Who Is Kris?

Kris Moriarty is the Director of CX and Special Projects at Epic Gardening!

About Epic Gardening

Epic Gardening is a content-to-commerce company, providing best-in-class educational gardening content that drives the launch of their E-Commerce offerings of user-friendly, long-lasting gardening equipment. 

Started as a hobby project by Kevin Espiritu in 2013 with the simple goal of teaching the world to grow, it has become the world's most-followed gardening brand, reaching millions of people every year through its website, multiple YouTube channels, podcasts, and extensive social media network. 

Kris’ CX Journey

Kris first gained CX experience through years of customer service work at several microbreweries. Then, as the director of business development for Stone Brewing, her days were filled with corporate and social events that required premier customer service as well as managing partnerships for the breweries.

“My favorite thing about customer service is creating a win-win-win—a win for the company, a win for the customer, and a win for the greater good,” she says.

Once the COVID-19 pandemic began, the capacity for business development, particularly events, simply went away, and Kris was laid off.

“I was at home, sad, trying to figure out what I was going to do next in the middle of a pandemic, watching YouTube videos and eating Pop-Tarts,” she says, able to laugh about the situation now. One day, she watched a video of Kevin Espiritu, the founder of Epic Gardening. Through his educational videos, she ended up converting her entire yard into a garden, growing a majority of her family’s produce. 

She sent Kevin a thank you note for helping her through such a dark time. He replied with a kind message, and that was that … so she thought. Then, there was an opening for a job as his Executive Assistant. She couldn’t help but apply for the job and the chance to work with someone so influential. As if by fate, she was hired and began her incredible journey alongside Kevin. 

“It just blossomed from there,” she says, “and about 2 ½ years ago, Epic Gardening secured a $17.5 million investment from The Chernin Group to further grow and develop the company.” 

“To be honest, I was not the best executive assistant,” she says. But, she was successfully handling customer service, managing the Shopify store for their $2 million in sales. She also found herself pursuing business development special projects, like implementing garden programs at schools and prisons. 

“Our mission is to teach the world to grow. That’s where my heart and passion lies,” she says. Following this passion and leaning into her strengths, Kevin and Kris agreed—a shift to CX seemed only natural. 

“[Customer service is] business development, but on a one-on-one basis,” she says. So, she transitioned from personal assistant to CX director of the now-80-person company.

The CX Team at Epic Gardening

A team of four, the CX department at Epic Gardening is a nurturing group with a combination of talents. She manages these talents simply—“After hiring, we see how people land,” says Kris. 

“I have one person who is amazing with data and analytics and knows Gorgias in, out, backwards, and forwards,” she says. So, she’s the one who uses the data to decide the best way to expand CX. Another has a special skill for training. “She wrote a full training manual and SOPs. That's ‘her thing,’” Kris explains. Then there’s a talented copywriter who checks macros and facts and an escalation manager with a knack for all things “pesky.” 

In downtime, they work on things they’re good at and enjoy. 

“Personally, customer experience is when you have the opportunity to improve the day of anyone you interact with—whether employee or customer.”

Epic Gardening is a self-proclaimed “customer-obsessed” business. In the early days of the commerce side of Epic Gardening, Kris and Kevin collaborated on a vision centered around CX. She and her team really broke down what that meant, focusing on the customer from the very beginning of Epic Gardening, and sustaining this focus still today.

They mapped out the customer journey from the website experiences to shopping and ordering experiences to YouTube, Instagram, and blog content experiences, asking themselves, “We’re an educational content company and we sell really stellar gardening products. So what does that look like from beginning to end?” Beyond just mapping the customer journey Kris and Kevin asked themselves, “What can we do to blow people away every step of the way?”

KPIs Kris is Tracking

“We are a knowledge-based company,” she says. From content to commerce, they incorporate this knowledge to make key decisions. For example, with a consistent NPS score of 88 and a CSAT score of 86, they were able to see and reemphasize the impact of their hyper-personalized CX strategy. 

They also utilize a variety of KPIs to assess their regular CX efforts. “We go through and we ask where we are missing the mark,” she says. Then they further develop their SOPs to apply across functions like their content and customer service.

For FAQs, they regularly review them to ensure content is accurate and helpful to customers. They ask questions like, “Why are people still needing help after they view this FAQ?” They analyze the most commonly used macros and keep an eye on first response time. All this data is incorporated to further their highly personalized, customer-obsessed mission.

Leading a CX Team

On an organizational level, Kris relies on the entire company to obsess over the customer. “Your marketing has to be customer-obsessed. Your warehouse team has to understand the way they pack something really matters,” she says. 

To reinforce that every position matters, she regularly updates their Slack channel, Customer Feedback, with updates like, “Someone loves the marketing,” or, “Someone had a great unboxing experience.” This ensures that all feedback, positive and negative, reaches all corners of the company.

At their annual strategic planning meeting, they discuss how each department affects the customer. “There’s just no position that doesn’t,” she says. 

Within her team, they have a Customer Service Announcements channel, which only Kris can post to. There, she announces any changes to products or content. Everyone must indicate they have read it, requiring transparency, accountability, and seamless communication.

Additionally, each customer service agent owns and uses an Epic Gardening product  “They have to know what the product looks like, how to build it, how it feels, what unboxing is like, what the possible issues are,” she says. 

With this information, customer service is empowered to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. “They don’t need to run everything by their manager like, ‘Am I allowed to give a discount on this?’” she says. Rather, customer service is armed with the knowledge and given the autonomy needed to serve customers in the best way, not the traditional way. 

“Empowerment is one of our biggest tools,” she continues. 

Facing Negative Feedback

Customer retention is key at Epic Gardening, and when dealing with negative customer feedback, their go-to strategy is proactivity. 

“Even if they have a really negative experience,” she says, “Nine times out of 10 you can turn that into a hyper-positive experience.”

For example, her team dealt with a major shipping issue. Their orders were stuck at port. “It just took forever,” she says. So, they sent an email to let their customers know. People emailed back and customer service simply gave them their options. 

“Retention [efforts] are so much better than not interacting with your customers,” she says, “People just want to know.” Her team will do whatever it takes to salvage negative experiences through their hyper-personalized strategy. They will even suggest customers hold off on certain purchases if there’s an upcoming sale. “They’re so appreciative and it keeps you from having to go back and deal with that negative experience,” she says.

“You can make a customer for life from a bad experience.”

Tech Stack

Gorgias:  “It’s geared to be able to give you information in a way that's understandable and then actionable. We track product complaints and then we're able to break it down by product.”

Shopify “It’s really easy for us to look at their past orders and see what the next logical product recommendation would be.”

Retently

Loop

Klaviyo

Northbeam

Postscript

Malomo

Slack 

AI or Not to AI?

“I’m a fan of AI,” she says, but there’s been some trial and error to find the right tool. “I’m sure it’s great if you’re just selling a widget or have a formulaic approach, but if you don’t, there’s too much work on the back end.” 

Currently, she is meeting with a variety of AI companies to find the right fit. Although Kris hasn’t found the perfect AI/CX tool for her team, they still use AI all the time. They use it for gardening questions, for example, with a prompt to find answers within Epic Gardening’s resources. 

For the foundation of more complex tickets, they run it through ChatGPT to get a general answer before plugging it into their personalized answer.