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Why Your Best Customers Leave After the First Order · eCommerce Podcast

• 0:04
  So welcome to the eCommerce Podcast.
• 0:07
  My name is Matt Edmundson and it is great to be with you this fine fettle of a day.
• 0:12
  It's always fun to be with you actually.
• 0:14
  I really quite enjoy doing these shows and today is no exception.
• 0:18
  We've got a great guest coming up but before we talk to Max, let me just give a quick shout out and a warm welcome to you.
• 0:24
  If this is your first time with us on the eCommerce Podcast.
• 0:27
  It's great.
• 0:28
  We just talk about all things eCommerce from every angle that we can possibly think about because like you, I'm also in eCommerce.
• 0:35
  I run my own eCommerce business.
• 0:38
  Well, businesses actually.
• 0:39
  And I just love these shows because we get to find out all kinds of weird, wonderful things from our guests.
• 0:44
  So Max, welcome to the show.
• 0:46
  It's good to have you on.
• 0:49
  Yeah, it's lovely to be here.
• 0:50
  Thanks so much for having me.
• 0:52
  Been a long time listener, so it's lovely to be here with you.
• 0:57
  Good, very good.
• 0:59
  For those of the listeners that might not know who Max Beech is, why don't you give us the quick 20 second low down.
• 1:07
  Yeah, so I'm currently running my own startup, which is basically on the grounds that most eCommerce brands know a lot about their customers, but communicate with them
• 1:18
  like they know nothing.
• 1:19
  And so the goal of Athenic, which is the startup, is to close the gap. It builds a profile of every customer over time, and it uses that to make every message feel personal.
• 1:30
  And before that, I was working at a couple of startups in product management, working at
• 1:35
  Revolut and Yahoo in their various app and website teams respectively.
• 1:43
  I love how you called Revolut a startup and Yahoo a startup.
• 1:46
  That was great.
• 1:51
  Yeah, at one point it was a startup, right?
• 1:54
  We've all had to start somewhere.
• 1:55
  So why not?
• 1:56
  Let's go for that.
• 1:58
  Well, welcome to the show.
• 1:59
  Now we're going to be talking a little bit about personalisation, which is your area of expertise from these various ventures, from your own to the things that you have done.
• 2:08
  Obviously you've set up
• 2:10
  your software because you see a gap in the market, right?
• 2:14
  You see some possibilities, but I'm curious Max, if there's one thing, right?
• 2:18
  If you could wave your proverbial eCommerce magic wand, as I like to say, and solve the one key thing that we all seem to be suffering from, what would that one thing be?
• 2:30
  For me, I think it would be just to give every founder five minutes inside the head of the most recently churned customer and not the data about them.
• 2:39
  So I think eCommerce founders are brilliant about knowing their CAC, their LTV, their repeat customer rate, but actually the experience, what did that
• 2:48
  customer feel when their first email arrived from the brand?
• 2:51
  What did they feel like when no one followed up potentially?
• 2:54
  What would have made them stay?
• 2:55
  Because I think most founders
• 2:57
  probably actually know what they'd see.
• 2:59
  And that's the problem.
• 3:00
  They know that their communications are often a little bit too generic.
• 3:03
  It's one of those things that might feel like a nice to have, but they just either don't feel like they've got the time or the tools to do anything about it.
• 3:11
  But it's something that really makes the difference.
• 3:14
  And so you might look at your churn rate or your lack of retention and you see that dropping, but by then it's already too late and you really have to work back and look
• 3:25
  at that experience.
• 3:26
  That's a really interesting idea, to get inside the head for five minutes of the customer who last churned.
• 3:37
  What sort of things would we discover if we could do that?
• 3:43
  I think it would be a lot of the basics.
• 3:47
  A key moment here is the first 14 days after someone's purchased.
• 3:54
  A lot of brands might treat that period either as dead air before the next sale.
• 3:58
  They might also think, okay, maybe we're a one-time purchase product.
• 4:02
  There's no huge value in really communicating with that customer other than dealing with them if they've got a problem.
• 4:09
  But this is the moment of highest trust.
• 4:11
  Very often,
• 4:12
  these brands waste that opportunity.
• 4:14
  But if they do tap in, they might be thinking, right, we'll send them an email, maybe with a 10% off code to get their next purchase.
• 4:23
  But the key is, don't try and sell them anything.
• 4:26
  I think everyone's been in that experience where they've been inside a store and that salesperson is just nagging them trying to be too salesy.
• 4:34
  And it's exactly the same experience that a lot of customers
• 4:38
  feel when they're online. They've purchased something from a brand and the first message they get is a 10% off code on day three, for example.
• 4:46
  But it doesn't need to be that way.
• 4:48
  You can build the rapport and think about the lifetime value of the customer, whether the goal is to sell them something again, whether to keep them as a subscription or whether to
• 4:58
  leverage them to then recommend that product to the next three, five people.
• 5:04
  It's a really interesting point, isn't it?
• 5:06
  I think I've mentioned this before on the eCommerce Podcast and what you're making me think of is my favourite coffee shop, right?
• 5:16
  In the sense that when I go into, there's a coffee shop in Liverpool and if you're in Liverpool, go to Bean, it's in town, it's in Liverpool One, it's a great coffee shop.
• 5:28
  I don't drink coffee, but I really like the teas and stuff.
• 5:30
  Anyway, I go to this coffee shop, and I go at least probably two, three times a month when I'm in town and I just want to go sit and work.
• 5:38
  I'll go work and the guys that own it are great.
• 5:42
  And I've known them for years.
• 5:46
  You go in the coffee shop, right?
• 5:47
  It's beautiful.
• 5:48
  You've got very good coffee shop vibes.
• 5:50
  They care very deeply about coffee.
• 5:52
  And so they attract the coffee lovers, which is good.
• 5:56
  And you walk up to the counter and you walk past a drinks dispenser, where you can get your can of Coke or whatever it is.
• 6:03
  They've got this beautiful glass presentation case with all the pastries and things that I could buy until my heart's content.
• 6:11
  I've got a beautifully designed price board above me and the lady or gentleman behind the till who takes my order is usually quite chirpy, very pleasant and lovely.
• 6:25
  I place my order.
• 6:26
  Because at this point, I'm happy.
• 6:28
  I'm enjoying the experience, right?
• 6:30
  I'm quite a happy chap.
• 6:32
  And then everything changes in an instant.
• 6:37
  And it's not just Bean, it's every coffee shop I've been into.
• 6:40
  It's like, right, we've got your money.
• 6:41
  Now go stand over there in a queue, which has no sense of order about it.
• 6:46
  It's just like, and you'll stand there until somebody shouts your name.
• 6:49
  Now, if you're bored, do something on your phone, but there's no decor, there's no chairs, there's no...
• 6:55
  way of engaging me.
• 6:56
  There's no onboarding.
• 6:58
  There's nothing.
• 6:59
  It's just like sit and wait.
• 7:00
  And then eventually I get my coffee at some point, never quite sure if it's mine or I went up, my tea or whatever.
• 7:11
  I suppose that's one of the benefits of not drinking coffee.
• 7:13
  I know when my drink gets called, I'm not going to confuse it, but it's a really interesting analogy for me.
• 7:20
  And I've often stood there when I'm waiting on my drink and I smile every time it happens.
• 7:24
  Because it happens in coffee shops all over.
• 7:26
  Everything is geared to getting your coffee order.
• 7:29
  And then of course they want to make you a good coffee.
• 7:31
  They do want to deliver.
• 7:32
  But at the end of the day, the experience while they deliver is rubbish.
• 7:36
  And so in eComm, there's a very similar vibe, right?
• 7:42
  In other words, we create these beautiful websites, these beautiful experiences.
• 7:46
  Everybody is all about getting that first order.
• 7:50
  Then once the order is placed,
• 7:53
  it's like crickets. There's no onboarding.
• 7:56
  And like you say, what I might get is thanks for your order.
• 7:59
  And some forward thinking eCommerce brands then send me an email saying, here's 10% off your next order.
• 8:06
  I've not received, like you say, I've not received the first one yet.
• 8:08
  So down to your classic email.
• 8:10
  So I get what you're saying.
• 8:12
  It's about creating this experience, isn't it?
• 8:14
  Between, well, one of the things is about creating an experience between point of purchase and point of delivery, I would have thought.
• 8:23
  100%.
• 8:23
  And I think it's such a good idea to look at other industries like you did with the coffee shop.
• 8:28
  Maybe that's not the correct experience, but some industries, some products do this actually really well.
• 8:36
  And when I was at Revolut, I saw this. Tech companies in general are so good at retention and it does help that they perhaps don't feel they need to sell the next product
• 8:48
  straight away.
• 8:48
  But in fact,
• 8:50
  if I went into the next design review and pitched that we were going to try to upsell a premium subscription to day five customers, I'd be
• 9:00
  laughed out of the room.
• 9:01
  So the goal in companies like that was to identify the magic moment that will make this person sticky and then work out how can we get that person to
• 9:14
  that point as quickly as we can.
• 9:16
  And then
• 9:17
  identify the moment where they're most likely to feel happy enough with the product that they're then willing to refer the next three people.
• 9:24
  And then how can we get that person to that point as quickly as possible?
• 9:29
  And so it's all about identifying what is the user journey.
• 9:33
  And that's not just getting the person into the product or, if it's eComm, it's getting the person to buy the product.
• 9:40
  It's actually how can we take them through that experience and just
• 9:49
  So how would I think about that journey?
• 9:51
  What are some of the things that I need to think about as an eCommerce entrepreneur?
• 9:57
  I think you can look at your retention like this.
• 10:00
  I'm not saying don't look at the data because it might give you some good hints at where people might be dropping off if it's a subscription product where you can get that sort of
• 10:10
  minutiae of data.
• 10:12
  But I think what a lot of people miss is just actually asking the customer.
• 10:18
  And I think for me, when I'm thinking about personalisation, we did a couple of really interesting personalisation products
• 10:26
  at Yahoo, for example, and one we submitted for a patent, the other one we probably should have done.
• 10:31
  And we spent a long time trying to collect all of these small little points of data, which people were perhaps putting out there and we were trying to use that to build a
• 10:42
  picture.
• 10:43
  But I think one thing that was actually much more helpful than that was when we sent a little form to them that was just like, tell us about the last seven days.
• 10:54
  Tell us about this product.
• 10:55
  And I think it's something that eComm founders don't do nearly enough is just ask them. It could be in the post purchase email.
• 11:02
  Why did you buy this product?
• 11:04
  Just trying to be very straight up to understand who is this customer and what do they want.
• 11:10
  Because someone is buying running shoes.
• 11:12
  They could be doing that because they just need to walk their dog next week.
• 11:17
  So they've just bought a new dog or it might be because they're training for a marathon next week.
• 11:21
  But if you're trying to segment,
• 11:26
  Mm.
• 11:28
  it needs to be a very different experience.
• 11:29
  And so you need to understand what are the typical user journeys for the type of people buying your products and how can you then identify who those different people are
• 11:40
  as best you can, and then guide them through that user journey.
• 11:44
  That's a really valuable point, isn't it?
• 11:46
  Talk to your customers and find out why they're buying.
• 11:50
  And actually, by doing that, I guess you will find out what the user journeys are.
• 11:54
  We can all hypothesise, right?
• 11:56
  And we can all go, well, we think it's this.
• 12:00
  But I guess we don't actually know, do we?
• 12:03
  And we function a lot on assumption without clarifying sometimes.
• 12:08
  I guess my slight hesitation,
• 12:11
  Max, if I can put it this way, is...
• 12:18
  When we have historically asked customers questions, it is a little bit like trying to pull teeth, right?
• 12:25
  So I get for Yahoo, for example, who will have millions of people, you can send out a million surveys and you'll get 10,000 back or whatever it is.
• 12:35
  And that's actually quite a significant number.
• 12:39
  If I'm a small eComm business with, I don't know, a hundred or a thousand, maybe 10,000 customers, you can send out,
• 12:48
  these requests to ask why people buy.
• 12:51
  Getting people to fill that in is a trick in its own right, isn't it?
• 12:55
  I don't know if you've had any experience with that or how you get people to answer those questions.
• 13:02
  Yeah, but it doesn't need to be something where you say, right, well, I need to create this survey and find statistical significance.
• 13:10
  You can pick your top 10 customers and just send them a WhatsApp if you've got permission for that or give them a call.
• 13:17
  And I think when you break through and be that much more personal, then the response rate changes.
• 13:24
  We talk about open rates.
• 13:25
  Well, if you stick a handwritten letter in your next product delivery, then
• 13:31
  the open rate is going to be 100%.
• 13:33
  So there are ways to do it that aren't scalable and they don't need to be scalable to get a good sense.
• 13:39
  The benchmark we used is, if you reach out to about 10 people, that's probably enough where you're going to start to see some trend in just the
• 13:51
  answers that they give.
• 13:52
  Obviously depends on the scope you're asking.
• 13:54
  But I think another thing that's just very important for businesses to do and what I see is
• 14:00
  eComm businesses are not the best at this is just trying to help them understand where is all of their customer data.
• 14:09
  So if they're not reaching out to these people individually, let's just lay the groundwork and just understand where do we have all of the customer data?
• 14:18
  Because at the moment, there might be data spread out across Mailchimp, Shopify, maybe something like WordPress or Klaviyo and all of these different
• 14:30
  touch points where if the customer then comes to them or they want to go out to the customer, they've got no chance at trying to have a cohesive understanding of who that
• 14:40
  customer is.
• 14:41
  And we think about segmentation as being one to many.
• 14:46
  Well, really what we want is to get to a point where it's more memory-like where it's one to one.
• 14:51
  And we actually understand that that person, if they say that they're buying running shoes, we can connect the dots to understand.
• 15:02
  That's a really interesting point, isn't it?
• 15:04
  And I guess with AI, with software like yours, with technology the way it is, this is becoming easier and easier.
• 15:12
  Because Google Analytics definitely doesn't tell you that information.
• 15:14
  Well, at least I don't think it does.
• 15:17
  And if it does, someone needs to correct my thinking very quickly.
• 15:20
  But I think it's an interesting thing to track.
• 15:24
  And this leads into your idea of dynamic customer knowledge bases.
• 15:29
  Yeah.
• 15:30
  And for me, when I'm building the product, I'm trying to build something that is scalable and that essentially tries to build memories about each customer.
• 15:41
  And that works at scale, but it doesn't have to be at scale. Even if someone doesn't have any technology, really just trying to have a framework so that when a
• 15:53
  customer reaches out to them, they can at least understand.
• 15:56
  Okay, right.
• 15:57
  Well, these are the places I need to go so that I'm not embarrassing myself when they've been a customer for five years and I don't understand that
• 16:06
  loyalty.
• 16:07
  And another great industry example of this is a company, I don't know if you're aware of Stitch Fix.
• 16:13
  But essentially they built a, they were in the UK actually, they've refocused back into the US but they built a $1 billion business
• 16:23
  on the very simple premise that your personal stylist remembers you.
• 16:27
  So every time you fill in your profile, every time you keep an item, return an item, write a note, they store it.
• 16:34
  And their algorithm wasn't really an algorithm at all.
• 16:38
  It was being incredibly organised on their backend with how they keep this data and organise it.
• 16:44
  And so when they then go to next purchase or when the customer then goes to next purchase a product, there's actually a human there that has that data to hand.
• 16:53
  And can utilise it to offer a personalised product.
• 16:56
  And whilst most people don't need to be on the scale of that to personalise their products, the point still stands that even if you don't invest in software to automate
• 17:07
  this at scale, there are ways that you can still build a good understanding of each customer just by being a little bit more organised with where you store data, where you
• 17:17
  know to look for data when someone does reach out and you want to.
• 17:26
  Well, let me ask you about that then because let's assume I'm just starting out and I'm selling
• 17:34
  I'm just looking randomly around my desk.
• 17:37
  Here we go.
• 17:37
  I've got Lego Iron Man.
• 17:40
  Why would you not have, I just need to.
• 17:43
  There you go.
• 17:43
  If you're watching on YouTube, you can see Lego Iron Man.
• 17:46
  So I've got Lego Iron Man on my desk.
• 17:48
  That's a question as to why a grown man has Lego on it.
• 17:50
  Anyway, I've started a business and I'm selling small plastic toys.
• 17:55
  I'm just starting out.
• 17:58
  So I'm being budget conscious.
• 18:01
  What...
• 18:02
  How would you tell me to start to organise this data?
• 18:06
  What are some of the things that I can do before I start subscribing to various different things?
• 18:12
  But what are some of the basics that I can do to help myself?
• 18:15
  Max?
• 18:15
  Yeah.
• 18:17
  I think the one thing is just trying to understand where these different data points are.
• 18:23
  If you're selling this product, just trying to know when someone reaches out, how long have they been a customer?
• 18:31
  And so I think there's some basic data points that people don't necessarily have.
• 18:35
  If someone reaches out on a direct message on Instagram, is there a way that you can easily
• 18:42
  get yourself in a position where you can look up their Shopify order history.
• 18:46
  And it might just be as simple as your personal flow of if you're the one doing it or if you've got someone to help you reply to customer responses, how can you just make
• 18:58
  sure that you design yourself a system where you can tap into this information so that the customer isn't having to repeat themselves?
• 19:07
  So as much as it's,
• 19:27
  It's really interesting, isn't it?
• 19:28
  And I guess I'm just thinking slightly, if I...
• 19:35
  If I'm listening to this and I've not done this before, I'm thinking, well, how much data is enough data?
• 19:44
  Part of the problem I think we have in eCommerce is too much data and not knowing what to do with it.
• 19:51
  If there's one thing I hear over and over again, it's like, I've got access to all this data.
• 19:55
  I don't know what it's telling me.
• 19:56
  I don't know what I'm supposed to do as a result of it.
• 19:59
  And so I guess understanding
• 20:03
  how do I avoid that sense of data overwhelm?
• 20:08
  What are the key things I should be looking at?
• 20:14
  I appreciate I'm asking you how long is a piece of string, because it's obviously going to depend on your industry.
• 20:19
  But what are some of the generic things that I should definitely be looking at maybe?
• 20:23
  And how do I avoid that sense of data overwhelm?
• 20:27
  I think you avoid it by just, it sounds a little bit cliche at this stage, but just thinking back to the customer and who they are and who you believe they are and
• 20:37
  really trying to get into the head of what is their current experience.
• 20:42
  Obviously what type of products that you have and what type of retention you're hoping to get from them is important for this, but what is the ideal journey that you've got for
• 20:52
  them?
• 20:53
  And then where
• 20:55
  are you currently having a, in the tech term, we call it a leaky bucket, but essentially, where are people being dissatisfied?
• 21:04
  And that's where you can then focus on and just understand, okay, well, what data do we have?
• 21:09
  For example, maybe it is that 14 day period after they've purchased a product.
• 21:13
  And maybe we're better off communicating how we can actually use the product.
• 21:20
  Maybe it's something as simple as, we identified that this
• 21:24
  product's got a high return rate and we just need to put an A4 piece of paper printed with our next product, which just explains, maybe it's signed by the founder
• 21:36
  and it just says exactly how to use this product.
• 21:39
  And then they can take that and they can see, okay, well the brand has actually thought a little bit about this experience and we can go from there.
• 22:02
  understand where there might be a leaky bucket.
• 22:05
  That was something that we focused on a lot at Yahoo.
• 22:10
  I was in charge of their finance apps.
• 22:14
  Essentially, what we had was a huge amount of scope to try to
• 22:19
  improve the experience from when a user first understood that there was a finance app to downloading it, to using it, and to actually try to build a picture of this user journey,
• 22:29
  incredibly difficult.
• 22:31
  We had pretty good data tools to our hand, still extremely difficult to actually understand from this point, this customer is then doing this.
• 22:40
  And it really took us just speaking with customers,
• 22:44
  trying to step back and understand what are they likely doing as the best way of really understanding what the journeys were and where we needed to spend our time.
• 22:55
  Yeah, I'd say that's fascinating.
• 22:57
  I mean, I love the fact you said "in tech, we call it a leaky bucket" like leaky bucket is a tech term.
• 23:09
  Yeah, adopted perhaps.
• 23:11
  It's funny, isn't it?
• 23:14
  And I mean, I was always told you never fix a leaky bucket by adding more water.
• 23:19
  You've got to fix the leak.
• 23:20
  And so it's, yeah, I mean, that aside, I'm sorry, I've gone off on one in my head now.
• 23:28
  I'm imagining code, the code brackets we like to use, says leaky bucket.
• 23:34
  Forward slash close leaky bucket.
• 23:37
  Anyway, I'd love to understand what some of the things that you were surprised at when you were working with Yahoo on this journey, what are some of the
• 23:53
  expectations or assumptions that you had that actually by the end of it, they'd got reversed?
• 23:58
  Because I'm guessing, if we're going to integrate this well,
• 24:03
  this ideology well in our own eCommerce businesses.
• 24:06
  We actually have to start by making a reasonable assumption.
• 24:11
  Like we're going to make our best guess based on what we know.
• 24:14
  And then we're going to go and have a look at the data and what that tells us.
• 24:18
  I'm imagining on a regular basis and we're going to adjust our assumptions, right?
• 24:23
  We're going to, rather than waiting for everything, for all our ducks to be in a line and then make an assumption.
• 24:31
  Maybe I'm wrong.
• 24:31
  I guess that would be how I would do it.
• 24:34
  I would make an assumption, best guess assumption, test that hypothesis, iterate it as I go along as much as I hate the word iterate.
• 24:40
  Sorry, everybody.
• 24:41
  I shouldn't say that.
• 24:42
  In my head, iterate and ping are two words which should be banned from the English language.
• 24:48
  But that's another story.
• 24:50
  Is that a good assumption to make or is that a good place to start, maybe?
• 24:54
  Yeah, I think it's good to have those and actually, a lot of the times, as much as we'd like to say that we were looking at the data, looking for a problem and
• 25:03
  then trying to solve it.
• 25:05
  So hard to do that realistically with the amount of data that we have, but also trying to really properly understand it.
• 25:11
  So a lot of the time it came from an assumption and then taking that, trying to look in the data and then see if there was a case to try to solve it.
• 25:20
  And so I think it's something that
• 25:23
  is just as common in eComm where you can look at the data and try to understand, okay, right.
• 25:29
  Well, these customers aren't coming back and trying to solve it that way.
• 25:35
  But, as we've both said, there's so much data that you can look at and it's great that eComm owners are so good at keeping such a great eye on all of these data points
• 25:47
  in case they move.
• 25:48
  But I think it's also to the detriment of
• 25:50
  actually stepping back and just seeing what is going to annoy the customer. If we do this, it's something that you see time and time again in tech.
• 25:59
  And certainly I experienced it as well, where you think, right, well, if we just move this pop up further ahead in the flow or make it a little bit bigger and the same
• 26:09
  with eComm, if we send another 20% discount two days earlier, it's going to boost our numbers.
• 26:16
  But what is that doing to the user journey and what's that doing to the customer's experience?
• 26:22
  So it's easy to say you're repeating things, but it just doesn't hurt to just go back and think, right, as a true customer, can I stand back and actually feel what would this be
• 26:35
  like if I received this pushy promotional code or promotional message?
• 26:41
  Or what would it be like if actually the brand didn't try to do that?
• 26:45
  Maybe they tried to send some information about the product, or maybe it was just as simple as sending something human.
• 26:51
  I think there are a lot of examples where a company has just tried to be Innocent.
• 26:57
  I don't know how many international listeners will know the brand Innocent, but a really great drinks company in the UK.
• 27:04
  What they became quite viral for early was just putting funny, quirky messages on their bottles.
• 27:31
  about the next metric.
• 27:33
  But just trying to make your brand feel a little bit more human is very undervalued.
• 27:38
  That's a really good point, because again, like you say, I think it's easy in some respects to make an assumption about how a customer is going to function on our website
• 27:47
  and then forget we've made that assumption because we're so busy doing other things and not improving it or testing that theory about the journey.
• 27:54
  Yeah.
• 27:55
  And it's something which when we moved to a new tech product, the first two weeks, three weeks you've got where you can really be a
• 28:05
  customer of that product.
• 28:06
  And then after that, you understand too much about it that you're too in the weeds.
• 28:10
  You understand why there was this funny awkward user experience decision because it made the backend three times more efficient.
• 28:21
  Or you understood why
• 28:23
  we hadn't done this big onboarding flow because we tried it three times and it hadn't worked.
• 28:28
  And so it's really only those first few weeks where you can truly understand the product as a user.
• 28:36
  And so we were always trying to work out ways to step back and appreciate the product as a user again.
• 28:43
  And so it's absolutely the same in eComm that I'd recommend founders try and do that.
• 28:48
  Maybe it's as simple as ordering their own product to their own home and just.
• 28:57
  Yeah, that's a really good idea and actually also order your competitors' products and do that on a regular basis would be my advice, just to see what their service is
• 29:06
  like, what they deliver like.
• 29:08
  What's it like when you try and return to them?
• 29:10
  I think you learn so much just from buying from your competitors.
• 29:15
  What are their landing pages like?
• 29:16
  What are their ads like?
• 29:17
  Just record all that information.
• 29:18
  Anyway, we're digressing, but I think you can learn a lot from that.
• 29:24
  I suppose another good place to look at what customers think is in the reviews, right?
• 29:28
  Because there's language that customers will use in that, both good and bad, about the product.
• 29:37
  That would be another great data source.
• 29:40
  But let me circle back to the question I asked.
• 29:42
  What were some of the things, some of the assumptions that you had at Yahoo that surprised you?
• 29:49
  I'm curious, when you went through the process, those assumptions were challenged and you're like, oh, I didn't predict that.
• 29:57
  Yeah, I think actually on reviews, it was quite an interesting assumption where we had a team dedicated across all of the Yahoo apps to replying to reviews.
• 30:09
  My assumption going in was, okay, right.
• 30:13
  Well, if they're replying to every review, great, we've got a team dedicated to it.
• 30:20
  We're maximising what we can on that.
• 30:21
  But to be frank,
• 30:24
  they did as good a job as they could, but they were covering a lot of different products and to do it effectively at scale for them was a challenge.
• 30:34
  And so it was a problem that I spotted when I joined the team and the finance app at the time was at, I think it was a 3.5 stars out of five on the Android Play Store.
• 30:48
  So really in a bad state in terms of
• 30:53
  the reviews.
• 30:55
  I just dove deep after that and tried to just understand why people were leaving these poor reviews.
• 31:03
  It got to the stage where it wasn't just about reading the reviews, but I was going in and spending at least an hour of every single day replying to every single review.
• 31:13
  You could imagine that it's all been well doing that for one product, but the scale that the app was, Yahoo
• 31:27
  And so to spend and reply to every single review took a huge amount of time.
• 31:32
  But I learned so much from just reading every review, replying to every review, and then going away and actually taking that piece of information, trying to put it in our feedback
• 31:44
  and our roadmap.
• 31:45
  And then even going up and updating that review to say when we've deployed a fix or made an improvement.
• 31:51
  And that was something that was
• 31:53
  not particularly scalable.
• 31:54
  I managed to do it for about a year until I handed it back over to the original team.
• 31:59
  But it was something where I learned how even at the stretches of not really doing something at scale, you can learn a huge amount and really transform your assumptions
• 32:12
  and what the customer might assume that you might do.
• 32:15
  Because whether it is at the scale of that or whether it's the scale of a small eComm store,
• 32:21
  customers aren't necessarily expecting you to break out of what they assume is not really something that's scalable. And replying to every review, particularly if it's
• 32:31
  personalised, whatever store or scale you have doesn't necessarily seem that scalable or that expected.
• 32:38
  And it's something that I think everyone needs to just step back into and just try not to be too much like these big companies, because there's a reason why they
• 32:47
  can't reply to every single review as personalised as possible because they've just got the scale of it.
• 32:53
  So I think it's where eComm businesses have such an opportunity to be more personal and to try to find those opportunities that the bigger brands aren't able to
• 33:04
  fulfil.
• 33:05
  I think it's such a power...
• 33:06
  Mic drop moment right there.
• 33:08
  I think it's so true.
• 33:09
  We try and be like the big companies because that's what we've been conditioned to do.
• 33:13
  But I think actually our superpower is being like ourselves really.
• 33:17
  I think it's such a good point, Max.
• 33:20
  I guess...
• 33:35
  So one of the things that you do is I'll go and get somebody to do the customer service.
• 33:38
  So they start doing the customer service responses, which is great because it is like you say, it's a lot of admin work, but I...
• 33:47
  And this is where those TV shows come into play, isn't it?
• 33:50
  Where the massive companies, the CEO goes and works on the shop floor.
• 33:54
  I think there's something about answering the phone still as the CEO.
• 34:00
  I still think there's something about talking to customers.
• 34:04
  There's still something about...
• 34:19
  think that is almost one of your superpowers as a small eComm business and not neglecting that seems to be quite an important thing.
• 34:27
  Yeah.
• 34:27
  And as you say, it doesn't need to be every single message.
• 34:31
  But I think it is also those opportunities where you can be that much more human and something might just go viral.
• 34:38
  I mean, there are so many stories online of companies who have just given their customer services team the breathing room to be human and to deal with problems that
• 34:53
  might come up.
• 34:58
  There's a good example, the Ritz-Carlton.
• 35:02
  Essentially, there was a family whose kid left a little stuffed giraffe, which the kid absolutely loved.
• 35:13
  He forgot it, left it at the hotel.
• 35:15
  The staff found it and then they created, and essentially the parents told the kid the stuffed giraffe had stayed behind.
• 35:25
  Joshi was its name, stayed behind for a holiday, right?
• 35:28
  And so the staff found the giraffe and they created a little dossier of Joshi's extended vacation.
• 35:36
  They photographed him by the pool in a spa robe, driving a golf buggy, and they put him on a lounge with sunglasses and they made this full album and they returned Joshi to
• 35:49
  this boy with the full album.
• 35:51
  And that was...
• 35:53
  so popular it didn't just go viral.
• 35:55
  I think it was a Harvard Business School case study.
• 35:58
  And it was an example, and there are lots more like this, where a company just allows either themselves or their customer service team to be human and to break the rules with
• 36:09
  what seems like an efficient brand safe response and just go a little bit beyond what the customer expects.
• 36:20
  And that's where you can just
• 36:22
  really change it.
• 36:23
  So whether it's for you as an eComm business, it's you as the founder picking up the phone or whether it's trying to be a little bit more elaborate like that.
• 36:31
  It's trying to just be a little bit more unexpected, but come back to that thing of trying to have a much more human connection with your customers.
• 36:43
  And that's really where I've been trying to focus my time is how can we try to bring back that human connection.
• 36:51
  Because it was there a hundred, 150 years ago where you had customers coming into stores.
• 36:58
  But these days it's much more of a challenge.
• 37:03
  Such a powerful point. I love that story of the giraffe.
• 37:07
  Like you say, there's lots of stories where you're not measuring ROI, but ironically, it creates one.
• 37:14
  It's not your standard textbook play.
• 37:18
  But it is quite fascinating how those things demonstrate culture and they demonstrate values.
• 37:24
  And this is interesting because, again, I come back to the point you made earlier.
• 37:28
  If I try and be like Amazon,
• 37:29
  I'm going to treat all my products like a commodity and I'm going to treat all my customers like a number.
• 37:34
  And it's not that Amazon's bad, but they don't know me.
• 37:37
  They don't know who I am.
• 37:38
  Their algorithm knows what I like, but that's about it.
• 37:41
  But I know what I get with Amazon.
• 37:42
  I'm going to go on there.
• 37:44
  There are certain things that I'll go to Amazon and buy and I go, bish, bash, bosh, job's a good 'un.
• 37:48
  And they sell on convenience, which is great.
• 37:51
  For a small business, it's like the small corner shop where you get to know your customers, right?
• 37:59
  Old TV show, you're probably too young Max, but there's a TV show called Cheers which had the theme tune where everybody knows your name about a pub and you go, that's
• 38:10
  brilliant if you can create that because that creates that sense of community, that creates that sense of belonging, that sense of connection, it differentiates you in so
• 38:19
  many ways from bigger brands.
• 38:21
  I think it's really, really powerful.
• 38:24
  It is.
• 38:25
  The brands are slowly getting better at it.
• 38:27
  And I think there's an opportunity with AI to try to catch up.
• 38:33
  I think, to use your Amazon example.
• 38:35
  I think that they're starting slowly to get there, trying to build a picture of this customer's loyalty.
• 38:42
  And so it's just as important as ever that we make sure that as smaller businesses, we are doubling down on that experience and
• 38:53
  recognising the loyalty because there will come a time, I do feel, with the way that AI is developing where businesses that are much larger are able to get at least a little bit
• 39:06
  closer to the same experience that we can deliver.
• 39:11
  Yeah, that's such a good point.
• 39:13
  I think one of the quick wins here, obviously I don't want to detract from what you guys do with your company, but I appreciate one of the quick wins that you can do, that we've
• 39:24
  tried quite successfully, is to create a board of customers.
• 39:29
  So you pick like three or four different customer personas that you've got that you know exist in your business and you put them into AI.
• 39:38
  And we use Claude a lot.
• 39:40
  I use Claude Code all the time.
• 39:42
  And it's amazing.
• 39:45
  And so you can put stuff into that and go, right, I need you to push back as a customer, right?
• 39:52
  And it will help you understand the customer journey and what they think.
• 39:55
  And again, it's all very hypothetical.
• 39:57
  You've genuinely got to find out.
• 39:59
  But if you're not sure, that's a good place to start.
• 40:03
  And it will start to give you, I think, some of these
• 40:06
  ways to think through some of these insights.
• 40:09
  Like I say, we've used that with great success, not as a finisher, but as a good starter to get you to start thinking.
• 40:16
  Yeah.
• 40:16
  And you can absolutely do that.
• 40:18
  And I think I love that you use Claude as an example, because I think it's particularly good at being able to put in a lot of data, but also it has quite a large output token
• 40:28
  max.
• 40:29
  So it means you can stick in a lot, but also it'll put out quite a lot as well.
• 40:34
  And I've done that quite a lot.
• 40:37
  You can do it with your own data.
• 40:39
  You can use your competitors' public data and just collect
• 40:44
  all of that information, put it in there and you can get all sorts of good information out.
• 40:49
  Going back to your earlier point of what sort of data could we have about our customer?
• 40:54
  Well, it doesn't need to be these days.
• 40:56
  It doesn't need to be a closed style quiz that you're sending your customers to understand how they're finding their product.
• 41:06
  Because now you can just ask a free form, why did you buy this?
• 41:09
  And then
• 41:11
  a couple months later, you can stick all of that information into something like Claude and you can get some really interesting insights.
• 41:18
  It's not hugely scalable, but it doesn't necessarily need to be if you're just trying to break out of your rhythm of going about your day to day and just try to
• 41:30
  understand your customers from a slightly different angle.
• 41:34
  Yeah, that's a really powerful point.
• 41:37
  Just even going into Claude and saying, help me define my customer journeys as a starting point, and getting that pushback and then figuring out and testing and proving
• 41:47
  those things is a good idea.
• 41:48
  Max, listen, I am aware of time, my good friend.
• 41:53
  How do people reach you?
• 41:54
  How do they connect with you if they want to do that?
• 41:57
  Yeah.
• 41:58
  So you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 42:00
  You could also find me through my website, which is getathenic.com.
• 42:05
  And there are links to connect to me through that.
• 42:07
  And yeah, very happy to chat and keep the conversation going.
• 42:12
  And how are you spelling Athenic?
• 42:14
  Yeah, that's a good question.
• 42:16
  That is A-T-H-E-N-I-C.
• 42:22
  getathenic.com, we will of course link to that in the show notes, which will be on the show notes page.
• 42:30
  If you're on the podcast player, just scroll down to the description, it will show you them.
• 42:33
  If you're on YouTube, go to the description, they'll be there.
• 42:35
  All of Max's links will be in there.
• 42:37
  And of course, if you're subscribed to the newsletter, it'll be in the newsletter.
• 42:41
  And if you're subscribed to the newsletter, I feel like I've gone on about this quite a bit now, but the newsletter is available at ecommercepodcast.net.
• 42:50
  And we just email you the show notes every week.
• 42:52
  It's all we do.
• 42:53
  They're all in there with takeaways and actually links to other episodes as well and connecting topics together.
• 42:58
  So quite a lot of work goes into that newsletter.
• 43:00
  So do go check it out.
• 43:01
  It's very worthwhile subscribing to. Max, two questions for you before we close out the show. Question number one, a question I've started to ask my guests is what's your
• 43:12
  question for me?
• 43:12
  This is where you give me a question and I will go away and answer on social media.
• 43:17
  So what's your question for me?
• 43:19
  Yeah.
• 43:20
  Well, I'd love for you to think of the last brand you bought from that you actually told someone else about afterwards.
• 43:26
  And not because they asked you to, not because you had a discount code, just because you wanted to tell them.
• 43:32
  And what did they do to make you feel and do that?
• 43:36
  That's a really good question.
• 43:38
  I would love to answer that and I know the answer already.
• 43:40
  So we are going to be doing that on social media.
• 43:42
  If you'd like to see me answer that question, come find me on LinkedIn at Matt Edmundson.
• 43:46
  All the stuff will be there at some point in the
• 43:49
  future.
• 43:50
  I keep saying that but they genuinely are coming.
• 43:53
  Max, saving the best till last.
• 43:55
  This is where I like to hand over the mic to the guest for the last two minutes of the show to give us your top tips, top value for those that have stayed till the end, who are
• 44:04
  listening to the end.
• 44:07
  Everything that you've said, which I think is really good, really powerful, really challenging.
• 44:12
  What's the best way to supercharge that?
• 44:15
  What's your top tip for everyone that stayed here?
• 44:18
  This far to really supercharge what you've told us today.
• 44:21
  The microphone is yours my friend.
• 44:23
  Over to you.
• 44:24
  Yeah.
• 44:26
  As we've touched on, there are plenty of ways, whether tools like mine or tools like Klaviyo, where you can try different ways to personalise at scale.
• 44:36
  But I think there are plenty of ways, and we've talked about a few of them, where anyone here can do something that's not at scale, but still potentially very valuable.
• 44:46
  Going back to what we said at the start, really thinking through that customer journey and really deeply thinking about
• 44:53
  your customer. It's one of the main pillars at Revolut, which was to think deeper.
• 44:58
  And it really did resonate with me, that one.
• 45:02
  So what I would recommend is go into your email platform, look at the last five messages you sent to customers and for each one ask, is this about what I want as a brand or about
• 45:13
  what they need right now?
• 45:15
  And if the answer is mostly what I want, and it probably is, then you've got a really clear brief
• 45:21
  of what to fix first.
• 45:23
  It takes probably 20 minutes.
• 45:25
  Most brands will never do it, but it's one of the most effective ways you can try to just change your thinking from how to grow the
• 45:36
  brand to trying to work out how to make that customer feel closer to my brand and recommend me, buy from me more in the future.
• 45:46
  Very good.
• 45:47
  I love that.
• 45:48
  I love that little exercise.
• 45:50
  Now that's great.
• 45:50
  Max, listen, thank you so much for coming on the show, man.
• 45:53
  Genuinely appreciate it.
• 45:55
  Really great to hear your thoughts and your stories.
• 45:58
  And just bringing some great value.
• 46:00
  Genuinely appreciate it.
• 46:01
  Thanks for coming on.
• 46:03
  Well, there you go.
• 46:04
  Another fantastic conversation on the wonderful eCommerce Podcast, even if I do say so myself.
• 46:10
  I've just realised what I've said.
• 46:13
  Thank you so much for joining us.
• 46:15
  Have a phenomenal week wherever you are in the world.
• 46:18
  But I will see you next time.
• 46:19
  That's it for me.
• 46:20
  That's it for Max.
• 46:21
  Bye for now.