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1. Failure Is a Growth Mechanism – Maddie reminds CX leaders that allowing agents to fail creates meaningful opportunities to learn and develop stronger decision-making skills and expertise over time.
2. High Agency Is a Core Hiring Value: Maddie seeks CX agents who are self-directed and take ownership of their work, encouraging them to approach their role with a problem-solving, figure-it-out mindset rather than waiting for direction.
3. Meet Customers Where They Are: Begin Health proactively reaches out via SMS rather than waiting for customers to come to them. Maddie believes personalized, human-led SMS onboarding sets the brand apart by making customers feel supported from the moment they place an order.
4. Avoid Micromanagement in Leadership: Over-directed agents default to following rules rather than problem-solving in the company's best interest. Maddie encourages leaders to trust their agents to work independently while realizing when to step in if the job isn’t getting done.
5. Self-Service Reduces Agent Load: Begin Health invested heavily in developing its online help center. Maddie believes that offering customers meaningful self-service has reduced the volume of work falling on human agents, easing burnout and improving efficiency.
Maddie Klug's entrepreneurial spirit led her from a career in investment banking to seizing an opportunity at Begin Health, a pediatric microbiome nutrition company, where she joined in 2024 as Head of Partnerships. Now in the role of Chief of Staff, Maddie leads an international, fully remote CX team, empowering agents to problem-solve independently while delivering a white-glove service that makes customers feel like they're getting support from a caring friend invested in their children's health.
Meet Maddie Klug, Chief of Staff at Begin Health!
Begin Health is a pediatric microbiome nutrition company. As an evidenced-based gut health brand, Begin Health empowers families to nourish and preserve the vitality of the gut microbiome. Its vision is that every baby inherits a thriving and resilient microbiome for a lifetime.
Driven by ambitions of becoming an entrepreneur, Maddie Klug began her career in investment banking, viewing it as a strategic steppingstone toward that goal. A chance introduction to Madeline Lauf, Founder of Begin Health, sparked a pivotal career change and in 2024, Maddie joined the infant, toddler, and kids' nutrition company. "I started as Head of Partnerships," she reflects and goes on to describe the wide-ranging role the start-up needed at the time. "I handled podcasts, healthcare practitioners, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, and corporate partnerships." Within just five months, she had transitioned into the role of Chief of Staff.
Today, Maddie's responsibilities span operations, finance, and marketing. "What is my CS function at Begin Health? CS is highly correlated with marketing," she explains. "And the fact that those functions are so tightly correlated has made it seamless to make sure that our CX agents are communicating with our email marketing, growth strategy, and so forth."
Maddie manages a lean CX team consisting of herself and two agents – one based in Brazil and another in the Philippines. Responsibilities are clearly divided: the Brazil-based agent handles tickets and fulfillment – Begin Health operates its own warehouse – while the agent in the Philippines oversees customer success, focusing on high-touch SMS communication.
Begin Health values CX agents who demonstrate high agency in their work ethic. "They should be entrepreneurial," Maddie explains, "willing to figure things out without having to pull in management every time."
When onboarding her latest agent in Q3 last year, Maddie recognized that the brand's CX training resources needed to be updated and streamlined for easier access and efficiency. Using ClickUp for project management, she built a centralized CS hub housing SOPs, daily trackers, monthly priority docs, and email and SMS macros. "When a new person joins the team, they can go into the hub and see everything they need."
Email is Begin Health's most active support channel, though customers also reach the team through SMS. The brand has invested heavily in building a robust online help center, with impressive results. "A lot of tickets are now resolved through the help center," Maddie notes, "which takes a lot of stress off our human agents."
Initially, Begin Health's customer onboarding strategy centered on phone outreach, but of 100 calls, only 10 resulted in conversations. The company's target consumer, mothers, were often caught off guard, too busy with their own kids to stop and speak with a CS agent. "We weren't getting that valuable of conversations and had very little data to go off of based on these conversations," Maddie explains.
In an effort to better meet customers where they are, Begin Health transitioned to personalized SMS onboarding through Kinship, a D2C customer care platform. "Right now, our agent is actually texting customers, helping them as soon as they order a product to explain how to use it. We're giving them this exceptional white-glove service, and it has been unbelievable," Maddie says. The approach has allowed the team to build brand trust while gathering invaluable customer feedback. Looking ahead, they aim to automate the process by leveraging Kinship's AI capabilities to reduce manual work.
Begin Health sees a spike in orders during Q4, driven by existing customers stocking up during Black Friday and holiday sales. But business truly peaks in Q1 – what Maddie calls Begin Health's "Super Bowl" – when parents become deeply focused on supporting their children's health through nutrition and supplements.
ClickUp – “We use ClickUp for project management.”
RichPanel – “We love RichPanel. I don’t think enough people are talking about it except the podcast, Operators. RichPanel’s Shopify integration is awesome. Our customer service reps can see all of the customer’s data right on the view. And their support – they answer in like 30 seconds.”
AI's impact on customer service is being felt across the board, with many e-commerce brands turning to automation and chatbots as a way to reduce their reliance on live agents. Maddie believes this shift will ultimately push customer service teams to expand into new areas of expertise. "The people on the human side of customer service will have to think much more critically and creatively – they need to have a marketing brain," she says.
In CX, there is a tendency for leaders to micromanage, which can cause agents to focus on doing what they're told is "right" rather than evaluating situations and finding the best solution for the company. Maddie believes CX leaders should give their team members room to fail, seeing those moments as opportunities to learn, grow, and ultimately make better decisions. At the same time, she reminds leaders to stay mindful of whether an agent's repeated failures are having a negative impact on the business.
Can’t-live-without-tool? Kinship. I implore everyone who has an opportunity to create a high-touch, white glove service to find a platform like Kinship. I’ve never seen so many customers so excited to talk to a brand. If it sounds like a person, and ours is literally a person, and we text in almost the same way as your friends – multiple lines rather than one long paragraph. We ask a lot of questions, it feels very personalized. We’ve been able to get more out of customers in these four months than in any other customer service tactic we’ve tried. Being a subscription business, our goal is to get customers to reorder. This platform has been great for us to nurture that relationship.
Favorite support channel? I’ll plug the brand – Taylor Duke’s Wellness. They sent me a bot text message asking about reordering protein powder with the option to skip, delay, or proceed. I pressed skip a month and it sent me a text message immediately confirming “your order has been skipped, your next order will be this date.” I responded asking “what is this platform? I manage CX and need this.”
Recent book or podcast? I listen to Operators constantly. It’s a bunch of E-Comm unicorns. I just listened to a really good episode talking about the five hardest roles to hire for in E-Comm.
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