*BONUS Episode* Sarah — Director of Customer Success

Sarah: 0:00

I know that our artists don't want to spend time working on their website. You know, we want them to spend their time in their studio painting and just creating their artwork, so we try our best to make it as easy as efficient as possible.

Laura Arango Baier: 0:14

Welcome to the BoldBrush podcast where we believe that fortune favors the bold brush. My name is Laura Arango Baier, and I'm your host. For those of you who are new to the podcast, we are a podcast that covers art marketing techniques, and all kinds of business tips specifically to help artists learn to better sell their work. We interview artists at all stages of their careers, as well as others who are in careers tied to the art world in order to hear their advice and insights. On this episode, I interviewed Sarah, Director of Customer Success at FASO and BoldBrush. This is an exciting episode because she tells us about Fasthosts features and how the most underutilized ones are actually the ones that will help artists the most. We also talk about ways that FASO helps her artists whenever they run into any problems on their sites. And we also talk about some of the behind the scenes of how FASO and BoldBrush actually work. Basically, this episode is all about understanding what FASO is all about, and how FASO is a toolbox full of useful features that artists can use to take their sales to the next level. Hello, Sarah, and welcome to the BoldBrush podcast. How are you today? Hey, Laura, I'm doing great. Thanks.

Sarah: 1:21

How are you?

Laura Arango Baier: 1:22

Feeling? Pretty great. I'm excited to hear from you all about FASO. But first, I want you to please tell us a little bit about your role and what you do it fast. So

Sarah: 1:31

okay, great. So I guess my official title is Director of Customer Success. This role carries many responsibilities from managing the customer success team, optimizing the customers journey and coordinating with different departments at FASO to ensure that we're all aligned towards our members, finding Vasso to be the best place for them to be at

Laura Arango Baier: 1:53

perfect. How did you even get started at FASO?

Sarah: 1:57

Well, I was working at a tech co working space called gitam in downtown San Antonio. And one of my colleagues introduced me to Clint Watson. So Clint is the founder and CEO of FASO, BoldBrush Amuse arrow. And so when I started talking to Clint, I learned more about his vision for the company, and his vision for the artists community. And I was really interested. So I did some research on the company, I learned about like the mission, you know, the culture, and I thought, it's a great place, you know, to work at. And then, thankfully, it was about maybe a few weeks after that, after meeting Clint, I learned that he was looking to hire someone to run his customer success department. And I had about maybe 10 years of experience in being in a very similar role. So I threw my name in the in the running, if you will. And now seven years later, I'm here at FASO. And I really love working here. I really feel like FASO is my home. Oh,

Laura Arango Baier: 3:02

it's so sweet. Yeah, I

Sarah: 3:04

enjoy it. You know, the people I work with are amazing. So that has a lot to do with it as well.

Laura Arango Baier: 3:08

Yeah, I think you mentioned earlier that it's just like 20 people write about? Yeah. Oh, that's so nice. It's like an actual small business.

Sarah: 3:19

It is. And I truly enjoy working for a small company. Although we're a small company. You know, as you know, we have over 15,000 customers, so we stay very, very busy. But it's kind of like a large company feel. But in a small environment. So I get the best of both worlds, if

Laura Arango Baier: 3:38

you will. Yeah, I actually thought faster was much bigger before we talked about the actual size of it, because it has a feel like you said that it has a feel of something a lot bigger.

Sarah: 3:51

Correct? Yeah. Yeah. So

Laura Arango Baier: 3:53

speaking of FASO and BoldBrush, being big, but it's actually nice and cozy and small. I actually wanted to know, what are some other things you like about working for FASO? And BoldBrush?

Sarah: 4:06

Well, that's a great question. And say what I like most about working at BoldBrush? Well, there's actually a few things. I definitely love the people I work with. My colleagues are very kind. They're driven and they love to help people. So I enjoy that aspect a lot. I mean, it's very difficult to find co workers that that have that drive, if you will. I also love coming up with creative solutions to help our members in our team and thinking outside of the box and, and finding ways to help our members is is rewarding, in a way. And also I love the exposure to the art that I have on a daily basis. And I have to be careful with that because sometimes, you know, when I'm helping one of my team members troubleshoot something on a customer's website. I can get caught up with looking Get their art. And then before you know it, you know, 1015 minutes of my time have gone by when I'm just looking at their art. There's a lot of talent out there. So that's one of the very things that I feel is very rewarding about my job. Is that exposure to the art? Yeah, it's

Laura Arango Baier: 5:15

very enriching.

Sarah: 5:16

Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of talent out there for sure.

Laura Arango Baier: 5:20

Oh, yeah, for sure. And then what are some of the day to day behind the scenes of working at a tech company?

Sarah: 5:27

Well, that's a great question. I'm definitely would say multitasking. Basically, triaging and handling team member needs as a pop up. An example would be like handling customer concerns and coming up with strategies to address some of the more common issues. In our office communication is huge. Some of it is on the fly, sending important updates to FASO staff, and ensuring each team member understands the changes. Lots, you know, of process improvement ideas, because we're always looking for, we're always asking our customers for feedback and looking for opportunities to improve the customer experience. Keeping in touch with my coworkers is huge. Morale is huge. For me, I think it's very important. And it kind of maintains a great culture for the company. Rolling with the punches, when there are issues, basically, like my approach is, okay, take a chill pill, I stay calm, I help my team stay calm. And when there's a technical problem, it's important to communicate well and ensure that every department has the information they need in order for us to resolve the issue as efficiently as possible. So I'm cutting out the middleman of sorts between the dev team and other departments at FASO that work directly with customer success. So my goal is to ensure that FASO staff gets what they need in the most efficient ways so that we can better serve our customers.

Laura Arango Baier: 7:05

Yeah. And then I think earlier, you also told me that FASO and BoldBrush they really high in customer, what was it customer?

Sarah: 7:14

Yeah, so we use a metric called NPS, which is short for Net Promoter Score. And so we do rank very high. Were under the category of outstanding customer support. So, you know, we do our best to ensure that every experience for our customers is a remarkable positive experience.

Laura Arango Baier: 7:37

Yeah, I mean, personally, I also use FASO and I love using FASO. The one thing I know about it is that it has like this little chat box. And I could just type in like, hey, how do we do this? And there's, there's always some of the replays, like, within five minutes and says, Oh, this is how you do it. And I'm like, Oh, perfect, thank you. And it makes it so much easier, because we're also making a little loss. And it feels so nice to feel like there's always someone there that will listen and say, Don't worry, we got you. Right, exactly. There's definitely our goal. Yes. And you guys are fulfilling it really well. Thank you. You're welcome. So what are some of the frequently asked questions that users have? And how do you solve them?

Sarah: 8:21

Ooh, I definitely we get a lot of questions about SEO, which is short for search engine optimization. We also get a lot of questions about domains, e commerce, image requirements, you know, things of that nature. We saw them with our amazing support care, whether by a support ticket chat phone calls, we also share links to our excellent we have an excellent FAQ from our extensive knowledge base. And sometimes we, depending on the complexity of the issue will even list the steps in a ticket. But going back to SEO, we do get that question a lot, especially from new customers. So like an example of a question would be like, I just activated my account and registered my domain. It's been a few days, why can't I find my name or my website on Google? That is a very common question that we get. So you know, anytime a new domain is registered or created, it does take a few weeks and possibly up to a few months for the site to appear organically in Google search. So unfortunately, FASO has no control over the timeframe or what Google chooses to index. But the good news is that FASO does have a good proven record. Historically, we've been consistent in getting indexed quickly, but it does take some time and patience. So that's one of the more common questions that we get from some of our new members.

Laura Arango Baier: 9:57

Yeah, that's that's something because I've been helping do some support for FASO. And I also noticed when I look at all the tickets that a lot of people have that question, like, why can't I find myself on Google. And oftentimes, I see this mistake that some people make, and they don't even write artists or fine art after their name or anything related to their career, they just expect their name to come up. And honestly, how many people have the same name as them?

Sarah: 10:26

Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up. Because those are very important things that you know, and we do have an FAQ in our knowledge base that touches on these points. But in order to help index your site, there's definitely things that the artists, you know, it is kind of like a two way communication type of thing. Like there's things that are automatically built into our templates that help get our customer sites indexed by Google. But there's also some things that our members have to do as well in order to speed up that process.

Laura Arango Baier: 10:58

And it's also so convenient. If your name is already unique, it probably makes it so much easier to for it to just pop up on Google faster. Yes, it does. Yes. And then what are some of the features that FASO provides that tend to go underutilized?

Sarah: 11:15

I definitely would have to say the, we have an extensive marketing documentation, library, and resources, which can be found in the FASO Control Panel, it's under the marketing section. There, you can find very helpful information such as like our art marketing playbook. And that provides our members with some guidance on how to best market their art through their website. And we also have an extensive library of marketing videos, and articles that our members can access at at their leisure. So you know, there's a lot of helpful information in there. Another feature that we offer is the artful mill system. And this is an excellent free tool that not many of our competitors provide. artful mail is a software that allows our members to easily create newsletters. So it's a very effective tool that can help artists market and sell their artwork. You know, and and we do find that some artists don't send newsletters or if they do they send them sporadically. So we often, you know, when we get the question about, well, how do I increase my sales, we encourage artists to focus on growing their newsletter, subscribers their list, and also, you know, we encourage them to at least send a short newsletter at least once a month, and that definitely will help drive up sales. Another one that I think is important that is underutilized is our BoldBrush contest. You know, entering the BoldBrush contest is a great way to get exposure to 1000s of collectors. We also added an ecommerce option to every artwork submitted so that collectors have an opportunity to purchase an artwork straight from the contest. So you know, there's a collector, if they, if they see an artwork that they love, they have the ability to just purchase that artwork straight from the site. So that's definitely very helpful. And then, of course, we do offer cash prizes, which is about I think it's over $30,000 per month that we actually award for people that that actually win one of the categories that we offer on the contest. So you know, and a lot of our members, I guess they forget to to realize that they get free entries into the contest. Every paying FASO member gets two free entries per month, up to four entries per month, it just depends on the plan that they're subscribed with at FASO. Dice, I believe those are some of the things that I can think of that are top of mind. And lastly, the support help desk, also known as our knowledge base library, there is a ton of help articles in our library that walk you through each step of completing a certain task. Some of our articles even contain videos that literally show you how to complete each step. So I mean, I'm a visual type learner. So that's very helpful to me. And the good news is that we're also working on adding a How To Videos section to our knowledge base. So that will definitely help the visual learners out there. Yeah, that's

Laura Arango Baier: 14:33

like pretty much all the artists on FASO, because I'd see we're all very visual by nature. And you know what I think? I think like most of the features you mentioned, I have underutilized myself.

Sarah: 14:45

Maybe. Well, hopefully in our discussion now. You'll be more inclined to use them, taking advantage of them. They're very helpful and very beneficial. Definitely.

Laura Arango Baier: 14:56

And you know what? The big thing that I really liked And I'm starting to play around with it on my FASO website is the fact that it has a blog feature already integrated into it. I love that. And it's so convenient because I've always considered, well, maybe, maybe I should start a blog and I thought about Tumblr. But then I remember Wait, doesn't my website already have a blog? And that makes it even easier? Because then you know, someone can visit my site and not have to go somewhere else to see my strange ramblings.

Sarah: 15:25

Yeah, and the interface is built in such a way that it's easy for you to communicate back and forth, you know, with your bloggers and, and you'll actually have a record of the different blog posts that you post. So absolutely, that's another feature that does tend to go underutilized.

Laura Arango Baier: 15:43

Building your artists website can be a hassle. But with FASO, they make it easy to get online, sell more of your work and promote your art. Right now for our BoldBrush podcast listeners, you can get over 50% off your first year or so with our special link, simply visit faso.com forward slash podcast. FASO is a leading provider of fine art websites, they have online marketing tips that you get every week, as well as online workshops and other tips and tricks to help you sell your work. So remember, these are link faster.com forward slash podcast to get over 50% off right now. That's f a s o.com forward slash podcast BoldBrush. But also like to give a huge thank you and shout out to Chelsea classical studio for their continued support in this podcast. If you're interested in archival painting supplies handmade with a lot of patients, go check out their Instagram at CCS fine art materials. Of course. And then also I think I read somewhere that if you write an interesting blog post, then somehow one of the FASO marketing people notices it, it can sometimes end up in the newsletter. That is correct.

Sarah: 16:49

You know, that is up to our marketing department. They're the ones who determine what gets posted. But yeah, I have heard that as well. And I've actually witnessed it.

Laura Arango Baier: 16:58

And then that's also more exposure to more collectors and other people's since I know that collectors also subscribe to the FASO newsletter. I know FASO has daily art stream and a bunch of others.

Sarah: 17:08

Yeah, we do. We have the fine art views newsletter we have the daily. We had the BoldBrush magazine newsletter, formerly known as informed collector. Oh, yeah, I'm

Laura Arango Baier: 17:20

subscribed to that. Yeah,

Sarah: 17:21

we have 1000s and 1000s of collectors in each newsletter. So you know, we we tried to do our best to market a lot of our artists in to our different newsletters and collectors. So yeah, and

Laura Arango Baier: 17:35

I think that's the other cool thing. Sometimes I'll get on the newsletter, and I'll be looking around, and I'm like, Oh, this looks interesting. And then that leads me somewhere. And then that leads me somewhere else. And then suddenly, I somehow find new painters and other artists that I can appreciate and follow on Instagram, too. Yeah.

Sarah: 17:52

Do you have the option to actually purchase ads and different newsletters as well?

Laura Arango Baier: 17:59

Yeah, you know what I've seen that. And I know sometimes BoldBrush Does promos, where they give you money for BoldBrush ads, if you sign up using a certain link, I've always wondered how it works.

Sarah: 18:09

Yeah, there are BoldBrush ad credits. So when you sign up with the goal plan, you get $100 in BoldBrush ad credits, and you can utilize those credits. You know, as you see fit, like you can purchase an ad in our Daz, which we call it the Dazzle, which is a daily art stream newsletter. And you can purchase an ad to be featured in one of the top sections. So your artwork submitted for the day will be featured in one of the top sections of the newsletter. So you can utilize those funds as you see fit.

Laura Arango Baier: 18:41

So the other cool feature that I love about FASO, I mean, they've got a lot of really cool features. But the one that I really appreciate is the fact that people can make a purchase directly on your website. I think that's so convenient. Because you don't necessarily get that on other platforms. Like you could probably find one that does, but it's very limited. And then the other thing I like about FASO now that we're talking about these features is the newsletter, like people can just sign up directly on your site. I know some people have MailChimp and stuff. But I love that you can manage all of that in one place. Like you have your website, you have your newsletter, it's all in one integrated place. And you could just go in, go on your control panel and click on newsletter and write one really easily. Thanks to all the templates that are already there.

Sarah: 19:29

Absolutely, yeah, that's definitely our full mail system that I agree with you gets, you know, doesn't get used as often as it should, you know, and we do our best to make it as easy as possible to create a newsletter it really just takes to create a short one. Once you get used to the system, it literally can take you like 10 minutes. You can add videos, you can add links. There's all kinds of really neat features that have been added to that software. that will enable you to produce a really good newsletter, it's really easy to grow your list. Subscribers can sign up, you know, a lot of our artists that do like a pop up or at some places, you know, they come back with like a manual list of people that they collected during the pop up. And it's really simple to add each subscriber, you know, you can either add them in bulk or one at a time. So,

Laura Arango Baier: 20:24

yeah, so convenient. Definitely, the one thing that I get confused about or I don't really understand it is like when someone signs up for your newsletter, they'll receive an email asking them if they want to confirm their subscription. And I had this problem where I had some followers who subscribed, but I couldn't find them on my list, which is when I discovered that the confirmation email ended up in their junk mail,

Sarah: 20:52

I think you're referring to the opt in feature, they do have to opt in and confirm that they agree to join. And that's, I'm glad you brought that up. Because that's not necessarily a FASO rule. It's more of like an internet rule that has been put in place, you know, in order to ensure, you know, it really just boils down to like spamming laws and things like that. But we do have to ensure that the person that is signed up, you know, actually gives us their consent to sign up. There's benefits to that too, because at least the artist knows that everyone on their subscriber list is a valid user.

Laura Arango Baier: 21:29

Very true. So can you tell us about the different ways FASO users can get help from FASO?

Sarah: 21:35

Yeah, of course, we've always been known for, you know, our fantastic caring customer support. Some of our support team members are artists themselves. So that really helps them relate to our members. But we do have multiple avenues for support, which we encourage our customers to take advantage of. My favorite one is, we have live chats available, which can be activated by clicking that little red bubble that you see in the FASO control panel. That's my personal favorite, because you actually get to work with a live support agent. And you know, because sometimes there's some interaction that has to take place, so that you can actually get to the root of your question or your issue. So this enables you to work with the life support agent. And we do our best to respond within five minutes or less, depending on how busy chat is for the day. But chat is available Monday through Friday, from 9am to 6pm. Central time. Our customers are also welcome to submit a support ticket, you know, support tickets can be submitted from the facile Control Panel, all you do is click on the Help button. And the Help button is located along the very top of the menu bar the FASO control panel. Our support desk is manned from 8am to 8pm. Central Monday through Friday, and we also have support available on the weekends. So on Saturdays and Sundays, we have someone working tickets from 10am to 8pm. As well, we also offer phone support. So customers who are on the gold plan or higher are welcome to schedule a support call, which can be done from the FASO control panel as well. They'll be taken to a scheduling calendar, where they can select a day and time that is convenient for them. The time that is shown is for their local time because I know that can get a little confusing, but we have agents located in multiple time zones, so that the appointment system will automatically make adjustments so that they the customers are called at the time they selected. We also have a free weekly zoom webinar for new members, that is hosted by Jen Caulfield and Deborah whitetop. And these take place on Thursday afternoons. This session is titled getting started with FASO. And it provides an overview of how the facile platform works. And it shows you how to build your website. We also host a live support question and answer session with our technical experts. Jason Smith and Gail wiz Bong, both of which are, they have a technical background, and they are also artists themselves. So these sessions are very helpful. And finally, we have an extensive help document library available which can be accessed from the FASO control panel as well by clicking the Help link at the top of the control panel menu. So those are all of the different ways that our customers can get help. I mean, we try our best to make ourselves as available as possible.

Laura Arango Baier: 24:54

That's great. Yeah. And that's also my favorite feature that I mentioned earlier. You know, we'll chat bubble in the corner like hey, I can't figure this out, you know, how do we do this? And there's someone there like, this is how you do it. Perfect. Thanks. And I think that's so convenient. The final question, though related to getting help is, if someone opens a ticket, how long does it usually take to resolve the issue?

Sarah: 25:18

Ah, well, that's a good question. I mean, we do have 1000s of artists and collectors and art lovers that connect on the vessel platform on a daily basis. You know, we receive approximately 800 tickets and about 300 chats per week. So our our goal to answer your question is to respond to a ticket within five minutes, basically letting our customers know that their request was received, and that we're working on it. However, we do aim to resolve each ticket within an hour. But the resolution does depend on the complexity of the problem, because sometimes, we'll receive requests that require extensive research. Or maybe it's something that the support team cannot resolve. And so we'll have to escalate that matter to our developers, especially for things that are considered customer or things that are at the template level and not at the account level. So the support team has access to make changes at the account level. But if there's anything that requires some customization or changes at the template level, then we do have to escalate those issues. And those do tend to take a little bit longer than an hour. So it really just depends on the complexity of the issue.

Laura Arango Baier: 26:35

Gotcha. I mean, from personal experience, I don't think like any of the times that I've opened a ticket, I don't think it's ever taken more than five minutes for them to get back to me. And then within maybe 10 minutes or less, it's already resolved.

Sarah: 26:49

That's great to hear. Yeah.

Laura Arango Baier: 26:52

And it's really convenient, too, because it's like, sometimes some people probably don't have a lot of time to, you know, manage their website, that they're in and out pretty quick. And maybe they have to be somewhere or they'd rather be in their studio, or they're trying to mail packages, what have you. And it's like, oh, well, I hope this gets resolved fast. Or actually one time, I was going to send out a newsletter. And that same day, I had this issue with newsletter bounced, and I got support immediately. I remember I went into the chatbox. I asked them what happened, explain it to me. And five minutes later, I was able to mail out the newsletter.

Sarah: 27:31

That's our goal. You know, our goal is to try to resolve it as as efficiently as possible. But I know that our artists don't want to spend time working on their website. You know, we want them to spend their time in their studio painting and just creating their artwork, so we try our best to make it as easy as efficient as possible.

Laura Arango Baier: 27:52

Cool. Thank you so much, Sarah, for all wonderful and helpful information. If anyone has any questions, how can we reach out to you?

Sarah: 28:00

You're welcome. Laura is definitely a pleasure speaking with you today. Absolutely. I have my own personal email address. So customers are always welcome to reach out to me. They can reach me at Sarah net Sarah with an h@boldbrush.com

Laura Arango Baier: 28:16

Perfect, thank you.

Sarah: 28:18

Thank you