1. Always Listen: Jim believes that by listening to customers, an E-Commerce company will have invaluable information needed to be successful.
2. Focus on High-Touch CX Strategies: Jim maintains that by deploying high touch strategies in CX, an organization can provide its customers with great service and products.
3. Customer Service is a Skill Set: Jim believes that customer service is a skill set. Anyone working in CX should have demonstrated skills necessary to provide support, address problems, and find solutions.
4. Provide Value: To be successful in E-Commerce, Jim stresses that a company must provide value to its target market that people can’t get anywhere else.
5. Leverage AI: Jim views AI as a useful tool to help shape and establish a consistent brand voice across relationships and channels.
With a background in sales, Jim Umlauf saw first hand how valuable customer service is to the success of a company. Jim made sure his customers (and their pets!) were the focus when he founded his own company. Read how Jim and 4Knines are growing a successful E-Commerce brand and innovating pet products by listening to their customers.
Meet Jim Umlauf, Founder of 4Knines!
Founded in 2003 by Jim and Maggie Umlauf, 4Knines is passionately committed to delivering top-quality seat covers, cargo lines, and other dog products designed to protect car interiors so owners and pets can better enjoy life’s adventures together.
They say, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and in 2013, Jim and his wife found themselves in need of a better way to protect their car’s interior from 2 very large Dobermans. With nothing offering a solution on the market, the pet-owners designed a seat cover (he was working in sales, and she had a hospital job at the time). Jim looks back on 4Knines’ beginning and says, “We launched this product and it just started taking off. So, for the first couple of years we’re doing a lot of chasing – chasing the performance of the product making sure that we were constantly upgrading to make it better based on customer reviews and feedback.” Learning as the business grew, they found that success came by listening to their customers. 4Knines now has over 20 product patents, and all originated out of customer requests. “That allowed us to continue to drive the growth of the company with new products, because customers kept asking us for more,” Jim notes.
Jim takes pride in the fact that 4Knines is a “high touch organization.” While many E-Commerce companies rely on chatbots and automation for communication, people can call 4Knines to speak with a live person. “We believe in producing great products and providing better customer service,” he adds.
The team at 4Knines is lean with core members working in-house at the headquarters in Oklahoma City, OK. The company is fully remote with additional members based on the East Coast and West Coast providing support. “From a customer service standpoint, we are covering our time zones,” Jim notes.
Working in sales and retail, Jim observed firsthand how “providing the best customer service you could was a differentiator.” Excellent customer service is a core value at the company. “Unfortunately, we’re seeing customer service degrade over time. It’s become a lost art,” he laments. He uses self-checkout, which is managed by employees with little CS experience, to further this point. “If something goes wrong, they may have a skill set to fix the transaction, but they don’t have a skill set to fix the customer interaction.” For these reasons, 4Knines only hires people with demonstrated CS skills who are equipped to address problems, provide help, and find solutions.
Jim describes his products as simple – a seat cover and cargo liner that protects the inside of your car from pets. Customers were quick to point out that they couldn’t use the middle seat once the cover was installed. That was their only note, but Jim realized that the cover was also getting in the way of the arm rest and folding the back seats. Through research and development, they came up with a design that allows all the features of the vehicle to deploy while keeping the cover in place. “It makes your life easier,” he says of 4Knines’ current models. “And that’s born out of customers asking us for the ability to use the middle seat.”
4Knines’ priority is providing reliable products to meet customers’ needs. Their biggest product released last year resulted from listening to customer feedback – a floor hammock for trucks that folds between the front and back seats to create a stable platform when traveling. “People kept coming to us for the solution because they know how well our products are built. Bringing that product to board made a significant difference for the company.” Nothing goes to market that hasn't been tested and used with Jim’s own dogs. “We’re built so you don’t have to worry about using our product,” he adds. “Our goal is happy customers.”.
4Knines has a customer return rate of 25% -30%, which is very good given they make high-quality products with a lifetime guarantee. Continuing to make new products such as door guards that address pet owners’ needs keeps customers coming back. While not the first company to offer door guards, 4Knines developed a version that, unlike others, doesn’t flap around when the window is down. “We already make a really good product, but we’re constantly finding new ways to tinker and make it better,” Jim remarks. “Our belief set is that we’re never going to be done. We’re always going to be listening, always improving. And that’s our goal.”
In addition to Q4, the company’s peak seasons occur in January when people are getting new vehicles, and July when summer outdoor activities and road trips mostly occur. Despite 4Knines’ tight team, Jim says they successfully manage busy periods because of strong SOPs. West to East coast customer service reps accommodate time zones and website educational videos and resources are available. They have avoided order and distribution issues by using the same reliable manufacturer for the last 11 years. “We’re growing,” Jim notes. “We realize that we’re reaching capacity constraints and are planning to add another person to the team soon.”
“We’re already really good in terms of brand recognition,” Jim says. For this reason, expanding brand presence across multiple platforms and marketplaces is a key priority for the company. Established on Amazon and Chewy, 4Knines is looking to grow business on Target, Walmart, and even Wayfair. People aren’t looking to a single E-Commerce giant anymore, Jim notes. “We’re seeing the marketplace dynamic shift. There’s a bunch of other different channels that we’re endeavoring to be available on. We want to get the brand out there and available in as many places as possible.”
Asked to give his advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, Jim believes that “patience and perseverance are required traits. He goes on to stress the importance of maintaining a high touch relationship with customers to understand their needs. This means instead of relying on assumptions and market studies, ask your customers directly what they want for information that can be used to steer your brand. He finishes, “And always provide value, whether you're providing value with patents or technology. And don’t sit on your laurels."
What excites you most about E-Commerce? The customer service potential of it. It’s so easy for people now to find new stuff and discover new products that you wouldn’t be able to do if you were limited by only what a store provided. E-Commerce gives you access to more options.
Can’t live without tools? From a hardware perspective, my laptop. We are remote – when you have that capability, it transforms your lifestyle dramatically. Regarding software, having a good email provider. This is something that we didn’t do a great job with right out of the gate. We learned, and having a great email list and treating it well has made a huge impact on our business.
Key hiring trait? Professionalism and customer focus. To sum that up, you must be able to talk to people. That’s #1. You need to be able to talk to people the right way.
AI or no AI? AI is a fantastic tool, and we use it a lot. To give you an idea, we created a chat GPT that is loaded with canine information. We loaded our best emails, brand style guide, and sales copy into chat GPT to provide a similar voice for the brand across all our different partners and people. So now you are getting a similar experience across the brand with the messaging that we are putting out. We also use it with our content creation, emails, and our customer service team. AI is a very valuable tool, but I will also say that AI can cause significant problems if not leveraged the right way.
Influential thought leader in E-Commerce space? We’ve had the fortune of being in a lot of different entrepreneurial groups and built fantastic relationships. But what I listen to a lot about right now is ‘mindset.’ I love listening to Ed Mylett. He gives you a good balance of not only business but also mindset. It’s easy for entrepreneurs to get stuck in a void sometimes. It gets lonely, you lose perspective sometimes depending on the size of your team. He does a good job of looking outside the entrepreneurial model into just improving yourself. For straight E-Commerce, Ryan Daniel Moran does a really good job of email tactics for small businesses. Alex Hormozi is also great for business related information. Lastly, one of my favorite people of all time, and just an amazing person, is Ezra Firestone. From a social media and business standpoint, he is fantastic.
#1 Challenge as a leader? My main challenge is patience. I move fast like a lot of other entrepreneurs do. It’s taken me a long time to realize that not everyone moves at the same speed that I do. So having that grace and patience for people who are not moving at quite the same speed as I do is an everyday challenge for me. Everybody has different skill sets and just appreciating those skill sets is also one of my greatest opportunities as a leader.
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