“The most important piece of the puzzle is empathy and truly understanding the people you're designing experiences for.”

This week on Be Customer Led with Bill Staikos, we had a great talk with Callie DePina about establishing and fostering the member experience. Callie is the vice president and head of member experience at ButcherBox, a company launched in 2015 with the purpose of making high-quality meat more accessible. 

Throughout the episode, we dive into ButcherBox’s approach to member experience and some important takeaways from Callie’s experience.

[01:37] Callie's Background - Sharing her journey so far, Callie explains her role at ButcherBox. Moreover, she mentions several practices they follow there.

[12:25] Metrics – Callie discusses the metrics they employ to identify and quantify the impact of their members.

[18:00] Journey Mapping -  Callie presents their approach toward journey mapping and mentions its significance.

[21:23] Experience Management – Callie highlights the most crucial aspects of experience management. 

[25:11] The Future – Callie describes the direction she expects experience management will take over the next few years. 

[28:14] Advice From Callie – Callie gives the listeners two essential pieces of advice on nurturing the  member experience.

[31:18] Inspiration – Callie shares the role models she admires and the sources of her inspiration.

Resources:

Connect with Callie:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/smithcallie/

Check out ButcherBox: www.butcherbox.com

ButcherBox discount: if you want to become a new ButcherBox member, ButcherBox is offering listeners $30 off their first box by using the discount code: CALLIE30.

Callie DePina on Creating & Nurturing the Member Experience

[00:00:32] Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to be customer led. This is your host bill Staco. I have a very, very special guest on the show and not only special from the perspective of what she does for work, but also she works for a company that I am a massive, massive fan of. So Cali Dina is on the show today. Now Cali is vice president and head of member experience at a company called butcher box.

Now for our international listeners, who, or for, even for our us listeners who don't know what butcher box is, it's essentially a monthly subscription service for lack of a better way to put it. And they send you the best cuts of meat ever. And I recently had chicken tenders delivered in my latest box, which I got this past Monday.

And my kids went bananas for the chicken tenders. Callie. Thanks so much for coming on a show, such a pleasure to have you here.

[00:01:26] Bill Staikos: listening. Yeah. Now I wanna be clearly, this is not a paid advertisement.

Be customer led does not take money for any of this stuff. I just I'm like when I saw you like pop up at my LinkedIn, I'm like, holy cow, I've gotta have her on the show. Just cause one, I talk to folks that you do what you do every day, but even more importantly, I just love the product. Hey, Calvin, before we get into sort of the, me the show, I just, it would be great.

If you can share your journey with our listeners, I just, you've, you've spent your time and life and customer experience and just talk to all listeners a little bit about, what were the differentiators in your success.

I'm so excited to hear that. It's what we love to hear. In a role like mine. So I guess to kind of give you the overview of how I got to where I am, I've really been in various eCommerce roles throughout my whole career. Mostly much smaller sometimes startup companies. Mm-hmm where. I would say experience management.

Wasn't something that was really defined, but I somehow found my way into that type of role at every company that, that I was at. So I thought I would kind of give a little bit about, each of the companies that I was at and what I learned about experience management from each one and how I kind of built on it.

So the first place that I worked was ULA law, which back in the day, if people remember flash sales, it was like the, one of the major players in the flash sales space. This was like my crash course in e-commerce. We basically were launching an entirely new site every day. So with that type of business, We would have these sales that launched every day at 11 o'clock mm-hmm

And by the first half hour, we would've sold out of most of the products in the sale. So what I really learned there was to be super detail oriented because if something went wrong, there was no time to fix it. You had to have everything perfect before it went live. And it really taught me that like, being detail oriented really affects the customer experience.

Mm-hmm and that's been really valuable to me throughout my whole career. From there. I went to a company called gem Vara. this was custom jewelry where we specialized in, mostly engagement and wedding, but special occasion jewelry, mostly gemstones. And what was really interesting about this was because it was gemstones and not diamonds that most people were purchasing from us.

Mm-hmm , there was really a story behind each piece that people purchased and. Learning those stories and really connecting, the emotion behind the purchases. Mm-hmm, really helped me build that empathy for customers, which I think, is probably the number one thing. That's the most important in customer experience management.

So that was really cool experience. I was in a bunch of roles there ended up in kind of the site experience. So really, really focusing on the digital site experience there mm-hmm then I went to a company called full lean, which. It's a Boston based company that was started out with brick and mortar retail, and kind of transitioned, not away from brick and mortar, but into a sort of hybrid, omnichannel mm-hmm

So when I joined, they were really starting to focus on their e-commerce business. This was clean skincare and beauty. So really interesting product, really great product. I love the company they're still around today. They've expanded their, their footprint really, really cool company to work for. And then that's what led me to butcher rocks.

And people always laugh about kind of transitioning from beauty to. But I it's actually, there's more similarities between the two businesses than you could ever imagine. Because with full lane, we were selling clean beauty and at butcher box, we're selling clean meat. And so both of these spaces are kind of around health and wellness, which is really important to me.

Mm-hmm so I really identify and empathize with customers in both spaces. And it's a space. Both spaces are, are spaces that. A lot of education is required and they can be kind of confusing for consumers. So there's a lot of stuff in the experience that we have to do to kind of educate consumers about the specific products.

So like, yeah. Great. For the gens out there, go download the app. Super easy, go buy. You could buy like suits, like great. I had a great prices, great price, but who the heck is wearing suits anymore. So, but you still go buy regular clothes. So helper listeners call understand a little bit around your role at butcher boxes, head of member experience, right?

And like, like what are you and your team doing day and day? .

That's everything from our VOC program to any serving that we're doing are quantitative studies. We also do qualitative ethnographic research and we're looking at high level customer metrics like NPS and what we call M a, which are it's a member satisfaction metric to, the typical things, uncovering pain points within the journey.

Yeah. Trying to, trying to improve the experience in. Any way that we can, then we're also working really closely with our marketing and product teams to support any kind of questions that they have about our members or specific projects that they're launching. And so we'll support from the research side with member and customer insights for, for those teams specifically, or anybody across the company.

but those are the two teams that we tend to work with the most closely. The second piece is UX and product design. So this may be a little more atypical for, to kind of roll up into a CX organization, but UX and product design do fall into my purview. Mm-hmm and it's pretty straightforward.

We're designing the experiences for the website, working super closely with the product team mm-hmm really serving as a resource for them. and working hand in hand with. We're also working really closely with our brand team. Who's kind of supplying the, the imagery and the language yeah. To the experiences that we're designing.

So really cross-functional there. And then the last piece is community, which again, I think is maybe a little bit atypical for, for this type of role, but, and it's new for us to have community rolling up into my organization. But what we've really found is. within the spaces where our members are so on our social platforms and even in sort of local communities, mm-hmm, , that's a piece that we've found is very, very important for our members.

Mm-hmm to feel that sense of community. And so we're really trying to find ways to integrate that more into the broader experience. And so, so that's kind of the, the overview of, of what my role

Interesting. And I love that you have UX and product design in there. I think that's so important cuz your VOC teams are probably working closely with your UX and, and product designers, right? Not just with the product team, et cetera. I think that a lot of comp personally, just in my opinion, I think a lot of companies miss that trick when those UX teams are sitting somewhere else in the organization, And they're not aligned towards like a common, shared vision totally.

and common goals and objectives. I think it's awesome that you guys have done that. Has that been different than maybe how you've led sort of experience management teams in the past? I mean, outside of community, which you said is, is a little bit new and maybe even the product designers, but has it traditionally been more VOC focused or, or what other models have you kind of developed in past?

Mm-hmm . I think this is the first time where it's sort of like officially part of my role to own UX. And I think it works really, really well. The other thing that I think is unique about how butcher box or somewhat unique about how butcher box has our CX set up is that we actually all roll up, product and CX roll up to the same organization.

So we have a chief product and experience officer cool. That kind of manages both of those groups. So product. Customer experience are basically one department, which is it's amazing because I think. At the end of the day, it's the product managers who have the power to actually prioritize the things that we need to do to improve the experience.

So having that direct connection is, is really powerful in being able to get things done.

Kind of caught up to the Silicon valley kind of tech space and saying, Hey, look, we need product and CX really married up very closely. So you're seeing that. That organizational structure more and more, which is really fascinating. So I'm hoping the next three to five years, you'll see, actually see your bank experience.

Maybe you get a little bit better as a result. you, you mentioned your member satisfaction score. Like how do you, is that a primary sort of measure of success? Like. How do you measure success for not just, even for the company, from a customer experience metric perspective, but even for your team, like, are there any, specifically that's operational or customer metrics that you use to, to kind of identify and measure impact, across your members?

kind of going through the high level metrics that we measure on a regular basis. Mm-hmm what I'll caveat that with is. We don't measure our team on those metrics. Like we don't have a goal for NPS, for example, mm-hmm that we're like chasing mm-hmm . and I think that's really important, super. And so it is really difficult to kind of figure out exactly how to measure the performance and are we making an impact, but so to back up, I'll go through kind of like the main things that we mm-hmm that we measure on a regular basis.

We do measure NPS, which is pretty standard. I think everybody who listens to the show will know exactly what NPS is. Yep. Yep. Then we, we measure M a, which is member satisfaction. It's a five point scale that we rate on. We also rate on sort of different, different factors of satisfaction. So there's an overall satisfaction.

And then we kind of break it down into your delivery satisfaction. Mm-hmm your satisfaction with the product itself. And there's a few other, areas that we look. those two scores are the, the sort of overall experiential scores. They're not transactional. They're mm-hmm we send those surveys out, at a regular cadence, but it's they're at specific times so that people are able to think back about their whole experience, not just one singular transaction.

Then we have, what we call DSAT, which is delivery satisfaction. And that is a very transactional score that we send out to every member after every box is delivered. And so that is something that we do use in terms of. Measuring the performance of our operations and logistics team are all over that score.

They're, we're, we're constantly talking to them about what's happening with DSAT. They're using that as like a scorecard for our shipping partners and our fulfillment centers. And so that's something that is a very, very tangible that they can make improvements really quickly from. It's a super, actionable metric, the other two NPS and MSAT.

We use them. We, the company knows what they are. We, we measure them. We, we track how we're doing relative to previous years, et cetera. But it's more about looking at the underlying data in those surveys and uncovering those bigger issues that we need to work on. It's less about chasing a score there. So we're not measuring anybody's performance based on what those scores are.

If that makes sense.

And then you're getting away from the importance of the customer. And there's like all sorts of. bad follow on impact as a result of that. Right? Totally, totally.

And I think a lot of companies are, is like, how do you quantify this? And yeah, what we're trying to do is put out as many actionable insights as we can. I think we've started to sort of transition into this phase where we're getting really good. Interpreting the data and giving the rest of the company, the rest of the departments and the company actionable things that they can do.

And now what we're trying to do is kind of take it to the next level where, okay, we've given you some actionable things. Now we're gonna help you take action on them. And so it's sort of more a measurement of what initiatives are being are being, prompted by these insights that we're serving up to the company.

And mm-hmm, what initiatives are successful based on the insights that we've,

I'm like, I wonder if it was because of the survey actually that I just like told that as an example. So

[00:15:58] Bill Staikos: So smart to do. I love that you're doing that. Yeah. let, let's talk about sort of journeys for a moment.

How are you thinking about the journey you mentioned sort of the delivery experience, which by the way is great. Not only, and just for listeners who don't have the service, by the way, like when you go into butcherbox.com, you can pick which days around. You want the box delivered and like it tells you like the, the expected day, and then you get an email saying, Hey, it's been delivered, et cetera.

So really just a nice way to kind of manage the delivery around your schedule versus it being, Hey, you gotta get it on this day. And it's the first of the month. And then you're figuring out and scrambling, how do I make sure that I'm home to make sure that happens? Right? How are you guys thinking about, you mentioned some journeys, are you journey mapping?

Are you using any kind of advanced technology to do analytics around the journey? Are you're doing some level of orchestra? Just by measure of sending out different emails to different people, what's your view on the importance of this and, and where do you wanna maybe take it for butcher box?

Yeah. We've tried to get a little bit more granular with it and it, we haven't found much success in it because I think. It's really hard to, and I I'm, I'm guessing this is true in a lot of industries, but with butcher box in particular, our members are so diverse in come from so many different places and are in such different situations that when we try to make, even if we try to do like a persona based journey, we find that it's almost like we would have to do a one to one journey map for every single member.

Yeah. Which obviously we can't do. It's not possible. It's not possible. We we've kind of shifted away from that. And we've leaned more into, like you were talking about kind of trying to personalize the experience based on personas. We, we did a persona study about a year ago. That was really, really interesting where we uncovered four different personas, within the butcher box member base that are values based, not demographics based.

So it's really like shared values around cooking, eating, and health and. So that gives us a lot of room to kind of play around with messaging and communication and content that we can personalize the experience based on, somebody's values rather than E especially when you get into like, beyond the digital journey when somebody's actually using the product.

And they're at home cooking and sitting down to a meal, it's just such a personal experience. Yeah. So we, we kind of have to be mindful of that and, and not try to blanket. Yeah. Make blanket solutions for, for those types of things,

And I think because consumer needs have just evolved so much and it continue to do so. I just think that the technology that we've got access to now can really get you down to the individual level. There's almost no need to say we're gonna box this person. In this kind of group anymore, right? Exactly.

I'm ex and I'm excited. I mean, the technology on that is only getting better and better, better and better. I think the next kind of two, three years, it's gonna really change the way that, practitioners in this space really think about their work and, and how to engage the customer differently.

How do you, Kelly, how do you think about sort of the core tenets of experience and, and bringing them into your work? Like what are the three to five things that like, are your go to that you're always modeling or think, excuse me, thinking about modeling again.

And just being able to truly understand your customers and be able to walk in their shoes and really understand what their needs are. It's a, it, you really have to talk to a lot of people and just getting on the phone or, serving or what, however you can reach your, your customers. I think that's the number one most important piece of the whole puzzle is having empathy and truly understanding, the people that you're designing experiences

I think that's well that's well said. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but like that's the, if you, if you're not starting with empathy, You shouldn't be doing this

Even it has to be a company wide effort. And if it's not, it's not gonna work because, I think you, you really. Part of my job, I think, is to help people understand how the work that they're doing every day, no matter what department that they're in, in the organization, how the work that they're doing every day is affecting our end users and our customers and our members so that people, again, and helping to develop that empathy throughout the organization for our members is what makes this whole thing successful.

If you don't have the whole company bought in from top to bottom, you're not gonna be able to. Get what you wanna get done.

Like how important, I guess then if everybody owns it, right, like one person has to kind of manage that. And I think that's what you're saying, right? One person should be accountable or responsible for managing it. Everybody should own it. How does that work? Where you are? Is it bottoms up top down? Like how does that kind of manifest at a company like butcher box.

And I think, it's something, that's a, honestly, it's a, it's a work in progress. Always. We can always get better. But we're really trying to, to help people understand again, how their work affects the member and why that matters, why it matters to create experiences that that are delightful for our members.

How does that affect the bottom line and how does that affect the longevity of the company? Mm-hmm so just sort of trying to pull all of those pieces together for people I think is again, like what my role and what my depart. is there to do in, in a lot of ways.

Like next couple years, three to five years, even like, like what, what are you really excited about from the discipline perspective?

Like we actually need to create experiences that are really personalized to our customers and members. and I feel like we're starting to get the technology and the data and every, all those pieces in place where that's actually gonna be a reality in the, in the near future or already is today. And I think it's, it's hard to harness a lot of that right now, even though I think it's possible, but at least for.

a smaller company, it takes us a while to get there. But I think that's one of the, that's the first thing that pops into mind in terms of like where, where the discipline is headed. And then I think, again, like we've been talking about just more of a whole company effort and really bringing the entire company into the process and, and really thinking about the experience as being owned by every single person in the company.

[00:24:31] Bill Staikos: Yeah. Yeah. And giving people the tools to be able to understand the impact that they have, even if they're in the operational guts of a company. Right. Totally like way back, like at the end of the day, still what they do. Everyone's accountable to the customer, right. At the end of the day or the member in this case, but giving them tools and visibility and to understand like how, what they do day in and day actually impacts not only the company from a strategic perspective, but also the customer.

I think we are super close to that. It feels like there's a lot of conversation around how do we tie the employee experience together with the customer experience yeah. And connect those journeys. And I think that there's, there's a lot of, lot of opportunity for some of the bigger tech players to kind of solve some of those problems, for, for a lot of folks that are in this space.

Totally agree. Before we close out, I've got a couple more questions for you, Callie. I am, I, you may, you may not know this from our conversations, but I am a huge proponent of female and minority leadership and an ally. I like to think myself as an ally, in this space, What advice do you have for other individuals, females, or otherwise, maybe even, who are inexperienced management today, they're practitioners or just professionals and who are looking to grow and develop into a similar role, like heading up, member experience and being a VP at a company.

what would you say maybe to start thinking about now? And then similarly, the flip side of that is what advice do you have for allies in this space? And that's. I mean me asking, cuz I'm always trying to learn and, and do better there, but also I think that there are a lot of, male listeners on the show that are, similarly minded and wanna make sure that they're helping as well.

It's always a winding path and I. One of the most important things is to embrace that, that you're gonna go in a bunch of different directions. You're gonna learn a ton of things along the way, and you're gonna end up where you wanna go, try to have a picture of where you wanna be and let the path wind.

I think that's super important because. This industry is changing so quickly. Yeah. It's there, it's just, it's different at every company and you just have to embrace it. So I think that's the number one thing in experience management, male or female embrace that kind of ambiguity, winding path kind of kind of journey.

The second thing, and this I think is for both this, I think applies to allies as well is seeking out mentorship. So I. Talk to so many people coming up in their careers about the fact that you are never going to get everything that you need from your manager. And you shouldn't expect that as a manager.

So, if you're particularly, if you're a male manager of, of female employees, you need to recognize that as well and really support your employees in finding that mentorship that they need. Mm-hmm so particularly for young women, I think it's really important to find female mentors that you can.

Look up to in your field or, or outside of your field, but mm-hmm, really just kind of taking a look at the pieces of your role or where you wanna get to that. You feel like you can't really get from your manager and proactively seek out mentorship outside of that. And again, as a manager, making sure that you're supporting your employees in doing that.

Like I could probably be doing a better job of that, even myself as I think about it, but it's, I don't think you you're a hundred percent, right. That shouldn't just be in the employee's shoulders to. Who do you look up to whether it's in the CX space or, or just in industry, are there any leaders that you kind of look to as a, as, as role models?

So it was, it really couldn't have been a better situation. I sought her out. She ended up eventually becoming my boss and, it couldn't be a better situation, but she's amazing. She's really inspiring. She's great female role model. and what I, what I think is unique about her is I think she was on the forefront of this kind of bringing product and member experience together.

Mm-hmm and that's something that. I had always in my, in my career, it's always sort of naturally been wanting to be pulled together. Mm-hmm but she was the first person that I, that I sort of knew that was really pulling it, together. Yeah. In, in a, in a formal way. So

Last question for you. I know you're super busy. It's a Friday. Where do you go for inspiration, Callie.

[00:30:12] Bill Staikos: perspective? No, just like what, what fills your tires in life? Like what, what gets you kinda like, what gives you inspiration? Generally?

Yeah. But what, where I kind of, the place that I go for inspiration is my daily, like workout, exercise routine, where. That's the time for me, where my mind is the most clear I have two young kids. I have I'm pregnant. I there I have a lot going on,

[00:30:46] Callie DePina: That's awesome.

Yeah. So it's life is crazy. And so that's the time when I feel like it's the only time when my mind isn't on something. Yeah. And that's when, most of my reflection happens. And, when I think a lot of my most inspired ideas come when, when my mind is actually. has a little bit of a

Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. When I'm on my Peloton, the only thing I can think of is when am I getting off this thing? And like, it feels good, but like when is this so far? When is the 30 minutes or 45 minute class gonna be? Yeah. Hey, this has been a really great show. I really one congratulations on, on your cut your third, soon to be, third child and that's awesome.

I've got three. It's just, it's a really cool number. . And I really appreciate you coming the show and yeah, look again, love the product. I'm grateful that you agreed to, to be on the show. It's great to meet you and talk to you and, and for you to share a little bit about, what you're doing, at ButcherBox.

[00:31:45] Bill Staikos: All right, everybody. Another great show this week. We're out. Talk to

Leave us feedback on how we're doing or tell us what you wanna hear more about until next time we're out.