From Acquisition to Retention: Mastering CX with Cate Marques
Join Jess Cervellon and Cate Marques, Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at Terra Kaffe, as they share the key aspects of customer experience in today's rapidly evolving market on this episode of The Juice.
(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'm in New York City
with my emotional support, Shambre shirt,
'cause I seem to keep wearing this in every episode.
And I am here with my friend Kate Marquise,
who is CXO at Terra Cafe.
Welcome.
- Thank you so much.
- I feel like this has been a long time coming.
- I'm so excited to be here.
- Well, I know.
We're gonna operate on vibes on this episode.
Gotta be honest with you.
Tell the homies just a little bit about Terra Cafe
and you were employee number two, start there.
- Oh my gosh, yeah.
So I am like a few days shy of my four year anniversary
at the company, which is bizarre,
'cause it feels like it's been my entire life,
but also three months.
I have no sense of time anymore ever since the pandemic.
I'm just done.
But yeah, so Terra Cafe, we are a super automatic
bean to cup espresso machine, which is a mouthful.
Basically a way of saying a really cool coffee machine.
When I started, yeah, I was employee number two.
And I hate saying that sometimes,
'cause I don't want it to be like,
"Oh, it was employee number two."
Like, good job. - You're really proud of that.
- I know I was employee number four.
- I was employee number four at V-swools, and like,
it's not me bragging when I bring it up,
but I'm like, you don't understand the trials
and tribulations of being early stage employee, okay?
- Uh-huh, uh-huh, that's exactly it.
Yeah, it actually like gotten laid off at my previous shop,
COVID hit, I was in commercial real estate,
nobody needed commercial real estate during the pandemic.
And I happened to meet the founder
and the only other employee,
and they looped me in, you know?
And I thought about it.
I was like, does it make sense to join a super early stage
startup in the middle of a global pandemic?
And I just decided, you know what, like, if not now one.
Like, I knew I'd found my home and startups.
So yeah, I started, and my title at the time was CX
and Ops Manager, which basically meant I did everything
'cause that's what you do when you're that early stage.
But the reason I say I was so early, you know,
I think it says a lot about Tara Kefee
and about our founder or CEO
that they wanted to bring in CX so early, you know?
At that point, like, it was a mess.
We were handling everything via Gmail.
We were like tracking summaries in Google Sheets,
like trying to tag things.
Since then, we have definitely gotten
a little bit more sophisticated,
but it's been a wild ride.
When I started, we just had one machine, the TK one.
And I think like one of the coolest things
that I've gotten to do at TK and just professionally
in general is, you know, having a machine,
having something out there in the world,
proof of concept, collecting all that customer feedback
and insight and channeling it back into the company
to create our second machine, the TK two.
- Yeah.
- So just came out, oh my God, we started shipping them
like very end of December, 2023.
So it was like, I don't know, three and a half years
worth of product development.
And I think about it, like I had two kids
during the time we were in Prod dev.
I'm like, wait a second, what is time?
I don't even know.
- That's so crazy.
- But we've grown a lot.
You know, now we are, I don't know,
I wanna say like 32 people, eight of us are CX.
So it's still a huge component of what we do,
but it's, you know, it's startup life for you, right?
Like it's always moving, always changing at a crazy pace
and the amount that you can learn if you want to.
And you know, in an early stage startup, it's second to none.
- Yeah, I know.
I mean, I know.
I also like really commend TK
for bringing NCX from the beginning.
I mean, it makes sense in the sense
that like the product is a luxury good, right?
And it's like, that's a certain type of customer audience,
but it's not only a certain type of customer audience,
it's like commendable in the sense that
I'm developing out this luxury product.
I care so much about the experience of the consumer
from an aspect of like the brand experience,
the customer experience and support, community building.
Like, I think that's just so like, I think that's still,
but I think that a lot more startups should prioritize
CX in that same manner.
Like, Fisables was the same way.
- Yeah, I completely agree.
I mean, when I think about the product that we sell, right,
these things start at almost $900.
So it's generally not like an impulse buy.
It's not like me scrolling Instagram,
I see like a new cream blush and I'm like,
oh, I gotta try that out.
You know, it's generally something people really think about.
For most people, it's a huge investment,
likely more than they've ever spent on, you know,
a kitchen appliance of that kind.
And I think, you know, we've been fortunate,
we've had really good creative partners from the start,
which kind of puts you in a corner
'cause they make assets that are gorgeous
and are selling, you know, this whole lifestyle.
And, you know, if that's what we're selling
and people are really investing us in us
and their whole experience with the brand doesn't match that,
it can feel really disjointed, you know?
So one of the first things I did when I started
was map out our customer journey and picked it apart.
You know, I just like, toward your shit,
I was like, this isn't working, this isn't working,
this isn't working.
Like, and over the course of years,
like really tried to rebuild it
and make the entire experience end-to-end
from brands awareness all the way to, you know,
retention and loyalty match that same elevated feel.
And I think it's something missing, you know,
a lot of brands think of CX as like a necessary cost center.
- Yeah.
- And just like, oh, okay, we need people like answering
the phones or answering emails, whatever.
And they don't realize that, you know,
for a lot of customers that CX,
so CX is gonna be the only person
that that customer ever speaks to from your brand.
It's such a position of importance
and I feel like it's just so often treated
like an afterthought.
- Yeah, I think it is treated like an afterthought.
But I actually really like that you started
at customer journey, the journey mapping.
- Yeah.
- Like that was also a practice that I did
at Feastewales too, like in the very beginning,
even before we had our customer,
was mapping what that journey looked like
and then after we launched, then mapping it again.
And I think that's a very valuable hot tip moment.
If you have a brand, whether you're starting out
or you're revamping, start at a customer journey.
Journey map, think about it from acquisition,
all the way to retention.
- Yeah, I could not agree more.
And like within doing that, map out,
like what tools are your customers interacting with?
What's SaaS platforms are they interacting with?
And making sure all of those are up to standard.
'Cause, you know, when I found when I did that,
for example, like this is a complicated machine.
There is a necessary amount of like troubleshooting
that goes into it if you don't know how to use it.
Totally fair.
You know, that was a huge pain point for customers, right?
So how are we going to elevate our service offerings
to support that?
Same thing for like loyalty and retention.
You know, when I started out,
there wasn't even a referral program.
We ended up launching one and still to this day,
like more than 15% of our customers
come from direct referrals.
It's massive, you know?
If like I said, if you, especially if you have
like a high consideration product with a high price point
that people are interacting with daily,
you can't afford to let any part of the experience slip
or the whole brand kind of goes to shit.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely, man.
Like, um, absolutely.
I think that that is really important to think about
like thinking about it from retention to loyalty
to every aspect of your brand journey.
You know, I have a quick question that like kind of popped up
into my head.
So like your product is a little bit technical, right?
So when you're hiring for agents,
like what types of attributes are you looking for
in their skill set?
Yeah, that's a good question.
And I think it's something we're constantly refining
because I think, you know, in some ways,
the product itself can be easier to teach
than the personality, you know?
And I think that's something probably common to all CX.
Like you need absolutely superior communication skills, right?
Certain things are just table stakes, like communication,
empathy, ability to kind of strategize
and figure out the ways to help the customer
when you might be constrained.
But then on top of that, like, you know,
the technical side of it, I think,
is actually a little bit easier to learn, you know?
There's definitely a steep on ramp.
But that's just knowledge and facts, you know,
and questions and answers as opposed to like
innate personality traits and what makes somebody like,
quote unquote, good CX.
And I think one of the things that I really try to look for
in my team is the ability to really look at both sides
of customer experience, like the ability to support
the product and the customer, answer questions,
do kind of like the core part of the job.
But I think what's been really critical for us
is finding people that also have the ability
to kind of synthesize those insights
and feed them back into the rest of the company.
So we, you know, we have like a crazy motley crew
of CX people, you know, some former baristas, some chefs.
I think the probably the common theme
is people that can withstand a lot of pressure.
But, you know, people are constantly kind of finding
like what is their specialty going to be within TK
and how are they going to take all that customer gold
and then help the rest of the organization kind of grow
around it, whether it's product development or new recipe
is or, you know, finding new softwares
to let us more efficiently serve customers.
Like everybody kind of finds their niche.
- Yeah, I think it's so interesting when you like,
it's an interest, it's a different type of customer service
or customer experience, like a customer experience,
like individual, right?
Because we talk so much about, you know, customer service,
like you have to have display a lot of empathy,
a lot of patience, like all these things, right?
And it's not just about order support.
I think with you, it's like you have,
there's like so much patience, right?
And like walking through technical support, right?
And so I think, I just think it's interesting.
I think it, I don't necessarily want to say
it's a different skill set,
but it's a different type of like mindset
because I come from B2BCX.
- Yeah.
- And like that's very technical.
It's like very like, you know, troubleshooting, right?
And it's the same type.
What channels do you guys have?
- So hot topic.
Right now, pretty much just email and contact form.
We used to have phone lines.
We had to close them about a year ago
because we just, honestly, we outgrew our ability
to service them, you know?
2023 was a hard year.
I think for a lot of startups,
a fundraising landscape was brutal.
- Yeah.
- You know, we were not in a position to scale our CX team,
you know, in tandem with our installed base,
but we are in a much better position now.
We're actually reopening phone lines in a few weeks.
We're working on live chat, we're launching that,
we have it, it's kind of all ready to go.
We're just getting signed off from various teams
on like the way it's going to look on the website.
- Cool.
- So we're in a really interesting era, I think,
for TK CX, you know, our own little microcosm
of the world is evolving a lot right now.
It's going to be a busy few months for us.
- Yeah.
What does that evolution look like in the landscape of AI?
- Oh, I--
- Hot topics.
- Yeah, oh my God, speaking of hot topics,
I'm a big fan of it, you know?
We work really closely, we partner with Sienna,
and they're incredible.
And, you know, I think AI, at least a few years ago,
when people were starting to like figure out
business opportunities for it,
people might've felt like it, you know,
as a fad, kind of be a flash in the pan,
but I think what we're seeing now is like,
it's not a fad, it's not going away.
It's something that's here to stay.
We are witnessing our evolution in real time,
and I think to the degree that, you know,
I and my team, my business, you know,
everybody can kind of be open to it and embrace it,
the better off it will be.
You know, it's like, adopt early
and learn as fast as you can,
'cause if we don't do it, our competitors are.
So we definitely leverage AI in a few different ways,
and it's serving us really well right now.
Yeah.
So what I think is interesting is that
we've all been really using AI.
We just are using it in a different form.
So like, what the Sienna tool is like,
and also even like customers, KIQ, Assistant,
it's, these are all like AI, like generative AI,
and I think that's the difference.
So people like don't understand that like generative
versus like intent-based or two different things.
But we've been using intent-based for a long time.
Yeah. Right?
Yeah.
We're just building the brain in the background.
And like, people just don't realize it.
Like IVRs on your phone line.
Yep.
Are very intent-based AI too.
Yep. You know?
Yeah. I mean, we're seeing like,
I mean, I'm sure there's probably a technical term
like second wave AI, third wave AI or something.
I don't know what it is.
But, but you know, we're living through it right now.
We're in such a crazy time.
Like the world is not going to revert back
to what it was before what's happening.
And you know, it's been a little tough.
I think, you know, like it was a huge topic within TK
when we decided to start leveraging AI in the CX base.
You know, there's a lot of fear.
I think it's very justified.
Like to be fair, there are zero guardrails
around any kind of AI use.
But we had a lot of conversations,
a lot of debates internally.
You know, we just closed that we use AI.
You have to. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, and if customers want to opt out of it
at any point, that's absolutely fine.
We can basically put them on like the no AI list.
So they will only interact with humans, you know,
going forward.
But we do have to have a disclaimer.
Like you can absolutely opt to only work with humans,
but be aware like humans work at human speed, you know?
So there might be a little bit of a wait time.
I know.
And I think that's like an interesting thing
that you've brought up is that like the consumer behavior
in general has like changed so much.
Like think about it so much from like even just COVID to now,
right? Like the last four years.
And like it's not even just the level
of like personalization ones.
It's like the impatience now.
Yes. Oh my gosh.
People want instantaneous everything, you know,
you know, and we all talk about how like, you know,
Amazon has forever room shipping for everybody
because people expect like same day delivery on everything.
But it's really like across the board.
People just want instant effective answers,
results, shipping, returns, all of it.
And like you can have instant and you can have effective.
It's really hard to find both.
Right. I know.
I mean, I always say like my thing is like answer questions
before they become questions.
So it's like really building out like your help center,
building out like any of these chatbots also.
But like, but that applies to not only the external customer,
but I actually call agents internal customers
because like we should be like setting them up for success
and servicing them as well. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean, I think it's like it's so critical.
I think to have leadership by an org wide on CX leaders, right?
Because our hands are tied otherwise, right?
Like CX has to be empowered to make judgment calls,
to make policy exceptions,
to actually create a good customer experience.
It's it's only going to set us up for disaster
for like, Nope, no exceptions ever.
Yeah. You know, I've I've dealt with brands like that.
And I'm like, okay, I'm not going to be a customer of yours anymore.
Okay. Yeah, I know.
I know. It's so it's so it's just so funny
how like your customer experience can just change within an instant, you know?
Like I've had like really bad customer experiences,
but not even just like from like a chatting or email aspect,
just like not providing the right information.
Actually, here's a fun story because it we're filming this
and recording this right after tax day.
Oh, God. Yeah.
So and this is my CX brand. Okay.
So my CPA, she'll never listen to this.
No, I needed to like get something done.
And instead of instead of just explaining to me what it was
that I needed, she sent me a help article from irs.gov.
No, no, no, no, no,
10 30 at night on April 15th.
Like what? No, no, I feel like it's such a passive, aggressive move,
like just kind of telling you, I know, it could have found this yourself.
I know, I know for sure.
But like think about it in like this at the realm of like customer success,
customer support experience, right?
I'm like, damn, that was a shitty customer experience.
Yeah. And now I'm kind of like, I said this to my fiancee this morning.
I was like, I think I got a fun different CPA.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like like we've all been there, right?
Like especially we in this world, you know, we have these experiences
and I'm like, Oh my God, it would have been so much easier
to just make it a little better.
But I think that's like also the struggle with, you know, having a CX team
being a CX team
is like trying to explain those things to the other departments, right?
And helping them to really understand like, you know, this one small decision
could have ramifications that ripple outward.
I mean, one negative customer experience that's one negative review,
somebody leaves and then how many prospective customers see that?
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Yeah, no, I agree with you.
Well, that actually brings up a really good point though,
or a good area that I wanted to talk about,
because in the beginning of this, you talked about how you've seen the
transition
from being employee number two,
and coming up with TK1 to TK2 and going through that product innovation.
I'd love to hear what type of analytics are you taking from the CX journey,
and not just on support tickets, not just on reviews,
and how are you taking some of your analytics and then bring it back into the
company?
Yeah, so I think one of the things that we launched, you know, a TK2,
so TK1 is not a connected machine.
TK2 is a connected machine, so it has an app, it's IoT connected,
it can receive like over there updates, it's cool, you know,
I mean, the beauty of a connected machine is it's going to get better over time
So in making TK2, we took all of the feedback and insights from TK1 customers,
channeled it into TK2, but now with the TK2, we're collecting insights, you
know, in real time,
channeling them through JIRA, you know, the whole CX team has JIRA accounts,
we were feeding everything to engineering constantly,
and then we're releasing real over-the-air updates.
Like, you know, the biggest complaint we had about the TK2 was that people were
saying,
like, drinks aren't hot enough, drinks aren't hot enough, and, you know,
see, see words.
CX was the first group to kind of raise the alarm, like,
hey, this is a real pain point with customers, it's driving, you know,
X% of returns, what are we going to do about it?
And then engineering, you know, over the last couple of months,
ran a bunch of tests, you know, tried to figure out how do we increase,
you know, various components, I'm not going to bore you with the technical
details of like
the machine and ultimately resulted in a hotter brew,
that's an over-the-air update that we launched yesterday, you know,
so we're constantly feeding information back to them, you know,
we track everything, we use customers, so we track everything in customer,
you know, customer type, product type, etc.
We tag everything, you know, we've got probably way too many tags that could
use
a spring cleaning, but always clean our tag.
Yeah, right, but we collect everything, you know, in a voice of the customer,
monthly report, surface, you know, relevant themes to various departments.
We also really kind of have our hands in everything.
Like, there's honestly not much that happens at TK without CX insight input
and then ultimately sign off.
Like, there's not an email campaign that goes out without us getting eyes on it
There's not a social post that doesn't get our sign off.
Like, everything that happens because we need, you know,
we as the ones who have been talking to our customers, you know,
40 plus hours, we must be realistic, like 60 plus hours a week for the last
several years,
like, we know who they are, we know what resonates with them,
and we just constantly have to channel that back into the rest of the business
to guide us,
you know, otherwise, like, what are we going to do?
Like, build stuff no one wants.
Yeah, yeah.
I know. I mean, like, I feel like we preach it all the time as like CX leaders,
but it's like analytics and feedback loops are just like, what comes with it,
you know?
But you know what's so crazy?
I have come across people who have just started tagging.
No.
After like five years.
How do they track anything?
And I'm like, not.
Yeah.
And just not.
And I'm like, okay.
Wow. How do you get that high level view of what's happening and what your
customers are saying
and like not delivering analytics on it?
Yeah. I mean, especially when you get, I mean, I guess you could do that if you
have
very, very few customers, but at a certain point, it just becomes unscalable.
And then I'm just guessing like, oh, a lot of customers wanted to get refunds
this month,
maybe.
Yeah.
But like so many people operate like that of like interesting.
Oh, that's really interesting. Like there are a lot of like influx of returns,
but then it's like you turn to the CX department and you're like, why is that?
But like nobody has an answer about that.
And it's like so important.
Like your CX team is the lifeline of your customers and they know what's going
on.
So it's like equip your team or like allow, because I also see this a lot too.
I also see a lot of people just operating off of like, just people in the queue
but not actually managing it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then it's like, how do you get a higher level view if you never equip your
team with
the ability to even do those things?
Yeah.
Yeah. And I think it, you know, it's a common misunderstanding with other
departments.
I think it like somehow gets phrases like, oh, CX just operates off gut feeling
And they don't necessarily have an understanding of how data driven CX can
actually be that like,
everything that comes in is tagged and segmented and evaluated and then fed
back, you know?
And it's not like gut feeling.
It's a lot of work that goes into developing like our quote unquote opinions.
I mean, yeah, because well, that's the other thing too, is that like with CX,
it's like you can't just go like gut feeling and you'd be like, I love feelings
and all these things,
right?
Because then nobody like will hear you and rest you come to the table data,
right?
Right.
And speak their language, right?
Like when I'm going to my finance team and I'm pressing for something,
I'm going to say like, hey, you know, look at this person's lifetime value.
I think we should make an exception here.
They've got a coffee subscription with us.
They've got, you know, a TK one and a TK two.
They're very vocal on, you know, the Facebook community.
I think we should do right by them here and make a policy exception.
You know, unfortunately, like our finance seems amazing.
They're super in the weeds with us.
But I've worked places that aren't like that.
And it's like, what are you doing?
I know.
Yeah. Like I definitely have seen brands who are like also on the
over-versed end of it, though, having really great return policies, like 100%
happiness guaranteed.
But then you show them data of like, people are abusing this.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Like, oh my God.
You know, like, yeah, maybe we should change some things.
I know.
I think of that.
But like, I think about myself, I'm in such a hypocrite.
Like I use the Honey Group Google Chrome extension to get discount codes,
but then I hate it when our customers do it.
And I'm like, oh, God, no, no, no.
I'm like, OK, I see what you're doing because I do it too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
We're all like looking for--
We're all looking for a little bit of a deal.
Everybody wants to know.
Everybody wants to know.
Well, especially if you're dealing with something that's really expensive too.
Yeah.
I don't blame them for sure.
I know.
I wasn't a no-marker.
Yeah, exactly.
Like, I'll be honest, like, I wasn't in the market for a $1,000
espresso machine before I knew what they were because I started working here.
Now I couldn't live without it.
Yeah.
Man, I'll have to get myself one.
On my little coffee.
I'll hook you up.
Coffee.
I'll hook you up.
Oh, look at that.
On camera, folks.
On camera, OK?
I wanted to switch gears a little bit because I've seen some celebrities
utilizing TK products.
And I don't know if it was Kim Kardashian or Kate Hudson.
And I can't remember exactly.
But what was your personal, holy shit moment when you saw a celebrity utilizing
your product?
Oh, my God.
So Jimmy Kimmel got in touch with us a few years ago.
And he wanted to buy 20 machines to gift to friends and family.
Yeah.
We were like, oh, that's really cool.
You know, how awesome.
But then random people started popping up here and there with TK1s.
Like, Jennifer Aniston has a TK1.
Courtney Cox has a TK1.
And there was this photo posted on social media.
I think it was like Kristen Bell and Dak Shepherd posted a photo of like, you
know, a bunch of friends out in Idaho or something.
And I looked at this table and the photo and there were like probably 20
celebrities.
And I'm like, holy shit, at least 14 of them have TK1s.
Like it's this whole little community all started by Jimmy Kimmel.
He's been a great friend of the brothers.
Wow, we really love that word of mouth.
Right?
You can't beat it.
You can't beat it.
And then, you know, we see like these names kind of trickle throughout inbox
from time to time.
And I'm like, wait, is this this person?
Dude.
And then I realize it is.
And I'm like, oh, okay.
And then I get like random like, you know, friends from college,
like sending me Instagram posts of some NFL player with our machine.
I'm like, I don't know who that is, but they have two million followers.
How cool?
Yeah, dude.
My moment at Feastables was Jack Block.
Oh, that's a good one.
Yeah.
Oh, it was really funny because like, you know, obviously early employee,
like we're dealing with the, you sometimes you got to
you might be so high level, you got to get into that queue, you know.
And I remember somebody asking me like, is this really Jack Black, like address
or whatever?
And I was like, I don't know what we shouldn't be looking at this.
Like it's not real or whatever.
Oh, yeah.
And of course, he did a little research.
And I was like, oh, shit.
Oh, yeah.
Turns out Jack Black also lived down the street for me from when I lived in Los
Feliz.
I was like, oh my God.
I love that.
Yeah.
No, there was a time I was like, I had to get on the phone with Courtney Cox to
trouble to shoot
a machine.
And I told a friend of mine, I was like, I probably shouldn't be telling you
this
because she's a huge friends fan.
And I was like, I probably shouldn't be telling anybody outside the company
this.
But I'm like, I just want to tell you who I was on the phone with earlier today
Oh my God.
Was she nice?
She was so nice.
I pictured that.
So nice.
I was like, wow, I thought that I wouldn't have expected it, but I was just
like pleasantly
surprised.
I was like, oh, wow.
And you're making time for me.
And you're so kind.
Yeah.
Great.
Yeah.
I love those moments.
That's our celebrity moment, right?
Like our little fangirl moment.
How do you guys like deal with?
How do you guys actually deal with like bad influencer moments though?
Like, and maybe not influencer, but like, yeah, actually a bad influencer
moment.
Yeah, it definitely happens from time to time.
You know, I remember there was this one influencer that had the machine and it
was just
some user error, but the milk function wasn't working, which sucks, you know,
but is easily
correctable.
Unfortunately, she posted a bunch of Instagram stories before she reached out
to our customer team.
So, you know, we see them and, you know, our social team obviously was on it.
They saw it right away.
We reached out to them.
We're like, hey, we'd love to like hop on a quick video call with you.
We think we can correct this really easily.
And, you know, she grew up, you know, luckily was open to it.
Was her septive jumped on a video call, fixed it.
She posted some nice stories.
I'm like, OK, so it doesn't like necessarily correct the potential damage that
was done by
the initial post.
But, you know, I think like every, like, I tell my team, right?
Like, any time a customer has a negative experience with us, like, good if they
're telling us,
right?
Because then it gives us the opportunity to turn it around.
You have the opportunity to make somebody more of a brand loyalist than you
ever would
have if you'd never heard from them in the first place.
Like, come to me.
Like, I want the shit.
I want the shit.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
And I think also it makes your brand look real.
Yeah.
You know, yeah.
Because it's like, you can heavily moderate things, right?
But not everybody's having such a positive experience, right?
And addressing it.
Yeah.
Is really important.
Yeah.
I think that's the most important thing.
You know, we do our best to kind of stay on top of it.
I think, you know, certain platforms are harder than others.
Yeah.
Reddit is a tough crowd.
You know, it's a tough one, man.
Like anonymity does funny things to people.
Dude, people be on a keyboard like,
"Wam, wam, wam, wam!"
Oh, yeah.
Keyword warriors, you know.
But it's, you know, I guess at the end of the day, right?
It is just increasing brand's awareness too.
Yeah.
Like we're a, I don't know, five and a half,
six year old company.
We're not super widely known yet.
I don't want to say like all publicity is good publicity,
but we're getting the name out there, I guess.
Yeah.
I know.
Do you guys like utilize, and this is just a random question
I thought of, but like, do you guys utilize any sort of like
social listening tools?
And like, what do you take on?
Yeah.
So we don't.
And I think it's going to be a big area of opportunity
for us this year.
You know, historically like our marketing team
has kind of divided and conquered on social media.
And we just hired our first like fully dedicated social media person.
I think she started like two and a half weeks ago, Shadowhunter.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and it's, it's interesting.
You know, I'm not super versed in this space, honestly.
Like I couldn't even tell you like what we should use
as opposed to other things, but I'm definitely intrigued by it,
especially like with the products like ours,
that people are posting about, people are talking about it.
It is like a conversation piece in and of itself.
Like, let's see what's out there.
To me, like more information, the better.
Yeah.
I agree with you.
So, and that wasn't me like probing you in the question.
I don't know.
But so at Feastables, we also like CX with support and community.
And like we would do, I had to do these really in depth, like social reports,
just because I was like also dealing with a creator.
Like, there's a lot that happens, right?
And so like one of the things that I found, a couple of tools that I've like
utilized
was like meltwater and amplify.
Okay.
And, but whichever tool you utilize, right?
Like social listening is, I think is really important.
And it's like one of the things that I can like tell other brands now is like,
you can look at all these channels because they're coming to you,
and you can see them because they're owned, right?
But what about the people that are not,
like not coming to you, right?
Right.
Right.
Right.
And here's a really good example, not a problem, but I tweeted one time.
I was like, I need help with the Squarespace website.
And I didn't tag Squarespace on it.
I just said Squarespace in it.
And Squarespace commented on that tweet.
Wow.
So like, but that's the power of social listening, right?
Yeah.
Is like you capture the things that aren't even being tagged at you.
Exactly.
So like my favorite place to lurk is in our customer run Facebook groups.
Yeah.
I check those probably an unhealthy amount, like four or five times a day.
I'm in there just to see like, what are they saying today?
And I love it.
They're so engaged.
It's incredible.
Yeah.
I mean, well, I think what's interesting about Facebook in general is that like
that audience is just so, I mean, it's a lot of people.
It's, it's people have more time on their heads.
More time.
But really like an older demographic.
Like, you know, maybe people that are a little less tech savvy.
It's definitely an interesting subset of customers.
Which is interesting because like the Facebook group is a different segment,
an older segment, right?
Whereas like Twitter is a different segment,
Reddit is a different segment.
And you know, and it's like, how do you, how do you like leave that CX, you
know,
like amongst it all?
And I, and I think the other thing that we run into too is like a lot of social
media
teams like run, run community teams, right?
But there needs to be a lot more collaboration between like CX and, and
community.
Yeah.
And I think just a lot of more discourse around like differences in channel,
you know,
even within CX alone, right?
Like I think about the different types of customers that come via contact form
versus phones.
It's completely different, you know?
So if you're too embedded in one, like you're only getting part of the picture.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I totally part of the picture.
Yeah.
But it goes back to also the point about like analytics too.
Yeah.
It's like, yes, like utilize all these, those channels and like your CX
channels that you own,
right?
Give the analytics of it like your reviews, like any of that stuff, like your,
your retention rates, like all of that stuff, but also like give, um, get the
perspective on
the social channels too.
100% 100% right, especially for like a high consideration purchase.
Most people are looking.
And for any business in general, right?
Like if you're looking for funding at any point, the very first thing
and prospective investors going to do is go Google your company and see what
people are
saying about it.
So like you best know what they're saying about that.
Yeah.
I didn't really learn that until, I wouldn't say a lot learned that,
but I didn't really understand the importance of it until like much later.
Yeah.
I mean, brand reputation is everything.
And these days, these days got a majoring myself.
Like, you know, these days, people have so many platforms to voice opinions
that you have
to stay on top of it.
I know.
So many.
Probably too many, but you know, that's the world's where I'm right now.
I post this episode in the, in the Terracafe Reddit.
Just see what happens.
Oh, God.
We actually did that in the glossier community and it like, people were like,
loved it.
Oh my God.
Well, the glossier community is incredible.
They've historically been like the benchmark for engaged community.
It's, it's amazing just to have watched like,
glossier's whole journey.
It's like from the sidelines.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
They're doing it.
They're doing it.
Yeah.
I know.
Shout out to Katie.
She's, she's the baddie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Completely switching gears.
I would love to talk about this subject because I feel like there is not a lot
of executive
leadership in CX.
And I don't know, like, you know, you're a CXO.
I've been in a VP CX role.
Like these are very high level like roles within a company and very senior
leader,
but like you don't see them that off down.
How do you motivate your team?
Like, and it's not that you want your team to like leave, right?
But like what, like the time they spent with you on your team is like gearing
them up for the future.
So like, how do you like motivate your team and like,
and sharing with them that there is a career in CX?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it's something I've thought about a lot because I think about, you
know, the team I've
led over the years, right?
And I can think about my, my, my top two performers I've ever had on my team.
Neither of us, neither of them is still on my team.
Like one of them, shout out Madison.
I know it's just me like Madison.
Madison?
Hello?
Are you listening?
You know, Madison left to lead member experience at Sunday is, you know, she
and I worked together
for over three years and at a certain point, I was like, you need to lead your
own team.
Like you need to build your own thing.
Whereas, you know, I had another one on my team, Kailia, who was always kind of
like
the liaison between CX and marketing.
And she at some point, you know, decided I actually want to be in the marketing
space.
So I'm like, let me do everything I can in my power to help you make that
happen.
And now, you know, she's been transitioned on to TK's marketing team as a
senior manager of
community marketing for over a year.
Good for her.
You know, so I think with CX, you know, it can be positioned sometimes like, oh
, it's just an
entry level job, right? Like maybe you've never worked in the corporate space
before,
but I don't know of any other role that has the potential to have exposure to
so many
different parts of the company, right?
Yeah. Like you're of course dealing with customers.
That's just, that's the job.
But with that, like you get to learn about every facet of the company, you
learn your own
operations inside out.
Yeah.
Constantly learning from the finance team, you know, you're working with
marketing on like
what you think customers will actually respond to.
You learn so much.
And from there, like you can move up the chain within CX and get more into
people management,
or you can go into so many different specialties.
Like CX is the best possible launching pad, in my opinion.
I agree with you.
I absolutely agree with you.
I mean, if you see a lot of like junior level people come in and then like
watch them like
just skyrocket, you know?
Yeah, it's incredible.
And I think especially, you know, if they take an interest early in leveraging
customer insights,
I mean, the amount of exposure you can get, like it's just huge.
And there's also so many ways to kind of like bring in natural skill sets.
Like all of our, you know, YouTube instructional videos are filmed by Tyler on
my team.
He has a background in like video editing and production.
So we're like, great, let's use this, you know?
And that just kind of happens over and over again.
And people can grow really, really quickly if they want to.
Yeah.
I also think as CX people, we've kind of become a generalist.
Oh yeah.
But I kind of love that.
I was just having this conversation the other day.
Like I am absolutely a generalist.
Like I know how I function, right?
Like I'm really not a subject matter expert.
Like my superpower is that I can do shit really fast and learn really fast,
which makes me suited for early stage startups, you know?
But I think, you know, being a generalist within CX is huge because you have so
many different
touch points with different parts of the org that if you can like successfully
navigate that,
you'll just skyrocket.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree with you.
I think like the trajectory could go anywhere.
You know what I mean?
It's like, okay, you end up in like the queues and CX, but like you can stay
within CX.
You can go do the things or you can even go into like, I don't know, supply
chain.
Oh yeah.
Absolutely.
Like I have, you know, Olga on my team, right?
She's, you know, CX, but then she also works a couple of days a week with our
engineering team,
you know, doing like product testing and development.
I'm like, wait, what?
How did this even happen?
Who knows?
Yeah.
She's amazing.
She's a former barista and now she's just kind of like a part-time engineer.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's incredible.
She's crushing it.
Yeah.
I love that.
I love that.
I have a quick random question for you.
Love it.
What's your favorite TK coffee drink to make?
Oh.
Do I have a favorite recipe?
Yeah.
Do I have time or no time?
Uh, you have a lot of time.
Okay.
Okay.
So.
My book a lot of time.
All right.
So in life, what I typically drink, right?
Because I have a two-year-old and a one-year-old at home.
I am just dumping espresso shots over ice, right?
I just want caffeine in my bloodstream instantly when I wake up.
If it's a weekend, I'm not in a rush.
I love tandem, time and temperature, medium roast beans.
Okay.
Over ice.
I'm an ice coffee gal with frost oat milk.
So go with a little bit of cinnamon on top.
Perfect.
Oh, yeah.
So good.
Yeah.
So good.
Yeah.
I'm an ice coffee all year round person.
I have me the same.
And I love each cargo.
Um, what is your favorite piece of customer feedback that you've gotten from?
Oh.
That's like, it gets you out of bed every day.
Oh my gosh.
I like dang.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I'll be honest with you.
It's the, it's the negative customers.
I really guess you had a better.
I, I, I love nothing more than, you know, getting on a video call with somebody
who's so
frustrated, so infuriated and helping them and turning it around.
And by the end of the call, they're like, oh my God, thank you so much.
I didn't know this would work.
I'm like, yeah.
You're sure?
That's what I'm here for.
Like a certain personality behind a keyboard.
Yeah.
That's, it's so true.
It's so true.
You know, it's, it's, there's probably something deeply wrong with me.
I love escalations.
Oh God.
I don't like it.
I'll deal with escalations.
Like I will take into escalation before my team.
Yeah. Any day.
Yeah.
Because I will like protect my team.
Yes.
Like, uh, I don't, maybe because I worked in the banking industry.
Oh God.
Yeah.
I can imagine.
And like money is a very sensitive subject in anybody's life, right?
Yeah.
And so like the escalations you deal with there is like kind of like,
concatostrophic and like just kind of sucks, you know, but like,
how man, I remember, you know, dealing with like older people who got scammed.
Oh, that's so sad.
I know.
Oh no.
And don't worry.
I fixed it.
I had no doubts.
I fixed it.
Uh, but, but you know what I mean?
Like so upset.
Let's calm down.
Yeah.
Unwind this problem.
Yeah.
Figure it out, you know, like, I just like, I think that's why, like,
I think I have PTSD from escalations.
I don't blame you.
I don't blame you.
I mean, there's something like, there's something in me that absolutely loves
it.
But I also love, um, really specific product feedback.
You know, if somebody is like, I would really like to see this feature or I
would
really like you to tweak this feature.
And I'm like, oh my God, we can do that.
Like that's actually within our power.
Like maybe not right this minute, but we can totally put that in our product
roadmap.
It's so, it's so fulfilling to be able to deliver that.
Uh, God, being so close to the product.
I love it.
Yeah.
My whole career has been like a general slide to being closer and closer and
closer to the end user.
Because I love the immediate impact that you have the opportunity to make.
Like I'm all about that.
It's a rush.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
This one is completely random, but I think this is an important story to share.
So I learned something about you at She Innovates.
Oh.
Um, Kate and I both attended this conference called She Innovates, um, in New
York a couple
of weeks ago, right?
It was like a women's event in tech.
I mean, I put it on like not like I don't know what it is, but, but, um, I
learned that
you come from an executive assistant, personal assistant background.
Oh God.
It was not your role before Tara?
No.
So it was a few startups ago.
Can I tell you I was the world's worst executive assistant?
Same.
Oh my God.
Terrible.
Terrible.
Why were you so bad?
Because I didn't care.
Yeah.
I was so many steps removed from anything actually happening.
Like, you know, I supported a consultant who worked on a team who had a client
who was
a company that had a product that eventually affected an end user.
And, you know, I think like going back, I probably could have thought about it
a little
differently, but you know, I was in my early 20s.
It happens. Um, and I was the world's worst executive assistant because I've
learned about
myself, like I can be a really good worker, but if I'm not emotionally invested
, it's just
terrible.
I know.
It's really bad.
Like I wish I could go back and do it differently, but I'm just instead not
ever going to go
down that path again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was a terrible office assistant.
Yeah.
It's it was so I was so bad in it.
It's valuable to find what you're not meant for, I guess.
But I think a pivotal moment in that office assistant job was that I got fired
from it.
And then it actually, like, I wonder if she'll ever see this content because
like,
I'm pretty sure she hates me.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I wasn't fired, but I don't think they were sorry when I left.
They were like, bye.
They were like, okay, cool.
We can definitely backfill you with somebody better.
I'm like, yes, you definitely can too.
So this office assistant job, she basically was like,
yeah, you're not really good at the details.
That's interesting.
Which is ironic right now.
Yeah. Isn't that crazy?
Like, you know, I can crush, but like before, I mean, I had the same brain.
I was the same person.
I just didn't care.
And that was the only difference.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sick.
I know it's like you really got it.
Like we really got to care a lot about it for sure.
I wouldn't say I didn't care about it.
I cared about it, but I also like didn't care.
Yeah.
I was like, yeah, I just like wasn't good at it.
And then I also was a personal assistant for like an eyewear company, like a
couple, right?
Okay.
And I really liked a couple, but I hated what I was doing.
Yeah.
Like they were trying to put me through like, optician classes and I'm like,
what?
What?
Like I was like, okay.
This doesn't align.
Nice little side path.
Yeah, I know.
But I wrote, but like, take me to a warby Parker and I'll tell you about some
glasses.
Okay.
And I was like, you got the PD.
And like the distance between your pupils, like it's so weird.
Okay.
Oh, I learned something new today.
There you go.
That's it.
You know, that's it.
You got to do it.
I know you learn a little bit about a lot.
Okay.
Last question.
You ready?
I'm ready.
What is the best brand experience you've had in the last six months?
Oh, in the last six months.
Oh my gosh.
Um.
Wow.
In the last six months, that's really tough.
Okay.
Is it not the Starbucks situation?
Oh my gosh.
I know.
Don't.
I said buck not bucks.
Not golf.
I work for a coffee company and I stopped at Starbucks.
Um, my best or brand experience in the last six months.
Um, you know what?
I'll be honest with you.
I think it's been working with the team at Sienna.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, my head immediately meant to like, went to like, what have I bought
in my personal life in the last
six months?
But I, you know, I think in terms of like brand experiences, there is a lot
that's often
missed in SaaS in terms of customer experience and they're doing it right.
You know, they're doing it right.
It's a brand new one.
Yeah, it's not a brand new technology, but in this iteration it is.
You know, they're doing it right over there.
You know, the onboarding was incredible.
The support has been amazing.
You know, our account executive is like second to none.
I cannot speak more highly about what they're doing and just like,
they're availability, you know, to help and like guide us through things.
This is new territory for us.
It is for like most brands using tools like this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, for anybody listening and considering customer, Sienna and customer
integrate for
the ultimate experience.
Oh, it's so good.
It's so good.
I love it.
Kate knows she's on both of these tools.
That's true.
This is true.
All right, Kate.
I told you, man, this thing goes by so quick.
We are at the end of the road.
Oh my gosh.
That flew.
You may have to like go back to real life now.
I know.
The worst.
But tell the audience where they can find you.
Yeah.
You can find me on LinkedIn.
You can also find me at Kate@terracafe.com.
That's probably the best bet.
I check my work email way too often.
Same girl.
We'll link all contact info for both Kate and Terra Cafe in the show notes.
And I appreciate you coming on today.
Thank you so much for having me.
You're the best.
Thanks.
Well, that sounded really eager to go.
Not thanks.
Like,
- I appreciate you too. - I appreciate you with your grace.
Everybody out there, I appreciate you tuning in.
And we will talk again next week.
Toodles.
Hey, wow.
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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