AI & the Future of CX: Lean Teams, Better Workflows & New Revenue Levers - with Richpanel’s Amit RG

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Marketing Operators

Episode: "AI & the Future of CX: Lean Teams, Better Workflows & New Revenue Levers – with Richpanel’s Amit RG"

Date: November 11, 2025

Hosts: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker
Guest: Amit RG (CEO & Founder, Richpanel)

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Overview

In this episode, the Marketing Operators crew sits down with Amit RG, CEO and founder of Richpanel, to deep-dive into the evolving landscape of customer experience (CX), especially through the lens of AI-driven innovation. The team discusses how leaner CX teams, automation, and smarter workflows not only reduce costs but unlock new levers for retention and revenue generation. CX’s organizational home—whether operations or marketing—is hotly debated, and the episode is peppered with practical ideas, honest skepticism about CX’s revenue claims, and memorable stories from all four operators.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. How AI Is Revolutionizing the Modern CX Team

• Lean Team Dynamic: AI is significantly reducing the headcount required while maintaining or improving support quality.
  • "The number of people you need to run the CX team, that's gone down dramatically. People are using AI to do a lot of the backend stuff." – Amit RG [06:43]
• Automation’s Reach: AI now handles tier-one tickets and enables mass ticket categorization, surfacing customer insights to leadership seamlessly.
  • "You're now able to...read tickets in bulk, like hundreds of thousands...put them into categories and...give that insight to CEOs and CMOs." – Amit RG [07:38]

2. CX’s Org Chart Dilemma: Ops vs. Marketing

• CX Tied to Operations: Amit and Cody assert that due to the nature of most tickets (“Where’s my order?”), CX is best under Ops.
  • "It's been a lot more efficient because so many of the tickets are 'Where's my order?' There’s very little that's needed from a marketing perspective." – Cody Plofker [08:44]
• A Case for Marketing: Connor makes the case for CX as a marketing function tied to retention and upselling, seeking a tighter CX-marketing feedback loop.
  • "How are we compiling all the information? They are on the front lines...How are we making that valuable to marketing...?" – Connor MacDonald [12:15]
• Adaptability Based on Team: Amit points out that the optimal reporting structure can depend on specific team strengths and org needs.
  • “Every org operates differently. I think yours is a special case where you are taking on more and more of the ops. You're more like a COO than a CMO in my view.” – Amit RG [14:22]

3. Skepticism & Strategies: Is CX Really a Revenue Channel?

• Skepticism Around Revenue Attribution: Cody is cautious, noting that CX vendors often take excessive credit for revenue.
  • “I get hesitant with that. I think I've just never been proven the, like the actual incrementality...most CX softwares are just putting the revenue in here and saying this is how much revenue we're driving you.” – Cody Plofker [46:24]
• Maximizing True Revenue Opportunities: The team discusses successful CX-driven initiatives like shade matching at Jones Road and contextual upsells during support (like warranty claims).
  • “For you, Cody specifically, you're generating like couple of million a month using the shade matching team...Would you not say that is a CX initiative?” – Amit RG [45:13]
  • "It is. That part definitely is." – Cody Plofker [46:24]

4. Practical Ways to Unlock Revenue and Retention with CX

• Optimized Post-Purchase Touchpoints:

  • Order Tracking Pages: Turning highly trafficked transactional pages into opportunities for relevant offers and upsells.
    • “From a Klaviyo flow perspective...some of the best engaged with emails. We're driving tens of thousands of visits to these pages...I think that provides value.” – Connor MacDonald [34:34]
  • “I would love to upsell shipping protection right there just be like oh you're on a tracking page, you're worried about it. Two bucks and I guarantee you know, if something happens we’ll get it to you.” – Cody Plofker [38:28]

• Warranty and Support Interactions:

  • Using CX touchpoints such as warranty claims to offer upgrades and ancillary products.
    • “We have a lot of warranty claims...I see they have a carbon fiber wallet. I'm going to offer them 20 off our latest carbon fiber pens...” – Connor MacDonald [60:53]
    • “If we could have like an option where when I go to say that the screw came off...like, buy a new one or get a new one altogether for like 50% off...” – Amit RG [60:53]

• Social Channel Interactions:

  • Personalizing engagement by having founders reply to comments on ads and organic posts.
    • “We run a lot of founders ads...we are going to start answering some of the comments...from his own page...it gives it a lot more personal feel...” – Connor MacDonald [57:06], [58:01]

5. Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Uber’s Influence for Richpanel:

  • “I was able to dispute like a cancellation fee in literally like 15 seconds...that was the aha moment for me. And I was like, hey, why can't we create a SaaS?” – Amit RG [27:01]

• On Attribution and AI in CX Metrics:

  • “If you just go off deterministic attribution...it just doesn’t pass the average marketer sniff test...So I'm on board with this, this approach.” – Connor MacDonald [51:37]

• Tattoo Bet Saga:

  • (Joking about a cost savings bet leading to a tattoo) “If you can do that, I’ll get a tattoo.” – Cody Plofker [00:21]
  • “Sorry, Amit, but I will talk about how much I love Rich Panel, how much Amit has helped us.” – Cody Plofker [32:12]

6. Looking Ahead: AI’s Next Frontier in CX and Retention

• AI-Driven Retention Workflows:
  • Anticipation of AI not only writing messages but also determining triggers, timing, and personalized context for communication.
    • “It will not just be the text that will be automated. But even the trigger, even like when to send it based on what you purchase...” – Amit RG [66:36]
• Testing & Workflow Innovations:
  • Richpanel is piloting a returns portal that lets brands A/B test the returns journey—including flows, offers, and prompts—to increase exchanges and reduce reverse logistics costs.
    • “We are going to allow brands to do ab testing on the returns journey. And what I mean by the ab testing is you will be able to ab test the policy, the prompts, the offer for going to exchange...” – Amit RG [68:48]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [06:43] – Amit on how AI is reshaping CX teams & reporting structures
• [08:44] – Cody: CX under Ops is more efficient
• [12:15] - [14:22] – Connor & Amit debate: Should CX live in Marketing, Ops, or both?
• [29:11] – Uber’s influence on Richpanel’s approach to self-service CX
• [34:27] – [38:28] – Turning order tracking & transactional emails into revenue levers
• [45:13] – Amit: “Isn’t shade matching a CX revenue driver?”
• [51:37] – Connor & Amit: Smarter attribution for CX-generated revenue
• [57:06] – CX/social: Personalized replies from founders & its potential impact
• [60:53] – Transforming warranty claims into upsell moments
• [66:36] – Future: How AI will fully automate and optimize retention communication
• [68:48] – Amit previews Richpanel’s A/B-tested returns portal

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Memorable Quotes

"The number of people you need to run the CX team, that's gone down dramatically. People are using AI to do a lot of the backend stuff."
— Amit RG [06:43]

"I get hesitant with that. I think I've just never been proven the actual incrementality... most CX softwares are just putting the revenue in here and saying this is how much revenue we're driving you."
— Cody Plofker [46:24]

"If you just go off deterministic attribution... it just doesn’t pass the average marketer sniff test. If we were calculating ROI on our CX program by influenced revenue over cost, I'd believe it."
— Connor MacDonald [51:37]

"It’s 200 bucks a month, expensive gym... They have these offers and values... as soon as you respond then it's a one to one conversation. That is a great example of the marriage between retention and CX."
— Connor MacDonald [63:12]

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Takeaways

• AI is dramatically slimming down CX teams and empowering new workflow possibilities.
• CX can act as both cost center and revenue lever, but how it’s measured and where it’s housed (ops vs. marketing) is fluid—and must be tailored to company org and goals.
• Many CX touchpoints—tracking pages, warranty support, social replies—are underutilized opportunities for revenue and retention, but require coordination between CX, marketing, and ecom.
• Attribution remains a challenge; new AI-driven approaches could make CX’s revenue impact clearer and more defensible.
• Richpanel is soon launching an AI-driven returns portal for A/B testing returns flow, with the aim of turning more returns into exchanges and revenue.
• Next-generation retention will blur the lines between marketing, support, and even retail, powered and personalized by AI at scale.

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For listeners: If you’re looking to modernize your CX, drive new revenue, or just survive Q4 with your sanity intact, this episode is a must-listen for practical strategies and candid operator insight.

Transcript

[A]

We've got a special guest today, Amit, CEO and founder of Rich Panel.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

We want to jump in, talk about customer experience. I've got a number of questions on how it relates to retention and revenue generating touchpoints that many brands I don't think are thinking about.

[B]

Cody, you owe me a tattoo.

[C]

I don't really remember this.

[B]

I have it on slack, you know, I have it in writing. He made a bet. Cody, please tell us.

[C]

He's like, yeah, I think we can cut like 500k, 600k a year for you guys. And I'm like, dude, if you can do that, I'll get a tattoo.

[A]

You said that you were heavily inspired by Uber's helpless experience when building Rich Panels. What about Uber's customer experience, like, really stood out to you.

[B]

I was able to dispute, like a cancellation fee in literally like 15 seconds and I got a refund immediately. So that was the aha moment for me. And I was like, hey, why can't we create a SaaS?

[C]

We've actually shifted it from marketing to reporting to ops and I think it's been a good move. We're probably half the team size that we were a year ago. Just like music to my ears.

[B]

The number of people you need to run the CX team, that's gone down, like, dramatically. People are using AI to do like a lot of the back end stuff.

[A]

All right, we are back with another episode of Marketing Operators. We've got a special guest today, Amit, CEO and founder of Rich Panel. Beloved sponsor Amit, thanks for coming.

[B]

Of course. Thank you for having me.

[A]

100, 100. We've got. We're a little bit in closer proximity than we typically are. Connor Rowland, you're out in LA this week. How's it going?

[D]

It's good. Yeah. We're like hatching our. Our final. Not hat. I wouldn't say hatching our vinyl Black Friday plans more so making sure Jason is aware of what we're planning to do this week. But yeah, we got the whole, like, we got all growth leadership out here, so it's been fun to. Fun to get everyone in the same room. It's been a while since we've done that and it's a. It's a fun time of year to do it. We're like, you know, two and a half weeks out from. From our big moment, so it's fun to be together.

[C]

If you want Jason for meetings, you have to, like, show up to the.

[D]

Golf course pretty much or you got to show up right to the office. All the. Him and Sean and, and Matt and Katie and Maytab. Who else was here? Jeremy, there's. Thurswell was here. They're all just hanging out shooting the yesterday. And in the back room here, I'm like, I just swore we have to bleep that one out. I'm like, I'm like, I can't sit here and hang like con. I texted you guys like, hey, I'm working today. I'm like, so am I. Like this is, this is our time, right? I'm like, I'm not hanging out back there shooting the crap as much as they are. But yeah, it was good to see everyone here in the office yesterday.

[A]

Dude, they're the best. Yeah, Sean sent me an invite. It was something like hang in chat Q4. And I was like, hang in chat Q4. I'm like, it's October 29th. I'm like, we're in the thick of it.

[D]

I walked in and they were talking about AI powered creative and I'm like, I'm gonna just, I'm gonna leave guys. I gotta, I gotta go do stuff.

[C]

Yeah, everyone, everyone thinks the CEO job is so hard. It's not. It's like you just have your team, you have the CMO, the head of growth prepping for Q4 and you just get to go to Dodgers games and play golf and talk shit.

[A]

That's funny. You know, I did, I did. Here's an incredibly first world problem, but I made it to the Dodger game on Monday with Sean and I was so stressed going into it. Like I just have so much work to do this week already kind of behind the ball and stuff. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna try to take it easy. It'll be the two and a half hour game. I'll have one beer. I'll be back by 8:30. I'll get some work done tonight. Not at all the case. Historic 18 inning game on that Dodger Stadium till 12:30. I, I get four hours of sleep. I'm back up at 5:30 in the morning the next day, grinding it out. So yeah, it's been, it's been a pretty crazy week. But that's Q4. All right, sweet. We want to jump in, talk about customer experience. I've got a number of questions on how it relates to retention and I want to talk about revenue generating CX touchpoints that, that many brands I don't think are thinking about Ridge. Hasn't been for a long time and they've kind of been on my radar. I think it'll be a fun episode. But before we begin, I want to thank our sponsors, Motion, Ridge Panel, Prescient After Sell and House so we can get right into it here.

[D]

So I don't know about you guys, but we are fully locked in on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday sale at hexclad. Motion is as always, a very big part of this. We do a ton of just iterations on evergreen ads with like Black Friday sale banners. So we're just taking literally our top performing ads for the entire year, slapping a banner on them and that's at least one part of our content stack for bfcm. So easy just to use motion to look at like last 90, last six months, year to date. Which ads are getting us the best efficiency, which ads are getting us the best scale. It's like a really quick and easy way to pull that report in motion and then come up with just a bunch of overlays onto your evergreen ads. That's one way we're using motion as we head into the peak season for us. The other way we're using it is for more like instantaneous feedback. So we're saying hey, we did that. But we also shot and produced all these seasonal ads, so which ones are performing best and then we'll iterate on those like during bfcm. So all of this is getting powered by motion reports. It's just the quickest, the easiest way to see what's working, what's not. Connor, how are you guys using Motion at Ridge to inform your Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday ad decisions?

[A]

We're in a similar headspace. We did a, an exercise that I was calling a Bottoms up planning this year where we granularly looked at what worked at what times throughout, you know, late October, November, Dec. Last year. That all comes from analyzing our creative. So we got that foundational approach of what are the things we want to be prioritizing and then we can get into the fact of what are the new things that we want to be trying this year. And Motion really kind of led point on a lot of that analysis.

[D]

Cody, how about you?

[C]

Yeah, same thing. Like we'll have everybody propose their strategy and their plan but like there should be no reason to start from scratch. Like there's no, you know, blank page. I think you got to hit that like 8020 of explore and exploit. But I think for, for exploiting like you got to look at what's performed well and you know, we try to have a lot of warm up points like we will have like a holiday kits launch. We have Labor Day, we have last Black Friday. So we just build a report of all of them. We just see what traits perform well. Anything that you can filter by naming convention so we don't have to start with a blank screen. And then we're able to just get more pinpointed in our strategy, hopefully each launch.

[D]

And lastly, one thing I really, really appreciate about Motion is you don't need to like be this expert in how to use the tool. Like, like they're very good at getting you onboarded, getting your data ingested and connected, and then training you on exactly how to use the tool. So if you've been dragging your feet, it's time to get going with Motion. Head over to mot.com.

[A]

I kind of want to kick us off with discussing what a modern CX team might look like today and what are the workflows. So me, I, I'll hand it to you first. You obviously see more CX teams than anybody else on this call. We've all only got one, you've probably got hundreds. So how would you answer that question today around how a modern CX team looks and feels?

[B]

I would say that the, the, the things haven't changed much. Like they still report into operations as they rightfully should. I know that in the initial notes you discussed whether they should report into marketing versus they should report into operations. I feel like the CX is so dependent on operations. Like if anything goes wrong in fulfillment, anything goes wrong in inventory, they are flooded with tickets and it's usually the operations team that they have to go back to. So they both go hand in hand. That hasn't changed. But one thing that has definitely changed is the number of people you need to run the CX team. That's gone down dramatically. People are using AI to do a lot of the backend stuff. It's not there where it started to do end to end customer service for you. It can probably do it for tier one tickets. But when it comes to workflows that involve involving multiple people or getting approval from someone, that is still pretty human dependent. But what have people done is like they've realized what are those tier one tickets where people are spending like a lot of time on and how can we completely take that off their bucket? So the teams have become like way leaner. Another thing that has also happened is they've started to do things which was previously not possible. Like in the case of Ridge, you guys had this beautiful thing where you would label a negative customer CSAT Right. Like you would have like someone dedicated that is going in there and tagging and labeling every complaint that you got from cx, compiling that into insights and then sending it to you and Sean at the end of the week. Now that's become possible for every team to do no matter what the size is. But you're now able to like read tickets in bulk, like hundreds of thousands of tickets, put them into categories and you know, give that insights to the CEOs and the CMOs, which was not previously possible. So those are the changes we are seeing.

[C]

I agree with that. We've actually shifted it from, from marketing to reporting to ops. And I think it's been a good move. Obviously Amit knows like he works closely with our team, but I think, I think it's been a good move. I think it's been a lot more efficient because so many of the tickets are where's my, that's a majority of it is where's my order? Or it's something wrong with the order. There's, there's, you know, very little that's like needed from a marketing perspective. And yeah, we are, we're probably half the CX team size that we were a year ago, which is, which is awesome. And just saw like our budget for next year for it and I think we're our like senior director Ops who oversees CX thinks we can, we can make it work with the same team size we have now. Which is like music to my ears.

[B]

Yeah, Cody, you owe me a tattoo.

[A]

He becked me a tattoo.

[C]

Yeah, he said dude, Cody, what are you doing?

[B]

If he made a bet on yeah, Cody, please tell us what's the bet?

[C]

I don't, you know, I don't really remember this.

[B]

I have, I have it on Slack, you know, I have it in writing.

[D]

He's got a screenshot.

[C]

I remember it was like, it was like holiday. It was like I was in Miami at my brother in law's house.

[D]

This explains everything. You could just stop there. I was in Miami.

[C]

Well, hold on. And I see Maytab tweeting about CX and Rich panel and, and like some efficiency changes they made. So I asked Maytap, he's like, yeah, you should ask me. And, and, and we were like already on rich panel and stuff and so I started bugging a meat about it and I'm just like, hey, like how, how can we cut costs? How can we save? How can we improve our program? It's like, well you got to get you know, the self service up and running. You got to do this stuff like we've been telling you about it and, and other stuff and you know, some just like org changes. And he's like, yeah, I think we can cut like 500k, 600k a year from you, you know, for you guys. And I'm like, dude, if you can do that. I probably said like, I feel like what I usually say jokingly is like, I'll name my next kid after you, but maybe I said, I'll get a tattoo. Which I don't know why I don't remember that. I can look back the rest of the. But I'm sorry, man. It's not going to happen. I love you. But.

[B]

Yeah, he tried to get away by. Yeah, he tried to get away by putting like a sticker on his ribbon. And I'm like, it's not the same thing.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, you're like this degenerative, degenerative gambling streak apparently.

[C]

No, that one, it was out of nowhere. Maytag. Maytag just like made that up out of nowhere. There was like no bet behind that one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Connor, do you guys have CX reporting into ops as well at hexclad?

[D]

We don't. We. We actually have reporting into our chief info and admin officer and he has like a bunch of. A bunch of different, like, not, I don't want to say random, but like he owns like a bunch of different, like very, I guess, kind of unrelated parts of the org. But yeah, we have like a very, a very senior lead that reports into him right now.

[A]

Okay, interesting. Because I, I don't know. I, like, I'm split on where it should roll up into the org. Historically it's been an ops function. It became a marketing function last summer 2024. I'm kind of a proponent of it now. And let me tell you guys quickly, my, my vision for. For cx and you guys could tell me if you think it should be rolling into to marketing or not. The first one is very operational oriented where we just want to lean out the team. So that was when we switched to rich panel summer 2024. We wanted to optimize and automate and just make the team as lean as possible. But then my two things are one, how does that CX team and function become a resource for the rest of the organization? So how are we compiling all the information? They are on the front lines of talking to customers, hearing about problems, getting feedback. How are we making that valuable to marketing or to product or to ops? I guess, but they're probably third on that.

[D]

List.

[A]

And then the last one is I think there's a lot of opportunities to generate revenue from related touch points. So what we have now is we have our VP of marketing sitting over retention, partnerships, organic, social retention. And I think those are all very own channels. And I. My plan for 2026 is for those to work in tandem much closer. So that's almost where I want the tighter feedback loop being versus a tighter feedback loop between ops. Because I think there could be a dotted line that's just like hey yeah, figure out why our shipping times are slowing down or whatever. So that's my pitch to you guys as to why should be more of a marketing function. But you're not buying it. You're not believing that CX should be a marketing function.

[B]

Yeah, I don't have like a very strong opinion. I'm just wondering if you feel that way because, because Sean is like outsourcing more and more responsibilities to you. So it's, it's more a function of you than, than the overall or which, which happens with me too. Like if I like I had this like really good account exec that I promoted to like head of sales and then I saw that he was very good with onboarding customers and taking care of them even months after he's closed the sale. So I'm like, hey, why don't you become like head of revenue, right? Like why don't you even take care of customer success and sales so both roll on to you. But that's very specific to that individual. But that does not become prescription that this is how you should run a SaaS company for everyone else. So when I met with Sean a couple of times, you know, he will tell me like, oh, I'm putting corner here, I'm pulling corner here. So it's more a function of you understanding operations and you know, you having enough cycles to put in like other areas where you are advocating for that. I feel like the dotted line reporting for the other org should be with marketing where you are like hey, give me these insights on a weekly basis as to what's happening. And marketing is supposed to give you like forecasted revenues or forecasted orders what the predicted spend is so they can do the capacity planning accordingly. But on a day to day basis imagine like something happens, something goes wrong on the warehouse. Something like you know, you're not working on a weekend or you don't have enough capacity or you got like a surge of orders or you need approvals maybe you know, you have like a threshold of how much refunds can you do like, you know, usually it is like, hey, 3% refunds on a day. I'm just making stuff up. But now it's going like to 4.5% on a particular day because we just shipped a lot, which was not good from the manufacturer. So you gotta now talk to someone from the warehouse or do something like 45 times a day or 450 times a day. They're not going to ping marketing. They need to ping ops into what's happening at the warehouse. What can we change here or something broke at the warehouse. So we are routing the shipments over here. So this is the communication you need to make to your people. So that's like more on a daily basis that you need to coordinate between the two teams. Hence the thing that it needs to report to operations. That's my view. But every org operates differently. I think yours is a special case where you are taking on more and more of the ops. You're more like a COO than a CMO in my view. Same thing is happening with like Cody, like he was a CMO and then he became like the CEO. So like everything is falling under him.

[A]

I like what you're saying. I'm hearing overworked. I'm hearing potential promotion, I'm hearing raise.

[C]

I think that's part of it because we had it under marketing and I think definitely just with, with like your role, like you're definitely involved in probably more than most CMOs and maybe what most CMOs should be like. I know you're involved with product dev. You went to China recently, did some factory stuff. So like I do think like, like, I mean saying like you are wearing more hats and I think it depends and like I am curious to hear more. I think I don't personally buy that it's like this big revenue driver. I see it more as a cost center personally. And by the way, we actually have shade matching on ours and so we do have a team of people that are legit shade matching and that's more of a revenue on. We have it under ops. We moved it under Ops as we had some restructuring. Partly because I was like, hey, I have too many things on my plate. I have too many direct reports. Our only other C suite as a CEO. So I'm like, let me put it under under her because like she's strong. She can just handle more workload and responsibility. So I think some of it was a strategic decision of like, I think it actually should work closer under Ops for the reasons Amit's saying. And some of it is like, hey, who do I have on my team that is strong and can absorb more responsibility? And we just had a senior director of ops under her who has also overseen cx. But I do think so. I think our numbers are like the best it's been. I don't know if this is anything but like our CSAT is better than it's been, partly because we're just what you measure gets managed and we're just actually giving KPIs to the agents as well. But it's the highest it's been and I think something is, is, you know, working right. It's the best it's been with the least number of people. But I don't buy the whole like revenue Zappos type thing. I haven't been made a strong believer in that.

[D]

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[A]

So that's kind of step two of my plan. I think we're in the middle of that now. Like we just got a great we on our all hands. Yesterday we had a report from our director around some of the issues that we're seeing, some of the improvements that we're seeing, things like that. So it is, I like that that forcing function, pushing back to marketing and being updated. It's one of the reasons why I think if you think about common issues or places for improvement or whatever else, it's going to be heavily retention dependent where it's like yeah, how are we updating welcome series or post purchase flows or welcome series flows or transactional flows, things like that, email, sms, if you're having Issues you need to communicate with customers. Like that's often happening via a Klaviyo or a postscript. So that's why I like those channels sitting underneath our VP of Marketing E Comms. The other really big one, right. Like having a really tight feedback loop between and E Comm. So questions are being reflected in FAQs or if there's issues on the site, we're getting those resolved as quickly as possible. So that is, that is. Yeah, those are a number of reasons. So it being a resource step number two in my plan for CX at Ridge. I do hear Amit's point though that really on a day to day basis I guess it is probably closer to a OPS function. Especially when you start thinking about projecting resources. Like we're going into Q4 we staffed up over the last couple weeks. Like that is all very inventory planning, finance dependent. Look, like I said, I was split on it coming into.

[C]

Depends as well. Like again I think it depends on the Oregon it can go better. And now I'm like almost playing devil's advocate and thinking of things that are like maybe slightly worse off as you're talking through it like one enemy. I'm really curious to ask your perspective. Right. I remember Sean said this on an episode of Operators. He's like, you know everything, everyone has their bias and like if you ask a director at CX like like what you should do to improve the business, they're gonna be like hey, we should stop running ads because like you'll get less tickets if you do that. And so like yesterday our, our, you know, senior director of Ops is like hey, I. I want to explore putting the widget, you know, the self serve widget across the whole site. And I'm like I'm hesitant to do that especially around holidays. Like yes, I know that would help with our response times and more tickets. Like what's that going to do to conversion rate? And granted like I also think it doesn't matter where they are because as long as you have like the right decision making structure, like I'm going to decide on that anyways. But I think that would be one that if OPS team was just like yeah, yeah, let's do it. That helps our upside. Like that's obviously a huge no, no. And maybe that should be rolling up into marketing because most sites are under marketing. You know, ultimately like we have it find either way. But I mean what, what, what have you seen for that? Like have you seen any brands actually test the conversion rate using intelligems or something? Else of a self service widget or are most of them just deploying it without testing?

[B]

Yeah, I agree with your feedback that everyone has their own biases. Just yesterday we had the CS team come to us and say that hey, we should not be creating slack channels for we have these shared slack channels for customers be on board. So we have with Uridge, we have with Jones Road and now we are up to like you know, thousand slack channels. So it's like a lot of noise and we have to like scale more. So they are like hey, we should probably not create slack channels for everybody. I'm like where is that coming from? Like is it helpful for the customers? Probably not removing that one communication challenge. So they're like oh, can we do it? Like only if customers are paying like more than thousand dollars a month should we have that slack channel. And I'm like absolutely not. Like you need to think from first principle basis because that will be your guiding principle in everything. Like from a customer's point of view, what you're doing, is it good for me if the answer is no, probably don't do it. So going back to your point Cody, in the event there are two things, right? Like if you put the self service widget on the website on every page, 70%, 80% of the traffic is mobile, if it starts to cover your add to cart or cover like any of the other CTAs because you're not designing the whole web page thinking that there'll be widgets on top of it, right? So that's obviously going to be like negatively affecting your CRO. But the best way to do it is put it like a button, like a navigation button, just like Amazon does it or Uber does it. Like if I go to the Uber Help center on desktop there is a widget that will be like hovering that you can contact on, but on mobile it's in the navigation menu. Like you click on the navigation and you then click Help or Support and then the whole thing opens up. So you know, just from first principle basis it's going to have like zero impact on your CRO, right? I don't need to ab test it. If a customer wants to contact, it's very intentional. It's not distracting them from their purchase journey. They're going on the navigation menu and they're clicking Support or they're clicking Help. So we don't need to like ab test it. And then I'm giving them the options to like look at their orders, track do returns, do cancellations, you know, change or Edit an order that's, that's all available inside that menu. So that, that is an obvious journey for us.

[C]

Yeah, for that you might not need an A B test for, for adding a button on mobile across every page. If there is even a chance that I would allow my team to do it, it's a hundred, it has to be AB tested. That, that one scares the crap out of me. So that was why. I'm just curious if you've seen or had data. Have, have either of you guys tested that? Any type of widget or like a self serve or a chat?

[A]

We haven't. Well, we have self serve popping up on, on the help pages. So it's similar to what Amit described. We didn't test it, but if you're down in the support pages then it begins kind of surfacing there. So that makes total sense. But like we had this, this was probably four years ago or something, but our director of Ecom, like our CX manager, went to our director of E Comm and was like, hey, I want to put this big button on the site that floats around everywhere. And then we did it one day and I go on the site and I'm like, what are, what are we even thinking? Like, this is just massively intrusive. So I at the very least agree with you. I don't even know if we'll ever test it, but at the very least we would have to test it. Something I'm not confident would be a net positive necessarily.

[C]

Oh yeah, we had, we had one old CX person who was like, I think we're having some like, you know, address order, you know, issues like people putting the wrong address for stuff. So I was like, we should add a checkbox before they order that they like have to like, you know, know commit. I'm like, we're, we're not going to do that. Yeah, we're not gonna do that.

[A]

So Amit, you bring up the Uber help desk. I was doing, I was doing my research coming into this interview and you said that you were heavily inspired by Uber's help desk experience when building Rich Panel, is that right?

[B]

Yeah, that is correct.

[A]

So what was, what about Uber's customer experience? Like, really stood out to you or like what do you guys try to emulate? That's not a common point of inspiration, I don't think.

[B]

Yeah, so. So, you know, I just have an example to share from like yesterday. So I ordered a display, like a external portable display for my laptop and I had it delivered to Olivia's address Olivia lives in Brooklyn, but we were both attending a show yesterday, like a trade show. So, you know, I go to the tracking page and it says that it's going to be delivered when she's not at home and the signature is required. So if you want to remove the signature, you pay like, you know, some $16 or $17. So I'm like, you know, heck it, like I'll pay for it, but I couldn't do it. Even then after paying like $16, I couldn't do it. Finally, you know, I called the call center and they're like, okay, you know, you pay $7 if you want me to do it if you can't do it. So I'm like, okay, take another seven bucks, do it. And finally the signature was still required, right? So I'm down like 25 bucks. And I'm not going to call them and spend 30 minutes trying to get 25 bucks. But, but I do feel like a little cheated. Like I'm like, hey, like I spent my time and you still required the signature or you didn't let me like change the delivery address. So similar thing would happen in Uber, like back in the original days, like if the ride is canceled, I would still get charged. But nobody has the time to like dispute it. You're already on the road, you want to like get to the next stop. So you don't have the time to do it. But you do feel like the. It's like, hey, why did you charge me like 10 bucks for the driver not showing up? And one day, all of a sudden I see that they have these like self service options. So you go on help and it's no longer a chat widget. It's like, hey, do you need help with this? Right? They started displaying these rights and I'm like, yeah, that's what it is. It went from being like an open ended text input to like proactively detecting what you're here for. So you click on that and it's very dynamic. So if you do that like just three minutes after booking, you know, getting dropped off somewhere, they'll be like, hey, did you forget an item or do you want to like change the driver's rating? Right? And if it is like, you know, few days later, it'll be about like, hey, do you want like an invoice for the trip or a receipt? Because maybe if you're coming after three or four days, you want to file for reimbursement. So it's very intuitive and intelligent. But I was able to dispute like A cancellation fee in literally, like, 15 seconds. I went, I said, you know, this one. It determined that I was charged the cancellation fee. So it was like, do you want to dispute it? What's the reason? And I got a refund immediately. So that was the aha moment for me. And I was like, hey, why can't we create a SaaS that everybody then uses? And then I called up, like, a lot of people, including Uber, and I was like, hey, what do you guys think of this? They're like, if you were a SaaS before we build this out, we would have definitely used it. So there is definitely a need for it. And that's. That was our inspiration for. For creating this.

[A]

I think that's an incredibly cool point of reference. Like I said, like, you don't hear a lot of people in D2C talking about emulating Uber, but I totally agree. It's a great experience.

[C]

So I remember, like, right around Christmas time, when most people should probably normal people were like, off taking that, taking their time, chilling family. I was like, looking through our P and L, our budget for next year, I was like, how are we going to save money? And one of the things I did is I leaned on a lot of our partners. And I remember slacking a meet from Rich Panel. And I was like, what can you do? How can you help us? We had just switched to Rich Panel a few months before, went really well. And I told him jokingly, by the way, I want to throw it out there jokingly, that if he could help cut about 500k from our customer service costs, I'd get a Rich Panel tattoo. Well, we did that. You've probably seen a tweet. He did some AI thing of me with a neck, neck tattoo. I'm not going to do it. Sorry, Amit, but I will talk about how much I love Rich Panel, how much Amit has helped us. So we had 18 support agents before. It was a lot, and it just was not scalable. We had so many people. We had this, like, old legacy software. It was slow, it was broken, it was expensive, and it just took too many people to operate. So we not only made the switch, but Amit and his team really helped us. Now we have eight people and we have a much better CSAT score. Our numbers are way better, our response times are way quicker. We're leveraging a lot of automation, a lot of AI, but again, it has not hurt customer experience. We track and I get a weekly report of our csat, of all of our stuff, of our NPS and it's going up because we're actually able to get back to people, give people better answers. The automation learns from our best agents. So it's just continually is getting better. We switched to Rich Panel about two weeks before Black Friday. Might be a crazy thing to do, but it was super easy. We came out of Black Friday for the first time in three years with no ticket backlog. The software and support has blown us away. I highly recommend you switch. If you do it and they save you a lot of money, you should probably get a tattoo. But it's not something my wife would let me get away with. But yeah, if you're running an e commerce brand, I highly recommend you switch to Rich Panel. You'll be able to leverage their software, save money on software costs, which is great, while saving a significant amount of money on personal costs. So if you want to go into Q4 with a leaner, smarter support setup and come out of there without this crazy tech backlog and just make your CX team happier, go to rich panel.com demo, tell them Cody from our credit operator sent you and tell them you're ready to get a tattoo.

[A]

So maybe I'll have to do some convincing here. I want to, I want to chat revenue generating CX touch points that you're not thinking about Cody. Sounds like you're not thinking about any of them. So this might be a helpful episode for you.

[C]

But I'm always, I'm always down to be proven wrong. Also on that note, I was looking through some slacks with Amit and I and it did happen. I blocked it out of my memory. But I did offer to get a tattoo. What was.

[A]

That's so funny dude. That's what Miami does to you. Was it specified would you presumably a Rich Panel logo tattoo.

[C]

Yeah. It didn't say where so I'm not getting it anywhere visible that you can see.

[B]

But, but that's the whole point, Cody. Like I, I want like real estate on the podcast, you know, like every time Cody does some appearance and the Rich panel tattoo will appear. That's the, that's the.

[C]

I'm wearing some house swag today, so I haven't gotten any Rich Panel swag. But you know, if you send it my way, you never know.

[B]

100%. 100%. Yeah, we'll send it for all of you guys. Please just wear it a couple of times.

[A]

You know, I've joked about that before. That house crew neck that Cody has on is extremely comfortable. That's the best marketing you could do. Just a well Fitting hat, a comfy crew neck. House sent some sweatpants at one point. That's how you get into the hearts.

[C]

Of like if somebody sent us like a really good water bott it would be good. Yeah.

[A]

If, if only we knew someone. Okay, awesome. All right. Revenue generating CX touch points. You know what I like it just came to mind during this conversation but when McCoy was on a couple weeks ago he said this like somewhat jokingly but he was like everybody's talking about incrementality right now and you know, using geolift studies to measure the, the true impact of a channel. He goes look, a year from now, two years from now, we're all going to be talking about better retention, better LTV generation, things like that. And I think he's at super spot on. Like, like if I if out 18 months it's like yeah, we will have gotten much better at acquisition. We'll be way more data driven. And all of a sudden I think, I think I'm ahead of the curve here slightly or I think 2026 will hopefully make some progress on this. But figuring out ways that retention and CX and Ecom can all work together for a great buying experience and hopefully we'll do some hold out tests Cody, prove that we can actually generate some additional revenue here. So I've got a small list that I've figured we could jam through and then if anything else comes to mind we could go from there. The first one, do you guys use Wonderment? What do you guys do for like package tracking?

[D]

We use Parcel Labs.

[C]

Okay. We, we use like PDQ for it. They have like a similar functionality, a.

[A]

Similar sort of offering because my, you know, it's like one of our highest. They're just you get so many clicks from like a, from like a klaviyo flow perspective. It is like some of the best engaged with emails. We're driving tens of thousands of visits to these pages these people just purchased. It's incredibly high value. It is maybe I'm like bending the rules a little bit calling that a CX touchpoint, but they're very interconnected. If you're happy with the visibility that you have into your order, if you're less likely to make tickets, if you're back on the site, if you're having a great experience, I think that provides value. So we're going to look at better optimizing that touch point which I think is very much a retention and sort of thing. Have you guys thought at all about that?

[C]

Yeah, I, I'm definitely a big Fan. I think it should definitely be done and it's like low hanging fruit where like it's, it's a very good experience and I do think providing a good experience is, is a good part of retention. I haven't done a holdout on it or stuff like that, but I think it's worth doing it. I think like we talked about this with, with when we talked about Groon's retention like and their SMS file. Like I would want to test the SMS transactional stuff for like a holdout just because there's a higher cost of that.

[A]

Right.

[C]

But for email like you don't have to test it. I think everybody should be on some type of like the tracking providers. I really also your. Your tracking page is probably one of the highest traffic pages on your site.

[A]

Oh that's and sorry, that's the point that I'm making. For us it is, it is. I mean it's not the highest traffic but from a Where does Klaviyo drive clicks it is number one every single month.

[C]

Oh yeah. For, for, for us it's one of the highest traffic pages. It like feels like it's a missed.

[A]

Opportunity but that's what I'm talking about dude.

[D]

So what is when you say optimize that page con, are you saying like, like hey let's add some like if someone bought a wallet let's add some like CTAs to the bottom of that page saying hey, have you thought about rings or luggage? Like are you trying to think through like how do we get someone from a very like transactional. Where's my package from my previous order to start to think about shopping again. Is it like simple stuff like that? Like how do we get them back in that shopping flow? So it's not just like a, a dead end loop where it's like all right, like I know my package is coming in two days just X like I'm done. It's like no package is coming here. And now the bottom below that's like oh, I'm interested in rings actually. Click. And now they're shopping again.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Well we talked about this a couple weeks ago about how I forget who are we. Who we were discussing it with but we have found at Ridge that the earlier that we can we have someone becoming a customer.

[C]

It was a post pilot episode with Michael.

[A]

Yeah, there we go.

[D]

Thank you.

[A]

I was like I knew someone else was there. Someone makes a purchase, they enter our LTV flow. So we're trying to generate that second order. That's when someone's most likely to purchase and we found the earlier we can move that up the more effective it is. And, but, but basically for a long time and we're starting to make optimizations here and I'm really excited about it going into November and December here but they've almost been disconnected experiences that we've got these email and SMS flows over here trying to drive that second purchase and then we've got these klaviyo flows over here giving you updates on your order. Incredible engagement over here. But there's no cross pollination of like how are we, how are we highlighting this LTV offer in the transactional flow? That transactional flow is good and we have the compelling LTV offer. I think these things just compound on one another so I think we'll be able to squeeze some more juice out of that, that whole system.

[D]

Definitely. Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. Two monetization ideas I have Connor. This is actually one of your like predictions of like brands monetizing everywhere. But I, because I, I agree with you that like theoretically it is actually the best time to upsell but I also think you have the opportunity to, to do like a rock network offer like show type thing and just like charge a CPM for displaying other brands. And maybe it's you know, because maybe you find like the upsells are not that incremental for you but you can, or you could do both or monetize the other stuff. So I think that's one. And then I think where was I going with it? I feel like depending on when they're ordering like there are opportunities to upsell. Like if they're like here's one where like if somebody's going to the tracking page they might be like worried about their order. I would love to upsell like shipping protection right there just be like oh you're on a tracking page, you're worried about it. Two bucks and I guarantee you know, if something happens we'll get it to you. I don't know something like that. But I think there are probably some opportunities to get clever and better monetize that traffic or better to integrate that into your retention flows as you said, 100% or even.

[A]

I mean that's where a lot of tickets end up getting created, right? If someone needs to edit their address or they have some question about their order when it's going to arrive, you're initiating a lot of CX touch points. We know that this is a really high volume opportunity so. And I'd love your take on this Amit because I would Love for our agents to be aware that hey, this customer just purchased two days ago. They're asking if their order is going to arrive in time for their son's birthday. We know that they have access to this. We do 40% off $100 plus your second order. So we're going to now offer this person a great experience, we're going to give them visibility, visibility, we're going to answer their questions, etc. And we're going to turn this into a monetization opportunity by highlighting the offer we know we have, they have available to them. Do you see many brands doing that? Am I just like stating the obvious and trying to like unite these sorts of efforts?

[B]

I think the way you're thinking about it is 100% correct because a lot of these initiatives are disconnected from one another, but they're touching the same customer. Right?

[A]

Right.

[B]

So they're receiving these emails from transactional systems and they're also receiving these emails from like marketing side which is Klaviyo. But as an end customer I might be confused because I'm receiving like multiple emails. One is a cross sell, one is a tracking and there's an opportunity to combine both of them so that it looks more intentional. It looks like it's coming from one entity. Exactly. So 100% aligned with the way that you're thinking, the way that other brands are doing it. We have something called as a agent wiki. So just like you train the AI on how to respond to customers, we also have agent assist in the right hand side bar. So apart from seeing like what's the LTV of this customer, when did the last order, things like that populating on the right hand side. You can also probe them to make this offer based on the conversation details. So not many people use it by the way, but brands which have like more than 100 agents, they use this extensively. The agent assist because for them if you change the sop, you also have attrition and customer support team. There are new people joining, there are, there is external BPOs. So they use the agent assist on the right hand side to tell them how to answer certain type of questions. What are the questions? How do you troubleshoot it? What is the issue tree looks like. But they also will take input from the marketing team and they're like, hey, what offer do I make? And it's a lot for people who have started to like some brands do this quite a bit where they discourage automatic returns, especially for like high AOE orders. And they redirect them to customer Support where there is a conversation and then they ask a bunch of questions and then they offer something else like, hey, if this is your issue, how would I do this? How would I do that? Because you don't want to like lose a customer that paid you like 500 or 700 bucks. So you can use that agent assist to pitch those marketing offers or retention offers.

[A]

Totally. Yeah, it makes total sense. So that's one I'm excited about. You know another slightly related idea off this like tracking, tracking page optimization is we just had a great little workflow between our E Comm team and our CX team and our Ops team so that we could delay our orders a few hours going into November and December so that if someone, because this happens, we get thousands of tickets every year. Someone saying hey, I accidentally put in the wrong address or there's some sort of typo if they don't, if they Write in within 30 minutes and we quickly respond, we can quickly update it. But we miss a lot of those. So then you have all these missed shipments. So we just created this little delay. We set that up with fulfill. We set that up with order editing. There's a Revo component to that. Revo connects to order editing. So it's this very nice flow between I guess Ecom and Ops. It's resolving a CX issue beforehand. So anyway, more reason why I think these teams should be working closer together and I think it's related because there's just more opportunity. You, you have more touch points on the site, you're driving people back. It's more self service. You just have the ability they could be adding additional items to their order when they're updating addresses, things like that. You just get a lot more control there.

[D]

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[B]

I I do have like a follow up question for Cody and that's, that's around like you know you believing that CX is not a you know, big revenue driver and that might be true for many brands because you know even we don't have like marketing copy that promotes it actively because it's not true for like a lot of brands. But for you Cody specifically you're generating like couple of million a month using the shade matching team that existed like for many years. Would you not say that is a CX initiative? So they are just a corner just for reference if you go on like Joneshore Beauty they have not sure which shade to buy and they have like a shade matching quiz. They also promoted a lot on Instagram ads and they're like hey you know send us a selfie. So Rich panel is full of like customer selfies that Jones Road customers are sending and Then they have like these dedicated experts that look at their skin color or you know, skin type and then suggest what shades they should be buying. And they're driving like a lot. Those are all like, I think 70, 80% of them convert into orders. So would you not say that is that. Is CX driving it? Or.

[C]

I mean it is. I've never. That. I think that part definitely is. I always get skeptical of like general like CX revenue stuff, right? Where like, I don't like. And I don't know if like our agents can see that because they're like, oh, I drove. Like, I've definitely had calls with people in the past where they're like, hey, like I'd like to talk about my promotion. I see how much revenue I'm driving for the company, but it's like, well, you don't understand like incrementality. Like a lot of those customers would have ordered anyways. They're just saying like, where's my order? Like a quick question. And like, here's how much we spent on marketing to get that customer. Here's how much we spent on fulfillment. You know what I mean? So like I, I get hesitant with that. I think I've just never been proven the, like the actual incrementality of it. And it's just like, oh, most CX softwares are just putting the revenue in here and saying this is how much revenue we're driving you. Because they want to be able to be like, okay, this is, this is how much revenue our software and our program is driving you. I think shade matching is a little bit different and I think that's, you know, a worthwhile component. I mean we definitely have, we have all of our CX team like overseas now, but we have, you know, us based CX agents who are definitely, you know, paid more for it and think there's a higher value. So yeah, I think there's a revenue, you know, component of that definitely. And this probably could be easily tested.

[A]

So I, I would bet, I bet like revenue per shade match engagement is probably like extremely high. I understand that it's probably not all perfectly incremental. The fact that you guys do it. Would you guess that it is likely incremental and profitable, but just probably like at a, at a big discount to like fully attributed revenue?

[C]

Yeah, I think so. I think the thing that like we, you know, we haven't known. It's like, is it worth continuing to scale that up more or not? Like to obviously take like the, the extra fixed cost to be doing that and like that hasn't been, that hasn't been super clear.

[D]

Do you guys ever cohort? We did this a while back. We were like, we just wanted to see like cohorted people by. Has never had a CS interaction, has had a CS interaction and of course people that have had any interaction with CS had like I forget what the percent was but it was a pretty significant percent increase in lifetime value. Now that's a bit self fulfilling because people that are going to be ordering more will probably be reaching out to CS more.

[A]

True.

[D]

But that we thought that was interesting just to like understand like all right, when we do have a CS touch point that lifetime value compared to non CS touchpoint is like I don't know what it was. 30 higher, 35 higher. Which just I guess gave us the confidence to like keep trying to like give easy ways to get in touch with our CX team along the entire journey. Again kind of like a self fulfilling idea there. But I thought it was just interesting to look at that. Have you guys ever done any sort of cohorting analysis like that?

[A]

I haven't looked at it on a, on a CX basis in a while, but I totally agree it's a slippery slope. We did it on account creation where it's like yeah, if you, if you create an account you're way more valuable. But it's like yeah, if you create an account you're engaged, like you're clicking emails. Is it that you see the exact same thing with email? The people that open emails are worth more than people don't open emails. It's like what was email's actual role in that is like extremely questionable.

[D]

Yeah, they already had more value probably before they made the account for sure. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think the point that Cody is making is 100% valid where you know a lot of the people that are. Because there's a selection bias as Connor mentioned. So there is, you know, people who are going to purchase anyways, you know, they ended up speaking to support and support got like wrongly attributed for it because most of the softwares including Rich Panel, the way that the attribution works is that you see whether there was a conversation that started a few hours before a purchase happened. Right. So that's the way that you attribute like hey, there was a conversation that started before an order was made and there was also an agent reply that happened before the order was made. Right. So if these two things are true, you attribute it to support. I think one other input that we are adding now is if you take the same conversation, you put it into ChatGPT and you're like, hey, do you think that agent had a hand in like convincing the user to buy just a simple pro? And the output from ChatGPT is like yes or no. Right. That would help a lot because it will field out all of these other conversations where someone is like, hey, I'm not able to access my coupon code. And then they're like, hey, never mind, found it. So I ordered anyways. And then the support gets like wrongly attributed for it because support had like zero role in contributing to that sale. So that one little prompt can help you in building out all of this false positives by doing that enrichment. So that's one of the things that we've started to do. You can do this too. Inside Rich panel, there is AI enrichment where you say, end of the conversation, give me a yes or a no on whether the agent had a hand in convincing the customer to make the purchase. Right. So then you have like two levels of attribution. The first one is deterministic whether, hey, was there a sale that happened within hours of a conversation? Yes. Within a day of con. Yes. Second, the chat GBT input says, yes. OpenAI says that yes, agent had a hand in convincing this customer. That would give you like the very accurate results is what we could think of.

[A]

So I think that's fascinating because I think that's a big reason, like marketers can be dismissive of CX as a revenue channel is because the attribution is so unclear that like, if you just go off deterministic attribution. Also I'll comment. Hilarious. Just all conversations resolve back to attribution for us. But attribution so unclear because you're gonna have a ton of revenue. That was that. That it gets attributed to cx. Like, yeah, it just doesn't pass the average marketer sniff test. If you said, if we were calculating ROI on our CX program by influenced revenue over cost, I'd believe it. Like everything you just said makes so much more sense than just like blanket attribution. So I'm on board with this, this approach.

[D]

Well, Cody, have you. Have you CRO your way into the shade matching? Because I would tell you, right? Like split test, hey, this experience has the shade matching, this experience doesn't. And like, what's that lift? Because that would tell you, like, what. What kind of incremental lift that that provides. Right.

[C]

What we do is we do a ton of CRO for like our quizzes.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And We've really tried to, to route people down that as much as possible, but almost every test we've done and we're, we're actively doing a bunch of these right now. The more we, we push people to shade matching, the better it performs. Yeah, just like the simplest thing we do have an AI shade matching tool. It's like almost ready that we're going to test and I think that'll be, be an interesting test, but it's not the same as obviously like routing to people. I think that would be challenging with CRO because usually CRO you're, you're measuring some type of conversion on that page. And so obviously these people aren't usually buying right away. They're, you know, right. They're, they're emailing and then buying later. So I think zero would be a challenging thing. You'd almost have to like geo that or hold out it. And I don't know if it's, you know, makes sense, but I am curious to test the shade watching stuff. But I think our approach has been like, we haven't necessarily wanted to like push people to shade matching just due to the bandwidth and volume. Maybe, maybe it's a thing that we should, it just hasn't felt as scalable at our volume. So it's like let's help people find their shade every other possible use. And then like after a quiz, if you're like in a quiz flow or you take a quiz and you still haven't bought, then we're like, hey, do you know you can send us an email and stuff like that?

[D]

Are you getting first party dating data, Cody, on like ethnic background of your prospective customers? And then like. Cause I would imagine like certain people might have more or less need for like their subtle variance in the sh. In the tone or shade they need. Like do you, is that part of your upper funnel strategy is like hey, I identify as like Caucasian or black or Latina or like are you getting that data and then like pumping them into funnels based on that where you have found that maybe like for whatever reason Latina women need more engagement with shade matching than, than someone with a different ethnic background?

[C]

No, we haven't taken it that deep. I think the extent of personalization we've done on quizzes, like if you, if you take our quiz and you, and we, you tell us you're a certain age, all the, the rest of the models in that quiz will be of that age.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

And then I don't know, like we, we ask people their skin tone not Necessarily their ethnicity or background. We ask their skin tone. I think we try to kind of like, obviously the, the shade recommendations we give are going to be all based on that.

[D]

Right?

[C]

But we're not necessarily, you know, like it's not like every model you see is going to be that tone or something like that.

[D]

Right? Yeah.

[C]

Okay, but that's a, that's an interesting.

[D]

One and that's in your like popup. That's like the first touch point is like what's your, what's your skin tone?

[C]

Or is that later on in our, in our quizzes? It's like one of our first few. Yeah, it's like one of our first unit quizzes.

[D]

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[A]

All right, I've got a, I've got a second potentially revenue generating CX touchpoint. You've got all these agents answering all these social comments, some of them automated. One thing we're going to be testing over the next couple weeks is comments from a page from our founder. So we run a lot of founders ads. Daniel Kane highlighting hey I started Ridge. We made this great wallet. We are going to start answering some of the comments on those videos from his own page and I think the attribution will be extremely difficult on that. But like one of our goals as a brand is to just reinforce the like founder led messaging and family owned messaging and I think that's a really cool way to like leverage more of our teams and our existing resources to just add at the very least thoughtful touch points. And I would imagine there's going to be some sort of incremental benefit to it. Incremental benefit and profitable. It's questionable but like that's something else we're doing. What do you guys think?

[D]

I love it. I think it's a good idea.

[A]

You guys should do, do it with Danny.

[D]

I know we should. Well, we're trying to figure out how to like do this with partnership ads because like the, the software we use like you can't comment on partnership ads the same way that you can comment on an ad from like the hexcloud branded page. So we're starting to, we're trying to figure out like more of a, a manual workflow where it's like we're linking out to every single partnership ad that we make and that's like in parallel to just the from brand stuff that pulls right into Amplify. But we're trying to like give the actual creator the information they need to respond to these comments. But like it just never happens as you would imagine. So like we just have to be a little bit more on and like keeping track of these partnership ads so we can come in and comment from our brand page on it. But we like that's been an area we've kind of missed in the past. But I like the idea of coming in from your non brand page with someone that's related to the brand. And answering the questions. I think it gives it a lot more personal feel than like ridge responding, which is, you know, obviously a faceless 100%.

[B]

That's a limitation by Meta where the API limits you. If you do like whitelisted ads, you don't get like API inputs. That's why your software there is not able to do it.

[D]

Yeah, it's actually a huge bummer when I learned that. I was like, how can this, how can this be the case? Especially when you're like. So many brands are increasingly running more partnership ads that generally get a lot of new engagement and new questions because inherently they're reaching new audiences. It's like, it seems like a big hole that you can't hold software.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I mean, they spent, they spent a whole day at Meta Summit just talking about partnership ads. And it's like, when, when do you think they realize, like, hey, we should look, let brands moderate the comments.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's coming next year.

[A]

Yeah, so somebody, somebody missed the boat there. All right, I got one more here. We have a bunch of warranty claims. This is obvious, this is another kind of obvious one, but again where we're trying to like unite retention efforts and CX efforts. We have a lot of warranty claims. We offer a lifetime warranty. We'll ship you new screws, elastic new money clips, et cetera, et cetera. Right now it's extremely transactional and it's low cost for us and we're happy to do it. I think the customer experience does help with conversion rate at the beginning. Our lifetime warranty is a big kind of tentpole of the brand. But I think there's a massive opportunity, especially as we've expanded categories for a CX agent to say, hey, this person needs a new money clip. I see they have a carbon fiber wallet. I'm going to offer them 20 off our latest carbon fiber pens or something like that. And I just think all of a sudden, and the reason it came up recently was we were talking about ways that we could, could. We were like, should we start charging for these parts and do free shipping or charge for shipping? And there's just so many ways to slice it. But the biggest thing that would make, that would turn our warranty program into like, you know, a really lean but definitely a cost center into like a massively revenue generating program would just be thoughtful upsell. So that's, that's one of the other touch points that we're, we're thinking about quite a bit.

[B]

Yeah, I like that. Quite a Lot. Yeah, yeah. If you could have, like, the. I have, like, so many Ridge wallets myself. Bought pot slot for my team, and we also give it as swag. If we could have, like, an option where when I go to, like, say that the screw came off or something like that, and then you have, like, two options, like, hey, go replace the screw or, like, buy a new one or get a new one altogether for, like, 50% off or, like, 40% off, that would be pretty good. Because I get a new one, right? Like, I get a new replacement, right?

[A]

And you're a happy customer. You're like, look, I can just get the free screws. They're backing up the lifetime warranty. I'd much rather spend 40 or 50 bucks and get, like, a new design.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

And I think it depends, like, right. If. If, like, that's one of your value props. Like, like Patagonia, like, I. I am sure that influences their retention because you just know it becomes a brand thing. It becomes a value prop. And, like, if there's a talking point of like, hey, I love this. And like, I remember my cousin got this jacket. We were in Colorado a few years ago, and he had, like, a rip in it, and he went there. And so, like, anyone that tells him, hey, I like that jacket, and he, like, tells him that story, worry, you know?

[A]

Right.

[C]

So I think if that's like a brand value prop, like, totally, that becomes a marketing moment that can become like an actual, you know, revenue driver.

[D]

That's a great example, Cody. The. The Patagonia, because I did the same thing, and now I have this, like, Patagonia puffer that's this, like, light blue. And now I have like, two different spots that has this, like, purple patching. So it's just like a one of one now. And every time I wear it out, someone's like, what? Where'd you get that? And then I go into that exact story. I'm like, oh, I had holes in it. I brought it in. They replaced it. It. And you're totally right. Like, that's really interesting word of mouth. It just, like, gets that conversation going, and then you end up with these, like, kind of one of. One of one Patagonia jackets that look completely unique to anything else that's out there. That's a really interesting example, dude.

[A]

Yeah, And I like, those are. Those are the. The sorts of experiences that I think are really interesting. And I think, by and large, by the DDC community, like, not fully adopted yet. That's the sort of thing where McCoy is like when we're talking about retention two years from now, like it'll be be, it'll be things like that, like how are you? Because at what point is that? At some point that is, that's retention, that's E Com. And then there are massive amounts of CX tickets and conversations that are happening in order to like manage those. The other one that I love. Have any of you guys ever been an Equinox member?

[D]

I've been, I've not been a member.

[A]

Okay, so the onboarding experience and like retention experience of Equinox is fantastic. And it's like it's 200 bucks a month, expensive gym and what they do is it's all, all like it's largely plain text from people. It's clearly automated and at scale. Like they have a very nice CRM system but then as soon as you, and they're inviting you to classes and things like that and they're saying like hey, you can come in and get measured and weighed and we'll do your free one hour personal training since you just signed up, etc. Etc. They have these offers and values that they're offering and then as soon as you respond then it's a one to one conversation. And I just think like that is such a cool and unique experience of being a member of this, this club and that is like another, another great example of the marriage between retention and cx.

[C]

Yeah, so I was thinking about that, I was going to give two examples and I'm like, is this mark, is this retention or cx? So SMS sales, postscript, like and I think everything is going to like AI and shopper. But like that is very incremental revenue for us. There's like a pretty big cost behind that because it's people texting all day and that is very incremental. So like is that CX versus sales? I feel like that's right in the middle Metal. We just started, we're piloting a what's called a client telling program for our stores. So I'll give you an example. I bought something for my wife at Cartier probably four years ago. Every quarter I get a text from the Cartier store guy manager, hey Cody, how's, how's everything checking in? How's your, how's your wife doing? Like how are your kids doing? You know, and like I bought one thing four years ago. Right. But we're in their CRM. But like is that CX is at sales. So we're, we're piloting, we're doing a Holdout. Here's our holdout. We're going to do it at a few of our stores, not all of our stores. That'll be like our, our holdout. But we're essentially, it'll be a software, a CRM type software where our team and our, you know, retail store associates and managers can go in and say, hey Connor, it was great having you, you know, last week. Or Connor, I haven't seen you in a while. Like we just got this new product. Do you want to come in and try it out? You know, I feel like that's, that's the in between, but can definitely drive revenue. I'm hoping it will.

[A]

So you guys are using Shopify as your PLS system in the store?

[C]

Yeah, we're using a software called Endear for the clientelling. But yeah, we use Shopify for that.

[A]

And then, and then Endear plugs into Shopify. Like are they enriching customer profiles?

[C]

Basically it's almost like a klaviyo. It's almost like so like there's an integration you see if they buy. But it's like the software that's supporting like the SMS and like the actual sending of the messages and building the list.

[A]

Yeah, and I think that's a, I think that's what more and more of retention will look like over time.

[C]

Time.

[A]

Like what you're describing with the stores is more of a traditional approach. Like years ago they would like write it in their books and like a great sales guy would remember to follow up. Okay, that's all, that's all productized now. But SMS sales is an example of that being done at scale for all of your direct to consumer customers, which I think is super, super exciting.

[C]

How and how do you guys endomete? How do you see like this evolving over time with AI? Of course it's like do you see the first message being AI like hey, this is the best time to send it and then a person takes over. How do you guys see this?

[B]

This?

[C]

Because what you're describing, Connor, it's kind of like a high touch service.

[A]

Totally.

[C]

And it's one thing for Cartier local stores to do that because it's probably a $10,000 AOV, you know, but at a 50 AOV for a nine figure D2C brand, like that's not scalable. How do you see this evolving for different types of businesses with AI?

[B]

I believe it will be completely done by AI even though it's not being done by AI today. In fact it will not just be the text that will be automated. But even the trigger, even like when to send it based on what you purchase based on your previous conversation it will decide like the right time to follow up with Cody should be like two days from now versus for Connor it should be like two months from now. So it will determine based on what your purchase was or what your previous interaction was. You know that that's how it will determine and it will, it will not just customize the message but also like the trigger and the other points, I, I totally see that happening.

[A]

This is one of the reasons I'm excited about signed in shopping is I think like the more kind of first party data and context you can collect on a customer will just become more and more valuable over time. This is postscript talks about it with SMS sales. They want to be collecting first party data by having conversations over text. But if you're signing everybody in and really prioritizing these signed in experiences on your site, all of a sudden I can know, know if someone's interested in travel because they signed in and started looking at luggage despite the fact they bought a wedding van three months ago. So I, I, I, I see a convergence of all these tools over time and we're kind of in the early innings of it.

[B]

Yeah, like we, we already are seeing that happen. Like we have this integration with postscript, with kvo, with Attentive where if a customer has like an open ticket, we suppress marketing to them because totally end customer. What happens is like, you know, I'm complaining about something, you've not responded to me but you know, 30 minutes later you're like, hey, here's another promotion which makes no sense and it's coming from the same brand. The customer doesn't understand, oh, this is marketing of Cody and this is, you know, CX of Cody. They're just like, this is, this is Jones Road. So they get a little frustrated that you've not responded to my query, but you're promoting more stuff 100%.

[A]

That sounds like a fantastic, like little life improvement for both CX teams and customers. All right Amit, I've got one more question for you. Rich panel kind of founded on this idea of being AI native. What are you excited about over the next like 12 to 18 months for new AI developments either within CX or E commerce broadly.

[B]

So we're launching a returns portal next month. We are already in pilot with a few brands and the reason we decided to do returns is because it naturally fits in to our current offering, current CX experience offering and we see a lot of optimization where people are not thinking about the returns journey that much. So we are going to allow brands to do ab testing on the returns journey. And what I mean by the ab testing is you will be able to ab test the policy, the prompts, the offer for going to exchange and even the the merchandise for merchandise experience for the whole exchange flow. Like what do you, what do you show based on the product that you are returning. Right. And convert like a lot of those reverse logistics cost into, into exchanges and more revenue for the brand. So that's, that's the piece that I'm like very excited about.

[C]

Totally.

[A]

And that's. You said next couple months. Next month.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

All right. Exciting stuff. 2026 is going to be a big year. All right, anything else you guys want to cover? Cover or we could call that an ep, I think. Beautiful. Amit, thanks for coming on. Super, super fun.

[B]

Of course. Thank you for having me.

[A]

All right. Thank you for listening to another episode of Marketing Operators. Thank you to Amit, founder and CEO of Rich panel. I had a lot of fun talking all things CX retention and the future of them. Thank you to our sponsors Motion Rich panel, Prescient after sell and house. As always, make sure to like subscribe Share this episode with your friends, your family, your colleagues. Leave us a comment on YouTube. We've been reading those review on Spotify. I would very much appreciate and we'll see you again next week. Take care.