Who Is Ren?

Meet Ren, the Director of Experience at TUSHY!

About TUSHY

TUSHY is a modern and sustainable bidet company on a mission to bring bidets to homes across America and educate Western culture on the bathroom tech adopted by the rest of the world.

Ren’s CX Journey

When world events of 2020 threw a wrench into the launch of her vacation lodging startup, Ren—already a TUSHY customer—saw a remote customer service job pop up. On a whim, she applied, and TUSHY, with a backlog of 10,000 tickets, hired her immediately.

Her first day at TUSHY was an introduction to an unfortunately common CX nightmare at the time: No product in stock, a broken supply chain, and a long, disgruntled customer queue. “And so,” she mused, “in an experience where people were buying on preorder and waiting for it to come, without any clarity on when that would be, it was my first experience of seeing what brand love truly is.”

“In the earlier years, she says, “it had all been reactive email. It had been a response team. My thoughts were always on CX to be proactive. But you have to have systems in place to be able to even do so.”

The CX team had to get creative. “It meant a lot of logistical moves: opening up new 3PLs shipping direct from our manufacturers in Hong Kong to the US; figuring out how to white label; building landing pages with expected delivery times so customers could track their orders. We were,” she concludes, ”building the plane as we flew it.”

She planned to return to her startup ambitions as soon as her bank account was healthy again but started to see the possibilities of a long-term commitment. “Here I am almost 4 years later, having lots of fun still.”

The CX Team At TUSHY

“I have an incredible team,” she boasts. “I have my right-hand man, Dave, who’s one of the longest-tenured employees at TUSHY. He’s a senior CX manager, based in Brooklyn.” The majority of her 13 Poo-Ru agents are offshore.

While the team was previously U.S.-based, most are now in the Philippines. “We’re in a time of remote arbitrage, right? I can get great help around the world. The Philippines is astutely positioned for this because they’re native English speakers and they grew up washing their butts with water.” The offshore team also enables TUSHY to offer 24/7 support. “Because they’re on a 12-hour time difference, we’re able to have round-the-clock,” she says.

“We have a pretty robust training program and a really cool hiring funnel,” she states. When choosing agents, Ren looks for attentive, thoughtful, and outspoken candidates, with soft skills and a little knowledge of technology.

“We don’t need yes people. I look for people who are squeaky wheels,” she says. “During the hiring process, there are mistakes built in along the way. I expect them to flag, and that will show me they are really attentive to detail.”

Training is intensive, in part because the product requires a sort of home renovation. “We’ve built the training in Google Classroom—and thus have dubbed it the TUSHY Ass-Room. It starts with ticket basics but goes into plumbing, installation, and bidets. It’s a 2-week training process before they jump into the queue, and there’s a lot of shadowing with veteran agents and tag teaming.”

Customer support continues into the bathroom. “We have a video service that will actually come into your bathroom. It’s a Google Hangout call.” The agent can guide the customer through installation and answer any product use questions that come up.

Ren makes sure her team makes time for fun and games. “Every month, we have a space that we call TUSHY Gang that is just for hanging out for an hour. This week, we talked about what we were grateful for, in line with Thanksgiving here, and we played Pictionary. Other times, we share our hobbies or what our home workspace looks like or the things we can’t live without.”

All agents participate and no customer service is offered during TUSHY Gang. Ren says this might not make sense for other businesses, but she’s tracked the KPIs, and it’s working for TUSHY. In November, TUSHY Gang fell on the Tuesday after Cyber Monday. “I see the conversion rates and their first response times during this time. It’s like, they’re not fatigued. They’re bolstered by this connection.”

Top Challenges With An Outsourced Team

“It has its challenges,” Ren says, of working with an outsourced team, especially a home-based one. She cites time zone differences, children at home, weather, and infrastructure.

“The Philippines is impacted by typhoons. They lose electricity. We make sure they have certain apps on their phones so they can let us know,” she notes, adding “I think there’s a lot of people that thrive working on their own, but it’s about finding these places for connection and then setting up proper systems so you can inspect what you expect. I’m not going to micromanage because data speaks for itself. If you stay on top of it and you’re clear with your expectations, I think it can be a really beautiful experience.”

KPIs Ren Is Tracking

Ren looks at KPIs as a way to measure agent success, team performance, and ultimately, company performance.

“CSAT is king for me,” she says. “I say every single day: ‘quality over quantity.’ We don’t want just blind email responses. It needs to be thoughtful. And CSAT is the strong indicator of that.” She also tracks first response time, email, and chat, as a team. “When I see that lag,” she says, “looking at the individual level, the other things, CSAT, NPS—it’s not just about our team. It’s a diagnostic of the whole company.”

”Conversion rate is the other thing that we look at as a team. We don’t have a dedicated sales team within our team. We reward the agents when they hit certain goals as a group. The whole group wins if they’re hitting their individual goals,” she says, citing her years as an educator for helping clarify the goals of competition and reward. “If they unlock the goal conversion rate, they get a small bonus on a monthly level, which is a fun game.”

Tech Stack

Gorgias

Stella Connect

Okendo

Recharge

Sling with Clockify – Workforce management

Google Classroom – training

Slack

Google Hangout – Video call installation consultation

AI or Not To AI?

“I’m human all the way with AI supporting—a ton,” she quips. TUSHY recently integrated AI into ticketing, taking language from macros and previous emails. “It was pretty phenomenal, and the cool thing is, it’s not automated.,” she notes, adding that she expects her agents to customize the AI output.

Ren’s team has used ChatGPT to customize interactions. “Last week, a customer sent us—in Shakespearean verse—a whole ode, requesting a faulty product replacement. Cheryl, my colleague, took it upon herself to go into ChatGPT and ask it to mimic the tone for the response she’d written.” She laughs, “Then they had this whole incredible back and forth in Shakespearean language!”

AI is used in other facets of the business. “Some of our teammates work on higher-level projects. We leverage it for things like that, as well,” she says, citing presentation decks for Canva and complex Excel worksheets. “If it’s going to be an all-day project they did in 20 minutes, that’s fantastic for me because it allows them to focus more time on our customers and not banging their head against the wall, figuring out an Excel formula.”

“AI,” she notes in conclusion, “allows us to do higher level things that on their own might not be possible.”

Advice For Other CX Leaders

“One of my greatest learnings throughout my career is that crappy scenarios shouldn’t be lamented—they are opportunities. If you have a strong touchpoint, that can create the greatest brand and best ambassadors,” she says.

“Things are going to break. There are bugs. There are labor issues. There are all of these things we can’t control. It’s really how you manage it when people do flag these things to you. If you do right by them—educate them or whatever that may be—these are the things that people will talk about and not that the website was so cool or that their order was delivered on time.”

Ren suggests that good CX is the seed and she is seeing the organic growth of a community around TUSHY products. “Through email campaigns, through SMS, Facebook groups, a just-launched WhatsApp, a robust blog,” she notes. “It’s really about trying to meet people where they are. It blows my mind how much customer love and product evangelism there is that we’re not prompting.”