About AJ

AJ Musselman standing on the rocks by the water

Hi, I'm AJ, a Chicago-based Customer Experience Leader with 12 years in CX and 6 years leading CX operations for fast-growing DTC and CPG brands. Across full-time and consulting roles, I've built and run CX for skincare, beauty, wellness, apparel, and food & beverage brands. I turn support into a competitive advantage without losing the human touch.

I built my foundation in empathy and communication as a flight attendant, where I learned that small, consistent moments create lasting trust. That lesson still shapes how I design processes, guide teams, and build systems.

Industries served
  • Skincare
  • Beauty
  • Wellness
  • Apparel
  • Food & Beverage
  • Functional Beverages
  • Celebrity & Founder-Led Brands

Career Highlights

Now2025 – Present · Customer Experience Operations Manager

Grüns Acquired by Unilever, 2026

Leading CX Ops across the Ü Snacks portfolio: six brands, one support operation, across DTC, Amazon and TikTok Shop.

The portfolio
GrünsGrüns KidsNütropsImmünJücedMüves
2025 · Fractional CX Manager

Create CX

Ran CX for five DTC brands concurrently, from Gorgias rebuilds to AI strategy, working directly with founders.

40–0%
Ticket automation
Siena AI across client brands · 4.3+ CSAT
2024 – 2025 · CX Manager

Juice Beauty

Owned the CX function for a $100M+ beauty brand and moved support from Outlook to Gorgias with a self-service-first strategy.

0 → 0%
Ticket automation
Against a 12% Gorgias benchmark at the time · FRT −37% · 4.56 CSAT
2021 – 2023 · CX Manager

GXVE Beauty by Gwen Stefani · New Theory Ventures, 2020 – 2023

Built the CX function from launch: channel mix, policies, helpdesk, help center and the BPO model. Before GXVE, launched CX for SELF/ish Skin (2020 – 2021) at the same fund.

0.00
CSAT, sustained
Sub-7-hour first response across tenure

Case Studies

From an Outlook inbox to a CX operation

Juice Beauty · 2024 – 2025

When I joined Juice Beauty, a $100M+ brand was answering customers from a shared Outlook inbox. Replies were copied out of a Google Doc, nothing was categorized, and there were no documented processes. My job was to turn that into a system without the customer ever feeling the construction.

Read the recommendation from Juice Beauty’s Director of Operations
Read the full storyClose

Where it started

  • Support ran out of an Outlook inbox
  • No ticket categories, no routing, no automations
  • No macros. Answers lived in a Google Doc and got pasted in by hand
  • No documented processes, so every answer depended on who was online

What I did

  • Documented the processes first. You can't automate what isn't defined, so the SOPs and macro library came before any rule
  • Moved everything to Gorgias with routing rules and a tagging taxonomy, so we finally knew what customers were contacting us about
  • Published clear shipping and return policies, then built a help center on top of them
  • Went self-service first: if a question had a good public answer, deflection handled it and the team handled the rest
  • Took a monthly voice-of-customer read to the C-suite and let it set priorities

Where it landed

0 → 16%
Ticket automation, against a 12% Gorgias benchmark at the time
−37%
First response time
−14%
Ticket volume
4.56 / 5
CSAT, held the whole way through

Launching CX in stealth

GXVE Beauty by Gwen Stefani · 2021 – 2023

I came in before launch, while GXVE was still in stealth, which means I built the customer experience before there was a customer. The hard part of that is guessing well: every policy, macro and escalation path had to be ready for day one, for a celebrity brand that would be watched closely from the first order. I'd just done the same for SELF/ish Skin at the same fund, so I had a playbook, and GXVE was where it got tested at scale.

Read the recommendation from GXVE’s VP of Ecommerce
Read the full storyClose

Where it started

  • Pre-launch and in stealth, with no support function at all
  • No helpdesk, no policies, no help center, no team
  • A launch date, a famous founder and a lot of people about to be paying attention

What I did

  • Set the support channel mix and wrote the shipping and return policies before we had a single order
  • Implemented Gorgias from scratch, with the help center and SOPs alongside it
  • Sourced, evaluated and selected the BPO partner, onboarded the team, and ran their business and performance reviews
  • Was the day-to-day point of contact for the 3PL, holding them to SLAs on unshipped orders, address issues and returns
  • Ran PR gifting and the social engagement from @gxvebeauty, because early on, CX and community are the same job
  • Co-managed the brand ambassador program with the VP of Social Selling

Where it landed

Day one
Support live at launch, with a team already trained
4.65 / 5
CSAT across my tenure, with sub-7-hour first response and sub-14-hour resolution
0 → 1,700
Brand ambassadors in 15 months

Skills

CX Operations

Inbox operations, SOPs, macro libraries, playbooks, SLA design, and KPI reporting (FRT, CSAT, AHT, SLA) across DTC, Amazon, and TikTok Shop.

AI & Self-Service

Siena AI implementation (personas, guardrails, intents, QA), Gorgias Automate and help center architecture, deflection strategy, and the escalation logic that protects CSAT.

Team Building & BPO Management

Hiring, onboarding, coaching, QA, and managing BPO vendor relationships including contracts, SLAs, and performance.

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