Aiming for “Wow!”: 8 Ways to Level up Your CX By Building Deeper Customer Relationships

Most food subscription companies have customer retention of only 11% per year. Not Wildgrain. The company, which sells artisan breads and pastas, retains 96% of its customers every month, or more than 60% each year.

Why? Because of the company’s relentless focus on building customer relationships.

The need to maintain a human touch in customer service cannot be overstated: we’re built for human connection.

A genuine human touch can turn a mundane transaction into a memorable experience, fostering loyalty, advocacy, and improving customer retention.

Building strong customer relationships through your support team can turn your contact center into a critical pillar of your brand.

And it can drive real, tangible financial results.

Consumers are clear about the value they put on human connection. One study found that 86% of consumers surveyed ranked the level of importance of human customer service as either “important” or “very important.”

According to a recent Qualtrics study documented by Marketing Charts, 71% of consumers surveyed preferred human interaction instead of digital interaction for customer support.

Customers want quick solutions to their problems, but they also crave empathy and understanding. And for all the great things AI is doing for customer service, empathy and understanding are two things you can only really get from a real person.

So how can companies maintain that human touch in an increasingly remote world? How can they build real relationships with customers, driving genuine delight and long-term customer loyalty? And how can they do it while also capturing efficiencies from AI & automation?

In this blog, we will:

• Lay out 8 ways you can build deep customer connections through your support team
• Provide more than two dozen real examples of how companies in diverse industries are delighting customers with simple policies and practices
• Show how you can use technology and AI to improve the efficiency of your customer service – without losing customer relationships
• Share tips for how you can empower customer support agents to go above and beyond for customers

Do you have ideas of your own? Reach out! Email me at hannah@peaksupport.io or connect with me on LinkedIn to share your approach.

1. Offer generous refund and return policies

Here’s how Ismail Salhi, Co-Founder & CEO of Wildgrain, describes his company’s refund policy: “We’re extremely generous in every single possible way you could imagine.”

Wildgrain’s approach prioritizes customer satisfaction over everything else. Of course, if a box arrives damaged or spoiled, they’ll refund the customer. But if a customer simply doesn’t like the box, they’ll refund it too.

The reason: they’re investing in building a relationship over the long term. The policy doesn’t cost much, but it’s a huge hit with customers.

Carlos Ventura, founder of meal delivery company Feast & Fettle, agrees with this approach.

“If they feel strongly they want a refund, it’s no questions asked,” Ventura says. “We’re extraordinarily generous with refunds because we look at the relationship with the customer holistically. The math works out if you’re more generous with refunds and credits because you have longer lifetime value.”

No-questions-asked returns policies save customers the trouble of sending in photos to prove a product was damaged.

Says Salhi: “Some customers will abuse our policies, which is fine, but I think policing is worse.”

Michael Bair agrees. He built the customer support team at Figs from 12 to 170 people. The hugely popular medical apparel company doesn’t dicker with customers who say a package never arrived.

“The job of an ecommerce company is not just to ship a package out of a warehouse. It’s to get it in the person’s hands. So even if it shows as delivered, if the person doesn’t have the package, we’ll take their word for it and replace it.”

2. Empower your agents to go above and beyond

Recently, a Wildgrain customer canceled their subscription, writing, “I can’t afford this, I just lost my job.

“We saw that they were a loyal member and sent them a free box,” says Ismail Salhi, Wildgrain’s founder and CEO.

Wildgrain sees these kinds of policies as brand-building. “You could spend $3 million on a Super Bowl ad and call it brand building,” Salhi says. “Or, you can spend $3 million on things that matter to your customers and make them talk about you.”

AI will never be able to replicate the sheer delight a customer feels when you go above and beyond what they were expecting.

At Feast & Fettle, “associates almost have unlimited freedom” to delight customers, Ventura says. “We really empower our team to look at every single email and phone call individually and actively seek out opportunities.”

If an agent doesn’t know the answer to a customer’s question, they’re empowered to seek it out.

I noticed that one Feast & Fettle recipe listed “turkey stock” as an ingredient. Off-the-shelf stocks can sometimes include MSG, so I reached out to customer support to ask for the ingredients in the stock.

The agent clearly didn’t know, and it didn’t seem like she’d ever gotten a similar question. She asked for a couple minutes and came back with the complete ingredient list.

“A lot of our competitors started as tech companies. We look at ourselves as a hospitality business,” Ventura says. “That’s the lens in which we view everything. Similar to a high-end restaurant that prioritizes the interaction with their customers, we do the same.”

Tracksmith, an apparel company focused on runners, goes above and beyond for runners on marathon weekends.

“Sometimes a customer needs to divert something from their home to a hotel. We’ll connect with the team on the ground and deliver something to the hotel,” says co-founder and CEO Matt Taylor. “We’re trying to minimize stress around race weekends.”

They also host pop-up stores at major marathons. At each one, they create a limited edition poster; and runners can come by and get their time hand-stamped on it.

At the last Paris marathon, a customer reached out to support because they had to leave at 8 a.m. the day after a marathon to catch a flight. The pop-up store didn’t open until 9.

“One of the customer support agents told the guy on the ground, and he said, ‘No problem at all.’ He showed up at 8 a.m. That customer probably told 10 friends about his experience.”

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to go above and beyond for customers. You can do it for 50 cents.

In the book Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara, co-owner of famed restaurant Eleven Madison Park, shares another example. One evening, a guest told the host that they had to feed the meter in the middle of the meal. The host offered to do it for them.

This so delighted the customer, that the restaurant made it a standard part of their service offering. Says Guidara: “This gesture was the definition of a grace note – a sweet but nonessential addition to your experience. … The simple gift, worth 50 cents, blew people’s minds.”

3. Personalize customer experiences

Addressing customers by name, remembering their preferences, and tailoring solutions to their specific needs can make them feel valued and appreciated.

This can be simple, like greeting your customers by name, or it can be more. Imagine two different customer conversations with an ecommerce support team:

• “Hi, thanks for contacting Acme Inc. How can I help you today?
• “Hi Suzanne, thanks for reaching out to us again! How are your Mavericks doing lately? I hope you’re enjoying that jersey you purchased last month!”

The first one isn’t rude by any stretch, but it’s generic. The second example is far more personalized and way more likely to create a meaningful connection (and with the right technology, it’s fairly easy to make it a reality).

Some companies use handwritten notes to personalize their customers’ experiences. Joybird, the furniture-maker, sends handwritten thank-you notes to customers.

I recently received a package from Toasted Jewelry with a simple “Thanks Hannah!” and a heart written on the receipt. A note like this distinguishes Toasted from the much larger corporations they compete with, and aligns with their brand focus on “Hand Crafted and Ethically Sourced” jewelry.

You can also personalize customer experiences by training your agents to recognize and respond to “bids.”

A bid is a concept from the Gottman Institute, founded by legendary couples therapists John and Julie Gottman. It’s the foundation of every relationship – a request to connect. Every time someone makes a bid, and another person picks it up, a relationship gets deeper.

Recently, a Feast & Fettle member mentioned in an email that they were ordering extra food because a friend’s child had a rare disease, and would be staying in the hospital for months. Feast & Fettle offered to feed the child for free.

“It’s about active listening and finding opportunities,” Ventura says. “It’s hard to put a value on that but it has a snowball effect on the brand. People start talking about you differently.”

4. Use AI to build deeper customer relationships

Both Feast & Fettle and Wildgrain are using AI – but neither company is using it to fully automate customer interactions.

They’re using AI to get closer to customers, not farther away.

Wildgrain is implementing SwiftCX for agent assist. “We don’t use it to interact directly with customers because AI is not there yet, and I don’t know if it will be there, ever,” Salhi says. “We use it to help agents read between the lines and not miss an ask.”

Salhi also used ChatGPT to build an internal tool for customer insights. They feed reviews, anonymized tickets, cancellation reasons, and other data into the bot. Then anyone in the company can ask it questions, like:

• “What are the top products customers love right now?”
• “What are the least popular products right now?”
• “Suggest solutions for…”
• “Tell us why…”

AI can free up time for agents, enabling them to invest more in the deep, active listening skills that enable them to deliver delightful customer interactions.

“We use AI all over the place,” Ventura says. They use it to streamline processes and workflows and to support agents.

They are also considering using AI to help customize meals for customers, “so if you’re always removing tomatoes from your salad, we’ll just do it for you automatically each week.”

5. Make it easy to reach a human

Of course, many companies are using AI to interact with customers. That’s ok, too! Customers love self-service when it works well, but they want to reach a human when needed.

On your IVR menu or your chatbot, make sure you have an option that allows customers to connect directly to an agent. And in your self-service portal, make your contact options so obvious they can’t be missed.

Note that this doesn’t mean you always need to make human support the first option. In our experience working with dozens of growing brands across ecommerce, gaming, SaaS, and other industries, we’ve found that you don’t need to undercut your self-service and automated support channels by always making human support the default.

We recently optimized a chatbot for our client Embark Veterinary. One change: we took the option to contact a human off of the first menu. Embark’s deflection rate increased from 75% to 96%, while CSAT remained at 97%.

Wealthsimple is another good real-world example of this. Their chatbot (powered by Ada’s technology) uses a combination of a decision-tree and generative AI. When a customer indicates they have a question, the bot instantly does two things:

1. Confirms if humans are available to help and what their hours are
2. Encourages the customer to give the bot a shot

If the customer still wants to talk to a human, the bot tells them how to get human help, including sharing the current average wait time for human live chat support.

6. Build flexibility into your processes

Sometimes, providing personalized support for agents means bending the rules. So make the rules bendable.

Wildgrain’s boxes are shipped frozen, so the company has a complicated calculation for how much dry ice should be included in each box, based on the time of year and customer location.

If a box arrives warm, in addition to giving a refund, Wildgrain gives agents freedom to customize the amount of dry ice in a customer’s future deliveries. This required building appropriate back-end processes. “We do things that our logistics team hates,” Salhi says.

Another customization: they allow agents to talk directly to their fulfillment centers, to cancel orders at the last minute, if a customer forgets to cancel in time.

Feast & Fettle owns all delivery for its meals, rather than relying on a third-party like FedEx. That enables them to respond quickly to customer feedback.

Almost every week, they get feedback from customers. For example, in the meals delivered on Sunday, they might hear from two or three customers that the salad is a little wilted.

“Two to three pieces of feedback is an immediate red flag,” Ventura says. “We’ll get that swapped out for the next delivery day. We’ll offer the member a choice of a credit or a redelivery. We couldn’t do that if we didn’t own all delivery.”

7. Build connections in the real world

In-person interactions enable companies to connect with customers in a deeper way. This has been proven with scientific studies: our brains are way more active when they’re with other humans in-person than they are on video calls.

So build relationships with customers when their brains are already activated.

Tracksmith, which sells running shoes and apparel, hosts as many as a dozen in-person runs per week in New York City, Boston, London and Chicago.

Feast & Fettle builds partnerships on the ground with local moms groups, hosts launch events when they expand to a new region, and show up at local celebrations.

“When people see you in person, it’s a tangible differentiator. Big meal kit companies won’t show up to a Wellesley town day but Feast and Fettle certainly will.”

Tracksmith also invests in in-person events. “From the earliest days, we knew having those real life human connections was going to be very important,” Taylor says.

Their first pop-up was at the Boston Marathon in 2015 – before pop-ups were common. “Our options were to go to the expo like everyone else, or create a much more immersive experience nearby,” he says.

Now, they create in-person experiences at all the major marathons. Most days, their events calendar features at least 3 or 4 in-person runs in Boston, New York, London, and Chicago.

“Having a great experience will make you more likely to talk about the brand to other people,” Taylor says.

8. Put customer support under marketing; consider it an investment in brand

I put this last, because I know most leaders reading this will immediately roll their eyes. It seems like a pipe dream, right?

Not at Wildgrain.

At Wildgrain, the CX team reports up to Marketing – so it’s considered an investment in brand, rather than a cost center.

“We have this sort of hidden hierarchy in the team. The CX folks have more say on what should be done for the brand, above pretty much everybody,” Salhi says.

Every employee who joins Wildgrain spends a day answering tickets, so they understand customer requests and maintain empathy with customers.

“You realize the support team isn’t asking for these things out of the blue, they’re asking because it matters to our customers,” Salhi says. “Building that within the company culture is super important to us.”

But how do you empower agents to deliver exceptional experiences?

Ultimately, your agents are on the front lines interacting with customers every day. Many of the ideas in this ebook rely on empowering them to make customer-centric decisions.

But that’s easier said than done. Customer support teams are often process-driven; agents are rewarded for following the rules, not thinking outside the box. So how can you empower your customer service agents to go above and beyond?

Of course, empowering people is easier said than done. How do you teach customer service agents that they truly can go above and beyond without getting in trouble?

Wildgrain brought on Peak Support as an outsourcer when the customer support team had only two agents. The first agents worked closely with Alison Mooradian, the VP of marketing, to understand Wildgrain’s approach and get the brand tone right.

Now, the team has tenured, trained team members who can coach agents and make sure that they understand Wildgrain’s goal of providing above and beyond service.

“We want our outsourced customer support agents to be an extension of the team,” says Taylor of Tracksmith. “We integrate them into internal meetings and cultural things so they can embrace the brand.”

For Ventura, it starts with hiring. “If you hire an ex-waitress, 1000% they get it already,” he says. “It’s having the natural inclination to not just respond but actually improve that person’s day.”

In addition, all employees get free food every week. “We want them to feel as taken care of as the customer,” Ventura says. “If you take care of your staff, if you take care of your team, they will take care of your customers.”

Here are a few other techniques:

1. Give guidelines. Provide guidelines to your agents for how they should treat customers, but not strict rules. Show them you trust their judgment, and give them leeway to delight customers, up to a certain amount.
2. Share the business context. Help agents understand the “why” behind your policies. Explain the ROI behind no-questions-asked refunds, for example.
3. Tell stories. If one of your agents went above and beyond for a customer, share the story. Then share it again. Telling stories is one of the best ways to reinforce your desired behavior. 
4. Give shoutouts. When a customer service agent goes above and beyond for a customer, shout them out in Slack, in an internal newsletter, or even on social media. Externally, these stories help build your brand, and internally they reinforce the behavior you desire. 
5. Empower your team leads. When Wildgrain initially launched an outsourced customer support team with Peak Support, internal Wildgrain team members had to approve all refunds and freebies. Now, the company trusts tenured team leads to make the call. 
6. Give freedom to fail. When you empower your team, they’ll make mistakes. Show them it’s ok by highlighting and even rewarding risk-taking behavior. 
7. Set policies that allow for personalization: When you’re rushing because you’re confined to a 4.2 minute handle time, building connections becomes more challenging. Consider your policies holistically to make sure they reinforce your goals. 
8. Ask for feedback. Ask agents for feedback regularly, either through surveys or 1:1 outreach. When you get feedback, respond publicly and share your response. Demonstrate to agents that they have a voice in how the team is run.

For more tips on empowering your team, check out Peak Support’s guide to creating an exceptional company culture.

Foster deeper customer relationships with Peak Support

AI will continue to evolve and impact the customer experience space. But instead of replacing humans and making every brand a commodity, it can (and should!) empower companies to add more human touches to their customer service.

If you’re struggling to add or maintain a human touch in support, or if you’re a growing company that needs help finding the right balance between AI and human customer service, we’re here to help.

We’ve built and scaled customer service and technical support teams for companies across the globe, and we can help you create a plan for scaling your support operations in as little as a few weeks. Reach out today and let’s figure out how!