At a Glance

Carly is the Product Manager of Spectrum Boutique, a sex-positive sex toy store that offers toys and products as well as sexual education to any adults who are interested. Their products are marketed to adults in general rather than being gendered or being directed as specific types of people. This, along with their educational content, helps customers to explore and feel more comfortable with their own sexuality and experiences.

Who is Carly?

Meet Carly, Product Manager at Spectrum Boutique!

About Spectrum Boutique

Spectrum Boutique was founded in 2015 in Detroit and since then has only continued to grow, offering more and more products as well as educational content. The goal of Spectrum Boutique is not just to provide sex-positive sex toys to customers, but also to help those customers to learn more about themselves, their health, their sexuality, and their preferences through educational content.

Carly’s CX Journey

Spectrum Boutique wasn’t intended to start as an online store. Rather, the owner wanted to open a brick-and-mortar store and was struggling with the permissions to make it happen. After all, adult toy stores can be a bit more regulated than others.

As a result, the owner decided to start with a website and a warehouse that she was doing all on her own. Including the website, the product uploads to the website, the customer service process, the shipping and everything else required to run the company. And it started to do well.

As a result, she was able to hire someone into customer service. For Carly, everything seemed to happen in just the right time, because she had lost her job just before the pandemic and joined Spectrum Boutique in the midst of it. She had already known the owner previously and the opportunity turned out to be just right for all of them.

With her experience in customer service, Carly was a great fit for the team and she loved the opportunity to grow with Spectrum Boutique. And being able to help customers and put out fires along the way really helped everyone. But that wasn’t the end, because Carly eventually became the owner-operator for Spectrum Boutique.

It happened slowly, as the team realized that she had more skills than just customer service. It grew into curating the website, product picking, and even adding new items to the lineup. She’s even responsible for the product copy and curation, to really keep improving the business and her own skills and abilities.

The CX Team at Spectrum Boutique

Customer service is an essential part of the team at Spectrum Boutique even though it’s a small team of only three people. Zoe, who is the owner, Carly herself who does customer service and product management, and Valentine who is in charge of marketing. Outside of that is simply a warehouse partner and some developers working with the website. But the team at Spectrum Boutique likes to keep things simple and in-house.

By keeping things close and internal it’s possible to keep a more family feel and make sure that the brand voice and all of the creative marketing are fully controlled by the team. It keeps the voice more authentic and central to the company itself.

When it comes to handling those customer questions and concerns, Carly says most of them choose email or even text to communicate. While it’s possible for customers to call, most of them don’t use it, after all, Carly admits that in the adult retail space it can be a little awkward for customers to call. And where the chat feature was once available, it was never a good one for Spectrum Boutique, so it was ultimately cut.

Taking Care of the Business

When it comes to taking care of things in the business, Carly is responsible for all of the customer service emails. She’s responsible for product issues and questions and anything else that customers might need. And when she’s not handling customer service situations, she’s adding products and putting new things on the website to make sure they’re offering the best for the customers.

Understanding the CX Philosophy

What does it take to make customer service work at Spectrum Boutique? Carly’s philosophy is to make the customers happy. The goal is to make sure that they never walk away unsatisfied with the products they’ve purchased. Sometimes that means working with them to find something that fits them and their needs even after an initial purchase. It might mean offering a discount on a new product but it definitely means making sure to help customers as much as possible before the sale as well.

In order to do that, Carly makes sure that the product descriptions are as detailed as possible and also that they offer as much support as possible. In general, it’s about killing them with kindness, no matter what’s going on.

CX Team Success Factors

Boosting revenue and continuing to grow the business is always important with any business, and it’s no different for Spectrum Boutique. But the philosophy by which they do it? It’s all about making sure they do what they do best, providing excellent service and products for their customers. Carly credits the way they curate their catalog and speak with customers as well as making sure that the entire website is user friendly, and creating a social media presence that appeals to their customer base.

Looking to the Future of Spectrum Boutique

There’s always more that can be done when it comes to any business, and Carly’s plan for Spectrum Boutique starts with expanding their Spectrum Essentials line. This line of toys that are entirely their own is quite small, but they’re looking to add in new products including toys and even lubricants that will be entirely their own.

Encouraging Future Entrepreneurs

The most important thing when it comes to starting out on your own is making sure that you know your audience well and therefore that you’re putting out products and running your business in a way that speaks to them. By focusing on the audience and what they need it’s possible to be successful and it’s possible to continue to grow.

As an entrepreneur you just have to make sure that you’re doing whatever it takes to provide what your audience is looking for every time. And while it’s okay to test out something new, recognizing what they really want and what they don’t is crucial to any business.