An Insider's Look into Glossier's CX
This episode of The Juice with Jess is JUICY! We're joined by Cati Brunell-Brutman, CX Manager at Glossier, to discuss inspiring teams, being a leader, showing up as your authentic self, and getting comfortable with data! Cati also pulls back the curtain on how Glossier runs CX! We discuss the complexity of their omnichannel network and how the CX team stays in the loop, working with Sephora, and a lot more!
(upbeat music)
- My name is Jess Servion,
and I'm super excited to bring you my new podcast,
The Juice With Jess.
This podcast is gonna be about everything
in your customer's journey.
We're talking acquisition, awareness,
making that purchase, retaining that customer,
bringing them back around, and everything in between.
This is gonna be all about delivering dope brand experiences
and talking to some really amazing people
who are in the customer experience space,
the marketing space, and everything in between.
(upbeat music)
My friends, welcome back to another episode
of The Juice With Jess Servion.
I am super excited about this week's guest.
It's one of my dearest friends in the CX space,
Katie, last name used to make her show.
But now it is no longer she will say her married last name,
but she is one of the CX leaders from Glossier.
Katie, introduce yourself, tell the crowd your new last name.
- Hello, the crowd.
I'm Katie Brunel-Brahman.
She's a hyphen now.
Like, did I take my husband's last name
because it has a hyphen, and that sounds fancier.
- Absolutely.
And I am a CX leader at Glossier.
Previously have worked at Daily Harvest,
at Birchbox, at Headway,
and have really been in the CX space
for about the last six or seven years
in the startup world, kind of growing teams
and starting with companies that are a little bit smaller
and helping them grow and scale and do good work.
- Yes, yes.
I am super excited to bring Katie on.
Katie and I actually go way back.
So before I was ever in the D2C space and festivals
and any of the e-comm brands that I worked for in the past,
or you don't fractionally work for,
Katie and I met when I was a CX leader
and a cybersecurity company.
I forget how we met.
- I also was trying to think about this the other day
and I was like, how did Jess and I meet?
I just feel like we've always been in each other's
like LinkedIn messages being like,
should we have it a call?
- Yeah, and sometimes she goes to me,
but I get it because wedding planning
like takes your life away.
But Katie and I have known each other for a really long time
and she's just like a really awesome person.
Honestly, you mentored me.
Because like you really, you were one of the people
that like helped me move from like B2B to B2C.
And I'm just super stoked for you to be on.
So this week we're gonna talk about her time at Glossier,
mentoring and anything in between.
So I'm gonna kick it off.
So you've worked in the CX space pretty much like
since the start of your fucking career at this point, right?
Yeah.
But what drew you to CX?
- Ooh, okay.
So I had a slightly circuitous route to CX
because I was a theater major
and got an undergrad degree in a master's in theater
and was working as a professional like stage manager,
events manager in New York,
living my absolute theater dreams,
hit my like mid 20s and realized
that I really wanted health insurance
and like a steady paycheck.
And kind of pivoted into CX agent work
because it was really flexible.
I could do it from home.
And it's kind of the same job.
Like, you know, when you're stage managing,
when you're doing event management,
you're communicating with people cross functionally,
you are solving problems,
you're kind of thinking on your feet,
you're handling crisis, crisis sees.
And so going from stage management into CX management
was such a natural thing for me
because it was all the same skills
but it had a little bit more security.
And I also really love the startup space
because it's always changing, it's always growing.
You never know what's gonna happen.
You know, I could come into work one day
and be like, I don't have that many meetings today.
And then, you know, like a discount code leak online
or like a policy will change
or somebody else come out of an article about you
and you're like, oh, okay, cool.
Now we have to handle this thing.
What are we gonna do?
How am I gonna communicate?
What is the best way to communicate this to my team
to come up with a process?
So that is really energizing for me.
- Yeah, I love that.
I think you hit on a good point about startup space.
We're gonna get there.
We'll definitely get there.
Well, actually we'll just get there now.
Like what's really interesting is that
I also started my career in CX
and but less startup.
It was actually corporate America, right?
- Yeah.
- It was corporate in America.
I was doing a lot of the Cal management
and it was really dope.
And then moved into the startups space, right?
And I really love, I personally really love startups
because you get to wear so many hats
and you get to do these things.
- Yeah.
- And like learn all the things.
And that's the beauty of CX, right?
- Yes.
- But you kind of burn out sometimes.
- You definitely burn out sometimes.
- And so actually curious, what do you do to avoid burnout?
- So one of my favorite things to talk about
is actually like mental health in the startup and CX space.
'Cause I think people don't really think about it
as emotional labor, but that's what it is.
You have to meet customers where they're at,
meet collaborators where they're at.
And sometimes where they're at is they are just screaming at you
because they need somebody to scream at.
And it doesn't feel great.
And I think as well in the startup space,
like you said, you're wearing so many hats,
you're trying to solve so many problems,
that there is really a mentality of like,
you're gonna set yourself on fire to keep everybody warm.
- Yeah.
- And the first thing that you have to do
is realize that about yourself.
And then, and I'm still working on this,
talk about it in therapy all the time.
It's like setting boundaries.
And therapy's so good everybody should do it.
That's my, that's my hot tip
for being a person in the world.
- I know.
- But really figuring out how much are you willing
to put of yourself out there?
What do you consider an emergency?
And like, that's some like conversations that I have
with collaborators and managers of like,
let's define what an emergency is.
Because like, if there's an emergency,
if the website crashes and it's a Saturday,
like call me, I'll hop online.
But if it's not an emergency, like,
it's totally fine to be like, yup,
seeing this, I will handle it on Monday.
This does not need my time right now.
It is not an emergency.
And I think as well being a people manager,
you're really setting the example for your team
from the top down.
So like, if I don't take all my PTO,
no matter how many times I tell my team, take your PTO.
They're subconsciously gonna see me not doing it
and be like, oh, should I not take my PTO?
In order to advance in my career,
should I do what my boss is doing?
And I'll take my PTO.
- No, don't do it.
- Don't do it. - Don't do it.
- Don't do it. - Don't do it.
- It's like, please, do not be this us millennials.
Girl, I think you like actually hit the nail on the head
'cause it leads to like one of,
one of the things I was gonna ask you is like,
as CX leaders, it's like, we're always like,
okay, like go do this, like don't be us.
Like I know me as a leader,
like when I'm leading like some of my fractional teams,
they come to me for advice and I'm like, no,
like have your boundaries, do these things.
But then here I am in Italy, like on my vacation,
like still online, I'm available for you all the time, right?
- Absolutely.
- And like, so I mean, you hit the nail on the head though,
it's like you're kind of saying like, okay, do you,
don't be like me, like all this stuff, right?
But like, let's dive into that a little bit further.
Like as a CX leader, like, you know, besides burnout,
how do you, how do you distinguish between do this,
like not do this, like I'm not demanding anything from you,
but like, how do you inspire people to do things differently
than maybe you were brought up in the industry?
- Ooh, that is such a great question.
And I think the first part of it is just being okay
with like being vulnerable and kind of calling yourself out.
I like to call it when I'm coaching teams,
show your failure and I am the first one.
Like if I mess up, I will be like, hey team,
this was on me.
I screwed this one up and this is what we've learned
and this is how we're gonna go forward
and really setting that up and demonstrating
that it is okay to drop a ball, to have a slip up
as long as you own it and learn from it
and kind of creating that vulnerability,
I think in just the day to day job creates a more safe space
for people to be able to say,
hey, I need to step away, I'm having a rough time
or this is what I need to do, you know, in my day to day,
this is the support I need to really feel like
they can bring themselves to work in a genuine way.
- Yeah, absolutely, I think inspiring your team
and your peers is just like really important
but I think also showing up authentically
is the most important, right?
Like I don't know about you Katie,
but like I've had this in my career
what I had like other CX leaders who have like,
I will not even CX leaders, just like my leaders, right?
As I was like a manager or an associate or whatnot
and I was like coming up in the space and like,
they, there was always this very like,
this is business and no personal
and there was no authenticity to it.
And you, you know, you can like smell bullshit
from a mile away.
- Absolutely. - You know what I mean?
You can smell bullshit and so like,
and I just remember like coming up in the industry for me,
like I just was always like,
I don't wanna be like you or,
and I don't wanna treat my peers or my team like that either.
Like I wanna show up really authentic
and show that you, that I'm a human
and like you can be human too.
And listen, here's the thing,
business is business and personal is personal
and that is always my boundary and I always say that.
But you can still be a human to your teammates
and to the people that you work with
and still show up caringly.
- Yep.
Yeah, there's a way to show up and have your boundaries
but also be yourself and not compromise your values,
compromise the way that you're showing up and bringing yourself
to work.
I had a manager very early in my career,
pull me aside once and say,
hey, the leadership team probably won't take you seriously
because you're really perky and you talk fast
and that makes you seem dumb.
- And looking back, I'm like,
oh, somebody did not have my back.
And I sat down with that and I was like,
I get what you're saying this,
but I'm not gonna listen to this feedback
because I don't wanna change the way I speak
and the enthusiasm that I bring
to fit into a mold that is business or more professional.
Like, I think that I can come in and be like really perky
and excited and also be like,
hey, I know what I'm doing.
Here is the data, here's my experience.
Trust me for the job that you hired me to do.
- Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Okay, so one more thing, like, God, this is like,
oh, although like CX journey people,
like whether you're an associate,
whether you're a manager, a leader, an executive,
like there's so much great value out of like this conversation
that you can have because this is really this conversation
isn't just about CX, this is about leading
and this leading your peers.
So one of the things that I wanna like dive into
and what you said there though,
is the fact that like somebody didn't have your back
and when you have a leader who doesn't have your back,
oh, that is so tough, right?
And again, like I get it personal,
it's personal business is a business,
but there is a tactful way for you to help your,
you know, your associate, your peer or whatever,
like level up, right?
Like I have actually a really similar story to that.
I remember right after college,
I didn't really like know what I wanted to do.
Like I was floating, I went to art school
and I was like, I don't want anything to do with that
when I was done, I am--
- Relatable, yeah.
And then became a personal assistant.
And honestly you guys like, I was fucking terrible.
(laughing)
Like I was terrible at being a personal assistant,
I was terrible at being an office manager.
I'm not gonna lie about it, okay?
Like I'm really good at like support, community building,
digital experience, but my forte is not assistance.
And I'm not, okay?
Anyway, point is, okay, so that is like very valuable
in those details of the story
because I remember having this boss
and living in kind of like fear if I like a messed up, right?
And then this one day he like tells me,
and I'm very junior, I mean like,
we'll rush out of college, so I'm very junior.
And he's like, oh, you know, you're really rough
around the edges and you're so rough around the edges
that like we really have to soften those
or you're never gonna make it anywhere.
So right now in this moment,
I just wanna be like, that's funny.
- That's funny 'cause my journey
was just a little bit different, my guy.
- You've made it nowhere.
- Listen, I'm not saying I'm like, I'm not saying,
oh my God, I'm so amazing.
I'm not, that's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is like, it's really interesting
that like this person that was leading me
and supposed to be helping me like upskill myself, right?
Like said this very like non-tact full-waving to me
that like honestly has a core memory
that now I use as like my fuel.
- Yes.
- To the fire.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
And I think it's like, I personally like one of the things
that I think drew me to like being friends
with you in the beginning and I was like,
Jess is so cool and she brings like her authentic self
to interactions and I don't feel like, you know,
like you're coming in and you're like,
I'm gonna put myself in the business mold.
And that authenticity like fully I like met you
and I was like, oh, we're friends now.
It's happening because you're bringing a bow in yourself.
- My friends, let's switch gears a little bit
because you know, at the end of the day,
Katie, you do work for a really dope company
and I really wanna talk about it.
- Yeah.
- So let's get into the juice.
Let's get into the juice.
So listen, Glossier is a big real company, right?
It's no longer like startup-y.
And as a CX leader, you know,
what's the process like when you're integrating new tools
into your CX department?
- Ooh, that is, that's a, that's a, that's a,
that's a big question.
And I think it's kind of something I'm always thinking about
is, you know, like are there ways to do this better?
I think in the world right now,
like we are all trying to be the most efficient
and the best at what we do.
And a lot of that is figuring out like,
where do I put my people in and how do I give them
the most time to do their best work?
And one of the things that I can automate,
one of the things that like,
there is a tool that has solved that,
because ultimately like, I really hate the idea that like,
oh, AI and tools are gonna place people
because that's not it.
And I would never wanna do that.
And I don't think anybody does.
Like nobody wants to be like,
only chatbots forever.
- Listen. - The worst.
- Truly no, no, not at all.
- Listen, listen.
I will reference this episode,
if you're listening to this one after,
listen to the Eli from Yapho episode,
'cause we talk a lot about AI
and like I'm about to get into it.
- I'm with Katie here.
- But, yeah.
- And I think AI absolutely has its time and place
and I think there are great uses for it.
But I think you're not using it to replace people.
You're using it to take things off your people's plate
so that they can actually do what their bread and butter
is, what their super power is.
If you have somebody in your team
who's really great at community building,
but they're stuck in a queue like dealing with returns,
you're losing it and your company is losing out
on like having an amazing community builder
to what they are passionate about,
what they're amazing at.
- No, absolutely, absolutely.
I mean, I think that's the biggest thing
and that's the biggest hot take.
Like last year, this year,
AI is not coming for your job.
Whether that's CX, that's marketing, copy,
like all these other like things, right?
AI is not coming from your job.
What AI is gonna do is help you level up yourself.
So in this case about CX and automating things,
I am a strong believer of like chatbots
and automating like very like tier one low level tasks.
So you can then allow the opportunity
for your support agents or even your community managers
or your digital marketers, whoever it is
that is under your CX team
to actually be able to like humanize an experience,
have them for the time to like think through problem solving
and be able to like put themselves in situations
that maybe will like upskill them
and also put them in situations
that will make a really dope experience
for the external customer too.
It really AI is just helping the internal customer
just be better, like straight up, you know?
- Yeah, it's just, it's finding your efficiencies
and it's using those tools and figuring out
how they can actually supplement your work
versus take it away and do it for you.
- Yeah, absolutely.
So given the number of customers
you're dealing with every day,
what data are you constantly analyzing
and where does that come from?
- Ooh, okay.
Honestly, it's not like numbers, you data,
but I go with my team's guts a lot.
- Oh yeah.
- Like I will sometimes have somebody come to me
and say I am seeing these numbers.
What is happening with the numbers?
And the first thing I will do is go to my team
who was in the queue and be like,
hey, what are you seeing?
What's your take?
Is this going up?
Is this going down?
Like what do you think is happening?
And if I can take those two things
and put them together, these are the numbers
and then this is the anecdotal,
that is the strongest case that I can make
to then say here's the recommendation,
here's a change we need to make,
here's where we need to resource.
And I think that's something I had to learn early
in my career, I was like, I don't like data,
I go with feelings, I'm in customer service,
I'm gonna use feelings.
And you can't be all data, but you can't be all feelings.
If you can take a quote from a customer
that's really evocative and then put it with numbers,
that is the strongest way to really advocate
for your people and say like, here's the data,
here's what the people are saying, let's do this thing.
- No, absolutely.
So I think what's really interesting,
and again, this kind of goes back to AI too,
but I think what's really interesting is that
as CX professionals or people who are like junior level,
move working their way under manager, whatever,
it's so interesting that like a lot of us
are just not data driven,
like we really come from like an empathetic place
and they're like trusting our gut,
but then at some point in your career,
you have to shift and you have to start utilizing data.
Like a CX manager who I love dearly
and like I'm super so for like him to like be leveled up
and all these things because one of the biggest things
that I taught him when I first started working with him was,
he was like, you know, trusting his gut a lot
or would be like, oh, you know, like I think this is right.
I think this is like right,
but I'm always like, where's the data?
Where's the data?
Where's the data?
And so one of the things that I build for like every CX team
is like a very scrappy dashboard utilizing like Google Sheets
or Excel, right?
Like there's like some queries in it and, you know,
formulas and stuff.
And I take a lot of the data and then like create like grass
and all these other things, right?
Yeah.
It seems very more complex, but it truly is not.
But in the reason it's important,
I'm gonna land this plan, I promise you.
Is that with the CX manager and like showing him that like,
hey, like yeah, you're downloading like the amount of tickets
you're getting or the tags or this or that
and all these other things.
And then you're putting it into this dash
and then viewing it from like a data driven point of view
rather than like, oh, I think we're having this type of ticket
or I think we're doing these things literally shifted
the way he was thinking.
So like, and now I'm super so proud of him
because he, it's so interesting to watch us.
He's shifted into data driven.
Like now when there's a problem, he's like,
well, let me see how many of the tickets that I have.
Okay, maybe that's not as big of a problem
as I thought it was, you know?
It's beautiful, I'm obsessed with it.
And I love the idea, I love the word that he was using the word
I think and he has stopped using that
because I think the data can actually make you more confident
because you can say this is my gut instinct.
Does the data back it up?
Oh, it does.
Oh, I know what I'm doing.
I'm great.
And I think especially early in your career,
like that's so much as being confident
in that you know what you're talking about.
And by using that data and backing yourself up,
it's a great way to build that confidence.
- Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Because like, so the other side of it too,
and I think this is really important,
like no matter what level you're in
and you're looking at like your CX team or community team
is that you have to have data to support everything, right?
And not only do you have to like have data
within the platforms itself,
you also need to be able to like take that information
and create an executive review, right?
That's how you like, I wouldn't say that's the only way
you get the seat of the table.
But if you come to the table with data
and like proof in the pudding in a way,
you're more likely to get the buy-in
about needing the help or needing the tool or whatever it is.
Like you can't just come to the table with like,
I think you have to come to the table
with some sort of feedback loop,
some sort of data about the problem
that you're trying to solve.
- And then on the inverse,
you can't just like put graphs down and be like,
here is data, interpret it.
I was talking to a friend who's a CX leader recently
who is working in a department now
with somebody who's never worked in CX.
And this person said,
"Hey, can you just like tell me what a CX leader does?"
And one of the things that she was talking about
was like KPIs and data.
And I was talking to her and I said,
"Don't forget to say that one of the things that you do
"is interpret that data and figure out the storytelling of it
"and then make recommendations."
Because that's why you're there
is you're the one who can take that data
and then make it in to the recommendations
and to the next steps as a CX leader.
Like that's why you're in your job.
- How do you at Glossier use data
to personalize your CX retention strategy?
- Something that I love about Glossier
is that, and I've never had this before,
is that people really like the CX cheapest people.
Like the CX team has fans and I love that so much.
- I love that.
- And we have seen in the past that people
will DM us and ask for specific people
or like on chat we'll ask to talk to specific people.
And as we started seeing that coming in,
we were like, "Oh, this is like part of it.
"This is like having people sign their names
"in a DM versus like the company personalizes it."
Having people put like photos in,
they're like help desk pictures, like, "Oh, it's a person."
And as we started seeing that role in
and started kind of making this changes
to really personalize it,
if the agents are comfortable, again,
we want psychological safety,
but we actually, we saw people start to
like have longer conversations.
And like really specifically,
we have a really like a vibrant online community
and like Twitter and Reddit and things like that.
And people will call out specific agents
that they spoke to and be like, "IDM glossy, H9,
"and so and so give me an amazing recommendation."
And like we'll screenshot it.
And I like to send people tweets,
but I'll be like, "Hey, you made Twitter a great job.
"You did it." - I love that.
- And just like seeing how that really creates
that relationship, which I think continues
to make customers come back because it's not just,
it's a brand, but it's not just a brand.
It's people and it's people who are meeting you
where you're at.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's people who are meeting you where you're at.
I think it's like,
this is exactly what we're talking about, right?
Like you can utilize AI to AI chatbots
to like automate the low level stuff,
but this is what it means when you get
to the higher level stuff, right?
Like you're personalizing that experience
with the human, right?
Because the agent has more time to call the person Katie,
jazz, whatever, and make the time
to actually make a recommendation to them, right?
So then the experience just becomes that much doper, right?
I will say the only thing that freaks me out is like,
I don't like one of my real names of my agents
or their pictures or, okay.
And that's just because like,
and I worked at also a huge brand as well, right?
Like for festivals, like 1000%.
I was like, we ain't gonna be real here, okay?
You're a real human behind this,
but your name is no longer Alex.
It's Jerry.
We have that as one of like the safety measures,
'cause that's something I think about all that is like,
safety for my team, is that if you would like to use
a work alias, you use that work alias,
and we encourage people to put pronouns in there
in their signature.
If that's not something you're comfortable with, that's cool.
'Cause I want them to be people,
but I also don't want anybody to be like, I am unsafe.
Okay, yeah, so I think with personalization,
it's really hard, like, I would say it's really hard,
just like balance it.
That's all I'm saying.
Just balance it, maybe Alex wants to be Jerry,
maybe Alex doesn't want his photo online,
and that's okay, like don't force it, right?
I think you can't force your agents
to put out their real persona.
I think that's really important.
So that's all I'm saying with that.
- I'm gonna plus one that 100 times.
- Plus one.
(laughs)
Okay, so I kind of wanna get into the juice of Omni Channel
because Glossier has like--
- We love Omni Channel.
- Omni Channel, so much.
Okay, so listen, I think you guys have a really deep
and complex brand experience, which is really dope,
really awesome, really love it,
but you have your own brick and mortar,
you're also available in Sephora,
you're also available on your own site,
are you on Amazon?
- We are not on Amazon.
- Okay, good, I love that.
- Don't buy Glossier at Amazon, it's recently.
- Yeah, don't do that.
- Okay, so how do you create an Omni Channel
customer experience?
- I have to give the biggest shout out
to our trading team who varies one person
on our trading team who is in charge
of creating the training for wholesale,
for e-com and for retail.
- Wow.
- And because there is one person owning that,
who also truly is doing 500 jobs and I bow down to her,
but it's a consistent experience,
the way we speak to products,
the way we speak to the customer experience,
and really finding those touch points of like,
we are all gonna talk about this this way.
Something else that I really value
is we have a lot of cross-functional communication
between channels, so I have a regular meeting
with some of our wholesale team to be like,
what's happening in Sephora right now?
Oh, are we seeing that reflected online?
We'll talk to the retail teams and be like,
oh, we released a product today.
People on e-com haven't gotten it yet
'cause they ordered it online,
but people in the store are touching it,
playing with it, trying it on, what are they saying?
Because that will affect,
that's gonna be what my customers are saying on e-com,
so I should prep for that as well.
So that feedback loop between all the channels,
like you really can't silo them,
they have to talk all the time and share information.
Dude, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, like straight up
when we were talking about an on-me channel
customer experience, I see this so often in brands,
and I know this isn't necessarily related to B2B,
but hey, maybe B2B, you'll get some sort of enablement
ideas out of this, right?
Like shout out to Bridge, Bridge is a QR company
that like really helps bridge the gap between retail
to D2C, but my point is though, is that,
you know, I see this a lot with brands,
like Omni Channel brands, it's like, you get so excited
and you go into retail or you like do your brick
and mortar store, and then you completely forget
what happens in e-com, and you can completely forget
that it's not necessarily what happens in e-com,
but like in order to create the loop of like retail,
or your brick and mortar back into e-com,
you need to understand what's happening
on the shelf in retail, and I think it's really, really,
really hard, and especially if even if you don't have like
your own store, maybe it's your in Walmart
and your Target, and you can't control that experience, right?
But you really like, as you go into retail
and you do these things, you really gotta think about,
okay, well how am I gonna bridge the gap
once I get into there?
Even though I'm really excited about how am I gonna
bridge the gap for the customer experience,
because what will happen if you don't,
it then it becomes siloed.
It becomes siloed like you're having this own experience,
even if you're in Walmart, Target, like all these places,
and then you're having a different experience in e-com,
but like ultimately you wanna loop people back
to your e-com website, 'cause that's where you're gonna
grow the brand loyalty, so what's really important,
and I think Glossier has really figured this out,
is that it comes down to the training,
I think it comes down to having a very tight feedback loop
amongst all of these channels, and then like,
that's what's constantly feeding the sheet.
I'm sure you run into things that are like,
that maybe don't make sense, and maybe you just pivot
and change them, but I think you have the ultimate pillar.
- Yeah, yeah, it's ultimately one team, one dream.
We are all doing the same thing, and we are all talking
about these products and educating about them,
so if we're all coming at it from different angles,
it's gonna be confusing for the customer,
it's gonna be confusing for people looking at the brand,
especially people being introduced to the brand
for the first time, 'cause ultimately,
they're gonna think about the brand,
they're not gonna think about Sephora,
oh, I had a bad experience at Sephora,
it's gonna be, I had a bad experience with this brand,
it is the brand's accountability,
so really making sure that that conversation is happening.
Something that I love that we do is when we have a,
like a big training about a new product,
our ECOMCX team will go to the stores
and train on the floor with the store team,
so everybody's talking about the product together
and learning about it together,
so we're all coming at it from the same place.
- Yeah.
- I think that's really amazing, I mean, granted,
like for anybody listening and that's thinking about
like omni-channel experience, right?
I do think, I will say that like Glossier,
like yes, has the ultimate pillar,
I think Glossier should be like the North Star for sure.
You don't think you can always control these things
in like Target and Walmart, but what you can do
is you can work with those companies
as much as you possibly can for like a training aspect,
yeah, or what you could also do is like think about
the packaging that you have on shelf
and possibly put in a QR code, or maybe it's a shelf talker
that has like aisle on it, right?
Like how do you just loop them back to your own experience
and try to control that environment as much as possible?
- Yeah, so Sephora's really interesting as a platform too,
right, and I actually just quickly want to ask you,
how does CX support work for Sephora?
Like what happens?
Like do you have customers that sometimes come to you
and then what do you do with that?
- We do, yeah, we have customers that come to us
and be like, I bought this in Sephora,
and we really see ourselves as kind of the education component
of that, so if they come to us and they say,
"I bought it in Sephora and I'm confused about the packaging
or the formula," or, "Is this the right product?
Did I buy the right product?"
We want to make sure that we can be that touch point
and be like, "Okay, cool, let's give you the background
of this product, of the brand,
let's be that educational source."
Also empower the Sephora beauty advisors to have that as well.
I had a member of my team who was going into our UK Sephora
once a week for one of our quarters
and actually just with the beauty advisor team
and talking to customers in the store and being like,
"Hey, I'm from Glossier, what questions do you have?
How can I help you as a touch point for the brand
in this space that is our wholesale space?"
And then also encourage customers, like,
"If you have questions, you can come to our Instagram,
even if you didn't buy it from our e-cobs,
that are our retail store.
If you have a Glossier product, DM us.
That's what we're here for.
Is to answer your questions,
and I think social media is such a great opportunity
for that education, no matter where people are getting
your product with your DSA,
using your social media as an education platform,
and an open forum of like, "Hey, what questions do you have?"
- Yeah, absolutely.
I think what's in it,
and I actually really wanna get into the Glossier community
'cause I think this is really important to talk about,
but what I see a lot of times,
and this is like both B2B and B2C, like straight up, okay,
I think what's really interesting,
and I posted about this on LinkedIn,
that you, okay, you have your support,
and then you have your community, right?
But a lot of times the community sits on the social team
or a marketing team,
and it's kind of away from support,
and I'm not saying like, "Oh my God,
"like they have to be housed,
"and they have to be absolutely together."
But I think that those teams have to really work closely
because here's the thing,
you might have your product reviews,
or your MPS surveys, or whatever surveys,
and you're outwardly asking your customer for information,
but if like, Karen in Lafayette, Indiana
doesn't like your product, straight up,
or not just product feature as well,
like if you're SaaS, straight up,
Karen ain't coming to you, okay?
She's, you know where she's going?
She's going on the Facebook forum, yep,
she's going on Twitter, and she's gonna tweet about it,
she's gonna write about it, and like do the jams about it,
and then if you have nobody monitoring that channel,
like what are you doing about it?
Like, you have like this problem
that could like snowball, so what I think,
yes, that's a complaint avenue, right?
But I think that there should be a level of community
that understands customer support,
and not just necessarily handing it off
to the customer support team,
I think that community managers should be very well-versed
and trained in customer support as a whole,
and I also think that those team,
like whether it's like the same team, or different team,
or however it is that works in your organization,
those teams should be working hand in hand,
because at the end of the day, in CX,
support, you're literally a level of building community.
- Yeah, so I don't know, that was just like a hot take,
I'm gonna be real with him.
- It was a great hot take,
and I think like when I'm looking at brands,
and I was going to their social page, I'm a millennial,
I'm like, I'm gonna touch this brand's Instagram,
if I see them engaging and answering CX questions
in their comments, I automatically trust the brand more,
'cause I'm like, oh they're responsive,
they're willing to answer questions,
or respond to criticism, it's not just like,
well, the comments are free for all,
and nobody knows how to answer them, oh well.
- Well, I think you were hit a good point,
and I run into this a lot with like,
a lot of support organizations of like,
should I respond to the ad comments?
Yeah, you should be responding to the ad comments,
yeah, I get it, there's a little controversy
about hiding them or not, whatever, at Feastables,
we honestly responded to every single comment we could,
like, I mean, it was a little bit crazy,
and a little bit manual, we'll get into that later.
But, this actually brings up a really good point,
so Glossier Community is so strong, right?
Like, you've even had ad campaigns
about the Glossier community.
And I think that, and again, I think a lot of brands
wanna replicate this, but in, you know,
I've spoken a lot about like, what the things that I think,
but like, how is Glossier, in your words,
created that strong community,
and like, what is CX's involvement in that?
- Ooh, okay, CX is really involved,
I think in the online community creation and moderation,
we are the ones, the digital team,
which we call the J team,
are the ones who are responding to all the comments
on social, who are answering DMs,
it's not separate things, like email support and chat,
and social or not, separate things,
it's all one team that's responding.
We also have such an amazing feedback loop
with our social and communications team,
we have a weekly meeting where we talk about
what's coming up in the social world,
like, what are we posting, what are we asking,
like, is the social team gonna ask a question about,
like, hey, what's your favorite color of lipstick, cool,
we know that, we can look out,
and we can continue to have that conversation
really prompted, and meet those people and say,
oh, okay, cool, now we have the insights, let's keep going.
I also think, like, I love Wall Street community so much,
I was a Glossier fan before I worked there,
and we're the best customers in the world.
I'm gonna say, I'm gonna hot take,
best customers in the world, they will just reach out,
just to talk to us. - Yeah.
- Like, we get wedding invites,
we get invites to people's situations,
people will tell us, like, the Glossier story,
I had an amazing customer who reached out once
before we relaunched our solid perfume,
and she just literally wrote in to be like,
I love this perfume so much,
I wore it on my first date with my husband,
we're getting married next week,
I just wanted to let you know how important it was,
and we knew we were relaunching the solid perfume,
and so I got with our team and I said,
hey, can we get this to her?
Like, right when I launched this,
'cause her wedding was like the weekend of the launch,
and so we got it to her, and we sent it to her,
and we said, hey, we're sending it to you,
like, we wanna be, we love that we're a party to special day,
and six months later, she sent us her wedding photos,
and the perfume was in the photo of her dress,
and her shoes, and she sent us a little thank you note,
and like, the photo of how it meant so much to her,
and I think with beauty especially,
it's such a personal thing,
and you're so involved in people's lives,
and their routine, and how they take care of themselves,
that I think you always have to have that
in the front of your mind, of like,
this is a lipstick, but the lipstick is also kind of like,
maybe helping somebody's mental health,
maybe helping them figure out their identity,
and I think that that's so special,
and you also have to keep that in mind.
Switching gears slightly,
'cause I wanna talk about retention,
I wanna talk a lot about support in the community,
but I really wanna understand,
what does retention look like at Glossier,
like, I know there's loyalty programs,
but like, how are you thinking about it,
how are you measuring it, like, what are you guys doing?
- One of the things that I really love that we do
is that we ask our community questions,
I think that something we talk about,
like on the business side is like,
oh, if you're gonna do an initiative,
you need to get buy in,
and we get buy in from our community,
and I think Glossier was really founded online
with Into the Gloss, and asking questions on like,
what's your dream plans are look like?
Okay, cool, we're gonna make it,
and we do that, and we continue to do that,
is like, hey, we're thinking about coming out
with new lipstick colors,
which of these two do you like, vote on it?
You know, like, that's gonna influence the decision we make,
and you know, we're always looking at the comments,
and we people are saying like, oh man,
I wish, I wish that a brown mascara,
we got, I wish that a brown mascara for so long,
we made a brown mascara, and we got to say,
hey, that thing that you asked for, we have done it,
and we saw people who were like, oh, I asked, I DM'd this,
I did this, and there's that great relationship
with a brand of like, oh, I am actually contributing
to what is being created to the product development,
and I think that that really creates this idea of loyalty,
and kind of like, a personalization of the brand.
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you,
I mean, I think we've like, been hitting on that
for like, so much of like, the conversation,
but like, you're right, I think the theme is like,
absolutely loyalty, and because of that personalization,
like, it's like, Glossier, I think, is really become,
I think it's like, a brand that is like,
gonna be around for a long time, it's like the L'Oreal,
it's the Mac.
Hearing the way that I think the teams talk about it,
and how excited people get about the products,
and I've worked at brands before,
where like, it's not cool to like the products,
and then always makes me a little bit sad,
it's like, oh, you ordered the product, lame,
and people at Glossier love Glossier,
and I just get so excited to be like, oh my God,
are you wearing that lipstick?
I'm wearing that lipstick too,
and we just get excited about it,
'cause we really like the product.
Yeah, and I think that that's evident in the way
that we talk about it, and the products that we make.
Yeah, I think that that's really important,
and the one thing that we like,
this is basically what we've been talking about
this whole time.
Good CX actually starts from within.
It starts from within, it is the culture of the business,
it's what's happening internally,
that thing can then deliver externally,
and give a good customer experience,
an overall brand experience,
and I think that Glossier is like, really good at this,
right, and even for myself,
that's literally the pillar of how I build
every single one of my CX teams,
like, vegetables, the same thing, right?
I just wanna give another an additional example,
but I came onto Feastables, I was employee four,
we didn't even have a customer the day I started,
we didn't have customers for four, six months later, right?
But what it was was I was employee four,
we said customer experience is going to be
at the core of this business, right?
So one of my missions was every person that came in,
you then, honestly we came to the people experience person,
I'm not gonna lie, it was a joke that I was the HR person,
which I'd be a terrible HR person, straight up,
but okay, 'cause I curse too much,
not because I like that.
- I'm like, "How about that human?"
I'm like, "I'm able to--"
- My HR advice from now on.
- Yeah, okay, so the reason I'm bringing all these things up
though, is because the culture for your CX
starts from within, right?
And so, everything that I was doing
and building that program was training the marketing team,
was training the supply chain team,
and was training the strategy team.
I remember one of my dearest friends,
it was like she started on the strategy team,
and the first day I was in our tiny,
we work office in Chicago,
and I turn around, shout out this for you, Laura.
And I was like, "Lora, how are you gonna help me with the CX?"
(laughing)
And she helped me develop it out,
that dashboard that I was talking about,
but it's so important that it's a good brand experience,
and customer experience starts within,
and I think it starts at every level of the company.
So that's the story with V-soules,
but I very much, everything that you've said, Katie,
about Clossier, and everything that it is
that you're doing, every piece of the business
is so focused on that customer experience,
that's what makes a really dope experience.
- Yeah, yeah. - And it's commendable.
- I love that basically everybody who works at the brand
is also a customer of the brand,
and it is very cool to be like,
"I am a fan, and I get to make the thing that I wanna see."
How cool is that?
Like, I've been there for over three years now,
and I still wake up, and I'm like,
"My job's really cool."
And I think it's really special to,
after three years, still think your job is cool,
and I tell everybody who, you know,
start, we have a great program with your new employee,
you get kind of paired with a buddy for your first month,
usually out of different team to just be like,
"Hey, what's going on at the company?"
And everybody that I have been paired with,
I've been like, "Listen, everybody is so kind and so nice,
and you might think, when's the other shoe gonna drop?
Like, what's wrong?
What's the problem?
What's gonna be the thing?"
And everybody who's just that kind and nice
and good at their job.
- That's culture hires, man.
- Yeah.
- That's so important. - So important.
- Culture hires, I won't get into people's experience
'cause we all know I'm terrible at HR.
- So I have some hot takes,
I have some random questions for you.
- What about hot takes?
- And these are a little bit about Glossier,
and I know we talked about it,
but like, what's your favorite Glossier product?
- Okay, it changes all the time.
- Oh, I think right now, in this moment,
after-ball, is, I don't know why people
are not talking about this moisturizer, it's so good.
I, any moisturizer. - Any moisturizer.
- Anytime that I have any, like,
dryness, reactive skin, like,
excellent, dry cuticle, dry elbows, like, it is so good.
And we came out with a mini version over the holidays
that's like just tiny little like travel size version.
And I was actually in Philly,
just for fun season, I stopped by our Philly store,
and they were like,
do you want a little after-balling while you're here?
'Cause you're traveling, and I was like,
I do want a little after-balling,
like I have the big one, I also need the little one,
'cause I love it that much.
- Yeah, it's so good.
God, I need that travel bomb.
- It's very good.
- You know, Glossier is actually down the street,
and I think we're gonna go to it.
- Oh, we're absolutely gonna go to it.
(laughing)
Oh, we're gonna go.
- All right, so, ooh, this one's gonna be tough
for like your, your, bringing more to people,
'cause LA Philly and New York might get a little upset,
but what's your favorite, Glossier store?
- You're like asking me to choose between my children?
- I know.
- The first store I actually worked at was the Philly store,
so I have to say the Philly store.
They were so wonderful and welcoming,
and when I went there, and I spent a couple of days
working on the floor, and I was so afraid to do like
the back of house, like picking and packing orders,
and they were so great and encouraging,
and they were like, it's scary, but you can do it.
And I had the little thing to scan the products,
and I was like, this is the scariest thing I've ever done,
because what if I mess it up?
And the team was amazing, and it's just,
it's such a beautiful store.
There's like this beautiful like ramp that you go up,
and I think all of our stores are so really nicely
aesthetically designed.
It's just nice to walk into them,
but shout out to the Philly team.
- All right, I love that.
- I love Philly, so, I've never been there,
but I'm picking that store too.
- There you go.
(laughing)
- All right, so, switching gears back to CX, just specifically,
what's something in CX that has a lot of red tape
that you wish didn't?
QA, oh yeah.
- Like it's so important to like, consistently do QA,
and there's not a good way to do it,
that isn't like, I'm gonna like, copy paste this ticket,
and then I'm gonna put it over here,
and even if you're using some sort of a similar program,
like, there's never a good way to like integrate it,
and it takes so much time,
and I need somebody to figure out a beautiful, perfect QA,
resolution for me.
- There's no good QA resolution.
- No, there's no tool that is perfect yet.
- Yeah, and like, don't come at me and say like,
"Oh, but my tool's so great."
- Listen, I mean, it could very well be, okay?
But listen, like, can we just like,
have a CX round table to talk about this?
- This is like, because it's like, everybody knows.
- Everybody's trying to solve for it,
but it's like, never what you need it to do.
- No.
- There's AI advancements.
Asher, there's somebody out there listening to this,
that's gonna do something, but, you know.
- When you do it, Jess and I will give you notes.
- Yeah.
- Done, call us.
- Okay, hot take.
Do you think that the retention and CX Playbook
is ever fully solved?
- No.
- Literally never.
I think that if you ever say that I've solved it,
that's when you can step away and like,
not be doing it, because there's always time to iterate.
There's always other things you can do,
and even if it feels like right now everything is solved,
I think the technology, the industry,
the people are always changing.
I mean, the pandemic.
Like, you could have had a perfect CX retention experience,
and then the pandemic happened,
and it changed your entire industry.
And then you better iterate.
So I don't think it's ever solved.
I don't think you've ever perfected it.
- Yeah, I agree with you.
I absolutely agree.
And I also think it varies by audience,
it varies by industry, right?
Like you can have your core pillars,
but like at the end of the day,
like one pillar might not work for the other, right?
- Yeah, so last question,
and then I'm actually gonna do something else.
What's the best advice you never received?
- Oh.
- Ooh.
Don't be afraid to be weird.
- Ugh, amen girl.
- Like, I have a self-proclaimed weirdo.
I have a possum tattoo, like, come on, I'm a weirdo.
And every single company I started working at,
I was like, I gotta see it along
before I could let my weirdo out.
Like my husband and I had a joke where he's like,
how long do you think it'll take before you like get weird?
And we would make a bet every time I started a new company.
And just like be that, they hired you
because of you as a person.
Like something that you brought to the interview
and something about your personality,
your experience is the reason that they brought you in.
Do not feel like you need to like take your like passions
and your excitement and put them in a box
and hide them and not bring them with you.
- Ugh, amen girl.
- Be a weirdo.
- Be a weirdo, be authentic, be your real self.
Like, I know we were told this is children
or we've been all told this many times,
but it's like life is like honestly too short
to not just be who you are.
- Just do it. - That's it.
- You're gonna be so much happier.
And everybody around just gonna be so much happier.
- I know, absolutely.
Well, thank you for tuning in to the juice and Katie.
Thank you so much for coming on.
- Thank you so much for having me.
- This was delightful.
Where can all the friends find you?
- You can find me on the Instagrams at Katie Brunel-Broughman.
You can find me at my newsletter,
which is going to come back.
- Yes.
- It's the MillennialManager.substack.com.
Sign up.
I talk a lot about being a Millennial
and being a people manager
and mental health in the startup world.
- Yes.
- I think that's it.
- Yes.
Sign up for her newsletter.
We'll put it in the show notes and we'll link it everywhere.
And I will see you guys and hear you guys,
or you hear me next week.
Thank you.
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