EP.141/ VICTORIA BECKHAM BEAUTY & SWIFTCX
Victoria Beckham Beauty x SwiftCX: Elevating the Online Customer Experience with AI
Leanna Nazzisi, Senior Director of Customer Experience at Victoria Beckham Beauty, and Nino Cavenecia, Co-Founder and CEO of Swift CX join Mariah Parsons, Host of Retention Chronicles. Leanna discusses her journey from customer service to her current role, emphasizing the importance of personalized customer experiences. Nino shares his experience building customer support teams and the founding of Swift CX, which leverages AI to enhance customer service efficiency. They explore the integration of Swift CX with Malomo for seamless order tracking, enhancing customer experience and reducing support workload for the Victoria Beckham Beauty team. Both highlight the value of customer insights and the potential of AI to improve retention and brand loyalty.
Episode Timestamps:
3:27 Early Career Challenges in Customer Service
7:46 Nino's Perspective on Customer Service
13:22 Current Roles and Vision
20:55 Integration of Swift CX and Malomo
40:54 Challenges and Opportunities in Customer Experience
42:44 Leveraging AI in Customer Support
44:32 Final Thoughts and Future Directions
EP. 141
LEANNA NAZZISI
NINO CAVENECIA
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
ecommerce customer experience, brand loyalty, AI integration, branded order tracking, customer support, customer retention strategies, luxury convenience, seamless experience, customer insights, support tools, brand differentiation, customer satisfaction, AI benefits, customer retention, support efficiency
SPEAKERS
Nino Cavenecia, Leanna Nazzisi, Mariah Parsons
Mariah Parsons 00:05
Greetings and welcome to retention Chronicles, the podcast with learnings from expert e commerce brands and partners. I'm your host. Mariah Parsons, if you're here, you're either on a quest for E commerce enlightenment or you accidentally click the wrong link. Either way, I am thrilled you stumbled into our corner of the internet, and I hope you'll stick around. We've got pearls of wisdom for everyone, whether you're running a multi million dollar business or simply just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey. Before we unleash the brilliance of today's guests, let's give a shout out to our podcast sponsor, Malomo. Malomo is so much more than just another Shopify app, their post purchase wizards, making beautiful and branded order tracking smoother than a jazz solo. So our amazing founders, like our guests, can keep their customers happy and up to date while they track their orders. So hit that subscribe button like it'll increase your LTV overnight and go listen to our other episodes at Go malomo.com that's G O M, a, l o m, o.com Get ready for insights, chuckles, and perhaps a profound realization or two with This newest episode of retention Chronicles. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to retention Chronicles. I'm psyched for this episode today. It is the first time that we've had both a brand and a tech partner on in one call. So guys, we're already studying history. Thank you so much for being here with me, Nino and Leanna. I'm so excited to get to chat with you and really dive into it today. But let's say hello to our listeners first and give a quick background on yourself. So Leanna, we're gonna start with you, and then Nina will go to you after,
Leanna Nazzisi 01:47
yeah, really excited for this. Thank you for having us. So my name is Leanna. I'm the Senior Director of Customer experience at Victoria Beckham beauty. My previous roles in life have always been customer service focused. I started as a fun fact, started as a part time agent 10 years ago, sort of like worked my way up into this new role. So been in beauty customer service for quite a while, and my first role was at Birchbox, and then I pivoted a little bit to do some things on the brand side, and I worked at Zendesk for quite a bit, but yeah, really back here in the beauty world, where I love so thanks for having
Mariah Parsons 02:31
us. I love that. Yeah, we'll dive into all of that, but Nina, let's get your brief background summary before we do that. Yeah,
Nino Cavenecia 02:38
sure. And of course, thanks for having me as well. So I've spent almost 20 years building and scaling customer support teams for all sorts of different industries, primarily fast growing startups so kind of as early as maybe seed or series A and then just kind of growing from there. But definitely, I would say, kind of as a call out of the places that I worked that really, really influenced my career. So one of my first jobs, Nordstrom, selling ladies shoes, of all things. But that really colored in terms of, like, my perspective on, you know, just that Nordstrom experience, on what you could achieve in terms of what you deliver for customers. And then I was actually one of the first five people in support at Zappos, so I was there in the very early days, just kind of watching what they were doing. So two tremendous experiences that really kind of colored my career in terms of, like, just the value of delivering amazing customer experiences. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 03:34
I love it so, so much to dive into, and that's why I'm so excited. And it's going to be a fun challenge for me to be able to kind of think through like, obviously, what are the differences? What are the parallels of coming from both your guys's backgrounds and then peppering in my own experience as well? So it's going to be, it's going to be a fun 40 or so minutes. But Leanna, let's start with you. When you were talking about, obviously, your history in customer experience and customer support and customer service talking about just how much you're learning on the fly of like there, there's never going to be just one answer fits all for like customers, and it's always going to be like or at least the goal is to have something that is a unique or a personalized feeling When the customer leaves and that they feel valued. So tell us a little bit about when you first started as a part time agent in CS. What were like, some of the first learnings where you were like, Oh my God. Like, I think anyone listening to this episode knows that CS is so difficult, and so with both of you having your backgrounds in CS, I would love to hear just like, what was that like? Moment of like, Oh my God. Like, whoa. I really hold a lot of a lot of responsibility to make sure that the customer has a great interaction with this brand.
Leanna Nazzisi 04:52
That's a really great question. And it's like such a good point too, because I feel like customer experience and support and service. Has this, like, really negative sort of connotation, or, like, history of this, you know, someone sitting one of 100 people in a call center, you know, and no one really cares about your issue. And you know, not that I was one of 100 but I was one of, like, a very large team at part time who's just listening and receiving, like, negative stuff every day, and it's really hard to not let that get to you, you know, when you're on the inbound of just like problem solving, but all you're getting are the problems. Like No one writes the customer service to say, have a wonderful day, you know, but what really helped me was, like, there was some point at my career at Birchbox where I was like, if I change my mindset a little bit and figure out ways to make people special and kind of, you know, expand that out and put, Like, some numbers behind it and put some hypotheses around it, like, that is a game changing, like, career move and, like, literally, that's kind of what happened to me, where I decided, you know, I want to understand for every customer who comes in, like, angry, What happens afterwards, once they talk to us, like, what? How does their behavior change? Do they, you know, cancel their orders or subscriptions? Birchbox was very subscription based, you know, are they repeat purchasers? Are they referring friends like, it's all of these, like, little things that I was like, I have the power to influence that by sitting at home on the phone, you know, and all of those kind of shifts in my mindset really helped me to now where I am today in my career, where, like, I fully believe that customer experience is like the solar system of your universe, for your brand, and if they are not at the center of your brand, like your brand can't succeed. So, yeah, it's, it's really important to kind of try and shift that a little bit as much as you can.
Mariah Parsons 07:10
Yeah, yeah. Really putting in just like the grunt work, or the legwork of, like, I'm going to really, really give it my all and see, you know, sometimes there's just nothing you can do, but like the effort most people will respond to. And I think that that comparison, or that parallel, of like, it needs to be your center, CX needs to be your center needs to be your solar system. I love that, and that's something that I've seen as well on the Malomo side of things, of like, if you really go that extra mile, sure, you might not be able to remedy, specifically for us, like a bad shipment experience. But you can make the next one better, or you can make it a little bit better, even if you can't, you know, make the truck get to the person's house faster. So I love that, Nina, let's hear from you what, what was kind of one of those moments where you're like, wow, customer success. There's such a, I guess, a a like weight or a responsibility that you get the privilege of carrying. But there's, you know, it's, it's no joke when you're looking at of all the things that go into, you know, running a business, yeah.
Nino Cavenecia 08:15
So I think two parts there. So I like Leanna, I started as an agent, and I would say that I think support is one of the the most kind of misunderstood departments within a company, and just in terms of, like, what people think they know about support, and what actually is, you know is happening and what's possible is just such a wide gap. And so, you know, when I started as an agent, no offense to the 1% out there, that was like, I aspire to start myself as a customer service agent in my career. It wasn't something that I picked, but it was an opportunity that I got, and I thought this is pretty interesting. You know, that I can kind of work my way up in the company and and I think, you know, one thing that stood out to me first in my career as an Asian, is the level of difficulty. Again, this is kind of that misunderstanding of support internally, of how complicated it is, what's being asked of us. So, you know, we have these super high power, high paid sales folks as an example, and they're being tasked with, you know, creating relationships and and and closing deals, but they have a lot of room to work with in terms of building that relationship. We're being told, in five to 10 minutes, you need to take somebody who's upset, a perfect stranger, build a rapport, turn things around, navigate at the same time. Oh, and by the way, you're the lowest paid person in the company, and so I think a lot of folks don't like that. That is insane. That's an insane task that we're asking of support of. Um, and so, you know, I think it takes a lot out of your front line, sometimes on their own, to kind of go, how do I bring my own sort of happiness out of this? And so for me, it was really like a game. I I really wanted to take this person who I did not know that was, you know, unhappy for whatever reason, and figure out how I could change it around. And those, you know, those wins here and there kind of kept me going and kept me excited, and sort of kind of fed that next one. And then I quickly started. So I excelled, especially with that mentality. I excelled really well as an agent, and went into leadership pretty quick. And then you get into leadership and you're like, oh, wow, this is great. Like, I'm moving up in my career. And then you hear all these things about, you're just the complaints department, you're just the cost center. And I'm like, okay, you know, I'm advancing, and now this is what I advanced to. And so really early on in my career, I would say this is, you know, the first year or two in leadership, I realized that there were departments like marketing and product and others that were thirsting for Voice of Customer content, and at a really young age, I kind of put two and two together that I'm sitting on all this information that you're not really valuing. And so I started kind of changing the narrative really early in my career about what support could mean for a business and how it could impact it. And that just changed the trajectory of my career like, you know, tenfold. So then I, then I became, you know, really close to reporting directly the CEO and and being able to be part of that sort of executive vision on, how do we fight, how do we harness all these customer insights and empower key stakeholders in the company to be able to to improve our customers experience and really reduce the need for folks having to be reactive and come into support. So I think those two areas kind of really stand out at me, sort of just that, that that understanding of how difficult it is to be an agent, but also how powerful that role is, and then also this information that that we sit on that's just like gold within a company. Yeah.
Mariah Parsons 12:16
I mean, we're sitting here today because Malomo, our director of CS connected us, right? So, like echoing exactly we were talking about, of just this wealth of knowledge because you were sitting in between the customer and the business. And I know, like, I will forever, always take our and I give credit to our leadership team as well for enabling our CS team to be like, No, say that this is like, what you're hearing from the customers, and this is what you know our product dev should be, or you know what you're hearing in the industry because you were some of the most relatable or most connected to said customers you're working on the daily with, you know, figuring out issues or figuring out what's annoying them. What do they love? What don't they really need? But you're completely right in how the the majority of any vertical looks at customer support as like, Oh, something that's necessary, but maybe isn't, like, a growth channel, or like, anything like that, that it's like, oh, you can really scale, scale with your with a great customer support team. And so I love that we're, we're we're talking about this, and it relates so so closely to retention, obviously, is like, if you can, if you can get someone who has a horrible experience, and then turn that into a better experience, and one that they're actually more likely to come back and buy, because they see how you will treat a bad experience, they have that Security of, okay, well, if something bad happens again, I'm probably going to get the same process. So I'm more likely to continue to shop with set brand. But we're going to get into all those, all those fun retention strategies a little bit later, walk us up till we walk through the background. So now let's, let's talk about what you what the seats you're both sitting in currently, and Nino, I think it would be a great transition to learn about what then brought you to start swift CX, and then we'll hop over to you. Leanna, sounds good.
Nino Cavenecia 14:13
So probably just the root of it was just frustration over the course of my career. You know, watching, I have always been, uh, sort of a support geek at heart. I've always, you know, played with whatever tools are out there, trying to make sure I was up on the latest stuff. And what I found as a trend throughout my career was a few things. One is, it's crazy how much effort support teams have to put into their tools to get back value. And that's like nuts to me, because we don't have that time. There's so many things we need to be doing we don't have the capacity to also invest a ton of time in our tools, which really should be giving us value out of the gate. So that was one thing I noticed. And then two which I feel like connected to, that was every single founder I ever saw that built tools that we used had never actually been in support. And I thought, well, maybe there's something to this. And so I wanted to try my hand at that, put one of our own in the community in that founder seat, set the vision and and, you know, our vision at swift CX was to make it easy to deliver amazing customer experiences, leveraging AI and so the key there being, like, easy and amazing customer experiences like that typically just does not go hand in hand. So, like, if you're doing, you know, high quality service, it's usually high effort and high cost. If you're doing low quality service, which is probably what most of us are used to, it's low effort and low cost. Low effort, except for the agent. The agents always high effort. But whatever, you know, in terms of operation itself, like if low quality service, you can do that standing on your head. It's easy, you know, just slap an email address, hide your phone number, you know, call it, don't, don't answer for seven days. You know, there's a whole lot of flavors of low quality services. It's totally easy, right? So I wanted to find a way to leverage tech, especially this new era of AI, in a very thoughtful and kind of, you know, innovative way to figure out, how do we get the best of both worlds? How can we help these support operations that need value from their tools and need it to work without them having to put so much work into them and and to be able to assist them in delivering highly efficient, high quality service? So that's what we do with our AI platform.
Mariah Parsons 16:42
Okay? Love it. Love it. Love it. So Leanna, now give us kind of the rundown of what you're excited about with Victoria Beckham beauty and what you're kind of bringing to the table, how you're how you're looking to you know, where you're really excited about what you all are doing. Yeah, I
Leanna Nazzisi 17:01
could talk about this for years. I was, I think I was employee number 12 here, and I haven't even hit my two year period here. So we are relatively small, which I think will surprise people here from, like, a celebrity brand. It's pretty small, and when I came here, you know, worked with the CEO, and I was like, we should put customer experience under marketing, because I have this, like, vision of, you know, a reactive and proactive support team. And let's like, do the shifts? Because everything is mostly 100% reactive, but can we shift in 50 and what does that look like? And then in these moments where we think about these big picture, huge campaigns that require a lot of creative effort and marketing and resources and campaigns and ads, and we're just not sure, but like, let's try it and see what works from a sales perspective, I can then step in and be like, wait, wait, let's try this. I have the customer sitting in the inbox, like, I have people ready to go. So let's try it here, and we can report on it, and we can get, like, the really nitty gritty, granular details, and see at a larger scale, with time, effort, you know, all those resources. Is it worth it, you know? And that sort of vision has kind of been the grounding foundation of, like, what we're doing on our team, trying to find all of these, like, end points where customers are talking, and they're maybe not talking directly to CX, but they're talking about the brand in a way that who's going to answer that? But CX, you know, so this, these are your like, your product reviews, you know your trust pilot Facebook, you know community management. Like, let's filter all of that in, because that's all information that I guarantee you is already in, like, your CRM, you know, inboxes with with CX and, you know, to what Nina was saying earlier, like the customer experience team has to do so many different jobs. My team, they are like Logistics specialists. You know, they're like fraud fighting their product specialists. They know every single ingredient in our eyeliner. They're up selling. They're cross selling, like they know everything. And to me, my like, core dream, just as a human in this space, is to elevate these people outside of the reactive customer support. And so they have so much talent that, like, I've clearly built my career off of but like, they can also do the same. But in order to do that, you have to, like, free up their time, you know, and you have to find the ways to, like, give customers what they're looking for without putting a. Human, person behind that. And I think that's something that can be, like, really daunting for brands, for people. I think AI in this age is kind of a scary term sometimes, but I mean, we've been using AI for decades. Like, your Gmail filters are AI, yeah, those things like, people don't realize you know you're when you're texting and like, the it auto populates the words for you that is AI, like it's already here and it's been here and we're utilizing it. And to me, there's nothing more luxurious than convenience. As a customer support person, I don't want to bother other customer support people, so how can I give our customer what they're looking for without them having to wait, you know? And that's where these tools come in, and that's where it's like, you know, how can we surface information and education and things to them in a way that's instantaneous and still has like that instant gratification reaction? It doesn't have to be human, per se, you know, I'm very transparent when they're talking to a bot versus a real person, but I want them to be able to have that at their fingertips, because that then makes them happier as a consumer, and it frees up my team to do these things that they are like subject matter experts in or can even, like, expand further than you know, the things that I think about, and so that's my dream. Truthfully,
Mariah Parsons 21:29
I love it. I love the dream. That's what we're here for, right? No, that you you teed us up nicely to talk more about, obviously, what you and both of your teens are doing to make sure that Leanna, you and your team can be, you know, like the luxury of convenience, but then also having something that works really well and it satisfies both your customers and your internal teams. So I would love to just double tap real quick, because you're talking about right, you it's like a coupled system of having AI, but then also having experts, human experts. And so do you have any like, high level way or high level thought process as to how you're like, okay, my team experts need to be handling this issue, or need to be thinking about XYZ strategy of like, how do we better, you know, customer education on social media, or we're seeing a lot of chatter in these Facebook groups, right? Like, anything like that, versus when you know, AI should be handling said, said customer response?
Leanna Nazzisi 22:31
Yeah, that's it really depends on the brand. I have read and I've even practiced, you know, a lot of support teams will go straight to what's our top five issue types, and let's create, you know, some sort of AI that answers those. But for me, it's more like, what are the questions that don't require human thought and, like, opinion and or yes or no questions, or, like, do you ship to Canada? You don't need a human for that, you know? And those things that might not be the top five issue type, but it's something that is important to the conversion of the sale, and it's not information that someone needs to wait on. It's like an immediate if they can't find it on our website and they want to ask somebody that shouldn't be something that you're on hold for, or you have, like, hours reply time or days even, that's just silly, you know, and that's where I kind of look at, let's retain, you know, talent, where opinion and like, FINESSE is necessary. So if you have upset customers, and maybe you have, like, a widespread issue about something that is upsetting a lot of people, and you're thinking, okay, maybe we should, like, AI this a little bit. Maybe you shouldn't, because that might need a little bit like the, you know, human touch, where we have 20 different resolution options at our fingertips. We're training the AI model to just do A, B or C, as that's all they have access to, or from the technical perspective, you know. So that's sort of how I think about it a little bit. It's where the agent can shine from the things that they already know, versus what does the customer need to know? But like, they don't really need a human to say it to them. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 24:24
yeah. I think that's a great distinction. And I think a lot of our listeners who are on the CS or CX side of things will, I think it'll help them reframe, because you're right, and when you said that, I think AI is a scarier just like something that everyone's talking about. It's, you know, it's easy to fall into that trap of like, this is a new thing, but there's so many systems that I already run on AI you called out a couple of great ones, and so I think it'll help people kind of reframe, maybe, how they're thinking about it. And I was just at CHOP talk fall here in Chicago, and the co founder and CEO of thread up was talking. About AI and how they use it on their resale site. And he was saying that it's like something as small as the image search or their AI stylist, who you can go in and say, like, Okay, this is the outfit that I want. Help me design it, something that is so helpful, but also so I guess just like, more fun, or a lighter, lighter lift when the consumer is looking at it, not on the back end, because I know it took a lot for their team to roll that out, but something like that. And he was like, I don't think AI is hyped up enough, like we've been using it for years, and it'll be something eventually that it just, you know, it becomes normal. And it's like the internet when it first got rolled out, or mobile phone, right? It's like, all these crucial areas of our history of just technology. And he was like, we, you know, it's easy to get caught up in the, oh, this is going to change everything, or, like, rework whatever, but then it just leaves human capacity open to do the things that you're an expert in it, or the things that you know better. So I love that you called that out. And Nino, I would love to get your opinion on you know now that you and Leanna have been able to work together on seeing what swift CX is able to do with Victoria. Beckham beauty, what is there? What is the experience been from your side of things like, what have you all been? What's something that has been like, Okay, this is a really, really great, I guess, partnership, or way that we've been able to really help leanna's team with your technology.
Nino Cavenecia 26:34
Yeah. So great question. I think leanna's response is a perfect example of if, if I could pick a customer to work with that has a similar mentality. That's like my favorite, you know, I can. I could, for sure, get customers who come in and say, you know, 8020 rule, basically, you know, 20% of my contact types. It's represent 80% of the volume. Let's just deflect all that. And, you know, yeah, cost reduction, right? We can do that, and we'll do that in a really high quality way. But it's, it's my and when I was consulting like, the way Leanna explained it is, that's how I would consult with folks who are thinking about. AI is trying to be thoughtful about this. It's not a flip of a switch, right? And, and so Leanne's approach of like, you know, trying to lean into these moments where, why am I making you wait for a human like this is, it's almost like clean automation, right? It's just like, this is perfect, perfect use case, right? That's someone, I think, who's been very thoughtful about how they want to embed AI in the customer's experience. And customers feel that, especially the, you know, the the counter example, right? They feel all the of them, I would say the majority of cases where you put this guard dog bot at the front door, that's like, and the customers like, agent, agent, agent, let me in. I want to kill you guys, right? That's not Victoria Beckham or leanna's, you know, implementation, right? And so that makes me feel really great, because that's what I believe we should be doing for customers. And I think one of the things that that I was really happy about in the early days when, and I've actually known Leanna for years, even before Victoria back in beauty, and so it was just really great timing where I was like, hey, you know, I know I'm early in this space. Try our bot, trust me, like I am. I'm dialing this thing in. And there were cases where the customers were thinking our bot, and I thought, That's it. Like that to me is like, that's the warm and fuzzies for me, if a customer is going out of their way to thank an AI without, you know, necessarily, you know, needing to at all, obviously, that's great. And so, you know, we're, we're at at the still the beginning stages, because there's so much more we can do. And I think, to me, being able to work with, like I said, customers who have a similar sort of vision on what the future of AI and support should look like that's how we want to engineer and evolve our product around those kind of approaches and use cases. Because I think every company is going to benefit from that. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 29:33
it's funny that you bring up guard dog is such a good way to articulate I think what most consumers, or most most people would be, I guess, normalized to, or just expect when they hear AI an AI bot, is just like, you can't get to where you need to go, and you're like, sitting there, and you're like, I'm so frustrated, like, at the pre prompt or whatever, it just doesn't have. What I need. And then when I go and click Other it's it can't get to someone who can, like, solve this problem. So I'm laughing to myself, because I'm like, that is exactly relatable. And I've even had, you know, this amazing support agent tell me she was like, if you ever call back here, don't she was like, press this number and then just say this one phrase. She was like, that's what will respond in our system. You'll get inside our tips Exactly. And I was like, I appreciate you so much. Because I was like, I have called multiple times and not gotten to any not gotten any help. It's like,
Nino Cavenecia 30:35
some kind of password at a speakeasy or somebody, you know, I mean, like, three times and then say this. It's like, That's ridiculous, yeah.
Mariah Parsons 30:43
And I was just like, sitting there, and I, you know, we finished the call, and it was for, like, my Wi Fi, and so I was like, I work remotely. This is really, I need it to work right? And like, ended up someone the, you know, cable got disconnected outside all this other stuff that I would never know, right? But I was like, I hung up, and I was like, somebody finally listened and just told me, you know, like the secret little in but it really it stands out in all the different support conversations that I've had, just of like, someone understood what it's like to be on the other end of the phone. And it really stands out. And then also the use case that you brought up of thinking the AI bot. I'm like, I know, I've also done that. It's just like, I know you're a robot, but I don't care. You helped me, and I'm gonna thank you so I can, I can totally see how on your side of things, you're seeing that. And you're like, that's just awesome. Like, we were able to crack the code of being easy efficient, but also incredibly helpful, which is exactly, exactly what you want. And I want to go into another use case that where I know all three of us are excited for, and that is pulling in the Malomo API key to then work and have the seamless, branded order tracking experience that Malomo enables work with Swift cx to then pull in and help you know, teens like yours. Leanna even more. So Nino, even if it's like high level overview, give us, give us a little bit of a rundown of like, what you're excited for when this integration goes live.
Nino Cavenecia 32:18
Yeah. So this is going to be a little off script, and I know you weren't planning for this. I know you that you guys, that you guys don't talk about Malomo on your podcast. I'm going to do it for you. So there's things that I want to call out because I really like and I enjoyed. So Leanna hit me to you guys. I didn't even know Malomo even existed. And I was like, Oh, this is really interesting. So as I started to dig in more, it, like, hit a lot of spots for me. So, so first and foremost, your question about this integration. So we're really excited about this, basically bringing what you guys are experts at, and creating this really kind of custom, fluid, seamless, you know, order, lookup experience, and having that just be this very simple handoff from our bot that just feels very seamless to the customer. And we have integrated with other systems before. And so my developer, I had asked him even before the podcast. I said, you know, what are your quick thoughts on your experience, kind of working with Malomo? And he was like, Oh, the documentation was just so
Mariah Parsons 33:21
easy. Oh my gosh, our team is gonna be so happy to hear that. Yeah,
Nino Cavenecia 33:23
he said it was really easy, really straightforward. I definitely have not seen that in most cases. So we really appreciated that as a partner. But the other thing this is probably more so the off script and and just the kudos to you guys is is definitely won't even tell you when I started as an agent, long time ago. But there were, there were, if you can believe it, there were times where, like, wismo Order Status, like, it wasn't like every site, like, you couldn't even find out where your order was. And maybe, like, it was crazy, you would have to just contact support. They'd be like, here's the tracking number. It was like this huge manual thing. And I know because I did that, and I wish there was a Malomo in that era, but then, I don't know if you guys have ever, ever thought about like a link to this comparison. It's not like the shiniest, fanciest comparison, but to me, it was so impactful in sort of that wismo Umbrella experience is the Domino's Pizza tracker. So pizza tracker, to me, like not going to say anything great about their pizza, but so ingenious about that tracker. Like, yeah, here you had every at that point when they released it, you had pretty much everybody, by default, doing order tracking in some different flavor. And then here's Domino's, like, the only one that heard like this issue of where the heck's my pizza. Like, I have guests who are, like, about to strangle me and tie me up and. And, and sometimes those pieces will take a long time and the weight, but I but I think the cool thing about what they did there, that I see signs of, like, what you are trying to do is that it, it was a very consistent and very informative experience, like, and it was very much unreal. Like, it's very visually please. Like, you can see it's going in the oven, the person's putting cheese on it, whatever. And so with Malomo, I thought, How great, because I literally just yesterday was 100% truth. I went to a site I won't name, but it's a very offline,
Mariah Parsons 35:36
I'll tell you guys, but offline, I love that insider
Nino Cavenecia 35:39
name, because I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to be mean, but it's a popular site that I am like, where is my order? And I go look at my email from them. There's no link to tracking on the email itself. And I'm like, This is so weird. I mean, this is what, 24 right? And so I go into my account, and when I log into my account, the first, the first thing it says when I log into my account is, you don't have any orders. And so I go, I click order history to see my order, then click on that to actually see a link, but then click on that, and I actually see where it's going. And so it's moments like that where I'm like, yes, there is a strong need for you guys and what you're doing. So kudos to you all.
Mariah Parsons 36:28
Thank you. I very much appreciate it, and I I know I'm going to be sharing that with my team, because it is all the little things that match, you know, that make the difference of hearing like those stories, and I know I've been a customer when I'm like, where is my order? And I definitely am more privy to it now, being in this space, obviously, I just know the potentials, the potential of what you know, brands can do out there. And the domino pizza tracker is such a good one. Like, I've even included that in SEO post of ours, right? Like, full, like, so no offense, you didn't get offended by it? Yeah, no. I mean, it's, it is, I think it's such a creative way to know exactly what you're talking about, because even there's education in our space that it's like, okay, this is what we're talking about when we say order tracking, right? Like, it's not something like, you say email or SMS, and people like, oh, yeah, whatever. Get it. It's more education that needs to be of like, because it isn't just it isn't normal, or it isn't every single person. Every single merchant who sells something online doesn't have that tracking like you just express which that's a wild, wild ride. I think most people would have probably given up and maybe message someone before digging into the order history that much, but it's a great parallel, and this is one of the things that I truly believe, is just uncertainty is much scarier than just having the answer. So that's why people like order tracking. That's why they like that dominance tracker as well. Because if you're looking at something and it's like, okay, you know something's on the way, but you have no time frame for when that is. It could be in two minutes, it could be in 10, it could be in 30, it could be in two hours. So it's like the the pain of just anticipating something is way worse than just knowing okay, it's going to be here in probably 30 minutes, right? And then you can, kind of like, ease and know, and tell people, okay, 30 minutes, whatever. And then, you know, like the party, example, people are on your back about, where's this pizza? So I very much. It is something that I believe, to my core, of like, the uncertainty of things is just too much. It's a heavier burden to bear than just having an answer to something, even if it's an answer you don't like. And we've seen that on the Malomo side of things. But I want to transition and talk more about your experience, Leanna, because obviously got me knows experience, and we're so excited about it on the Malomo front. But what are you excited that it's going to bring to your team for when the integration goes live?
Leanna Nazzisi 38:58
Oh, I can't wait. It's, it's happening right before peak season, which is, like, a beautiful time to test. Which, like, don't quote me on that, because a lot of other code freezes from, like, October to, you know, January. But like, to me, I'm like, this is the busiest time of a year. Like, this is our Super Bowl, you know. And wismo is the number one issue type. And I know I'm contradicting myself a little bit here where, like, don't always put your number one issue types in. Ai however, like this is a scenario where we, our team has, you know, by default because of what we do. I like to call them, like logistical experts, and we're an international brand, so like our team has studied tracking pages for every courier in almost every country we ship to, and we're trying to decipher these messages, you know, these scans. What does this mean? What does you know sorted at this facility mean? And you know all of these. Other things, and we do this every day, and we still don't really know, you know. So I can imagine the customer who's going to that page, who is probably also equally familiar with something like that, because everybody shops online nowadays. But I think there is a little bit of we got spoiled by Amazon, a little bit, you know, quick, like, something is going to show up as soon as I think about it. But that's just like, what's naturally not, you know, sustainable for other brands like ours. And to me, I'm like, Well, this is such a fun experiment to you know, if the customer is going to our branded tracking page via Malomo, and they're just like, what, I still don't get it, you know? And then they want to, like, reach out to support here, we have swift CX, kind of, like, in the middle ground to almost, like, translate what these couriers are actually saying. So when we're talking about, you know, this was returned for delivery, or this requires a signature, or whatever. Like, we can using the macros in a language that we've like so expertly put together with that, like customer touch, we can say this requires a signature. We need you to be home at x time, or whatever. And like, you don't have to wait to hear from someone you know, and you you're getting that information firsthand at a very sensitive time of year where, like, everybody wants everything now, and I think it's going to be a game changer, not only for the agent, obviously, because there's like, more room to do the fun stuff, but for the customer to, like, recognize how easy this experience was, and almost like compare it to others that maybe haven't been as easy. And I think it's that piece sometimes in this, like luxury beauty market, where, you know, we have a very high price point product, and it might not be accessible to everyone in the world, but like, if you had a really great experience and the tracking was easy, and you just got all your questions answered, like, so seamlessly, why would you not shop again if you could? And that's sort of like, where I feel like this is gonna be helpful for us, and even some of the things I'm thinking about beyond this around, like, the more time we free up for the CX team to do fun stuff, we can, like, track revenue behind it and track, like, how much value this team is bringing when they're referring these specific products, and when They're, like, sending certain links or whatever like, that is something we don't have time to really build right now because we're in problem solving mode. But if you have a really great tool that kind of, like, helps assist with that, it's, it's a no brainer for me, and I think it's like marrying these two very efficient, you know, softwares that we have here together, like, I'm just, I'm geeking out, but I'm so excited for it, because I really think it's going to help in these conversations where we talk about, like retention, returning customers and Like brand experiences, like everybody always remembers that really terrible brand experience when you do, like interviews and you ask people, what's your good customer experience, or what's your terrible one? The good one, I always find people are like, it takes them a while, but the bad one is instantaneous. And I'm like, Okay, let's shift that a little bit. And I think this partnership can really do that.
Mariah Parsons 43:44
Yeah, yeah, no, you're totally right. Like, when someone's been burned in the past, they like your your brain calls that into memory so quickly. And so it's, you know, it's, it's not a great thing. Like, we, I wish that that wasn't the case. And so to be able to have more positive narratives and like, really give room to people who are in the customer experience space and just be like, Okay, I want to enable you to go get creative or like, I, I've I, I've noticed the trend of of customer experience or customer support starting to be more in the marketing world. Or, like, you know, you said in this episode, fall under marketing and like, have that, have that communication. But it's not the norm by, by any means. And so, you know, even things like that, where it's like, can you can the marketing team and the CX team sit down and be like, Okay, what are our customers talking about, right? Like, this is what i i love to ask our CI team when I'm, like, not bothering them, they're not swamped with something, or not trying to, you know, draw away from their time, but I'm like, What are you hearing? What's the chat? Or, like, what, what are you seeing from your side? And how can I pull that into what I'm trying to do with making, you know, an email really valuable. For our customers, right? Like, how, how can you do all those little things or put revenue behind, you know, what CS is doing? Because that's like a channel that has not been explored traditionally. You know, it's something that's viewed as a cost, cost center. And so I, I'm really excited to see kind of this, this movement, and I want to say justification of, like, just validating how how much effort goes into CS, because it is not, it is not a job for the for the, you know, for the weary. So, yeah, I love that. We'll wrap up this episode with just a really quick touch on I want to hear when both of you are like, Okay, I have this problem, or I have this issue that I'm trying to solve. Where do you both go to level up? So this is, like, it could be podcast, content, friends, family, right? Like, anything. Where, where do you all kind of look when you're like, I have no idea how to approach this. Nina, let's start with you.
Nino Cavenecia 46:01
Good question. This is sort of like, is this specifically work related, or, like, just everyday, anything
Mariah Parsons 46:07
open open door,
Nino Cavenecia 46:12
not to be super on the nose about it because of what we're doing at our startup. But I mean, can't hate on chatgpt. I mean, it just does some things that are it's pretty magical. And for sure, obviously we're just because I've been working with it and other models so closely, I'm hyper aware of its limitations. But when you guide it the right way. I mean, geez. I mean, it's the stuff that I get back and then, and then me teaching it, let's say to my eight and 10 year old and just thinking, what's their chat GT gonna look like in 10 years? I then I just need to go take a nap. Because,
Mariah Parsons 46:57
yeah, you're like, Okay, now I'm too existential. I love it. I love it. We know. What about you?
Leanna Nazzisi 47:05
Um, I have a group text called Sisterhood of the Traveling CX and 10 women who are all heads of E commerce brands, and we've all sort of kind of met over the course of our careers, some of us have worked together. You know, we support each other. We do networking events together. It's just such a fun group text. And I go there. I'm like, girls, help me find this software or this agent. You know, got this, like, really great review. And I want to, like, do this thing. What have you done? And it is such a lovely community, because I get, I think finding people in this space is really challenging, especially in a post COVID world where, like, probably 90% of customer service teams are remote. You know, my customer service team is remote, and I think about our agents who are sitting at home by themselves, reading email after email after email, and I'm like that that probably can't feel good over a long period of time. So something that we've all connected with really was like our common interest of, like being human in CX and empathetic, and we all feel so strongly about not only the customer, but like the people talking to the customer, and they're on the same level, you know, it's not, it's not the customer is always right, You know? It's like, oh, how can these people no one has to be right or wrong here. How can these people work together on something that we all want? No customer support person wants you to have a bad experience, you know. So whatever we say in this conversation is not to make you feel bad, you know. And I think it's hard sometimes to be on the receiving end of customer emails, because they don't have that mentality, you know. So I found this really great group of women who support each other, and we geek out about so many different software things, so many people have recommended different projects and brands and you know, stuff to us. And yeah, they're my they're my girl gang.
Mariah Parsons 49:23
Oh, I love that. I love that so much. That makes me happy to hear. And I do find, as an industry, everyone is very willing to share about struggles, challenges, wins at all of it, right? Like you get the whole gambit most of the time. I will say, so I love that. Okay, this has been an absolute blast to have you both on thank you for making the time. It is the joy of my day, so I really appreciate it, and it's great meeting you both.
Leanna Nazzisi 49:49
Thank you.
Nino Cavenecia 49:50
Thank you. Appreciate it.
