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1. Empathy is the #1 CX Trait: Laura believes a great customer experience candidate must be a natural empath who genuinely wants to help – not just someone with technical skills. This is especially important at UrbanStems where agents are assisting customers with flower orders, which are typically connected to an emotional occasion.
2. Hire from Non-Traditional Backgrounds: Laura champions hiring people from diverse, unconventional career paths, viewing it as a strength that brings fresh problem-solving perspectives.
3. Curiosity Is a Core Leadership Trait: Laura ranks curiosity among the most critical qualities a CX leader can possess, above reactive or assumptions-based management.
4. Effortless CX Is the Goal: Laura believes ideal CX experience is frictionless and seamless, reducing customer burden at every touchpoint. At UrbanStems, the goal is to make processes such as tracking orders as effortless as possible for customers.
5. CX is a Long-Term Relationship, Not a Transaction: Laura stresses the importance of customer retention in E-Commerce. At UrbanStems, the focus on repeat customers signals a view of CX as building lasting loyalty, not just resolving isolated issues.
Ten years ago, Laura McDonald made a bold pivot – leaving a career in political crisis communications to join UrbanStems, a budding flower delivery start-up – and she hasn't looked back since. Today, as Director of Customer Happiness, she has witnessed the rapid evolution of E-Commerce firsthand, navigating the constant introduction of new technologies and tools reshaping the CX landscape. Leading with empathy and curiosity, she inspires her team to forge genuine connections with customers – creating experiences that feel not just satisfying, but effortless.
Meet Laura McDonald, Director of Customer Happiness at UrbanStems!
UrbanStems was launched on Valentine’s Day 2014 with the focus of providing freshness, sustainability, and outstanding customer service, aiming to transform the flower delivery industry with a fully integrated supply chain. Today, UrbanStems offers coast-to-coast next-day delivery, as well as same-day delivery across major cities including New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, and Boston. By courier or truck, the end result is always a gift that was carefully prepped with the customer’s happiness in mind.
Laura McDonald describes her entry into E-Commerce customer experience as a “happy accident.” While working in political crisis communications in Washington, D.C., she was recruited by a friend-of-a-friend to help at a new flower company, UrbanStems, during the Valentine’s Day rush. “They were like, ‘You know how to put out fires — you do it in your day job. Come help us for a week,’” she recalls. That one week turned into a decade, and, as Laura says, she’s “so grateful for that.”
Now serving as Director of Customer Happiness, Laura has witnessed firsthand the rapid evolution of E-Commerce over the past 10 years. “It’s crazy how fast the industry changes,” she says. “It’s a full-time job just keeping up with new technology and innovations. But at the same time, it’s really exciting. There’s always something to learn.” For Laura, that constant evolution is what makes the field so dynamic and creatively fulfilling.
Laura leads a fully remote international team of 13 members located across the globe. “We scale up dramatically for the holidays,” she says, noting that Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day are UrbanStems’ equivalent of the Super Bowl. During peak seasons, the team expands from 13 up to 80-100 agents for a two-week period to manage the surge in orders.
Laura also acknowledges the operational challenges that come with rapid seasonal hiring. With shorter-term staff, maintaining consistent quality can be difficult. Additionally, workforce management often requires attention to the smallest details – from monitoring callouts and late arrivals to tracking overtime – to ensure the team continues delivering a seamless customer experience.
"I personally love hiring people from non-traditional backgrounds – I came from one myself, and I see it as a huge asset because they approach problems differently," Laura begins. She believes a strong CX candidate must be a natural empath with a genuine curiosity to help customers, particularly in an industry centered on flowers, which are so often sent to mark life's most meaningful moments. "There's always an emotion behind it," she explains. "So we really need agents who can connect with our customers and put themselves in their shoes."
Making sure agents brought in during Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day have a strong grasp of order tracking is a top priority. Urban Stems works with multiple carriers – customers may be dealing with a delivery company they’ve never used before. “The tracking page might not be set up in a way customers understand,” Laura explains. “Training our agents to understand that and translate it clearly for customers is essential.” She also emphasizes the importance of troubleshooting during peak season, ensuring agents are prepared to identify issues quickly and provide effective solutions.
Laura stresses the importance of one-touch tickets when evaluating CX performance at UrbanStems. “We don’t want customers going back and forth, especially when they’re sending flowers for an emotional occasion,” she explains. “We want to make the process as effortless as possible.” She also tracks customer effort score, CSAT, and NPS, while paying close attention to customer retention. “We want to see if these customers come back year after year. Did they have a great experience sending flowers for Valentine’s Day? And how can we improve that experience for next year?”
UrbanStems is weaving automation into its customer experience through self-service options for shipping, refunds, and account credits. "It's about letting customers choose their own path to happiness," says Laura. "Empowering them to feel in control of a situation that can, at times, feel anything but."
Recognizing that flowers are as deeply tied to emotion as they are to personal taste, UrbanStems is also building more personalization into the CX journey. "In the upcoming year, we want to create personalized landing pages showing customers how to arrange their specific bouquet," Laura explains. "All they have to do is enter their order number, and it generates a beautiful page with everything they need to know about their bouquet – and how to care for it."
Laura believes that "white glove" service will define the future of customer experience in e-commerce. “Customers want personal connection – they want a personal email address or phone number. Customers want to be able to have their contact within the company and know they’re going to make it right,” she explains.
Gorgias – “We operate on Gorgias.”
Laura believes curiosity is one of the most important traits a CX leader can have. Taking a step back to assess a situation leads to a deeper understanding of what's really going on – and how best to respond. "Ask questions," she urges. "If you have an underperformer on the team, ask why. Do they have the right tools? Is something happening outside of work that's pulling their focus?" More often than not, the answer has nothing to do with laziness or lack of commitment.
Can’t-live-without-tool? Looker. We use Looker as a data platform. It’s so user-friendly and allows us to layer in so many different dimensions to the surface the full scope of what our customers are experiencing.
Key hiring trait? Empathy. If you’re not empathetic, your service comes off as robotic, which then turns customers off.
Recent book or podcast? I look forward to reading the Harvard Business Review because it helps me understand the business case behind some of these customer experience situations. Sometimes within organizations, customer service can be siloed or maybe not fully understand the business thought or logic behind the decisions that are made. So it helps me understand how other leaders within my company are thinking.
#1 day-to-day challenge? Keeping up with technology. I think as it stands, technology is changing faster than people can adapt. Every day, there’s a new platform, new automations, new AI models. Just understanding what excels at what is a full-time job.
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