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If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.
Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.
Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.
You can check out our daily blog post and signup for our newsletter here https://talk-commerce.com
Brent Peterson (00:15.513)
All right, welcome to this special episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Casey Drake from Endear, a long time supporter of the show. Casey, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day to day role and one of your passions in life.
Casey Drake from Endear (00:30.667)
Well, I'm sure most of your listeners remember me from my last episode because they have probably just been begging for me to come back. But I am the VP of sales at Endear. Endear is a retail CRM is the simplest way to put it. If you're familiar with client telling, we would say retail CRM and client telling tool, but client telling is more of an action you're getting done with Endear, the CRM. You said one of my passions. I think one of my passions right now.
is and like my fiance is going to laugh at me so much for saying this, but is like my routines. I've gotten really, really into having this morning routine that I check off the list. I read this book, Atomic Habits, that I'm sure a ton of people have read and know about. And I've just like kind of become obsessed with it. So that is my, for lack of a better word, that's my passion and my hobby right now is like nailing down my routines to a level that like, I just really love it.
Brent Peterson (01:27.577)
Is that the book written by Oppenheimer?
Casey Drake from Endear (01:30.923)
No, different one, different one. Oh, oh my gosh, that you should use that. That's your, that's a great joke. There you go.
Brent Peterson (01:32.153)
See, that's a joke. It's a pre -joke.
Brent Peterson (01:41.561)
Thank you, thank you. The other thing too I wanted to mention is that I have all these new sound effects that I want to try out today. So this is going to be a groundbreaking episode. Or as chat, yeah, as chat GP. Yeah, exactly. All right, so let's go right into the free joke project really quick. I'm going to try this transition.
Casey Drake from Endear (01:54.027)
On the speed episode, it's a great episode to try out your sound effects is this speed run episode.
Brent Peterson (02:11.289)
Yeah, what do you think of that? Let's try this one. Yeah, none of them work. All right, let's just do the joke. This is supposed to go fast and we're already what, 10 minutes in? Okay, here we go. All you have to do is say, should this joke be free or should somebody pay for it? And would somebody pay for it at a POS? Using sales chat. I'm writing a book about hurricanes and tornadoes.
Casey Drake from Endear (02:13.867)
Tense.
Casey Drake from Endear (02:21.323)
Hehehehehe
It's the sound effects episode.
Brent Peterson (02:39.385)
It's only a draft at the moment.
Casey Drake from Endear (02:43.435)
That that's a paid joke. That one should go into the pay category. You could you could tell that one on a stage in New York City and you'd get a couple laughs.
Brent Peterson (02:53.049)
Yeah, I should have done this one before.
Brent Peterson (02:58.329)
Oh no, maybe that's right after. All right, let's just stop. Let's stop on all the sound effects, even though they're kind of fun. Let's go into, let's talk about sales chat. Is that, oh, do it, please, go for it.
Casey Drake from Endear (03:08.875)
I've got a quick story I've got to tell. I don't know if I told that on the last episode, but when I was a young Casey, I emceed a talent show for my middle school and I had my friend sit in the corner and I wrote a bunch of corny jokes and I would like point to him and he had a snare drum and a cymbal and every time I pointed to him, he would just go, I loved it. It was, yeah, it's one of my favorite stories to tell people.
Brent Peterson (03:32.377)
That's awesome.
Casey Drake from Endear (03:39.691)
Exactly, that's what you need to have ready to go for your jokes.
Brent Peterson (03:39.865)
There you go, that's the, yeah. All right. Good, well, now that I'm gonna actually pay attention and stop worrying about my sound effects, let's talk about sales chat. First, yeah, tell us how would you like to set this up? Because this is something new for Indir, right?
Casey Drake from Endear (03:50.347)
Hehehehe
Casey Drake from Endear (04:00.171)
Yeah, totally. So I think the best way to set this up would probably be to tell a little bit of like the story of why this is such a big priority right now, I would say like for Indir and for the retail space as a whole. I mean, I could tell a little bit about what Sales Chat is for. So Sales Chat is a live chat widget on your website. It's Indir's word or Indir's what we're calling our live chat feature is Sales Chat. And we put that word sales on it for a reason.
because it's meant to be and separate itself from a traditional support chat widget that people might be used to putting on their website, right? And the big bet there is that, and I really believe this genuinely, is that live chat is meant to be an interaction that doesn't require like a long period of time to go look something up and dig up information and do these.
And that's what support is. Support is, let me look up your order number. Let me go talk to the team and see what I can get approved. That shouldn't be handled in a live chat environment, but support just sort of like beat sales to that spot on the website. Right. And so this isn't even really a, I would say, endear original idea. The reason it's a priority now for us is there's this company called Hero. They got purchased by Klarna. I'm sure you've heard of Klarna, the buy now, pay later company.
Brent Peterson (05:24.249)
Mm -hmm.
Casey Drake from Endear (05:26.667)
So they were purchased by Klarna. Hero, in Indir's early days, a lot of people would compare Hero to, or Indir to Hero, because both of them, the concept was your sales associates at the store are the best people to get conversions to happen. And so if you have people on your website looking to chat with a sales associate to help them get that through that purchase process, you shouldn't connect them with a support agent. You should connect them with a sales associate at the store.
And so that was their whole pitch. They got purchased by Klarna and they were, they did great, right? A ton of awesome brands used Hero for whatever reason, Klarna announced, I'm not even sure they really announced it, but you know, we heard through the grapevine that Klarna was sunsetting the live chat feature, basically sunsetting the Hero purchase. So they got what they wanted out of it, maybe, I don't know, but with that news, we sort of like had already been...
building a beta version of our own live chat, but we were like, well, let's put the accelerator on this because there is, as far as I know, there is no other version of live chat out there that is built for a sales team. And that sales team could be at your store. They could be, you know, we see some brands with a team at like HQ that helps answer some chats. Most of the time it's store associates actually on there during periods of downtime answering chats. And so without Hero,
There's really no other solution in the market. Everything else is just a support chat. So that's really why we, we sort of put a bunch of eggs in that basket, if you will, to start this year.
Brent Peterson (07:01.689)
So let me see if I get this correct then. The idea is instead of somebody sitting in a dark room in the Philippines, they're sitting at the POS having a little downtime. They've acknowledged that they're not doing anything. Hopefully their boss doesn't see that. And they then get popped up with messages from a sales channel.
Casey Drake from Endear (07:11.435)
Yes.
Casey Drake from Endear (07:28.139)
Exactly. Yep. Yeah. They would be prompted to accept sales chats. They would, it's just like any other, right? They can put themselves online or offline. But if you really think about it, a support team is usually like, you know, even for a really large brand, 10 people, 15, it's not a massive team at your company. Your associates are already, if you have even five stores have got to be that many people, maybe even like a little bit more.
And the truth of the matter is you're going to get more conversions this way, which is why you should want a salesperson in that position, even if it means staffing an extra person at the store. But what we see most of the time is foot traffic's going down. And so like stores do just have more free time to help answer these kinds of chats. And then the big thing is like that relationship. If you're a support ticket and your support ticket gets closed.
Like the goal of the support person is that you don't need anything else from me. Like I win as a support person when you no longer need to reach out to me. That's the opposite in the sales world. Once I've connected with you on this like sales side of things, I want to keep going back to you and keep sort of getting what I can out of that well. And so you would rather make that connection as the brand than make the other sort of more transactional connection in that moment. At least that's what I believe.
Brent Peterson (08:52.441)
Yeah, and it enables the sales person on the floor to have more opportunities to, if they're commission based, to get more sales, right? That's a big advantage for the sales people. A big advantage for the actual merchant is that their customers are, they're talking to a real person, not a chat bot farther down the line.
Casey Drake from Endear (09:03.819)
Exactly.
Casey Drake from Endear (09:12.555)
Yeah, stores, stores aren't going anywhere, right? It's like brands, there's so much value in stores, even without sales that like, even if you don't just take the number of sales that happen at the POS, you think about buy online, pick up in store, ship from store, all these different sort of functions that a store can play now, the store's not going anywhere. And if the store's there, you're going to need staff to staff it.
and foot traffic is only gonna be what it's gonna be. So it's like, if you have staff in that store, put them, like, they want to usually keep working. Most staff isn't like pumped to just stand around and do nothing for a day. They'd love to make more, especially if you commission them, they'd love to make more money.
Brent Peterson (09:56.921)
Yeah, that makes total sense. So I mean, I think in the last episode, we talked a little bit about client telling or in every episode we talk about client telling because I think it's super interesting. But what are some of the big hurdles that companies still have to get their POS based is if that's the correct term. There's salespeople based in store in brick and mortar to be engaged online.
Casey Drake from Endear (10:23.435)
It's credit. It's like all about attribution, credit. And some of that honestly comes back to the brands themselves and the way that they structure their goals and incentives. I think they sort of like shoot themselves in the foot a little bit. I say it all the time. When I'm working with a brand, it's the craziest thing, but so often I see, and the best brands aren't like this. So often I will see that the retail team's biggest competitor is the e -commerce.
store and team. And it's like not the other stores on that street, like you would expect it is literally their own team. And like that wall just needs to be broken down. And I think the only way you get that wall broken down is with like, we need to have a conversation about attribution and how store associates can get attribution for online sales. It doesn't need to be every online sale, but give them a way to do that. Most of the time, like if I talk to a brand and they're like,
Well, we need this store to have, we need the sale to happen at the store or we don't get credit or like we, it doesn't count towards our goals. And like, I have no argument against that because I can't change their goal at the end of the day and how they get credit towards that goal.
Brent Peterson (11:36.313)
Yeah, I think five, six years ago, that's the argument that you would hear from a B2B owner where there's sales people route, you know, driving the roads and just making in -person sales. And they were worried that suddenly you open up this new channel and they wouldn't get credit for that sale. And in the B2B world, it was pretty simple. Like you would give that, that would still be their account and they would get credit for it. And this is, this would be one way to kind of put in, put retail into that mix. And.
Do you think retails, like the physical retail is still way behind the curve in terms of how they work digitally, taking aside that most people are on a POS?
Casey Drake from Endear (12:15.531)
No, I don't. I think they are really catching up. What I think they do, though, is I think they find ways to make a sale happen at their POS because they, but they're crafty. I've like, you know, there are retail sales associates out there that will be like, a lot of them, the best ones are just very honest with their customers. And they'll be like, hey, if you see something online and you really like it, like you don't even need to come to the store, call me.
let me ship it to you, like I'll ship it to you for free from the store. Like they will do things like that. So they're using their digital resources and creating these own personal hacks around the limitations that have been put in place. And then I'm just like preaching at their e -comm teams and the director of retail, like, Hey guys, like Indir does this for you. We give you the numbers right there and like you can adjust the model and change everything. Like you just need to have that conversation. And then.
everybody will be happier. You know, we'll arrive at this new global maximum.
Brent Peterson (13:19.353)
Um, the, the, I have this conversation with a few of the, um, handwritten note people, like there's, there's a bunch of companies that have robots that write notes now. And so your POS per your salesperson can write, just put in some notes in the, in the transaction and then you'll, it'll, it'll write a note from that person to go to that client. Yeah. Handwritten has been on the, been on here. Yeah. Um,
Casey Drake from Endear (13:40.107)
Yeah, I think there's one called handwritten actually, like the name of the company. Oh, they've been on the pod? Yeah, I've heard of them.
Brent Peterson (13:47.545)
is I mean all those ways of engaging with the client that's this is just another way this is another avenue for salespeople and merchants now to get their get involved with more the client telling right.
Casey Drake from Endear (14:02.923)
Totally. Yeah, you're exactly. It's just another, I view Sales Chat as another contact method for your store that adds to the existing, you know, bundle of contact methods. Because I think the biggest gain again out of Sales Chat is the relationship that you keep after the chat is over. And it's like emailing with them and texting with them and getting that information during the chat. Because it's all about mindset.
It's like you think about it that way when you're a salesperson. So it doesn't even have to be, we have brands that will take customer support agent. I'll give a little bit more credit to at least the brands I've worked with. Most of them aren't using like outsourced customer support teams. They are in house, but they're usually like, you know, five or six people. They're not massive teams and they're real humans sitting there. And a lot of them have realized that sales can come out of this. So they'll take like their best.
customer support person at driving sales and just shift their role to be an online salesperson. And they'll be like, hey, when a sales chat comes in, and I'm not talking about our feature, like in their existing support chat, when a chat comes in that's sales related, this person's going to take it and they're going to get, you know, cause they know how to work them in that way. That whole concept is really what we're doing here as well. And there's a really cool piece to endear.
Cause it, one of the biggest things I hear Ecom people say is that, well, what happens when somebody does just want to chat with support, right? So the way that we view it is that can happen, but you should lead with sales. So we have this escalate to support button, right? Where a lot of the major support players out there today, we have integrations with, you can simply add an agent from your support team in that platform to the chat.
So now it's like the exact same chat for the customer. They just see that a support agent gets added. And then your associate can be like, all right, I'm gonna move on now. I know that one's good. I'm gonna move on to a sales one.
Brent Peterson (16:07.673)
So you see this as complementary to some of the other ones that are out there. I won't mention any names, but there's some big players out there in the support chat arena and ticketing.
Casey Drake from Endear (16:16.395)
Yep. Yeah, exactly. I just think a ticket is different than a live chat.
Brent Peterson (16:20.761)
Can you, I know you're a partnership manager, I think her name is Madeleine Anderson. She likes to talk about white whales and getting some wins. Do you have any, anybody you can mention that you have running that's had some success in this?
Casey Drake from Endear (16:29.835)
Mm -hmm.
Casey Drake from Endear (16:40.107)
Yeah. So press release actually just came out in, I think retail dive is the name of the website. Yeah. We partnered with Untuck It on this specifically because they were, they had previously been users of the Klarna live chat experience and we're looking for something new. I had a connection over there from shout out. Her name is Caitlin Gottlieb. She is, I don't know her exact role. I don't want to mess it up. So I won't say her role, but she is a.
been like almost like a guide and like a great friend for me to bounce off of pretty much since they wanted Endear. I've been like, of course, trying to get them to use Endear that whole time, but for whatever reason hasn't happened. Finally, we're talking about this live chat thing and like this was just the perfect way for us to finally get to work together. So it goes to show you if you're not a crappy salesperson that annoys people and just bothers them and you actually like...
you know, let people say no and maintain a relationship with them, good things can still happen. So for all my salespeople out there that are annoying and burn bridges, please stop doing that. You make all of us look bad. And I promise it'll still work for you if you just let people tell you it's not the right time for us.
Brent Peterson (17:49.945)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (17:55.577)
That's a whole nother episode and that's just a whole mindset. And I agree, there's some salespeople that are so good, they leave companies, they go to the next company or they have a client or even clients. Clients shouldn't burn bridges, right? Because I've seen, I've experienced a client coming back after a long time and they're saying, well, we kind of made a mistake and blah, blah, blah. I think salespeople, it's even more important in any, I mean, in any...
Casey Drake from Endear (17:59.627)
I know, right? Yep.
Casey Drake from Endear (18:16.395)
Mm -hmm.
Brent Peterson (18:24.025)
forward -facing role, there's no advantage to getting upset and then just going nuclear with your contact, right? Because there's always an opportunity for business in the future. Anyway, so that's another topic we can cover. All right, so untuck it, untucked, untuck it. No relation to Nan. I'll let you think of that for a second. Nan, tuck it.
Casey Drake from Endear (18:33.771)
Yeah.
Casey Drake from Endear (18:39.915)
haha
Casey Drake from Endear (18:44.523)
and tuck it.
Casey Drake from Endear (18:53.867)
Oh, OK. Yeah, no, that one's free.
Brent Peterson (18:54.457)
I know, that was really bad. That's the impromptu ones that just come out of me. Okay, so just really broad, their success, or they paralleled from Hero to Endear, is that what happened? So they were able to maintain what they were doing.
Casey Drake from Endear (19:14.539)
Yeah, exactly. They needed, it's a big piece of success for them. So their big thing is like, they find you the perfect fit shirt. That's like what they do. So for an online shopper, it's like you almost need to be talking to a person, right? And what's really cool is like, you know, they have their real store associates on there that can chat with you that fit people in store all the time and like,
I've tried it myself just because I wanted to experience it and they're great. They have really such an awesome team. I think we talked about this on our last episode, but that's another huge piece of this is it's so important to hire good people. And like that, like just can't be stressed enough. I think so many brands need to like really take their hiring process seriously and then treat the good ones that they do get, treat them well and put them in the positions to succeed. Cause
that like none of this works if you don't have good people. And I'm not afraid to say that if you don't have, if you don't trust the people at your brand to talk to customers, which it, you know, if you have them in stores, you are kind of already, but like, if you don't trust them and talk to them digitally, you, you need to work on that first and then we'll get you on sales chat.
Brent Peterson (20:28.761)
Yeah, that is such a great point that I think a lot of merchants overlook is, hey, they've hired somebody in store for 12, 15 bucks an hour to work the till. And they're entrusting them with this whole experience of buying something at some big retailer. And then,
Casey Drake from Endear (20:52.523)
I say this to brands, sorry to cut you off, like they are the face of your brand. They are the personality of your brand, whether you want to admit it or not. That like you shouldn't put that associate in the store if you don't trust them digitally, because like. Yeah, they rep, they are what your your customer thinks of when they think of your brand like you can do all the image and everything on the website. But like the personality of your brand is the people that I get to interact with at your brand.
Brent Peterson (21:21.817)
All right, so I've got a thought and you tell me if you've already put this into play or not, but it would seem that if you have a large enough footprint for retail that you could employ, you could get people online, your sales reps, and you could also route it by the most successful sales reps. So the ones that are most engaged, the most, when they have opportunities would get messages more often than the ones that aren't. And I...
Casey Drake from Endear (21:50.155)
Yep, yeah, we have it exactly set up like that. Smart man.
Brent Peterson (21:53.049)
Good, yeah, all right. Well, I guess we can finish now. So Casey, we have a few minutes. What is it? Tell us a little bit of how people can start working with this. This is not a sales presentation, but I think it's interesting and I do feel like it's an overlooked area of retail, not just e -tail commerce, like not just online commerce, but where would they start? Tell us.
Casey Drake from Endear (22:22.571)
Yeah, so I mean, we'll give you a link so they could watch at least a video version of like a quick walkthrough of what we chatted about in terms of Sales Chat. And then I'd really just encourage them to come to the website and book a demo if they want to see more. We have an awesome, like I said, hiring matters. We have an awesome team of people. It wouldn't matter who on my team you get set up with. I know that they're going to show off Sales Chat in the best possible way for you.
Brent Peterson (22:48.345)
And would sales chat be for people that, what if you don't have a retail store but you're online, would it still be an option?
Casey Drake from Endear (22:57.899)
Yeah, it's a great question. I think the biggest thing is that you have, you, you have a team of people. It's not a robot, right? As long as people understand that you need a human, you can set away hours, right? Just like any chat, you could set like we're off during these times and leaving away message sort of thing. But during the day when I'm shopping or during shopping hours, it's kind of like having a store, right? You need a human manning it on the other end. So as long as you have a team prepared for that, uh, then I think.
Any online retailer could definitely use Sales Chat, especially if they want to value sales over support. Usually higher priced is typically what we find you need to talk to somebody to walk through that purchase process.
Brent Peterson (23:41.433)
And how about complementary? It complements a lot of other CRMs as well. Is it dependent on having Indir? And I know we just questions in advance, but.
Casey Drake from Endear (23:55.659)
Yeah, it's, I would say it's not dependent on having Endear. We have an open API. So like you could feed that sales chat specific data into a different CRM if you wanted to. I would, I would recommend against it, right? But I guess that's why I'm a, the VP of sales at Endear and not at one of these other CRMs.
Brent Peterson (24:16.377)
Right. Good. Casey, we have a few minutes left and I know we've done a few plugs already, but we I do a shameless plug at the end of the episode. What would you like to plug today?
Casey Drake from Endear (24:28.459)
Um, honestly, I think it wouldn't be fair to, to plug anything else other than sales chat. I just want people to go click on that link in the description, wherever they're watching this. Um, and go just see it, see the video demo of sales check. Cause I think it's really, really cool. And you will really be impressed with what we've done.
Brent Peterson (24:46.265)
Yeah, and I'll make sure I put the links in the show notes and I'll see if I can get that video embedded on the blog post for this episode. Casey Drake, you're not the founder of the Drake Relays, but I've heard that. Or isn't there a rap group too, Drake? Is that you?
Casey Drake from Endear (24:56.747)
Awesome.
Casey Drake from Endear (25:08.203)
Drake, a rap group. You can't be, Brent, you can't be that out of touch. Come on. A rapper? There's a rapper named Drake. You have to know who Drake is. Okay. It's just one guy. Yeah.
Brent Peterson (25:13.081)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (25:16.697)
I know who Drake is, I didn't know if they were a group or a single person. Yeah, it's out of my musical genre that I would normally listen to. I'm very eclectic, but just say, can I say hip hop?
Casey Drake from Endear (25:27.883)
That's totally fair. That's totally fair. It's more. Yeah, he's definitely hip hop. I think it's more like he's he is trends transcended just his music, if you will. I feel like everybody knows Drake. That's why I was like, I was like, wait, is he talking about Drake right now? Yes. Same Drake. Same Drake.
Brent Peterson (25:44.601)
Yeah, that's where I was going. I do everything to confuse people. You should know that by now. All right, case...
Casey Drake from Endear (25:50.923)
Perfect. Just like the sound effects on the speed episode.
Brent Peterson (25:58.585)
All right, there we go. And that marks the end of the episode. Thank you so much for being here, Casey.
Casey Drake from Endear (26:05.195)
Yeah, thanks, Brent. Have a good one.