GQ Fu is the Co-founder and CEO of LTVplus, a company that provides world-class customer service outsourcing for ecommerce brands. At LTVplus, GQ helps increase a brand’s customer lifetime value by providing omnichannel customer support outsourcing and failed payment recovery services in any time zone and any language. GQ has extensive experience running and managing remote teams, and he is also the Co-founder of TaskDrive. Before starting his career in customer success, GQ was in the music industry for over ten years.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How GQ Fu’s career in customer success first began
- GQ discusses how his company, LTVplus, plays a part in making customer service profitable
- GQ’s strategies for reducing friction in the buying process
- Sales recovery frameworks: automation versus human response
- How LTVplus helps fast-growing brands successfully scale their customer service teams
- GQ shares a case study of a brand that generated over half a million dollars in revenue through great customer success
In this episode…
Every stage of your customer’s journey is an opportunity to create a brand evangelist. But, many ecommerce brands are missing out on this critical opportunity due to poor customer service. From engagement to recovery, a great customer success team will help you provide a frictionless experience that will boost your sales and improve the reputation of your brand.
However, building a customer success team is a complicated and expensive process for many fast-growing ecommerce brands. With an unpredictable flow of traffic, it can be difficult to determine how many customer service experts to hire at any given time. So, how can you overcome this challenge and start turning your customer service into a profit-making machine?
Listen to this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast as host Joshua Chin chats with GQ Fu, the Co-founder and CEO of LTVplus, about turning customer service into a profit center. Together, they discuss how ecommerce brands are losing money at different touchpoints of the buyer’s journey, GQ’s strategies for recovering those sales, and the importance of a customer success team for reducing friction in the buying experience. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Special Mentions:
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency.
If you are a direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand that wants to unlock the optimum customer lifetime value through email marketing, then look no further than Chronos Agency!
Our team of passionate email marketing experts have helped hundreds of brands generate over $70 million in return from email alone, and our clients receive an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts.
Chronos Agency has worked with a variety of brands, including Truly Beauty, Alya Skin, and many more. Our mission is to help real businesses achieve real results.
If you want to take your revenue to the next level using email marketing, be sure to email our team at sales@chronos.agency or visit chronos.agency to learn more.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the eCommerce Profits Podcast, where we feature top founders and experts in the e commerce industry and take an in depth look at their struggles and successes in growing e commerce brands profitably.
Joshua Chin 0:21
Hey guys, Josh Chin here. I’m the host of the eCommerce Profits Podcast, where we feature top experts in the eCommerce industry. And we go behind the scenes of the struggles and successes of growing a brand. Now this episode is brought to you by Chronos.Agency. Now if you are a direct to consumer econ brand that is ready for next level growth and to unlock the optimal customer lifetime value true email marketing, Chronos is your company, we have helped hundreds of brands get over $17 million in returns from email alone, and our clients get an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts. We’ve worked with brands like TrulyBeauty, the Udi, Ally Skin, and many more. And for some reason, GQ, I’ve said this many times, but beauty brands and apparel brands are just attracted to us has nothing to do with my fashion sense, obviously. But if anyone is interested, the next step is just email us at Sales@chronos.agency sales@chronos.agency, you can also go to cross a Chronos.agency to learn more. And today’s guest is someone really, really interesting. He has an amazing background and is doing some amazing work with ecommerce brands from all around the world. GQ Fu is the Co-founder and CEO of LTVplus GQ helps increase the customer lifetime value of e commerce brands by providing omni channel customer support outsourcing and failed payment recovery services in any time zone and any language. Now he has extensive experience in running and managing remote teams with LTVplus being 100% remote customer service outsourcing company that is spread all across the world. GQ, thank you so much for joining me.
GQ Fu 2:08
Welcome to thanks for having me, Josh. Thanks for having me, Josh. This is a it’s always a pleasure to catch up with you. Yeah, if you’re a fashion brand or beauty brand looking for help Chronos Agency definitely is the agency to go to we’re very happy being partners with Chronos Agency.
Joshua Chin 2:23
Appreciate that. And then, and we were just talking about your background before coming onto the show. Prior to LTVplus and building these amazing businesses in the e commerce space, you were in the music industry for over 10 years. Tell me more about that. And how has that experience shaped your current venture and in entrepreneurship?
GQ Fu 2:50
Sure. So yeah, not a lot of people actually know that about me, because it seems like if you go on my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see that it just starts from 24 2015 or 2016. Like I’m a late bloomer, right. So Late Bloomer. Yeah, so um, I was I was based in Singapore at the time, that audio post production for about, I think, two to three years, did some music composition as well, and then moved on to, you know, music performance and songwriting for a good amount of three to four years. So yeah, kind of under 10 years, I’d say. But what was really interesting for me was, you know, when you’re working as a musician, and doing your own productions and compositions, it kind of is entrepreneurship anyway, it’s just I never knew, it’s just like, because yeah, you’re looking off, you know, you’re working with different people, we even started like a small production crew just, you know, produced pop songs or whatever, we just wanted to go after the work with labels, you know, that songwriting. So they kind of help under help me understand what it would take, you know, to run your own business, right. So this was like, from a solopreneur level, or like a small agency setup, if you will, then, you know, Got really inspired when I, you know, I wanted to do more in the world, I figured, like, I want to leave like a better impact instead of just music, you know, music is great, but like, you know, want to do something more, I guess, visible. So then I decided to, you know, join a startup in Singapore back then. And this was in a tech company as a customer success manager. And that’s where essentially the entire customer service customer success journey began. Any of the things that when you work with clients or other musicians, there is that customer service aspect to it, just not necessarily framed in SAS or e commerce. Right. And so started from there did about two years or so before, you know, we’ve ventured out to build our own businesses. Today, we have LTV plus, and I’d say the skills and the I guess the networking involved and the you know, managing yourself managing your time. How do you delegate things over time? These are things that I have, I think I could bring over from my ex musician’s life, if you will. And, you know, bring it over here combined with things that I’ve picked up along the way.
Joshua Chin 4:58
Yeah. Is that part of your identity. Do you consider yourself a musician?
GQ Fu 5:04
Well, if I were to say, for the past three years, well focus on LTVplus and a bit of test drive, I’d say. Yeah, like always a musician at heart. I think you never really lose it. But it’s just a matter of, you know, how much time do you practice? How much time do you? How much time do you spend on your craft, right? Like, you know, as a musician, you typically spent 810 hours writing music playing your instrument practicing, which is the same as an entrepreneurship writing, you’re constantly hustling every day prospecting. I, you know, refining your organization. So it’s the same concept, but just different. A different application. Right? So I would say that because I’m not spending so much time on it. Now. It’s, it’s become more of a hobby, more of a thing to love versus something that you’re working. This is not so much of work now. But more of a of a hobby, if you will. Yeah.
Joshua Chin 5:54
Got it. That makes sense. And I think that experience carrying it forward into what you’re building today with LTVplus, it’s still about people, isn’t it i and i think that that I mean, the way that you carry yourself and the way that you treat your, your clients and your brands, I see that you care a lot. And that’s very evident from from all the times that I’ve spoken to you. Tell me more about how LTVplus brings that we talked a little bit about turning customer service into a profit center. I think that concept is incredibly helpful. I love that idea. Tell me how LTVplus plays a part in in doing that?
GQ Fu 6:36
Sure. So it’s about reframing, you know, like some brands, and I think this is a gradual shift in mindset. But people always view customer support or customer service as a cost center, right? Like all you have to pay for customer service to make people happy. Some brands may not necessarily understand that this goes a long way. But I think there is that shift in the industry right now, especially more So ever since caught, you know, last year. So the way we work with our clients is first of all, we want to understand, you know, what opportunities are there to engage shoppers, right? You know, when we’re talking about customer service, so you have a lot of channels now, and you know, and you want to meet your customers where they are, right. So you know, for example, if they’re very frequent on on Facebook or on Instagram, that’s kind of where you want to go offer them if they’re more active on email, you know, or even phone calls, depending on your demographics, that’s kind of where you want to better engage them. So for example, we first look at what are those opportunities to engage people, right, it could be on their website, where we’re talking about live chat, for example. And so one thing that we commonly like to say, or would like to share with people is, have you considered live chat? And if so, how are you tracking, you know, shoppers in your site before you engage with them. So for example, if someone were to shop for, like, I didn’t know, like that, we can talk about fashion, if someone’s going out to the shop, a pair of jeans, and you know, maybe they also sell, you know, like belts and other accessories that go with the jeans. You know, if you were to track someone going into your site, you know, browsing a couple of what do you call it, a couple of lines, you know, just figuring out what pair of jeans they wanted, you know what to purchase. And that’s kind of where our check to come up and say, Hey, Josh, you know, I noticed that you were checking out, you know, this pair of jeans, like, you know, Virginia and he helped you know, the sizing or whatever. And so this kind of like not an ideally non invasive because you have to test this as well, because some, again, some brands may not like some demographics may not like, you know, like a pop up chat, they just may not like that. But however, if they do, it’s nice to be a front of mine. And so people can get that experience and kind of put those questions out there. And then, you know, you engage with them that way, and you can recommend them the products that they’re actually looking for. So you know, if they’re, you know, if they’re actually looking for a pair of jeans, but they’re they’re missing something, you know, if they were to get that that would help them actually be more happy with your purchase, versus trying to sell them a whole bunch of stuff that they may not necessarily need. And so that leaves a long lasting impression. And we’re very big on LTV, right. So if you leave a lasting impression on the customer that they want to come back, and they want to talk more about your brand, that’s where you kind of every single interaction that you have is where it’s a chance for you to create an evangelist for your brand. Right? So this is one of the many examples that we know, we figure out engagement opportunities, we figure out, you know, in the wholesale aspect, like you know, like so but that’s kind of more on the e commerce brand site, you know, how does the post sales experience work? Right, how is it like, right in terms of shipping terms of you know, the kind of email marketing that they’re getting, you know, what kinds of discounts or VIP loyalty programs that they have. So that’s probably you know, something separate. But outside of that, besides engagement, we also talk about things like cart abandonment recovery where you know that previously you lose these sales like if you didn’t have like, any simple, let’s say email marketing software in place or or text marketing software right now SMS marketing and so now with a variety of tools, and in fact, there’s so many on the market right now that you could use to automate and pick up shoppers who would you know, they might have dropped off the cart because they had to attend to something, maybe they just wouldn’t Sure. And even a simple like text message where it’s like, Hey, you know, hey, Josh, I saw that you you were shopping for these items in your cart? Let me know if you’d like me to check if I could get a discount for you, you know, if they’re a new customer, right? And that’s like a really, you know, we’ve seen some clients try that out. And it works really well. It starts the conversation and something as simple as like a 510, maybe sometimes 20% discount for the initial purchase. But then, you know, previously, you weren’t even converting these guys, because they left right now you’re you have that ability to right. And so that’s something that we talked about as well. And we work with, you know, obviously agency partner, like Chronos Agency to figure out, you know, how does email marketing work for that? How do they How do they recover these abandoned carts? And then outside of that, from the customer service standpoint, it’s really advising and figuring out once people reply you, besides the automation piece, how, how can the customer service team engage with them to actually convert that sale, and ideally, tweak the cart, so that you know, all you have to do is just give them a link, and they can just pay and go? So frictionless experience, right? So we talked about engagement, we talked about recovery, and that also applies to fill payment recovery, for those of you who run subscriptions based ecommerce businesses, right, so we’re talking about involuntary churn, maybe the credit card just got declined, there weren’t enough funds, you know, so these are things where you can just send a nice reminder, or just to let people know, because sometimes emails may not necessarily be the best in that case, it might be you know, if for whatever reason it went to someone or folder or spam, and then you have text messaging to kind of kick in, and that kind of helps. Or if you’re getting a direct email from from from someone, so that way, you’re, you know, kind of cuts through the noise. But those are just some aspects. We’ve talked quite a bit here. So I’m just gonna,
[Continue to Page 2]
