How to Transform Consumer Insights into Actionable Business Strategies

We’re back with yet another exciting edition of The Hark Report as we dig into consumer insights with this week’s guest: Leeor Cohen, the Founder and CEO of Create CX!

Leeor discusses how he got his start in the world of CX (pants and pizza??), and how he helps brands actually use consumer insights data to improve their entire organization. Leeor takes a data driven approach to everything so you’ll learn a lot about inputs and outputs, implementing AI the right way, and more..

Here’s Leeor to introduce the topic of this newsletter!

Table of Contents

• Leeor's CX background

• Identifying valuable insights from tons of data

• Translating consumer insights into actionable strategies

• How Leeor uses Hark to make a big impact

• Inputs and Outputs: Balancing the human element with AI

• Common mistakes brands make when trying to implement consumer insights into their strategies.

• How Create CX combines creative and data driven strategies

  • CX Tip of the Week 💡

  • Strong Inputs create world class Outputs 👉💪

Emily (Hark): Tell me a bit about your background in the CX world, and the experiences that led you to start Create CX and how that’s been for you.

Leeor Cohen (Create CX): I started my career working at Bonobos on the frontlines of the CX department. This is where I learned first-hand the power of an amazing, thoughtful customer interaction. Amazing messaging plus being extraordinarily data driven with every interaction to then pass along feedback throughout every other department. I feel so lucky to have started my career at Bonobos. It gave me an excellent base to see how CX touches every business unit. 

Then, I went to Slice (the pizza app) and learned that in customer experience whether you’re selling pants online or servicing pizza eaters and pizza makers– in a two-sided marketplace servicing two customers - the core fundamental idea of proactive CX, being thoughtful with those interactions and bringing CX data back into the organization are all the same.

My last FT role was at Coterie Baby where I led all things Product, Operations and CX. This allowed me to really flex into the technical side of DTC. I became a Shopify wizard, great product manager and learned the 3PL side more intimately. All of this while thinking from my CX lens really unlocked the reason why Create CX was born. 

If done well, CX maps out and manages customer expectations from end-to-end. Bringing those CX inputs into actionable outputs throughout your organization creates the ultimate unlock for every internal stakeholder and ultimately helps customers have the best experience possible. 

Emily: In your experience at Create CX, how do you identify the most valuable consumer insights for brands from the noise of data?

Leeor: We start every CX engagement with a CX Refresh. A CX refresh is where we go through the end-to-end customer experience, mapping every possible touchpoint that any internal stakeholder would have to answer to. These are the Inputs. The Outputs are the critical answers customers need to solve any issue whether pre-purchase, while their item is in transit, and post-purchase. 

Taking a data-driven approach where every single ticket answers core questions of what is the customer asking, where in the experience were they that led to the query and what was the solution? - this bubbles up the insights to focus on. Something might be a “problem” but if it is affecting .05% of contacts, there are likely far more impactful (ie. low hanging fruit) that CX should emphasize to make an impact on the bottom line. 

Emily: Once you gather consumer insights, what is your process for translating them into actionable business strategies for clients?

Leeor: Consistency. Every Monday our brands get an insights email from us driving home their largest trends and themes. We track WoW, MoM and YoY. 

We also help contextualize their revenue and orders with the impact on CX - this helps bring CX to C-Suite (cliche but it’s an effective ism we use a lot).

For example: You processed 1,000 orders last month. This created 500 tickets. This (normally, varies based on business) is a very inefficient business. 500 customers felt the need to write to your support team after their order. 50% of orders felt some friction. If we can reduce that to 25% or 10% (the goal) contact rate, this helps contextualize that the work Product, Operations, Marketing, etc, are doing has a meaningful impact on the brand customer experience. 

Emily: Can you share an example where Create CX used consumer insights to shift a brand’s strategy in a way that made a big impact?

Leeor: Ironically, Hark! We were trying to convince a brand to adopt Hark more broadly on their website, in emails and generally when asking a customer for feedback - obviously replacing their contact form with Hark.

We saw the average ticket within this particular business from start to close was about 5.5 messages (in and outbound messages). With messages that came in through Hark we saw the average messages per ticket at about 2.8 messages.

This means in very simple terms two main things:

1. Your customer was getting their answer faster. More contacts were resolved on the first interaction - big win for satisfaction with less back and forth. 

2. Agents are freed up to help other customers creating a more productive CX department. 

Emily: We love a Hark shoutout! What role do technology and AI play in helping Create CX transform consumer insights into real business actions? How are you balancing this with keeping that human element that people appreciate when it comes to customer experience?

Leeor: Back to one of my favorite isms: Strong Inputs create world class Outputs. 

Inputs need to be dictated by the humans. This is where our CX Refresh comes into play and knowing what every interaction is about and how the internal team wants to handle every contact type. 

From there, some Outputs are very successfully handled via automation and AI. Training your AI to know which interactions are far too important to your business vs. the interactions (WISMO) that can be very easily deflected is the balance. 

This has a longtail impact on CX team hiring. You need humans in your CX department but with the correct AI implementation maybe your team of 20 agents should actually be 12…. This is part of that balance.  

Emily: What are some common mistakes you find brands make when trying to interpret and implement consumer insights into their strategies? 

Leeor: Most brands just download a helpdesk and start answering emails. They aren’t LEARNING from every interaction. It seems elementary but so many companies are just busy closing the inbox they don’t setup simple systems to scale. This benefits the agents, admins and C-Suite of the organization. Again, Inputs to Outputs. It’s all connected. 

Emily: Finally, how do you at Create CX integrate creative and marketing strategies with data-driven insights to ensure a cohesive business approach?

Leeor: We need 3-months for our CX Refresh. From there, we either have taught the brand to fish for themselves, manage and scale CX internally. We also offer Fractional VP of CX go-forward engagements to stay on as a partner to the internal team. For those companies wanting to remain super lean - we have had a lot of success adding the right amount of value whether with a fully embedded CX Leader or just a technical & analytical extension for the CX department.

To chat with Leeor and start your CX Refresh, grab some time off his calendar here!

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CX Tip of the Week 💡

Strong Inputs create world class Outputs 👉💪

Make sure Inputs are dictated by the humans on your team, and let the Outputs be handled by AI. Understand which interactions are the most important to creating that human connection and awesome experience, and which easier interactions (like WISMO) can be given to AI… with this balance you may find you can reduce the amount of agents while still fostering close relationships with your customers through human connection 🫶

That’s all for today! See you next time, and thanks for chatting Leeor! 🙂