Why Your CX Will Always Be Broken (& How to Hire and Scale Anyway), with Michael Bair

Why Your CX Will Always Be Broken (& How to Hire and Scale Anyway), with Michael Bair

Most brands want customer experience to become a clean, efficient, fully solved function. Hire the team. Set the policies. Add the help desk. Bring in AI. Reduce the backlog. Keep customers happy. But as Michael Bair explains in this episode of CX After Hours, CX is never really “fixed.” The business keeps changing. New products create new questions. Policies create new friction. Channels multiply. Teams grow. Tools break. Expectations rise. And just when you think the system is under control, something else shifts. Michael Bair is the Founder of Bair Consulting and former SVP of Customer Experience at FIGS. He has spent 20 years working across customer experience, sales, retention, e-commerce, SaaS, and consulting, and has hired more than 1,000 people throughout his career. In this conversation, Michael joins Guillaume Luccisano and Anya Kelly to talk about what it really takes to hire and scale CX teams in the real world. They discuss why great CX starts with people who genuinely like customers, Michael’s “PhD” hiring framework - passionate, hungry, and driven - and why interview skills are often a poor predictor of performance. They also get into scaling teams without lowering the bar, treating AI as part of the staffing model, deciding what belongs with AI, BPOs, or internal agents, and why “Where’s my order?” tickets may be telling you something deeper about your shipping experience. Michael also explains why e-commerce CX teams should pay close attention to repeat purchase rate, and why the best CX leaders are often the people inside the company who stay closest to customers. Because CX is not a function you finish. It’s a function you keep building. Chapters: * 02:12 Great CX Traits * 03:41 PhD Hiring Framework * 05:21 Finding CX Talent * 08:26 Interviewing For Motivation * 11:22 Sales To CX Shift * 15:11 The Vent - Where’s My Order? * 17:47 Fixing Shipping Expectations * 24:53 Scaling CX Three Ps * 26:14 BPO And AI Staffing * 28:50 AI Limits and Leverage * 30:23 Routing VIP Customers * 32:32 Phones Versus Digital * 34:57 Email Backlog Debate * 36:45 The 10% Fix Framework * 37:18 Knowledge Base First * 38:57 Dashboards and KPIs * 40:06 Repeat Purchase North Star * 42:14 Memorable CX at Scale * 43:33 Chewy Surprise System 📺 Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lHtwZc5iwjU [https://youtu.be/bJmKomr28zI] Subscribe via email and get new episodes delivered to your inbox: ⁠https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours⁠ [https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours] Follow the hosts: Guillaume Luccisano: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/] Anya Kelly: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/] Follow this episode’s guest: Michael Bair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljbair/ 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/ [https://yuma.ai/]

Eli Weiss on Why Your Best Customers Leave - And Why Better CX Starts Before They Complain

Most e-commerce brands think they have a retention problem. But according to Eli Weiss, they often have something deeper: a customer experience problem. In the first episode of CX After Hours, Eli joins hosts Guillaume Luccisano and Anya Kelly to unpack where retention really breaks — long before a customer churns, leaves a bad review, or opens a support ticket. They discuss why your best customers often leave quietly, why “deflection” is the wrong goal if customers still aren’t getting resolution, and why the boring parts of e-commerce CX — returns, refunds, exchanges, replacements, and policies — are often the moments that decide whether customers come back. Eli Weiss is VP of Advocacy at Yotpo and previously led CX and retention at brands including OLIPOP and Jones Road Beauty. He also writes the excellent All Things CX and Retention newsletter. Subscribe to Eli’s newsletter: https://www.eliweisss.com/ [https://www.eliweisss.com/] Chapters: 03:21 — From CX cost center to retention driver 08:00 — The Vent: what CX gets wrong about automation 09:00 — Why the remaining 10% of tickets matter most 13:31 — Faster slop: when AI makes bad CX worse 14:21 — The ripped socks story: policy vs. customer loyalty 16:01 — When AI should hand off to a human 17:12 — Deflection vs. resolution 18:43 — Why retention is mostly product 19:36 — What Reddit and social reveal about CX 24:11 — When CX becomes a safety net for broken systems 29:23 — Why refunds and returns are business tools 36:07 — The future of CX: bots plus exceptional humans 📺 Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bJmKomr28zI [https://youtu.be/bJmKomr28zI] Subscribe via email and get new episodes delivered to your inbox: https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours [https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours] Follow the hosts: Guillaume Lucissano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/] Anya Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/] Follow this episode’s guest: Eli Weiss: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliweisss/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliweisss/] 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/ [https://yuma.ai/]

Intro: Welcome to CX After Hours

CX After Hours is the podcast for customer experience leaders and operators in retail and e-commerce navigating the space between customer expectations and business goals. Because in CX, you sit in the middle. You want to do right by the customer - while also driving retention, revenue, and growth. Every day is a balance between empathy and efficiency, speed and quality, automation and human connection. The problem? Most CX content feels polished and theoretical — far removed from the reality of the job. So we created CX After Hours: honest, unscripted conversations about what it actually takes to make customer experience work at scale. Hosted by Guillaume Luccisano and Anya Kelly, this show dives into the real stories, trade-offs, and decisions behind modern CX. Expect conversations around: * AI in CX * Retention and loyalty * Scaling support teams * E-commerce and retail operations * Tough calls, mistakes, and lessons learned No corporate jargon. No perfect playbooks. Just real conversations about real CX. If you work in customer experience, e-commerce, or retail, this podcast is for you. Subscribe to CX After Hours on your favorite podcast app. Get all the episodes in video format, with additional written content, on our site: https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours [https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours]