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
3 Ways to Reduce the Load On Your Customer Support Team
By Ross Beyeler, Founder and CEO of Growth Spark
Often, a support team answers the same questions over and over…
Or issues returns repeatedly for reasons that could be addressed internally…
Maybe the sizing isn’t well represented, the fulfillment house has mixed up SKUs, or your product images aren’t clear or detailed enough.
If you can lighten the load for your customer support team, you can save significant time and costs, while at the same time improving the buying experience for your customers.
The goals here are to:
- Reduce repeat inquiries
- Shorten first response times
- Speed up problem resolution time
- Lower overall customer care costs
The key is to address your customers questions and issues before they ask your support team. Here's how you do that:
A Better FAQ Page
91% of shoppers would gladly try to answer their own questions first using an online knowledge base or FAQ page before reaching out to a customer service team, according to a survey by Coleman Parkes for Amdocs.
This means that your FAQ page is a huge opportunity to answer your customers’ most common questions and issues so they don’t need to reach out to customer support.
FAQ information typically falls into one of two distinct buckets: product-specific and buying process.
Product Specific: Common questions about individual products may be better off addressed on the product pages rather than in a broad FAQ page. You may need to provide clearer or more comprehensive product descriptions, or consider more or better photography to clear up common product questions.
Buying Process: Questions about shipping, returns, policies, and other operational topics are best addressed in a single easy-to-find page like an FAQ.
When is the last time you cross-checked the content of your FAQ page with the data from your customer support team?
There are many customer support tools like Gorgias that will make it easy for you to track the reasons behind why users submit a ticket.
Once you begin tracking the topic, or tag, of your questions, you can easily identify the questions that top the list, and permanently add the responses to the FAQ.
Bonus points: Prioritize the FAQ page based on the frequency of each customer service inquiry so that the most relevant answers are closer to the top.
Your next step is to set up a monthly meeting with your head of customer service to review the feedback coming in from your customers and ask yourself:
- What are the most frequent topics of support inquiries?
- What issues take up the majority of your support team’s time and resources?
- What issues are emerging or could emerge do to seasonality or new initiatives within our company?
Remember, an FAQ page is:
- Easy to find
- If shoppers can’t find it quickly and easily, they won’t use it and all your work answering all of their questions will go to waste. If you have an answer on your FAQ page, yet people are still inquiring, they might be having trouble finding the page.
- Searchable
- Include a search bar so that shoppers can easily find the answers for their specific problem without having to read through everything else.
- Easy to read
- Use simple, conversational language. Technical slang gives most of us a headache, and leaves most people reaching for the closest live human to explain it in terms they understand.
For more on FAQ pages, check out this Shopify article.
Now that you have your FAQ page squared away, be sure to track visitors to the page and note any changes in volume, and look for changes in your support ticket volume around those related questions.
Remember: You should never answer a support ticket only by referencing your FAQ page. Always include the information they are asking for directly within your response. After that, let the customer know that there is an FAQ page for more information, to avoid future tickets.
See Where Your Customers Get Tripped Up
Have you watched actual customers explore your online store to see where they stumble?
Customer behavior tools like Hotjar make it easy to review how customers navigate your website. One way that customer behavior analysis tools can help you understand exactly how your customers are using your site is with heat maps.
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A heat map is a visual representation of the most popular (hot) and unpopular (cold) elements of a website page. They can give you an at-a-glance understanding of how people interact with individual website pages. Elements that get the most views and interaction are shown in red, so you can immediately spot what your users are clicking on. Those that most people tend to ignore appear in blue.
Once you know which parts of your website are most (and least) useful to shoppers, you can tweak those elements to make the on-site experience easier to use.
Customer behavior data can inform on-site improvements, such as:
- Identifying any “dead” pages so you can remove them
- Recognizing “deep” content that requires too many clicks for customers to reach, and making it more visible or accessible
- Ensuring that customers can easily see and access main links, buttons, and CTAs
- Making sure that important elements are getting the attention they deserve
- Checking whether any static elements are getting clicked too often, and adjusting them to clarify that they aren’t a linked object
It may require some A/B testing to ensure your changes deliver results.
Learn from Returns
According to a recent Shopify post, during the holiday season, Ecommerce returns surge to 30 percent (or as high as 50 percent for “expensive” products).
Return deliveries are estimated to exceed $550 billion by 2020 in the U.S. alone.
Many of those returns are probably associated with a customer support ticket - whether customers are asking questions about the product they received, or need help processing their return.
Anything you can do to reduce the number of returns - and the number of customer support requests associated with them - can mean a huge boost for your bottom line.
So, what causes returns?
Returns can often be traced back to a disconnect between customer expectations and the reality of the product once they receive it. It may be that:
- It doesn’t fit the way they expected
- It doesn’t look or feel like they thought it would
- Delivery came later than they expected (or not at all)
All of these problems (and more) can be prevented in advance with improvements to your website content.
Sizing Issues
While fit can be a difficult factor to get right online, including detailed dimensions is a big step in the right direction. Some apparel merchants are taking sizing one step further with interactive fit guides, like the one above Nudie Jeans, which uses an app integration called Virtusize:.
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Appearance Issues
Poor quality or not enough product images can make it difficult for customers to accurately understand what your product will look like when it arrives at their home.
You can easily reduce your return rate by making sure your product photography is clear and high-quality, and illustrates all of the primary parts of each product. More complicated or detailed products can also benefit from a video or 360-view.
Detailed product descriptions can also help address confusion about product appearance and feel. Sol de Janeiro does this with a multi-tab product content area that defaults to a brief product highlight, with additional tabs to provide more details.
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Fulfillment Issues
Are orders not being fulfilled to the right customers?
Are deliveries taking longer than they should?
Analyzing your fulfillment data and using that information to make adjustments to your website content - such as average delivery times - can help eliminate a source of customer support calls.
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For example, maybe you want to be able to deliver every order within two days, but your current fulfillment resources simply can’t make that happen consistently. Being up-front and clear about realistic delivery times (like The Black Dog does in their Shipping FAQ page, above) will help set customers’ expectations appropriately.
Bonus: To get setup on two day shipping, consider our partners at ShipBob.
Final Thoughts
Continue to study your on-site data using Google Analytics or Shopify’s native analytics and look for high exit % pages. These may be pages where prospects or customers are running into a dead end and being forced to turn to support.
You can also create a goal in Google Analytics that corresponds to contacting support, then reverse the user path to determine which pages lead to them submitting a ticket / hitting that “contact” or “support” button.
Chances are, there are a few areas of “low hanging fruit” that can make significant improvements to your customer support load once you find them and address the root concerns. And with those small fixes, you could see a big impact on your bottom line, and a better on-site experience for your customers.
Read more about customer support on our trusted partner’s site, Growth Spark:
Customer Loyalty: Bringing The Human Touch Back To Ecommerce
Ecommerce has become awash with digital bells and whistles. Technology has no doubt enhanced the shopper experience but the rapid rate of digital innovation has had a profound effect on customer expectations. By 2020, customers expect brands to automatically personalize experiences to address (not just predict) their current – and future – needs.
But, although customers expect more in terms of tech, they still crave the person-to-person connection. In fact, 75% of consumers want to see more human interaction, not less.
At LoyaltyLion we know that bringing back this human-touch depends on providing a good customer experience. Clearly, a worthwhile cause, as studies show that 86% of shoppers who received great customer care are more likely to repeat purchase. By going the extra mile to treat your shoppers as people – rather than numbers – you can secure a faithful, constant customer base.
Here are three insights that will help you bring the human touch back to your online store.
Use Data To Personalize Communications
Each customer is unique. They interact with your brand in different ways, all while having their own personal needs and desires. When a customer feels that you have taken the time to understand their unique requirements, they will trust and value your brand more.
Data and personalization go hand in hand. By using member information to learn how customers engage with your loyalty program, you can understand their feelings towards your brand and react accordingly. Being data-driven is the key to true e-commerce success.
One golden opportunity to personalize your communications this is through targeted emails. Use your Gorgias dashboard to identify past interactions and purchases, as well as a customer’s loyalty points balance. You can then use that member data to create bespoke rewards that you can send right to your customer’s inbox.
Maybe you’ve noticed that they keep eyeing a specific product range? If so, give them discounts on new products in that collection to tempt them to back to buy again. Or perhaps you’re aware that they’re just a couple of points away from their next reward. Give them a little nudge to return and receive their reward sooner. For example, LoyaltyLion user Dr. Axe alerts customers when they have rewards waiting to be claimed, and suggests a particular product to redeem that reward on.
Find Ways To Delight Customers
Shoppers love to feel that they’re your only priority and that you care about them on a personal level. They want to feel valued as individuals, not just another number in an extensive database.
Loyalty strategies should incorporate ways to surprise and delight customers. For example, making it easy to offer customers points on their birthday or taking a moment to personally congratulate them when they’ve made a certain number of purchases with you. Beauty Bakerie, for example, offers their customers 500 points on their birthday.
With Connectors for Shopify Flow, it’s easy to use LoyaltyLion and Gorgias to set up triggers that automatically create tickets on a customer’s birthday, reminding a representative to get in touch. It’s the thought that counts and going the extra mile will ensure your customers trust and remember you. Plus, you’ll feel good about it too!
Convert Negative Experiences Into Positive Ones
Customers get frustrated when they feel their complaints aren’t taken seriously. Dissatisfied customers will tell between nine and 15 people if they have a bad brand experience. Using Gorgias’ helpdesk and macros, you can help resolve complaints whilst maintaining a personal touch. For example, ethical online yarn store, Darn Good Yarn uses the helpdesk to analyse and automate how they solve common customer issues, using a whole database of the shopper’s history to address specific queries in a more informed way.
If you are reacting to customers have had a negative experience, your loyalty program can help you demonstrate you care. You might consider offering bonus points or benefits such as free delivery, or moving them up a loyalty tier so that they can unlock more exclusive rewards in the future. These tokens of appreciation can turn a bitter experience into a sweet deal.
Research shows that 94% of customers who have their issues solved painlessly said they would purchase from that company again. This shows that helping customers to solve their problems is key to securing their long-term loyalty. Treat your most valuable customers well by making their shopping experiences as easy as possible. In return, they’ll give you their loyalty.
It’s all about people-to-people
In a world where technology and data can give ecommerce stores a competitive edge, there’s a risk that we could lose touch with the human side of retailing. Human exchanges are still, and always will be, the primary driver of loyalty. So, use digital personalization to your advantage and treat your customers as individuals.
Small engineering team as a competitive advantage
It's been over 3 years since we've started working on the Gorgias helpdesk. The engineering team started with just me (Alex) and then gradually grew to a team of 5 people. We're a small team, but we've accomplished a lot during this period. Here are some stats from 0 code/customers/revenue in Oct 2015 to this:
- Handled over 16 million tickets.
- 2000 daily active sessions with an average length of ~4h each.
- 600 paying customers (companies).
- 17% MoM revenue growth.
Modest numbers to be sure, but we're very proud that people use our product in a big part of their workday and hopefully are becoming more productive while doing so. The whole idea behind our product is to scale customer support with as little resources as possible. Given this, perhaps it's only natural to build our product with a small team as well?
We've been suffering chronically from "not having enough people" - we still do. That forced us to adopt a certain engineering culture that I want to talk about in this post.
When we first started building Gorgias, having just a few people on the team allowed us to progress at a pace where we could collect real feedback from our customers with things that really mattered to them rather than building every feature they ask for. A lot of their asks seemed legitimate, but because we didn't have a lot of people it forced us to prioritize the critical, high impact things first.
Having a small team can act like a barrier that blocks you from building a bloated product.
I want to make more of a case for the above statement, but first I'd like to get a bit more into what we did during the 3 year period.
Once we've build an initial version of the app and got our first customers we quickly realized that building a "second Gmail" is super-hard:
- Communication protocols (email/facebook/etc..) are complicated - we knew that before we even started, but it's difficult to describe the amount of work that needs to get done to make them work correctly. The amount of corner cases and weird protocol quirks is just staggering. In fact I would even go ahead and say that if you're integrating with any kind of external systems (webhooks, REST apis, etc..) then you're going to have a very hard time making them work correctly.
- Having a highly-available and fast app is very hard when you don't have a team of full-time SREs. Scalability was not our big concern when we first started because we didn't have customers, but having an app that was always on was very important, remember the ~4h average session length? It meant that we had to make some architecture and infrastructure decisions that allowed for a high uptime.
- Customer support software space has a very high barrier for entry these days. You need to have certain features before people start to even consider you as a platform. The switching costs are high as well because now you have to train your people on a new app and changing people's routine is hard.
It takes a lot of effort to get to a point where you can compete with the likes of Gmail or Zendesk - both amazing products btw. This was definitely the case for us, for close to 2 years we had only a couple of customers and our product wasn't that good if we're being honest.
So what changed a year ago? To put it simply: our product didn't suck anymore. Or sucked less. It had that minimum set of features and stability that made it attractive enough to our main customer base (Shopify merchants) that were passionate about productivity in the customer support space. That, and the tenacity of our CEO Romain who was convincing everyone that they should use us.
So we started having our second wave of early adopters and all our hard work was finally starting to pay-off!
Now that we had more and bigger customers we were starting to have performance issues, our app was slow, suddenly we were starting to get bombarded by viral facebook posts events or promotional events via an email campaigns, we didn't have enough monitoring in place, our app was pretty inefficient, the main database was a frequent source of congestion. So we started fixing those issues while still receiving numerous feature requests.
Thankfully we didn't actually optimize our code that much before (no customers!) and there were a lot of low hanging fruits at first, but it still put a lot of stress on the team which was becoming tired and overworked and requested to hire more people to build those features and help with the performance issues.
We all agreed that it would be for the best to have more people on the team, but hiring is hard. Competent coders are not just randomly looking for the next gig. SF is also a very expensive city and for a startup that raised $1.5M and a 2 years of money burned we couldn't really compete with other players in town. We've started working with some great devs in Europe, we worked with a few talented interns as well and we tried to get by until we could have more customers and hopefully raise some more money to hire more people.
I could speak more about hiring in the Bay Area and there are a lot of things we did wrong and still have a lot of things to learn, but that's probably an even longer post than this one. But yeah, it's hard to find someone good, it's expensive, etc...
So what is the situation right now? Well, it's not much better. We've raise d a seed extension round from SaaStr with Jason Lemkin and hired a few people in the Growth team, but we still have a hard time hiring in SF or remote. In the meantime we have a small team and want to talk about that.
On the importance of saying NO
I think it's important to realize the advantages of having a smaller team and the single most important super-powers that you're forced to acquire is saying NO more often that you would with a bigger team. If you have a bigger team and say no to a feature, new platform, integration, etc.. it's harder to justify the decision. There are arguments like:
... we have enough devs! They are paid to make features, so what's the problem!?
... the data shows that 50% of our customers are saying that they want this or that feature, we must build it!
But do we absolutely need to build that feature? Are the customers going to be a lot less effective with your product otherwise? Is it going to be a big boost for them or just a nice improvement? Once a feature is there you have to maintain it, fix bugs, improve it, etc.. The thing with data driven decisions is that sometimes it can be biased towards some historical practice that might not have a place in your current world.
Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't listen to your customers, you absolutely have to, but be sure you understand well what they want before taking action and understanding takes time. Having an artificial brake on your enthusiasm might be a good thing.
Engineers build things, the natural tendency is to accept any technical challenge because of ego, curiosity, fun, etc... It takes discipline to say no and stick by it. A small team is making it easier to do it.
Automation
When you have a small team you're forced to automate a lot more often some of your workflows. You don't have the luxury to do repetitive stuff so:
- You start writing more tests because you don't have people hired in QA and you don't want to repeat the same tests all the time.
- You add optional static typing, linting and other code quality tools because you don't have time to deal with random type errors or have debates about tabs vs spaces.
- You resolve repetitive bugs by doing some refactoring because you can't deal with the constant flow of tech support tickets.
- You make a lot of tasks retry-able so if a HTTP request to facebook failed you don't have to manually retry them.
- Cronjobs, cronjobs everywhere.
Building the right culture is a long process
People that work at Gorgias come from different backgrounds and sometimes it can be challenging to be on the same page. In some cases our work processes are similar to many other companies:
- Github for our code and issues.
- Code-reviews on Reviewable - it's awesome!
- Jenkins to build our docker images and upload them to google cloud.
- Kubernetes to run everything on GKE.
- Sentry to collect production errors.
- Datadog to monitor everything.
But there is so much more than just the above processes to engineering:
- The way we all come together and decide how certain things will be built or fixed.
- The way we talk about a certain API decisions and refactoring.
- The way we deal with an outage and a bad bug that affects our biggest customers.
These things need time to happen to be embedded in your engineering consciousness and if you're the first-time founder (like myself) you also need the time to understand how to operate in this environment.
Management overhead
Never managed a big team so I can't really speak about it's dynamics, but I would expect that because there are more people there is a lot more bandwidth you have to manage, a lot more people have to agree, a lot more politics have to be settled. I don't look forward to that to be honest, the more time I can get away with hiring as little as possible without a big sacrifice of our growth as a company the more I'll try to delay it.
I conclusion I would say that it's totally fine to have a small team, in fact, I'm considering it a competitive advantage that you should try to keep as long as you can.
The irony
I made a point in this post that having a small team is a competitive advantage, but I also think that we are ready to grow our team a bit. Yep, we're hiring!
Scale your Messenger marketing with Octane AI and Gorgias
Integrate your Smile.io account to Gorgias!
Loyalty programs are widely used amongst e-commerce merchants to grow and maintain market share by improving the number of repeat customers and attracting new ones. These programs come in different formats - from loyalty points to surprise gifts depending on the level of loyalty of each customer - and have proven efficient to help brands build a community of consumers based on the emotional attachment to their identity and values.
As a customer support helpdesk, Gorgias is focused on providing the best experience for both end-consumers and support agents. Consequently, giving access to the most accurate information about your customers’ loyalty status enables your support team to adapt their answers to customer requests.
Thus, it seemed only natural that we partner with Smile.io, a rewards platform that has helped over 20,000 merchants reward their most loyal customers for performing profitable actions.
With Smile, you can create and manage reward programs such as loyalty points, referrals and VIP programs, to build a fruitful relationship with your customers.
Because Gorgias is appreciated for its ease of use and automation tools, we have decided to build a strong integration with Smile: not only can your support team have easy access to all the necessary data about your customers, but they can also use Smile variables in canned responses (or “macros”) and automation rules.
- Display your customers’ Smile profiles next to tickets
- Use Smile variables (loyalty status, points balance, VIP program, referral url) in both your macros and your rules
By integrating your Smile account to Gorgias, you’ll be able to improve yet again not only your customer support but also your customers’ engagement to your brand. Our early adopters of the integration are already thrilled by it!
"We're loving the Smile integration so far! Having access to the variables in the automation features of Gorgias (macros and rules) is a game-changer, especially now that we're focusing on improving our loyalty program. It would be great if the integration went a little further in the future to enable editing loyalty points!"
Chris Storey, Founder and CEO at Dinkydoo
If you're already a Gorgias customer, you can connect Smile directly from your Gorgias account, in the Integrations section. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.
Announcing the Okendo integration
Here at Gorgias, our aim is to provide the best customer support tools to our clients, whatever their specific needs. The more you grow, the more we work to develop our offer so that you can benefit from a tailor-made spectrum of integrations. As your business becomes more successful, you need to adapt your website to a fast-growing community of consumers, especially regarding the quality of your reviews and how they appear.
This is why today we are proud to announce our new partnership with Okendo, a customer-marketing platform perfectly suited for high-performance Shopify businesses.
Okendo helps Shopify’s fastest growing companies like oVertone, Paul Evans and Dormify build vibrant customer communities through product ratings & reviews, customer photos/videos and Q&A.
Along with this, Okendo gives you the tools to leverage customer generated content across other marketing channels such as Google Search, Google Shopping, Facebook and Instagram.
Since one of the key advantages of using Gorgias is to manage all your customer support in one dashboard, we decided to design a straight-to-the-point integration:
If a customer leaves low rating review such as < 3 stars and/or with negative sentiment, Okendo can automatically create a ticket in Gorgias. This way, your staff can quickly engage in a conversation with them to understand what went wrong, and address the issue immediately.
We believe this integration will take your customer support teams to the next level, as Okendo has already convinced some of our key clients.
"One of our biggest assets is our unique customer community, so being able to maintain it as active and engaged as possible is key for our business. And making sure that we address any negative experience efficiently and in no time is just as important: this is exactly what the Okendo integration within Gorgias has enabled us to do, by automatically creating a ticket for these cases with the review displayed right next to it."
Dan Appelstein, Founder & CEO at BeGummy
"Aside from being excellent at building shopper trust, reviews enable us to identify customers who, for whatever reason, have had a less than stellar experience. The Okendo + Gorgias integration enables us to flag these instances and automatically assign a Gorgias ticket to a member of our Client Services Team, so that we can follow up and do our best to assist them with whatever issues they're encountering. This integration, along with Okendo’s consistent availability and unwavering support, have made the integration between these two platforms seamless and successful!"
Jae Sutherland, Director of Client Service at oVertone
If you're already a Gorgias customer, we can introduce you to Okendo to implement the integration directly from your Okendo account. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.
How Campus Protein built a multi-million dollar business
The supplement industry is not often the first thing that comes to mind when looking to start a new business. It’s crowded, the barriers to entry are low, the margins are thin, and there are some established and well-known brands with large budgets to outspend competitors.
And yet, Campus Protein, a provider of supplement to college students that started in a dorm room in 2010, has managed to carve itself a highly profitable niche and power its way to millions of dollars in revenue.
No, there’s no magic sauce or secret weapon that helped them do it. They have the same access to resources as everyone else. In fact, they have a smaller team than older brands in the space.
The only difference is they focused on one thing that others in the industry weren’t, the customer experience. This is the story of how they did that and dominated behemoths like GNC in colleges across the US.
Identifying The Problem
Before coming up with the idea, founder Russell Saks was just another sophomore at Indiana University. After joining a fraternity, his new friends convinced him to start hitting the gym.
As Russell started getting into fitness, he noticed that every month his friends would head to the local supplements store to purchase $200 to $300 worth of protein and workout drinks. These were the same people who always complained that they didn’t have beer money on the weekends. Yet here they were, spending hundreds of dollars on supplements without batting an eyelid.
In any industry as crowded as the supplement industry, there are always cheaper options. You can go online and buy your supplements at a much lower price than at the local store. However, the drawback is that you have to wait for it. And, as Russell found out, college students never planned ahead and always needed their next tub of protein powder instantly.
Ever the entrepreneur, Russell figured there was an opportunity here. If he could combine the affordability of online prices with the same-day delivery of the local store, he had a business. All he had to do was bulk order product from a low-cost site in advance, store it locally, and then redistribute it to students when they needed it.
As with any business, those initial days were rough. Yes, there was demand and Russell would often sell out each batch soon after they came in, but the margins were razor thin. To maintain cost-effectiveness, Russell sometimes had to take a loss on certain products.
On top of that, Russell found that his life was getting consumed by the fledgling business. To scale it up, he needed help. His friend and first business partner (now Chief Sales Officer), Mike Yewdell, was a fellow student at Indiana University with lots of connections. With his network, they quickly became the go-to source for supplements on campus.
Russell’s next stop was his high school friend (now business partner and CMO), Tarun Singh, who was studying in Boston University at the time. Tarun noticed the same problems at his school and quickly expanded Campus Protein to his school and then the entire Boston area.
The final piece fell into place when they entered into a business competition and won $100,000 to scale up. With the up-front money, they could negotiate deals with supplement makers to improve their margins, and expand to more college to increase sales.
Today, Campus Protein is in over 300 colleges across the US and shows no signs of slowing down. But none of that would have happened if Russell hadn’t been hyper-focused on a certain type of customer and their needs.
Customer Experience As A Growth Channel
One thing Russell learned early on was that college students had very specific needs. Thus, they craved a personalized experience. They needed help with what supplements to buy based on their goals and budget.
At the local supplement stores, Russell noticed that they couldn’t get any of that. Firstly, they sold to everyone so they didn’t have any expertise specific to the college student market. Secondly, they were trained to sell as much product as possible, so they’d often push supplements that weren’t right for the students.
Russell realized that Campus Protein needed to really understand the needs of a college student to own the market. That meant the company needed to hire students who were into fitness. And so the Campus Rep program was born.
A Campus Rep's main job is sales and marketing. They grow awareness for the brand and encourage help other students achieve their fitness goals.
By recruiting Reps in each college, Campus Protein could keep their core team lean while maintaining a large salesforce on the ground.
This has been the real key to their growth. These Reps are their ideal customers, and they hang out with other prospective customers. Thus, they provide a customer experience that’s far better than anything other brands can offer.
Imagine you’re a college student. Before Campus Protein came along, you had to figure out which products to buy, got pressured into buying unnecessary stuff, and ended up with very little money left over.
Today, you probably have a Campus Protein rep in your gym, wearing a branded tank. He’s giving out free tasters, providing you with workout tips and nutrition advice, listens to your goals, and hands you a card with a link where you can buy exactly what you need for much less. How’s that for customer experience?
Extending The Experience Online
Campus Protein may be marketing offline with their campus reps but all their sales come from their Shopify website. That’s the best way for them to scale.
Here’s how it works - they have warehouses across the country where they stock product. Because of their deep customer understanding, they know exactly what to stock and what not to stock. The campus reps then go around building awareness, and students head to the website to make their purchase. Because of the warehouse network, they get their products pretty quickly.
Because the actual sale is made online, the website becomes a crucial part of their strategy. If they don’t provide the same level of customer support and care their reps do, they’ll drop the ball and lose the sale. More importantly, they’ll lose trust. One bad experience could hurt their reputation across an entire college.
To replicate the one-on-one support of their reps, they used website chat. In the early days, they started with Zopim Chat. But as they grew, they found that it was too basic for their needs. They couldn’t tell if someone they were chatting with was an existing customer or a new one. They couldn’t tell if it was a new conversation or a continuation of one that happened in a different channel. It was a poor experience for the customer and the company.
Remember, they have a small core team, so they needed a customer support tool that could do the heavy lifting for them. That’s when they came across Gorgias and it allowed them to create an online experience that increased conversions and revenues.
For starters, Gorgias combines all their customer support channels (chat, email, phone, social media) into one unified view, and builds a profile of each customer. When a student chats with them, Campus Protein know if they are a previous customer, can see all past conversations and sales in their dashboard, and can provide relevant support.
Compare that to the typical support you get when you’re forced to repeat your previous conversations each time you chat with someone.
To speed things up, Gorgias also has macros and templated responses based on the question. For example, if a customer wants to know where their order is, Gorgias presents the support agent with a templated response that pulls in the customer’s order details from Shopify. With just a click, the support agent can answer the question in near real-time.
Automations like this also frees up time for support agents to provide more detailed answers to complicated questions, like when a student asks for nutrition advice. Again, they can provide the same level of caring support that reps do and this helps increase sales.
Another way they increase sales is by detecting if customers are spending a lot of time on a certain page and initiating a chat with them. For example, if someone is on the checkout for too long, Gorgias automatically pops a chat and ask them if they need help. This directly increases conversions.
Perhaps the most important way Campus Protein uses customer support to increase revenues is by converting feedback into website and product changes. For every question that comes in, they try to understand why it wasn’t obvious on the website, and make the appropriate change. This leads to fewer tickets of the same type and higher conversions.
Widening The Moat
At the end of the day, Campus Protein is just another retailer. In an industry like supplements, anyone can replicate their model, or existing brands like GNC can enter the market. So why hasn’t that happened yet?
Like Warren Buffett says, every business needs to have a moat, something that defends them against competition. In Campus Protein’s case, it’s their deep customer knowledge and the personal level of support they provide.
A college student is introduced to Campus Protein via the local rep. They’re nice, helpful, and remember the student’s name each time. When the student goes online, they have the same experience. Their previous conversations are remembered and even their most complicated questions are answered with care.
Now, you may not be able to create a rep army like Campus Protein for your eCommerce business, but you sure can create an online customer experience that sets you apart from others in your industry.
With Gorgias, whenever a customer creates a ticket on any channel, you have all their information like previous conversations and sales, right there. Instead of asking the customer if they’ve written in before or what their order numbers are, you can get straight to the important stuff. And with all the templates, macros, and automations available, you can do it in minutes.
When a customer has to decide between purchasing at a store where they forget about you after the sale, versus one where they treat you like a friend and remember you a year later, which do you think they’ll choose?
Give your customers a great experience and, like Campus Protein, you’ll have a business that keeps going up.
Curious about how Gorgias can optimize customer service? Click here to learn more.
Gorgias Builds Strong Relationships With Aircall
Aircall is a cloud-based call center software made for support teams. With Aircall, support agents can track everything from A-Z, on any device, with zero hardware to manage. The right tool to increase agent efficiency and customer satisfaction!
Aircall Makes the Gorgias Helpdesk Complete
After listening to early customer feedback, we quickly realized we needed to find a phone integration that empowered users to manage voice calls as easily as emails or chats.
Traditional helpdesk integrations simply log calls as tickets. We wanted to go one step further and associate the phone call with the right customer. This way, agents can see the full conversation history between the brand and the customer.
By building Aircall’s cloud-based phone into the Gorgias platform, agents can also quickly edit orders while on the phone based on the case history they see. After a call has ended, all notes will be added to the correct customer’s profile along with a link to the full call recording.
Why Aircall was the Right Choice
Looking back, the partnership has been mutually beneficial and seamlessly implemented.
Aircall has a well-documented API that our dev team could easily use. We were able to build a working and robust phone integration with Aircall in just a few hours. Four days later, after QA testing, the new solutions were fully functional and ready to use.
Since Gorgias and Aircall both seek to provide the best customer experience possible, cross-company visibility has become a valuable source of new leads and sales. Furthermore, we conduct regular catch-up meetings and share a Slack channel to make sure both teams work hand-in-hand to create the best integration and the best results. The partnership with Aircall is super valuable for both our customers and our respective companies and we strongly recommend each others.
If you're already a Gorgias customer, head to your account and go to Integrations to connect Aircall. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.
Building delightful customer interactions starts in your inbox
