CX After Hours: Ecommerce CX, AI & Customer Service

What makes someone love a brand so much that they want to work for it? For Hadas Drutman, it's happened three times.In this episode of CX After Hours, Hadas, CX leader at Bobbie and formerly Glossier and Seed Health, joins Anya Kelly and Guillaume Luccisano to explore what creates genuine brand loyalty and how being a customer first has shaped her approach to CX.Hadas shares how writing a 100-page thesis about Glossier helped launch her career in customer experience, and how her own experiences as a customer of Seed Health and Bobbie influenced the way she now builds CX teams.They also get into her unconventional approach to customer contact at Bobbie. While most CX teams are trying to reduce contact rates, Hadas wants more conversations with customers, not fewer. She explains how AI is making that possible by handling transactional interactions and giving her team more time to build meaningful relationships.Plus: how to get the wider business closer to customers, why being too emotionally invested in CX can sometimes be a challenge, the small gestures that create lasting loyalty, and Hadas's 10% Fix for getting more value from your CX technology.Chapters01:38 Meet Hadas Drutman04:33 From Customer to CX Leader: Glossier, Seed Health and Bobbie08:27 How a 100-Page Thesis Led to a Role at Glossier13:18 How Bobbie Won Hadas Over as a Customer18:22 Building CX Teams with Real Product Expertise20:17 How AI Creates More Time for Human Connection24:56 Why Bobbie Wants More Customer Conversations, Not Fewer30:20 The Vent: Stop Making Customer Deflection the Goal35:17 Bringing the Voice of the Customer Into Company Decisions42:05 Can CX Leaders Be Too Close to Their Customers?46:23 What Really Creates Brand Loyalty?48:12 How Bobbie Turns Small Gestures Into Lasting Loyalty57:03 The 10% Fix: Reassess Your Tools01:01:53 Why the Role of the CX Leader Goes Beyond SupportWatch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8Lq_C1yfn4wSubscribe to the podcast via email on our website, and get new episodes delivered directly to your inbox: https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hoursFollow the hosts:Guillaume Luccisano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisanoAnya Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kellyFollow this episode's guest, Hadas Drutman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hadasdrutmanCX After Hours is the podcast for CX leaders and operators in retail and ecommerce who are in the trenches scaling customer experience to drive real growth. Powered by Yuma AI, the show goes beyond polished talking points to explore the trade-offs, pressure, and decisions that shape whether customers come back, spend more, and stay loyal.Learn more about Yuma AI: https://yuma.ai/

Customer support is often treated as the bottom rung of CX. Zoe Kahn thinks that’s exactly backwards.In this episode of CX After Hours, Zoe, founder of Inevitable and host of Let’s Laugh About It, joins Anya Kelly and Guillaume Luccisano to talk about why the support inbox can be one of the most valuable sources of customer and business insight.Zoe shares how a part-time support job at Ghost initially felt like a step backwards in her career — until it gave her visibility into everything from product development to fulfilment and warehouse operations.They also get into how AI is changing customer support, why customers shouldn’t have to think about whether they’re talking to AI, and how CX leaders can use data to separate the issues that feel urgent from the ones that actually matter most.Plus: how to advocate for customers without becoming the “annoying CX person”, the CX disasters they can laugh about now, and Zoe’s simple 10% Fix for catching problems before customers do.Chapters01:13 Meet Zoe Kahn08:28 Why Customer Support Is Undervalued13:10 What the Support Inbox Reveals About Your Business16:57 How AI Is Changing the CX Tech Stack19:49 Using AI to Spot Customer Issues Faster22:46 Why Zoe Almost Turned Down Customer Support27:23 The Vent: Why Customers Still Hate AI Support31:52 How to Advocate for Customers Without Losing Influence40:36 Let’s Laugh About It46:48 The 10% Fix: Test Your Customer Journey End to EndWatch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4KibtftkV50Subscribe to the podcast via email on our website, and get new episodes delivered directly to your inbox: https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hoursFollow the hosts:Guillaume Luccisano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisanoAnya Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kellyFollow this episode’s guest, Zoe Kahn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoe-kahn-5b61aa129CX After Hours is the podcast for CX leaders and operators in retail and ecommerce who are in the trenches scaling customer experience to drive real growth. Powered by Yuma AI, the show goes beyond polished talking points to explore the trade-offs, pressure, and decisions that shape whether customers come back, spend more, and stay loyal.Learn more about Yuma AI: https://yuma.ai/

How do you scale customer experience without turning it into a rigid set of policies, scripts and automations?Jennifer Villalba, Director of Customer Experience at 32 Degrees, joins Anya Kelly and Guillaume Luccisano to talk about how she’s building a CX operation that can grow while still giving people room to use judgement.Jennifer shares how 32 Degrees prepares to scale its support team from around 20 agents to as many as 60 during peak season, why she recently made the high-risk decision to change BPOs just before Q4, and how the team is rethinking training, knowledge management and staffing as AI takes on more support work.They also dig into agent empowerment: why Jennifer created a VIP framework that allows agents to make refund and replacement decisions themselves, why she tells her team that sometimes “rules are meant to be broken”, and where human judgement still matters as more CX becomes automated.Plus, they discuss post-purchase experience, brand voice, outdated macros, WISMO, phone support and why CX teams are often the first people in a business to spot when something is going wrong.In this episode:03:13 Scaling CX From 20 to 60 Agents for Peak05:48 Why 32 Degrees Switched BPOs Before Q409:22 Building a CX Knowledge Base From Scratch11:32 Are Customer Support Macros Outdated?15:08 What Makes Customer Support Actually Feel Human?20:50 Does Phone Support Still Have a Future?25:15 The Vent: CX Vendors Need to Step Up29:45 The 10% Fix: Fixing the Post-Purchase Experience34:28 How to Make Major CX Changes Right Before Peak36:26 Giving CX Agents the Power to Make Decisions42:15 Why “Rules Are Meant to Be Broken” in CX43:40 Where AI Should Stop and Humans Take Over49:49 How CX Spots Problems Before Your Dashboard Does53:09 Why CX Leaders Still Need to Work the QueueWatch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9q5xTBTBGUgSubscribe to the podcast via email on our website and get new episodes delivered directly to your inbox:https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hoursFollow the hosts:Guillaume Luccisano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/Anya Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/Follow this episode’s guest, Jennifer Villalba: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-villalba-34999469/CX After Hours is the ecommerce customer experience podcast for CX leaders and operators in retail and ecommerce who are in the trenches scaling customer experience to drive real growth.Powered by Yuma AI, the show goes beyond polished talking points to explore the trade-offs, pressure and decisions that shape whether customers come back, spend more and stay loyal.Learn more about Yuma AI: https://yuma.ai/

Your CX dashboard can tell you what happened. But can it tell you why?In this episode of CX After Hours, Naomi Oriol, Director of Customer Experience at Freebird, joins Anya Kelly and Guillaume Luccisano to discuss how AI is changing the way CX teams analyse feedback in ecommerce customer experience.For many ecommerce brands, customer support teams are sitting on thousands of conversations containing valuable information about product issues, delivery problems, customer expectations and potential churn. The challenge is turning that unstructured feedback into something useful.Naomi explains how her team uses AI to search across raw support conversations, uncover hidden patterns and turn customer tickets into evidence the wider business can act on.She shares how Freebird identified an issue affecting more than 1,000 orders, why traditional CX metrics such as CSAT can miss important parts of the customer experience, and how bringing leadership real examples from customer conversations can make CX insights harder to ignore.The conversation also explores the relationship between customer experience and retention. CX teams can influence whether customers come back, but they can’t fix problems created elsewhere in the customer journey. Acquisition, product expectations, checkout, shipping and post-purchase experience all shape retention before a customer ever contacts support.Naomi also breaks down how Freebird is using AI for quality assurance and agent coaching, where automation can genuinely improve customer support operations, and where human judgement is still essential.In this episode:03:13 Why CSAT isn’t telling you the full story10:05 How Freebird uncovered a 1,000+ order problem16:18 Why CX isn’t your retention bodyguard21:25 Bringing leadership “real receipts”27:41 The 10% Fix31:24 Using AI for QA and agent coaching36:00 Where AI still falls shortIf you work in ecommerce customer experience, customer support or CX operations and want to use AI for more than just automation, this episode is packed with practical ideas you can take back to your team.Watch this episode on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWxqHRX83WESubscribe to the podcast via email on our website and get new episodes delivered directly to your inbox:https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hoursFollow the hosts:Guillaume Luccisano:https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/Anya Kelly:https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/Follow this episode’s guest, Naomi Oriol:https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomi-oriol-71762539/CX After Hours is the ecommerce customer experience podcast for CX leaders and operators in retail and ecommerce who are in the trenches scaling customer experience to drive real growth.Powered by Yuma AI, the show goes beyond polished talking points to explore the trade-offs, pressure and decisions that shape whether customers come back, spend more and stay loyal.Learn more about Yuma AI:https://yuma.ai/

In this special season recap of CX After Hours, our host Anya Kelly revisits six standout moments from the podcast’s first six guests - and shares what each conversation taught her about building better customer experiences.From Eli Weiss on protecting the human side of CX and investing in your agents, to Michael Bair on why strong teams need clear metrics and accountability. Cati Brunell Brutman explores how CX leaders can turn overwhelming amounts of customer feedback into action, while Leeor Cohen challenges the instinct to solve every problem by buying a new tool.Anya also reflects on Caroline ON Wilson’s perspective on the emotional labor behind customer experience, and closes with Aleni Mackarey on why CX and marketing need to operate as closely connected parts of the same customer journey.Along the way, Anya shares lessons from her own career and the recurring idea running through the first season: great CX isn’t just about answering tickets. It’s about understanding customers, supporting the people serving them, influencing the wider business, and identifying the small changes that can make a disproportionately big difference.Whether you’ve listened from episode one or you’re discovering CX After Hours for the first time, this is the perfect introduction to the conversations and ideas that shaped Season One.Plus, a preview of what’s coming next when CX After Hours returns September 9, starting with Naomi Oriol of Freebird and a conversation about what AI means for traditional CX metrics, ticket categorization, and understanding the why behind customer conversations.CX After Hours is the podcast for CX leaders and operators in retail and ecommerce who are in the trenches scaling customer experience to drive real growth. Powered by Yuma AI, the show goes beyond polished talking points to explore the trade-offs, pressure, and decisions that shape whether customers come back, spend more, and stay loyal.Learn more about Yuma AI: https://yuma.ai/