The XCJ: Effective Subscriptions for Hypergrowth
is the DTC Chinese street food brand bringing equally authentic and
innovative soup dumplings, crafted sauces, bamboo steamers, and more to the
modern Chinese food ecosystem.
We sat down with XCJ’s Chief of Staff, Brian “Blok” Lok, to learn how the innovative F&B brand leverages Skio. Topics include:
How Skio helped XCJ reduce CX volume by over 80%
Three headaches of using Recharge for subscriptions
Skio’s white-glove migration and tailored onboarding flow
“From quickly coding features for us to reducing customer support tickets, Skio has truly been the best subscription engine we’ve ever used.”
The Recharge Headache: Lackluster Subscriptions
When co-founders Caleb Wang and Jennifer Liao first launched XCJ, their
Seattle storefront was the crux of their operations and growth
plans.
Yet, like most restaurants, the arrival of COVID-19 forced a significant
pivot. XCJ launched their flagship eCommerce product — soup dumplings — for
DTC sales nationwide.
After garnering immense success in DTC, implementing a subscription service
for their repeat purchasers became a natural next move. However, explains
Blok, they have yet to truly optimize the LTV of their subscriber base due
to bandwidth and a simple lack of efficient tooling.
They strived to boost their 3% subscription rate to double digits as soon
as possible. Prior to Skio, XCJ ran subscriptions through Recharge and
repeatedly encountered three key hurdles:
Inability to scale — Resulting in excess manual work for XCJ’s user support team
Frustration & churn — Customers struggled to log in and edit their
subscriptions due to shoddy UI/UX. Blok recounts the dashboard as clunky
with buttons that were barely responsive.
Countless tickets — XCJ's user support team repeatedly faced mountains of
support tickets, leaving them to manually resolve 50% of customer
subscription-related adjustments.
Even more, the XCJ site ran on mostly custom code, meaning Recharge-related
malfunctions made basic experiences like adding or removing items from your
cart a headache.
“We knew pretty quickly that Recharge wasn’t the best long-term system for us, especially as we hit DTC hypergrowth. It just required way too much oversight and manual lifts.”
Enter Skio: White-Glove Onboarding
After the XCJ team had struggled enough with Recharge, Blok spearheaded the
search for a replacement and was quickly drawn in by Skio, specifically the
platform’s intuitive design.
While Recharge may have had the bells and whistles, he could tell Skio’s
simplified engine and key subscription feature actually functioned – and
would likely lead to happier subscribers.
The seamless onboarding process that followed was, in Blok’s words, a
positive sign of what was to come: a competent, proactive, and truly
customer-driven product team.
For instance, to execute XCJ’s migration from Recharge, the Skio team built
out a feature, on the spot, for the XCJ team to correctly map historical
subscription SKUs and real-time shipping fees.
“The Skio team is always thinking two steps ahead and is deeply focused on our outcomes. With Skio, I’m very confident XCJ can scale our subscriptions by 2x to 5x.”
Driving Outcomes: Skio’s Immediate Impact
Blok names three growth points as key reasons for XCJ’s love of the Skio experience.
1. Declining UX Tickets
Since implementing Skio, the XCJ team has seen an 80% decrease in subscription-related customer support tickets.
Blok attributes this to both the platform’s intuitive UI/UX and the Skio
team’s dedication to delivering meaningful product features that
substantially improve metrics.
As a result, XCJ’s support team has been able to redirect focus from login
resets to actual product-related inquiries, opening up yet another
opportunity to increase revenue-generating channels and customer
retention.
2. Tailored Service
As mentioned, the Skio team’s willingness to experiment and roll out new
features, as well as individual client-tailored assets, has been a standout
perk.
In a few words, Blok refers to the Skio team’s efficiency as icing on the cake.
Most importantly, this degree of individualized support — almost akin to
white-glove service, says Blok — runs circles around Recharge’s average
72-hour response time.
3. Steady Foundations
After Recharge, Skio’s reliable execution has finally allowed the XCJ team to start innovating on the subscriber’s brand experience.
For instance, since Skio logs order history, XCJ is considering internal
initiatives like user segmentation. Upcoming Skio features (i.e. gifting and
group discounts) are also on their radar.
Ultimately, according to Blok, Skio has helped XCJ transform its
subscription program into a superpower and a driver of company-wide growth,
not just a source of frustration.
