00:10
Ciaran
Hello and welcome to Customer Friendship Conversations, the show where we bring you the latest trends, tools and insights into delivering customer experience as it’s meant to be. I’m Ciaran Nolan and I lead relationship management for Dixa. Today we’re bringing you a particularly spicy episode of the podcast, because I’m talking to Cherina Røsand. She’s the head of customer care at Sinful Group. Sinful Group are an award winning ecommerce sex toy business, the largest in northern Europe. Their mission is a more playful sex life for everyone. As you can imagine, customer experience takes an entirely different shape when your customers are buying something so personal and intimate. So how does Sinful manage maintain such high levels of customer satisfaction? I’m pleased to have Cherina from Denmark to tell us all about it. Thank you so much for joining the Customer Friendships Conversations podcast. We’re delighted to have you here.
01:08
Cherina
Hi, Ciaran. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure.
01:11
Ciaran
The pleasure is all ours. So, Cherina, we have a lot of people listening in, so why don’t you give us an introduction to yourself and tell us a bit about you.
01:20
Cherina
Yeah, well, I work now as head of customer care here at Sinful Group. I’ve been in this position for two years now, but in the customer service industry, I’ve been for over ten years. I have sold everything from travels to baby equipment and now I’m on to sex toys. So it’s quite interesting. I think before I worked in customer service, I was a tour guide and I can really feel that I think it was there I kind of gained my passion for customer service and saw the differences it could give people and really felt that was kind of a road. I wanted to kind of prevail a bit more and see what I could do with that and just learning how communication is so important and how the complexity of some cases can be really interesting and challenging and something I at least find very fun.
02:20
Cherina
And I think now I’m working in an international company, so there’s also cultural differences to have in mind, both with my staff but also just with customers. And that’s something I really find interesting. And here at Sinful, I work a lot with optimizing processes, talking to stakeholders. You, for example, is a good one. Yeah. And of course, take care of my team.
02:46
Ciaran
Excellent. And we’ll come back to your team later in the conversation, because if I was to think of one leader who I see as somebody as really putting the employee front and center, it’s definitely you. But to stay on you for a moment, you’ve obviously had a very interesting career and have worked in one of the world’s leading travel companies. What was it like working in customer experience for people on holidays when they’re spending their hard earned cash and when things went wrong?
03:16
Cherina
Yeah, it’s really challenging and some things are easy. Someone comes up, they want to buy an excursion, that’s lovely, but on holidays as well as at home, things can go wrong and we have to be there as a support whatever could have happened. So it was really putting yourself aside and really being there for the customers, but also just when I started having a team, I mean, the staff are far away from home, they don’t have the same support and backup system, they can’t go home to their parents or their best friends and talk about things. They only have you and you have your team. So it’s really important to kind of just be one big family and work together and support each other in the best way. And the same with the customers, really put them in front and also have respect and understanding that they have, as you say, spent a lot of cash often going on this and really looking forward to it and you really want to try and exceed their expectations.
04:20
Cherina
Yeah, that’s really important.
04:22
Ciaran
And obviously you spoke through your career briefly, you worked in the travel industry, you’ve worked in the baby accessory industry, and now you’ve very much moved into a largely direct to consumer business in the set toy industry. What did that journey for you look like?
04:43
Cherina
For me, customer service is kind of customer service, so what the product is for me is not so important. But again, I’m very passionate about my work, so I think for me it’s really important that the company is passionate about themselves and what they sell and what they do, that they take themselves seriously. And that was something I could feel when I started at Sinful that you feel the passion and the values of the company so much out here every day. And I kind of had a flashback to when I was in the travel industry because it was the same there. I’ve never met so passionate colleagues and it’s kind of the same here. People really think our mission and do their best every day to kind of work towards that. It was quite interesting. Of course, the two first weeks were a bit different. Maybe you have to get used to decorations on the desks and whatever we have, but it’s fun and quickly it’s normal to talk about and it’s not awkward at all.
05:48
Cherina
So yeah, it’s good.
05:50
Ciaran
Yeah. Excellent. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about Sinful? And I know both you and I spent some time together in Copenhagen, two or three weeks ago now, and we spoke a lot about the mission and vision there. Why don’t you give us an introduction to the company, the industries you’re working within and really the mission and vision that overarches the organization.
06:11
Cherina
Yeah, Sinful is an entrepreneur startup company, but it started in 2008. So some time ago by at that point a couple, Tony Anas and Missile Mikowski, they started it together in their own little apartment. They found it Sinful and it’s grown. Now we’re Northern Europe’s biggest online sex toy company so it’s really grown a lot. We’re of course in all the Nordic countries but we’re also in Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, UK, Switzerland. So it’s really big and it’s very broad, many different customers. We have a very clear mission that we want a more playful sex life for everyone. And that is something we work hard for every day together with our vision that we want to be the most trusted sex toy shop in Europe. And that’s a lot where my department especially comes into play. We need to make sure customers feel secure.
07:19
Cherina
We want them to feel safe, contacting us. We want them to know that they’re not alone. We really want to communicate more about sex and sex toys. And our way to kind of grasp this at Sinful is also that we made a communication universe called Let’s Talk About Sex. We made a huge public survey with over 2000 people from our six largest markets where we kind of saw that 70% of us think that a good sex life is important for a functioning relationship. So these figures have kind of helped us to get to know our customers, find out how we best can help them into kind of communicating more. Because we also see that 21% of people think that it’s really hard to communicate with their partner about it and even with their friends. So I mean, it’s really important and we really want to help people and make sex toys and the talk about sex more mainstream in different ways and kind of just contribute to normalizing.
08:26
Cherina
Something that in the essence is just fundamentally human.
08:30
Ciaran
No, I really love that. And I think one thing you mentioned there was you want to be the most trusted company in your industry. How do you go about building that trust with your customer base? Because we know that there’s a well known saying trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. So how do you go about building that trust with your customer base?
08:53
Cherina
I mean, of course it’s a lot down to kind of, first of all our website. You need to go into it and feel that this is a professional environment. This is somewhere where I feel safe because many people, when they think of sex toys, they think of a sneaky backyard or a small basement or somewhere where you had to go down and customer service didn’t exist. But we want to make sure that people understand that they get that here and they have the same rights as buying whatever other product they might buy for their home or whatever. But it’s a very intimate topic for many people to talk about. So also we just need to be very open minded, down to earth. We try and create a very friendly environment with our customers so that they kind of feel they’re not calling someone that’s very stiff and so we want to make them feel as if they’re calling a friend asking for advice.
09:56
Cherina
And I mean, we’ve built a lot of private label brands just to also make sure that when we go out and listen to the customers and see what is it they would like, we make these products ourselves. So we really make sure that they’re done in a proper way and really as the customers want them to be. Last year we launched our brand Ocean. You can see some of it behind me if you’re looking in and I mean it’s the world’s first sex toy that’s made from upcycled recycled ocean bound plastic. So I think that’s really a huge step of also kind of wanting to be first mover with the products and we’re very proud of that in our.
10:46
Ciaran
Conversations both even today but also longer term in our ongoing partnership. You reference data a lot and you are a very data driven business because at its core you are a direct to consumer online retailer. So can you tell us a little bit about how you use data and how the business uses data to guide decision making?
11:12
Cherina
I mean at least in my department of course we do it very much. We use the figures we can get from Dixa to see why are the customers contacting us, can we do something so that they don’t have to reach out? Because, of course, often people reach out if there is a problem, an issue. And if we could just beforehand on that and making sure that they didn’t have to do that, of course that would be great because people want a hassle free, easy service, not having to spend their precious time reaching out to a company because something has gone wrong or they couldn’t find some information. So we really try and look into why are we getting contacts and how can we maybe help them not to have to reach out to us another time. They’re of course more than welcome to. We love speaking to our customers and love guiding them and spend lots of time on the phone helping out with different cases and guidance.
12:12
Cherina
But I mean the one everyone has is where is my parcel and I mean could we better on kind of informing of that? That would be great for the customers as well. But I think also just in general in the company we use it a lot both on our website to see what are customers looking for, what are they searching for, do we have the right products on the shelves? I mean we do have over 6000 so there is quite a lot but there’s always coming new products, new things people are looking for. So we have to make sure that we have what the customers need. Also in the different markets there could be cultural differences as well. So we really try and use the data we can get from different sides and put that into kind of our way of thinking forward.
13:04
Ciaran
Really interesting. How would you describe Sinful’s approach to creating customer friendships? What does that look like in Sinful? And what kind of philosophies do you follow as a team and as a business?
13:17
Cherina
Yeah, again, as I said before, we really want to be really friendly, down to earth. Again, the security and the trust is so important for us. So we need to make sure when customers reach out that sometimes it can take a while on a call before people dare to open up. And it’s really my team’s responsibility to make them feel welcomed and make them feel secure enough to kind of open up. Because if they can do that, if we can get them to communicate with us, we can also help them in the best way because, again, it is very private, intimate things people have to talk about. And it’s hard for people to reach out to talk about something so delicate as it sometimes can be. So we really honor that they do this and don’t take it for granted.
14:12
Ciaran
Because I’m sure in your recruitment and onboarding you are as a really people centric leader, you really care about your team. I get the sense you really care about learning and development and developing them. How have you worked to kind of remove that stigma and equip and empower your team to be comfortable having these conversations, which likely it’s quite unique, it’s a quite unique insight into people’s lives and some people might find those conversations a little bit embarrassing or uncomfortable. How have you been able to equip your team to remove that stigma and to put the customers at ease?
14:53
Cherina
I would say definitely in the recruiting we always there try and make sure to find the right fit, to make sure that they also understand what is this job. We want to make them feel comfortable in handling these calls. We want to make sure they understand the company values and can see themselves doing this. But also just that we feel that they want they’re curious about learning and they’re curious about people. They want to know about these products. Of course, you don’t know everything when you start, but we do a lot with onboarding them and teaching them about the products so they feel safe. We have a lot of demo drawers, so we have many of the products nearby. Our warehouse is just next to us, so they can always go out and look at a product if needed, take it out from the stock, open it up, check it, whatever they need to do to make sure that they can provide the customer with the right answer they need prior to a purchase or after a purchase or whatever it can be.
15:55
Cherina
So it’s really important for us that people feel safe and confident and just feel that they have knowledge and support close by. We use the Dixa knowledge base a lot, especially when onboarding. We really want them to search and find everything in there, and we do a lot to make sure we have the knowledge they need so that they always feel help is nearby. And if they can’t find it in there, they can always ask a colleague or call me or our supervisor to get help. They should never feel alone when sitting with a case, so that’s really important.
16:30
Ciaran
So Cherina in the conversations today, but also in our partnership and again in Copenhagen over a few drinks, you really spoke about how you are the mom to your team and having spent time around you and talked to you a lot, you’re an exceptionally caring person, and you’re definitely somebody who puts that employee experience front and center, I guess. Two questions on that. First of all, why has that been something you’ve led with as a leader? And secondly, how do you measure the satisfaction of your team as their leader?
17:04
Cherina
I mean, for me, I think I’ve been a leader for, I think, 13 years or something now. And I kind of just feel going forward and experiencing this, I can just feel if I have a strong team behind me, they’re also willing to go that extra mile for the customers. And where I am now, for example, I have people come here to work from Germany, and I have someone here from Finland. And I mean, that’s just really special to me that they have chosen to be here and want to work for our company. So it means a lot to us, and I really appreciate and want to value that. So it’s just important for me that they’re happy and like their job and they feel motivated. And I think that’s one of my finest jobs. And sometimes, yeah, I can be their mother if needed.
17:58
Cherina
I often do a couple of every second month, I go on a walk and talk with them. And we don’t talk about work, at least very little. I just want to hear how they’re doing, what’s up, what are they doing for the summer holiday, how did Mom’s birthday go, all these things. Because I’m just in customer service, time flies by. There’s calls, there’s emails, there’s meetings all the time. You don’t always have much time to check in on a daily basis. So for me, it’s really important to sometimes just stop a little bit and just kind of feel, what’s up with you and how are you? And showing them that I’m there for them if they need it. And I can just feel that if they trust me and feel secure in my presence, I can also see they trust the decisions I take for our department or the customers or the company.
18:54
Cherina
So it really does mean a lot to me. And then you asked about how do we measure this? We of course, have our employee satisfactions once a year. That goes out to the whole company and of course that’s important. But for me as well, it’s just also checking in because once a year, a lot can happen in a year. So it’s also just for me to check in when we have our one one talks, is there any feedback for me what’s going on? And kind of is there anything we need to twitch a bit? How is their motivation? Because I think that can be more important than something they answer once per year. Of course that’s also a good guideline, but a lot of things can happen in a year.
19:36
Ciaran
Yeah, I really like that and I really like the regular touch base, the walks and talks and things like that. So really good examples perhaps for some of the leaders listening into the podcast to take away, I guess, shifting gears a little. Cherina, you came on board with Dixa around a year ago now. How did you first come about partnering with Dixa?
19:59
Cherina
I mean, for us, when having this international team, it was very important for me that we could try and gather all of our channels into one system and we could do that with Dixa. But also, we’re not the biggest company. We have a lot of countries to cover and a lot of languages, but I don’t have that many staff for each country. So we also just wanted to make sure that in busy times, if someone is sick or on holiday, that we don’t it’s going to sound bad, but forget about, oh, we also had that country we need to do. And with Dixa we felt we could build the flows, that we make sure we handle every customer in the same way, whether we have a native speaking or not, we make sure to be able to handle their request. Also, just that we can have it on the go that if my Finnish team member needs to go to Finland for whatever, she can sit and work from Finland using the system.
20:59
Cherina
And I think that’s something they at least the staff have been very pleased about, that they’re able to do this. Because again, it is just hard sometimes being away from home and that we can give them that option is just really nice.
21:14
Ciaran
And how did you hear about Dixa in the first instance?
21:18
Cherina
I think it was through my network, through a different company using it. Of course, you don’t change a system these days without having recommendations that some other companies doing somewhat the same as you have good experiences with the system. It’s like if you have to buy a new car, you also read the reviews and ask them, oh, you have that car, how is that? So we kind of course, asked around, went and saw the system. How does it work? How does it work for the staff that are actually using it. One thing is for me, as an Admin, how do I set things up and everything? That’s of course very important as well, but also just are the people using the system happy with it? Does it give them the nice experiences they want when working? Because a lot of their time is spent in that system, so it needs to work for them.
22:12
Ciaran
And the final question pertaining to Dixa, how would you describe the onboarding and the ongoing partnership with Dixa overall?
22:21
Cherina
You know what, it was great. And it’s just one of the things I feel so happy about because the system we had before the support was really not there at all. And with you guys, we know exactly who to go to. We have a check in each month. How is it doing? You make sure you have the webinar as often that I at least love listening in on to just keep up with what’s new, what’s going on, are we using the system as best we can and just someone is always there to help and say, hey, we got this new feature. Make sure to add this because otherwise in a busy day today, you don’t always take the time to sit down and be like, okay, am I using this system to the fullest or is there even more I could do? And you guys really help and support that.
23:07
Cherina
And I feel that you guys really value us as your customer, being happy, and we can feel that it means a lot to you. And for us as a company that also puts our customers quite upfront, it really is something we value especially a lot.
23:26
Ciaran
I’m really glad to hear you enjoy our webinar series as well for anyone who’s listening in, can you please check it out? It’s also me. So I think you must really enjoy listening to my voice.
Yeah, it’s either you really enjoy listening to my voice or you really enjoy the pain of listening to my voice. But I’ll let the listeners and you decide that, I guess. Cherina, when we think of customer experience, sinful, when you joined, I guess one of the problems that you faced that was really unique to Sinful that you had to solve for. And I’d imagine it’s the discretion, the types of products, the packaging, everything. What was really unique for you that you were kind of like, oh, I never thought of that.
24:13
Cherina
I think what I didn’t think I would experience so much was how much our products can impact on people’s lives. I mean, for example, when we reach Christmas, we sell our Christmas calendars. Last year we had six different kinds, so there’s really something for everyone. And reading the comments and the feedback from customers, either on the products or on trust pilot it really warms my heart seeing how this one thing can make people get so much closer to each other again. And just seeing people write that were all drifting apart and this just got us communicating, this got us back together. Thank you so much. That couldn’t do for the rest of the year. So it’s really something that’s special.
25:09
Ciaran
That’s a really nice story. I really like that. Excellent. So let’s turn to the future. And I know you are an innovator. You’re somebody with an eye on the future. You’re somebody who’s always thinking ahead and maybe thinking four or five steps ahead, which is great because you’re working in a very innovative business. What’s next for customer experience at Sinful?
25:34
Cherina
Of course, we need to keep up with new features and new technologies. It’s growing so fast, it’s hard to keep up. And that’s why it’s also nice having a partner like you guys that are also keeping up to speed so you can help us and guide us, but we of course need to understand, learn and implement these processes. And here I’m talking AI, Chat GPT all of these features also just to keep up with the customers expectations. But at the same time, we can’t forget the customers that are just not there or just not ready yet. So we really still want to be available on all the different channels to make sure and make sure to tell them that we are there for them. And it’s not just self service or a chat bot or whatever they can get help from. We still have the human person behind and the human interaction really is generally still so important.
26:37
Ciaran
I love that. I really like the way you’re thinking of your entire customer base because I think with all the excitement of AI Chat GPT of course here at Dixa, we’ve always been working on that it’s just become more to the foreign eye for all consumers. But you also want to make sure that those people who aren’t there yet also don’t feel left out or don’t feel like they don’t matter to your customers. So I really, as always, I love your thoughtful approach to these types of technologies and how you evolve the business. And I guess this is a nice lead on question, I guess what challenges do you foresee in maintaining your really strong level of customer service?
27:22
Cherina
Again, as I said, we need to keep up with this technology and not see it as a threat. But find out how can it help us, how can it help our department, and how can it maybe heighten the customer experiences in some ways and make sure that we can provide a faster service, but also just make sure that our staff can use it. And figure out how can they have this as a helper and not as something coming in and wanting to take over their job, because that’s not going to happen. We really need to make sure that they figure out the best ways to use these new technologies and features to support them in their work. I think that’s the most important thing.
28:11
Ciaran
And that’s something, and I’m sure I think you’ve already seen this already, but for our listeners, we are already working on a tool belt as such for agents to be like their amazing sidekick, to really harness the power of AI and make their lives that bit easier. Because, Cherina, this is a discussion we had as well. How can you allow your agents to have maybe 20, 30 seconds more on the phone with somebody and what does that look like and what could you do in that time?
28:45
Cherina
Yeah, exactly. And the more time they can have spending on really valuable conversations that are meaningful, the better it is for the customers in the end as well, not having to wait for their inquiries.
29:03
Ciaran
Yeah, amazing. So, Cherina, let’s move on to our quick fire round. Three questions. I would love to get your thoughts on these. The first one is what do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your customer experience journey?
29:20
Cherina
Good question. I think for me, just it’s so important to listen to your team. They sit with so much knowledge and so many good ideas how to enhance customer experiences, internal processes. It’s really important to just see them as your help and not people you just need to control around, but just really use their knowledge and the things that they have for ideas for improvement and just take them forward. That’s really important.
29:54
Ciaran
Love it. Second one, how do you measure the success of customer friendships and customer experiences within Sinful?
30:02
Cherina
We of course use the Dixa CSAT on email and chat. Just started with the phone on our beta test at the moment, so that’s really exciting. But that’s of course for our department, it’s a really good say because it’s customers we actually have been in some sort of contact with. So it’s a very saying for the service we have a general one of 89 so that we’re very proud of and we can see, for example, on our claims, we’re way over 90, so that’s really nice. So we can see even if people come in with maybe thinking they’re coming in with a bad experience, that’s actually where we can make the biggest difference and make happy customers in the end. But of course, we also use Trust Pilot and Trusted Shops and we have some different in different countries of review sites. That’s important for us because, sorry to say, nobody wants to buy a sex toy from a company that has two stars at least I wouldn’t.
30:59
Cherina
So that really means a lot to us.
31:02
Ciaran
Yeah, excellent. Listen, final one, given that you’re so good at providing a really high level of customer service, what would be your number one tip for other companies and organizations to get to as good as you are.
31:16
Cherina
Trust your staff. And give them the empowerment to take their own decisions, I think that’s it. They are often so awesome people sitting there. At least my people are the staff I have, so just letting them do their job and take the decisions they feel best for the customer, I think that’s really good.
31:38
Ciaran
I love it. Empowerment. Excellent. Well, Cherinaa, thank you so much for joining us today. I always enjoy spending time with you. I’ve really enjoyed this podcast and I’m so glad that we’ve had you on here to really tell your story, sinful story and really get across your passion for employee experience to all of our listeners of Customer Friendships conversations. So thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
32:06
Cherina
Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure. Fun as always, to speak to you.
32:13
Ciaran
Thanks for listening today’s episode of Customer Friendship Conversations. If you’ve enjoyed the show, then make sure you’re following us on your podcast platform of choice. It means that you’ll get notified each time we release a new episode so you won’t miss out on any of the other amazing customer friendship heroes we’ll be showcasing in the coming months. Of course, a rating and review is a huge help to the show, so we always massively appreciate those as well. And if you’re interested in learning more about Customer Friendship, then head to Dixa.com to discover everything you want to know about customer experiences meant to be. I’m Ciaran Nolan. And another huge thank you to Cherina for taking the time to share her knowledge and insights with us today. Until next time.