? And then the cadence of that is actually on a weekly basis, not on a monthly basis. So it could be weekly and it can be monthly. But the reason is, is because you should be tracking these trends on a weekly basis.

Because if you have any sort of. Again, going back to like CPG in particular, but if you have any like, sort of like adverse reactions or, you know, issues with like a product that's on the shelves, like you, that's something that you need to alert like immediately. Right. And, and so like, that's why I like it in like more of a weekly basis.

I have also had an apparel client who I had on like a weekly cadence for like this type of reporting back to the company, because.  They were churning out, I wouldn't say churning out, churning out is not the right word to use. They were producing more SKUs, like it's a payroll company, so you have like a ton of SKUs, right?

Like sometimes you have like hundreds of SKUs and you're always in like product innovation, right? And you're always in product innovation and style, sizes, all of these things. But I think like, That feedback on styles and being accepted on sizing on, you know, if the quality is good or not for like that product is so important for companies who are like constantly developing out new SKUs.

So, so those are just like 2 different types of aspects of like CPG and apparel, but I think it's really important to look at it on a weekly basis and then again on a monthly basis and then 2nd.  The last thing too is like, it's not just about the dashboard. It's also about how do you communicate to like.

Executive level people and then also be able to communicate information to maybe like the supply chain manager, right? Like, I, like, you have to be able to take all of these data points and then be able to put, whether it's in a, to a slide or it's into like a written form of like, what is actually going on with your customers and being able to communicate it to like different, different types of individuals within the company.

Yeah, that's so interesting. So what was I going to say? What, what kind of metrics are you tracking in that dashboard? I'm presuming that dashboard is like not like metrics based numbers based. Is that yeah. Yeah. So of course, you know, if I'm looking at product reviews, like, of course I want to know it, like what one through five, like what is, you know, what's happening in each one of those.

But then I also break it down by skew. In like CSAT,  CSAT customer satisfaction score for tickets, right? Like customer support tickets. Like, of course, I want to know what, like the satisfaction rating is of like a customer's  ticket in particular. Those are a few of them. And then, you know, MPS, like I want to look at like all time MPS opposed to like weekly MPS.

Were there any sort of sort of different trends there? And sorry, MPS is Net Promoter Score. And, you know, I looking at that and then, like, when it comes down to post checkout surveys, it's not it's not really metrics based, but it's really more like trends analysis based because, like, what post checkout surveys is doing is really like telling you, like, the attribution, but I also think it's an opportunity to look at, like, demographic information.

You can ask your customer and those, like,  Who are you purchasing for? And again, if I'm asking who in a post checkout survey, who are you purchasing for? That's not really a metric. That's more of an informative thing that I'm being told. So, and then, you know, when we go into like retention, retention marketing standpoints, right?

Like, of course, like you're looking at like your click through rate and your open rates and like those basic those basic metrics, because that's telling me is, Is my copy hitting? Is it right in the right tone of voice? Is this like actually captivating this audience? And then, sorry, I'm really nerding out right now.

I told you I would nerd out. No, I love it. I love it. And like, not even, you know, like, not even just like... So in this dashboard, like I know I'm telling you like all the survey touch points, but like also the retention marketing touch points, but also when I'm looking, I'm also looking at the transactional email touch points as well because, and I'll tell you why this is really important to look at and like not forget about your transactional emails  nine times out of 10, a customer is like. 

Probably not good. I wouldn't say nine times out of 10, maybe eight times out of 10 is not going to read an email, right? They're going to read their order confirmation and be like, type, like, got that. That's great. I, I even do it. I don't look at my order confirmations after.  So what's important to me is, is those transactional emails and looking at like click through rates and open rates, because in those transactional emails, I'm also putting a lot of informative information for the customer to understand, like, what are the next steps after, after it's been sold to you.

So.  Again, these are a variety of different things that I'm looking at, and these are a variety of different things that I'm tracking, but this is like, this is how granular I get. Yeah.  Amazing. It's so interesting because as a digital marketer, like we, I, you know, preach the same thing, right? We've got to track everything every week.

You've got to look at your. Site traffic, where traffic came from, you know, active email users. You want to look at your conversion rates, your AOV your click through rate, all of that stuff, but I had never really thought because it's not the area that I focus on that, you know, you'd also be focusing on the satisfaction levels, the reviews, you know, things that are indicating to you where the product that's hitting the customer.

As being well received and  because you're doing so much effort to get people to become a customer, if you then forget about them, once they become a customer, then, you know, that's  a real mess for your business. So yeah, thank you for enlightening me about that.  Cool. So,  and what does your tool, your tool or software stack look like for you, for, you know, for the majority of your clients or at festivals?

Like what, what tools do you recommend people use  to kind of manage this and track this?  Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, at Feastables,  at Feastables, it's, it's pretty much the same of like what I like always refer clients to, to but at Feastables, we utilize customer, which is our like Ticket tracking, or I'm sorry, not ticket tracking, our, our ticketing tool.

So any emails that we get, any sort of DMs, SMS messages, like any of that stuff, like all bleeds into customer with a K and that's how, like, you know, the support team and the community team will like communicate back and forth with our customers. It also like.  And then for reviews, I actually really, really, and I will double down on this 5, 000 times over love a kendo and I'll tell you why I love a kendo a kendo  a lot of people think it's just product reviews, but I have put so many serving touch points in a kendo recently, so I have our product reviews, I have our MPS in there, I have, I'm eventually moving our CSAT there, I also have the ability to like Do one off surveys through this tool.

And the other reason why I really love this tool is because I can get very granular. So for instance, like post checkout survey, I,  most people do. Here's just a post checkout survey to all the customers, right? But they don't actually get granular into, is this a new customer? Is this a returning customer?

What product are they purchasing? And, you know, and then diving deep into that granularity again. And Akendo allows you that opportunity to utilize logic based off of new returning type of product purchase attributes.  I love that tool. I will  double down. I'm not, this is not paid by Akendo. I am just saying that it's one of my favorite tools for me when I talk about consumer insights.

That's awesome. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. And yeah, one of the, I would add as well, one of the things I love about Akendo that, you know, some of our clients use it and it's great for post purchase. UGC like testimonial requests. So they've found it to be really good at doing that in a way that's kind of like user friendly for the customer and makes it easy for them to submit their video reviews.

Yeah. And here, here's a piece of tactical advice. Cause, cause Jesse and I are nerding out about a Kendo right now, but when we talk about like UGC and like why that's. I mean, obviously UGC is important, and I won't dive too deep into it. But the other thing that I really love about Akendo is like, you can get very granular.

So if you leave a written review, you maybe you're giving 10% off, right? If you're leaving a review with just a picture, you're giving 15%, 20. And then if you're leaving a review with a video, you can get 20%. I'm just saying like, those aren't like the, the discounts are just, you can get so granular into like the offerings and the rewards.

That's amazing. I just love it. Yeah. I hadn't realized it was so nuanced. Yeah. I love it,  man. That's so  cool. Again, not sponsored by Akendo. Just saying. So, customer of Akendo, we haven't gotten that far, customer of Akendo, and PostScript is one of my favorite SMS marketing tools. I really love I just love the tool.

I love the tool. I think it's very easy to use. It's a very good compliment to like your email marketing tool, it can, it, and there's some other feature sets are just like, are just really awesome. Also, the team is like really awesome to work with. So, and we've done a lot of We've done a lot of things that not the average customer,  postscript customer would do at Feastables.

And they've been very flexible and have been really amazing. So shout out to customer or postscript. And then at Klaviyo, of course I think, I think it's really interesting about Klaviyo or just any of these email marketing tools that.  When you need to send out like, of course, your marketing campaigns or your transactional emails, like you can, you can utilize Klaviyo to do those things.

But I, I think something that's like really underestimated that people don't do often  is from a post purchase perspective. Let's say like, let's say you did a mass sale and I don't know, there was a delay in shipping, right? And. And I, I have found this like in a lot of other brands too, they'll be like, Oh, we really want to mass email these people to tell them like, Hey, there's a shipping delay or like tell them something about their product after the fact.

Right. And I'm like, yeah, okay, great. We can easily just build a segment and just like build a nice email and send it to everybody. And so I, I think it's a very, My point is about Klaviyo is that I think it's a tool that's very underrated that like more CX leaders should also use for like better segmentation and to, for the ability to like, if you need to send one off emails to like large lists of people, you can do it within your email marketing tool and have like all the profile information there.

That's my point.  Sorry, I nerded out. Yeah. I know  it's sometimes hard. I find, no, it's awesome.  Yeah, I was going to say it's sometimes hard to explain how awesome Clavio is like, cause occasionally I'd still do come across a client or a brand that's using MailChimp  and I have to try and sit them down and explain.

And there's so many like little things like that, that  yeah, that make it. Amazing. It's the fact that it's built for e commerce and it like, and it's directly feeding into Shopify and understands like who all your customers are, who's spending the most, what they've bought when they bought it. That's what makes it so much better than just a standard email tool. 

Yeah, absolutely. And I. Sorry, like nerd out moment about like bridging the gap between your marketing tools and your CX tools. I think it's really important to like, whether it's, whether you're talking about your SMS marketing tool, you're talking about Klaviyo or any of these tools that you're like mass.

communicating to your customer. And that has like segmentation built into it. Even a kindo, right? You should be bleeding that back into your CRM tool. So like, I bleed all of this information back into our CMA or CRM tool customer. So my agents, Whether you're on the community side or the support side, you can see certain information about that customer so you know what type of service to give that customer.

Does that make sense? Like, if you're a customer that's like purchased, you know, I don't know, I'm making up dollar amounts, 5, 000, right? You should be treating that customer as a VIP customer and that support agent should also be equipped with that information.  All I'm saying,  a little tactical advice, put all your tools, your marketing tools, In front of your CX agents so they can see the same information that you see when you're segmenting to them.

That's all I'm saying.  But yeah, I mean, those are my main tools that I utilize and all make talk to each other. So. Love it. Amazing. We will link to them all in the show notes. So next question for you is you've been at festivals from the early days, right? I'd love to hear the story of like customer experience at festivals and what you've kind of learned along the way and implemented it along the way. 

Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite stories to tell because I think a lot of people don't know this. So Jesse, hard off the press. You ready? We're  getting it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ready? So,  so, you know, I came on board at Feastables. I was actually employee for right after, you know, the CEO, the  COO and a member of the supply chain, right?

So, You know, for them to hire a CX leader as employee four before we were even on the market mean, like just goes to show you like the value of like the customer experience and how much we care so much about it. That we've also built the customer experience department as its own org. Like I don't sit under marketing.

I, I do, I report directly into our CEO. And the reason it's. built this way, though, is because we care so immensely about the experience of the customer, not just from a support standpoint, from a community standpoint, from you know, a digital experience standpoint that we we built.  CX to be, you know, really just like the top of the line, or I wouldn't even say top line, just like best in class  from go to market stages.

So, you know, I came on board back in October before we launched in January, 2022. So October, 2021 was when I first began and I was tasked with creating  a CX department. And I'll be honest with you, like, I didn't know what to expect. Newsflash,  I'm not 21. The Botox might tell you I'm 21, but I'm not.

But my point is, is that I just absolutely I didn't know what to expect. I just really didn't know what to expect. And I, I took. The principles that I have always known about customer experience, as far as like building out the right tools and getting the right, like right information to the, the agents, building out efficiencies and all of these things as, as best as I could before we launched. 

And when we first launched, we actually launched with 30 plus agents that were outsourced. So we launched with 30 plus agents that were outsourced and we only had two individuals agents that were in, in house. One being on the CF support side and one being on the community side. We are now  a year and a half later. 

I no longer outsource my team and I actually have brought all of customer experience in house. So each member of our, our team  sits on the Feastable side. And the reason for that is a little bit of I approached our, our customer experience very much how our audience would. Want to communicate  with us.

So, you know, originally we had started on, it wasn't customer. We started on another tool and we were just getting mass tickets to us. Like we were getting mass tickets, like from our SMS channel, mass tickets from our email channel. But I also had produced this web bot on the site and I noticed that this web bot was getting so much engagement.

I mean, like it was insane. Like it was deflecting like a hundred thousand. Tickets, 100, 000 ticket. Wait, I'm not even saying that  100,  000 tickets. Okay. Whatever.  But anyway, it was like deflecting so much. And I was looking at the pathways of like.  Of like the, the user behavior and I was noticing that these people were like so interested in like product ingredients and they were interested in like this bot telling it jokes and all these things  that I took that idea of like the bot and I built that into our SMS channel and as soon as I built it into our SMS channel, it started deflecting 90% of my traffic there too and then because I had it like deflecting traffic on the website and on the SMS side, I was actually able to  like reduce my head count on the outsourcing side and focus more on bringing my.

My individuals in in house to be really ingrained in the Feastables brand and listen, and I know I'm like really diving deep into the story, but the reason I'm diving so deep into it is because Feastables care so much about customer experience and the experience of our customer, not just from like a packaging perspective, a taste perspective and all these other standpoints that I'm telling you, but also like an interaction standpoint where, you know, it's so important to them that like, The members that are communicating with our customers are also very ingrained with like feastables and like core values as well.

So that was really important to me to bring that team completely in house and I'm able to do it in such like, because now a year and a half later,  you know, like we're not only available in the U. S. In online, we're also available in Walmart, Walmart, Target, 7 Eleven were available in the UK, Australia, and I'm able to, to scale this massive brand customer experience because I've doubled down on that digital experience.

Yeah. So can you, can we just back up a little bit? Can you explain to me this? So it's a chat bot that you deployed on the website. Is that right? So it's a chat bot and you had programmed it to kind of like answer all the costs, common customer questions  and to have some like a fun sense of humor, it sounds like.

And by doing that, you reduce the number of support tickets massively. Yeah,  exactly. Because one of the things that I found, and I mean, this comes back and I think that this I think that this tactic, and I'm not saying it's just like chatbots. Okay. I'm saying this tactic of understanding your audience and being able to learn how they want to be communicated to  can help you in like how you scale your customer experience from like beginning stage, middle stage. 

You know, massive stage. Right. And so like, that's essentially what I did was that I found that like this audience was communicating to this chat bot and like they were communicating in such a way that like they were talking to it as if it was its friend. Like we used to call it feisty bot. It's no longer feisty bot.

It's just like. Chatbot. But they were communicating to FeastieBot that it was became this like its own personality, right?  And it became its own personality to like the point where people looked forward to like when we would put in new jokes or we would put in like new pathways or anytime we would like Put on a new product on the site, I would notice a high increase of the interactions of it, like being asked questions about, like, what ingredients do you have?

Where do you source them? Like all of these, like, just this like always on type of salesperson, right?  And like, and again, going back to like, I'm not saying like the tactic of a chat bot is like for every brand, but what I am saying is that I doubled down on understanding the audience and understanding how that audience wanted to be communicated to.

Okay. That I was able to then deflect thousands upon thousands of tickets away from our agents than I could then scale, scale in a different way. So I think that same tactic can be utilized by a lot of other brands. If you just,  you know,  understand how your customer wants to be communicated to and like offer, offer avenues to communicate to them.

So like to even scale it down, like forget the chat bot.  Let's say you found out that your customer was like  always asking, like. About a style for a shirt, right? They were like, why did you choose this colorway? Or I don't know. I'm just making a question, right? Answering those questions on a PDP might reduce the amount of tickets that you get.

To your agents is my point. I see. Yeah. And how that process of creating that chatbot, because I guess that's something that often is done really badly, right? You see phone companies do it and it's really frustrating because you're trying to get the answer and you're just in a loop and you're getting a stupid answer and you just want to talk to someone real.

Like, how did you make sure that it was received positively in that way? And like, what steps did you go through to make sure that it was able to kind of.  Like give the answers people wanted. Yeah. I hired a copywriter at the time. Like we, we now have copywriters on stuff, but we have more marketing people on stuff.

But at the time I hired a copywriter to literally just study Mr. Beast videos and like how this, and like comments, right. And then write material based on that. I'm not saying that like everybody can do that, but I'm saying like the wherewithal of like thinking, like, I need to be very specific about the tone of voice of this. 

To so that like it will continue to get engaged with and it won't feel like so robotic was really important to me.  And then, you know, on the other side of it, too, is like just creating like pathways and modules and all of that stuff, right? I kind of just like put myself as if I was that customer and like, if I'm going to come to this website and look at.

And have questions about a product or if I'm a part of this audience and I like see that they love to like joke around right like I'm going to build material based off of like. What I think that this customer would like and it no, and, and whatnot.  Third, to be honest with you  before Feastables, and I said this, but like before Feastables, I actually worked in SAS, and so I come from a very like.

tech support, product support type of background, right? Where it's like, okay, if somebody writes in and they're like I need to change my password, you want to be the most helpful as possible and also collect the most amount of information as possible. So then that way, like your agent can quickly help them.

I built this bot based off of that theory though, of like, okay, let me collect the most information as possible, but also let me be the most informative. So I can inform the customer while it's interacting with this chat bot. And if they say even one time, speak to a human, it immediately transfers you to a human.

You're not stuck in this like loop of like, Oh, let me go look at this FAQ article or this or that, that like, so I, I just kind of took, yeah, yeah. Like, cause that's the thing is like,  you also have to remember too, about like you just. General user behavior. Not every person wants to talk to a human.  Not everybody wants to talk to a human.

Right? And like, and that applies to like phone calls that applies to emails that applies to everything. So give it like thinking about your experience as if  you are  speaking to somebody who doesn't want to talk to a  human,  give them the most information as possible, but always have the human available on the other line.

And then lastly, I also, and this is just like how I think of writing even like FAQ articles or articles on a PVP or just writing in general, just like general copywriting to my customer again, going back to like, not everybody wants to talk to a human. Also, not everybody learns the same way. So some people like learn by like written form. 

Some people learn by like. Vocal form. And some people learn by like how to videos, right? So when I'm like creating an FAQ doc, and if it has to get very technical, I always encourage like anybody that I'm working with myself to always like create material for the three different styles of learning.  Does it make sense?

So like, even like in a if you want to apply that to an email, right?  Have a good visual of like, if it's, you're giving a how to to enter a giveaway, have a good visual of like how to enter the giveaway. Right. But also include words, make it fun and interactive. So then people actually retain the information.

That's awesome. Love that.

 So what do you see on the horizon for the field of customer experience? What are the bears around the corner and what are you most excited about?

Yeah, I think what's really interesting and what's happened happening in like both the e com space and the SAS space, to be honest with you is that.  There's people out there that are like me, like Eli Wise you know Eli Wise, he's senior director of CX at Jones Road Beauty and you know, there's, there's Michael Bear.

He's SVP of CX at FIGS, the  scrub company, but I'm mentioning these people because it's like, they're all like, we all are. We all are becoming like in this, this roles of like executive leadership in CX, which is kind of paving the way for, for junior level CX managers, associates, that there is a career path in CX, like you can do this long term and, and I think that's like really exciting for the industry, but I also think what's really interesting is that CX and retention is like just getting It's kind of getting taken more seriously by brands, by companies, because there's people like myself and the, and the individuals I named out there that are actually preaching to the choir.

They're actually preaching about consumer behavior and why it's so important. So I think like, we're honestly like paving the way for not only like companies to take it seriously, but we're paving the way for other individuals to have career paths in this. And I also think that,  you know, me standing on like my. 

My hell of like, listen, customer experience isn't just customer support.  And the reason I say that is because it's literally the study of your consumer behavior. And I think if brands can double down on like studying your consumer behavior and the why and the what of why your customers come back or why your customers are your customers, then.

That's that's elevating that's elevating CX and that's elevating retention. So it's like, I just think that  I think there's a lot that is like around the corner for it. I think there's there's new tactics and new techniques that are yet to even be talked about. But I think that, I think it's kind of just having its day and I think it's, and I think it's really dope and I think it's really important to really  study your consumer behavior and not just a marketing perspective, but like an insights perspective.

Amazing. Love that. Yeah, it feels really exciting. Feels like an exciting time to be in this industry for sure.  And what about e commerce? What do you see on the horizon for e commerce in general? Anything you'd want to you'd want to chat about with the,  with the audience? Yeah, I think what's really interesting and like, again, why like doubling down on understanding consumer insights and consumer behaviors is so important is that, you know, Ecom had like, it's a big boom in like recent years because of the pandemic and because so many people were like at home and shopping online.

And I think we've seen that shift in, you know,  in the last year that, you know, you have to, you really have to like double down and really Like  make your customers really want to come back to you rather than purchase you and in retail. Right. So I think what's like coming around the corner for e com is like really just the emphasis again, the emphasis on like the consumer insights, the market research, and the emphasis on understanding like consumer behavior and, and dialing that into your practices as like  Marketing individuals as supply chain individuals as just whatever general operator that you are, it's really taking like that consumer behavior and every action that you're taking  makes an impact to your experience.

So then that way your customer continuously comes back. I think I think that's  that's the next thing for E com is is just doubling down on that.

Amazing. Yeah, that's so true. I think we can't  the days are gone where we could just like. Harvest Facebook for  Customers make them profitable on the first purchase. 10X ROAS, you know, we've got to work a lot harder now to like,  to delight them, keep them, keep them coming back. And yeah, I love the way you approach that.

Cool. So where can our audience find you, follow you, hear more from you? Yeah, so I'm pretty active on LinkedIn these days, so. Jess  Servian, and I also have a website,  jessservian. com. Both places. Write me an email through my website or DM me on LinkedIn and I promise you I will respond. Amazing. Thanks so much for coming along.

Thank you for having me.