VP, CX Insights & Community at PartnerHero | Talking about creating your customer experience from scratch. I build and scale customer-facing teams that give a shit and can help you do the same.

I transitioned from being a barista to working in customer experience 20 years ago, and life hasn't been the same since.

I've been fortunate enough to work at companies like Wistia, Atlassian, Trello and Appcues. I've worked with amazing customer-facing folks to create scalable strategies and delight customers. 

Now, I spend my time helping to elevate leaders of teams and empower them to create the best customer experience. Employee-centered teams with simple, beautiful processes are where I find my joy.

Outside of my work with Boldr, I also consult and write for businesses such as Help Scout, HubSpot, and others. Let's work together!

Mercer Smith

Yesterday I ordered Halal and they didn’t have the option to add white sauce to my order or make any modifications. They just had a box to type requests. In that box I typed “please may I have extra white sauce? Please drown my shawarma in white sauce. I am willing to pay up to one million dollars in additional white sauce fees. Please absolutely cover my food.” And most of the time no one reads those things I don’t think. But yesterday, my order arrived like this. 

“I don’t need one million dollars. Sorry.” But ALSO 5 tubs of white sauce. 

Even if they never read my requests again and I never get extra white sauce, I will order from this place forever. 

This is why humans see important.

CX Strategy & Solutions at Boldr; Author of CXOXO | Talking about creating your customer experience from scratch. I build and scale customer-facing teams that care and can help you do the same.

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Some days I get told that a talk I gave at a conference years ago changed someone's whole outlook and career, and some days (the same day in this case!) I accidentally glue my own mouth shut with nail glue in a hotel room.

So I guess just remember that no one has it all figured out or is perfect all the time. In fact, some times those people that you think are really smart use their own teeth to open a literal bottle of super glue and get it all over themselves.

You're doing great. We all make mistakes. It's what you do with the knowledge that you gain that is most important.

A few weeks ago I had a thought I couldn’t shake: SaaS might be kind of cooked, as my nine year old would say.

AI is making it wicked easy to build your own tools. Stuff that used to take a full product team, months of back and forth, prioritization, all of it, now it’s one scrappy operator, a decent prompt, and a couple hours if you’re willing to poke at it a bit. At some point it has started to feel like we’ve all been taught how to fish, so why are we still paying for fish?

I kept coming back to it and needling it, and while the thought has SOME water, I don't know that it's actually fully true. 

Not because the premise is wrong — building is absolutely getting easier — but because I was only looking at the fun part of it. Thinking of a tool, spinning something up, having it work, and getting that little hit of “oh hell yeah, I made this" is something I've done a ton of over the past few months. But, building is easy; owning it is where things get real.

After it's built, you have to keep it running, deal with the weird edge cases you didn’t think about, make sure it’s secure, make sure it integrates with everything else, and fix it when it inevitably breaks at the worst possible time. That part doesn’t go away just because AI showed up, and unless we all start using OpenClaw isn't something that is quite solved yet.

Similarly, most teams don’t actually want to own more software. They just want the problem handled so they can move on with their lives. So, while it might not be true that SaaS is dead, I do think it’s about to get a lot less comfortable for businesses in the space.

If I can rebuild 70% of what your product does over a weekend, I’m going to start asking some questions about why I’m paying for it, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. The bar is shifting from “does this work?” to “is this meaningfully better than what I could hack together myself if I really needed to?” and those are very different standards. That doesn't even dive into the actual customer experience behind using your tool.

The things that survive that shift are pretty obvious: 
1. products that take on real complexity
2. ones that absorb risk I don’t want anywhere near me
3. Ones that are so good I wouldn’t even consider rebuilding them. 
4. businesses with humans or an ethos that caresabout the clients utilizing their product

Everything else is going to feel the squeeze. SaaS might not be dead, but good enough software might be, and that feels like a huge actual shift that’s coming.

Oh my gosh, I'm not crying, you're crying? (Scott Tran, for the record, I think my join date was actually 2011? Maybe that spreadsheet that circulated a few years ago was off?)

Thank you for your trust Scott Tran and the whole Support Driven team that has been working with Boldr (and me!) on this over the past few months. I'm so excited to see this inaugural event and all of the amazing things that come after it! 🚀

Helping customer support professionals grow their careers — and helping founders build with community, not just for it

A few updates on the Support Driven Salon for Online Brands - March 3, downtown LA.

We have 3 volunteer spots open for community members who are between roles right now.

SD Salon is about CX operators and leaders at online brands helping each other and building real relationships. As a volunteer you're a full participant - in the room for every conversation and at dinner afterward.

I can't promise volunteering will lead to a job but the connections made at SD events have led to jobs for people. I'd love for that to happen again.

If that's you or someone you know, DM me.

--

I want to thank Boldr for partnering with us on the first SD Salon for Online Brands.

When we brought this idea to Boldr, there was no playbook. No past attendance numbers. Just a belief that if you put CX operators and leaders in a small room together, good things happen - real relationships, honest conversations, practical help. Boldr said yes to that.

Boldr is no stranger to creating new experiences for the community with Support Driven. We've organized sound baths, mindfulness workshops, and more together. David Sudolsky and Greg Collins have always understood that the value of working together isn't in impressions. It's in relationships.

Special thanks goes to Mercer Smith at Boldr. 

Mercer joined the SD community in 2014 when we had less than 50 people. She didn't just join - she organized and spoke at our very first conference in 2016. Our community now has over 20,000 members in Slack and Mercer is still here, still showing up, still creating with us.

Recently, Mercer is the person who helped me take this from "I think this could work" to an in person experience. We've been working with her to shape the direction, the format, and what it feels like to be in the room at SD Salon.

--

And here are photos for where we'll be having dinner together 👇

Are you in ecomm or dtc? Are you in LA? Do you love this sticker and want one for yourself? Do you love me?  Well, great news for you: the sticker and I will be in LA this week! 

Kicking off the week by hosting not ONE but TWO fire-side solutioning chats at the Support Driven Salon TOMORROW. If you're in ecomm or dtc CX, and want an invite, lmk. We (Boldr, not the royal we) will also be hosting a dinner afterwards if you want in for some food and bevs.

Then, the VERY NEXT DAY (how lucky am I?) I'll be attending Momentum and hosting a lil informal gathering after the fact. Will there be a mechanical bull? You bet. Will there be Sarah? Oh yeah. Will there be great steak? I think so? Haven't been there before but we'll see! If you want in to Momentum, it's invite only as well, but let me know and I can get ya connected. Great for marketing, sales and CX leaders in ecomm and dtc.

I have some slots in between the madness, so if you're around and want to hang 1:1 or connect over some coffee, please just let me know. I'll be in DTLA, and then WeHo.

When asked about my hopes and dreams in a game and these are the choices I am given. 😍

Cc Sarah Betts 

Ps, iykyk: I love Shelley, and Dunk, and Lyric.

Customer Experience Maven, Events & Community Enthusiast, and Believer in the Best in People.

So excited to be moderating this panel on the Rebuy stage at #shoptalk! Big thanks to my buddies Mercer Smith, David Glenister and Fran Brzyski for bringing their incredible insights and ideas to the convo. Tuesday March 24 at 11am!!

If you've ever walked out of an exec meeting thinking "I said the right things… but nothing moved," this workshop is for that moment. 

⭐Ty Givens, MBA at CX Collective will be leading a hands-on workshop at the upcoming Support Driven Salon for Online Brands in LA where you'll build an executive briefing designed to drive decisions at the exec level. She'll draw on her CX experience at Intuit, See's Candies, and working with 50+ teams as a CX Consultant. 

The workshop will walk you through 
- A clear **executive summary** — win, risk, next focus — that respects your exec's time and earns their attention
- **2–3 KPIs framed around business impact**, not just support metrics
- A **voice-of-customer slide** that creates urgency
- A sharper **strategic narrative** that connects your team's work to company outcomes
- A **confident strategic ask** to help you get budget, headcount, priority, etc. 

If you're a CX operator or leader at an online brand and want to participate in this workshop and the Salon, apply here - https://lnkd.in/gJ55ERZ2

A lot of people in Support Driven choose the consulting path, and I want Support Driven to be a place where that work is visible and trusted. 

Ty has been part of the Support Driven community since 2019 and has presented at multiple SD conferences — members have told me directly how valuable those sessions were. When we started thinking about how to make Salon a more valuable experience, she came to mind immediately. 

I’m excited for this and if you're a CX consultant that's open to partnering with us on future Salons, please let me know in the comments. 

Also, here are photos of Ty at past SD conferences

Honestly, it's stuff like this that makes the job worth doing. <3

In our world, every ticket represents a pet parent who needs help. And that’s not something we take lightly!

A backlog isn’t just an operational metric. It’s a real delay for customers who are counting on us (and it’s tough on the teams working hard behind the scenes, too). Coming out of the holiday season and into a backlog, we knew we needed to move fast and fix it without compromising the experience.

Even though we’d only just started with Boldr within the past couple weeks as part of a focus on compliance (and not specifically for the backlog), they leaned in immediately and helped us tackle it with urgency, care, and a true partnership mindset.

And we did it while continuing to show up for pet parents:
✅ CSAT held steady and improved 3% within the first two weeks, and 30% over the month even with backlog pressure
✅ Re-opened conversations dropped 49% meaning we’re resolving more inquiries the first time
✅ Got out of backlog within 8 days of starting our partnership due to the weeks of painstaking and fastidious planning

Grateful to have a partner that doesn’t just understand CX, but understands how important our customers are to us, and shows up accordingly. 🐾

Boldr 
Greg Collins
Mercer Smith

What will stand out at eTail this year? 

From new CX trends to honest conversations happening behind the scenes, Mercer Smith and Erica Clayton are breaking it all down.

Skip the FOMO and join us for a candid debrief featuring a few special guests adding their ✨perspective✨.

📅 February 26th, 2025
🕛 12:00 PM Central Time
🔗Register here: https://hubs.ly/Q043HN0F0

When I first read this blog post I was shook! Elen slayed with the knowledge sharing and takeaways in this piece. Truly a must-read for anyone who is implementing AI or thinking about how AI intersects with their human team moving forward.

Your AI isn’t just drafting replies anymore. It is executing BIG decisions and making judgment calls at scale.

Meanwhile, most CX org charts still assume humans do the work and automation “assists.”

This mismatch isn’t obvious on day one. The signs start showing up quietly: a refund that followed the prompt but not the intent. An escalation that never triggered. A retention offer sent to the wrong segment (half the time).

Our new blog unpacks the shift from AI as assistant to AI as operator and why guardrails like ✨governance and real ownership✨ have to evolve with it.

Read the full article here on LinkedIn, or dive deeper on our blog:
https://lnkd.in/gvKXVCdK

Cisco is forecasting a significant jump in agentic AI handling support interactions end-to-end. Not AI that drafts a light reply, picks its nose, and 

Open article: You hired agentic AI, but did you hire a babysitter? by Boldr • 9 min read

You hired agentic AI, but did you hire a babysitter?

If you've always wanted to go to Shoptalk (or never wanted to go, no judgement) but can't this year, Sarah, Erica and I have got you covered. We'll be doing a run down of all the hits and misses from this year's shoptalk on March 27! Come get your tea, your goss, and all of the delicious takeaways with none of the hangovers or social anxiety.

Missing Shoptalk this year? 

You might not be on the expo floor, but you don’t have to miss the insights.

Join Mercer Smith, Erica Clayton from Forethought, and Sarah Hatter from Rebuy Engine as they share the tea on the biggest trends coming out of ShopTalk and what they mean for the future of CX.

See you there! 🍵

🕑 12:00 PM CT
 📅 March 27, 2026

Vicky Windell, Aitana Rangel Garibay and 4 other attendees

View event: ShopTalk Tea: The Post-Conference Debrief

ShopTalk Tea: The Post-Conference Debrief

Andrew Rios, MSML

Global Customer Support Leader & Mentor, Builder of CX Teams & Future Support Leader's, Fractional Support Leader, Coach, Support Insights Story Teller

I’m Andrew “Coach” Rios — a passionate, high-energy, Global Customer Experience and Support Operations Leader with 25+ years of experience guiding world-class support organizations across startups, scale-ups, and Fortune 100 companies.

Blending a strong technical foundation with a people-first mindset, I’ve led and developed high-performing teams at companies like Turntide Technologies, Fitbit, Cisco, and Megapath Networks. My leadership is grounded in trust, empathy, and execution—building support infrastructures from the ground up, transforming underperforming teams, and aligning customer operations with business strategy.

Whether I’m implementing global BPO strategies, designing Voice of the Customer programs, or coaching CX leaders, I bring **energy, clarity, and a builder’s mindset** to everything I do. My core strength is connecting deeply with people and helping them unlock their potential while delivering measurable business value.

💡 **Core Strengths**: Relator | Futuristic | Restorative | Self-Assurance | Activator

🎯 **Expertise**:
• Global CX & Support Operations
• Team Building & Leadership Development
• Technical Support & Escalations
• BPO/Vendor Management
• Program & Process Design
• Voice of the Customer (VOC)
• Beta Testing & Product Feedback
• CRM Ecosystems (Zendesk, Salesforce, Jira, etc.)

I’m also a runner, mentor, speaker, and proud youth coach for my son’s soccer and football teams. When I’m not building support strategies, you’ll find me enjoying a good book or spending time at the beach with my family.

If you're passionate about building great teams, transforming CX, or leading with purpose.  Let’s connect. ⚡

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Mercer Smith

Andrew Rios, MSML

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