1. Value your CX team as much as other departments: Companies should invest in CX teams to make them a core advantage, ensuring customer loyalty, according to Brian.
2. Look for confidence and self-motivation in remote team hires: In remote work, these traits drive consistent productivity and resilience, crucial for managing a dynamic CX environment.
3. Prioritize proactive customer interaction: Brian emphasizes listening to customers regularly, not just when complaints arise, to drive ongoing improvement.
4. Balance AI and human interaction: AI is useful for handling basic tasks, but human connection remains critical for a successful customer experience, Brian advises.
5. Inspire rather than direct your team: As a CX leader, inspiring your team leads to self-motivation and authentic customer connections, which are vital for long-term success.
Meet the conductor of customer experience at Loog Guitars, Brian Gazzotti! His story isn’t just about solving customer queries; it’s about orchestrating a seamless harmony between technology and human touch. Join us as we explore how Brian leads his team to create unforgettable musical journeys for kids—and learn why CX is the melody every business should embrace!
Meet Brian Gazzotti Deich, Head of Customer Experience at Loog Guitars!
Loog is an award-winning line of guitars, designed to make it fun and easy for children to play music. It started as an academic project when Rafael Atijas developed the concept for a 3-string kids’ guitar as his Master’s thesis at New York University. A year later, in 2011, Loog launched to market through a Kickstarter campaign and, since then, has expanded to a full line of acoustic and electric instruments and music learning apps. Loog guitars are played by hundreds of thousands of children all around the world, as well as established musicians, such as Jack White and members of The Rolling Stones.
Brian has been leading customer experience teams for the past ten years. Through his experience, he learned that customer support is only one of the facets of CX. In fact, what initially got him into CX was the problem-solving and analytical thinking part of it.
He loves that CX is dynamic. Even though when most people think about CX the first thing that comes to mind is working with customers, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As someone explores a career in customer experience, Brian explains, there’s so much more that can be discovered behind the scenes, which is what excites him the most about his career.
“Of course, helping customers and helping people is a big part of it as well,” he says, “but for me, specifically, getting to work on all the projects behind it and getting to lead a customer experience team as well [is] what excites me [the most.]”
Although Brian’s team consists of eight people during the off-season, it usually grows to 15 during peak business times. The team works fully remotely, and this setup allows every team member to create a healthy balance between work and their personal life.
Advocating for his team with other departments is the biggest challenge that Brian faces in his work. When he connects with start-up owners on LinkedIn, he always ensures that the company is willing to invest enough money in its CX team.
“Most of the time, their question is how to improve the CX area, and my [answer] is how much do you care about your CX team?” he says. “Does it have the same value as any other department within the company? … In my experience with every new job, it was always the same.”
Over the years, Brian has realized that companies need to view and respect CX as a proper department. When he first began managing the CX team at Loog, his goal was to turn CX into one of the main advantages of the company. He wanted to make the CX team one of the reasons why people choose Loogs.
When hiring new members, Brian looks for confidence and self-motivation in a potential employee. Because the team works remotely, they have to be able to push themselves to work and improve on a daily basis. A good sense of confidence will keep the agent’s head high even when dealing with negative customer interactions.
“When I see that someone’s got confidence, I know that they’re going to be able to manage all the tasks that involve being not only a customer support representative, but also a part of a highly dynamic team as well,” he says.
KPIs Brian is Tracking
Brian looks at his team’s KPIs on a weekly basis, which includes tracking CSAT scores, first response times, automation rates, and the amount of tickets handled by an agent. Overall, Brian hopes to see quality over quantity throughout his team’s work. He doesn’t want the message to be that his agents should simply be handling more tickets. Instead, they need to be creating genuine and resourceful connections with each customer they interact with.
Prioritizing Proactive CX
When customers aren’t reaching out to his CX team, Brian sees it as a neutral occurrence because it doesn’t always mean that the team is doing everything right. Additionally, you always want to hear from your customers, and you want them to know you’re available to listen to their concerns.. To leverage customer feedback, Brian’s team has set up a program in which they use different tactics to hear customer opinions. This is extremely important because, on average, businesses usually only hear back from 4-5% of their customers. Knowing this, the team comes up with new initiatives to connect with customers and see how they can improve.
“We don’t like to see a full inbox every day because that’s exhausting,” he says, “but we like for our customers to write to us because that also means that we’re doing a good job.”
Integrating AI into Customer Experience
Brian’s team uses some AI in automation strategies, but he understands that it’s important for start-up companies to keep the human factor in the forefront. Because of this, the team uses the AI tools only for basic automated messages and during peak times.
Maintaining a good balance between AI and human interaction is also crucial, Brian mentions. Your team can’t rely on AI to create successful customer experiences.
“It’s important that you have those tools because there’s no limit as to how many automated interactions AI can handle, but you do have a limit as to how many customer complaints you can handle if you rely only on your representatives,” he says. “I think [AI] plays a very important role, but you shouldn’t rely completely on one side or the other.”
Brian advises other CX leaders to discard their preconceived ideas about what a CX manager should be. Instead, they should see themselves as guides rather than authoritative figures. As a CX leader, you should inspire your team to improve and create genuine customer connections, treat them with care, and show them that they are as valuable as any other department. Through your guidance, your team will find the motivation to be successful.
“I always like to inspire my team,” he says. It’s always better if you can inspire them because motivation shouldn’t come from you; it should actually come from within them.”
Can’t-Live-Without-Tool: Gorgias
Favorite Communication Channel: CRMs, like Gorgias, because you’re able to centralize information and connect it to other platforms your team might use. He also prefers to use email as the focus of customer support because he can manage customer expectations with less difficulty.
Favorite Book or Podcast: “The Witcher” book series written by Andrzej Sapkowski.
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