How to Drive Growth with an Automated Subscriber Journey
TL;DR:
- Subscribers drive 3x more value than one-time buyers. Subscriptions create ongoing relationships that build loyalty and increase lifetime value.
- Make subscription opt-ins easy and appealing. Use tools like default subscription settings, upsell widgets, and A/B testing to encourage conversions at every step of the journey.
- Retain subscribers by treating key drop-off points as recovery moments. Use win-back campaigns, payment recovery, and personalized support to reduce churn.
- Meet customers where they are with AI-powered tools. Solutions like Gorgias Shopping Assistant and Recharge Concierge SMS provide real-time, contextual support and subscription management.
Vanessa Lopez, VP of Customer Experience at Recharge, recently led a workshop that outlined how brands can transform one-off interactions into rich subscription journeys that increase opt-ins, reduce churn rate, and boost lifetime value (LTV).
Here’s what we learned.
What are the different subscription types?
There are many different ways that you can offer subscriptions. Here’s a rundown of the most common.
Subscribe and save
The most common subscription type is “Subscribe and save.” Instead of making a one-time purchase, customers subscribe to a product and receive it on a different cadence, whether that's weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
For example, Apothékary offers a Subscribe and Save option for its herbal remedies where shoppers get a discounted rate if they subscribe every one, two, or three months.
Subscription boxes
Subscription boxes ship to customers monthly. Shoppers subscribe over a course of time, like every quarter, six months, or year. For example, CrunchLabs offers a prepaid Build Box option for kids and adults who want to tinker like engineers.
Meal kits
Meal kits are weekly food delivery services that either include pre-packaged ingredients to cook a dish or fully cooked dishes.
Surprise and delight
For brands that are selling higher-cost or unique items, subscriptions to purchase the same product over and over might not be the best way to gain subscribers.
The better option is a curated box, also known as a "subscribe and delight" or “mystery” box. It’s a unique way to cater to customers who prefer trying out different products, rather than receiving the same product on a recurring basis.
For example, premium snack box brand Bokksu specializes in shipping Japanese snacks. Rather than packing the same treats each month, the brand curates different items with every package. This creates both excitement and differentiation each time a customer gets a delivery.
How to drive revenue growth with subscriptions
- Turn interactions into journeys
- Create multiple touchpoints for conversion
- Retain subscribers over time
- Meet customers where they are
- Approach AI as a solution-driver
Subscriptions are the original relationship between a brand and its customer. In fact, subscribers drive three times more value than the one-time buyer. That's because a one-time purchase is really just that—a moment in time—while subscriptions are a journey.
“When you have a customer and they subscribe, you get to see that moment they fell in love with your brand,” says Vanessa. “You get to see when they have those moments where they made you a part of their routine. Every time they engage with you and purchase something new, you learn their rhythms. You learn their preferences. It's impossible to do that with one-time buyers for the most part.”
Subscribers drive three times more value than the one-time buyer, and that's because a one-time purchase is really just that—a moment in time—while subscriptions are a journey.
1) Turn interactions into journeys
Subscribers can only drive growth if you can get those customers to subscribe in the first place. This is what Recharge does: it takes customer interactions and turns them into a customer journey, allowing you to act on those signals in a personal way at scale.
It all starts the moment a shopper browses a product. Each touchpoint is an opportunity to turn that shopper into a subscriber—from the product description page to the subscription widget to checkout.
Vanessa’s tip? Make subscriptions the default option on a product description page. When you present customers with the better and more convenient option, and they see this information at the right time, they're more likely to subscribe.
Put it into practice 💡
Now, it’s time to test. Here's a checklist you can follow to A/B test your subscription journey:
- Test the small details, like button styles, CTA copy, subscribe and save benefits, and their positions on the page.
- Compare different value propositions and discounts.
- Analyze the difference in opt-in and subscriber rates and product performance, and keep iterating.
When customers see the right information at the right time, they're more likely to subscribe. That's because it's the better and the more convenient option.
2) Create multiple touchpoints for conversion
Let's say you have a customer who starts on a product description page. They decide not to subscribe—no worries. You can catch them in the cart.
When they add a product to their cart, you can upsell them with different subscription benefits so they know what they're missing out on. Do it again when they review their cart, and then again when they go to checkout, showing them complementary products that they might be interested in.
And don’t forget to take advantage of that post-purchase "your order is confirmed" high—offer customers cross-sell products, complementary products to their order, or similar items to what they've purchased in the past.
By creating multiple touchpoints for conversion, you’ll increase the possibility that they’ll make a purchase.
Put it into practice 💡
Set up automations in the subscription tool –– like Recharge –– you use. That means adding on upsell and cross-sell tools, and perfecting the times they trigger for customers. Test out different copy and cross-sell/upsell offers to see what resonates the most.
3) Retain subscribers over time
Just as important as acquiring customers is keeping them around.
The Recharge team names three core customer moments that might actually diverge from what brands expect to happen in the customer journey:
- When a payment fails
- When a customer cancels their subscription
- When a customer skips—and keeps on skipping
And while they might seem like hiccups in the process, these moments are actually hero moments. They’re moments that give you the opportunity to actually win those customers back.
Put it into practice 💡
- Prevent cancellations by addressing individual customer concerns at scale with a help desk like Gorgias.
- Set up win-back campaigns. Recharge found that these types of campaigns can convert up to 35% of subscribers by giving them a compelling personalized offer and a straightforward reactivation.
- Recover failed payments to ensure small issues –– like billing and shipping address inconsistencies –– don’t get in the way of your sales.
- Connect all of your customer touchpoints with rewards and referral products.
4) Meet customers where they are
For browsing shoppers, educational and informational resources are the best way to meet their needs, hesitations, and objections.
For regular subscribers, it’s providing them with direct control over their subscription, whenever they want.
The goal is to reach customers where they already are and respond instantly to their needs in a personalized way.
Gorgias’s Shopping Assistant does exactly that—meeting customers where they are by answering customer questions and even initiating conversations based on browsing activity.
This AI sales tool detects a shopper's intent, cart contents, and browsing behavior to initiate conversations, recommend products, and even send discounts as they make a decision.
Modern bidet brand TUSHY saw a 20% increase in chat conversion rate after implementing the tool.
Put it into practice 💡
Decide how you’d like to leverage AI and automation to meet customers where they are. That might be by providing a phone number that customers can interact with via SMS, or implementing a tool like Shopping Assistant to strike up conversational AI chats. Using AI and automation will help you better meet your customers where they are and at scale.
5) Approach AI as a solution-driver
Rather than using AI to come up with problems your brand can solve, Vanessa recommends looking at the challenges your brand has already seen with subscriptions.
The key is to view AI as a tool that drives three core areas:
- Scaling your business without adding headcount
- Reducing churn
- Increasing how much customers spend with you over their lifetime
Vanessa says the most effective strategy starts with leveraging AI-powered tools, such as Recharge’s Concierge SMS.
Typically, SMS tools use template auto responses like, "How do you want to manage your subscription? Type one to cancel, type two to skip." But these aren’t compelling enough for customers to respond. What if they want to do something that doesn't fit in those two options?
Concierge SMS enables brands to build stronger relationships with their customers through conversations powered by pre-trained AI. It personalizes SMS support with customers, so relationships can expand into loyalty.
Put it into practice 💡
Implement an AI-driven subscription management tool that allows customers to interact and ask questions via SMS, rather than only being able to confirm or deny upcoming shipments.
Grow your brand sustainably
Gorgias and Recharge are a powerful combination when it comes to integrating subscription management with top-notch customer support.
With Recharge, efficiently convert one-time buyers into subscribers, retain subscribers through intelligent interventions, and connect every customer touchpoint into one cohesive journey.
With Gorgias, sell more and resolve support inquiries with conversational AI.
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TL;DR:
- Start with your CX team—they know what customers are asking. Their insights reveal what’s confusing, what’s converting, and what’s causing returns before marketing ever gets involved.
- Turn pre-sale questions into better messaging. Use common support queries to improve landing pages, product descriptions, and emails so customers feel confident enough to convert.
- Your best-performing products aren’t always the most hyped. Let real customer comments guide your messaging by identifying what people rave about in chats and reviews.
- Customer confusion and returns usually stem from messaging gaps. Fix product pages, policies, and descriptions to better reflect what people need to know upfront.
Your CX team talks to customers every day. They know what’s confusing, driving purchases, and causing returns, because they hear it firsthand.
But all too often, those insights stay siloed in support tickets and live chat transcripts instead of informing the campaigns that shape the customer journey.
This post is here to change that. We’re breaking down the most valuable questions marketing teams should be asking their CX counterparts. When marketing and CX work together, you get more relevant messaging, smarter product positioning, and campaigns that convert.
Whether you’re planning a big seasonal push or just want to improve product education, this is where to start.
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1. What do customers ask about before buying?
Your CX team knows what makes shoppers hesitate. They’re the ones fielding questions like: Does this come in a larger size? Is it final sale? Will it arrive in time?
Beyond being pre-sale inquiries, they’re signals. They reveal what your customers care about most, and where your messaging may be falling short. When marketing teams tune into this, they can proactively address objections in landing pages, product detail pages (PDPs), emails, and top-of-funnel content.
At luxury jewelry store Jaxxon, Director of Customer Experience Caela Castillo saw firsthand how important it is to address these questions early.
“Chat used to be a support tool for repetitive questions and problem-solving, but now AI Agent takes care of that for us,” she said. Once those friction points were handled upfront, the CX team could focus on more meaningful conversations, and conversions improved.
And when AI recommended the wrong products? Conversions dropped. It was a clear signal that relevance matters, especially before the sale.
Ask your CX team:
“What do customers most often need to know before they buy, and how can we answer that earlier in the journey?”
2. What product do customers rave about—and why?
Your best-selling product isn’t always your hero product. Sometimes, it’s that under-the-radar item that customers can’t stop talking about. The one that shows up again and again in reviews, chats, and post-purchase surveys.
The insight is gold for marketers. The key is to find out why people love it. Is it the fit? The feel? The results?
At online fashion brand, Princess Polly, Alexandria shared that her team expected Gen Z shoppers to lean on AI for recs, but what really influenced them was customer feedback. Reviews, not bots, built trust. That’s why campaigns built around real customer language and experiences often outperform the most polished product copy.
Shopping Assistant can turn those rave reviews into real-time action. It highlights top products using your Shopify product catalog to make personalized recommendations, proactively assists shoppers by using behavior signals, and even offers tailored discounts when they’re ready to convert. That means less guesswork, greater relevance, and an easier path to purchase.
Ask your CX team:
“Which product do customers rave about most, and what exactly are they saying?”
3. What product causes the most complaints?
When customers are frustrated, it’s easy to blame the product. But in many cases, the issue isn’t quality, it’s communication.
At Shinesty, a men’s underwear brand, Molly Kerrigan, Senior Director of Retention, observed that high return rates often stemmed from unmet customer expectations.
She noted the importance of maintaining clear and consistent communication as the company grows, “We get a lot of praise from our customers, and they talk highly of our CX team after 1:1 interactions. We can’t lose that as we scale.”
Molly notes that using Gorgias AI Agent enables Shinesty’s customers to receive quick answers, freeing her team's time for more complex or sensitive issues.
Similarly, Princess Polly saw that delivering a standout customer experience meant being fast, consistent, and helpful at every stage. After switching to Gorgias, their support performance improved dramatically:
- 80% decrease in resolution time
- 95% decrease in first response time
- 40% increase in efficiency
Before changing the product, try updating the messaging. Use insights from CX to rewrite descriptions, add size guides, include user-generated content, or even build a quick-fit quiz. Small tweaks help set clearer expectations and reduce unnecessary returns.
Ask your CX team:
“Which products are driving the most complaints, and what do customers wish they knew before buying?”
4. What confuses customers the most?
Confusion is a conversion killer. If a customer isn’t sure about how something works, what’s included, or whether it’s right for them, they’re more likely to bounce.
That’s why it pays to ask your CX team where customers get stuck. Is it a product feature that needs more context? A vague store policy? A missing detail on a bundle?
The good news is that most confusion is fixable. Start with the following steps:
- Simplify your product pages
- Add quick-hit FAQs to your emails
- Use plain language and real examples
If you’re using Shopping Assistant, you can go even further. It can detect when shoppers are hesitant and provides real-time nudges. Like an assistant who knows all your needs, Shopping Assistant automatically surfaces the questions customers are likely to ask when evaluating a product, so they’re equipped with the clarity they need to proceed to checkout.
TUSHY, a modern bidet brand, faced similar challenges. As bidets aren't mainstream in North America, shoppers often had concerns about product compatibility and installation. They’d ask questions like:
- Will a bidet fit my toilet?
- Is installation complicated?
- Which bidet is right for me?
Without immediate answers, many potential buyers would abandon their purchase. To address this, TUSHY implemented Shopping Assistant, providing instant support. Taking this approach resulted in an 81% higher chat conversion rate compared to human agents and a 13x return on investment.
“The Shopping Assistant has been a game-changer for our team, especially with the launch of our latest bidet models. Expanding our product catalog has given customers more choices than ever, which can overwhelm first-time buyers. Now, they’re increasingly looking to us for guidance on finding the right fit for their home and personal hygiene needs,” said Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Sr. Director of Customer Experience at TUSHY.
Ask your CX team:
“Where do customers get confused most often—and how can we clear that up sooner?”
5. Which products are frequently bought together?
Your CX team picks up on patterns that analytics sometimes miss. They hear which items customers ask about in the same chat, which products get added to carts together, and which pairings people reorder time and time again.
That intel is a goldmine for bundling and upselling. It helps you build smarter campaigns that feel relevant and drive real value.
Zoe Kahn, owner of Inevitable Agency and former VP of Retention and CX at Audien Hearing, emphasizes the importance of using AI to enhance customer interactions.
“A lot of that revenue was potentially missed revenue because these were customers sitting on the site, asking questions about the products, and wanting an answer now so they could purchase…Now, AI can answer those questions immediately and convert those customers.”
With Shopping Assistant, you can act on these insights in real time. It will surface personalized product pairings, bundle suggestions, or accessories based on customer behavior. All before they hit the checkout page.
6. Which products lead to the most returns, and why?
Returns cut into your margins and chip away at trust. Most of the time, they’re not caused by poor-quality products. They happen because expectations weren’t met.
Your CX team already knows which items come back the most and why. Maybe the color doesn’t match the photos. Perhaps the fit runs small, or the product description left out a crucial detail.
Instead of pushing the product harder, reframe how you present it. Add real customer photos. Include fit notes or a sizing chart. Call out anything that might surprise the customer post-purchase. A little clarity upfront goes a long way in reducing returns and boosting retention.
At Pepper, an intimates brand specializing in bras for small-chested bodies, they recognized the importance of pre-sale education. When customers have sizing questions, their AI Agent, Penelope, can provide immediate assistance.
“Penelope takes the information we give her and responds better than a Macro. She tailors it so that it sounds like a natural conversation between two people,” said Gabrielle McWhirter, CX Operations Lead at Pepper.
By proactively providing instant support, Pepper improved customer satisfaction and saw an 18% uplift in average order value.
Ask your CX team:
“Which products get returned the most—and what could we do upfront to change that?”
CX + marketing = smarter campaigns, better results
Before you launch your next campaign, start with a quick sync with your CX lead. They already know what your customers need to hear. You just have to ask.
From fixing messaging gaps to surfacing the right products at the right time, these insights help you connect with customers in personal, timely, and relevant ways.
Tools like Shopping Assistant make it easier than ever to act on this data in real time. You can turn CX knowledge into dynamic recommendations, personalized nudges, and smarter discounts.
Ready to see how you can improve your online shopping experience? Book a demo to see how Gorgias Shopping Assistant engages customers in real-time.
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Featured articles
How to Use CX Data to Improve Marketing, Messaging & Conversions
TL;DR:
- Your support inbox is full of marketing gold. CX insights can sharpen messaging and inspire high-impact campaigns.
- Ticket data unlocks smarter segmentation. Use support interactions to build more relevant, behavior-based audiences.
- Chat campaigns work better with CX insights. Tackle objections in real time and lift conversions with proactive messages.
- Use objection data to reduce drop-offs. Identify common blockers and address them in product pages, ads, and chat prompts.
- Help Center stats guide better content. Turn top-searched questions into FAQs, landing pages, and ad copy.
Today’s best marketing starts with your customers.
According to Forrester’s 2024 research, “Customer-obsessed organizations reported 41% faster revenue growth, 49% faster profit growth, and 51% better customer retention than those at non-customer-obsessed organizations.”
Support teams interact with hundreds or thousands of customers every week, collecting valuable insights in the process. This voice of the customer (VOC) data is a goldmine for marketers, but it too often stays siloed among CX teams.
Ahead, we’ll break down how ecommerce brands can tap into CX insights to drive better marketing.
5 ways to use CX data to improve marketing
CX can play a crucial role in driving growth, but many brands aren’t leveraging it for marketing insights yet.
When connected to marketing, CX becomes a proactive engine that fuels better segmentation, sharper messaging, smarter campaigns, and more personalized content.
Support functions collect objections, complaints, compliments, and pre-purchase questions. When you capture and apply those insights, your marketing can target the precise roadblocks—and key sales differentiators—customers care about.
Here’s how to turn CX insights into a high-impact marketing strategy, with real examples from brands using Gorgias.
- Leverage ticket insights to improve messaging
- Segment customers based on support interactions
- Launch more targeted chat campaigns
- Reduce drop-offs and abandoned carts
- Monitor Help Center and Dashboard stats to craft smarter content
1) Leverage ticket insights to improve messaging
When you want to sharpen your brand messaging, there’s no better place to look than your support inbox. Your support inbox is a rich resource full of information specific to your brand and your customers.
Tools like Gorgias Ticket Insights help surface recurring themes, top questions, and friction points across all conversations. By analyzing these patterns, marketers can identify the exact words customers use to describe problems, questions, or product feedback and then reflect that language across ads, landing pages, and emails.
How to implement
Spikes in tickets around specific topics (sizing, shipping timelines, and materials, for example) are insights marketers can use to update and improve corresponding content.
This can increase confidence and conversion on key pages.
By incorporating the same terminology and phrasing customers use in support conversations, brands can also increase resonance across ads, emails, and social media. Messaging that mirrors the customer’s language builds trust and helps audiences feel understood.
Ask your CX team 💬 What product issues or themes have emerged this quarter?
For example, cordless heating cushion brand Stoov® used Ticket Fields in Gorgias to understand and resolve a ticket spike. By figuring out that some customers were dissatisfied with the battery life of its core product offering, the team was able to add an optional upsell. For €20, shoppers now have the option to purchase a larger battery.
The results were meaningful: the brand saw 50% of customers opt for this battery, resulting in a 10% increase in average order value (AOV). And while the team saw a significant increase in revenue, they saw no increase in support ticket volume.
2) Segment customers based on support interactions
Most marketers rely on transactional data—like past purchases or time since last order—to build audience segments. But support data reveals a whole new layer of context: behavior, concerns, sentiment, and urgency.
Tools like Gorgias’s Ticket Insights and Ticket Fields allow CX teams to customize different properties attached to tickets. Agents can fill these out to capture data more accurately.
Here’s how these types of tools work: tickets come with a mandatory field for return reasons, product feedback, contact reason, etc. Before the agent closes the ticket, they use a dropdown menu to fill out the ticket field.
How to implement
Studying support interactions helps answer key questions around why customers are getting in touch. This data can provide marketing teams with a way to build smarter segments for campaigns or personalized journeys.
For example, if one product is getting a large amount of inquiries, marketing teams could segment customers interested in those products and launch pre-sales education campaigns.
Fashion brand Psycho Bunny switched from Zendesk to Gorgias to improve access to reporting tools that surfaced customer patterns and support trends.
“By cross-referencing our Gorgias data with insights around basket size, product performance, and store performance, we can inform broader business decisions. For example, we can see if a certain store location generated more tickets or how many incoming queries are about a certain product,” says Jean-Aymeri de Magistris, VP IT, Data & Analytics, and PMO at Psycho Bunny.
By integrating insights like these with marketing workflows, teams can build more relevant segments that improve retention and engagement.
Ask your CX team 💬 Which customer segments are most likely to churn or repurchase?
3) Launch more targeted chat campaigns
Chat campaigns are proactive messages that trigger based on real-time behavior and context. You can use CX trends to design campaigns that directly address common objections, answer FAQs, or deliver tailored offers.
How to implement
Start by reviewing your most common pre-purchase questions with your CX team. Then, create chat prompts that address those concerns exactly where they arise. For example, a sizing guide prompt on product pages or a shipping FAQ in the cart.
Make sure your message feels helpful and not overly salesy. Conversational AI assistants like AI Agent can also tailor responses in real-time, helping customers get what they need without leaving the page.
Pepper, a size-inclusive bra brand, put this into practice by combining their AI Agent (named Penelope) with targeted chat campaigns to guide shoppers through one of their most common friction points: sizing. Thanks to insights from their support team, Pepper created messaging that helped customers find the right fit instantly. The result was an 18% uplift in average order value.
“With AI Agent, we’re not just putting information in our customers’ hands; we’re putting bras in their hands. With Penelope on board, we’re turning customer support from a cost center to a revenue generator,” says Gabrielle McWhirter, CX Operations Lead at Pepper.
Ask your CX team 💬 How are customers reacting to recent promotions or launches?
4) Reduce drop-offs and abandoned carts
When shoppers hesitate at checkout, it’s often because they don’t have the information they need.
Tapping into support conversations allows CX teams to identify common objections. They can then share those insights with marketing to refine product messaging, improve product pages, ads, and marketing campaigns.
How to implement
Use customer service data to identify the top three objections customers have before converting. These might be concerns about sizing, compatibility, delivery time, or product setup. Then, pair that knowledge with a proactive AI sales tool like Shopping Assistant to offer timely answers that move shoppers closer to purchase.
For example, TUSHY, a modern bidet company, found that many prospective customers were hesitant because they weren’t sure how difficult the installation would be. By using a real-time shopping assistant to address these concerns directly on-site, TUSHY was able to guide shoppers past uncertainty.
Ask your CX team 💬 What are the top three reasons customers contact us before they buy?
5) Monitor Help Center and Dashboard stats to craft smarter content
If you want to know what content your customers actually need, your Help Center holds the answers. Real customer questions are found right in Help Center search queries and article analytics.
By tracking which articles are most viewed, most searched, and most frequently updated, marketers can spot common knowledge gaps and fill them with high-value content.
How to implement
Start by reviewing your Help Center Statistics to see which articles are performing well, which ones are underutilized, and what terms customers are searching for.
If an article about “returns policy” is getting a spike in views, that’s your cue to simplify the policy or preempt questions with a dedicated email campaign. Marketing teams could also use this insight to build FAQ-rich landing pages, preempt questions in email flows, or even turn top-performing help content into organic blog posts or performance ad copy.
You can also use Gorgias's Dashboard to spot emerging trends across all your channels. This custom reporting feature lets you choose from various charts that reveal high-level patterns—like the most common contact reasons or sudden spikes in ticket volume—giving marketers early insight into shifting customer sentiment and trending topics across social platforms.
Ask your CX team 💬 Which articles in our Help Center are most searched right now?
Find alignment between CX and marketing teams
When support and marketing teams collaborate, you unlock a cycle of continuous improvement. CX teams surface the insights, marketing turns them into strategy, and both sides drive measurable results.
Here’s how to make it work:
- Set up recurring syncs between CX and marketing teams to review insights from customer service reports.
- Involve support in campaign planning to consider what customer objections might come up.
- Encourage CX to tag tickets based on themes or behavior that marketing can act on.
Unlock revenue by listening to your customers
We need to reframe CX as a proactive function that drives revenue.
Support teams already have the answers marketers are searching for. You just need the tools to tap into them. Gorgias makes that easy, with flexible reporting features, powerful AI, automated tagging, and integrations that bridge the gap between CX and marketing.
Want to connect your support data to better marketing?
Explore Gorgias’s analytics tools or book a demo to speak to a product expert about how to integrate your support strategy with marketing.
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The Hidden Cost of Not Adopting AI in Ecommerce
TL;DR:
- Ecommerce brands not using AI are falling behind, as 77.2% already use it daily to boost efficiency and revenue.
- AI saves time and cuts costs, like Trove Brands saving $23K/month and reducing cancellations by 70%.
- Customers want speed and privacy—AI provides fast, judgment-free answers in sensitive categories.
- AI empowers support teams by handling routine tasks so agents can focus on high-value interactions.
Doing nothing when there’s rapid change happening in an industry is risky business.
Right now, according to our latest report, 2025 Ecommerce Trends, 77.2% of ecommerce professionals are already using AI in their day-to-day work. What happens if you’re part of the 22.8% that isn’t?
Inaction is action—one that’s a quiet drain on revenue, resources, and reputation.
Every minute spent on manual work is a minute your competitors are focusing on higher-value customer interactions, improving CX, testing offers, and scaling campaigns.
And the cost of falling behind is compounding fast. Here’s what you’re losing when you pass on AI.
Time lost = money lost
As support volume grows, so does the cost of inefficiency.
Nearly 80% of CX professionals say AI saves them time. In fact, 83.9% of support leaders using AI in Gorgias say it has made their teams more efficient.
Trove Brands experienced this firsthand:
- They reduced missed cancellations by 70%
- And saved $23,000/month in labor costs by automating repetitive support tasks
If AI can handle 70% of your support tickets, your team finally has the time—and headspace—to focus on the 30% that actually builds trust, drives repeat revenue, and improves the customer experience.
Trust when customers need it most
Hot take: AI isn’t impersonal. Not using it is.
In 2024, nearly one-third of CX leaders worried AI would make interactions feel less human. A year later, that number dropped by half.
Why? Brands started to see that AI wasn’t hurting the customer experience, it was removing friction from it.
For sensitive or personal products—think wellness supplements, intimate gifts, or anything a shopper might feel awkward asking about—AI creates space for honesty without judgment. And that can change the outcome entirely.
“Too often, a great interaction is diminished when a customer feels reduced to just another transaction,” said Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Senior Director of Customer Experience at TUSHY. “With AI, we let the tech handle the selling—unabashedly, if needed—so our future customers can ask anything, even the questions they might be too shy to bring up with a human. In the end, everyone wins.”
It’s a powerful point, especially for brands where discretion matters. AI removes that barrier.
You're losing trust if your support experience still makes customers hesitate. For many, that means being able to get an answer without needing to explain themselves first.
Revenue hiding behind unanswered questions
Every unanswered pre-sale question or missed upsell is revenue slipping through your fingers.
Product recommendations alone have the potential to increase revenue by up to 300%, boost conversion rates by 150%, and drive 50% higher AOV. But those results don’t come from hoping customers find what they need. They come from proactively guiding them.
That’s where AI comes in.
With Gorgias AI Agent and automation features, for example, Kirby Allison
- Increased conversions by 23%
- Grew sales from support by 46% in just two months
“Our favorite features are definitely Flows and Article Recommendations. They drive so much automation for us. Shoppers get answers to their questions by themselves—what’s the right size hanger, where is my order, what shoe polish would you recommend, etc,” said Addison Debter, Head of Customer Service.
Flows let Kirby Allison surface up to six commonly asked questions directly in the chat widget. When clicked, each one opens a relevant help article—no agent needed.
Auto responses also allowed the team to handle common inquiries like sizing, shipping, and order tracking before a human ever steps in.
If your support team isn’t set up to handle pre-sale conversations at scale, the cost isn’t just in time. It’s in all the revenue you never realize you’re missing.
A CX team stretched thin
It might sound counterintuitive, but AI gives your team more space to be human.
The myth that AI replaces agents is still floating around in some circles, but the reality inside fast-growing ecommerce teams looks different.
In fact, AI frees up time for your team to focus on what they do best: solving complex problems, building relationships, and creating moments that actually drive loyalty.
SuitShop is a perfect example of this in action. When the team adopted AI Agent, they paired automation with intentional escalation:
“We’re helping customers feel confident during some of the most important moments in their lives—weddings, proms, job interviews, and everything in between. Naturally, my biggest concern with introducing AI was: ‘Will customers feel like they’re getting the same level of care from AI?’ But learning that AI Agent would pull knowledge from our Help Center articles and Macros, which are already written in our brand voice, made me feel more confident,” said Katy Eriks, Director of Customer Experience.
AI was able to handle common pre-sale questions like shipping timelines and product availability, while human agents stepped in for customizations, wedding-specific questions, and tailored styling support.
The goal wasn’t to remove the human element. It was to give their agents the time and context to show up more meaningfully.
The longer you wait, the harder it is to catch up
In just one year, AI adoption among Gorgias users jumped from 69.2% in 2024 to 77.2% in 2025.
Excitement is rising, too: 55.3% of ecommerce professionals now rate their interest in AI as 8–10 out of 10, up from 45.6% the year prior.
AI is no longer in its experimental phase. It’s the standard, baked into everyday workflows across ecommerce.
If you’re still on the sidelines, 2026 is going to feel like a catch-up game.
The good news? You don’t have to overhaul everything to get started.
So while we’re on the topic of speed, let’s walk through how to start implementing AI for your brand.
How to get started with AI
You don’t need to automate everything on day one. The best CX teams start small, pick the right entry points, and give AI the same level of care you’d give a new team member. Here’s how to roll out AI in a way that actually works:
1. Vet your options thoughtfully
When searching for a new AI tool to help you manage CX, look for one that:
- Offers strong tone-of-voice control so your AI doesn’t sound like a chatbot from 2012
- Delivers consistently accurate responses, even as inputs and workflows evolve
- Provides real post-sale support to help your team troubleshoot, train, and scale usage
Price matters, but it shouldn’t be your only filter.
Also, AI should make your team feel more capable. If it feels like a bolt-on or requires constant developer help, it’s going to create friction, not solve it.
2. Make someone own it
The most successful AI implementations all have one thing in common: someone owns it.
“One of our CX Managers spent 30–40 hours a week building and refining AI. That ownership was critical,” said Sarah Azzaoui, VP of Customer Experience at Clove, when she was explaining how her team first got started with AI.
What many people don’t realize is that AI isn’t going to be perfect out of the gate. AI takes real time and intention to build out. Assigning a clear point person—or better, a small squad—ensures someone is tracking performance, making optimizations, and flagging edge cases.
3. Involve your CX team from the start
No one knows your customer conversations better than your support team. They see the full range of questions, tone, friction points, and emotional nuance every day.
Bringing them into the AI rollout early helps you:
- Identify which questions are repetitive and low-stakes
- Flag which issues should always be handled by a human
- Set realistic expectations across the org about what AI should handle vs. what it could handle
This step also builds trust. If your agents feel like AI is something being done with them instead of to them, adoption is smoother and the outcomes are better.
4. Start small with the right topics
One of the biggest mistakes brands make with AI is trying to do too much, too soon. AI rollout should feel like a phased launch, not a switch flip.
Start in a test environment if your platform allows for it. Roll out automation in stages—by topic, channel, or ticket type—and QA every step of the way.
We suggest beginning with high-volume, low-complexity tickets like:
- “Where’s my order?”
- Subscription pauses or cancellations
- Returns and exchanges
- Store policies and FAQs
Platforms like Gorgias offer tools like Auto QA that track whether AI responses hit the right tone, offer accurate answers, and resolve issues effectively. Use those tools to catch gaps early and monitor performance over time.
That slow, deliberate rollout pays off in performance. At Psycho Bunny, AI Agent now automates 30% of customer tickets, with custom messaging that reflects their brand tone and processes.
Once you’re ready to scale, you’ll feel more confident that the simple queries are handled correctly while you start to train the AI on more nuanced questions.
For example, Gorgias’s Guidance feature gives AI access to non-public SOPs so it knows how to respond or when to escalate.
“The Guidance feature is so important,” said Tosha Moyer, Senior Customer Experience Manager at Psycho Bunny. “We have a lot of processes that we definitely don’t want described in a customer-facing article, but we want AI Agent to be able to access that information and manage tickets accordingly.”
5. Prep your knowledge base
Even the best AI platform can’t succeed without solid inputs.
Before you roll out, take a hard look at your help docs and macros:
- Are they accurate?
- Are they clear and consistent in tone?
- Are they tagged so AI can understand when to use them?
Think of this step as training your AI. The stronger your internal content library, the more helpful and brand-aligned your AI will be across every channel.
6. Communicate with customers
Whether you disclose AI usage is up to you, but be intentional.
Some brands choose anonymity for a more seamless experience. Others find that transparency builds trust, especially when something goes wrong.
What matters most is that your approach aligns with your brand tone and customer expectations—and that clear escalation paths are in place if a conversation needs a human.
Research shows that 85% of consumers want companies to share their AI assurance practices before rolling out AI-powered experiences. Customers are open to AI. But they expect clarity when it counts.
7. Scale the program over time
Once you’ve built the foundation, scaling AI across your CX org becomes a lot easier.
“We started with cancellations. Now we’re rolling out warranty claims, retention campaigns, and more,” said the team at Trove Brands.
After proving value with one or two ticket types, look for opportunities to expand:
- Pre-purchase product recommendations
- Exit-intent offers via chat
- Predictive personalization
- Multichannel automation across email, SMS, and live chat
The goal is to implement smarter automation that makes your team more effective and your customers more supported.
The future is human + AI
The best CX teams aren’t choosing between AI and human agents. They’re choosing both and building stronger systems because of it.
“It’s not human agents vs. AI,” said the team at Clove. “Our team helped shape the AI strategy—and that changed everything.”
But ignoring AI? That comes at a cost. And it’s not just inefficiency. It’s:
- Missed sales from unanswered questions
- Slower support that erodes customer trust
- Burnt-out teams stuck in reactive mode
- Lower CSAT from inconsistent experiences
- And eventually, falling behind as the rest of the market moves forward
It’s time to build it into your workflows. Not just as a helper, but as a core part of your team.
Start using Gorgias AI Agent to reduce ticket load, recapture revenue, and deliver the kind of support that actually feels personal.
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Stop Resolving These 7 Tickets Manually (Use AI Agent Actions Instead)
TL;DR:
- Actions are tasks automatically performed by AI Agent for customers. From address changes and subscription pauses to order cancellations, Actions can fulfill requests for your customers, even when your human agents are offline.
- Actions connect directly to your ecommerce apps. Currently, Actions have native integrations with Shopify, ShipMonk, ShipHero, ShipStation, Stay AI, Recharge, Loop, Subscriptions by Loop, Skio, Seal Subscriptions, and Wonderment.
- Use pre-built Actions or build your own. There are 12 Action templates available, or you can build Actions using custom HTTP requests.
- Watch out for setup snags. Conflicting Guidance, multiple matching Actions, older orders, or broken logic can block an Action from executing.
Automated responses don’t actually resolve anything. In reality, they increase customer wait time.
What a customer really wants is immediate resolution, whether they’re looking to cancel an order, change a shipping address, or pause a subscription.
So, how do you go beyond automated text responses? AI Agent Actions.
Below, we’ll go over the 7 most common customer service requests you can resolve with AI Agent Actions, so your team gets time back to strengthen customer relationships, increase revenue, and improve your CX strategy.
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What are AI Agent Actions?
AI Agent Actions are tasks AI Agent can complete for your customers, such as canceling an order or updating a shipping address.
Instead of handing it off to a human agent, AI Agent resolves the ticket by connecting to your ecommerce apps and performing the action on its own.
You get maximum control over when and how Actions are executed. Before performing the Action, AI Agent asks customers for confirmation, respecting your processes and maintaining a high level of customer service. Once an Action has been taken, you can even share feedback with your AI Agent to reinforce its behavior or finetune it further.
Pro Tip: Unlike Guidance, which tells AI Agent how to respond in a conversation, Actions determine what happens. It’s the difference between saying “I’ll refund your order” and doing it.
Related: How AI Agent works & gathers data
Top 7 customer requests you should be automating with AI Agent Actions
Ready to resolve requests in seconds? Activate these pre-built Actions in Gorgias to keep your team efficient and your customers happy.
1. Customer wants to update their shipping address
Action to use: Update shipping address
Supported apps: Shopify, ShipMonk, ShipHero, ShipStation
Incorrect shipping addresses lead to costly re-shipments, delays, and even refunds. Catch errors early to keep customers satisfied and excited about their order.
Why do you need this Action?
The reality is your agents aren’t available 24/7. Unless you hire a team to cover night and weekend shifts (which is unlikely), requests will be missed. AI Agent fills in that gap, handling time-sensitive issues when your team is off the clock. Missing them isn’t just about poor customer experience—it can also lead to extra costs, like reshipping orders.
2. Customer wants to cancel an order
Action to use: Cancel order
Supported apps: Shopify, ShipMonk, ShipHero, ShipStation
Perhaps a customer ordered the wrong item, chose the wrong size, used the wrong card, or simply changed their mind. Allow them to quickly cancel their order and receive a refund in one go.
“Actions responds to tickets within about 30 seconds and is available 24/7. Regardless of when a customer places their order, the likelihood of quickly catching and canceling the order has increased by 70% since we started using Actions. It’s an exceptional result."
—Jon Clare, VP of Customer Service at Trove Brands
3. Customer wants to replace/remove an item in their order
Actions to use:
- Replace item, or
- Remove item
Supported app: Shopify
It happens—shoppers order the wrong size or color and want to change their order immediately. Regardless of the reason, make their new decision easy to implement. Quick, accessible order updates prevent returns, lost revenue, and, most importantly, customer disappointment.
Here’s what the replace order item setup looks like in Gorgias:
Pro Tip: If you have unique workflows, you can create advanced, multi-step Actions and connect to your tools beyond our default integrations. This option requires some tech know-how (like custom HTTP requests), so feel free to bring in your developers for assistance.
4. Customer wants to skip or pause a shipment
Actions to use:
- Skip next subscription shipment, or
- Pause subscription
Supported apps: Stay AI, Recharge, Subscriptions by Loop, Skio, Seal Subscriptions
Subscriptions shouldn’t be all or nothing. Let customers skip a shipment or pause their subscription, so they can come back when they’re ready. Giving them full control lets them manage their subscription on their own terms, reducing churn rate in the process.
Here’s how AI Agent handles a skip shipment request:
5. Customer lost or damaged their order in transit
Action to use: Reship order for free
Supported apps: Shopify, ShipMonk
No customer expects a lost or damaged order. Let customers know that you have their backs by reshipping a new order free of charge. Fast resolutions during unexpected events demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction.
“An instant response builds confidence. We live in a world with short attention spans, so customers appreciate how quickly we can respond to their inquiries. Customers aren’t worrying unnecessarily for longer than they have to for an address change or order cancellation.”
—Mia Chapa, Sr. Director of Customer Experience at Glamnetic
6. Customer wants to know their return shipping status
Action to use: Send return shipping status
Supported app: Loop
Customers want to know that their return package is on its way to you, so they can redeem their refund. Easily send them a shipment tracking link to give them that peace of mind.
7. Customer wants to know about order status
Action to use: Get order info
Supported apps: Shopify, ShipHero, ShipMonk, ShipStation, ShipBob, Wonderment
Based on Gorgias data, order status ranks among customers' top 10 questions for support teams. Reassure your customers with quick updates on their orders, including product details, shipping progress, expected delivery date, and other helpful information.
What to know before turning on Actions
Here are a few helpful setup tips to make sure Actions run without a hitch:
- Guidance can override Actions. If conflicting Guidance exists, it may prevent an Action from triggering, even when all conditions are met. Review your Guidance to avoid overlaps, or write your logic into the Action description instead.
- Any Action that changes data requires shopper confirmation. Actions like canceling orders, updating addresses, or canceling subscriptions mean AI Agent will always ask the shopper to confirm before making a change.
- Currently, only one Action can run per ticket. If multiple Actions qualify, none will run, and the ticket will be handed off. Use conditions carefully to ensure only one Action matches per use case.
- AI Agent can only access the shopper’s last 10 orders. If the customer references an older order, the Action won’t trigger and the ticket will be handed over for manual handling.
AI Agent Actions speak louder than words
If you want…
- Fewer repetitive tickets
- Faster customer support
- Happier customers who get what they need instantly
- More time for your team to strategize
- Lower costs and higher efficiency
AI Agent Actions can get you there.
You’ve now seen how Actions can resolve tickets in a snap—no unnecessary handoffs, canned responses, or long response times.
Book a demo to see AI Agent Actions work in real time and start automating what you shouldn’t be doing manually anymore.
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Further reading
Event #1: Optimizing Brand Experience To Drive Revenue
Last thursday, we organized our first event at Gorgias. It was the perfect opportunity to celebrate our new round of funding and recent moving to a new office in SOMA, while discussing brand culture and customer experience.
Special thanks to our speakers Renee L. Halvorsen from Marine Layer, Alicia Levine from Sunski, Dorian Greenow from Keto-Mojo and Anthony Benedettini from Dry Farm Wines.
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Here are the key takeaways you should remember:
- As an e-commerce brand, you cannot compete on price with Amazon and powerful dropshippers. That’s why brand experience is your key differentiation factor.
- Building a strong brand experience requires to be present on each distribution channel. Don’t let your resellers do the job for you! Sunski for example prepares “environment kits” for their resellers and marketplaces. This way, customers can experience Sunski’s spirit beyond its website.
- When building brand experience, your community is your key success factor. Create a pool of ambassadors who will promote your brand, and reward them with presents, promo codes, and dedicated attention.
- Bet on your own team! Building a great mindset within your team will help you create a strong and consistent brand image. At Keto-Mojo, each member of the team does customer service, so that everyone focus on what customers really need. Besides, the founder should inspire a culture of passion and dedication to the product.
You missed our event? Don’t worry, it was the very first of many!
Curious about how Gorgias can optimize customer service? Create an account here and get started in a few minutes!
Thank you, interns!
Announcing the ReCharge integration
Recharge is the most popular subscription app in the Shopify app store and is the preferred solution for Shopify Plus stores. Over 10,000 Shopify merchants chose ReCharge to help sell products on a recurring basis, including stores like Dr. Axe, Hubble Contacts, and 5 Hour Energy.
The challenge is, when a customer has an issue with their subscription, the support team needs to jump between their helpdesk, Shopify and the ReCharge platform to fix the problem. This negatively impacts response time. Agents end up wasting hours per week going to ReCharge to skip a box for a customer, edit a subscription, etc. One of the key advantages of using Gorgias is to manage all your customer support in one place. A few months ago, our customer Darn Good Yarn asked us to build an integration with ReCharge. They no longer wanted to switch between ReCharge, Shopify and their helpdesk. This was completely aligned with our vision, so we decided to build it.
Today, we're excited to announce we've partnered with ReCharge to launch this integration.
Here are the key benefits:
- Display ReCharge subscriptions next to support tickets.
- Edit ReCharge subscriptions in one click from your helpdesk: refund charges, skip monthly payments or cancel subscriptions from Gorgias
- When a customer ask to edit their subscription, you can send them an auto-response with the link to manage the subscription.
“Gorgias gives us a holistic view of our customers. This way we can provide them with fast and personalized help”
Nicole Snow, DarnGoodYarn
Let’s take the example of Averill John. She wants to cancel her subscription to the Yummy Box and has just sent an email to your support.
Here is how your helpdesk looks like:
You can see that Astrid has been assigned to this ticket and that this ticket is tagged “Ambassador”. It means that Averill is one of your super loyal customers.
On the right, you can see the ReCharge account data of Averill. Here, Averill has a monthly subscription to the Yummy Box and will be charged on the 15th of October.
Astrid can skip the October charge in one-click on the “Skip charge on subscription” button. It will immediately set the action within ReCharge. Response time? Less than 1 minute!
If you're already a Gorgias customer, head to your account and go to Integrations to connect ReCharge. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.
Announcing the Aircall integration
One of the key advantages of using Gorgias is to provide a unified support experience to your customers across all channels. A few months ago, some of our customers asked us to build a phone integration. Traditional helpdesk integrations simply log calls as tickets. We wanted to go one step further and associate the phone call with the right customer.
Today, we're excited to announce we've partnered with Aircall to build this integration.
Aircall arms small-to-medium sized business (SMBs) with a phone system built for modern business. With zero hardware to manage, dozens of integration options to explore, and the ability to add local numbers in more than 40 countries, support teams can easily provide phone support in minutes.
Here are the benefits of this new integration:
- When a customer calls your company in Aircall, it creates a ticket in Gorgias and automatically matches it with the corresponding Shopify customer. This way, your staff can edit orders while they are on the phone with the customer.
- Your team sees all previous interactions they had with each customer, under their timeline.
- Get omni-channel statistics. Gorgias stats include Aircall phone data. For instance, you can monitor if you're getting more return requests over the phone or through Facebook Messenger.
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.
We're joining the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program
We're integrating with LoyaltyLion!
Great news! Today, we're announcing a new integration with LoyaltyLion. LoyaltyLion is a digital loyalty framework that gives ecommerce stores innovative ways to engage and retain customers.
Our mutual customer Darn Good Yarn uses it to successfully increase customer retention. When they switched from Freshdesk to Gorgias to manage customer support, they wanted to leverage their loyalty program for customer support.
We used their feedback to build the integration with LoyaltyLion, which they have been using for a couple months in beta. Today, we're excited to make it available to all our users.
What is the LoyaltyLion integration?
Here are some of the benefits of this integration:
- Display how many points a customer has when they contact your support team
- When you respond to customer support requests, award loyalty points to customers directly in Gorgias
- Include the customer's personal referral url in your responses. This way, if they are happy about your support, they'll refer their friends to your store.
Overall, this allows your team to use your loyalty program for customer service.
"We love being able to issue our customers loyalty points directly from Gorgias! It's a great way to boost efficiency and also customer retention."
Chloe Kesler, Customer Support manager at Darn Good Yarn
How can I use the LoyaltyLion Integration?
The integration is immediately available on your Gorgias account. If you don't have an account, you can create one here. Then, follow the instructions in our documentation and you can get started!
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How to leverage customer support to increase sales?
Most customers are loyal to brands because they know what level of service they can expect. As a result, providing an above-average customer experience is key to increase repeat in sales.
It’s relatively easy to provide great support when you get started with your store: your team gets a few dozens of support requests a day, and they respond to them almost instantly. The thing is, this level of service is very hard to maintain as you scale. Response time usually drops, and most brands start using standardized macros to keep up with the pace, which is a poor customer experience.
Your sales have increased, good. Now, you need to get your customer support up to speed
Source: Gorgias customers during the Thanksgiving peak
At Gorgias, we’ve been chatting with 400 stores over the past year, and we’ve seen a lot of them working on crossing this “chasm”.
This post shares learning on how you can build a customer support organization that will scale with your business, and provide best-in-class customer service, which will drive customer retention.
Step 1: Run an audit of your support organization
A good place to start is to list the most common reasons customers are contacting you about. Go ahead and manually classify 200 tickets from your support inbox. This should take you about an hour. You can build categories from scratch, or use this spreadsheet of the most common requests for e-commerce companies we built.
Now, you should be able to understand what problems are causing the most pain to customers.
If a specific type of request is above 10% of requests, then it’s a good candidate for optimization. For instance, if you’re getting a lot of “where is my order” questions, here are a few things you can do to deflect those:
- Add a tracking section for customers to track their package on your site. Aftership can help here.
- Send updates to customers about issues with delivery, through SMS or email.
Now that you have a good understanding of the reasons customers are contacting you for, you can map the customer journey, and identify what actions your agents need to take to respond to tickets.
Later, you can use this for training purposes, and to identify optimization opportunities.
At Piper, we basically studied the whole customer journey and tried to identify all reasons why someone could contact us (based on previous history). This helped us quickly identify where customers were "blocked"
Finally, let’s analyze the efficiency of your team. Of course, every business is different, but you can use this table to figure out how efficient your agents are compared to other stores. A good metric to track it is ticket closed per month. Just make sure that satisfaction remains consistent.
Related: Learn more about the impact of live chat on sales. And see how Gorgias live chat can help you turn more browsers into buyers with chat campaigns.
Step 2: Figure out how you can improve the customer experience
Now, let’s work on creating “wow moments” for your customers. If you manage to exceed customers expectations when they contact you, you’re most likely to increase their loyalty and have them refer your store to their friends.
Here are a few ways you can create “wow moments”.
Make it easy for customers to contact you
You should be where your customers are. For example, if you have a Facebook page with a large audience, consider it as a real customer support channel. The point is, you should provide the same level of assistance across all support channels that your customer will use.
Also, don't be afraid to contact customers first, especially when they have items in their shopping cart. Offering help or a discount code at the right time could make the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart.
Example: providing high quality support on Facebook
70% of customers consider Facebook as a live chat support. To maximize customer satisfaction, your response time should be no more than 1 min. You’ll then be listed as a very responsive page, which will encourage your customers to respond.
You can also leverage public posts to build relationship with your customers. Another easy way to facilitate customer communication is to remove the need for customers to repeat themselves. On your support platform, make sure your merge Facebook conversations with email tickets. This way, if the customer switches channel, your team will have access to the context of what the customer said before.
Related: Check out our trends and best practices for customer support.
Personalize every interaction with customer support
You should leverage every data point you have about the customer to personalize the way you communicate with them:
For how long they have been a customer
Their order preference
Their location
The days of the “we value your business” are over.
Always go an extra mile for your customers. If the customer asks for the status of their order, don’t respond only with the tracking number. Go get the order status on UPS so the customer doesn’t have to do it themselves when they’ll receive your email in the subway with poor network connection.
Another good thing to do is to use a specific tone with your customer, that matches the brand image you want to convey.
If you’re into gifs, you can use them to build a brand tone your own set of gifs, designed for your own brand, and use them in your support emails. You can hire an illustrator on Upwork for that, or build them yourself.
Related: Tips to respond to angry customer emails.
Step 3: Give your team the “ironman suit” for support
Now that you know the level of support you aim at giving your customers, and you know what actions your agents need to take to get the delivery info, create an RMAs, etc., you can start optimizing the process for them.
Display rich customer profiles for your agents
To personalize messages, your agents need to have access to customer data. You can leverage the standard Shopify integration from your help desk as a starting point.
Though, it can be relevant to connect other data points to your help desk:
- Display fulfillment data. Shippo is great for that
- Inventory data: Stitch, display inventory to the reps
- NPS responses
- Responses to last promotions
If you’re on Zendesk, enabling the Shopify integration is a good start: it shows how much the customer has spent, and the past orders.
Some Gorgias customers have pretty advanced widgets that display data from Shopify, Stitch & Shipstation. This way, all the customer information is available.
Empower your reps to perform actions from support conversations
You can create custom widgets for your help desk, so that your agents can trigger actions from your help desk. Here are the most helpful actions:
- Create a coupon
- Place a replacement order
- Cancelling an order
- Create an RMA
This is a bit more tricky to implement. You need to build a custom app with buttons that will trigger actions - there are some good tutorials for Zendesk, Freshdesk & Help Scout. At Gorgias, we’ve built integrations with Stitch, Shipstation to embed these actions in the product, and enable you to add your own.
Other 3rd party apps like Chargedesk enable you to refund customers in one click.
Step 4: Track your progress
Our goal here is to improve the customer experience to drive sales. A good way to track the efficiency of your support work is to compare the behavior of customers that have been in contact with customer support from those who have not.
Shopify helps you easily to this. You can create an integration between your help desk and Shopify to tag customers who reach out to support, using the Shopify API. Say you add a “customer_support” tag to them.
Then, you can use Shopify statistics to monitor how the cohort of customers who have been in touch with your support team behaves, and assess the impact of your efforts with customer support.
Another way to proceed is to tag orders that generated a support tickets. This way, if you work on improving delivery notifications, you can monitor the impact.
Final thoughts
Building a scalable support team that provides an amazing customer experience takes time.
Try to test different “wow moments”, iterate on the way you personalize messages, on the tone you’re using, and always track your progress. Among the teams we surveyed, several mentioned they managed to increase sales repeat by 30% after implementing these tactics.
Want to learn more about how customer support can improve your conversion rate and lead to more purchases? Check out our guides to ecommerce upselling and Shopify abandoned cart recovery.
Celery + Gorgias
Celery just released their API on Github, currently in beta. Here are some of the cool stuff you can do with it in Gorgias.
Display customer information
When you receive an email from a customer, you can connect your Celery account and see customer information (orders, shipping address, etc.). Here’s what it looks like:
To configure it, grab your Celery access_token, head to integrations, and add an HTTP integration using this URL:
https://api.trycelery.com/v2/orders?buyer.email={ticket.requester.email}
Then you can customize the sidebar to only show the Celery data you need to respond to customers. Click the cog and simply drag and drop elements you want to show.
Refunds, order change... without leaving tickets
Celery’s API enables you to perform a few actions from your favorite helpdesk:
- Edit an order
- Cancel an order
- Issue a refund
- Create a coupon
Here’s an example of how you can cancel an order from Gorgias itself. Say you already have a macro to cancel an order. Add an HTTP action to it, in this case:
https://api.trycelery.com/v2/orders/{ticket.requester.customer.data[0].number}/order_cancel
Then, when you use this macro and send it to the customer, it will automatically cancel the last order at the same time:
We hope this integration with Celery can save you time. If you'd like to try Celery with Gorgias, shoot us a note! At support@gorgias.com.
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