Broad River Retail

Wes Dudley is a retail leader with 36 years of experience, including three decades at JCPenney, where he held 17 roles, ultimately serving as Director of Corporate Customer Care. His career trajectory includes senior leadership positions as SVP of Customer Care at Ashley Furniture Industries, VP of Customer Experience at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams and VP of Customer Experience at Broad River Retail. At Broad River Retail, Dudley is heading initiatives to streamline planned returns, design a comprehensive customer journey and create a People, Process and Technology roadmap aimed at eliminating operational inefficiencies and reducing technology silos, positioning the company for sustainable growth and enhanced customer satisfaction.

Through this article, Dudley discusses strategies for improving customer experience through technology, humanized AI, efficient delivery processes and training for teams.

Experience is the Key to Success

• It is important to rely on your experience of what worked and what did not work from past projects when putting together the current project at hand.

• We have a unique situation at Broad River where we have low attrition, great KPIs and an amazing culture while my Customer Experience (CX) All-Stars all work from home.

Adapting AI for Better CX

• The biggest challenge for me at Broad River was the timing of updating the tech stack. We started the review just as Chat GPT was being launched.

• Technology changes quickly and with AI, it was overload in early 2023. I completed 31 demos of Generative and Conversational AI platforms in 2023, so I could try to make sense of what was available and what we could use to elevate our customer experience.

• With my direct reports, we came up with three tracks we wanted to implement. 1) Onboarding/Training, 2) Customer Experience, 3) User Experience.

Customer Experience is no longer just a call centre; it is training the teams on technology to prepare them for the future.

CX Through Humanized AI

• The overhaul of the entire CX Tech stack.

• The goal was to enhance the CX taking a humanized approach to AI while reducing overall spend.

• We reduced tech spend by 22%

• We reduced our resolution times and escalation times by taking a real-time approach to the customer issues instead of waiting for them to be reported.

Elevating the Delivery Experience

• For furniture, our CX team gets involved mainly about delivery and repairs.

• Our new delivery routing software has allowed us to not only take advantage of auto-routing, but also using SMS allows the customer, the ability to reschedule their delivery with no help from an agent. In addition, as soon as the driver is leaving for their next delivery, we are now in contact with the home the driver just left to make sure everything was flawless with the delivery. If not, we can start resolution immediately.

Preparing CX Teams for Tomorrow

• I am on the CCW Advisory board.

• At each conference, I walk the floor looking for new things I have not seen before.

• I also demo with many new companies so I can see what that have or what potential they have in the future of the CX space.

• The biggest challenge for implementation right now in this industry is training our teams differently. Customer Experience is no longer just a call centre, it is training the teams on technology to prepare them for the future.

Building Connections for Greater CX

• Building a network is one of the most important and easiest things to accomplish.

• Get out there. Go to conferences (again a plug for CCW), join forums, watch webinars and stay active on LinkedIn.

• This is a small industry, but one of the most important industries to be in for customer loyalty. More companies need to realize the importance and investment needed in this space.