At A Glance

Léa-Jeanne Thibault compares her group of workers to warriors on the front lines of e-commerce rather than just someone heading a team. Discover how her team is playing a crucial part in shaping the future of customer service and how she is influencing it by emphasizing empathy, transparency, and teamwork.

Who is Léa-Jeanne?

Meet Léa-Jeanne Thibault, Customer Experience Team Lead at Silk & Snow!

About Silk & Snow

Silk & Snow was founded in 2017 on the belief that transparency shouldn’t be a luxury. The company’s highly-curated sleep-essentials are manufactured thoughtfully using high quality, sustainable materials. Silk & Snow’s mattresses are locally-made in its hometown of Toronto by experienced Canadian craftsmen using the best traceable, locally-sourced materials.

Léa-Jeanne’s CX Journey

While studying psychology at University, Léa-Jeanne decided to take some time off and accepted a CX agent position at Silk & Snow. The job was only supposed to be for a couple of months, to pass time until she figured out her next steps. Instead, Léa-Jeanne was introduced to a new career path. “I ended up really enjoying it and found out that a real passion of mine is talking to people,” she says. That Silk & Snow was a growing company also appealed to her. “So many ideas were always heard and listened to and there was always something to do” she remembers. “Being a part of the first steps of branching out the team was really amazing.” After one year, Léa-Jeanne advanced to her current role of Customer Experience Team Lead.

CX Agents: The Soldiers of E-Commerce

Asked what excites her most about working in CX for E-Commerce, Léa-Jeanne directs attention to the collaborative structure of Silk & Snow. The different teams are inter-connected with customer service getting a strong sense of operations and workflow throughout the whole company. Léa-Jeanne reveals that unlike large corporations, which tend to be more isolated, when an issue occurs, she can understand and empathize with the other departments. Elaborating, she uses an analogy to describe Silk & Snow’s structure, “I view CX as the soldiers, the operations team as the barricade around the town which holds the different departments. We are representing the company. When you believe in the mission, the values, and the product, at the end of the day, you’re happy to do your job.” Her team is motivated by positive interactions with customers and good reviews while seeing growth and more orders coming in.

The CX Team at Silk & Snow

Silk & Snow’s CX team is comprised of 15 members, which includes 3 team leads, a brand ambassador, and a manager. Using a hybrid model, some team members work in the office while the rest work remotely. The team’s structure and size has remained consistent since she joined Silk & Snow nearly three years ago – a reflection of strong company culture. “We’re very lucky. There are a lot of anniversaries coming up – we have very good and loyal employees.”

CX Philosophy: Transparency, Personal Approach, and Quality

The core value of CX at Silk & Snow is transparency. “If there are issues, we want to be as proactive as possible in letting the customers know,” Léa-Jeanne explains. A personal approach to customer engagement is encouraged - noting that someone has a pet or children to ask about in a future interaction builds a meaningful relationship. Looking past numbers, Léa-Jeanne stresses quality to her team by taking the time to formulate thoughtful and accurate responses whether talking on the phone, writing an email, or live chat.

Maintaining CX Values During Rapid Growth

Despite Silk & Snow’s rapid growth, the key values of CX have only gotten stronger. Léa-Jeanne believes this is because the company’s foundation was built from the ground up by people, like herself, who have been with there from the beginning. Having been a part of those early discussions along with setting up official processes and creating SOPs put her team in a more confident spot for “being as fully transparent as we can from having clear communication with our operations team to making sure our customers are kept informed with detailed emails about orders.” She reminds her agents that even if they are talking to numerous people a day, they must maintain a personal approach with each individual customer.

CX Team Success Factors

Leveraging Technology Tools for CX

Taking an intentional approach to technology, Léa-Jeanne says “what’s worked best for us is not over researching a tool until we fully know if it is going to serve us, and until we are at the point where we need it. The CX team’s core stack starts with Zendesk, “an all-in-one tool” that Léa-Jeanne used to build out a help center and chat bot for Silk & Snow’s website. TypeGenie helps the team write emails more efficiently. The team uses Asana to organize, track, and manage workflow and customer orders.

AI and Customer Experience

While Léa-Jeanne is open to using AI in customer experience, she advocates the importance of maintaining human touch. Silk & Snow’s customer base appreciate that they can easily access and talk to agents when needed. “A personal approach is the foundational part of our CX philosophy,” she says. “With AI, it’s about making sure that we find the right fit, then building it correctly so that it works perfectly for us. As long as it’s supporting your team and your values, and not replacing them.”

Meeting Customers Where They Are At

A main objective for Silk & Snow is meeting customers where they are at and the Toronto-based company provides customer support 7 days a week (Monday-Friday 9:30am – 8:30pm, Saturday and Sunday 9:30am – 5:30pm). This extensive accessibility is reflective of her team’s growth and commitment, Léa-Jeanne says. “I’m happy that we are in a place where we can offer this service. Having trusted team members with the proper tools in place has really made a difference.” 

When Going the Extra Mile for a Customer Pays Off

Sensing that a customer who was having tracking and shipping issues was about to cancel their order, Léa-Jeanne took a personal approach to find resolution. “I told them that I will be their point of contact if they need further help,” she remembers. By being transparent, empathetic, and taking accountability, Léa-Jeanne turned the customer’s experience around – they were 100% satisfied. Noting that her team can share many more stories like this one, she directs attention to Silk & Snow’s positive Google reviews as evidence.

Tech Stack

Zendesk “Zendesk is our “all-in-one” tool. With Zendesk Explorer, I was able to build out multiple dashboards that we use for metrics, knowledge-based macros, and updating the tagging system – having that insight about what people are inquiring about has been life-changing.”

TypeGenie “We use TypeGenie to help our agents write emails more efficiently.”

Asana “We utilize Asana to organize and keep track of tasks and customer orders.”