Who Is Amanda?

Amanda Brown is the Chief of Staff and Customer Experience at GoodBuy Gear. She is joined in the interview by Maddy McLean, their Head of Marketing.

About GoodBuy Gear

GoodBuy Gear is a second-hand marketplace for baby and kid gear. They partner with local sellers along with brands and retailers. GoodBuy Gear only sells safe, clean, and quality-checked products so parents can shop with confidence.

Once families are done with their items, they can easily sell them knowing that they are helping another family own for less!

Amanda’s CX Journey

At GoodBuy Gear, CX is a collaboration across all teams, not just customer service. As such, both Amanda & Maddy have worn a variety of hats over the years. 

Amanda began working at the company six years ago, just after its inception. Her initial role was cross-promoting items to Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, the humble beginnings of what would soon become a full-blown E-Commerce marketplace. Then she joined processing, taking the products and quality and safety checking them. 

Over time, new projects were added to her plate, and she began touching all different parts of the business—including, one day, answering customer questions. Fast forward, and she is now the fearless leader of their staff and head of their CX team, a perfect fit after years of seeing all corners of the GoodBuy Gear realm. 

“In terms of customer experience that’s where you have to be,” she says. “You have to know the entire business to make it go because our customer’s experience is the whole way through.” 

Maddy’s role, too, has evolved over time. Now heading marketing, she began primarily getting their organic social and influencer program up and running. As she grew, her path became intertwined with Amanda’s, whom she now works closely with. 

“We try to make sure our marketing initiatives are not taking anyone by surprise and are supporting all other departments however needed,” she says. 

“It’s really making sure all the teams are involved,” Amanda adds. Whether it’s one of our processors, packers, our marketing team, our tech team… it’s all those things that come into one.” 

The CX Team at GoodBuy Gear

It’s difficult to discuss the CX team at GoodBuy Gear as a separate entity from the entire company, because while the Customer Care team consists of three remote staff members, all of GoodBuy Gear is in on the CX process. They are less of a silo and more of a collaborative hub.

For example, they’ve implemented customer care shadow sessions, where staff from other departments spend half an hour with someone on the customer care team twice a year. They have the chance to watch and see what customers are saying and incorporate it into their daily operations. 

It’s easier to discuss the qualities of the CX team than their functions—first and foremost being empathy. “The empathy piece is huge,” Amanda says. “Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.” With an empathetic lens, her team has adapted to parents’ needs by leveraging phone calls over email and chat. 

“It’s just quicker and easier,” Maddy says. “Parents’ time is limited.” This focus is reflected also in their marketing decisions, such as opting for short review videos instead of lengthy blogs for example.

Not just empathetic, the CX team is empowered. This is a culture built by open communication and trust, with ample opportunity to give feedback to supervisors. They guide customers with confidence, even cutting down response time due to their ability to make decisions themselves.

KPIs Amanda is Tracking

That response time, along with CSAT and time to resolution, is tracked, with each conversation tagged. “Our CSAT is actually amazing,” Amanda says, “even with our small team.” They maintain a 90%. 

Beyond these KPIs, however, GoodBuy Gear is tracking customer feedback through detailed surveys, video interviews, and video reviews. “We want to hear both the good and bad. We want all their feedback,” Amanda says. 

It’s not just the customer care team that’s reaching out for feedback. Amanda assigns customer interviews to all sorts of individuals within the company so they can have a chance to have that face-to-face time with the customers. 

“Right now, our marketing coordinator is speaking with a customer, and our coordinator might spark an idea from that conversation that Amanda and I may never think of,” Maddy says. 

Tech Stack

Intercom: “We try to use the tools that do the most for us, and Intercom is just doing everything.”

CloudTalk

Slack

AI or Not to AI?

“I started out not liking AI—it’s creepy!” Amanda says. Now, she sees it as a transformative tool that allows her team to focus their time on the human side of things, with AI taking over the collection of information needed to help the customer. “You can literally just throw out words, not even full sentences. You don’t have to put that thought into it.”

Even better, their AI tool, Fin, already exists within their tech stack through Intercom. While others may opt for Gorgias or Zendesk, GoodBuy Gear has worked with Intercom since the start. They’ve explored other options, but can’t imagine a better fit. Fin has a lot to do with it as well—“We have seen so much efficiency improvement, and I can’t just turn away from that,” Amanda says. 

“Fin will go in and read all of our conversations, our FAQ articles, and everything we’re doing,” she says. “It knows our tone and what our brand messaging sounds like.” Naturally, she’s aware of the limitations. There are errors to consider and brand tone to finetune. But even if Fin doesn’t always provide the right answers, it’s trainable. 

Thanks to Fin, by the time a ticket reaches the customer care team, they have so much more information on what the customer truly needs.

‍