Who is Sean Agatep?

Meet Sean Agatep, the Founder of Vincero Collective. 

About Vincero Collective

Vincero is an e-commerce company focused on men’s and women’s jewelry. They specialize in ethically manufactured watches with a key focus on products that blend style with functionality. 

Sean’s Journey

After graduating college, Sean and two friends took the plunge and moved to China to learn about sourcing, manufacturing, and product development. "We had a real passion for making better products in better ways. We saw an opportunity to build our own brand and kind of kicked off that whole journey,” he explains.

In 2014, they started their own company, with Sean handling operations while his partners focused on marketing and branding. The experience of living and working in China was invaluable, albeit challenging initially. 

Overseas Brand Development

Sean says, "None of us knew Mandarin going over there. It was definitely a culture shock.”

The decision to immerse themselves in a foreign country paid off. "It was cool to do that. Also, to do that with your best friends while still trying to build a business and going through all these cool experiences together.”

After nearly a decade, Sean’s Mandarin skills may be "a little rusty," but the experience shaped his entrepreneurial journey in indelible ways. He emphasizes, "You can still drop me anywhere, and I'll get my workaround.”

Vincero Priorities

For Vincero, the key to sustainable growth goes beyond just optimizing processes - it requires empowering and trusting people. 

The company prioritizes treating customers exceptionally well, which has paid off in the form of an impressive 30-35% repeat purchase rate.

He highlights, "If we do the right thing, they'll focus on who we are and what we stand for, it'll take longer and you're not going to be as flashy and you're not going to be able to do like that hyper-growth that is always talked about but good things take time to build."

A Brand Built on Performance

While processes are important, Sean believes in team performance. "People are the ones that are implementing the processes so it's like they need to be able to empower to be empowered to change those processes as they fit as roles grow," he says. 

For Vincero, thriving over the long term means investing in the right people, empowering them, and keeping the focus squarely on delivering an exceptional customer experience through open communication and well-supported employees.

CX Philosophy at Vincero

Customer service naturally fell under operations in the early days of Sean's company. As he explains, "You need to build a team that's proficient with the product. They know how it works, they know the common issues."

Many CX issues were related to shipping and logistics. Whatever the issue, Sean’s approach has been straightforward. 

“Treat people right. Treat people fair.”

Remote Management

The CX team is managed remotely by someone who oversees three offshore team members. All of them have been with the company for five years. The key challenge is keeping everyone aligned. Sean says that developments concerning sales, product launches, discount codes, etc. happen pretty quickly. 

"Being able to fluently articulate those changes in real-time can be challenging for the team to keep up."

Another challenge is determining when to make exceptions to policies, especially with 30% of their business being international. 

Sean explains, "There's a lot of stuff that happens where you need to make a judgment call and make exceptions for rules...Being able to implement those changes and having proper oversight without just like every single question coming up the chain and asking for approval."

Sean tries to instill the mantra of "do what feels right" in his CX team. However, he does think it is important to draw the line when people are being unreasonable. From his perspective, CX shouldn’t have to deal exclusively with issues anyway. 

“Ninety-nine percent of the conversations around CX happen on the negative side of things...what's wrong, what needs to be fixed." 

This negative environment can lead to fatigue as the team has to constantly deal with unhappy customers. As Sean says, "You have to have a tough emotional stamina to be able to deal with people online. They say some stuff that they wouldn't save you in person."

Building a top-notch CX team

When it comes to building a top-notch customer experience (CX) team, Sean looks for employees with a very particular mindset. "We look for that curiosity of like, 'Oh, I did this, and also I saw this was happening. Would you like me to fix it?'" he explains

Simply checking tasks off a list is not enough. Sean wants team members who are proactive problem-solvers. "That proactiveness is really hard to teach,” he says. “It's more of like, you know, you either have it or you don't, and that's a quality you look for when you're trying to build out a team."

He expects his CX reps to "manage up" by identifying issues and proposing solutions. "If you're doing it, I need you to bring, I need you to manage up. Tell me what's going on, because I'm not in the weeds anymore."

While training documentation exists, Sean admits: "It's probably outdated because we haven't had to do it in so long...the unfortunate thing about e-comm is that like you spend the month creating an SOP and six months later you change one software and then all of a sudden that whole SOP's like you gotta go back and redo it."

Ultimately, Sean aims to build an autonomous CX team of self-starters who provide stellar service while proactively strengthening processes. It's about "identifying who needs help where" and empowering those passionate problem-solvers.

CX Team Success Factors

In terms of evaluating CX success, Sean evaluates pretty standard KPIs. His goal is to maintain a 90% CSAT standard. They also look at response and resolution times. Ultimately, it’s about striking a reasonable balance between quantity and quality. 

He explains: “For a while there, we're averaging like 23 minutes [for our response time]. But if it takes you six or seven interactions to handle that with that customer, that's not fair to the customer. We need to be able to respond correctly. It's not a goal of how many tickets I can respond to.”

Going the Extra Mile

Shoring up operational vulnerabilities and cultivating customer loyalty are two critical priorities. Sean is taking a proactive approach to addressing both.

“There’s obviously some concerns with fraud that we've been dealing with, especially around shipments,” Sean says. 

That said, he’s mostly looking forward. Sean sees opportunities to provide differentiated experiences and perks based on purchase history and longevity. "If it's your first purchase, if you've been with us for a while, if you bought five things from us - there's a lot of fun stuff we can do.”

By making more of an effort to "highlight the positive" customer stories and experiences, Sean believes his team can enhance what's already working well. "It's refreshing, and it makes you think - what else could we do to make it even better?"