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Customer Experience Goes Beast Mode: Using AI to Drive Sales in a Creator-Led Brand

Customer Experience Goes Beast Mode: Using AI to Drive Sales in a Creator-Led Brand

Last Updated:  
March 18, 2024

I’d ask you if you have had a bad customer experience, but I already know the answer. Let me ask the follow-up question I already know the answer to: did you make a second purchase? With so much competition, especially in a rapidly growing DTC sales environment, brands don’t get second chances. So what happens when an established brand for online content decides to start selling DTC? They’ve got the audience, they’ve got the loyalty, but how do they translate that to sales? We’re pretty sure Feastables, the snack company started in 2022 by MrBeast, is currently writing the playbook on converting subscribers and fans into loyal, snack-obsessed customers. 

Even if you don’t follow MrBeast, chances are you’ve seen the videos circulating social media. Remember the guy who spent 50 hours buried alive, multiple last-person-to-leave wins challenges, or the real life recreation of Netflix’s The Squid Game, where 456 contestants competed to win $456,000? With over 146 million subscribers on YouTube and countless viral videos, he’s the biggest YouTuber in the world, and has a captive audience he can sell a product (or several) to. But the jump from video production to selling physical products wasn’t completed without a whole lot of thought and consideration. The product had to be 1) actually good, 2) something his fans would like, and 3) undeniably on-brand for who MrBeast is. 

Feastables meets all of the above criteria, and this creator-led brand is on track to give traditional snack companies a run for their money. Launched in January 2022, Feastables hit 10 million dollars in sales in just 4 months. These sales paved the way for entry into Amazon, Walmart, and retailers across the country. And, behind the scenes, there was a team focused on Customer Experience but specifically through the lens of MrBeast’s brand as a whole. Jess Cervellon, who helped build the Feastables Customer Experience Team from the ground up, has some great advice for how to center the customer experience to drive success. Click the link below to watch Rabah and Ash chat with Jess about how Feastables chooses to inject MrBeast’s personality into the DTC experience, including a walk-through of the AI-powered web bot named Feasty!

Capturing the brand voice

When it came to crafting the brand for Feastables, it needed to use the building blocks of MrBeast’s brand while also developing its own personality. It’s kind of like MrBeast birthed a child, and through the wonders of nature and nurture, Feastables grew into its own living, breathing, and attention-grabbing brand. One of the ways the marketing department focused on that was specifically incorporating the personality of MrBeast into every part of the marketing, from the tone of voice in website copy, campaigns, or even a conversation online with a customer. With every touchpoint viewed through the lens of whether MrBeast would actually say something or find something funny, they were able to craft an experience that feels authentic. Feastables is successful because the customer feels like they’re interacting with MrBeast. 

Building a community of Feastable fans

It’s not enough to sell to customers, you’ve got to develop fans of the product. This is accomplished by creating a quality product and applying customer feedback to improve. The benefits here are twofold: you make your product even better, and the customer understands they’re being listened to. 

Jess accomplishes this by surveying customers at every possible touchpoint to gather as many insights as possible, such as post-checkout surveys, NPS, and conversations with chat bots. Feastables can then amalgamate all of this information to use it to inform not only the marketing teams, but supply chain as well. They gathered a ton of insights from customers surrounding the MrBeast Cookies that directly influenced the marketing plans for bringing the cookies to retail. 

Turn that frown upside-down

Another important thing to consider is negative feedback: if someone is disappointed, you’re going to hear about it. The key to a great customer experience is not only listening and resolving that issue, but implementing plans to fix what went wrong so it’s smooth sailing in the future. Customers can also influence product development because they’ll tell you what they really want to see. Whether that’s through making changes to an existing product or developing something entirely new, your customers are exactly who you want to appeal to. Listen to their demands like you might a ransom negotiator… ok, maybe not that intense, but you get the point. 

The right way to use AI

It’s all the rage right now, AI. Swaths of companies are ditching real humans answering Customer Support questions in favor of AI bots. Is that the key to a good customer experience? That really depends. Are you still able to reach a human at the end of the day, if you actually need one? So long as that’s still the case and engaging with an AI bot is an enjoyable experience for the customer, then that might be the best way to build AI into the customer flow.

Bots on the front line, but make it fun.

Hey there, meet Feasty. He’s on the product packaging, and he’s also embedded on every page of the website, ready to answer your question or play a game. Feasty is fun to chat with for simple resolutions, or fielding the engagement from customers who just want to say how much they love Deez Nutz. They’ve injected the personality of the brand into the bot by enabling a feature called Secret Door, where customers can play word scramble games or answer riddles for endless entertainment. An even more secret door leads them back to learning more about MrBeast or signing up for a casting call to be in a future YouTube video. Ultimately, this bot that’s embedded in every page of the Feastables website serves the purpose of building engagement and driving brand loyalty. 

“Talk to a human” 

Feasty does a lot of the heavy lifting; in 2022, this bot managed to deflect 1.1 million conversations away from an actual agent, which was a huge time saver for the customer support team. By using AI intelligently, Jess was able to discontinue outsourcing support to create a team of five people in-house that are specifically in charge of different aspects of the customer experience. If you need to talk to an actual human, that ability is there - it’s just that using AI enables them to focus on the customers who actually need human attention. Beyond the time-saving, FeastyBot actually drove sales: 6.5% of total launch revenue came directly from the bot itself. The numbers don’t lie - this implementation of AI technology has paid off. Feastables plans to continue to iterate and grow the bot experience with more video content straight from MrBeast, which would definitely be a hit with their customers! 

Delivering a branded experience post-purchase

A lot of brands will just send a basic email after a purchase is made, but Feastables has created a branded, colorful page through Wonderment. On this page, the customer can track their order, browse FAQs, play a little game with Feasty, or sign up for SMS updates. Therefore, the customer has a ton of information available to hopefully answer questions before they actually become questions. This page also has a ReBuy option to convert a customer post–purchase, which has also been successful at driving further sales. 

Final thoughts

To conclude, a top-to-bottom branded experience is one of the keys to customer satisfaction. Feastables knew who they were (or at least who their daddy was) and ensured this brand voice was consistent from the copy on the website, to the packaging, to the little chat bot answering silly little questions. By utilizing multiple touchpoints to survey their customers and gather feedback, they are able to iterate and improve their product offerings and ensure the customer knows they’re being listened to. Feastables found a way to use AI in a way that offloaded millions of chats from the support team while also making engaging with the bot fun and informative. If you want to talk about Deez Nutz with a real human, you now know what to do!  

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