Creating a Natural Experience

Delaney Shipman is the Guest Experience Manager at Buff City Soap, a plant-based product line that produces home products as well as personal care products made with plant-based ingredients. Buff City Soap offers a full line-up of products designed to help you and your home look, feel, and smell great while using plant-based products.

Who is Delaney Shipman

Meet Delaney Shipman, the Guest Experience Manager of Buff City Soap.

About Buff City Soap

Buff City Soap is all about handmade plant-based products, including a wide range of products for home like Laundry Soap and Room Spray, and a variety of personal care products like Bars of Soap, Bath, Bombs, and so much more. Their products are designed without harsh chemicals but with all of the delightful scents their guests love. Their mission is to create handmade products that are free of harsh ingredients and full of nourishing plant-based goodness. 

Delaney’s CX Journey

Delaney has been part of the guest experience space for quite a while, starting out with a retail position in other establishments before she joined Buff City Soap. But she also didn’t join the company as a manager. In 2021, Delaney joined as a soap maker. And from there, she continued to work her way up through the ranks before being promoted to Guest Experience Manager.

Today, she’s excited about the opportunities that her position offers, including the opportunity to introduce brand new customers to the company that she loves. 

The CX Team at Buff City Soap

It’s a good thing Delaney enjoys the hands-on aspects of guest services, because the customer experience team at Buff City Soap is intentionally built as a lean, highly efficient operation. The team operates in a hybrid structure, with Delaney based in-office at the Support Center and a remote associate supporting coverage. Delaney leads guest services during the week, while her associate manages weekends, ensuring customers always receive timely support.

Of course, having a small team can be great when it comes to keeping everyone on the same page, but when it comes to scaling for the holidays it can become a challenge. Seasonality is an industry-wide challenge in CX, and at Buff City Soap, it’s something Delaney plans for well in advance. The goal isn’t simply to handle increased volume, but to scale support without compromising the guest experience or the team behind it. By building strong workflows and preparing ahead of peak periods, the team is able to stay ahead of demand rather than react to it.

When it comes to scaling and hiring new agents, Delaney takes a hands-on, intentional approach to training. She models live ticket resolution and walks through the “why” behind each decision, giving agents the context they need to succeed. As they begin handling tickets independently, consistent quality checks and early feedback loops help reinforce confidence and ensure alignment.

That means live training showing how to solve tickets and all of the playbooks. For those who live nearby, Delaney may even bring them into a Makery, giving them a firsthand feel for the environment and what the brand stands for. These visits help agents better understand the guest experience and connect more deeply with Buff City Soap’s values. The important thing? Making sure they understand the ‘why.’ Without that, there’s no frame of reference for what the products mean to the customer. 

CX Team Success Factors

Keeping the customer experience team successful means focusing on two important things. First reply time and overall satisfaction from the customer. First response time plays a critical role in shaping guest perception and building trust. For Delaney, it’s not just a metric, but a key part of the overall experience, setting the tone for how supported and valued each customer feels from the very first interaction.

Understanding where friction exists is a key part of how the team improves the experience. Delaney has built reporting that breaks down OSAT and guest feedback by ticket category from online order fulfillment to in-store experience and rewards. This allows the team to identify patterns, not just react to isolated comments, and turn sentiment into clear, actionable direction for both cross-functional partners and field teams.

That’s one area where Delaney is planning to implement even more AI. While Delaney doesn’t believe AI will ever replace the human element of customer service, she sees it as a powerful tool for enhancing it. Beyond improving first response times, AI supports automation, surfaces trends across conversations, and frees up agents to focus on higher-impact guest interactions.

Looking ahead, Delaney sees AI continuing to shape customer experience over the next 5–10 years, particularly through automation, predictive insights, and operational efficiency. For her, the opportunity isn’t just in adopting these tools, but in using them thoughtfully to support teams, enhance decision-making, and elevate the overall guest experience without replacing the human element.

Using the Right Tech at Buff City Soap

What’s the most important technology that Buff City Soap is currently using? That would be Gorgias, the new E-Commerce helpdesk software that they’re currently transitioning over to.  

The Future of Customer Experience

What’s next for customer experience at Buff City Soap and elsewhere? Delaney believes that it’s all about AI. After all, that’s what she’s hearing all about at conferences, from guests, and more. But she’s certain it’s not going to take over all of customer service. 

At the core of guest experience is the human element. Empathy, judgment, and emotional intelligence can’t be automated, and they’re what truly build trust and loyalty. The goal of implementing AI is to handle repetitive work, so agents can focus on the more complex, emotionally driven interactions where that human touch matters most.

Being a Customer Experience Leader

The best piece of advice that Delaney has to offer for customer service leaders is to be curious and adaptable. It’s always going to be important to be flexible about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. In retail, the landscape is constantly evolving from new technology to promotions and incentives. For Delaney, strong leadership means staying adaptable while keeping the guest at the center of every decision, ensuring the experience remains consistent even as the environment changes.