Who is Morgan?

Meet Morgan Wright, Customer Experience Manager at Parks Project!

About Parks Project

Founded in 2014, Parks Projects offers National Parks t-shirts, hats, and accessories with a purpose. Its goal is to protect and preserve parklands for generations to come by educating, advocating, volunteering, and activating park supporters to get involved in conservation. To date, Parks Project has contributed over $2,620,578 to help fund vital projects in National Parks around the US.

Morgan’s CX Journey

After graduating from college with a degree in conservation biology, Morgan was looking for an entry level job to tide her over until something in her field came along. “I found a seasonal CX position with a brand called Huckberry,” she remembers. “They’re amazing and I loved my team, which incentivized me to stay longer than planned.” She came to appreciate interacting with customers, realizing that the CX space was where she was comfortable and could cultivate professional skills. Eventually, Morgan got a job as a ranger in Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park – she worked there during the summer and continued working in CX during the winter.

When the position of Customer Experience Manager at Parks Project opened, Morgan saw it as the ideal opportunity to advance her career. “It’s this perfect blend of my passion for conservation with the CX work that I love and am good at,” she says.

The Team at Parks Project

Parks Project is a small company with 18 to 20 members who work remote/hybrid. Because ‘siloing’ happens in a remote structure, efforts are being made to foster internal culture and cross-team collaboration. 

Morgan highlights the recent opening of a ‘Discovery Center,’ or office space in Culver City, CA where local employees can go to work. “It breeds this mentality of community,” she says. “It’s encouraged to go there at least once a week.” Additionally, Parks Projects holds staff meet ups 2 to 3 times a year and has developed committees to address challenges in work culture. “These are opportunities for us to connect and create a better environment,” Morgan adds.

CX Philosophy

Parks Projects came from the idea of creating ‘souvenirs’ inspired by and in support of National Parks that resonated with people on a universal level. Morgan explains, “Our founders, Keith and Sevag, set out to make products with incredible designs, putting the money they made from sales back into the parks.” The company has expanded its line to various apparel, accessories, and home and outdoor goods. Looking ahead, Morgan says there are potential plans to return focus to key design products, such as t-shirts, which have been steadfastly successful and loved by customers.

Listening to and connecting with customers drives CX at Parks Projects. When customers requested that some items be offered at lower price points, the company opened an ‘Outlet’ on its website. Morgan describes the move, “Instead of listing markdowns randomly, they are put into their own section, which proved to be a better overall customer experience. Not only an opportunity to give our customers what they wanted, it helps conserve our brand for years to come through giveback.”

CX Team Success Factors

Asked to define great customer experience, Morgan says that at Park Projects, she and her team aim to make the CX journey as seamless as possible. “Our hope is that they don’t even have to reach out to the customer service team,” she says. Still, she acknowledges that situations arise in e-commerce and her team is prepared to handle them with attention and care.

Morgan reviews her team’s CSAT, and overall response and resolution times on a weekly basis. “We have SLAs for each and try to make sure that we are hitting our marks,” she says. Setting a high bar, they aim for a 95% CSAT score, which means “9 out of 10, we are winning with customers.”

For a holistic view of how the brand is performing, they run a NPS survey each quarter. “This gives a broad scale metric of how the business is doing with relationships to customers,” she says.

Prioritizing Proactive CX

Parks Projects understands that efficiency and adequate information are necessary for positive CX. Morgan remarks, “When people do reach out to our team, we strive to provide the quickest solution for their issue. Additionally, we want to educate them so they may not need to reach out in the future. We call this ‘next ticket avoidance.’”

Driving Retention

As an awareness-driven brand, Parks Projects is focused on retention through community. “We want to create a community feel for our customers,” Morgan says. With customer service comes a valuable opportunity for a brand to communicate its mission. “It’s important for us to make sure we’re living by our core values as a company,” she says about interacting with customers, “which is inclusivity, intentionality, and creating a loving atmosphere.” 

CX Goals and Priorities

Delving into customer feedback, Morgan has initiated focus group studies where she sits down and asks 10 customers about their experience with the brand. She’s learned that their customers are very communicative and appreciate human interaction and conversation. As the e-commerce trends toward automated software and AI driven CX, Parks Projects is paving its own path for the future. Morgan sheds light, “My focus is giving our customers what they want and hopefully fall somewhere in the middle – staying in line with industry standards but also concentrating on our customers’ desires and values.”

Top Challenges as a CX Leader

It’s not uncommon for an e-commerce company selling a diverse volume of product to run into software problems. Morgan notes that because this directly affects the customer, her team is the first to deal with the matter, often with little information to go by. To successfully manage these periods, she says "it's important to keep a level head, be nimble, and have a bucket of solutions you can pull from.” Proactive messaging is critical to let customers know what is going on. “People have expectations,” Morgan says. “If you’re not meeting those expectations, your customers deserve an explanation.”

This leads to another one major challenge - handling the ever-evolving expectations of customers. Morgan points out that judging from a website, a business may appear big, which results in it getting placed alongside industry leaders like Amazon. “We don’t have the same resources to replicate that kind of CX,” she acknowledges. “This is when creating trust and a sense of community with our customers really takes hold.”

Tech Stack

Zendesk - “Zendesk is our helpdesk software.”

Slack - “We use Slack and Monday for internal communications.”

Monday - “We use Slack and Monday for internal communications.”

Shopify - “Our transaction software is Shopify.”

Apparel Magic - “Apparel Magic is our ERP system.”

Loop - "Loop is our return software. They’re very easy to work with.”

Global-E - “For the international market, we use Globally. We’ve had wonderful success with them. They’re expensive, but if you’re a smaller business looking to go to the international market, Global E is owned by DHL, so they can get really great rates and quick shipping.”

Yotpo - “We use Yotpo for customer reviews and to host our customer loyalty program.”

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