3 Easy CX Wins That Still Work in 2025

Hi team,

It’s been an interesting few weeks for ecommerce brands. Last week, I shared some tactical tips I’ve been passing along to brands navigating these tumultuous tariff times.

This week, I want to take a lighter note and share three easy ways any brand can stand out with great CX, including a tidbit from Bombas that kicked it all off.

For those of you who’ve been reading this newsie for a while (almost three years now, somehow), you’ll recognize the ranty, whiny tone ahead. Hopefully it feels a little nostalgic. 🙃

Let’s dive in.

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Bombas and the Ownership Mindset

Late last week, I shared a post about Bombas that seemed to resonate with a lot of people. It was about something simple that most brands still get wrong.

Most DTC brands treat shipping like the finish line, especially in fashion. Once a package leaves their warehouse, it’s someone else’s problem. Good luck if the customer didn’t pay extra for VIP shipping protection.

Lost in transit? Damaged in the truck?

Not their fault. Talk to the carrier.

Bombas looks at it differently. They see it as their responsibility until the package is actually in your hands. And they stand behind it.

As someone who spent over a decade leading CX teams and owning the reshipment budget, I understand why brands hesitate. It can get expensive. Especially for high-AOV brands, the numbers can add up fast.

But unless you are in the top 1% of most-abused brands, reshipments are still a tiny fraction of your total orders. It is a rounding error compared to the damage you do when you make customers fight to be made whole. It generally ends up in chargeback territory anyway. 

Customers are not thinking about who shipped the box or which third-party warehouse you used. They bought from you. You are the face of every part of that experience, whether you like it or not. If they don’t receive the package in full and unharmed, they are not mad at FedEx. They are mad at you.

When a brand steps up and takes responsibility, it changes the entire relationship. Customers don't have to wonder what happens if something goes wrong. They know you will make it right.

Bombas builds that trust quietly. It is not a marketing headline. It is just how they operate.

That is what real CX looks like. It is not loud. It is not flashy. It is the boring operational stuff that keeps customers around long after the discounts and points wear off.

What drives me nuts is when CX leaders brag about "getting around" reshipments like it is some Olympic sport. Too many of them hate hospitality and service and probably should not be working in CX. 🤷‍♂️

As a CX practitioner, you should actually want service recovery opportunities… even if you would never say it out loud. 🤣

As a customer, this is exactly why I would rather pay $5 more and buy from Zappos every time. I know they will not tell me to f*** myself when UPS takes my New Balance shoes on a joyride to Guam.

Set Expectations Early and Clearly

One of the easiest ways to stand out in ecommerce today is also the most boring: set better expectations.

Most brands either overpromise or stay vague. They tell customers a package will arrive "in 2–5 business days" but never clarify what that actually means. They throw out words like "premium quality" without explaining why it is better. They talk about "easy returns" without clarifying the return process until you are knee-deep.

When you are vague, you leave room for customers to build their own expectations. And nine times out of ten, the story in their head will be better than what actually happens. That gap is where frustration starts.

Great CX starts before the customer ever places an order. It starts with clear shipping timelines, obvious return policies, and real descriptions of what they are getting and when they are getting it. It starts with setting a standard that you can actually hit — and then hitting it.

One thing I learned running CX teams is that most customer frustration has nothing to do with what actually happens. It has everything to do with what they thought was going to happen. If they expected three-day delivery and it shows up in five, you failed. If they expected a seamless return and you hit them with a $9 restocking fee and a bunch of fine print, you failed.

You can be a "good brand" and still drive people crazy if you let vague promises do the talking.

Setting expectations early also makes life easier for your support team. Fewer tickets. Less scrambling. Less apologizing for things that were never clearly explained in the first place.

It is boring, but it works. Every time.

Instead of spending hours in Slack communities trying to figure out how to "surprise and delight" angry customers, spend two hours rewriting your confirmation emails, your product descriptions, and your FAQ page. Spend two hours making sure the story customers hear before they buy matches the story they experience afterward.

A lot of customer loyalty is just customers feeling like they got exactly what they expected. Nothing more, nothing less.

Get the basics right. Then get fancy.

Protect the Human Moments

Not everything in CX needs a human. And not everything should.

The best brands know the difference.

I talked about this recently in this video, but the basic idea is simple. For most brands, a big chunk of customer inquiries are things like tracking updates, order status, and basic returns. You can automate most of that. You should somewhat automate most of that.

Where brands screw it up is when they try to automate the 20% that actually matters. The parts where someone is frustrated, confused, angry, or disappointed. The moments when a customer is not looking for a tracking number, they are looking for someone to fix a broken promise.

I spent 10 minutes in that circle of hell with a United chatbot, and it made me want to stay home. 

That is where humans need to show up. Fast, clever, empathetic.

Too many brands invest in AI for the easy stuff, then try to stretch it into the hard stuff because it is cheaper or faster. They hand off angry customers to a chatbot. They send apology macros when real help is needed. They design systems to protect themselves from effort instead of protecting the customer from friction.

And then they wonder why loyalty is so fragile.

Protect your humans. Save their time and energy for the moments that actually move the relationship forward.

Automation should exist to clear the way for better human experiences, not replace them.

Stop scaling for scale's sake. Instead, be thoughtful about where you show up personally and where you let machines keep the lights on in the background.

The brands that get this right feel different because they are different. When something goes wrong, you feel the shift. You are not fighting a ticket system or a bot. You are talking to someone who actually cares.

It does not happen by accident.

It happens because someone decided that the 20% matters more than the 80%.

And customers can feel it.

That’s it for this week!

Any topics you'd like to see me cover in the future?

Just shoot me a DM or an email!

Cheers, 

Eli 💛

P.S. Looking for inspo on your next email/sms campaign?

I know you will love this.