👥 Join our private Slack community
Claim invite →
.png)
1. Implement AI Intentionally: As E-Commerce companies adopt AI broadly without strategic focus, Matt stresses that the real value comes from identifying core CX and business functions first, then selecting AI tools that directly support those high-impact areas, such as customer communication channels or subscription management.
2. Diversify Support Channels: Matt encourages leaders to integrate support channels with the goal of meeting customers where they are at. His team offers email, chat, and phone support, recognizing that a segment of their customer base still prefers speaking directly with human agents.
3. Build a Knowledgeable Team: CX teams in highly technical industries must balance broad product understanding with the ability to accurately address detailed, specialized customer questions. Matt and his leadership team train agents to develop deep expertise in Clearly Filtered’s products so they can confidently provide clear, helpful guidance on home water filtration systems.
4. Strong CX Leaders Draw from Experience: Matt’s path to becoming a CX leader wasn’t linear. His background in tech, combined with experience building customer relationships as a consultant, prepared him for his role at Clearly Filtered, where he balances CX tools with a customer-first mindset.
5. Don’t Lose Sight of the Customer: Matt emphasizes that, despite the rise of AI and new technologies, exceptional CX must remain rooted in a deep understanding of the customer. Leaders should design strategies and goals around their customers’ needs, ensuring their teams are equipped to serve them in the most effective and meaningful way.
With a background in computer technology and years of experience building client relationships as a consultant, Matt Dale was well prepared for his leadership role at Clearly Filtered. Since joining the company in 2023, he has taken on a broad scope, leading CX, technology, AI initiatives, and business intelligence reporting. By pairing a thoughtful, intentional approach to AI with customer-focused CX strategies, Matt has built a highly knowledgeable team equipped to guide customers through their water filtration needs, helping them feel confident that their water is clean and safe.
Meet Matt Dale, Customer Experience Leader at Clearly Filtered!
Clearly Filtered makes advanced water filters and filtration systems that target hundreds of contaminants typical filters can’t. Its breakthrough Affinity Filtration Technology filters chemicals, metals, and toxins that can’t be seen, smelled, or tasted, including fluoride, arsenic, and PFAS. Products are built in the USA and tested by EPA-accredited labs.
Matt Dale traces his entry into customer service back to high school, when he balanced computer repair work with teaching internet skills to senior citizens and leading an after-school program for at-risk youth. “I never had a typical first job,” he recalls. “I was essentially consulting on my own – whenever someone needed help and I needed the money, I’d go to their home and get to work.”
After college, he joined an Apple-authorized repair center in Ojai, California – a haven for creatives in music and film. There, Matt frequently supported industry professionals, helping to build and maintain editing rigs and computer systems for film projects. “That’s where I really cut my teeth,” he says, “taking my experience working with technology to helping customers.”
After a brief stint as an operations manager for a law firm during business school, Matt returned to the tech sector, joining Irvine-based SaaS company Illuminate Education. Originally privately funded, the company was later acquired by a private equity firm, sparking a period of rapid growth. “We completed nine acquisitions in just a couple of years,” Matt explains. “My role was to integrate those teams, including one I built in Bangalore, and align everything toward an eventual sale.”
When the company was acquired in 2023, Matt supported the transition but recognized it was time to return to his roots in customer experience. “I launched my own consultancy, Moxie CX, where I help companies build and scale their CX teams and implement new systems,” he says.
That work soon led to a deeper opportunity. After a friend asked him to support CX at his e-commerce company, Clearly Filtered, Matt initially joined as a fractional consultant before stepping into a full-time leadership role overseeing CX, technology, AI initiatives, and business intelligence reporting.
Headquartered in Rancho Santa Margarita, Clearly Filtered operates with an in-house organizational structure. From Boise, Idaho, Matt leads a team of five agents, and a manager – one team member is based in North Carolina, while the rest work on-site. This remote-hybrid setup enables strong coverage across support channels, including phone, email, and chat, ensuring tickets are handled efficiently throughout the week. “I visit the office once a month to interact with my peers in leadership and support for the team that’s in the office,” Matt shares.
Clearly Filtered’s core product line includes water filtration systems – pitchers, under-the-sink units, and fridge filters. The company follows rigorous testing protocols to ensure its filters remove over 350 contaminants commonly found in home water supplies.
“We need a broad understanding, but also the ability to dive deep and answer highly specific, technical questions—we have to get it right,” Matt says of Clearly Filtered’s science-focused product. Their customer base is often well-educated on water quality, so questions about contaminants like chromium-6 are not uncommon. He looks for team members who can think on their feet, stay resourceful, and recognize when an issue should be escalated to a team lead.
“Our goal is for everyone to improve and get a little better every day,” Matt says. Performance is assessed based on the quality of each agent’s work – how effectively they support customers and provide accurate answers to their questions.
If an agent is struggling but doesn’t speak up, it becomes difficult for management to offer meaningful feedback. “You can’t improve if you don’t know how you’re doing,” Matt explains, noting that communication is one of his biggest challenges as a leader. “If we’re not aware that someone is struggling or giving incorrect information, the assumption is that everything is fine.”
To evaluate his team’s performance, Matt considers response time, ticket volume, context (whether a ticket is simple or complex), and average handle time across channels. He also questions CSAT’s ability to fully reflect performance, asking, “Does it reflect the quality of response?” To gain a clearer picture, management uses Maestro QA to assess agent quality control feedback and review overall work product. “We look at the quality, we look at the quantity, we look at the types of tickets that come in, in combination, to give us an idea of how the team is performing,” Matt explains.
Gorgias - “We really like Gorgias because it gives an agent all the information they need for our customer in a single place. We use Gorgias for their voice product as well – we have three channels – voice, chat, and email.”
Shopify – “As a company, our shopping system is on Shopify.”
Recharge – “We use Recharge for recurring orders and subscriptions.”
Loop – “We use Loop for returns.”
KODIF – “KODIF is an AI tool. We’re running our chat and our email through KODIF first and using that to answer customers’ questions.”
“I feel like we hit an inflection point in the fall of last year, from a generative perspective, where the responses that AI can give and the research that it can do are actually useful in a way that before, it took a lot of work to get that chatbot tuned,” Matt says. With the help of tools like KODIF, he’s optimistic about chatbots’ ability to enhance the customer experience while supporting specific workflows and integrating with other systems.
“The other function AI performs well in a support environment is providing quick knowledge augmentation for our internal, human agents,” he adds. The ability to surface answers from past responses, prebuilt macros, and both internal and external knowledge bases gives agents a powerful advantage in resolving issues efficiently.
“I think the last thing AI does really well in a support environment is analyzing large data sets,” he notes. Tasks that once required extensive data mining and countless spreadsheets can now be streamlined, with AI organizing ticket data into centralized systems that capture both content and customer sentiment.
As a consultant, Matt has seen many e-commerce companies adopt AI without fully understanding how to leverage it to support CX and broader business goals. “Talking to other CX leaders, I tell them to focus on their core business functions—what’s actually going to move the needle,” he explains. Whether that’s managing chat and email interactions or, in Clearly Filtered’s case, helping customers navigate subscriptions, Matt encourages leaders to identify the areas that matter most and then choose tools that best support those priorities.
Looking ahead, Matt believes the foundation of CX will remain unchanged. “At its core, customer service is always going to be focused on the customer and their needs. My goal is to get them the answer they’re looking for quickly, with minimal frustration,” he says. As AI continues to evolve, teams that take a thoughtful, strategic approach to implementation can enhance the overall customer journey – using technology to reduce friction rather than create it.
Can’t-live-without-tool? Right now, we are really excited about KODIF. I think it’s really going to change how we do business, although we are still in implementation – about three months into it. Earlier, I would have said our Gorgias app – being able to answer tickets, having all our information in one place, and being able to see the entire life cycle of the customer is really helpful.
Key hiring trait? The ability to troubleshoot properly and isolate the issue. Determine if it is in this half or that half doing binary searches and being able to figure out the root of the problem, whether that’s in a technical situation or in more of an E-Com situation – being able to figure out what the customer’s issue is and get right to the point.
Favorite support channel? I think there’s different perspectives to that, depending on your customer base. I dislike handling phones because they’re costly and you have a lot of downtime with an agent. I would prefer chat as a synchronous channel as opposed to phones. I think email is the easiest to manage because you have time to think about the issue and how to properly resolve it. However, a segment of our customer base want to pick up a phone and talk to a human being; our goal is to meet our customers where they’re at and support them through their issue
Favorite book or podcast? Mercer Smith’s CXOXO book is fantastic. I enjoy hearing what Craig Stoss has to say when he’s on a podcast. Charlotte Ward’s Customer Support Leaders podcast is one of my favorites.
#1 Challenge as a leader? The people aspect. We talked earlier about work product and I think that’s really important and something that we’ve been working on quite a bit at Clearly Filtered. The goal is to get the right people, train them properly, to make sure they have the right resources to do their jobs well. “Did I set my team up for success?” is a question every leader should ask themselves regularly.
We're elevating customer experiences at 500 top E-Commerce brands (and counting). Let's see what we can do for you!
Learn MoreBook a call with one of our specialists today to see how TalentPop can assist you with putting together a solution for your customer service needs.
Learn More
.png)
