Interview with Emma Rios: Building Teams That Master Customer Effort Score Measurement for Shopify Wholesale Sellers
Emma Rios leads business development at OfficeSupply Wholesale Hub, a mid-sized distributor specializing in office essentials for retailers across North America. With five years in wholesale and a deep understanding of Shopify’s ecosystem, she’s helped her teams improve customer retention by fine-tuning the way they measure and act on Customer Effort Score (CES).
We spoke with Emma about how she approaches CES measurement, especially when building and developing teams in a wholesale environment using Shopify. Her insights dive into hiring, structuring, and onboarding with a clear focus on keeping customer effort low and loyalty high.
Q1: Why should a wholesale business, especially one using Shopify, care about Customer Effort Score measurement?
Emma: The basic idea behind CES is deceptively simple: measure how easy it is for customers to get what they want from you. For a Shopify-based wholesale company, that could mean how smoothly a retail client can reorder paper, get invoice clarifications, or resolve delivery issues.
Think of it like this: if your retail customers feel like they’re running an obstacle course every time they place a bulk order, they’ll look for a supplier who hands them the baton more smoothly. A 2024 B2B Pulse survey found that 65% of wholesale buyers are willing to switch suppliers after just one frustrating experience.
CES helps us pinpoint exactly where those obstacles are. Unlike broader metrics like NPS (Net Promoter Score), CES isolates the customer’s perceived effort. For Shopify users, integrating CES feedback can be straightforward with apps like Zigpoll, Delighted, or even built-in Shopify surveys, which gather quick, actionable input right after critical interactions.
Q2: What unique challenges do you face when building teams around CES measurement in wholesale?
Emma: The wholesale business is often complex — multiple SKUs, bulk orders, pricing tiers, and shipping logistics that vary by region. When you’re building or structuring a business-development team, you can’t just throw a customer success rep and a data analyst together and call it a day.
One big challenge is aligning the team around what “customer effort” actually means. It's different for a retail small business ordering 10 boxes of pens versus a large chain ordering 1,000 units of mixed office supplies. Your team needs to speak that language.
We’ve seen teams flounder when the frontline staff—like account managers—aren’t trained to gather qualitative data that augment CES scores. It’s like trying to fix a leaky pipe without knowing where the drip is.
Q3: How do you hire and onboard team members to handle CES effectively?
Emma: We look for three key traits during hiring: curiosity, empathy, and analytical ability. Curiosity keeps the team digging beneath surface metrics. Empathy ensures they understand the customer's point of view, especially in wholesale where relationships matter more than in B2C. Analytical ability helps interpret CES data alongside other KPIs like Shopify conversion rates or average order value.
For onboarding, we use a “map the journey” exercise. We actually walk new hires through a wholesale reorder cycle on Shopify—from browsing SKUs in the backend, through invoice review, to delivery updates. Then, we bring in real CES feedback from clients through Zigpoll surveys conducted after their last order.
This gives a tangible feel for where customers struggle. One new hire realized that complicated bulk discount tiers were causing confusion, which we hadn’t flagged earlier.
Q4: Can you share an example where team restructuring improved CES and customer relations?
Emma: Absolutely. About a year ago, we reorganized the team into smaller pods, each focused on a subset of our wholesale segments—like educational supplies or general office products. Each pod included an account manager, a customer experience analyst, and a logistics coordinator.
Before this, CES scores hovered at 4.1 (on a 5-point scale) for our Shopify reordering process. After three months, one pod focused on educational supplies pushed that up to 4.6. They reported a 20% reduction in customer complaints related to “difficulty placing bulk orders.”
How? The analyst cross-referenced CES survey data from Shopify apps with Shopify’s order abandonment rates. The account manager then proactively contacted customers showing signs of friction, based on the data. By focusing efforts, the team felt more ownership and became more proactive rather than reactive.
Q5: What are some advanced team tactics for keeping CES measurement sharp as your wholesale business scales on Shopify?
Emma: Once you have the basics in place, it’s about embedding CES into the team’s daily rhythms. Here are a few tactics:
Weekly CES Huddles: Have 15-minute stand-ups where pods review CES trends from the past week. Discuss any sudden drops or spikes. Keep it fast but focused.
Role-Specific CES Goals: For instance, logistics coordinators might have targets for reducing delivery-related effort scores, while account managers target ease of ordering.
CES Heatmaps for Shopify Touchpoints: Visual tools that map CES data onto Shopify user flows, highlighting where customers struggle most.
Cross-Training: Rotate team members through customer support, order fulfillment, and data analysis roles to deepen empathy and understanding.
Remember, these tactics work well in wholesale but might not translate right away to pure B2C Shopify stores where interactions are simpler. Wholesale is relationship-heavy and complex.
Q6: How do you integrate CES measurement with existing Shopify data for maximum impact?
Emma: Shopify provides a treasure trove of quantitative data—order histories, time on page, cart abandonment, and more. CES adds the qualitative layer, telling you why customers struggle.
We pull CES results via tools like Zigpoll, Delighted, or Shopify Inbox and combine them with Shopify Analytics. For example, we noticed one client segment with high CES effort scores also had a spike in canceled orders from the Shopify dashboard.
Digging deeper, the team found that confusing minimum order quantities were the culprit. This allowed product managers and developers to tweak Shopify’s bulk order rules.
This combo of CES and Shopify data turns guesswork into evidence-based decisions. But a warning: data overload can paralyze teams. Assigning a CES analyst to filter and translate insights is crucial.
Q7: Do you have advice for managing the limitations and pitfalls of CES measurement in wholesale?
Emma: CES is powerful but imperfect. For one thing, it’s a snapshot—taken right after an interaction—so it misses long-term effort pain points. Also, in wholesale, buying teams can be large and include multiple people with different perspectives; a single CES might not capture this fully.
The risk is focusing too much on CES and neglecting other KPIs like lifetime customer value or repeat order rates. It’s a piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture.
Finally, over-surveying can fatigue customers, especially busy wholesale buyers. Using tools like Zigpoll, which allow micro-surveys embedded in Shopify workflows, can reduce this risk.
Q8: What’s your number-one piece of actionable advice for business development pros managing CES teams in Shopify wholesale settings?
Emma: Build your team’s CES muscle by making it part of your culture, not just a metric. That means hiring people who genuinely care about reducing friction and training them to connect CES data to everyday decisions.
For example, have your account managers follow up on low CES feedback personally. This hands-on approach built a 9-point rise in CES for one pod last quarter, which translated into a 15% uplift in reorder volume on Shopify.
Start small but stay consistent. A single negative experience in wholesale can cost you a client for years, so lowering effort is literally dollars and cents. Keep your teams curious, empathetic, and data-savvy—and remember: CES is a conversation, not just a number.
Emma’s approach shows that CES measurement, when embedded thoughtfully into team structure, hiring, and onboarding, is more than data collection. It’s a way to build stronger, more responsive wholesale partnerships—especially for Shopify sellers navigating a complex purchase lifecycle.
