As ecommerce grew this year, we continued to work toward a decentralized vision of commerce — a model where merchants take back their customer relationships from colossal marketplaces and connect one-to-one with the people who buy their products.
Our merchants had a record-breaking number of these personal interactions in 2021 and that’s worth celebrating. So we’ve collected all the firsts, upgrades and proudest moments to share with you.
Since January 2021 feels like 10 years ago (and also 10 minutes ago, somehow), let’s take a walk down memory lane.
- 8,000 brands with one thing in common
- 75 million chances to improve customer experience
- Our merchants met shoppers wherever they were
- Assembling the ecommerce A-Team
- Customer feedback drove our product roadmap
- Gorgias grew alongside our merchants
- Looking ahead to 2022
8,000 brands with one thing in common
This year, we helped 8,000 brands support over 290 million shoppers, bringing in customers like Bidabo, Biketart, Lillie's Q and Livinguard.
All together, our customers generated $1.1 billion from their customer support functions in 2021.
Those companies varied in size, from single entrepreneurs still proving their products to enterprise companies scaling beyond their wildest dreams. Differences aside, they united in prioritizing customer experience to grow their businesses.
Some industries came up again and again on our roster, including:
- Fashion and apparel (like Marine Layer)
- Health and wellness (like Kettlebell Kings)
- Food and beverage (like Olipop)
- Cosmetics (like Ellana)
And because Gorgias powered growth across 110 industries, our customers’ customers were purchasing everything from medical supplies to maritime essentials.
75 million chances to improve customer experience
Every minute of 2021, Gorgias customers closed out an average of 179 tickets. In more relatable terms, they helped more than 10,000 shoppers in the time it took to watch a new episode of Shark Tank.
At the peak of support volume — the five-day period from Thanksgiving and Black Friday through Cyber Monday (BFCM) — our merchants answered 2.5 million tickets. Their support teams drove $25.6 million in sales during that time.
With tools made for that moment, they were able to stay on top of the ticket pile and turn the holiday rush into a gold rush.
The impact didn’t stop there. On average, our merchants received a 4/5 satisfaction rating from their customers in 2021. The 75 million tickets they answered reinforced their brands, one loyal customer at a time.
After all, when your team has a million fires to extinguish, the only flames in customer support should be the emoji reactions to your five-star ratings.
And that’s exactly what you’ll be chasing as your performance metrics approach those from our top quartile of merchants. The top-performing teams clocked first-response times under two hours and resolution times under 8 hours, on average.
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Our merchants met shoppers wherever they were
As ecommerce becomes more decentralized, so do the channels that provide your customer feedback.
Still, it’s no surprise that email remains the most popular support channel, used by 92% of our brands. Together, they answered 64 million emails in 2021 (85% of all tickets).
This next stat may be more of a revelation: 78% of our brands have brought Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter interactions into their Gorgias workspace. They answered 3.7 million comments across those three channels, with almost two-thirds coming from Facebook.
These social channels were used even more than our live chat, phone, and SMS integrations. And Gorgias helped merchants meet their customers in all of the above, without ever leaving their dashboard.
Assembling the ecommerce A-Team
2021 also saw the launch of our long-awaited Gorgias App Store. This hub features 75 apps to extend the power of our helpdesk and centralize the information support agents rely on.
62% of our merchants are using at least one of our partner apps, and we’re exploring new partnerships all the time to continue streamlining the customer support process.
This allows us, and all of our partners, to stay focused on being the absolute best at what we do.
Some of our merchants’ favorite integrations include:
- Klaviyo: An email and SMS marketing automation platform
- Recharge: For subscriptions and recurring payments
- Attentive: A comprehensive text message marketing solution
- Postscript: SMS marketing for growing ecommerce stores
- Yotpo: For customer reviews, loyalty, referrals, and more
So go ahead and close those 20 tabs out — you won’t need them where we’re headed.
Customer feedback drove our product roadmap
We released 91 features this year, 42 of which were led by your requests on our public roadmap.
Our most requested features (that are all available today!) were:
- Receiving and replying to Instagram DMs from within Gorgias
- Creating a Help Center, or FAQ hub, on your website
- Adding a self-service portal to your chat widget to handle order-status inquiries
- Receiving and replying to Twitter posts, mentions, and DMs from your helpdesk
- Managing phone calls in Gorgias, with both new and existing phone numbers
The quick adoption of our 2021 social media updates made it clear these channels were critical to our merchants’ success this year. We expect that to continue into 2022. (TikTok, anyone? Give it an upvote here!)
And while voice support didn’t see the same volume of requests as the social channels, we knew it was essential for certain brands. To better serve these merchants, we built a native phone integration that’s easily set up for new and existing numbers.
Merchants responded by taking more than 4,000 calls from shoppers this year. As a result, resolution times were up to 34% faster than others who left phone service out of their strategies.
And while we want to give our merchants a variety of tools to provide help, sometimes it's best to empower shoppers to help themselves.
Our new Help Center feature provides FAQ hubs on merchant websites, to work toward this goal. The first 100 Help Centers that went live attracted over 100,000 views, answering inquiries before they could turn into tickets.
Another contribution is perhaps our most exciting release: Our Automation Add-on allows for customization of self-service flows and deflects even more tickets to boost team efficiency.
Hundreds of merchants used the add-on in 2021 to automate their tickets, increasing efficiency across their support teams.
Our self-service portal alone deflected up to another 33% of tickets specific to shoppers (like order status). This freed up agent time to provide a more personal touch to important conversations.
Gorgias grew alongside our merchants
We tripled the size of our team in 2021 to continue building the best possible helpdesk for the specific needs of ecommerce brands. There are now 185 employees who work in 16 countries around the globe and speak 18 different languages.
That means there’s more Gorgians building out integrations, furthering the product roadmap, and contributing to our merchants’ success.
And our customers have let us know how much these improvements impacted their businesses. We currently hold top marks among the helpdesk categories on G2, Capterra and the Shopify app store.
Looking ahead to 2022
2021 was a year to remember for the Gorgias team and our customers, but 2022 is shaping up to be even better. It might even be the year people learn to pronounce our name. (470 people asked how during this year’s demos; think “gorgeous.”)
Fingers crossed.
Either way, we have some key new features on the roadmap and several surprises up our sleeves. We’ll continue building and optimizing channels so you can meet your customers where they are (including a much-requested Whatsapp integration). We’re also going to renew our focus on automation tools to increase efficiency across your team.
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As for the rest of the ecommerce industry, we have high hopes for 2022 (and plenty of predictions). We’re expecting continued shift of support tickets to social channels, a bigger emphasis on self-service options and a sharper focus on app integrations across the ecommerce ecosystem.
Until then, thanks for a great year!
