Inside Cuyana's CX Playbook: Small Team, High Standards, Big AI Ambitions

Table of Contents

• Small Team, High Standards
• The Rule That Runs the Operation
• Sentiment Over Surveys — But Both Have a Place
• Agent Experience: Dad Talks and the Will-or-Skill Question
• The AI Rollout: Process First, Technology Second
• What the C-Suite Actually Asks About
• What's Next: Chat AI, SMS and International Expansion

The Gist

• Process before technology. Before Cuyana deployed AI-assisted support, Gardner spent months auditing workflows, updating knowledge-base articles, and standardizing every process in their ticketing system. The technology came after the foundation was solid.
• Phone calls aren't dying. Fifty-seven percent of Cuyana's inbound customer volume comes through voice. Gardner says brands that write off the phone channel aren't paying attention to their actual customers.
• AI handles the volume; agents handle the judgment. Crescendo's AI resolves 40 to 45 percent of tier-one tickets at first contact — but Gardner is clear that empathy and policy discretion still require a human in the loop.

Editor's note: Listen to this interview in audio podcast form on CX Decoded.

Tyler Gardner picked up his first customer service call at 18 years old, working debt collection and balance transfers for DiscoverCard off a paper dial sheet in front of a black-and-green monitor. He didn't plan on making a career out of it. Twenty-five years later, he's the Director of Customer Experience at Cuyana, the premium women's clothing and handbag brand, running a lean team, reporting directly to the CEO, and navigating one of the more consequential technology moments the contact center world has ever seen. He's not rattled by any of it.

"I think it's always about fundamentals," Gardner told CMSWire in a recent conversation on Beyond the Call. "The great thing about customer experience in general is just about the customer's journey. Making sure the customer is happy, they're taken care of — and how do we do that? We have to change with the times."

That combination — deep operational instinct and a willingness to adapt — defines how Gardner runs CX at Cuyana. And it offers a useful blueprint for CX leaders navigating the gap between AI hype and operational reality.

Small Team, High Standards

Cuyana's CX operation is, by Gardner's own admission, the smallest team he has ever run. Customers reach the team through two primary channels: voice and email tickets, handled through their ticketing system in Freshdesk. A web form rounds out the inbound options, but the lion's share of volume comes through the phone — about 57 percent, a figure Gardner says surprises no one who actually pays attention to the brand's customer base.

"A lot of people want to say phone calls are a dying practice," he said. "I don't believe that's true for a lot of organizations. If I have a problem, I pick up the phone. I try to find a phone number any way I can because I just feel like it's faster, it's quicker, and you get a better resolution."

Cuyana's customers are working women, broadly ranging from their 30s through their 70s. The product — premium leather goods, totes, handbags, and clothing — is a considered, often emotional purchase. That raises the stakes for every interaction. A misstep isn't easily shrugged off the way a fast food order might be.

"When you're doing a more personalized purchase — something someone is really excited about — it's got to be more spot on," Gardner said.

Gardner reports directly to CEO Wendy Yu, a former marketing executive who he describes as a collaborative partner in piloting new technology. That direct line to the top has shaped how Cuyana approaches CX decision-making: with speed, but never without the groundwork laid first.

The Rule That Runs the Operation

Ask Gardner about his guiding principle and he doesn't hesitate. "If it's not written down, it doesn't exist." He says it to his team. He says it to the broader company. It's less a motivational phrase than a functional requirement — the operational backbone of everything Cuyana's CX team does.

The principle extends to how Gardner trains agents. When a customer sends an email, the expectation is that the agent reads it thoroughly — once, twice if needed — captures every issue, and responds with all the answers and options upfront. The goal is to eliminate back-and-forth before it starts.

"It's the speed to answer. It's the speed to resolution," he said. "Everybody likes to throw out white-glove service or gold star, diamond, whatever. But at the end of the day, it's just making sure that the customer has a good experience."

Consistency is the mechanism that makes that happen at scale. Gardner is direct about what inconsistency costs a CX organization — not just in customer satisfaction, but in organizational credibility. Customer service teams that can't demonstrate standardized, documented, repeatable processes struggle to justify their seat at the table.

"Most customer experience organizations are a cost center," he said. "What are you bringing to the table? Are you bringing feedback from customers back to marketing, back to product? Are you making sure the answers you're giving are standardized? If we're not all following the same playbook, we all have a problem."

Sentiment Over Surveys — But Both Have a Place

The broader CX industry is in the middle of a measurement reckoning. CSAT surveys remain a staple, but practitioners are increasingly leaning on real-time behavioral signals — what's actually happening during an interaction — as the more meaningful data source. Gardner runs both at Cuyana, and he's clear about where the signal is strongest.

"The meat and potatoes really is what's happening right now in that interaction between the customer and the service agent and how the customer is feeling at that time," he said.

Cuyana uses sentiment analysis tools to surface how customers are feeling during both voice and ticket interactions in real time. The post-interaction CSAT survey still gets deployed — Gardner values it as a measure of overall experience — but the in-the-moment data is where he looks first when something needs to be fixed.

AI-generated call summaries have become another key tool. Rather than listening to every recorded call, Gardner's team can review detailed summaries of what happened, identify the top contact reasons, and determine whether the resolution required a process change, a technology adjustment, or simply better agent coaching.

"You really have to look at every individual customer journey," he said. "Which is really hard to do if you don't have some type of reporting or analytical tool to be able to do that."

Agent Experience: Dad Talks and the Will-or-Skill Question

Gardner spent time in college studying to be a teacher before his contact center career took over. He never finished that path, but he carried the mindset with him — and it shows up in how he manages his agents today.

He calls his one-on-one coaching sessions "dad talks." Not disciplinary in nature, but direct. The goal is to understand what an agent isn't grasping about the customer experience and to help them get there — not just hand them a corrective action memo.

"There is a science behind customer interaction," Gardner said. "With associates, they deal with hard things. They deal with hard instances and customers they have to try to take care of, and they're not always going to do it right. There's gotta be the want. And everyone wants to have the conversation: is it a will or a skill?"

The distinction matters because the response is different. A skill gap gets training and tools. A will problem is a culture and leadership issue. Gardner invests in both — and it appears to be working. Despite contact center work carrying some of the highest turnover rates in any industry, Cuyana's CX team retains agents at a rate Gardner describes as well above average. Several associates have been with the company five, six, seven years. Some managers have been there even longer.

"It starts with the type of leaders you have," he said. "What are we doing to put back time and effort into the associates, make sure they're comfortable and they're taken care of."

The AI Rollout: Process First, Technology Second

When Cuyana decided it was time to introduce AI-assisted support, Gardner didn't start with a vendor demo. He started with a process audit. Every internal knowledge-base article got reviewed and updated. Every workflow got documented in Freshdesk. Every edge case got a written answer. Only after that foundation was locked did the technology conversation begin in earnest.

"If you don't have all of the processes written down and everybody's following the same thing, then yeah, it can go wrong," he said. "Once you have that foundation, then yeah, you can implement technology and it works great — because anything you throw at the AI that's a fundamental process or the right way to do something, it will carry it out."

The vendor Cuyana selected was Crescendo. Gardner describes the implementation as unusually smooth — a rarity for anyone who has lived through a contact center technology rollout. Crescendo's engineering team handled the heavy lifting on the technical side, keeping the load light on Cuyana's internal tech team. For agents, the change was less disruptive than expected: instead of reading raw inbound messages, they now review an AI-generated summary of what the customer contacted about before engaging.

"I always say it's like a pre-chat survey," Gardner said. "It takes all of the information of what the customer is contacting about and puts it in front of the associate."

The results have been measurable. Since the August launch, Cuyana has resolved 40 to 45 percent of tier-one tickets — the straightforward, where's-my-order class of inquiries — at first contact. No follow-up. No back-and-forth. Gardner spent the first two to three months post-launch reviewing tickets and voice interactions with a fine-tooth comb, making incremental adjustments with Crescendo's support as he went.

What AI Still Can't Do

Gardner is enthusiastic about what the technology has delivered, but he's not uncritical. The area where he sees AI fall short most consistently is empathy — specifically, the judgment call that an experienced agent makes when a situation doesn't fit neatly inside the policy document.

"It's very much like whatever's in that document is what's going to fall into a tee," he said. "It doesn't have necessarily the customer associate aspect of the empathy yet built in where they can say, I understand — we're only two days outside the return window. How much of a correction do we need to make?"

That gap is where Gardner's coaching practice becomes most valuable. The AI handles the volume. The agents handle the judgment. And Gardner handles making sure the agents know when and how to exercise it.

What the C-Suite Actually Asks About

Gardner reports to a CEO, which means his CX metrics don't just live in a department dashboard — they end up in executive conversations. He's candid about the dynamic. CSAT is table stakes. If it's low, nothing else matters. But at Cuyana, where customer loyalty runs deep and the brand carries genuine emotional resonance, the questions from leadership tend to go beyond scores.

"It's more about what else does she need," Gardner said. "What colors is she asking about? What is she looking forward to in the next phase of her life?"

The voice of the customer data Gardner's team collects — top contact reasons, product feedback, shipping complaints — flows directly to marketing and product. That feedback loop is, in his view, one of the clearest ways a CX team justifies its existence beyond the cost-center label.

"I'm always a fan of making sure that things are quantified and qualified," he said. "We have this many customers reaching out about this product or about shipping or about damage — so here's something to actually chew on, and here's a possible solution."

Shipping is a persistent source of complexity. Cuyana relies on UPS, FedEx, and USPS for delivery — and when something goes wrong in transit, the customer's call still lands with Gardner's team. Passing the blame to the carrier isn't an option.

"We can do everything right as far as our company is concerned, but we still have to rely on it being delivered on time and in 100% great condition," he said. "A lot of companies skimp on shipping because it's cheaper. I think that has to be part of the conversation."

What's Next: Chat AI, SMS and International Expansion

Gardner has a full roadmap ahead. The near-term priority is chat AI — a channel Cuyana doesn't currently offer but plans to launch before the holiday season. The goal isn't to push customers toward chat. It's to have chat available for the customers who prefer it.

Behind the chat initiative is a sales engine capability from Crescendo that Gardner is watching closely. The tool can surface product recommendations during a customer inquiry and guide a purchase without requiring agent involvement — a potential bridge between CX and revenue generation that tends to get the C-suite's attention quickly.

"Anytime customer experience can not just be a line on a spreadsheet of what we're costing the company," he said, "that's great."

SMS is also on the radar. Gardner sees text as a natural extension of the omnichannel vision he's building toward — a world where a customer can start on a phone call, get pulled away, and pick the conversation back up via text without losing context or resolution momentum.

International commerce is the longer-horizon initiative. Cuyana already has a global customer base. Getting the infrastructure right — factoring in tariffs, taxes, and cross-border logistics — is the work ahead.

Through all of it, Gardner's operating philosophy stays consistent. Don't guess what channels customers want. Don't roll out technology because everyone else is. Document everything. Fix the process before you deploy the tool. And when in doubt, pick up the phone.

"I think in this day and age, we always try to guess how customers want to contact us, or we choose for them — and I think that's a disservice," he said. "The future of customer experience is whatever is easiest for the customer at that moment."