Whether for style or comfort, socks can be the cherry on top of any wardrobe. For comfort-focused sock and apparel company Bombas, however, socks mean so much more. As the most-requested clothing item in homeless shelters across America, socks are a simple way to not only warm the feet of those experiencing homelessness, but also to restore a sense of comfort, compassion, and dignity to the socio-economically disadvantaged community — something Bombas knows all too well.
“For every item purchased, a specifically-designed item that meets the needs of the homeless community is donated. Features of these items include reinforced seams, an antimicrobial treatment, and darker colors to minimize visible wear,” says Samantha Lee, Director of Customer Insights and Strategy at Bombas.
This focus on human kindness and comfort has led to Bombas donating well over 30 million items, while simultaneously growing a successful, socially-conscious, and customer-centric company.
Speaking to the latter, Lee sees customer experience as an essential piece of any B2C retail brand and critical for the success of Bombas. “It’s my goal to understand the customer throughout the entire journey — and Delighted helps me do that.”
“Customer experience is a huge part of the sales journey. Our team is built to be customer-centric throughout the acquisition, consideration, and retention phases, to not only meet customer needs, but also to engage with and delight our customers along the way.”
For Bombas, the entire customer experience begins when a prospective customer sees an ad for the first time and continues as they make their first purchase, return for repeat purchases, exchange products that don’t fit, and recommend Bombas to friends and family.
Bombas wants customers to be as happy wearing Bombas as they are making them — that’s why the Happiness Guarantee ensures that the Customer Happiness Team will do what it takes for customers to be satisfied with their Bombas.
Delighted NPS is the tool of choice for ensuring that customer expectations are met each step of the way.
Bombas surveys first-time customers post-purchase to collect data and feedback on both the product and buying experience. Delighted NPS helps the brand measure how strong a first impression they’ve made by asking customers how likely they are to recommend Bombas to friends or family.
“We believe that people need to try our products to experience just how comfortable they are. Often, after trying them once or interacting with our team, they will remain a customer. Delighted helps us answer the question: ‘How did we do?’”
In addition to creating a comfortable, high-quality product, Bombas’ success also stems from their ability to use customer feedback captured with tools like Delighted to make product and overall customer experience improvements.
By using Delighted NPS, Lee and her team are able to measure the strength of their brand and their relationship with customers — both of which positively reflect Bombas’ tremendous growth.
For Bombas, not only is Delighted NPS a way to measure customer experience, but it’s also a tool for discovering how the product and Customer Happiness teams can make improvements — something incredibly important for all of Bombas.
“We use NPS scores to help us consistently push ourselves to do better,” says Lee. “For example, the feedback surfaced the need for women’s extra large size socks, not just men’s. We were immediately able to take that data-backed insight to the product design and merchandising team to enhance our women’s size offerings.”
With constant NPS feedback data, Bombas can make proactive changes in the way products are designed to meet the needs of their customer — something Bombas sees as a huge win.
Online retail is hyper-competitive. For Bombas, prioritizing the needs of their customers is a way for them to compete with some of the bigger retailers in their space.
“How do we compete against the Amazons of the world? By using actual people to respond and interact with customers to provide a more personalized experience. Humanizing a transactional process, buying clothing, is essential for Bombas.”
Their emphasis on happiness expands to their employee happiness and company culture as well. From the start, the founders have recognized that their team and the people who work at Bombas are the keys to their success, and they’ve worked hard to ensure employees feel happy, fulfilled, supported and connected to both the mission and product across everything they do.
“We chose NPS as a metric because it’s heavily used in our industry and gives us a great sense of what our customers think.” At Bombas, data influences almost every business decision. From making product improvements to providing better customer care, the data collected with Delighted NPS contributes to Bombas’ goal of continuous improvement and customer attentiveness.
In Lee’s words: “Delighted shares a lot of values that we do: putting customers first, and making things intuitive and easy for the customer. If Delighted were taken away, it would be harder to understand how our first-time customers think of Bombas.”
Finally, when it comes to launching a customer experience program, Lee shares this advice for anyone unsure of where to begin:
“Always use data to understand why customers are doing what they do, but also use the insights collected anecdotally from those interacting with your customers daily to ask internally: “Why are we doing what we do?’”
Delighted helps some of the world’s most coveted brands gather actionable customer feedback and make customer satisfaction a competitive advantage.
Sign up now to send surveys for free. You’re minutes away from getting feedback!
