Aug. 2, 2022

This paid piece is sponsored by Silencer Central.

It doesn’t take long for Andrea Pins to translate a patient’s experience in health care to a customer’s experience making a purchase.

“They’re vastly different in some ways but very similar in others because they both speak to the human experience,” said Pins, who recently became head of customer experience at Silencer Central.

“What we all want is to feel heard, to have our needs anticipated and met, our burdens eased. We want to be surprised and — especially in today’s world — delighted unexpectedly by the goodness of others.”

Pins is packaging all those elements in her mind as she begins her new role at fast-growing Silencer Central, a national leader in the firearms industry that is expanding rapidly from its Sioux Falls headquarters.

She most recently focused on patient experience at Sanford Health, specifically patients’ digital experience, which built on a career that includes time in corporate communications, nonprofits and marketing.

A Twin Cities-area native, Pins completed her undergraduate degree at the University of South Dakota in contemporary media and journalism. She returned to the state for a college friend’s wedding, met her future husband and moved back in 2011.

We sat down with her to learn more about how she’s preparing to deliver an even stronger customer experience at Silencer Central.

What attracted you to your new role at Silencer Central?

It was really a number of things. First and foremost, it was the opportunity to come in at a really exciting time. The business is experiencing incredible growth, so to come in at the beginning of that and have the opportunity to shape the approach to customer experience and help drive growth was exciting and appealing to me personally and professionally.

This is a new position, so where do you start? What’s first on your “to do” list?

To start, our customer already is very central to who we are. Our values are customer, integrity and winning. Our founder, Brandon Maddox, built the organization from the ground up based on relationships and trust and regularly incorporating customer feedback. And as we have grown, that commitment hasn’t changed, but it can be hard to scale. That’s where my role comes in. My role is dedicated to making sure the customer remains at the center of everything we do.

In the first few weeks, I’ve really been diving into the current customer experience. What is the customer journey? What do they see when they search for us online? What’s the purchase process like? How are they engaging after they’ve had a silencer delivered to their door? How are we optimizing and aligning to our mission of making buying a silencer simple?

What are some of the key duties of your role?

The key duties of this role are essentially knowing our customer and really advocating for them in a strategic way, aligning our work so the experience is consistent and representative of our mission and values. It’s also about partnering with our team on continuous improvement across all areas of the business and optimizing business decisions by helping our leaders focus on that sweet spot between what customers value most and what brings us the most value. I hope to also get to a point where we’re intentionally designing new experiences that further differentiate us and position us as leaders in the industry. 

What are some of the first initiatives you’re working on?

Mapping out the customer journey and identifying opportunities to improve, specifically looking at customer communications. The process of buying a silencer can be cumbersome and lengthy and bureaucratic. We don’t want to add to that; we want to simplify it. We want to give as much transparency as we can about the process and have the customer feel like we are a partner walking them through the process and taking care of the red tape. We’re also working toward a new customer portal that will give even easier access and autonomy to customers to check on where they’re at in the process, easily access their gun trust and other documents, and see shipping and tracking.

You have to address an organization that meets its customers in multiple ways – increasingly online, but also by phone and still in person at industry events. How do you balance that in optimizing the experience?

There are multiple touch points, and we’ll address all of them, but my primary focus to start is online because it’s new and it’s where we’ve really expanded. There are many enhancements and improvements that can be made. And increasingly, it’s necessary to look across industries because consumers are blurring the line in their expectations. If you can do it by an app with an airline or a department store, why is it different with another business? Our competition is no longer our direct competition. Our competition is the last best experience our customers have had anywhere.

What has your own experience been like so far at Silencer Central as a new member of the team? Is there anything about the company that has surprised you?

I have really enjoyed it so far. The customer truly is central to everything we do, and there’s a commitment from every person on our team to hold true to that, which in and of itself makes it a great place to work. That’s the North Star we’re all working toward and rally around.

I think for Sioux Falls, for South Dakota, to have the opportunity to work for a startup leading in its industry is an opportunity that doesn’t come around often. It’s a unique opportunity for me personally, but I think it’s a cool point of pride for the community to have something like this in their backyard. That we’re representing Sioux Falls and South Dakota in the firearms industry, in advocating for customer experience, is really cool.

Want to join the team at Silencer Central? It’s growing, so there are always new opportunities. For a list of current openings, click here.

New Silencer Central office designed to focus on employee experience