Overview
SpearmintLOVE got its start as a small online store that sold “Made in the USA'' blankets, meaning all their products (and the items they were made of) originated in the US. What started as a small business quickly grew into a large online retailer due to how much customers worldwide loved the quality of SpearmintLOVE’s eco-friendly blankets.
Today, SpearmintLOVE is the leading independent online retailer of baby and small children’s clothing and small goods. The platform managed that feat thanks to Shari Lott’s (the Founder and CEO) position as a well-known industry influencer. Over the years, she partnered with 100+ baby and children’s fashion brands to offer consumers a vast selection of products from popular, new, and owned brands.
SpearmintLOVE has gained a large and loyal customer base, with over 2 million likes on Facebook. Their products have also been recognized and featured in well-known and acclaimed magazines such as "Pregnancy & Newborn" and "Style at Home".
SpearmintLOVE’s Challenges
SpearmintLOVE had been looking to use an NPS service to boost its customer loyalty levels for some time. Still, they had trouble finding an NPS solution that offered any integration with the ecommerce platform they were using at the time - BigCommerce. Without such support, it would have taken too much time and effort for SpearmintLOVE to effectively use the NPS service or transition to another ecommerce platform.
Besides that, they also needed an NPS platform that featured some degree of automation to streamline engagement with their customers - particularly the unhappy ones. The problem was that some clients were leaving negative scores without providing actionable feedback. SpearmintLOVE needed an easy way to reach out to them that didn’t involve having a team of people looking up negative reviews and reaching out to the customer in question, one by one.
Other goals SpearmintLOVE wanted to achieve with NPS software included:
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Finding out what happy customers loved about their brand so that they could focus on those areas and improve them.
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Turning happy customers into brand advocates and converting passive or unhappy customers into loyal ones.
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Enhancing the overall customer experience to secure repeat purchases.
The Solution
SpearmintLOVE came across Retently, a scalable CX platform, back in June 2018. The main thing that got the company’s attention was the fact that Retently was willing to set up a native integration with BigCommerce, the platform they were using at the time, specifically for them. Later on, Retently made that integration available to all their clients.
Even though Retently offers complex survey campaign management options, SpearmintLOVE opted to keep things simple since that worked out best for them, and they didn’t want to come off too strong to customers. They configured a transactional campaign that fires out surveys ten days after a customer’s order was fulfilled. Retently allowed them to ensure that:
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The surveys could be sent at a specific time;
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The survey is sent at the most appropriate time a customer might reply by using Retently’s proprietary AI-powered algorithms.
SpearmintLOVE implemented workflow automation offered by Retently. Thanks to them, they could automatically start conversations with unhappy customers (Detractors) who didn’t leave any text feedback. They also configured a scenario where customers who have surveys that bounce hard are automatically unsubscribed from SpearmintLOVE’s mailing list.
Retently's granular data allowed the brand to track trends and analyze scores on a weekly basis, giving the team a clearer understanding of customer needs and preferences. With access to metrics that quantify customer satisfaction, the team was able to become more invested in the brand's mission.
Results with Retently
First of all, SpearmintLOVE can still use its current ecommerce platform to send out CX surveys without the need to switch to a different ecommerce platform or manually upload customer data through CSV files. This means that the company can continue using its current platform while also gathering valuable feedback from its customers.
SpearmintLOVE triggered automated surveys through Retently whenever a customer placed an order through BigCommerce. At a much later stage, at their own pace, the brand switched to Shopify - an integration also supported by Retently. The transition was executed seamlessly, with no downtime. This allowed the brand to continue measuring customer satisfaction after each purchase and gather invaluable feedback with no disruptions to the surveying process.
Retently also offered SpearmintLOVE a clear overview of customer data and feedback. It helped them achieve an NPS score of 79, which is way above the average NPS score for ecommerce businesses (63). SpearmintLOVE’s score also didn’t experience any declines while the company used Retently’s platform.
Another decent benefit SpearmintLOVE got with Retently was seeing what exactly customers loved about their brand. Thanks to in-depth analytics, they found out their most loyal customers liked their pricing, shipping, how easy it is to place an order, that they offer top-notch customer service, and that their stock is varied and high-quality.
Because of that, SpearmintLOVE could better prioritize product development and business decisions. They now knew what other areas to highlight when marketing and selling their services, resulting in more orders.
Besides the positives, Retently also helped SpearmintLOVE discover what some clients disliked about their brand. Even though Detractors tended not to leave text feedback, Retently’s workflows automatically allowed SpearmintLOVE’s team to start a conversation with them. That way, they found out a few customers didn’t like how they handled shipping. Even though they were a minority, SpearmintLOVE still allocated some manpower and funds to solve those minor complaints, which resulted in higher customer satisfaction rates.
