Meet the Team: Elissa Chandler, Head of Community Care and Business Development
As Head of Community Care and Business Development, Elissa Chandler knows Good Eggs — and our community — inside and out. From school partnerships to events and programming, Elissa works every day to put our customers at the core of everything we do. I sat down with her to chat about these efforts and the many other ways she’s strengthening our community of dreamers who do.
How’d you get your start at Good Eggs?
I first joined Good Eggs even before we became an operations company — we were just focusing on connecting farmers to buyers. When we launched a delivery and pick-up service, we realized we needed a customer service team to answer questions about our food and farmers, as well as the logistics of pick-up. I volunteered to lead that project, which eventually became a fully fledged Community Care team. Interestingly, my role on the team hasn’t changed that much. When we founded the team, we set a mission statement that ultimately laddered up to one idea: we’re in this together. It’s the same today as it was back then.
What do you mean by “we’re in this together?”
It’s the phrase we come back to when making any decision. We break that idea down into four pillars:
Always go above and beyond for our customers. If you get in touch with us about anything that was wrong with your order we will make it right, no questions asked.
Get to know our customers. Because we’re an e-commerce brand, connecting with our customers in a meaningful way is even more important. In order to go above and beyond for each customer, we’ve got to get to know them. If someone mentions that they’re having a baby, we’ll send them a care package. If another customer mentions their kid is graduating, we’ll send something a little more gift-y.
Be an expert on all things food. Between all of us, we’ve tried almost every product in our marketplace, and make it a point to share recipes and tips whenever we can. We hope people ask us even more questions then they do!
Support our operations team. We know that if the team can’t be on their A-game, then our customers will be let down. We’re the liaison between our customers and our internal team, and we pass on any and all feedback so they have the knowledge to remedy the issue ASAP. Supporting them in everything they do is then an essential part of what we do to ensure our customers have the best experience possible.
Any stories come to mind from your time leading the team?
There are so many stories! We know that we’re not always going to be perfect, but we know that we can always make it right. A lot of my favorite stories come from those kinds of situations. One customer had ordered a 3-pack of strawberries, and for whatever reason, those strawberries didn’t make it to her door. She called us, and we gave her a credit toward her next order. As an added gesture, we sent another 3-pack out to be delivered ASAP. The next day, she called us literally crying. It was her 20th anniversary with her husband, but he was having heart surgery and they couldn’t be together. Just getting those strawberries on a really tough day brought her to tears.
That’s just one example, but this sort of thing happens all the time. Our driver will tell us a customer is really pregnant, and we’ll put it on our calendar to check in a few weeks later and send a care package. It’s a fun way to surprise and delight.
We know that we’re not always going to be perfect, but we know that we can always make it right.
Last year, you started to focus more on the larger Good Eggs community in the Bay Area. Can you tell us about some of those projects?
Yeah, totally. They felt like a natural extension of the work that I was already doing: really getting to know our customers. Word of mouth is the number one way people find Good Eggs, and I wanted to find a way to really amplify that through the relationships we’ve already built with our customer community.
It’s awesome to grow Good Eggs and help our community grow in their own ways at the same time.
Knowing that we have so many families in our community, I launched a school fundraising program last year to help local schools raise money. Since launch, we’ve raised over $150,000 for local schools, which is incredible. And it’s great because a lot of the schools invest the money they raised in their school gardens, which feels like a really natural fit. It’s awesome to grow Good Eggs and help our community grow in their own ways at the same time. A total win-win.
What’s to come with partnerships with the larger community?
We’re about to launch a new program called The Good Eggs Friends Program. Through the program, our regular customers can connect with each other, us, and our larger community of farmers and foodmakers. Think events at our hub, farm tours, and much more. Kids can learn where their food is coming from, and customers can get a peek into our kitchen and foodhub. I’m really looking forward to bringing folks from various communities together with ours.
Our mission is to reinvent the food system, for good. What does that mission mean to you?
Good Eggs has always had a really big focus on community, especially our local food community. It’s what attracted me to work at Good Eggs in the first place. I think as we have grown, the mission has become more inclusive in a really good way. We’re reinventing your food system for good. It’s capital “F” food system, but also your food system: how you get good food on your table. It’s about making our customers’ lives easier and in a world that’s increasingly complex. I think our customers are the absolute best — and I truly believe that. We’re just returning the favor.
Interested in signing your school up for our fundraising program this spring? Fill out the form here.
