At A Glance

Alice Shabazian enjoys puzzles, and as CX supervisor of Wool&Prince, she finds deep satisfaction in problem-solving. In the year and a half that she has been with the company, she has streamlined things by using automation to perform what had been time-intensive and repetitive manual work. She applies the same thoughtful approach to managing people, showing an empathy that leaves room for growth and avoids burnout. As you learn about her approach to CX at a company that prides itself on transparency and sustainability, you’ll see how her holistic approach strengthens the human connection with both customers and her team.

Who is Alice

Meet Alice Shabazian, CX supervisor at Wool&Prince.

About Wool&Prince

A premium menswear brand, Wool&Prince uses merino wool to create garments that naturally resist odors and wrinkles, they believe that you get more out of life when you have fewer—but better—things. To prove this, founder Mac Bishop wore the same merino wool shirt for 100 days straight in 2013 as part of a Kickstarter campaign for the company, inviting people to sniff the shirt to verify the fabric’s odor resistance. Today, the Oregon-based online retailer makes everything from dress shirts to boxer shorts and has also introduced a women’s line: wool&.

Alice’s CX journey

When Alice first began working at a coffee company, she didn’t expect it to lead to a career in CX. Turns out it was an exceptionally solid foundation for working in that space.

“I had a really strong face-to-face customer-service background,” she said, “which I feel is really helpful. It gives you a really good foundation for dealing with tough situations.”

From there, she moved to a CS job with Portland Leather Goods, a thriving E-Commerce brand with a top-50 Shopify store. Alice quickly worked her way up, her curiosity and people skills making her a natural fit for leadership. She then began taking a more holistic view of customer experience, which led her to Wool&Prince where she was hired as CX lead and progressed to supervisor.

Wool&Prince’s team structure

Alice is the leader of a CX team that includes three other agents. One of those agents is full-time, working in-house. The other two are part-time contractors. Alice and the other in-house agent work a hybrid schedule, coming into the office three days a week. The contractors work remotely, but have become such an integrated part of the team that one has been with the company for more than seven years now.

Seamless CX

With a lean, tight-knit CX team at Wool&Prince, efficiency is important. That’s especially true since the company has two clothing lines, Wool&Prince for men and wool& for women. Both wool& and Wool&Prince ship worldwide and also have dedicated Europe-specific sites for faster, easier delivery to their growing European customer base. Since coming on board, Alice said she has been focusing on streamlining operations, using Gorgias to automate what had been time-consuming manual tasks such as product returns as well as the gift cards sent out as part of the company’s popular wardrobe challenges. “Automation is definitely at the forefront of all of our priorities right now,” Alice said. “But we’re balancing that with maintaining a human touch and making sure that we keep a close eye on all of these automations.”

Finding team members

Alice said that prospective employees are asked in the hiring interview to specify some clothing brands they like. The goal isn’t to get testimonials about Wool&Prince so much as to see if this potential team member is familiar with slow-fashion and whether they make sustainability part of their criteria in making wardrobe selections. “Culture alignment is really important,” Alice said. The other full-time agent on the Wool&Prince’s CX team knits, which means they are very familiar with the properties of merino wool.

AI or no AI?

The AI assistant through Gorgias, whom they have affectionately and humorously named "Ewenice" (pun intended), has been very effective at the straight-forward issues that tend to bore human agents and pretty good when it comes to more complicated issues as well. Alice said she’s reluctant to turn everything over to the technology, however. “I think having humans available if needed is really, really important,” she said. “I have our AI agent set up so she can only answer initial inquiries.” Not only that, but customers are informed right away that the initial response is coming from AI. Customers are then told if they wish to hear from a human agent, they should simply reply again and then an agent will get in touch. “I think we've all experienced that endless bot cycle where we want to talk to a human and we just can't get through to a human,” Alice said. “That is the most frustrating experience in customer support. It was really important for us to avoid that.”

People power

Alice said she uses AI every day, however, she also thinks it has been pushed so heavily that there ultimately may be something of a pushback. “We're going to start seeing people go back to really human, really warm experiences,” she said when asked to predict the future of CX. “I think we'll just see a shift toward humanity and a shift toward humans being at the helm rather than having AI at the helm. Having AI as a little assistant is the way to do it. People laying off their whole CS support team in favor of AI? I think people are going to realize that's a big mistake and shift back to human first.”

Alice’s advice to other CX leaders

Most companies have come to understand the importance of empathy in responding to customers. Alice pointed out that it’s just as important to take a similar approach to manage members of the CX team.

“These are human beings with rich inner lives,” she said. “They're humans before they are employees. I try to balance ticket queue with side projects and making sure that people have projects that make them feel really engaged and avoid burnout as much as possible.”

 Being flexible with scheduling is one way to do this. Finding ways to automate manual tasks that are time-intensive and repetitive is another. Alice said she’s also conscious of dividing up tasks so that agents aren’t spending all of their day in a queue, handling one ticket after another.

 “Burnout is so real and it creeps up on you,” Alice said. “If you want to avoid high turnover, which is really common in customer-support roles, letting your employees know that you have their back is so important.”

Tech stack

Gorgias

Zapier

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