Who Is Natasha?

Meet Natasha, Senior Manager of CS at FightCamp!

About FightCamp

FightCamp offers interactive boxing workouts, streamed on demand. They cater to people who are tired of traditional workouts and are looking for something more engaging. Built for anyone from beginners and boxing enthusiasts alike, FightCamp teaches them how to box with fun and engaging content.

Natasha describes FightCamp best, saying, “We like to call ourselves the boxing version of Peloton!”

Natasha’s CX Journey At FightCamp

Natasha started in labor before transitioning to CX in her early 20s. She decided she wanted to work more with her mind than her hands. “I wanted to be that person who could problem solve and be part of a customer’s journey,” she says.

As employee #6 and the only CX agent at FightCamp in its early days, Natasha has yet to see a glass ceiling. She is currently a senior manager, with lofty aspirations. “I’m on my way up, hopefully,” she says.

The industry-wide tech layoffs of 2022 halved Natasha’s staff. She now manages a global remote team of seven, four outsourced and three internal. The company has offices in California and her internal staff will meet up occasionally, but there’s no requirement. “We might dip in and out of the office to boost morale and get that culture back,” she says.

How Natasha Works With Her Outsourced Team

Natasha says her outsourced team needs a highly managed approach. “You really have to pour into an outsourced team to get them where you want them to be.” Cultural expectations and applied emotional intelligence differ in countries outside the U.S., she notes. “I need to get them outside of their comfort zone when responding to emails,” she says. “We’re a boxing company. We bring a lot of energy to CX transactions. I need them to carry this same tone.”

For this reason, outsourced agents don’t use phones. She also prefers dedicated outsourced talent. “We’ve had some slip-ups,” she says, referring to non-dedicated agents.

She’s implemented a paid 2-day trial period for new agents at FightCamp. At the end of the trial, the agent presents a short recap. “I like to see how their mind works,” Natasha says.

“I don’t really look at hard skills. I want to see if they are empathetic. I want to feel they can develop. They do a fire chat at lunch with the rest of the team. I want to see if they fit in with the culture. Then, we make our decision.”

While outsourcing serves the company’s bottom line, it is offset somewhat by the additional CX time investment. Managing outsourced teams requires more training, more check-ins, and more QA, she notes.  Natasha dedicated one internal team member to managing the QA and overseeing her outsourced team. Additionally, the outsourced team has a team leader. “I used to try to do it all. Now I delegate, delegate, delegate.”

How Natasha Tracks KPIs On Her Team

“I’m a bit different,” Natasha claims when looking at KPIs. “I like to call our KPIs our Health Metrics. These are the things that other departments do not care about.”  

She tracks first response time, CSAT, resolution time, call time, and containment rate with the chatbot. Currently, they are partnered with Glady for a helpdesk solution. “As long as we’re above industry standards, I’m happy. But, I want my team to focus on more impactful things. KPIs are good [to track], but that’s not what keeps us relevant across the company.”

Natasha meets with the Product team once a month to present trends from customer feedback tags and Slack. New in Q42023, she’ll conduct 10 video interviews a month with early adopters who canceled their accounts after only a few interactive sessions.

The market segment comprising early adopters is crucial to the long-term success of FightCamp, and that’s where Natasha wants to make an impact. They have conducted surveys on canceled accounts previously, but surveys, Natasha says, only tell you the “What?” and not the “Why?”. In an interview, the customer might cite the instructors or content as a reason, and Natasha will push for more detail.

“Were they underqualified? Unlikeable? We can find that out,” she says. “What better department to have that kind of flowing conversation with the customer than the one that talks to them every day?”

CX Tech Stack

Gladly

Ada

Brevy

Stripe

Shopify

Slack

Calendly – Natasha uses this for concierge CX support, where a customer can book a time to chat directly with a CX agent.

Natasha’s Thoughts On AI In CX

“I love AI. If you’re afraid about AI coming in and replacing your work, you’re doing replaceable work,” says Natasha. The implementation of the Ada chatbot at FightCamp is intended to elevate the customer experience. “Let the AI deal with the mundane questions, and let your team focus on something bigger.”

“AI is expensive to have and building the intelligence takes time, but now Ada can compensate for three or four agents,” she says. Additional cost savings come from hiring and training budgets.

Importance of CX At FightCamp

Customer retention is a high priority at FightCamp and understanding the customer’s mindset furthers that goal. “Customers are very sensitive. One wrong thing with the equipment and they’re ready to drop out and stop exercising,” Natasha finds, adding that her team treats equipment failures as emergencies. “After one email, if the equipment’s still not working right, we need to get on the phone and get it worked out or video chat and show them step by step.”

If the churn reason is financial, she incentivizes. “We can throw 2 or 3 free months at a customer, just to alleviate that worry,” she says. This keeps the customer exercising, and it puts the CX agent at the level of a coach. Proactively, Natasha’s team will look for ways of preventing involuntary churn, such as monitoring credit card expiration dates and notifying customers by phone. “We want to attack those avenues to make sure we are maintaining our importance as CX.”

Advice to other CX Leaders

Listen – A manager who can’t take criticism from a team can’t grow and can’t grow a team.”

Advocate – Find a balance between being a team leader and being a business person.

Be Progressive – Don’t focus just on the KPIs. Be a team that adds insights and isn’t just a cost of doing business. Grab the low-hanging fruit. Partner with other teams and make them successful. Pitch your team’s ideas and lead projects that stem from them.