Lovevery creates personalized service to drive retention

Lovevery is an early childhood brand best-known for their subscription Play Kits, offering stage-based play essentials for children’s developing brains, ages 0 to 5. Since launching in 2017, the e-commerce company has set itself apart by creating playthings that are built to last with sustainably harvested wood, organic cotton, nontoxic paint, and baby-safe materials. Lovevery debuted Play Kits for various ages and developmental stages in 2018 and now has more than 360,000 subscribers across the U.S., Canada, the UK, Europe, and Australia.

Unique CX strategy for subscriptions

Emily Sarver has been part of Lovevery’s evolution since launching the customer experience program five years ago, as a team of one. Now the Vice President of Customer Experience, Sarver has a deep understanding of why subscription-based companies need to create a seamless customer experience, especially when serving the parents of young children. That philosophy continues to inform her CX strategy.

“Lovevery’s purpose is to be of service to families,” shares Sarver. “I was hired to be the first and foremost frontline support for the parents and caregivers who make up our customer base, and at the same time plot a vision of the future of the customer experience function at Lovevery.”

“I envisioned building out a customer service team with their own amazing user experience, so we could power an incredible customer journey for the parents that we serve,” adds Sarver. “We deeply value the role that Lovevery plays in the lives of growing families and strive to ensure that every customer touchpoint is of service to parents as we continue to scale quickly.”

Lovevery now has 50 support agents, with approximately half the team working at the headquarters in Boise, Idaho, and the other half following a remote hybrid model.

Extreme growth powered by Zendesk

The business entered a period of hypergrowth during the pandemic when parents were home with their children, and Lovevery needed a CX platform to handle the rising sales and support volume.

“We found that the demand for our product took off in a remarkable way, with parents seeking independent self-guided play as an alternative to screen time. Lovevery began to shift into a mass market brand and our growth became exponential,” Sarver says.

Lovevery made the switch to Zendesk in 2020 and now leverages Zendesk for support channels, primarily chat and email, along with a robust help center. Agents utilize views within Zendesk to prioritize what they see as the most urgent tickets, and they can set up automations to catch orders that might have the wrong customer details or address before shipping.

Scaling the team to match high volume

The company’s CX transformation was accompanied by changes in staffing, too. In March 2020, Lovevery had only five CX team members who all switched to remote work. By 2021, the group had expanded to 20 support agents. Today, the team has 50 agents.

“To support our growth, we look to hire team members who are problem solvers and who are committed to learning at all stages of career growth,” says Sarver. That approach to hiring benefits everyone within the organization.

“Being a part of Lovevery at every stage has been a masterclass in entrepreneurship. The opportunity to learn directly from our co-founders and incredible colleagues how to build and scale a company has been invaluable,” remarks Sarver. “Staying true to our mission to be of service to families and building experiences that best cater to them has been central to our success so far.”

Agent education and empowerment

During the pandemic, Lovevery’s support operations were fairly ad hoc with only a bit of documentation. “There was a lot of last-minute scrappy deck building, real-time walkthroughs, and troubleshooting on the spot,” recalls Sarver. “After realizing a need for more structure and formality in the onboarding process, we spent six months trying to categorize and organize as many processes and workflows as possible, so there would be a living breathing resource for the existing team and future teams.”

As part of their proactive approach, the team uses Confluence to create internal documentation for agents. They set out to capture key differentiators for Lovevery, the brand voice, the audience, and how to connect with customers, as well as products and systems training.

“This year, we started building out a 30-60-90 day plan for each new team member focused on employee engagement,” notes Sarver. “We want to support individuals through the stages of company growth and make sure that they feel holistically supported and have the education, empowerment, and tools they need to provide great service.”

Personalization keeps subscribers happy

Around 85 percent of Lovevery’s business is subscription focused, so their CX strategy revolves around creating personalized services to help drive retention.

That involves finding ways to surprise and delight customers. Agents use Zendesk to deliver proactive messages around shipping credits and delays, replacing lost toy parts, and subscription management and order tracking.

“Our team primarily serves customers through live chat and email,” says Sarver. “We try to leverage those real-time conversations and real-time engagements to make that personal connection, which is so meaningful to parents.”

Lovevery has seen the demand for chat support soar during retail promotions, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Fortunately, launching chat has helped the team achieve a 10 to 15 percent increase in agent productivity and become more responsive to customer needs, which in turn creates happier, more loyal customers.

Bespoke solutions for every customer

Lovevery knows how invested parents are in their child’s future, and that every child’s development path is unique. “Children develop at different stages, at different paces, and every child’s journey is different,” explains Sarver.

The team is deepening personalization for customers by offering Disability Support Service for children with a learning exceptionality or disability. Customers enroll using a custom web form that is integrated with Zendesk, and they are quickly connected with a Lovevery disability support specialist.

“We’re able to give customers the information and share the expertise that we have on our team, connect them with a product that’s truly delightful, and support them in a meaningful way going forward,” says Sarver. “We try to offer bespoke solutions for caregivers to make sure that we are really meeting their needs. The team loves making that magic happen.”

Success with integrated support

Although Lovevery’s subscription platform is custom built, the team has established useful connections with FlowEQ, Zapier, and Playvox for QA, while also integrating Shopify with their Zendesk instance.

Sarver’s team saw a lot of success this year using the FlowEQ integration to guide workflows within Zendesk Agent Workspace and incorporate automations. Along with 10 to 15 percent gains in efficiency, the team was happy to report less decision fatigue for agents and reduced onboarding time.

The future of Lovevery CX

The team aims to enhance the digital experience for customers by leveraging self-service and increasing customer engagement on The Lovevery App. For example, Sarver sees conversations happening on the mobile app as an opportunity to help drive commerce.

She believes “the answer may be something as simple as offering SMS in the future and expanding our channel assortment because we know that people will be accessing Lovevery more and more through their phones.”

Lovevery will also keep refining the agent experience and making things as empowering for the associate team as possible.

“I don’t think there’s any limit to how great we can make the agent experience,” says Sarver. “We want to make Lovevery a place where people can do their best work and thrive, while serving the families who make up our customer base.”