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In a recent webinar conversation with Unwrap’s co-founder Ryan Millner, Chrissy Nichol, Director of Guest Support at lululemon, unpacked how her team builds memorable experiences, where AI fits (and where it doesn’t), and how Unwrap helps them listen at scale and move faster on the moments that matter.
The hospitality mindset that guides the company
lululemon’s language is deliberate: people who shop with and engage with the brand are “Guests,” not customers. That language choice comes from the brand’s philosophy around creating memorable guest experiences both in-store and online.
Drawing on inspiration from other hospitality leaders, Nichol went on to cite a distinction made by Will Guidara, American restaurateur and author of the book, ‘Unreasonable Hospitality’, “we like to think of guest support similar to creating a great restaurant experience: from the little details of when someone walks through the door, their check-in experience, how the menu is designed, the food itself, and how people talk about it after they leave,” shared Nichol.
This intentional choice sets the teams’ expectations of how they design their experiences and how they measure success.
More conversations that matter: The vision for an evolving support experience
Looking ahead, the team is investing in more educational, relationship-building conversations, even if that approach challenges traditional support efficiency metrics.
“Right now what’s top of mind is being intentional about what types of conversations we want our teams to be having with guests,” explained Nichol.
“How can we take our conversations a step further, beyond simply solving the problem, to making sure we’re also educating guests about our brand and newness in our products.”
The traditional way isn’t the only way. For lululemon’s guest support team, efficiency isn’t what they're chasing. It’s value.
“These conversations take more time and may come at the expense of classic call center metrics, but we believe more of the right conversations will drive that long-term loyalty.”
Guest-centered, AI-assisted support
So what will help Nichol and her team achieve their future-state vision of guest support? A mix of human and AI efforts. While AI is a powerful accelerator, for Nichol and her team it’s not the end all be all.
“AI is important, but it's not a strategy in its own right. It's a tool that helps us work towards our future vision, but we see humans at the center of everything we're doing,” she explained.
Rising expectations from shoppers, however, means AI can and should meet guests where they are.
Understanding the whole guest experience, not just support tickets
People often contact Guest Support when they have an issue. While resolving issues is important, it isn’t representative of the full guest experience. . Nichol’s team understands that broadening its listening allows them to see the full end-to-end customer journey.
“By adding insights from across other aspects of the guest journey—places like product reviews, or social media platforms—it gives us a much more comprehensive look at experiences and potentially gets us ahead of things before they come through service channels,” explained Nichol.
Between layering in AI and widening the scope of feedback channels they’re tuned into, lululemon sought out a customer intelligence platform for help.
Enter Unwrap: Democratizing insights and speeding up time to action
The guest support team uses Unwrap to unify and understand guest feedback at scale. The core value for them is instant visibility to themes across channels without bottlenecks.
“It's really the availability and the ease of accessing themes across all of our channels. With Unwrap, we can compile everything across all our feedback channels to capture themes and see how guests are feeling.”
Previously, partners would ask how a launch went or what impact an outage had, and teams relied on contact reason codes or anecdotes which were helpful but limited. Today, with Unwrap, that process looks different.
“We can now see feedback themes and provide much more context into how often something is coming up and what the actual impact is. Putting those insights directly into the hands of decision-makers has unlocked a whole new level of guest centricity,” said Nichol.
Catching issues before they escalate
Nichol went on to highlight a recent example of an Unwrap insight that helped her team course correct in near real time, acting as a first line of defense against new issues.
“We saw an insight in Unwrap that pointed to guests being confused about the return process, which was surprising because we hadn’t made changes to it. We were able to identify a counterintuitive flow that was isolated and only happening with one of our entry points,” explained Nichol.
“It's something we’ve already fixed. Without the cross-channel signal, the team wouldn’t have been able to identify it as quickly.”
Positively impacting support org metrics
Unwrap also helps lululemon move from lagging to leading indicators. As an organization focused on guest experience, Nichol and her team prioritize guest satisfaction scores (GSAT), Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and survey data. Unwrap helps her team move these metrics in a positive direction.
“Unwrap gives us qualitative insights into how our guests are talking about us, and we’re able to pair that with what we’re seeing through GSAT and NPS. We know GSAT and NPS are lagging indicators, and with Unwrap, our goal is that we can get some leading indicators on issues and work to resolve them before we see it actualized in our GSAT data,” shared Nichol.
For lululemon, guest support boils down to guest-centered hospitality, AI in service of educators and guests, and a unified feedback insights engine in Unwrap. Together, they help lululemon act quickly while keeping empathy at the center of every interaction.
