Every business has to have customer service. But what makes an experience memorable versus just functional means imbuing every customer interaction with magic.
I’m Ren Fuller-Wasserman, the Director of Experience at TUSHY. At TUSHY, our end goal is to have everyone using bidets — and that means it’s crucial for our team of Poo-Rus (our customer service reps who are poop gurus!) to make people feel comfortable enough to talk about what they would never dare — bathroom hygiene.
On paper, customer service and customer experience may have different definitions, but ecommerce founders need to know that they’re inseparable when crafting long-lasting relationships with customers.
How customer service and customer experience intersect
When you build customers a world that intertwines both customer service and customer experience, you have a higher chance of aligning them with your brand mission and converting them into loyal amb-ass-adors.
What is customer service?
Customer service is the functional side of interacting with customers and addressing customer needs. It is assistance that can be managed by service agents or automation, like a one-on-one conversation on email or an automated conversation through an AI chatbot or self-service options on your website.
There are several ways to evaluate your customer support program, like response time or keeping track of how many customer service interactions it takes to resolve an issue, or what’s called a Customer Effort Score (CES).
Where does customer experience come in?
If you think of customer service as the reception of an establishment, it’s necessary, essential, and expected. Customer experience is all the welcoming perks, extra treats, your favorite corner table with your name on it, and fancy decorations that take the rating of an establishment from three stars to five.
In short, customer experience comes down to how a customer feels after interacting with your brand — and what will bring them back again and again. It includes every interaction a customer has with you, from seeing an ad and liking a post on your social media, to browsing your website and receiving the product on their doorstep.
You want each experience to mimic your brand’s core values. At TUSHY, we want our customers to experience magic and delight at all touchpoints.
Customer experience is usually quantified by customer perception of your brand, using metrics such as a Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).
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5 ways to blend customer service with customer experience
Below are five ways our CX team wraps customer service in a nicely packaged experience with the help of Gorgias. We’ll look at how we build an exceptional experience with a chat widget, the right tone, omnichannel support, a proactive attitude, and a consistent experience across all platforms.
➡️ See our posts on why customer service is important and how to improve customer service.
1. Anticipate customer needs with automated chat conversations
Customer and agent conversations are where we see the most friction, which is why it's crucial to pad it with a customer experience that can make customers feel taken care of right off the bat.
Often, the first tickets we get from new TUSHY customers are about bidet installation and usage. To prepare for these inquiries, we use Flows, or pre-configured conversations, to customize our chat widget to include an “I need help with installation!” button. In a couple of clicks, customers can watch our video tutorials to install their TUSHY product on their own.
Customer service isn’t only about getting an agent in front of a customer. It’s also about finding the most convenient ways to get an answer to your customer with the least amount of obstacles. Changing culture is hard, so we want to make it as easy as possible for customers to learn more about bidets.
🚽 Where customer service comes in: Agents identify and anticipate the customer issue.
🚽 Where customer experience comes in: An easily accessible chat widget on the homepage offers one-click answers to the appropriate issue.
2. Find the right tone for customers
While TUSHY is known for its cheeky brand voice, we turn it down a notch when it comes to answering customer tickets. Customer interactions about a bidet can get pretty intimate and we want people to know we’re trustworthy and have their backs (and bottoms).
The Customer Sidebar on Gorgias is helpful in adjusting our tone for each customer since customers don’t always speak to the same Poo-Ru. When a different Poo-Ru gets assigned to an existing customer, they can find the customer’s order history, location, and personal notes from the sidebar and use the right tone to naturally continue the conversation.
We once even had a mother tell us how using TUSHY helped her daughter deal with threadworms! When we put effort into building relationships, customers feel comfortable enough to tell us even the most personal details, and we often learn new things about how our customers interact with our product that we might not have even considered.
🚽 Where customer service comes in: Agents adjust their voice and tone depending on the customer.
🚽 Where customer experience comes in: Conversations are continuous and don’t have to restart with every interaction, allowing customers to feel valued and heard.
3. Provide multiple avenues of support at post-purchase
We pay close attention to the post-purchase stage for two reasons: to make sure customers are educated and satisfied.
To ensure our customers are confident with their new bidets, we educate them through Gorgias omnichannel support or support through channels like email, SMS, live chat, FAQs, and our Help Center.
Through these channels, we manage customer expectations by letting them know that installing a bidet isn’t actually a major plumbing project. Our comprehensive TUSHY Support Center covers everything from order management and installation videos, to our rewards program and fun fact articles about our eco-conscious efforts.
🚽 Where customer service comes in: Provides your customer base with multiple support channels to reach them where they are.
🚽 Where customer experience comes in: Customer conversations are continuous and streamlined with Gorgias’s omnichannel support feature.
4. Foster a proactive team unafraid to talk to customers during slip-ups
Our TUSHY CX crew is a deeply empathetic bunch who truly care about being of service to people even when slip-ups happen. That means we don’t just fix pain points in the customer journey, we encourage our Poo-Rus to be proactive and reach out to the affected customers.
We’re fervent believers that even the worst customer experiences are actually opportunities ripe for the Poo-Rus to convert into meaningful customer interactions, experiences where we can show a customer that we’re truly listening and have heard their concerns. We can’t always solve every problem, but our customers knowing that they have a real live pooping human supporting them through their woes has been invaluable in building lifelong product and brand relationships.
If you can believe it, multiple customers have sent us photos after devastating house fires, showing the TUSHY still intact but needing a replacement part or two. We respond by sending them the full suite of TUSHY products, including our now famous “Ask me about my butthole.” shirts. This small gesture can mean so much in this time of need, and it’s the least we can do!
These are the great customer experiences, coupled with support, that define our brand.
By creating an environment that motivates agents to be creative and empathetic problem-solvers, maintaining customer retention becomes a breeze.
🚽 Where customer service comes in: Agents engage in proactive customer service to listen to customers.
🚽 Where customer experience comes in: Customers feel heard knowing their opinion will be directly applied to how customer service will run in the future.
💡 Pro Tip: Team-building is integral to keeping your customer service team aligned and thriving. At TUSHY, we have a monthly space called TUSHY Gang where we engage in group activities to build stronger bonds with each other, and for our remote team this has made our CX game even stronger. Investing in our team has been a valuable way to invest in our customers — we’ve seen how when they feel cared for they always want to pass this along!
5. Continue the customer experience across all platforms and mediums
Some customers purchase TUSHY outside of our website, like Amazon or Walmart, which can make it challenging for us to provide a uniform customer experience.
We realized that the common touchpoint for all customers regardless of their entry point is the unboxing experience. Thus, the easiest way we would bring them into the TUSHY-verse would be right at their fingertips.
Here’s what we print on our packaging to bring customers closer to TUSHY:
- A scannable QR code: Customers can access product registration, warranty activation, and a list of other resources with a quick scan of their phone.
- Our website: hellotushy.com is printed on the front flap of the box in big, clear text.
- Our social media handles: Our username and the icons for each of our social media platforms on the front flap of the box.
The goal is to give customers just enough information but also make them curious enough to check us out and engage with us. If they dig in, there’s a wealth of bidet knowledge!
🚽 Where customer service comes in: The essential contact points like website and social media handles are included on the packaging.
🚽 Where customer experience comes in: We provide an uncomplicated unboxing experience with only the essential information customers need, and they can find more as needed without feeling overwhelmed.
How TUSHY provides poo-rific post-purchase support
As we mentioned before, new customers often have problems with installation. Right after purchase, we see a drop-off when customers aren’t comfortable installing TUSHY. We uncovered this gap via user focus groups, return reports via Loop, Stella Connect reviews, NPS score ratings, and Okendo product reviews.
Our customers tend to get very excited when they learn about a bidet, and might pull the trigger on a purchase only to later discover they aren't so gung ho on a small DIY project. It's pretty common for TUSHYs to sit in their box for weeks, months, or years before getting installed. So we're aiming to close that gap with more in your face installation guidance and instructions, so that TUSHYs aren't sitting in closets, but rather under butts delighting the customer!
To recapture customers who may need help, we make use of post-purchase SMS and emails (we use Klaviyo). In our messages, we make sure to give customers exactly what they need with a link to our YouTube video tutorials and our website for additional educational resources.
Go beyond the numbers and learn from customer feedback
Metrics are important, but they need the context that comes from customer feedback. That’s where insights from your agents who talk to customers day in and day out will be extremely beneficial.
For example, we noticed that a percentage of customers were returning their bidets, but we didn’t know why. So, we had a chat with 10 customers and took note of the challenges they were facing with our product and the improvements they wished to see in our service. Turns out, they simply didn’t want to go through the hassle of installation.
Without taking the time to reach out to our customers, we wouldn’t have had the knowledge to fix a critical metric like churn rate.
Build unforgettable customer experiences with Gorgias
When you weave CX and CS together, the most memorable customer moments can happen. At TUSHY, we can attest to that. With the help of a customer-centric helpdesk like Gorgias backing our Poo-Rus, we’ve managed to make over tens of thousands of bums happy with our best-selling, five-star-rated Classic bidet.
Gorgias puts brands in the driver’s seat by championing personalized customer service. They let you customize everything from scheduled messages with Macros, interactive messages with Flows, and an educational hub with a Help Center.
From the overall customer experience, to customer support, and everything in between, Gorgias makes it easy for TUSHY users to feel supported through the entire customer journey. As a result, every touchpoint builds the potential to gather a mass of loyal customers.
📚 Related reading: How TUSHY influences 25% of sales with Gorgias Convert
All we had to do was refine our customer service experience and we got brand ambassadors. How amazing is that? If you’re looking to do the same, book a demo today.
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