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1. Focus on Empathy: Lisa prioritizes empathy and problem-solving in customer support candidates, emphasizing that agents should act as customer advocates who can understand individual experiences and think creatively beyond rigid processes.
2. Lead By Example: Lisa believes in leading by example during training, emphasizing direct engagement, shadowing, and feedback to ensure new customer support agents align with the brand's standards and feel confident in their roles.
3. Optimize Technology to Manual Workload: Lisa aims to reduce manual workloads through technology and AI, believing that automating routine tasks allows her small team to focus their talents on more meaningful, complex customer issues.
4. Each Escalation is Unique: Lisa emphasizes the importance of treating each escalation as unique while using data analysis to identify patterns and root causes, enabling the team to implement preventive processes and reduce future customer issues.
5. CX Impacts Customer Acquisition/Retention: As Underlining® grows, Lisa sees customer experience as essential to attracting and retaining customers. By focusing on people, technology, and processes, the team aims to reduce friction and continuously improve CX to support business growth.
After graduating from college with a degree in fashion marketing and management, Lisa Guidone took her first position in customer service at Net-a-Porter and never looked back. After holding leadership roles at The RealReal and Olaplex, she joined Underlining® in May 2024 as Director of Customer Customer Service. You’ll want to read how Lisa has built a dynamic team culture focused on empathy, customer advocacy, and one-one-leadership.
Meet Lisa Guidone, Director of Customer Service at Underlining®!
Underlining® is a premium beauty & cosmetics company creating innovative products across multiple beauty verticals. The E-Commerce company’s brands include Nailboo (nail care) and Freewill (haircare) with over 1 million customers worldwide.
After earning a degree in fashion marketing and management, Lisa began her job search during a recession and was met with limited opportunities. Determined to break into the industry, she accepted a customer service role at Net-A-Porter. “I was happy to get in with the company,” she says. “It’s where I built the foundation for my journey in customer experience.” At the time, Net-A-Porter was a pioneer in the emerging world of direct-to-consumer and e-commerce. Lisa worked with a global team, gaining hands-on experience in people management and the latest customer service technologies—such as live chat, which was beginning to replace phone and email communication. ““You’re the nucleus when a company doesn’t have an in-store presence,” she notes. She later held leadership roles at The RealReal and Olaplex, where she had the opportunity to build customer experience organizations from the ground up, asking key questions like, “What do we want our brand’s customer service to look like?”
In May 2024, Lisa took the position of Director of Customer Service at Underlining® - a personal care company with two flagship brands: Nailboo and Freewill. Nailboo is a one-stop shop for salon-quality nails that can be done at home, offering options ranging from classic press-ons to more intricate designs. Freewill focuses on haircare, tailoring products to help customers achieve their hair goals.
Lisa leads a small internal team that manages customer experience for both Nailboo and Freewill. The team includes a lead who oversees operations and logistics, along with two agents dedicated to social media engagement across all platforms and day-to-day customer service. Additional support from TalentPop agents helps round out daily customer service activities. “We’re the first line of attack,” Lisa says. “Anywhere a customer can reach us, it’s my team.”
“I don’t want my team to drown in manual tasks. I think it’s a waste of talent,” Lisa says. As a small team, it's critical to optimize technology and streamline processes so agents can handle more complex issues. As the team grows, Lisa says the biggest challenge is identifying where AI can be implemented to make her agents' lives easier: “so we can have them focus on what we really want them to.”
Lisa values empathy in a CS agent candidate. “We are not rule enforcers. We are customer advocates,” she says. “I want someone who can look at the individual experience and put themselves in that person’s shoes.” She also emphasizes the importance of innate problem-solving skills. Not every issue can be resolved with a process-driven approach - some situations require creative, out-of-the-box thinking.
As a leader, Lisa prioritizes one-on-one time with new agents during the training process. “If I have a certain standard that I want to hold my team to, and want our brand to look and operate, how can I hold someone accountable if I’m not showing them that?” she asks. Shadowing experienced team members, receiving feedback, and participating in face-to-face meetings all help prepare new agents for their CS roles, ultimately making them “feel comfortable executing in a way that we want them to execute.”
Email, LiveChat, and social media are the main channels customers use, Lisa says, noting that her team handles every DM, question, and comment that comes in on Instagram and TikTok for Nailboo and Freewill.
“Each escalation is unique, and we have to treat each one with that in mind,” Lisa says, noting that not every case can be resolved through established processes. Analyzing data is crucial for understanding what customers are saying and spotting trends that can help prevent future escalations. “We’re taking that data and compiling it to see the overall impact of an issue,” Lisa explains. With that insight, the team can determine “what processes can be put in place to prevent something like that from happening again.”
Above all, Gorgias is essential to customer service operations at Underlining®. “As a small team, it really does everything for you - you’re not looking elsewhere for additional integrations,” Lisa shares, praising the platform’s ongoing innovation. The company uses Shopify for e-commerce and AfterShip to manage order tracking, returns, and exchanges. Smooth shipping processes are key to customer retention. “If you get a color you’re not happy with, just exchange it for another one. We want to keep you happy as a customer,” Lisa explains.
Recent additions to the tech stack include Okendo for customer reviews and Subscrify for managing loyalty programs. “We just launched our new loyalty page,” Lisa adds. “I think it’s making things a lot easier for my team by providing clear visibility into how customers are redeeming their rewards.”
As a small, emerging personal care company, Underlining® is focused on gaining new customers, building a loyal customer base, and driving retention. “Customer experience will play a big part in that,” Lisa explains. “We’re the backbone of the entire team, providing insight into what is and isn’t working.” To evaluate CX performance and identify areas for improvement, the team has defined three core pillars: people, technology, and processes. The primary goal is to reduce customer friction. “We want to acquire new customers - and once they’re here, we need to keep them,” Lisa concludes.
Lisa acknowledges that she initially had reservations about AI when it first emerged. Now more open to its potential, she sees AI as a necessary component in customer experience, provided it’s thoughtfully integrated with a human touch. “I don’t think AI is going to replace customer service,” she explains. “But you need to be strategic in how you incorporate it into your customer service operations.”
Lisa believes the future of customer service will rely less on team size and more on streamlining processes and embracing innovative technologies. But who decides the path forward? “You’re going to have to have strategic leadership ask, ‘what do we need invest in, and why?’” she explains. She emphasizes that people, processes, and technology will continue to accelerate - and E-Commerce companies must be ready to adapt.
Reflecting on her decade-long career as a CX leader, Lisa shares, “The best experiences I’ve had come from learning from the people around me.” She emphasizes the importance of observing how senior leaders navigate adversity and conflict while staying true to their values. “Take advantage of the situation - it’s not a competition,” she says, reminding us that colleagues often bring perspectives and insights we may not yet have.
Can’t-live-without-tool? Gorgias. We’re a small team so we need something that will do it all for us.
Key hiring trait? Empathy
Favorite communication channel for support? LiveChat. Also, I might be old school here, but phones – which we don’t have. I would like to have a phone presence here someday. Personally, I hate calling. But a lot of people really want that option, which is why I think phones are still so important. Things can get lost in translation or taken differently – sometimes a customer just wants to walk through an issue with you.
Recent book or podcast? I love Mel Robbins. Not even so much for customer service, but for life in general. Sports is another great source of information for me. I love sports and we are a huge college football house and fans of the Alabama Crimson Tide. There’s so much you can learn from strategic coaches. When you look at games, they have designed plays to win, they have to be innovative, they are recruiting and developing these players. Like Nick Saban – I actually got a job doing a presentation of what is called ‘the process.’ The way they talk about strategy and player development - I’ve taken so much useful information and applied it in this space.
#1 challenge as a CX leader? Getting a seat at the table. CX is the nucleus of your company – we literally are going to tell you why you are succeeding or why you are failing. We are the heartbeat of your community. Not at Underlining® - we are a small team and I do have a seat at the table. However, in past jobs, it’s been a struggle to get feedback across. Often, I think they are looking at marketing. But with me, anytime I’ve been lost on a brand is after the purchase – you won’t lose me in the pre-purchase journey. If I want something, I’m going to get it. But if you really upset me in the post-purchase journey – if there are issues, friction, and I can’t get in touch with you, or I have to channel surf to get something done, you’ve lost me. I don’t think companies focus on this enough.
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