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How FabFitFun Leveraged Granular Feedback To Improve Customer Service

While FabFitFun has expanded its customer service department from approximately 20 agents to 200+ agents over the past two years, the brand has done more to enhance its service than just invest in manpower. The seasonal lifestyle and subscription company doubled down on its ability to monitor conversations between its customer service agents and shoppers, to better inform the reps about the impact, successes and weak points of their interactions.

In implementing the Stella Connect customer feedback platform, FabFitFun has:

  • Maintained an average customer satisfaction (CSAT) score of 95;
  • Decreased agent departure rates;
  • Included agent photos and quotes in emails;
  • Enabled team leads to better coach agents on mistakes; and
  • Better understand who its highest performers.

The availability of granular feedback arguably has been the biggest benefit for the customer support team, which is split between a call center at the company’s Los Angeles headquarters and one in the Philippines, since implementing Stella Connect. Caitlin Logan, Director of Customer Experience at FabFitFun, noted that prior to using the platform, the company used a survey tool through its CRM platform to send post-interaction CSAT surveys. However, these were limited to a simple “Are you satisfied?” question and a request for comments. Additionally, agents did not even have access to shopper comments that could have potentially helped them improve in the role.

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“This did give us some data and it gave us an opportunity to follow up with people who gave us a thumbs down, but it really only scratched the surface,” Logan said. “I was excited for the customer support team in using Stella Connect. It’s not just a thumbs up or thumbs down, it’s a sliding scale of a one- to five-star rating. On top of that, the customer gets to say that there are certain sorts of excellence that your service agent did well at. If it’s a low-star rating, there’s also areas where they can rate whether it’s a specific effort issue, or grammar issue, that didn’t satisfy them in that interaction.”

FabFitFun takes other steps to get honest feedback from customers. The retailer humanizes the agents for customers by including their photos within emails, along with a tidbit on where they are from and a quote from them detailing why they enjoy FabFitFun. This generates more specific feedback, and at a better rate, because it feels more like a friend-to-friend conversation, according to Logan.

Real-Time Feedback Enables Team Leads To Coach Service Reps

Positive feedback from customers is collected and shared directly with agents in real time throughout their day via streams, dashboards and leadership boards. Negative feedback, when it comes in, gives the agents a chance to self-correct and proactively reach out to team leaders for help or clarification. This can reduce the coaching burden on team leaders, who now can focus on exactly what needs fixing.

“Overall, there are 22 team leads who all have eight to 11 people on their team,” Logan said. “We have coaching sessions depending on whether it’s a veteran agent or someone who’s new — they might get more or less coaching. But there’s at least 30 minutes designated to every agent on the floor from their team lead on a biweekly basis. We encourage team leads, if they see a negative satisfaction rating that needs to be addressed right away, to walk over to that team member, sit next to them and help them understand where the disconnect is.”

FabFitFun also recently introduced the platform’s service recovery functionality, ensuring that after a negative customer interaction takes place, it is flagged within Stella Connect feedback streams and a new ticket is automatically created. The team lead collects and prioritizes all negative feedback to decide whether it is appropriate to follow up directly with the customer. This leaves the customer support team with a “no stone left unturned” attitude to ensure that they can always make up for a poor experience.

2019 Goals Remain Lofty

With that in mind, the lifestyle company now has the 2019 goal of getting its average customer support star rating up to 4.95 out of a 5.0 Stella satisfaction rate.

Aside from the development efforts with its customer service agents, FabFitFun has been very busy in 2019, closing an $80 million funding round in January designed to help the company expand its membership offerings, evolve the platform as a launchpad for brands and expand globally. On May 15, the lifestyle retailer made its first move outside of North America, launching in the UK.

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