At A Glance

As soon as Amrita Kisnamasamy began working in customer experience seven years ago, she knew she saw it as an avenue for driving systemic change. For the past three and a half years, that’s exactly what she’s done at Thesis, creating a CX team that’s not just able to patch the problems that come up, but is part of the engine that drives the company forward. As you learn about her perspective on CX, you’ll be inspired by the way she sees it as a potential competitive advantage for companies.

Who is Amrita

Meet Amrita Kisnasamy, Head of CX at Thesis.

About Thesis

Thesis is a direct-to-consumer brand selling cognitive performance products, which are known as nootropics. Founded in 2017, Thesis takes an individualized approach to wellness, customizing its products according to each individual’s unique brain chemistry and desired cognitive state. As a company that prides itself on pharmaceutical-grade testing, Thesis applies the same data-driven, results-oriented approach to customer care.

Amrita’s CX journey

She started her CX career as a frontline agent at Make Space, a moving-and-storage startup. Right away, she knew she wanted to work her way up to a position where she could drive systemic change. En route to becoming a Team Lead, though, she also discovered she had something of a knack for managing people. “I love being able to nurture and grow a team,” Amrita said. After four years at Make Space, Amrita came to Thesis. While it was an entirely different category, Amrita said health and wellness had always been top of mind for her. “It seemed perfect,” she said. She joined the company more than three years ago, coming aboard at a pivotal point when the company was rebranding. That gave Amrita the opportunity to shape the CX team, defining its systems and best practices.

Thesis’s CX team structure

Amrita heads up a lean, layered team that works remotely. That is a huge plus, said Amrita, giving Thesis access to the best talent across multiple time zones. Amrita has two managers who report directly to her. One handles personnel: training, learning new processes or skill development. The other is more focused on operations: bringing the voice of the customer to different departments, identifying issues and pointing out small fires that might need to be put out day-to-day. Each of those managers has a team of frontline agents, with senior agents assigned to higher-tier tickets and Tier One agents in charge of more basic questions about the company and its products.

Thesis’s CX philosophy

The goal is to meet customers where they’re at, which means being there at the moment they start to feel unsure or are unclear on the next step. “Not everyone wants to pick up a phone and call,” Amrita said. “That’s the last thing that someone wants to do when they have a problem.” Email is handled through Zendesk, which accounts for most of the volume. There’s also a chat available through the help center and in the Thesis portal. Additionally, team members in charge of monitoring social-media content are not only watching for problems, but they’re equipped to address those issues immediately. “They are cross-trained on brand voice,” Amrita said, “So they are able to handle DMs and any customer questions that are coming up through comments or our ads or anything like that.”

Cautiously using AI

Thesis is experimenting with AI to see how it might help answer some of the Tier One questions about its products and the different formulations. Agents use Swift CX’s AI Copilot, which is capable of pulling a customer’s history and help tickets. Amrita said the goal is to make things easier for the company’s agents, though, as opposed to automating the process. “I approach a lot of these tools with a lot of caution,” Amrita said. “They should enhance the human connection that we have. We're not looking to replace it. We don't want to compromise everything that we've built thus far in terms of personal connections we've built with our most loyal customers.”

CX is more than a cost center

Amrita sees a future in which executives see CX teams as assets as opposed to a necessary expense. After all, the CX teams are sitting on a veritable gold mine of information about customer preferences in addition to a record of the problems that crop. “If done right,” she said, “the CX team can be used for a proactive approach being predictive and personalized. The future of CX needs to continue to lean in on empathetic resolutions.”

Amrita’s advice to other CX leaders

Good CX requires quick attention to the issues that crop up on a day-to-day basis. That granular focus can make it easy to miss the bigger picture, however. Amrita said that pausing to take a high-level view of the situation is what opens the door to lasting change. “Zoom out,” she said. “While it’s good to be in touch with what's going on, zooming out and really taking stock of where all the friction points are throughout the journey of your customer lifeline will be the most impactful.”

Tech stack

Zendesk

Swift CX AI Copilot

“The copilot pulls from our help center and previous ticket history and it reduces agent load. By being able to free up the agent's time on these lower-touch tickets, we can then shift them to being able to be more involved in overall company retention strategies and being proactive.”