Mizzen+Main brings service led retail to life with Sunshine

For millions of men, dressing with confidence is a lot easier said than done. Nothing gets in the way of looking and feeling good like sweat stains or being stuck in stiff, restrictive shirts. Whether customers are finding the perfect fit for the office, hitting the links on the golf course, or chatting with customer support for care instructions, we want every step of the customer journey to be as high-quality as our shirts. The challenge is offering a premium, personalized experience online that’s as warm as walking into our stores.

We quickly learned that the best way to live up to our customers’ expectations for high quality, personalized service was to put our trust in the customer data we have at our fingertips.

Connecting the Data – From fit to flex

As a direct-to-consumer brand, every interaction is a chance to define our relationship with customers. Since we’re not a traditional big-box retailer, we can focus on the personalization that defines modern, luxury customer experiences. In order to give our customers the personalized, white-glove treatment that they crave and deserve, we first need to understand them fully.

Mizzen+Main may be young and scrappy, but we have always been data focused. We believe that every touch point with a customer pertains to their overall customer experience. There is so much to learn from data — whether it’s understanding how our customers shop, or where they’re feeling frustrated. It’s important for us to constantly analyze this data in order to better leverage customer interactions.
But our hunger for data intensified, and we were looking for a partner that could not only help us analyze data, but make those insights actionable as well. We partnered with Zaius because of our shared belief that every organization — from marketing and merchandising to customer support — should have access to data.

We initially started with analytics before adding different layers of functionality after successful testing. That’s why when Zaius brought us Zendesk Sunshine, we immediately started to collaborate on the concept of Service Led Retail.

Service led retail

The concept of Service-led Retail is simple: put all the rich customer data — including customer profile data, browsing history and even behavior predictions — into the hands of service agents. This represents a true democratization of data across the organization. Why? Because data should be accessible to the roles that require intelligence to deliver great experiences, not stuck in silos where it can’t be used.

Our support agents are at the front line of customer conversations — a direct representation of Mizzen+Main. We wanted to make sure that they were equipped with everything they need to provide a customer experience as personalized and flexible as the shirts we sell. In a matter of weeks, we were able to integrate data — like when a customer bought a shirt, the specific shirt they bought, their exact size, and even their birthday right into Zendesk Support.

We also created a custom side-bar app that takes all of the data integrated into Sunshine and gives our agents the ability to make personalized style recommendations with just one click. This entirely revitalized our agent experience. We now have the opportunity to instantly turn an interaction from a return to an exchange, and in less than a month we’ve transformed our Customer Support team into a satisfaction boosting profit center. Not only do we feel more empowered by our data, but our customers have loved the change as well. Since we’ve implemented Sunshine, we’ve seen our CSAT go up 3% — proof that our data backed approach is working.

Always the perfect fit

We’re obsessed with customer experience, and data helps us interact with customers on an individual basis. The last thing someone wants from a brand that’s all about personalized is to be treated like they’re just a number.

Being able to provide a top-of-the-line product is only half the battle. As the days progress and technology advances, so will our customers’ expectations. For us, being able to understand customer behavior will uncover what it is they’re looking for in a customer experience. The story is in the data — it’s up to us to translate it.