Stop Bad Customer Support From Flushing Your Customers Down The Drain

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Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (00:03):

Okay, welcome everyone. I am Lucas Walker from gorgeous. Thank you to everyone who's joining alive and still with us. I know that they're having a lot of virtual events that you could be attending, that you have an attending earlier today. So it really does mean a lot that you're here with myself and Hayden from hydro drug, hydro jug. I should be able to pronounce that right as trying over the last few minutes, but Hayden, do you want to give us a little bit of background on who hydro jug is, what you do? And then I'll go into gorgeous says, and we can jump into the meat and potatoes of our, of our webinar. I hate the phrase webinar, because I think it's just sort of the least sexy term right now. So we'll call it a live stream, live podcast, recording and Hayne. Let me know. Do you want questions, rapid fire as they come or say them all until the end? What's, what's easier for you for your flow?

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (00:56):

Yeah, I'm actually fine with, um, either of that, either of those options, um, we can kind of just whatever you guys are. If we have a ton coming in, we can take them. If there's not a lot, we can save them to the end. I uncomfortable with either format.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (01:10):

Awesome. Let's let's see we'll if they come in and they're relevant, we'll answer them. If not, we'll save them til the end and if they suck, we'll just, we'll ignore them altogether.

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (01:18):

That sounds good to me.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (01:19):

So, and if you are asking a question at home, try to phrase it so that everyone paying attention can, can benefit, not just one specific piece of advice for, for your store. Uh, ultimately if it's very personal, you have access to data that Hayden and I don't have, so I can share what our gorgeous customers are doing, hidden ginger, what he's doing for everyone's benefit by let's try to have more open ended questions that can truly benefit, uh, everyone here. So, Hayden, do you want to, uh, introduce yourself your role and a little bit of the history of the hydro drug?

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (01:53):

Yeah, for sure. So, um, my name is Hayden Wadsworth. I'm happy to be here. Um, and I am the CEO and cofounder at hydrogen. We are still, um, very much a startup. This is our fourth year of business and, um, really what we're doing and our, what our core is here. We're trying to help people live healthier lifestyles by making it easy and convenient to drink more water. So whether that's a fitness person, whether that's a person that has a desk job where we're happy to, um, see, I mean, through social media and what we're doing is helping people. So that's kind of the quick pitch on what we do and kind of what's at our core here at hydrogen.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (02:39):

Awesome. And I mean, old survival attitude, you can go four minutes without oxygen, but in four days without water for weeks without food, you need water to live for all 70% water. So just, uh, I mean, other than that, the air, we all breathe. I think that there's not much more important than that that's out there then staying hydrated. If you're listening on the podcast, uh, I'm actually drinking out of my hydro drug right now. I love it. If you're watching on the live stream, you can see that I'm drinking out of a clear pine pine glass, but I've been on these webinars all day. Uh, not exactly working up a sweat outside. I know I'm treading water because I wasn't staying, staying hydrated for today.

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug)

So get your address and send us some product over it.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (03:31):

Or I could just, um, buy one because it's a quality product or a painful price for not having to harass my friends and this kind of can actually support my, uh, my friend's business.

And you know what, I think that might be a, a, an awesome idea as well. Anyone who asks a question, um, I don't know how we're going to measure this, but if you ask a question and you engage with us, uh, hidden, if you want to pick someone to give away a hundred dollars gift card to a hundred drug, uh, gorgeous, we'll pick up the tab for that because we do something like that. Absolutely. So, I mean, we like to support our customers. How can we be a customer support, help desk if we're not supporting our customers and in every way that we can with the number one rated help desk for e-commerce. So helping you reactively answer your customer's questions, like, Hey, where's my order. Can I get a tracking update? Can I cancel something, but also being proactive and really helping answer the questions.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (04:13):

Like when, if I order today, when, when can I expect my order? What's your guarantee? Um, or in your case, do you ask them questions? Like, do you use BPAs or anything like that, even when you clearly state it in your product display page and your ads that you don't, sometimes customers just want to have those one-to-one conversations. So, um, we don't have any slides because I think we've all seen the charts and trends on webinars. But the one statistic that I really wanted to highlight is that customer support inquiries are going up at a higher rate than sales velocity. So we've seen a lot more shifting to e-commerce over the past two to three months was happening at an even greater rate is a number of those customer conversations. So we help you manage all of those, even if your, your sales are going down.

What we've seen is that the number of tickets and inquiries is staying the same. And we actually do have a stimulus offer that we are wrapping up at the end of the month. If you have seen a drop in sales, or, uh, even blessed by a little bit of a, an uptick during the reason, couple of months, let us know. And we would love to help you out either way with that. But no, I don't think anyone signed up here to be shamelessly pitched products. Let's jump into it with the first topic, which is growing your repeat purchase rate. And I think that this is a really, really interesting question because you wouldn't necessarily think of a water bottle as a subscription product or a repeat purchase product. But in many ways I would actually think it is consumable because I have several water bottles that I put on my bike.

I know sometimes, unfortunately I lose them if I go to the gym, uh, it happen, but also, uh, comparing to say a travel mug that I have multiple versions of if I'm going out with my friends or family, and I want to bring a couple, uh, maybe I'm packing a cooler of meat or something, and I want an extra open of an ice pack I'll I can freeze it to put it in there. So we've got a lot of different uses outside of why I wouldn't normally buy my, my water bottle. But, um, how have you really grown your repeat purchase rate with, uh, without a glyphic year, some of the strategies that, uh, that you've really utilized?

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (06:34):

Yeah. So kinda like you brought up, this is actually a really interesting question when it comes to hydrojug, since our main product is Water bottle and it's seen kind of as a onetime purchase product. So really I kind of broke this down into a few high level groups, like, um, customer experience, product quality product type and, and selling strategy. So, um, the first one we want to tackle is product design. So, um, like you said, the wall, it's a water bottle. People don't need a subscription, so like 12 water bottles over the year. So, um, as we, we launched our product and got a lot of feedback, like a lot of P a lot of our customers were asking for a straw, for example, like, Hey, I drink way more water out of a straw, or is this insulated? We want our water to stay cold. So we immediately, or as quick as we could, we came out with a straw and a neoprene sleeve that insulates, um, the bottle.

So as we kind of grew into this, um, these have been our, our repeat purchased, um, items. So even if your main product, isn't a per se, a repeat purchase item, you can build off of that main product and create these items that people would, it would be perfectly fine purchasing two or three sleeves or accessories that have to do with your main product. So I think I'm taking a step back and really thinking what your strategy is from a product standpoint, you can definitely increase that repeat purchase rate.

And, um, I mean, I also mentioned selling strategy, so we are working on, and this is kind of a leak. We are working on a supplement that pairs perfectly with our product. So, um, a big thing that we've heard is some people just don't like the taste of water. So they drink soda or they drink whatever they enjoy, like flavor-wise. So we came out with like a hint of lemon flavor, and we're coming out with like a raspberry lemonade flavor that is dosed for a half gallon, and It's good for 30 days.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (08:28):

So action was two. So it says, take your poach, put it in the drug. Good to go. It's not going to be too strong. It's not going to be like super water. It's not going to be sitting at the bottom. Is this going to be designed to be mixed in the hydro jug? And, and here's a question, uh, for you and I hope I hope it's not. And that's just because I'm curious, um, does it, cause I always have two water bottles, so one for my electrolyte beverage and then my other one for water, because I just, I find that it just, it, it sticks in the container and if you've had something other than water in it, it just, you don't want to put water water in that. Does that, will that happen with your, your flavor products?

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (09:12):

So we, we definitely, that was top of mind for us. Um, like I said, um, this, so this product is actually it's electrolytes, it's immunity and it's energy. So, and it's not like a blast of energy, like a coffee or like a pre-workout in the fitness industry. It's kind of like all day sustainable energy. Yeah, yeah. 400 beats a minute. Yeah. So, and to answer your question, um, just because it is over a half gallon of water, it's not as concentrated. So with, with plastic, it is difficult to reduce, um, the amount of flavor that is, um, like attracted to the material, but that is why we choose the plastic that we use. And that was a big pain point in the beginning. A lot of manufacturers didn't want to use polypropylene, and that is the, the it's it's the most easily recycled and accepted plastic for a cyclability. And it's also, um, dishwasher safe. Um, BP really ticks all the boxes. So if you have it for a week and you've been dumping the supplement in it, and you want to switch back to water, it's as simple as throwing it in the dishwasher or just rinsing it out. And it's going to, I mean, it's not going to hold that taste. So

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (10:23):

That's awesome to hear it so refreshing to hear, um, hero brand that's designing for repair rather than just manufacturing it's you always hear about how car manufactured, it's impossible to change a headlight because the whole product is designed to be made as quickly as possible and not worrying about, uh, repairing cause you make more money in service being there anyways. So refreshing to hear is how you're creating a, a top line product and really selling to that customer pain point, which is funny because we're using all of these buzzwords for, for a water bottle. But it's true that when, for people who do stay hydrated, that all of these are pain points that you can't put it in the dishwasher it's or you put in the dishwasher and a muscle, but now it's, you have to put more plastic in the landfill. So it's really nice to hear, to hear all of that. Um, also, um, so you talked a little bit about the sleeping add-ons creating the supplement line, which, which I think is awesome. Ties in with some of what the other speakers were talking about with subscriptions.

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (11:22):

Yeah. We're hoping to get a subscription, uh, um, strategy behind that. So people can just have it on order ready to go. So,

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (11:31):

And I mean, and that ties into sort of the next point, which is really about loyalty, because you can do do a few things when it comes to customer loyalty, like on their six subscription, send them a fresh water bottle and just say, thanks so much for being a customer or send them asleep or something really small like that. Um, so that's one idea that I'm spit balling off the top of my head. I'm sure you have a few other, uh, better ideas that, that you've done or that you're planning to do with the subscription launch. What are some of those loyalty tactics that you've done that have been really successful?

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (12:11):

So I think the biggest thing is creating a customer experience, and this is everything from how they interact with you on a high level on social. And then when they're opening your product after you shipped it to them, and there was, um, when I think your customer experience, there was a post that I saw on social that comes to mind in it. It talks about how like Netflix didn't kill blockbuster. It was like the late fees. And then, um, like Amazon didn't kill other retailers, poor customer service and experienced it. So when you take a step back and make your entire operation, I mean your product and to your employees, everything customer centric, which is difficult to do in the startup stage because every penny counts, right. And you're thinking like if I have to re send this customer a brand new product, I mean, what's the opportunity cost there. What's my actual actual sunk costs. There. It can be difficult to have a customer centric approach, but if we take a step back and look at it like, um, an investment like ad spend and calculate it, it's difficult to see an actual ROI, but we see it all the time. We see Amazon, we see Netflix, we see Apple, these huge brands that are customer centric and it pays dividends.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (13:23):

I was doing another webinar earlier today. Uh, and it's, I, I titled it. A dollar of retention is worth 10 of acquisition. It's literally the thing that you learned in the first day of business school, one Oh one, they made fun of it on the office. It's five to 10 times cheaper to keep an existing customer than to go out and acquire another one. So if you're a profit on something is a hundred dollars and you're happy with a $40 cost to acquire a customer. Why not give an existing customer, a $4, uh, throw in or an $8 throw in with their next order to get that, that same level of profitability, because that's just pure margin there that's 32 free dollars of just pure profit that you're working less hard to earn

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (14:04):

A hundred percent. I mean, you, you look at your acquisition costs and the more the customer comes back, we're talking like customer lifetime value here. I mean, it just goes down substantially. So, uh, and the it's really the right tools to, I mean, like you should always have that loyalty program in place. You need to have the tools to identify and segment out who your VIP is, are, who you are engaging with and just make sure it's important to your team, because I can honestly say that our customers are valuable too to everyone. I mean, this is our customer service people. This is our social people, our graphic designers. We take a, a, an approach where we start with the customer. And I really that's been the culture since the beginning. Um, we, we had a product and we got feedback and we came out with new lines like this. This is how we've always been and, and how we want to continue and have it really here at hydrogen. So, I mean, it's there, like I mentioned, that the right tools and we have, I mean, gorgeous plays a huge role in that, which I mean, um, we can dive deeper into, and the users that use gorgeous, know this already, the tools that are available there to identify these, um, customers that we want to interact with and really sell them, sell them for life. So,

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (15:13):

Yeah, I mean, I think it's far more powerful to have a customer, uh, to their home horn than me, than me doing it. I was saying to Eddie before I joined it. So I'm actually a merchant myself. And it was a gorgeous, ease of use that convinced me to, to join the company, uh, full time. Um, but like, but really what's more important than that. One to one connection that your customers have with your brand. That's not Cheryl, the customer support agent. That's not Jamal, a customer support rep. Those are the face of your company to that person. And if that person doesn't feel happy or if they feel pissed off, like we all have felt dealing with big telco or an airline, I'm never buying from them again. So sure. You may have saved 70 cents on that ticket, but not empowering your team, but you just cost yourself out future revenue.

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (16:08):

Yeah. And I mean, it really it's really good. How other brands operate too. Like I just had an experience with the company that I like and a brand that I follow, I had to order canceled because I imagine they oversold some of their product. And immediately I get the next day, I get an email saying, Hey, we saw this happened. Here's X amount off to your next order.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (16:26):

See, I have, I had the exact opposite thing, buying something, and they sent me just your order's been canceled and that was it. But they had more in sock at other stores. You contrast those, those two experiences, one where I'm trying to give them money. We're both trying to give the brands one to set close to the door when like, I can see that there's still more inventory in the back. They're saying, Nope, meanwhile, they're welcoming you in and making it easier to, uh, to repurchase. So. And what about, um, is there anything else that you wanted to touch on? I know that you mentioned social media. Um, I don't know if you've been on tech talk personally. I've been, been on it. I've been all about take talk. How do you have any great stories about loyalty from social media there that made you want to tell him a little bit more?

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (17:20):

Yeah, so we had a customer or I'm, and this is a customer we didn't reach out to, and we didn't ask them to post about us, but we are just, we're, we're super in tune. And we, we make the investments and allocate the resources so we can be, and one of our team members that, uh, deals with social, they came across this video of a customer that was showing a hydrogen that had a million views. And I mean, it hasn't been more now, so we immediately reach out to them and we put together kind of a care package, swag bag type deal, and send them with a handwritten note saying, thank you. So [inaudible], and this is where I'm coming in. This isn't me. I didn't, um, I didn't see this video. I didn't, um, come up with this idea. This is my team members. So this is how, I mean, culture really plays into it. It needs to be important to everyone in your organization. Um, the really coming up with these creative ideas, how to relate to people and, um, just, I mean, really think about it. How, how do I like brands to treat me, you know, what, what would buy, what, how would I get bought into a brand for life? And I think it's little things like that, that do it. So, um, yeah, that, that's how it handled and that was on tip talk. So

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (18:38):

Tic Tocs been amazing for his true organic reach and content discovery. So the really cool thing about that is the people watching that video are probably pretty likely to either be into fitness or just in general, generally being healthy, who would, uh, who would want that? So that's awesome on the retention and loyalty piece, we've talked about some, when things go go really well, but everyone watches, uh, auto racing for, for the crashes. So let's dig into maybe some roads. There was times that it didn't go so good if you are comfortable bull sharing, or even just some mistakes that, uh, that you made. So even though people don't need to make them them selves, maybe we can learn from,

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (19:18):

From your mistakes. Yeah, for sure. I mean, being a startup and, and anyone that's been in this situation knows of all of the, the problems or mistakes that come up. Um, yeah. I, I mean, I can tell a story about one of them. So early on in the business, actually our first, um, our first container that we ordered in of product, it came in, we started sending them out and we just got, um, a ton of emails and this is when we're managing every, through everything through Gmail, but they just start flooding in like, Hey, these leak. So yeah. So I go back to my manufacturer. Oh yeah. I mean, this is how many units, you know, and like, um, so you have a decision to make you're okay. Do we send, do we continue to send these out? Um, what do we do to our, for our current customers?

Do we, um, like kind of, what do we do from here? And this is, this is important because I mean, I think it's super important to communicate, be transparent and be honest and, and do it all quickly. So we immediately emailed everyone that had bought from us and, um, talked to our manufacturer. We got new seals in and we sent seals to, to all of our customers that have bought. So I mean, upfront that that's difficult because you, you do weigh the costs. And, um, but I think we took an opportunity that is, it's a mistake and it's a one, but you make it positive. It creates a situation where someone is upset and then you make it better. And now it's a, it's a positive thing. It's a, it's an opportunity, an opportunity to win. So, um, yeah, I think that's the best route to go to. Um, I mean, if we're talking about avoidance, I, I should have spent more time in testing and product development, but I mean, that, I think that's the best thing we can do as far as taking issues and, um, turning them into like a positive thing.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (21:22):

Yeah, absolutely. It's, uh, there's Stan actress tot that when you have that, that customer experience point is as long as the it's resolved in a positive way, that that really does go up. So how did you, what did that dream look like going from, from Gmail to gorgeous and what was really, what did that look like? And, and just because you had made some notes in there, I'd love for you to just dig into that from sort of going from, I don't know, a hammer and handsaw tools to full automating, whatever the, the top of the line woodworking tools would be.

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (21:57):

Yeah. So, um, I was handling kind of all the customer support myself. We, I had, um, add all kind of our canned responses in, um, in my notes, on my iPhone and I'd copy and paste them out into general. And as we grew and I mean, volume picks up, um, you have more cashflow, you can reinvest back into the company. We hired, um, a support rep to kind of do a part time and obviously wear other hats as well. But we started on Zendesk and, um, I was working with my, um, Shopify rep and they, um, recommended gorgeous, which I think you guys were still pretty new at the time, but we, I was just kind of discussing some of the pain points that we had was in desk. Go ahead.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (22:42):

I was going to say in the grand scheme of things, we still are pretty, pretty new. I mean, in general, it's still pretty new and that's, what's crazy is how, how

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (22:51):

New it was and all of the features and how completely built out it was. I mean, we, uh, so like I said, we, we hired someone to do this part time and that person is still our only support rep. Wow. So, yeah, I mean, and they, um, obviously work more than part time now they're there full time and, but really having access to everything on a ticket view. So I mean, tracking and links to all the different services, it really brings everything together that you can offer that customer experience that we've talked about. So it doesn't take a day, two days. Like, I mean, our goal and metric is to respond within a business day. So, and I hold, um, our support rep to that, and we've never had an issue. So it's crazy too, because I don't really have to check in because I see the comments on social, like, Oh, hydrogen, they have great customer service.

I see it in our reviews on our website. I don't have theirs. I mean, I don't know if I can even think of one time where someone had reached out to customer service and had a bad experience. I definitely have seen people that are frustrated, but as soon as they get the customer service and we take care of their issue, um, that's the end of it. So, and they usually will come back and give you that positive review, which, I mean, I don't know if you can even put a price tag on that if a customer is unhappy and then they come back on social and say, what a good experience they have. So, and I mean, that's the ROI that we were talking about earlier.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias)

Well, that's awesome to hear. And just out of curiosity, if you didn't have a whole new, we're still managing everything in Gmail and notes, how many people do you think you would need to, to be able to run all of that?

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (24:39):

Oh man. Yeah. I, that would be hard to even take a stab at, but just like from an organization piece, um, from making sure everyone gets responded to piece, like it would just be a nightmare. I could see, like I have a team of 10 people trying to, trying to tackle that.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias)

So that's, that's just awesome to, to hear. And especially knowing that we can support entrepreneurs in that way. This is a big thing for me coming from doing, like being in myself and doing literally the exact same thing. It's just to know that other people don't don't have to do that, but we don't need to pitch a gorgeous too, too much. If anyone does want to see what Hayden's talking about, you can just shoot me an email Lucas at a gorgeous dot, a gorgeous.com. We do have a question from Jan, how did he train your, your support team?

Uh, what are some of the best practices and philosophies that you provided them? And you know what, we only have a few minutes left, let's jump into Q and a. Anyone has those questions. You do get a hundred dollar gift card, 200 jog for asking. It's lots of Jan's question there.

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (25:32):

Yeah. So it really started off when I was still doing support. We took, um, a customer centric approach where we started with the customer and kind of reverse engineered the process. So like, here are the typical problems that we see, um, how do we address them and what, what, what do they want to hear? So, I mean, I worked in before this, I worked in, um, chat sells, so I would sell online through chat. And it's, you gotta, you have to be very careful because there's not, um, there's no expressions with text, so you have to make sure that you're expressing.

So you're using the right punctuation, emojis, those kinds of things, um, to make it a good customer experience and design a successful, um, support, um, operation. So we, we kind of, we took that approach. Here's our common, um, issues. Here's how we like to approach them. And I mean, they're called macros in gorgeous. So like canned responses. And we have probably, I would think three to four, a macros for each issue. And, but then it's, it's a decision tree too. So like here's the four canned responses that solve the same problem, but they say them with different words, different tones. Um, and just to make sure that customer doesn't feel like they are getting a canned response and gorgeous has the tools to do that. Like, I mean, we can put those tags in there that pull in their name, pull in, um, unique characteristics about the customer to make it feel super personal, like a retail experience you're going into the retail store and someone is talking to you that that's really our goal. And the approach we take when designing our support processes.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (27:34):

That's, that's really nice to hear because quite frankly, that's, that's the way, the way that it should be. Um, and we do have one last question from Matthew, uh, an a North Matthew North America, what is hydro drug's monthly ticket volume, like, and just to reiterate, do you see any, see seasonality? Do you see any, uh, fluctuation with that?

Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (27:57):

Yeah, a hundred percent. So let me pull it up so I can give you a good number, but, um, the, uh, it definitely fluctuates. So as sales go up, we can expect ticket volumes to go up. Just, I mean, it isn't necessarily, it doesn't have to be issues. It can be common questions, like where is my order? Because when sales volume goes up, um, the longer it takes to fulfill the longer it takes to get out the door and then like in peak seasons, like Christmas and, um, new year's, those are sorry, black Friday, the shipping companies actually, I mean, have a hard time getting everything out too. So it's not always just issues, but yeah, your, your ticket volume definitely goes up. And With that being said, um, we'd still only have that one rep even during peak season. So she can just keep up with that. So that's amazing. Sorry, I'm trying to get this pulled up here so I can give you an accurate number,

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (29:00):

Awesome, and wall, uh, while you do that. I think that's just such a good point to, to be, to be aware of seasonality. And it's interesting that you said, uh, new year's instead of black Friday cyber Monday, do you see a spike in sales sort of in the new years, people are setting resolutions trying to get, uh, trying to get healthy.

‘Hayden Wadsworth (Hydrojug) (29:17):

Yeah. Yeah, we actually are. Um, it's kinda strange because, uh, January is actually, it has been a bigger month in December for us.

Lucas Walker (Gorgias) (29:29):

That's interesting. Yeah. Drinking gravy and cranberry sauce throw to November, December. I need to tone it down and, uh, in January. Yeah.