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1. Building consistency: With 40 in-house agents at 1stDibs, Shane’s biggest challenge is creating a level of consistent service that still feels personalized.
2. Outcome oriented: Experience is great, but the ability to proactively problem solve is what Shane prioritizes when he’s adding to his team.
3. The need for speed: Shane’s current focus is vetting AI vendors, looking for a model that will that can provide faster, more consistent customer support.
4. Measuring success: When it comes to measuring agent performance, Shane says looking at the rate of escalation is a good way to see how well his agents are able to solve the problems customers are encountering.
5. Tiered service: 1stDibs has a category of tiered trade clients who get a higher level of customer support, and Shane thinks that type of concierge service might become a premium customers are willing to pay for as AI agents become increasingly common in the industry.
1stDibs is an online marketplace offering customers high-end art and luxury items from a worldwide network of trusted sellers. Shane Summers joined 1stDibs shortly after the company’s IPO as it began scaling its CX team. As you follow Shane’s story, you’ll see how much of his job is about knowing both the people on his team and the customers that they’ll be serving.
Shane Summers is the director of support at 1stDibs, a position he has held since July 2023.
Founded in 2000, 1stDibs is an online marketplace for luxury goods from high-end design items, to fine art to jewelry. The platform features items from a worldwide network of trusted sellers, and customers are offered the chance to negotiate prices as well as make direct purchases. The company went public in 2021 with an IPO that raised $115 million.
Shane managed the office of a title company in Texas, but it was in 2016 when he went to work for the Gerson Lehman Group in London in the financial services sector that he began to build teams at scale. In one instance, he went from 0 to 60 members in the span of two months.
“That's really where I found my strength,” Shane says. “But also, I got a lot of enjoyment out of it.”
In 2021, Shane moved back to the United States and found an opportunity at 1stDibs, which was just entering a phase of aggressive growth. Nearly five years later, the company has grown significantly.
“The organization looks nothing like what it did when I came in,” Shane says. “I'm super proud of that.”
Shane’s CX team includes 40 in-house agents with another 30 to 35 team members that can be added from offshore partners in India.
1stDibs has teams located in the UK, New York and Denver. New York is the only location where there is a physical office though employees there aren’t required to come in. The employees in the UK and Denver work remotely, getting together for social events.
1stDibs has a playbook full of instructions for how to handle any issues that arise. The key to creating a successful CX is creating a level of consistency in how agents interact with customers.
“That's the biggest challenge,” Shane says. “How do we get 40 to 70 people all doing the same task in the exact same way without losing that personal touch?”
One method is identifying top performers and then pairing those people with others who need guidance. Another method is to set up shadowing sessions, allowing agents to see best practices in action.
When Shane is looking to add to the team, he sees experience as a plus, but it’s not necessarily the most important criteria.
In fact, he pointed to several examples where 1stDibs has hired people from direct competitors who struggled in spite of their familiarity with the business.
So what does he value?
1. Versatility. He wants his team members to be comfortable communicating across multiple different platforms.
“I don't want somebody who's only been on email before,” he says, “and now this is their first job where they're going to have to talk to a customer on the phone.”
2. Independence.
“I look for people who are comfortable with a high level of autonomy,” Shane says. “Most people aren't going to be in an office and they’re going to spend most of their day without anybody next to them or anybody looking over their shoulder.”
One metric that Shane’s team tracks is the rate at which agents escalate tickets.
“That signals to me they need a little bit more help than their peers to get through their daily work,” he says.
It’s a cue for additional training and more monitoring.
“If we still see they’re having to escalate,” Shane says, “that might be a flag that this person doesn't demonstrate the level of autonomous problem solving that we need if they're pushing too much of their work to management to finish for them.”
There’s an emphasis on improving the speed of customer service, which is why Shane is currently spending a great deal of time meeting with and vetting AI vendors.
“Customer support is an excellent use case for a lot of these AI vendors,” Shane says. “There's a huge opportunity there to drive speed and consistent quality through some type of bot versus trying to train 40 people to always do the same actions the same way.”
In the short term, that’s going to lead to many companies incorporating AI to save money.
Down the road, Shane could see a situation where the proliferation of automated customer service could create an opportunity to commercialize human agents as a premium service.
“I think people will be willing to pay more for that,” Shane says. “That’s kind of my hot take on the future.”
The average order value at 1stDibs is almost $3,000, which makes customer retention one of the most important functions for the CX team.
“We feel like that's really where we can impact the most,” Shane says. “We drive customer retention through expanded support policies for those high-tier and high-spending customers. They get more time and more benefits should something go wrong.”
This is why autonomy is such an important trait in hires.
“We really ask everyone on the team to take this commercial mindset,” Shane says, “when thinking about how you're going to resolve an issue for a customer.”
1. What is the most important quality you look for when it comes to hiring a new customer support representative? “Demonstrated ability to be proficient in the role with a high level of autonomy. I really look for people who want a job with a lot of autonomy and will see that as a value add as a role. We’re going to leave you alone as long as you do what we ask you to do.”
2. What would you say is like the number one tool or thing or anything else in the world that you couldn't live without? “Slack.”
3. What is your favorite communication channel for customer support? “The fastest is phone, but the risk with the phone is that things are open to interpretation even with calls recorded and transcribed. For me, when I'm resolving like a issue, I like to use email because there's a paper trail of everything. I can really explain things out, provide supporting links and documentation.”
4. What was the last podcast you listened to that you found really interesting? “I recently did a long drive back from Texas, which is where my family is, and I listened to a podcast from the Huberman Labs. It was on common faux pas in public speaking. All day I'm speaking to large meeting groups, and I'm always challenging myself.”
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