Hello? Can I Speak To a Human Please? (Why The Biggest Opportunity on Shopify Right Now Isn't AI)

Jay Myers: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Shopify 1% Podcast. Did you know, I did some stats before this, 79% of your customers say they would rather talk to a human than an AI, which is probably not surprising. Most people... I'm, I'm in that camp. When I talk to an AI, the first thing I start saying is, "Human, human."

I start rage typing it in. Um, and actually less than 2% of people say they prefer to talk to an AI. So there actually is 2% of people that are okay talking to an AI, but that's it. So the question I have when I read these stats is why is every single Shopify merchant on the planet racing to bolt on an AI chatbot somewhere in their flow, in their checkout, their abandoned carts, everywhere else?

So I had to have my guest on today because he's flipping it around. In the world where everyone's going AI, he's going real. Real humans, real people actually sending, sending texts, and he's getting incredible [00:01:00] results. Uh, I'm, I'm gonna quote this. He can tell me if I'm wrong, but the last thing I saw was they're getting 21% recovery rates on abandoned cart emails or, or SMS, uh, at roughly a 20X ROI, and it's just crazy because we're seeing...

Uh, I saw in the news recently, you know, Klarna laid off, I can't remember what it was, 700 or 900 people, and now they're slowly rehiring them all. Um, and it's just so interesting what's happening in the world. So Steve, Steve's with, with Live Recover. Steve, welcome to the show first of all. Thank you so much for coming here.

I caught you in the middle of a coffee shop, but I'm, I'm glad, I'm glad I got you, so we might hear some dishes in the background. Thank you so much for being here.

Steve Lequerica: Jay, no, thank you. I've been licking my chops to get on here with you. This show is so well done. Um, you're a GOAT in this space, and I love you as a person, so thank you again

Jay Myers: Oh, I appreciate, I appreciate you. So, okay, l- I like to jump right into it. I can ask you the whole backstory of LiveRecover, but right now, at this moment, like I w- we were just at [00:02:00] SubSummit last week, and every booth is AI this, AI that, and everyone's getting pitched that they need AI for something, um, especially including cart recovery.

So tell me about LiveRecover, the business that you've built doing the exact opposite, and then I have a ton of questions. But what is LiveRecover, first of all, so people have the context?

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. So very high level, right? We are a Shopify app that instantly in 10 minutes, right, you can plug and play us. In 10 minutes, we deploy a sales team of real people for your brand. Now, when that happens, right, you install our app. We're-- Our goal is to transform the way you communicate with customers, starting with abandoned checkouts.

So the highest intent shoppers looking to buy, they have questions. Now, majority of shoppers that actually abandon checkout, you're not able to actually legally communicate with, right? From a marketing standpoint, unless they opt in to your marketing channel. But with a [00:03:00] real person, you can legally text them as long as a phone number is left.

So we are able to instantly activate a whole new channel of customers that you're actually able to talk to. 'Cause otherwise, if you don't have real people texting or calling these customers, which I'd argue, hey, if you're not using a solution like LiveRecover, every brand should be doing this. But, you know, then you run compliance risks.

Who do you know is on a do not call list versus who's not, et cetera. But anyway, real people can text and call your customers today that abandon checkout that are not opted into your marketing list, and it'll transform the way you communicate with your customers, but also give you an extra 5% to 15% top-line revenue lift.

And that's, I think, the key, the key motto is how do we continue to optimize revenue for brands, not just for abandoned cart checkout, but for all different ways across the funnel. And that's like what I'm trying to bring to the market

Jay Myers: Okay, so what does this look like? I, I know right away where listeners' minds are going. They're saying, "What, does he have a room full of people [00:04:00] texting?" Are these, are these consultants around the globe? Are they all local, or what does that look like?

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. The-- all, all of our agents, or I should say majority of our agents, over 95% of them are based in the Philippines. They speak better English than you and I.

Jay Myers: It's their first language there

Steve Lequerica: It's their first language. They're also multi-language, like, uh, for, for our Canadian folks. I've had a lot of Canadian brands that have French-speaking customers.

You know, now with AI and ChatGPT, we're able to handle a lot of conversations that are in different languages. But, you know, ideally, we wanna focus on English. You know, that being said, agents are based in Philippines primarily. We also have some scattered in the US and Mexico too. Big thing is need to cover all time zones.

So legally, we have to stay within SMS, you know, TCPA, CTIA laws for quiet hours, but, um, it's 24 coverage, right? So if a, if a brand, uh, if a customer abandons checkout on a [00:05:00] brand site and it's like 2:00 AM within that respective time zone, they would just fall into like the priority queue the following morning.

Would still be texted, just not obviously at 2:00 AM

Jay Myers: Gotcha. If there's a previous conversation, if I abandon cart and that's, it's during the day and you message me, and I reply at 2:00 in the morning, can they, can they engage if I initiate the reply as a customer?

Steve Lequerica: No, that would be, that would fall within the

Jay Myers: still, they still wait e- even though I'm messaging at 2:00 AM, they wait until the non-restricted hours.

Gotcha. Okay. And so I'm gonna ask a bunch of the obvious questions before I get into some

Steve Lequerica: Yo, I love this. I love

Jay Myers: stuff. Does one person work with one store? Do they get to know that particular store or does, is there mult- depending on the store size, multiple people assigned to it? Or if I'm a brand and I'm looking at doing it, what, uh, what does that look like?

Steve Lequerica: No. Oh, you're getting [00:06:00] juicy, Jay. I like

Jay Myers: wanna know. I

wanna know.

Steve Lequerica: No, this is

Jay Myers: wanna know

Steve Lequerica: So one, yes, there are brands, 'cause we work with nine-figure plus brands all the way down to, you know, I don't discriminate, 10K MRR. You know, we can scale with anybody. Certain brands that want a certain level of support, we, we have that optionality to get them a team of dedicated agents, you know, assign two to three agents depending on the brand.

They eat, sleep, and breathe that brand over time. They literally become an extension of your team. I kid you not, I have brands that have been with us for four years doing over, well over nine figures. One of the brands we just recovered 147 grand last week. They, they review our KPIs like on a weekly basis,

Jay Myers: I think I saw they, they emailed you and I think you had that on LinkedIn,

Steve Lequerica: So you know I'm not a liar.

You know I'm not a li--

Jay Myers: I literally saw that like four hours ago. I like

Steve Lequerica: And, and they lit- and they literally send their agents, like our agents, their, you know, their team as well, gifts, like on a monthly basis. You know? Like our, our a- our agents are actually incentivized based on the [00:07:00] quality of conversation and how well they're converting. So like this is also a good point you make, right?

'Cause that's, this is always the number one or two biggest objection for brands. I don't care if you're Steve Madden I'm talking to or, you know, Joe Spices, you know, just starting. Like everyone's, everyone wants to feel like Gucci. They want their brand like their, like never to be tarnished, never to mi- be misrepresented, right?

And so that's so sensitive to us, and we have a very strict policy on our agents getting ramped up based on brand guidelines and what's called the knowledge base. Like everything's built out in the knowledge base. So when a brand initially installs us, we'll use AI to scrape their site and web for any FAQs, commonly asked questions, like any information we can get.

Jay Myers: Yeah

Steve Lequerica: of course, the brand probably has some guidelines as well that they share with us. We'll, so we'll get that initial framework through the agents. But this, this is a big, big thing is over time, right? Even in the first few days or weeks, all those [00:08:00] transcripts that we're compiling, that is invaluable data, uh, that we're gonna a- also be able to share with you at the brand and say, "Hey, Jay, here's also some insights we've been getting.

A lot of, a lot of conversations are asking X, Y, and Z. Can you help us fill in these gaps?" Or, "Hey, what do you think about these conversations? Uh, is there any feedback so we can add more to the knowledge base so these agents..." 'Cause it's very simple. It's some of the beauty and the curse is this is a human-to-human combat, so are we gonna have conversations potentially that you actually would've said X or you should've not provided that offer because you're providing a site light offer?

Yes. All we d- we, all we need to do is be aligned and then train the agents, and then that never happens again.

Jay Myers: You probably have data on, uh, what a store's site is missing and not what answers are not being answered on their site. Like right now, one of the things that as a brand you wanna do is make sure that every question is answered on your site so that when you go to ChatGPT and you ask a question [00:09:00] like Steve Madden shoes, like what's the best way to treat and waterproof my shoes?

And, or what's the most water- what's the most waterproof dress shoe? I might ask that question to ChatGPT and, and, and if you don't have an answer related to that on your site, ChatGPT's not gonna know either, 'cause really it just ingests everything. And so it's interesting, like you might... You also would have a, the, the gap between what a site says and here's, here's everything we scraped and the knowledge base that we built for our agents, and you're missing a lot because they're a- everything that gets asked is not likely on a site.

Like you're sitting on valuable information too with that

Steve Lequerica: Brother, brother, it's, it's almost zero party data in a way, 'cause think about it. And I, I've been, you know-- Again, everybody that wants to take advantage of getting on early, uh, you know, take advantage 'cause you're getting so much value initially. Like, we're not charging for s- a lot of these, all these features that we're building, AKA, to your point, insights.

All-- The, our insights feature, I've [00:10:00] thought about how, how do we monetize that because there's... I, I sometimes think the biggest value brands get is that, especially initially. This, to your point, is filling the gap with being able to communicate to all those customers that they can't legally communicate to because they're not able to market to them today. They haven't converted, they haven't converted them yet. And then ha- and being able to assess that information and bring it front-facing to them. Always, always there's huge nuggets in there that the brand's like, "Oh, wow, I didn't even realize X," or, "I didn't even realize Y." The one-- The last thing I'll say is something I'm starting to see so many brands use us in so many different ways, and it's so cool.

Like for example, this brand that sells around a $400 to $500 red light mask.

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm. They're the trend right now,

man

Steve Lequerica: know, they're, they're, they're the trend, man. And, and they're-- This brand is, is, is great to work with, but they're so unique where they just like are obsessed with being able to use our agents in other ways outside of the box.

For example, we can do post-purchase. [00:11:00] So we can engage, and this is a huge unlock, we can target any customer that has ever bought from a brand and has a Klaviyo profile, 'cause that phone number's stored. So if they're not opted into SMS, but they have a phone number stored because they previously bought from you, whether it's two months, two years, et cetera, we can re-engage them back to the site.

So what this brand was wanted to do is they wanted to get a, they wanted to do a survey, a post-purchase survey to all their recent purchasers within the last six months to understand their demographic and where they found them from. Like, where was the attribution? And what was so cool is when they got all the data back and we assessed it with them, they, um, they thought that their target demographic was always like a 25 to 40-year-old sweet spot.

But what they found is all the responses that we got, the majority of them were 55 and older. So, so again, just a data point, but like a lot, like a, a lot of brands are starting [00:12:00] to use us in ways that I really never even thought about. For example, helping them manage all of their ad comments on Facebook, Instagram, et cetera.

I mean, just, just to give you a tidbit.

Jay Myers: Well, that's interesting too. So I wanna just clarify. So abandoned cart emails are okay, but SMS, unless they're opted in from a human, it's okay, but an automated SMS, that's where the line is?

Steve Lequerica: Correct. There is legally, there's a huge delineation between, if you wanna get, like, technical about it, it's called A2P SMS, which is automation to person or application to person is what it's classified as. That requires explicit marketing opt-in, either checking that checkbox at checkout, double opting in, or putting that phone number, which the majority, putting that phone number in the pop-up, right, and then opting into SMS.

The majority of people that visit your site and also abandon your site are not ever going to opt in to that

Jay Myers: Yeah. Yeah[00:13:00]

Steve Lequerica: channel. Now, if they end up reaching your site and leaving their phone number, they can be texted once by a human. And so that, that need-- that's what, that's what's classified as peer-to-peer SMS, P2P.

So human texting another human. It's a separate channel. It's also, you require a separate phone number. So if you're using Postscript or Klaviyo or Attentive or whoever for traditional SMS, you'll have your short code or a dedicated 10 DLC or 1-800 number. But with live recovery, you have your own live agent phone number, P2P phone number, and that's, that should be looked at as like your concierge, right?

Like, that's like your relationship... Like I have with my buddy at Bloomingdale's, I text him a couple times a year, "Hey, I want that cologne. Do you have that cologne and that shirt?" "Oh, no, like, but I have-- I, I don't have the cologne, but I have the shirt. Hey, come in Thursday. I got you." You text that phone number, you know, and it's the same phone number, same experience, like as if you have your own sales rep at that brand.[00:14:00]

Jay Myers: Now, is tho- these reps... So does each agent have their own phone number or they have, is it different by store as well too?

Steve Lequerica: No, the everything's broken down by stores for the agents in terms of like the agent out-- Like, the, the phone number is registered by

Jay Myers: To the s- Okay, so if three, if three different agents, if one agent is sick and a different agent, like they're all using the same number per store. It's through a, through a web app that they're doing the

Steve Lequerica: Correct. Yeah, that's our

Jay Myers: goes through. Yeah

Steve Lequerica: internal, app and everything, like every brand, the way that we make sure it's full compliance and the best brand experience. Because we also have the optionality now to do blue bubble RCS, like traditional iMessage or the green bubble SMS. Um, but every, every brand we get on like an actual dedicated phone number

Jay Myers: Yeah. It's amazing. Okay, so I think that's good context on, like, how it works. Now, what are the results you're seeing? [00:15:00] Obviously, you're selling head-to-head against... Well, I, I know you do a lot more than abandoned cart, but on the abandoned cart side, you're, you're going head-to-head against the traditional automated flows from, it's Klaviyo, Omnisend, Attentive, like Shopify has a built-in one.

What are the results you're seeing compared to these automated ones?

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. And the, the easiest way I always like to frame it is whoever we're talking to, we're Switzerland, right? We sit on our island, you let your email flows do their thing, your SMS targeting for those that opt in. Maybe you have also AI chatbots or, or support chatbots. Then the live recover, the live, live sales agent, we're focused on...

Initially what brands usually do is say, "Hey, I just wanna focus on first time customers that aren't opted into SMS." So there's no overlap, there's no s- there's no confusion, so I can truly prove out live [00:16:00] recover's incremental, which ni- 99.9% of the time we're gonna prove that out, whoever the brand is. And so as long as we can justify that clear, very clean, "Hey, here's who we're targeting," right?

'Cause sometimes brands just wanna target us for, "Hey, I only want live recover engaging with customers that have a cart value of $500 or more, and is a first time customer, not opted into my marketing," whatever it is. But I know one- once at least we show them that experience, show them the conversion rates are always gonna be substantially higher.

You know, we generally shoot for a conservatively a 15 to 20% conversion rate with conversations that we initiate. Once we get a response, right, which our response rates are substantially higher, we generally, if we're gonna start a conversation, we'll get a response 40 to 50% of the time on average. And, and then once we, once we have that dialogue, our reply to purchase rate is two to two and a half X the normal conversion rate.

So if we're closing 15 to 20% of conversations our agents initiate, [00:17:00] once we get a response, we're closing that sale almost 50% of the time

Jay Myers: That's incredible. It's only SMS, right? Do the agents do the email as well too, or just SMS?

Steve Lequerica: I, I wanna keep it simple, stupid right now. My partner Corey, Corey, uh, Epstein, who he founded a D2C brand back in the day and, and had a successful exit, Distilled. I call him the AI godfather. I, uh, I can't wait for you guys to meet, meet one day. He's doing some, some special things in like building the future of our product.

He has a lot of, of plans for potentially kind of doing different things where

Jay Myers: Yeah

Steve Lequerica: whatever a brand wants to do, whether they wanna send a plain text email, a live person text or a phone, whatever. Um, but you know, what I've always really been focused on is keeping it simple, stupid, given live recover. The TAM is endless and every, every brand should, should use a live recover or self-- like what...

Do this yourself or use a live recover or a, [00:18:00] a platform that actually does P2P SMS, 'cause if you don't, you're leaving 5 to 12% of revenue just sitting there on the table.

Jay Myers: It's insane.

Steve Lequerica: why not test it?

Jay Myers: And you've got some data that, like, it's not even that you just, you have to discount these abandoned carts to get them, like, um... I think I got it here. I think this is from... I don't know if it's from a blog, but I, I pulled this in

Steve Lequerica: Look at you. You're good, man. You're good

Jay Myers: I got my, I got my notes. But, uh,

Steve Lequerica: K- knew I loved you

Jay Myers: for every one customer that redeems, uh, with a discount, 3.7 buy without a discount.

Um, which is, I don't know, like a s- I know so many brands that they just give a 10% discount on abandoned cart emails or flows or whatever it is. But it's... They're, they're throwing away money essentially on 75, more than 75% on like... I'm not gonna do the math in my head, but like on 85% of the abandoned carts are not being [00:19:00] redeemed with a, with a discount.

Like, what's your philosophy on that?

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. A- and it's funny, you know, and bra- brands used to beat me up, man, on, on Twitter and whatnot 'cause we used to not have the functionality to support, like our agents were only able to

Jay Myers: Right

Steve Lequerica: a discount, right? And I totally get like where brands were coming from because multiple ways you can think that, like just the experience, you never wanna just be looked at as a discount shop.

Customers are getting so much smarter that buy online, as you know, they're expecting a discount, whatever. But also

Jay Myers: people that they, people, people just add stuff to the cart and they wait a couple hours for their discount code. Like

Steve Lequerica: 100%. 100%. Uh, you know, I'm the most impatient person there is. I'm the worst online shopper to model after. Like, I wouldn't, but at the same time, as soon as I get that discount, I'm gonna use it. And so that, that eats at their margin, right? And what, what I'm always super, super focused on with anybody I speak with is when they're comfortable to actually test this, I wanna make sure that I'm aligned [00:20:00] with their unit economics.

'Cause as long as our percentage take is aligned with their unit economics, it should be an incremental profitable lift. So it, it's not a one-size-fits-all, although we'd always love that. I have amazing gun brands, I have amazing apparel brands, I have amazing furniture brands, I have amazing food brands, I have amazing XYZ.

Like, margins are not universal, so as long as we can align on what makes sense. And also factoring in if they're gonna also provide a discount, let's be sensitive to what that percent needs to be. You know? Maybe there's more flexibility if they don't provide a discount, whatever. But, but yeah, I think to your point, we, uh, we absolutely can lean in and have our agents try to recoup that revenue without providing a discount, and they do it.

Um, I mean, it does, it does affect that traditional conversion rate a bit, like when we're not providing an incentive that, that depending on what the brand is selling will change the conversion rate. I, I usually shoot for like 5 [00:21:00] to 10% versus 15 to 20%. But, but still, it's, uh, it's you're, you're holding on to more margin depending on how you look at it

Jay Myers: I almost think it's, it's, it's fundamentally backwards to give a discount on ab- on an abandoned cart because the customer almost never has an issue with the price. Like, if they saw the price and they added it to the cart and they got to checkout, they're okay with the price. They're not okay with maybe the shipping time, shipping methods, shipping cost, your refund policy, returns.

It could be anything else but the price. But then we, like, we just, we reach out with this weird solution that's like, "Oh, here's a discount." A- and especially if you're selling, like, a higher ticket item. Like, if you're selling, like, a $200 T-shirt, the person's not gonna care about a 5% discount on it. They wanted to know that they could return it, no questions asked, for 30 days because they want it to feel a certain way or, you know?

Like, they're addressing the [00:22:00] wrong problem. They think that the symptom is always price, but it's... I bet it, it's almost never price. Like, I, I can't, I can't think of a time I abandoned a checkout because of the product price. I'm like, "I put it in my cart. I got to checkout," and, you

Steve Lequerica: Yeah

Jay Myers: So are your agents trained to know different pain points that customers might have and try to address those first?

Steve Lequerica: Absolutely. I think, and, and, and twofold there, Jay. Like something you just mentioned made me think like, like I always say like in the experience, like it's all-- Like when a brand starts with us, there's so much to tweak and optimize and test like right away 'cause like I always like to say, "Let's dance."

Maybe, maybe, maybe you do initially start with, "I wanna provide a discount, target first-time customers," and it's just one touchpoint. But maybe once we have that text, like once we text a customer and they respond to us, that's [00:23:00] fair game for us to engage. So if they don't convert, right? Which, which obviously is gonna happen.

They don't convert after a day or two, we can also schedule a nudge where the agent follows up in two days or three days. Maybe there's an email in between or whatever. Or, or maybe, or maybe when that abandoned cart triggers where an agent should've jumped in, you don't want a live agent to jump in yet.

You want them to get other communications. Maybe, maybe you are, you are okay with us hitting up anybody that opts in as well, so we, we can target anybody that abandons checkout. It's just about how do you wanna dance? Like have the SMS flow go first, then 24 hours maybe or 48 hours, you have the live agent to try and really close the deal and provide an incentive.

Like there's so many different ways you can mix and match. So I like-- I always say like always be tweaking, like let's dance. Like the way that, the way that, you know, you're closing for first-time customers also might be very different the way that you close for rePete customers, which we could separate those [00:24:00] flows.

And also post-purchase, right? There's so many different levers that we can pull. But initially, I just always like to say, "Hey, let's get in the door." You can start seeing what type of volume of conversations our agents are having, the quality, and then we can start to iterate on who are we targeting, incrementality tests, holdout testing, et cetera.

Jay Myers: I imagine they're incentivized, right? The, the agents to some, some type of commission-based bonus something structure

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. And every brand I pretty much talk to loves that, the way that, you know, we structure that, 'cause of course, you know, they're, they're also penalized based on quality, so they're never gonna misrepresent the brand. We've, we've done so many updates to our escalation path. We have a very robust, like, way of, hey, if an agent actually doesn't know the answer to something, we can either escalate that directly to your team if you want us to pass that to your CX agents or your team of experts, 'cause we work with a lot of brands that are [00:25:00] like, have doctors on staff that sell health supplements or weight loss drugs, et cetera.

You know, there's a very, like, intricate like, hey, if it gets to a certain point, pass it to them. Or they c- we can be the intermediary where we're basically troubleshooting it, getting the answers from the brand, and then communicating it back to the customer. But either way, however the brand wants us to handle that, we have a very smooth pass off.

We, we actually reduce support tickets, even though I, I never wanna claim support. Our goal is to sell and optimize revenue for every brand, but we, we, we reduce support tickets by like 20% to 25% per brand, just based on the intimate nature where cust- our, our, our agents are coming in and driving impact in these

Jay Myers: I believe it. There must... Is, is there a line? Like they'll, they'll answer like as much as they can. Well, they can probably answer questions related to like shipping and basic stuff, but once it gets into product knowledge or somewhere, is that when it gets handed off

Steve Lequerica: Well, I used to get upset, like, or not upset, but just I didn't wanna bog down agents for so much pre- and post-purchase [00:26:00] support. But given that it all feeds into the whole ecosystem of value add for the brand and ultimately helping us convert more revenue, like they do provide so much additional soft value, like outside of obviously...

I can't tell you how many times, think about it, customers are texting. As soon as they have a good experience, they're texting our agents immediately, like a couple days later or a day later, like, "Hey, do, do you know when my order's coming?" And like all those things like that our agents can, can, can help with, but it's not like we're, we're getting incentivized for it

Jay Myers: Can they? So they have, they can give tracking numbers or they can tell if it's shipped

Steve Lequerica: Yeah, they have access to all of, all of that, all the details pretty much. And if they don't, they can check with the brand, 'cause you're basically any, any brand that works with me is a heartbeat away from my agent team. My right hand is Alina, who manages our agents. She used to work at Attentive, Klaviyo.

Like, she just knows how to help any brand, whether you sell knives, this, that, to be successful implementing this channel. And, uh, she's, she's the [00:27:00] one that literally goes and trains the agents daily and speaks to them in Slack. And so she-- You guys tell her something, she immediately can communicate it and get that information back and forth

Jay Myers: So the agents don't, they don't need a s- uh, a, a staff account to your Shopify store, right? They have their own LiveRecover admin that pulls in just basic information about if an order is shipped, "Hey, this order number," like that kind of an interface? Or do they get like a base... Do you g- do you get some stores giving them access at, like, d- obviously certain levels?

Steve Lequerica: They have, they have access to, like, all the order details. So, like, all of, all of that's, like, passed within... Like, their view is like a folder view per, per brand that they manage. And, you know, again, if they, they don't-- if they can't access certain information, we can still troubleshoot it and, and get it from the brand generally very quickly.

But yeah, they, they, they have access to pretty much all that order detail

Jay Myers: Interesting. So I know I'm asking a lot of [00:28:00] these basic level questions, but I feel like this is exactly what would be going through my head if I'm thinking about using it. And, and do they, is there any incentive for them to cross-sell or upsell in any way, or do they keep it pretty much focused on the product, um

Steve Lequerica: I love the way you brought that up, 'cause naturally, think about it, when a brand's using us, we're generally like a 20 to 30% bump on their traditional AOV on Shopify. You know, the, the quan- the, the basket size generally increases naturally, but also a lot of brands like to use our agents to either trigger, like this is where post-purchase can come in.

We can say, "Hey, if someone, if someone bought X main product, in two days, I want you to trigger an agent to reach out to them to try and upsell them on this adjacent product." And, and/or maybe you want them right then at-- maybe you want them ri- right? Maybe you want them right then and there versus triggering two days later.

Maybe you want them right then and there when they buy that product and say, "Hey, we can also [00:29:00] include this product for 50% off and a free gift with this additional purchase if you want." Like, there's a lot of different... Like, we can do free gift with purchase, we can do upsell post that I... But yes, to your point, that's where a lot of brands have been starting to test us on, on the post-purchase side, is for instant up- instant upsells on adjacent products, either a day later or three months later or whatever.

And then, um, subscription brands. Subscription brands are licking their chops to test us for our, all of our new features, but for specifically reaching out to one-time purchasers, trying to drive them into a subscriber.

Jay Myers: Okay, yeah, we talked about this a little bit before we got on air, and I thought it was fascinating, and I kinda said, "Okay, hold on. Let's talk about that on the show." So, so tell me, tell me about this. It-- This is... So someone orders protein bar one time, and because there is a subscription on it, now you can trigger it where an agent will reach out and try to convince them to upgrade to a subscription[00:30:00]

Steve Lequerica: There or, or replenishing that order in 28 to 38, 30 days, right? When the traditionally they're, they're prob- likely gonna be out of product

Jay Myers: Yeah.

Steve Lequerica: and, uh, it would be time to replenish that order

Jay Myers: Right. So how do they, I guess if they're gonna upgrade to a subscription, they just, they give a link in the, in the text thread?

Steve Lequerica: And, and we could provide a discount on, on that, uh, on that, like, upgrade. Um, either instantly, like either even- like there, there's multiple ways we could do it. We could do free gift with purchase. But, but yeah, link-- generally link back to co- l- link back to where they can upgrade and also, um, a, a discount associated one, one time

Jay Myers: does there even need to be a integration with a subscription app, or could it just be with any subscription app? Like if a product has an active subscription and they're sending them to that product page to like, "Hey Steve, [00:31:00] noticed you bought this. Did you know you can save 20% off or 10% off? I can give you 50% off your first month or whatever if you wanna switch to a sub- subscription," and then you share the link.

Does... Is there an, is there an integration with the subscription apps or does it just work

Steve Lequerica: We were looking into like, 'cause there's a lot we could do with just having like if, if brands identify by customer tag or there's some way to tag like that customer is a subscriber. But with-- I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go down the technical path because I'd, I'd feel more comfortable with me, Alina or Corey talking through that.

But we ended up now going the path of like integrating directly with a Recharge and next is gonna be Stay AI and Skio, et cetera, 'cause, um, there were just, I think there were some gaps in data, but now like actually us having the connection to a Recharge, we can pull in all those different events to actually

Jay Myers: You can know if... Yeah, [00:32:00] there's probably, probably just keeps it cleaner that you would know if they either have an active subscription or had one in the past, just to keep the messaging not so you look like you... Maybe that person just canceled the subscription, and now they bought it once, and now you're trying to tell, sell them to a subscription again.

That might look bad, too. So I guess to

Steve Lequerica: Right

Jay Myers: um, yeah, that does, that makes sense. That's interesting. How do you, how do you price it then? Is it, like you're mentioning all these use cases. So you've got abandoned carts, the upgrade to subscription flow. You said this one brand is l- is kind of, they did some surveys with it.

'Cause I see on your website, I love your pricing model. I, uh, commission-based, like if they make sales, I love that. But for something like this or like this, the survey flows, like how do you price that?

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. The-- They're-- In, in the survey, they did provide a like... And essen- like, to answer your question, it's, it's all priced the same right now. So like there are gonna [00:33:00] be certain messages like when we're sending these post-purchase, like for example, the brand that sent the surveys, like they did provide some type of coupon code if they did complete the survey.

But, you know, there, there was still the element of there's a lot of messages that went out. We probably had conversations with customers, had a good conversation, but like they didn't buy anything. Like we just eat those costs, right? And then on the subscription side, we're in beta right now, so transparently, like unless we're getting a conversion or recover churn, et cetera, like there, there might be a lot of times where we're not actually getting paid for whatever that conversion or that conversation, but we're exploring potentially a different pricing model for the subscription use cases 'cause that's something we need to think through, right?

Like maybe, maybe there's an element of do we explore certain, um, a certain aspect of like a per message cost with that, um, or m- [00:34:00] maybe, you know, exploring a, a, an increase in, in the overall percentage that that brand has from, from a commission standpoint. Open to it all. But the, the great thing is now it-- brands are grandfathered into beta, so there is, there is no, no additional pricing at this moment.

Jay Myers: So yeah, to me that, I guess that seemed obvious, but there, there is no SMS fees the same way there is with a traditional SMS tool. If they make a sale, there's the commission and there's like, I think a flat monthly fee, but then the rest is just if they actually make a sale. But then there's no SMS fees on top of that, correct?

Steve Lequerica: Correct. We eat all the carrier costs, SMS costs, like that's, I believe 99% of instances brands are gonna look at, at that as a, as an advantage when working with us because I wanna be fully aligned with the brand. You're winning, you're winning, we're winning, right?

Jay Myers: the only way to go. So regardless if your agent sent 50 messages or five [00:35:00] messages, it doesn't matter. It's only if they get the sale

Steve Lequerica: And, and, and I, I don't know, maybe there's an avenue where we're gonna help brands increase... Maybe, maybe with this new ability to do so many new features, 'cause we also have now a connection with TikTok where we can help brands sell way more on TikTok for brands, you know, from, you know, cart abandonments and different ways that,

Jay Myers: like DMs

Steve Lequerica: Um, well, there's a huge gap between like TikTok Shop and Shopify where a lot of phone num- a lot of phone numbers are not being passed, right? So we're able to now collect a lot more event data from TikTok Shop specifically, and also do post-purchase events with TikTok Shop customers specifically, which there's like, there's a black box between Shopify and TikTok Shop with that.

So like I had an agency say: "Hey, can you test this with a brand?" And like we just so happen to have that same brand that like as cl- as a client that's doing nine figures, they sell shower heads. And, um, we just launched that a couple weeks ago and we're already seeing some [00:36:00] decent results. Like it's not a comparable like, hey, your conversion rate, like compare your conversion rate on post-purchase with traditional cart recovery, 'cause it's much different.

You're targeting customers that like were not showing intent to buy, et cetera. Like, but either way, it's still incremental and it's optimizing a whole different like subset of channels. So, so yeah, I mean, any way that... A- and that's what we're real- that's what really our goal is right now, is we're able to build so quickly, like a lot of us are now, given, you know, AI and, and, and all the advancements, is really what, what is, is going to move the needle for you as the brand operator or, or you at this brand that you would, you want to leverage live agents for?

Like if, if you had a, a, a shiny genie bottle, what would you want to use live recovery or, or live agents for alongside your AI and whatever to optimize for your specific brand? Like I'm, I'm starting to do [00:37:00] a lot more customer interviews a lot now that I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and tone down the travel a little bit because I've been on the road every week as you've probably seen, Jay.

Seen you a bunch, which I, I love. But, but yeah, I wanna, I'm gonna start talking with a lot of our, our top brands and, and just all brands of shapes and sizes like to, to understand their current experience and, and what they wanna specifically see. 'Cause we could build very quickly. I mean, we've launched subscription with Recharge and TikTok in like a couple weeks, so.

Jay Myers: Yeah. Yeah, and I'm willing to bet most brands, it's not something they think top of mind when they have like a, a chat, like the, the brand that wanted to send that survey or the brand, like it's not something you normally think, "Oh, I could leverage hundreds of human people to send these messages." Like that doesn't-- It's not a normal way of thinking.

You start to think like, "How can I build a tool to do this or d- or buy a tool?" But like you've got real people, and if you just make that known to brands, you're right, like there's endless possibilities of what could be done if they know that it was there.

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. And [00:38:00] some of what we fight, fight against is, is that, right? Is like, you know, what we do is so non-sexy and non, and non-cool right now with no buzzwords, MCP, Claude this or, you know, rock that. Like, it just works. It's, it's o- it's old school. It's humans that, that actually work and, and help your brand sell more stuff.

It just, you know, it, it just kinda operates in the background. But, you know, because there's not some crazy AI terminology with it and this, that, like it's-- I almost feel like brands get turned, turned off in a way. But at the same time, there are a majority of brands that are starting to come back that ha- initially had that AI buzz, and I'm in love, and I...

everything needs to be AI. I feel like a lot of what I'm hearing from really, really, like a lot top thought leaders, big-time operators is like, "We've never wanted to be able to differentiate a more authentic as a brand, and this is gonna help us do that in a lot of ways." [00:39:00] So it's not, "Oh, I should just do AI," or, "I should just do l- live people."

It's, "I should do AI, a lot of it, figure out where it fits. I should do my SMS retargeting email, and I should do live people," 'cause it all fits in

Jay Myers: Yeah. It's so interesting. We just-- We take for granted that 15 years ago, every time we called a brand, a human picked up. If they had a chat thing on their website, you were talking to a human, like there was no bots. And now, now that's like a luxury to talk to someone, and, and brands need to realize that, that you can, you can differentiate by just putting a human...

Like, it is so-- I, I would feel blown away, like every site I go on, I, I know the chat I'm starting with is always AI and, and, and it will try its best, but then eventually I almost always get to a point where I'm like, "Speak to an agent. Speak to an agent."

Steve Lequerica: Brother, brother. I mean, we're, we're building that too. We're gonna have something called Inbound because one of the biggest [00:40:00] feature requests that we have right now is what you just said. "Hey, like, we would pay you whatever you want, more percentage or a flat fee per month of like a couple thousand dollars if you can have your agents be like a chat bubble in the front of like when someone enters the site, and if they like wanna talk to some- wa- chat with an agent, chat with a, a rep."

And then we're having that conversation and helping them through their journey on the customer site from the start of the page versus them having to reach the checkout. 'Cause if a customer doesn't reach the cart or the checkout right now, we don't ever get involved. So, you know, like to your point, more ways that a brand can have the ability to connect with the customer.

'Cause, you know, right now I'm, I'm dealing with it right now. I'm, I'm dreading calling, calling the IRS, calling the town, the town of Nutley and all these things 'cause I know I'm gonna be on hold for three years and not gonna be able to talk to somebody

Jay Myers: Yeah. I've been-- We've all been there. Well, you said, uh, the play is to [00:41:00] sell with a soul in an AI-driven world. Tell me, tell me what that means. I mean, this, I feel like leads into it a little bit here, but selling with a soul, what, what is that about?

Steve Lequerica: Selling with the soul, that sounds like, that sounds like some of our marketing. I like it though

Jay Myers: I pulled it in from somewhere. It must've been, 'cause I have

Steve Lequerica: Yeah.

Jay Myers: yeah.

Steve Lequerica: I think at the end of the day, I just think it's, it's all about being authentic. It's so hard-- I think it's so hard to, for people to just be normal these days. Like, I even... Like, we were talking about before we jumped on the, on the pod, Jay, it's like I just... What you see is what you get with me. You know, from the moment I wake up to the moment I, I go to bed, like, I try to be as authentic as possible and really embody the brand, right?

And, and, uh, all my social media probably annoy people like crazy, and people get retargeted with our ads of me talking this, this, and that. But it's like, how in such an AI-driven world and a world that demands so much attention and crave for attention, it's like, how do you, how do you stick out? I don't [00:42:00] really, I don't really know any other way than to just be your true self, you know?

Even, even, even when I write all my content, there's no em dashes 99.9% of the time. There's no this, there's no that. I, I, you know, I go off the cuffs and, and, and ju- and, and just share, you know, raw things. You know, I get off a call and share exactly what happened, and, you know, might not, may not be for everyone, but, uh, but yeah, I think like, h- you know, and, and truly from the brand side, like it's, it's so remarkable to see sometimes brands that had so much hesitation and were, were so convinced that this type of way of, of doing business or talking to their customers just wouldn't work.

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Steve Lequerica: you know, the only time I've genuinely seen our product not work for a brand is when this brand sold the-- They, they, they're a very interesting business. They were doing like eight figures, but they sold like custom, like a custom [00:43:00] quilt that basically you'd send a bunch of shirts to them, and then they would cut them out and craft it and connect them all.

So it's like, you know, you were Bobby who's 18 years old and your mom wanted to get all your jerseys together or blah, blah, blah, you know? Like, it was cool, but there was so much back and forth of like issues with the order, back of returns, this, that, and, you know, once our services are rendered, like in our terms and conditions, we're not refunding our commission based on if a customer refunds.

So like the, the, the way that they were just structured, it just didn't work. But, but yeah, outside of that, I mean, we work with brands that sell custom car parts, $7,000 engagement rings, you know, $5,000 beds, you know, $20 spices. It really doesn't matter. Having real actual people act as salespeople for your brand.

Like, just like if you're at the mall. I'm at the mall. I'm not t- I'm not, I, I, you know, I might be in the minority, but if I'm at the mall, I'm going to buy shoes or a shirt or whatever. I'm enjoying that process with the sales agent. I'm [00:44:00] not talking to ChatGPT and getting recommendations or whatever. Like, I'm just, we're gonna have it the old-fashioned way.

Yeah

Jay Myers: So where do you draw the line? Um, I sometimes hear people say that the best is a hybrid approach. You know, use AI what it's good for, use humans what they're good for, automate what needs to be automated, and humans for the other part. Like, obviously, brands are gonna be using automation and AI for a portion of their business.

Like, there's gotta be things that it's like, "Yes, use that." Do you have a, a rule in your head where you say like, "Okay, this is where humans excel and you should leverage it, and this is where automations and AI excel," and is-- do you have any guiding principles for that?

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. You know, it's funny, I, I see a split a lot of times 'cause I always am interested to hear from operators at the brand level, like what their sentiment is, and I see such an interesting split. Like certain, certain brands are like, or, uh, certain operators are like, "I [00:45:00] wanna retarget, I wanna retarget everybody that I can under the sun as many times as I can.

I can't send them en-enough emails. I can't send them enough SMS. Live Recover can hit up people that are not-- also aren't opted into my marketing. I want them to hit up anybody they can." You know?

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Steve Lequerica: But I, I also don't totally agree with that. You know, I, I, I always enjoy brands that are very sensitive to that experience and like really take a very dialed approach, right?

You know. Lately, people not actually doing SMS, you know, doing email, not doing traditional SMS, but using Live Recover for everything abandonment,

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Steve Lequerica: using AI as a layer, of course. But, you know, what do I, what do I... I, I'd say crawl, walk, run, Jay. So my recommendation, and based on what I've seen successful, is you start Live Recover with a small subset of traffic 'cause you're not gonna believe it.

So just have us either target very high-value customers, [00:46:00] so like over X amount. Like, yeah, like, uh, we only target customers that have a lifetime spend of X or they have $300 or more in their cart, right? And is a, and is a first-time customer. And then, you know, over a 30-day period, we measure the volume, we measure the success, we measure how those conversations look, and then maybe we open up that net a bit and say, "Hey, why don't we now also start to target people that are rePete customers?

And let's adjust that threshold so we can now have more..." 'Cause the more we restrict in terms of who we're targeting, the more, the less sample size you have to see of what we could recover and optimize, et cetera. So I always say like crawl, walk, run in order to, to make everybody comfortable. 'Cause once a brand sees A, you can get set up with us in 10 minutes and we could start recovering revenue in like 30 minutes.

So it's like the easiest thing you'll ever set up on, on Shopify and in your tech stack. And then over the course of time, we just kind of sit in the background and do our thing with- without you having to be [00:47:00] involved. And so a couple weeks go by, they start to see X amount of revenue recovered, X amount of recovery rate, very good conversations.

Seldomly is someone gonna wanna leave and, and turn off the software.

Jay Myers: That w- you a- I think you kind of answered my next question. Uh, I was gonna ask if, if someone has a smaller budget and they wanted to try it, w- what is the first place to plug in? But you're saying pick the f- first-time customers who've never ordered before and haven't, I guess, also haven't opted in 'cause they're brand new, so you can SMS them, and then you can pick a higher, a higher priced item.

If your a- average order value is $40, maybe you wanna target 60 and up or something along those lines

Steve Lequerica: Or 100 and up, yep

Jay Myers: Yeah. Super interesting. What are you doing... So I don't know, do you know the exact number? Like you, you said your, your average recovery rate, is it 21% you said earlier?

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. Average conversion rate across all brands is 21%.

Jay Myers: It's crazy. I, I think for [00:48:00] normal abandoned cart automations, like it's in the single digits. I don't know exact- Do you know what it is? Like

Steve Lequerica: Low sing-- I mean, for traditional SMS, I would say like on a good day would be, you know, on a good day would be 6% or 7%.

Jay Myers: So you're roughly tripling them. What is happening inside those conversation that are so different? Like, w- where's the gap?

Steve Lequerica: You know, it, it's, it, it varies so much 'cause there are, of course, a lot of conversations where, you know, a customer didn't even realize they could talk to someone.

Jay Myers: Yeah

Steve Lequerica: may, you know... And, and maybe the brand is leaning in with like, "Hey, you know, saw you, you checked this out. Is there anything I can help you with or do you want a discount?"

And they're like, "Oh yeah, I'd love a discount." Right? So the, the immediacy, like right this is truly like someone's leaving the store, uh, 'cause it's, it's 30 minutes post, right? So 30 minutes post, they're getting a text message from an actual real person from the brand from [00:49:00] where they just were evaluating whatever.

And, and so that, that instant definitely plays a role in a lot of bo- like we, we measure like conversation data and a lot of like customers, I'd say 60 to 70% plus buy passively. You know, had, had just maybe a basic question or two,

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Steve Lequerica: So also think about from a brand side, when a brand's overcomplicating getting started with us, like, "Oh, like how are you gonna answer all my questions?

How are you gonna do this? How is it even a..." A lot of times they're very basic questions starting off. Like, you know, they have a basic question or two sizing this, right? Where I get excited is, to your point, w- what else happens is like there are very complex questions. You know, maybe they have sizing questions.

Like someone says, "I normally run big in a large," like, "Do you have a sizing chart? If, if I also, if I also wanna buy this for my sister who is X, like what is your recommendation?" Like there's so many different nuances. We can talk for days. But, uh, you

Jay Myers: But that's-

where, that's where the [00:50:00] automated ones, they fall apart. That's

like,

Steve Lequerica: even with the best AI, even with the best AI, you know, if you're like, "Hey," like, "Hold on." Like, like if you're talking to an AI bot, like our agents actually I've seen in a conversation, not that this really matters much, but it's like, "Hey, hold on. Give me five, five minutes. I'll be right back.

I have to use the restroom." Like,

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Steve Lequerica: gonna be able to be that authentic,

Jay Myers: You'll come back and it'll say, "Are you still there? Are you, are you still there?" Uh, "Chat closed."

Steve Lequerica: Well, you know, uh, we were talking about like how we have, you know, in the nature of us, I guess, doing good business, you know, you always, always have some competition flaring up out of the woodworks. And told you about a, a recent, uh, you know, company that made a c- uh, competing product that's also AI-enabled, so it's not really apples to apples.

But anyway, they're targeting all my customers. And their, uh, their whole moat is, uh, that they still do have real people, but there's also AI on top of it. So one of my brands that a- [00:51:00] started to test them, um, for a period of time showed us some conversations, and it actually showed like a customer being like, "Are you really a human?"

Which our agents get all the time. Like, "Are you really a human?" Obviously, we can answer that authentically.

Jay Myers: common questions.

Steve Lequerica: It's very common. And when, when in that conversation, when the brand showed us, our agent asked, or our c- the customer asked the agent, like, "Are you a real human?" And, and the response was, "I can't answer that question."

Jay Myers: Right, 'cause they don't wanna say no.

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. Yeah

Jay Myers: can't lie and so interesting. How long do you think... Like, do you think there's a world in five years where AI becomes so good that there's like, or like there's never a need for human? Or does the more people get frustrated with it? I was listening to, um, Gary Vaynerchuk yesterday, and he's

Steve Lequerica: Yeah, what does my Jersey boy say? He's a Jersey boy, what does he say?

Jay Myers: he's, he's big on, on, on, like, things going, uh, um, not, not or- not organic. What's the right word I'm looking for? Like, going back [00:52:00] to non... Like, like teenagers wanting non-smartphones and people wanting real experiences. Like

Steve Lequerica: actually kids playing in the park

Jay Myers: Yes. Yes. Like

Steve Lequerica: Yeah, and like playing like Sega together. Like, yeah, like I'm with that

Jay Myers: wants, he wants to open, he wants to open a restaurant.

I think he's got seven or eight restaurants, and he says he wants his next restaurant to be one where when you come in, you have to put your phone in a, in a locker. And every table, every table is a communal table, so you have to sit with other people. You can't just sit and stare at your spouse and not talk about anything.

You have to sit in a group and, and learn, and meet new people

Steve Lequerica: I would love

Jay Myers: talk and, and that's... Yeah, he says that he w- uh, like

Steve Lequerica: Brother, I would be right there with you. I would be taking retreats with you, you know? And, and 'cause, you know, you know I love you, so I wanna hang out with you more. Like,

Jay Myers: I'll be at your table with my phone in the locker. 100%, man

Steve Lequerica: I mean, we might start by twitching a little bit, but we'll get over it after 15 minutes, and then we'll have actual real dialogue, you know?

Jay Myers: I love it. [00:53:00] So you've worked with, is it 4,000-plus brands?

Steve Lequerica: Oh gosh, Jay, you're making me feel my age. That's why I lost all my hair. That's why I wear

Jay Myers: the, this, the, I mean, the, it's my AI agent scraping things, pulling this in, so I'm gonna trust my agent here that told me that you worked with 4,000

Steve Lequerica: Over, over 4,000 at this point. You know, we have close to a, you know, we have close to 800 brands live. Um, yeah, well over 4,000 that I've, I've come across over the last five years

Jay Myers: Is there anything that the best ones are doing different? Like I know obviously like, you know, the agents are the ones talking to people, but I always say, you know, how you work with an agency, how you work with a product, how you work with like how, how merchants work with us at Bold affects how good their products are able to do.

Like what do the best brands using LiveRecover do to s- to really get the best results? Is it, is

it...

Steve Lequerica: for a live recover?

Jay Myers: Yeah. Yeah. So like if I'm a brand and I wanna use it and I said, "You know [00:54:00] what? Tell me exactly what I have to do to be the best customer you ever had. I wanna be a case study. I wanna be on the front page of LiveRecover as, as your, as your poster boy.

What do I have to do as a brand to be t- to be that? Like how do I be a good brand with, with the, with the tool?"

Steve Lequerica: Yeah. So any brand that I work, work with generally, I'm gonna give them access to Slack support at no additional co- like I want the re- like I want every brand just to get on, and I know once they install the app, they're gonna be successful 'cause our team and the way we do business is phenomenal. We're gonna help you execute.

Now, the best brands are communicating with m- us in Slack, and I'm not talking like anything crazy like this. Initially getting us some brand guidelines so we can build out that knowledge base exactly the way they want, so we're not messing up any conversations, right? 'Cause that's important. If a brand is very sensitive to how we're gonna interact with their customers, why don't you help us out a little bit there?

So that's, that's important. And [00:55:00] then two, if I'm gonna label two things, it's that, and then being open with us on, and communicative with us on how we're setting up that initial flow of who we're targeting, are we providing an offer or not, and how we're, how we're gonna measure that for the first 30 days.

And then also their marketing calendar, right? 'Cause we're... Think about it. If we're having conversations with all these people that abandon checkout and are on your site, et cetera- Yeah ... and we're not aligned with what you're also offering on-site for all those other discounts that are floating out there, we might provide somebody an offer or have a conversation that isn't aligned with what your existing offers are.

Like for example, Memorial Day. What is the brand's site-wide offer? You know, we should be pushing that versus providing any discount codes, right? So it's the best brands, the best brands are aligning with us on initial setup of brand guidelines and the marketing calendar. Marketing calendar. You know, aligning us on marketing calendar

Jay Myers: they have it in min where [00:56:00] they, like, put, put this in or do they actually, like, tell an agent? Or if, like, if I, if I'm running a promotion for the next month where it's buy any two bags of coffee, get a free mug or whatever, and I want my agents to know about this, how do I convey that?

Steve Lequerica: Yeah, dude. It's like, honestly, the one-- like a brand that, a brand that they're okay with me sharing this too is like, like think about it, like we have like very like... They'll just go to us in Slack, and I'm gonna share this with you real quick. Am I able to share screen?

Jay Myers: Yeah, you are. Yep. Yep

Steve Lequerica: Um, here is my Slack. Just real quick, I'm gonna share this.

These are my boys from Jordan Craig. Love my, love my brand from, uh, my, my live recover, live recover fam from Jordan Craig. So like, think about it, like these are the upcoming-- like this is the sale name for the upcoming Memorial Day sale or whenever their, their past sale was. It looks like this was last month.

And like they're letting us know, "Hey, [00:57:00] here's when the sale start date is, end date. Here are the codes. Here's the offer." And then like our agents are communicating back and forth with whoever's running that at the brand. And then, you know, once that's, once we, once we set

Jay Myers: They're right in there in the Slack channel

Steve Lequerica: oh, they're right at like, dude, like we're literally an extension, we're an extension of these brands' team.

You know, brands that are close to doing a billion dollars in revenue are like coming to us like as if we work together at their, at their office, you know? And

Jay Myers: realize they were that

Steve Lequerica: how we want it to be. Yeah, like that's how connected you can be. And like we've also started to dabble in like, should we, should we invest or should we start to think about like a service model?

'Cause given the level of support that we provide, like brands are getting more value than what they're paying for. Of course, that's always tough to articulate and everyone's gonna have their own opinion, but that's why I'm like, when a brand has issues with pricing, like talk to me. Let's figure out what actually makes sense in order for your brand to be profitable.

'Cause I know [00:58:00] if you're profitable, this should never be a question, right?

Jay Myers: Yeah. Yeah

Steve Lequerica: the incrementality, but like the value add that we're actually adding to your business. 'Cause there's so many different nuances and ways that we should be driving value, not just from money that we're coming in. You know, we, we, we could do ad hoc reporting with all these insights, right?

We talked about the insights. I can slice and dice all these conversa- on all this transcript data and give it back to you, Jay, to know exactly what every single customer that abandons checkout, what they're saying about Pillow Cute, you know?

Jay Myers: Yeah. And you'll never get that with an automated text message that people can't reply to. You're either gonna get a click that you just give away 10%, or you get nothing, you get crickets, but you don't get the data. That's huge. That's huge. Like I, I-- In my head, I'm thinking, do you get the transcripts? Like, do they get every...

Steve Lequerica: Every single transcript,

Jay Myers: I would take all those transcripts, and I would, I would, I would throw that in Claude or ChatGPT, and I would ask it to read through [00:59:00] all of them and pull out the five themes of questions, and I would, I would f- I would answer those on my checkout. Like, yeah, huge

Steve Lequerica: Exactly. Like that, that, that alone, that's why we built the insights feature that does basically just that.

Jay Myers: You have that built.

Steve Lequerica: yeah, we have that built because about a year ago, uh, one of our brands, Jordan Craig, you know, came, came to us and we were beta-ing that, and we basically gave them a beta of it, and then they used that data to re- They were realizing that their shipping, like their whole shipping...

Basically, customers were-- Their, their shipping was an absolute mess. And so they used all of that data that they were compiling, and they s- they actually built a shipping program into three different tiers, like gold, silver, bronze, based on all the cr- the transcript data that they evaluated from our, all of, just our conversations.

Not saying that, like, we're on- the only conversations that they're having, but like there's so much value in just our data that we're [01:00:00] actually having with legit, like, potential customers that, you know, it, it, it transformed the way that they now handle their fulfillment, which is kind of a dope use case

Jay Myers: That's, that's worth its weight in gold right there. Amazing. This has been super informative. I didn't realize, like, I had a very surface level understanding and I, I, uh, I was, I'm actually blown away. I didn't realize how connected you would, you are with the agents. I, in my head, I kind of thought it was there's a bucket of agents and you have just an app and you, you don't talk to them.

But I had no idea it was so

Steve Lequerica: No, I appreciate that, man. Yeah, I mean, like, they're like, they're like my family, you know? It's, uh, like, like our, our family, like Corey and I. Um, and, and they're... What's, what's also special is like over 90% of them we've retained since we've started the company, you know, when we even bought, bought the business from, uh, Dennis and, and Cody initially.

Jay Myers: Yeah

Steve Lequerica: so there's a lot to be said about that. They eat, breathe and sleep the, the space, you know?

Jay Myers: [01:01:00] Amazing. Okay, I know we're over time here. You've been super generous. I wanna ask you, you know, the topic or the theme, the title of this show, sorry, is the Shopify 1%. And I often like to ask guests if there's something they can do today to improve their s- their s- Shopify business 1%, 'cause I don't know if you know, I didn't make this...

I didn't invent this concept, but if you improve 1% a day for a year, you're 3,700% better at the end of the year compound. So

Steve Lequerica: Ooh, baby

Jay Myers: in your space, I mean, ri- right away my mind is going to like y- not just 1%, 10%, get, get a human on your, on your abandoned carts. But, uh, can you leave our listeners with something they can do to make their store 1% better?

Steve Lequerica: Um, gosh, 1% better is, you know, I hate to say it, 1, 1% better I would say

Jay Myers: It can be 2 or 3%, or 10 or 21

Steve Lequerica: Gosh, Jay, uh, call me [01:02:00] biased, but what's coming to my mind and, and this is what I've been talking about, like I've spoke at a couple of events in this year is screw live recover, screw anything. Like you should be figuring out a way to talk to your customers that go to your site and leave without buying.

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Steve Lequerica: know? There's a lot of customers you can talk to today, either text or call, if they go to your site and abandon checkout. Do that for a period of time, you're generally gonna reach a certain scale that either, A, you're worried about, ooh, am I calling someone or texting someone that's on a do not call list and I might get sued for?

Or B, you're just gonna reach scale where you're not able to follow up with everyone and, and get, get every... But what you're gonna always do is you're gonna get insights from those conversations that are, that could potentially transform your business overnight. So screw live recover, screw this. Just talk to your customers genuinely at any point and see what happens for you, 'cause I think that'll get [01:03:00] you way more than 1% better

Jay Myers: I love that. That's so good, and it's something that sounds obvious but hardly anyone does. But that's, n- I don't know what, it varies by store, but rough- 97% of the people who come on your store don't end up buying. So you're not talking to 97% of the people. Like, it... If you put that in the context of imagine a retail store like wa- like 97, imagine 97% of people come in, turn around, and walk right back out, and nobody talks to them.

That's what's happening

Steve Lequerica: it's mind-blowing. Like, and, and, you know, like in this day and age, just even having... You know, I've always said like the only good qualities about me, uh, the only good qualities about me is I have a decent memory and I can talk a little bit. And, and just being able to actually genuinely talk to people, 'cause I do

Jay Myers: qualities about you than that. Come on

Steve Lequerica: I appreciate you, Jay. But no, I, I mean, just be- being able to talk to people these days, gosh, you can, you can change the [01:04:00] world if you can actually talk to people. 'Cause I tell you, man, people don't even know how to communicate these days

Jay Myers: We, we're recording this right after Sub Summit, and, uh, this'll probably go in a couple weeks, but we literally said this today, like being at Sub Summit last week, there's, there's been a few brands that we've been talking to or like some of them are just... And then at, at Sub Summit, like we're giving hugs.

Like people are running up and it's like, it's like th- it just would never happen, you know? And, and talking, being in person, meeting them, yeah, nothing beats it. So I couldn't agree more. Steve, I know you've got, uh, a little bit of an offer that you were super gracious to. Before the show, I asked you if there's, if there's anything you wanted to extend to our listeners.

So first of all, I guarantee there's a lot of people listening right now that are thinking about trying or using LiveRecover and, and I'm a huge fan. Um, I, I, I cannot-- I am not sponsored in any way to say this. I just genuinely believe in what you're doing. Uh, m- maybe [01:05:00] LiveRecover will be a sponsor one day, who knows?

But like, that's not the point. I, I, I've been that customer. I've been that person banging my head against a wall. I've been that one yelling at the AI agent just screaming, "Human, human." And I think what you're doing is amazing, and I love that it is going against a lot of what is so easy to get caught up in right now.

And every time I open Twitter, it just, it feels like, A, I'm behind on everything and the whole world is ahead of me, and even though I'm, I know that I'm in like the, the, the top 1%, but I-- you feel like you're a million years behind and you feel like everything is... But you're, you got real humans. You're, you know, that never goes out of style, and I love what you're doing.

So if someone wants to try this, where can they go? And tell me about this, like, offer that you mentioned.

Steve Lequerica: No, I appreciate you immensely, Jay. And yeah, the, uh, the offer I wanted to mention before they actually kick me out of this place is, uh, so in, in all seriousness, I wanna make [01:06:00] this simple stupid for anybody to get to just test. So I actually would like to offer what we call free summer. Jay and I call it free summer.

So if you're signing up from this show, whether it's a, a link Jay provides or just reaching out to me that you found out about through this show, we're gonna give LiveRecover for free to test for the entire summer. So June, July, August, you will not... You can literally get free money even if for whatever reason you don't like live agents.

Everybody likes free money, and this is a tool that you'll be able to use for the whole summer at no, no charge to test

Jay Myers: Amazing. No-brainer to try it. Steve, thank you so much. It's liverecover.com, right?

Steve Lequerica: liverecover.com. Find me on socials. It's my name, Steve LaCricca, IG, LinkedIn, Twitter. Um, and would love, would love, love to speak to any of you

Jay Myers: Steve, you're an absolute legend. Thank you so much

Steve Lequerica: You're the GOAT, Jay. Thank you so much for having me