We interviewed Anna Pettus, Vice President of Strategic Operations, Global Member Services at TechStyle Fashion Group, the parent company to JustFab, ShoeDazzle, Fabletics, Fabkids and Rihanna’s new Savage x Fenty. During our interview, Anna discussed how TechStyle is re-thinking the customer service experience while growing the e-commerce business.
Rosenthal: Tell us a little bit about yourself, work history, and your focus at TechStyle.
Pettus: My name is Anna Pettus, originally from South Carolina and now residing in Playa del Rey, California with my husband and 2.5 year old daughter. I graduated with a Sports Management degree and began my career in the American Hockey League. I suppose my love for fashion surpassed the excitement and chill of the ice rink and after six years I accepted a job with JustFab Inc. (now TechStyle Fashion Group) in 2011. TechStyle was founded in 2010 as a platform to build digitally-native and direct-to-consumer brands for today’s modern shoppers. Since launching its original brand, JustFab, the company has given rise to ShoeDazzle, Kate Hudson’s Fabletics, FabKids, and most recently, Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty.
In my current role, Vice President of Strategic Operations for Global Member Services, I am responsible for leading operational efficiencies and cross-functional groups to maximize success that focuses on digital services, brand reputation, experience and our North American operations.d
Rosenthal: As a leader in experience, can you describe the perfect TechStyle customer experience?
Pettus: The perfect experience for our customer is one that balances the customer’s needs in partnership with TechStyle in an effort to create a positive experience journey from start to finish. Because we are a tech-driven fashion company, we depend on our data and brand insights from across channels to better understand the wants and needs of our customers. The only way to create optimal experiences is to have your customers at the forefront of each decision you make as a brand.
At TechStyle, we are committed to analyzing all of our data and experiences; from ecommerce to the contact center to the customers experience with our bots and artificial intelligence. By taking a critical (but constructive) look into these insights and adjusting areas of our service journey, we can create the most seamless experience possible.
Rosenthal: What is one digital initiative you’re proud of that you’ve worked on at TFG? and/or what about your job are you passionate about?
Pettus: I am proud to be a part of a team that fosters the innovation gene -- we aren’t afraid to test and we aren’t afraid to fail. For example, we started testing Facebook Messenger as a support channel in early 2017. Our original intent with opening this new service channel, leveraging bots and real-time agents, was to deflect contact volume from traditional channels (voice/chat), and we are currently measuring a 90% bot containment rate. However, we are realizing that we want a hybrid of both deflection and service, and the program is now evolving into an all-inclusive channel for customers. We are also actively exploring returns and exchange capability, marketing opportunities and upsells for 2018 -- all powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language understanding.
Rosenthal: Can you talk a bit more about how you are rethinking the customer care experience?
Pettus: When I look back over the last seven years and think through how TechStyle has evolved and changed, it’s something most companies never experience. We’ve grown at a tremendous rate! One way we’ve evolved through the changing service landscape is that we operate on our customer care channels using just social, voice and chat. We discontinued e-mail as a service in North America in spring of 2017. When some people hear that we discontinued email, they think we’re insane, but we know we are only building ourselves up for the future evolution of service.
But what I saw in North America was that our consumers were evolving, and so were their “channels of choice”. TechStyle has chosen to evolve the service side of our business to support this new behavior and new opportunity. Additionally, how we engage our consumers is different by brand, by channel and by country. TechStyle consumers are savvy and they want to communicate with us; they want to be heard. We take all of that into consideration and that's how we make a lot of our strategic decisions.
Rosenthal: Beyond your work in care and consumer experience though, have you seen this channel be a revenue driver or increase conversion rates?
Pettus: Commerce is absolutely where we're headed! We have the ability to showcase our spring and fall catalogs in the bot, and can focus on raising average order value, brand loyalty and engagement. We're far along and mature on the service side, but we have not even begun to develop what we can do from the “return on investment” perspective in terms of commerce. The opportunities are endless with this channel and from my perspective, we're just getting started.
.
Rosenthal: Do you have any advice to brands interested in launching a Facebook Messenger chat experience?
Pettus: I continue to be excited about the work we're doing on Facebook Messenger. Any advice I could give to someone looking to launch on Messenger is that you have to have patience. We started working on our Messenger bot over a year ago, we’ve been constantly iterating, and now it has such robust capabilities. For example, we have shipping and tracking push notifications and intelligent automatic FAQs. We are trying to ensure this bot is intelligent enough to handle anything related to someone’s account.
Rosenthal: Unlike social media, which is one to many, messaging is one-to-one marketing at scale. When you think about the promise of the conversational space, what aspects are you most excited about?
Pettus: We have a complete team dedicated to Digital Service which is inclusive of chat, social, Facebook Messenger and new communication channels. While we are actively involved with the build out of our bot strategy on both traditional and new channels, we also have the ability to activate new channels for our customers: SMS, Alexa, Google Home, etc. We are positioning ourselves to be able to test when the time is right, and the desire for new channels is there for our customers.
For Messenger specifically, once you have an engaged audience on this channel, the opportunities are endless. From upselling and cross-selling to new product pushes that drive AOV and engagement, being able to reach our customers at scale but still be able to create curated experiences is a win-win for a brand. Messenger provides TechStyle an efficient way to interact with our customers in real-time on their channel of choice.
Rosenthal: How will machine learning and AI affect marketing, user acquisition and engagement?
Pettus: AI is unique in that it is continuously learning and teaching itself over time to create thoughtful experiences. Essentially, you can think of it as the voice of the digital technology landscape.
Coupling Machine Learning with AI helps the AI become more robust at making calculated decisions. When these tools are calibrated to work with each other, you have the ability to drive a new level of targeted marketing, customer acquisition, loyalty and engagement.
We are embarking on new territory where every day, human-like interactions will be masterfully built by AI and machine learning bots. Imagine a world where bots can be knowledgeable of product life and can direct message your customer with a replacement or upsell you with a like product that fits your customer’s spend and need.
Rosenthal: If a brand had a perfect data set, how should they use it to personalize their marketing efforts? What type of data should brands be most interested in collecting?
Pettus: For brands looking to create more personalized experiences for their customers, you can start by focusing on your customer profiles and identifying the types of shopping and service experiences you want to create based on personal preferences, engagement, purchase rate etc. We use analytics to improve the customer experience by looking at these data sets, and in addition, we are committed to traditional face-to-face feedback.
We host customer meet up events in select cities and our corporate offices in El Segundo in an effort to obtain direct feedback from the source. With over five million active members globally, real-time feedback -- whether online or face-to-face -- allows us to deliver high-quality, straight-from-the-runway products at unprecedented value month-over-month.
Rosenthal: What’s one final piece of advice you would give to brands, agencies and marketers reading this?
Pettus: Do not be afraid to push the limits when it comes to the Digital Service world, expand outside of your comfort zone and build a team around you that fosters innovation and is not afraid to try and try again. The beauty of all of this, is no one has written the play book for social and communication service channels, it is up to us all, as leaders in this space to embrace the evolution of service and write the book for ourselves.
And don’t forget, commit your brand and your team to fostering the relationship between brand and customer both online, in store and in person. With these frequent interactions you will be able to build out actionable results to better drive AOV, repeat orders, retainment, brand loyalty and service experiences long-term for your customers.
