How to Write Guidance with the “When, If, Then” Framework
TL;DR:
- AI Agent is only as good as the instructions you give it. Clear Guidance enables it to perform like your best support teammate.
- The “When, If, Then” framework makes writing Guidance easy and repeatable. Start with the scenario (when), define the conditions (if), and list specific actions (then) to create structured Guidance.
- Use Guidance to handle frequently asked questions, like returns, cancellations, or discount code inquiries, so your team can focus on more complex issues.
- If your Guidance isn’t working, formatting or logic gaps might be to blame. Check for missing conditions, unsupported tasks, or confusing formatting.
AI Agent is built to deliver fast, accurate support at scale, but like any teammate, it performs best when given clear and specific instructions.
That’s where Guidance comes in. Writing structured prompts that tell your AI Agent exactly what to do in a given scenario helps reduce escalations, speed up resolutions, and create a more consistent customer experience.
One simple, repeatable way to do that is with the “When, If, Then” framework.
In this post, we’ll show you how it works, using examples from our Gorgias Academy course, Improve AI Agent with Better Guidance.
You’ll learn how to write Guidance that results in:
- Fewer escalations
- Faster resolutions
- Smarter, more consistent AI behavior
Let’s break it down.
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What is Guidance?
Guidance is how you tell your AI Agent what to do. It’s a set of instructions that outlines how your AI Agent should respond in specific situations.
When Guidance is available, your AI Agent follows it first, even before checking your Help Center or website content.
That means if your Guidance is missing, unclear, or incomplete, your AI Agent might escalate the ticket, or worse, give a confusing or unhelpful response. Here’s an example:
Let’s say a customer wants to return an item. A human agent would send them a link to the return portal and explain the steps. But without that instruction in Guidance, your AI Agent might skip straight to escalation, turning a simple request into unnecessary work for your team.
That’s why clear, step-by-step Guidance is key to help your AI Agent respond the way your best support agent would.
Learn more: Create Guidance to give AI Agent custom instructions
Introducing the “When, If, Then” framework
Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start when writing Guidance. The “When, If, Then” framework gives you a simple, repeatable structure to follow, so there’s no need to guess.
Taking this approach mirrors how AI Agent processes information behind the scenes. When you write clear Guidance, your AI Agent can follow it step by step, just like a support teammate would.
Let’s walk through the three parts of the framework.
WHEN: Set the scenario
Start by identifying the situation your Guidance applies to. This is the trigger or scenario. Use it as the title of your Guidance so it’s easy to find later.
Example:
- WHEN a shopper asks to return an order
- WHEN a customer wants to cancel their subscription
Keep it simple and action-oriented. You’re setting the stage for what comes next.
IF: Add conditions
Once you’ve defined the scenario, add any conditions that determine what should happen. “If” statements help your AI Agent understand what to do based on specific details, like timing, order history, or customer tags.
Example:
- IF the order was placed less than or equal to 15 days ago
- IF the customer has a VIP tag in Shopify
Use as many “if” conditions as needed to guide different outcomes. Just make sure you cover all the possibilities so your AI Agent doesn’t get stuck.
THEN: Define the actions
This is where you tell your AI Agent exactly what to do. Be specific and use bullet points or numbered steps to keep things clear.
Example:
- Tell the shopper they’re eligible for a return
- Send them a link to the return portal
- Let them know they’ll receive a prepaid label once the form is submitted
The more clearly you outline the steps, the more consistently your AI Agent will perform.
The framework keeps your Guidance simple, structured, and easy to understand—for both your team and your AI Agent. When your AI Agent knows exactly what to do, it can deliver fast, accurate, and helpful responses that keep customers happy.
Put it all together
Say a shopper messages your store asking to return an item and you want AI Agent to send them to your return portal.
Here’s how this looks in a complete piece of Guidance:
WHEN a shopper asks to return an order:
IF the order was placed less than or equal to 15 days ago,
THEN
- Tell the shopper they’re eligible for a return
- Send them a link to the return portal
- Let them know they’ll receive a prepaid label via email once they submit the form
If you want to personalize it even more, you can use Shopify variables like tags to tailor the experience. For example:
IF [Tags] include VIP,
THEN provide the shopper with a discount code VIP25
The top 9 most common scenarios that need Guidance
These nine scenarios come up constantly in ecommerce support, and they’re perfect candidates for automation. They follow predictable patterns and are quick to resolve when your AI Agent knows what to do.
Use the examples below to jumpstart your setup. Each one is written using the When, If, Then framework and can be copied directly into Gorgias. Then, you can test out your Guidance by going to AI Agent > Test.
1. Where’s my order? (WISMO)
WHEN a customer asks about their order status:
IF tracking information is available,
THEN
- Provide the tracking number and link to the carrier's tracking page.
- Inform the customer of the expected delivery date.
IF tracking information is unavailable,
THEN
- Inform the customer that the order is being prepared for shipment.
- Provide an estimated shipping date.
2. What size should I order?
WHEN a customer inquires about product sizing for [item name]:
IF the customer asks what size to get, or mentions they’re unsure about sizing,
THEN
- Share the sizing chart or guide.
- Offer recommendations based on common fit feedback.
3. Can I change my shipping address?
WHEN a customer requests to change their shipping address:
IF the order has not been fulfilled,
THEN
- Confirm the new address with the customer.
- Update the shipping address in Shopify (or your chosen platform).
IF the order has already been fulfilled,
THEN
- Inform the customer that the address cannot be changed.
- Provide options for order interception or return.
4. Can I cancel my order?
WHEN a customer asks to cancel their order:
IF the order has not been fulfilled,
THEN
- Confirm that we can cancel their order.
- Tell them they’ll receive their refund in 5-10 business days.
IF the order has already been fulfilled,
THEN
- Inform the customer that the order cannot be cancelled.
- Help to initiate a return once the item is delivered.
5. How do I return an item?
WHEN a customer asks about returning an item:
IF the return is within the allowed return window of [x] days after the order was received,
THEN
- Provide the return instructions and link to the return portal.
- Inform the customer about the refund process.
IF the return window has expired,
THEN
- Inform the customer that the return period has ended.
- Offer alternative solutions if available.
6. Do you have any discount codes?
WHEN a customer inquires about discounts or promo codes:
IF there is an active promotion for [item name],
THEN
- Share the current discount code and its terms.
IF there are no active promotions for [item name],
THEN
- Inform the customer that there are no current promotions.
- Suggest subscribing to the newsletter or following social media for future promos.
7. I want to pause my subscription.
WHEN a customer requests to pause their subscription:
IF the customer has an active subscription,
THEN
- Provide instructions on how to pause the subscription through their account.
- Confirm the pause and inform them of the next billing date.
8. When will this item be back in stock?
WHEN a customer asks about product restocking:
IF a restock date is available,
THEN
- Inform the customer of the expected restock date.
IF the restock date is unknown,
THEN
- Offer to notify the customer when the product is back in stock.
- Suggest similar products.
9. Do you ship internationally?
WHEN a customer inquires about international shipping:
IF international shipping is available,
THEN
- Confirm that international shipping is offered.
- Provide estimated delivery times and any additional fees.
IF international shipping is not available,
THEN
- Inform the customer that shipping is limited to specific regions.
Troubleshooting: Why Guidance might not trigger
If your AI Agent isn’t following your Guidance, or it’s escalating tickets you thought it could handle, run through this quick checklist to spot the issue:
- Has a descriptive, easy-to-understand name: Name your Guidance based on the scenario (e.g. When a shopper asks about returns).
- Clear IF and THEN conditions: Make sure your Guidance spells out what to do when a condition is met.
- Covers all variations (no gaps in logic): Don’t leave your AI Agent hanging. Include fallback instructions for all scenarios.
- No wall-of-text formatting: Break things up with line breaks, headers, and spacing to help AI Agent scan quickly.
- Clearly written steps with bullets or numbers: Use lists to make actions easy to follow, like you would for a teammate.
- Doesn’t include unsupported tasks: Avoid unsupported instructions like “send macro,” “assign to agent,” or “delay the response.”
Bonus: Let AI do the heavy lifting
Don’t have time to write Guidance from scratch? The good news is AI can help with that, too.
AI-generated Guidance is available for all AI Agent subscribers. This feature analyzes your historical ticket data and uses it to generate ready-to-use, customizable prompts for your AI Agent.
Here’s what it does:
- Analyzes past tickets to identify common support scenarios
- Generates step-by-step Guidance based on what’s worked before
Ready to level up your Guidance?
Clear, structured Guidance is the key to unlocking better performance from your AI Agent. With just one well-written “When, If, Then” prompt, you can reduce escalations, speed up resolutions, and give your shoppers a smoother experience.
Not sure where to start? Try writing Guidance for one common question today—like returns, order status, or promo codes. Or, if you want to go deeper, check out our free Gorgias Academy course.
TL;DR:
- Your helpdesk shouldn't hold you back. If your team is buried in tickets or bouncing between tools, your platform might be the problem—not your process.
- Rising ticket volumes, slower response times, and clunky integrations are signs you’ve outgrown your platform. Don’t wait for these issues to impact revenue or retention.
- You’re not alone—fast-growing brands hit these roadblocks too. Dr. Bronner’s, Psycho Bunny, and Audien Hearing all switched platforms to support bigger growth with less friction.
- Helpdesk migration doesn’t have to be scary. With the right migration support, you can move quickly, avoid downtime, and give your team a tool they actually want to use.
As ticket volume grows, even the best CX teams start running into roadblocks: limited integrations, repetitive manual work, clunky interfaces, and slower response times. You patch things together. You make it work... until you can’t.
Many growing ecommerce brands find themselves trapped in a system that demands constant workarounds just to function.
If your current customer service platform feels more like a burden than a backbone, you’re not alone—and you’re not stuck.
In this post, we’ll walk through:
- The key signs it’s time to switch platforms
- What to prioritize when choosing your next one
- How brands like Pepper made a smooth move to Gorgias
The 5 warning signs you’ve outgrown your helpdesk
There’s a tipping point most brands hit as they scale. The signs are subtle at first—maybe your agents are taking longer to respond, or the volume of customer support tickets quietly outpaces your team. Then it starts affecting revenue, customer satisfaction, and retention. Big yikes.
Left unchecked, small inefficiencies can snowball into bigger operational challenges.
Catch these warning signs before they start costing you growth:
1. Rising ticket volume and slower resolution times
Support teams that are always playing catch-up rarely have time to focus on higher-value work. If your inbox is constantly overflowing or first response times are creeping up, it’s likely a sign your tools aren’t scaling with your business.
That’s exactly what happened with apparel brand Psycho Bunny.
“As we grew and expanded, we needed a tool that was better suited for Shopify, easier to manage, and offered better support to help us get the most out of the tool,” said Jean-Aymeri de Magistris, VP IT, Data & Analytics, and PMO at Psycho Bunny.
2. Agents constantly toggling between tabs and tools
If your agents are spending more time gathering context than solving problems, you’re losing time (and likely, patience) on both sides of the conversation. Fragmented tools can seriously undercut productivity.
Dr. Bronner’s experienced this firsthand, juggling Salesforce, spreadsheets, and disconnected systems.
“When I joined, we were logging calls and emails in Excel. It wasn’t scalable,” recalled Emily McEnany, Senior CX Manager at Dr. Bronner’s.
3. Clunky or missing integrations with your ecommerce stack
Some platforms require technical support even for small changes, such as custom workflows, new automations, or basic integrations. That may work at the start, but it becomes a bottleneck as your brand grows.
Disconnected systems strip away context, increasing the risk of mistakes. Whether it’s pulling up an order status or managing a return, agents need tools that work together, not against each other.
4. You’re stuck answering the same questions over and over
Every support team deals with repetitive inquiries. But without automation or self-service options, those tickets eat into your team’s time and keep you from focusing on higher-impact conversations.
Nude Project struggled to keep up with their ticket volume due to Zendesk’s lack of intuitive automation features. During Black Friday, the team received a record-high number of tickets—more than double their average volume.
“Connecting with customers through a screen is not always easy. With the high volume of messages, we need a tool that simplifies operational tasks while enabling effective communication and organization,” said Raquel J. Méndez, CX Manager at Nude Project.
5. Onboarding takes too long
Your platform should be easy for new hires to learn and for your team to evolve with. If ramping up agents takes weeks (or months), the platform might be getting in the way more than it’s helping.
Arcade Belts went through this process, trying one system, then switching back to one that better matched their needs.
“It just took a demo or two to realize what was actually going to support our team the way we needed,” their Ecommerce Coordinator, Grant, shared.
If any of these challenges sound familiar, you’re not alone.
The important part is recognizing when you’ve outgrown your current setup—and knowing that there are options out there to help you move faster.
What to look for when switching CX platforms
Switching platforms isn’t just about solving today’s problems. It’s about creating space for your team to be efficient, serve customers better, and turn support from a cost center into a real growth engine.
Need to migrate to a new platform? Look for the following:
1. A system that keeps up with rising ticket volumes
As your brand grows, support volume naturally increases.
Find a stable infrastructure that can handle that growth, has zero platform lag, and a robust engineering team that continuously makes the tool better for your needs.
To Psycho Bunny, Zendesk was a “legacy tool”—so they switched to Gorgias.
In just a few weeks, they migrated all historical conversations, tags, and Macros to Gorgias. Jean-Aymeri, their VP IT, credits Gorgias’s helpful onboarding specialists for making it effortless to integrate their apps and onboard their team onto a brand new tool.
Related: The engineering work that keeps Gorgias running smoothly
2. Automation for repetitive tasks (that maintains the human touch)
From “where’s my order” questions to return policies, prioritize AI tools that can automate repetitive inquiries.
Dr. Bronner’s implemented AI Agent to handle rising volumes of FAQs, allowing their team to focus on complex requests that require a human touch.
In just two months, they saw:
- 45% of all customer service tickets automated
- $100,000 saved per year by switching from Salesforce to Gorgias
- 4 days per month in team time savings
- 11% higher customer satisfaction score
By systematizing the simple stuff, they freed up bandwidth to focus on what matters most—building relationships and solving more nuanced problems.
3. Built-in features that turn support into sales
More brands are rethinking how support contributes to revenue. Look for a tool that combines support and sales. The most effective ones use AI to initiate upselling conversations, so your team can generate new revenue without needing to scale headcount at the same rate.
For jewelry brand Caitlyn Minimalist, which normally saw 30,000 tickets per month, AI Agent was the perfect fit. On top of answering FAQs, AI Agent also helped recommend products based on customer needs.
These conversations often begin as simple inquiries (“What should I get for my friend’s birthday?” or “What product suits me?”) and end in a purchase—handled entirely by AI. In fact, AI Agent’s conversion rates were 150% higher than the team average, proving that automation can support and sell.
4. A more efficient workflow—without relying on developers
The last thing scaling brands should have to worry about is relying on developers for basic changes. That includes being able to create macros and automations in-house and access key customer data without toggling across tools.
The platform should fit into your existing ecommerce stack—not fight against it.
That’s where Audien Hearing found themselves before switching to Gorgias.
“I’ve seen companies lose a lot of money because it’s not efficient,” said Zoe Kahn, former VP of CX. “You try to save money early on, but then you look at your helpdesk a year later and think, ‘Oh no, what’s happening?’”
Since switching from Richpanel, Audien Hearing’s CX team has been able to run CX on their own terms—without the bottlenecks.
They now resolve 9,000 tickets per month through self-service alone (including a customer knowledge base), cut first response times by 88%, and reduced return rates by 5%. With more time for one-on-one conversations, CSAT jumped from 80 to 86.
What migration actually looks like
“But migration sounds hard.”
We get it. Moving your entire CX operation can feel intimidating. But with the right partner (and the right platform), it doesn’t have to be.
Here’s how Gorgias makes switching smooth and stress-free:
- A dedicated onboarding team: Our team is with you every step of the way—from initial setup to post-launch optimization.
- A platform built for ecommerce workflows: Gorgias is designed to work the way ecommerce brands do, not the other way around.
- Fast setup and agent training: Most brands are up and running in days, not weeks. And because the interface is intuitive, teams can get comfortable quickly without heavy, time-consuming training.
- Full data migration support: Whether you’re moving from Gladly, Zendesk, or another platform, we’ll help you bring your history, macros, and workflows over smoothly.
Most Gorgias customers are fully live within just a few days—ready to serve customers faster, smarter, and with less manual lift.
How Pepper made a smooth switch to Gorgias
When fast-growing intimates brand Pepper outgrew their old CX platform, they knew they needed a system that could scale with them—without sacrificing speed or quality.
“Gladly didn’t offer any automation or inbox organization features. Our queue got really messy. We got 400 tickets a day during Black Friday, and we didn’t clear that backlog until the following Spring. We knew we couldn’t do that again,” explained Gabrielle McWhirter, CX Operations Lead at Pepper.
With Gorgias, Pepper was able to:
- Fully migrate their workflows and history
- Train their team quickly on the new platform
- Launch their AI Agent ("Penelope") to automate more than 50% of support tickets
And the results spoke for themselves:
- 16.5x ROI on AI-driven sales interactions
- 90%+ decrease in first response and resolution times
- 18% uplift in average order value
See how Pepper made the switch happen (and why they’re never looking back):
Is it time to make the switch?
If you’re seeing the warning signs, here’s a quick gut check:
- You’re drowning in tickets and toggling between tabs
- You can’t track or tie support to revenue
- You need better integration with your tech stack
- You’re not using automation, or it’s not actually saving time
- Your team dreads logging into your current tool
The right platform won’t just help your team work better. It’ll help you drive more revenue, boost customer retention, and actually make customers want to talk to you.
See what switching to Gorgias could do for your brand. Book a demo today.
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TL;DR:
- Your CX team drives revenue: Build trust, remove friction, and influence buying decisions across the customer journey
- Optimize existing processes: Automate tasks, address concerns proactively, and create efficient handoffs
- Spot risk early: Use tagging and sentiment detection to re-engage customers before they churn
- Protect VIPs: Prioritize loyal customers, create moments of delight, turn supporters into advocates
Rising tariffs. Shipping delays. Unpredictable price hikes. For ecommerce, it's an understatement to say the pressure is rising. If you're on the CX team, you're already facing the fire head-on — all the customer frustration, confusion, and hesitation.
CX teams are on the frontlines of support and sales. You're shaping customer trust, buying decisions, and brand loyalty.
From pre-sales conversations to loyalty programs, it’s time to rethink the customer journey, so you can turn every interaction into an opportunity to grow your revenue.
Reframe CX’s role across the customer journey
Customer service isn’t just about reacting to problems. It can be a proactive and strategic function that helps you stabilize and even grow your revenue.
Think about it this way: you have the power to turn everyday customer moments into wins.
At every stage of the customer journey, you can turn:
- Purchase hesitation -> confidence to buy (pre-sales)
- Concern → relief (post-purchase)
- Disinterest -> re-engagement (loyalty)
- Returning customers → brand advocates (advocacy)
This isn’t about being pushy for sales. It's about anticipating needs and putting systems in place that protect customer relationships and revenue.
As you update your CX workflow, keep these two questions in mind:
- How can I positively influence revenue?
- How can I reduce the risk of losing it?
1. Resolve pre-sales hesitation with education
Most pre-sales hesitation is rooted in uncertainty: What’s the return policy? How much is shipping? Will this fit? Will it arrive in time?
Reduce customer effort and build confidence with automation as your CX team’s first line of defense. Anything else more complicated, your agents can take care of.
Automate repetitive questions
Start by setting up automated answers for the questions your team responds to every day, especially the ones that delay conversions:
- Where is my order?
- Do you ship internationally?
- How much is shipping?
- Do you accept returns?
- Are your prices affected by tariffs?
There are a few ways to automate these questions in Gorgias:
- Flows: Automated conversations designed to resolve common inquiries without agent intervention
- AI Agent: Conversational AI that answers customer questions in chat and email, trained on your internal documents and brand voice
- Help Center: A self-serve, customer-facing knowledge base of help articles, FAQs, guides, and product resources
Read more: How to optimize your help center for AI Agent
Proactively guide shoppers
Be the compass for the wandering window shoppers and browsers. They might not know exactly what to get, but with the right nudge, you can guide them toward the right product and a fuller cart.
Try these chat prompts:
- Don’t know what size to get? Check out our sizing guide to get your perfect fit!
- Need help choosing the right carry-on? Here’s a quick comparison of our top sellers.
- We offer free shipping for orders over $60!
- What’s your skin type — dry, oily, or combination?
Offer discounts based on shopper intent
Sometimes, a discount is all a customer needs to take their order to checkout. Instead of storewide promo codes, use AI to offer tailored discounts to shoppers who show strong intent to buy. This can help reduce abandoned carts and leave customers with a great impression of your brand.
Here are some of the best times to offer a discount:
- A first-time shopper is hesitant because of the price
- A shopper adds an item to their cart, then asks about shipping or return policies
- A shopper asks if they should wait for a sale
Recommend products in real time
If shoppers can’t quickly find what they’re looking for, they’ll leave. Real-time product recommendations help resolve indecision and increase average order value.
Examples of when real-time suggestions drive conversions:
- A shopper asks for jeans in medium — AI suggests bestsellers in their size
- A returning customer mentions loving a nude-colored top — AI recommends similar or matching items
- A product is out of stock — AI suggests alternatives based on color or style
Hand off high-intent shoppers to live agents
High-intent questions are usually specific and goal-oriented — things like:
- What size should I get?
- How soon can this ship?
- Is this item still in stock?
When customers ask questions that directly impact their ability to purchase, it’s a strong buying signal. If they don’t get a fast response, they’ll probably abandon their cart.
So, how do you encourage shoppers to keep shopping?
Activate chat on your website and equip it with automated features, such as Flows, and/or conversational AI, like AI Agent.
No matter what setup you choose, always have a protocol ready to hand off to a human agent when needed.
In Gorgias, you can set up Rules or use AI Agent handover rules to automatically route conversations based on specific keywords, topics, or customer behavior.
2. Alleviate post-purchase concerns
After buying, customers may want to change their order or just need reassurance that everything is on its way.
If customers feel ignored during this critical window, you risk losing their business.
The easy fix? Eliminate friction, reassure customers, and make it easy for them to stay excited about their purchase.
Automate order status updates
Customers expect full visibility into their orders. Give them full access to this information, and you'll receive fewer WISMO requests.
Integrate your helpdesk with your 3PL or shipping provider to automatically send real-time updates on order status. If customers have an account portal, give them a tracking link.
Pro Tip: If delays are expected, automate messages to let customers know ahead of time. Being proactive keeps customers informed and reduces the need for reactive support.
Turn negative experiences into retention moments
When something goes wrong, like a delay, a lost package, or unexpected fees, it's how you respond that matters most.
Empower your CX team to act quickly. For example:
- Offer store credit, loyalty points, or free shipping perks to impacted customers
- Prioritize VIP or first-time buyers for fast-tracked resolutions
- Escalate critical post-purchase issues to senior agents
You can also use sentiment detection to flag frustrated customers early. Gorgias has built-in customer sentiment detection that automatically identifies tones like urgent, negative, positive, or even threatening language. You can create Rules that tag these conversations and route them to the right agent for faster handling.
Read more: Customer sentiments
3. Re-engage at-risk customers and reduce churn
Just because a customer is at risk doesn’t mean you’ve lost them. Identifying and re-engaging at-risk customers is one of the highest-impact things you can do to protect revenue.
Spot risk early
Pay attention to repeat patterns that signal dissatisfaction. Common early indicators include:
- Multiple shipping complaints
- Frequent refund or return requests
- Negative or urgent sentiment in support tickets
- Long periods of customer inactivity after purchase
Use sentiment detection and Ticket Fields (ticket properties) to tag these signals automatically. With this data identified, you’ll start to spot patterns that can help you address issues, giving customers a reason to stay.
Build recovery flows
Once you’ve identified your at-risk customers, use win-back strategies, like:
- Offering discount codes, loyalty perks, or free returns
- Sending personalized emails or messages acknowledging the issue and offering solutions
- Prioritizing conversations for your most experienced agents or account managers
When handled thoughtfully, a churn-risk customer can become one of your strongest advocates because you showed up when it mattered most.
4. Build loyalty by surprising your best customers
Don’t forget, there are already customers who love you! These loyal customers don’t just come back to buy again — they bring friends, amplify your brand, and give your business stability when you need it most.
Identify and prioritize VIPs
Use customer data to identify customers who purchase frequently, spend more, or have referred others. Tag them as VIPs in your helpdesk so that their requests are prioritized.
For example, in Gorgias, you can use Customer Fields (customer labels and properties) to group your customers under:
- VIP
- Repeat purchaser
- High lifetime value
- Promoter
When you know who your top customers are, you can offer more personalized service and make sure every interaction strengthens their connection to your brand.
Create brand advocates through small gestures
You don’t need to offer huge discounts to let customers know you appreciate them. Small, thoughtful gestures often make the biggest impact:
- Send handwritten thank-you notes with their orders
- Offer a free gift, upgrade, or loyalty perk after a milestone purchase
- Include a referral code they can share with friends
- Feature loyal customers on your social media channels (with their permission)
If you’re using macros and automations, you can even trigger some of these surprise-and-delight actions automatically, making it easier to scale while keeping the personal touch.
Make revenue your outcome at any time
We know how overwhelming uncertain times can be. It’s easy to think you need to reinvent your entire strategy just to keep up.
But the truth is, you already have what you need. You have a team that knows your customers. You have conversations happening every day that can protect, nurture, and even grow your business.
By grounding yourself in what’s already working and creating proactive systems, you can turn uncertainty into strong and steady growth.
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2025 Ecommerce Trends: AI Adoption and Smarter Tech Stacks
TL;DR
- Ecommerce teams are overwhelmed by app overload, with 42% using six tools daily—leading to inefficiencies, rising costs, and poor customer experiences.
- Top brands are consolidating their tech stacks, choosing deeply integrated, ecommerce-specific platforms to simplify operations and lower costs.
- AI adoption and excitement are accelerating, with 77.2% of ecommerce professionals using AI daily and 55.3% rating their excitement as an 8-10 out of 10.
- Gorgias powers AI-driven support and sales in one platform, through a single workspace that helps ecommerce teams resolve faster, sell smarter, and operate more efficiently.
At Gorgias, we work with over 16,000 ecommerce brands and one common challenge emerges over and over:
Ecommerce tools are essential, but too many tools becomes a burden.
With different teams responsible for different functions, brands risk creating a disconnected tech stack that causes inefficiencies, reduces productivity, and ultimately impacts profitability.
Ecommerce teams are shuffling between tabs, copying and pasting order numbers, searching for customer data, and trying to piece it all together. It’s not only inefficient—it’s expensive, frustrating, and unsustainable as you scale.
So we dug into that data.
Our 2025 Ecommerce Trends Report surveyed ecommerce professionals across industries and job roles to understand what they really think about tech stacks and AI’s role in it.
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Ecommerce professionals are approaching app overload
There is now an ecommerce app for every possible use case a brand could need. But as businesses adopt new technologies for each part of their customer journey, their teams end up working out of dozens of platforms.
The study found that 42.28% of ecommerce pros use at least six apps daily to perform their role. Regardless of the number of apps used, integration and compatibility are a must. When technologies don’t talk to each other, you spend time context-switching instead of focusing on customer experience.
For Audien Hearing, Gorgias’s open API allowed them to create an integration with its warehouse software to manage returns directly in Gorgias rather than a shared Google spreadsheet. This integration helped them reduce returns by 5%, protecting their margins and leading to higher customer satisfaction.
Read more: How Audien Hearing Increased Efficiency for 75 Agents and Reduced Product Returns by 5%
Consolidation is the smartest move a brand can make
The most successful ecommerce brands aren’t necessarily using more tools—they’re using smarter tools. Leading businesses are opting for platforms that are deeply integrated, AI-compatible, and built specifically for ecommerce needs.
A growing tech stack also comes with a growing tech budget. Each new app has new costs, including subscriptions, set-up, management, and development fees. They quickly add up.
Nearly 40% of ecommerce professionals spend $5,000 to $50,000 annually on their tech stack.
Different roles have different priorities
We asked ecommerce professionals what they actually value in their tools. Unsurprisingly, the answer changed based on who we were talking to.
Top tool benefits included:
- Revenue growth for support leaders, revenue-focused roles, and founders
- Simplified workflows and time savings for support agents
There’s a clear difference between what ecommerce leaders and agents value in a tool and considering both is key to success.
Why brands hesitate to consolidate
Despite the benefits of using fewer, well-integrated tools, there are a few things that hold brands back from consolidating their tech stacks.
We asked respondents:
What, if any, are the biggest deterrents to consolidating your tech stack?
Top concerns are:
- Compatibility issues with existing software (52.4%)
- Direct costs (fees for software licenses, subscriptions, or customizations) (47.6%)
- Time required (40.3%)
AI adoption is accelerating—and it’s driving results
AI is dominating the world of ecommerce. It impacts every aspect of the customer journey, from brand discovery to the post-purchase experience. AI is actively reshaping the way ecommerce professionals work, so we wanted to know how they feel about it.
- 77.2% of ecommerce professionals use AI and automation to perform their role in 2025, compared to 69.3% in 2024.
- 55.3% of respondents rate their excitement for AI as an 8-10, compared to 45.6% in 2024.
Despite growing usage and excitement, teams still have their concerns with AI:
Read more: 8 AI Trends in Ecommerce: What’s Changing and How to Prepare
The AI shift—From just a support tool to a sales engine
The most impactful use cases we’ve seen aren’t just about reducing support ticket volume. AI is now driving revenue, increasing conversion rates, and enabling 24/7 coverage without expanding headcount.
Gorgias’s AI Agent is now capable of virtual sales assistance through personalized product recommendations, dynamic discounts to reduce cart abandonment, and cross-sells and upsells.
Top brands are already leveraging these new capabilities and seeing results. For example:
- TUSHY uses a Gorgias AI Agent to accurately answer pre-sale questions, leading to a 15% conversion rate, with AI Agent driving 2x more sales than human agents.
- Trove Brands enabled an AI Agent named Wally that cut misshipments by 70%, meaning reducing unwanted charges, avoidable fulfillment costs, high return rates, and customer frustration.
- Caitlyn Minimalist uses AI to reduce response times by 99% and saw a 150% increase in ticket conversions.
Gorgias: A one-tab tool for Conversational AI
We asked one final question to make ecommerce folks really reflect on how they work:
How many tabs do you currently have open?
The average ecommerce professional works with 22 open tabs. We’re not here to judge, but if you’re looking to close a few of those tabs, Gorgias might be what you’re missing.
Gorgias replaces all that complexity with a single workspace. From support to sales, order management to automation, it all happens inside one platform.
Ecommerce businesses can now leverage Gorgias’s Advanced AI for both support and sales. Within the same AI Agent, ecommerce brands can
- Fully resolve customer inquiries, not just respond
- Provide order tracking details
- Cancel, edit, and manage orders in Shopify and integrated apps
- Process returns and exchanges
- Provide tailored product recommendations
- Drive conversions
- And much more!
Get your copy of the 2025 Ecommerce Trends Report
This blog just skims the surface of what we uncover in our 2025 Ecommerce Trends report.
Want the full story?
Download the complete 2025 Ecommerce Trends: AI Adoption & Smarter Tech Stacks report to access:
- Data-backed insights and trends from ecommerce professionals
- The biggest barriers to consolidation—and how to overcome them
- Real-world case studies from leading brands like TUSHY, Caitlyn Minimalist, and July that are winning with AI
- Tactical recommendations to future-proof your ecommerce stack through AI-powered consolidation
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Store Policies by Industry, Explained: What to Include for Every Vertical
TL;DR:
- Clear policies reduce tickets. When customers can’t find return windows or shipping timelines, they turn to your support team — often unnecessarily.
- Each vertical has different CX needs. A fashion shopper wants fit info. An electronics buyer needs setup help. Tailor your policies to match.
- Proactive placement matters. Don’t bury policies in the footer — surface them in product pages, chat, emails, and account portals where customers actually look.
- Policy + AI = self-service support. Gorgias’s AI Agent can guide shoppers to answers instantly, reducing WISMO and freeing up your team for high-value work.
For many ecommerce teams, store policies are an afterthought, tucked away in the footer or buried deep in the FAQ. But they shouldn’t be.
Great customer experience (CX) starts before a customer reaches out. And with 55% of shoppers preferring self-service support, your store policies are often their first stop for answers.
In this guide, we break down the must-have policies for five key ecommerce verticals, based on real Gorgias ticket data. From shipping delays to subscription changes, you’ll learn how to prevent tickets before they happen.
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Why store policies are a CX power move
If you’re constantly fielding questions about returns, shipping times, or order changes, it’s a policy opportunity.
Well-crafted store policies are one of your CX team's most effective tools for setting expectations, building trust, and preventing support issues before they happen. When done right, they turn common friction points into effortless experiences.
Common blind spots that lead to tickets
When policies are vague or hard to find, customers turn to your inbox, driving up ticket volume and slowing down your support team.
Here are the most common blind spots we see:
- Unclear or missing return windows lead to questions like, “Can I still return this?”
- No defined process for exchanges or edits confuses customers who need to fix an order.
- Subscription rules hidden in fine print frustrate loyal customers trying to pause, skip, or cancel.
- Shipping timelines that shift without explanation cause “Where’s my order?” messages that could’ve been avoided.
When policies aren’t clear or easy to find, customers turn to your inbox. And that means more tickets, wait times, and pressure on your team.
Proactive policies = fewer tickets, happier customers
Based on real data from Gorgias, these are the top 10 tickets customers send across channels like chat, contact forms, and email:
- Order damaged
- No reply tickets
- Shipping policy
- Shipping change
- Order change
- Product question
- Return status
- Thank you tickets
- Discount request
- Shipping status
What do most of these have in common? You can address them with clear, accessible policies.
15 store policies you need, organized by industry
Customer expectations aren’t one-size-fits-all, and your store policies shouldn’t be either.
What shoppers expect from a fashion brand is very different from what they need from a wellness company or electronics provider.
We’ve broken down the top policy must-haves by vertical, using real-world examples from Gorgias customers and ticket data.
Use these examples as your plug-and-play guide to write better policies, reduce ticket volume, and create smoother support experiences — no matter what you sell.
1. Apparel and fashion
When it comes to fashion, uncertainty drives tickets. “Will this fit?” “Can I return it?” “Where’s my order?” The most successful fashion brands like Princess Polly cut down on support volume by making these answers easy to find before customers ever reach out.
Key policies to prioritize
- Returns and exchanges: Be clear on timeframes, conditions, and the process. Bonus points for adding visuals or quick links to return portals.
- Size guide and fit: To minimize confusion, include details on model sizing, garment measurements, and fit notes.
- Order changes: Let customers know how to update their order before it ships.
- Shipping timelines: Set expectations around processing and delivery windows (especially during peak seasons).
Where to share store policies
- Link return and shipping policies on product detail pages (PDPs).
- Trigger chat campaigns with the sizing guide when shoppers linger on product pages.
- Add return instructions in post-purchase emails to cut “How do I return this?” tickets.
2. Consumer goods
Consumer goods customers often want to know two things right away: “What’s it made of?” and “When will it get here?” These questions can quickly pile up in your inbox if your policies aren’t front and center.
Trove Brands, home to household favorites like BlenderBottle and Owala, solves this by proactively answering product and shipping questions across their site and emails.
Key policies to prioritize
- Shipping: Share estimated delivery times, carrier information, and instructions on how customers can track their orders.
- Product specs and materials: List dimensions, materials, care instructions, and safety notes to avoid product-related confusion.
- Damage/defect resolution: Set clear expectations around what qualifies as a defect and how customers can report it.
- Warranty or guarantee: Outline what’s covered, for how long, and how to claim it, especially important for durable goods.
At the end of each product page, BlenderBottle shares a support menu where shoppers can find information on order status and replacement parts.
Where to share store policies
- Embed product-related FAQs directly on PDPs to answer questions where they arise.
- Use conversational AI assistants like AI Agent to automatically resolve tickets related to product questions and damaged orders.
- Add warranty and damage policy links in order confirmation and shipping emails to keep customers informed.
Read more: What's the secret to reducing WISMO requests?
3. Consumer electronics
In electronics, clarity is everything. Customers want to know how to use the product, what to do if it doesn’t work, and how to get a replacement — without jumping through hoops.
Over-the-counter hearing aid company Audien Hearing nails this by creating crystal-clear support content around setup, shipping, and returns, so customers can troubleshoot confidently and independently.
Key policies to prioritize
- Warranty/repairs: Explain what’s covered, how to file a claim, and turnaround times for repairs or replacements.
- Returns and exchanges: Clearly state the return window, list of eligible items, processing time, and whether you accept refunds, in-store credit, or exchanges.
- Shipping and delivery expectations: Share average delivery timelines and what to expect once a product ships.
- Troubleshooting steps: Provide self-service guides for common issues like connectivity, battery life, or setup confusion.
Audien Hearing has clear visual policies that make it simple for shoppers to find the info they need quickly.
Where to share store policies
- In chat, set up an automated flow that answers questions like “How do I set this up?” or “Can I return this?”
- Let customers track their return or exchange process, especially when high-value items are involved.
- Create step-by-step guides, accompanied by video or images, in your Help Center for setup and basic troubleshooting.
- Include warranty and return information in the product packaging, so customers have it readily available in case something goes wrong.
4. Health and wellness
In the health and wellness space, trust and transparency are everything. Customers want to feel confident that the products they’re using are safe and that the support will be just as thoughtful as the product itself.
Brands like period underwear brand Saalt do this exceptionally well, pairing clear product education with empathetic policies that guide customers through everything from first use to subscription changes.
Key policies to prioritize
- Product safety and use: Provide detailed instructions, safety disclaimers, and FAQs for first-time users, especially for intimate or ingestible products.
- Returns (especially for hygiene items): Be upfront about what can and can’t be returned, and include compassionate language to build trust.
- Order change or cancellation: Make it easy to update or cancel orders, especially for items that ship quickly or automatically.
- Subscription FAQs: Clearly explain how to skip, pause, or cancel a subscription, and what benefits subscribers get.
Saalt lets customers phrase questions themselves or choose from a dropdown menu.
Where to share store policies
- Prioritize clarity on your contact form by using dropdowns or checkboxes to organize customer inquiries by topic.
- Let AI Agent handle recurring product questions like “How do I use this?” or “Is this safe?” to free up your team.
- Include shipping and return info in SMS flows so customers can get answers on-the-go, without needing to email.
5. Food and beverage
Food and beverage customers tend to be both curious and cautious. They want to know what they’re putting in their bodies — and what to do if something goes wrong with the order.
Brands like Everyday Dose get ahead of these concerns by making their policies clear, accessible, and customer-first.
Key policies to prioritize
- Ingredient and allergen disclaimers: Transparency is everything. List ingredients, possible allergens, and sourcing details to build trust.
- Subscription changes: Give customers full control to pause, skip, or cancel deliveries with minimal friction.
- Damaged orders: Outline what customers should do if a product arrives broken or spoiled, and how fast they can expect a replacement.
- Shipping and delivery FAQs: Cover delivery timeframes, how orders are packed, and what to do if a shipment is delayed.
Everyday Dose lists frequently asked questions and makes it simple for customers to find important allergen and ingredient information.
Given that Everyday Dose is a mushroom supplement brand, many shoppers will likely have questions around allergens and exact ingredients. On each of their product pages, there is a clear “Read the Label” button.
Everyday Dose also has a chat which encourages customers to click through to the correct support link or to track their order.
Where to share store policies
- Enable self-service order management on chat to give customers real-time updates on shipping status and subscription changes.
- Feature policy links prominently in your customer account portal — especially for managing subscriptions.
- Include your damage/return policy in post-purchase and thank-you emails, so customers know exactly what to do if something’s wrong.
Pro Tip: Use a conversational AI platform to handle common questions at scale. For example, Gorgias’s AI Agent can instantly respond to FAQs like “How much is shipping?” or “When will my order arrive?” — all in your brand’s voice. And when a request needs a human touch, it routes the ticket to the right agent automatically.
Best practices for writing and distributing store policies
Even the most well-written policy won’t reduce tickets if it’s buried three clicks deep in your footer. To truly support your customers (and lighten your team’s workload), your policies need to show up in the right places, at the right moments.
Here’s how to get them in front of customers when they need them most:
Surface policies across key customer touchpoints
- Product detail pages: Link to size guides, shipping timelines, or ingredient lists directly on PDPs.
- Chat: Use a combination of automated flows and conversational AI to proactively suggest relevant policies based on the customer’s question or page.
- Help center: Turn your most common ticket topics into easy-to-scan articles with clear titles and headers.
- Email flows: Include return and warranty info in post-purchase emails, shipping updates, and thank-you messages.
- Account portals: Make it easy for customers to manage subscriptions, view order policies, and find FAQs in their account dashboard.
- SMS or mobile support: Include quick policy reminders in transactional texts, like shipping delays or renewal reminders.
3 core elements of a strong store policy
- Clear: Use plain language, short sentences, and bullet points. Avoid legal jargon.
- Accessible: Link them prominently in your footer, header, Help Center homepage, chat, and product pages.
- Actionable: Tell customers exactly what to do — where to click, who to contact, and what to expect.
Well-placed policies turn support into a self-service experience. They empower your customers to get what they need without ever opening a ticket — and that’s a win for everyone.
Turn store policies into your first line of support
Clear, proactive policies do more than answer questions. They prevent tickets, build trust, and make your support team’s job easier. By tailoring your policies to your industry and placing them where customers actually need them, you turn potential friction points into smooth experiences.
Want to take it a step further? Book a demo to see Gorgias’s AI Agent handle common inquiries like shipping, returns, and product questions, across chat, email, and contact forms.
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How CX Leaders are Navigating Tariffs with Transparency
If you're an ecommerce leader right now, you’re likely facing a new wave of uncertainty. Rising tariffs, disrupted imports, and sudden cost increases are putting pressure on your margins, and your customer relationships.
At Gorgias, we are working with thousands of brands that are grappling with tough calls: adjust prices, shift sourcing, or absorb costs to protect loyalty. And while the supply chain is where these issues start, the customer experience is where they play out.
Whether you’re a growing DTC or an enterprise brand, your customers deserve transparency. We know the pressure you're under, and we're here to help you navigate it. To help you not only manage the conversation, but lead it with clarity, empathy, and speed.
Ecommerce brands are in an impossible position right now, following the 24 hours news cycle, and waiting to see how tariffs will cut into profits and impact their business.
For customers? It can create confusion, frustration, and a flurry of angry tickets if brands aren’t proactive and transparent. But here's the truth: how your team talks about tariffs is just as important as what they say.
These moments of friction, and how you communicate these changes to your customers can be opportunities to build trust, reduce churn, and even demonstrate the real revenue power of your team. In a moment when clarity and trust are everything, the role of CX leaders is more important than ever.
When tariffs hit, CX takes the call
Tariffs may seem like a back-end issue, but in reality, they shape front-end experiences—from product pricing and availability to fulfillment speed and satisfaction.
For ecommerce brands, especially those sourcing from China or shipping globally, these trade shifts hit close to home. Products get more expensive, shipping slows down, and some SKUs disappear altogether.
And CX teams are often the first to hear about it. The question isn’t if you should communicate tariff implications, but how.
What customers actually want to know
Here’s the good news: customers don’t expect you to control global trade policy. But they do expect honesty.
What matters most right now is:
- Transparency: Be clear about what’s changing and why.
- Timing: Tell them before they find out at checkout.
- Empathy: Acknowledge that increased prices or delays are frustrating and explain what you're doing to help.
And even more specifically, your customers are likely looking for answers to three simple questions:
- Did the price increase? Why?
- Why can’t I find this product anymore?
- Is my order going to be delayed?
In times of change, trust becomes foundational. If you're not upfront about what’s happening and how it affects them, customers will fill in the blank, or worse, turn to competitors.
How to talk tariffs without losing trust
Be clear, not complicated
Tariffs are complex, but your messaging shouldn’t be. Strip out the policy jargon and explain the changes in human terms. Let customers know what’s changing, why it’s happening, and what steps you’re taking to protect their experience.
Instead of: “Due to regulatory changes impacting import duties…”
Say: “Because of new tariffs, some of our prices have gone up. Here’s why, and what we’re doing to keep costs down.”
Say the same thing everywhere
From your Help Center to your agents to your email updates, your message should be consistent. Mismatched explanations create confusion and erode trust. Align your team on the key talking points and update scripts and automations across all customer touchpoints.
Speaking of your Help Center, now might be a great time to create an article specifically about tariffs and how you’re approaching them. The article can serve as a source of truth for your customers and your AI agents on the front lines answering questions.
Lead with empathy
Customers don’t just want the facts, they want to know you care. Acknowledge the frustration, and offer reassurance. Small gestures like a personalized note or a shipping perk can show you’re on their side.
Be specific and honest
Generic messages fall flat. Give customers details that they can rely on: Are the changes permanent? Are you absorbing part of the cost? Is a specific product impacted? When you’re upfront about the situation, and how you’re responding to it, you build credibility.
Decide how AI Agents should help
Times of uncertainty are times to cut costs, but it may also mean increased ticket volume. AI agents can help on the frontlines. But be sure to build your handovers to escalate to your team in the right moments to build trust.
Start with transparency: Beis sets the bar
Luggage brand, Beis, recently sent an email to customers that is a great example in customer-first communication. Rather than quietly raising prices or burying fees in checkout, they called it what it was: tariffs.
They explained the change clearly, why it was happening, and what customers could expect. And most importantly, they acknowledged the frustration. No spin, or vague language, just a clear message from a brand that respects its customers enough to be honest with them.
This kind of proactive messaging does more than prevent a flood of support tickets. It creates alignment between the brand and the customer. Beis didn’t make the rules but they’re navigating them with their customers, not in spite of them.
Make it a CX conversation, not just a policy page
Too often, tariff policies get relegated to the FAQ page or terms and conditions. Customers typically only land there after they’re already confused or upset.
Instead, CX should treat tariffs as a key part of the customer journey and be equipped to speak about them empathetically and clearly.
1. Proactive chat leads to fewer surprises
Add a proactive message to your chat widget that addresses tariff-related questions before they even come up. A short note like, “You may notice some pricing changes – here’s why,” with a link to your FAQ or a specific article, helps to deflect confusion and prevents cart abandonment.
2. Update your FAQ with key information
Surface timely information right where customers are most likely to look. Use your chat or search function to include a clear callout.
“Looking for information on recent pricing or shipping updates? Here’s what changed.”
This type of visibility empowers self-service, and reduces ticket volume.
3. Equip your agents with scripts that are genuine
Don’t leave your support team guessing. Create internal scripts with clear language on what to say (and what to avoid) when talking tariffs. Script empathy, not just compliance: Empower agents with language that acknowledges the inconvenience while reinforcing the brand's values.
Say:
- We’ve made some pricing updates due to new tariffs, and we’re doing everything we can to minimize the impact.
- We know this change may be frustrating. Here’s how we’re helping our customers through it.
Avoid:
- Overly technical or vague terms like “regulatory adjustments” or “economic climate shifts.”
- Any messaging that deflects responsibility or blames external factors without explanation.
4. Build smart macros for Tariff FAQs
If you’re using automation, make sure your AI Agent and autoresponders can explain tariff policies accurately and compassionately. Use macros to ensure fast, consistent replies, without sacrificing tone. Some key macro themes to create:
- Why did prices increase?
- Are tariffs permanent?
- Is my order delayed because of tariffs?
- Why is this product no longer available?
Each macro should strike a balance of clarity, empathy, and brand voice, offering both the what and the why.
You can’t control tariffs. But you can control trust.
Tariffs might be out of your control. But how you talk about them? That’s entirely in your hands.
This is your moment as a CX leader, not just to react but to lead. To turn friction into transparency, tension into trust, and confusion into connection. Because when policies change overnight and customer confidence is on the line, the brands that communicate with honesty, consistency, and care don’t just survive. They strengthen loyalty.
Your customers don’t expect perfection. They expect clarity. They expect empathy. And they expect you to show up.
At Gorgias, we’re here to make sure you can. With tools to automate answers, personalize conversations, and empower your team to deliver the kind of CX that builds long-term brand equity, even when times get tough.
Further reading
Why Talent Sourcing is Key for Gorgias Recruiting (And How We Build Our Talent Pool)
As a Talent Acquisition Specialist, I firmly believe talent sourcing is a crucial component of recruitment. It involves proactively reaching out to good-fit candidates to broaden your talent pool and make key connections well in advance, rather than just waiting for the perfect person to find and apply to job postings once they go live.
Talent sourcing helps us at Gorgias cut through application noise and get the highest quality candidates possible. Our outreach emails for Engineering positions, one of the most challenging roles to fill, see 26%-46% response rates. And in this deeply competitive labor market, getting in contact with those gem candidates is especially important.
In this article, we’ll discuss the merits of talent sourcing as a hiring strategy, as well as the tools and tactics we use for talent sourcing at Gorgias.
The state of the hiring market in Q1 2022 (post-pandemic)
The state of the hiring market in 2022 is worrisome, to say the least. It seems like every single company has at least 10 open roles, and they’re all competing over the same pool of top-notch candidates.
Let’s take a step back and look at the last couple of years. Compared to Q1 2020, iCIMS reports job openings in Q1 2021 are up by 86%, hires are up by 45%, and job applications are down by 11%.
Meanwhile, 78% of companies report being unable to find enough talented candidates in the market to fill their open roles. Why? As we mentioned above, the labor market has tightened. This means that naturally, there are more jobs open than people to fill them, which consequently makes hiring even harder.
2022 continues these trends. There are now a record 5 million more job openings than unemployed people in the US, according to this article published by CNBC (which contains many top takeaways from the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.)
Also, like always, certain roles are particularly difficult to fill right now. Full-stack engineers are most in-demand right now, meaning they’re especially difficult to find and hire. Fortunately, a shift toward hiring remote talent in smaller regions is taking place. Software engineers who are open to remote work receive 20% more interview requests.
Part of appealing to this pool of in-demand talent is understanding software engineers’ top priorities. Here’s below the full list of the biggest motivators for software engineers, according to the 2022 State of Software Engineers Report:
These motivators are valuable insights because they can help you market your open roles (and, to get back to the topic, talent sourcing outreach) more sharply.
What exactly is talent sourcing?
There are differing opinions about the exact definition of talent sourcing. But the basic definition of talent sourcing is engaging candidates who are not active applicants. We call the targets of talent sourcing “passive talent,” which excludes candidates who apply traditionally, through a job posting.
For us, the goal of talent sourcing is to build a pipeline of talent that operates throughout the year as a proactive approach to the company’s hiring needs. Sourcing allows us to connect with potential fits long before a need develops. Considering that hiring a new employee can take anywhere from a week to several months, getting a head start on promising candidates is a great long-term strategy.
Why do we believe talent sourcing is an essential best practice?
In Q1 2022, it took our team an average of 53 days to extend an offer. In Q2, we were able to send out offers in 39 days thanks in part to talent sourcing. Therefore, we managed to speed up the process of extending an offer by 26% thanks to talent sourcing.
We looked at some statistics outside of Gorgias and here’s what we found: 70% of the world's workforce are passive candidates, and 86% of the most qualified candidates for your open positions are already employed, hence not actively looking for a job. That said, LinkedIn has found that 90% of the professionals active on their platform would like to hear about career opportunities.
Talent sourcing helps bridge the gap between the companies hiring and passive candidates (which, again, make up 70% of the workforce). We can build relationships with promising talent well before we’re urgently looking to make a hire.
Gem found that talent sourcing is the second most important recruiting trend (after diversity recruiting), according to their 2022 Recruiting Trends: Data-Driven Recruiting.
The impact of talent sourcing on key hiring metrics
Why exactly is talent sourcing such a prominent trend? Because it’s a strategic approach to improve many of the most important metrics a recruiting team pays attention to.
Time to hire
Talent sourcing can improve your time to hire because you can start refining a pool of candidates well before you have a live job ad. For us, one of the best tactics was to use outreach to identify a pool of talent that uses our tech stack. That way, when you post an engineering, product management, or non-tech role, you don’t have to source from scratch and filter out candidates because of basic misalignments.
Once a job posting goes live, our team has a huge headstart (and can therefore crush previous time-to-hire metrics). Instead of going to LinkedIn and starting a search from scratch, I would go to our refined pool of (currently, but forever growing) 111K candidates that match our company’s needs, tech stack, or overall preferences and start my search there.
Candidate quality
Talent sourcing helps us create a pool of pre-vetted candidates, so we’re never in a situation of having to accept a mediocre candidate because of a time crunch and lack of inbound interest.
Also, when a high-potential candidate doesn’t end up receiving (or accepting) an offer, they go back into our talent pool so we can potentially find another opportunity to work with that high-quality candidate.
Diverse hiring
We use Gem for robust top-of-funnel diversity reporting. The tool lets us deep dive into our natural sourcing tendencies and analyze passthrough rates across demographics like gender. This helps us point out some of the unconscious biases we each might have, so we can keep diversity and inclusivity in mind, implement action items, and source a diverse and strong team.
Our approach to building a Talent Pool
Explore our ATS for candidates we want to re-engage
As you likely know, a candidate’s potential (and journey with your company) doesn’t necessarily come to an end after a rejection. To make the most of high-quality candidates who have already gone through our screening once, we check out junior candidates we talked to 2+ years ago and marked as under-qualified. We do the same with candidates who have kept warm after rejection and candidates who withdrew from the process because they took another offer.
These candidates have already expressed an interest in our company and therefore get consideration to introduce into our ongoing talent pool.
Optimize our recruiting tech stack for searchability
One of our most helpful tools is HireSweet. The tool enables us to explore all of the 4,000 candidates who live in our ATS much easier than just searching the database. One of the best features is that HireSweet allows us to find candidates that may have switched careers completely but live in our ATS under an old position.
But the question still stands: how do we expand our talent pool to 111K people?
Source, scrape, and upload a massive number of leads
We don’t reach out to leads by hand: we contact them in bulk by sourcing and scraping. Before we explain our process, the important thing to keep in mind is that your search and bulk leads import should always resonate with the company’s hiring strategy. Simply put, we don’t do volume sourcing for the sake of doing high volume.
Bulk imports can help you in a few ways:
- While searching for candidates, you want to keep profiles that are not an exact fit so you can find them when a better-fit role comes along
- You want to reach out to a higher volume of leads
- You want to anticipate and pre-source for the future
Here’s an example of how we might pre-source our industry to collect a high volume of good-fit names:
- Find a list of start-ups (related to your industry if you want to be more precise)
- Break it down per country
- Find the companies’ LinkedIn pages (with automation, if possible)
- Scrape the “people” section of said pages
- Clean the data, and import it into your 3rd party tool to enrich it
- All employees that mentioned working for the companies you’re targeting are now in your talent pool
We use the following four tools to execute the process described above:
LinkedIn will limit the number of profiles you can scrape each day. If that’s the case, you can set up bot automation to run multiple times a day. With fewer profiles scrapped more frequently, you can stay under the radar.
Additional ways to improve your talent sourcing and recruitment marketing
Did you know that 66% of people who changed jobs were aware of the company they joined before they applied? That’s why we encourage you to do everything you can (with the resources and buy-in you have) to take a proactive approach to your talent strategy. Some more tactics include:
Create clear, engaging outbound messaging
A well-written message tailored to each candidate (or at least each role) is a terrific approach to draw top talent in, keep them interested, and persuade them to discover more about the company.
At Gorgias, we do our best to include the relevant information without plopping an entire job ad in the first message. We typically try and highlight a couple of unique features (including compensation, which we share with our SaaS calculator).
Encourage your non-recruiting team to source talent
Talent sourcing doesn’t just need to be a recruiter activity. We encourage employee ambassadorship, wherein the entire company is invited to source talent for live and upcoming roles. (They aren’t scraping LinkedIn, but can refer candidates our way and spread the word.)
When employees establish a direct relationship with candidates, they can provide a meaningful testimonial and sneak peek into the company’s culture.
Engaging passive candidates involves more effort than engaging active candidates because you have to persuade someone to be interested. But the effort is worthwhile: at the very least, you spread the word about the company.
Speaking of engaging your team, check out our article of five tips to engage a hybrid or distributed team.
Let us know your take on talent sourcing
At Gorgias, we managed to reach a 26%-46% response rate for our outreach emails for Engineering positions.
Even though recruiting and sourcing tactics constantly evolve, the mindset is still the same:
- Grab candidates’ attention
- Engage with them in a clear, helpful way
- Build relationships that make great placements easier in the longterm
Top talent is in high demand, and competition for their attention is severe. That’s why we need to establish a presence wherever potential candidates are — starting with their Inbox.
We’re hungry for lifelong learning and growth, so we want to hear from all the recruiters and sourcers out there. What’s your take on talent sourcing? How are you approaching it in your company? What can we learn from your practice?
Send me an email and let us know!
Playbook: How Berkey Filters Drove Customer Adoption of a New SMS Support Channel
When your company decides to launch a new support channel — usually for efficiency and customer convenience — setting it up is only half the battle. The other half is driving customers toward the new channel (and away from your old ones). Without a concerted effort for customer adoption, you risk paying for a support channel that nobody uses.
Berkey Filters, a world leader in water purification and seller of water filter systems, wanted to add SMS as a support channel for their shoppers. SMS is more convenient for on-the-go shoppers and allows agents to provide service to multiple shoppers more efficiently than other channels.
Berkey Filters launched SMS with Klaviyo, and wanted wanted to add the Klaviyo SMS integration to Gorgias to unify customer conversations in one platform.
The launch was one of the most successful we’ve seen to date, both in terms of ticket efficiency and customer adoption. Within a month of launching SMS, Berkey Filters:
- Achieved a 2-minute average first-response time for SMS
- Achieved a 20-minute average handle time for SMS
- Converted 2% of tickets to SMS from more time-consuming channels
- Decreased time-consuming phone tickets by 23%
- Decreased time-consuming email tickets by 21%
We sat down with Jessica, the Gorgias account owner and Customer Experience Analyst for Berkey Filters, to ask how Berkey Filters achieved such suburb support stats so quickly. Jessica was generously willing to share her strategies to drive customer adoption of the new support channel.
In this Playbook, learn about the six tactics Berkey Filters used to launch SMS, increase the number of customers using this channel, and decrease ticket volume on older channels.
Why add SMS to your helpdesk in the first place?
SMS is one of the fastest-growing support channels today. It’s one of five channels consumers expect from brands, alongside email, website, voice, and chat.
Consumers love SMS because it’s fast, convenient, and always with them (even on the go). They don’t need to block off time in their day to sit by their laptop or on the phone to deal with a support situation. They can carry about their day and effortlessly reply to texts whenever they have a moment – something most people already do.
Support managers love direct messaging channels because conversations are typically shorter and resolved faster. And as long as SMS tickets are managed in the same places as other channels, it’s easy for agents to manage.
Jessica was specifically interested in using the SMS channel in Gorgias for Berkey Filters to achieve the following goals:
- Decrease the number of phone calls they received (because agents can only talk to one person at a time)
- Decrease the number of times a customer reaches out across multiple channels for the same issue (because faster response times on SMS would make it less likely for duplicate tickets to come in)
- Let customers using mobile — which accounts for half of their website visits — contact customer service on the device they’re already using
- Easily send photos back and forth with customers (especially because they frequently get questions about how to fix or store their products)
- Offer a channel that doesn’t require a stable WiFi connection (because they have customers all over the country, including in rural areas that don’t always have reliable service)
Jessica’s team also views SMS as a modern support channel. More and more brands want to offer a customer service experience that’s seamlessly integrated into the shopper’s day, and Berkey wanted to be an early adopter.
While some of these benefits are pretty applicable to any store, make sure you’re clear on your “why” before adding a new support channels. This will help you know how to prioritize it compared to other channels and justify the work that goes into adding a new method of communication with your customers.
How to add Gorgias SMS to your helpdesk
For the purposes of this playbook, we’ll assume you’ve already created your Gorgias helpdesk. If you haven’t, get started with a free trial or schedule a call with our team for a personalized demo.
Gorgias SMS allows you to send and receive 1:1 SMS and MMS messages with your customers. To add it, go to Settings > Integrations > SMS.
You’ll need a Gorgias phone number to get started. If you have one already (likely because you use Gorgias voice support), you can add the SMS integration without changing numbers. If you do not have a number yet, it’ll prompt you to create one first.
If you already have a phone number but it isn’t owned by Gorgias, you’ll need to port it. Learn how in this help doc.
If you’ve just added SMS (or any new channel), there are a few administrative tasks we recommend before following the steps outlined this playbook:
- Create a dedicated view for SMS tickets
- Set up routing Rules for SMS tickets
- Create SMS-specific Macros (SMS messages should probably be shorter than some of your other channels, for example)
- Review existing Rules to add or exclude SMS as a channel trigger
Now, we’ll share exactly how Jessica promoted SMS for Berkey Filters customers.
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6 steps to drive customer adoption of your new SMS channel (inspired by Berkey Filters)
Jessica knew they would eventually add their SMS number directly on the Berkey Filters website, but she also knew she’d have to wait for her developer to do so. In the meantime, she started with the tools available to her in Gorgias.
Here are six tactics Jessica used to drive adoption of the newly launched support channel:
- Launch a Gorgias Chat Campaign on the Berkey Filters “Contact us” page
- Customize the auto-reply that was sent to new email tickets
- Add the SMS number directly on the “Contact us” page
- Promote SMS in the top banner of the website
- Leverage their 2 min. first response time (FRT) for SMS in messaging
- Maintain that FRT with an SLA view in Gorgias
Let’s break each of these down.
1) Launch a Gorgias Chat Campaign on the Berkey Filters “Contact us” page
Even though Jessica would need to wait for her developer to update the actual page content, she knew she could launch a Gorgias Chat Campaign on the “Contact us” page to announce they now offer support via SMS. (If you don’t know, a Chat Campaign is a live chat session that automatically and proactively triggers for targeted website visitors, often to announce special promotions.)
Here’s what their campaign looked like:
Jessica’s campaign automatically opens a live chat box announcing the launch of SMS for anyone who stays on the Berkey Filters contact page for longer than 30 seconds. That time frame is a good way to target anyone who’s clearly trying to identify the best contact method, and not someone who accidentally clicked onto the page (and would likely bounce before 30 seconds).
To create a Chat Campaign in Gorgias, go to Settings > Integrations > Chat and select the chat widget you want to use. Click the “Create Campaign” button in the top right.
From here, you can enter the URL(s) the campaign should appear on, set a required time spent on the page, and customize the message that displays.
Read this help doc to learn more about chat campaigns.
2) Customize the auto-reply on new email tickets
One of the best ways to tell customers about a new support channel is to promote it on one of your existing channels — especially to customers who are already accustomed to those existing channels and may never visit the contact page again.
For the segment of customers who already use email to contact support, Jessica leveraged the initial auto-reply that Berkey Filters sends when a customer emails them to announce the new, faster channel.
In addition to the standard, “Thanks for contacting us! An agent will reply back shortly,” Jessica added, “We are currently experiencing high contact volumes and will be responding as quickly as possible. Our chat and text response times are typically faster. We are now accepting text messages at 1-800-350-4170.”
By customizing the auto-reply to promote the new channel, Jessica met Berkey Filters’ customers where they were to make sure they knew about the latest and greatest way to get support.
3) Add the SMS number directly on the “Contact us” page
At this point, Jessica got developer support to add the support phone number to the website. The contact page is a natural location to add any new support channels, because you know new customers will go there looking for contact information.
Here’s what the Berkey Filters “Contact us” page looks like:
When building this page, Jessica made many intentional decisions to funnel visitors toward the new channel. Specifically, she:
- Featured SMS next to another efficient (and therefore preferred) channel
- Put the phone number in the headline so it’s easy to see
- Added “Text Us” and a chat bubble visuals to clarify the number is for texting, not calls
- Pointed out that texting is great for “Conversation On The Go,” reminding people to use the channel if they plan to step away from the computer
- Set expectations by listing each channel’s average response time (ART)
The lesson? When releasing a new support channel, don’t be afraid to give extra context around it to help your shoppers understand when they should use one over the other.
4. Promote SMS in the top banner across the website
The banner at the top of the website is a high-visibility location that’s especially great for getting in front of returning customers (since they may not need to visit your contact page anymore).
Brands usually use the top banner for promotions or sales, but Berkey Filters uses it for a mix of sales and support to cater to the entire customer experience. If you refresh their website a few times, you’ll see it rotate through three messages:
- Free shipping on orders over a certain amount
- Chat now for an immediate response
- Text us for support on the go
5. Promote first response time (FRT) for SMS in messaging
You might’ve picked up on this already, but Jessica was doing something really strategic with her messaging about SMS: She was promoting their first response time of 2 minutes.
That’s fast! And therefore, a pretty compelling reason for shoppers to use it over other, slower channels like email or voice.
Now, obviously this only works if your team is achieving a fast response time like that and willing to maintain it. (More on that in the next point.)
What’s important is that Gorgias gives you insights into your support team’s performance. While that’s useful for internal planning (staffing, budgeting, etc.), we also highly recommend leveraging these data points with your own customers to show the value of the support you provide.
Support stats that are great to leverage when promoting support via SMS:
- Global first response time
- SMS first response time
- Global resolution time
- SMS resolution time
- Global CSAT score
- Total or percentage of tickets your brand has answered via SMS (if you’re still trying to increase adoption post-launch)
We don’t currently include SMS CSAT score in Gorgias reporting. If you’d like to measure and promote your SMS CSAT score, share that product feedback here!
6. Maintain that FRT with an SLA view in Gorgias
To help her team keep those impressive first response and resolution times, Jessica knew she needed to improve (and not just measure) those times. She set up a service-level agreement (SLA) view in Gorgias that shows SMS tickets that are open and were created more than one minute ago.
Here’s what that looks like:
This view sits at the top of their sidebar along with a few other SLA-based channel views, so agents can quickly prioritize what tickets they should solve next.
In addition to the view, Jessica created an Auto-Reply Rule that sends the first message to an SMS ticket.
This message thanks the customer for texting support, and states the business hours for Berkey Filters. We love how this helps set expectations right from the start, especially for customers who might text in outside of these hours. (So they don’t text again waiting for a reply!)
Here’s what that Rule looks like:
Last but not least, it’s worth mentioning that Jessica was also incredibly intentional about rolling all of this out to the Berkey Filters agents. Specifically, she involved them in the decision to launch the new channel, trained them on the new system, and made sure they were prepared before launch.
None of this would be possible if agents were unsure how to handle incoming SMS tickets or use the SLA view.
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Berkey Filters’ results from adding support via SMS
We’ve already teased some of the impact that Berkey Filters has seen since adding SMS support, but how does it all add up?
In their first 30 days using Gorgias SMS, Berkey Filters:
- Closed over 250 SMS tickets
- Sent almost 1400 messages via SMS
- Achieved a 2-minute first response time
- Achieved 20-minute resolution time
- Converted 2% of all tickets to SMS
- Decreased phone calls by 23%
- Decreased emails by 21%
That’s remarkable! And while those stats certainly speak to the high quality of their support team, they first needed to make customers aware and excited about the new channel. If you decide to launch a new support channel, we recommend following Berkey’s lead and creating an intentional adoption campaign to accompany the launch.
Get your customers excited about texting your brand
Prioritizing SMS shifts customer service conversations to a “live” channel where agents can help multiple customers at once, giving everyone a better experience.
And even if you’re strained for resources (like waiting for your developer to be able to update your store’s site) you can follow Berkey Filters’ lead and use other features and channels in Gorgias to start promoting your new channel.
Gorgias also integrates with SMS marketing platforms like Klaviyo to make texting a seamless part of your customer journey (and easy for agents to manage).
Specifically, if customers reply to an SMS sent with Klaviyo, Gorgias will create a ticket so your agents can respond right away. Plus, Klaviyo and Gorgias share customer data in real time, so you have as much information about your customers as possible in both tools:
“Having the Gorgias + Klaviyo integration has helped provide a service to our customers that we did not have before. Our customer service department is now able to provide a near-instant response via text message without having to exit Gorgias. This feature has made the entire process of getting to these tickets so effortless and much more efficient.”
— Jessica Robles, Customer Experience Analyst at Berkey Filters
To get started with Gorgias SMS, log into your helpdesk or click here to sign up for free.
What’s New with Gorgias: June 2022 Product Updates
Every month, our product team holds a casual, conversational event with our customers to demo new features, receive real-time feedback, and host live Q&As.
Watch the video below or read on for a recap of our latest product updates.
1. Admins can require Two-Factor Authentication for all users (3:18)
While Gorgias does a lot to keep your data secure, one of the best ways to add an extra layer of security is to encourage agents to use secure passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA).
And with our latest update, you can do more than just encourage. Admins can now require agents to set up two-factor authentication.
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1. Admins can require Two-Factor Authentication for all users (3:18)
Once an admin toggles the option, all users in your account will have 14 days to set up 2FA. After 14 days, users will need to set it up to access your helpdesk.
2. Add a contact form in Gorgias Chat for a better CX outside business hours (11:38)
It can be hard to follow up with chat tickets that were left during off-business hours. Sometimes customers don’t include enough details in their message, making it harder to follow up on the next day.
Using a contact form in Gorgias Chat, you can capture a customer's email and message in a short conversational way. The contact form is designed to collect more information without disrupting the conversational experience, so you can easily follow up and help via email when you log back into Gorgias.
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The contact form prompts your web visitors to select a subject (to help you triage tickets faster), and then provide more details about their issue so your agents know what they’re trying to solve. Last, it collects the shopper’s email address so you know who to follow-up with and where to reach them. All of this information will be collected in a single ticket in your helpdesk.
Read this help center article to learn how to enable the contact form in your Gorgias chat.
3. Create sub-categories in Help Center (19:55)
Create multiple levels of categories to help your shoppers navigate to improve help center organization and find help content for related issues more easily.
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These new categories also give your team more options when creating a Help Center, so you can organize FAQs in whatever way makes sense for your brand.
4. New Managed Rules (For Automation Add-on Subscribers) (21:30)
Rules are a powerful feature that let Gorgias users automatically organize, tag, and reply to tickets. Thousands of Gorgias customers have adopted rules in their customer support workflow to save time and allow themselves to provide faster and higher quality service. Focusing on the common inquiries like WISMO, we’ve built Managed Rules to optimize time for Automate subscribers.
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Managed Rules are pre-built automations developed by the Gorgias team and include some of the most common and helpful automations. They need no code, no setup. Install them from the Rule Library and you’re good to go! If we improve the Rule, it will automatically update in your helpdesk, no action from you required.
Customer Q&A (24:44)
Tune into the above timestamp if you want the full 25 minutes of customer questions and answers from our product team. Here were a few of the highlights!
With only two weeks left in Q2, which of the planned releases on the public roadmap will actually launch? (25:44)
Some features listed in Q2 of our public roadmap will indeed be released in Q2, while others will spill into Q3 (or later). We’re proud to provide transparency with our public roadmap, but please understand that it’s subject to change throughout the quarter. We do our best to update our roadmap frequently but can’t always do so right away.
Although we can’t promise to release any of these features in Q2, a few features we plan to release sooner than later include:
- FAQ article recommendations in chat
- Create a Chat report in help desk statistics
- Display agents phone availability state
Our team is actively prioritizing the roadmap for Q3 right now. Check back soon to see the latest plan!
Will you be improving the returns and cancellations workflow for the Help center? We use Loop, but can’t integrate our self-service return portal with our new Help Center. (33:40)
This is a limitation we’re definitely aware of, and are exploring options. The long-term solution is to build better integrations with Loop and other top returns platforms. If this is a feature you’d like to see, please submit the request here.
When will the option to convert phone calls to SMS be available? (45:15)
We’re hoping to release more features around that at the start of 2023. Today if you receive a phone call, you can always reply to that ticket via SMS. In the future, we’ll focus on helping you deflect the phone call entirely and prioritize SMS instead.
Join us for the next monthly product event
Thanks for checking out the recap of our June customer product event. We hold these events once as a month as a way to share the latest releases and connect with our customers in real-time. It’s a favorite – from both customers, and the Gorgias team.
If you’d like to sign up for the next one to attend live, you can register here. We’d love to have you join us!
New apps that integrate with Gorgias: Summer 2022
There are now over 85 incredible integrations in the Gorgias App Store with the tools that power your ecommerce store. While each app is unique, together these integrations can help your agents work more efficiently to provide excellent service to your customers.
Take a look at the newest additions so far from 2022.
In the first half of the year, we’ve launched 15 new integrations for your Gorgias helpdesk:
- Klaviyo (updated!)
- Gorgias SMS
- Thankful AI
- Netsuite
- Okendo
- Narvar
- Skio
- Via Software
- Clyde
- Smartrr
- ShipMonk
- Annex Cloud
- Daton
- Shogun Frontend
- Gobot
- Shop2app
Read on to learn how you can use these tools to help manage your store, and visit the Gorgias App Store to activate them today!
Klaviyo (updated early 2022)
Klaviyo is an email and SMS marketing automation platform built for ecommerce. Gorgias was the first helpdesk to connect to Klaviyo SMS, allowing your brand to create seamless conversations between your marketing campaigns, shoppers, and support team.
With the updated Klaviyo integration, you can:
- Automatically create tickets in Gorgias from replies to Klaviyo SMS campaigns
- Reply to Klaviyo SMS messages in the same place as every other customer conversation, with all the context of your ecommerce integrations
- Create contact lists in Klaviyo based on support events in Gorgias
This integration helps you streamline customer interactions and create higher-converting marketing campaigns. To learn more, go to the Gorgias App Store.
Gorgias SMS
We recently released Gorgias SMS, an easy way for your brand to offer this convenient and conversational communication channel. It’s one of the fastest-growing support channels for ecommerce brands, and one of the most reliable for customers to contact you on (since it’s not dependent on internet access).
With Gorgias SMS, you can:
- Talk to customers on their (since they likely always have their phone on them)
- View order information in the same window as SMS tickets
- Easily send photos back and forth with customers
Click here to learn more about Gorgias SMS, available with all plans.
Thankful AI
Thankful AI is a platform dedicated to helping you deliver better support for the post-purchase needs of your customers. The AI is tailored specifically for retail and ecommerce businesses, so you don’t have to worry about a disjointed experience.
With this integration, the Thankful AI agent can:
- Triage and route tickets to real agents
- Tag tickets in Gorgias
- Respond to tickets across all written channels
This frees up your agents to focus on more meaningful conversations with customers. Visit the Gorgias App Store to learn more about the Thankful integration.
NetSuite
NetSuite is a cloud ERP including financials, CRM, and ecommerce. It helps brand work more efficiently, take control of inventory and fulfillment, and bring all your tools together in a unified business management suite.
Sync NetSuite data into Gorgias to give your agents important customer & order information in a single tab.
With this integration, you can:
- Add over 60 NetSuite fields to a widget in the Gorgias Customer Sidebar.
- Sync customer information from NetSuite into Gorgias.
- Sync order information & shipping details from NetSuite into Gorgias.
- Sync RMA information from NetSuite into Gorgias.
- View the last 10 orders that have been created or modified.
This helps your agents have all the context they need next to every conversation they have. Visit the Gorgias App Store to learn more.
Okendo
Okendo is a customer marketing platform and an Official Google Reviews partner that helps brands capture and showcase high-impact social proof such as product ratings & reviews, customer photos & videos, and Q&A messageboards.
With this integration, you can:
- Automatically create tickets in Gorgias for Okendo product reviews
- Easily respond to every customer who leaves a review
- Add an Okendo widget to the Gorgias Customer Sidebar for customer loyalty insights next to every ticket
Visit the Gorgias App Store to learn more about our Okendo integration.
Narvar
Link Narvar Return & Exchanges for Shopify with Gorgias to automate returns management and get rich insights that help you save costs and improve operations.
With this integration, you can:
- Create flexible return policies. Deploy tailored returns flows, policies, and fees for different products or customer segments to offer a differentiated experience.
- Retain revenue with recommended exchanges. Convert up to 45% of refunds to exchanges by recommending exchanges of same or different value to customers right within the returns flow.
- Bring customers back by incentivizing store credit. Add a credit bonus to store credit refunds based on specific exchange rules that will incentivize customers to keep shopping in your store.
To learn more about our Narvar integration, visit the Gorgias App Store.
Skio
Skio helps brands on Shopify sell subscriptions. With this integration, you can add a Skio widget to your Customer Sidebar in Gorgias. This gives your agents insights into customer subscriptions right in the helpdesk without having to switch tabs.
With this integration, you can:
- View Skio customer information in the Gorgias Customer Sidebar
- Quickly click out to Skio right from Gorgias if needed
- Respond to subscription questions from one central location
To learn more about our Skio integration, visit the Gorgias App Store.
Via Software
Via is a mobile commerce (SMS marketing) platform for ecommerce businesses. Send personalized messages to your customers for increased revenue and customer satisfaction.
With this integration, you can:
- Automatically create tickets in Gorgias based on customer replies to Via SMS
- Respond to Via SMS messages directly from the Gorgias helpdesk
- View the entire conversation, including replies from Gorgias, in the Via platform
Visit the Gorgias App Store to learn more.
Clyde
With Clyde and Gorgias working together, you can create a seamless and positive support experience by syncing all warranty data inside your Gorgias account. Stay focused and close tickets faster by viewing Clyde contracts and claims information in the same window you use to talk to customers.
With this integration, you can:
- See the full picture of every customer
- Find open warranty claims in a flash
- Turn your support center into a profit center
Manage warranty requests & find claims information in one tool. Head to the Gorgias App Store to learn more.
Smartrr
Smartrr is a seamless, full-service subscription solution. Paired with Gorgias, you can equip your team with the best customer service tools in one convenient location to increase customer satisfaction and drive customer loyalty.
With this integration, you can:
- Sync subscription data from Smartrr in Gorgias
- Help agents stay focused in a single tab
- Provide better, faster support for subscription questions
To learn more about our Smartrr integration, go to the Gorgias App Store.
ShipMonk
ShipMonk is an order fulfillment platform for eCommerce businesses ready to scale. They offer technology-driven fulfillment solutions that enable business founders to devote more time to the things that matter most in their businesses.
With this integration you'll be able to:
- Pull order fulfillment data and tracking information from ShipMonk to Gorgias
- Access specific orders in ShipMonk directly from the Customer Sidebar in Gorgias
Learm more about the ShipMonk integration in the Gorgias App Store.
Annex Cloud
Annex Cloud is a cloud-based customer loyalty platform for enterprises. They provide integrated loyalty, engagement, and retention solutions across a range of program types like paid memberships, incentives, and more.
With this integration, you can:
- Sync customer’s loyalty data across tools
- Show loyalty information of a customer when opening a new or existing ticket
Click here to learn more about our Annex Cloud integration.
Daton
Daton can replicate Gorgias data to your data warehouse in minutes, freeing up your analysts to focus on generating important business insights instead of extracting data.
With this integration, you can sync information from Gorgias to your data warehouse like:
- Customers
- Jobs
- Users
- Tickets
To learn more about Daton, visit the listing in the Gorgias App Store.
Shogun Frontend
Shogun is a headless ecommerce platform built for merchants. Convert more with richer merchandising and sub-second store speed. The Gorgias integration allows merchants to add chat capabilities to their Shogun-powered shops.
With Gorgias chat on your Shogun Frontend, you can:
- Promote your products and provide order details, all connected to your ecommerce platform
- Create chat campaigns to proactively message customers while they’re shopping live on your site
- Have agents answer live chats or create customizable, automated flows to free up agents for the most important conversations
Click here to learn more about our integration with Shogun Frontend.
Gobot
Gobot helps fast-growing Shopify stores convert more shoppers and reduce support burden with beautiful guided selling quizzes and AI-powered support chatbots.
With this integration, you can:
- Sync recommendation data from Gobot into Gorgias so reps can respond and address questions via chat or email.
- Collect post-purchase survey data and automatically connect select customers with questions/feedback to support reps in Gorgias.
- Automate repetitive customer support inquiries with Gobot’s AI Support Automation and seamlessly transition to Gorgias live chat or email support for those who require human assistance.
Visit the Gobot listing in the Gorgias App Store to learn more.
Shop2app
Shop2app is a mobile app builder. It’s designed for local delivery, national delivery, and in-store pickup, and also makes it easy to manage subscriptions and send push notifications to customers.
With this integration, you can:
- Automatically create tickets in Gorgias when customers contact a merchant from their mobile app.
- Allow customers to initiate a support ticket directly from past orders within the mobile app.
Visit the Shop2app listing in the Gorgias App Store to learn more.
Supercharge Gorgias, your CX command center
The Gorgias App Store features 85+ high-quality integrations with other leading ecommerce tools. By connecting the apps that power your store, you can give your agents the context they need to provide remarkable customer service from a single workspace. (No more switching tabs!)
To add any of these apps to your helpdesk, go to Settings > Integrations or visit the Gorgias App Store.
What’s New With Gorgias – May 2022 Product Updates
Each month, our product team holds a casual, conversational event with our customers to demo new features, receive real-time feedback, and answer live Q&As.
Watch the video recap here, or read on for a recap of the latest releases.
1. SMS is officially live for all accounts (3:10)
With this new channel, you can receive and respond to SMS and MMS messages within Gorgias. This makes it easy for your customers to communicate with your store while they’re on the go, and easy for your agents to provide fast, conversational support.
We’re releasing SMS this quarter as a free trial for every customer on every plan. Conversations will count toward your plan’s ticket count, but there are no additional charges for minutes, usage, phone numbers, etc. In the coming months, we’ll be assessing the best way to provide Voice and SMS so we can continue to innovate and build powerful new features for these channels.
2. SMS Pro-tip: Create a Gorgias Rule to set up a double opt-in (11:55)
If you want customers to consent to receive SMS messages before your agents actually reply, you can do this with a simple Rule in Gorgias. Here’s what it would look like:
Read this article for four more Gorgias Rules to help automate SMS.
3. Agents will now receive browser notifications when a ticket is assigned to them (14:55)
This is especially great for anyone who gets tickets assigned to them, but may not be looking at Gorgias throughout their entire workday. (Think managers, social media collaborators, etc.)
To see these notifications, you may need to adjust your browser and/or computer settings. You can see an example for Chrome + Mac in our official Product Update.
4. Quick response flows in self-service got a revamp (21:48)
Quick response flows bring in a critical component to self-service, creating more ways to engage with shoppers who visit your store online. We designed quick response flows with the guidance that 60% of the time, customers use chat to ask pre-purchase questions. Most successful merchants leverage their FAQ content to prompt conversation with quick response flows that result in generating revenue, trust and loyalty.
If you haven’t yet activated quick response flows, you’re in for a treat. With this revamp, you can now easily manipulate every step of the experience for quick response flows from self-service settings. Immediately under the Quick Response Flows tab, you can write in any question and answer you prefer and hit save. There is no other place or screen you’d need to navigate. Using the preview on the right, you can reassure the quality of the experience you want to create for your customers.
If customers click on a quick response flow and find the information they need, this will not count towards your monthly ticket volume.
If they click on a quick response flow and select “No, I need more help” option, it will create a ticket for an agent to address.
Best practices
It’s amazing when our merchants start using a feature and take it to the next level. We’ve seen some of the best practices to include creating unique tags for each quick response flow created (e.g. Quick_Response_Flow_1), then adding a corresponding view in Tickets. This way, you can track closely the conversations prompted by quick response flows and dedicate a select group of agents who are trained to expand on the subject and help your customers become fans. For more on this subject, check out Quick Response Flows help doc here.
Customer Q&A (26:50)
Tune into that timestamp if you want the full 25 minutes of customer-led questions and answers from our product team. Here were a few of the highlights!
Gorgias Phone vs Aircall: What are the differences? What’s the timeline for improvement for Gorgias Voice? (32:40)
Gorgias phone is an easy way to add a basic phone line to your store. If you’re looking for advanced, full call center features, our partners like Aircall or RingCentral may be a better solution for you.
For example, their phone-specific statistics are more in-depth than ours, but the ability to create a phone number and answer it in the Gorgias helpdesk is naturally easier with Gorgias.
Our long-term vision for Gorgias Phone is not to fully compete with apps like Aircall, but rather to invest in ecommerce-specific solutions so you can provide the best voice support to your shoppers.
What’s up with WhatsApp? (37:50)
It’s our next new channel, coming Q3! We have access to the API and are ready to start building at the end of the quarter. (Just need to polish up a few existing channel bugs first.)
Any plans to integrate with Shopify Blogs? (43:15)
Not yet, but we’d love to hear more feedback about this if it’s something you’re interested in! Submit this idea on our Product Roadmap to help us prioritize it.
Join us for the next monthly product event
That completes our recap of our May customer product event. We hold these events once as a month as a way to review the latest releases and connect with our customers in real-time. It’s a favorite – from both customers, and the Gorgias team.
If you’d like to sign up for the next one to attend live, you can register here. We’d love to have you join us!
4 Benefits of Adding Voice Support to Your Ecommerce Store
Wondering if your team should add voice support to your ecommerce channels this year? You’re not alone.
Over 15% of our customers currently have a phone integration added to their account, thanks to the Gorgias Voice integration and partners like Aircall and RingCentral.
While voice support may feel like an “outdated” channel in the age of live chat and social media, this tells us that ecommerce support teams are increasingly finding value in offering it to their clients.
Here are 4 benefits of adding voice support to your ecommerce store:
- You can achieve faster first response times and faster resolution times.
- It’s easier to express empathy with customers.
- Having a phone number builds trust and brand quality.
- It makes your support more accessible.
You can achieve faster first response times and faster resolution times.
Phones are an immediate communication channel, so it’s not surprising that adding voice support can boost your first response time. What we weren’t expecting, however, was by how much:
Our customers with phones have a first response time that’s 7x faster than merchants that don’t offer voice support. (30 minutes compared to 4 hours.)
What’s even more important to note, however, is that adding voice support doesn’t decrease resolution time (like many support managers fear). In fact, it makes quite a positive impact:
Our merchants using phones have an average resolution time that’s 34% faster than customers who don’t.
So not only does this channel help you respond to customers faster, but it helps you resolve their issues faster. That means your team can work more efficiently and spend up to 66% less time resolving each ticket. (Imagine how that could help increase your store’s revenue!)
It’s easier to express empathy with customers (which can lead to better Satisfaction scores).
Talking (literally) to shoppers and hearing their tone of voice is the best way your agents can adjust their responses to create a great customer experience.
While you can do your best to read clues in email and chat, it’s always going to be easier to match the customer’s tone when actually listening to them on the phone.
And when your agents can express empathy and solve the problem accordingly, you’ve got a better chance at getting that 5-star review and positive customer feedback.
Our customers using phones have an average Satisfaction score of 4.56 out of 5.
While that score also depends a lot on your support agents and their personal approach to customer service, there’s no denying that actually speaking to clients is helpful for both parties in those moments.
Having a phone number builds trust and brand quality.
Especially if you sell high-end products or have VIP customers (like wholesalers buying in bulk), having a phone number adds a level of legitimacy to your business.
Since most online stores don’t immediately add phones as a support channel, it will stand out to customers when your shop does offer voice support.
Phones add a sense of maturity to your business (and especially if you’re using an integrated solution like Gorgias Voice), there’s not much cost involved to elevate the status of your store like this.
It makes your support more accessible.
While the internet has come a long way over the years in terms of accessibility, the truth remains that phone support may be an easier and more comfortable contact method for some of your customers than digital channels.
Test your live chat experience with a screen reader, for example. What’s the experience like? (And how does it compare to dialing a phone number and talking verbally to someone?)
If there’s a chance that voice support is more approachable for a part of your customer demographic, you’ll create a better shopping experience for them by adding a phone line.
Now that you know the benefits of phone support, how do you actually add it?
The first thing you’ll need to decide is who on your team will actually be answering the phones.
A few options to explore:
- Having your existing support agents answer phones. This is best if your agents aren’t already too busy, or you have someone who’s particularly good at verbal communication.
- Hiring a new agent(s). This is the situation many support managers find themselves in -- they want to add phones, but don’t feel like they have the right staff yet to manage it. Hiring someone new can help, but we also recommend following these tips to keep resolution times fast and phone processes efficient.
- Outsourcing phone support. If you’re expecting a large amount of call volume and don’t feel you can internally staff the team to support it, outsourcing to a call agency is always an option. This can be expensive upfront, however, so it may be best to try one of the other options and consider this as a last resort.
Next, you’ll need to choose a phone platform.
If you’re adding our built-in voice channel to your Gorgias helpdesk, all you have to do to get started is log into your Gorgias helpdesk and create a new number (or forward or port an existing one, if you happen to have one already).
Our phone integration is included in all Gorgias plans, and unlike other providers, there’s no annual contract fee and no minimum seat requirement.
This makes it a great option for teams looking to add phones for the first time or who want to manage all communication channels in one place.
Plus, our ecommerce integrations save your agents time by displaying callers’ shopping history right in the helpdesk, so they don’t have to go searching for the last order, for example.
For more tips on how to create efficient phone processes and increase resolution time by 34%, check out this article.
Finally, once you’ve set up your team and chosen your provider, all that’s left to do is make your number visible.
If you’re offering voice support for all your customers, you might place it in the footer of your website or all transactional emails.
If you’re piloting voice support or using it exclusively for a segment of shoppers, you might save it for smaller email segments or place it only on dedicated landing pages just for them.
Wherever you decide to put your number, just make sure it's easily accessible and clearly visible so your shoppers can start calling, and your support team can start delivering even better customer experiences!
Start providing SMS support today, with Gorgias
SMS is a convenient way for customers to contact your brand and receive fast support. It’s no wonder it’s one of the top five channels that consumers expect to engage with brands, alongside email, voice, website, and in-person.
Every Gorgias plan now includes two-way SMS at no additional cost, making it easy for your brand to start offering this conversational channel.
Why offer SMS support?
There are many reasons to offer customer service messaging, but here are the top four:
It’s fast and conversational
SMS is a conversational, real-time channel. The benefit of this is that customers tend to keep the conversation short and reply quickly to follow-up questions, meaning your agents can resolve the situation quickly, too.
Customers can contact you while they’re “on the go”
Most people keep their phone with them everywhere they go. With SMS, it’s easy for customers to start the conversation and follow-up as they move throughout their day, instead of feeling stuck to a chat conversation on their laptop.
It’s natural for younger customers
Sending text messages feels like you’re texting a friend, even if it’s actually between customers and your brand. Younger clientele will feel natural using this support channel, and it can even help you build that friendly-feeling into your brand perception.
It makes sending photos back and forth easy
Does your refund or return policy require photo evidence to kick off the process? If your customers ever need to send pictures of damaged items or wrong products, SMS is the perfect channel because they’re probably taking those photos on their phone anyway.
Still not sure if SMS is a support channel your brand should prioritize? Try it for 2 weeks. Because SMS is included in every Gorgias plan, it’s easy to turn off if you decide it isn’t right.
Recommended reading: Our list of 60+ fascinating customer service statistics.
How to add SMS to your helpdesk
You’ll need two things to get started with Gorgias SMS. (Don’t worry, they’re both quick!)
If you’re new here, get started on the Gorgias helpdesk. It only takes a few minutes to create an account, and you can always book a call with our sales team if you have questions.
The second is a Gorgias-owned phone number, meaning you either created it in Gorgias or ported it from your previous phone provider. You can do both of these actions in Settings > Phone Numbers.
Note: SMS is currently only available for US, UK, and Canadian numbers.
Once your phone number is ready in Gorgias, you can add the SMS integration to it. You can do this from Settings > Integrations > SMS.
Once the integration is active, you’re ready to start replying to SMS conversations from your customers.
To tell your customers they can now text your brand, we recommend adding “Text us,” plus your phone number, in some or all of these places:
- The footer of your website
- The “Contact Us” page of your website
- Your Gorgias Help Center
- Transactional emails (order confirmation, return initiated, etc.)
4 automation Rules to help you get started
Below are four top automation rules to take full advantage of SMS customer service. We also have a full guide on customer service messaging that includes templates and macros to upgrade your SMS support.
Auto-tag with “SMS”
SMS is an official channel in Gorgias, meaning you can see SMS-specific stats or create SMS-specific Views out of the box. There may be times when you also want to Tag tickets with “SMS” however, in which case you can do so with a Rule like this:
Auto-assign to a real-time team
SMS is a fast, conversational channel, so you’ll want to assign these tickets to agents that can keep up with the pace. If you have a dedicated chat team, they’ll be naturals at answering questions via SMS, as well. Here’s a Rule that will automatically assign SMS tickets to a specific team.
Auto-reply: Message received
When customers text your brand, they’ll expect a fast response. In order to buy your agents some time, we recommend sending an auto-response to let the customer know their message has been received and an agent will be with them shortly. This will also give them confidence that the text message did in fact go through, so they don’t follow-up right away.
Auto-reply: Order status
Whenever you add a new communication channel for your customers, you should consider how you’ll respond to WISMO (“Where is my order?”) questions on it. With SMS, you’ll want to keep the length of your reply in mind so you’re not sending an insanely long text message back to customers. We recommend creating a Rule that can A) make sure the reply follows the best format for SMS and B) save your agents from having to answer these WISMO questions manually.
Next: Connect your SMS marketing apps for a seamless experience
Gorgias SMS empowers your brand to keep the conversation going on SMS, even when your customers are on the go.
We also integrate with SMS marketing apps, making it easier for agents to answer promotion replies from one workspace. They can work more efficiently while turning SMS questions into opportunities for better customer value.
In the Gorgias App Store, you’ll find some of the top ecommerce integration partners like Klaviyo, Attentive, Postscript, and more.
If your brand is using any of these apps to drive sales via SMS, we highly recommend integrating with Gorgias so your team can work more efficiently toward your revenue goals. When SMS marketing and SMS customer service work in tandem, they are far more powerful.
Want to see an example of a brand that successfully launched SMS customer support and effectively drove customers to use the new channel? Check out our playbook of Berkey Filters, an ecommerce merchant that did just that.
Ready to get started with this conversational support channel? Add SMS to your Gorgias helpdesk today or book a call with our team to learn more.
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