Unlock the secrets of customer retention and CX mastery with our latest episode featuring expert Eli Weiss, VP Retention Advocacy at Yotpo. Join us as Eli shares his inspiring journey from facing countless rejections to becoming a trailblazer in customer experience. In this juicy episode, we're squeezing out insights on leveraging AI for sentiment analysis in the early stages of a brand's life, the vital role of inclusive and respectful interactions within the industry, and the definitive edge that kindness offers in both B2B and B2C landscapes. Eli and I also share the ripe details of our transitions across different industry roles, and how these experiences shaped our understanding of diversity and customer experience strategies.
0:00
(upbeat music)
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- My name is Jess Servion,
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and I'm super excited to bring you my new podcast,
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The Juice With Jess.
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This podcast is gonna be about everything
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in your customer's journey.
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We're talking acquisition, awareness, making that purchase,
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retaining that customer, bringing them back around,
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and everything in between.
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This is gonna be all about delivering dope brand experiences
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and talking to some really amazing people
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who are in the customer experience space,
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the marketing space, and everything in between.
0:30
(upbeat music)
0:32
- Welcome back to another episode
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with The Juice With Jess Servion.
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I'm Jess Servion.
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I don't know why I just called out my name, but here we are.
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This week, I am joined by a very special guest
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and dear friend of mine, also mentor of mine, Eli Wise.
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Eli, do you want to give the audience
0:58
a little bit of background of who you are?
1:00
- Yeah, well, first of all, thank you.
1:02
I feel like this is a long time coming.
1:04
We've been on the podcast circuit for a minute.
1:08
We haven't done anything together, so this is fun.
1:09
I did have you on the down-to-chat circuit,
1:13
so that was fun.
1:14
A little bit about me,
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I kind of just, a kid from Jersey
1:20
that went with his gut a whole bunch of times,
1:22
and luckily, it's been working all right.
1:27
If you told me 10 years ago,
1:28
I'd have any sort of meaningful job
1:31
in any meaningful company.
1:32
I think you're crazy.
1:33
I somehow grew up in a small Orthodox world,
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number two is 10.
1:40
I never graduated high school,
1:42
never went to college, did my GD in my early 20s,
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and kind of started my career in D2C.
1:51
First I had a Kickstarter brand,
1:52
which we can get into more details,
1:54
and then subsequently at brands like Ollie Pop and Jones Road,
1:57
and now I've switched onto the dark side,
2:00
and I switched to SaaS a couple of months ago
2:03
at a small company called the Yappo.
2:05
(laughs)
2:06
- Very tiny guy, you know?
2:08
- Yeah. - Yeah.
2:09
Okay, there's nothing wrong with the dark side, straight up.
2:13
Let's just start there, okay?
2:16
I just wanna say that sometimes in your career,
2:20
you switch back and forth between B2B and B2C.
2:23
My career for anybody who doesn't know this,
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yes, predominantly has been an e-commerce,
2:29
I've worked at festivals,
2:30
I've done a lot of fractional roles
2:31
with some really dope brands, Tastelude, kind of,
2:34
(laughs)
2:36
kind of Tastelude, and Fat Milk,
2:40
and very like fun CBG companies,
2:42
but my background is actually from B2B.
2:44
I used to be in SaaS,
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and now I'm also back in SaaS as well.
2:51
I am the VP of content marketing and advocacy
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at Customer with a K, right?
3:00
So point is, right?
3:02
You switch back and forth, and there's nothing wrong with it.
3:05
So let's just start there.
3:07
What, you don't have to tell me like the things that happen,
3:10
but like how has that transition been from you
3:14
to go from B2C to B2B,
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especially in e-com enablement?
3:17
- It's been interesting.
3:18
So my entire career started by me needing a job very badly.
3:23
I was dating my wife with my girlfriend at the time,
3:26
and she was double majoring, and I had no education.
3:29
I was just like, I'm an absolute loser,
3:31
I should find something to do.
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And the first job I found was an e-com,
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and the first job I found was in customer service,
3:37
and it ended up being 15 other parts of the business,
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but I started an e-com because that's where my career
3:43
started, that's what I fell into.
3:45
I was always excited about the convergence of CX and retention.
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I think the most interesting thing,
3:51
and you're catching me on a good day here,
3:52
is like the most interesting thing is kind of,
3:55
this idea that on the brand side,
3:57
everyone's so nice and respectful,
3:59
and you think that everyone in this industry
4:01
is like friends with you because you're working
4:02
at a cool brand, and then one day you switch
4:04
your Twitter profile, and all of a sudden you enter
4:07
a very, very different ecosystem
4:10
of kind of like this sharky, crazy, chaotic B2B world.
4:14
And I think what's interesting to me is,
4:17
I've always been a person that just because something
4:19
is some way, it doesn't mean you can't change that.
4:21
Most of the, you know, I have not shut up about CX
4:24
and how low the bar is since I started in this industry,
4:27
and we've made like you and I,
4:29
and everyone else in this industry has made so much change
4:34
in CX, and like due to C brands
4:35
that didn't give a shit about it six months ago,
4:37
five years ago, 10 years ago, now care,
4:39
and jumping into SaaS, you know, I was like,
4:41
"Wow, people are rude."
4:43
And somebody's like, "Yeah, dude."
4:44
They're like, "Welcome."
4:45
And I'm like, "Sir, just because you've been in this
4:47
"for five, 10, 15, 20 years, doesn't mean it's gonna be
4:50
"like this for the next 20."
4:51
And it's been my biggest challenge is like,
4:53
how can we just be kinder to one another?
4:55
Like there's enough business for everyone.
4:57
- Yeah.
4:58
- And that's like, if I had to think about my next 12 months,
5:02
it's like, yeah, super focused on YAPO,
5:04
how we build a fantastic perception around the future
5:09
and what we're trying to build,
5:10
but also how can we make this a kinder place
5:13
for everyone, not just for brands, but for providers.
5:16
Like, you know, we're providing E.com
5:19
SaaS enablement for businesses.
5:20
If they don't like it, they don't have to be a customer.
5:22
If they do, we'll make it a great place to be.
5:25
So I'm like a weird breath of fresh air
5:27
that everyone wants to spit out.
5:29
- Yeah.
5:30
I have a lot of thoughts there.
5:31
I mean, I think the biggest thing is like, okay,
5:34
so I said like, I've been in B2B
5:36
and then I came to B2C and then like I'm back to B2B,
5:38
but I'm still in B2C.
5:39
Like honestly, I'm like all over the place.
5:42
I still maintain the operator in Wiffer E.com brands.
5:45
I'm still doing like these things for customer.
5:48
But my point is that it's like,
5:50
there's nothing wrong with CX leaders
5:51
for us to flip back and forth.
5:53
There's like absolutely nothing wrong with it.
5:55
But I think that, and I want to get your opinion on this,
5:58
do you think that we're like,
5:59
we want to make the space a big safer
6:01
and you know, less assholes, like all this stuff
6:05
because we're CX leaders and like we're empathetic.
6:08
And it's like our.
6:09
- It's possible.
6:10
I mean, I think something that comes up over and over and over
6:13
is you know, when I started in the space,
6:15
which is like nine, 10 years ago,
6:17
D2C Twitter was just growth guys.
6:20
And it was just growth guys.
6:21
And I think we still suffer tremendously
6:24
as an industry of not enough diversity.
6:27
Tremendously. - Absolutely.
6:28
- Big time. - Absolutely.
6:30
They're like, you do not know how many events
6:33
that I go to that is just predominantly men
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and not enough people of color, not enough women at them.
6:43
Like I went to a dinner last night
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that was literally 98% men and 2% women.
6:49
And I was part of that 2%.
6:51
- This and this breeds this chaotic insane behavior
6:55
of you know, we see misogynistic outlandish behavior,
6:59
which is basically this idea that this started as a,
7:02
as a frat house of a bunch of,
7:05
a bunch of dudes running growth marketing.
7:07
And I think in order for us, yes, it has to do with,
7:10
I'm a softy.
7:11
I like when people are nice, like sue me.
7:13
Like I like when people are nice to me.
7:14
And it's like, oh, you're not raw enough
7:17
what to sell SMS software?
7:19
Like we're just slinging SaaS.
7:21
We're just trying to help brands.
7:22
Like I've been on the brand side.
7:23
I'm trying to help brands like myself.
7:25
Like people like myself, I'm trying to help you market better.
7:28
I'm trying to help you retain your customers better.
7:30
You don't have to like the tool, but you do have to be nice.
7:33
- Yeah. - And I can force you to,
7:34
but I think the wider we make this tent,
7:36
the more alternative voices we bring in,
7:40
the more diverse the events we create are,
7:42
the one dinner I ever hosted,
7:44
I was like, I'm not coming to this dinner
7:45
unless we have 50 plus percent women.
7:47
Like, and yes, we can do a lot better.
7:51
But I think yes, it has to do with the fact that we're CX,
7:53
but it's also the DNA of a lot of this industry
7:56
has to change meaningfully over the next.
7:59
- No, absolutely.
8:00
And I think, and to be honest with you,
8:02
I don't think it's just us.
8:04
I think it's us voicing this
8:06
and actually talking about these things.
8:08
So we can make that change, right?
8:10
Like, I'm doubling down this year on more women's events.
8:13
Like, I'm gonna be posting a women's event
8:16
with Nicole from Recharge and Dylan, Yapo, right?
8:20
That's going to be enabling women in the commerce space,
8:25
whether you're B2B or B2C, it doesn't matter, right?
8:28
And I think that not just like women doing this,
8:32
we also need more men to do this for women
8:34
and to show up for us.
8:37
When there's something that's nasty on the internet,
8:39
on a Twitter thread and somebody's newsletter,
8:42
more men need to show up to the plate.
8:44
- I fully agree.
8:46
On the first part, please, I know you're already working
8:50
with Dylan who's fantastic, but Eli, on the Yapo side,
8:54
like we all want, we all share the same vision
8:57
around creating events that are different
8:59
and more meaningful in a lot of different ways.
9:02
So we'll talk afterwards about like,
9:04
how can we do more of this together?
9:05
'Cause we're on the same page here.
9:07
It's like we've seen the same thing over and over and over.
9:09
And if we want to shift culturally,
9:12
there's a lot of change that has to happen.
9:15
But six weeks in, I'm questioning daily.
9:20
I'm like, am I a moron?
9:21
Or are people really obnoxious for no reason?
9:24
- No.
9:25
I mean, dude, absolutely.
9:26
Like the last point I'll make for the audience
9:29
and we'll transition to more like CX and retention things.
9:33
But Eli and I right now are on a little bit of our crusade.
9:38
The last thing that I will say is like,
9:39
I've also experienced that not even just like in
9:44
across B2B, like multiple companies I have experienced
9:48
where salespeople or people internally,
9:52
they like are slanging the product itself,
9:56
but they don't actually understand what the customer needs.
9:59
And like that's the point of these advocacy roles.
10:02
That's the point of this, of the roles that Eli and I
10:05
are doing within customer and YAPO
10:07
is not only for the external outfacing of understanding
10:11
like, hey, this tool is really dope
10:12
and like you really should use it
10:13
and gassing up like the companies that we work for,
10:16
but also for advocacy within the company itself.
10:19
Because in order to sell your product,
10:21
it doesn't matter if you're an SMS tool, a CRM tool
10:24
or I don't know man, like a pop up tool, right?
10:27
Your core of your problem,
10:29
it should always be what the customer wants and needs.
10:32
So if you're selling something,
10:33
if you're in the customer's success side,
10:35
you're supporting it, you, yes, need to protect the company,
10:39
but you also need to understand
10:40
that you are enabling your customer to do better.
10:43
So what does my customer ultimately want all the time?
10:47
And like, and again, again, the purpose of us
10:50
on our crusade for multiple different things,
10:53
you know, women like more diversity,
10:57
but also at the core of it all,
10:58
it's for customers and that tool
11:02
to sling to that customer in a more meaningful way.
11:06
- Well, no, the last few things I'll say on this
11:09
is number one, a lot of this chaos started
11:12
because brand, you know, SaaS companies
11:15
were competing against the same 10 customers,
11:17
but instead of talking about the customer's problem,
11:19
they were talking about here's why X sucks.
11:22
And they were taking a shit on other companies.
11:25
And part of my motivation here and yours as well
11:28
is how can we shift again to your point,
11:29
talk more about customers.
11:31
And that will create a space
11:32
where we're not taking a shit on other providers.
11:34
We're saying here's why yup,
11:36
how can help solve your problems?
11:37
If you want to go with Sendlane, PostScript, attentive,
11:41
- Great. - Totally fine.
11:43
Totally, totally fine.
11:44
By shifting sales that way,
11:46
we're creating a space that's more meaningful for,
11:48
yeah, there are certain customers that are great for you,
11:50
certain that are best for us.
11:51
There's enough, like, let's think about this
11:53
in a wider, more,
11:58
what's the word for it?
11:59
And like, more wider way where we understand
12:02
that there's enough for everyone.
12:04
And I think that's probably phase one of like,
12:06
how can we be more kind to one another
12:08
and we can compete, but we're both competing
12:11
in a way that we want customers
12:12
to have a better relationship with their customers.
12:15
Right, yeah, absolutely.
12:17
I mean, absolutely.
12:18
And yeah, so as much as like,
12:21
these tools are enabling for your customer
12:24
or for whatever your mission is for the company.
12:27
Also, there has to be a piece of the enablement internally
12:31
and the advocacy for the customer.
12:34
Hence why our roles have come up in the space.
12:37
And the last point, which actually will lead me
12:40
to my next piece of this,
12:42
is it's all about community building
12:45
that we're doing here too.
12:47
So it's not just about like, okay,
12:49
we're gonna go and like, do these events
12:51
or we're gonna do these things.
12:52
It's also community building internally.
12:54
It's at events, it's at conferences,
12:56
it's at like digital spaces.
12:59
And one of the things that I wanna get to is Eli,
13:04
you started a Discord, a CX Discord
13:06
that has how many members now?
13:07
- A bunch, right?
13:08
- A bunch, it's over a thousand.
13:10
I'm a moderator.
13:11
- Yeah, 1200.
13:12
1200.
13:13
- Yeah, it's gotta be, right?
13:14
But the cool thing about this Discord in particular
13:17
is one of the things that like Eli and I met a long time ago
13:22
and we like had a conversation and we were like,
13:24
there's no space for like D2C people, right?
13:26
And then he decided to like build this Discord
13:29
and now it's has like 1200 plus.
13:31
I'm a moderator in it,
13:33
but the cool thing about this is that there is B2B
13:36
and B2C in this community
13:38
and everybody solving problems together, right?
13:41
And I think that that's really cool.
13:44
Like that's the beginning of like building community
13:47
amongst everybody.
13:49
- So to your point,
13:50
like the beauty of moderation and you know,
13:55
there's a lot of noise around, you know, how,
13:59
it's a public square.
13:59
You can say whatever you want.
14:01
Yes, but not in our Discord.
14:04
And we try very hard, again, I'm a softie.
14:08
I like having places that everyone feels safe in.
14:12
And it was really important, you know,
14:14
the few rules that we set up when we created this Discord,
14:16
like I literally just went on Discord,
14:18
I'm like, start Discord, never done this,
14:20
but okay, I reached out to a couple of people like,
14:22
you know, and said, hey, can you hop in
14:24
as help me moderate this and build this?
14:26
And all of a sudden, again, it's like 1200 CX leaders
14:29
and then CX kind of like adjacent B2B, et cetera.
14:32
And the few rules were number one, no slinging.
14:36
We're not here to sell, we're here to help.
14:38
Again, like if your tool solves a perfect problem,
14:41
that's okay, but no slinging.
14:43
And number two, be kind.
14:44
Like we don't allow assholes.
14:46
And I think that that set up a framework
14:49
and like bringing in good people and bringing nice people
14:52
and the amount of jobs that I've helped,
14:54
I'm sure you've helped people find through this Discord
14:56
alone, like we have a job board.
14:58
We've probably placed like 20 or 30 CX leaders
15:00
at fantastic companies, Brightland,
15:02
you know, like some of these like incredible Mofoku,
15:06
like these incredible brands
15:07
were able to place people from this Discord,
15:10
but also a space where like, I created this
15:13
because I hate leaving my house.
15:15
I want to create a network without ever leaving my house.
15:17
And it's like, how do I make a space
15:18
where people know who I am?
15:20
And I'll create more opportunity for myself
15:22
and for everyone else without having to go to events
15:24
every night.
15:25
And it did turn into like, we went axe throwing.
15:28
- Oh yeah, we got it. - Couple of weeks ago, right?
15:30
So it's been-- - Shout out to customer
15:32
and flip CX and pod pitch and Ciena.
15:35
- Ciena, so it's been meaningful, right?
15:37
To like be able to do this IRL too,
15:38
but creating a space with like intentionality
15:42
and kindness is taken for granted, but is super meaningful.
15:47
- Yeah, no absolutely.
15:49
Well, okay, let's switch gears.
15:51
Let's talk about CX and retention.
15:53
So in particular with this Discord, right?
15:55
Like there's so many individuals on this.
15:57
There's so many like tools.
15:59
There's so many brands.
16:00
And I'm curious from you,
16:02
have you like bringing in these individuals into this space
16:07
and building it as much and like in being like a CX
16:10
and retention guru,
16:12
did have you individually learned anything
16:15
that has changed your retention strategy
16:18
from like what stands out to you
16:20
from any of those individuals in the Discord?
16:23
- Yeah, well, first of all, very kind.
16:25
I don't feel like a guru at all.
16:27
I feel like I've learned more in the last 10 years than most.
16:32
I think that something that I've been challenged
16:35
a lot in my career is imposter syndrome
16:37
and feeling like I'm a one trick pony.
16:39
Like, oh, you've only done X
16:40
or you can only do Y,
16:42
which kind of got me to this quarter life crisis
16:45
of jumping into a different,
16:47
completely tearing down everything I've built
16:48
and starting again in a, well,
16:50
somewhat argue otherwise, but theoretically.
16:53
And something I've learned over the last 10 years
16:55
is how shockingly it's whatever industry you're in,
16:59
it's always the same, right?
17:00
It's always like deeply understand
17:02
who your customers are, mission number one.
17:04
Mission number two, deeply understand what motivates
17:06
and what they're excited about.
17:07
Mission number three is try to solve problems.
17:09
I think most brands, especially founders,
17:12
like I find that most founders I talk to
17:14
have a giant ego and maybe you need that
17:16
in order to create a large brand,
17:19
but they feel so strongly about like,
17:22
no, I'm solving this problem.
17:23
And then you're like, wait, are you sure
17:25
that's a problem?
17:26
They're like, well, we have product market fit.
17:27
Okay, but cool, but do people understand
17:28
the problem the same way you do?
17:30
Or are they just feeling like this solves
17:31
a different problem that you don't completely get?
17:34
So I've learned that is that like it takes humility
17:37
and it takes talking to customers,
17:38
creating a space where customers can actually
17:40
provide feedback and that it's not much different.
17:43
Like whether you're in, like we have people
17:45
on the Discord that are selling like,
17:46
grass seed and people that are selling like auto parts
17:52
and people that are in food and beverage
17:54
and people that are slinging sass.
17:56
And we're all solving the same problem.
17:58
We're like trying to understand their customers'
18:01
values needs and solving it, which sounds very elementary,
18:04
but I guess I'm not a guru, you see him learn.
18:07
- You are a guru.
18:08
Listen, you are a guru and I think that,
18:10
I mean, I've personally learned a lot from you.
18:12
Like me switching from B2B into B2C,
18:15
like you were literally my mentor.
18:17
You were the first like Nick Sharma intro'd me to you
18:22
and I was such a huge fan of like your work, right?
18:25
And even though I might have like years of experience already,
18:29
I didn't have B2C experience and I think it was really
18:33
important for me to like learn specifically in B2C.
18:36
I do, and so like you are guru, I think that like,
18:39
thank you for being a mentor to me and me being,
18:42
like a mentee to you.
18:43
But I think you make a very valid point.
18:48
At the end of the day,
18:48
like when you look at customer experience
18:50
and you look at retention, right?
18:52
The strategies all differ by the audience
18:55
because your customer is like a different customer,
18:58
might have different needs, might have different ones.
19:01
But the core of everything that you're doing
19:04
is you have your pillars and it's all the same.
19:07
It's all the same, whether you're on the B2B side
19:09
or the B2C side, right?
19:10
Whether it's like let's just use a B2B to B2C, right?
19:14
B2B is very focused on what is that user's journey?
19:18
Where's the friction in that journey?
19:20
And how do I get this user to adopt my product
19:23
without friction, right?
19:24
And then if you look at B2C,
19:26
it's the same thing in a way, right?
19:28
Like yes, I might have this product
19:30
and I have this beautiful like brand logo on it,
19:34
colors like whatever it is, right?
19:36
That is a user journey.
19:37
If somebody picking up, I'm like, pretend this is a cup, okay?
19:40
Like if I'm looking at this cup
19:43
and I'm saying like, oh, this cup is really beautiful,
19:47
it has this very like particular things
19:49
in a part of this cup,
19:51
that is a journey within that product, right?
19:55
And then you take it to the website.
19:57
Okay, how do you build brand loyalty?
19:58
A website has a user's journey,
20:00
has an entire experience between the awareness,
20:04
to making the purchase, to in the checkout
20:07
and then post purchase.
20:08
These are all user journeys
20:10
that are also very similar to B2B.
20:12
So my point is, right?
20:13
B2B, B2C, no matter what kind of customer experience
20:17
or retention plan that you're looking at,
20:18
your pillars are all the same.
20:20
It just differs by the audience.
20:22
And I think what's really important,
20:24
going back to the mentor mentee space,
20:26
is that we don't all have the answers.
20:29
We don't all have the answers.
20:30
And I think that we really,
20:31
whether no matter which space you're on,
20:34
you should be looking outside of yourself
20:35
and looking at other brands and like,
20:38
oh, that's a really dope experience.
20:40
Okay, maybe I can incorporate that,
20:41
something into my brand experience.
20:44
Or maybe it's even like post script, for instance,
20:47
has a really awesome customer service
20:51
and success program.
20:52
They're really good at being brand strategist alongside you.
20:56
They are B2B to B2C company, right?
20:59
Or I'm sorry, a e-common enablement company, right?
21:03
That, but their customer experience journey
21:05
is very service oriented, very much being a strategist.
21:08
Why couldn't you apply being a strategist
21:11
to your, I don't know, soda brand, right?
21:14
Like you can apply those principles into your sport.
21:18
My point is, my point is, is that it's net,
21:21
like we all have our different strategies,
21:23
we all have our different retention plans as well,
21:26
but like at the core of it,
21:27
our customers are all the same.
21:28
And there's no necessarily like copying of one another.
21:32
It's just let's all be kind to each other
21:35
and learn from each other.
21:36
That is my point.
21:37
I landed the plane on my tangent.
21:40
(laughs)
21:41
I don't know, what do you think, Eli?
21:42
- No, I think that we just have to be really, really clear
21:46
that we start with the customer.
21:48
We start with understanding the customer's problems
21:51
and we try to build solutions in a meaningful way.
21:54
And the best experience slash product slash,
21:58
what have you will win?
22:00
And that's that.
22:02
I think it's like a cross every, across every industry.
22:05
Yeah.
22:06
- Yeah.
22:07
Okay.
22:08
So one question that I have for you though.
22:10
So beyond birthdays and the obvious ways of surprising
22:16
and delighting your customer and like, you know,
22:19
giving like retaining them in those like manners,
22:22
what do you think are unique ways to leverage data
22:25
in personalizing your customer experience?
22:28
'Cause now we're on the BV.
22:29
So we got to, we got to be talking about data.
22:31
- Yeah.
22:32
Yeah.
22:33
I mean, I love the question and something that I've been
22:36
talking about for a while.
22:38
I remember being asked this in maybe 2020 on a podcast
22:41
was like, what is the next billion dollar idea?
22:43
I think it was Caitlin on the customer whisper.
22:46
It was like, what's the next billion dollar idea in e-commerce?
22:48
And I think it's this exact idea that we have so much
22:52
customer data, but we do nothing with it.
22:55
Like birthdays is like, oh, we're asking you your birthday.
22:57
We're sending you something cute.
22:58
But what's more meaningful than that is understanding
23:01
every move the customer made,
23:02
something that we see SaaS do well on like ABM
23:06
for the SaaS folks is like, you know, like we know exactly
23:08
which landing page they hit and like,
23:10
if they took a demo, if they didn't take a demo
23:12
and we're so meticulous about walking customers
23:14
through this funnel, and I think from a D2C perspective,
23:17
we have so much data.
23:19
So for example, we know if the customer left a positive
23:23
review or a negative review, we know if they're tier X
23:26
on the loyalty program, we know if they're subscribed
23:29
to email SMS, we know what they've purchased
23:30
on the past, we know if they're subscribed to a product
23:34
with your subscription.
23:35
So like, we have all these data points on their behavior,
23:38
but we also, if we ask if we use Octane or we,
23:41
whatever survey, we understand so many data points
23:43
about the customer, both from behavior
23:45
and from what they like in this, like,
23:47
and then even double clicking into that,
23:49
we know what emails they opened, we know what they clicked.
23:52
Right, so we have such a detailed buyer journey,
23:54
we do nothing with it.
23:55
Most brands just don't scratch the surface.
23:57
The biggest problem, right, and this was like,
23:59
this is not a long wind of Yup-Hoe pitch,
24:01
but this is how I ended up at Yup-Hoe.
24:03
The biggest problem is that there's nothing,
24:04
there's no meaningful way to accelerate usage on that data.
24:07
Right, there's no meaningful way where you can say like,
24:09
okay, take a cut, you can create 900 segments
24:12
and you can create custom properties in Play-Vio
24:14
that pull from all different places,
24:16
but to be able to have all that thing in one place
24:18
and talk to AI and say, hey, sending this campaign,
24:22
it's about our new soda that's launching next week,
24:25
give me an idea of the 10 most meaningful segments
24:28
and go as detailed as you possibly can.
24:29
Imagine querying that data with like a chat GBT in overlay
24:33
and saying like, make the 10 most meaningful segments,
24:36
I don't wanna send to more than 10,000 people,
24:38
I want you to get to the 10,000 people
24:40
that you think will make the purchase next.
24:42
And that is basically saying like,
24:43
skip 900 of the emails you would have sent
24:47
and just send 100 to the perfect customer
24:50
with the right message at the right time,
24:52
that is every retention person/customer experience
24:54
person's dream and there's zero way to do that today
24:58
because A, you don't have all the data in one place,
25:00
B, you don't have an overlay that can do that for you.
25:03
I think that this is my very long-winded reason
25:07
as to why I ended up on the SAS side
25:09
because I think this is the biggest opportunity to come
25:11
but it's also a reason why people spend way too much money
25:15
on SMS, right?
25:16
So email, it's like, yeah, whether you're paying
25:19
for the list or you're paying for whatever,
25:20
like you're not really paying per email you send
25:22
most of the time with most providers.
25:24
With some you do, some you don't, but with SMS,
25:28
there's not a single provider, you're not paying per SMS.
25:30
And imagine I told you, you can send 10% of the messages
25:33
and make the same revenue because we know
25:35
who's gonna click and purchase.
25:36
- Yeah.
25:37
And so this is the YAPO tool,
25:39
like are they utilizing like AI for this?
25:41
- So this is like, this is the current slash six
25:45
to 12 months of YAPO, whereas like, you know,
25:47
yes, they have Taylor, which is like AI querying
25:51
when you build segmentation on email SMS.
25:54
The Taylor is, you're gonna see it across multiple different
25:58
portions of the YAPO experience, but I think also the overlay
26:03
of like having one place that you can query all the data.
26:06
So what, you know, it's currently a retention dashboard.
26:08
It'll continue to be this retention platform
26:11
where you can query all the data.
26:13
And again, it's like everything else here is noise.
26:15
You can choose whoever you want to sling.
26:17
It's just SMS, it doesn't matter.
26:19
You can use whoever you want for email.
26:21
I don't care.
26:22
- Yeah.
26:23
- And to be quite frank, almost nobody cares.
26:25
Who you like your providers on tech doesn't say anything
26:28
about you.
26:29
- Yeah.
26:29
- My goal and YAPO's goal, and I'm speaking for myself here.
26:32
So I'll remove the YAPO's goal.
26:33
My goal is to create the most incredible seamless experience
26:37
for retention operators to be able to sling the correct
26:40
messages to the right person and deeply understand action
26:43
before the customer even knows their action.
26:46
- Yeah.
26:47
- So that it feels, imagine you walk into a store
26:49
and they're like, just not to be really, really weird,
26:52
but I know exactly what you want today.
26:53
So let me just take you there.
26:55
- Yeah.
26:55
- And not have to drive you through 500 different emails
26:58
cross selling every tool in the universe.
27:00
Something we've done very basic at Jones was we said,
27:02
"We know that if you purchase X with like an 80 something
27:06
percent likelihood, you're probably going to purchase Y.
27:09
So why send you through 900 emails?
27:11
Let's just take you exactly where we know
27:13
you're probably going to go.
27:14
- Yeah.
27:14
- Imagine that at scale.
27:15
- Yeah.
27:16
- And again, I'd love for everyone to build this.
27:19
- Yeah.
27:20
- This is not like a, this is what I believe is the future
27:23
of retention.
27:24
- Yeah.
27:25
- And I like that world.
27:26
- Yeah.
27:26
- And Google is telling us, yeah, you're kind of going
27:29
in that direction with the changes.
27:31
Yahoo saying like, yeah, you're kind of, we're over spamming.
27:33
Get a couple of unsubs and you're on the shit list.
27:36
And as email marketers, we're still like, no, no, no,
27:38
full send, sling.
27:39
- I hate the full send, like stop full sending.
27:42
Hot take, my friends, just to reiterate in my own words,
27:46
right?
27:47
It's the same hot take.
27:48
I'm going to be honest with you.
27:49
Segment your audience.
27:50
For the love of God, please segment your audience.
27:53
Stop spamming every email person.
27:56
Stop spamming every SMS person.
27:59
Save yourself some money.
28:00
Save your customer experience because if you're
28:03
continuously spamming the same people,
28:05
they will unsubscribe.
28:07
That's my hot take.
28:09
Leading to this, actually, this,
28:11
what's really interesting about Eli mentioning this,
28:16
this personalization is this is a very much a hot take
28:20
from you because a couple of years ago,
28:22
you were not about the AI life.
28:24
You were not about the AI life.
28:26
It was like very scary.
28:27
And I think we can jointly say this now, right?
28:32
AI is not coming for your fucking job.
28:34
AI is not coming for your fucking job.
28:35
AI is going to make your life easier.
28:37
And if we need to get to a level of personalization
28:41
and continuously personalizing your users experience
28:44
so that they can want to keep purchasing your product,
28:47
adopt your features, whatever it is,
28:50
we need to embrace it and utilize it
28:53
for our retention plans, our customer experience plans,
28:57
customer success, sales plans, whatever plans it is,
29:00
we need to utilize that personalization
29:02
because you cannot scale without the ability
29:06
of utilizing tech and tools to do so.
29:09
100%.
29:10
I'm going to sit here today and say that I'm always
29:14
excited and willing and able to be proven wrong
29:16
at almost everything, as you know.
29:18
And AI is one of the many things that UI has been completely,
29:21
completely wrong on some of the aspects of.
29:24
And I think that to your point,
29:25
like I dream about,
29:29
this sounds kind of outrageous,
29:31
me dreaming about a day in time or a vision.
29:34
But basically this, the beauty of e-com
29:39
when it comes to messaging is imagine
29:40
Wayfair didn't send you 30 emails.
29:42
Yes.
29:43
I just told you exactly what you wanted.
29:45
Right?
29:46
But imagine getting an email about like,
29:49
we know that you bought this table.
29:51
People that bought this table bought one of these three chairs
29:54
with a 96% accuracy.
29:56
Just save me all the time.
29:58
But no, we want to send you 400 different emails
30:01
'cause we hope that you'll buy other things.
30:02
Now, even though the data's telling us otherwise,
30:04
the data's saying like,
30:05
there's less than 1% chance that you're going to buy
30:07
all the random shit thrown your way.
30:09
I just, I think that would be like a fun future for e-com.
30:12
And again, it would be a fun future for tools as well
30:15
because now they can create an ecosystem
30:18
where the tools give a higher ROI with a lower cost.
30:20
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31:19
- I actually have a couple of questions in regards to AI,
31:23
but I wanna ask you this one first.
31:25
So we're talking a lot about data
31:27
and we're talking a lot about scaling
31:29
and like, okay, you have all this information,
31:31
but what if you're a brand that, or even a company,
31:35
like a SaaS company that's just starting out,
31:38
like your bootstrapped or maybe you were just like
31:40
in pre-seed, seed stages, like whatever,
31:44
and you don't have a lot of data about your customer.
31:46
Where do you see, not just in email marketing,
31:49
but where do you see AI being utilized
31:52
in the awareness piece of it?
31:53
- I'm probably the least poised answer
31:58
of this question in a meaningful way.
31:59
- It's fine.
32:00
- We're just talking.
32:01
- So I might skip.
32:02
- It's like literally just came up.
32:04
- I might skip.
32:04
I honestly don't know, I'm curious your point of view.
32:06
- Yeah.
32:07
I would love to see AI.
32:09
Well, one of the places that I've used it,
32:11
and this will actually, this is my next question for you,
32:13
one of the places that I've utilized AI
32:15
is actually in like sentiment analysis on social channels,
32:18
but less on the awareness piece, right?
32:21
So I am really interested to see like what the transitions
32:25
will be, like we don't have the answers for this straight up.
32:27
We don't have the answers for this,
32:28
but I'm interested to see what like the transitions will be
32:31
like, okay, well, we're talking about personalized agent,
32:33
your customer's experience and retention
32:35
and all of these things, but where will AI come into play
32:39
in the awareness and acquisition piece
32:41
and like social specifically, right?
32:43
Like how do you bridge the gap between social channels
32:47
into your website or wherever it is
32:50
that you want your journey to be or in your list, right?
32:53
Like I haven't seen a lot of innovation in that.
32:55
And like I'm really interested to see like how that,
32:58
what I've have seen is like bots on social channels
33:01
of like comment, I don't know, exercise.
33:04
And then like that influencers like sending you a plan
33:09
that I think that's really interesting.
33:10
But how do you, it'll be, I guess in my perfect world,
33:14
I would like to see some sort of AI,
33:15
like doing some sort of like bot situation
33:19
and building into lists.
33:21
- I think that's smart.
33:22
I think it's, I think AI is an interesting way to scale
33:27
something that already works, right?
33:28
Like the comment exercise and get whatever,
33:30
create your own plan, like that's super interesting.
33:32
I think that we've viewed AI as like either
33:35
to help one problem or help a different problem.
33:39
And to your point, like we haven't created a cohesive,
33:40
like here's how AI can help a customer go
33:42
through their entire journey with you as a brand.
33:45
In general, I'm very bullish on AI or tools
33:49
that can kind of connect dots.
33:52
- Yeah.
33:53
- I think the customer journey now is so siloed and broken
33:56
that I think if there's, it's almost like,
33:58
I dream about hand holding, like I just want,
34:01
like the wonderment/moloma post purchase
34:04
and then connect that to your journey pre-purchase
34:07
and the CX questions you had and kind of,
34:10
I would love a tool that can create, like,
34:13
I've seen a lot of things in SAS that were like,
34:15
"Oh, this is super interesting.
34:16
I wonder what that looks like in D2C."
34:18
So something that I've seen in SAS is kind of like
34:20
executive summaries where I can just grab a page
34:22
and learn everything about this account.
34:24
Like when they joined Yappo, if they churned Yappo,
34:27
did they have any experiences they didn't like with us
34:30
in an effort to try to better understand
34:31
what people love and hate?
34:32
I know what I hated about Yappo, like I've churned Yappo,
34:36
I know what I hated, but I'm always curious to see,
34:38
like, how can we make this experience better?
34:40
And I was like, what about an exec summary on customers
34:44
where I can just jump in and see like a AI synopsis of like,
34:49
it's almost like a one paragraph, like,
34:52
here's where they were, here's where they came from,
34:53
here's what they loved, here's what they hated,
34:55
they had four issues in the past,
34:57
each one was resolved in a meaningful way.
35:00
If they're pissed off, this is what they'd be pissed off
35:02
about and it's almost like, yeah, you're probably now having
35:04
like a CX associate jot that down and pass it along
35:07
to a director, but I think that's also like a fun way.
35:10
Any kind of sentiment that's detailed is fun.
35:14
And then kind of take that and we've seen a bunch of tools
35:18
that you can kind of like take that and tell you en masse,
35:22
like here are the five things that people love
35:25
or hate about your brands, like the Chattermel,
35:28
the Cinquely, all that stuff.
35:29
But yeah, that's on the AI.
35:32
Look at me talking about AI.
35:33
- I know, it's really weird.
35:35
Like our conversations literally used to just be like,
35:37
I'll leave pop.
35:39
Wait, we didn't even get into like your Kickstarter
35:41
to your role. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
35:44
- But yeah, no, I think what's really interesting
35:47
about AI, so like I told you like,
35:49
I wanted to get your perspective of like,
35:51
you know, the social awareness pieces of it,
35:54
but really I think what's interesting is,
35:58
you know, where I'd like to see more doubling down
35:59
is that sentiment analysis, because like what I do,
36:02
a lot of it for like my fractional clients
36:04
or like project based like CX things that I'm doing,
36:07
I build out like a really scrappy like Google Sheets
36:10
or Excel doc, right?
36:12
That takes like the analysis of like all of your tickets,
36:16
all of your CSAT, MPS, like any sort of like serving
36:19
touch points and like query it in like these Google Sheets
36:24
which eventually will run out, right?
36:26
But the point is though is that where I would like to see
36:32
more AI doubling down is that sentiment analysis 100%
36:37
and like an easier way to scale it,
36:39
but across multiple channels,
36:41
I actually posted this on LinkedIn today
36:43
about churn rate and retention rate
36:46
and then getting down to like a sentiment rate.
36:50
Like we don't have in the industry as a whole,
36:53
we do not have a sentiment score.
36:56
Think about it.
36:56
You have a sentiment score on your channels,
36:59
but you don't have a sentiment score on like one overall
37:04
cent, like customer sentiment, right?
37:06
- It's like NPS just like supercharged with AI.
37:09
- Supercharged with AI.
37:10
That's what I'm thinking, you know?
37:12
And then something I can like scrub like your Twitter feed
37:15
or your LinkedIn or all these places,
37:16
'cause this is all the stuff I used to do at Feastables.
37:18
Like you would literally have to manually
37:20
and they still do, God bless my CX-tam,
37:24
but they still literally go through tweet by tweet.
37:28
And like if the AI doesn't pick it up like accurately
37:32
and leaves it as like neutral sentiment,
37:35
then they're like manually tagging that a negative
37:37
or a neutral or positive.
37:39
Like I think there's a lot of advancements
37:41
that need to like still happen with it.
37:43
Anyway, I'm on a tangent, I apologize.
37:45
One question I do have since we're on this AI subject
37:48
and this is where we went.
37:51
Eli is on the AI side now.
37:54
Okay, let's switch to chatbots
37:57
'cause this is the ultimate fucking hot take for Eli.
38:02
When I met you, you fucking hated them.
38:06
And I was like, let's go, let's chatbot this,
38:10
let's automate as much as possible.
38:11
Where's your stance now?
38:13
- Would you hate me if it hasn't changed much?
38:16
- No, but I would love to get into the course of it.
38:18
- No, I think that AI has gotten better.
38:23
I think that GPT, whatever we're up to for.
38:28
- I call it chat GPT sometimes.
38:30
- Yeah, I've gotten a lot of people that call it that.
38:33
And I stopped fixing it 'cause I'm like,
38:35
it's not gonna keep me up at night.
38:36
But I think it's gotten meaningfully better.
38:39
I think the other important thing that's changed
38:43
is the ingesting of much more data more quickly.
38:47
So it's not just answering based on this one conversation,
38:51
it's answering based on the way that you've answered
38:53
historical but also on the 500 or 5,000 other conversations
38:57
that have come through.
38:58
And we've seen like CX tools or chatbot tools
39:01
that ingest much wider groups of information,
39:04
which I think just makes for a better experience.
39:06
I'm ultimately about whatever is the more meaningful
39:10
and scalable, thoughtful experience.
39:14
And I think AI has come a long way.
39:15
It's like my politically charged answer here.
39:17
(laughing)
39:19
- Right.
39:21
- Well, I mean, my opinion is that I think--
39:24
- They fucking rock.
39:25
- I love AI, I love chatbots.
39:28
Which I do, okay?
39:30
Like I've dealt with mass scale amount of tickets
39:34
that were literally I love Mr. Beast.
39:36
And like you want to engage with those conversations,
39:39
but it's like, how do you engage with those conversations?
39:41
It is so tough, right?
39:43
And like, I need to keep my agents free and clear
39:46
so they can actually do something
39:47
in the humanized experience, right?
39:49
- I saw Jess wearing a t-shirt the other day.
39:50
They said, I love chatbot.
39:52
- I love chatbot.
39:54
I love customers' chatbot.
39:55
- Yeah.
39:57
- So, okay, one, the portion of this,
40:00
so the hot take of it,
40:02
is that I think what we have seen with chatbots previously
40:06
is that they're very intent based.
40:08
Choose X to get to X information,
40:11
but not action based, right?
40:14
And I think that's where like,
40:16
the advancements truly will be.
40:17
I don't think it's coming
40:19
for your customer support agent's job.
40:21
Straight up, I don't think it's coming
40:23
for your support agent's jobs,
40:24
because you're still gonna need to humanize that experience
40:28
no matter what.
40:28
Like, I think that it can get to a point of actioning,
40:33
actually very like tier one stuff.
40:36
Like for instance, like a case study
40:37
that I was reading about is customer with sweet green.
40:41
When sweet greens app came out,
40:43
God bless my friend Jen for running that,
40:46
the CX team at Sweet Green.
40:48
When their app came out,
40:50
they were getting a lot of cancellation requests, right?
40:53
And so what happened was customer helped
40:55
develop out of workflow,
40:57
utilizing chatbots, AI,
40:59
to go through the conversations
41:01
and take action on the cancellations.
41:03
Those are very tier one things, right?
41:07
That then allow the Sweet Green team
41:09
to have the availability to handle
41:11
like truly humanized experiences, right?
41:14
Like things that like they need help with.
41:17
So I think one AI in chatbots
41:19
is not going to come for the support agent's jobs.
41:23
I think if anything,
41:24
and this will lead to my next question,
41:26
if anything, it will allow your support agents
41:30
to have more time to deliver a humanized experience,
41:33
but also the availability to level themselves up
41:37
in other skills that pertain to retention
41:41
or leveling themselves up in like customer experience.
41:44
And so, you know, maybe it's going through,
41:47
going through a list or availability of people
41:51
who are like, who've purchased three different times
41:54
for your product,
41:54
but maybe should be converted to a subscriber, right?
41:56
Like things like that.
41:57
Like I think it just allows your agents
42:00
to be able to do like very like top level stuff.
42:03
So my question to you, switching gears,
42:06
very much away from AI is what is your hot take
42:10
on CX leadership and leveling up CX agents
42:13
to work their way into retention roles?
42:17
- I think that something that I've thought about a lot
42:21
in the last two years,
42:24
I've always like been involved
42:26
in the retention side of the business.
42:29
Jones was the first job I had that was meaningfully
42:33
like directing both parts of the business
42:36
and something that I've learned is that
42:38
it is two sides of the brain.
42:40
Like CX is a more creative empathetic side of the brain.
42:42
Retention is a lot of data.
42:45
So I think it takes a different part of the brain
42:49
to do both.
42:50
I think that we very often combine the two recently,
42:54
but I think it was really challenging for me at Jones.
42:58
Like my honest take here is it was challenging.
43:03
I think it's a very, especially at a business
43:06
that was growing that fast.
43:07
My completely brutally honest take
43:11
is that it was very challenging.
43:12
I think it's, I'm lucky that Joanne,
43:17
who's leading retention at Jones was an incredible operator.
43:22
The deeply understood retention,
43:25
but also deeply understood what great experience looks like.
43:27
So I think that's like to run retention,
43:30
you need to have, in my opinion,
43:32
a better leg up on the data and an analyzation,
43:35
meaning you're better off as a retention operator
43:38
with a dash of CX and you are at CX
43:41
with a dash of retention.
43:42
I think you need to be able to either have that data analysis
43:45
or upscow quickly.
43:47
Frankly, I was unable to upscow fast enough
43:51
on the retention side to get where they needed to get.
43:54
Or I didn't feel like I was able to upscow fast enough.
43:58
So I think that that's the only challenge.
44:01
But if you find somebody,
44:02
the flip side of that is like most of CX is just like,
44:06
oh, if you're entry level and you don't find the job,
44:08
you try to get a job in CX
44:09
because it feels entry level.
44:10
So there's a lot of that also,
44:11
which is like as much as you want to shift the paradigm,
44:14
it's still somewhat there.
44:15
So if we find people that generally lean towards data
44:20
and analyzation and deeply understanding cohorts,
44:23
I hope for a time that you won't have to be that savvy
44:26
in order to run a retention program.
44:27
But I think today you really need to be a ways
44:31
at cohorting and segment analysis.
44:33
So if you have that and then you also have a retention,
44:36
a CX mind, that's like the best, best, best, best, best
44:40
in class programs have a wizard on retention
44:43
that completely gets and sits very close to CX.
44:46
That's the dream.
44:47
- Yeah, absolutely.
44:48
And I think that also retention isn't always the dream
44:50
for every CX or right?
44:53
Like some people, like I've led teams where some people
44:56
were like, yeah, all right, they've moved into
44:58
like retention marketing or lifecycle marketing.
44:59
Like I did, I moved into those places
45:02
because like I love marketing, right?
45:05
But I have also had individuals under me
45:10
who really more so just want to be a leader
45:13
in the support side of things.
45:14
Or they want to move to the community management side
45:17
of things.
45:17
So I think that CX and retention, yes, are one in the same,
45:21
like they're constantly being put under
45:23
like one of the same lately.
45:25
But I also think that like not every CX team
45:27
is a retention team.
45:29
- Correct.
45:29
- And you need to really understand like, okay,
45:33
is that leader or those individuals,
45:34
do they have that passion for segmenting and co-hearding
45:39
and like marketing brain?
45:40
Or do they have that passion for the empathy
45:42
and community building brain?
45:43
And those are two different pathways.
45:46
That's my point.
45:47
- Yep.
45:48
- Okay, last couple of questions, my dude,
45:50
we're gonna spend a whole 15 minutes on this.
45:54
- I'm excited.
45:55
- As we talk a lot.
45:56
- Yeah, all the hard questions.
45:57
- They're not really hard, I promise.
45:59
- Oh, shoot, okay.
46:01
Okay.
46:01
Do you think that the retention in CX playbook
46:06
is ever fully solved?
46:08
- I mean, I think it's a very, very quickly evolving space,
46:16
especially on CX and retention.
46:19
I mean, generally come changes quickly,
46:20
but CX and retention consistently is shifting.
46:24
I think the playbook hasn't been changed
46:28
in the last like 50, 60 years until like ECOM 2.0
46:32
or D2C 2.0, which is like when we realized
46:34
that like sustainable growth is important
46:36
and retention is important and that shifted budget
46:38
towards CX because CX and retention,
46:40
like in order to retain the customer,
46:41
you need a great experience.
46:43
I don't think it's gonna evolve that quickly
46:46
or not that quickly that meaningfully.
46:48
Like I don't think it'll completely shift
46:49
like it did in the last couple of years,
46:51
but I think it continues to evolve.
46:54
- Yeah.
46:55
And that's kind of a trick question because like,
46:57
this basically what we're talking about,
46:59
but I think that people really get stagnant
47:02
thinking about it.
47:03
So if you learn nothing, learn that like--
47:06
- Stay on your toes.
47:07
- Always stay on your phone.
47:09
- The robots are coming for you.
47:10
- They're coming.
47:10
They're taking your job specifically.
47:12
Okay, for you, like you have your newsletter,
47:16
you obviously had like down to chat, podcast,
47:20
you like are always in like content
47:21
and like doing a lot of fun things,
47:23
but what type of content do you personally consume?
47:26
- I love, so I have a problem that I struggle
47:32
to listen things at regular speed.
47:34
And I can't, I'm not a big reader.
47:38
So I'm very, I'm always listening.
47:40
I listen to podcasts at like two and a half
47:42
or three times speed and I consume a lot of that.
47:46
I love listening to like econ podcasts.
47:49
I do read a couple of newsletters.
47:52
I generally feel like we've discussed
47:55
at the beginning of this conversation
47:56
that I try to consume things that are outside
47:58
of my purview.
47:59
So I deeply understood SaaS way before I started in SaaS
48:02
where I realized I didn't deeply understand it,
48:04
but I knew enough to jump in.
48:06
And I feel similarly like I try to deeply understand
48:09
hospitality and get a good grip of what finance looks like.
48:14
And I try to consume wider.
48:16
But yeah, I'd say a couple of newsletters,
48:20
a couple of podcasts.
48:22
Yeah, now I drive to the office every once in a while,
48:26
which is a good two hours.
48:27
So I get through probably,
48:29
I'm not gonna math or write 10 hours of podcasts
48:31
and not 10, but six.
48:34
- I like don't, I mean, I consume a lot more
48:36
like business newsletters and like,
48:39
I read yours every week.
48:42
- Thank you.
48:43
- R-E's, R-E-M-R-E's, Daniel-M-R-E's,
48:45
the power couple.
48:49
- Nix, you know, there's like quite a few like Kendall,
48:54
Dickie Zends, like newest like, nates.
48:56
Nates, oh my God, how did I forget me?
48:58
- It's fresh checkout.
48:59
- That's a really great one.
49:00
But so like my, but like newsletters is where I consume,
49:04
but it's interesting podcast.
49:06
I like don't consume a lot of it.
49:08
I consume about like cereal, like, you know,
49:12
true crime stuff or a lot of astrology,
49:14
my little Leo friend here.
49:17
But like not business.
49:19
And I don't know why.
49:20
Anyway, that's a random thing.
49:22
Okay, these are a little bit personal,
49:24
but I want to get down to the nitty gritty
49:26
and I want the audience to really know who you are.
49:28
You ready?
49:29
- Okay.
49:30
- What would you tell Eli on day one
49:33
of his first ever job?
49:35
- Wow.
49:37
- Deep.
49:38
- It'll be, it'll never get easy,
49:46
but it'll be slightly less challenging.
49:48
Something that I realized after almost a decade in this space,
49:54
I had like a quarter life crisis
49:55
and I realized that I want to shift
49:57
to do something very different.
49:59
And the first question I asked myself was,
50:02
what did you like and dislike about what you did
50:04
in the last eight years?
50:05
And then I reframed the question of if you can choose
50:08
like three qualities that are super meaningful,
50:12
what would you choose?
50:13
And I realized that the space I'm working in
50:16
was not one of them.
50:16
It was three, one of them was work with people
50:18
much smarter than me.
50:20
Feel super challenged every day.
50:22
Have a good time doing it.
50:23
Those were the three most meaningful things.
50:25
And I realized like,
50:26
didn't matter what space I was in,
50:27
didn't matter how large the company was.
50:29
All the things that people told me were consideration.
50:31
Like, are you crazy going from a 20 person company
50:33
to a 800 person company?
50:35
Or are you crazy going to SaaS?
50:36
Like those things didn't matter at all.
50:39
But I struggled, I continued to struggle
50:41
from imposter syndrome.
50:43
And I would tell myself that it won't get easy,
50:44
but it'll be less challenging.
50:47
And I think that to me,
50:50
the biggest challenge was breaking in.
50:52
So I applied to like over 100 jobs
50:55
in the span of two years,
50:57
just trying to break into the space
50:58
until I got, you know, the nugs and Ollie Pop job.
51:01
It was really, really hard.
51:03
And it was very, I almost gave up a bunch of times
51:06
of like, this isn't saying,
51:07
like I can't even get an interview.
51:08
You wanted really, you got real.
51:12
- No, I love that.
51:13
- Actually, I'm putting down this lappy top to like,
51:16
I think that that's like one of the,
51:19
you hit on a point that I think that a lot of people,
51:22
whoever, if you're junior, even exact level,
51:24
it doesn't matter like whatever level you are.
51:26
Like I think it's really important to like remember
51:29
this one thing out of this conversation is that,
51:32
so Ollie, like you didn't go to college.
51:36
Like you started your career in, you know,
51:39
NCX and then worked your way through it, right?
51:41
And if you hadn't like allowed people
51:44
and opened the doors for you or applied for those 200 jobs
51:47
and all of these things,
51:48
you wouldn't be in the place that you are today, right?
51:50
And every like, every no can equal a yes at some point, right?
51:55
But I think what's really important in like,
51:56
our story is actually very similar to this.
51:59
I went to art school.
52:00
I went to art school, didn't know what I wanted to do,
52:02
ended up in customer service jobs.
52:03
And the amount of people that have told me no in my life,
52:07
or have kept me in like a lower level job
52:10
because I was making money for the company.
52:12
I was like really good at sales or all these things, right?
52:16
And I would always crave that challenge,
52:18
but I would be afraid the imposter syndrome of like,
52:21
oh, you're not enough or you can't do this or whatever.
52:24
But sometimes you just have to push through it
52:29
and take the risk to get to the next piece of it, right?
52:32
And like, and I mean that individually,
52:35
but I also mean that to the audience,
52:37
to anybody listening,
52:39
take the chance on the person that might be the diamond
52:41
and the rough, because they might make your company
52:45
the dopest company possible.
52:47
Their ideas might actually bring you to the next level.
52:51
- Two things that come to mind is number one,
52:54
having a chip on my shoulder is my favorite quality
52:57
about myself.
52:58
Like I consistently feel like I don't deserve it
53:00
in a way that makes me wanna work 10 times harder
53:03
and take on larger challenges.
53:04
Like the fact that I had so many people
53:06
that I thought were like my friends saying like,
53:08
you're crazy, you're risking your entire,
53:10
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
53:12
Yeah, you're about to throw hands.
53:15
- Literally, like what?
53:17
- Number two, like something that's been funny is like,
53:20
little known fact, I applied to Yupo in 2015.
53:23
My resume was my date of birth and my name.
53:26
There was not a single thing under it.
53:28
It was like one half ass job.
53:29
Like I had, it was like a applying for credit card
53:32
without credit.
53:32
It was like a thin file.
53:34
And I think that's like something I start almost every meeting
53:37
with a Yupo and somebody's like,
53:38
what do you do here?
53:39
What's your name?
53:40
And I'm like, so this is my victory lap.
53:43
I applied in 2015.
53:44
But it's, I cannot tell you like I've saved those resumes
53:50
and those cover letters because I haven't made a resume
53:54
in the last like five years, but I've saved those,
53:56
or four years, but I've saved those resumes.
53:58
Like the CV's, the cover letters and the folder.
54:01
I also have a shit list, which is like super immature.
54:04
- We both have a shit list.
54:06
- I'm like, mm.
54:07
- Like we're so rude.
54:08
And like some of them like interviewed me and then ghosted me.
54:11
Some of them just never responded to my email.
54:13
I have like a small shit list, which somebody reached out
54:15
in the LinkedIn DMs when I was at Jones like saying,
54:18
hey, we'd love to work with you, blah, blah, blah.
54:19
And I'm like, how dare you?
54:21
I applied for a CSM role in 2018.
54:24
And he didn't even give me an interview.
54:25
And then I was like, wow, well, that was the pettiest DM
54:28
I've ever sent.
54:30
But it's a very interesting concept.
54:35
- Yeah.
54:37
Well, what's interesting about that too is like, I don't--
54:40
- How childish I am.
54:41
- No.
54:42
- No, I don't, we just never forget.
54:45
You know what I mean?
54:46
When you like, we're--
54:46
- It's not a fully rich.
54:47
- When you work really, really hard.
54:50
And like, I mean, dude, I've had this job before.
54:52
When I was in the travel industry,
54:54
I worked at this company for five years, okay?
54:57
Five years, and I was always kept at like an associate level.
55:02
Right?
55:03
Because, I'll tell you why,
55:05
because it was like unlimited commission, right?
55:08
And I was really fucking good at my job.
55:11
And it wasn't like me slinging stuff.
55:13
It was nothing like that.
55:13
I was just really good at like customer service
55:16
and account management that I like would be crafty
55:19
about fairs, like whatever.
55:20
And I would save people money.
55:21
And like there was airlines to pay you commission,
55:23
whatever, right?
55:24
But I was really good at it.
55:25
And I would always go to the president's club.
55:27
And every year, there would be an assistant manager role
55:31
or a team leader role up.
55:33
And every year, I would apply for them.
55:35
And every single year, my boss would keep me
55:39
in the same spot because I made that money,
55:42
that company too much money in that role, right?
55:46
- Yeah.
55:47
- And like, but instead of, instead of actually like,
55:51
allowing me to level up and upskill myself into like,
55:54
management and then training other people under me
55:58
about how to be like really good with fairs
56:00
or whatever it is.
56:01
- Well, sure, I cited it.
56:02
- Exactly.
56:03
So like my, so what's interesting is like,
56:06
those scenarios have to happen to me very often.
56:09
I worked in the B2B space for a really long time.
56:11
Like I left, like I worked in the B2B space
56:13
for a really long time.
56:14
Like, festivals is actually my fifth startup
56:17
that I've ever worked at.
56:19
But it was my first D2C company that I've ever worked at,
56:21
right?
56:22
And I worked as a customer experience leader.
56:24
I've done product marketing, I've done success,
56:26
I've done all sorts of pieces of customer experience
56:29
within the B2B space.
56:31
And I kept wanting to be in like D2C and ECOM,
56:35
and nobody would give me a chance.
56:37
Nobody would straight up give me a chance.
56:39
And I remember applying for a role
56:42
and getting pretty far in the interview process
56:45
and then being told,
56:46
well, you don't have any D2C experience.
56:48
So this is actually why we're not hiring you.
56:50
Which, okay, whatever, I understand it,
56:52
I'm not mad about that piece of it, right?
56:55
But my point is I applied for so many of these roles,
56:58
constantly, constantly, constantly,
56:59
and never would get them.
57:01
But funny enough, my first D2C role was working at festivals.
57:07
And how I never moved to Chicago,
57:09
I never would have met our previous CEO,
57:13
Jim Murray, shout out to you,
57:14
talked to you yesterday, you're an awesome person.
57:17
But he took a chance on me
57:18
because of my B2B career,
57:20
and then I built this dope customer experience
57:24
across support, community, and digital experience,
57:26
and took so much of that B2B learning
57:29
of user journeys into the space.
57:31
And I worked for one of the biggest ECOM creator brands, right?
57:36
And I mean, this is not me chipping on my shoulder,
57:39
but that's my point, is like,
57:41
sometimes you gotta get up,
57:43
and people are gonna fucking tell you no,
57:45
constantly tell you no, right?
57:47
And then sometimes you just gotta get up and keep trying,
57:50
because now I'm on my own victory lap, right?
57:54
- You should.
57:54
- I B2B, B2C, I would do fractional for a lot of really,
57:59
some of your favorite brands,
58:00
I'm doing a lot of fun stuff for them,
58:02
and now I'm back in B2B again,
58:04
rabbling up, revving up customer,
58:09
and to deliver dope customer experience, right?
58:12
It's like full fucking circle.
58:14
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58:16
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Now back to the show.
58:51
We are going to wrap this up.
58:52
I have one last final, final question,
58:55
and like, doesn't have to be long,
58:58
but Eli, what is your best customer experience
59:02
you've ever had from a SaaS company,
59:06
or a D2C company?
59:08
- I will say, that's a good question.
59:13
I will say some of the,
59:16
but I can't, this is pretty sad
59:19
that I can't think of any great experiences I've had, period.
59:21
I mean, some of the SaaS providers
59:25
that we've worked with in the past
59:26
just so thoughtful around experience,
59:29
which like I've been inspired by people
59:30
like the team at PostScript
59:32
about how thoughtful they were around experience.
59:34
They were one of the people that I've worked so closely with.
59:37
Shout out to Beller and shout out to Mike.
59:40
I mean, these are people that inspired me
59:42
to be more thoughtful around CS and experience and strategy.
59:47
And outside of that,
59:48
I'd say that on the brand side,
59:51
brands like Shopop, which is owned by Amazon,
59:55
it's like they've just,
59:58
something's missing,
59:58
some things delayed in transit,
01:00:00
no worries at all will send you a new one.
01:00:01
I think that the bar is so low,
01:00:04
which is like disappointing and depressing,
01:00:07
but that's where the bar is,
01:00:08
is like if something's lost in transit,
01:00:09
like will you shout out off fifth,
01:00:14
it's been three weeks,
01:00:15
some things lost in transit
01:00:16
and they're still like filing a claim for me.
01:00:18
And I think that that's like the reason why
01:00:21
I will shop over and over and over with Shopop
01:00:25
or like a Mr. Porter
01:00:27
or people that take experience seriously.
01:00:29
And I'll probably avoid like Essence and off fifth
01:00:32
and all the kind of like,
01:00:33
oh, who knows when it'll ship to you?
01:00:35
And I think we've,
01:00:36
we've often like, you know, those are marketplaces.
01:00:39
So we've often said like, okay,
01:00:40
who cares if like,
01:00:41
Kith makes you wait five days to give you a track.
01:00:45
Like who cares that like ALD might have an awful return policy
01:00:48
because like they're a streetwear brand
01:00:49
and everyone loves them.
01:00:50
And it's like, yes, it's unfortunate,
01:00:53
but that's kind of true.
01:00:54
It's like people will continue to purchase from a brand
01:00:56
if you can only buy it from them directly.
01:00:59
But you buying it,
01:01:00
you still don't feel great about the company,
01:01:01
you feel good about yourself
01:01:02
and you want to show other people that you're a high-paced.
01:01:05
But I think it's like the relationship you have
01:01:06
with the brand over time,
01:01:08
meaning like when a brand like Kith is less cool,
01:01:12
are you still riding that Kith train
01:01:13
or are you onto the next one?
01:01:15
And I think that's where loyalty is confusing
01:01:17
for brands more than it is for consumers is like,
01:01:20
if you want to wear something that's cool,
01:01:22
you're wearing something that's cool.
01:01:24
But if they developed a real brand relationship,
01:01:26
like think about the brands that have lasted
01:01:27
a really, really long time,
01:01:29
it's because they developed a real, real thoughtful relationship.
01:01:32
Now, will a loyalty program help you?
01:01:34
Probably not unless your experience is great.
01:01:36
So I think that that's to me,
01:01:37
something I've been thinking about a lot lately
01:01:39
is some of these like hypey streetwear brands
01:01:42
that have, they had the right of a lifetime
01:01:45
for the last five years, 10 years.
01:01:48
When they become uncool,
01:01:50
people start thinking like,
01:01:51
what's the experience that great?
01:01:52
Is the clothing quality that great?
01:01:54
And I think that's like the long-term play
01:01:56
that not enough people are playing, right?
01:01:58
So yeah, you made more money
01:01:59
'cause you charge $10 for every order,
01:02:01
whether it's $10 or 500.
01:02:03
You don't offer free shipping,
01:02:04
so you make more margin in every order.
01:02:06
Yes, your return policy is like,
01:02:07
we'll give you a gift card,
01:02:08
we're never gonna give you your cash back
01:02:10
even if the size doesn't fit you
01:02:11
and you bought one specific thing.
01:02:12
Like, I can think of like 20 or 30,
01:02:15
kind of like obnoxious or strange,
01:02:17
kind of like quirky streetwear brands, phenomenons.
01:02:21
But when you focus on experience,
01:02:22
which is one of the reasons why I loved Matt Happy
01:02:25
over the last couple of years
01:02:26
is because they put a staunch focus on experience.
01:02:29
And on like, yeah, they still charge what they started,
01:02:31
charge, but they have a return policy that's functional.
01:02:34
They actually have a great team shout out
01:02:36
to their CX team that's like incredible.
01:02:39
They think about returns,
01:02:41
they think about free shipping.
01:02:42
They think about like, yeah,
01:02:43
that you don't have to offer a discount
01:02:44
to be a brand that puts experience first.
01:02:46
Yeah.
01:02:47
That was the most long-winded answer here.
01:02:49
No, I get it.
01:02:50
It was a really good one.
01:02:51
Yeah.
01:02:52
Because it actually wraps up with this,
01:02:53
like perfectly, it's ultimately about the user journey
01:02:58
in your brand, in your company
01:03:00
that keeps people coming back
01:03:02
and keeps people even talking about you,
01:03:03
whether you're a hype company or not.
01:03:05
If you have a dope experience,
01:03:07
people are gonna continuously come back to you
01:03:09
and that's what they're loyal about.
01:03:10
Love it.
01:03:11
All right, Eli, I love you so much.
01:03:13
Thanks for being my bestie.
01:03:14
Thank you.
01:03:15
Thanks for coming on.
01:03:16
Where can the audience find you?
01:03:18
So it's Eli Weiss with an extra S on Twitter.
01:03:22
So E-L-I-W-E-I-S-S-S.
01:03:25
Eli Weiss on LinkedIn, my newsletter is Eli Weiss
01:03:28
with anextrass.com.
01:03:30
And I'm super introverted.
01:03:33
So if you reach out to me with a long, nice message
01:03:36
and I just say thank you so much,
01:03:37
and you say can we hop on a call
01:03:39
and I say thank you so much.
01:03:41
It's not because I didn't understand,
01:03:42
it's because I hate hopping on calls
01:03:44
'cause I'm introverted.
01:03:45
So he's a very introverted friend.
01:03:47
But it's the best CX retention person
01:03:50
you know in space.
01:03:52
Thank you.
01:03:52
All right, we'll see you next week.
01:03:53
Thank you for joining us on the Juice.
01:03:55
Juice with Jess.
01:03:56
Juice with Jess.
01:03:57
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