At A Glance

Dennis Manning is changing the GhostBed customer experience using a customer first approach. In the cutthroat mattress business, Dennis's leadership is having a big influence on customer pleasure and loyalty—from growing the team to improving CX tactics.

Who is Dennis?

Meet Dennis, Director of Customer Experience at GhostBed.

About GhostBed

In the early 2000s, Marc L. Werner founded Nature’s Sleep — the parent company to GhostBed — as he strived to create a mattress that prioritized the ultimate comfort for consumers. Ten years later, he innovated his mattress formula and introduced the GhostBed mattress, sold online, as a new way for consumers to buy products. 

With GhostBed, a mattress that fully conforms to your body and offers optimal comfort, customers can sample their new mattress for 101 nights risk-free.

Dennis’s CX Journey

After earning his English and Marketing degree at King’s College in 1985, Dennis first entered the customer experience field when he began working for Citizens Bank as a training manager. Years later, he obtained his Masters in Training and started managing the call center once the company began to expand in size and ownership.

Dennis mentions that he loved working at the call center because every call was a new opportunity to improve upon his previous work.

“It’s the only kind of job I know that lets you kind of, call by call, day by day, change up and get better at what you just did,” he says. “... You have to be able to read your customer. This industry lets you do that time and again.”

Although he enjoyed his work at Citizens Bank, he then began overseeing the 450-seat call center at Wyndham Resort in 2007. When it closed, Dennis arrived at Nature’s Sleep and GhostBed in 2016, becoming the company’s Director of Customer Experience.

The CX Team at GhostBed

Dennis currently manages the service, sales and retention team, but he’s seen the team grow exponentially since his start seven years ago.

In 2016, there were only three people on the customer service team and it operated on Fridays from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Dennis helped the team increase its hours, which then increased its productivity. After changing the hours of operation to seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and adding a chat service option, GhostBed innovated its customer experience team.

On Dennis’s team, each member does a little bit of everything from sales to customer service. Even though it’s challenging to find potential hires who are open to flexibility, Dennis knows that the team’s current model has contributed to their growth over the years.

The GhostBed team is broken down into ten operational support members, three managers, and agents who all work in-house, which differs from the traditional remote model. As Dennis explains, the company prefers a CX team that can work together. Not only does working in person help each team member get a sense of the ins and outs of the monthly showrooms, but it also promotes commitment.

Additionally, Dennis highlights that working in person helps him give feedback to each team member. Because most of his team works hourly, he’s able to easily direct his employees in a synchronous workspace.

“For the model at GhostBed, we like people to be around, able to touch and feel the products, the experience, and go for some one-on-one training,” he says.

Core Philosophies of CX at GhostBed

After working in the CX realm for 35 years, Dennis lists the core philosophies that he’s learned from his experience.

First, Dennis understands that the goal of customer experience is not to teach the customer anything, but to listen and help the customer in any way possible.

“We’re not here to teach anybody anything,” he says “If they want to vent, let them vent, because they will stop eventually. It’s not about you unless you caused it, so let that go.”

Dennis’s second teaching is to listen to your frontline people. When you cultivate a positive relationship with them, then they’ll “go the line with you,” he explains.

“The most important person in a call center is the person who manages the direct line. If they don’t have those people who are in their back pocket, and they don’t feel that they’re in the same bank account, then it’s just a job and they’re just doing service, not experience,” he says.

Dennis also explained the importance of maintaining a great relationship with your CX team using the ‘chicken and pig’ analogy. From this perspective, a chicken is compliant and will give you an egg whenever you ask for one. On the other hand, a pig will give you bacon, but it will ask a lot more from you. The best team relationship is a symbiotic one that works together to achieve one goal. It may require some push and pull from both sides, but the relationship has to be equal.

“If you don’t have committed people, then you don’t know what they’ll do to your business,” he says. “They’ll steal right out from under you. [They] never felt committed, they only felt compliant.”

Dennis’s CX Touchpoints

Because GhostBed is a family-owned company, Dennis feels that it’s important to make sure that the connections with each customer are personal. The CX team finds a way to appeal to the customer and make sure that they’re receiving the best service. Most of the team owns at least one product so they can speak to a customer and share their own experiences.

“You can’t walk into a store to touch… It’s 99% online and with us, and the power of my voice, my suggestion, and our conversation,” he says. “I can connect with you because people buy those and they know [they] can trust [me], and then they’ll buy.”

Dennis shares that the team also checks in with each customer towards the end of their product trial to see how they feel. In the case where a customer does want to return their product, it’s important to ensure that the process is as easy as possible so the customer wants to return in the future.

Training New Members

Although there wasn’t much of a training process when Dennis first started working at GhostBed, the team soon created one when it began to grow.

Dennis brought a lot of his training experience from Citizens Bank to his CX team at GhostBed. Instead of only going through the onboarding training process, team members receive ongoing training to track performance and receive feedback to improve their skills. For instance, they can learn tips and tricks on how to deal with angry customers, landing a sale, and successfully following up with a potential customer.

He also pulls his team members into small huddles throughout the week to discuss different topics and areas for improvement, which has also helped individual members improve their performance.

“It doesn’t stop with just a new hire. We come back and keep product knowledge, service knowledge, experience knowledge, kind of going on a day-to-day basis,” he says.

Driving Sales and Customer Retention

When it comes to ensuring that his team lands the perfect sale every time, Dennis emphasizes that during each call, his team should try to discern why the customer is calling. This helps to understand what’s really going on in each interaction. This can be achieved by asking, "What brought you here today?”

“If we don’t ask that question, then we easily miss what’s going on,” he explains. “We keep driving that [you need to] get to know your customer… That helps us stay in touch with you on that level.”

Dennis lists three touchstones that drive customer retention within his team. The first is to reassure the customer of their purchase within the first 24 hours. After the 30-day trial, he says that you should help the customer with their decision. If they don’t like the mattress, you can help them find a new product that fits their needs and preferences. The last step is to help the customer through the return process.

Tech Stack

Zendesk

Affirm

Shopify

Advice for Other CX Leaders

Dennis advises other CX leaders to keep going back to the front line and helping them with whatever they may need. This helps to balance a positive relationship with them and resolve any issues that may arise down the road. If everyone’s on the same page, then the whole team can reach their specific goals. 

He utilizes huddles to see what the customers are talking about. After taking notes, he shares these topics with the marketing and operations teams, which also helps to resolve issues quickly and improve the customer experience.

“I let them know that their feedback can make a difference,” he says.