Shelley E. Kohan (00:01.858)
Hi everyone and thanks for joining our weekly podcast. I’m Shelley Kohan and I’m very excited to welcome Leigh Sevin, who is the co-founder of Endear It is a CRM retail solution for modern brands. So tell us what that means and why it’s important, Leigh.

Leigh Sevin (00:22.415)
Yes, so Endear is a CRM for omni-channel brands. And what that means to us is we are really here for the retail team at those brands. In our opinion, that is the team that is the most underserved by technology, but also with the biggest upside to improving the way that they work every day. So what that really means on a sort of day-to-day level is store associates typically have no software besides the point of sale.

but they’re also responsible for generating a large share of a company’s revenue, sometimes north of 80%. And they still today have no way of influencing how to get foot traffic in the door. So our platform allows them to scalably reach out to customers without sacrificing personalization and create those lasting relationships that not only generate a sale today, but also create very high loyalty, very high LTV, and ultimately give them

numbers to what they do every day and give them a sense of gratification and sort of success in their day-to-day jobs.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:26.306)
I love that, Leigh, and I also love the story of how you helped co-found the company, which is your frustrations with the lack of continuity between the online and the offline channels. And so your idea with your co-founder was try to help solve that problem. And it’s a big problem for retailers, for sure. So welcome, and we’re excited to talk about this more in depth.

Leigh Sevin (01:50.745)
Me too, thank you for having me.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:52.673)
Of course. I think one of the biggest things that’s kind of really shifted, I know we’ve been talking about this shift for years, but I think now we’re really seeing it come forward. And that is we’re moving away from a transactional relationship in society with customers. And we’re really becoming more of this kind of shared, meaningful, you know, relationship with our customers. These customers, they want to feel connected to the brand, and they actually want to be part of that bigger story.

So talk to us a little bit about that.

Leigh Sevin (02:25.198)
I think that brands, it’s never been more competitive, right? Especially in the digital world, right? So you’re competing against new brands that are popping up every day. I think as a supporter of small businesses, I think it’s amazing that it’s so easy to launch a brand, but that creates a lot of competition and competition creates a lot of expensive marketing. And so the only way as a brand that you can compensate for that customer acquisition is to think about loyalty.

And today, as you’re saying, people have a thirst for authentic connection. And the people who are best able to deliver that on behalf of your brand are the people who work in your stores, the people who see customers every single day, who know them by name. I mean, when I talk about what Endear does, so often people think about the local boutique or the high-end luxury store where they know every customer and they call them and they know their kids’ names and they know their husband’s names and they know their birthday. Endear’s whole mission is

How do you actually create the opportunity to build that relationship with every single customer? Not just the top 10 whose names you happen to remember, but how do you use data? And now how do you use AI to think about growing that relationship without sacrificing the personalization? Our whole thing is you should be able to have that relationship with everybody and software makes that possible.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:47.289)
love that. And you’re right about this idea of the human touch and be able to connect with them on a more natural, authentic level. And I think a lot of people, when they think about AI, they’re thinking robotics and this programmed answering, but that’s certainly not what you’re an advocate for.

Leigh Sevin (04:01.804)
Exactly.

Leigh Sevin (04:08.024)
Correct, we’ve said it so many times. We believe that AI is there to take the annoying work out of humans’ lives. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t get to do the fun part. And I think for our user, the fun part is meeting customers, getting to know them, speaking to them, making product recommendations. And so the power of AI is actually on helping users figure out.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:18.317)
Ha ha.

Leigh Sevin (04:34.168)
who are those customers that I should be reaching out to? I’m not just gonna sit back and rely on the people who happen to speak to me. I should figure out who my real VIPs are, right? Who are the people that quietly spend a lot of money with us that aren’t as comfortable coming up and introducing themselves? So for us, it’s really about doing the heavy lifting and taking out the rote work that associates are expected to do.

and leaving time for them to actually get creative and get personal with their outreach so that they feel that they are doing their best work. It also means that retention at these brands, at these stores increases because people feel like they are contributing and they’re not being asked to do the same, quite frankly, the same boring task every single day.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:20.908)
No, I love that. The other thing I want to talk to you about is, so I teach marketing and CRM at Fashion Institute of Technology in Syracuse University. One of the big topics we always talk about is segmentation. And I know this is really changed in the past few years. And I can’t imagine in the last year how much this has changed. But what’s happening now is that this micro segmentation, which used to be very complex, very difficult to execute,

Leigh Sevin (05:30.478)
Amazing.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:49.918)
at scale and super costly, now, I don’t know, it looks like it might be a little easier.

Leigh Sevin (05:57.592)
Certainly the way that we do it makes it very easy. What we hear from everybody is, I want to build this segment and I want it to look a certain way and I wanted to have these features. And what we acknowledge very quickly is, especially if you’re in retail or you’re retail store manager, your background isn’t in data insights and analytics. You don’t necessarily know SQL. So how are you expected to do two main things? A,

it shouldn’t be your job, especially with AI, to even come up with the audience you want to build, let alone leaving it to you to build it perfectly. And we’ve seen that struggle so many times, especially from people who are like, this is just the first step in what I need to do to get out the right email or the right text to our customers. And so what Endear really focuses on with AI is facilitating that segmentation so that your life is much easier and you’re not weeding through

ands and ors and inclusive and exclusive, right? It should be a very simple, hey, I’m trying to build a list of VIP customers. Tell me who my VIP customers are, right? I think it should look a certain way, but you have all the data, right? So how can we get to a stage where I am not sifting through minutiae and I’m able to get to the part of the work that feels a little bit more important, which is the content of my message? Of course, AI can also help with the content of the message, right?

It’s having that sidekick, which is how, you know, I prefer to talk about AI. It’s not the robot that’s replacing you. It’s the sidekick or the personal assistant that’s helping you get your work done both at a higher quality and at a higher speed. And I think with segmentation, that’s where a lot of people need the most help.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:43.247)
What’s interesting, about what you said, I didn’t realize this, but so I was thinking on a broader scale like marketing teams, but I thought I heard you say like management, like a store manager can go in and be able to segment customers. Did I hear that correctly?

Leigh Sevin (07:59.458)
Yeah, mean, listen, there is no dearth of marketing software out there. God bless them. That’s a competitive space. I don’t need to go over there. I think marketing teams are overwhelmed with AI tools. As I said at the top, I still think it’s true that retail teams have almost nothing. And so we are very happy to be sort of leading the pack when it comes to equipping store associates with AI software.

and making them feel like they’re not getting left behind. This is something that they can use, they’re capable of using, and they ought to be using, right? So, you know, no more copying and pasting random texts or sort of using your own devices. Let’s give you a tool that lets you feel empowered and lets you leverage the latest technology to actually do more at your job.

Because I honestly, I don’t think associates actually love sitting around re-merchandising the store all day. So if you can give them something that again, feels very rewarding, right? And lets them contribute to the success of the brand at large, you’re gonna get that buy-in and they’re gonna be more productive day to day.

Shelley E. Kohan (09:10.196)
and they’re gonna want it’s gonna help their sales right so that’s what yeah

Leigh Sevin (09:14.961)
yeah, also that. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that up. It will also increase their sales. No, that’s exactly right. We’ve seen insane numbers twofold. The first is just generally sales numbers at stores increasing because of brands rolling out Endear. More importantly, we’ve seen AOVs increase 75%. We’ve seen frequency increase nearly double. And so those stats ultimately result in what I mentioned earlier, which is

Short-term, immediate sales at your store, long-term, higher customer lifetime value. And those two things can make or break a brand when you think about also the cost of customer acquisition at the beginning. So we are very much about ROI. We think that it’s something that every brand should be able to measure on every piece of software in real time. And because we are so focused on sales, it’s something that we want to put front and center.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:11.031)
I think that’s great. So let’s talk about a little more detail. Let’s talk about two things. One, inside the store, what kind of tools or technology provide that sales associate the ability to kind of get to some of those details or use an AI tool that is user friendly? And also, what happens then when that customer leaves the store? Is that the end of the story or can it continue?

Leigh Sevin (10:36.001)
Yeah, I think you’ve just touched on what we think is the unlock for retail, right? So what we hear all the time, and this is what’s so great about being a verticalized software is we get to talk to our users and really ask them, even with our own product, what’s not right about our product or what’s still hard about our product. And what we heard over and over is, know, Endear has this great notes function. I can write notes about customers, but…

I usually don’t have time to write notes about my customers. I’ve got another person walking in the door. It’s taking too long for me to type all this stuff or use my phone. So what we launched was an Endear AI note taker. And it’s so funny because note takers have taken over the digital world, right? No one joins a Google Meet or a Zoom without some, maybe everyone has a note taker. And so actually though, the store associates are, in my opinion, people who need it most because they don’t have time to write all this stuff down.

And so we have solved that problem by creating a very easy recorder that they can use in the store right after interacting with a customer. But it’s not just about dictation and turning that, you know, talk to text option. It’s about then leveraging what they just told the note taker as again, that personal assistant. That note taker will take all that information and make recommendations about how to use it as structured data. So.

Sounds like you just gave me a birthday. you want me to update the birthday field? Sounds like this person’s going on vacation. Should we send them a message a week ahead of their trip to ask them if they need anything and follow up about how their trip went? Great, I’ve created those tasks for you so that you know to send those messages and when to send them. And so it’s turning that in-store interaction into something that you can make into a long-term relationship by using that note taker and that

note taker will inevitably follow up with everything that needs to happen after the customer leaves the store, which was your second part of your question, right? So the customer comes in, you have a great interaction. Let’s capture all of that in the AI note taker. Okay, great. Now I have all these follow-up tasks that help me continue to build that relationship. I’m going to check in on their purchases. I’m going to follow up on their birthday. I’m going to check in on their vacation. And every time they hear from me, it doesn’t have to be,

Leigh Sevin (12:58.422)
transactional, as you said, right? It shouldn’t always be just about a sale. It should be about building that relationship. So how can we make that aspect of the job as easy as possible?

Shelley E. Kohan (13:07.895)
What’s really interesting is, so when I started in retail when I was 18 years old, we used what we call patron books. Does that name ring a bell? Client books? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leigh Sevin (13:14.646)
Okay. I mean, is it like a black book? Yeah, client books, black books. Yeah, for sure.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:21.783)
We call them patrons back at Bullock’s Wilshire, but so you’d have to write all this information down. And then we went to now inputting it online. what I think what you’re doing is, and you’ll probably appreciate this, is so with the higher level sales associates, so like people that work at the Saks Fifth Avenue Club or Bloomingdale’s At Your Service, they get these assistants that do, like human assistants that do what you just described. And I think, Leigh, what you’re doing is you’re

democratizing assistance for all associates.

Leigh Sevin (13:57.185)
Yeah, absolutely. This has always been about democratization, right? So the first level of democratization is for consumers feeling like you have a lifeline at the store that you can text and email with, and you don’t need to be spending tens of thousands of dollars to deserve that service. So that was the first level of democratization. And then the second level is what you’re talking about. You don’t need to be…

you know, not only an A level sales associate at an A level place, you can just, you know, work in retail and have these tools that have become remarkably affordable, right? We don’t, you know, they’re not people anymore. They’re just tools to make your job that much easier and also to be much better at your job. I think a lot of the time what we’ve seen or what we’ve heard is someone knows what the ideal behavior is.

but repeating that behavior every single day, even though you should, just becomes impossible. And so you stop doing it. And so it’s, you know, that is, think, where I even see value in AI in my day to day. It’s, hey, I know what this process should look like, but I want to set up the process once and have the automation take care of doing it for me every single day.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:11.745)
No, I think that’s great. And I think the other thing that you talked about with sales associates, you’re actually adding what we call in the workforce management side of the business, enrichment, job enrichment. You feel like you’re really…

developing a skill and you’re able to actually deliver a great service to a customer without having to be like you said that A plus, you know, sales associate or, you know, only the top of the pyramid gets these exclusive tools. So I love that about that part of your solution at Endear.

Leigh Sevin (15:44.854)
Yes, yeah, absolutely. And I think what we’ve also seen a lot of the time is if you are an associate and you’re new or you’re a store manager or regional manager and you want to be in the driver’s seat, how do we make it possible to ensure for the brand at large that your customers are getting contacted, right? Not everyone is always comfortable first day on the job sending a text message. It can be very, very intimidating.

especially if you’re new to retail, you’re new to this brand, you don’t know how you should speak. So that’s where AI can also be incredibly helpful, right? It helps you craft that first message where you can kind of take all the risk out of it and feel like, hey, the grammar’s right, the brand voice is right, the spelling is right of this person’s name. Like I have very little to worry about and sort of giving each brand that works with Endear the flexibility around control and outreach.

has really made people feel very confident about creating their own client telling strategy within the platform. Not every one is the same for everybody.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:49.022)
It’s a…

No, but it’s empowerment, right? You’re giving empowerment to the associates, which is great. So the other thing I want to talk about is I know a lot of retailer and brands are understanding this idea of you really have to balance AI with human touch and there’s got to be some type of human interaction involved in that AI. But tell me how are you delivering these like meaningful engagements, these impressions that last a long time with consumers or shoppers?

Leigh Sevin (16:54.603)
Yes.

Leigh Sevin (17:21.962)
think it really comes down to the scale at which you’re able to operate with AI, right? So with marketing, what they have to do is they have to think about being very broad and then saying, if I’m trying to maintain this broad level, well, how personalized can I get within this broad level? Sales is actually the inverse, right? It’s almost like I’m trying to be very personal. I’m trying to deliver something that feels authentic.

I’m creating a relationship with this customer. Okay, now how do I scale that up without sacrificing that level of personalization? So from where we sit, it becomes a lot more a matter of, I’ve completely lost my train of thought and I completely forget your question. So let’s pause and let me do that again. Can you repeat your question? I’m so sorry.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:08.148)
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So I know a lot of retail and brands, get this idea where you have to have, you know, a balance between AI and humans. There’s got to be some type of human interaction to make it more authentic. So tell me a little bit about how you’re delivering these meaningful engagements that have the balance between AI and humans.

Leigh Sevin (18:33.235)
Yes, I think that’s a great question. Ultimately, we think that the end point should be the human to human interaction. But what happens to facilitate that conversation ought to be AI. Because what we hear all the time is that store associates want to deliver a really personalized message. But delivering that personalized message takes forever. And so that is where the AI can be incredibly helpful. So you’re basically using the AI as your research tool.

So now instead of looking up 10 birthdays one at a time, I can look up a thousand birthdays with one click and then personalize that outreach to a thousand people about their birthday. So it’s really about putting the human front and center and letting the AI do all the hard work in the background, but keeping those two things working together.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:23.948)
love that example. That’s amazing. What a great example. Everyone loves their birthday. You know, there’s a lot of marketing. Go ahead.

Leigh Sevin (19:26.527)
Yeah.

Actually, not everyone loves their birthday, which is something I had to learn the hard way. So yeah, you got to be sensitive. Yeah. Do you love your birthday? So do I. I love my birthday too. I once got a message that suggested I shouldn’t love my birthday and I was very confused and I was like, this is a poor use of automation. I love my birthday.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:34.389)
What?

Some people get offended. I love my birthday. It’s my favorite day of the year.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:49.197)
Well, I think the other part of this kind of AI helpful productivity hack tool, I don’t know if you use that terminology, but that’s kind of what we’ve been saying is that, know, product recommendations is a huge thing. And while associates might know what’s in their specific store, and if you have a big store, maybe they just know one department of their store, but tell me the use case for this

you know, really efficient product recommendations that are actually relevant to the customer.

Leigh Sevin (20:24.543)
Yeah, I think again, you’re really touching on the difference between marketing and sales, right? So marketing to us is more a broadcast of what do we have generally? You know, what’s on sale? It’s very, here’s what we think you are interested in. With sales, it has to be, here’s what we’ve seen you be interested in and we’re tailoring it to you, not tailoring it to what fits our inventory right now. And so one of the things that…

has been a huge success within Endear is the ability to incorporate personalized recommendations into outreach very, very easily. So again, taking it back to the days where it sounds like you were in retail, right? I’m sure what you had were store associates taking selfies or like taking photos on their phones of products and sending it to customers. And it’s, you know, they’re going above and beyond and yet it’s a really clunky experience.

both for the associate and the consumer, they’re getting these like not best quality images. They don’t link to the website. They don’t have any context around size availability or pricing. And so what we wanted to do was really enable associates to take advantage of the e-comm experience and really take advantage of just generally the online to offline connectivity and say when now when you recommend a product, which maybe that customer

try it on in store or, know, again, using data, you can see that they bought this skirt last season and maybe they want the top to go with it. That’s where you can use your trained eye to send the most relevant products for that person, not the most relevant products for your latest marketing campaign and say, here’s what I think you’d like. It’s available here. Text me if you want it. I can put it on hold or, you know, this is the part of Endear that we’ve always believed in. go buy it online.

And Endear will take care of tracking that you purchased that thing because I texted you about it. And so for us, that online to offline is still at the core of what we think a lot of brands miss out on.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:28.436)
I think the other thing is that you touched upon this communication that the customer receives. And there’s definitely a fine line between personalized and creepy. And for me, I think it’s really creepy. I don’t want sales associates texting me on my personal phone.

Leigh Sevin (22:39.807)
Yeah

Shelley E. Kohan (22:47.656)
about stuff in a store, especially people I just salespeople I just met, you know what I mean? So that to me is a little creepy. So I love the fact that this kind of puts it in a more professional personalized environment. And I’m sure a lot of customers feel the same way.

Leigh Sevin (22:52.682)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Leigh Sevin (23:03.304)
Yes, think, know, oddly enough, one of the first things we needed to solve was protection for both sides. And ultimately what we were hearing from store associates was like, I really want to keep in touch with these customers, but sometimes the conversation goes in the wrong direction and they have my personal phone number and now I’m uncomfortable. And so I think the, what we try to deliver to the brands at large is a level of

transparency and compliance that they can monitor. So what are my associates sending and what are consumers responding? You want to have the ability to track all of this and track both for the sake of ROI, but also for the sake of protection and security. You don’t want people’s credit card numbers out there. You don’t want people’s personal phone numbers, any sort of personal information just floating around in an associate’s personal device by keeping it kind of within a platform.

where we are managing that for you, is actually the safer way to allow your associates to connect with the customers.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:08.684)
Absolutely, I never thought about the reverse, about the associate being uncomfortable with the customers texting them, but that’s great.

Leigh Sevin (24:12.157)
Yeah.

Leigh Sevin (24:15.592)
You’d be surprised. You never know who you’re dealing with on either side of a phone. So I always like to point out that it goes both ways.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:23.52)
You should write a book called The CRM, The Things I Learned While Developing This Company, because we’ve learned so much about these kind of interesting insights that might be counterintuitive to what we really think. But Leigh, it’s so great having you with us today. Do you have any closing thoughts for our audience and listeners?

Leigh Sevin (24:46.014)
clothing thoughts as well, but we can stick to closing thoughts.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:47.756)
I don’t know where my brain’s at. Shopping. You got me in the shopping mode.

Leigh Sevin (24:51.014)
No, that’s it’s Friday, shopping. We all just want to go out and shop. My closing thoughts generally are that we know that a lot of people generally, people who work in a retail environment are hearing probably a lot about AI and they’re wondering how it affects their jobs. And so I think what I’m most passionate about is seeing AI as a tool to make your job easier.

for you to get better at your job, for you to stand out in your career. And so we really believe that AI is not coming for your job. It’s something that every retail team should have access to as much as the marketing team does. And so if marketing is procuring AI software, retail managers should be thinking about procuring their own AI software. We would love to be that AI software, but if it’s not us, find something, because AI can really change the game for you.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:45.288)
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much and thank you to our listeners.

Leigh Sevin (25:49.706)
Thanks for having me, great to meet you.