Today’s brands face the challenge of balancing growth with limited resources. How can teams scale operations without inflating costs and maintain personalized customer experiences? In a recent panel at Gladly Connect Live 2024 on “Doing More With Less,” CX leaders from Crate & Barrel, FTD Flowers, and SelectBlinds discuss strategies for boosting efficiency without increasing expenses.
How Crate & Barrel’s Christina Sheehan Is Elevating Performance by Nurturing Associates
When Christina Sheehan, Associate Director of VOC for Customer Care at Crate & Barrel, hears “do more with less,” she thinks beyond reducing the budget. “Of course, it means a reduction in the P&L (profit and loss). But how do we still provide amazing customer service? That doesn’t go away. How will we work with our cross-functional partners to solve the root issues that make customers call? If you have less budget or staff, how are you still performing at or above current capability?”
Christina believes that to do more with less, you must shift your attention to up-leveling your agents and provide a sense of accountability. “How do we up-level associates to be more proactive and thoughtful when a customer calls? [They should be] proactive and reach out so customers don’t have to call back, there isn’t endless churn, [and] using the tools we have from Gladly like Customer Profile and Hero AI for tone and empathy… [we’re not just] thinking about solving immediate problems, but also anything that could be happening in the future.”
“We’re relaunching the idea that [the agent] is the customer’s hero; they own the conversation,” continues Christina, who is adamant that deflection is never the answer. She gives an example as to why. “While well-intended, some of our associates were giving away gratis cards when customers would call; they were using those in the place of good, personalized customer service. But that’s not why the customer is calling in. They’re looking for empathy, not to be brushed away. When we dug into that and put some accountability in place — we can’t just give away cards; we need to solve problems and show empathy — it actually improved P&L.”
To achieve these results and maintain morale in the team, even in the age of AI, Christina says it’s imperative to focus on new hire training in addition to providing additional training classes to get associates with work experience that extends beyond their immediate role.
“Smaller team sizes have allowed our supervisors to coach their associates, so we’re not doing a ton of new hire training but really creating career paths, up-leveling skill sets, and focusing on retention…and [that’s also] the way we’re trying to tackle [the fear of AI and job loss] — providing extended training so they can see that [Crate & Barrel] is investing in them.”