Experts of Experience - #43 Going Beyond Basic Customer Service

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

On this episode, Eli Weiss, VP of Retention Advocacy at Yotpo, discusses the evolving space of customer experience and SaaS, emphasizing the importance of kindness and humility in the industry. He also discusses the importance of personalization in CX and retention, and highlights the value of leveraging data to create targeted messaging and improve the customer journey.Tune in to learn:The Importance of RetentionFinding the Balance in CX StrategiesThe Value of Great CX and Missed OpportunitiesBusinesses' Perception of CXThe Role of AI in Improving CXThe Power of PersonalizationThe Future of MessagingTrends in CX and RetentionElevating the CX and Retention Conversation–How can you bring all your disconnected, enterprise data into Salesforce to deliver a 360-degree view of your customer? The answer is Data Cloud. With more than 200 implementations completed globally, the leading Salesforce experts from Professional Services can help you realize value quickly with Data Cloud. To learn more, visit salesforce.com/products/data to learn more. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Let's get rid of the fluff. Just give me what works for me. Isn't it crazy though, Lauren? I feel like the bar is sold out. It's like practically on the floor. Like we talk about airlines, but I mean, look at any business. I can count on like maybe five instances

where I was like, that was not bad. I've reached out to businesses where I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars to ask them about something that was like slightly out of the defined lanes of which I was able to play with. Hey, I'm one day past the return on this. Or like, hey, I got this package and it's damaged. And to get like a blanket BS response from 95% of them, the bar is really low.

Consumers are like ready to be wowed and surprised. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today, I'm thrilled to have Eli Weiss on the show, the VP of Retention Advocacy at Yotpo. We're going to dive into cutting-edge trends in the customer experience and retention space and really understand what trends are shaping e-commerce technology today. Eli, so great to have you on the show. How are you? I'm well. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat a bit. So you have a very popular newsletter that I'm a huge fan of, CX and Retention, which are two

topics that need to be talked about. I love that you've merged these two things together. And I think many CX folks also agree, which is why it's become so popular so quickly. And I'm interested to start off by just understanding what inspired you to start the newsletter. So I started in CX in probably 2015, 2014. I got my first real kind of CX big boy job in 2016. CX to me was kind of like the starting at the bottom of the business, like taking the first job that I was able to get. And it seemed like there was a concept across everyone I spoke to in CX that it was like an entry level job. And then as I kind of navigated within CX and kind of started director level roles and started building out teams, I learned really quickly that this was a messed up notion that was kind of driving the wrong people to end up in CX.

It was people that were just looking for any job and it drove the wrong people into CX. It was just like a entry level to get into any other part of marketing. So somebody wanted to get a job in marketing and couldn't get into marketing, they would jump into CX with a goal to move in six months. It kind of messed up the people that were trying to build a career within CX. So instead of taking six months and trying to get what does a CX lead look like? What does a senior manager slash VP of CX look like? Nobody was talking about that. So I started working on CX at great brands. I was learning a ton and realized that everyone was taking CX learnings from people that have been in this space for 40, 50, 60 years. There was no one young working at these early stage consumer companies talking about CX. And

after my work at Olipop and starting at Jones, I started kind of getting pinged by a bunch of people like, hey, did I do X, Y, and Z? And said, I'm an introvert. I hate doing these things. What if I was able to just sit in the corner of this room and write about my learnings and have people that were interested, if you're interested, you tune in. If you're not interested, you don't tune in. Tweeted like, hey, would anyone be interested in this? And within like 48 hours, I had a thousand signups from my Twitter, from my LinkedIn. I said, okay, I guess we're in it now. Most of what happened in the last couple of years was due to the newsletter. So I guess the interest on the newsletter, fascinating, but also CX and retention, which I think you mentioned,

like I've never been thought that way. Retention was kind of like the email manager that sends the email six weeks after no customers come back or the CRM manager or what have you. And businesses were mostly just growth. The growth guys, the CMOs, the growth gals, it was just like they build the business. Retention is an afterthought. CX is an afterthought. And I felt like retention was also evolving. Retention was going from send the email to like, let's be thoughtful around the whole strategy of the post-purchase onboarding, unboxing, et cetera, et cetera. I thought those two worlds collided in a really interesting way. It's like great CX can't be done without learning all those things.

It's what's making people get frustrated or excited to be here. And great retention can't be done without understanding the consumer point of view and where they are and what they're excited about. So those two worlds felt interesting to me. I was probably one of the only people that got a job, my job at Jones, a senior director of CX and retention and said, screw it. I guess we're writing about them both. I mean, there are two things that feel like as someone who has worked my entire career in CX, mostly in the B2B space, but I've done a little

bit of B2C as well. Regardless, CX and retention go hand in hand. You cannot have a retention strategy without thinking about the customer experience. And that's obvious to the folks like those of us who have been in that space, but it's not always obvious to the rest of the company. And I feel like we're often kind of on this megaphone of like, no one's going to stay if it's not good. So they really go hand in hand. And I love that you've decided to focus on it in your career. When it comes to retention, what is important about bringing CX into the picture? I think at its core, retention is overthought through and over-engineered or under-engineered, and nobody has a clue and they're just spraying in the dark. I think great retention is obviously product. Product is really important for great retention.

If the product's not good, as many emails you send, customer won't stick around. And then I'd say the flip side is understanding what the people that are sticking around, what do they love, what do they hate, is done with great messaging. And I think retention overall has been spray and pray over the last bunch of years. It's gone from just email to now email and SMS to email, SMS, direct mail. I mean, like it's gone, it's gone wide. And we've had hundreds of people saying like, if you don't send, you're losing money and just send, send, send. And what that's turned into is if you think about like this evolution of brands that just

send one or two emails to the full list every single day. And as a customer, we've been to the other side of that. And we look at that and we say like, well, that's really frustrating. But then on the brand side, we do the same thing. It's a tremendous cognitive dissonance. I thought to myself, like, what if there was a universe where you actually understood what was meaningful to the customer, then double down or triple down on that. So to give you an example, at Jones, like something we learned early on was one of the biggest apprehensions people had to buying makeup online was not knowing if it was the right shade. And we said, okay, like if they knew the correct shade, that would make it 10 times easier for them to go ahead with this. So

why don't we build a welcome flow that was based on every objection we had around shade around, is this the right product for my skin, my skin's dry, my skin's oily, etc, etc. So living those two universes living close together is the easiest way to make sure the content you're pushing is actually resonating with customers. And then on the flip side, I think it's also interesting to say, okay, these top 10% of consumers, like these people with the highest LTV, what do they have in common? For us, we found out that people that went wide, people that ordered a skincare product and a makeup product and maybe a tool in one order, those were like the super, super top 10%. We said, okay, what if we can push after order number one,

we can push people to go wider and look at other categories because we know the wider you go, the stronger your LTV will go. So I think it's been interesting to see both like what the people that hate or have trouble with the product, how can we get over those objections? People that love the product, how can you learn, how can you share that and help other people kind of get to that high LTV bracket? The thing that I think is really interesting about that example that you just gave is you're really thinking about their full journey too, from the very moment that they come on board, how do you support them in finding the full journey too, from the very moment that they come

on board, how do you support them in finding the right shade for them? Because you know that that's a key issue that customers experience and then kind of going down the journey with them and thinking about how you can optimize the full thing, which is exactly what customer experience is about. And retention is going to be the outcome if someone has a great experience. I mean, I do think I've seen so many brands and I've seen two extremes. I think it's important to note that either people are over engineering and this is a concept that I think about a lot is like they're so focused on what the perfect customer journey is that they end up isolating so many of the other customers. They're not even sure which direction they should go.

And they're just leaving any choice out of the mix. So you can't decide like, hey, I bought this, maybe I want the same exact product in a different shade. So I think when you when you go too narrow, you're probably also over engineering. And then like, what is what is the impact of creating 17 welcome flows? Probably not, it's probably not worth the lift. And it's probably like, it probably just gets silly at a certain point so i think that's the real strategy is figuring out like if you have x amount of time uh should you be creating six new welcome flow variations should you be sending a bunch more campaigns should you be thinking of like the lapsed 90 day purchase flow so i think there is a lot of nuance and it's harder to tell versus growth

where the, if the ad works, the ad works. Retention is a longer game, so it can take you 30, 60, 90, maybe even 180 days to see any sort of results. Yeah. How do you, you just touched on a really great point, which is the balance of like, how deep do you go or how tailored, how personalized are you making something at the different phases through the journey? How do you find that balance? What would you recommend to folks? I'd say like there are two approaches. So approach number one is going to like the largest opportunity zone. And you say like, hey, I have hundreds of thousands of customers that signed up for the email list and open the emails. None of them are purchasing. So you say like, if I can impact that tiny amount of people, I'll have an easier push to get them through to order number one. And I think that

that's like probably the way most brands should think about it is look at the opportunity versus the cost and analyze it that way of like, okay, if you have all the time in the world, there's an endless amount of work to fill that time. So I think there's like, you'll never be bored on a retention team, you'll never say like, oh, there's nothing I can iterate. And when you're done iterating those six flows, you can start again from flow number one. So I think there will never be there will never be not nothing to do. But you should probably look at kind of like the cost versus the benefit and create like an impact versus lift and say, okay, this is the most potential impact with the lowest lift is probably the quadrant I should start from. And then I think, you know, once you start

thinking about like, oh, would this be a marginally better experience from like a qualitative perspective that becomes, again, fun, but harder to justify. So I think depending on like what your goals are and what you're trying to justify. It's get more first time to second time orders, get more second time orders to increase their LTV. There are probably different ways to view it, but I think thinking holistically across the business. You're outlining one of my favorite exercises, which anyone can do with themselves or their team when you're thinking about these types of things, just creating a simple quadrant of opportunity to cost or lift and just plotting

things so that you can really see and visualize clearly, okay, where are we going to get the most bang for our buck? And then you can work your way through everything over time, over the next couple of years, maybe even, but at least you have some direction in terms of where you're going to get the most out of your efforts. So thank you for sharing that. It's truly like such a game changer, such an easy thing to do. Anyone can do it. I'd love to ask you a question about what you think businesses miss. Like what do you think most businesses are missing when it comes to customer experience? It's kind of everything or nothing for most businesses. So what I've seen across a hundred plus brands in the last five years is either CX is

the most important thing, I'm going to put my heart and soul in it, everything's going to be, nothing's going to be outsourced, everything's going to be going through my desk, I'm going to spend crazy amount of time making sure CX is great. Or it's the other extreme, like this is not my core competency, I'll outsource everything, No skin in the game. And I think those are both obviously really flawed. But for some reason with CX, we don't see that the same way we'd see that elsewhere. If somebody told you the same thing about design, it's like either you don't touch anything and everything's just kind of like out of the box or you spend hours designing every single landing page, you'd think they're crazy because you'd obviously understand the nuance.

I think most business owners and directors don't understand the nuance of great CX and don't understand what it does aside from kind of like, oh, could you track the LTV tomorrow from somebody that spoke to me on Facebook Messenger? I mean, that's silly. That's silly. That's like how we prove to the people above us that CX is meaningful. And I think as I went through my career, I realized that that's great for somebody else. If somebody else wants to spend their time proving to their leader why CX is meaningful, that's great. But I want to work for people that understand the value of great CX. And yes, like after the fact, we can say, oh, it would be interesting to see how much value CX drove.

But if they don't understand the value of having CX, either they're silly or they'd rather use the money elsewhere. Meaning like as a human in this universe, you've probably had great experiences and terrible experiences. And I think we've had that with hotels. We've had that with our grocery store. We've had that with online ordering. We've had great experiences, terrible experiences.

And you know you want to align with the Four Seasons or with whatever hotel that delivers great experiences. And yes, even if it's not $1,500, you can find the cute neighborhood hotel that offers a magical check-in experience. And you obviously like that more than the Holiday Inn. And that's okay. But when it comes to your brand, you say, no, it doesn't matter. Everyone's whatever. If it comes in a little paper bag and it takes two weeks to get there, it'll be fine.

You don't actually believe that. You're just saying that because you think the money's spent better elsewhere and that's okay. But my approach is there's a nuance and there's a medium. There's a happy medium between having a great experience that doesn't cost a ton of money and it doesn't take hours as much as it takes giving it. And I think most brands don't understand that there can be a universe where maybe even you outsource the least important tickets and it's 70% of them, but you still keep an internal team that sits and focuses on this all the time. And maybe it's not all day in the tickets. Maybe they're thinking about unboxing and maybe they're thinking about how do you drive more value LTV wise together with the retention team, the meaningful way that's not just gross

upselling. It's not an everything or nothing. And we're clearly not there yet because you see Zappos and then you see everyone else and you see Chewy and you see everyone else. And you see, there are a million examples where it's nobody is even in the 20 yard glide of the rest. And I don't think they need to be, but they have to be in the same playing field. A hundred percent. I mean, this is the thing about CX is like, as much as you can quantify things, you're never really going to be able to say that like the value of the CX is X, Y, and Z. It's something that is long-term. It is all encompassing in how people are interacting with your brand, thinking about your brand, talking about your brand. We can't quantify

the way that we make people feel, but the way that we make people feel is ultimately what is going to have them want to come back or not want to come back. And we can see that in the metrics eventually, but it's something that goes beyond just the straight KPIs. Like I think you mentioned in your explanation that it's kind of like brand. Did you say that or am I making that up? I didn't say that, but it's true. It's true. Yeah. And I think about that a lot. It's like, we spend a lot of effort. I've worked in creative agencies, worked with design teams, and we spend a ton of effort to think about how does this brand look and feel? What emotions does it evoke? And CX is the same,

but it's, yeah, like you said, often not considered to be that important. And it's really, I mean, I just wholeheartedly agree with you that there's some companies that just believe in the value of creating an experience that may make people feel great and they want to come back for more. And I'm excited to see more and more people talking about this and thinking about this and incorporating it into their brands. But I think we're just still really at the early stages. I'd agree. And I think there's always a universe where you can be neurotic and kind of cuckoo and

start measuring kind of like you can split out your CX and send half the tickets to an agency in the Philippines and keep half of that with like u.s overpaid x y and z like there are ways that you can build this out and kind of get neurotic about it but yes to your point there's a certain element of this that's great brands like when i reach out to and i'm not going to name names because it's not super friendly but when i reach out to one brand versus the other brand one brand is u.s based picks up the phone right away or answers the email within decent time and the other brand takes me four days to get a response. My feelings about the brand are obviously changing. And we always see that as a consumer, we never see it on the other side of the desk.

Yeah. And I think it's because we're skewed by this idea that keeping internal CX is insanely expensive, insanely X, Y, and Z. And I do want to share that when I was at Jones, and again, I haven't been there for a minute, so things may have changed. So take this with a grain of salt. But when we were looking at the size of the team and the amount of tickets we were getting through, my US-based team of 10 was getting through, I was comparing it to a team that had 35 people outsourced. And again, this is not a rule. I'm sure Brian and Jess are going to hop up in the comments and say, no, my outsource CX is 10 times better. This is not a big banner.

It's just be thoughtful around the decisions you make. It's like we were comparing ourselves to another brand in the same universe with the same kind of tickets. And they had 35 reps to tackle the same as my 10 were tackling. We were getting to it in half the time. So I think like it's not even always cheaper. reps uh to tackle the same as my 10 were tackling we were getting to it in half the time so i think like it's not even always cheaper uh but we we like to think that it is because we like to assume that whatever our friend told us is accurate but by outsourcing your entire cx it just just crunch

the numbers on a decision that's impacting your brand in the biggest way possible before just saying like i'm over it i'm done find me me the first team that'll take this off my chest. Yeah. I think there's a big difference when we talk about outsourcing. There's a big difference in why are you outsourcing? For example, when I was running the CX team at Too Good To Go, which is a global surplus food marketplace, I had been advocating to actually outsource part of our team because I knew that there were low level tickets that we didn't need our US experts to be responding to. And we could still drive the narrative. We could still, you know, gather the insights and do what CX teams do best while having some of the tickets taken off of our plate so we can actually respond

faster. And, you know, there's pros and cons. And I think this actually is a really good segue into the AI topic, because I think a lot of teams are now thinking, oh, I don't know, I don't need that outsource team anymore. I can just AI it. And I mean, first off, I'd love to get your opinion. This is a big topic when it comes to CX. There's so many things that we don't know yet because the tech isn't quite there, but the concepts are definitely. And so when you think about AI in the realm of CX, how would you recommend leaders to think about utilizing this technology to improve their customer experience? I love the question. And I love the question because it's something I've

changed my opinion on big time. And it's something I'm proud of is I'm open to changing my opinion the same way I would on outsourcing my entire CX if I found that it was a better customer experience. I think all of those are open to kind of like the data and seeing what works and seeing what customers love. When it came to AI, I think in the early days, I was very, very, very not happy with it. And I thought, and I still do think that AI is going to come for growth marketing roles before it comes for CX. Like you're seeing Facebook,

you're seeing Google, PMAX, ASC, like you're seeing all these campaigns that pretty soon you won't need somebody click, start, click, go to run ads. And I thought that that would happen before the nuance of like a crazy ticket where you have to like deeply understand customer sentiment, understand a lot of kind of like nuanced passive aggressiveness that AI can't pick up.

Like I think there's a lot that you need to understand. And obviously like most agents or most CX members can see like what the last order issue was. They can see across like Gorgias and Shopify, et cetera, et cetera. And I thought that AI wouldn't be able to get there as quick as it did. And I think that, you know, like looking at tools like I've looked at Sienna, which I think is an interesting one, where you're basically understanding that they can plug in so deeply with all these other platforms that they really do have access to see everything that's going on. And they train on voice really quickly to better understand and talk the same way your team would. What I've seen is that, again, kind of similar to, I'd say, outsourcing for the easy tickets is you can create a universe where the kind of where's my order can now be responded to in 30 seconds with the correct answer.

And the kind of harder to deal, harder to handle human necessary empathy driven tickets, that 10 or 20 or 30 or even 80%, like those tickets, whichever you deem are important, can be handled by humans. But look, I give you more time to go deeper on those important ones. So that's like my biggest learning is for the right tickets. My hot take is I'd rather go AI before I go outsource. That's my hot take. When you're using Salesforce to tackle your company's most important goals, failure is not an option. At Salesforce, they get it. They've made their most highly skilled advisors, Salesforce CTOs, available to help you with expert guidance and implementation support at every step of your journey.

Learn more about Salesforce CTOs at sfdc.co slash professional services. I agree with you. I think, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen with the future of outsourcing agencies at this point, because I think, in my opinion, the best way to use another team outside of your core team, and AI can be that other team,

is to outsource the low-level tickets. Outsource, I just need an answer to this. And AI does a better job than humans because it's immediate. It's a link. It's like, here's the thing. I mean, what is possible at least is it just being a really quick response to here's the information you wanted. And then when it's something else, we can get to it. I think though, I've seen a lot of really big brands. I mean, I'm like a total nerd for this. If I have an opportunity to reach out to a customer service team, I'm on the phone. I can't wait to see how it goes down. And you really see like, I mean, there's some really big airlines

out there who don't have it right. I'm not going to name names, but I'm like, why do I keep having to tell you the same information? Why can't you see this question and direct me to something helpful? I think the technology is still a ways away, but like you said, it's changing really, really fast. And the area that I'm actually the most excited about is how it can help CX teams operate faster, more efficiently, and more accurately. The discussion about having all of the data, order info, reviews that they've given, no, no, no. The entire customer's experience, having all of that in one place is something that two years ago, I was knocking on the product team's door every single day being like,

please, can you just integrate these three tools so that my team doesn't have to have five tabs open to answer one ticket? And I think AI is really quickly solving that problem, which I'm stoked on. I think something that's been interesting for me now that I'm on the SaaS side is it's interesting when you start thinking about all those pieces, right? Like what did they give a five-star review versus a one-star review? What did you tell them previously? What did they order? Like now when you start thinking about the retention side, which is again, kind of an interesting piece is like,

how did they rate the last customer conversation? How many times they reach out in the past? What review did they leave? What did they buy? What did they look at? Like once you have that in that CDP, whether it's like an actual CDP or leveraging just those data sets that you have and working with a provider, you can actually get pretty granular on what should I send them next? Like what should I email them next? What should I text them next on the next? Like what do I want to push them to buy based on like they gave a a five star review on X, but they actually give a one star on Y, people that gave five star on X are more likely to buy A, B and C. And then knowing when to message

them based on like, when was their last kind of negative CX experience, like all those data points can become really interesting. I mean, so interesting. I mean, this brings personalization to a whole other level. It's not only what do we know about you, but how have you interacted with us in the past and how can we continue that conversation in a fluid way? I'm so stoked for this, both as a CX leader and a consumer. I'm like, let's get rid of the fluff. Just give me what works for me. Isn't it crazy though, Lauren? I feel like the bar is so low. It's like practically on the floor. Like we talk about airlines, but I mean, look at any business.

Like I think maybe I'm hard on businesses, but I can count on like maybe five instances where I was like, that was not bad. Like that was personalized and thoughtful, both in CX and on retention. Like I cannot think of very many emails I got or SMS messages I got or even responses to a complaint. Like, I've reached out to businesses where I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars to ask about something that was like slightly out of the defined lanes of which I was able to play with. Like, for example, hey, I'm one day past the return on this or like, hey, I got this package and it's damaged. And to get like a blanket BS response from 95% of them, the bar is really low. I think airlines are keeping it on the floor for us. But in general, I think the bar is really low.

So I had an experience the other day that was kind of a wow moment for me. And it's not so much customer service, but it was just part of the experience where I was like, oh my God, I love you. It was Airbnb. Who's been just doing a great Airbnb is just great. I just love everything they do. I'm an Airbnb host. I had a guest reach out an older woman who was like, oh, I want to make sure I have the wifi password for my stay in two weeks. And I was like, you know, it's all in the app, but she doesn't see that. She asked that question and I opened the message and there was this little pop-up from Airbnb that said, would you like to send her the wifi password? Click yes. And so I just do. And it's like, I don't have to write the message, go and find the password. It was just like right there for me. And I was like, this is what we're talking about. Like, this is the perfect example of how you've just made my life so much easier, Airbnb.

I love you. I will always be a customer. So yeah, I'm excited for more of that. And like you said, the opportunity is ripe. Little things go such a long way because consumers are like ready to be wowed and surprised. I love it. No, I love it. I love that story. And I think that that's what the future of CX and retention will be with AI, right? It won't make

you do the thinking. It'll suggest something before you have to start thinking like, what do I want to do next? It'll tell you, okay, here's the message you have that's ready to be sent. Do you want to edit it or do you want to hit send? Both on email, like both on retention and on CX. Like here's the ticket. Here's my response. Can I click send? Yeah. And that's kind of nice. And you touch on something that I think is so important that, I mean, I think a lot about AI and how are we working with AI in our lives and in our work and really the best use of AI now. And I believe in hope in the future is that it's a co-pilot for us. It's not taking away our jobs. It's adding to it. And in this case of Airbnb and what you had just mentioned,

it's like, here's what we suggest. Do you agree? Do you want to edit it? And you've just gotten me to step eight out of 10. And now my life is better, but you didn't do something that I had to then go back and see and make sure that I trust you. And like, you know, or did you do it right? I'm still in control. I'm just greatly supported, which is really the way I think it, we should be focused on using AI. So I wanted to chat a little bit about where you're at today. So you started your career, as you had mentioned, in the DDC space. You've built brands like Olipop and Jones Road. And now you moved into SaaS with Yotpo. So I'd love to just for everyone to know,

can you give us the super quick TLDR on what Yotpo does? And then I'd love to understand kind of how you're approaching CX within that space. Still feels funny to hear that because I haven't quite fully registered nine months and I'm on the SaaS side. The TLDR is, you know, Yotpo is a retention platform that helps you kind of do things similar to what we discussed. Like it has, you know, retention tools like email, SMS, subscription, combined with like loyalty reviews. And it gives you the ability to have all those things in one place. You have like a comprehensive understanding of the customer in an effort to be able to message them and

understand them better and drive them from conversion to retention and beyond. I think what happened to me is essentially I've shared this on a whole bunch of other podcasts in the past, but I grew up like an Orthodox Jewish family, number two of 10. I had no kind of formal experience in this space, never went to college, finished high school when I was like 22 with my GED, jumped into startups similar to what I was saying before, like CX was the job you jump in without a ton of experience. I learned quickly that that was the job I wanted to stay in. So I spent like four years at this luggage company doing everything from ops, logistics and trade shows and investor relations. And I mean, we were working with so many different factories and warehouses. And one of the many things I did was CX. I was doing like emails and

SMS and all the other retention stuff too, but I just loved CX. I felt like the methodology for me is what can I do 10 times better than most without working a 10th as hard. So that was like my thought process. And it was CX. It was like, I was faced with the most crazy, this was like Kickstarter, multiple years delayed. And it was just the easiest for me to resolve these issues because I deeply understood what the customer was saying without reading. I was able to read between the lines. Got excited about CX, spent a bunch of years in CX, built a business startup of my own that kind of went for a few years and failed. We moved back to the States in 2018. By the time 2020 came,

luggage company shuts, I need a job, applied applies to like 85 companies couldn't even get interviewed, like period, nobody wants to even talk to me because I didn't have a traditional background. That was the impetus for me starting to share on social, I realized I need like a warm, a warm intro, a third door, I needed a way to get in. That was me starting to share on social, so many of the brands that I couldn't even get an interview in over the years, kind of tried to hire me, which is an interesting, like somewhere in my head, I have a list of those, like not 85, but I have a list of like, I can remember 20 that I tried to get an interview in. But over the years, I started at Nugs, which was called Simulate, which was very early,

raised a bunch of money. Vegan Chicken Company was there for a short period of time and then got pulled by Olipop. And again, kind of leading CX, a small business just getting started. I keep getting pulled into CX, but quickly I learned that it's not doing enough for my brain. The Jones Road conversation was for me and the internal conversation was I know nothing about beauty and I'm also taking on retention as a formal part of my role. This would kind of keep me motivated, engaged to the highest level and jumped in a couple of months later. I understand that a customer is a customer. Yes, there are challenges. I'm being challenged in the wrong part of my brain. Like I was being challenged in like the data and spreadsheets.

And that's like not, you know, I think it took me a bunch of years of my career to realize that challenges the corner you want to be challenged in. If not, it's just annoying. And most people, to be honest, I don't think many people have the luxury of saying this is a challenge I want versus this is a challenge I don't. And the newsletter really helped me understand. I start the newsletter, the newsletter becomes a formidable business, and the newsletter helps me understand that, yes, I could decide which challenges I'm excited and where I want to go wide and where I want to say this is not what I'm interested in. And something that resonated with me at that point in time was the three things I care about is I don't care about the company size, don't care about the space, don't care about the sector, anything I care about. I want to work with really,

really sharp people. I want a real challenge. If I'm not there, the business has a harder time than with, you know, like meaning like I can actually add something and it's a real challenge. And number three is I want to have fun. I think I've always felt guilty about that. It's like having fun. It's work. It's not fun. I want it to be fun and I have the ability to choose. Yeah. And I can choose. So if I can choose, then I will. And when I left Jones, I left an incredible opportunity. I mean, like this is one of the fastest growing beauty brands in the world. Bootstrapped, crushing it, Bobbi Brown. I mean, she's a legend.

I was working so closely with her and her family. And I left a lot of opportunity on the table for something that I wanted to challenge me. When I took the kind of conversations around, okay, what I do next, I spoke to a bunch of people. Most of them were like, yeah, well, everyone said, yeah, you should go. One of the people I spoke to was Yapo. They sponsored my newsletter. And that was really the conversation I had with them.

I turned this customer twice. I felt a certain kind of way about Yapo as a company. And when they sponsored the newsletter, I learned they were doing much more than I understood them as doing. I understood their reviews and loyalty. It turns out they have like email and SMS and they're thinking about a platform and they have a dashboard. And I was like, oh, this is things that I wanted to build. I thought so much about the things that you and I discussed of like, if you have all the information in one place, why can't you create a more personalized plan? And that's literally what they were trying to build. I got excited about just talking to the CEO. I heard great things about him. I had no intention of joining Yopo. I was just interested in what they were building. He was like, when you join SaaS, I tell the CEO, absolutely not, there's no chance. And then I have a few more conversations and realized that it fits exactly into the things I'm looking for. There's a sizable challenge. I mean, this is a business that's built

150 plus million ARR, but they still have certain challenges across the board. Everyone is 10 times smarter than me. I feel dumb when I walk into any meeting and it's fun. This to me is like Tomer, the CEO, describes me to myself. He says, Eli, you're an entrepreneur without the risk tolerance. And I think he's 100% right. I like the stability. I have a wife in med school. I have a three-year-old. I want the stability, but I also want to feel like every day is something else and I can actually make an impact. I took this job. The title made no sense. It was just like, I just knew I was jumping in to try to help and spent six weeks meeting the whole team and

realized that my mission here, less so on product as much as bringing Yatpo as a company culturally closer to the problem they're solving and bringing them closer to the ecosystem and try to help people in the ecosystem, my people, my retention people, my CX people try to help them win. And knowing that that'll help Yatpo win over time. So that was like my mission was I spent most of my time within the marketing org, reporting to marketing, senior leadership and executive team. And I try to do my best on bringing the business towards the consumer, the products we put out, the way we think about CS, the way we think about sales, the events we put out. It's like, I try to be the

ecosystem. The same way I was the customer, the CX team is the customer. They're the customers at the table. On the Yopo side, I try to be the ecosystem, the people we're talking to, the people we're selling to, the people we're servicing. And that's my whole spiel.

I don't even know if I answered your question. No, I love it. I love it. We got the full story. And just so that everyone is clear, who is the customer of Yopo? Just in case folks don't know. I mean, the customer of Yotpo? Just in case folks don't know. I mean, the customer of Yotpo is retention marketers and directors of e-comm. The people

that are building, the people that are working really hard and often not recognized, the people that aren't necessarily going to the trade shows or the conferences, but the ones that are doing the work. And these are right people. So I feel like I'm in like a service-based industry and I feel like I can help the former me and people like me. So it's really fulfilling. Like I went to the office on Thursday, left the house at 5.30, get to the office at 7.30 a.m., got home at 9.30 p.m. And I was telling the CEO this morning, like I didn't feel tired. Like I felt like this was the most meaningful work I've done. And I've never had that in my career where I can put in a 12 hour, 14, 16, 18 hour day and feel rejuvenated. And it's probably because I'm doing something that's meaningful. I mean, it's really amazing that not only were you a customer, but you actually were a lost customer multiple times and you can deeply understand what was missing for you and most likely others. So I think it's very smart on the CEO's side to actually pull you in and help

you really be the advocate for the customer base. How do you approach customer experience within Yotpo? And does the customer experience work that you're doing for Yotpo also apply to their customers? I'd say that I spent less of my time on customer experience as much as on the other things. We actually hired the brilliant Amanda, who was VP of CX at Love Wellness. We hired her as a director of customer care and she's actually leading that also from like sitting in the same seat that I was. So we're trying to create a team of people that come from the brand side with select experience to try to drive that. I'd say like my biggest focus when it comes to customer care is deeply understanding the things that made me uneasy or unexcited or unmotivated to stay with Yapo and try to kind of bring that to every team as necessary. So for example, one of the reasons why I churned Yapo back then was I felt like

it wasn't worth what I was paying. There were cheaper alternatives. And also during the kind of cancellation call, they were trying to cross sell me. Like, I felt like it was aggressive culturally. And I deeply understood that everyone there, I mean, the people that worked with me then are no longer at the company. It's been like five years ago. But I also realized that culturally, the company deeply understood that it was okay with moving away from that towards a different space. And that was exciting for me. But I think even more importantly, Yopo as a company understands that when people choose

SaaS tools, and I'm talking to myself because I know I've been a victim of this, brand plays more of a factor than almost anything else. If I went to 50 people and asked them whether it's Klaviy or Tentive or whatever, pick your poison. If I asked them what tools or what features you use here that X or Y doesn't offer, I think maybe one of 10 would actually be able to explain those. I think people choose tools because of previous positive experiences with them, because other people they look at or look up to use them because the company, like so much happens before the sale. And I think from a brand perspective, we saw Shiappo didn't put enough effort into that. So that's another kind of big, exciting project for me.

Again, something I've never done in my career, but something I feel like the work I've done, especially around CX and retention, I think both of those parts of my brain are very helpful to this mission. Amazing. When you look ahead, like if we look ahead one to two years in like the CX and retention space, what are some trends that you see emerging? What can people expect to kind of come? I think this is a hot take, but I think we're actually going to send less messages in two years. I think that this is like an evolving story that we've seen play time and time again. We saw it with email, where email went from like

zero to everyone sending a bunch, now people slowing down. We're seeing the same thing with SMS. Like SMS is now a little bit trending downwards in the amount of messages people send because of the cost of SMS, but also because I think from the standpoint of the brand, they're realizing that sending a hundred messages is not necessarily driving as much as sending the right messages to the right person. So we're seeing that. On that topic. I'm like, please, to all the brands who are filling up my messages, please stop. You don't have to. One every once in a while is great. Every day, I'm like, I'm missing important messages from my friends because you're up in here and I just don't want to be a part of it anymore.

So that's my consumer perspective. No, I mean, I agree. I think most consumers agree. And the way we've been treating it now is like if they don't unsubscribe, they love it. And I think that's like a skewed notion is like not everyone has the time to unsubscribe. It's going to happen after 10 messages. And by the time you got there, you're annoying in their book. But I do think like my biggest hot take is brands are going to send less, but they're going to send more personalized to the right person. And that's because of the tools that exist, but also because of the way the consumer demand is kind of over just spamming. I mean,

maybe it's not such a hot take because you're seeing Google, Yahoo, et cetera, kind of like create rules around this. Like they don't want spam. It's not good for them either. You're seeing deliverability drop. You're going to see the same with SMS. You're seeing rules in Florida. You're seeing TCPA rules across multiple states on like, stop sending me SMS at 1 a.m. This is the trend. And I think brands should get on it by personalizing messaging earlier instead of just waiting. 100%. And really what it is, is listening to the customer's feedback and needs and wants. And I think it hasn't been that easy to personalize messages en masse, to be able to have a scalable outreach, scalable marketing engine running. But now we are much more able to do that. Like the AI technology is helping us. There's companies like Yotpo helping to pull

everything together so that you can save time and actually focus on the actual customer's experience and giving them what they need when they need it instead of just like, listen to us, listen to us. Are you listening yet? I'm glad to see that the trends are moving away from that because it's not actually providing value. And I think every company should be thinking about how do we provide value in every single interaction. Agreed. What are some key resources, blogs, podcasts, thought leaders that you like to follow to help you keep up with everything going on?

To be honest, especially in my circle, especially in CX and retention, I started writing because I really felt like there was nothing. There are some great books, like there's like the effortless experience, there's some books by Jay Baer, like there are a few books, but when it comes to like, blogs that take one or two topics at a time, I have not personally found many. Two of my friends in this space that have started a newsletter in the recent little bit, they both have podcasts as well, is Zoe Kahn and Jess Servan. I think both of those, they have great newsletters and podcasts, but overall, I really don't think there are many. I think overall, e-comm, there are quite a few newsletters.

Most of them are about growth. Most of them, almost everyone I know of is growth marketing. So if you're not a growth marketer, there aren't a ton of options. And again, I'm the furthest from worried about people not reading my newsletter because there are too many great ones. And I highly encourage everyone, like I'd rather my newsletter go defunct and don't exist because there are so many great ones. So I encourage if you have something great to say in CXO retention, the world wants to hear. And I think it's important for us to elevate this conversation. that I've spoken to in the last couple of years that have tried to give a platform, like Mike from Figs, like Amanda from Love Wellness. I've tried so hard to give these people a platform because we need more voices in CXN retention.

We don't need Eli jumping on so many podcasts. Eli wants a vacation. Please, step in. Well, we really appreciate all of your thoughts, Eli. And I couldn't agree more. I mean, this is why we started this podcast. It's like, it felt kind of obvious to me. I'm like, well, doesn't everyone care about customer experience? Cause I care so much, but like, no, most people, most people are just tuning into the fact that this is really, I mean, this is my hot take, my opinion. CX is the essence of

your business and it needs to be thought of at the forefront. If we think about CX first and everything else will make sense, everything else will fall into place. We need to make sure that we have sales, marketing, product, all thinking in a customer-centric mindset. It's not just a team. It's truly a way of being for a business. And whether you're B2B, B2C, solo, I don't know. It still matters. So yeah, thanks for doing the work that you're doing. And I will pitch your newsletter, even if you want a vacation, because it is a great newsletter. Everyone should check out Eli's newsletter. It's a great resource and I love the way you write it. So thanks for that. Thank you so much. Of course. I have two last questions for you that we'd like to ask all of our guests.

I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with a brand that left you impressed. What was that experience and why did it have an impact on you? I am a sucker for great hospitality. I joke, maybe it's not a joke, that at some point in my career, I'll definitely work in hospitality. I've done a ton of travel in my early 20s, mostly with credit card points. I'd say the only hotel I'm ever going back to, I just love seeing a new hotel every time. I love seeing new places every time. The one hotel experience that blew my mind was the Conrad in Tulum. I think that they, aside from just being beautifully designed, Boho and chic, et cetera, they take experience so seriously. When I went two years ago,

it was right after they opened, and there were a couple of issues. The air conditioning was broken for a few hours. There were a few small issues. And the manager or the general manager then said, come back when we're fully up and running. I will give you a memorable experience. And I booked something for a few weeks from now. And I basically look for the general manager. It turns out he doesn't work there anymore. I find somebody on LinkedIn who's like the current manager at the front desk. And I reach out to her and within an hour, I just get

the most thoughtful, like over the top beautiful message about like how thankful they are. And trust me, they don't need me. I'm not even paying for so using my points. Just the most incredible message I saw that they upgraded me to a beautiful suite. And they're just like taking this service recovery so serious. And I don't think many brands do that. Like you can have a terrible experience with a clothing brand. Your next experience will be the same. Like nobody's doing it the way great hospitality companies are doing it.

You see that in restaurants too. I mean, like what's his name from Shake Shack, Danny Meyer, like setting the table. He has so many great books about kind of like doing this in hospitality. And again, obviously margins are different. The cost, the structure, all of it's different, but there's so many learnings we have from hospitality, from like restaurants and hotels that I don't think brands are doing.

I've tried to implement on the brand side. Like I've tried to implement like that fun kind of like post-purchase experience that feels thoughtful and feels like hospitality esque but i that's like top of my list is great hotels like the wall i've had like a few like the waldorf and amsterdam like these are all hotels that are brutally expensive but uh you can go with points i've not paid for any of these just to be fair the waldorf and amsterdam also like over the top super super thoughtful experience. And I encourage anyone in CX, get a great credit card, be responsible with it, get the points,

go to a beautiful hotel, whether it's Conrad or a Waldorf, go to like a top tier hotel and just bask in the glory of great experience. And it'll probably inspire you. I couldn't agree more. So I did the Ritz Carlton customer service training probably five years ago now, but it was so eyeopening to, it was the first time I bridged that gap of, oh, great hospitality is something that you can apply to any business. And it's really a place where we can take inspiration from. And it's not only the way that the place looks and feels, but it's the way that you're treated. It's the way that you feel in their care. And I think like shout out to all the hotel managers out there, because that is like one of the hardest jobs. And it is also the moment that can make the biggest difference as you're sharing in your

example. Like it completely changes your opinion when you have someone really taking great care of you individually. So love that example. Last question for you, as I know we're right about to finish up on time. What is one piece of advice that you think every customer experience leader should hear? Don't waste your time trying to convince the unconvincible about the value you bring. And I know this is coming from a different side of the table than it was, but I was a CX associate four years ago, less. I was answering 800 tickets a week on my own and struggling to prove the value.

And if I had to tell something to myself five years ago, it would be, don't need to work at the best brand in the universe. Work with brands that understand the value. And again, I chose Olipop before Olipop was Olipop. I didn't go there because it was a great brand. I went there because they understood CX at a high level. It'll make your job miserable or great, depending on which direction you choose.

And getting a job at, you name it, whatever kind of star-studded company that doesn't understand CX will be the most miserable career move. So be very, very mindful about that. That's like a very practical piece of advice that I'd give myself and anyone else at CX. Mm-hmm. I love it. Well, Eli, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your wisdom with us. We appreciate it the future as an AI enterprise thriving

with Salesforce AI and data, and it is bright. Getting there? It's a little fuzzier. Don't worry. Salesforce CTOs are here to work side by side with your team and turn your AI and data vision into a reality. We're talking expert guidance and implementation support from the best of the best. To learn more, visit sfdc.co slash professional services.