At a Glance

Emily Goodwin Sharpe is the Head of Customer Experience and Leader of the Global Happiness Team across the Australia and UK offices of Mustard Made, a global brand that creates statement storage that’s bold, beautiful and built to last. 

Who is Emily Goodwin Sharpe?

Meet Emily Goodwin Sharpe, Head of Customer Experience and Leader of the Global Happiness Team for Mustard Made.

About Mustard Made

Mustard Made is a cult homewares brand known for its colourful palette and love of metal lockers in all shapes and sizes. The original locker lovers, Mustard Made makes beautiful, functional homewares to help you organise your life with style.

With ‘original lockers’, inspired by the retro school locker, as well as an elevated glass panelled collection, these lockers create a beautiful addition to any home or office. They come in different sizes so you can store as much or as little as you like, with single doors, double doors, long, short, and tall designs and a whole lot more.

The idea is getting a locker that fits your style and your needs.

_{Emily Goodwin Sharpe’s CX Journey}

Emily was the very first employee hired for Mustard Made when the company was founded seven years ago. At the time she was brought on as the part-time Office Manager, but as the company has grown, so has her role in it.

She has served as the People, Culture, and Customer Experience Coordinator, the Customer Happiness Manager and now Head of Customer Experience. And she’s made the jump to full-time with the company as well.

When it comes to what actually led her to the customer experience and got her excited about this, Emily says she’s actually always been interested in understanding people and helping solve problems. It’s all about staying close to the customer and creating a meaningful impact on their journey. And her career history reflects that.

As a previous business owner herself, Emily has an understanding of how to lead people and how to motivate them. With her experience in HR, she’s been even more at the forefront of helping employees. It’s all led her to being extremely hands-on in the customer experience but also being able to look at the big picture of what needs to be done for the business.

The CX Team at Mustard Made

Customer experience is an important part of the team at Mustard Made, but it’s still a relatively small team with only four members. Two are based in Australia and two in the UK, with offices located in both areas. Even still, they work with a hybrid model and it works out well for everyone.

When it comes to making sure the team is where it needs to be, Emily believes that it’s all about balance. It’s about making sure that customers are supported, but also that the team is able to grow and that they’re welcome to make their own suggestions and feedback for the customers. She wants all of her team to know that their insights are valuable and that customer service isn’t all about being reactive. It’s also about looking at the processes and the offerings to make sure that they’re giving customers what they need from the start.

Hiring for the Team

Hiring someone new for the customer experience team means making sure that they are going to be a good fit. And the first thing that Emily looks for is their attitude. After all, she believes that you can’t teach attitude. But finding someone who is thoughtful and kind is extremely important. On top of that, problem-solving, caring about their job and their customers, confidence in making decisions and also a person who is open to learning and growing and accepting feedback is essential.

CX Team Success Factors

Communicating with the team at Mustard Made is actually quite simple. They have an AI agent that handles some of their communication through each of their stores but there are ways to get in touch with live agents as well. Social media and email are big options that still have a lot of customers reaching out, even with the rise of AI chat.

One aspect that she considers important for tracking is the number of messages per conversation between customers and the customer experience team. While she’s not really looking at reducing the quantity of messages, she is looking to cut the first response time and the resolution time.

Communication is essential to her approach, and she encourages team members to speak with customers in a way that is kind, clear, and supportive. 

The Future of Customer Experience at Mustard

The number one thing that Emily is focused on is making sure that as they continue to roll out AI in the company, it stays true to the brand and to their vision. It’s important that the AI is personalized to the audiences that they serve because every audience is different. Going from the US market to the European market can be a big change, after all and Emily wants to make sure that AI responses and offerings are tailored to each of them.

What does it take to make sure that happens? It takes training and upskilling the team to make sure that they are confident with the AI system and that they are offering feedback to ensure it’s doing things the Mustard way.

Looking at all of their offerings and making sure that they’re always aligned with the brand, and that the team is confident in representing the brand, is essential for the future of Mustard Made.

Embracing AI

What does AI look like at Mustard Made? It’s not just about the AI agent handling chat features for the customers. Mustard Made is also looking at other ways AI can help. But Emily wants to make sure that the rollout and the uses for AI all feel genuine and that her team understands they’re not being replaced. Instead, AI is used as a support function to support the workload and give customers quick and easy answers that don’t need a human involved.

That’s because Emily believes that having that personalized touchpoint for customers is essential to make sure that they’re getting what they want and what they deserve from the company at every turn. To do that, they make sure to support the customer throughout their journey with their product, not just at the time of the purchase.

Being a Strong Customer Service Leader

For Emily, the number one thing that it takes to be a strong customer experience leader is just being a person. A genuine, real person. She acknowledges that those first chats or emails can be the worst, but you should never take it as a personal insult or a personal attack on you. The key is understanding that the customer just wants to be heard and that the customer service team is meant to hear them and offer solutions.

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