It’s All ‘Patagucci’: Patagonia's CX Operations Manager Shares How The Brand Became Celebrated For Its Customer Service

As we prepare for Customer Contact Week Nashville 2023 in just a few short weeks, I can’t help but think about all the incredible people I’ve gotten to meet over the years in Las Vegas, San Antonio and elsewhere. During our on-site events contact center pros, CX leaders and the customer service-curious all converge, finally putting names, faces and feelings to some of those thoughts, intro emails and ideas we leave in the email drafts.

For me it’s a great opportunity to ask those burning questions that in the cadence of a normal workday, many of you might not have the bandwidth to answer. But for a brief few days (never long enough, in my biased opinion!), we are able to give each other a level of attention and interaction so valuable that months after we‘ve left the Expo Hall floor we’re still thinking about them. 

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One such interaction that sticks out in my mind from Customer Contact Week Las Vegas 2023 is a run-in with Lily Cristiano, CX Operations Manager for Customer Service at Patagonia. An avid hiker and camper myself, I’ve always been curious about how the brand manages to turn a profit when it has such notoriously generous customer satisfaction policies and enviornmental adovacy efforts to fund. Over recent years the Patagonia brand has earned the pop cultural coin of “Patagucci,” which Rice University describes as an indication “that Patagonia has reached a sort of luxury brand status (like Gucci).”

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So, when I bumped into Cristiano while grabbing coffee at a CCWomen breakfast, I figured then was a good a time as any to ask: What’s good with the Patagucci being at a Customer Contact Week conference? Below you’ll gain not just context on what companies are looking for when it comes to their customer contact investments, but insider knowledge on what events like CCW Nashville can mean for you, your organization and the future of branding and CX.

Wandy Felicita Ortiz, Analyst at CCW Digital:

So what brings you and Patagonia to CCW Las Vegas?

Lily Cristiano, Patagonia: 

I'm really looking to tap into more industry knowledge and get our Patagonia customer service department into that next tier of being the best in customer quality customer service, by really getting the technology behind what we need to accomplish.

Currently, our challenge is that we operate out of too many systems. We have so many vendors, and we really are looking to consolidate those vendors. We are also at a place where we are still doing 100% manual QA, which means that we score about less than 1% of our contacts.

We really need to improve that quality, because quality is so important to our Customer Contact Center. And lastly, we need to get into the generative AI or ChatGTP market as well… We really want to have a quality vendor that's going to help us in the long term, not just this next year, but accomplish our long term goals.

WFO:

In terms of your place in the customer service space market, there are so many different areas to consider. Patagonia is different from hospitality, it's different from the patient experience and it's different from airlines…

What do you think is Patagonia's bread and butter when it comes to customer service, and how do you plan on connecting it with these types of technology you’re on the lookout for?

LC:

I do feel like Patagonia does have best-in-class customer service, and we thrive on having the highest quality as a retailer… we kind of do the above and beyond, we will do whatever it takes for our customers. So you have ironclad warranties: we will guarantee our products for life; we will just take care of the customer at any cost.

We will go above and beyond to help our customers. And so it's a really people-focused business for us. And I think that sometimes this means that our technology or our systems take a backburner because we are so people focused.

It’s why when we're looking at our service center, we're not the service center–that's like micromanaging the average handle time. We want space for the conversation, the storytelling, the connection with the customer, we want to hear how you're using our gear.

So if you're calling me about a Better Sweater, I also want to know where you live, what your climate is, where you're going to use it, if you are traveling, and how I can help you in your lifelong journey so that we can build customers for life. We want you to come back to us and continuously use our gear.

WFO:

Now,  this question is more of a personal one for me, because I'm curious about your thoughts or internally what your company thinks about this: do you love it when people call it “Patagucci?” Do you think it's silly? Do you think it's cool? Do you say it in your team?

LC:

Oh, that's so funny! No, we don't say it–we definitely hear it; we have some laughs… I think for us that means that associating with the Gucci name is just associated with quality, and so we can get on board with being associated with quality. 

We got a lot of contacts when Northface partnered with Gucci. And in the last six months, we’ve had so many customers calling our call center saying, ‘Why is Gucci partnering with Northface and not you?’ And so that was very interesting that our customers were protective of our brands and really wanted us to partner with Gucci because of that nickname. But I think it's just silly, it’s fun–no harm in it, and just definitely associated with high quality.

Coming off the heels of June and preparing for our next in-person event in October, I can personally attest that when it comes to making high quality connections in customer contact, whether Las Vegas, Nashville or in between, attendees and avid learners alike will be Patagucci at CCW events.

Customer Contact Week Nashville: Register Here

I hope to see you on the Expo Hall floor in Nashville and have the chance to touch base with–and profile–more of our community members in Tennessee this year. Better yet, stop in for our CCW Digital sessions and get some more of that insider information straight from the source.

See you soon, partners!