At A Glance

Meet Lauren Lane from Primally Pure, where their merchandise and customer service are both customer driven. See how Lauren's unique combination of e-commerce acumen and empathy for nonprofits has molded a workforce that enjoys providing outstanding care and one-on-one encounters. Her story provides guidance on how to incorporate genuine customer service into a business that is expanding quickly.

Who is Lauren?

Lauren Lane is the CX Manager at Primally Pure!

About Primally Pure

Primally Pure started as a cosmetics company that was focused on delivering non-toxic hygiene and beauty products to a customer base that values healthy living. They’ve since expanded into home care products that are geared toward people who desire a natural, non-toxic lifestyle. 

Lauren’s CX Journey

Before beginning at Primally Pure Lauren spent nearly ten years working in the non-profit sector before transitioning to a role at Stitch Fix. 

“That experience (Stich Fix) taught me a lot, because they do things with excellence, and they treat their customers with such a high level of care.”

Lauren got her start at Primally Pure just five years after it launched. She enjoyed the challenges of watching the company scale up but takes even greater pleasure in how she sees its products influence people’s lives. 

Lauren believes that the nature of Primally Pure’s product line—non-toxic home and skincare items—creates a unique relationship between the customer service department and the people who contact them. 

“Our customers have always looked to us for more than just product information. They've looked to us for questions about their own lifestyle and how they could live more non-toxic healthy lives.”

Lauren appreciates the excitement inherent to her work. Even after years as a CX manager, she feels an ongoing thrill that comes from forging personal connections with the customers. 

“I would say, the personal connections that we get to create with our customers have always been really unique and special,” Lauren reflects. “There's always something new. There's always something exciting.”

The CX Team at Primally Pure

Lauren leads a team of four people at Primally Pure. For the past 13 months, Lauren's team has been functioning entirely in a remote capacity. Before this, they utilized a hybrid work environment. 

Presently, all team members are located in Southern California, allowing for occasional in-person meetings, typically occurring once a quarter. This allows them to foster a sense of connection and community while still enjoying the flexibility of remote work. 

Lauren’s team is small but efficient. “We've always functioned in a very lean fashion with our company,” she explained. However, the team’s size hasn’t impacted its efficiency. She says that everyone has their niches and roles, but flexibility remains important.

“We have several working moms on our team,” Lauren said. It’s very normal for her to modify schedules based on people’s personal schedules. While it can be difficult to juggle scheduling conflicts with a small team, it’s something Lauren is always happy to do. 

“I always make sure that that's a priority. I think because of that, we've been able to maintain our employees for a long time.”

Lauren’s willingness to prioritize work/life balance amongst her team has paid off. The department has experienced minimal turnover during her tenure and includes several employees who have been there almost as long as she has. 

Lauren views her department’s retention rate as part of its key to success. 

“It really contributes to a much better experience for our customers… People on my team are incredibly efficient and skilled and they have like the capabilities to provide an awesome experience instead of having to constantly be…hiring new people.”

Working for a company that focuses on not only providing women with healthy products but also educating them on how to avoid toxicity in skin care does change the perimeters of CX slightly. “Our brand is built on education,” Lauren said. 

“We've always provided a lot of language around that, a lot of tips, lot of encouragement, suggestions. so we have a very robust macro catalog of how we address a million different issues.”

KPIs Lauren is Tracking

Lauren focuses on the significance of CSAT scores as a crucial guiding light for her team's performance. She actively tracks these scores every week, noting consistently excellent numbers from her team, even during onboarding. 

Lauren sets a minimum CSAT score as part of the onboarding process, aiming for the team's standard of 4.4.9 and above. During slower periods, she focuses on low scores not to assign blame but as an opportunity to collaboratively address challenges and enhance the overall customer experience. 

Lauren’s employee-centric approach to management extends even to how she reviews and ultimately tries to improve KPIs. 

“I don't use it as an opportunity to say, well, could you have done differently? It's more, well, we have this customer's information and how they've scored this low score. What can we do now to get it back to a five?”

Beyond CSAT, Lauren also reviews tickets based on the number of hours worked each week to make sure team members are meeting their minimum requirements. 

Ultimately, however, Lauren is very pleased with her team’s impressive 4.9 CSAT average. “We always want to reflect that really personal and friendly tone as a brand. That's like our brand voice and I think that our team has really understood that.”

Tech Stack

Gorgias

Yotpo

Recharge

Shopify

To AI or Not To AI?

While Lauren’s team has experimented with AI features, so far nothing has been able to match the level of support that human staff provides. “We did test that out. We found that our customer was immediately having very negative responses, not having that personal interaction.”

Lauren believes this response owed partially to the company’s established brand. She says long-term customers were simply used to a highly personalized experience. 

Right now, she doesn’t see AI as offering an enticing value proposition. “I think until the offerings are either more developed or significantly less expensive, it doesn't make sense to take away from the customer experience.”