Day In The CX Life With Emily Stubbs, AD of Customer Service At Pair Eyewear

Welcome back to A Day In The CX Life With CCW Digital, a series where we take a look into the people, technology, tools and trends that drive the customer contact industry. In this series we ask employees just like you to share how they spend their workday–from wake-up routines to meetings and what’s on their dinner plate for the evening.

In this daily log we meet Emily Stubbs, Associate Director of Customer Service at customizable glasses brand Pair Eyewear. You may have seen this fashion-forward company's viral TikToks gracing your phone screen lately, but it's taken years of hard work from Stubbs and her team to get Pair Eyewear to where it is today. Since 2020 she has helped grow the brand's customer experience team from five customer experience representatives to 150 agents and implimented a tech stack that improved Pair Eyewear's SLAs, customer interactions, and allowed the company's leadership to thrive and grow. Today, she’s sharing what a Tuesday in CX looks like for her.

Name: Emily Stubbs

Occupation/Company: Associate Director of Customer Service, Pair Eyewear

Industry: eCommerce

Age: 31

Location: New York

Years At Role: 3

Professional Goals: Always be a leader that others respect and look up to, and never lose who I am at my core. 

Personal Hobbies: Reading (this is a theme in my day, you’ll see!) anything having to do with K-pop, yoga, hanging out with my dog/husband.

TUESDAY

6:15 am: On days that I go into the office for work I usually wake up around 6:15-6:30am. I am a big fan of the snooze button in the mornings—an unfortunate habit I have had since high school, whoops!

6:30-7 am: I always start my mornings with a coffee and a walk with my dog, Pickles. If I WFH I typically sleep in a little bit longer, but on office days we have to get moving a bit early. Getting outside first thing in the morning is actually so nice, if the weather keeps it together.

Pickles, Emily's dog.

7-8 am: Get ready for work and listen to a book-related podcast or watch “BookTube” videos. I love listening to what other people are reading, and I always get my next read queued up because of how much book content I consume.

8:15-9 am: Morning commute/reading time. I founded the Pair Eyewear Book Club and our current read is The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I’m also reading Yellowface by R.F. Kuang for a separate book club I’m in. And yes, I’m the crazy person who sometimes reads 3-4 books at a time. 

9-10 am: Admin work! Before my day begins I try to sift through any emails that might have come in overnight (or since I last checked this morning). I look at my calendar at all of my meetings to make sure I have prepared any deliverables that I am responsible for. I also use this time to check on our team’s KPIs, see how our queues are doing, and check any Slack messages that need my attention.

10 am: Time for the first meeting of today! We have a cross-functional discussion between the CX and our tech teams to connect on how CX is doing, anything in the roadmap that could be affecting us over the next week, and generally check-in.

10:30 am: Second meeting of the day starts. During this time, I am meeting with one of our Operations Strategy Managers to discuss the CX team’s metrics. We tend to discuss any trends that we are seeing WoW. Next week’s discussion will be the differences we saw MoM. We work closely on these metrics as it directly correlates to how we plan our headcount forecasting.

11:30 am-12:30 pm: More admin work and daily task time. 

12:30 pm: Weekly check-in with our training manager. I oversee our Training and QA programs, alongside our BPO relationship management. Typically we discuss any trends we are seeing with our agents—where is there confusion in our processes? Where is the team falling behind or falling short? Is everyone understanding the latest updates we have been giving them? We also discuss any changes that need to be made in our knowledge base. This week, we also discussed our game plan for onboarding more agents next week.

1 pm: Lunch time! Typically, I’m pretty fond of bringing my lunch from home. I am an absolute leftover queen.

2 pm: Weekly check-in with our internal team’s manager. Although they are not my direct report, we find that keeping a standing 1:1 is helpful to know what the other is working on, bounce ideas off of each other, and keep each other in the loop about what’s going on in each other’s worlds.

2:30 pm: Time for the weekly CX/Operations check-in. At the beginning of the year, our operations and CX teams merged under the same umbrella. This is a time for us all to get together and talk about inbound and outbound shipments, inventory updates or issues, CX KPI and team news, and any other high-level updates everyone should be aware of.

4 pm: Weekly touch base with one of our BPOs. Every week, we meet with the leadership team of both of our BPOs to garner insights into how the team is performing. We can call out any issues either side is seeing, or any trends we have been noticing throughout the week. If the team has difficulties throughout the week they can let us know during that time, and we can determine if we need to address it via QA or training. We are also updated about agents who are on performance improvement plans, any potential attrition, or any other people updates we need to be aware of.

5-5:30/6 pm: Wrap up the day and finish any other administrative tasks that need to be done. Make sure all emails are wrapped up for the day.

6 pm: Pre-pandemic I was always a person who worked out in the morning, however, I’ve switched to a post-work yoga or cycling class. Working out after work has actually been a great way to clear my head after a long day and reset before going home. Today it’s a hot yoga day!

7-8 pm: Commute home. If I’m not stopping by Trader Joe’s for groceries I definitely don’t need, I actually love commuting because this tends to be the time of day that I get to read the most. I get 45 minutes to and from work for uninterrupted reading time!

8 pm: Shower, make and eat dinner, dog walk, and wind-down time. Typically if I get home later and I didn’t meal prep earlier in the week, my husband will start making dinner (that I sometimes need to rescue when I get home). As the husband is at trivia night tonight, I’m fending for myself. I resist the urge to order something for delivery, and I end up making a “sushi roll in a bowl” which is probably one of my favorite meals! Recipe below:

1 piece of salmon
½-1 cup of rice or cauliflower rice
Kewpie Mayo

Soy Sauce
Sriracha
Green Onions
Cucumbers
Seaweed Snacks
Kimchi
Sesame Oil

Most of these ingredients are optional, based on preference. But this is one of my favorite simple meals! Simply cook up the rice and salmon to preference and add any seasonings you’d like. Break up the salmon over the rice with a fork. I typically eyeball the condiments. (Measure with your heart!) Add as much soy sauce, mayo and Sriracha as you like. Mix. Add in your chopped up cucumber, cut green onion, and you can even top with optional sesame oil, sesame seeds, furikake, etc. Eat on your seaweed snacks and top with kimchi.

After eating dinner I typically tend to do some tidying or laundry if I have some time, watch a show, read some more, or do another one of my various hobbies I always seem to be starting! The end of my day always ends with some quality time with my pup and another trip outside.

11pm-ish: Bedtime!

Photos courtesy of Emily Stubbs

Know somebody who might be a good fit for our series? If you’d like to nominate a member of your team or highlight new initiative your organization is tackling through your work, email wandy.ortiz@cmpteam.com