1. Invest In Your Agents: Sarah emphasizes the importance of investing in your team. Agents who are happy in their roles are motivated to best serve customers.
2. Quality Over Quantity Equals Success: Focus on hiring candidates who are excited and driven. Sarah believes success can be achieved with a small team of capable and inspired agents who feel purpose in their job.
3. Get in the Trenches: To be a good CX leader, you must step out from behind the desk and onto the front line. Sarah believes working alongside team members gives you a better sense of their experience, allowing you to offer solid advice and guidance when needed.
4. Focus on Communication: Talking with her team, Sarah has learned not just about the experience of Clove’s customers, but also about how she is performing as VP. She believes open communication between leaders and agents is critical for CX team success, both internally and externally.
5. Foster an Open Work Culture: Sarah focused on fostering a work culture where her agents feel heard and seen. She says that creating an open, safe space has not only built up the team, but it has also led to Clove making key strategies based on CX insight.
When Sarah Azzaoui joined Clove 5 years ago as the only employee under customer experience, she was tasked with building a team capable of bringing the emerging E-Commerce brand to the next level. Now VP of CX, she leads a dynamic CX team of members who are committed to both their roles and making Clove customers happy. You’ll want to read about how Sarah focuses on communication, learning, and adaptability to continually grow as a leader and achieve CX goals while keeping her agents motivated.
Meet Sarah Azzaoui, VP of Customer Experience at Clove!
About Clove
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When Sarah joined Clove 5 years ago, she was the first employee hired directly under customer experience. Her task was to build the company’s CX team and within just 2 years, she was overseeing 20 agents. Sarah’s quick success resulted from her past CX experience combined with an openness to integrate new strategies. She explains, “I have adopted many new tools to make us more efficient such as AI. We’ve reduced headcount as a result because we’ve achieved above 50% automation on all tickets.”
Presently, Sarah leads a CX team of 8 made up of 2 full-time managers supported by 6 contractors. “The CX function has expanded over the years for Clove, which has created tons of exciting opportunities for my agents,” she notes. No longer stuck in tickets all day, her team is engaging with customers through phone interviews to better understand their experience, conducting surveys, and analyzing data. When Clove recently expanded business to wholesale, the team stepped in to handle support. “It’s been a great opportunity for them to grow their careers while offering exceptional service across both channels, E-Commerce and wholesale,” Sarah says, excitedly noting that her role now extends beyond CX as a result.
What Excites Sarah About CX
At its basic level, E-Commerce is a transactional exchange between a consumer and a company for a good or service that takes place on a website. Sarah is motivated by the fact that her work allows people to have a human connection when shopping online. “It’s just making people happy. It’s knowing that I can control their experience with Clove’s brand.” If a customer has a question or problem with an order, it is the CX team’s duty to address it and find a resolution. “I always have a chance to impact someone in a positive way,” she adds. “They can come to us disgruntled, but I have a chance to convert them and make them a lifelong customer. And that is very exciting to me.”
Sarah’s drive as CX leader is furthered by seeing how her and her team’s contributions have impacted the company’s strategic decisions. “We’ve expanded into other markets from the insights that my team has shared about our customers and who they are,” she reveals. CX is at the frontline educating customers, individual and wholesale, about the Clove brand and what it stands for. “Knowing that our voices are everywhere, and our customers’ voices have a seat at the table because of the work that I get to do is extremely satisfying and fulfilling.”
Qualities Sarah Looks for in a CX Agent
When Sarah was first building her team, she hired seasonal agents understanding that with flexible, contractual work comes a lower level of commitment. As her vision for CX became clearer and strategies and goals were put in motion, Sarah focused on bringing in the most qualified people. After trial and error, she now looks for “a good person. And I mean exactly how it sounds. I look for someone who is smiling during the interview, who is excited, enthusiastic, and can hold a conversation.” Technical aptitude, the ability to learn skills, and adaptability are also important. “Training is intense. There’s a lot of processes to learn, and then to have to do that on top of platform training,” she says, realizing that a new agent, if not suited for the role, could feel overwhelmed.
Sarah’s Phase-based Approach to Training and Onboarding
“It has to be a phased-based approach – everything is new” Sarah says when asked about the training/onboarding process at Clove. New agents are shadowed by a more senior agent to get a sense of how they are grasping their duties. In the next phase, agents work independently with private views for managers who will then do QA about selected tickets. “That has been successful,” Sarah notes. “Because it’s so ring-fenced. You have a close eye on how they are doing.” Check-ins between new hires and upper level continue through that first month to go over training modules and SOPs (standard operating systems).
Sarah stresses the importance of communication with both new and seasoned agents. “Every time I have talked with a team member, I learn something,” she says. “They inform you so much about how you teach them. You must talk to them, and curate that open space and feedback loop.”
When Your CX Team Is Happy, Your Customer Is Happy
Sarah takes pride in the fact that every CX agent has been working at Clove for no less than 2 years. Looking ahead, she is focused on building her agents in their roles rather than the headcount of her team. “I’ve seen much better results – the performance has exploded – we have dedicated so much time to training, mentoring, coaching, and growing them,” she reveals while noting, “everyone who is here has a purpose, and it’s going to be so hard to replace that purpose.”
Another priority for Sarah is keeping her agents feeling happy, which in turn, keeps customers happy. Working with her leadership team, she has created an atmosphere where her agents feel seen and heard, knowing their feedback implements real change at Clove. “Making my team feel like they are part of the discussion and part of the strategy, because they are, is important. And I think it’s critical to success,” Sarah finishes.
Topics of Interest
Sarah’s Thoughts on AI in Customer Experience
An advocate of using AI in customer experience, Sarah says they are currently automating 50-60% tickets with a goal of 70%+ by the end of the year. After fully implementing AI into CX operations in 2023, Clove switched tech providers to reduce the number of complex automations, going from 100+ to 9. “It’s very detailed now. Every automation can do 15 to 20 different prompts depending on the situation.” AI requires ongoing QA of 3 hours a week to catch and correct AI errors. “You have to keep a pulse on it and make sure systems are in check,” Sarah reminds.
The Future of CX and How Small E-Commerce Brands Are Leading the Way
Sarah is optimistic about the direction that CX is currently taking at the industry level. For new E-Commerce brands like Clove, she believes that CX is part of the DNA. Whereas legacy retail names have subscribed to a “call center” approach to serve their customers, Clove takes a holistic view, providing support throughout the CX journey from start to finish. Sarah explains, “In those moments is when you see word of mouth increase and people coming back. Reviews say a person’s name – ‘Sarah helped me, and this is why I’m going to keep shopping at Clove.’” She continues, “That’s experience, and I think that more brands are realizing the value in that,” adding that the move of bigger, established companies to modernize their CX operations is exciting.
Sarah’s Advice for CX Leaders
“You are not above anything” is Sarah’s direct advice to rising CX leaders. She elaborates, “Get in the trenches with your team. Make them feel like you are a team member, because that’s the way you gain respect.” Any task asked of your team should be done by you first – only then can you offer sound guidance and support. “I know that I can hold a conversation on any single topic under the umbrella of CX because I’ve done it myself. And there are so many leaders that just don’t take the time to do that,” she notes while adding “I can honestly say that example has been shown to me by my own leadership team at Clove.”
Can’t-live-without-tool? It's our CRM, we use Gorgias.
Favorite communication channel for customers? I love live chat. I appreciate that it’s still digital, but it’s a live interaction and you have a second to think about how you’re going to respond.
Recent Book or Podcast? The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, which was tasked by our Founder and we read it as a leadership team. I appreciated it because it made me feel less insane. The book talks about all the common themes that a lot of businesses face and how to combat and get through them. It’s been about 2 years since I read it, and I still refer to some of the things that I learned from the book in my day-to-day now that I am a VP. I was a director at the time and remember thinking, “that’s crazy, that stuff happens?” But now I am experiencing it. A very good book that I recommend to anyone in a leadership role.
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