AI will not fix your CX. But it will expose whether your foundations are strong enough to scale.

In this episode of CX After Hours, Anya and Guillaume are joined by Leeor Cohen, founder and CEO of CreateCX and Scale Your Team, for a practical conversation about what ecommerce brands need to get right before they try to automate customer experience.

Leeor has worked across frontline CX, e-commerce operations, consulting and BPOs, with experience spanning Bonobos and Coterie among several others. That gives him a clear view of where brands often go wrong: chasing new tools before cleaning up the foundations.

The episode covers why CX teams should be cautious about rushing into helpdesk migrations, AI platforms or new outsourcing partners when the real problem may be poor CX hygiene. That means unclear processes, outdated documentation, messy playbooks and systems that do not give human or AI agents the right inputs.

Leeor also explains why AI should be treated more like a junior team member than a magic solution. It needs training, maintenance, oversight and clear rules for when to act, when to escalate and when to hand over to a human.

The conversation also explores how AI and human agents can work together, how brands should plan CX capacity around marketing and operational peaks, and why proactive, plain-text communication during shipping delays can make a major difference to customer trust.

Topics covered include:

• Why AI scales problems when CX foundations are weak

• What “helpdesk hygiene” and “CX hygiene” really mean

• When switching tools is not the answer

• How to create better inputs for human and AI agents

• Why playbooks still matter

• How to take a crawl-walk-run approach to CX automation

• Which support moments should stay human

• How AI can free agents up for more proactive, revenue-driving work

• The changing role of BPOs in an AI-powered CX world

• The 10% Fix: communicating clearly during shipping delays

Chapters:

• 03:03 The Vent: Shiny Tool Trap

• 04:39 Helpdesk Hygiene Over Switching

• 07:44 Inputs Playbooks and SOPs

• 10:39 Crawl Walk Run with AI

• 12:50 AI as Junior Agent Maintenance

• 15:34 Balancing AI and Human Teams

• 19:01 Proactive CX and Retention

• 22:40 The 10%: Fix Shipping Updates

• 24:37 Proactive Shipping Updates

• 25:30 Turning Stockouts Into Loyalty

• 26:49 BPOs Facing The AI Era

• 28:04 Human First BPO Model

• 31:06 Choosing The Right BPO

• 38:58 Playbooks Before AI

• 42:42 Vendor Selection Tips

• 45:52 Wrap Up And Where To Connect

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3678QkMxtMg?si=n-WJAMm6K_-5P-tW

Subscribe to the podcast via email on our website, and get new episodes delivered directly to your inbox: https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours

Follow the hosts:

Guillaume Luccisano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/

Anya Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/

Follow this episode’s guest, Leeor Cohen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeorc/

CX After Hours is the podcast for CX leaders and operators in retail and ecommerce who are in the trenches scaling customer experience to drive real growth. Powered by Yuma AI, the show goes beyond polished talking points to explore the trade-offs, pressure, and decisions that shape whether customers come back, spend more, and stay loyal.

Learn more about Yuma AI: https://yuma.ai/

AI is everywhere in customer experience right now - automating support, replacing repetitive work, cutting costs and speeding up replies.

But according to Cati Brunell-Brutman, formerly CX Lead at Glossier, the real opportunity is bigger than automation.

It’s data.

Every support ticket, product review, social DM, NPS comment, complaint, and customer conversation is telling you something about your product, your brand, your operations, and your growth.

Most companies just aren’t using it properly.

In this episode of CX After Hours, hosts Guillaume Luccisano and Anya Kelly sit down with Cati to talk about how high-performing CX teams turn customer conversations into business impact.

Cati shares what she learned from building and leading CX teams at brands like Birchbox, Daily Harvest, The Wing, Headway, and Glossier, including how to get CX out of the “cost centre” box, how to use AI to analyse years of customer feedback, and how to turn raw customer data into stories leadership will actually listen to.

They also get into why unrealistic shipping expectations are hurting both brands and teams, how surprise and delight can build real customer trust, why retail teams are an underrated source of customer insight, and why Cati loves NPS but has very little patience for CSAT.

Chapters:

• 03:14 Meet Cati Brunell-Brutman
• 04:14 From theatre production to CX
• 04:53 Building CX at early-stage brands
• 06:43 Why CX is still treated like the kids’ table
• 07:00 CX as customer insight, not a cost centre
• 08:43 Speaking the language of each stakeholder
• 10:15 Why CX is a goldmine of data
• 10:38 The Vent
• 14:41 When CX should use surprise and delight
• 15:28 Turning a delayed order into a memorable moment
• 17:48 Shouting out great CX internally
• 18:36 Connecting exceptional CX to data
• 20:47 Getting feedback from retail teams
• 23:05 Reading NPS comments like a novel
• 27:30 How AI helps CX teams analyse feedback
• 28:39 Using AI to analyse five years of product reviews
• 31:01 Why CX is really storytelling
• 34:53 The 10% Fix
• 36:22 Leaning on the Sisterhood of the Traveling CX
• 39:37 Cati’s take on NPS vs CSAT
• 41:11 Efficiency metrics and social engagement
• 42:53 Why CX should own social replies
• 44:22 Collaborating with marketing on social responses
• 45:44 One takeaway for CX leaders
• 46:01 Create your community
• 47:14 How to follow Cati

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/XQNd37H9dyg?si=TvF7E5hzG-nVgaYJ

Subscribe to the podcast via email on our website, and get new episodes delivered directly to your inbox: https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours

Follow the hosts

Guillaume Luccisano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/

Anya Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/

Follow this episode’s guest, Cati Brunell-Brutman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cati-brunell-brutman-5355b04a/

Instagram: @catibrunell

CX After Hours is the podcast for CX leaders and operators in retail and ecommerce who are in the trenches scaling customer experience to drive real growth. Powered by Yuma AI, the show goes beyond polished talking points to explore the trade-offs, pressure, and decisions that shape whether customers come back, spend more, and stay loyal.

Learn more about Yuma AI: https://yuma.ai/

Most brands want customer experience to become a clean, efficient, fully solved function.

Hire the team. Set the policies. Add the help desk. Bring in AI. Reduce the backlog. Keep customers happy.

But as Michael Bair explains in this episode of CX After Hours, CX is never really “fixed.” The business keeps changing. New products create new questions. Policies create new friction. Channels multiply. Teams grow. Tools break. Expectations rise. And just when you think the system is under control, something else shifts.

Michael Bair is the Founder of Bair Consulting and former SVP of Customer Experience at FIGS. He has spent 20 years working across customer experience, sales, retention, e-commerce, SaaS, and consulting, and has hired more than 1,000 people throughout his career.

In this conversation, Michael joins Guillaume Luccisano and Anya Kelly to talk about what it really takes to hire and scale CX teams in the real world.

They discuss why great CX starts with people who genuinely like customers, Michael’s “PhD” hiring framework - passionate, hungry, and driven - and why interview skills are often a poor predictor of performance.

They also get into scaling teams without lowering the bar, treating AI as part of the staffing model, deciding what belongs with AI, BPOs, or internal agents, and why “Where’s my order?” tickets may be telling you something deeper about your shipping experience.

Michael also explains why e-commerce CX teams should pay close attention to repeat purchase rate, and why the best CX leaders are often the people inside the company who stay closest to customers.

Because CX is not a function you finish. It’s a function you keep building.

Chapters:

• 02:12 Great CX Traits
• 03:41 PhD Hiring Framework
• 05:21 Finding CX Talent
• 08:26 Interviewing For Motivation
• 11:22 Sales To CX Shift
• 15:11 The Vent - Where’s My Order?
• 17:47 Fixing Shipping Expectations
• 24:53 Scaling CX Three Ps
• 26:14 BPO And AI Staffing
• 28:50 AI Limits and Leverage
• 30:23 Routing VIP Customers
• 32:32 Phones Versus Digital
• 34:57 Email Backlog Debate
• 36:45 The 10% Fix Framework
• 37:18 Knowledge Base First
• 38:57 Dashboards and KPIs
• 40:06 Repeat Purchase North Star
• 42:14 Memorable CX at Scale
• 43:33 Chewy Surprise System

📺 Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lHtwZc5iwjU

Subscribe via email and get new episodes delivered to your inbox: ⁠https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours⁠

Follow the hosts:

Guillaume Luccisano: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/⁠

Anya Kelly: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/⁠

Follow this episode’s guest:

Michael Bair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljbair/

CX After Hours is the podcast for CX leaders and operators in retail and ecommerce who are in the trenches scaling customer experience to drive real growth.

Powered by Yuma AI, the show goes beyond polished talking points to explore the trade-offs, pressure, and decisions that shape whether customers come back, spend more, and stay loyal.

Learn more about Yuma AI: ⁠https://yuma.ai/