1. Scale proactively to avoid being overwhelmed during growth: Shannon's experience with rapid scaling at Plum Organics fuels her obsession with preparation.
2. Thoughtfully implement AI: integrating Siena.cx allows Hero Bread™ to manage high volume without sacrificing the human touch, retaining empathy in customer service.
3. Use metrics like CSAT, reply time, and ticket volume to track AI performance: despite initial concerns, Shannon found that AI didn't negatively impact satisfaction.
4. Prioritize CX feedback by quantifying issues and sharing data-backed insights with stakeholders: Shannon emphasizes the need for relevant storytelling around CX numbers.
5. Hire for passion and service excellence: Shannon believes CX roles should be seen as careers, not just jobs, and values a dedication to best-in-class service.
Meet Shannon Long, the CX whiz behind Hero Bread™, who has combined her love of food and business to create a winning formula for customer service. Discover how Hero BreadTM has benefited from her expertise with cutting-edge AI and quick development, as well as how she is overcoming the difficulties of working with a remote team by combining creativity and excitement.
Meet Shannon, the Director of CX at Hero Bread™! Shannon is a CX guru and a startup aficionado, with 25 years of experience in CX and 14 of those years working with startups.
Hero Bread™ is a leading innovator in the food industry, specializing in baking delicious, better for you bread and baked goods that contain 0-2g net carbs, 0g sugar, fewer calories and more protein and fiber per serving than traditional bread. The company's mission is to help make humans healthier and happier while giving them the opportunity to enjoy bread again.
Winning a secret shopper award on her first day working in retail in college set Shannon’s feet firmly on the CX path. She soon realized she had both a knack for CX and an interest in early-stage startups, along with a passion for food.
She joined Plum Organics as the first CX hire. As the company experienced rapid growth—becoming the leading organic baby food company, before being acquired by Campbell’s Soup—Shannon’s department scrambled to keep pace. This trial-by-fire shaped her approach to CX. “I never want to be in that position again, so now I am very much scale-obsessed. This isn’t my first rodeo!”
Hero Bread™, an innovator in the low-carb bread space, is her current home. Strategically, she positioned herself pre-launch at Hero, analyzing scenarios and addressing questions, such as what messaging is needed, which support channels should be implemented, which tools, in-house v. outsourcing, and most importantly, how to scale should the company experience rapid growth. Fueled by her previous experience, Shannon felt confident that she was the best person for the job at Hero.
“I’m a builder and I’m passionate about providing best-in-class customer service,” she says. “My sweet spot is innovative, disruptive food companies.”
The CX team at Hero is currently 100% remote, with coverage provided by overlapping time zones. With just two full-time CX agents, Shannon was leaning toward hiring another, but Hero began considering AI to bridge the gap. Since utilizing AI, the need to grow the team has become less apparent.
“We have an amazing team in place-we’re small and mighty. Both members of the team are super experienced and talented CX pros who bring so much to the table every single day. Adding Siena.cx to the equation has really set us up for scale.”
Hero is working with Siena.cx, which integrates with Gorgias and provides realistic AI customer support.
“It’s really convincing,” she says. “The whole empathic approach is super noticeable.”
Much more than a chatbot, it’s a virtual support agent that provides account management, order group management, and scalability. Launched over the summer and monitored closely, the AI agent (who the team affectionately refers to as “Cameron”) has been able to automate almost 60% of all customer support at Hero.
“Cameron’s a member of our team.”
Gorgias
Slack
Siena.cx – “It completely exceeded my expectations. When I first went into the pitch meeting with them, I was looking for a chatbot solution, only to find out this is way more than that.”
Shannon has kept a close eye on CSAT, expecting to see a dip due to implementing AI, but was surprised to see that the score remained unaffected. Other metrics Shannon pays close attention to are reply time and the number of tickets to volume. Including social channels, Hero’s volume is 5k a month, with 2k of them coming in through Gorgias.
Email is the primary channel, and there is no live phone support (although the team does provide callbacks for those who request it). Previously, her team was doing some live chat through Gorgias but the high volume made it unsupportable.
“We didn’t have the bandwidth to be live online, but we’re looking forward to exploring chat again now that our AI tool has been implemented” she notes.
Hero Bread™ products can be purchased one time or as a subscription, which opens up the conversation of customer retention.
While the Hero Bread™ team does have promo codes to offer in order to help retain displeased customers, Shannon says that they have been able to retain many customers by simply offering a skip on this month’s order or adjusting the frequency of their deliveries.
Even though CX trends emerge subjectively, Shannon works to quantify them so that they are relevant to the rest of the stakeholders. “I come with numbers,” she says, when presenting CX insights to the rest of the company, adding that the story around the numbers is important, too. “The CX team has a lot of juicy nuggets and we don’t want to be a black hole,” she notes.
“The top 3 issues are the ones I’ll drill into and share out,” she says. “And then I let people know I am an open book. You can come to me any time if you want to drill in some more. We have that data.”
Can’t-live-without tool? Slack
Key Hiring Trait: “Best-in-class service and passion. Not seeing the position as a job, but rather as a career.”
AI or no AI? Thoughtfully implemented AI.
Favorite CX communication channel? “Email encourages more intimate conversation and lets me incentivize a customer in ways that I may not be able to do publicly on social.”
Favorite book or podcast? “Founder Vs. Investor is a new book I’m reading. It’s cool because it’s all about the startup world, but told from both perspectives. I also listen to the “Business Wars” podcast, which compares the histories of competing businesses, like Taco Bell vs. Chipotle or Target vs. Walmart. I love, love, love that.”
#1 Challenge as a CX leader: “Always being on, but the challenge is what I love.”
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