Why Your CX Will Always Be Broken (& How to Hire and Scale Anyway), with Michael Bair

Most brands want customer experience to become a clean, efficient, fully solved function.Hire the team. Set the policies. Add the help desk. Bring in AI. Reduce the backlog. Keep customers happy.But as Michael Bair explains in this episode of CX After Hours, CX is never really “fixed.” The business keeps changing. New products create new questions. Policies create new friction. Channels multiply. Teams grow. Tools break. Expectations rise. And just when you think the system is under control, something else shifts.Michael Bair is the Founder of Bair Consulting and former SVP of Customer Experience at FIGS. He has spent 20 years working across customer experience, sales, retention, e-commerce, SaaS, and consulting, and has hired more than 1,000 people throughout his career.In this conversation, Michael joins Guillaume Luccisano and Anya Kelly to talk about what it really takes to hire and scale CX teams in the real world.They discuss why great CX starts with people who genuinely like customers, Michael’s “PhD” hiring framework - passionate, hungry, and driven - and why interview skills are often a poor predictor of performance.They also get into scaling teams without lowering the bar, treating AI as part of the staffing model, deciding what belongs with AI, BPOs, or internal agents, and why “Where’s my order?” tickets may be telling you something deeper about your shipping experience.Michael also explains why e-commerce CX teams should pay close attention to repeat purchase rate, and why the best CX leaders are often the people inside the company who stay closest to customers.Because CX is not a function you finish. It’s a function you keep building.Chapters:02:12 Great CX Traits03:41 PhD Hiring Framework05:21 Finding CX Talent08:26 Interviewing For Motivation11:22 Sales To CX Shift15:11 The Vent - Where’s My Order?17:47 Fixing Shipping Expectations24:53 Scaling CX Three Ps26:14 BPO And AI Staffing28:50 AI Limits and Leverage30:23 Routing VIP Customers32:32 Phones Versus Digital34:57 Email Backlog Debate36:45 The 10% Fix Framework37:18 Knowledge Base First38:57 Dashboards and KPIs40:06 Repeat Purchase North Star42:14 Memorable CX at Scale43:33 Chewy Surprise System📺 Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lHtwZc5iwjUSubscribe via email and get new episodes delivered to your inbox: ⁠https://yuma.ai/cx-after-hours⁠Follow the hosts:Guillaume Luccisano: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumeluccisano/⁠Anya Kelly: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/anya-kelly/⁠Follow this episode’s guest:Michael Bair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljbair/CX After Hours is the podcast for CX leaders and operators in retail and ecommerce who are in the trenches scaling customer experience to drive real growth.Powered by Yuma AI, the show goes beyond polished talking points to explore the trade-offs, pressure, and decisions that shape whether customers come back, spend more, and stay loyal.Learn more about Yuma AI: ⁠https://yuma.ai/