Who is Coley?

Meet Coley Horner, Customer Engagement Manager at Stix Golf.

About Stix Golf

The founder of Stix Golf, Gabe Coyne, golfed casually for 20 years when he eventually wanted to upgrade his clubs. He found that there were only two options — beginner clubs or advanced clubs, which cost about $2,000 — and, ultimately, discovered a gap within the industry.

Stix Golf designs modern, accessible, and fairly-priced golf accessories for both beginners and pros. The company’s sleek, minimalistic designs are meant to build confidence in even the newest golf players. Stix Golf offers 14 different styles of clubs that fit every player, regardless of size or skill.

Coley’s CX Journey

Coley's first jobs were in retail and restaurants, and she pursued a career in graphic design. Her experience in these roles still informs her work in customer experience. In a period of transition, Coley found herself with an opportunity in Apple retail, where she realized her passion for customer experience.

“It was really there that I was like… I’m in the right place,” she says.

Apple retail is known for setting the standard of excellence for a high caliber customer experience. While challenging at first, Coley knew she had the right skills to be great at her job. The trick was figuring out how to use and apply them to find success. Coley started from the bottom in a part-time position and climbed the ladder, soon taking on leadership roles that furthered her passion for CX.

When Coley began working at Stix Golf, they had been experiencing tremendous growth. Coley herself had never played a full round (18 holes) of golf. Feeling the pressure from rapid growth, inexperience within the industry and the game, she jumped right in and started with re-building the department from the ground up.

When asked why she stuck around in CX, Coley shared that she loves that customer experience is never redundant. Even though you may have the same issues with customers, like helping them with a return, you never have the same interaction twice.

“You’re never talking to the same person,” she says. “You’re meeting and experiencing diversity every day, and you’re able to connect with such a wide network.”

Transforming a Start-up’s CX Team

When Coley started at Stix Golf, she came at a critical time — a “make or break” space, as she mentions. It was two weeks before Black Friday, and the company was getting settled in their new HQ and warehouse location. Due to a successful partnership with an influencer, there was an overflow of inquiries coming from potential customers.

Coley had to act quickly, making new relationships to quickly resolve operational infrastructure needs to support a successful customer experience & holiday season. Stix experienced many "firsts" at this time, and the partnership across teams (specifically Fulfillment) was critical to making magic happen for their customers.

“I spent every day saying, ‘What can I do today, what can I do by the end of the week, and what needs to be done by the end of the month?’”

Within her first 30 days at the company, Coley created a CX playbook and a policy that outlined the how-tos for every situation. She also spent her first few months working with executives and workshopping plans that would elevate the company’s situation.

Coley remembers that the elevation process took time because so much was happening all at once.

“You can’t shift anything on a dime,” she says, “It’s a continuous evolution.”

The Stix Golf CX Team

Coley manages a two-member team from a fully remote setting.

Every team member, including herself, answers help tickets and interacts with customers. Although there is an escalation plan for trickier cases, Coley is still involved in the field, helping customers whenever she can.

When Coley first joined the Stix Golf team, the company worked with Horatio, a customer support outsourcing company. Due to some restructuring, the partnership ended and the CX team experienced downsizing. She was then tasked with taking a smaller CX team and maintaining the same level of experience and performance.

Managing a smaller team can be difficult at times. Coley mentions that the success of the brand has brought comparisons to larger brands, such as Taylor Made and Calloway. With that comes higher expectations of customer experience.

“It’s kind of a balancing act,” she says, referring to her small but mighty team and aiming to achieve the expectations of a much larger brand.

KPIs Coley Is Tracking

Coley loves data and uses it to ensure that the numbers drive her team’s decisions and strategies. She looks at NPS and analyzes not only agent feedback, but also product reviews, SMS responses, and even social media comments to gauge how well the company is doing.

“Anything our customers are engaging with, that’s feedback that’s valuable to me,” she says. “It’s really important to know what my customers are saying [and] what I can start tracking because that can vary.”

Utilizing her experience in graphic design and user experience, Coley spends a lot of time on the website testing the customer journey, which helps her identify any areas where her customers can get stuck.

“I know the product and I know what we want, but if it’s not translating for me as an employee, then it’s definitely not going to translate for our customers,” she says.

Another metric that Coley keeps her eyes on, and perhaps the most important, is revenue conversion. She emphasizes the importance of revenue conversion because it’s the indicator that every customer leaves with a “complete experience.”

Revenue Conversion Through CX 

When shopping with common high-end retailers such as Apple and Lululemon, Coley knows that customers usually don’t leave with just one product because of upselling and cross-selling baked into the customer experience. When it comes to Stix Golf, Coley points out that a lot of golfers don’t know what they need because they’re new to the sport, which can help the CX team push complete sales.

“It’s our job to not only usher them in and say, ‘You can trust us,’” she says. “We’re here to meet you where you are and give you what you need.”

Coley emphasizes to her team that they should create a space in which a customer feels safe to ask questions about the product and the sport within each interaction. It’s important to cultivate a rapport with each customer to maintain a helpful relationship with them and understand their needs, ultimately to be able to suggest additional products that might improve their experience on the golf course.

From this stems the value of understanding the sport. When Coley takes on a new hire who doesn’t know much about golf, she makes sure that they learn more about it — like practicing swings on a golfing range — so they can answer customers’ questions with proper knowledge.

By connecting with the customer uniquely and genuinely, Coley says that you can bring them back over and over because of the consistently positive experience your team brings to the table.

“If you’re looking at a live chat or an email feeling like you had an in-store retail experience because that connection or level of service was so good, that’s what makes them [the brand] worth it,” she says.

That’s Coley’s goal — for her and her team to create experiences that “surprise and delight their customers so much [that] they’ll never look anywhere else.”

Tech Stack

Gorgias

Slack

Zowie

Shopify

NetSuite

Loop

AI or Not to AI?

Coley believes that there has been a cultural shift in terms of AI acceptance. New CX leaders are excited to see what AI can do, and Coley can attest to this.

Although the broader team at Stix Golf was hesitant to introduce AI in the beginning stages, Coley helped everyone reframe their perspective when it came to all that AI could offer the team.

“Everything is a tool,” she says. The difference lies in how you use the tool - taking the time to evaluate "what is the work only my team can do" versus alternate solutions allowing CX teams to be more strategic with their time, systems, and resources.

AI can complete smaller tasks like answering the more high-volume, one-touch tickets while an agent can spend time connecting with customers over the phone, which can be time better spent. Once the Stix team understood that time is a currency just as sales are, the team was more open to utilizing AI.

“If this one tool can give you back an hour a day to further invest in our customers or your own development within the company, what does that look like?”

Ultimately, Coley’s team found great success by incorporating AI. Since implementing Zowie, they’ve been able to increase efficiency and decrease their tickets by over 50% with the tool’s help.