How Pact's VP of CX scales with an 11-person team

What do you do when you're managing thousands of customer conversations a month with just 11 people, disconnected systems, and no engineering support? If you're Lauren Inman-Semerau, VP of Customer Experience at Pact, you refuse to compromise.

In the latest episode of Radically Personal, Lauren sits down with Joseph Ansanelli to share how she's preparing Pact, Earth's Favorite Clothing Company, to grow without doubling or tripling her team. Her secret? What she calls "gritty innovation," a philosophy that blends data-driven decision-making with the willingness to try crazy ideas and learn fast.

The false choice

For years, CX leaders have felt trapped between two options. Deliver efficient, scalable service or provide deeply personal, white-glove experiences. Lauren argues that this is a false choice.

"Two years ago, everything was ChatGPT, go, go, go," she explains. "People wanted to use AI to eliminate the human touch. We saw a lot of robot, churn-and-burn stories. But I don't think there has to be a sacrifice. Efficiency and personalization go together."

At Pact, Lauren oversees everything post-purchase. The moment something lands in your cart, and you hit buy, it becomes her world. That includes fulfillment, customer support, returns, exchanges, and the company's resale program. With a small team handling massive volume, she's had to get creative about where AI takes over and where humans shine.

Meet Willow

Lauren is a big believer in naming AI. It humanizes the technology and helps teams see it as a partner, not a threat. At Pact, the AI is called Willow, your "partner in wellness." Willow handles everything from complex "where is my order" inquiries across multiple carriers to sizing questions that used to eat up agent time. The result? Lauren's team can focus on the customers who need real help, the ones with nuanced problems that require empathy and creative problem-solving.

"How do you take the things that don't have to be personalized away and have your AI do that so that the radically personalized things can be done by humans?" Lauren asks. "And I think even that is shifting now."

Proving ROI in the age of AI hype

One of the biggest challenges Lauren faces isn't technical. I's executive buy-in. But the conversation has changed dramatically in the past year. "A year ago, you were still trying to get CEO buy-in," she says. "Now executives are coming to CX leaders saying, 'Hey, what's this AI thing? We're ready to talk about it.' The problem is they're not yet educated."

Instead of selling AI, Lauren now finds herself teaching executives how to filter noise. With so many tools promising the world, the key is grounding the conversation in strategy. What do you want to accomplish? How will this tool get you there? What will ROI look like in three months, six months, a year? "You have to take your CEO on that journey and help them get rid of the chatter," she explains.

Bringing teams along for the journey

One of the most powerful moments in the conversation comes when Lauren discusses how she manages team anxiety around AI. At Rothy's, she had years of banked trust with her team. At Pact, she walked in as a stranger with a reputation as "the AI lead." Day one, her new team Googled her and found her podcast appearances about AI.

Her approach? Transparency and involvement. She brought a team member into the process of building Willow, asking her to test the AI with real customer conversations and identify what wasn't working.

Within a day, the team member went from skeptical to converted. "She said, 'Oh, this is going to make the easy stuff go away so we can spend more time with customers who need real help,'" Lauren recalls. "That unlock is key. Having people help you by being transparent. That's the unlock."

The metrics that matter

Lauren predicts that traditional CX metrics are on their way out. Average handle time? Gone. SLA? Obsolete when AI is available 24/7. Even CSAT scores are shifting. AI often scores lower than humans, but for good reasons. "We set Willow up to say, 'I'm so sorry, that's a final sale item,'" Lauren explains.

"If someone gets really mad and wants an exception, they push to a human, and my human gets to make the exception and get the good CSAT. That's great human touch. That's loyalty."

The new north star? RevGen. CX teams are no longer just service, they're revenue drivers. With AI handling routine inquiries, teams can focus on pre-sales questions, upselling, and saving returns before they happen.

Watch the full conversation

Lauren's journey from Malibu nanny (yes, really. She may have been in early Kardashians episodes) to CX leader at some of the most innovative brands in the world is full of hard-won lessons about data, grit, and the power of starting with the end in mind.

Watch the full episode to hear how she's preparing Pact to scale sustainably, why she tells Willow to "go do the thing," and what advice she'd give her younger self about trusting your instincts while staying data-driven.

Watch the full episode on YouTube, Apple Music, and Spotify.