1. Prioritize Communication: With over 20 years of experience, Jean understands that strong communication skills are essential for any customer service leader. Clearly conveying company - especially scientific - information, while actively listening to both agents and customers, is vital to a team’s success.
2. Emphasize Human Touch: AI’s role in customer service is ever-evolving. While AI may work for addressing simple issues, Jean believes a human touch is needed to handle more complex situations.
3. Value Education: Because Viome is a cutting-edge health and wellness company, providing customers with adequate information and resources about its product is imperative. To her team, Jean stresses the role of education in CS to ensure agents can answer questions and address customers' sometimes very personal needs.
4. Build a Desire-Driven Team: Jean maintains that a desire to help, a desire to serve, and a desire to problem solve are key character traits in CS. Experience has shown her that desire-driven CS agents tend to be the highest performers.
5. Be Flexible: Viome is a rapidly growing company offering the first (and only) at home RNA test. Changes to science, technology, and workflow processes happen frequently. Jean believes that any CS leader at an E-Commerce startup must be flexible and ready to pivot to best serve their team and the company.
With over 20 years’ experience, Jean Randles accepted the position of Customer Service Manager at Viome, a revolutionary health and wellness E-Commerce company. Within 3 years, she has built an international team of dedicated agents equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to tackle the most complex issues. Read on to learn how Jean uses human touch, communication, and education to best serve both customers and her team.
Meet Jean Randles, Customer Service Manager at Viome!
Viome provides the industry’s only direct-to-consumer healthcare test that analyzes microbial and human gene expressions (mRNA), with proprietary technology engineered exclusively by Viome Life Sciences, in order to provide individuals with health insights and the nutrition they need.
With over 20 years’ experience as a customer service leader, Jean joined Viome in 2021 to head up the Customer Experience team. It is her first job in health science and Jean is quick to remark on Viome’s contribution to the industry. “Our founders started research and development in 2016 – it’s been quite a long time in the making. But we’ve only been selling our products to consumers for a few years.” She explains that through saliva, blood, and stool analysis, Viome tests RNA (human gene expressions) to provide customers with key insights on how to improve their health through nutrition and supplements.
You don’t have to scroll long on Instagram before seeing an influencer advising which supplements and foods to take to improve your microbiome. In many cases, they are not experts and the information is overwhelming, misleading at times. With the industry’s most comprehensive and the only company using RNA with at home testing, Viome provides customers with everything they need to know about making optimal choices for their well-being. Viome’s Full Body Intelligence Test is the most comprehensive, addressing heart, brain, gut, and oral health. Jean elaborates, “If you have a score that comes back after analysis that is not optimal, we’ll tell you what foods to eat, what foods to avoid. And we’ll also tell you which supplements to take. You can source them on your own, or you can purchase our products, which are custom made based on your results.” For each customer, Viome makes a formula based on their needs, which is manufactured into custom supplements that are sent out monthly. Jean mentions that their newest test looks at early markers for oral throat cancer, the first at-home test to detect biomarkers associated with early-stage oral and throat cancer. “We’re going to be expanding that line. It’s cutting edge with just a saliva sample.”
Despite beginning in 2016, Viome is very much a ‘startup’ company, Jean says while noting they are at the frontier of developing and selling health tests directly to consumers through E-Commerce. Following a hybrid model, Jean and her core team of 3 work from Viome’s main office in Bellevue, Washington and are supported by 20 outsourced agents based in Cebu, Philippines. “As a young company, cost is always a factor,” she says. “I focus on making sure our outsourcers are like true partners and take ownership. Quality and NPS are key to our success.”
Jean’s Main Challenges Managing an International Team
At a fast-moving company like Viome, where science and strategy evolve quickly, keeping the team aligned is key. “My goal is to keep agents engaged and informed so they feel confident and supported, because clearly, when the team thrives, our customers benefit too.”
Hiring and Training New Agents
Understanding that customers are placing a lot of money and trust in its hands, Viome uses rigorous hiring, onboarding, and review processes. After being hired through ePerformax, overseas agents receive 1 month of global training to learn about serving Viome’s mostly US customer base. “Then they are vetted based on our program needs,” Jean explains. “Next they enter our Viome training, which is 2 weeks in the classroom and 2 weeks on the floor.” She notes that they’ve set a high bar for ePerformax to find the right fit for the company. "We work toward white glove service and measure performance through that lens. I ask for sincere engagement from our agents with customers who are often very specific about their health issues. "
Viome’s Main Customer Support Channels
Viome’s preferred channels for customer communication are voice and chat – email is used but can be tricky due to the PII (personally identifiable information) that is involved. “In the last few months, we’ve partnered with iAdvise to add a chatbot that helps customers get info while they browse,” Jean says. “During office hours, they can also chat with a live rep, we’re focused on meeting customers where they are. So far, we’ve seen a significant boost in new customer conversions and increased awareness of our availability among existing customers.” Jean adds.
Handling CS Escalations with a Complex Health Product
Viome’s unique product can be complex, and Jean’s team works hard to keep that from leading to customer escalations. Most questions relate to shipping—whether samples or supplements—or specific health concerns. Tracking samples and understanding results can be tricky, Jean notes: “There are a lot of steps, and a few points where things can go wrong.” Still, results typically arrive within 3–4 weeks of sending a sample, which she adds, “is pretty amazing given the complexity.”
The Importance of Educating Customers About Product Use
For Viome’s products to truly impact health and nutrition, customer education is key. Jean sees a big opportunity to help people clearly connect their scores with the personalized recommendations they receive. “It’s a lot of information,” she says, “but when customers understand how their results tie to diet and supplements, they gain real power over their health.” She describes the ‘aha moment’ many experience: “That’s the answer. That’s what I need to do to improve.” Proactive customers will retest within 4 to 6 months to track their progress.
Jean’s Tech Stack and Thoughts on AI Implementation
Viome’s tech stack includes Kustomer for CRM, Shopify for e-commerce, and the recent addition of iAdvize to support a new sales team. Jean shares that the company is just beginning to explore AI in customer support. “The biggest challenge is making sure our knowledge base is clean and consistent,” she explains. “Customers can ask the same question in ten different ways, and we may have ten different articles depending on the scenario - AI doesn’t always pick up on that nuance.”
Proactive CS: Meeting Customers Where They Are
Viome offers a variety of resources to help customers understand their test results and recommendations, though engagement hasn’t always been easy. Jean notes that many customers overlook emails or blog content. However, the Thrive with Viome Community, originally launched as a Facebook group, has been a standout success. “It’s not just a place to vent,” she says. “It’s a supportive, engaged space where members share insights and experiences. It’s led to some great conversations.” Viome also hosts weekly webinars with clinical nutritionists, which are later posted on YouTube for easy access.
While Jean sees the value of AI in handling simple inquiries, she notes, “The more complex your systems, processes, and products, the more you need human support.” Viome is gradually expanding its use of AI in customer service, but with care, as the technology improves its ability to handle nuance. Jean adds that customers often reach a point in a chatbot interaction where they want to speak with a real person, and it’s essential to provide that option.
Jean’s Advice for Aspiring CS Leaders
When asked what advice she’d give aspiring customer service leaders, Jean answers without hesitation: “Communication.” She explains, “Sometimes I think I’ve communicated clearly, but a contact center leader might misunderstand - or I may not have been clear enough. That can lead to issues you don't even realize unless you're actively creating space for dialogue. Staying connected with your team is critical.”
To better understand the challenges her teams face, Jean makes it a point to meet with both leaders and agents. “I try to create a space where they can safely ask questions, challenge ideas, and raise concerns when something’s not working.”
She also cites the book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter as a source of inspiration, emphasizing the value of leadership that empowers and supports those around you.
Key hiring trait? Desire to serve, desire to help, desire to solve. There are people who have that innate desire. And it’s hard to gauge in just interview questions. That’s where hiring software has been helpful – it asks a list of questions and the applicant can say how they would respond to or think about a situation, etc. And I’ve been successful in getting candidates that have that natural desire. An interest in performing well and strong communication skills are also important.
Favorite CS support channel? Phone, I have no patience for IVRs (interactive voice response). You’re 5 minutes into the call and you haven’t even gotten into the queue yet. I’m pleased that with our IVR, you are either on hold or taken right to an agent – there’s no choices to make, no phone tree, I really appreciate that and so do our customers.
#1 challenge as a leader? In a startup, when things break, customers don’t want to hear that there's a backlog in our shipment facility or that their sample failed. Helping customers understand what happened, why it happened, and what we are going to do to make it right is a challenge. Moving from there, helping my agents be confident and prepared to handle those kinds of situations are main concerns.
We're elevating customer experiences at 500 top E-Commerce brands (and counting). Let's see what we can do for you!
Learn MoreBook a call with one of our specialists today to see how TalentPop can assist you with putting together a solution for your customer service needs.
Learn More
.png)
