December 9, 2025 • 42 mins
Sarah Betts, the Director of Support and Operations at Vizit, joins us to talk about one of the most joyful parts of customer experience: intentional gift giving. We dig into why humans naturally connect through gifts, how the smallest gesture can make someone feel seen, and what it looks like to build a gifting strategy that is personal, thoughtful, and realistic for your team.
Sarah shares wonderful stories from her time in the corporate gifting world, including an unforgettable moment involving an Avengers superfan CEO and a beautifully targeted gift that immediately won his attention. She walks us through what makes a gift feel genuine instead of gimmicky, when branded items can strengthen a relationship, and why timing matters just as much as the gift itself. We explore simple ways to create delightful moments even when your budget is small, from handwritten notes to quick video messages that let your sincerity shine through.
Learn how to measure the impact of gifting, what mistakes to avoid, and which tools can help you scale your efforts once you have the basics in place.
Sarah mentions some of her favorite gifting platforms, like Loop and Tie, Brilliant, Tremendous, and Sendoso. And of course, we look at Chewy, which continues to show the entire industry what beautifully executed customer delight can look like.
Where to find Sarah:
Later in the episode, Jordan and I take a moment to reflect on our second full year of Happy to Help. We look back on the incredible guests who joined us in 2025 and the big themes we explored together. It has been such a meaningful year of conversations, learning, and celebrating the craft of customer support. If you have ideas for topics or guests you want us to feature next season, tap the Text the Show link in the show notes and send them our way. We would love to hear from you.
We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!
To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com.
Thanks for listening!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Priscilla (00:00):
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, PriscillaBrooke.
Today we're exploring thewonderful world of gift giving.
We're discussing why giftgiving is a great way to connect
with your clients and customersand how to build a gift giving
strategy that is fun, scalable,and impactful.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
(00:21):
So, joining us today is SarahBetts.
Sarah is currently the Directorof Support and Operations for
Vizit, where she helps buildsystems and connect data,
empathy, and experience.
Throughout her career, she hasbuilt and led high-performing
global teams and scaled supportdepartments across remote
locations.
Sarah believes in buildingcultures of trust, clarity, and
(00:45):
continuous improvement.
Thank you for joining us today,Sarah.
Sarah (00:48):
I am so thrilled to be here with you, Priscilla.
Thank you.
Priscilla (00:52):
I love meeting another Sarah that is fun.
I feel like there's so manypeople in the support world that
are named Sarah who are great.
Oh, you, yes, Sarah Camoniti,Sarah Hatter.
There's so many good Sarahs.
Jordan (01:04):
I think we've had all the Sarahs on the spot.
Oh, there's more.
Sarah (01:07):
There's more Sarahs, and they're all fantastic.
I've met so many great Sarahs.
Priscilla (01:11):
We should launch a podcast that is just
interviewing Sarahs.
There you go.
Wouldn't that be kind of cool?
Maybe that would be my podcastidea.
You should interview otherSarahs.
A tour of Sarahs.
A tour of Sarah.
That's amazing.
Jordan (01:25):
I love that idea so much.
Priscilla (01:26):
That's so good.
So we've already kind ofstarted on a positive note here,
but we always like to kick ourepisodes off by shouting out
someone in the support world whohas made your day recently.
So, Sarah, do you have someonewho has made your day recently?
Sarah (01:41):
A person who consistently makes my day is Mercer Smith.
She is an endless cheerleaderand always turns things around
to make it sound like I'm hercheerleader somehow.
Yeah.
But yeah, she recently gave mea really sweet compliment,
backed me up on something.
So I appreciate her.
Priscilla (01:57):
I love it.
It's like the small things thatyou don't really think are
gonna have a big impact, justlike giving someone a
compliment.
Yeah.
It's something I feel like Iheard recently someone saying
that they really want to be abetter fan of things.
Oh, and they want to talk aboutthe things that they love more.
And so it's like when I seesomeone who's wearing a cute
(02:18):
outfit, I'm never gonna let thecompliment not be spoken.
Absolutely.
Because you never know whatkind of impact a small
compliment can have on someone.
And so I love that.
You know, Mercer made your dayby giving you a compliment and
being in your corner.
And I think that's a totallyworthwhile way to start this
podcast.
I love it.
Absolutely.
So, Sarah, you have aninteresting background.
(02:39):
You've been in the supportworld for over a decade, but you
have worked in some differentenvironments.
And one of those is a corporategifting company.
Yeah.
And that's something that I'mnot very familiar with.
And that's so that's what we'regoing to talk about today is
gift giving and how that canimpact customers and clients.
But before we kind of get intothat, can you share a little bit
(02:59):
more about your background incustomer support and how this
industry kind of inspires you?
Sarah (03:06):
Yeah.
I actually got into customersupport quite accidentally.
Like I wasn't looking for it.
I was going through a divorce,needed a job, and a friend of
mine was like, hey, you know howto do all this stuff.
Would you come work for me andhelp like build documentation
and answer customer questions?
And I was like, you'll pay mefor stuff I already know?
Yes.
(03:26):
And through that job, like Istarted getting frustrated with
the systems that we had or thelack of systems and building
things, and landed my first techsupport role and from there got
into operations and support.
But support is still my love.
I love building the systems.
Yeah.
But support feels like anever-ending quest.
Priscilla (03:47):
Yes.
Sarah (03:48):
Because you constantly have something new that pops up
that you have to go, where didthat come from?
Yes.
And it's just like this regularrabbit hole of sleuthing, of
finding the clues and figuringout what happened, and then be
like, Eureka, I got it.
And then yeah, documenting itfor the next person.
Yeah.
Jordan (04:04):
We hear that so much from anyone who's on this
podcast.
There's something about likethe sleuthing and puzzling and
figuring things out that justreally motivates people and it
like lights a fire.
Sarah (04:16):
Yeah, I heard somebody say that support people are
like, you know, that meme thatused to be like, what would you
leave in the circle, in thepentagram circle to like summon
somebody if they were ademonstration?
Yes.
That support people are just anendless line of being able to
summon people by just dropping alittle puzzle in front of them
and they'll just follow itforever.
Priscilla (04:37):
I guess.
That's exactly it.
Yeah.
Well, and I like what you saidabout like something new pops
up, and you're like, how hasthis not come up before?
And now it's all of a suddencoming up.
I think about that sometimeswhen I think back in the early
years of being at Buzz Sprout,and I'm like, those were the
questions we were getting allthe time.
And now we don't get thosequestions.
We get this whole new set ofquestions all the time.
(04:57):
And so we'll solve that andthen we'll figure the next ones
that come in.
And I do think there'ssomething really fun about that
continuous puzzle and gettingnew things to figure out every
day.
And then the dopamine hit whenyou do get it is really nice.
Sarah (05:13):
That's it.
It's the dopamine hit if it'salways something new.
It's not like an office jobwhere you file the same reports
over and over and over again.
You do not know what you'regoing to find when you walk into
the queue in the morning.
Priscilla (05:24):
It's so true.
I always tell new hires thatthere's a balance of like
repetition because you are in aqueue.
So that will feel repetitive,but every question is going to
be different.
And so it's all going to feeldifferent every day at the same
time.
So it's this balance ofrepetition and continuous
exploring.
Yes.
(05:45):
When this episode drops, we'regoing to be right in the middle
of December, right in the middleof gift giving season.
And I feel like it's, you know,just such a great time for us
to discuss building a giftgiving strategy in a corporate
sense with customers andclients.
And, you know, you think aboutwhen I think about gift giving,
I think about birthdays, I thinkabout holidays.
Beyond that, though, there's,you know, gift giving on these
(06:08):
like grander schemes.
Like you think about the Statueof Liberty was a gift.
Yes.
That is like one of the biggergifts in the world in history.
Never given a gift that sizemyself.
Just not.
No, and we're not recommendingthat in this episode.
But it's funny because you lookat how powerful gift giving can
be on just a small scale from afriend to a friend, and then
(06:29):
how powerful it can be on thishuge scale, country to country,
and that it is a strategy thatis used to build a relationship
and to strengthen arelationship.
And so then you look at it in acorporate sense where it's a
company giving a gift to clientsor to prospective clients or to
employees and a way to buildand strengthen relationships
(06:49):
there.
So I want to talk about thatpsychology around gift giving a
little bit.
What do you think is it aboutgift giving that allows it to be
such a powerful part of therelationship building between
customers and that customerexperience situation?
Sarah (07:04):
As humans, as beings, we are wired to share.
Human society can't survive ifwe don't share because one
individual can't meet all ofyour needs.
I firmly rely on Costco andTrader Joe's and, you know,
places like that.
But before that, you know, Imight have excess grain and you
might have excess milk, and Ican just eat a lot of grain.
(07:24):
That's boring.
But if I can have some of yourmilk and give you some of my
grain, now we have a symbioticrelationship and we can help
each other survive.
So that's like the corepsychological thing that we have
always given gifts and thepeople who survived were good at
sharing.
We still make those connectionsthat way.
And it is kind of that we'regonna survive together.
(07:45):
And in business, it is likethat.
If I don't have my customers,my company's not gonna make it.
Like I might be able to fakesome reports for a while, but
ultimately my investors aregonna be like, that's enough.
Right.
This isn't adding up.
Exactly.
Those numbers need to besomewhere within range.
So right now it's really noisy.
I'm sure you both opened upyour inboxes this morning and
(08:07):
just sort of ignored most ofwhat's in there.
There's so many filters thathelp you automatically ignore
most of the emails.
I get dozens of cold calls.
Thankfully, shout out to Pixeland Google Fi for having
built-in tools to just ignore alot of them.
But stuff still gets through.
And it is really, really hardas a business to break through
(08:27):
that noise.
Yeah.
And people want to be seen.
We don't have the strongcommunities that we used to
have.
We don't have the stronggroups, like we've got our
friend groups, but it's not asbroad.
And so if I notice that youhave a dog, like you just
adopted a dog, and I send you alittle winter coat for your dog,
you're gonna feel really seen.
And like I cared.
(08:48):
And I think that is the thingabout gift giving that it makes
us go, oh, you don't see me as acontract, you see me as a
person.
Priscilla (08:57):
Yeah.
I think that's so cool.
So do you have any successstories from when you were in
that corporate giving worldwhere you saw that relationship
be strengthened because of agift giving strategy that went
really well?
Sarah (09:11):
One of my favorite stories was this pretty new BDR
was trying to land a call with aCEO and they knew their
solution would work.
It wasn't just like, oh, wejust need to get enough numbers.
She was like, I saw him postabout it on LinkedIn, I saw that
he was looking for this, Icouldn't get through.
And she had our research teamdo some research and found out
that he was an absolute Avengersnerd.
(09:32):
This guy was obsessed.
So she ordered a four-panelhand-painted fan art watercolor
of the Avengers and had itshipped to his office.
And he opened that, was like,holy, and picked up the phone
and called her right away.
Because it wasn't just anotherBDR trying to reach out to him.
It was somebody who took thetime to say, I see you as a
human.
Priscilla (09:52):
Yeah.
Sarah (09:52):
I see the geek in you.
Priscilla (09:53):
Yeah.
And here you go.
That's so cool.
What kind of an impact that canhave on you when you're like,
man, this person, they don'tknow me personally.
I don't see them every day.
They're not in my personallife.
And they knew enough about meto send me something that was
hyper-personalized.
Thinking about it from theirside can feel you're like, man,
that must feel so good to beseen in that way.
(10:15):
And that can like inspire us onthis side to want to do it
more.
I think it's really cool.
So, you know, gift giving isvery powerful, but it can also
be very time-consuming.
And if someone is at a companyand they're trying to figure out
how to get a gift-givingstrategy in place, it can feel
overwhelming.
I would guess there's ways thatit can feel more promotional
(10:36):
than really connection.
And so, Sarah, when you'reconsidering selecting a gift,
how do you select a gift in away that it feels genuine and
not like a promotional tool?
You know what I mean?
Like gimmicky.
How do you avoid that?
Oh, and I saw that.
Sarah (10:52):
Yeah.
You know, I saw people thatwere just like, here's our
$50,000 budget.
We're just going to, you know,I hate the term, but spray and
pray.
I've just hit everybody with agift card.
Yep.
And gift cards are one of thosethings that can be done very
poorly.
I mean, everybody has an offerfor an Amazon gift card.
Right.
Which is, it's nice, I guess,to have an Amazon gift card, but
it doesn't feel like somebodypaid attention.
(11:12):
That said, I have given giftcards that felt like I was
paying attention.
We had somebody who had amishap in support, and this is
one of my cool strategies forusing gifting, is we screwed up
somebody's account.
We made a mistake.
And so I had my team send out abig gift card to the head of
the shop.
It was an auto shop.
And it was just a nice note oflike, I'm really sorry we messed
(11:33):
up.
That was totally our fault.
Go get coffee for your wholecrew.
Love that.
That's so cool.
And he was like, that was thenicest apology I've ever had.
Like I felt like you cared.
Priscilla (11:43):
Yeah.
Sarah (11:43):
You have to be very strategic.
Because it's so noisy, youcan't be sending out that gift
card through an email as yourfirst outreach because it will
probably get spammed and thenyou will never get through
again.
Once you get spammed, that'sit.
It's game over.
So definitely once you have awarm lead, somebody's engaged,
that's when to start thinkingabout gifting.
But I like to go farther intothe funnel with gifting, not
(12:06):
early in the funnel, but later.
So if you've got a contractrenewal coming up, go find out
your champions, learn somethingabout them, and send them a nice
gift.
Or if it's coming up on ananniversary, even if you have a
multi-year contract, or youknow, maybe you've just finished
onboarding, just like we wouldgive a gift to a friend of like,
oh my gosh, you totally killedthat.
And, you know, I just sent youflowers or whatever.
(12:28):
Send flowers.
If you find out somebody had alife change event, send a gift.
Priscilla (12:32):
Yeah.
Sarah (12:33):
It's not hard if you can step back and think of people as
people.
Priscilla (12:36):
Yeah, that's the key.
Thinking about people aspeople.
You just said send flowers.
It made me think of somethingwe've done in the past at
BuzzSprout.
So Buzz Sprout is an onlineservice.
We have many customers.
We're not having these clientrelationships like you would see
with like an ongoing clientservice type of a thing.
And so we have all thesecustomers, so many that we
(12:58):
talked to once and never hearfrom again, but that use the
product.
And once years ago, we hadsomeone who was going to come to
a conference.
And she wrote into our supportteam and said, I'm coming to
this conference.
I'm so excited.
I'll see you guys.
I'm excited to meet you.
And then a couple of dayslater, she wrote in that she had
had a life change.
Someone in her family hadpassed away and she wasn't going
to be there.
So she told us about thisexperience that she had.
(13:20):
And we were very consolatoryand understood that she wasn't
going to be able to be there.
But then a few weeks later, shewrote back and she said, You
know, I've decided I'm going tocome.
Things are hard right now, butI want to be there and I don't
want to miss this.
And we got the opportunity tofigure out some details about
her and send her flowers.
So she had flowers in her roomwhen she got to this conference.
(13:41):
And it was really cool to beable to do something like that.
Not because we can do this forevery single customer for Buzz
Sprout, but we can do this forone customer that we know of
that's going through a hard timethat we're going to have this
ability to impact in that way.
Sarah (13:57):
You know who really nails this, like at scale and does it
beautifully?
And you know who I'm going tosay is Chewy.
They have nailed this.
And it's because they knowtheir customer, they have dialed
it in.
They know exactly who theircustomer is.
Yep.
They know exactly what momentsare decision moments or, you
know, times that are hard.
So I get a birthday card for mydogs and my cat every year on
(14:19):
their birthdays.
I had an experience where wehad to change my cat's food and
they were like, just donate it.
And so, you know, took the foodin.
Amazing.
But if you cancel a recurringorder, they will often send
flowers and sometimes ahand-painted photo of your pet.
What?
And that is so meaningful.
Yeah.
Oh, so meaningful.
(14:39):
It doesn't work for everybusiness, but because Chewy
knows their customer very, verywell, they have a very good know
your customer team.
Yeah.
They're on it.
Priscilla (14:48):
Yeah.
Sarah (14:48):
They know exactly what to do.
And some would argue, well,that's easy because it's pets
and we're all attached to ourpets.
But I am willing to bet thatevery business knows something
that their customers areattached to.
Priscilla (14:59):
Yeah.
And that comes back to thepersonalization side of things
and how a personalized gift isgoing to be so much more
impactful, have such a betteroutcome than something that is
not personalized.
But personalizing it is hardand that does take a little more
time.
It takes a little bit moreeffort on your end as the
customer's support or successperson who's doing this.
(15:21):
So, what are some of yourfavorite ways to personalize a
gift that might be a little morescalable, if you know what I
mean?
Sarah (15:29):
Yeah, some things are easy.
Like we had a customer who hadan annual conference that they
did every year.
And because we were all remoteand everything, they sent like
movie supplies because they weregoing to be watching a series
of videos.
And so they sent, like, youknow, the popcorn ready to pop
and the hot cocoa mix and thelittle blanket.
You know, it was themed forthat.
Yeah.
Other things that I've seen aresending a video with the gift.
(15:52):
Like it doesn't have to be thegift itself that is
personalized.
It can be the note.
Priscilla (15:56):
Yeah.
Sarah (15:57):
Or the way, the way you convey the gift.
I really like the ability tochoose.
So a lot of gift-givingplatforms will allow you to
create or select from a group ofgifts that fit a certain theme.
And then you send a link andyou say you choose what you
want.
And the choice then ispowerful.
It's not like, okay, but I have500 water bottles and I really
(16:18):
don't need another one.
Right.
But it may be that you're like,well, heck, that blanket.
Yeah, because my dog stole mineand I kind of need a blanket.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Speaking of in this house, ourdogs steal all the blankets.
It doesn't have to bespecifically the gift that is
personalized, as was what I'msaying.
It's it's the approach, it'show you do it, it's the choices
(16:40):
that you give, those kinds ofthings.
Priscilla (16:42):
Yeah.
And a lot of companies willsend swag.
We do that a lot withBuzzSprout, is we'll send
podcasters swag with our logo onit.
What are your opinions onbranded gifting versus
unbranded, more personalizedthings that are not containing
your logo anywhere?
Sarah (17:00):
I think branded gifts are very powerful.
Really?
Done the right way.
Yeah.
So if you have somebody who'ssay written in and just been
like, oh my gosh, I am so inlove with your app, it just made
everything easier.
I switched over for this otherplatform, whatever, send them
branded gifts because they're anadvocate right now and they
will they're fans that willmagnify that feeling.
If they write in and they say,You suck, I am so tired of this
(17:23):
feature.
You're just really pissing meoff.
Sending them a branded giftwill magnify that feeling.
Priscilla (17:28):
Maybe don't send them a bunch of stickers at that
point.
Sarah (17:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Unless you want to see yourstickers on a light pole with
unsavory things written overthem.
Yeah, or like a bathroom stall.
Priscilla (17:37):
Yeah.
So you kind of touched on thisa little bit, but another big
aspect of gifting and doing itwell is timing.
Yes.
And so how can a companyidentify what those right times
are?
Are there any that stick out toyou as the best times to give
gifts?
I know we're in the middle ofthe holiday season, so I would
guess that that's a prettycommon time.
Sarah (17:57):
What do you holidays are fun, but not necessarily the
best time to leverage.
Okay.
Now, I will say that it dependson your industry.
If you're someplace where,like, say you are targeting
medical offices, that's a wholenother thing of rules and
whatnot.
But maybe sending a basket atChristmas is not the best time
because they probably have 40.
Oh, good.
(18:17):
Yeah.
If you know when that officewas founded, if you know they
recently got an award, if youknow they recently had a change,
like if they just got a newreceptionist, that is the time.
Yeah.
Make it about them.
Priscilla (18:30):
Well, and it comes back to what you've already been
saying, which is thepersonalization.
It's not personal to send agift at Christmas or during the
holidays because that's gonna bewhen everyone sends it.
It's gonna get lost in thenoise.
Yeah, it's gonna get lost inthe noise, but it is personal if
you find out when they werefounded.
I think that's such a good tip.
So smart.
Sarah (18:50):
And a lot of those things used to take so much time.
Yeah.
But now with the tools like AIand a lot of the gifting tools
connect to your CRM.
So if you have a group ofpeople that is going out and
finding information, or ifyou're on a call and somebody
says something and you're like,oh, now I know this tidbit, if
you can go record thatsomewhere, you can reference it
(19:11):
later.
Priscilla (19:12):
Yeah.
One thing that we have in BuzzSprout is we have milestones
that we celebrate with ourpodcasters.
Yeah.
So when you've released your10th episode, or when you've hit
10,000 downloads, or when youget another subscriber, those
kind of things, or years whenyou've been podcasting for a
certain number of years.
And so, like milestones are ahuge thing for gifting.
(19:34):
Milestones are super huge.
Sarah (19:36):
Yeah.
Also, if you have a tool thatrequires onboarding,
specifically SaaS, things likethat.
Yeah.
I primarily work now inEnterprise SaaS, obviously.
So we have very large contractsand some of these things, it
it's a bit of a slog to geteverybody set up and configured
and moved over from their priortool or whatever.
So when they completeonboarding, it's a great time to
give a gift because renewaldecisions are made by the
(19:58):
customer during.
Onboarding.
Yeah.
So if you've had any roughnessto sort of smooth over, that's a
great time to hit them with thehey, I heard you're going on
vacation to, you know, Maine.
Here's a jacket for you towear.
Some lobsters.
Some lobsters.
A jacket with a lobster on it.
Priscilla (20:18):
I don't know.
Exactly.
I was thinking like plushlobsters, not like real
lobsters.
That would be a very differentkind of gift.
Sarah (20:25):
That would be adorable too.
Priscilla (20:26):
I'm sure that there are some people that are
listening to this that arethinking, I would love to give
my customers gifts.
In an ideal world, I would loveto put some effort and some
time and budget behind that.
But the reality is I don't havethe time and I don't have the
budget.
So what are some creative,maybe low-cost ways that you can
show appreciation for yourcustomers on a larger scale that
(20:48):
maybe isn't going to be sendingsome plush lobsters, but would
still have an impact on yourcustomers with that same
strategy?
Sarah (20:57):
Yeah.
The lowest time, highestimpacts personalized notes.
And there's a lot of companiesout there that will do
handwritten notes.
Some of them actually havepeople writing, but there's
machines that do it now as well.
Also send a small gift card.
Yeah.
You know, maybe like we have ameeting coming up and I just
want to send you 10 bucks forcoffee.
Priscilla (21:16):
Yeah.
Or for SaaS companies, like Iknow for BuzzBrout, we've built
into Buzzsprout the ability togive credits to customers.
And so then you don't have tosend a gift card.
You can send credit.
Oh, that's brilliant.
You can just surprise people inthe middle of the week with
some credits and a nice writtenemail.
That doesn't take much time.
It's very low budget and it'sstill gonna give you a little
(21:39):
bit of that impact.
Sarah (21:40):
Yeah.
I think the primary rules ofgifting are does it make sense?
Like, am I just sending arandom Amazon gift card and
people are like, thanks?
Yeah.
Does it mean something to theperson and can they use it?
Jordan (21:51):
I really like your idea, Sarah, about sending a video to
a customer too.
Like to me, that kind of hasthe same personalization as like
a handwritten note that youlike took the time to like just
take a video real quick and justbe like, hey, really proud of
you making five years in this.
We're all excited in the officefor you or something like that
and send it to them.
Like that would mean so much.
Sarah (22:12):
And it's very low effort.
The other thing I would say, ifit's a budget thing, is run a
trial.
Jordan (22:17):
Yeah.
Sarah (22:17):
See if you can get a small amount and compare it.
I mean, be a scientist and say,I'm not going to gift this
group, select it at random.
I am going to gift this group,select it at random, and maybe,
you know, wheel down from there,maybe only ICP or whatever.
And then show what impact doesit have on their product usage,
on their renewals, on theirsentiment?
Do they post on LinkedIn?
(22:38):
You know, what happens when wesend those gifts?
Maybe that $20 gift turned intoa $2,000 deal.
You don't know how that's goingto work out.
Priscilla (22:46):
Yeah, exactly.
And when you're trying to getbuy-in, if you've done those
trials and those tests, thenyou're going to have a much
better job getting that budgetfor that.
Sarah (22:56):
Like any change in business, take numbers and
you're good.
Yes.
Priscilla (23:00):
I was talking with someone a couple days ago about
AI.
And one of the things that hementioned, and we've talked
about this so much, I'm sure,but taking AI and using it as a
way to do the mundane thingsthat we don't want to do so that
we can focus on these thingsthat are not scalable.
So for some companies, sendinghighly personalized gifts to
(23:20):
every single client isn't goingto work because of the number of
clients they have or the typeof service they're running.
But you can take these mundaneemails about how to log in and
let AI help you with that andthen focus your time on okay,
how can I take this thing that'sreally not super scalable for
us and still impact 20 customerstoday, which honestly is more
(23:45):
fun than helping someone loginto an account.
100%.
Figuring out what to send them.
But I do think it's one of thecool things about AI and the way
that it can impact things likethis is it lets us do the
non-scalable things.
And this is a great example ofthat.
Sarah (24:01):
So one thing I do on anybody I work for, yeah.
And I'm gonna reveal a littlesecret they may not know, is I
set AI to do some deep researchon them.
Okay.
And especially, you know how alot of people don't have their
professional email on LinkedIn?
They have their personal email.
Add that in so then the AI isactually running through their
personal stuff too.
I don't know how people feelabout that.
(24:22):
But what I have at return ishow does this person take
feedback?
What are this person'sinterests?
What do they care about?
What have they talked about?
Like what is their focus?
And you can switch that to whatare they interested in?
What do they care most about?
And maybe it's not a thing.
I have an employee who's veryinvolved with the Macaw Society.
They work on preserving theMacaw birds down in Peru.
(24:43):
And I know if I donated to thatcharity in her name, that would
just make her day because shecares about it.
Jordan (24:49):
Yeah.
I think that companies similarto like ours are a little bit of
an advantage because you knowtheir interests.
Yeah, we know they they talkabout their interests, they talk
about every intimate detailthemselves and publish it
weekly.
Yeah, they publish it weekly.
Sarah (25:04):
So we got we gotta figure out how to run some transcripts
through.
Yes, that would be fascinating.
You might learn something aboutthem they don't even know.
Yes, scary.
But but what I'm saying isthere may be more ways to use AI
to take more time off of yourplate.
Yes.
And you can even run customerinfo through AI to be like which
customers are at the highestrisk that we may not want to
(25:27):
spend the money on giftingversus the ones that are a
little ambivalent, where maybejust a little push of I care
would make a difference.
Priscilla (25:35):
Yeah.
Every day I feel like I'mlearning more and more things
that we can do with AI that canmake our lives easier and
simpler and better.
So it's very cool.
One thing we talk about on ourteam sometimes is this idea of
doing for one what we wish wecould do for everyone.
So if you're listening to thisand you're like, I just don't
think I'm gonna be able to getmy team to buy off on me
(25:58):
starting this whole thing ofgift giving.
The idea that you could do thisfor five people is still gonna
be incredible.
So just because you'rethinking, I can't do this for
all, you know, 200,000 customerswe have, it doesn't mean that
you can't do it for five.
And so, even just talking aboutthis, I'm like, man, I kind of
want to give everyone on my teamlike, hey, you have a small
(26:19):
budget, pick four people nextmonth and send them a gift.
Let's just see what we can do.
So early on, we talked aboutways to not feel promotional or
gimmicky, but what are some ofthe common mistakes that you've
seen companies make with giftgiving so that we can kind of
let people know to avoid those?
What are some of those commonmistakes?
Sarah (26:39):
The first mistake would be not checking with your legal
team.
Oh good one.
That's a very good one.
Yes.
So depending on your customers,there are a lot of laws,
especially around healthcare,government employees, people in
finance.
Oh you cannot just randomlysend them a gift because they
may lose their job if theyaccept it.
Yep.
And that would be bad.
(27:00):
Yeah.
Especially if they're of anadvocate for you.
So check with your legal teamand see what you can do.
In that case, sending a videoor a handwritten note, perfect.
Jordan (27:10):
Yeah.
Sarah (27:10):
But there are laws about like the value of the gift,
pre-branding, pre-shipping,things like that, you know, true
value of the gift, which is howyou get around healthcare
gifting.
And so check with that.
Check to see if they have anygift giving restrictions at
work, because again, you don'twant to get someone fired.
That's a bad look.
Jordan (27:27):
Yeah.
Sarah (27:27):
The other thing I would say is start small.
A lot of people are like, oh mygosh, we have a budget and we
can send gifts.
I'm gonna send gifts to all30,000 of our customers.
It's probably not effective todo that.
Priscilla (27:39):
Yeah.
When you were talking about,you know, trying to get buy-in.
Measuring success is a big partof this, right?
You have to show the people whoare footing the bill that this
is successful.
So, how do you measure success?
How do you draw that link tothe gift and customer loyalty?
Sarah (27:56):
I think it goes back to that gifting strategy.
Figure out why you're giftingfirst and then measure that.
So if I want to know if giftingimproves retention, if done
during onboarding, I'm gonnatrack all of my customers who
were onboarding.
I'm gonna track who I gifted.
Uh, probably also track to seeif that person is still with the
company, because there's a lotof turnover in companies.
(28:17):
So track that too.
And then see of those customerswho were given a gift, how many
renewed, of the ones thatdidn't pick, how many renewed.
And maybe at what value.
Priscilla (28:26):
Yeah.
Sarah (28:27):
Or if you're not running on a renewal thing, maybe it's a
purchase thing like Chewy, I ambetting they've got some
numbers that show if you sendflowers in a painting, that
person is coming back with theirnext pet.
Yeah.
And they're going all in on thepuppy gear or the kitten gear.
Yeah.
So if you have a customermarketer on your team, they're
gonna eat this up because theyalready know how to do all of
(28:47):
those numbers.
The other thing is that if youare using a corporate gifting
tool, it probably already hasstuff tied in to help you make
those calls.
I know Loop and Tie, Sendoso,Brilliant are some of the
companies that have really donea good job of integrating with
Salesforce, integrating withHubSpot.
So you can see who has receiveda gift and what happened next.
(29:09):
Yeah.
Oh.
So utilize your tech stack.
It's there.
Yeah.
You've got a way to track thosethings.
And then talk to your datateam.
There's probably somebody, ifyou don't have a customer
marketer, you're not set up onSalesforce, if you have somebody
that's just pretty good withdata on your team, they can
probably help sort out based onwhat you've got going on in your
own company to see where tomeasure that impact.
Priscilla (29:30):
Another thing that I was gonna say was, you know,
don't forget about customerfeedback quotes too.
Oh, yeah, like share that kindof stuff.
I think sometimes we get verylike data focused, and data is
great, and it's such a good wayto show there's a connection
there.
But when you hear from someonethat they've been touched by
(29:51):
this gift or it made an impacton them, grab those quotes and
save them somewhere and havethose ready.
Cause I really think that is sopowerful as well, and sometimes
is not focused on as much asthe data is.
Jordan (30:03):
Oh, yeah.
Whenever someone like postsabout Buzz sprout, we're
constantly like takingscreenshots from social media.
If we notice something reallytouching, we will take a
screenshot, post it in thecompany chat.
Sarah (30:13):
Yep.
I do a thing as part of mymonthly reporting and I call it
the Glimmers page.
Oh, glimmers, glimmers of likehappy little things that people
said.
But we had a field at Alice inevery gift because they were all
digital or mostly digital afterthe pandemic.
And it was just a thank youfield.
And my team was responsible forwatching that field because
sometimes it was somethingdidn't work and I had to fix it
(30:34):
and they wouldn't tell us anyother way.
It was just in that field.
But it felt really good to beable to go back to somebody's
manager and say, Hey, Jordangave this gift and look what
this person said.
Priscilla (30:45):
Yeah.
So for anyone who's listeningwho wants to start incorporating
gifting into their customerexperience, maybe for this
holiday season, or maybe sinceholidays aren't the best time,
maybe for February.
What is one small step thatthey can take this week to get
started on that and to starttesting those things out?
Sarah (31:04):
I would say choose a subset of customers that you
think in whatever way might beimpacted positively by a gift.
And that could be somebodythat's just maybe that's the
customer that's been with youthe longest.
Yeah.
Or, you know, somebody that hasbeen such an advocate and
brought in other customers.
And then figure out what yourbudget is to see how much you
can spend, because that reallyinforms what you can do.
(31:25):
Some companies have, you know,top flight golf set budgets, and
some of us don't.
Um figure out what that is.
Maybe it's a note, maybe it's aloom video, maybe it's a box of
chocolates for talk inFebruary.
Priscilla (31:39):
Yeah.
I would also say just as aleader, you can start fostering
a culture of encouragement,honestly.
Sarah (31:46):
Absolutely.
Priscilla (31:47):
If you just want to start getting people thinking in
that way, and maybe you're notgoing to start actually
physically giving giftstomorrow, but maybe you just
want to start saying, hey, don'tmiss an opportunity to
encourage someone when you're inthe support inbox today.
Look for ways to delightpeople.
And then as you start gettingthat culture of encouragement in
(32:07):
place, then you go, hey, nowlet's take this up a notch and
let's see what we can do withsome physical gifts and let's
look into sending them thosechocolates and things like that.
So I think if you're reallylooking for that like first step
and you're in a place whereyou're like, we're so far from
sending gifts.
We barely do good customersupport.
Good point.
Sarah (32:26):
It is a mindset.
And look around for what youcan leverage as a gift.
It may be something that youdon't think about.
Like you're talking aboutBuzzsprout credits.
That's not something that isgoing to be expensive for your
team to do.
So maybe give everybody acredit budget or a refund budget
or something like that thatthey can use.
Priscilla (32:43):
Well, and I also think, you know, you've
mentioned a couple of timeshandwriting notes.
And that's so easy to do as acustomer support person.
If you have five minutes, youcan handwrite a note.
And most of the time you have abilling address on file and you
can send a handwritten note toa customer with very little hit
on your time and money.
(33:05):
And so that's another kind of,you know, if you're really at a
place where you're listening tothis, maybe you're not a support
leader, maybe you're a supportcontributor or professional, and
you're like, I don't work in aplace that has this kind of a
culture.
And I'm not going to be able tosell my team on gifting.
So how can I make an impact bymyself without a budget?
(33:27):
That might be something thatyou can do is take five minutes
and write a letter and send itoff.
Sarah (33:32):
Yeah.
And your marketing team may bewilling to share a logo with you
so that you can run it throughVistaPrint for some cute note
cards or something like that.
Yeah.
We had that when I worked atOlark Live Chat, I had a stack
of note cards that had our logoin like holographic ink.
And it was so quick to just belike, hey, I notice you've been
with us for three years.
We just really enjoy you as acustomer.
Have a great day.
That's so nice.
(33:53):
So simple.
Priscilla (33:54):
Yeah.
And then it comes out of theblue and it makes them feel
cared for and known by yourteam.
Because how often do you get ahandwritten note in the mail?
Like when was the last timethat ever happened?
Never, never.
It does not happen anymore.
So then for the biggercompanies, the ones that maybe
do have the budgets for this,you've mentioned a couple
(34:14):
third-party services that peoplecan work with.
Maybe which ones do yourecommend for those companies
that have a budget for this?
Sarah (34:21):
It depends on your size.
So if you're just gettingstarted and you're not sure
where to start, maybe you justwant to do some gift cards.
Brilliant is great.
They have a really goodselection of gift cards and they
also do charity donations.
Priscilla (34:31):
Oh, that's really cool.
Sarah (34:33):
Because if you can't accept a gift, you can probably
be like, thanks for donating tomy favorite charity in my name.
Priscilla (34:38):
Yeah.
Sarah (34:38):
Another one that I really, really love, totally in
love with them, is loop and tie.
Okay.
They're very eco-conscious.
They have collections like, youknow, the BIPOC collection, the
woman-owned collection, theyhave kind of artsy gifts, but
they focus on choice.
So you're not always picking agift.
It's like, here's your budgetand your theme.
Oh, that's cool.
And then your recipient gets topick the gift.
(34:59):
That's great.
The bonus there is that youdon't have to know their
address.
So if you don't have someone'saddress, they take care of it.
That is nice.
And then if you're on thelarger side, Sendoso is really
the big player and they're theones that can handle like, I
need to ship 4,000 cuttingboards that are personalized to
a warehouse and I want them allto go out on the same day.
(35:20):
Whoa.
They're the big, big and theycan do custom kitting.
Big scale.
Yeah, employee onboarding kitsfor large companies.
And they also have a lot of AIfunctionality.
So they can do some of that AIgifting research in platform and
then tell you in Salesforcewhat the impact of that gift
was.
Wow.
Priscilla (35:36):
That's awesome.
So if you had one takeaway toshare, because I feel like we've
covered a lot in thisconversation.
Oh my gosh.
One takeaway that you wantpeople to keep when they turn
off this episode.
Sarah (35:48):
I think my biggest takeaway would be don't
overthink it.
Don't get so wrapped in thewhat if and what about, and then
later, don't think two yearsdown the road.
Think like one small thing Ican do right now.
That's so good.
Send a note.
Priscilla (36:01):
Send a note.
Just send a note.
Everyone listening to thisshould pause the podcast, write
a handwritten note.
Yes.
Whether it's in support orhonestly just to a friend, send
a note.
It makes it a little bit more.
Jordan (36:13):
I was about to say it to the mom.
Priscilla (36:16):
Yeah, send it to your mom.
That's your mom.
I think it's so fun.
I think, you know, delightingcustomers is probably one of the
most fun aspects of thecustomer support industry and
just this job as being able tomake someone's day.
And I don't think it getsenough attention.
So thank you for coming on andtalking with us about it.
I think it's really, really funto do this kind of stuff.
(36:38):
And it reminds us that this isa really fun job.
Like the puzzle side of it isreally fun.
But this aspect of getting todelight and surprise customers
is the best.
Like we shouldn't take it forgranted.
It really is the best.
It's so much fun.
That's why I'm still here.
Yeah.
Thank you for coming on andsharing your insights because it
really can be really fun.
(36:59):
And I feel like we both learneda lot.
I've got so many ideas justlike running through my head
right now.
I'm ready to go Christmasshopping right now.
Jordan (37:05):
Me too.
Priscilla (37:05):
This is the holiday spirit.
So before you go Christmasshopping, I know that your
experience goes way beyond giftgiving.
So how can people find you andlearn more about scaling teams
and leading remotely?
How can they find you?
Sarah (37:22):
Uh, LinkedIn is really my primary place.
And then I'm also very activein the support-driven and
elevate CX communities.
So you can almost always findme there.
Priscilla (37:30):
Which are fantastic communities.
If you're not part of those,you should be a part of those.
Definitely.
And we will link Sarah'sLinkedIn in the show notes.
So if you want to just click onthat link and hop over and send
her a message, you can.
And I'm sure she will share allof her great insights on
everything else that she is anexpert in because there's so
much more than gifting, but itwas so fun to talk about
(37:51):
gifting.
So thank you so much for beinghere, Sarah.
Sarah (37:53):
Thank you for letting me come and talk about something
fun like gifting.
It's been a joy.
Priscilla (37:57):
Now enjoy your Christmas shopping.
Yay! So usually this is thesegment where we read a support
story or answer a real lifesupport question.
But today we're gonna do thingsa little differently because
it's December, which means theyear is ending.
Yeah.
And we are wrapping up oursecond year of Happy to Help.
(38:21):
That's so wild.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
It does not feel like it's beenanother year.
Jordan (38:25):
I don't even know where it went.
Priscilla (38:27):
It really is crazy how fast 2025 went.
Someone said to me the otherday, Oh, you've been podcasting
for two years.
And I was like, that's soweird.
What?
Isn't that wild?
Oh.
Two years.
It goes so fast.
It really does.
So I thought it would be coolto take a minute and look at
some of the episodes that we didthis year.
Yeah.
And just highlight how muchreally cool stuff we got to do
(38:50):
this year through this podcast.
So we've covered topics like AIand customer support.
Yeah.
And journey mapping.
And we've talked aboutcommunicating with developers.
We did that episode with Tomback at the beginning of the
year about ways to communicatewell with developers when you're
in tech support.
Which is so good to know.
(39:11):
Seriously, we did an episode oncustomer education and the
importance of customereducation.
Kara joined us, which wasgreat.
We did an episode on managingremote support teams.
Yeah.
We've had some really, reallycool guests this year.
I think this is the thingthat's the most exciting to me
is that we've had some reallyincredible guests.
Yeah.
We had Chase Clemens from 37Signals, classic.
(39:34):
We love him.
He'll be on next season forsure.
Yeah, of course.
We had Connor Pendergrass.
We had Matt Patterson from HelpScout.
We had Erica Clayton, who wasso much fun.
So we had Sarah Betts today.
We had Stacey Sherman fromdoing CX Right.
She's fantastic.
And that was such a greatepisode about journey mapping.
Yes.
And then we had Brittany Hodak,who talked about super fans
(39:59):
with us.
And that was.
So much fun.
And music.
And music and a little bit ofTaylor Swift.
Yeah.
She has tied in everything welove.
Yeah.
What a good year.
It really has been such a goodyear of podcasting, of
conversations, of creatingremarkable support experiences
for customers.
And so anyone who's listeningto this who shares this with
their colleagues or theirfriends, like I really
(40:20):
appreciate it.
It has been so much fun to dothis every month.
And I'm really excited for nextyear and some of the things
that we're talking about andplanning for with our upcoming
episodes.
So we're not taking some bigbreak.
We'll have an episode come outin January, but I'm just really
proud of the work we've donethis year.
So thanks, Jordan, for editingall of it and making me sound
(40:43):
smart and contributing to theseconversations.
It's been a lot of fun.
Jordan (40:48):
It has been.
Yeah, I think that it would bea good opportunity for our
listeners to tap the Texas Showlink in the show notes if they
have any ideas for people weshould have on as guests or any
ideas of like topics we couldcover.
We love getting topicsuggestions because it's hard
putting content together.
So if you want to give us uhsome softballs for us to hit,
(41:11):
that would be great.
Priscilla (41:12):
Yeah.
Like what are you strugglingwith right now?
What is it that you're tryingto figure out?
Yeah.
And you want an expert whoknows what they're doing in that
field to come in and tell yousome strategies.
Yeah.
We can find that expert.
If you tell us what you wantthat information on, we can help
find that.
So yeah, definitely.
If you've enjoyed listening toepisodes or if you have
questions or episode ideas,yeah, tap the send us a text
(41:35):
link in the show notes and sendthat in to us.
And we would love to do anepisode specifically on your
topic for you.
Yep.
All right.
Well, Jordan, congrats onanother year of Happy to Help.
Congratulations, you too.
This was fun.
We will see you next year in2026, and I am so excited about
it.
So I want to once again thankSarah Betts for being here today
(41:57):
and joining us on the episode.
And thank you all forlistening.
Now go and make someone's day.
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, PriscillaBrooke.
Today we're exploring thewonderful world of gift giving.
We're discussing why giftgiving is a great way to connect
with your clients and customersand how to build a gift giving
strategy that is fun, scalable,and impactful.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
(00:21):
So, joining us today is SarahBetts.
Sarah is currently the Directorof Support and Operations for
Vizit, where she helps buildsystems and connect data,
empathy, and experience.
Throughout her career, she hasbuilt and led high-performing
global teams and scaled supportdepartments across remote
locations.
Sarah believes in buildingcultures of trust, clarity, and
(00:45):
continuous improvement.
Thank you for joining us today,Sarah.
Sarah (00:48):
I am so thrilled to be here with you, Priscilla.
Thank you.
Priscilla (00:52):
I love meeting another Sarah that is fun.
I feel like there's so manypeople in the support world that
are named Sarah who are great.
Oh, you, yes, Sarah Camoniti,Sarah Hatter.
There's so many good Sarahs.
Jordan (01:04):
I think we've had all the Sarahs on the spot.
Oh, there's more.
Sarah (01:07):
There's more Sarahs, and they're all fantastic.
I've met so many great Sarahs.
Priscilla (01:11):
We should launch a podcast that is just
interviewing Sarahs.
There you go.
Wouldn't that be kind of cool?
Maybe that would be my podcastidea.
You should interview otherSarahs.
A tour of Sarahs.
A tour of Sarah.
That's amazing.
Jordan (01:25):
I love that idea so much.
Priscilla (01:26):
That's so good.
So we've already kind ofstarted on a positive note here,
but we always like to kick ourepisodes off by shouting out
someone in the support world whohas made your day recently.
So, Sarah, do you have someonewho has made your day recently?
Sarah (01:41):
A person who consistently makes my day is Mercer Smith.
She is an endless cheerleaderand always turns things around
to make it sound like I'm hercheerleader somehow.
Yeah.
But yeah, she recently gave mea really sweet compliment,
backed me up on something.
So I appreciate her.
Priscilla (01:57):
I love it.
It's like the small things thatyou don't really think are
gonna have a big impact, justlike giving someone a
compliment.
Yeah.
It's something I feel like Iheard recently someone saying
that they really want to be abetter fan of things.
Oh, and they want to talk aboutthe things that they love more.
And so it's like when I seesomeone who's wearing a cute
(02:18):
outfit, I'm never gonna let thecompliment not be spoken.
Absolutely.
Because you never know whatkind of impact a small
compliment can have on someone.
And so I love that.
You know, Mercer made your dayby giving you a compliment and
being in your corner.
And I think that's a totallyworthwhile way to start this
podcast.
I love it.
Absolutely.
So, Sarah, you have aninteresting background.
(02:39):
You've been in the supportworld for over a decade, but you
have worked in some differentenvironments.
And one of those is a corporategifting company.
Yeah.
And that's something that I'mnot very familiar with.
And that's so that's what we'regoing to talk about today is
gift giving and how that canimpact customers and clients.
But before we kind of get intothat, can you share a little bit
(02:59):
more about your background incustomer support and how this
industry kind of inspires you?
Sarah (03:06):
Yeah.
I actually got into customersupport quite accidentally.
Like I wasn't looking for it.
I was going through a divorce,needed a job, and a friend of
mine was like, hey, you know howto do all this stuff.
Would you come work for me andhelp like build documentation
and answer customer questions?
And I was like, you'll pay mefor stuff I already know?
Yes.
(03:26):
And through that job, like Istarted getting frustrated with
the systems that we had or thelack of systems and building
things, and landed my first techsupport role and from there got
into operations and support.
But support is still my love.
I love building the systems.
Yeah.
But support feels like anever-ending quest.
Priscilla (03:47):
Yes.
Sarah (03:48):
Because you constantly have something new that pops up
that you have to go, where didthat come from?
Yes.
And it's just like this regularrabbit hole of sleuthing, of
finding the clues and figuringout what happened, and then be
like, Eureka, I got it.
And then yeah, documenting itfor the next person.
Yeah.
Jordan (04:04):
We hear that so much from anyone who's on this
podcast.
There's something about likethe sleuthing and puzzling and
figuring things out that justreally motivates people and it
like lights a fire.
Sarah (04:16):
Yeah, I heard somebody say that support people are
like, you know, that meme thatused to be like, what would you
leave in the circle, in thepentagram circle to like summon
somebody if they were ademonstration?
Yes.
That support people are just anendless line of being able to
summon people by just dropping alittle puzzle in front of them
and they'll just follow itforever.
Priscilla (04:37):
I guess.
That's exactly it.
Yeah.
Well, and I like what you saidabout like something new pops
up, and you're like, how hasthis not come up before?
And now it's all of a suddencoming up.
I think about that sometimeswhen I think back in the early
years of being at Buzz Sprout,and I'm like, those were the
questions we were getting allthe time.
And now we don't get thosequestions.
We get this whole new set ofquestions all the time.
(04:57):
And so we'll solve that andthen we'll figure the next ones
that come in.
And I do think there'ssomething really fun about that
continuous puzzle and gettingnew things to figure out every
day.
And then the dopamine hit whenyou do get it is really nice.
Sarah (05:13):
That's it.
It's the dopamine hit if it'salways something new.
It's not like an office jobwhere you file the same reports
over and over and over again.
You do not know what you'regoing to find when you walk into
the queue in the morning.
Priscilla (05:24):
It's so true.
I always tell new hires thatthere's a balance of like
repetition because you are in aqueue.
So that will feel repetitive,but every question is going to
be different.
And so it's all going to feeldifferent every day at the same
time.
So it's this balance ofrepetition and continuous
exploring.
Yes.
(05:45):
When this episode drops, we'regoing to be right in the middle
of December, right in the middleof gift giving season.
And I feel like it's, you know,just such a great time for us
to discuss building a giftgiving strategy in a corporate
sense with customers andclients.
And, you know, you think aboutwhen I think about gift giving,
I think about birthdays, I thinkabout holidays.
Beyond that, though, there's,you know, gift giving on these
(06:08):
like grander schemes.
Like you think about the Statueof Liberty was a gift.
Yes.
That is like one of the biggergifts in the world in history.
Never given a gift that sizemyself.
Just not.
No, and we're not recommendingthat in this episode.
But it's funny because you lookat how powerful gift giving can
be on just a small scale from afriend to a friend, and then
(06:29):
how powerful it can be on thishuge scale, country to country,
and that it is a strategy thatis used to build a relationship
and to strengthen arelationship.
And so then you look at it in acorporate sense where it's a
company giving a gift to clientsor to prospective clients or to
employees and a way to buildand strengthen relationships
(06:49):
there.
So I want to talk about thatpsychology around gift giving a
little bit.
What do you think is it aboutgift giving that allows it to be
such a powerful part of therelationship building between
customers and that customerexperience situation?
Sarah (07:04):
As humans, as beings, we are wired to share.
Human society can't survive ifwe don't share because one
individual can't meet all ofyour needs.
I firmly rely on Costco andTrader Joe's and, you know,
places like that.
But before that, you know, Imight have excess grain and you
might have excess milk, and Ican just eat a lot of grain.
(07:24):
That's boring.
But if I can have some of yourmilk and give you some of my
grain, now we have a symbioticrelationship and we can help
each other survive.
So that's like the corepsychological thing that we have
always given gifts and thepeople who survived were good at
sharing.
We still make those connectionsthat way.
And it is kind of that we'regonna survive together.
(07:45):
And in business, it is likethat.
If I don't have my customers,my company's not gonna make it.
Like I might be able to fakesome reports for a while, but
ultimately my investors aregonna be like, that's enough.
Right.
This isn't adding up.
Exactly.
Those numbers need to besomewhere within range.
So right now it's really noisy.
I'm sure you both opened upyour inboxes this morning and
(08:07):
just sort of ignored most ofwhat's in there.
There's so many filters thathelp you automatically ignore
most of the emails.
I get dozens of cold calls.
Thankfully, shout out to Pixeland Google Fi for having
built-in tools to just ignore alot of them.
But stuff still gets through.
And it is really, really hardas a business to break through
(08:27):
that noise.
Yeah.
And people want to be seen.
We don't have the strongcommunities that we used to
have.
We don't have the stronggroups, like we've got our
friend groups, but it's not asbroad.
And so if I notice that youhave a dog, like you just
adopted a dog, and I send you alittle winter coat for your dog,
you're gonna feel really seen.
And like I cared.
(08:48):
And I think that is the thingabout gift giving that it makes
us go, oh, you don't see me as acontract, you see me as a
person.
Priscilla (08:57):
Yeah.
I think that's so cool.
So do you have any successstories from when you were in
that corporate giving worldwhere you saw that relationship
be strengthened because of agift giving strategy that went
really well?
Sarah (09:11):
One of my favorite stories was this pretty new BDR
was trying to land a call with aCEO and they knew their
solution would work.
It wasn't just like, oh, wejust need to get enough numbers.
She was like, I saw him postabout it on LinkedIn, I saw that
he was looking for this, Icouldn't get through.
And she had our research teamdo some research and found out
that he was an absolute Avengersnerd.
(09:32):
This guy was obsessed.
So she ordered a four-panelhand-painted fan art watercolor
of the Avengers and had itshipped to his office.
And he opened that, was like,holy, and picked up the phone
and called her right away.
Because it wasn't just anotherBDR trying to reach out to him.
It was somebody who took thetime to say, I see you as a
human.
Priscilla (09:52):
Yeah.
Sarah (09:52):
I see the geek in you.
Priscilla (09:53):
Yeah.
And here you go.
That's so cool.
What kind of an impact that canhave on you when you're like,
man, this person, they don'tknow me personally.
I don't see them every day.
They're not in my personallife.
And they knew enough about meto send me something that was
hyper-personalized.
Thinking about it from theirside can feel you're like, man,
that must feel so good to beseen in that way.
(10:15):
And that can like inspire us onthis side to want to do it
more.
I think it's really cool.
So, you know, gift giving isvery powerful, but it can also
be very time-consuming.
And if someone is at a companyand they're trying to figure out
how to get a gift-givingstrategy in place, it can feel
overwhelming.
I would guess there's ways thatit can feel more promotional
(10:36):
than really connection.
And so, Sarah, when you'reconsidering selecting a gift,
how do you select a gift in away that it feels genuine and
not like a promotional tool?
You know what I mean?
Like gimmicky.
How do you avoid that?
Oh, and I saw that.
Sarah (10:52):
Yeah.
You know, I saw people thatwere just like, here's our
$50,000 budget.
We're just going to, you know,I hate the term, but spray and
pray.
I've just hit everybody with agift card.
Yep.
And gift cards are one of thosethings that can be done very
poorly.
I mean, everybody has an offerfor an Amazon gift card.
Right.
Which is, it's nice, I guess,to have an Amazon gift card, but
it doesn't feel like somebodypaid attention.
(11:12):
That said, I have given giftcards that felt like I was
paying attention.
We had somebody who had amishap in support, and this is
one of my cool strategies forusing gifting, is we screwed up
somebody's account.
We made a mistake.
And so I had my team send out abig gift card to the head of
the shop.
It was an auto shop.
And it was just a nice note oflike, I'm really sorry we messed
(11:33):
up.
That was totally our fault.
Go get coffee for your wholecrew.
Love that.
That's so cool.
And he was like, that was thenicest apology I've ever had.
Like I felt like you cared.
Priscilla (11:43):
Yeah.
Sarah (11:43):
You have to be very strategic.
Because it's so noisy, youcan't be sending out that gift
card through an email as yourfirst outreach because it will
probably get spammed and thenyou will never get through
again.
Once you get spammed, that'sit.
It's game over.
So definitely once you have awarm lead, somebody's engaged,
that's when to start thinkingabout gifting.
But I like to go farther intothe funnel with gifting, not
(12:06):
early in the funnel, but later.
So if you've got a contractrenewal coming up, go find out
your champions, learn somethingabout them, and send them a nice
gift.
Or if it's coming up on ananniversary, even if you have a
multi-year contract, or youknow, maybe you've just finished
onboarding, just like we wouldgive a gift to a friend of like,
oh my gosh, you totally killedthat.
And, you know, I just sent youflowers or whatever.
(12:28):
Send flowers.
If you find out somebody had alife change event, send a gift.
Priscilla (12:32):
Yeah.
Sarah (12:33):
It's not hard if you can step back and think of people as
people.
Priscilla (12:36):
Yeah, that's the key.
Thinking about people aspeople.
You just said send flowers.
It made me think of somethingwe've done in the past at
BuzzSprout.
So Buzz Sprout is an onlineservice.
We have many customers.
We're not having these clientrelationships like you would see
with like an ongoing clientservice type of a thing.
And so we have all thesecustomers, so many that we
(12:58):
talked to once and never hearfrom again, but that use the
product.
And once years ago, we hadsomeone who was going to come to
a conference.
And she wrote into our supportteam and said, I'm coming to
this conference.
I'm so excited.
I'll see you guys.
I'm excited to meet you.
And then a couple of dayslater, she wrote in that she had
had a life change.
Someone in her family hadpassed away and she wasn't going
to be there.
So she told us about thisexperience that she had.
(13:20):
And we were very consolatoryand understood that she wasn't
going to be able to be there.
But then a few weeks later, shewrote back and she said, You
know, I've decided I'm going tocome.
Things are hard right now, butI want to be there and I don't
want to miss this.
And we got the opportunity tofigure out some details about
her and send her flowers.
So she had flowers in her roomwhen she got to this conference.
(13:41):
And it was really cool to beable to do something like that.
Not because we can do this forevery single customer for Buzz
Sprout, but we can do this forone customer that we know of
that's going through a hard timethat we're going to have this
ability to impact in that way.
Sarah (13:57):
You know who really nails this, like at scale and does it
beautifully?
And you know who I'm going tosay is Chewy.
They have nailed this.
And it's because they knowtheir customer, they have dialed
it in.
They know exactly who theircustomer is.
Yep.
They know exactly what momentsare decision moments or, you
know, times that are hard.
So I get a birthday card for mydogs and my cat every year on
(14:19):
their birthdays.
I had an experience where wehad to change my cat's food and
they were like, just donate it.
And so, you know, took the foodin.
Amazing.
But if you cancel a recurringorder, they will often send
flowers and sometimes ahand-painted photo of your pet.
What?
And that is so meaningful.
Yeah.
Oh, so meaningful.
(14:39):
It doesn't work for everybusiness, but because Chewy
knows their customer very, verywell, they have a very good know
your customer team.
Yeah.
They're on it.
Priscilla (14:48):
Yeah.
Sarah (14:48):
They know exactly what to do.
And some would argue, well,that's easy because it's pets
and we're all attached to ourpets.
But I am willing to bet thatevery business knows something
that their customers areattached to.
Priscilla (14:59):
Yeah.
And that comes back to thepersonalization side of things
and how a personalized gift isgoing to be so much more
impactful, have such a betteroutcome than something that is
not personalized.
But personalizing it is hardand that does take a little more
time.
It takes a little bit moreeffort on your end as the
customer's support or successperson who's doing this.
(15:21):
So, what are some of yourfavorite ways to personalize a
gift that might be a little morescalable, if you know what I
mean?
Sarah (15:29):
Yeah, some things are easy.
Like we had a customer who hadan annual conference that they
did every year.
And because we were all remoteand everything, they sent like
movie supplies because they weregoing to be watching a series
of videos.
And so they sent, like, youknow, the popcorn ready to pop
and the hot cocoa mix and thelittle blanket.
You know, it was themed forthat.
Yeah.
Other things that I've seen aresending a video with the gift.
(15:52):
Like it doesn't have to be thegift itself that is
personalized.
It can be the note.
Priscilla (15:56):
Yeah.
Sarah (15:57):
Or the way, the way you convey the gift.
I really like the ability tochoose.
So a lot of gift-givingplatforms will allow you to
create or select from a group ofgifts that fit a certain theme.
And then you send a link andyou say you choose what you
want.
And the choice then ispowerful.
It's not like, okay, but I have500 water bottles and I really
(16:18):
don't need another one.
Right.
But it may be that you're like,well, heck, that blanket.
Yeah, because my dog stole mineand I kind of need a blanket.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Speaking of in this house, ourdogs steal all the blankets.
It doesn't have to bespecifically the gift that is
personalized, as was what I'msaying.
It's it's the approach, it'show you do it, it's the choices
(16:40):
that you give, those kinds ofthings.
Priscilla (16:42):
Yeah.
And a lot of companies willsend swag.
We do that a lot withBuzzSprout, is we'll send
podcasters swag with our logo onit.
What are your opinions onbranded gifting versus
unbranded, more personalizedthings that are not containing
your logo anywhere?
Sarah (17:00):
I think branded gifts are very powerful.
Really?
Done the right way.
Yeah.
So if you have somebody who'ssay written in and just been
like, oh my gosh, I am so inlove with your app, it just made
everything easier.
I switched over for this otherplatform, whatever, send them
branded gifts because they're anadvocate right now and they
will they're fans that willmagnify that feeling.
If they write in and they say,You suck, I am so tired of this
(17:23):
feature.
You're just really pissing meoff.
Sending them a branded giftwill magnify that feeling.
Priscilla (17:28):
Maybe don't send them a bunch of stickers at that
point.
Sarah (17:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Unless you want to see yourstickers on a light pole with
unsavory things written overthem.
Yeah, or like a bathroom stall.
Priscilla (17:37):
Yeah.
So you kind of touched on thisa little bit, but another big
aspect of gifting and doing itwell is timing.
Yes.
And so how can a companyidentify what those right times
are?
Are there any that stick out toyou as the best times to give
gifts?
I know we're in the middle ofthe holiday season, so I would
guess that that's a prettycommon time.
Sarah (17:57):
What do you holidays are fun, but not necessarily the
best time to leverage.
Okay.
Now, I will say that it dependson your industry.
If you're someplace where,like, say you are targeting
medical offices, that's a wholenother thing of rules and
whatnot.
But maybe sending a basket atChristmas is not the best time
because they probably have 40.
Oh, good.
(18:17):
Yeah.
If you know when that officewas founded, if you know they
recently got an award, if youknow they recently had a change,
like if they just got a newreceptionist, that is the time.
Yeah.
Make it about them.
Priscilla (18:30):
Well, and it comes back to what you've already been
saying, which is thepersonalization.
It's not personal to send agift at Christmas or during the
holidays because that's gonna bewhen everyone sends it.
It's gonna get lost in thenoise.
Yeah, it's gonna get lost inthe noise, but it is personal if
you find out when they werefounded.
I think that's such a good tip.
So smart.
Sarah (18:50):
And a lot of those things used to take so much time.
Yeah.
But now with the tools like AIand a lot of the gifting tools
connect to your CRM.
So if you have a group ofpeople that is going out and
finding information, or ifyou're on a call and somebody
says something and you're like,oh, now I know this tidbit, if
you can go record thatsomewhere, you can reference it
(19:11):
later.
Priscilla (19:12):
Yeah.
One thing that we have in BuzzSprout is we have milestones
that we celebrate with ourpodcasters.
Yeah.
So when you've released your10th episode, or when you've hit
10,000 downloads, or when youget another subscriber, those
kind of things, or years whenyou've been podcasting for a
certain number of years.
And so, like milestones are ahuge thing for gifting.
(19:34):
Milestones are super huge.
Sarah (19:36):
Yeah.
Also, if you have a tool thatrequires onboarding,
specifically SaaS, things likethat.
Yeah.
I primarily work now inEnterprise SaaS, obviously.
So we have very large contractsand some of these things, it
it's a bit of a slog to geteverybody set up and configured
and moved over from their priortool or whatever.
So when they completeonboarding, it's a great time to
give a gift because renewaldecisions are made by the
(19:58):
customer during.
Onboarding.
Yeah.
So if you've had any roughnessto sort of smooth over, that's a
great time to hit them with thehey, I heard you're going on
vacation to, you know, Maine.
Here's a jacket for you towear.
Some lobsters.
Some lobsters.
A jacket with a lobster on it.
Priscilla (20:18):
I don't know.
Exactly.
I was thinking like plushlobsters, not like real
lobsters.
That would be a very differentkind of gift.
Sarah (20:25):
That would be adorable too.
Priscilla (20:26):
I'm sure that there are some people that are
listening to this that arethinking, I would love to give
my customers gifts.
In an ideal world, I would loveto put some effort and some
time and budget behind that.
But the reality is I don't havethe time and I don't have the
budget.
So what are some creative,maybe low-cost ways that you can
show appreciation for yourcustomers on a larger scale that
(20:48):
maybe isn't going to be sendingsome plush lobsters, but would
still have an impact on yourcustomers with that same
strategy?
Sarah (20:57):
Yeah.
The lowest time, highestimpacts personalized notes.
And there's a lot of companiesout there that will do
handwritten notes.
Some of them actually havepeople writing, but there's
machines that do it now as well.
Also send a small gift card.
Yeah.
You know, maybe like we have ameeting coming up and I just
want to send you 10 bucks forcoffee.
Priscilla (21:16):
Yeah.
Or for SaaS companies, like Iknow for BuzzBrout, we've built
into Buzzsprout the ability togive credits to customers.
And so then you don't have tosend a gift card.
You can send credit.
Oh, that's brilliant.
You can just surprise people inthe middle of the week with
some credits and a nice writtenemail.
That doesn't take much time.
It's very low budget and it'sstill gonna give you a little
(21:39):
bit of that impact.
Sarah (21:40):
Yeah.
I think the primary rules ofgifting are does it make sense?
Like, am I just sending arandom Amazon gift card and
people are like, thanks?
Yeah.
Does it mean something to theperson and can they use it?
Jordan (21:51):
I really like your idea, Sarah, about sending a video to
a customer too.
Like to me, that kind of hasthe same personalization as like
a handwritten note that youlike took the time to like just
take a video real quick and justbe like, hey, really proud of
you making five years in this.
We're all excited in the officefor you or something like that
and send it to them.
Like that would mean so much.
Sarah (22:12):
And it's very low effort.
The other thing I would say, ifit's a budget thing, is run a
trial.
Jordan (22:17):
Yeah.
Sarah (22:17):
See if you can get a small amount and compare it.
I mean, be a scientist and say,I'm not going to gift this
group, select it at random.
I am going to gift this group,select it at random, and maybe,
you know, wheel down from there,maybe only ICP or whatever.
And then show what impact doesit have on their product usage,
on their renewals, on theirsentiment?
Do they post on LinkedIn?
(22:38):
You know, what happens when wesend those gifts?
Maybe that $20 gift turned intoa $2,000 deal.
You don't know how that's goingto work out.
Priscilla (22:46):
Yeah, exactly.
And when you're trying to getbuy-in, if you've done those
trials and those tests, thenyou're going to have a much
better job getting that budgetfor that.
Sarah (22:56):
Like any change in business, take numbers and
you're good.
Yes.
Priscilla (23:00):
I was talking with someone a couple days ago about
AI.
And one of the things that hementioned, and we've talked
about this so much, I'm sure,but taking AI and using it as a
way to do the mundane thingsthat we don't want to do so that
we can focus on these thingsthat are not scalable.
So for some companies, sendinghighly personalized gifts to
(23:20):
every single client isn't goingto work because of the number of
clients they have or the typeof service they're running.
But you can take these mundaneemails about how to log in and
let AI help you with that andthen focus your time on okay,
how can I take this thing that'sreally not super scalable for
us and still impact 20 customerstoday, which honestly is more
(23:45):
fun than helping someone loginto an account.
100%.
Figuring out what to send them.
But I do think it's one of thecool things about AI and the way
that it can impact things likethis is it lets us do the
non-scalable things.
And this is a great example ofthat.
Sarah (24:01):
So one thing I do on anybody I work for, yeah.
And I'm gonna reveal a littlesecret they may not know, is I
set AI to do some deep researchon them.
Okay.
And especially, you know how alot of people don't have their
professional email on LinkedIn?
They have their personal email.
Add that in so then the AI isactually running through their
personal stuff too.
I don't know how people feelabout that.
(24:22):
But what I have at return ishow does this person take
feedback?
What are this person'sinterests?
What do they care about?
What have they talked about?
Like what is their focus?
And you can switch that to whatare they interested in?
What do they care most about?
And maybe it's not a thing.
I have an employee who's veryinvolved with the Macaw Society.
They work on preserving theMacaw birds down in Peru.
(24:43):
And I know if I donated to thatcharity in her name, that would
just make her day because shecares about it.
Jordan (24:49):
Yeah.
I think that companies similarto like ours are a little bit of
an advantage because you knowtheir interests.
Yeah, we know they they talkabout their interests, they talk
about every intimate detailthemselves and publish it
weekly.
Yeah, they publish it weekly.
Sarah (25:04):
So we got we gotta figure out how to run some transcripts
through.
Yes, that would be fascinating.
You might learn something aboutthem they don't even know.
Yes, scary.
But but what I'm saying isthere may be more ways to use AI
to take more time off of yourplate.
Yes.
And you can even run customerinfo through AI to be like which
customers are at the highestrisk that we may not want to
(25:27):
spend the money on giftingversus the ones that are a
little ambivalent, where maybejust a little push of I care
would make a difference.
Priscilla (25:35):
Yeah.
Every day I feel like I'mlearning more and more things
that we can do with AI that canmake our lives easier and
simpler and better.
So it's very cool.
One thing we talk about on ourteam sometimes is this idea of
doing for one what we wish wecould do for everyone.
So if you're listening to thisand you're like, I just don't
think I'm gonna be able to getmy team to buy off on me
(25:58):
starting this whole thing ofgift giving.
The idea that you could do thisfor five people is still gonna
be incredible.
So just because you'rethinking, I can't do this for
all, you know, 200,000 customerswe have, it doesn't mean that
you can't do it for five.
And so, even just talking aboutthis, I'm like, man, I kind of
want to give everyone on my teamlike, hey, you have a small
(26:19):
budget, pick four people nextmonth and send them a gift.
Let's just see what we can do.
So early on, we talked aboutways to not feel promotional or
gimmicky, but what are some ofthe common mistakes that you've
seen companies make with giftgiving so that we can kind of
let people know to avoid those?
What are some of those commonmistakes?
Sarah (26:39):
The first mistake would be not checking with your legal
team.
Oh good one.
That's a very good one.
Yes.
So depending on your customers,there are a lot of laws,
especially around healthcare,government employees, people in
finance.
Oh you cannot just randomlysend them a gift because they
may lose their job if theyaccept it.
Yep.
And that would be bad.
(27:00):
Yeah.
Especially if they're of anadvocate for you.
So check with your legal teamand see what you can do.
In that case, sending a videoor a handwritten note, perfect.
Jordan (27:10):
Yeah.
Sarah (27:10):
But there are laws about like the value of the gift,
pre-branding, pre-shipping,things like that, you know, true
value of the gift, which is howyou get around healthcare
gifting.
And so check with that.
Check to see if they have anygift giving restrictions at
work, because again, you don'twant to get someone fired.
That's a bad look.
Jordan (27:27):
Yeah.
Sarah (27:27):
The other thing I would say is start small.
A lot of people are like, oh mygosh, we have a budget and we
can send gifts.
I'm gonna send gifts to all30,000 of our customers.
It's probably not effective todo that.
Priscilla (27:39):
Yeah.
When you were talking about,you know, trying to get buy-in.
Measuring success is a big partof this, right?
You have to show the people whoare footing the bill that this
is successful.
So, how do you measure success?
How do you draw that link tothe gift and customer loyalty?
Sarah (27:56):
I think it goes back to that gifting strategy.
Figure out why you're giftingfirst and then measure that.
So if I want to know if giftingimproves retention, if done
during onboarding, I'm gonnatrack all of my customers who
were onboarding.
I'm gonna track who I gifted.
Uh, probably also track to seeif that person is still with the
company, because there's a lotof turnover in companies.
(28:17):
So track that too.
And then see of those customerswho were given a gift, how many
renewed, of the ones thatdidn't pick, how many renewed.
And maybe at what value.
Priscilla (28:26):
Yeah.
Sarah (28:27):
Or if you're not running on a renewal thing, maybe it's a
purchase thing like Chewy, I ambetting they've got some
numbers that show if you sendflowers in a painting, that
person is coming back with theirnext pet.
Yeah.
And they're going all in on thepuppy gear or the kitten gear.
Yeah.
So if you have a customermarketer on your team, they're
gonna eat this up because theyalready know how to do all of
(28:47):
those numbers.
The other thing is that if youare using a corporate gifting
tool, it probably already hasstuff tied in to help you make
those calls.
I know Loop and Tie, Sendoso,Brilliant are some of the
companies that have really donea good job of integrating with
Salesforce, integrating withHubSpot.
So you can see who has receiveda gift and what happened next.
(29:09):
Yeah.
Oh.
So utilize your tech stack.
It's there.
Yeah.
You've got a way to track thosethings.
And then talk to your datateam.
There's probably somebody, ifyou don't have a customer
marketer, you're not set up onSalesforce, if you have somebody
that's just pretty good withdata on your team, they can
probably help sort out based onwhat you've got going on in your
own company to see where tomeasure that impact.
Priscilla (29:30):
Another thing that I was gonna say was, you know,
don't forget about customerfeedback quotes too.
Oh, yeah, like share that kindof stuff.
I think sometimes we get verylike data focused, and data is
great, and it's such a good wayto show there's a connection
there.
But when you hear from someonethat they've been touched by
(29:51):
this gift or it made an impacton them, grab those quotes and
save them somewhere and havethose ready.
Cause I really think that is sopowerful as well, and sometimes
is not focused on as much asthe data is.
Jordan (30:03):
Oh, yeah.
Whenever someone like postsabout Buzz sprout, we're
constantly like takingscreenshots from social media.
If we notice something reallytouching, we will take a
screenshot, post it in thecompany chat.
Sarah (30:13):
Yep.
I do a thing as part of mymonthly reporting and I call it
the Glimmers page.
Oh, glimmers, glimmers of likehappy little things that people
said.
But we had a field at Alice inevery gift because they were all
digital or mostly digital afterthe pandemic.
And it was just a thank youfield.
And my team was responsible forwatching that field because
sometimes it was somethingdidn't work and I had to fix it
(30:34):
and they wouldn't tell us anyother way.
It was just in that field.
But it felt really good to beable to go back to somebody's
manager and say, Hey, Jordangave this gift and look what
this person said.
Priscilla (30:45):
Yeah.
So for anyone who's listeningwho wants to start incorporating
gifting into their customerexperience, maybe for this
holiday season, or maybe sinceholidays aren't the best time,
maybe for February.
What is one small step thatthey can take this week to get
started on that and to starttesting those things out?
Sarah (31:04):
I would say choose a subset of customers that you
think in whatever way might beimpacted positively by a gift.
And that could be somebodythat's just maybe that's the
customer that's been with youthe longest.
Yeah.
Or, you know, somebody that hasbeen such an advocate and
brought in other customers.
And then figure out what yourbudget is to see how much you
can spend, because that reallyinforms what you can do.
(31:25):
Some companies have, you know,top flight golf set budgets, and
some of us don't.
Um figure out what that is.
Maybe it's a note, maybe it's aloom video, maybe it's a box of
chocolates for talk inFebruary.
Priscilla (31:39):
Yeah.
I would also say just as aleader, you can start fostering
a culture of encouragement,honestly.
Sarah (31:46):
Absolutely.
Priscilla (31:47):
If you just want to start getting people thinking in
that way, and maybe you're notgoing to start actually
physically giving giftstomorrow, but maybe you just
want to start saying, hey, don'tmiss an opportunity to
encourage someone when you're inthe support inbox today.
Look for ways to delightpeople.
And then as you start gettingthat culture of encouragement in
(32:07):
place, then you go, hey, nowlet's take this up a notch and
let's see what we can do withsome physical gifts and let's
look into sending them thosechocolates and things like that.
So I think if you're reallylooking for that like first step
and you're in a place whereyou're like, we're so far from
sending gifts.
We barely do good customersupport.
Good point.
Sarah (32:26):
It is a mindset.
And look around for what youcan leverage as a gift.
It may be something that youdon't think about.
Like you're talking aboutBuzzsprout credits.
That's not something that isgoing to be expensive for your
team to do.
So maybe give everybody acredit budget or a refund budget
or something like that thatthey can use.
Priscilla (32:43):
Well, and I also think, you know, you've
mentioned a couple of timeshandwriting notes.
And that's so easy to do as acustomer support person.
If you have five minutes, youcan handwrite a note.
And most of the time you have abilling address on file and you
can send a handwritten note toa customer with very little hit
on your time and money.
(33:05):
And so that's another kind of,you know, if you're really at a
place where you're listening tothis, maybe you're not a support
leader, maybe you're a supportcontributor or professional, and
you're like, I don't work in aplace that has this kind of a
culture.
And I'm not going to be able tosell my team on gifting.
So how can I make an impact bymyself without a budget?
(33:27):
That might be something thatyou can do is take five minutes
and write a letter and send itoff.
Sarah (33:32):
Yeah.
And your marketing team may bewilling to share a logo with you
so that you can run it throughVistaPrint for some cute note
cards or something like that.
Yeah.
We had that when I worked atOlark Live Chat, I had a stack
of note cards that had our logoin like holographic ink.
And it was so quick to just belike, hey, I notice you've been
with us for three years.
We just really enjoy you as acustomer.
Have a great day.
That's so nice.
(33:53):
So simple.
Priscilla (33:54):
Yeah.
And then it comes out of theblue and it makes them feel
cared for and known by yourteam.
Because how often do you get ahandwritten note in the mail?
Like when was the last timethat ever happened?
Never, never.
It does not happen anymore.
So then for the biggercompanies, the ones that maybe
do have the budgets for this,you've mentioned a couple
(34:14):
third-party services that peoplecan work with.
Maybe which ones do yourecommend for those companies
that have a budget for this?
Sarah (34:21):
It depends on your size.
So if you're just gettingstarted and you're not sure
where to start, maybe you justwant to do some gift cards.
Brilliant is great.
They have a really goodselection of gift cards and they
also do charity donations.
Priscilla (34:31):
Oh, that's really cool.
Sarah (34:33):
Because if you can't accept a gift, you can probably
be like, thanks for donating tomy favorite charity in my name.
Priscilla (34:38):
Yeah.
Sarah (34:38):
Another one that I really, really love, totally in
love with them, is loop and tie.
Okay.
They're very eco-conscious.
They have collections like, youknow, the BIPOC collection, the
woman-owned collection, theyhave kind of artsy gifts, but
they focus on choice.
So you're not always picking agift.
It's like, here's your budgetand your theme.
Oh, that's cool.
And then your recipient gets topick the gift.
(34:59):
That's great.
The bonus there is that youdon't have to know their
address.
So if you don't have someone'saddress, they take care of it.
That is nice.
And then if you're on thelarger side, Sendoso is really
the big player and they're theones that can handle like, I
need to ship 4,000 cuttingboards that are personalized to
a warehouse and I want them allto go out on the same day.
(35:20):
Whoa.
They're the big, big and theycan do custom kitting.
Big scale.
Yeah, employee onboarding kitsfor large companies.
And they also have a lot of AIfunctionality.
So they can do some of that AIgifting research in platform and
then tell you in Salesforcewhat the impact of that gift
was.
Wow.
Priscilla (35:36):
That's awesome.
So if you had one takeaway toshare, because I feel like we've
covered a lot in thisconversation.
Oh my gosh.
One takeaway that you wantpeople to keep when they turn
off this episode.
Sarah (35:48):
I think my biggest takeaway would be don't
overthink it.
Don't get so wrapped in thewhat if and what about, and then
later, don't think two yearsdown the road.
Think like one small thing Ican do right now.
That's so good.
Send a note.
Priscilla (36:01):
Send a note.
Just send a note.
Everyone listening to thisshould pause the podcast, write
a handwritten note.
Yes.
Whether it's in support orhonestly just to a friend, send
a note.
It makes it a little bit more.
Jordan (36:13):
I was about to say it to the mom.
Priscilla (36:16):
Yeah, send it to your mom.
That's your mom.
I think it's so fun.
I think, you know, delightingcustomers is probably one of the
most fun aspects of thecustomer support industry and
just this job as being able tomake someone's day.
And I don't think it getsenough attention.
So thank you for coming on andtalking with us about it.
I think it's really, really funto do this kind of stuff.
(36:38):
And it reminds us that this isa really fun job.
Like the puzzle side of it isreally fun.
But this aspect of getting todelight and surprise customers
is the best.
Like we shouldn't take it forgranted.
It really is the best.
It's so much fun.
That's why I'm still here.
Yeah.
Thank you for coming on andsharing your insights because it
really can be really fun.
(36:59):
And I feel like we both learneda lot.
I've got so many ideas justlike running through my head
right now.
I'm ready to go Christmasshopping right now.
Jordan (37:05):
Me too.
Priscilla (37:05):
This is the holiday spirit.
So before you go Christmasshopping, I know that your
experience goes way beyond giftgiving.
So how can people find you andlearn more about scaling teams
and leading remotely?
How can they find you?
Sarah (37:22):
Uh, LinkedIn is really my primary place.
And then I'm also very activein the support-driven and
elevate CX communities.
So you can almost always findme there.
Priscilla (37:30):
Which are fantastic communities.
If you're not part of those,you should be a part of those.
Definitely.
And we will link Sarah'sLinkedIn in the show notes.
So if you want to just click onthat link and hop over and send
her a message, you can.
And I'm sure she will share allof her great insights on
everything else that she is anexpert in because there's so
much more than gifting, but itwas so fun to talk about
(37:51):
gifting.
So thank you so much for beinghere, Sarah.
Sarah (37:53):
Thank you for letting me come and talk about something
fun like gifting.
It's been a joy.
Priscilla (37:57):
Now enjoy your Christmas shopping.
Yay! So usually this is thesegment where we read a support
story or answer a real lifesupport question.
But today we're gonna do thingsa little differently because
it's December, which means theyear is ending.
Yeah.
And we are wrapping up oursecond year of Happy to Help.
(38:21):
That's so wild.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
It does not feel like it's beenanother year.
Jordan (38:25):
I don't even know where it went.
Priscilla (38:27):
It really is crazy how fast 2025 went.
Someone said to me the otherday, Oh, you've been podcasting
for two years.
And I was like, that's soweird.
What?
Isn't that wild?
Oh.
Two years.
It goes so fast.
It really does.
So I thought it would be coolto take a minute and look at
some of the episodes that we didthis year.
Yeah.
And just highlight how muchreally cool stuff we got to do
(38:50):
this year through this podcast.
So we've covered topics like AIand customer support.
Yeah.
And journey mapping.
And we've talked aboutcommunicating with developers.
We did that episode with Tomback at the beginning of the
year about ways to communicatewell with developers when you're
in tech support.
Which is so good to know.
(39:11):
Seriously, we did an episode oncustomer education and the
importance of customereducation.
Kara joined us, which wasgreat.
We did an episode on managingremote support teams.
Yeah.
We've had some really, reallycool guests this year.
I think this is the thingthat's the most exciting to me
is that we've had some reallyincredible guests.
Yeah.
We had Chase Clemens from 37Signals, classic.
(39:34):
We love him.
He'll be on next season forsure.
Yeah, of course.
We had Connor Pendergrass.
We had Matt Patterson from HelpScout.
We had Erica Clayton, who wasso much fun.
So we had Sarah Betts today.
We had Stacey Sherman fromdoing CX Right.
She's fantastic.
And that was such a greatepisode about journey mapping.
Yes.
And then we had Brittany Hodak,who talked about super fans
(39:59):
with us.
And that was.
So much fun.
And music.
And music and a little bit ofTaylor Swift.
Yeah.
She has tied in everything welove.
Yeah.
What a good year.
It really has been such a goodyear of podcasting, of
conversations, of creatingremarkable support experiences
for customers.
And so anyone who's listeningto this who shares this with
their colleagues or theirfriends, like I really
(40:20):
appreciate it.
It has been so much fun to dothis every month.
And I'm really excited for nextyear and some of the things
that we're talking about andplanning for with our upcoming
episodes.
So we're not taking some bigbreak.
We'll have an episode come outin January, but I'm just really
proud of the work we've donethis year.
So thanks, Jordan, for editingall of it and making me sound
(40:43):
smart and contributing to theseconversations.
It's been a lot of fun.
Jordan (40:48):
It has been.
Yeah, I think that it would bea good opportunity for our
listeners to tap the Texas Showlink in the show notes if they
have any ideas for people weshould have on as guests or any
ideas of like topics we couldcover.
We love getting topicsuggestions because it's hard
putting content together.
So if you want to give us uhsome softballs for us to hit,
(41:11):
that would be great.
Priscilla (41:12):
Yeah.
Like what are you strugglingwith right now?
What is it that you're tryingto figure out?
Yeah.
And you want an expert whoknows what they're doing in that
field to come in and tell yousome strategies.
Yeah.
We can find that expert.
If you tell us what you wantthat information on, we can help
find that.
So yeah, definitely.
If you've enjoyed listening toepisodes or if you have
questions or episode ideas,yeah, tap the send us a text
(41:35):
link in the show notes and sendthat in to us.
And we would love to do anepisode specifically on your
topic for you.
Yep.
All right.
Well, Jordan, congrats onanother year of Happy to Help.
Congratulations, you too.
This was fun.
We will see you next year in2026, and I am so excited about
it.
So I want to once again thankSarah Betts for being here today
(41:57):
and joining us on the episode.
And thank you all forlistening.
Now go and make someone's day.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.