← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#790: Replay: Building stronger customer relationships using AI with Noah Zamansky, Stitch Fix
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The agile brand.
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Welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and martech platforms as we explore marketing, technology, AI, E commerce and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Happy holidays from me and the rest of the Agile Brand team. Just a note before we get started. This episode ran earlier on the show this past year, but I wanted to share it again because it has some really valuable insights in it. I hope you enjoy.
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We are here at Etail Palm Springs and seeing and hearing the latest and greatest in e commerce and retail. Question for you. Do you need to choose between AI and human recommendations? As a customer, why not have both? After all, don't each have their strengths? AI in the retail experience is all the rage these days, but today I'm talking with someone from a brand that has been incorporating AI, personalized experiences and shopping combined with expert human recommendations for over 14 years and continues to innovate today. Today we're going to talk about how AI based personalization plus human creativity and input makes an amazing customer experience at Stitch Fix. Tell me to discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Noah Szymanski, Vice President of Product and Client Experience at Stitch Fix. Noah, welcome to the show.
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C
Thank you Greg. Really happy to be here.
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Yeah, yeah. Love to do these like face to face. I do so many remote recordings and stuff. It's nice to be on the ground here.
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C
Yeah, it's really nice. It's a great day in Palm Springs. So yeah, really looking forward to chatting more.
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Absolutely. So before we dive in, we've got quite a few things to talk about. But before we do that, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Stitch Fix.
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C
Sure. So as you mentioned, I lead the client and styling experience team and we are a team of product managers, engineers, data scientists and product designers that we're really focused on delivering highly personalized experiences for our clients and giving our stylists the tools that they need to deliver amazing experiences. And so for those who are unfamiliar, Stitch Fix is the leading online styling service that helps clients discover styles that they love and makes them feel great and look their best. And so we've been doing this for 14 years. And the funny thing is, before I joined Stitch Fix, I was actually a client. That's actually the reason I am at Stitch Fix. I was leading the global fashion initiative at ebay, and Stitch Fix came up as a real leader within the personalization space. And so, as a bit of competitive research, I tried the service and I actually became hooked from, you know, the simplicity of the quiz to connecting with the stylist and then receiving my first fix and having that unboxing experience where, you know, I discovered brands like, you know, Vori and some of the brands that Stitch Fix, his own brands that, like algo 01, which I'm wearing today, and that basically fit just perfectly. So from that moment on, I was really hooked. And that's really what we're all about. Like, how can we provide best in class AI with that human touch of the stylus to create that magical experience?
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That's great. That's great.
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Yeah.
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I'm a client as well.
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You are?
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Yeah, yeah. So I've got a couple things on today, actually.
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C
Very cool.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Done it a few times now, so. Yeah, definitely. And we'll certainly talk about this a little bit more, but the experience certainly makes. It makes it a valuable thing as a customer to be able to have those recommendations, but also not feel like it's just kind of going into the AI void and stuff like that.
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C
Yeah, I'd love to hear some of your feedback. Also. One of the things that actually, just to go a little bit further that really worked for me is I can never get jeans and pants that fit. And Stitch Fix nailed it for me on the first time. And I've never had that going to a retailer. I always have to, you know, get my. My pants, you know, tailored. But, you know, something about the. The fit and the experience with Stitch just really worked for me. And so, yeah, I'm curious to see if it, you know, if it worked for you as well.
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Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. No, I've had a. I'm. I'm a repeat customer, so I think that, that, that, that bodes well. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, let's. Let's dive in here. And, you know, you touched. You touched a little bit on the, the business model in the introduction. But why don't you talk a little bit more, you know, for those, those a little less familiar with it, you know, what is the business model and kind of how did that get started?
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C
Yeah, the business model is really like, is combining best in class AI and in human stylists. And that's really the crux of it. And so from our entire experience, AI and human styling is embedded across. So from the algorithms that essentially leverage literally billions of data points, from over 100 million fixes, to the tools that we provide to our stylists to deliver amazing fixes, to the way we even plan inventory, personalization is embedded and really part of our, of our core experience. And so that's really the heart of our model.
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And so, you know, I talk a lot about AI on the show and there's a lot of, I would say, newer AI stuff that's, you know, obviously like things like ChatGPT have really brought generative AI and things into the spotlight. But as you mentioned, and I mentioned at the top of the show, you've been doing AI for 14 years at Stitch Fix. So how has AI played this role since the early days of Stitch Fix?
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C
Yeah, it's been evolving and so it's really been at the core of who we are. But over the last year and a half or so, we kicked off this transformation because what we realized was that client expectations had kind of shifted and we were really, we realized that we needed to move with them. And so as strong as our model was in terms of the recommendations and the stylus experience, we needed to bring it into the next stage. And so that really kicked off about 12 months of investment in new innovation that really helped us evolve past where we were 14 years ago. And I can share a little bit about the process there. But firstly was our onboarding experience, which we've completely redesigned. And if you remember, it was kind of like this, you know, almost like a form that you would fill out when you go to the dentist's office.
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Right, right.
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Very simple, but more of a one way communication. And we revamped that to really make it more of a two way conversation and building in little moments of micro feedback and personalized personalization to really, you know, share that we heard you. And then as part of that was that launch, was the launch of Style File, which is our personalized AI powered style profile that we provide to clients so that they can understand their style. And this is really impactful for our clients because it leveraged the power of our Algos and analyzes the likes and the dislikes and the responses that you were giving through that style quiz and mapped it to 10 unique style types, things like, you know, boho, edgy, contemporary and to formulate a picture of your, of your comprehensive style. And it's been really like a great inspirational experience for our clients. We're making it more shoppable so you can actually shop your style file and it's super highly personalized. So I don't know. Have you tried?
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Yeah, I did. So I'm a modern prep.
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Modern prep, according to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think like it was accurate?
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I think so, yeah, yeah. At least on good days, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I thought it, yeah, it's. I think it makes it a little more tangible and stuff to have that kind of Persona. I mean working in marketing, I think of it as like a Persona, but maybe the average customer doesn't deal with that stuff every day. So I think it's easy to have something to identify too and even to react to, I would imagine.
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Right?
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Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think people were really excited. Our clients were really excited to be able to react to it. I don't think that they really had that, you know, that style authority kind of really helping them to illuminate kind of what their style, the elements of their style were. And like, you know, mine is an adventure sport which is actually spot on. On the weekends I love to go outdoors. So I'm wearing more, you know, activewear and you know, at, at work, you know, working, I'm wearing more contemporary and in modern clothing. But you know, to be able to explore these individual facets is really fascinating for our clients and our stylists and clients are able to discuss the style file and share how that fits in with their own styling experience.
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A
So let's talk a little more about the client experience and I know we touched a little bit on this, but let's start at customer acquisition and just how is the joining process? You know, how are you thinking about that and how are you continuing to evolve that?
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Yeah, one of the challenges is really like how do you get to know your client in a short period of time without really putting them through a really super arduous process? How can you explain who we are in a short period of time? And so for us it's really about empowering the clients. And so when you're taking the onboarding quiz or the style quiz, we want to make that as interactive as possible. These moments of micro personalization, you may have remembered the style shuffle experience. So we ask our clients, do you like or dislike different styles? And that puts them in the driver's seat in terms of how quickly we can learn about their preferences and it actively shapes our understanding and the algo essentially. And so we want to make that as seamless as possible. We want to go deep with our clients because we need to understand you know, the details of their fit, their style preferences, but we don't want to overwhelm them and we want to have a two way conversation. And so that's why elements such as playback and style file are super important. One of the interesting things too is like, you know, where we continuously improve our algorithms, right. With a B testing, multiple a B tests every day to improve the relevancy conversion and the effectiveness of our algorithms, we find that when we're explaining and providing more context around the changes, it acts as like an amplifier. Right. And so we see much stronger signal where, you know, hey, for example, where we're sending you something that may be out of your comfort zone, maybe there's like a leather jacket or something that is a bit of variety or a new arrival. And we're explaining it more consistently with contextual nudges throughout the client experience. We're finding that that really has an amplifying effect, as I was mentioning, and it really is just driving trust with our clients at the end of the day and a better understanding of how the Algos are working for them.
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Yeah, yeah, well. And of course the algorithm is also complemented by humans. Right. So there's this. That's an interesting dynamic here. You know, there's so much focus being put on automating absolutely everything everywhere with every company. Right. So I think another interesting part is you've put a lot of investment and focus on an algorithm, but there are also real people doing things. So can you talk a little bit about how do you balance those two things? Giving credence to the algorithm and all the technology that you put to it. But also the human aspect seems a valuable part as well.
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Absolutely. And the stylus. Our humans are really at the center of who we are and we have got such an amazing talent pool there. And so really we really want to empower them with the science and give them the tools. So you mentioned the algo. We also have a tool called Note assist which leverages OpenAI's latest large language models to help stylists write a really personalized note to each and every fix. And think of it as like a first draft. The beauty of it is that it's really integrated within the broader context of what else is happening within that fix. The other items, the complimentary items, it's tuned to the right line of business, then the tone of voice, but it really allows the clients to get through that styling note faster so they can spend more time actually styling and providing creativity and human empathy to the styling process. And so that's really one of the key areas that we're driving. One of the other tools that we provide for them is our outfits model, which generates over a million outfits per day, complementary items to each of the items that you may own or you may be browsing or maybe in your fix. And that helps stylists as well provide more outfit options, category diversification. And so the thing that is really important for us is spotlighting them. One of the launches that we did was stylus profiles. So this really showcased your stylist, their interests, their expertise, and their photo. So now you can actually, you can see their photo, who they are. That had a really strong impact on one of our key qualitative metrics of we measure, want you back, which is after you're done with your fix, do you want to have the same stylist? So just having that human connection was really important in terms of how we're balancing the science and increasingly putting the stylists more in the forefront and in the spotlight to really showcase their expertise.
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Well, and also the other big trend over time that we're seeing is just consumers wanting more and more flexibility. So you mentioned you can change your stylus if you want to, or, I mean, there's a lot of room for flexibility within the interface. You already mentioned of being able to choose and select and like, are not like things or whatever. Are you seeing this as a continuing trend of just consumers wanting more and more flexibility? Or, you know, and if so, like, how are you, how are you thinking in terms of, is this just going to keep growing in terms of that need?
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I think it is. I think majority of our clients are looking for that. We do have some clients that like, just love the convenience of the service and are comfortable with the stylus, you know, taking, taking full control. But what's happening increasingly is, you know, with our clients is that they do, they do want that flexibility. And one of the ways that we're, we're driving towards that is, you know, traditionally we were sending out five item fixes, but we're expanding and giving clients the options to select up to 8 items. And that gives them a lot more flexibility in terms of going after like, hey, I want a seasonal refresh, or I have a new job and I need two or three outfits. Can you send me an eight item fix? And so that flexibility is something that we're increasingly building in. We have two modes of kind of interaction on Stitch Fix. We have our fix experience, but we also have our freestyle experience, which is a highly personalized kind of more self shopping mode, which has outfits and recommendations. And we're seeing that be really successful and continue to grow. So that's an indication that our clients do want that flexibility and we're continuing to evolve that.
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Do you see just AI being a continuing kind of force in what you're doing? I mean, it sounds like the balance is key, but again, all of these other retailers out there are. It's almost as if it's a new. I mean AI has been around for 40 years.
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Right.
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But it seems like it's a relatively new or novel thing to some degree. But is, is AI going to continue to be a big component of Stitch Fix moving into the future?
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I think you nailed it. It's been part of who we are. And so for us it's definitely not an add on strategy.
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Well, and sorry to that point, I think that's what I find interesting about this is that it doesn't feel tacked on. Maybe because you've been doing it for 14 years as a company, but yeah, absolutely.
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No, no, it's so true. And I think the exciting thing though for us is over the last six to 12 months, how fast everything has been developing. And we are seeing AI actually expand to every area of our business now. Not just the personalization and the styling experience, but how we plan our inventory. So predictive inventory planning. And so when you look at where AI is entering into every area of the business, it's just accelerated. And so we're really feeling really optimistic about how it's going to accelerate in a lot of areas. But one of the other areas we're really excited about too, which is emerging out of kind of more of the curiosity realm into more of an impactful use case within our space of styling is generative AI, especially the multimodal applications. And when we think about the possibilities for a client and a stylist to have a conversation about visualizing a style virtual try on and that enhancing that creativity and visualization. We think there's a lot of opportunity there. So watch the space.
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Yeah, yeah.
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But we think that that's a really exciting area for our client and stylist relationship.
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Well, and with the customer data and preferences and all that stuff that you have. I mean, I think for a lot of companies, I think that's, that's the challenge from the start is how do we get enough information from our customers to start personalizing and all that. But it would seem, you know, it's, it's part of your model to understand and to have that deeper understanding so it seems like to put you at an advantage there to be able to do that.
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Yeah, I think like it's definitely an enviable position, but we have such a deep relationship with our clients and every item that they keep, every item that they send back, we ask questions about that and that helps inform our understanding of them. And so we're in a really lucky position because we built this trusted relationship with our client base and they are happy to give that kind of information because they know that if I'm giving that information to my stylist and to Stitch Fix, the next fix is going to be even better. And that's what we try to make. It is continuous learning, continuous improvement. And so that we're constantly getting better and better for you.
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Well, and I think that's a good point too because talk with a lot of companies about first party data strategies and all this third party cookies going away. The antidote to that is what you're saying, which is get better and direct information. But the trade off there is that you literally said it. Customers don't want to give information if they feel like it's not going to be used. But I think the benefit here is you're asking for stuff, you're showing tangible direct value from them, providing that information, not just storing it somewhere and maybe you use it someday or whatever. So I think that's a, that's a powerful example of a good like first party data strategy. So.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it like, you know, when you're, when your jeans come back, for example, and they just fit better than they ever had and because you've given that feedback like, hey, that's kind of too long, right? You know, the next box, it comes and it's actually like spot on. Like that's real time, that's super tangible for clients and like, and so they, that's what it's about. It's about that, that trust. And then as you said, you said it perfectly.
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Thanks.
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Well, yeah, well, no. Great to see you here in Palm Springs. One last question I like to ask everybody on the show. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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C
Great question. I think for us in this turnaround at Stitch Fix, we're moving very fast, right. We feel a huge sense of urgency to improve our experience for clients. And as you know, the product development process takes time. You know, we spend a lot of time in discovery, listening to clients, you know, working with engineering and architecture and design and to really deliver the improvements for our clients. That's like you build a plan, right? You build a 100% plan. But in order to stay agile, you have to be flexible, you know, because you're going to learn things like next week, tomorrow that your clients are going to tell you that you have to pivot. And so, you know, any 100% plan I can guarantee you is going to be not 100% right. And so like making sure that you can maintain that flexibility is super critical. And that's what I find is making sure we're not too locked in. We're being agile, we're listening to customers continuously. And you know, the other thing is really like the space is moving so fast. How do we stay up to speed? And for me it's like, you know, having conversations like this coming to Etail. But also for my team it's how can we do hack week? And so we spent a lot of time, we've done hack week and hackathons to really stay sharp and explore and discover the latest technology. So that's how I think about it.
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Nice.
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Nice. Love it. Well, again, I'd like to thank Noah Szymanski, Vice President of Product and Client experience at Stitch Fix, for joining the show. You can learn more about Noah and Stitch Fix by following the links in the show notes and stay tuned for more of our interviews from etal Palm Springs 2025.
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Thanks again for listening to this episode. We're resuming brand new episodes after the new year starts, but thanks for tuning in and making this a great 2025. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagilebrand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkilstrom.com. that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by MissingLink, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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The Agile Brand.
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Before we continue, I wanted to share a key strategic resource that a majority of the Fortune 500 are already aware of. Finding the best technology, business and talent solutions is not easy. With business demands and competitive pressures mounting, you need to be able to design deploy and optimize your technology to provide leading customer experiences while driving business growth. Those of you that have been listening to this show for a while know that this podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, a global provider of technology, business and talent solutions for more than 80% of the Fortune 500. Tech Systems accelerates business transformation for their customers. Whether you're looking to maximize your technology ROI, drive business growth, or elevate customer experiences, TechSystems enables enterprises to capitalize on change. Learn more at techsystems.com that's T E K systems.com now let's get back to the show.