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😀 MOTW (Meme of the Week)😀
☺️ Hey, Hey, Heyyy! ☺️
Okay, BFCM prep season has officially taken over my calendar 😅
Cam sent me an article from Fusion CX that I thought was interesting.
"Most ecommerce support failures do not begin with volume. They begin with invisible operational gaps."
YES. Every November through February, brands blame the ticket spike. But the spike isn't what breaks things. It just shows you what was already broken.
The spike is just the flashlight 🔦
When we run CX Audits, the support team usually isn't the problem. On one recent audit, the team was replying in about 10 minutes (amazing!!) and the one-star reviews still kept rolling in. Why? The site, checkout and shipping emails were giving customers three different delivery dates. No amount of fast replies fixes that.
BFCM doesn't create these gaps. It just turns the volume up until everyone can see them.
The 4 gaps I see over and over
Teams that aren't talking. Marketing launches a promo, ops changes a ship date, and CX finds out… from the customer.
Systems that don't talk either. One brand we audited had some major warehouse miscommunication. The warehouse/3PL system communicated only one-way' so order updates were not getting relayed to the warehouse team. The brand kept blaming the warehouse for making mistakes and the warehouse was left confused.
Fraud nobody's tracking. "It never arrived" gets refunded one ticket at a time and nobody tracks it, so when you need to spot a pattern or fight a chargeback, there's nothing to point to.
Automations doing too much. Macros and bots that sound like a robot, or loop customers who just need a human. (We talked about this one a LOT in August lol.)
Audit your own house this week
This doesn't need to be a big project. Grab one hour with whoever owns CX, ops and email, and shop your own brand like a customer: place an order, check every date you're promised, abandon a cart, ask for a refund, and try to reach a human. Notate every place the answer changes.
Find a gap in October and it's a fix. Find it in November and it's a fire. 🔥
I'll go deeper on a few of these over the next few weeks (the fraud one is spicy 👀).
Want the AI side of this? Next Wednesday, Oct 7, I'm doing a 20-minute session at DTCx12 Global: Preparing Your CX Team for BFCM in the Age of AI. It's virtual, free, and there are 20+ ecommerce leaders speaking.
Know someone who's about to get buried in BFCM tickets? Forward this to them before November does 🙃
💬 Question of the Week 💬
What's one thing at work (or at home lol) that everyone thinks is working fine… but you know is held together with tape?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every one 👀
😌 Personal Update 😌
Earlier this week I got to do the 7-Figure Affiliate Marketing Playbook workshop at Kiln Phoenix with Will Padilla + Social Snowball.
If you missed it, the Affiliate Playbook breaks down how to recruit the right affiliates and actually get them selling.
And while I was in NYC last week, I recorded an episode of CX After Hours. I'll share it when it's live!!
👩🏽💻 CX JOB BOARD 👩🏽💻
Looking for your next CX role?
I’m keeping an eye out for great opportunities across CX, ecommerce, retention + more and sharing some of my favorites here.
Director of Customer Experience @ Ridge
Remote (US)
Hiring for a CX role? Reply with the listing and we may add it to next week’s Job Board
🎙️ LET’S LAUGH ABOUT IT 🎙️
New season drops October 15!! 🎉
We've got CX leaders from some brands that are probably already in your cabinet 👀 sharing the chaos, the mistakes, and what they learned.
Catch up before it drops:
YouTube
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Instagram
🚨Inevitable Agency CX Audits 🚨
Not sure which of these 4 gaps you've got? That's exactly what our CX Audits are for 👀
Our CX Audits dig into your current customer experience to uncover gaps, opportunities, and areas to tighten up before peak season hits.
Don’t wait until the tickets start piling up — book your CX Audit with the Inevitable Agency team and get BFCM-ready!
