Building the CX Foundation
This session presents an in-depth look at the remarkable journey of Jess Cervellon, the inaugural VP of Customer Experience at Feastables, a Mr.Beast brand. Starting as the first member of the CX team, Jess navigated the uncharted waters of establishing a robust customer experience framework in a dynamic DTC environment. She will share her experiences and challenges in building a CX team from the ground up, integrating customer support with the evolving retail landscape, and embedding community and AI frameworks into the core of Feastables' strategy. This session will provide valuable insights into strategic team building, role evolution, and leadership in customer experience, offering attendees a unique perspective on shaping and leading a CX team in a fast-growing brand. Join us to explore the strategies and leadership principles that have driven the success of Feastables' CX initiatives under Jess Cervellon's guidance.
(upbeat music)
- Woo! - Woo!
- To our next session with Jess,
with Jess, you like how we did that there?
How are you doing?
- I'm doing great, Ryan.
- Well, thank you for spending your time with us today.
We wanna just get right to it.
First of all, let me introduce you to the audience.
I know we know each other quite well,
but I don't know if the audience knows you quite well.
I think some of them do.
But Jess, previously VP of customer experience at Peaceables
before that, well actually right now too,
don't you do a whole bunch of fractional work as well
and you work with D2C brands and CX?
- Yes, so previously, just recently,
was VP of customer experience at Peaceables
and simultaneously because I am a psycho-path.
I also am a fractional CX and marketing leader
for several other CPG D2C brands.
I shouldn't say several, there's like five.
So they do various activities for other people
on a freelance perspective.
- That's great.
I think that the definition of several
is probably above five, right around five.
So I would say that.
- The definition of psycho-path is above five.
- You just committed, that's all.
Okay, and also previously,
you were co-hosting your own podcast, right?
- I was, I previously co-hosted your podcast,
called Oopsie Podcast that ended back in September, October?
- October, that's what I see here.
I've got my notes, I've got my notes.
- Listen.
- Just keep it in.
- Time to plug, time to plug when you got like
50,000 things going on, you know.
- And one more thing, and your newsletter, right?
- Oh my goodness, how did I not even promote my newsletter?
- Come on.
- I also started a newsletter back in October
called Sunday Postcards Notes from an Impact Leader.
That one's like, honestly a passion project
and something very special to me because
if you wanna learn about being a leader
and being an empathetic leader, come see me.
- That's it.
All right, so there's a lot of different ways
that you can kind of gain more insight from Jess here.
But I wanna start off specifically talking
about your experience at Feastables.
And to me, like, why I wanna talk about it
and let the audience, like better understand this
is just how you have, like, when you came in to Feastables
and where it's at now and your journey along the way.
So first off, can you tell us a little bit about
when you started at Feastables and what you kind of
came into and what was that customer experience
department like when you started?
- Yeah, so I think I've already said this
that I'm a psychopath, so I love a startup, okay?
- It's awesome.
- It's a very spicy startup with that, okay?
And I joined Feastables back in October of 2021
and Feastables wasn't on the market yet.
Feastables actually didn't launch until January 29th, 2022.
So I started at Feastables with just me, the CEO, COO,
and then a supply chain analyst.
It was like the four of us, right?
And we were just like, hey, so we're gonna start
this business, what are you gonna do?
And like they, and it was really important for Feastables,
for anybody who doesn't know what Feastables is,
Feastables is a snack brand that was started by MrBeast,
the world's largest YouTube influencer.
He's got like 200 million subscribers.
Anyway, so back then I was tasked with starting
customer experience from the ground up.
Literally, it was just me, had it hired one soul,
had it hired BPO, didn't even have a tool yet,
didn't have anything.
I literally had to start it from ground zero.
And all I knew about our customer base was that
we're gonna get a lot of tickets
and this is gonna be a large community to manage.
- Why, so a lot, I wanna just pin you on that.
Why did you know that it was just gonna be a lot of tickets?
Like what was the reason behind that?
- Because, so in my research stages,
if I went to like a MrBeast channel, like on YouTube
or Instagram or Twitter, I could see the amount
of followers and I don't remember the amount of followers
then 'cause it definitely was under 200 million then,
but it was just a ton of engagement.
I knew there was gonna be a ton of engagement.
I knew that like the fans loved MrBeast
and like we were launching this product,
the snack product onto the market.
And so this was not only going to be a channel
for purchasing, but this was going to be a channel
for engagement too, just based on my research.
- And tell me a little bit about,
kinda just take a step back, like you came to this job
knowing that like there was nothing there
and then there was gonna be a whole bunch of tickets,
whole bunch of engagement on top of that.
What inspired you to be like, ooh, like I want to take this
to this vision that you have.
- Yeah, so I mean, honestly, I think it was more
of a personal side than just on like the Feastable side.
Like I didn't really know what I didn't know then.
So previously before Feastables, my background
is mostly in B2B, SaaS types of companies.
Like Feastables was actually my fifth startup.
So I was where I've worked in like the customer success,
product support, you know, aspect even product management.
And I came to Feastables because I had always wanted
to work in ECOM and D2C and I never had an opportunity
to do those things.
So, and like Feastables was kind of like one of these things
that came up for me that I was like, oh,
like this sounds really interesting, but truthfully,
I actually joined Feastables because I thought it was really
interesting to be in the creator space,
but I also joined Feastables because the CEO and the COO
were both, I wouldn't say founding employees of RX-BAR
'cause I can't really remember that like their journey,
but they were like beginning stages of RX-BAR before it was,
before it was acquired by Kellogg.
So like I knew that like, I knew that this product
was going to be massive based off of the expertise
that was coming in.
And I also knew that like from an engagement
and like just supports perspective that it was gonna
be really interesting.
So it was more of like a personal thing
than it was just like about the product itself.
- Yeah.
- And people thought it was crazy.
Like people thought like I was crazy to leave
like sustainable products, meaning like SaaS
and like that world to go to something that was like brand
now, but I was just like, oh, so there's that.
- Well, I think that honestly like from my perspective
looking at it, the brand kind of matched like your style,
right?
I mean, you just talked about being a creator,
this brand was a creator,
I would define you as a creator as well too.
Like there's a big branding component of this,
which you yourself, big branding component of it.
So I think there's a lot of,
it totally makes sense to me.
So when you first started,
and this is where, you know, if you can give some advice
to listeners here, like how did you prioritize?
Well, what comes first?
Like did you think about tools?
Did you think about the customers coming in?
Did you think about the, just like the brand itself?
Like, where did you start that you can give advice
to those listening?
- So my two priorities was this,
and this is definitely from my like product support
background, right?
I have a philosophy for anything,
whether you're SaaS, whether you're, you know,
a travel company, whether you're an e-com brand
that you should be answering questions
before they become questions to a customer.
And so my first priority was like,
how am I gonna be able to like proactively support
a network of customers as quickly and sustainably as possible?
So that included like being able to like understand
like what FAQs I needed on this page,
understand like abilities for like this audience
to communicate and, you know, also having enough staff
to, for the humanized experience too.
And then second, the second priority,
and I would actually say it's like hand in hand,
but second priority was brand voice
because especially for like festivals coming
being like a Mr. Beast product,
like I wanna make sure that like whatever content
that we're putting out there, whether it's a question
being answered or the people that are like answering it
to be behind it, there's like particular brand voice
that is being displayed.
So like that's like the brand marketer that comes,
but those are my two priorities.
And I think that those are really important
for like any type of product or service that you're selling
because one, you wanna make sure
that you're proactively assisting your customers
with two, whatever like company you're putting out there
has a personality, right?
And you wanna be able to exemplify that personality
to your customers to then create like loyalty,
create community, I can trail off on this,
but that's why those two things are my top priorities.
- Okay, so we kind of one-step further
into the proactive support.
You talk about FAQs, that makes a lot of sense.
Like, okay, answer the questions beforehand
on the website, anything else that stood out
or anything that you did outside of that?
Either on the website, off the website,
what else do you do when you think about the proactive?
- Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing that I've done
since day one is I had a chatbot that was like on our website
that I, at first it was only on our website,
but then as time went on, I also put it on our website
and in our SMS channel.
The reason that was really important is because again,
this is diving into like being proactive with a customer,
but by, I didn't know how many tickets we were gonna have,
I just knew we were gonna have a lot,
so I needed to give an ability for like something
on our website for this audience to engage in,
to ask questions, to like have like fun in.
And a chatbot for me was like the first,
the first tool that I installed into like the CX department.
And it ended up being like a hit,
we can dive further into that, but like, I mean,
when I say thousands of conversations on day one,
I'm, that's not even like, that's not even a true estimate.
Like I'm talking like within the first month
that this, that the website launched and this bot was live,
it had like almost a hundred thousand conversations
just in like the first three to four weeks.
- Okay, I wanna go, one question before we go
into the chatbot because I think the listeners
would really enjoy this.
The question I have is about brand.
How did you like take the, like the brand itself
and infuse that into the proactive support you were talking
about like was it conversations with like,
or was it just you looking at the website saying,
okay, this is how we talk about this, this, this,
like I will use it to do any practice,
like whether any practices, exercises,
like interviews. - Yeah, I mean,
no interviews, more of like research.
So definitely like if I'm selling a product,
like I wanna make sure that like I'm giving product information
as much as possible.
So like here's where these ingredients,
these are why I chose these ingredients.
Oh, you have an allergy, like this is, you know,
you should be aware of these things, right?
Like so I built all of those things in FAQs
and then like pathways in the bot.
- Okay. - But I also knew from like researching
just like the audience that Mr. Beast had
that they liked to joke, they liked to like have back and forth
like banter, right? - Mm-hmm.
- So I also included like fun pathways in like chatbots,
also like fun like FAQs about like why we started the brand,
what the brand is about, you know,
things that just kind of like grew the personality.
And then I also invested, but this is because I'm,
I'm at the heart of everything.
I went to art school.
So like I am like, I think very creatively.
I also invested in hiring a temporary copywriter
to help us develop out that voice too.
- Okay. - And she helped develop out
the voice in not just on like stuff like on the website,
but also in this chatbot that we're talking about macros,
like all of these things to make sure that like,
you know, she set out like the first initial piece of it.
And then we've like built on it from there.
And then I also invested in design too.
I think like when I think of customer experience,
like I don't think about it like just like, okay,
all right, I'm answering the questions,
but how do you like psychologically like make a customer,
look at information and absorb the information correctly?
And that's like, that's kind of like the art of copy writing
to be honest with you. - Yeah, yeah.
- That's great. - Yeah.
- Okay. No, that's really interesting.
'Cause I honestly thought I was like, okay,
I'm just gonna interview like people
that already worked at Feastables.
But you're kind of almost saying,
it's also the other way, which is like mirroring
the customers of like what the customers expect,
what how do they talk, it's part of the two.
- I mean, when we launched like we didn't have a customer.
We only have customers we had were like the four of us.
And then like by the time we launched,
I think we're like eight people.
So it's like, we only knew what we knew
within this like, insular environment.
You know what I mean?
Like as a customer experience individual,
like I have to go out and like look at a customer
experience for like the Mr. Beast Brand is whole.
- Right, right.
That's so interesting.
Okay, so let's dive into the chatbot
because I think that's like such an interesting experience.
Like a lot of work that you've done on this site.
So walk me through this.
So you say like, okay, we gotta get the chatbot on the site
because there's just so many conversations that are coming.
How much research did you do like workflows,
like building the actual bot?
Like how many hours did that take
before you actually put it live?
Or was it reversed where you put it live
and then you learned what to tweak and what to edit?
- Yeah, it's actually a little bit of both
because like I said, like we didn't know
what we didn't know, right?
So it's like, okay, I walked into it with like,
all right, let me answer questions
before they become questions.
So it's like your basic product information.
And sorry, just to back up,
I had a full 30 days before we launched.
- Okay.
- And the team that the internal team
as well as like the tool that I used,
like that team like really helped us like,
get everything situated.
So we did, so of course, like the FAQs that we had built,
like the product information, like taking all of those things.
I also installed from like a product information perspective,
I installed the chatbot on our product display pages,
like the PDFs, because like if you're a customer
and you're coming to the page and you're sitting at that page
for like maybe one to two minutes,
like maybe you need a little bit of a nudge
to like make your purchase,
maybe you need a little bit of conversation
to like convince you to make a purchase, right?
So that was like always a strategy in the beginning
of like, okay, answering the questions
before they became questions.
And then as for like workflows,
then I built out like this randomness pathway,
which was like, 'cause the whole brand ethos
in the beginning was about like randomness and fun
and like really just kind of like living out
that like Mr. Beast audience, right?
And so I knew that like I had to like install
like that randomness and fun into this like boring,
usual boring chatbot, right?
So we built out like a whole randomness pathway,
there was like jokes, there was like games,
there was like a rock paper scissors game,
but like text base, there was like some gift exchanges,
memes, like really like fun stuff, right?
And like built out like,
and when we talk about workflows,
like they're literally trees.
So if you select A, you go to maybe C, right?
Or if you select B, maybe you're going to D,
like I like had to build out like these like pathways,
which sounds like when I'm talking about it,
probably sound to the audience might sound
a little bit daunting, but it's actually not.
It's just you have to like think about like strategy
from a strategic map, right?
And then the other thing that we also added,
which brought in a lot of revenue,
so I talked about like putting this bot onto the PDP pages
to like convince somebody to purchase, right?
So in the first launch,
the couple of months that we had launched with this,
that chatbot actually,
I can't say the exact amount,
but just put it this way, like gave us like
at least six figures in revenue,
which is significant, right?
For like something that's just like kind of an always on assistance,
right?
And then, so then to backtrack to like what you originally asked me,
so that was like the initial onset,
so like strategy of like utilizing this bot,
but then every single day or every single week,
like whatever we had time for,
we were looking into reporting,
we were looking into like failed paths
or questions that weren't being answered
and building new pathways on it.
So like what, no matter what tool you're utilizing,
you always have to feedback loop information
to continue like building upon your tool set.
And that applies for like chatbots,
that applies for like a phone service,
take it into your tool, whatever it is,
you're constantly having to look like at the feedback
that you're getting so you can constantly improve.
There's like, there's no way around it.
Like you can't just be like set it and forget it
and call it a day.
- Yeah, so when I'm listening to you,
it's like if there's a fine line, I think between,
like this, let's just talk about the bot,
the bot being almost an entertainment center,
where it entertains the visitor on the webpage,
as well as answering questions
and just getting to the response as fast as possible
for the consumer.
So my question to you is like,
for those that are listening right now,
how can one figure out if they should also start
building a chat bot that is either more entertainment
or more a just more about answering someone's question?
Or is it always about both right now?
- I think that I went into it thinking it was about
answering somebody's question and came out of it,
realizing it was entertainment
and doubling down on the entertainment.
And I think that that's where like I've developed
my philosophy about like AI and chat bots is like,
it doesn't always have to be about like this informative thing.
Like yes, make it informative, make it fun,
but also give it a little bit of like a personality
and like make it kind of an extension of your team.
- Yeah.
- Like there's always gonna be somebody
on the other end of it that's like
for the humanized experience, right?
But like if this audience is come in this audience
in particular for a few years comes to the table
and they're looking for engagement and like just entertainment,
I wanna entertain those people like through this like AI,
through this bot because I wanna make sure
that like the humanized experience like means
that the agents are a little bit protected to be able
to actually do the work that they need to do,
which is about like supporting retention, loyalty building,
right? - Right.
- And being able to have those conversations.
So I think it's, so again, I think it's a two-parter.
I think it's like informative and I think it's also entertainment.
And I think that like, and if I look at the like landscape
of like not just e-comm, I would even say like SaaS,
I would say like any sort of support, right?
Why do you have to be boring?
Why can't you make it fun?
Make it fun because if you're building fun
out of these like tools that you're like this always on assistance,
people are gonna be more likely to utilize them.
Like the take rate of like help centers and chatbots
and all of these things, all are all like all are dependent
on like consumer behavior, I wouldn't say consumer behavior,
sorry, I would actually say like psychological behavior
of like a person, right?
Like some people don't necessarily like to utilize help center.
Some people don't necessarily like to use chatbots,
but if you're developing out some sort of personality
with these tools, people are gonna be more likely
to have a take rate on them.
- I gotcha.
So you just talked about AI.
Can you talk to us a little bit about like how you infused AI
into your chatbots?
Was that kind of a necessary process
or was it something that just organically kind of like
happened in your case?
- It was actually more organic.
So in the beginning, we didn't like, so back then
we didn't actually have like chat TBT,
like there wasn't this whole like,
I wouldn't say resurgence, but there wasn't this whole thing
about chat GBT then.
It only happened like in 2022 for us, right?
So, you know, we went through, we were like building
these pathways for very like intent based perspectives, right?
Like you do X, you'll get to Y, right?
And then as chat GBT started to develop,
then we started utilizing AI into it.
But really where we're utilizing AI was,
as we expanded the company into like going international
and going to these other markets,
like you want to give some sort of localized experience.
But in order to like keep up with that demand
and keep up with the same philosophy of like,
you know, being informative and giving entertainment
for this always on experience,
I would have to hire like multiple agents
in multiple places, right?
So AI actually organically became used within this chatbot
for language and localized experiences.
And like kind of, you know, if you're saying hello,
it's Ola, right?
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, and utilizing it in like those perspectives.
And then where we've also, this isn't in chatbot,
but where we've also used AI is in agent responses.
So not all the time, but like to really like assist the agent
to be like, I don't want--
- Internally. - Internally, right?
I don't want to say like to be quicker necessarily,
but to be like, when you're constantly sitting there
and you're like spitting out tickets, right?
It's like hard to kind of like be entertaining.
It's hard to kind of like, you know, be fun all the time.
So like, we've utilized AI to like kind of change up
the pace of like a normal macro
and making the message a little bit like different
and a little bit more personalized.
- Yeah.
Well, I assume what's, what was really important
when you talked about like the localization
and the really expanding was that you knew your brand,
like you had a strategy already for CX,
like the chatbot was like kind of complete
for let's just say the English language.
And then since that was all well known,
it seemed to me that it was a lot easier than to expand out
with the AI capabilities.
Because if it wasn't, and then you're kind of like building
or expanding on really like a foundational layer,
is that accurate?
- I mean, yeah, basically it's like,
it gave us the ability to like scale the tools
rather than having to like go out,
like build another strategic map and like do this,
do that, like make sure like the language is all correct.
Like it just gave us that ability to like scale quicker
into international markets.
- Did you already have like where sales coming in
internationally and then you were like,
oh, we have to provide the CX theories on top of it?
Or was it the opposite where you weren't?
Sorry, go ahead.
- Yeah, no, it's proactive.
Like, you know, as I started the whole conversation
with like answer a customer's question
before it becomes a question, right?
So like we knew that we were like going international, right?
Like we knew that there might be any for French,
there might be any for, you know,
we're available in Iceland.
So like, I think that's Norwegian,
this is gonna be terrible, but you know what I mean?
Icelandic, Jesus Christ.
But you know what I mean?
Like, and that's like, that's just,
there's different language barriers.
And so like I come from the philosophy of thinking,
like answer questions before they become questions,
which also means we develop a localized experience
before like you get there.
Like from the onsite, on set,
you should be giving out like an experience
that like as you can control.
- Yeah.
And can you talk a little bit about like the result
of that so far?
Like had international sales,
the CX experience outside of America been like,
has there been work still to do on that front?
Or has AI really contributed?
- AI for sure has contributed
into like developing that localized experience.
Like that's, there's no question of that.
I think, and what's interesting too is like,
I wouldn't say we see the same amount of engagement
that we did when we like launched in the US,
but I would say that there's engagement,
there's still high engagement rates.
I think it just like allowed us to scale a little faster.
I wouldn't say, I wouldn't contribute anything
to like revenue or any of those perspectives.
- No, but I would say, at least like again,
to share this with the audience,
like I find that fascinating.
And we've had a lot of discussion so far in this summit.
And as far as I know,
no one has really talked about the AI use
like to expand into other markets.
And I honestly think that's like,
that's a great way to utilize AI right now.
Because especially though, if you have a CX strategy
already in place, your brand already in place,
and then it's just expanding as opposed to creating brand new.
- Yeah.
I think there's a lot of like use cases for AI.
I think also like the one thing to keep in mind
is that AI is not gonna come and take a job.
Like what it is going to help like scale faster
and make things like easier.
- Yeah, that's great.
Well, you know what, let's end it there.
I think that's the perfect quote.
I'm gonna pull that out and place it everywhere.
But Jess, thank you so much for your time today.
Really appreciate it.
Good luck into your future wherever that may be.
And we'll talk later.
- Thanks Brian.
- Bye.
- Bye.
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