CX IS NOT A COST CENTER (By Michael Bair, fmr SVP CX @ FIGS)

Why NOT Investing Is Disingenuous, Disrespectful, and Detrimental

Hi Team!

I’ve been in CX for about a decade now. It started as a way into the workforce and turned into the thing that built my entire career. But for all the growth the industry’s had, there’s still one problem that never goes away.

Every company that invests in CX eventually hits a point where someone upstairs decides it’s a cost center. They’d rather put the budget into growth marketing or brand. And somehow, it’s always on the CX team to prove their value. Around 30-40% of the messages I get come down to the same question:

“How do I prove CX is actually driving meaningful business outcomes?”

This week, I handed the newsletter over to Michael Bair, one of the sharpest CX operators I know. He’s spent 20 years leading teams across B2C, SaaS, and ecommerce, including a run at FIGS as SVP of Customer Experience. He’s seen this fight from every angle, and he’s got a framework that actually makes sense.

The floor is yours, Michael.

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by Peak Support.

Peak Support is a leading BPO that is turning CX into a competitive advantage.

Pro Tip: Turn Your CX Agents into Revenue Reps

You want your contact center to become an RIO center. And that starts with turning your CX agents into revenue reps. Here are six tips for making that happen.

1. Know Your Audience

Your agents need to know everything about your customers. And this involves a deep dive into psychographic characteristics and behavioral insights. How do you do your customers think, feel, and act? And what motivates them to spend more?

2. Earn the Right to Sell

You don’t want your reps to jump in and start selling. Instead, you want them to solve your customer’s problem first. By providing value, your reps can start earning trust. And that’s when they can start thinking about sales.

3. Listen Carefully

Ensure your agents are listening for upselling clues from every customer. With customer-driven insights, your reps are better equipped to recommend new products or higher subscription tiers that solve a specific problem.

4. Plant Seeds Strategically

Plant seeds throughout the call to create interest​. Don’t leave the first reference to an upsell to the end of the call​.

5. Ask for the Sale

By providing recommendations based on what’s learned in the call, your agents can ask for the sale naturally.

6. Align Incentives

Align your incentive program to upsells and cross-selling opportunities. But you don’t want your agents overly aggressive. Instead, you reward your agents on both customer happiness and new selling opportunities. After all, the best sales persons don’t operate in a vacuum, and neither should your reps.

Follow these six tips—and you’ll be on your way for empowering your agents to become revenue reps. And that’s always good for the bottom line.

Do you want to learn about how Peak Support can turn your call center into an ROI center, please click here.

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Hello Eli’s Newsletter!

I was so flattered when Eli asked me to guest-write his newsletter. He’s one of my favorite people, this newsletter has been a favorite of mine for years, and this topic, proving the value of Customer Experience, is one I’m passionate about.

First, a little about myself. I’m Michael. I’m a father, husband, die-hard Philly sports fan, and I love Customer Experience.

I’ve spent 20 years working across Customer Support, Customer Experience, Customer Success, and Sales. I’m currently a fractional CX executive and consultant across B2C subscription, ecommerce, and SaaS.

Before striking out on my own, I was the SVP of Customer Experience for publicly traded FIGS, where I led CX and B2B Sales. Prior to that, I was Senior Director of Customer Success for ServiceTitan and VP of Member Experience at Inspire. My “claim to fame”? The last four startups I joined all exited—two acquisitions and two IPOs.

So Mike, you’re rich, right? Not quite. (Startup equity is a topic for another newsletter.) I share this to say: I’ve seen what makes businesses succeed—and CX is always part of that story.

I’m going to spend the next few paragraphs making the case that you can prove the value of CX by explaining how NOT investing in CX is disingenuous, disrespectful, and detrimental. I know, strong words, but that’s what we’re here for, right? A little spice on your Thursday.

My hope is, by the end of this, if you’re a founder getting ready to outsource your whole CX team, turn the whole thing over to AI, or some other cost-saving measure, I will cause you to pause and rethink.

1. Not investing in CX is disingenuous.

If you’re a founder, CEO, or senior leader, my guess is you have a bit of pride about the business you run. You’re proud to tell people where you work, what you do, and the products/services you sell. Shouldn’t you also be proud of the people your customers interact with?

One of my favorite things, when I worked at FIGS, was meeting customers in the wild. I would ask someone what they do, they would say ‘oh, I’m a nurse, doctor, etc’ and I would reply ‘Oh, I work at FIGS. I run the Customer Experience team’. And not one time did I fear a negative reaction because I knew my team cared. We were the personification of the brand to our millions of customers and the tens of thousands that contacted us monthly.

Not investing in Customer Experience is disingenuous because you care about Customer Experience. I know you do. EVERYONE does. No one wants to call their cell phone company and wait on hold for 40 minutes. No one wants to email your favorite athleisurewear company about a return just to be told you need to send pictures, pay for your own return, and print your own label. No one wants to chat with their favorite skincare brand, wait 9 minutes between each returned chat, and be told about some buried, final sale policy.

Customer Experience is valuable and deserves investment because customers care about it. If you think customers don’t, you are being disingenuous.

2. Not investing in CX is disrespectful.

Businesses are inherently about human relationships. People don’t buy products from companies; they buy them from humans. FIGS did not grow to a half-billion-dollar revenue company because customers solely loved our products. The brand was for healthcare professionals.

We would say ‘we get you, we got you’. We, the humans. We got you. It’s the people in the business, connecting with and understanding customers, that drove its success. How could we say ‘we get you, we got you’ and not invest in the people these Awesome Humans (what we called our customers) were interacting with?

Similarly, when I was leading Customer Success at vertical SaaS behemoth ServiceTitan, human relationships were essential to our success. Our customers were well networked. They talked and they shared the vendors they used, so ServiceTitan had to be more than just the best software. It had to deeply understand our customers (home services professionals), their customers, and recognize the face-to-face nature of their business. They built their livelihoods on trust and personal relationships. It would have been disrespectful to their work to give them a faceless chatbot or an endless help center loop.

It would be disrespectful to the essential work that plumbers, electricians, and HVAC professionals do every day not to invest in our Support, Success, and Professional Services teams. If you respect customers, you will respect their time and invest in ensuring they have the best experience.

3. Not investing in CX is detrimental.

I spent the first two points appealing to your heart. This last point is for your wallet. If you are disingenuous and disrespectful to customers, it will be to your detriment.

Companies that invest in Customer Experience consistently outperform their peers. This is true for large, publicly traded companies down to small businesses. In the recent Watermark survey, “Customer Experience Leaders outperformed the broader market, generating a total return that was over 260 points higher than the S&P 500 Index.” For small businesses, studies show that a one-star increase on Yelp can boost revenue by 5% to 9%. Creating happy customers does not happen by accident and is essential to your business’s long-term viability.

I’ve seen this personally. When I was at clean energy startup Inspire, one metric we would look at was the LTV of customers who had contacted our Member Experience team vs. those who had not. Consistently, regardless of channel or the reason for their contact, LTVs increased after that interaction.

Why? Because we reconnected the customer to the mission of the company and re-enrolled them in the value they received as a subscriber. Keeping a well-trained, well-staffed, well-paid CX team will pay dividends to your bottom line. It will ensure customers feel valued, build loyalty, and communicate that you are a brand that cares.

4. How to prove it:

If you’re reading this thinking, “Yes, I agree, but how do I prove this?”, here’s what I want you to do.

First, I want you to list out 5-10 experiences or touchpoints your customers have with your business. Examples could be customers who call in, chat in, leave a product review, return a product, go through self onboarding vs. human, have a welcome call, etc.

Second, I want you to find someone on your Data team (if you have one) or someone on your Finance team.

Third, you are going to ask them to help you analyze the LTVs of customers who have these experiences vs. those that do not, with as similar product purchase experiences as possible. IE, Give me every customer with 6 months on book on XYZ subscription who HAS contacted my CX team vs. customers with 6 months on book on XYZ subscription who have NOT contacted my CX team. If your CX is as good as you say, you should see the LTVs prove that point. If you need help with that analysis, I’ll help you.

Alright, it’s time for me to step off my soapbox. I hope I’ve convinced you all that you can prove the value of CX. I love customers, I love Customer Experience, and I’d love to help you.

Interested in chatting more?

Get in touch at michael@bairconsulting.com or visit my website www.bairconsulting.co.

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 💛

P.S. If you want to figure out how to get your brand to rank high in LLMs and show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, and more… check this out.