Meeting customer needs in a turnkey fashion isn’t a nice-to-try for brands — in the digitally entrenched world, it’s a necessity. Luckily, thanks to a host of tools across a variety of channels, many companies are well-equipped to do so.
But while the latest tech might grant certain benefits, satisfying customer needs at scale often runs the risk of sacrificing the individualized, human component that solid customer success depends on.
According to Michael Bair, an SVP of customer experience at FIGS, it’s crucial to use tools that empower team members while still preserving the personal component in customer interactions.
“The world is moving more and more toward automation as tools and processes continue to evolve,” Bair said. “It’s important for us to arm our team with the capabilities they need to serve our customers in a personalized way.”
Bair said the e-commerce company leans on reactive and proactive outreach, leveraging tools like Zendesk to support the former and personalized, more automated methods to provide the latter.
And, while some methods might not be as easy to maintain in an environment of rapid growth, Bair said that customer focus should win out in the end. “While some channels, like phone, may be harder to scale, if your customers prefer it, you have to invest in it,” he said.
Recently, Bair connected with Built In to unpack how the Santa Monica-based medical apparel company strives for positive customer interaction and engagement in a sustainable way.
“Awesome Humans” Always Come First
What are the most important considerations when scaling a customer success team?
At FIGS, we’re on a mission to serve, celebrate and empower those who serve others. That means our customers — healthcare professionals, or as we like to call them, “awesome humans” — always come first. In building our customer experience team, we seek out people who are aligned with our values, love our awesome humans and are driven to deliver the best customer experience in e-commerce. Because FIGS is a direct-to-consumer, digitally-native company, this team, in many ways, becomes the personification of the brand.
When we select the different channels through which we engage with our customers, we prioritize those that they prefer. If your customers prefer to engage over the phone, you can continue to offer other channels like email, chat, self-serve or SMS and hopefully customers will adopt the more efficient ones. But the customer’s preference and satisfaction must come first.
When we select the different channels through which we engage with our customers, we prioritize those that they prefer.”
What tools or technologies do you use to make customer success more scalable?
Our number one tool is the customer experience team. This outstanding group is truly the heartbeat of FIGS. No technology will replace their empathetic, knowledgeable and caring voice.
Beyond the incredible people behind the team, it’s definitely an exciting time for customer success. More and more tools are being built to support customer experience teams as brands across the board recognize the value of engaged customers. At FIGS, we have invested in tools that support both reactive and proactive outreach to our healthcare professionals.
On the reactive side, ticketing and support tools like Zendesk are key. Zendesk’s size, width and reliability make it an excellent tool for inbound inquiries. We also don’t have to worry about reliability as the platform serves some of the biggest names in the business.
What makes FIGS’ customer experience efforts so unique is that, on the flip side, we prioritize proactive outreach — that is, personalized, automated methods of engaging with our customers. We like to use numerous tools and technologies that allow us to ask our customers for feedback or simply how their weekends were. It’s personalization, but at scale.
How are you striking the right balance of automation and human touch?
The world is moving more and more toward automation as tools and processes continue to evolve. It’s important for us to arm our team with the capabilities they need to serve our customers in a personalized way. When we look at our customers, we can see how they shop, when they engage with FIGS and which channels they interact with us on. At FIGS, we’re automating repetitive tasks where and when we can, but never at the sacrifice of creating unique, personalized, human experiences for our customers.
