How 32 Degrees Is Using AI to Scale CX Without Losing the Human Touch

Liam:

Jennifer, incredibly excited for today’s episode. You used to be at Frank Body with the Australian founders — I’m Australian, so I feel like we’re ready to go. I’d love to hear a little more about your journey and who you are. What we’re going to cover today is very exciting, particularly across CX, brand, and how you’re thinking about AI as it becomes so prevalent. But why don’t you share with the audience who you are?

Jennifer:

My name is Jennifer. I’m currently at 32 Degrees as CX Director, overseeing strategy for DTC — the website, everything. We’re a pretty lean team so I’m heavily involved across the board. But what really started my CX passion was working at Apple for five years in the retail store. Working with people every day in sales, you create that connection — and I loved it. When I got the opportunity to move into a more corporate setting, starting with the distributors for Creed Fragrances, I started in CX support and genuinely loved it so much that I was like, I need to make this my career. But I also always felt like CX was kind of the bottom of the barrel at most companies and no one took it seriously. I wanted to change that.

Liam:

What does CX mean to you today? What does your day-to-day look like?

Jennifer:

At 32 Degrees I have a direct report and a BPO — PartnerHero — based in the Philippines, about 20 people total. We’re a very simple company, an apparel brand, so most of our questions are post-purchase. Where’s my order, things like that. But every day looks a little different. We’re all involved in different parts of the business — warehouse, operations, products. We work super closely with our buyer and production team because we’re getting customer feedback first. I’m often in the weeds with my agents, jumping into the help desk and answering tickets myself just to see what customers are asking, what trends we’re seeing, how agents are responding. I’m involved in everything, making the strategic decisions, and really wanting to drive change.

Liam:

Has having an offshore team worked?

Jennifer:

Yes, for us it’s perfect. It would be crazy to have 20 agents in-house in the office. Our BPO is great — they’re super efficient, and when we need to scale for peak like Q4, it’s very easy. You just say, okay, we need X more agents. They hire them, train them, and it’s done. It’s also a lot more cost-effective, and they handle all the logistics — Wi-Fi, equipment, everything. I just say I need 20 agents who know these things, and that’s really it.

Liam:

Why did you go into customer support in the first place?

Jennifer:

I just love helping people. At Apple in Orlando specifically, we had a lot of Brazilian tourists. I was able to speak with them in Spanish — close enough to Portuguese that they felt at ease — and you could just see the relief on their faces. I loved the beginning, middle, and end of the customer journey. It felt so fulfilling. Apple also really ingrained a culture of feedback, both positive and constructive, through peers and managers. And they’ve always been great at CSAT. I took those tools with me and just built my career around them.

Liam:

So many people have the misconception that CX is just a support function. Why do you think getting it right is so important for a brand?

Jennifer:

CX is front and center of what customers are saying — immediately, in real time. Our agents see things before our return spikes or any other signal does. I’ll give you an example. We launched jeans for the first time and a couple of weeks later, customers started coming back saying something was off with them, the inseam wasn’t right. Once we had enough feedback to see a pattern, I went to production with Excel sheets of the data. They took it to the manufacturers and it turned out they had made a mistake. We immediately removed the jeans from the website, fixed the inseam, and relaunched them. We would have never caught that without customers emailing and chatting with us. And that’s one thing about 32 Degrees customers — they will immediately let you know when something is wrong.

Liam:

How important is it to have someone in your role actually summarizing and feeding that information to the right parts of the business, rather than just having agents replying to tickets?

Jennifer:

A hundred percent. Me and my direct report spend a lot of time gathering feedback, working on CSAT, actively reaching out to customers, even sending gift cards to really good ones. We’ll see a great review and send them something. And we’ve seen it close the loop on so many things — feedback on products, new product ideas. We started getting customers saying “you guys should do scrubs” because a lot of nurses were wearing our base layers under their scrubs. We launched scrubs and they loved it. The feedback component of CX is priority.

Liam:

What actually makes a customer interaction great?

Jennifer:

Listening. Not wanting to rush the interaction — speed matters but the value has to be there. Customers just want to feel heard. That’s really it at the core. What I see most brands get wrong is pushing out macros robotically and not even editing them slightly for the situation. Just “here’s your refund” with no personal touch. Every week I meet with my team and ask them — how do you want to be treated when you’re on the other side of this?

Liam:

How would you summarize the success of a CX function?

Jennifer:

Closing the loop. When you find the problem, get all the departments involved, fix it, and close it. We’ve had so many examples — a shipment of t-shirts mislabeled with the wrong color so customers received a different color than they ordered. We caught it through the tickets, immediately contacted the warehouse, updated the listing, and resolved it for all the affected customers. It can be stressful but when you work across departments and find the solution, it’s incredibly rewarding.

Liam:

In the world of AI, how should other teams in the business be using the data the CX team is getting?

Jennifer:

Just being innovative. Some people are scared to dive in, some are going too far in. But in order to be the most efficient, we need to be using AI now. My boss heads ecommerce and he’s using Claude — inputting data and having it run in the background giving him insights he wasn’t getting before. It’s amazing. For me specifically, we just signed with DigitalGenius. I’m really excited because the reason I prioritized AI was efficiency. Every Q4 I was hiring more and more agents. This last Q4 we had 40 additional agents on top of our usual 20. More mistakes, more questions for me and my direct report. It just stops being efficient, and I felt like our values got lost in the process. AI was the answer.

Liam:

Where do you see the biggest unlocks coming from when it comes to CX and AI?

Jennifer:

Brands like Caraway and Everlane are doing a great job. They’re obsessed with experimenting and not afraid to be first. For me, we’re starting with WISMO — where is my order — because that’s our highest volume ticket type. The tool connects to Shopify, Loop, Gladly, parcelLab, everything. So when someone asks where their order is, the AI can pull the tracking info and respond automatically. My goal for this coming Q4 is to need maybe 25 additional agents instead of 40. We’ll see how it goes. And as it evolves, we’ll move into things like defective items — the tool can actually detect if a customer sends a photo with a hole in a garment and automatically initiate a replacement.

Liam:

Is your mission with AI headcount reduction or better customer experience?

Jennifer:

Both, honestly. But my original goal was to reduce headcount to make Q4 manageable for me and my direct report. It’s just the two of us managing 60 agents at peak — it’s tough. That said, I’m going in smart and slow. I want to see how customers respond. Some customers are paranoid about AI — they’ll ask “is this AI?” for almost anything. I believe in it, I just want to be smart about it.

Liam:

How do you think CX changes between luxury versus more accessible brands?

Jennifer:

Honestly, it’s the same. No matter what a customer is spending, you give them exceptional service because these customers are important and we want to create loyal ones. That’s the culture I want to build. The one difference might be the journey — if you’re selling a $500 perfume, you might be on the phone explaining the notes of the fragrance because it takes longer for a customer to decide on a high-ticket purchase. But the level of care? Identical. I personally don’t like the idea of treating customers differently based on spend. Make them satisfied, no matter what.

Liam:

What are the top three things a great CX team has to deliver?

Jennifer:

Listening — always listening. Going above and beyond, treating the customer how you would want to be treated. And making sure the agents themselves feel valued. If you don’t feel valued as a CX agent, you’re not going to perform well. I’m always telling my team — we’re just selling $5 t-shirts, guys. We’re not doing surgery. Take your breaks. Take a mental health day if you need it. We are a team. I had a temp agent reach out to me on LinkedIn afterward saying if you ever have an opening, please, I just love the brand. That’s the foundation that makes everything else work.

Liam:

What are the most important metrics to determine CX success?

Jennifer:

Speed. FRT is critical. We send a daily CX report — it’s a simple Excel doc tracking first response time, average close time, and CSAT. Those three things. During our slow season, FRT should be two to three hours. During peak, if it hits 12 hours we’re in the yellow zone and we know we need to act. When all three metrics are green, we’re doing well. Simple as that. We also have an internal VIP system in Gladly — agents can see a customer’s full history, how long they’ve been with us, total spend, any red flags like chargebacks. That lets them make exception decisions confidently without escalating everything to me. I also have a VIP Slack channel where agents can post a ticket if they’re still unsure about an exception — it gives me visibility on what types of questions are coming through and why, while giving agents the confidence to act.

Liam:

What are the biggest opportunities you’re starting to explore with AI and CX?

Jennifer:

We’re starting with WISMO because that’s our highest volume. From there, we’ll look at defective items — the tool will be able to detect if a customer sends a photo of a product with a hole and automatically process a replacement. But what I’m also really excited about is proactive CX. That’s the reason we also signed with parcelLab. If we know an order is going to be delayed, we should be reaching out before the customer even has to ask. Send them an email — hey, we’re working on your order, it’s going to be a little delayed, just a heads up. My customers just want to know what’s going on. They want an update. They want a good experience, consistently, fast, always. And honestly, at the end of the day, it’s really not that complicated.

Liam:

Thanks so much for coming on. We don’t generally talk about CX on this podcast and I think people hearing your perspective on it is super valuable.

Jennifer:

I loved it. Thank you for having me.

We get into:

How CX caught a product issue before return data did

Why response speed builds trust for value-priced brands

How 32 Degrees scales a 20-person team to 60 during Q4

The invisible VIP framework that empowers agents to make exceptions

Where AI can reduce repetitive work and enable proactive CX

If you lead eCommerce, operations, retention, or customer experience, this conversation is a practical playbook for turning CX from a cost center into a growth engine.

00:00 Preview

01:00 Introduction

01:34 From Apple retail to Director of CX

02:36 Inside 32 Degrees’ CX operation

04:05 Why an offshore CX team works

05:33 What Apple taught Jennifer about customer experience

07:22 Why CX is more than customer support

09:20 Turning customer feedback into business decisions

11:18 What makes a customer interaction great

12:05 What most brands get wrong: robotic support

12:36 Closing the loop across product and operations

14:42 How every team should use CX data and AI

16:05 Why 32 Degrees chose DigitalGenius

18:00 The brands leading AI-powered CX

19:49 The real goal of AI: efficiency without losing trust

21:33 Should luxury and value brands deliver different CX?

23:19 Three things every great CX team needs

25:11 The CX metrics that matter most

27:54 The invisible VIP system behind customer exceptions

30:25 What’s next for proactive AI-powered CX

32:34 Final takeaway