Tracy Godtschalk

Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Keeyu. Led e-commerce operations and customer service at Papinelle, Hotsprings and APG & Co, where issues stayed invisible until customers complained - the pattern Keeyu's product was built to end.

Ecommerce Operations, Customer Experience, Returns, Post-Purchase, Product

About the author

Tracy Godtschalk is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Keeyu. She came up on the operations floor across Australia and New Zealand retail, leading e-commerce operations and customer service at Papinelle, Hotsprings and APG & Co, and running international customer care at Pumpkin Patch. In every one of those roles the same pattern showed up: inventory mismatches, delayed orders and payment failures stayed invisible until a customer complained, and by then the damage was done.

That is the reality Keeyu was built to end. Every order is a promise, and Tracy's job is making sure the product keeps it. She runs Keeyu's product and onboarding, from scoping a brand's stack to the workflows that detect and resolve fulfillment, payment and returns issues in real time - the shift from reactive firefighting to proactive e-commerce operations. Her rule from years in ops and customer service: complaints arrive long after the problem starts, so give teams visibility and control while there is still time to act, and shoppers get what they want, on time, as promised.

Suggested questions

  • Why do most e-commerce teams only find out about a problem when the customer complains?
  • What does proactive e-commerce operations actually look like day to day?
  • What breaks first when order volume scales faster than the ops team?
  • Which post-purchase problems should be automated, and which still need a person?
  • How do you stop customer service costs scaling in lockstep with growth?
  • What does a CX team lose to reactive firefighting?
  • How should a brand scope its stack before automating returns and fulfillment?
  • What is the real cost of a broken promise to a customer?

Episode ideas

  • From reactive firefighting to proactive e-commerce operations
  • Why the complaint is the last step, not the first signal
  • Building product from the operations floor
  • Returns, refunds and the timers nobody draws
  • Scaling CX without scaling headcount