Who is Benny?

Meet Benny, Senior Director of Customer Experience at Ollie!

About Ollie

Ollie provides nutritious, personalized meals packed with fruits, veggies, and grains for beloved furry friends. Ollie is prepared by passionate and dedicated crews in kitchens across the US. Made from carefully sourced ingredients that are freshly cooked and gently baked. Ollie also provides several other wellness benefits to help dogs live their best lives. 

Benny’s CX Journey

At 16, Benny began working at an outbound call center. Two years later, while obtaining his bachelor’s degree at the University of Utah, he started a part-time job at Discover Financial. While there, Benny worked in all the positions of the CX center furthering his experience and passion for the industry. 

Soon after, he worked for startup Kuru Footwear in the customer experience call center, his first foray into DTC customer experience. At Kuru Footwear, Benny built the CX strategy from the ground up. After six years with Kuru, Benny was recruited to work for Ollie in his current position.

At first, Benny’s transition from telecom CX to E-Commerce was a significant change, but one he felt prepared for. In DTC customer experience, Benny saw emerging technologies and realized that these businesses try to have more of a relationship with the customer. Smaller startups ask CX agents to assist with every aspect, whether email, phone calls, or live chat, which allows agents to be closer to the customer.

Looking back on his previous roles, Benny loved the competitive energy in the call center space, which encouraged him to work harder to continue improving his skills.

The CX Team at Ollie

Benny manages a 31-member team at Ollie from a virtual setting.

The team breaks down into smaller groups with different specialties, such as a Q & A team, training team, help team, vet techs, and general CX. Benny also hired a desk professional who can transfer calls to the various sectors, which has streamlined the company’s customer experience process significantly.

A shift manager or coach leads each group, oversees the agents — known as “canine care advocates” — and tracks their progress. The smaller teams also allow for more engagement and specialized feedback for each agent.

Benny tries to balance each team with a 1:12 ratio, meaning that one shift leader manages a team of no more than twelve agents. Although these numbers may fluctuate when he has new hires, Benny has found that this is the best setup for the team as a whole because it allows for more in-depth conversations and individual feedback within the team.

Although the company works from a fully remote platform, Benny typically hires agents in Salt Lake City or Nashville, called “employee hubs.” Because of the hubs, the team meets quarterly and has volunteer events throughout the year.

Over time, Benny learned how to shift from an in-person workplace to a remote setting. However, he loved being in the office and creating a unique culture for the team, like playing The Office in the office, planning team activities, and playing games. 

“... If I want to continue to have the same culture I’ve always developed, I really have to think differently about how to create that in a remote environment,” he says. 

Experimenting in CX

Another thing Benny loves about customer experience is that there’s a lot of freedom to experiment and try new things. Because of this, he and his team can create a process that works best for them and their customers.

“It’s just such a fun space… to have a hypothesis, test it, and see it coming true,” he says.

One area where Benny saw an opportunity was identifying people who were reaching out to the customer service team that are not current Ollie subscribers and directing them to an incentivized customer sales sector whose sole job is to support potential customers. These specific agents receive training and KPIs all geared toward sales growth. By training specific team members to approach the customer conversation with a more sales-focused mindset, the Ollie team has seen increased conversion on those potential customers. 

Internally, the team is also researching how CX can impact customer lifetime value and retention. Because Ollie is a subscription-based service, Benny emphasizes that his team members should prioritize retention and keeping customers interested in the product.

“If we can reduce their effort, make it easy, educate them for future interactions too, [then] we’re going to positively impact retention,” he says.

Benny’s team has also experimented with proactive chatting, where an agent will connect with an online customer at the estimated moment when most users abandon the site. This new change helps the customer engage with the site and receive help if needed.

KPIs Benny Is Tracking

When he began innovating the Ollie CX team, one of Benny’s goals was clearly defining their CX strategy. Creating a simple customer experience mission statement — “to create a world-class customer experience that meets the pups’ and their parents’ needs” — has helped keep the team on board and working toward the same goal.

In each new hire class, Benny instills the value of aligning the company’s overall mission to the team’s vision, giving the new members an idea of how they should interact with customers.

“We are trying to be the best of the best and genuinely kind,” he says.

One of the team’s key metrics is the star-rating system, which monitors customer feedback. Additionally, Benny monitors other aspects such as customer effort scores, average reply times, and first contact resolution.

Tech Stack

Gladly - Benny likes that Gladly views interactions as a customer rather than just a ticket, which rings in the team’s goal to cultivate personalized connections with every customer. “That core difference really changes things,” he says.

Advice for Other CX Leaders

Benny advises others to empathize with their team in order to be successful CX leaders. If you want your team to succeed, you must constantly check in with your team members and remember how it feels to be in their position. Always consider the type of experience you are creating for your team.

“I have to be just as intentional… [when I interact] with someone on my team,” he says. “With the same focus and effort, I’d ask of them when they’re taking care of customers.”

Additionally, Benny wants each employee’s experience working at Ollie to be the best chapter of their career. He works with his team members to determine how to achieve that goal.

“Always focus on your employees’ experience, seriously,” he says.

Benny understands that in the CX space, it’s common for leaders to lose empathy for their team members, but this causes the team to suffer and puts the customer relationship at risk. When leaders show up for their team, the team can show up for the customers and create a positive environment for all.