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Many companies recognize the importance of delivering a good customer experience, but only a select few see it as an act of service — a powerful opportunity to make their users feel valued and cared for.
Customer experience is an art that Fj Tamimi, head of CX at Whop, obsesses over. Through his obsession, Fj helped Whop become a $300 million marketplace for digital creators worldwide and is making us rethink our entire idea of customer experience. The lessons we can learn from how Fj approaches customer experience have as much relevance to law firms as they do to B2C tech companies like Whop. Regardless of industry or company, a fundamental desire never goes away — the human desire to be taken care of and to matter.
Some of Fj’s methods may appear extravagant, such as delivering pizza directly to a customer’s doorstep, yet it’s precisely this commitment to exceeding customer expectations that has endeared Whop to its clients and fueled an eightfold increase in revenue year over year.
The Whop platform
Founded in 2021 by Steven Schwartz and Cameron Zoub, Whop’s mission is to transform anyone into an internet entrepreneur. The platform is a digital marketplace where creators can sell digital products ranging from e-commerce courses to options trading community memberships. Whop makes its money by getting a modest cut of each transaction—anywhere from 3% to 4.5% plus a processing fee. Beyond facilitating transactions, Whop provides a suite of tools for promotions, sales, and analytics to its creators. Most importantly, Whop’s customer experience is unrivalled and is a major reason for its success, with a recent $17 million Series A raise.
Customer experience vs customer support
Understanding the distinction between Customer Support and Customer Experience is a fundamental requirement for any high-growth business. Customer support is the process in which a company helps its customers solve problems or challenges via email, phone, or other channels. Customer Experience goes further and encompasses the entire journey that a customer has with a company. Fj’s strategy at Whop fundamentally believes that you should never wait for a customer to contact you with a problem before starting the customer experience process. If you can equip your customers with what they need and want before they request it–you don’t just prevent a future problem–you give them more than they expect which strengthens your relationship with them as a brand.
The new standard of customer experience
Many companies these days build user flows preventing the user from reaching a real person. They consider customer support an expense and intentionally make it difficult to talk to someone. Fj and the Whop CX team flip this notion on its head and allow customers to get support within one click. They don’t just believe customer support is something to be minimized, they believe customer support should be maximized. In reviewing their analytics, Whop found that customers who talk to customer support are more likely to come back, purchase more on the platform, and retain.
This realization made them wonder, “How do we build the best rapport with these users?” When handling issues, the team makes sure to understand the problem and explains to customers that they’re there to help, even giving out their phone numbers to do so. Whop’s team has gone as far as offering customers dinner delivered all the way to their homes, which has gotten them social media shoutouts, and 5-star reviews on Trustpilot. All of this resulted in 99+ CSAT scores, or customer satisfaction scores, which are a commonly used metric indicating how satisfied customers are with a company’s products and services. More importantly, it made Whop’s customers feel the team was on their side.
Putting it all together
The key to implementing a successful customer experience, according to Fj, lies in attentively listening to user feedback and creatively addressing their needs. “The main takeaway is just to listen to the problems that your users are having and figure out the best solution,” Fj emphasizes. He advocates for a comprehensive approach to product development, where customer support solutions are not isolated but benefit the entire customer base. “Productatize every single thing, because what benefits one customer, through support, will benefit a ton of other customers,” he notes, highlighting how this philosophy has significantly contributed to the platform’s positive ratings and nearly 300 five-star reviews on Trustpilot.
Fj further elaborates on the importance of cross-team collaboration in understanding and meeting customer needs. “Talking to account management is like, okay, you’re talking to creators on the platform right now. What are their pain points? How can we help them? What are they spending their time on so that we can automate it for them?” he explains. This extends to customer support, where analyzing ticket trends provides insights into user satisfaction levels. “And then talking to customer support is like looking at analysis of the tickets we’re getting, what are people reaching out about? What are people upset about?” By integrating feedback from support, sales, account management, and leadership, Fj outlines a holistic strategy for improving customer experience. “You put all four together and then you’re like, okay, cool. I understand all of their needs. Then, introduce a product roadmap that covers everyone’s needs and aligns with the company’s business strategy. And that has been the framework,” Fj concludes, underscoring the collaborative effort required for a phenomenal customer experience.
