Scaling an eCommerce brand isn’t just about ads, creatives, or new channels.
Often, the biggest growth unlock comes from how you treat customers after the purchase.

In this episode of eCommerce Evolution, Brett sits down with Kristin Keys, VP of Customer Experience at Baseball Lifestyle 101, to break down how CX can become a true growth engine.

From empowering support teams to turning angry customers into loyal advocates, Kristin shares how great customer experience drives retention, increases LTV, and fuels word-of-mouth growth.

If you’re struggling with churn, negative reviews, or rising CAC, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you turn CX into a competitive advantage.

—

Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

—

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction: CX as a Growth Engine with Kristin Keys
(03:12) Why Good CX Drives Retention, LTV & Word of Mouth
(07:00) The Baseball Lifestyle 101 Origin Story
(14:02) Reducing Refunds, Chargebacks & Negative Reviews
(20:04) Empowering Your Team to Resolve Issues on the Spot
(24:10) Going Above & Beyond: Community Stories & Surprise Moments
(30:51) Key Metrics: Return Rate, Repeat Purchases & Sales from Support
(36:50) Biggest CX Mistakes D2C Brands Make
(41:46) Parting Advice: Build a CX Team That Loves Your Brand

—

Connect With Brett:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
• Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact

Relevant Links:

• Kristin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinkeyes23

Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, JC Hite, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Stephane Colleu, Jeff Oxford, Bryan Porter and more

Transcript:

Kristin Keys:

If you do a good job at giving them accurate expectations, this is what you should expect from top to bottom at every level, then they're not going to be disappointed when it happens.

Brett Curry:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we are talking about a topic we have never dived into on this podcast before. We're talking about CX, customer experience, customer service as a growth engine. Yes, I love talking about new ad angles and new ad types and open up new channels like YouTube and distribution like retail stores and all of those things. But I am here to tell you that the right customer service experience can mean so much to your marketing and growth and retention efforts. And conversely, a bad experience there can undermine what you're trying to do through the rest of your marketing. And so today I am delighted to welcome to the show Kristin Keys. She's the VP of customer experience at Baseball Lifestyle 101. Baseball Lifestyle is a client of OMG Commerce.

We hope on the YouTube and the Amazon side. And it's been so fun getting to know them and see what they do. And I truly believe they're one of a kind. Just the way they build community, the way they've created an amazing fan base all across the country. I live in the center of the Midwest. I go to the store. I go to a soccer game. I see kids wearing baseball lifestyle gear all the time. What they've built is truly amazing. And they've gone from just 2021, a couple million in sales to this past year surpassing 150 million in sales and growing. And now they're in Dick's Sporting Goods and Academy Sports and a number of others. Check out the full podcast on the operators podcast, Bill Rum. And Josh Shapiro laid out the full story on that pod where we're going to go deep on customer experience right here.

And so with that, Kristin, welcome to the show. And how's it going?

Kristin Keys:

It's great. I'm excited to be here. I'm very honored that you would consider this an important topic and I'm happy to get this information out there for everybody.

Brett Curry:

Absolutely. So we got to hang out in Miami just a few weeks ago. We were both presenting at the D2C Growth Summit. Shout out Johnny, Hickey and Michael Alt. But as you laid out this topic, I'm like, man, this is so good. This needs to be shared to a broader audience because I think a lot of people just view customer experience and customer service as an expense. It's just an expense line item and you don't handle it properly. It is. But if you handle it properly, it can be a growth engine. And I want to unpack how you guys look at that right now. And so I guess maybe kind of from a high level bullet point style here, Kristin, how can customer experience be a growth engine for a D2C business?

Kristin Keys:

Sure. I mean, so this is obviously something that is very I'm passionate about. I think that a lot of companies just, like you said, look at it as a cost. It's something that's there to fix problems, to fix issues, to just respond when a customer reaches out. And by being proactive, by being above and beyond what somebody is expecting by really giving them the time and the effort on your end to not treat them just like a problem, to treat them like somebody who is invested in your business, that you're invested in them. Showing them that you're invested in them is going to make that connection and that loyalty for that customer just deepen. And you can take any situation, this is something that we talk about all the time. There's customers that come that are so mad. And when you're dealing with that customer, one of two things can happen.

They're going to stay mad because you're not fixing that issue for them and they're never going to purchase from you again. And likely they're going to tell a million people about their experience, how bad it was. Or you're going to get on their level, be direct with them, identify their issue, fix it, and then give them a reason to keep coming back. And when you do that, you turn all of that, what could wind up being churn, what could wind up being negative publicity for your company or your business, you're turning that person into an ambassador, somebody who's going to go and tell other people, yes, they made a mistake, but they fixed it. We live in a world right now, I think, where everybody has so many more choices than they used to. There's so much information out there. And one of the big things I think is that setting yourself apart from another company no longer is just a product quality.

That's not enough. You have to have the whole package. You have to, from top to bottom, give them a great experience and be there for anything that they need. I mean, in 2026, I think just with the ability to connect on such a quick level, you have to basically be just a concierge service. It's not just a, "Hey, I have this issue." It's fully comprehensive. I mean, so we make ourselves available on multiple platforms and not just as a reactive service, we're proactive. We have a Facebook group that has over 10,000 members in it now. And we post in that Facebook group daily and answer outside of our customer service hours. I mean, that's something that I'm on my couch at night and I'm watching TV and I'm in my Facebook group and I'm responding to people. And not because my job tells me I have to, but because I'm invested, I want to make sure that we are delivering that top-notch service so that our customers do feel like we care about them because we do.

It's not just lip service. I don't hang up my hat at five o'clock and say, "I'm done. This is an all the time thing." And I think you mentioned that you're in the Midwest and you see people out in public wearing our gear. And for all of our employees, when we see people, we call it baseball lifestyle in the wild. And when we see people, we get so visibly excited, we talk to them, we pick their brain. And that is a genuine desire from us to let our customers know that they're important to us, that they're not just customers, that they're part of our community. And I think that's where baseball lifestyle really sets themselves

Brett Curry:

Apart. It's so good. It's so good. And I want to talk a little bit about the community aspect and also hear from your perspective a little bit of the baseball lifestyle story, but just to frame things and talk about where we're headed, GoodCX drives retention, drives LTV, right? It drives word of mouth, it drives brand forgiveness and operational clarity. We're going to dive into all of those. Those are points directly from your talk in Miami. And I'm just so excited to dive into that a little bit, but back up just a bit. And for those that don't know, I gave a few highlights of the numbers and we talked about the gear in the wild with baseball lifestyle, but how was BL 101 built and how did we get to where we are today?

Kristin Keys:

So one of the biggest things I think that sets Baseball Lifestyle apart is that they built a community before they ever asked for a sale. And this is something that we talk about often when we speak about the brand. And it's something that started as a 13-year-old boy posting, looking just for an outlet to share everything baseball because he himself was passionate about baseball. And he wound up connecting with- And

Brett Curry:

That's co-founder Josh Shapiro, right?

Kristin Keys:

Yes. A 13-year-old boy posted every hour on the hour. I mean, he is one of the most driven and meticulous people that I've ever had the opportunity to meet or lucky enough to be working with. And I think that him and his co-founder, Bill Roman, I was about to talk about how they got connected, but they really are two of the most genuine people that you've ever met. 100%. Extremely intelligent, extremely good business sense. And just how I say, as a company, we care about our customers, as founders, as CEOs, as C-suite, they care about their employees and they don't just expect their employees to do a good job. They want to make sure that their employees are happy doing that. And that's one of the things I think is one of the biggest takeaways. So real quick, just I started with Baseball Live Sell in 2021.

When I started, I was within the first 10 people who were hired, I think it was probably around seven. At that time, we were very, very small. We had one customer service worker. It was me. We had one distribution center. We were not in wholesale, we were not doing any retail. We were doing, like you said, just about $2 million in e-com. Four years later, I mean, the growth has been just exponential. We have over 300 employees, and now I manage a team of about 20. We're working with three and a half distribution centers. We're opening in retail locations across the company, and our wholesale and e-commerce are kind of really just exploding from where they were. And so I was brought on in 2021 as a part-time customer service agent at that time. I think our plan was under 360 tickets a month. And now we close probably about 13 to 15,000 on a normal month and over that on a busy month.

So obviously, I mean, the growth is just crazy. But within that time, I think the company has really never lost that, what you would call a small town feel. Josh and Bill are in the office every single day. They are walking the halls, talking to people. They're not CEOs that sit in their office with the door closed where we talk to everybody and two times a week we have full company meetings and people are encouraged to talk. It's not like everybody is muted and they can't share what they have to say. They want to hear from all of their employees. They want to know everything that's going on. Our Friday call starts with shout-outs and you can't shout out anybody in your own department. So it just really encourages that cross-departmental recognition, but also just reminds everybody just how important everybody is. People who you don't normally work with, when you get the opportunity to do that,

Everybody at our company is amazing. And I know that sounds so silly to say, but everybody is just so invested and it starts at the top with Bill and Josh. And the example that they set and the way that they carry themselves, it just really carries down to the newest employee that we've hired. They make that effort to meet them, to know them, to involve them. I mean, the company as a whole, I think just really does a good job of making everybody passionate about what they do. And that shows top to bottom in all of our work performance, I think.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. It's so good. And I've gotten to interact with some of the marketing team and the retail team and the team that's kind of assigned to the Amazon initiative. And then of course, getting to hang out with Bill and 100% agree with what you just said. And what's so cool is if you want to turn customer experience, customer service into a growth engine, you can't just flip a switch or you can't just send an email to your team and say, "Do this, do this better." We're doing this now. It does start with culture. And the more you take care of your team, the more they will take care of the customer. I know BL 101 believes that, you believe that, Bill and Josh believe that and it's happening. And so that is a great setup. You've got to have that in place first. Happy customers, happy employees who are equipped with the right tools, with the right information, with freedom to kind of make things right, they won't make for happy customers.

And so you guys are doing a great job there for sure. So awesome. Any other highlights on the BL101 story? Otherwise, we'll dive right into customer experience.

Kristin Keys:

I mean, it's kind of all a highlight, Brett. I mean, it's really like we talk about living a baseball lifestyle and for most of the employees, they mean that. I would say probably 80% of our employees played baseball or are avid baseball fans. So there's really no better place to work. I mean, it's kind of like a dream. I mean, we're working with influencers, they work with pro athletes, they work with all of these people and they're doing events that revolve around baseball. I mean, opening day of MLB is an actual company holiday. I mean, they don't play. I mean, they are invested in this sport, in this community and in this company ultimately. I mean, unequivocally, there is not a day when they don't actually do what they say and say what they do. And that's so important, I think, to really just not waiver and just be the same person that you are when you were in 2021 and you were small to now that you're in 2025 and you're big to know everybody to talk to you.

Yeah. Everybody's talking about

Brett Curry:

You now. All over the D2C community, everybody's talking about baseball lifestyle for sure.

Kristin Keys:

We're so thankful to be a part of this. I mean, sometimes we just look back and we laugh and we're just like, "This is a crazy world we're living. Did that just happen?" And it's really just exciting and fun. And I think everybody that works for the company is just so invested and it shows really that's what it is.

Brett Curry:

Love it, love it. And there's this concept that I heard years and years ago. It was one of my favorites in all of business, ties to marketing, ties to culture. But really yet two sides of any business, right? There's the inside reality, what actually happens inside the four walls of a company that's virtual and could be global and all that stuff. But what happens in the company, and there's the outside perception, that's branding, that's your marketing messages, that's what the marketplace believes about you and what the narrative is about your company. But I've always believed that eventually that inside reality will influence the outside perception. Eventually, that's going to come out good or bad. And so you guys have built a culture and a setup that's just truly remarkable and it's showing in the results. I think so too. Let's dive in a little bit to what are some of the things you do differently from a customer service point of view?

And I think maybe a place to start, and happy for you to reframe this if you'd rather, but good CX, it reduces bad things like refunds and chargebacks and negative reviews and social escalation and stuff ended up in Bill or Josh's inbox as founders. What are some things you do differently that kind of reduces the negative side of customer experience if it's not handled properly?

Kristin Keys:

Well, I mean, kind of just going back to just talking about how invested the employees are at this company and starting with myself, and that's been ... I don't just consider it a job. I'm very passionate about what I do. So it's never like a, oh, that's outside the scope or I'm off ... I mean, I'm online on weekends, I'm online on nights, I'm doing stuff outside of what would be considered my normal scope. And again, this is not because anybody's asking me to do this, it's because I take pride in what I do. I mean, I get that feedback and a lot of it I take very personally, as an executive at this company, I know that that perception lives and dies on my shoulders. So I don't ever want anything to come across Josh or Bill's desk. I don't want negative reviews to be out there.

I don't want any public perception to be, "Well, they dropped the ball on this. " I take all of those failures personally. So I'm never going to ignore them. We don't hide comments and don't address them anytime I see

Brett Curry:

Anything. And just a quick note, Kristin, for all the D2C founders listening out there, if you're creating a job description or you're looking to hire a VP of customer experience, take that little snippet of what Kristin just said, plug that into AI, get that working as like, "This is who we're looking for. " Anyway, continue.

Kristin Keys:

No, I mean, just to touch on that, I agree. And that was something that I said in Miami, you have to find the right person for any job. One of the big things right now is right seat, right position or right person. And it's true. And I think looking at customer service, a lot of times we just consider it a reactive, like they're there just to receive your complaints. And if you treat it as an actual skill, somebody who is going to be passionate about making sure your customers are happy, you really are going to wind up with a lot better customer service perception of how your company is running. So I mean, I think it really starts with not ignoring anything that's ever happening and always trying to improve. So we have our frequently asked questions on our website. Anytime anything is kind of like a gray area and we get a question about it, I'm immediately reaching out, working on that with our team to edit that, to get that updated, to make it more clear.

We don't want it to be a fine print type of company. We want everything out there because I think the biggest way that people can fail our customers is just not meeting their expectations. So if you do a good job at giving them accurate expectations, this is what you should expect from top to bottom at every level, then they're not going to be disappointed when it happens. I think that's really where people lose their faith is when they think that something is going to go one way and it doesn't. And then when they reach out, they're met with just these stringent, too bad, so sad kind of mentalities. So of course, we have posted policies and we uphold those posted policies, but I think allowing for there to be real human interactions, connections, mistakes that customers can make, because very often it is on the customer.

They're not always right. They did not do or expect what we told them to expect. And they should not necessarily be punished because of that. And as a company, I think a lot of people operate under the assumption that it's black and white and it can't be with customer service if you want to have that retention, that loyalty, that deepening of that brand, it's a relationship just like everything else. And everybody on both sides, if we want them to forgive us when we make a mistake, if we send you the wrong item or we do something, we're outside of our standard estimated shipping time or whatever it is, if we want the customer to forgive us, then we have to forgive them when they make a mistake. So if they order the wrong size or they order the wrong item, but it's outside of the 30 days, there's no harm to allow anything outside of those guidelines.

So we try to really just look at every situation as, "Hey, was this an honest mistake? How can we meet them halfway on this? How can we take care of them and how can we ensure that they're satisfied with that resolution?" And I think top to bottom, we really do that.

Brett Curry:

Hey there. Thanks for tuning in to the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I want to take just a minute and tell you a little bit about my agency, OMG commerce. Now we work with some of your favorite eight and nine figure D2C and Omni channel brands and our specialty is profitable scale. We love taking great brands and amplifying their growth profitably. We've helped a number of brands go from zero on YouTube to spending as much as a million dollars in 90 days while hitting a CAC or CPA Target. We've also helped multiple brands launch on Amazon or just add scale to Amazon. We took Boom Beauty from zero to almost $6 million in sales their first 12 months on Amazon. So if you're not satisfied with your current level of growth, if you're looking to diversify channels, maybe you're a little too dependent on Meta and you want to add YouTube or you're not pleased with your Amazon growth, then we need to chat.

So visit us at omgcommerce.com, click the Let's Talk button. We'd love to schedule a complimentary strategy session with you. And with that, back to the show.

Kristin Keys:

One of the other things I think that's important or at least is working very well for us is I talk with a lot of other customer experience employees and they treat their intake kind of on a tiered basis. And I'm going to escalate this to my supervisor or I'm going to bubble this up to whoever. And we don't really do that at Baseball Lifestyle. All of my team is trained and knowledgeable and empowered to fix any situation, borrowing anything crazy themselves. Nobody has to wait for approval from me to offer a gift card. Nobody has to wait for approval from anybody to refund shipping to do whatever it is to make that customer

Brett Curry:

Happy. Trained, informed, and empowered. I love that. And so basically you were saying a ticket comes to a CX associate or whatever you call them, they should have the knowledge, understanding, and the authority to make something right right there.

Kristin Keys:

All of them. All of them. And really, again, talking about employee experience and how you value them, how you make them feel. And that's how I make my team feel. That's how the company makes me feel. That's how our C-suite makes me feel. I feel empowered. I feel important. I feel like the things that I say make a difference. And why would I not pass that on to the people on my team and say, "I'm no better than you. You know how to handle this. You know the correct SOPs for what we expect." We talk about that. It's a constant dialogue. Like I was saying, to improve the customer experience, I'm in real time, I'm editing FAQs, I'm making things more clear. I do the same thing with my team. So as anything comes up where they're like, "Hey, I'm not really sure how to handle this or whatever." I'm explaining that to everybody and I'm talking about just the company's per opinion on how we should handle things like that, what our core values are, how we want that customer to feel.

And so they know that and they're going to deliver that stellar customer service without having to jump through hoops and make that customer think like, "Ugh, I'm going to have to wait and see if they say yes or no." No, it's going to be a decision for you right there. You're not going to have to wait and nine times out of 10, maybe 10 times out of 10, we're making sure that that customer is happy before they walk away.That's kind of just our unequivocal goal.

Brett Curry:

And that's so powerful because we can all think of times when we reach out to customer support, which none of us want to do. None of us want to make that call or send that email to customer support, but we can all think of times when we were extremely pissed about something. But then customer service makes it right and all of a sudden a switch is flipped and we are now an advocate for that

Kristin Keys:

Branch. Within my team, that's the ones that I say like, "Don't bubble it up if you're not sure or whatever." Bubble it up if they're angry. I want the angry ones because to me it's like a challenge. Can I make them happy? I mean, it's really fulfilling and rewarding because literally I know that I am saving that customer for our company and for me, that's the utmost importance. Me making a difference.

Brett Curry:

And it's like meaningful LTV, right? You're doing drops once a week, you're always launching new products. People buy your products religiously. And so to lose a customer, that's a big deal. You want to save each one of them.

Kristin Keys:

Absolutely. I mean, and genuinely, I mean, it's something ... This is my career. This is something that I'm very passionate about. Like I said, I kind of run it as if I would if I was owning it. So I don't want that negative connotation out there. I don't want people unhappy. I don't want that to be something that people say. I want when people talk about the company for it to be their amazing, their clothes are amazing, their customer service is amazing, their content is amazing. All of us really just want everybody. We care. I think that's the biggest difference. And we take that care right down to the very bottom, the smallest issues and the biggest. I mean, everything is important to us if it's important to you. So I think that's

Brett Curry:

Something- Any favorite BL 101 stories of how you made something right for a customer and what that did for you and/or for them. And I know some of those you maybe can't share, but any favorites that you can share?

Kristin Keys:

I mean, not even necessarily something that was wrong. We get messages all the time, and a lot of times it's just kind of sent out to everybody, sponsorships or donations. And something that really touched all of us, I think was a few months ago we got this message and it was somebody who was talking about the socks that we had. And his parents, they were in a car accident with a cement mixer. They're like a hot asphalt mixer. And the socks protected the sun's feet from getting burned. I mean, his legs were- Crazy. It was an insane story. And we shared this with our team and I mean, we went over and above to just reach out to him to talk about this, to send him some stuff in the hospital. I mean, so it's not just the problems that people have, it's everything as a whole.

When we see something, we don't just auto delete it or macro it out. We read everything. Another thing, just again, this isn't necessarily what you asked for, but somebody on our team, we kind of just send everything to her that we get like this. We'll get messages from people who are like, "My son loves your company. He has designs. He has ideas that he wants to send you and they'll send us pictures of new products and they're crayon and they're marker and they're whatever." I love that. He reaches out to our creative director and he will write them back personal notes to just kind of tell him, "Stay with it, keep on it, follow your dreams. This is really awesome." So I think just not necessarily anything about making an issue because I mean, we will always do that, but it's the above and beyond.

If we mess up, we will always fix it. And that's kind of where we live and die and we talk in our Facebook group and we'll always say, "We will make mistakes. There's never going to be a world where we're not making mistakes, but we will always fix them."

Brett Curry:

We're never going to get those mistakes to zero, just

Kristin Keys:

Not

Brett Curry:

Going

Kristin Keys:

To happen. You can't, you can't.

Brett Curry:

We

Kristin Keys:

Will send you the wrong size. We will make an error, but we will never not care. It will never be a, "Well, you're just stuck with it now. We will always work with you. " So there's not ever a doubt in my mind, so there's nothing in particular to share about that, but it's those above and beyond, I think that really sets us apart.

Brett Curry:

Making fans for life. And again, that only happens if you care about community externally, but also that you built it and built the right team internally, which is great. So I love that, I think the team has to be trained, equipped, empowered to make decisions, to make things right. You want to prevent things from escalating to the owners just because you want to handle that. You want your team to handle that.

Kristin Keys:

100%.

Brett Curry:

But there's a lot of information that comes in. A lot of insights that come in, there's the touching stories and stuff that you definitely want to share, but you don't want CX to be an island where nothing gets outside of that group. You want to share insights, right? Share insights are going to help operations and inform marketing and inform the social team for community building and things like that. So how do you guys do it? How do you recommend that you do it? Take good information from CX and inform the rest of the company so that they can improve based on that information.

Kristin Keys:

Sure. So we recently started distributing and compiling a voice of the customer report and it's done monthly and it's going to just touch on all those high points. So everything kind of that lives in my bubble is going to be reported on, and that's going to be

Brett Curry:

A reason to the customer report. I love that. I love that.

Kristin Keys:

So it's going to be some insights from obviously our actual ticketing, our phone calls. We also do live chat on the site, but it's also going to include stuff from our Facebook group, returns and exchange data that we're pulling and just trends that we're getting from that. So there's a lot of different areas that we're able to pull information from. In reality, like we've said that we were so small for so long that we use Slack. When I see any kind of product feedback, I'm immediately Slacking. I'm not waiting for that report to come out. I'm letting product development know, "Hey, we're going to teach the team immediately." Exactly. The fabric is itchy or the ankles are too tight or whatever it is. I'm giving that information in real time. Same thing with marketing, because they'll run promotions all the time. And really, at this point we've asked and they've responded, they send us over what they're going to be sending out so that we can kind of scan it for any loopholes that a customer is going to say, "Oh, well, you didn't say it was only on Sunday." So they let us know like, "Hey, this is what we're going to be running.

Do you have any feedback for us?" So we really all just work back and forth together sharing information to ensure that there's no lapse for that customer because ultimately that's the goal. Marketing doesn't want there to be any ambiguity. They want the customer to get exactly what they're telling them they're getting. And as CX, because we see all of the feedback, I know what to look for. And so we want to say like, "Oh, make sure that you put that that's online only. Make sure that you put that that is 48 hours, we get the start date so we know. " So sharing information cross-departmentally is the only way that you can really have a great customer experience. And it starts again, like we said, just with them valuing the information that you're giving them and actually making changes and taking it into account with ops like, "Hey, people are saying when you send the hats in this, they're getting smushed, so they get sent in better packaging now." So anything that we hear, we're immediately just sharing that information so that on all levels we can improve for the customer.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. And just one of the pieces that's missing in a D2C Or omnichannel company where if you guys were a small retail store only and you could see every customer and see how they're interacting with the product and hear their feedback, that's one thing. But now you've got giant departments that never see or hear from the customer. And so you guys are that portal. You are the connection to the customer, the voice of the customer. That information is absolutely precious and it's got to be shared. And so I know you guys are doing a great job of that. And so can you talk about any numbers where like, hey, as we've been focusing on these initiatives, we've seen return rate drop or we've seen other numbers improve. Paint a little bit of a picture for us of when we get this right, when we invest in it like you guys are, what could that mean for our business?

Kristin Keys:

Sure. And so for 2025, I think our return customer rate was 43% and we're not satisfied with that. We want it higher. I mean, we wanted to double that. So that's our goal all the time is why would we not want that customer to keep coming back? Like we've said, LTV is going to be such a driver for sales, for revenue, for growth. So making sure that those customers are coming back, taking away any roadblocks that would prevent them from coming back, making sure that their experience is perfect so that they are coming back. And really just taking care of the customer and making sure that there's no roadblocks for them to do what they need to do. We talked about return rates. Right now we have a 4% return rate in theory. And of that 4%, we retain about 60% of that overall return rate.

So of the 4% that is getting return, 60% of that, we're keeping that in- house, whether that's in direct exchange or a store credit. And that's not by accident, that's from us. Again, on every level, ensuring we have great products, ensuring that they're not getting them and saying like, "Oh, I don't like this. I want to return it. " They're not doing that. They're only returning or exchanging if it doesn't fit or there's an issue like that. So just making sure just on every level that there's just nothing that would prevent them from wanting to purchase again. And we all just kind of support that same metric. And there's something

Brett Curry:

So powerful, Kristin, about seeing those numbers and everybody measuring against them. So if I understood the first metric correctly, 43% of customers come back and buy again.That's a good number for an apparel brand. They want to hire. But you want to hire, right? So you've got-

Kristin Keys:

100%.

Brett Curry:

X team is looking at that, product is looking at that, marketing is looking at that, retention, department's looking at that. Everybody's looking at it. You're looking at those numbers and then you're discussing why. Why is it up? Why is it down? Why is this changing? And you're able to action on that and that is so incredibly powerful. And then yeah, looking at that return rate, how do we get the return rate down? Or it's apparel. There's always going to be a return. You're always going to order the wrong. I order the wrong size. I'm a pretty tall guy and it's like I just get the wrong size sometimes. And so that's never going to go to zero, but can you retain those customers and get them to do store credit or exchange or whatever? But measuring those is critical. And those mean real dollars of growth, real top line, real bottom line numbers.

And so that's huge. Any other metric that you're focused on and what that's doing for you?

Kristin Keys:

I mean, yeah. So the platform that we use will track how much sales are generated from support, which means anytime they've had an interaction with customer service, if they make a purchase within the following 48 hours. So that's a big metric for us. We want to position ourselves as there at the time that the customer's making that decision and ensure that they're fully knowledgeable to make that decision, to push checkout on that item. So like I said, we don't just offer email. We're on phone, we're on live chat, we're on every level just there for the customer to make that decision. And so we're really proud of our sales from support numbers. I think- Because I can probably

Brett Curry:

Offset or maybe cover a lot of the costs of the CX department. If you guys really focus on that number, sales driven by customer support can offset a lot of the costs, I would assume.

Kristin Keys:

Easily. And again, that's something that has never been taken for granted from our founders. That's something that they've always known, again, because I think they're so intelligent, so smart business wise. They have recognized that since day one, and they knew that making sure that the community fully supported, fully backed us, fully invested in them, and they did that by investing in that customer. And I say it all the time to them, because they would say, "Oh, you're doing such a great job. Our numbers are great." And I'm like, "It's so much of it is that you guys have empowered me to do this, that you have put..." And because how many times, even at a high level, "Well, I have to check. I have to run this by them. I have to put it in a proposal." And I don't necessarily ever really have to do that.

They have trusted me since day one to really just know what the customer or what the company wanted their guidelines to be, like their persona to be to the customers. And they've always just said, "Make it right." Surprise and delight, go over the top, make sure that they know that we're so sorry that this happened. So we do that all the time. I mean, it's not just something we say or 50% of people get a yes, 30% of people get a maybe, whatever it is. No, everybody has a potential to be a yes. There's no parameters to be like, "Well, you can only refund this many shipping fees or give out this many discounts." There's nobody looking like, "Wow, you gave out a lot of gift cards last month." No, if I gave it a gift card, they needed it and the company trusts me to make that decision.

And not having to jump through those hoops really just makes a difference. And it shows in the support that we're getting from that community because they know that we're going to make it right and they're not going to have to wait and go through all these different channels and wait for somebody to from high above to give the go ahead like, "No, I can do it right in that instant. We can take care of you. We can get this done." And we do it happily. I mean, we all love our jobs.

Brett Curry:

Yep. It's amazing. It's amazing. I'm sure, Kristin, because you're in this game all the time, and because you guys go above and beyond and the experiences great, when you have to reach out to other customer support from other companies you're buying from, I'm sure you are all kinds of frustrated, you're critiquing what they're doing, you're saying, "Hey, you should have done this or that or whatever." But stepping back a little bit, as you experience other D2C brands, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see? The biggest customer service mistakes you see D2C brands making that they need to be aware of and need to fix?

Kristin Keys:

Sure. I mean, I convinced myself and my husband that this is actually market research for my job description to online shop. I love that. I have to try this out and see. So I think really where most companies miss genuinely as an overarching thought is that they just treat the customer like it's a black and white issue and they don't allow for you to ... It's just a macro. It's just, this is the answer, there's no wavering in it. And to have to jump through hoops to get a, let me talk to a supervisor, is there anything else you can do? And so I think they miss the mark on that. I'm not treating each interaction like that person is special. And again, that comes at a cost, but that cost, like you just said, can be offset by the work that you're doing. So it's an investment in yourself, in your company, because when you have that customer who comes back and they have this issue and you make it right immediately, they're going to purchase again, they're going to tell other people.

There is so many times that I ... And truthfully, I'm the customer that probably those companies love because when they make me have to jump through hoops to return something, I don't do it. I literally, I'm

Brett Curry:

Laughing

Kristin Keys:

Because I'm in my office. I have three boxes right now on my corner of things that I should have returned because I wanted my $90 back and I just didn't do it. I'm too busy. I'm the same way. They didn't make it easy for me, so it's just sitting there. I'd rather give it to a trend than jump through. I look at those and I'm like, damn that company. And so we don't want anybody ever being like, "Damn that company." No, we want to be that company where they're like- Because

Brett Curry:

You'll never buy from them again. You didn't go to the return. And so the company's like, "All right, we didn't get a return." But you do have the customer forever.

Kristin Keys:

Oh, no. I keep notes, Brett.

Brett Curry:

And that would be a list I would like to see at some point in time. We will not publish that list, but that would be a great list for sure.

Kristin Keys:

Yes. And to that, I don't publicly blast them because it happens to us all the time. I mean, they're loud on, so if you don't do it, we're going to go blast you on social. Okay. Yes, it's going to get attention and yes, that may make us look at it a little bit differently, but you're still wrong. I mean, a lot of times, and so I'm not wrong in this situation and I still don't blast because there's nothing to gain. Let them live. I just will take my business elsewhere and I don't want anybody taking- And that's reality. ... baseball apparel business elsewhere. I want it all staying here. I want everybody coming back. I want them buying for their friends or family until they're retired. So yes, this is not a short-term game for us.

Brett Curry:

What other mistakes are you seeing brands make or mistakes that we need to be aware of so we can fix?

Kristin Keys:

I mean, again, I order a lot off of the internet. I think in 2026, it's very easy to Google a company and see where they're at. I think companies should do a better job of investing in that public persona, ensuring that their reviews are cleaned up, that if they're bad, they're being responded to. And that's something that we do. We're responding to every review, whether it's negative or positive. We don't even want people to post something positive and us not reach out and say, thank you. You should be thanking them for that. So I think customers don't take care of their own reviews as much as they should. I look and that's the first thing that I'm going to do. I'm going to Google a company and get the reviews. And so when I look and I see terrible reviews and no responses from the company, that speaks a lot to me.

So I mean, I think that's important. And then really just making sure that the information is out there and there is no bait and switch. There is not. And when they get you with the automatic renewal, that's something I am not a fan of. I want that option. I don't want you automatically putting me in because again, I'm not going to remember to cancel it, to turn it off, to monitor it. So don't automatically enroll me in anything. Make sure I opt into it with my full chest. If I'm getting on a subscription, I want to know I'm getting on a subscription. Don't auto-ship me a second one when I didn't want it.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah. So good. And just such a good reminder that poor customer experience- That's just not worth it. ... follow you. It will haunt you. Those negative reviews, those negative comments that they will haunt you for years potentially. But if you take care of it, if you're proactive and then you also fix things quickly, you're going to reap dividends from that for years to come as well. So any other thoughts, tips, suggestions that we didn't cover, Kristin? Anything we left out, any parting words of wisdom you want to leave the audience?

Kristin Keys:

Sure. I mean, and you said it before when you said take that and make it a job description. Make sure that your customer service team is in love with your company. Make sure that that customer service team is speaking about the company, using the words that you would use to describe that company, invested, making sure that they fully understand who you are as a company, what you want to do for your customers, and making sure that they're actually putting that into practice. Not just doing the job, because this is not ... Accounting, you can do a job. You can punch in those numbers, you can look at those numbers and compare and contrast. Customer services, there's a lot of soft skills involved, and that's not always easy to ensure that you have the right person. So make sure that your customer service team really wants to be there, really is passionate about what they're doing, and really is invested in your brand.

I think that that alone would make a huge difference for a lot of these companies. And again, comes at a cost, and that does necessarily mean that you're not using AI, you're not using offshores. You have people who are proud to be an employee and are proud to be working for this company and are going to speak about your company in a good light. And I think that's really one of the most important things.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. There's a cost to doing it the right way, but I believe there's a greater cost to not doing it the right way. And so totally agree, just go so far to have people on your CX team that love the company, love the product, love the mission, love what the team and the brand is all about, and it makes just a huge, huge difference. So here's what I recommend. I recommend you go buy something from baseball lifestyle, see for yourself what the experience is like. And yeah, if you have kids, especially, man, they're going to want some ice cream shorts or some cotton candy, hoodies, or some other of the amazing weekly drops of new baseball gear at BL101. And so with that, Kristin, thank you so much for taking the time. This was super fun. I appreciate having me insightful. And hopefully this inspired a few people to say, "You know what?

I'm going to think about CX differently." And I think the online shopping community will be better for it. So thank you.

Kristin Keys:

I appreciate you having me. Thank you.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. If you found this episode to be helpful, share it with somebody else you think will benefit from it. And if you've not done so, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you consume podcasts. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening. That'll do it for this week's episode. One final mention. If you feel like you've stalled out with your growth, if you feel like you've missed opportunities and if you feel like your current team or agency, they just don't have that buyer anymore, or maybe you feel like you've outgrown them, we would love to chat. You may be missing opportunities and we don't want to miss an opportunity to work with great brands. So if you'd love to scale on YouTube or Google or Meta or Amazon or email and SMS, or just look like a second set of eyes to look over how you're growing right now, visit us at omgcommerce.com and we can't wait to help you scale profitably.

‍