Enhancing CX with AI
Join Jess and Leanna as they uncover how AI revolutionizes customer experience, freeing up human resources and enhancing feedback analysis, customer support, and education. Get inspired by Leanna's passion for brand-building beyond CX, emphasizing the crucial role of inclusivity in beauty.
(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,
marketing space, and everything in between.
(upbeat music)
Welcome back to another episode of The Juice With Me, Jess.
This week, I am in New York City,
one of my favorite places,
and I am sitting here with Leanna Nezizi.
Nezizi, I'm so terrible at last names.
I really try before, but I never get it right.
Perfect.
So Leanna and I go honestly way back.
We'll get into that story,
but she is the director of CX,
at Victoria Beckham Beauty.
Yes.
And has been in the beauty industry for some time.
Like you worked at Birchbox.
Honestly, I don't wanna tell the audience who you are.
You tell the audience who.
Sure, yeah.
So I've been in customer experience
for over 10 years now,
started as an associate,
part-time associate at Birchbox.
I had a full-time job somewhere else,
and I was a subscriber,
and I was like, wow, what a cool company.
How fun would that be?
And when there was seasonal higher openings,
I was like, I'm gonna slip my name in there,
and it became a career.
I went part-time, full-time,
and then just moved up and up,
and then led that team,
and then took a little bit of a pivot,
and went to Zendesk for a bit.
And that was a lot of fun,
but I think brand customer experience
is where my heart is.
Totally.
Totally.
Back here.
Yeah, and we're gonna definitely get into that.
The difference between CXB2B and CXB2C,
and there's nothing wrong with either side of it.
I just think it's really different.
It is.
It's super different.
But before we get there,
I think that our story,
our friendship story is really interesting,
because this is actually the first time
Leanna and I are meeting a person.
But we've known each other for like,
oh, five years, something like that.
That's a lot longer than that.
Yeah.
And we met from networking.
Like, so during the pandemic,
early days of the pandemic,
and just, and I don't know if other people out there
feel the same way, but,
and when you're in CX,
like, sometimes it can feel like really isolated
to like get resources, network with people,
meet people, like do all the things, right?
And this is honestly like why I'm like on this mission
of like, gassing the industry up at this point,
because I think that people in the industry,
junior people need more resources.
They need more conversations, they need more networking.
So the point is though, I'm gonna land this plan.
The point is, is that Leanna and I met networking,
and like, I don't even know what group,
like a Slack group or something.
I do remember there was some sort of like,
video conference.
Yeah.
With an agenda that we did not stick to.
No.
No.
And, and it was just, I don't know,
it was just fun to like be on the other side,
you know, isolated at home in the pandemic.
But you're talking about things that matter,
customer experience.
And my thing has always been like,
this is so much more than like an entry point job.
It's how my career started for,
but like now it's come to a different place.
And that's like a big passion of mine of like,
like you said, trying to like be loud in the space
and like convince people,
not only like higher up in companies,
but also people who are just starting out in their career.
It's like, this is not just sitting in a call center,
hearing complaints all day.
Yeah.
Like you can really revolutionize this industry.
Yeah, totally.
And I think that like that's,
I mean, this is probably why we're homies, right?
Because like we are passionate about the same thing.
Yeah.
In customer experience, like customer experience
isn't just like support or you're picking up the phone
and you're typing some things away, like taking tickets.
It's not about that.
It's about brand experience.
Yeah.
And maybe like, and we'll dive into this,
but like maybe we think that way
because we've lived so long on the brand side.
I don't know.
Like I don't really know what the science is behind it,
but like hard.
I think it's really important to highlight
that customer experience is like,
doesn't just start at like when somebody needs help.
Like it starts at hello.
Hello.
It starts at hello rather than like service, right?
Yeah.
And I think that that's so important.
I think that's so important
because it's like it's everything in like your website journey
and your emails and like anything that you do
affects the CX team, right?
Random story.
I actually for one of my clients, CX clients, right?
This is a while ago.
There was like something to do
with their subscription service
and they added like a new tool into it,
but like the day of told the CX team.
Oh no.
And then there was all these issues, right?
But like the point of like telling,
I'm talking about this because like that's a CX journey
that like the support team needs to know about.
Yeah.
That journey is, it has to do with your customer experience.
Anyway, I'm rambling, but the point is
going back to now I'm actually gonna land my plan.
The point is, Leanna and I know each other
from a networking opportunity.
And we've stayed friends, internet friends mostly
and have learned from each other,
but we sought each other out and sought out these things
because we needed these resources.
Yeah.
And I think that's really important in the industry.
I completely agree.
And even the thing that you were saying around like,
you know, people need other opportunities.
And there's so many entry points in brand experience.
Nobody knows your brand better than the customer support team.
Nobody.
They know.
They know.
Every single entry point, every single URL, every PDP,
all that fun acronyms we can think of,
but they know the customer journey.
They know the customer's journey.
They know the customer's journey.
They know it's so well.
And it's time to put them first, you know?
I have this analogy that I always use.
And if anyone knows me, they probably heard me say this 1,000 times,
and they're probably so tired of me saying it.
But I stand by it, it's like, if you're gonna think about your company,
your brand as a solar system, your customer support team is the sun.
And it does not power without that support team.
It does not power the brand.
And giving them as much information, as much resources,
as much opportunities.
There are so many ways to tie thousands of different jobs,
KPIs, back to support, where it's not just like,
let me help you, reship something, let me help you with your broken,
you know, whatever.
It's so much bigger than that.
And it takes a long time, I think, for someone to really think that way,
inside of it too, like if you're just sitting there, like you said,
so emotionally taxing, day after day, home remote, like how do you make this
into a career?
And the more we talk about it, I feel like the more people start to recognize
that, like, oh yeah, there's stuff I can do here.
Yeah, I mean, there's so much in that.
Like, dude, there's so much in that, and I wanna point out,
if we're like really diving in and like deep in this,
we wouldn't even gotten to like the other questions.
But I think there's so much in that because like, okay, so I don't wanna like
make this about me.
So I'll just give the TLDR version, but I felt into customer service,
because I didn't wanna do art after art school, right?
So I felt into customer service, and I created a career out of it.
And what's really interesting as I've like ventured down the path and like done
all the things, like I always thought that I was gonna do something else.
I always thought I was like, oh, I'm gonna do marketing,
I'm gonna do these other things or, you know, whatever.
And then I've actually just found different versions of customer experience.
And now that I'm older, like in my career, I'm more of on the marketing side of
customer experience.
So it's like, it's not just retention, like life cycle, content marketing.
Like, I like, those are things that I find loyalty, subscriptions, like all
these things, right?
Like, those are the things that like bring me joy, right?
But at the core of who I am as an individual, I am a customer experience person
So I actually say, like, I build brands from a customer centric lens, right?
And so in the importance of like sharing that story into anybody who's
listening and like utilizing this as a resource,
if you're like starting off in your CX journey, is that there's so many
different career opportunities
that can start it as this is the core.
You learn the customer, you become empathetic to the customer, you understand
the customer's journey
in so many different ways, not actually can be applied to both B2B and B2C.
100%. And we're going to get into that. Oh, yeah.
Anyway, rambling, completely rambling.
But I mean, yeah, I agree with you.
I think that like we're a good testament to it, like, especially with your
career, you went from brand back to B2B to B2B to brand again, right?
Like, and I think that's really like dope, like you can flip flop back and
forth.
Yep.
I'd love to dive into just the beauty industry and the CX of the beauty
industry because you've like spent so much time in that space.
Yep. What's really interesting about the beauty industry is that it's so
personalized.
Yes.
So I'd love for you to like walk me through like an ideal customer experience
with a beauty customer.
Oh, absolutely. For me, it's always about like creating these magical moments.
And there's something about, I think, you know, it's cosmetics, it's
superficial, it's, you know, discretionary spending,
all those other fun, you know, words, but people want to feel special.
And how do you make people feel special? And it's all of these little things.
Have you ever read the book, "Atomic Habits?"
And I didn't like that book.
I am like two chapters in, so I don't know what I'm talking about.
Okay, no, I'm, yeah.
But, yeah.
But his whole bit around like, you know, the small changes to the cycling team,
like, adds up to gold medals.
And those are the things that I think about. It's like, okay, you know, maybe
in an ideal experience
for someone who's sitting at home doesn't really know what they want, like
asking questions, you know.
Doing a personalized like email signature.
Like, we do things that are like so silly, but they add up over time, you know,
at the end of all of our email signatures,
we put like, you know, best, Leanna, link to my favorite product.
I love that.
Just so personalized, right?
Just like this is something that I love, you know.
It's not like a, yes, obviously it has like marketing impact and revenue impact
, but it's like, this is my favorite product.
Like, check it out.
Or, you know, when I was at Birchbox and it was like an array of different, you
know, subscribers.
It was like, okay, here's my picture and here's like my hair type.
Here's like, you know, my favorite mascara, you know, and it's like, can you,
can I relate to somebody?
Can somebody read this email and be like, oh, she understands me?
Yeah.
She doesn't know anything about me.
She's reading my email address and like a couple of, you know, bullet points on
a profile, but tailoring it to be like, oh, okay, this person likes curly here.
Let me just link a little.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, okay, when this is the model that I was just thinking about and I'm
going to date myself here.
Oh, let's do it.
So, and I don't know if we're going to be on the same screen on this one, but I
way back in the day.
When I was younger, one of my first jobs, I worked at a video store. Did I date
myself?
Oh, I mean, I know exactly what video store you're talking about.
Okay.
I'm just making sure because like, but the young guys will tell you different.
Okay.
For the young guys, I don't know.
I know.
Like, probably only young guys probably own no red box, right?
I don't even know what that is.
Exactly.
That's how old I am.
It's something that was sit outside of 7/11 and you would get DVDs from.
But the point of ringing of the video store, right?
So in those days, like in those days, back Monday, the model is you don't have
like really
the internet to Google search.
You don't have all these media streams to like see what the hottest thing is,
right?
The biggest, the biggest movie.
And in, in how you would understand personalized recommendations or like even
make a purchase
at the video store is you would see like the employees of the video store, like
there could
be like a board or some, some sort of suggestion thing and they would be like,
Jess's favorite
movie today is Empire Records, right?
I literally dated myself on that one.
Literally.
It was a great movie.
I know.
Good.
Lift Tyler.
But my point is that was like, that's how you would find out like what the
hottest thing
was, right?
Because it was personalized human to human.
And in the digital world and like what we're competing against in like customer
experience
is like those.
The situation of, yeah, so much media, so many different things.
So like those little touches in an email chain, like in your signature about
like your favorite
mascara or your favorite bronzer or whatever it is, like it's so important
because you're
essentially like doing that like that traditional marketing, right?
A combination of like customer experience, like you said, traditional marketing
and there's
also like this like brand education bit too, especially for like beauty, which
can be like
so subjective in a way, you know, where it's like, okay, you have this like
array of looks,
you're gonna hear your products, you're gonna photograph this beautiful model
in this specific
look and people are like, I want to look like that.
Yeah.
And it's like, yeah, that might be really hard to do if like the woman that you
're featuring
has different hair color, different skin tone, but like the look is so
beautiful.
So it's like, okay, how do you take what you see off of Instagram, wherever,
you know,
and twist it in a way that it's like this person can still feel beautiful,
still feel
special.
They might not look exactly like this model, but like I want them to feel that
way.
Yeah.
And I know sitting on the other side of it, it's like, yeah, that's a really
hard look
to pull off.
Yeah.
But how can I give them the tips, the tricks, the pairings, the recommendations
are just
like, how do you make people feel special?
That to me creates like, you know, retention, people coming back, like everyone
has all
of these like events we've done.
Everyone always has that one, like I had this terrible customer experience
story.
Everyone always has always has one.
Oh, three.
Yeah.
Like, floating in as memory.
But like how many times have you gone back to that brand?
It's probably been the one time and that story has stuck with you for years and
years and
you're like, I'm never going there again.
Yeah.
And I'm like, okay, I don't want to be that person.
And I know sometimes in beauty, it's really hard to separate that because it
could be
hard to achieve some of these like looks and things that we put out there.
But in my mind, I'm like, beauty is like so universal.
Yeah.
We're not discriminating against anyone.
Everybody has a face.
Everybody has eyelashes for mascara.
Like let's make them feel beautiful.
Yeah.
How do we do that?
Yeah.
So I mean, that actually raises a question in my mind.
It's like, how does Victoria Beckham beauty specifically do beauty or create
beauty that's
inclusive?
Yeah.
Like what do you guys do specifically in that journey?
So I feel like one thing that's really important to us is like a different
array of skin tones
and textures.
And when I started, I've been there a little over a year.
I was like employee like 10.
Oh.
We love a startup.
Yeah.
Very, very startup, which you wouldn't think for the name, you know, and like
the, I mean,
people.
Instead, you know, recognition.
But what we really realized, at least in my first couple of months, what the
team that
was there, it was like, we need like a complete overhaul of everything.
You know, you're a, we're like a five year old brand, but after five years,
images look
pretty old.
Can you imagine your head shot from five years ago?
I would never want that out in the world.
I was blonde.
I am not blonde anymore.
So straight hair mostly too.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
My straight hair head shot, you know, before I was afraid for the curls.
I don't want that out in the world.
You know, so it's like we recognize immediately that it was like, okay, we need
to revive
these images.
And we all also need to bring in like not only the customer that we market
towards,
but the customer who's buying.
And there's a lot of research in like who that person is in the different parts
of the
world they are and like what they're looking for.
And the best resource to tap into that is the support team.
Because they're the ones talking to this person.
And so we put together like a group of, you know, okay, here's like the generic
like
profile of who our, you know, customer service customer is and what they're
looking for.
Because I always feel like if you take the time to write into a support team
and say,
I really wish you featured more models with gray hair.
One person, how many people are thinking that but didn't, didn't write in?
Totally.
You know, and like one thing to keep in mind on that point, right, is like the
people writing
into you, like exactly what you're saying, that people writing into you is one
person.
Yep.
But the people that are writing on social media or like talking about you that
aren't even
writing into you are probably saying the same exact thing.
Yeah.
Right.
So you got it.
You have to take that one person writing into you seriously as well as like
explore other
channels too.
Yeah, definitely.
And we're like, we're in this area now where it's like, okay, Victoria is, you
know, a legend.
But she's also a mom, you know, she's going to be 50 years old.
Like, you know, she's beautiful.
She's beautiful.
She's gorgeous.
Like, you know, she is aging in that way where it's like, we want to feature
people around
her age too.
Yeah.
You know, and we want to make sure that their beauty industry is open for
everyone.
It's not just about, you know, specific look.
Nobody wants to see skincare on 25 year old models, you know?
No.
Like.
So many people do do that.
Right.
I was just thinking about that.
Like what, like my journey on like social media.
And I'm like, all the Korean skincare of these like cute little 17 year old
girls.
And I'm like, what about the brown girls?
Yeah, you know, yeah.
Like, what about me?
Exactly.
And that to me has always been like, you know, as someone who is, I always feel
like
our support team is always the most diverse group at any company.
Your support team is always super diverse, different mix of cultures,
backgrounds, you
know, and they, if they can't use the product, then we're not servicing the
customer.
Right.
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See you there.
How do you guys approach feedback loops, though?
So like, so you get the conversations, you obviously have those conversations.
Like, are you tagging it?
Are you creating any sort of like voice of the customer reporting?
Like, what does that look like?
Oh, yeah.
So we do a lot of reporting.
We do something that I really love at our company where we do like an all hands
weekly.
It's like a marketing meeting.
Every team has about five minutes to present like top line what happened last
week.
And for me, I'm like, okay, I can talk about, you know, here was our first
reply time,
here's, you know, whatever.
And I do do that.
You know, I put it in a little graph that people could read later, but I like
to pull,
okay, what are like these like, you know, customer moment of the week?
What were the things that people were talking about?
And I like to look at the ticket types and like, you know, data that is not
like the bulk
of our inbox.
And the one that comes up a lot is like, how do you use this product?
It's maybe like 40 a week, you know, that's not a lot considering the size of
the business,
but it's like 40 people are asking like, what's the best way to use this?
And it's like, they've already hooked them.
They've already bought it.
They've already got it.
Now it's in their hands and they're like, I still need something.
And I'm like, ooh, there's something here.
There's something here that we're missing in the journey that people are coming
to us
and asking.
I'm not a person who goes anywhere to ask for help.
I would just be like, all right, I'll just figure it out.
But that's a generational thing though too.
Yeah.
Right?
Like you probably have, sorry, you will tell me more about it, but you probably
have older
generations like in your inbox.
Oh, absolutely.
That they're like, you know, we, I think the customer that we hear from the
most in the
how to use is the customer who has either has a bunch of stuff in their cart or
already
like purchase and they're like, I'm 75 years old.
I love Victoria.
I love, I love, I want to look this way.
What's the best pairings for mature skin or how do I, you know, make, I don't
know,
look less tired or whatever.
I mean, keys that all women want, right?
You know, and I'm like, there's something here where like you're, we're
servicing these
beautiful images is beautiful product.
It's absolutely fantastic.
But if you don't know, if you don't have like the makeup, artistry knowledge,
right,
but you're just excited about like the goodies.
Yeah.
Now what?
And I'm like, there's, there's a moment here that we, we can insert something.
Yeah.
And I'm trying to build like, what is that something?
Yeah.
And how do we want to tailor it?
Do we want to do it like a loyalty sort of like concierge where you get a
little bit
more something?
I think the power comes from like these first time buyers where it's like, what
can I
stick in their box?
Like literally, even if it was like a QR code, I was just going to say, have
you explored
QR codes?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm like, I'm trying to figure out like, cause you don't grasp anyone's
attention the
way you do when they have the physical product.
That first moment, that first moment, like you'll lose them.
Like if you, that, and that's the thing.
And, and I'm just saying it more on the consumer end of things, right?
Like I, I've never worked in beauty, right?
I've, I slang chocolate and like wellness brands.
Like literally that's like the brands that I've worked out, right?
But like, I think this is very consistent though.
And like the how to use, no matter what like that product is, that how to use,
you lose
the, the attention span of the customer.
If you don't get it right at the time of purchase and it's not necessarily like
, okay,
great, you can go and do the educational email and you can do all these, these
pieces in
their journey.
Right.
But then when they physically get the product from the store or from, you know,
it's come
to them in the mail, you need something there.
And that continues that, that hook and that journey because not everybody's
like, if
I'm looking at like contouring, I just learned to contour.
I'm almost 39 and I just learned to contour.
But my point is that was like, I look contour, for instance, right?
Like how I learned to do that is like being overwhelmed on social media, right?
Yeah.
Um, but then like a quick how to guide from a Fenty beauty product that I got,
I was like,
oh, that's so easy.
And it was like a, I got like a little sampler kit.
And so it was the contour stick and then the highlighter stick.
And then in the, the box was like a small card that like, three steps.
So smart.
Break it down.
Super simple.
Right.
Um, you can even use that concept of like a QR code, right?
Like something that stays on the package forever.
So then they can like, can, I travel a lot, right?
Like you wanted to continue with them.
I completely agree because I think about like, you know, online shopping now,
we're like
a digital company.
I do probably 90% of my online shopping for my phone.
There is no moment where I'm like completely glued to my phone.
The cooking, there's music on like the TVs on like you don't have my attention.
I'm buying things, but like you don't have my attention.
And like you said, if you're doing like these like educational post purchase
emails, how
many times are you reading emails and also doing other shit?
You know, like when the box comes, I'm dropping everything.
Everybody shush.
I'm opening my package.
Like look at all these fun things and nothing else matters in that moment.
And I'm like, that is magic right there.
And there's something there that we need to like insert.
Yeah.
And, and that's what I'm trying to explore this year.
It's like, what things could we test in packaging?
And just drop little like lines of like, you know, beauty stylist tips or like
even like
a line to like, do you like your product?
How are you feeling like email us?
You know, like something to connect it back to the brand, back to the customer
experience
team.
I think it's so powerful.
Yeah.
You know, there's this brand, this beauty brand that I'm thinking of is called
Gen C,
G E N S E E.
Wait, how many are you used to say?
Two E's.
Whatever.
Okay.
Okay.
And they have a really cool journey.
And this is like actually what hooked me.
So I found them on like an Instagram ad.
I got got Instagram ad.
Okay.
Let's talk about this journey.
I got, I got a mom on the Instagram ad.
I get the, I'm like, Oh, look at that blush or that like, that lip balm.
Like I was like, Oh, that's really nice.
Right.
So I click on to it.
And the journey from there to the website takes me directly to what that
product is
that I was looking at.
So the UTM link was literally to the products that it was showing in that image
Right.
And like, a grant of these products are like super simple.
So it's like, there's not really like a how to instruction, but that journey of
like,
of you going from like, Oh, okay, I got got by the ad.
Okay.
I want to go purchase it, but I'm going to, I don't have to go and like explore
and do
crazy stuff on the internet.
Right.
So I go and see the image of like the person like utilizing it.
Right.
So that sticks with me after purchase.
So I think it's a little bit of post purchase, but I also think it's in the, it
's pre purchase
as well.
Definitely.
There's like a, you know, you can have all these like beautiful editorial
images of things,
but like there's something about like reviews or like, could we do like a embed
a video
on a PD video, like videos like speak volumes.
TikTok is something that I think that we're exploring, you know, in the next
couple of
weeks, my dad, you know, that shop crushes.
It's unbelievable.
Yeah.
You get like some user generated content, UGC and like get it like an influ
encer to do
that, right?
Or micro or macro.
Yeah.
And then put like this, how I use the product, okay, go and purchase it, right?
And then they can go refer back to that influencer video constantly.
Exactly.
And this is the way I think digital e-commerce is like shifting where the brand
has to be
reputable and you have to have a good support experience.
You have to have a good brand experience.
But you also, I think people, at least in my experience, like I need a little
bit of extra
info.
Yeah.
And if the brand isn't providing that, where do you go?
You go to social media.
Yeah.
And if you have a social media presence there or if you're, you know, the
product, you'll
see if your product fails on social media.
People will talk about it, you know?
So I feel like I am even influenced much more by like random people sitting at
home recording
things.
Look at this vacuum.
And I'm like, whoa, dude, we need that.
Like, I know some girl in like Oklahoma.
I know.
Like I really needed my Dyson.
I remember this one Christmas.
I like really needed my Dyson because some micro influencer was like, look at
this Dyson
vacuum.
And I was like, I need it.
I'm my new impression.
It's like hard detailing videos.
Oh, yeah.
You watch those and I'm like, I can't do that.
I can't do that.
But I'm like, what?
The little sticky thing to like get all the like dirt and the crevices.
This is fascinating.
Dude, what is wrong with that?
Like, how is the power of like, you know, visual arts?
It's visual arts.
You're absolutely right.
Like content marketing.
Like, I truly believe this.
And maybe because like we come from like influencer brand, creator brands,
right?
And like where it's like, content is queen.
Yup, you're right.
But I truly believe in anything, B2B, D2C, like whatever, content is the queen
at this
point.
Like you, like people's attention span and the consumer's behavior, right?
Like consumer behavior attention span is so small now.
Yeah.
And as we've like literally just sit online all the time doing all these things
and that
in order to market to somebody and to order to get them to even convert, you
got to like
literally lead them to the water to go and drink it.
And you have to do that with content.
Yup.
And then you have to like serve them tea and biscuits and all the other things.
The level of personalization.
The level of personalization that customers expect now is so insane.
Yup.
It's so insane.
I'm a consumer.
I will be real with you.
Okay.
Like, I mean, this is a good example of like personalization stuff, but like I
'm, I'm
getting married this year and I haven't even found my wedding dress because it
's like,
I'm so overwhelmed.
Like I see all the things on content and I'm like, okay, like that's a really
nice dress,
but like, I'm so overwhelmed that I can't go purchase it online.
So I need to go have a personalized experience in a bridal shot because I want
to be what
like, it's not that I want to be waited on hand and foot.
Like you need the extra push to buy the thing.
Yup.
You know, um, speaking of personalization, this is going to switch gears a
little bit,
but I'm curious for you and like your support realm, are you utilizing any sort
of AI to
like help you with personalization and any of that stuff?
So right now we're doing a little bit of AI as sort of like a front end ticket
to flexion
bed, a little bit, excuse me, a little bit of brown, like, um, you know, asking
, training
it to answer product questions specifically, because what I think is most
powerful with
AI, at least for our brand right now, is this like pre purchase journey where
we have, we
get a lot of like performance marketing ads or like skyrocketing, you know,
there's a
lot of visuals of the brand out there, the click through rate is great.
But once they're there, I'm like, how long are they spending here?
This isn't really like an area that like, you know, is really traditional
customer support,
if you will, but I'm just curious because I'm like, how long are they spending
on here?
What are they looking at?
What are they reading?
What are they not reading?
And like, is there, if you think about if someone walked into a store, a beauty
store
of, would you walk into Sephora overwhelmed?
And you're just like, literally deer and headlights.
Yeah.
And someone comes up to you and is like, what can I help you?
Or let me show you whatever.
And then you like ease a little bit.
I want that AI to do that.
Yeah.
But he's like frozen on this PDP.
And I imagine they're just like deer and headlights.
What the hell do I buy here?
And I kind of, I mean, we're training the AI to pop up and be like, I see you
're looking
at, you know, this eye shadow.
If you like this, it would pair well with X.
Yeah.
Click here, see this look, build this thing.
And like, that's where I'm trying to train AI a little bit.
Yeah.
Besides, you know, the generic like, ticket deflection, where's my order
returns.
But yeah, that's what we're playing around with this year.
I love it.
I love like the conversion theories of AI.
So when I was at Feast of Walls, I actually like built a chatbot to not only
deflect tickets.
Like I got all the deflection, like did all those things.
But I actually had it sitting on the PDP pages, granted, like I'm slinging
chocolate.
Okay.
I think this, I think your products are like far more complex than this.
But like you can utilize this theory, right?
So sitting on the PDP, I had this little like feasty bot.
Like then we had a, our mascot was feasty who was going to say, do you name
your AI?
Yeah.
I'm trying to figure out like a name for her.
Like Vicki.
Vicki.
Vicki.
Vicki B.
That's actually a good one.
I kind of like it.
So Vicki B could be like sitting on like these PDP pages, right?
And like, and just like feasty bot was sitting on these pages that would pop up
after like
a certain point of time and be like, Hey, do you need help making your purchase
, right?
And then would just be like, okay, blah, blah, blah, like, okay, you're
interested in this
like milk chocolate, but like, have you tried this other best seller or, Oh,
you really
like this almond one, have you tried the crunch right, like personalizing those
things, but
like making it so conversational and AI, like I think what's interesting is
people
think that AI is just like this free spirited thing that just can like come up
with like
thoughts, but we've actually have all been utilizing AI for some time now,
because AI
is also considered to be intent based.
Yeah.
And so like this bot that I built is very intent based, even though it's like
this thing
that comes up with a conversation like, Hey, how are you?
But these are all things that you you program into it.
Oh, absolutely.
Like it's not like just freely going and just being like, Hey, Sam, this is
Vicki B.
Like a child.
Yeah, like, yeah, it's a smarter child, you know, it's literally like all of
these things
are programmed into it.
And so that's very like the intent based, right?
But my point is, is like you like whether you're utilizing like the free
spirited AI
or the intent based AI, you people shouldn't be afraid of it because you can
like build
out the flow maps, you know, I feel like people look at AI and they're like,
this is
going to take my job.
Yeah, especially in our world, they're like, this is going to take my job, you
know, yeah,
and I'm like, if you really think about it, you've been using AI forever.
I know, even if you're like filters in your Gmail, yeah, in a way, that's a
little bit
but it's not as advanced as you know, here's a chat bot talking to you, but
there's a
little bit of like technology smarts with those things that you don't realize.
And then I think there's like a stigma about AI for brands where it's like, you
know, this
is going to like deplete the workforce.
And you know, I'll be out of a job.
But I'm like, well, who's going to train the AI?
Yeah.
Who's building the personality for Vicki B?
Yeah.
I mean, you're totally right.
You're totally right.
Like people are so afraid of AI, but it goes back to what we were saying in the
beginning,
right?
CX is like the core of what you're doing.
Yeah.
And it's you're a part of your journey to go and do other things, right?
So like think about thinking about AI and like building all these things to
like deflect
or like to help convert or whatever.
And maybe it takes the salesperson out of it.
Maybe it takes the tickets away from the support agent.
But however, like that means that the salesperson can go and like the marketing
team, I should
say, should go focus on other things.
The support team can go focus on other things and upskilling in other areas in
their in
what they're doing, right?
Yeah.
And like, I, you know, a lot of the times too, and I would love to see this
happen a lot
more AI being utilized for feedback, right?
You're tagging, bagging, like all that stuff, like getting like and then giving
you like
a rundown of like top sentiments, top inquiries.
And then that way, like then the support team can go and run and go fix the
customer journey.
Yep.
You know, and this, this is what your customer is saying without you having to
sit there
for hours, running your tag report, running your whatever.
This is what the customer is saying.
There's so many opportunities to create like, for me, I'm like their AI can
help bring education
to the customer because in actuality, customer service is probably like 80%
reactive, you
know, and the reactionary things are like, where's my order?
This is broken.
I want to return.
Yeah.
You don't need a human to do any of that.
Apple does it.
Amazon does it.
So like, why do we as small brands need that?
Like, should I send an email and be like, I want to return something and wait
24 hours
for someone to be like, okay, terrible customer experience.
Like, you know, this is not the, this is not the world we're living in now.
So like, have AI do that.
Yeah.
Put it up there.
The customer will be so much more excited.
Wow.
I've returned this in three minutes and now I don't have to check my email.
I don't have to whatever.
And now like your team can do fun stuff.
Yeah.
They could be, they could create like, you know, hey, two days later send a
personalized
email or text or whatever.
I saw that you returned XYZ.
Do you have five minutes?
I want to talk about the product or like, what didn't you like or what do you
didn't like
or how could we educate you more?
Like, oh man, imagine even if you like utilize Vicky B to just do education.
Yeah.
Like, so, okay, I want to go and return the things, right?
But why do you want to, why do you want to go return it and like helping like,
just kind
of decipher that information.
So then when it gets to the agent, the agent's able to like actually just like
give that
personalized humanized experience.
And then you have to sort of like win back or something like opportunities are
endless.
Opportunities are so endless.
And I think we have to embrace it.
We just put boundaries around it.
Yeah.
You know?
Okay.
I want to switch gears one more time.
Sure.
Because like, we're getting to that.
Let's go to the show, right?
So I think one of the things we're, we were going to talk about like off camera
, but I
want to, I want to just save it on camera.
Yeah.
Is the difference between CXB to be and CX and DTC.
So you know, I think like there's like the generic responses to that, which is
like support
success like in B2B and then in like D2C.
It's like very focused on like retention.
Ironically enough, these are like the same things, just different names
retention and
support.
But, you know, and I actually don't even want to go there.
Like what I'm curious about, because you previously worked at a help desk,
right?
Yeah.
And decided you wanted to go back to brand.
Yeah.
And then you're like, you know, you're like, you're like, you're like, you're
like, you
want to decide it too.
But what was it like that you were so passionate about brand versus like CXB to
be?
That's a great question because I, I felt like a lot of my success in my early
career
at like brands at Birchbox was through my vendor relationships.
I had these goals.
I had things I wanted to do.
I had like objectives from, you know, my boss.
And I'd be like, how am I supposed to do this?
And everything was always about cost cutting as well.
So I would like have these meetings with my vendors and be like, I've been
tasked to
do this thing.
Here's how I'm thinking about it.
Any tips and, you know, my help desk partners and whoever they'd be like, Oh
yeah, implement
this, do a little bit of this, you know, and, and they would just come with the
, these
great suggestions.
They would like teach me a little bit more about the product that we're already
paying
for and help me build a new experience.
And then we'd like test and try and there was so much success.
And like year over year, I was like, this is so cool.
I feel like I owed a part of my career growth to these people.
And I was like, I hope that, you know, they get credit in their own
conversations and
their own companies to be like, yeah, we helped this person at Birchbox go for
a manager or
two director, you know?
Yeah.
And I was like, how fun would it be to pay it back to other people?
How many events have we done where we've gone to, you know, these like, um, CX
networking
things and everybody's talking about the same problem.
And I've been in events where I'm like, I had that problem and these people
helped me
solve it.
I would love to solve that for others.
So that's where I got in that world.
But when I was there, it was a whole different story because it all depends on
the passion
of who your client is.
Yeah.
And I feel like the clients that I had, it was like hit or miss and they weren
't as passionate
as I was as a CX leader.
And they'd be like, yeah, you know, that could be good, but we're not
interested in optimization
right now or we're not interested in it's so hard.
Like I'm why.
If for anybody viewing and you, I wish you could see like my face right now
because it's
so hard convincing people who are very stuck and they're talking about
traditional marketing.
Yeah.
Let's talk about traditional customer experience.
How traditional customer experience individuals and B2B are so hard to get them
across the
line to like not thinking that this is just a call center and to think of it
like as a
customer experience and a brand experience.
And I think that's where like you and I like absolutely align is that it's for
us because
we come from that brand side.
When we say brand experience, I'm not I'm literally not saying econ brand.
I'm literally saying the culture of your company.
Yep.
And I'm trying to give to your customer, but it's so interesting because it's
like you
see these people who have like and in call it customer support still.
Right.
They're so stuck in their ways.
And it's like, you know, people always talk about the you always hear this
phrase meet the
customer where they are.
Yeah.
You can't meet them if the only channel you offer is phone.
Yeah.
That's not where the customer is.
I don't think I've picked up the phone to call someone this month.
Yeah.
I think my mother.
I think I'm going to end up getting stabbed for saying this one.
That's probably sounds really harsh.
But like, I'm going to get I'm going to get some heat for saying this one.
But like, I'm sorry, man, like we don't really do phone support that often.
Like we don't even like supporting for support.
I refuse.
Yeah.
I refuse to offer phone support because I think it's an open avenue to keep
people stuck.
Yeah.
In like this complaint loop.
Absolutely.
I think people, you know, and it's also this is like a generational thing too.
And we have an older customer a little bit and beauty is hard.
And I'm like, if one thing goes wrong and we have an open phone line, I can
have an agent
on the phone for 30 minutes.
Oh, absolutely.
And how do we get them to, you know, and it's more pressure, I feel like, and
it's a
lot more work to teach the agent these like, you know, negotiating with like
getting somebody
off the phone, how to keep someone on hold all this like mannerism and just
dude.
I know.
Let's do different channels.
Let's do different channels.
Let's expand the channels.
Everybody has an email.
Yeah.
You have to.
Yeah.
Now everyone has an email text SMS WhatsApp like let's let's kind of stay there
Yeah.
for people who are like really really special,
we can have a super bat, a bat phone.
- Oh look at that, I'm glad.
- Bicky B phone.
- Yeah right.
(laughing)
You know and it's like,
it's going back to like our original topic
where it's like it's so hard.
I found it very difficult with my clients
where it's like I could tell immediately
the people that I was speaking to never use the product.
- Mm-hmm.
- Don't care about customer support in that way.
- Yeah.
- And it's like I can tell you all these things
to optimize to save you money, to save you time.
But if this is not a priority for your business,
then we're just wasting 45 minutes on a Zoom call right now.
- Yeah.
- And I was like, where are the people who want to disrupt?
- Yeah.
- Where are those folks?
- Let's all be more disrupted.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- What's up?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
All right, Leanna, we have entered the end of the road.
I don't know where I was going with that one,
but I--
- I think Boist Medna.
- No, honestly, like I really feel like we should
insert that 'cause I always say that same thing.
We have approached the end of the road.
- And then pause for flip.
- And then pause for voice of it.
Tell the audience where they can find you.
- You can find me.
So my, all of my social medias are all the same.
It's Leanna Banana 523.
You can email me first.lastname, Gmail, email,
Victoria Beckham Beauty, customer service,
- Yes.
- We'll send you stuff.
Why wanna hear what you like?
- Personalization from Leanna.
- Personalization, yeah.
Straight from the source.
- Well, we'll link Leanna's LinkedIn
in the show notes as well.
But I really appreciate you coming on.
- Thanks for having me.
- And thank you for tuning in to another episode
of the Juice and we'll see and hear you
or you'll hear me next Thursday.
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You made it to the end of the episode.
That means that you like me and I like you,
which also means you should subscribe to this show.
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