Why Do CX Leaders Fail?

Transcript

[00:00:00] Steve MacDonald: Welcome to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host. Today, we’ve got a really special guest: Lisa Del Fabbro. Lisa, you have been working in the apparel industry—I won’t say for how long, but for a long time.

You’ve actually come up the rank. You started as an agent. You now manage agents. You manage the operations. You report up to the C-suite board. You’ve got a lot of responsibilities. And so one of the things that we’re going to talk about as the overarching theme today is why do CX leaders fail?

What are some of the fundamentals that have really shifted, like with the upgrades in technology and AI and expectations of the contact center away from just being a cost center? We’re necessarily evil. Obviously, we have questions coming in from customers. We need somebody to answer them.

There’s really so much more to that. I think that’s one of the most important reasons why, when we’re garnering resources internally and advocating for ourselves, we have to show greater and greater impact on the overall business, right down to bottom-line revenue. And you’re going to talk about that today as well.

So, with that, maybe you can expand a little bit more on your background, and then we’ll jump right in.

[00:01:16] Lisa Del Fabbro: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It’s really an honor to be here and speak about the day-to-day work that I’ve been a part of for the last five or six years. Actually, my experience in the industry goes back to when I was in the late stages of schooling, worked in a store, and had my first experience in the retail and apparel industry.

Years later, I transitioned to B2B wholesale work, working and selling to retailers throughout Canada and the United States. Over the pandemic, as we know, the mass layoffs hit, and I had an opportunity to actually take a role as a CX agent in a pre-love luxury handbag company. This was challenging in itself, thinking that it was on an entry-level for the stage of life and my career that I was in, but it turned out to be a huge blessing.

During that time, I got certified in digital marketing and have since transitioned to CX digital experience. 

[00:02:14] Steve MacDonald: That’s fantastic. The perspective is that the frontline agent is so important in so many ways, which sounds like an understatement.

Of course, how they’re fully utilized and managed and their importance to the overall company and its growth is instrumental. So, I’m going to have you go to the core underlying theme of what we’re going to talk about here today. And why do CX leaders fail? What are your thoughts on that subject? 

[00:02:44] Lisa Del Fabbro: Yeah, absolutely. I think the value that agents have and the impact that they have on the business are sometimes undermined within organizations. Making their role and their day-to-day work as efficient as possible using technology and listening to the customer and their pain points is essential to the department’s success and essentially relates to all other aspects of the business.

So, whether we’re using AI to translate and write out a voicemail so that they don’t have to sit there and listen to it or if we’re using our NPS score to identify operational pain points and our help desk, too, our CSAT will give us a good indication of the customer’s satisfaction and how efficiently we respond to their requests accurately. It provides an excellent overall experience to the consumer.

[00:03:39] Steve MacDonald: So, in your opinion, what is one of the things within that environment that a CX leader would fail to do? What are they missing out on? What are they not taking advantage of that they should be?

[00:03:55] Lisa Del Fabbro: I think firsthand, I would say listening to the agents, further being in the agents’ shoes dealing with the escalations and being involved in the day-to-day of customer communication is essential that I don’t think a higher-level role requires but is essential to the success of the department.

So, leaders miss out on leveraging any kind of tool that Asians would be more efficient with. They only know what those agents go through on a day-to-day basis and how their flow with operations would affect the automation in the system.

They must have direct communication with the consumer. So, taking the escalations, being involved in those conversations, and leveraging those pain points to find efficiencies and create a seamless experience. I do this daily when I’m involved in customer communication, and I encourage the team to escalate problematic tickets and discussions with the consumer that really provides us with a lot of insight as to the voice of the customer, what their pain points are, and we work backward from there.

AI is obviously a huge topic right now, everywhere. It’s hard to navigate; you can apply it in so many ways. We have first-hand experience onboarding an AI that was front-facing to the customer, which went rogue. Promising donations, setting up meetings with our partnership team, and giving out promises.

So being able to really dig through that and catch it versus Not being connected in those conversations is essential. So, maybe we can leverage AI in another way to optimize the efficiency of our team. Maybe it transcribes our voicemails or summarizes our calls or conversations with customers so that the team is more efficient.

There are also ways of having it suggest a potential response that the agent can copy and paste. Being involved directly with the customer gives you the ability to work backward and not only catch issues but also be efficient at resolving them. 

[00:06:10] Steve MacDonald: I got a picture in my mind as you were talking there.

Have you ever seen horses that have blinders so they don’t get distracted by the crowds at a parade or something like that? Without keeping in touch with the agents who have their pulse on what’s happening and the feedback that could come into the business, especially around new product launches and things like that, or external factors in the market that are affecting our ability to sell or whatever it is.

I’ve interviewed C-suite leaders who make it a regular part of their daily job to talk to the agents directly because they want that feedback. That feedback comes in qualitative forms, but there’s also lots of data. With the technology, we have tons and tons of data. Tell me a little about how you’re using data in the tech stack and how you cut through all that data clutter to get to the nuggets of information you can make decisions on and act upon.

[00:07:18] Lisa Del Fabbro: Yeah, we wouldn’t be this efficient without our data, and after our first discussion and reviewing our notes, it was hard for me to separate the data from the other pillars of the discussion because it touches literally everything within our business and without that we can’t make accurate decisions.

Typically, an NPS score will help us solve operational issues and shipping delays and take a proactive approach to trickle that into the operation side. Our helpdesk gives us a CSAT, a feel of what the customer is saying, and how efficient we can be. Regarding reviews, we take that, and we have a loop back to our product team on how we can improve.

Knowing your business and understanding its landscape makes it easier to pinpoint what we need to look at throughout this data. For example, one of our brands is a performance sock company. We do all kinds of socks, and you don’t really think about your socks until you put these ones on. But for any running, hiking, golf, or whatever kind of sock you need, match that sport’s performance and movements.

We’re going through returns and a $400 return comes in. $400 of socks, that’s quite a large number. So, if you can set thresholds and automate some notifications based on the landscape of your business to what is normal and what is abnormal, and then identify those and drill down on the ones that are abnormal, it is a great way to leverage the data. Hear the customer and apply as needed. 

[00:08:56] Steve MacDonald: I love that. You couldn’t set those parameters if you weren’t tracking the data. When we talk about data, you talk about making decisions based on revenue sacrifices. You talked about that previously in longevity. What exactly do you mean by that?

[00:09:14] Lisa Del Fabbro: Yeah, so we believe in creating a customer-centric approach. We’re not just on the defense in terms of answering the customer’s inquiries, but we really have a seat at the table when it comes to strategizing and decision-making. Being the voice of the customer in the room so that when we’re planning promotions, when a new privacy policy comes up, and when the content of the actual garment is online, consumers nowadays are so educated as to what they’re buying, and they really want those details.

So, taking a proactive approach and being the voice of the consumer within the business is essential. We’ve worked with brands that have had a very strict return policy that saw returns as a sacrifice of revenue. However, we know the consumer, especially in apparel and garments, wants to be able to get their money back if it doesn’t fit. Creating a seamless exchange program as well.

It makes it easy for the consumer to trust that if they’re not satisfied with the product, they have options to get the right product that fits them or to change for a completely different item. So, being in the room when these decisions are made is essential to know the customer’s voice and what they’re expecting from us versus making decisions based on what’s going to drive revenue; those go hand in hand. Obviously, we need to make revenue; we are a business. But having that makes it more seamless for the customer, and we see a higher LTV when we do that.

[00:10:51] Steve MacDonald: You talk about having a seat at the table and providing insights to different departments. Did you have to earn that seat at the table? It was their skepticism at the beginning. Is it part of your company’s culture? Tell us a little bit about how you earn that seat at the table and keep it. 

[00:11:12] Lisa Del Fabbro: Yeah, I think I’m really grateful for the leaders that I work with because they understand that it’s important for CX to be involved in these conversations, communicating the value between different departments. It’s also essential to keep that going throughout and trickle through the business.

An example of this is an out-of-stock product or e-commerce launching a new tool without communicating it to the CX team. So, for us to be able to respond efficiently to the customer, we need to have the information before the launch so that we can accurately trickle that down to the customers.

Like I said, if it’s out of stock, we won’t be able to get it for X amount of time. We can strategize internally about providing the customer with different options, even on product pages, and what information needs to be there. Our team doesn’t work 24 hours a day. We have a relatively small team for the volume that we carry.

So, how do we provide the e-com team with the pain points and what is needed to fix them so that when the customer is on the site, they have all the information that they need to convert? Consumers nowadays don’t want to wait until Monday morning before we respond. So, how do we spoon-feed that information on the PDPs, for example, so that the customer doesn’t lose interest and doesn’t go to a competitor?

[00:12:39] Steve MacDonald: You’ve talked about feeding the team with data that enables conversions. I think that’s the area you just started talking about here. Can you explain a little bit more or maybe even give another example of what you’re talking about? 

[00:12:52] Lisa Del Fabbro: Essentially, we want to reduce friction for the customer. An example that I can think of is, let’s say, sizing charts. Having that accurately represented, privacy policy returns policy, and the UX of how all this information sits on the site. As I said, consumers are still educated that we really have to think about how much information they need to trust your brand and convert.

[00:13:21] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. You’ve talked about the difference between CX and CS mentality. Can you explain that a bit? 

[00:13:28] Lisa Del Fabbro: Yeah. I think it’s hugely important to communicate that value internally and throughout CX as a role within multiple different industries. It’s definitely misunderstood, but I see it as a proactive approach to customer interaction. We can see if a customer has been a lifelong customer or a first-time customer, and treating those differently is very important to the success of the business. That being said, it really is end-to-end.

You can be speaking to a customer at any point of their journey, so it’s really not just reactive in terms of customer service and answering a question, but it’s a holistic approach to how the brand and our agents are interacting with consumers at any given stage of their journey. Also, quantifying their impact.

We track the revenue of agents on the business weekly and quarterly. Any pre-sales tickets that convert, we can see how much revenue that’s generating. So, taking it as a CX versus CS, it’s really important to understand that there’s a bigger picture here. It can definitely relate to how we drive revenue, but communicating that value internally and being able to quantify that is essential.

[00:14:47] Steve MacDonald: You just talked about tracking revenue by agents. One of the points we want to connect is how the CX experience impacts revenue, and here you are tracking it at the agent level. I think that’s incredible. Is there more that you can say or talk to about how you track that and what you do with that data?

[00:15:11] Lisa Del Fabbro: That data is presented to the C-suite and C-level to reinforce the purpose of our business and justify that it’s not a cost or an expense.

It’s actually the opposite. I think that’s huge in what we do in terms of reporting. How do we track the growth of that revenue? How do we coach and mentor our agents to be able to grow that revenue on the flip side? Also, it doesn’t necessarily have to be directly tied to revenue. It could also be loyalty.

Leveraging those touch points with the consumer allows the agent to say, “Thank you for having a good experience or buying our brand. Did you know you have an X amount of loyalty points on your order?” If they’re satisfied with the product, they will come back, spend those loyalty points, and log into their account.

Revenue is one thing, and we can definitely track that. How do we track growth and communicate that internally, and how do we manage loyalty? Our loyalty program is a huge part of enabling our Try Now program. The CX team facilitates the Try Now program and handles that operationally with our warehouse and shipping.

Essentially, it’s a differentiator for us. It allows the customer to try the product for 30 days and to pay when that term is finished, and they can always return it if they’re not satisfied. So, facilitating that and tracking the number of conversions and satisfied customers we had from that program is also a way to demonstrate that our team can help facilitate revenue.

[00:16:50] Steve MacDonald: I love that. What are some of the KPIs that you look at most when you’re tracking revenue? 

[00:16:58] Lisa Del Fabbro: We have a way of tracking pre-sales tickets and what that conversion is, and it is direct within our direct revenue within our help center. So that’s huge. That’s the way we leverage our tools to collect data.

Our help center is incredible—I’m a huge fan. It’s called Gorgeous. They recently released conversion tools so we can trigger promo campaigns based on any number of different elements, such as exit intent, upselling to hit a shipping threshold, and so on. That’s all under CX as well.

So, we’re looking forward to really utilizing that aspect of our help desk, which will also help the customer convert and make them more aware of the programs that we have to offer, which are under the management of the CX team. 

[00:17:46] Steve MacDonald: We’ve talked about so much here. Tell me something that you’re most proud of that you’ve been able to do, accomplish, or contribute to the team. What would that be? 

[00:17:59] Lisa Del Fabbro: That’s a really good question. I think diving headfirst into AI and being so early in the game, whether it succeeds or fails, we learn so much from those experiences. I’m proud to have adopted that fairly early. Regardless of the outcome, it really taught us a lot, but I think I’m most proud of just being a part of the team and working with the different departments and people, especially our agents.

[00:18:33] Steve MacDonald: We’ve also talked a lot about agents, and if I could ask you a question, how do you rate it first on a scale of 1 to 10? One is not important at all. Ten is vital to the overall growth and vitality of the business. How important are the agents to the overall growth and vitality of the business? 

[00:18:58] Lisa Del Fabbro: Twelve. There are 12 in my eyes. 

[00:19:00] Steve MacDonald: Why would you say that? Why would you break the scale? 

[00:19:03] Lisa Del Fabbro: I understand the empathy and patience it takes to turn an unhappy customer into a happy customer. We all know the stats on whether your friend would recommend a product and how likely you are to purchase that product, and that’s essential to any business. 

We know CX has a high turnover. It’s really important to value the people who can do that, put a happy face on the customer, and be empathetic to a consumer when they’re coming to you.

[00:19:39] Steve MacDonald: In an environment where AI is taking some of the easier tickets, the harder tickets are going to the agents.

In one respect, the quality of the agent and the training for that agent, which we’re asking the agent to do, are just increasing in complexity. At the same time, we’re trying to understand the role of the live agent. Will AI take over? You’ve talked a lot about empathy. I’ve yet to see any AI system that could really be empathetic, intuitive to understand and listen to, and able to identify trends across even the conversation with one customer. What’s your point of view on AI? Is it actually a threat to the job of a live agent, or are we always going to need live agents? 

[00:20:34] Lisa Del Fabbro: We will always need live agents. Empathy and picking up on sentiment are some aspects of it. We’ll always need our agents to address escalations. They will always have a part in overseeing any AI function that we implement and furthering how we use their time for AI to drive efficiency. How do we use their time to help optimize their firsthand experience on the flip side? It’s funny; I was speaking to a CX director the other day on a call, and he said he freed up so much time within efficiency wasn’t necessarily related to AI, but just efficiency that they would personally reach out to consumers with abandoned carts and make that connection human to human to help drive revenue. I thought that was a fantastic idea.

We’ve seen a lot of success in it. So, how do we leverage AI to create efficiency so that the agent can deal with the escalations or whichever issue we’re facing with the consumer? On the flip side, how do we utilize their free time by creating that efficiency to help the business and optimize our tools?

To answer your question, we will always be there. Human interaction is unbeatable. AI can help, but only to a certain extent.

[00:21:57] Steve MacDonald: Yes. I’ve never heard anybody at any job say, “I’ve got so much time to be proactive.” I’ve got one final question for you. 

If there was one single takeaway that you have for the folks who were watching or listening to the podcast here that you wanted them to remember, what would that be?

[00:22:18] Lisa Del Fabbro: CX is an essential part of the business and touches every department. It impacts every department in a very positive and proactive way. It’s not just about driving revenue; it’s also about being the voice of the customer within those departments so that you can connect with your customers on a brand level.

[00:22:38] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic words of wisdom. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all your experiences here in point of view. If people had follow-up questions, would it be appropriate for us to give them a link to your profile on LinkedIn so they could reach out? 

[00:22:51] Lisa Del Fabbro: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:22:55] Steve MacDonald: Lisa, thank you for coming on. We really enjoyed everything you had today here. I hope that you get a lot of chances to talk to a lot of people who have questions.

[00:23:05] Lisa Del Fabbro: I hope so too. Thank you.