Let’s Connect!

       

0:00 – Hey guys Jon tucker here from e-commerce town hall and today i’ve got michael potters from Gorgias on the

0:06 – call so if you haven’t heard of Gorgias which you probably already have uh they are the leading help desk for shopify

0:13 – stores the highest rated help desk really if you’re in e-commerce and you’re running customer service you

0:19 – should be on Gorgias and you’ll really see why in this episode if you haven’t used it before um but the reason why i

0:24 – brought on michael specifically is we work with michael on a lot of client accounts at Gorgias we run customer

0:30 – service teams for a lot of e-commerce stores a lot of our clients are using Gorgias um we work with michael though

0:35 – and the reason why i wanted to bring him on is he has perspective not only as a power user of Gorgias and somebody

0:41 – working with a lot of brands that use Gorgias but also he was a merchant the ceo of an econ brand for six years prior

0:48 – to joining Gorgias all the way through to an acquisition so he knows what it’s like to basically be focused on building

0:54 – a brand and using customer service as part of that process so we dig into a lot of things on this episode but

1:00 – they’re all really under the umbrella of providing an awesome customer experience while also having customer service be a

1:06 – revenue driver there’s a lot of takeaways that you’re going to be able to apply from this episode so i think you’ll get a ton of value and you know i

1:13 – want to say that within the econ economic environment that we’re in right now with the recession it’s never been more important to nail retention and

1:20 – loyalty and really be able to grow with your existing customer base and so in

1:25 – the episode we go into a lot of tactical ways that you can do that uh if you have any questions feel free to reach out dig

1:32 – in share what you’re implementing and let us know how we can help we’re happy to scheme on more ideas but for now dig

1:37 – in and enjoy the episode welcome to e-commerce town hall where six seven and eight-figure e-commerce

1:43 – store leaders learn how to scale and streamline to get to the next level on

1:49 – each episode you’ll see strategies from the industry experts behind successful stores that you can take back and apply

1:55 – with your teams right away the show is brought to you by helpful.com help blow

2:01 – provides 24 7 live chat teams to over a hundred e-commerce stores and can help

2:06 – you drive more sales while providing an awesome customer experience through their live chat agents

2:12 – check them out at helpflow.com but for now let’s dive into today’s episode

2:21 – and hey guys welcome back to the show um today we are going to dig into customer service one of my favorite topics uh but

2:27 – you probably think of customer service as like handling customer questions and you know processing tickets or maybe at

2:33 – best like how to make the customer experience really good right when people interact with your brand those things are important but there’s also ways that

2:40 – you can drive a ton of revenue with customer service and from the efforts of your customer service team and that’s

2:45 – really what we’re going to dig into today is how to make the customer experience awesome while also having it

2:50 – be like a big big revenue driver in the business uh and to dig into this i’ve got michael potters fromGorgias on uh

2:57 -Gorgias is the leading help desk for e-com stores and literally the most used e-commerce store for help desk for

3:03 – shopify stores the most used highest rated so if you’re on shopify and you’re not usingGorgias you should definitely take a look at it they’re above zendesk

3:10 – and like every other player out there so you’ve probably heard ofGorgias i would imagine uh but if you’re in e-com

3:15 – and haven’t checked it out definitely check it out atGorgias.com but uh the reason why i brought michael on is we

3:20 – work closely with michael on a number of client accounts atGorgias and he has a really unique perspective because not

3:27 – only is he really really deep in terms of how to you know maximizeGorgias but he’s also got years of experience as a

3:33 – merchant before uh before joiningGorgias and so he’s got the experience on both sides of the table and uh i

3:40 – really wanted to bring him in to kind of share some of that perspective so michael welcome to the show man happy to have you thank you very much what an

3:47 – intro my goodness like i’ve never that was that was quite an intro thanks Jon it’s like uh it’s

3:52 – such a pleasure to be here uh i mean you know this is one of my favorite topics as well so there’s lots and lots to dig

3:58 – into here awesome awesome we’re going to get into the cs side in a second but give me a little more context on your journey as a

4:04 – merchant and kind of where your perspective comes from because i really want the audience to understand like yes you’re atGorgias but like you have

4:09 – this broad perspective of understanding like really what makes cs successful yeah for sure so

4:16 – of course so i i before i joinedGorgias i was on the merchant side so i was a merchant ceo founder operator uh

4:22 – for six years we were acquired in december of 2020 uh the hardest thing i’ve definitely ever

4:27 – done in my entire life not the sale was very challenging of course like you know diligence and going through lawyers and

4:34 – going through accountants it was crazy but of course the journey itself like leading up to that point was

4:39 – uh a lot of learnings uh and of course one of those learnings was like how

4:45 – how do you maximize every part of your business so that it is a revenue driver like how can

4:51 – you have to be so diligent in like evaluating every part of your growth stack and of course like during that

4:56 – journey we realized you know that customer support was indeed you know a revenue center for us for the longest

5:02 – time it was actually a cost center and it wasn’t until like the later stages of our business that we did indeed sort of

5:08 – discover the power ofGorgias actuallyGorgias did come along and actually buy out our zendesk contract

5:13 – uh we had also used freshdesk before uh usingGorgias so we sort of did the whole gauntlet you know we

5:20 – even before zendesk and freshdesk like and i’m sure there are some merchants in the audience that are doing this as well

5:26 – you know sharing a login to like an email inbox you know or sharing a login to zendesk

5:32 – you know like there was a lot of it was a headache we were tab shuffling and copying and pasting and trying to

5:38 – find information in shopify he was wasting a ton of resources our customers weren’t happy

5:43 – um so i’ve we definitely you know i’ve had a lot of a lot of experience in in

5:48 – that department and it was a reason i joinedGorgias frankly uh it was about six months after we were required i was

5:54 – looking for sort of the next challenge and there were very few

6:00 – uh like third-party solutions that really made a meaningful impact and i’m like it

6:07 – may seem like i fully drank the kool-aid which is actually true like i’m a fullGorgias like evangelist now um but

6:13 – you know going through that experience and and usingGorgias there were very few tools third-party applications that we

6:21 – were using as a business that had the same impact that um

6:26 – thatGorgias did clavio was the exception guevio was of course a big part of our business

6:33 – butGorgias was like an equal measure uh importance in the success of our

6:38 – business um and so much so in fact that like we thought to ourselves we can’t believe

6:45 – that it took us this long or anyone this long to come up with a solution uh that

6:50 – solved this problem for merchants um so i joinedGorgias six months later and i’ve been atGorgias for about a year and a half

6:56 – now and i’m a strategic partner manager so i manage all of our partners on the west coast and of course like we’re very

7:03 – grateful for them you know we have a very strong community of evangelists and um you know uh you know champions on the

7:10 – agency side and they’re a big part of our success uh they’re the ones that you know talk aboutGorgias and what it

7:17 – could do for merchants and uh i’m here to support them in any way i can

7:22 – awesome i want to dig into what what it is aboutGorgias versus

7:28 – other solutions that like really turn cs into something um

7:34 – that brands enjoy uh something that they can really use to drive more revenue like obviously we could go down the

7:40 – feature list on on the site but you have this perspective of like the merchant side zendesk fresh desk shared inbox like all

7:46 – these things um help me understand like as as a power user ofGorgias or some of the power users that you’ve seen like

7:53 – what are some of the specific features inGorgias that enable brands to really provide an awesome cs experience and

7:58 – really make it a revenue driver kind of break those down a little bit yeah for sure i think it first and foremost it actually starts i mean if

8:04 – you’re a shopify merchant the the strength of that shopify integration is really whereGorgias like finds a lot

8:10 – of it’s like super powers um where you can actually build like macros and rules

8:16 – around uh the data that you’re actually able to pull out of shopify so it it introduces

8:22 – a lot of efficiency into like the agent the support agent and the support team like workflow

8:27 – and without that integration of course as i mentioned there’s like a lot of copying and pasting and tab shuffling and just like lost inefficiency we

8:34 – actually well we didn’t publish a report it was actually a third party that published a report in january or february of 2022 it

8:40 – was one that was like really exciting for us uh and it rallied the whole team frankly uh internally and it was this study that

8:48 – was done that was determined that that in a really conclusive

8:54 – systematic data-driven way uh revealed

9:00 – just how much more efficientGorgias users were compared to zendesk they

9:06 – actually they they studied i believe there’s 400 000 tickets

9:11 – um betweenGorgias users and zendesk users and what they determined as i said in the data it’s very it’s it’s there

9:17 – it’s amazing is thatGorgias support agents are 30 more efficient than

9:23 – zendesk agents so what does that mean for a merchant well it means a couple of things

9:28 – first is that that 30 labor can be

9:33 – uh is now available that 30 of bandwidth is now available for the merchant to actually focus on

9:40 – those tickets that are actually related to revenue these are like the pre-sale questions these are the ones that like require a lot like attention these are

9:47 – the ones that like this is the money that’s frankly being left on the table because

9:52 – in any other ordinary world if they’re using zendesk for example you know that’s 30 of bandwidth that’s just locked up because it’s it’s inefficient

9:59 – like the shopify integration is is lacking uh the workflows are

10:05 – unmanageable the ui is challenging so you’re unlocking 30 more bandwidth for

10:10 – your customer support team to focus on those questions that are actually related to revenue or

10:16 – alternatively that’s 30 percent of bandwidth you just get get back in labor savings

10:22 – so between the two between those two you know like you’re either you’re unlocking revenue this is like net new

10:29 – revenue this is a new revenue channel for you or at least you know 30 percent of bandwidth it could be applied to

10:35 – driving more revenue customer support or you have 30 labor savings you know

10:40 – what i mean like these are you’re unlocking a lot of a lot of potential out of customer support simply by

10:46 – introducing more efficiency into the the customer support operation oh so we’re going to copy i want to get

10:51 – a copy of that report to share it with the show notes but yeah of course please yeah is there anything specific from

10:57 – from your experience as a merchant usingGorgias that you think is like most impactful

11:03 – with unlocking that and i know that shopify integration is deep maybe provide some color for certain users that i don’t don’t know exactly what

11:09 – that means um or or specifically it’s it’s so hard for me i imagine it’s hard for you to like i’m i’m very close

11:15 – to howGorgias works like most of our clients are usingGorgias on the cs side we get everyone to move toGorgias so like it’s it’s

11:22 – i i don’t remember what it was like not knowing how it all works and and um the benefits it provides i guess um but i

11:28 – guess i’m curious like what are the things that you see especially with people moving from other help desks what are like the big levers thatGorgias

11:34 – gets right that enables these brands to unlock that 30 efficiency

11:40 – um that’s a really good question so we measure customer

11:45 – support um improvement using sort of like two kpis

11:52 – and it’s first response time and resolution time okay so between

11:58 – on average the benchmark in e-commerce i’m actually just going to pull the data really quickly here the benchmark in

12:03 – e-commerce is it usually takes brands and again this is like the average 12 hours to

12:09 – uh for for that first contact so imagine like a

12:14 – a customer of yours or a customer a merchant you know they they

12:19 – they email in or they live chat in um or they phone in asking like where is my order okay

12:27 – the benchmarking e-commerce for the first contact or that first response let’s call it is 12 hours

12:33 – the benchmark in e-commerce for resolution time is 17 hours you’re looking at on average between the first

12:39 – contact and the resolution time around 29 hours so that’s the benchmark withGorgias

12:46 – our top performing merchants are actually able to reduce that first contact time from 12 hours to 10 minutes

12:52 – yes okay and their resolution time from 17 hours to 30 minutes okay so now you’re asking

12:59 – how how on earth is that possible it’s three things

13:04 – we empower merchants to deliver these exceptional customer experiences and these like lightning fast resolution and

13:10 – response times with sort of three mechanisms the first one is richer automations and this is again credit to

13:17 – the fact that we do have that integration with shopify so we can build automations that really um you know

13:25 – deflect a lot of tickets you know we ex we often see merchants on average deflecting up to around 20 to

13:32 – 30 of all support inquiries so these are the support inquiries that like you know don’t require a lot of human

13:39 – attention but withoutGorgias do you know like these are like the where is my order tickets these are like simple

13:45 – things like you know can you provide me with my shipping information and you know withoutGorgias and

13:51 – without these automations to deflect these tickets you literally have agents like typing out answers

13:57 – um over and over and over again which is crazy um and of course in addition to that our

14:03 – machine learning is also uh contributing to that and it’s worth mentioning actually that our machine learning has

14:09 – only ever learned on e-commerce sentiment and intent

14:15 – okay so it’s not it’s not it doesn’t have to understand it doesn’t have to learn about airline tickets doesn’t have

14:20 – to learn about you know banking related uh tickets or you know sas or any other

14:27 – sort of vertical we are 100 focused on e-commerce so that means our machine learning is highly adept at

14:34 – uh identifying sentiment and intent as it relates to e-commerce various you

14:39 – know picking up tickets that are you know triaging tagging ticket tagging and triaging tickets that are you know

14:45 – related to order status related to shipping defects you know these are all things that are machine learning is is

14:52 – highly adept at at uh detecting and then of course deflecting and triaging and making sure that that you

14:59 – know workflow is hyper efficient for the support team okay so that’s automation the second thing is macros

15:06 – macros for those who are unfamiliar are templated responses again credit to the shopify integration

15:13 – and of course credit to our other integrations as well it’s worth mentioning that we do have integrations uh into magento and bigcommerce as well

15:19 – but just just so we’re all on the same page with the with these macros these templated responses we’re actually

15:24 – pulling in data from our platform integrations

15:29 – to populate those macros so here’s an example if a customer

15:35 – emails in and they say where is my order withGorgias

15:41 – you could you would have a macro or a templated response that’s already pre-built it’s locked and loaded

15:47 – and when you’re when you choose this macro that’s appropriate to that question of course which is where is my

15:53 – order it’s going to automatically pull in those variables from shopify or magento

15:59 – or bigcommerce into that templated response so what does this mean for the merchant what does this mean for the support team it means that they don’t

16:06 – actually have to go into big commerce or magento or shopify to try to find this this information for the customer it’s

16:12 – automatically pulled into that templated response imagine you could do that for your personal emails imagine imagine you

16:19 – you had an email that came in you know um into your personal email and you already had these templated responses

16:24 – locked and loaded imagine what your inbox would look like you wouldn’t have an inbox it would just be it would be you’d be at zero zero email inbox all

16:31 – the time and the same applies here so those macros or those templated responses we’re automatic we’re pulling

16:36 – in those variables right out of the platform and making it super super easy for the support teams to just fire off

16:42 – those tickets and close them okay that’s the second thing the third thing is live chat very powerful live chat power by machine

16:49 – learning we can deflect up to 30 percent of tickets just using live chat uh customers can you know find their

16:56 – order information on their own they can get right to the faqs get the

17:01 – information that they need and more importantly when it comes to revenue our live chat campaigns are actually able to

17:09 – be displayed with the right information at the right time on certain pages of

17:14 – the website to improve those conversion rates which i’m sure we’ll get into a bit later so between those three things

17:20 – automations macros and live chat that’s how we’re able to deliver those exceptional customer experiences that’s

17:26 – how we’re able to drive down that first response time and resolution time got it god this is super super powerful

17:33 – and that’s kind of the the perspective i was looking for is like under the hood what is it that makes it you know drive

17:38 – such strong results um yeah from from more of a tactical perspective i’m curious like what are some of the things

17:44 – you see brands using um to really like maximize the customer experience so make

17:49 – it an awesome experience um and then also uh you know using uh using cs to

17:54 – drive revenue like what are some of the tactical ways that that you’re seeing brands do this um and i think for this

18:00 – part of the conversation we can assume like they’re already onGorgias here’s ways to get you know more results um you

18:06 – know out of uh out of the platform yeah so there’s a few ways so

18:13 – result so if we’re talking about revenue and a lift in revenue there’s a there’s a few ways and i’ll get into them one by one here so the first way is that if

18:19 – you’re able to resolve your customer concerns within six hours we actually have seen in the data that the estimated

18:25 – revenue impact is about one percentage point okay so that’s the first one improving your satisfaction score so

18:32 – we’re measuring the customer satisfaction score of course for all of our merchants and we’re seeing that those merchants those top performing

18:38 – merchants that can get their customer satisfaction score to a 4.5 between a 4.5 out of 5 and a 4.9 out of 5

18:46 – the estimated revenue impact is actually 4 okay

18:51 – in addition to that you know collecting your customer feedback to improve the customer experience improving the

18:56 – product of course we’re also going to attribute like that type of feedback collection into a revenue impact i mean

19:03 – you’re all you’re constantly iterating and improving on your product if you’re able to actually uh

19:09 – you know aggregate that data aggregate that feedback and make business decisions that actually make sense okay

19:16 – and then there’s a couple of more like tactical ways so those are sort of like the high level let’s improve your customer like support experience and

19:24 – this is like the revenue impact but in addition to that to your point there are a couple of like tactical

19:31 – ways that our top performing merchants are driving even more revenue so the first is that they actually

19:36 – incentivize their customer support team um to generate revenue so for example

19:43 – and this is the estimated revenue impact of this uh that we have internally is about one percent as well so

19:50 – if you can if you uh equip your customer support team for example and this is an example

19:55 – a lot of our top performing merchants are doing this if you can equip your support team with

20:02 – a macro for example with a coupon code that they could then use

20:07 – to uh in certain situations to offer to a customer if they’re on a

20:12 – certain page or if they’ve taken you know if they’re if they’ve purchased a certain product

20:18 – um you know equip it to empower the team to to

20:24 – like drive revenue you know um give them the tools that they need

20:29 – uh provide them with the you know the coupon code and then most importantly measure the performance of each of those

20:36 – agents who are driving revenue so you can see in theGorgias reporting dashboard like which of your agents

20:42 – what what’s their conversion rate you know like what is their individual conversion rate

20:48 – how much revenue have they actually driven through upselling and cross-selling and basically overall

20:54 – driving aov you know like when they’re on a when they’re communicating with a customer have they made an impact are

21:00 – they are they offering are they making product recommendations in certain situations

21:06 – um are they offering the coupon code uh when it’s appropriate um let’s measure

21:12 – all of this and make sure that we’re again equipping the team with the tools that they need to drive revenue and of

21:18 – course uh incentivizing them in the right way okay so that’s that’s the sort of first tactical way and we’re seeing a

21:23 – lot of our top performing merchants do that and the second thing is live chat campaigns

21:29 – okay so withGorgias uh live chat campaigns are are very popular with our

21:34 – top performing merchants basically it allows you to set up live chat

21:39 – sorry the live chat widget which you which you may or may not have seen i’m sure Jon you’ve seen this

21:45 – to actually be displayed on certain pages after a certain time interval so for example if they’re on this

21:51 – certain page and after a certain time interval you want that live chat widget to

21:57 – display to overcome objections or just to put a support team support agent in front of

22:03 – them to you know to ask them if if they need any help um this is how like you

22:08 – basically capture those customers in those in those high intent

22:13 – uh purchasing moments um and help to move them closer to the checkout to overcome those objections to answer any

22:20 – questions like pre-sale questions um very tactical very important of course

22:25 – and this is again how we’re capturing a lot of that revenue that would otherwise be lost when that customer just bounces

22:31 – from the site um that’s the other second second sort of tactical example yeah top before

22:37 – merchants are making very good use of uh that live the live chat

22:43 – yeah one of one of these campaigns yeah one of the things we’ve seen work really well too is is getting super

22:49 – granular with when uh those greetings are going out like basically being able to track okay like what’s the signs of

22:56 – somebody starting to slip away and check out and then basically you know engaging with them at that point um and so that’s

23:02 – definitely something i’ve seen work well um what about additional like third-party tools i know you guys integrate with a

23:07 – lot of tools it’s possible to bring a lot into uh intoGorgias um what what are some of the ways that

23:13 – you’re you’re seeing um brands leverage some of your third-party integrations to really make like a

23:19 – closed system where agents really have all the information they need um to help customers and really drive sales

23:25 – there’s a few really good examples for that so the first and i think probably our most popular integration and

23:31 – certainly a very powerful integration that’s worth mentioning is the clavio integration this is

23:36 – uh one that our our top performing merchants are are using so what that allows for merchants to do

23:43 – is actually ex basically it’s a it’s a two-way integration and we’re pushingGorgias data like tagging data into

23:50 – clavio to further enrich those like segments lists and automations that that are going out through clavio so this is

23:56 – super powerful i mean like clavio basically acts as like your data center or like your data in a lot of ways like

24:02:00 – a data warehouse you see and i know they’re moving towards sort of like a cdp type of setup for a lot of larger

24:08:00 – merchants as well so withGorgias like being able to actually push that data intoGorgias or

24:14:00 – sorry into clavio rather to like further it further enrich it and like to

24:19:00 – allow for some like really powerful segment lists and like automation building is like is has been

24:25:00 – has been really good for merchants the second thing is that as you probably know Jon um clavio’s

24:30:00 – pushing really hard into sms sms is like a very key marketing channel for a lot

24:36:00 – of merchants now you know 100 open rates you’re basically getting into people’s pockets

24:41:00 – um but what’s missing for a lot of merchants is that if there is a response

24:47:00 – to an outbound marketing campaign from klavio so if the customer actually responds which in which they do in a lot

24:53:00 – of cases the marketing campaign goes out it’s in their pocket it’s an sms

24:58:00 – and the the customer response the sms campaign okay so with with thatGorgias

25:04:00 – clavio integration what it will do is actually rather than uh sort of rather than

25:09:00 – rather than having the marketing or the support team have to go into clavio to

25:15:00 – answer those sms responses it’ll actually generate a ticket withinGorgias so now you

25:21:00 – basically created a fully two-way sms communication so your marketing communications go out

25:27:00 – through through clavio if there’s a response nothing is missed nothing falls through the

25:34:00 – falls through the cracks and you can actually build a relationship with the customer over like two-way sms

25:39:00 – um that’s super powerful so that’s that’s the that’s the beautiful in fact like we built the first integration we

25:46:00 – built the first version i should say of that clayview integrationGorgias did and it was so popular with those with

25:51:00 – clavio merchants that clavio came back to us and they’re like okay guys we’re going to resource this on our site as well let’s rebuild this integration um

25:59:00 – make it super super even more powerful than it was before and then relaunch it in like january or february of 2022 and

26:06:00 – it’s been wildly successful in fact both of our ceos got up on stage and you know sort of publicly announced the the new

26:11:00 – integration um so that’s the clayview integration the second one that uh is definitely worth mentioning is the yappo

26:17:00 – integration so yapov being a very popular um part you know reviews and loyalty

26:24:00 – um app for a lot of merchants a big part of their growth stack so withGorgias you’re pulling in all those reviews you

26:31:00 – can respond to reviews andGorgias you’re also seeing of course like their loyalty points that they have um you

26:38:00 – know what is the status of their of that particular uh customers

26:44:00 – uh loyalty program like which tier do they belong to how what’s what star rating have they left like we can build

26:50:00 – rules around this to actually identify which of these customers that are that are coming in to um

26:58:00 – ask a question which of them are vips you know should we treat them a little differently do they require a bit of

27:04:00 – special attention and if they’ve left a negative review like let’s set up rules around that as well like win back

27:09:00 – campaigns and you know triaging these tickets so that the support team knows that

27:14:00 – you know the this this these tickets that are coming in from uh these customers who have left an unfavorable

27:20:00 – review um but may be actually a vip you know they may have a lot of points

27:26:00 – accrued through yappo this is like this is a this this requires even more

27:31:00 – attention you know what i mean like a lot of points with a bad review these were building rules now to basically

27:39:00 – triage tickets according to the status of uh their loyalty with the brand um

27:45:00 – and answering those questions accordingly um and then the final one that’s worth mentioning and of course

27:50:00 – this is by no means an exhaustive list like we have our 50 plus at least 50 plus integrations

27:57:00 – with uh like our third party partners um but uh recharge is another big

28:03:00 – integration for us a very popular one so this allows for subscription management so a lot of merchants of course are

28:10:00 – offering subscription pro like products that are you know subscription products um and with the recharge integration you

28:16:00 – can basically as a member you know your support team can manage the subscription

28:22:00 – in one dashboard so there’s no need to go into recharge to manage the subscription for that customer you know

28:29:00 – you can you can take actions withinGorgias to manage that subscription uh

28:34:00 – without ever having to leave that environment you know it’s in you’re managing everything in one place

28:40:00 – you don’t have to tab shuffle or copy and paste or try to find that customer order information shopify and connect

28:46:00 – the dots like you know it’s all there in one place it makes it very easy for the support team to manage those are the

28:52:00 – three integrations that are worth top of my head that are like very powerful ones but again as i said

28:57:00 – it’s like by no means an exhaustive list there’s a ton of integrations that our merchants are using to power their

29:02:00 – support experience definitely what i’m really seeing is just the power of how you guys have

29:08:00 – deeply integrated um both on like the shopify side or econ platform side but then also into these other

29:14:00 – you know critical tools that that merchants are using so that deep integration and then and then also having it be like a single communication

29:20:00 – channel um for for the clients where we’re uh we’re helping them on cs like that’s always our approach is like

29:26:00 – integrate everything into cloud or into uhGorgias and then be able to basically respond lightning fast and you

29:32:00 – mentioned sms like one of the things we see work really really well is if you turn

29:37:00 – sms into more of like a real-time live chat experience so yeah exactly nobody gets that response or somebody replies

29:44:00 – and then they get a response right away and they’re going back and forth exactly right yeah 100

29:49:00 – 100 percent that’s what a lot of our top performing merchants are doing exactly that it’s a big channel in 2022 and we

29:54:00 – expect it to be the same in 2023 yeah absolutely absolutely i know we’re coming up on time but is there anything

30:00:00 – else you think um you know would be would be helpful for listeners when it comes to cs or using cs to drive revenue

30:05:00 – orGorgias in particular um anything else uh top of mind yeah i think it’s just it’s just so it’s

30:11:00 – so important you know we’re we’re sort of entering into what many people are expecting to be like a very you know

30:18:00 – challenging period period for you know e-commerce merchants across the board we’re entering into like a recessionary

30:24:00 – environment where a lot of consumers are starting to cut it cut back on their spending um and you know discretionary spending

30:30:00 – is is is no longer you know like a lot of a lot of merchants are going to start feeling it there if they not if they

30:37:00 – haven’t already so it’s never been more important to think about retention

30:43:00 – like it once you acquire a customer how can you max how can you

30:48:00 – really deliver an exceptional customer experience how can you keep them keep them spending their money with you

30:55:00 – this is our bread and butter like this is where you know customer support becomes the foundational layer of your

31:02:00 – entire growth stack you’re acquiring a customer of course but now acquiring a

31:07:00 – customer becomes very expensive so how do you retain them how do you retain them how do you

31:13:00 – maximize aov how do you maximize ltd this is where customer support as i said becomes like the critical layer and so

31:20:00 – for you know in the lead up to black friday cyber monday in the lead up to the holiday period it’s so important

31:26:00 – that merchants start thinking about uh retention um because that’s going to be the name of the game

31:32:00 – 100 100 agree i think um for people listening it’s really important that you get your

31:38:00 – your cs process and as part of that your infrastructure has to be really dialed in and so um you know whether you’re on

31:43:00 -Gorgias or another platform just make sure that you have really methodical ways um to run the process really

31:50:00 – methodical ways to track speed of each of those steps right michael talked about you know first response time being

31:55:00 – lightning fast resolution time also that’s something we focus on at helpful as well um like make sure that the

32:01:00 – experience is fast you’re providing you know quality service and that um you’re really empowering agents to to drive

32:07:00 – those additional sales through that speed but also through looking for opportunities and exactlyGorgiasGorgias is the

32:14:00 – platform to use if uh if you’re not already on it to be able to do all those things um and so i would definitely

32:19:00 – encourage you guys to check outGorgias um they do have programs to buy out existing contracts so even if you’re on

32:25:00 – a long contract with uh uh other providers um you know they have solutions for that as well michael any

32:31:00 – uh anything else you want to share as far as how people can you know useGorgias or test it out or any special

32:37:00 – offers or anything like that before we wrap sure yeah i mean um if you’re interested in checking us out we are

32:43:00 – we’re actually we’re actually buying out as i think Jonny just mentioned like we’re buying out zendesk contracts it’s

32:49:00 – it’s funny you know like we just eclipsed zendesk as and i think Jonny mentioned this at the top as the number one uh highest rated help

32:56:00 – desk uh in the shopify ecosystem and also the number one most installed so there’s sort of like a bit of blood in

33:02:00 – the water and we’re like very aggressively going after zendesk so um if you’re on a zendesk if you’re on

33:07:00 – zendesk and you’re sort of frustrated with the experience and you’re looking to explore other

33:12:00 – options uh we’ll we will as you as Jon said buy out that contract and

33:18:00 – a special offer that i’d like to offer as you know sort of being a guest at this podcast is uh the

33:24:00 – second and third month free so if you uh choose to take a a demo

33:30:00 – um and you know you mentioned that uh you were you know you come from help flow um we will and you’ve listened to

33:38:00 – this podcast uh please mention that you know you saw michael potter’s on the podcast

33:43:00 – with Jon and uh we will offer the second and third month free so um zendesk contract bio second and third

33:50:00 – month free um and then of course we are there for you 100 um to make sure that you’re set up for

33:56:00 – success it’s actually worth mentioning Jon that this is actually one of the pain points that often comes up

34:02:00 – with uh legacy help desk customers okay um these are like the 800-pound gorillas

34:08:00 – you know uh freshdesk and zendesk and so on often one of the challenges that

34:13:00 – merchants have is just like the availability of their support and success teams to like answer their questions and help them get set up yeah

34:20:00 – laughing the the cs the cs of the cs software right seriously yeah it’s a big it’s a big

34:26:00 – challenge as a merchant on my side that we had that challenge 100 um and regardless of size i mean like

34:32:00 – even some of some enterprise accounts that come over toGorgias like the big ones like the steve maddens and the minimals of the world um they move over

34:39:00 – toGorgias uh in a lot of ways uh because they just aren’t getting the support from zendesk they’re not getting

34:45:00 – the support from freshdesk and they’re really struggling um so we drink our own kool-aid you know

34:51:00 – like we we set the bar very high for ourselves we have global support 24 7

34:57:00 – and office hours for merchants dedicated uh customer support uh or our

35:03:00 – success dedicated uh customer support representatives for some of our larger

35:09:00 – accounts you know if you’re on an advanced or enterprise plan with us you get it you know someone who’s there for

35:14:00 – you all the time it’s your guy or girl to help you you know get take take full advantage of what

35:21:00 -Gorgias has to offer um so and in fact like ours our team our support team is

35:27:00 – like individually kpi’d on their ability to move you we measure every single

35:32:00 – merchant internally on a scale of one to five their ability to you know their first response time resolution time getting them from like a one which is

35:39:00 – pretty crummy to a five each of our customer success uh folks are individually kpi’ed on getting you

35:45:00 – there so we’re there we want to help you like we’re we’re individually incentivized to

35:51:00 – help you get there individually kpid so like your success is our success in like the most

35:59:00 – significant way yeah awesome awesome what i want you guys to hear from this as we wrap is

36:05:00 – not only hasGorgias nailed like the actual cs part the tech part all of those types of things but i know from

36:10:00 – experience of working with michael and the team like behind the scenes they’ve nailed that part too of like how to basically run a sas company well and

36:16:00 – like make people truly successful so um you guys heard it here if you if you uh want to dig inGorgias.com second and

36:22:00 – third month free if you mention the podcast uh and i would really encourage you guys to get this part dialed in i’m

36:28:00 – biased michael’s a little biased we’re both in customers uh customer service but it does work and we and frankly the

36:34:00 – reason why we’re biased is we’ve seen the revenue results behind us are ton of brands to get this right so uh get it

36:40:00 – right and if we can be a resource feel free to reach out but uh michael thank you so much for the time today man i appreciate it well it’s always a

36:46:00 – pleasure thanks Jon for having me really appreciate it cool take care

36:51:00 – thanks for tuning in to e-commerce town hall for more resources related to today’s episode visit

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