Hi Team!
A bit different agenda this week. I brought in my good friend and CX leader Michael Bair (former SVP CX, FIGS, etc.) to prep us for BFCM.
Michael is one of the sharpest CX leaders I know, and I am excited for him to share practical CX prep ahead of the most wonderful time of the year.
Let’s get into it.
This week’s newsie is brought to you by my friends at Horatio!
There’s nothing quite like the sinking feeling of a dispute notification landing in your inbox for an order you know shipped.
Let’s be real, chargebacks are a total headache for e-commerce brands. Between unrecognized billing descriptors, shipping delays, and plain old customer confusion, disputes happen to even the best companies.
And they sting more than you’d think. You can lose the product, the revenue, and get hit with a chargeback fee on top. Let enough of them pile up, and your payment processor starts asking uncomfortable questions.
But here’s the thing: once that notification hits, you’re already on the clock. If you’re digging through old emails for tracking numbers or figuring out your response on the fly, you’ve likely already lost the customer and the revenue.
The brands that win disputes (without burning out their team) are the ones that have a system ready before the chargebacks start rolling in.
That’s exactly why Horatio put together The Chargeback Response Playbook. It shows you how to classify disputes in seconds, set up friendly outreach protocols, and assemble rock-solid evidence packets before formal arbitration kicks in.
Grab it now, before you need it. 👇
BFCM Stress Test, by Michael Bair
“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I’ve eaten; even so, they have made me.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I love reading. I’m on my 26th book this year (Atmosphere, What Kind of Paradise, and All Good People Here are my favorites so far), and I get discouraged when I hear that reading for pleasure is at an all-time low. But then I remember that reading for pleasure isn’t limited to books. It also includes incredible educational and entertaining newsletters like this one.
I’m encouraged, too, when I talk to people who’ve turned a newsletter into a CEO role (shoutout, Zach Bingham) and read news like last week’s announcement that Express Checkout was acquired by Morning Brew (congrats, Nate and Jenna). Passionate, high-quality writing that builds a loyal audience has never been more valuable.
That’s why I’m honored when Eli asks me to guest-write his newsletter. I take that seriously.
With BFCM six weeks away, I want to talk about why it’s your CX stress test. If you’re a founder who’s nervous about whether your CX team is ready for the coming season, this is for you.
First, what qualifies me to talk about scaling? I’ve seen this rodeo a few times. My first startup was acquired in 2011. Soon after, we went from supporting 125,000 customers to 800,000 when our parent company acquired another company and folded it into our brand.
In 2015, I joined my next startup, Inspire, as its 12th employee. Over four years, our member base grew from 10,000 to 150,000, and we handled more than 10,000 retention interactions a month.
At my last full-time role, as SVP of Customer Experience at FIGS, we grew the CX team from 10 to more than 150 agents in North America and supported 700,000 interactions a year, all while going public in 2021 and as a multibillion-dollar company.
Different industries, different problems, but in each one, CS/CX had to scale with the business’s rocket-ship growth.
One of the hardest parts of figuring out whether you’re ready to scale is that you rarely get a test run. In e-commerce, BFCM is a great one. For many businesses, weekly revenue can increase tenfold, putting enormous pressure on pre- and post-purchase support.
Chat volume can quadruple overnight. Email backlogs reach new highs. Phone queues hit wait times you didn’t know were possible. And suddenly, the founder realizes: We were not ready for this.
BFCM is stressful because it exposes and breaks already-fragile people, policies, processes, and platforms. That’s true of CX, but it’s also true across much of your business. So why don’t we plan better for CX?
Some CX leaders are inexperienced with this kind of scaling. They think it’s simply a capacity issue: more orders mean more tickets, so I just need more people, right? Not quite.
When businesses scale, four things happen.
First, problems compound. An address-change email you would normally answer on time gets missed. Now it becomes a cancellation, return-to-sender, or return request. One ticket you’d normally answer in four hours turns into four tickets you’re answering over the next two weeks. Multiply that by ten.
Second, you can’t keep up with manual processes. Reviews go unmoderated, proactive research in Track by Loop doesn’t happen, orders sit in pre-transit, and fraud alerts in Shopify and Loop pile up. The day-to-day work starts falling through the cracks.
Third, processes that require a manager’s review in Slack pile up and get missed. Managers lose their minds trying to keep up with all the questions.
Fourth, and this is a new one, AI scales your incomplete processes at lightspeed. Incomplete process documentation, circular-reference workflows, and informal quality assurance can lead your AI to touch ten times as many tickets as you intended, and you may not be able to turn it off.
Have I caused enough heartburn and anxiety? Don’t worry. You have six weeks. That’s more than a thousand hours. As my son’s soccer team keeps yelling at me: “I’m bout to lock in, Coach Mike.”
Over the next six weeks, work with your CX leadership team on five areas:
People. Make sure everyone on the team has clear roles and responsibilities and knows what great looks like, with metrics to match. Start talking with them today about a six-week roadmap to readiness.
Policies. Review every customer-facing policy- shipping, returns, warranties, and so on- especially how it applies during your BFCM promotion. Is it clear and customer-friendly? Does it make customers want to shop with you again?
Processes. Search your CX knowledge base for “Slack” and count how many processes require someone to ask for permission, help, or access. Eliminate those steps or temporarily suspend them.
Platforms. Audit the readiness of each CX platform: help desk, returns, chargebacks, reviews, and surveys. If you manually review certain return requests, what would happen if those requests increased tenfold? If only one person moderates your social DMs and needs backup, how will the new person get access?
AI. Set up time with your CSM and ask them to audit your configuration. If you use a tool like Gorgias, you can also ask its internal AI agent, Gaia, to audit your setup. Review your settings, handover rules, and knowledge resources. Start QA’ing 10%, then 20%, then 30% of daily tickets, and make changes based on what you find.
Okay, that was a lot. But this is your stress test. It should be a little stressful.
When I first started in CS, before CX was really a thing, a leader’s experience with scaling was measured by the highest number of seats they’d led and interactions they’d handled. Today, I think scalability is about readiness and flexibility.
Readiness means having a plan. Flexibility means being able to handle a sales spike, a promo redesign, a lost pallet (or 10) at the 3PL, an influencer posting about you on TikTok, or any number of events that blow up your plan.
I started with a quote, and I’ll end with one. Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” BFCM is coming. Even if it goes well, it’ll feel like a right jab to the face. Get your plan ready, but stay flexible enough to take the jab and throw a hook back.
If all of this feels overwhelming, I’ve got you. Email me at michael@bairconsulting.com or DM me on LinkedIn.
We’ll start training tomorrow.
That’s it for this week!
Any topics you’d like to see me cover in the future?
Just shoot me a DM or an email!
Cheers,
Eli 💛
