Tanner Larsson 0:07
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the optimized e commerce podcast. I’m Tanner Larsson, your host for this episode, and today, I’m joined by none other than Daniel Escobar, who is actually one of our BGS revenue optimization experts. He is actually one of the first guys to go through our revised and revamped internship program where we basically took someone who knew nothing about Ecommerce, or optimization. And basically, I don’t know threw him in the fire when it came to optimization. And now, he’s been through the internship program. He’s one of our senior RO now and is freaking amazing at what he does. So I’m excited to have him on today. And today, what we’re going to talk about is how to use your customer service and specifically your support tickets to leverage the performance of your store and help you make more revenue, better decisions, and really turn what a lot of people think of as a pain point customer service and turn it into something really, really powerful for your store. So Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel Escobar 1:09
Thank you for having me, Tanner.

Tanner Larsson 1:11
Yeah, so it seems to be cold. So Daniel is one of those guys who kind of been everywhere he went to school to loom decided to US was cool, but he wanted to go home. So now he’s back in Colombia, and rockin life out in our awesome cool apartment in Colombia. And then it sounds like he’s gonna come back to the states again sometime soon. So he’s all over the place. But that’s where it’s really cool accent comes from. So Daniel, I already told him a little bit about you, but why don’t you kind of give us some background on you who you are, how you found BGS and what you do with us?

Daniel Escobar 1:40
Sure. So basically, um, I am from Colombia, as Tanner just said, I went to college in Bogota, which was the capital of Colombia. And then somehow I ended up attending Tulane in New Orleans, in the US. And then it was my senior year, I was looking for internships. I was not sure of what, uh, you know, I didn’t know what I wanted. I was studying finance and business management. And I found the the Ad, you know, the promotion for being an intern at BGS. And I did didn’t know much about revenue optimization, or, or Shopify at all, actually. But I decided to apply, right. So I applied, I applied start, did an interview with me, to be honest, I don’t know what he saw in me, but, but it seems like it turned out well, for BGS. I have learned a lot, a lot A lot ever since I came on board almost two years ago. Mm hmm.

Tanner Larsson 2:47
And so what do you do primarily with BGS, obviously, your revenue optimization, you know, expert, but can you give them some background on what what that is and what you do on a day to day basis?

Daniel Escobar 2:56
Right. So I managed two stores. So what we tried to do all day is to increase the revenue of stores, like the name implies, but but that means doing research. And then based on that research we do on the stores, we conduct like research on on customers, you know, on data, we jump into GA, we do all kinds of things, in order to to find insights to increase the revenue of the stores, and the way we do that, I’m not gonna get too technical here is we do A, B tests, right? So that’s, that’s kind of the way we know we’re actually improving the store will launch A, B test with our hypotheses, you know, saying, Hey, I think this is gonna work better. And I have this data to back it up. Let’s see if it actually does better, right. And after some time, we always you know, just pick the winning the winning variation. And that’s basically how we improve the storage reward con. It’s a lot of research, and a lot of testing.

Tanner Larsson 4:00
Yep. So guys, what Daniel’s talking about when he says he works on two stores, so in our amplified Partnership Program, that’s where we actually partner with, you know, really good brands, the stores that really want to take it to that next level and really scale. So inside our implement employee Partnership Program, each RO can really work on one to two, possibly three. Usually, it’s just two stores though. And that’s a full time workload along with him. He’s got an entire pot of support people, including GA experts, bug checkers, front end developers, back end developers, all these different people that all support what he’s doing on the store. And that’s what that’s kind of the system that gets done. So he works with an entire team that designed it plugs in to the stores, he’s amplified partner stores to really dial them in. Now, back on topic. So we got your little intro we know who you are and how handsome you are. And now we’re going to jump into this topic which is customer service and support tickets and how to leverage them for cha ching. Right How to make some money with them. Yeah. So first off, why is customer service really valuable for the audience? Why do they need aside from like taking care of their customer? But what are they? What’s so valuable about it?

Daniel Escobar 5:12
Right? So there are two main reasons, there’s one reason there’s very obvious is that you help that person that is reaching out to you, right, you help them solve that specific issue. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You really get to learn, you get to know your audience, because that’s direct feedback. You know, so every problem your customers have, is there a screening you, you know, they’re asking for clarity, they’re saying, I have this problem. And you should be learning about that, you know, you should be understanding what they don’t understand, you know, learning their problems learning their pain points. So it’s a nice tool for understanding your audience.

Tanner Larsson 5:56
Okay, so definitely, obviously, the simple one right there. But you’re basically saying that we can leverage the the angry customer information that comes in, or even then the non angry stuff and leverage that to see how can we improve what we’re doing versus just dealing with the problem? right?

Daniel Escobar 6:13
Exactly you can build upon it, right is not only be reactive, but you’ve got to be proactive with that information in order to generate more revenue on your store.

Tanner Larsson 6:22
And that’s pretty much something that we don’t see many stores doing, is it?

Daniel Escobar 6:26
No, I they just, you know, they’d some of them take pride because they have an awesome customer service. But you go and see what that awesome Customer service is. And they have the same issues come up again, and again and again. So hey, yeah, you might be awesome at answering it. But, you know, are you really fixing the problem? If that issue comes up again and again. So that’s something we see a lot.

Tanner Larsson 6:51
Makes sense. So with that, obviously, using customer service, leveraging it, what are some, you know, tips that you can give us the give the audience to tell them how they can leverage their customer service to and provide great customer service, but at the same time, increase revenue?

Daniel Escobar 7:06
Yeah, so so the first thing I would like to say is, provide many channels, you know, give them a way to reach you. So not only have an email on your website, also have a phone number, and possibly a live chat. Why? Because different people like different ways, you know, to reaching out to you. So for example, if your customer, you know, if your customers or potential customers are at war, maybe they can now grab that phone and make a phone call to ask a question. Maybe they’ll prefer, you know, a live chat, because you know, they cannot call Ah, so having having many options, you know, for people to reach out to you is ideal. So phone number, so put your phone number in there, so they can call you put a live chat in there so they can chat with you. And then also have have your email somewhere on your website. So they can you know, send you an email, if they have a question or concern.

Tanner Larsson 8:03
Yep. Now, one point I want to make on that before he continues on with the tips. But so all three of those phone, support ticket email, and then basically live chat or whatever. Those are all conversion boosters, they actually will increase your conversion when used correctly on your store. The number one one that we get lash back from stores on and not usually are amplified stores. But more stores that are in our members programs like ecom insider ecom Academy, is that I don’t want people to call me I this is an online business. I don’t want to deal with the customer. Well, the customers are your lifeblood. Number one, they’re the ones that pay your bills, pay for your car, your food, everything else. So you should treat them really good. Give them a phone number. But when you’re first starting out or whatever, you don’t actually have to give them a live person phone number, you can always have it go to an answering service, which are very cheap or straight to a even straight to a voicemail, and then you answer the voice voicemail and get back to him. It’s not as ideal as having a human answer the phone, but it’s better than nothing. And it’s a nice way to kind of segue into having a phone on your phone number on your on your store. Because a lot of store owners are starting out. They may be at work all day and they can’t answer the phone when the customer calls. So give them an option to leave a voicemail, and then you can get back to them. But at least having that option. It’s a big deal. And as an example, a couple year actually, more than a couple years ago now is 2016 I believe it was when we first did this. We’re doing a second amendment funnels for gun T-shirts and stuff like that. When we added a phone number on the funnel just to the top of the funnel, sales increased by 30%. Now that increase did come over the phone though. So people were calling us to place their order because that demographic is more conservative. They don’t trust the internet as much. And so there was a large chunk of our people that were not purchasing they were going to the checkout page and then didn’t want to give us a credit card. So what did we do? took their phone order went to the same checkout page that they would go to typed in their orders. As they get, click submit for them, they felt more comfortable doing that. But we had a 30% uptick in sales by doing that. So phones are very, very important to a business now. Sorry to derail you, Daniel, but continue on with your tips.

Daniel Escobar 10:13
No, no worries, no worries. So that’s just basically have many ways for them to reach you on and there’s something you should ask your, your, well, first of all, um, why why do you want to do this? Because it’s directed by, like, we just discussed, you know, we have a lot of people that come to us, and they asked, hey, how do I get feedback on my website? Where do I recruit people for user testing? You know, how do I know? You know, where do I get people that are likely to buy my product to give me feedback? on you know, many times I told them, hey, that’s exactly what you should be doing with customer service. You know, that’s the definition of your potential buyer. It’s people who you didn’t pay to know they’re browsing your website, and they have a question, and they want to call you, you know, that’s the most valuable kind of information you can have, you know, that’s better than paying someone 20 or 30 bucks to go through your website and give you your their opinion. Now, these are your real customers, asking real questions. Right.

Tanner Larsson 11:12
Yup. Or diagnosing real problems or issues that are going to affect other customers in the future, right.

Daniel Escobar 11:19
Yeah, exactly.

Tanner Larsson 11:21
Okay, so why should our, why should our, like the store owner, basically be talking? Or the person doing the optimization? Why should they be talking to the customer service team consistently?

Daniel Escobar 11:35
It’s because this it’s directed, again, you don’t want to solve that problem for that specific person. You want to solve that problem for everyone. Because you should take this into consideration. Okay, that person had the problem. And took, you know, they bothered to pick up the phone on call. But how many people have that same problem, but but they say, Okay, now I’m going to the competition, the competition is doing much better. I don’t have time to, you know, just make that call and ask that question. You know, or complain about this, hey, I have this complaint. No, they just they will they have many options, right? Nowadays, you’re just google search away from many other similar problems. So so that’s that’s kind of why.

Tanner Larsson 12:19
Okay, so Okay, we were getting all this customer service data. And obviously, most people have a ticketing system, whether they’re using gorgeous or whatever else, or whatever platform they’re on. What do they do with it? How do they organize it in a way that they can actually use it? What make it useful?

Daniel Escobar 12:35
So first of all, many people have a record, but make sure you have a record is not only about, you know, answering that call on solving that problem, have a record of what people are asking what their problems are, and have it all organized somewhere, you know, you don’t have to get fancy, it can be a spreadsheet, you know, you just put in there they issue they’re having or the question they’re having. And once you have a list of, of those issues, you know, you start classifying them, you know, so for example, in in, in one of the stores I managed, a lot of people were asking about, Hey, is this compatible with this machine? You know, but they would do it over the phone, right? And then somebody on the chat would ask, Hey, can I put it on the front on the front loader? Who was some this detergent for, for clothes, like for laundry, so they were not a camper on the front loader? Right? Um, there was no way to put all those pieces of information together, unless there was a clear record, you know, so that the way we did it is we would, we didn’t get fancy would just use a spreadsheet, you know, we put in there they issue on a column. And then we kind of created some categories, right? And well, those categories where you can call it buckets, however you want to call it I was a with which machines is like, which machines can I use this product with? So that’s, that’s the way to do it. Just first, record all the interactions, you know, and just write them down. And second build categories right now this falls under how to use it. These folds under what like what materials, is it from whatever right I’m that’s, that’s that’s the way to do it. And when a cool piece

Tanner Larsson 14:23
of that, those of you guys listening going, man, I have to do that manually. Well, yeah, I mean, so a lot. A lot of optimization has some manual aspects to it. But if you’re using a customer service, helpdesk system, or live chat, you can typically download your your chats, you can download all of your tickets into a CSV file, which obviously is a spreadsheet, open that up and then you can start organizing it there and then you really only have to pipe in the other ones that come from the phone, but it’s a good habit to get into with whoever answers your phone to make sure that they are they’re documenting either on paper or in a spreadsheet just as the call happens. It only takes a few extra seconds to do, but allows you to build that library. And then like he’s saying, you categorize it based on the category, you’re going to be different for every store, because all stores are contextual. They have their own stuff. So you know, maybe a how to use maybe, will it work with maybe a sizing category or whatever. And then you just start dragging and dropping until you take everything out of the bulk list. And it’s all categorized. And then what do you do with it once it’s categorized?

Daniel Escobar 15:27
So once it’s categorized,so now you have the specific issues you want from specific issues to broad issues, you know, so now you have the questions and the concerns people have. Now the key here is you get a find a way to solve that on the website itself, right? You put that information, how? Well that’s for you to figure it out, right. It can be copy, it can be an image, it can be a video, a comparison chart, and animation that right, you just got to make sure that you’re not just piling data there. But after you’re piled up data, you get these categories, you make something to solve them, right? You do something on your website. So you’re helping all those people. And also, you’re helping those people who didn’t make the call, but also had that question to answer it. Right. And that will help them convert.

Tanner Larsson 16:22
Now you got a really good example for this one, right?

Daniel Escobar 16:25
Yeah, that’s going. Uh, so I it’s, it’s, they sell body armor. I cannot disclose the name because it’s an amplified partner. But we were, we were getting a lot of questions about the sizing. You know, if you ever bought, you know, a body armor, you will know that there is more than S, M and L, there’s like 15 or 20, you know, sizes on people, we’re not sure which one to pick. So I would go talk to the store owner, and they would say, hey, but there’s a fit chart there. Right? How cannot they see it? And right, but people are asking about so if people are asking about it and and have concerns about it, then that means that there is a problem, right? So after we did these, we found out that probably 30 or 40% of the of the issues that came up with customer service was, Hey, I’m not sure which one to pick, right? Which size to pick. And second, because this is so complex. What happens if I screw up? You know, and I ordered the wrong size? Um. Can I you know, return it? And all that information was somewhere on the website, right? But the fact that they were asking that meant it was not clear enough. Correct. So what we did was basically we built our fifth finder, right? So you, you we took all the troubles out of it, right? So people just have to select, you know, how tall you are? How much weight, you know, and it will tell you like, which size should you buy? But on top of that, because another question was, I’m not sure, can I return it if it doesn’t fit. So right in the fit finder, when they got pay, you should pick this size to know maybe M or XS whatever. Below it would say, hey, and you have, you know, 30 days to return it for free. If it doesn’t fit, you will pay it will even pay you for you to return it right. So you don’t have to pay. And it’s like for anything, right? Mm hmm. So that’s a good example of how to organize all the data from different, you know, customer service interactions into something actionable to do on your website.

Tanner Larsson 18:36
Now guys on that. So he mentioned he dropped a bunch of really good stuff there when he was talking, but so you’re taking the data from the customer service, hey, I can’t find how do I get the right size. And if I get the wrong size, you can take care of it. Those are valid concerns. But as Daniel said, that site owner and Daniel as well, because they had already put it on the site, there was already a sizing guard guide on there, which was actually considered a fit Finder. So it was like a little wizard that would help them do it. It was it was already there. Right. The functionality was the information about the refunds and returns and all that was there. And the store owner is like why can’t they see it? Well, you’re not the customer. Okay. That’s the biggest thing that we run into with store owners is they get this tunnel vision of like, Well, I know the information is there. So it’s the customers fault if they can’t find it. Well, again, remember the customer is the one that pays your bills. So we don’t care about you, we care about the customer. So if even if you already have it there and you think it’s the most obvious and in their face thing, it’s clearly not it’s a recurring issue that you have and you should solve it even if it means having your sizing guide in multiple places. I know one another one of our amplified stores. We have the sizing guide in like three different spots on this one long page. It’s the exact same thing just duplicated three times because we found out every time we added it to a new location in based on our scroll depth and watching session recordings, conversions. As increase and questions started dropping, okay, yes, it’s the same thing. Yes, it’s like doesn’t make sense when you think about it. But from an optimization standpoint of what the customer needs, it makes perfect sense. And this is what Daniel does with this data.

Daniel Escobar 20:14
Yeah. And actually, when we added that fit finder, and that guarantee inside the fit finder, we got something like 15% conversion rate boost, only because of that, it was amazing. It was crazy. on it, even, you know, decrease the amount of returns we have, because we help them pick the right size right away. So it was it was it was pretty good. One last thing I would like to add up to a point that we talked about before, is when you get all that data that you’ll be tempted to run it through a computer system, or an algorithm that does it automatically for you that puts it into categories. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. You want to read the comments, you know, you want to see what people are saying you want to feel it, because that way, you’ll get a much better feeling for what the questions are, what the concerns are. So don’t say that.

Tanner Larsson 21:07
That’s a huge, huge piece, because it’s how do I get this done quicker, is whatever he wants to do. But there’s a lot to be said for actually having to immerse yourself in it. And you’re going to discover a whole lot more like Daniel saying, with that, guys, this is not the only like, just the only way you can leverage your customer service. It’s not only a matter of how to fix problems, it’s also how to spot opportunities. Right? So an example of that would be if you’re seeing, like people asking questions about a different product, like I bought product A What about product B? Or do you guys also offer this? So like, I’m making this up. But let’s say you sell sunglasses, and people are emailing you asking? What’s the best way to clean my glasses? Or do you have a cleaning kit to go with these glasses? Things like that. And you’re just like, I don’t sell that no, go somewhere else. That’s the wrong response. That should be like, Oh, look, our customers who are spending money with us are actually telling us what else they would like to buy from us. So you can use it, use it as research to help you expand your product line, you can use it also as a way when if you have too broad of a product line, you can use it as a way to say Okay, look, these products have the highest customer service, issue rating or take up the most of our CS. Well take that number look and see how much customer service it take compared to your other products, and then go look at your profitability and say, well, and sales, well, actually this product, it sells only 20% or less of what we sell, but it makes up 80% of our customer service. So maybe we should drop that product, because it doesn’t make us very much money and focus on the other ones that do that also have less customer service issues. So there’s a lot of different ways you can leverage this data. If you’re in it. If you’re reading it personally, like Daniel said, you’re going to actually learn a whole bunch. And it’s not it’s it’s honestly, wouldn’t you say Daniel, it’s kind of one of those things that you never know what you’re gonna find. And there’s always more to find than what you have found.

Daniel Escobar 23:08
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you start going through those comments, its gold, its gold, you’ll find things you thought were not a problem. You find things that are already on the website, but it’s not clear for them. You find business opportunities, product opportunities, you know, you can even find, like, a so somebody even once wrote on a comment, like, Hey, I wish you have more, you know, third party reviews. So that that was a sign for the store owner to go, you know, reach out to youtubers or maybe famous people in the industry and do some collabs or maybe send their products for them to review. Right. So so there’s a lot to learn from there.

Tanner Larsson 23:52
Absolutely. And guys, this is a this is a real short episode tidbit. We’re gonna have Daniel on for other episodes on other topics, because he’s really, really good at what he does. But this one thing if you just took this, you know, 25 minute episode, listen to it a couple times, and then wit and apply this, this would make your store more money immediately. And it would be a massive, massive benefit for any of your big holiday like Q4. As we’re recording this, we’re getting geared up for Q4. So if you could do this before Q4, imagine if you could slash your customer service by 30%. Simply by taking advantage of it while at the same time getting like Daniel said a 15% lift in sales. So this is what can happen when you actually take the time to do this stuff. So Daniel again, thank you so much for doing this with us. It was awesome. I love chatting with you. And guys, we will have him back on another episode I promise and what not. The thing I need you to do right now is if you’re on iTunes, please subscribe. If you’re on YouTube, subscribe if you’re on the opposite swap and go subscribe because this is a video podcast. Sometimes we share stuff on the screen that you’re gonna want to look at. Sometimes you just want to see a pretty face so you want to log on and watch it there. Other times you’re in the car, you want to be on iTunes, so make sure you’re listening scribed in both locations, we’re also on Stitcher and all the other podcast channels to get the links that you need, including the show notes. Just go to build gross scale.com forward slash podcast. And then again, the final thing I would ask is whatever platform you’re listening on, leave us a review. Leave us a comment. Tell us what you think. It keeps us enthused keeps us excited and then we cannot put out better and more episodes. All right, with that, guys, we’ll see you on the next episode.