TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, customers, customer experience, podcast, email, agency, retention, talking, team, e commerce, love, great, community, founders, learn, grew, clients, marketing, ecommerce, support
SPEAKERS
Mariah Parsons, Zoe Kahn
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, Ryan Parsons. If you're here, you're either on a quest for ecommerce enlightenment, or you accidentally clicked 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 multimillion dollar business, or simply just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey. Before we unleash the brilliance of today's guest, 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 her other episodes. Echo malomo.com That's gomalomo.com Get ready for insights chuckles and perhaps a profound realization or two with this newest episode of retention. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to retention Chronicles excited for this early morning recording. Here we have today. So we thank you so much for joining us. For those of you who knows that we can I'm sure you're excited for this episode. And for those of you who don't know Zoe Khan, I'm sure after this episode, you'll be very, very, very, very likely to look into everything that she's doing and everything that she's crushing, because I am definitely an avid follower. So sorry, thank you for being on today. I know it's 630 Your time, so really getting up and grinding, that I very much appreciate you making the time to do so. So thank you for being here.
Zoe Kahn 01:59
Yeah, of course. I'm super excited. And I don't mind the the early morning. See you do what you got to do. But I love getting on different podcasts and everything. So I'm happy to be here.
Mariah Parsons 02:11
We love it. Love it. Yes, you're a podcaster yourself. So we're gonna get into that. We'd love for you to just give a quick intro. So any of our listeners who aren't familiar with you can kind of have a little bit of context. Before we dive in, obviously, plug your podcast as well. And yeah, then we'll get into it.
Zoe Kahn 02:29
Yeah. Oh my gosh, it's so hard for me to say who I am now. Because I'm like, I'm a million things. Yeah. But currently my most up to date bio. I'm the VP of retention at adient hearing, which is an over the counter hearing aid company, which is new industry. Definitely very, very, it has its challenges. It has its pros, it has its cons and it's very rewarding. We're changing people's lives helping a lot of people. So it's amazing. So that's, that's my full time gig. And I also own an agency on the side called inevitable agency, which I always call my happy accident. It was a I created it as a place to solve a problem. I'm very, very customer centric customer experience in ecom is really, really important to any position that I've ever held, really. And yeah, I so I accidentally founded this agency, because I was getting a lot of outreach to ask about customer experience, so you want to humanize the customer experience because you're talking directly to your customers. And I just realized that I personally didn't have anyone to send these requests to because I don't know if it's a perfectionist in me, or maybe I'm a little brat, but I'm like, Ah, no one. No one does it like I do kind of thing.
Mariah Parsons 03:51
So I believe in yourself. Right? As a founder.
Zoe Kahn 03:53
Right. I do feel like it's a founder mentality. But also, I, yeah, I hadn't found a lot of customer experience solutions. And after being in E commerce for years, so I was like, Well, let me just go find some people that I trust and put a team together. And so yeah, now it's about a year and a half old. And we've got a team of seven people now. And I just recently started expanding my marketing team and the agency which is fun. So yeah, they're doing that and then I also host a podcast called Let's laugh about it. It's not so serious business podcast where we talk about all things business, but it's very light hearted and yeah, we were just talking about that Mariah and I have similar just like vibes and I there's a lot of not so light hearted podcasts out there business podcast, so it's something that's more casual to listen to, but still, you could gather insight from so that's a little bit about me.
Mariah Parsons 04:58
I love it. Yeah, that was a great So, Marie, what are you talking about? I know there's a lot to go into. We want
Zoe Kahn 05:03
to know my view. Yeah, mom's like, Okay, should I go into my favorite color my family life? Like,
Mariah Parsons 05:10
that'll be for later? Yeah, that's like five minutes from now. Okay. No, I, I feel like I going off of like the not so serious podcast balance of, I recognize the value of all of them in that like, super, super tactical strategy podcast, where it's like, okay, you need to like break out a notepad and like, start writing all this down. That's great. And with this podcast, I'd like to try and strike a balance, which is, you know, you learn about the person, you learn about some tactical, tactical approaches in which we'll get into and would love your advice, you know, with all the background and CX that you have. But before that, I wanted to ask because I feel like, like, I every quarter, and every month, it flies by it seems like but then also, when I'm in it, I'm like, Okay, we have so much time like, we're launching someone or something end of month, we have, okay, we have a month, whatever, right, like, so having your agency for a year and a half. Do you feel like that time has flown by? Because I feel like when I look back at a year and a half of what we are doing, or even when you and I met originally, it's dropped off two years ago or wait, yeah, two years ago. And that seems like it was just yesterday. I guess not to two years, but like probably like a year and some change. Because it wasn't Yeah, I guess. Yeah. So Yeah. How's it how has it been like growing the company? Adding on? You said seven other people? I don't know if that includes yourself or whatnot. But six or seven other people? What have what has that been like?
Zoe Kahn 06:46
Yeah, it's been crazy. I'd it's so it's one of those just things with time where it feels like it was yesterday, but then also feels like it's been forever. When I first started the agency, so it started with just consulting work. And I had, I still haven't done really any outreach. Well, we can actually talk about that, actually, because I'm trying to figure it out. The it's everything's been inbound, and I started getting consulting clients because I won a award. It was a CX operator of the Year award. And I didn't even really before that I hadn't, I was kind of just like, head down doing my job and like, doing the best I can at my job and learning as much as I can. And I didn't even really know that there was this like whole ecommerce community. And yeah, when I figured when I won that award, and realize, like, people are on like, Twitter X or whatever, like talking about e commerce and there, there's like, I don't know, different slack communities. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. And if even thinking about time, from like, before, like pre Zowie, knowing about community, I'm like, that feels like yesterday, but that also I feel like I've been in this like E commerce community for for a long time. And yeah, there's been so many, like, time has flown by because I'm like, oh, I need to go. Like, I went to an event after I won that award. And I was like, wow, I learned so much at this event. And like, there's just been so much has happened since the agency kind of like came into fruition. And yeah, it feels like it was yesterday, but and I can't even believe that like we have enough work to give to seven people. But it was just like, a client needs something and they like want more of our time and we're like, oh well we don't we don't have enough people for that but we can like if you guys want it we can hire for that and like make sure they're trained by us and it just grew and grew and yeah, now I used to be way more involved in like the day to day where I was waking up at I would I would wake up at 3am to post the podcast and then I would do agency work from like four to 7am and then start my nine to five and it was like that those days felt super super long.
Mariah Parsons 09:14
But they are super long Yeah. As they are because of that credit Yeah,
Zoe Kahn 09:20
exactly. Yeah, so those that that made things go by really really fast but I learned so much through it and then this these past like six months I've learned to accept more help and then just like put more trust in like now that people have been working at the Agency for a while. I mean a while say yeah, this time hold this whole time thing is like weird. But yeah, so now I've got like such a solid team that I can remove myself a little bit and have like more space to think and everything but yeah, it's time is crazy. It feels like forever, but just a minute. At the same time, yeah,
Mariah Parsons 10:01
yeah, I love I mean, kudos to you and your team for having everyone come in inbound. So far and more than happy to chat about, you know, kind of extending that branch. And like where you all are looking to go beyond that. But I think the big thing that I also have become privy to of being in this e commerce community is just how much it is a community. And it's great because people are so willing to obviously share their tips and tricks and be very vocal with like, what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. And like, share newsletters and all this stuff that it makes it very accessible, which I think is because a lot of the, obviously, a lot of the people in this space are founders themselves, right? Like they know how hard it can be to know what to do and what not to do and all that stuff. So once you started kind of waking up to a community aspect, and like the community community, that is really the undercurrent of E commerce, how did you start to tap into that? Because I, I feel like that's something where I hear from, like, our brand side of the podcast, where social is one of those things that it is, everyone knows it's important, right? Like everyone feels that as a consumer as a founder as a EECOM operator. But actually tapping into it, there's just so many different ways that you can do it in so many different platforms. So how did you kind of whittle down like, Okay, I want to focus on Twitter, and I would say, like LinkedIn, because that's where a lot of the E commerce operators are, but what what's if you can articulate like any of your thought process around, trying to dive into that community?
Zoe Kahn 11:41
Yeah, it's such I love this topic. And it could be related to brand sign too, because when you think about it, it actually all comes down to community, and being genuine. Because when I in I don't know if this is very helpful, but I have never had an intention of growth. I've just always had an intention of like, learning, and then also sharing knowledge. And I think keeping, keeping, like a curious mind and like, being always in a place where you're, you're in a growth mindset of, like learning, and you don't ever like think, you know, everything I know, I made the joke of like, no one does it as good as I do. But
Mariah Parsons 12:31
you'll, you'll walk back. I both are true, both are Jews. Both are true,
Zoe Kahn 12:37
I can say that. But at the same time, I know, there's so much out there to learn, there's always something to learn. And so when I'm in on Twitter, and on LinkedIn, and at events, like I'm there to learn, and then like, once I learned something, I want to share it, because it's helped in if you have that mindset of just like learning and connecting and just like truly, like just making friends and building community and, and I found so much value in people appreciate just like being connected to others who are similar or share different interests. And it's, it comes down to that community. And if you just, if you go into it with like, Oh, I'm gonna, like, connect with as many people as I can. So I can get all these clients and all these whatever and like, whatever. I've, that comes off kind of icky. And people can feel it. And I give when we go to events with the agency, girls, now I always give them the spiel of like, we're not here to get clients, we're here to learn, make connections, and like if clients come out of that, eventually, that's cool. But like, we're at these events to learn and like make friends and just like connect with others. And if you can teach someone something that's great to like, give, give, give and then like, things will come around what goes around comes around and I think it's just that it's like more about community and less about like, like, that goal like that money mindset, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 14:14
yeah, of course, I think yes, I 100% make think it makes sense. And I think a lot of people who are in this community would also understand and relate to that of and like that's how I see this podcast, I started it three years ago, right of just on a whim of okay, I want to get to talk to amazing people, I want to immerse myself in the E commerce community, how can I do that and also, you know, push myself to reach out to people and have this like benefit of okay, you're gonna be so gracious to give me your time. What can I give you as an exchange in that and a free platform to go and talk about your brand and your learnings and you know, I can I can connect you with the other people who have been on this podcast right and Like all the benefits of yes, okay, I am taking my time the same way you are taking your time, but you're also doing me the favor of teaching me about what you're caring about both on the brand and the partnership side, right. And so it was a great immersive experience where I could just kind of explode in terms of looking at the different all the different ways people are thinking about this without having a background in E commerce. And that's what's made it so fun to have this podcast, right? It's a great outreach to someone of like, okay, yes, please give me your time. And I will give you this free promotion. And then I can also go to those events and talk with people and like, make those connections that you're talking about. And then also say, like, Okay, you're, you're a cool person, I want to talk with you more, let's hop on this podcast, just like you and I are doing right now. So I think it's one of those things that it's a very slippery slope, or an easy thing to get, get caught up, caught, get caught up in of like, okay, to, and I understand it, right, and I see it from my side as well like, justifying expenses of like, okay, trying to get clients. But I think, to your point of like, people can read through that. And it'll probably be a way shorter interaction, if you're trying to do that. So I'm Aloma, we were the same way where it's like, okay, event marketing, that is surely like our metrics that we're measuring aren't attached to revenue. They're attached to like branding, and just like going and chatting with people, whether it's like personal branding, like just getting our name, like my name out there. And Lomas name out there, if just, you know, like, going and talking about what we do, even if that's where the conversation stops, and then we continue talking about personal stuff, like, that's where I am at. And that's where our company's at. And that's why I'm, I'm sure you feel this as well, with your agency, being able to like, share that message and know that you're sending people out there who are representing your team that also believe that message, it's so powerful, because like, even, as in my see, right, like, you're getting so many pitches, you don't you're not incentivized to want to say because the conversation has turned into something that, okay, now I feel this weird obligation to maintain this conversation, but like, don't want to be rude, but I also don't need this service right now. So it's like, it's great if you know, okay, tell me what you do. And then if that if I need that service, we can continue talking about that. But if I don't, then I just want to know about you, and like your story and your learnings, and like, all of that, rather than, okay, now I feel like I have to exit this conversation and like, give this weird middle ground of like, yeah, maybe like, you know, can I feel that? Yeah, I feel like a lot. I also, I think there are like certain conferences where that happens more or like certain events where that happens more at. So like, we were talking about Chicago before and like happy hours, right? Like, it's just very chill, there's, there's probably not really any metrics that any company is trying to hit. Because it's like, you know, your after work hours, it's not this big conference that you have all this big, expensive out around, it's just like showing up. And so that's where I find, you know, being able to make foster those connections, and then like, bring it into the community. This is a lot of fun.
Zoe Kahn 18:20
Yeah, and what I find too, and this probably isn't great advice for someone who's like, trying to grow an agency from zero to a million in a couple months or anything, but like, I'm very, I'm a very, like, long term person, or, I don't know, I actually don't even think about it too much it besides like, being there to help and give back. But what I have found is that I'll meet someone, like two years ago, and just stay in contact with them and just be a good friend. And one day they'll reach out and like ask for my help. Or they'll they'll recommend someone to me too and like so it's it makes it very, very organic and natural and like feel it feels good because it's not like I don't know, you're just helping people and it's like, it's a long game of just being there. And I also feel very blessed for I don't rely on the pot or on the agency to pay my bills and so because I have always had like a full time gig to and now one of my clients is is my full time gig. So I feel very blessed in that way where I don't feel pressure to like make sure the agency has enough clients to like pay myself or like live the lifestyle that I want to live kind of thing. But I just like as long as the agency makes enough money to pay the the employees then I'm happy and so I don't have that pressure of like, sell, sell, sell.
Mariah Parsons 19:58
Yes, yes, I think That's a great, I guess, way to articulate your great setup of like, okay, founding the business in this specific way so that you don't have that pressure. And then like, you know, you're not just saying, Okay, we're not trying to sell but like, deep down, you really have that pressure. Because like that also I understand, you know, like small team startup world, ecommerce, very fat, it's very quick paced, very fast moving. So I get that like, okay, sometimes you are gonna have to be in that seat of like crunching the numbers, but it's nice if you have that setup to not have to worry. And you have that security of a nine to five while you're still working with your clients. Yeah, so I love that. Okay, so let's dive into some more, I guess, strategy, because I think a lot of the times, when we have our agency partners on here, it's we're focusing on a lot of times, like paid media and email and SMS, which is great, because there's so much that you can do with that. And it's an ever evolving realm of E commerce, but an agency that's focused on the customer experience, I feel like it is more unique in that I just don't see it that often. Maybe it's simply because you know, Malomo, we're sitting, my nine to five sitting in in that realm of email and SMS. So I would love to kind of, if you can give like a summary or boilerplate or like best practices of the people that are coming to you like, what problems are you seeing often? What are they trying to solve for? And how are you kind of thinking about solving those problems for them?
Zoe Kahn 21:37
Yeah, and it's really, really interesting, I love this topic, so much. The, it's so in. It's so related to retention, that it's crazy that I don't I, it's wild that people don't look more into the customer experience. A lot of times, our clients and even audience, my full time job. It's a company that grew so fast, but didn't have the foundation of setting up their customer service or customer experience for success. And so they're overwhelmed. And they're like, their look taking a step back and being like, oh my gosh, I I don't know how to answer every customer. And like we are where we cut corners and like, use some cheap solutions that are giving bad experiences to our customers, or where we've put someone in the position that don't know, that doesn't know the brand, as well as the founders do, even though like the founders are the ones who train them. But then, you know, like, a lot of times a customer service or customer experience hire is one of the first hires. But with that, it's a really special hire, but you're, you're also being hired by founders, and the founders are very busy. And so a lot of times we see there's this disconnect of like, you know, your founders and your customer service, customer experience. And then like, there, there's a disconnect also of like being how much do you pay that person and if you're getting an entry level person, then they don't have all the experience of like setting up this foundation and stuff. And one of the places that we've gotten really good at is just operationally setting up your team for success so that they can give good experiences, but then also give great feedback. Because I my previous position to audience was chomps the meat sticks and that's what I worked there when we met. And I accidentally fell into email and SMS because the person who was doing it had gone into another position and I knew nothing about it. And I was just like, I I'll figure it out. You know, like Alison, I'll sit here temporarily like so. So someone
Mariah Parsons 24:01
how many days until you're like, Oh my God. Yeah, figure Yeah, it's really hard.
Zoe Kahn 24:07
Yeah, it is a whole nother world but what I realized is that like customer experience, it's actually related to like every part of the business but like if you don't have that good feedback loop with your, your retention, marketers and your email, SMS loyalty, subscription, literally everything. There's so many things that can break and that your customer service team doesn't understand where like you have this email flow that's going out and like you that the email marketers who set it up don't a lot of times, don't have time to do the due diligence to like check to make sure everything's working in 90 days when that flow goes out. Finally, and then the your customer service team is getting complaints of like, you guys said this in this in your email and this cute coupon code isn't working and like the The experience, the landing page is giving me a 404 error, like, all of these things that are like so simple, or even just like mass marketing to your customers that you get this like feedback from your customer service. And like, they, before I knew about email marketing, I was like, Okay, I have this list of 50 people that I need to reach out to, but gorgeous, at the time, can only send out 25 emails at a time. So I'm gonna break them up in List of 25. And I'm like, now I'm like, wow, I could have just uploaded that listen to clay Vo This for the years that I had didn't know how email marketing. So yeah, it's goes hand in it, you take all of this feedback that you're hearing from your customers, and you implement it into your retention strategies. And there's so many things that you can do with that. And looking at the customer insights and data to inform your customer experience, a lot of times the the other thing we do is look at different like Winback, because we're a lot of times playing cleanup, where it's like, oh, no, what we've done, we've grown too fast, or even we marketed too quickly, we sent out too many emails like, and we weren't aren't able to respond to them all. And then we lose customers because of that, because we're not there to service them. Or we we gave them a poor experience unintentionally. So we set up these like Winback systems of like, reaching out to these customers who were upset and emailing them and, and trying to win them back and apologize. And then also not only that, but like learn from the experience. And I always say this of we're putting we're actually like getting down to the root of the issues instead of putting band aids on them. And so we learned so much from the mistakes and then we cross communicate not only with retention, but operations and we fix all these issues and so that things can go smoothly, and that you can grow quicker without worrying about that that the damage you could do by providing poor experiences.
Mariah Parsons 27:06
Okay, I love that. So a couple of different things to tap into there. My first question is, I, I love what you said about the, I guess mass, like not mass exodus, but like mass. Yeah, mass email send or mass email blasts, and then having people who are lost, because you don't have the support that is necessary to answer their questions and make sure that they're taken care of. And so then producing a wind back campaign and making sure that you're okay, solving for that problem. Yes, I'd like those x customers did not have a good experience. So let's apologize for it. And I would love to first part go into kind of what like specifically what copy or what decisions if there's like a promotion or anything along those lines that you think you are that you're incorporating in a win back campaign? Because I think that could be tactically something where if someone's so overwhelmed with, okay, yeah, we sent this email, I'm like, Oh, my God, we got way more support tickets than we were ready to handle something that they could roll out of like, Okay, step one, when that campaign, don't send out any more emails until we try and win back the customers that were already customers and try and retain their business or gain it again. And then like, mass amplify that too. Okay, we'd learn this from this first email blast. Don't, you know, have have XYZ setup, and then can grow and like create that flywheel effect. So I would love to dive into kind of how you're thinking through copy and creative and making sure that you're not furthering the frustration, and pissing off customers even more when they're already upset.
Zoe Kahn 28:53
Yep, there is in I actually have grown in this area, because being very, like, being sitting in the seat of just like the customer support side, it is very much that like, hey, marketing, can you just stop sending out emails to for a second? Because like, we can't catch up. But now I've moved into that the mindset of like, now having the retention mindset of like, we can't just stop sending out emails, because we have growth goals and everything. And so like, how can we continue to send out emails, but also not damage our reputation with our previous customers? So that's really important to figure out and a lot of times it's a numbers game, or maybe it's like a temporary help type of situation. But very, very simply, first step is communicating with your support team and making sure they're staffed for mass communication. So it's, it's very, it's missed. It's so simple, but it's missed in many companies. So I have it, the bigger the company is and the bigger your email list, the more it matters. Because if you send out an email to a million people, and your support team doesn't, one doesn't even know what that email says, or what the offer is, or any like any anything about it, then they're not going to be able to service those customers and to they're not going to be staffed properly. So I would say like, make sure that the communication is there and just like talk about the schedule, and like, try your best to not send out last minute things or like something on a Saturday when you know, your your agents aren't working. It we've we've learned that it also helps with conversion, because you have people on the site who might be like coming in from the email that you sent. And they're they've got a question about the product. And so they're writing into the Chatbot. But if no one's there, or they don't know that how to answer those questions, it'll hurt your conversion. And same thing with email, it's like people might email in and have questions about your products or your service. And if no one's there to help them, that customer might not convert. So it's really really big, like communication is very, very important. And also, it might be annoying at first because I used to be that person that like support person that would be like, Oh my gosh, you need to add all of this, like fine print, because the customer is gonna like this happened before and like, the loyalty whatever, you know, and like, actually, you know, I hate this email don't even send it actually canceled a little bit. Yeah, like, just forget about revenue, like you just Yeah. So it's really great to establish good relationships with your customer experience and support people, because you'll be able to find that balance of like making sure that you're not causing them stress, because it's coming from a place of like, oh my gosh, I had to work till 3am To like, answer all those customers, because you didn't put the best like your copy in your email, like confused everyone, or like you didn't set up the like you didn't turn on or you didn't even like enter the SKU into Shopify, like all of these checks and balances that like cause your support team a headache, that's where that like that, like, please stop sending emails, Vegas coming up from. So if you just develop a good system, and just like really lean on your support team and be like, Hey, I'm gonna I'm thinking about doing this campaign. Do you think that there's anything I should look into? Or like things we've learned from the past that went wrong? That way, like, everyone's happy, your conversions are good, your customers are happy? And that's like, most important.
Mariah Parsons 32:47
Yeah. So this is an interesting discussion that we found ourselves in in that inherently like my nine to five is marketing your nine to five SES. So it's like talking about the partnership is quite fun in the partnership between teams. And so I feel like it I'm curious what you would say to this of a lot of teams just understand that the burden that CS usually gets, right, and it's like, very, what's the right word for it? It's very, not sensitive, but very tumultuous, maybe have like, because you're, you're the front line for customers. So everyone is like, CES, please be on it. Like, please don't make this customer frustrated, right later, like solve this problem that this other team started maybe you're right, like, and I think every, I hope at least every person ecommerce or retail or whatever, whoever is dealing with the customer, you are almost praying like, Okay, please, please, you know, make it a good experience. And with that, I know as a marketer of like, okay, CSS already so bogged down in so busy with everything that they have to do. So as a CES person. I like that you put the I guess, lens of okay, I used to be maybe this way, but now I think about the retention piece of like, okay, we can't just like stop sending emails, right? That's not realistic. So like, how do we work together? And one way is just making sure that your communications aren't last minute, and that the copy is, you know, of saying what it should be not confusing customers. But as you know, we're generalizing, of course, but for our representative teams, I know as marketing like, I would be hesitant and I've also learned this lesson of like, when to note a pull in your CS team of like, okay, review this email, it's been reviewed by everyone else. So you should just have to skim it right? Rather than like, okay, helped me draft this email. So like, that's one little example of I just know like, Okay, last touch bare minimum. Ask for RCS team. Do you feel like that's why some, there's maybe some hesitancy of like other Mark bidders maybe not pulling in their CS team, because everyone is kind of just like known in the, in the realm of like, more often than not, CES is probably overwhelmed. So don't bother them. Unless it's necessary. Like, do you think that there's any of that coming into play here?
Zoe Kahn 35:16
Yeah, it's such an interesting question. Because it, I think that it comes down to, again, that communication and understanding, because yeah, that, and the CS team, it depends on like, the structure of the CX team to because hopefully, in depending on the size of the business, etc, but like, because sometimes you're, you're, the person who's like, kind of in charge of your CS team is also the person who is still in the tickets and like, also of helping a lot. So hopefully, there, you get to a point where the person who's kind of in charge is not completely removed from the tickets in the customer answering because I think there's beauty and always being in the weeds of like, very, at least minimally in the weeds. But hopefully, there's a person who has that, that space to think through the entire experience. And that's where things can shift from just like, the support piece to the entire experience. And that's where you can get the most the insight from your support team. But I actually have found a lot of frustration from both sides. Where if, if, like, you're showing the support team to skim it, and then they bring up like, Hey, did you check this? Or like, did you talk to dev about like this? Or that there's so many different things that we can Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. But then you're like, oh, no, well, I like really just wanted you to skim this to like, make, like, whatever. And it's supposed to go out tomorrow, but like, you just brought up like XY and Z that I should check. And I, you know, like, let's just hope it goes. Okay. And so that's where it becomes really frustrating for support people. So that's where it's like, it's so hard to do, right? Because e commerce in I'm sure that you see this. Like, usually you have like small teams, and there's like, everyone, no matter no matter like how put together people seem to have it. No, everyone's doing last minute shit. Everyone's procrastinating. Like, no one's no one's three months ahead on their marketing,
Mariah Parsons 37:31
on top of it all the time with every single thing. Yeah. Nobody
Zoe Kahn 37:35
has their shit together. Yeah. So like, if you could ask your support team, you know, like, even just like, it doesn't even have to be like an hour long meeting of but like, if you just slack someone and just and say like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this campaign? Like, is there something am? Am I missing anything? Or like, here's the copy, do you think that the customers are going to perceive this? Well, like, that is so so appreciated by the customer experience team, because it's showing that like you're trying to prevent and like help with the best experience and you have the experience in mind. And I, yeah, you have to find that balance where you're not trying to put like work on the support team. But you you value their input, and that's like, what really matters?
Mariah Parsons 38:22
Yeah, I like I like that phrasing. I'm not trying to put work. But yeah, valuing insight. Okay, I love that. Well, I know, I feel like you just keep chatting forever. But I know it'll continue after this podcast. But it has been great to have you here even just to like touch on. All the giant that ces really is and be able to talk about the customer experience because it is so intertwined with retention. And obviously that's where majority of my time is focused with this podcast of okay, how can with the brands and the partners that we're talking to? How can we make sure that we are really focusing on retention when, you know, acquisition costs are so much higher, so it's a perfect, I guess, medley or perfect combination for us to sit here and think about how CES is playing into that because usually it's marketers that are that we're getting the majority of the prospectus funds from so it's a lot of fun to have someone like you in the seat today. So thank you for taking the time. Hopefully it was a good start to your morning.
Zoe Kahn 39:28
I love it, guys.
Mariah Parsons 39:30
Good good. I'm glad I'm very glad to hear that. They you again Zoey. I know we'll be in touch and I'm very excited to get this episode live for our audience. Thank
Zoe Kahn 39:39
you for having me.