Who is Avra?

Meet Avra Wacks, Senior Manager of Customer Experience at Levain Bakery!

About Levain Bakery

Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald created Levain Bakery in 1995, out of their passions for food, friendship, and hard work. After creating an ultimate chocolate chip walnut cookie to give them energy while training for a triathlon, they decided to sell a batch in their bakery, and they flew off the shelves. An icon was born. The cozy shop on West 74th Street became a neighborhood favorite and a destination for epicurious travelers from around the world. To this day, they bake everything fresh on-site and donate the leftovers to charity each night. Levain Bakery now has a handful of locations in their favorite neighborhoods across the country with more to come, as well as E-Commerce gift boxes for Nationwide Shipping.

Avra’s CX Journey

After college, Avra moved to New York City where she landed an internship at Chobani. Focusing on digital communications, she planned and executed digital brand strategy for social media, making Vine and Instagram videos for the yogurt company. Her next move was working retail for Anthropologie. Reflecting on these past work experiences, Avra says, “I’ve gravitated to companies that value customer service. Being a customer myself of those companies certainly helped give me the passion, understanding, and empathy needed for CX.” Graduating to retail management, she became supervisor of Anthropologie’s flagship store at Rockefeller Center, and then managed her own department at the clothing brand’s Upper East Side location. What remained constant through these various roles was Avra’s love for working with customers and building meaningful relationships.

Growing tired of retail hours, Avra joined the CX team for BaubleBar, an E-Commerce jewelry company and eventually became manager. “I learned a lot about E-Commerce, from the backend of websites to pre-order and order fulfillment to warehouse stock,” she notes. “Working my way up from agent to lead meant that I understood my team members because I had been in their shoes.”  

An interest in food and hospitality led Avra to work for Dig, a brick-and-mortar, farm-to-table chain in NYC as Head of Guest Experience. There, she learned about food delivery apps, catering for high-volume orders, and food safety issues. When Covid hit, Avra, like many in the restaurant industry, found herself searching for a job and was approached by Levain Bakery. “They were looking for someone to manage their customer experience team. My job at Levain marries my experience in retail and E-Commerce,” she explains. “We’re not solely E-Commerce. About 70% of my team’s volume deals with E-Commerce orders – the rest is helping with feedback that customers have from their in-bakery experiences.”

E-Commerce: Connecting with Customers

Working in E-Commerce, Avra finds inspiration in accessibility and outreach, particularly connecting with different customers from all over the country. She elaborates, “What our bakery team gets to experience when people visit Levain in person – offering flavor suggestions or learning why a customer made the trip and their reason for buying cookies - we are able to do, just in a digital space.”

The CX Team at Levain Bakery

The CX Team at Levain consists of Avra and 4 Customer Experience Specialists. Avra leads her team remotely and makes monthly trips to Levain’s NYC headquarters. Using a hybrid approach, the CX specialists, who are Tri-State based, go into the NYC office a few times a week.

The CX Team sits under the larger Commercial Team, which oversees the overall E-Commerce operations, marketing, creative, and development functions. Avra believes that alignment and clear communication across departments foster strong CX. “Despite having different jobs and responsibilities, I’ve never felt any friction between teams. At Levain, everyone understands how important the customer is.”

Levain’s Company Culture: Work Hard, Be Kind

Levain’s NYC headquarters is referred to as ‘The Cookie Suite.’ After joining Levain, Avra quickly noticed that the company is run by “by good genuine people” revealing that a core value is “work hard & be kind.” She goes on to say that this philosophy is instilled in company culture from top to bottom – from how leadership interacts with managers to how she directs her team to how her team services customers.

CX Philosophy: Maintaining a Hand-On Approach

Established by two women, who were also friends, Levain started as a small bakery in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “Our founders are still very much involved,” Avra reveals. “Just like in those early days, we still want to be warm, helpful, and accurate. This is the kind of service customers expect from us, so it’s important to create memorable experiences.”

As a growing business that is entering new markets with new bakeries opening in California and Philadelphia, Levain looks to its collaborative, home-grown company structure for stability. The general managers rely on feedback from the CX team to better understand ways to handle and resolve customer issues. Every day, bakers make Levain cookies, pastries and breads from scratch - Avra explains how this hands-on approach influences CX philosophy. “We may not be using the most cutting-edge AI or tech software. We don’t outsource – we’re people who were hired through The Cookie Suite with the shared mission of giving our customers the highest and most personal level of support possible. Customers have exchanged personal stories with us and sent my team handwritten thank you notes – we never want to lose that.” 

CX and Creating Memories

Because Levain sells perishable goods, Avra says problems can be resolved quickly – the main objective is to make sure customers are completely satisfied while delivering cookies that meet Levain’s premium standards. This is especially important since people often order Levain as a birthday, congratulations, thank you, or sympathy gift or because they moved away from NYC and the cookies are tied to special memories of living there. “We love being a part of these special occasions,” Avra says. “Yes, they are cookies, but they mean so much more than that.” She goes on to praise the E-Commerce team and notes, “they do an incredible job of successfully sending out exceptionally packaged boxes given the high-volume of orders they receive.”

CX Team Success Factors

Maintaining CX Values During Rapid Growth

Levain E-Commerce business grew during Covid, requiring the company to adapt CX strategies and policies (and do so with a focus on human touch). Avra reflects on this transitional time, “We wanted to make sure that we’re scalable and can now add more headcount if needed.” She continues to do one-on-one training with new members, giving real-time feedback on email drafts offering guidance on tone and how best to communicate with customers. Seeing a decrease in email response time from her team has made Avra open to testing Chat. “I didn’t want to start Chat until we were in a good place with our other channels so it could be incorporated thoughtfully and with adequate support,” she says. “I’m interested to see how customers interact with it, especially as we move forward to the holiday season.”

Avra takes pride in her team’s ability to service customers efficiently. “I think it’s a testament to the organization as a whole,” she says. “Despite being a lean team, we are able to handle questions and inquiries within hours, at times minutes, on a daily basis.” To gauge performance, she tracks ticket count to sales ratio, making sure they balance out.

Optimizing Communication Channels

Levain’s CX Team uses Gorgias to manage communication channels with customers. In addition to responding to emails and phone calls, members answer SMS texts, third party delivery platform reviews, and POS reviews. “My team handles the whole suite of feedback,” Avra adds. “They are every touch point that the customer has, whether it's retail or E-Commerce.” A hands-on leader, she stays connected with customers responding to emails and taking tickets during busy periods. “I’m at the service of my team and the customer. Whenever they need something, I will step in and help – that will never change.”

Tech Stack

Gorgias “It’s our shared inbox. Our tagging and metrics – everything lives there.”

Attentive “We use Attentive and Klaviyo for marketing.”

Klaviyo

Shopify