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How to Drive Growth with an Automated Subscriber Journey

Vanessa Lopez, VP of Customer Experience at Recharge, outlines how brands can turn one-off interactions into rich, automated customer journeys that increase opt-ins.
By Alexa Hertel
0 min read . By Alexa Hertel

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.

Apothékary product page for Take the Edge Off® herbal drops with subscription options and benefits.
Apothékary offers subscribe and save for its supplements. Apothékary

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. 

CrunchLabs Build Box subscription page showing toy kits and plan options.
CrunchLabs offers a prepaid box subscription. CrunchLabs 

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.

Bokksu Snack Box subscription page showing pricing plans and a woman holding an open snack box.
Premium snack box Bokksu offers a “surprise and delight” style subscription. Bokksu

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

  1. Turn interactions into journeys
  2. Create multiple touchpoints for conversion
  3. Retain subscribers over time
  4. Meet customers where they are
  5. 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:

  1. When a payment fails
  2. When a customer cancels their subscription
  3. 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.

Shopping Assistant can answer questions while shoppers browse your online store.

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: 

  1. Scaling your business without adding headcount
  2. Reducing churn
  3. 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. 

Book a demo →

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min read.

How Do You Build a Support Sales Flywheel? Lessons from 4 Experts

CX leaders from TUSHY, Tommy John and leading brands share how the support sales flywheel transforms support into revenue.
By Holly Stanley
0 min read . By Holly Stanley

TL;DR:

  • Segment customers for personalized support. Use purchase history and behavior data to tailor every interaction, making conversations more relevant and higher-converting.
  • Offer onboarding calls for complex products. TUSHY's "Poo-Rus" turned free install calls into a $15 paid service that dramatically boosts customer LTV and retention.
  • Pick up the phone strategically. Use voice calls for abandoned carts, stuck tickets, and VIP follow-up.
  • Give agents freedom to make judgment calls. Empower your team to bend policies and offer solutions that prioritize retention over rigid rules—confident agents drive more cross-sells.
  • Train for helpful selling, not pushy pitches. Use roleplaying to teach agents how to spot buying signals and offer value naturally.

At Gorgias Connect LA 2025, CX leaders from Tommy John, TUSHY, Triple Whale, and Talent Pop shared how support teams solve problems and drive revenue.

This shift, known as the support sales flywheel, doesn’t involve massive overhauls or shiny new tools. Instead, it means doing the small things exceptionally well, like picking up the phone, empowering agents to make judgment calls, and adding a personal touch where others automate.

These brands have shown that when support teams focus on consistency, connection, and conversion, the results compound. Every thoughtful interaction spins the flywheel faster, boosting loyalty, LTV, and revenue.

Ahead, we’re breaking down the most actionable takeaways so your team can start building its own support-led growth engine.

Watch the full panel here:

5 tactics that power the support sales flywheel

From scrappy install calls to AI-powered training, these CX leaders aren’t only talking about driving revenue, they’re doing it. Here’s how they’re turning support into a sales flywheel, and the tactics your team can start testing today.

1. Personalization at scale starts with smart data

“Customer service done right is actually a great source of revenue.” That’s how Tamanna Bawa, Tech Partner Manager at Triple Whale, kicked off the conversation on how data can transform CX from reactive to revenue-driving.

She advises segmenting customers based on purchase history and behavior to deliver more personalized, higher-converting interactions. 

In a market where margins are razor-thin and ad costs are high, Tamanna emphasized that “incremental gains from personalization are the difference between companies that are thriving and the ones that are just surviving.”

Steal this strategy 

  • Segment customers based on behavior and purchase history using your helpdesk, CRM, or analytics tool.
  • Give agents access to this data so they can personalize every interaction.
  • Use macros that adapt based on customer segments, like VIP status, product interest, or past issues.
  • Focus on relevance over volume: one well-timed, tailored message converts better than a generic one.

2. The power of onboarding calls

What do you do when your hero product needs a cultural shift as much as it needs installation instructions? If you’re TUSHY, you send in your “Poop Gurus.”

Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Senior Director of CX at TUSHY, shared how her team launched a scrappy, free CX-led service that has now become a legendary video install program to help customers set up their bidets.

The real value wasn’t just tech support. As Ren put it, “It wasn’t about the actual install process, it was the encouragement they needed to change culture.” These calls sparked deeply personal moments (yes, even with cats and toddlers wandering in) and created the kind of emotional connection customers never forget.

Today, that service has evolved into a $15 paid add-on at checkout, and the customers who use it have significantly boost LTV and retention. It’s a masterclass in turning support moments into revenue through genuine human connection.

Steal this strategy

  • Identify a product or feature your customers often hesitate to use, install, or fully understand.
  • Offer free, low-lift onboarding calls via Zoom or Google Meet to guide them through setup or usage.
  • Track LTV, CSAT, or repeat purchase rates for those who opt in.
  • If it drives results, package it as a paid add-on at checkout or use it to surprise and delight key segments.
  • Use simple tools like Calendly and Typeform to automate scheduling and reduce lift on your team.

3. When in doubt, pick up the phone

Phone support is back, and it’s becoming one of the most effective ways to turn conversations into conversions.

Ren from TUSHY swears by it. Her team uses customer phone numbers from abandoned carts to reach out directly. “You can send a hundred emails,” she said, “but a voicemail from a real person cuts through the noise.” Even if customers don’t answer, the fact that a brand called is memorable, and often enough to drive them back to checkout.

Max Wallace, the Director of CX Tommy John echoed the value of voice. His team recently implemented Gorgias Voice, using it to track conversion rates by agent. That visibility helps them identify what top performers are doing differently and replicate it across the team. “By the end of a tough call, customers often apologize for how they started. You can’t get that kind of de-escalation over email.”

In a world where inboxes are crowded and chat fatigue is real, a real voice builds real trust and real revenue.

Steal this strategy

  • Start small: offer limited phone hours once your chat and email support are dialed in.
  • Use phone strategically—for abandoned cart outreach, stuck tickets, or VIP follow-ups.
  • Track call outcomes with tools like Gorgias Voice to see which agents are converting.
  • Train agents to de-escalate and personalize through roleplaying or AI-based call simulations. 

Pro Tip: Don’t rush into phone if your other channels aren’t dialed in. “Master email and chat first. Then, start with limited phone hours. Taste it before scaling it,” said Armani Taheri, the co-founder of TalentPop. 

4. Trust your team to use their judgment

For Max at Tommy John, revenue-driving support starts with two things: deep product knowledge and the freedom to bend the rules.

“We have five different fabrics for men’s underwear alone,” Max shared. To help customers choose the right one, agents need firsthand experience. That’s why Tommy John sends new products directly to the support team, so they can offer real, personalized recommendations like “Try Second Skin instead of Cool Cotton.”

But product knowledge is only half the equation. The other half is empowering agents to make judgment calls. Tommy John’s “Best Pair Guarantee” allows customers to try a product and get a refund or replacement if it’s not the right fit. 

Agents are trained to prioritize retention, offering replacements instead of refunds, recommending better-suited products, and using their own discretion to keep customers happy.

As Max put it, “We don’t have really strict policies… we want them to use their best judgment.” That confidence translates into smoother resolutions, more cross-sells, and customers who stick around.

Steal this strategy

  • Send new or popular products to your CX team so they can speak from firsthand experience.
  • Build simple product cheat sheets or comparison guides to help agents make tailored recommendations.
  • Give agents clear guidelines—but also the freedom to make judgment calls when it comes to refunds, replacements, or policy exceptions.
  • Let your team know it’s okay to “bend the rules” if it means keeping a customer happy.
  • Track outcomes like retention and CSAT to show how empowered agents directly impact loyalty and LTV.

5. Training teams to sell without the push

How do you train outsourced agents to drive revenue, without sounding like a sales team? According to Armani Taheri of TalentPop, it starts with confidence and context.

“You have to tailor-fit the training approach to each brand,” he explained. That means grounding agents in product knowledge, tone of voice, and customer journey before they ever interact with a shopper.

One of the most effective tactics is roleplaying. Armani’s team uses both live roleplays and AI-powered chat simulations to prepare agents for real conversations, pre-sales, post-sales, and everything in between. Tools like Replit and Lovable help create lightweight, brand-specific training environments agents can practice in at their own pace.

The goal isn’t to turn CX reps into hard sellers. It’s to give them the confidence and consistency to recognize revenue opportunities, and act on them in a natural, helpful way.

Steal this strategy

  • Start with the basics: make sure agents understand your product, tone of voice, and customer journey.
  • Roleplay low-pressure scenarios, then layer in more complex ones.
  • Try AI-powered training tools like Replit or Lovable to create brand-specific simulations agents can practice anytime.
  • Emphasize helpfulness over selling: coach agents to spot buying signals and offer value, not push products.
  • Review transcripts together to highlight great conversations and show how small shifts lead to better outcomes.

Tools to power your flywheel

Ready to turn your CX team into a revenue engine? Here are some of the tools mentioned by the panelists that help make it happen:

  • Gorgias Voice: Track revenue by agent, spot top performers, and improve conversion rates across the team.
  • Flip CX: Automate common phone interactions with AI-powered voice support.
  • Kixie: Drop voicemails, integrate with Klaviyo and Shopify, and build smart call queues for abandoned cart outreach.
  • Calendly + Typeform: Scrappy, low-lift tools for scheduling paid or free support calls that drive LTV.

Whether you're scaling phone support or experimenting with post-purchase outreach, the right tools make the flywheel spin faster.

Your CX team might be your best-kept sales secret

They’re on the front lines with your most engaged customers, answering questions, easing doubts, and uncovering what really drives purchases. With the right tools and training, they resolve tickets and help close the sale.

With tools like Gorgias Voice, it’s easier than ever to connect the dots between conversations and conversions.

Want to see how your CX team can help drive growth?

Book a demo to see how Gorgias Voice powers sales through support.

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min read.

Every Successful Marketing Campaign Starts with a Customer Question

A successful marketing campaign starts with questions only your CX team can answer.
By Holly Stanley
0 min read . By Holly Stanley

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.

AI Agent answers questions on email and chat.
No matter the product, Gorgias AI Agent can answer your shoppers’ questions right in chat.

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.

Gorgias Shopping Assistant can surface questions while shoppers browse and search for products.
Shopping Assistant uses a shopper’s browsing behavior to answer potential hesitations and questions automatically.

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.

Shopping Assistant can detect shoppers' likelihood to convert
Shopping Assistant initiates relevant conversations by monitoring shopper behavior.

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.

min read.
Create powerful self-service resources
Capture support-generated revenue
Automate repetitive tasks

Further reading

Integration: Okendo

Create a 5-Star Customer Experience with Reviews & UGC

By Chris Lavoie
4 min read.
0 min read . By Chris Lavoie

Standing out and building a community of loyal fans is hard, and it’s even harder after the surge online shopping had in 2020. The mammoth amount of competition out there is constantly fighting for even the tiniest slice of ecommerce action.

To gain a competitive edge, brands must put their customers first.

In fact, companies voted customer experience as the most exciting opportunity for businesses over the next year, and it makes sense. Why? It’s because the customer experience drives sales. Research shows that brands with a customer experience mindset drive revenue 4-8% higher than the rest.

When your customers have a bad experience, it can wreak havoc on a brand and dramatically affect the bottom line. The problem is, it can be tricky to improve, especially if you don’t know where to start or what your customers actually want. This is where those customer reviews come into play

Not only do they help bolster customer support best practices, but these powerful assets give you a deep understanding of your customers — something that DTC brands are leveraging to the max. Customer-centric brands like Born Primitive, Beardbrand, Bombas, Tuff Wraps, and WAG are nailing customer experience by tapping into reviews and using them to leverage the buyer journey.

Read on to learn how reviews and UGC are helping brands create a 5-star customer experience. 

Reduce the risk of returns 

A clothing brand isn’t going to know how a jacket sits on every single body type, and they’re certainly not going to include this information in their product descriptions. Unfortunately, this can be a sticking point, especially since online shoppers aren’t able to try on products before they buy. 

This unsurprisingly leads to more returns (while in-store returns are around 8%, online returns hover around 25%).  

There’s a solution though, by strategically using reviews and UGC, brands can provide online shoppers with in-depth insights to help customers get exactly what they’re looking for. This is particularly essential for brands that use reviews with additional product and customer attributes, like shopper size and product color or type. 

Born Primitive does exactly this, sharing customer attributes and photos alongside reviews to help buyers get an idea about how items might look on them. 

Improve products and procedures 

Your products are the crux of your business. 

Fail to get your products right, and you’ll struggle to grow a flourishing business. This is one of the most important customer support tips for Shopify merchants — know thy customer and give them what they want. 

 Brands can fuel product development and internal procedures with customer feedback to continue to optimize the customer experience, all you need to do is listen.

 Using real-life feedback from buyers to improve how they view and buy products, as well as the products themselves, ties into the customer-centric vision that successful DTC brands share. It also shows your customers that you’re an honest, and transparent brand working to give them the best product and best experience.

 Take LSKD, for example. They’re using customer reviews to improve their products and to better align with customer wants and needs. The brand uses Okendo to capture reviews, respond to them, and gather crucial customer feedback. 

In fact, the brand’s popular Rep Tights have been molded over the years by customer feedback to ensure they take on the attributes buyers are looking for. Through reviews, customers are able to share their thoughts on specific product points to fuel development. 

Involving customers in this part of the process creates a community around a brand, and ensures you’re giving customers what they want. 

And think about it: if a brand is giving customers everything you need, why would they go elsewhere? 

Provide personalized and efficient customer support 

Support and customer experience go hand-in-hand. If customer support is good, the customer experience tends to be good too. 

Creating a good customer support experience is all about streamlining responses and separating those easy-to-answer questions from more complex ones. Brands can use reviews to automate commonly asked questions and personalize support based on the type of review a customer has given. 

On a more basic level, reviews help retailers identify customers who might be experiencing problems with their order. This, in turn, allows brands to address and resolve issues by responding to customer reviews, turning the experience from bad to good in a matter of minutes. Which can end up saving a company from hitting a bit of a rough patch, or issue with further customer responses.

Tuff Wraps regularly replies to less-than-stellar reviews with extra information and an email address that customers can use to get in touch with support. This can help customers feel seen and heard and completely turn around what was initially a poor experience. Combining reviews and customer support in this two-pronged approach aligns with the common best practices for customer support on Shopify.  

 If you’re experiencing this issue with customers leaving negative reviews, we’ve got something that might help. With Gorgias’ integration with Okendo, you’re able to diagnose these problems and handle them seamlessly from a single dashboard. By leveraging this integration, merchants gain full visibility on customer reviews and their support history.

Use reviews to carve a better customer experience 

 As many of us know, reviews are key to creating a positive customer experience, especially when they form such a crucial part of the buying journey. Shoppers actively seek out peer reviews before they buy to get a better understanding of a product.

 This is where Okendo can come in again, since it encourages customers to leave reviews complete with visuals and helpful attribute information. You can then use the reviews that come rolling in to glean valuable insights into the customer experience and identify ways to improve your products and the overall experience for your buyers.

Signup to Gorgias and leverage reviews to create a 5-star customer experience.

Why We Raised Our Series B

Why we raised our Series B, and what that means for our merchants

By Romain Lapeyre
2 min read.
0 min read . By Romain Lapeyre

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated the move from offline to online in retail. This got us busier than ever supporting our merchants, new and old, to ensure we help them work towards providing exceptional customer service. 

The latest example of this is Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where Shopify saw an uptick of 75% GMV when compared to last year.

As a result of this huge ecommerce spike, 2020 has been a massive year for Gorgias.

At the beginning of the year, we had just 30 people on our team and now, we’re sitting at over 100 incredible people working each and every day to help serve 5,000+ merchants.

Gorgias Virtual Summit Q4 2020

The reason our team grew so much this year is to support the growth of our merchants. 

Throughout the year, order volume has massively increased and therefore, lots of customers have been contacting businesses through customer service. We went from having 2 million support requests a month on Gorgias to 6 million during the holiday season. 

Growth of support requests through Gorgias


So today, we’re announcing a $25m series B lead by Rajeev Dham at Sapphire Ventures, with participation of Jason Lemkin (SaaStr), François Meteyer (Alven) and other historic investors. 

What’s our goal with this round?

We want to accelerate our progress towards our mission to transform support from painful to exceptional for merchants.

We asked our merchants and learned that they have the following needs: first they want their support to be fast and high quality, then they want to optimize their cost, and once they’ve done that, they are willing to shift the way they think about support to make it a profit center. 

How can we help merchants more in 2021

In 2021, we want to focus on the top questions our merchants are getting, which account for 60% of the support volume. By empowering support agents to respond faster to these frequent questions, we’re aiming at reducing first response time for our merchants and at increasing the quality of their support. This will free up agents time so that they can focus more on the more complex questions their customers are asking. 

The top 10 customer support questions

How are we going to do this? 

  • We’re building a help center so customers can self serve and find immediate answers to their most common questions
  • We’re going to work on becoming a platform so that third party developers can integrate with Gorgias and provide more value to agents
  • We’re improving our macro suggestions so that agents spend less time typing repetitive text and more time on custom responses
  • We’re also adding new channels, including Instagram DMs, Whatsapp, phone and others

You can learn more about our next quarter roadmap here

Looking further ahead into the future, our goal is to change the role of support from responding to customers’ issues to helping the business grow.

2021 is going to be a new chapter for us. With this round, we’re going to double our team to 200 people across all our hubs, in San Francisco, Belgrade, Paris, Charlotte, Toronto and Sydney. 

If you’d like to join the adventure and help us improve the daily lives of 3 million support agents in the US (and more worldwide), we’re hiring aggressively in all these locations

I want to thank our amazing team for helping build a company that has an impact on 60 million customers yearly, and the 5000 merchants who’ve decided to use our product every day. 

The adventure continues, we’re more excited than ever! 

Alex & Romain

Ecommerce Business Expansion Plan

How to Build a Great Ecommerce Business Expansion Plan (included PDF template)

By Julien Marcialis
9 min read.
0 min read . By Julien Marcialis

Your eCommerce business has proven to be successful and may have encountered growth limits. The natural next step is to expand, either by gaining more sales in your current market or moving into a new one. This can be done by creating new products, moving to a larger office, buying new technology, hiring additional staff—essentially taking all of the steps needed to set your store up for success.

However expanding an eCommerce business carries with it opportunities for both growth and failure, and it takes a lot of energy and resources to get it right. Passion and confidence are excellent, but they aren’t the only ingredients that go into growing an eCommerce business. 

For this venture to succeed, you need a great business plan. In this article, we go through every step of the process so that by the end you will completely understand how to write a great business plan for expanding your eCommerce store.

What is an eCommerce Business Plan?

Let’s start with the basics: Think of your business plan as fulfilling the role of a road map. Naturally, it can’t predict real-life variables flawlessly but it can establish a contingency plan for a wide range of situations. This will identify problems, how to overcome them and show lenders, potential partners or investors where your business is headed. 

Your business plan will also explain what the market opportunity is, growth projections, and other important milestones. Basically, this is the document where you state what you want to accomplish and how you will accomplish it. 

Why Should Your eCommerce Store Have a Business Plan?

The business world can be harsh and unforgiving. About 45% of businesses fail in the first five years and only 25% of them are still operating after ten years. If you are going to expand your eCommerce business so that it is thriving in new markets and selling out new product lines, you need to utilize every beneficial tool and resource. 

A good business plan sets you up for this type of success right from the beginning. Creating one isn’t the only factor that contributes to success, but data shows startups with a business plan grow 30% faster, are twice as likely to secure funding and succeed 16% more often.


source: toptotal.com

How to Write an eCommerce Business Expansion Plan 

Even though an eCommerce business plan is a complex document, writing one doesn’t have to be an intimidating process. 

Below, we list out every factor that should be taken into account as you work to draft a successful business plan for expanding your business.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is the last part you will write, but the first section that anyone reading your business plan will see. As the preface, it is basically a one-page synopsis that summarizes almost every important detail. It should grab your reader’s attention and convince them it’s worth their time to read the entire document. 

Below is the basic information that you should include in your executive summary:

What Kind of Products Do You Sell?

Describe all your of your products, new and old, explaining their key benefits and features. They need to address a need that customers have or opportunities in the market. You should also show how they differ from competitor’s products and highlight why potential customers will choose your product over the other options on the market.

Your Monetization Strategy

A monetization strategy is a detailed plan about how to generate revenue for your products. In this section, describe three or four of the main strategies you intend to implement to market your products to your target audience. 

Your Audience and the Market

Define your specific target market by including information like market size data, growth rate, customer segmentation, and market structure. You should also explain the characteristics of the ideal people to whom you intend to sell your eCommerce products.

Company Overview

A company overview will include vital details about your eCommerce business. It will describe the size of your company, how many more staff you plan on hiring, what you want to achieve and where it is located. It is typically the second section and appears after the executive summary. 

You should include the following elements when writing the company overview section of your business plan: 

Your Team 

List out your key players in the team section of your business plan. This might include everyone from the C-level executives to the HR representatives and the new positions you plan to hire for. Make sure you paint a picture of your team that showcases their professionalism and finest skills. 

Company Structure

In the company structure section, you should provide information about how your company is organized. The most common business structures are sole proprietorship, LLC, S Corporation, or partnership. If required, it will also discuss how your business structure will change. 

Mission Statement

The mission statement serves as an existential justification for why your business has been created. In a few sentences, you explain why you exist, and what you strive to accomplish. In addition to serving as a brief explanation of your business to readers, the mission statement can also serve as an internal reminder of your company’s values—one that could potentially shape decisions in the future. 


Source: https://www.thebalancesmb.com

Market Analysis

This section should demonstrate both your expertise and provide a thorough analysis of your current market. If you plan on tapping into a new market, it should also be analyzed. 

When you craft this part of your business plan, you should have a significant understanding of who operates in the space you have taken an interest or are currently in—both in terms of competition and consumers. This includes potential customer segments, the value and volume of the market, who your competitors are and what their challenges and successes have been.

Let’s look at these in more detail:

Target Market

It’s essential that you understand who your target market is, and never assume that everyone will want to buy your products. In this section, you will provide readers with your current and and new target buyers’ demographic data so that they understand who customers are or will be. You can use this research to create a customer profile, using information such as their education, income level, gender, lifestyle preferences and age. 

Market Size

The market size refers to how many people are shopping and purchasing products from your niche. This will also depend on the scale of your expansion. For instance, if you plan on selling clothing all around the world instead of only national, you should take an international approach to assessing the size of the market. The industry market size is often a huge factor for investors that will read your business plan. You should also note if the market is declining or growing.

Competitive Analysis

You want to know who is thriving in your niche, and why. For this part of your business plan, dissect your competitors, including as much information as you can gather about them. This could be everything from their weaknesses to their web traffic, to their product and pricing strategy. 

The more you know about your competition, the better you will be able to position yourself to stand out. 

Marketing Plan

This segment of your business expansion plan is where you share your comprehensive marketing plan. Identify how you plan to promote your new products, attract leads, and retain customers. Your marketing strategy will determine whether your expansion will have massive amounts of growth or you have none at all. 

Customer Loyalty Program

To retain customers that purchase new products at your eCommerce store, consider rewarding them through a loyalty program. Planning and outlining this from the offset will help increase your chances of accumulating a new and invaluable, solid customer base. There are different loyalty programs for you to choose from, such as point based, tier based, paid based and progress based.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy that requires sustained planning and well-organized content production. Targeting keywords, producing content, building links—all for organic visibility so that your new products on your eCommerce store will appear at the top of search engines to obtain as much traffic as possible.

Print

Print marketing may seem like a thing of the past but it can still be effective, especially when combined with digital. Direct mail marketing can drive traffic online and aid online sales when voucher codes are delivered to potential customer’s homes, for example.

Social Media

Social media is a very important element of any marketing strategy and should be accounted for in your business expansion plan. It may refer to what type of social media platforms you will use, what will you share, and when you will share it. This section should also include what metrics you are going to track, such as engagement, click-through, and conversion rates. 

Email

You should plan on expanding and segmenting your email list right from the moment you list your new products so that you have a cost-effective way to communicate and promote them. This will provide your business with a dependable base of consumers that you can offer compelling deals to time and time again. 

Source: https://www.sender.net


Products

In this part of your business plan, it is time to get much more precise about your current and new products, including what you have, what you expect to have, and how you plan on handling that inventory. 

Description of Products

Product descriptions allow you to explain your inventory to a buyer succinctly so they understand what they are getting - think benefits, not features. Product descriptions also serve as an opportunity for SEO and simply for differentiating your inventory from that of the competition. 

Anticipated Future Products

Write down what you expect to add in the weeks, months and years to come, beyond your current expansion. This will be extremely useful information to investors when evaluating your business plan.

Operations

In this section, you will account for what is involved in your day to day operations of running your eCommerce store. It is important to demonstrate that you understand the process it takes to also buy, manufacture and deliver additional new products. This can cover a lot of ground, depending on your business model.

Production

Is your company building its own products? If so, create a step-by-step outline on how they will be manufactured. If not, state whether you will be using a dropshipping or third party manufacturing company instead. It’s also important to acknowledge any problems that may occur. Production is a very important component of success, so be very detailed. 

Inventory

Here, you include how much inventory you have at any given time. It’s also important to plan for how you will store, handle, and track new product lines. 

Shipping

A lot of considerations factor into this very important element of your eCommerce business. Will you sell your new products to international customers? If so, how long will it take to package your products and ship them? Will a third party shipment company be necessary, or will you be able to handle the entire process from your own physical location? These questions need to be answered.

Equipment

Undoubtedly, equipment will be required for your business to operate. In this part of the business plan, you can list out what you have on hand, what you will need before you launch your new products, and what you might need as your business grows even more. You should also include the costs of your equipment.

In order to be as detailed as possible, list all types of software, hardware and machinery. This can include forklifts, computers, and other types of marketing automation that are critical to the success of certain departments within your company. 

Financial Plan 

The purpose of writing a business expansion plan is to prove that your eCommerce store is and will continue to be successful. You will have the opportunity to demonstrate this by translating all the components of your business into numbers. You will then need to elaborate on these numbers in a way that makes the expansion of your store sound like a profitable venture to investors. This section is often the least favorite part of the business plan to write, but it’s inclusion is essential. 

Income Statement

An income statement refers to your revenue streams, expenses, and profits over a certain period of time. It will show whether or not your business is profitable. If you are still in the planning stages of the expansion for your eCommerce store and the products have not yet been launched, you can model your income statement from the experiences of a similar business that is operating and selling the same products within your industry. 

Determine the Break-Even Point

Here, the term break-even point refers to how much of your products you will need to sell before you can cover the costs of all your expenses. This also helps make your case for a business loan as it shows the sales level your store requires to ensure it won’t incur a financial loss. 

Cash-Flow Statement

Cash-flow statements refer to the cash that comes in and goes out, typically per-month. When your company has more cash coming in then it does going out, this is referred to as “positive cash-flow” or, in other words, profit. On the other hand, if your expenses are higher than your revenue, this is called “negative cash-flow”. 

Forecasting cash-flow is very important, even if it is an imprecise practice. It allows you to prepare for a variety of different circumstances, such as a quiet season, and demonstrate how you will adapt your eCommerce business strategy accordingly. 


Source: https://bench.co/

Wrapping Up

The business plan you will write exists not just for attracting investors, but for helping you to overcome common obstacles eCommerce businesses often face while expanding. By planning ahead, you increase your chances of success and help to ensure that your business will enjoy a continued fruitful future.

By taking into account everything we have discussed in this post, you have the resources and tools needed to write a comprehensive business expansion plan. 

Integration: Klaus

Boost the quality of your customer service with conversation reviews

By Chris Lavoie
7 min read.
0 min read . By Chris Lavoie

By doing quality assurance on the support side, you’re able to see what’s working, what triggers customers and how to train your team to improve. It’s also a great tool for your team’s personal development as a support agent.

Since it’s time consuming though, everyone wants to find a way to streamline. 

The good news?

Klaus can do it, and there’s officially an integration that you can use with your Gorgias account to streamline it. Klaus is a quality review tool that helps you create a perfect customer experience for buyers and potential buyers

So, how does this help with the issues you may be facing with customer support quality assurance?

Let’s dive in.

It’s A Time Saver

As we just talked about earlier, customer assurance can be a time sucker. You may be manually looking at transcripts and organizing everything yourself, but there’s no need to do it this way. You know at Gorgias how much we love saving you time, so here’s how to reduce that with our new Klaus integration.

By pulling conversations automatically from your helpdesk, you can get instant review samples with erases the manually part of copy and pasting transcripts. Using Klaus, there’s also manual filtering options to help you quickly, and seamlessly, find specific cases or keywords you’re looking for.

For example, say you were curious about those tickets that took several responses to solve, or ones that received negative ratings from customers, you can easily pull those up in an instant

Notifications are also automatic when it comes to using Slack or email. By setting up these notifications, you’re able to ensure that none of your support agents misses a piece of their feedback. Thus saving you time, and constant reminders, to ensure that they receive these reviews. 

It’s Efficient

You all know how we love having all our data and information in one place, and Klaus is the same as Gorgias. Their dashboard which allows you to track you team’s performance over time, see the aspects of their communication they may be struggling with and looking into their quality scores (which will get into), really makes things easy. 

This full overview makes things efficient for you to see the overall health of your customer support team for your ecommerce business.

On top of that, reporting efficiencies are really easy. Reporting, no matter the department, tends to take up a lot of time. With Klaus, you can have all your efforts easily viewable in the dashboard. 

Chris Lavoie, Tech Partner Manager
It’s Personalized

No matter the size of your ecommerce business or support team, you’re always going to want to know how each of your members are doing. Using customizable scorecards with Klaus you can create these to add in a rating criteria for a number of different situations (an unlimited about by the way!). 

This is helpful when it comes to working with multiple teams or support channels since it allows you to efficiently track quality in as much detail as you need based on what you’d set the customizable scorecards for.

Klaus also lets you choose between different rating scales. For example, a binary thumbs up/down suit some people, while others would rather use the 3 or 5 point scoring system -- you choose what you prefer!

At Gorgias, we’re continuing to work on partnerships that will make your life easier, and Klaus is one of those that will make the difference in a critical part of your strategy. Haven’t tried Gorgias out yet? Give it a try for 7-days free and see how it can make your life more efficient and simple when it comes to your ecommerce store and customer support.

Your online store, mixed with the e-commerce helpdesk Gorgias, and topped with the quality review tool Klaus - that’s how you cook purr-fect customer experiences for your buyers. 

You don’t even have to write this recipe down because we’re excited to announce that we’ve just released the native Gorgias and Klaus integration! You can now pull your customer conversations from Gorgias seamlessly into Klaus for internal support QA and provide consistent feedback to your agents. 

There’s a number of reasons why Gorgias can be the best solution for your online store. And there’s a lot of sense in using it together with Klaus if you want to provide your customers with top-notch customer care.

Let’s look into the magic that you can unleash with the Gorgias and Klaus integration.

Gorgias for extraordinary e-commerce experiences

If you’re running an online store then you probably already know that e-commerce customer service is not just about helping your users. It’s about converting customers, increasing sales, and growing your business. 

To reap the benefits of having a revenue-driving e-commerce support team, set your team up for success with the right tools. A regular helpdesk may be enough to give timely answers to your online visitors’ questions, but it might not reveal the full potential of each of your customer interactions.

That’s why dedicated ‘e-commerce helpdesks’ are a thing now, and why Gorgias has become so successful in this category. Here’s what sets Gorgias apart from other more generic helpdesk solutions:

  • Focus on converting visitors into customers: Give your customers the same kind of personalized service that you would when visiting a physical store. Chat with customers to give recommendations, feedback, and special offers.
  • Engage with people before they visit your store: Gorgias allows your agents to respond to people’s questions and comments on your social media ads and posts. Increase your ad effectiveness and sales results in one go.
  • Track your support team’s sales results: See which support interactions - in text messages, social media answers, and live chat conversations on your website - lead to sales. Build your sales and support strategies to maximize the results. 

Gorgias also delivers information about the customers’ previous orders and other nifty functionalities that help you turn your customer service team into a sales department - and, as a matter of fact, a very successful one.

But how can you make sure that your customer service agents actually nail every sales opportunity hiding in your support interactions? That’s where Klaus comes in.

Klaus for consistent customer care quality

image
Klaus interface

Klaus is a conversation review and support QA tool dedicated to helping your agents make the most out of every support interaction. It’s a platform for having a systematic insight into your customer conversations, providing consistent feedback to your agents, and gaining control over support performance. 

You can’t improve your support quality if you don’t measure it. And Internal Quality Score - the metric of conversation reviews - does just that. It makes the quality of your customer service quantifiable and allows you to track and compare your team’s performance over time. 

While some smaller teams prefer to manage their internal quality reviews in spreadsheets, companies like Automattic, Wistia, PandaDoc, and Geckoboard, have trusted the manual work behind support QA to Klaus. Here’s why:

  • Instant review samples: Klaus pulls conversations automatically in from your helpdesk. That means no manual copy-pasting of ticket data and saves you a good few hours every week.
  • Advanced filtering options help you find the specific cases you’re looking for - e.g., those that took several responses to solve, or those that received a negative rating from your customers. 
  • Customizable scorecards: Create as many scorecards as you’d like. If you’re working with multiple teams or support channels, you can create a separate rubric for each. Add the rating criteria that makes sense to each particular situation, and track the quality in as much detail as necessary.

  • Klaus also allows you to choose between different rating scales: a binary thumbs up/down suit some teams, while others prefer the 3- or 5-point scoring. The choice is yours. 
  • Quality metrics dashboard: Track your team’s performance over time, see which aspect of their communication they are struggling with the most, and zoom into specific agents’ quality scores. You’ve got a full overview of how your team performs against your quality standards.

  • Klaus’ quality dashboard makes reporting ridiculously easy, too. All the efforts you put into training and coaching can now easily be seen reflected in your team’s performance. 
  • Automatic notifications: Slack and email notifications make sure that none of your agents ever miss a single piece of their feedback. Learning about their areas of improvement is the only way your team can become better at what they do, so make sure your agents get the feedback they need.

Klaus is a very dynamic and customizable tool and that’s why it works well with all customer service teams. If you want to boost your online store sales results through your support team, make sure you create the respective rating categories, measure your agents’ performance in them, and give regular feedback on how to score higher. 

We’re firm believers of support-driven growth and we’ve written more about building customer loyalty through customer service here. Go forth and prosper!

Gorgias + Klaus join forces

Your e-commerce customer service is running on Gorgias and now you want to start improving your customer service quality and drive more sales with Klaus? Can be done easily. 

image
Tickets rated in Klaus

Connecting your Gorgias account with Klaus is easy as one-two-three with our native integration seamlessly connecting these software solutions. To set up the connection:

  1. Sign in to your Klaus account or create one if you don’t have it already (comes with a 14-day free trial, no strings attached).
  2. Connect your Gorgias account with Klaus with the help of your Gorgias’ subdomain (yourcompanyname.gorgias.com) and API key.
  3. Create your quality scorecard: define your quality criteria in rating categories and accompany it with a suitable rating scale.
  4. Invite your team members to the Klaus party. We’ve already pulled the list of your team members over from your Gorgias account, all you have to do is decide who gets to be the reviewers, agents, and admins of your account.
  5. Review your first conversation (and the second, and the third - we know, it’s addictive). Track your team’s progress in the quality dashboard.

There you go, you’ve built yourself a scalable way of assessing your support team’s performance and providing individual feedback to your agents with no unnecessary hassle. 

The Gorgias and Klaus integration can give your customer service such an advantage that it almost sounds unfair. Poor competitors of yours!

Getting control over your support interactions and turning them into your sales reps is an art that not everyone can master. Working with the right tools is a quick shortcut to success.

We’re excited to welcome Gorgias into our extended family connected through our native integrations. Which other integrations would you like to see on our list? Share your thoughts in our online CX community The Quality Tribe.

Olipop SMS

Eli Weiss of Olipop Shares How You Too Can Make $10,000 in Less than 15 Minutes - Without Discounts!

By Lucas Walker
3 min read.
0 min read . By Lucas Walker

Eli Weiss, OLIPOP’s CX team. OLIPOP is a drink that is a healthier alternative to soda and has taken the beverage industry by a storm. It has achieved great accomplishments such as generating $10,000 of sales, without any discounts, in less than 15 minutes and has over 2,500 subscribers, making up 35% of their business. Working at the frontlines of customer experience, Weiss emphasizes that a good customer service team is the key to a successful business and he imparts two important takeaways in the podcast. Subscribe to Hello Gorgias on Apple, or listen below.

It's also worth nothing that we're able to get results like these, because of our integration with Postscript for SMS marketing.

Want to try Gorgias? Use Eli's special link, and we'll send you a free case of OLIPOP.

As a special bonus, anyone who listen's to Eli's podcast episode and does a trial of Gorgias using his special link will receive a free 12 pack variety case of OLIPOP.

Leverage Your Customers as A Marketing Channel

Customers want to feel like they are an important part of a brand – that they are helping to build the company and that they are not just going through a revolving door. They want to know that they are cared for and not just seen as a walking and talking wallet. By adding a little bit of individuality in each message, even by doing something as simple as referring to them by their first name in an email, it shows the care and consideration that the customer service team has for their clients. Although problems such as shipping estimates and an unsatisfactory drink flavour are out of the team’s control, the customer’s satisfaction is. After all, it is five to ten times easier and cheaper to retain an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one, so it is essential to keep the client base happy.

Asides from making them feel like they are an important part of the company, it is also essential to develop a long-term relationship with them and SMS is a perfect tool to do so. A lot of brands have started to abuse SMS, sending out marketing messages so frequently and without any personal touch that it pushes interested parties away. SMS is an intimate tool, allowing companies to jump into a person’s cellphone, so when it is taken for granted, customers tend to leave. Brands should not always think about the fastest way to make money and bring in customers because, in the end, it can do the exact opposite. By growing at a slower but steady pace, people will begin to follow. They will appreciate the freedom and flexibility and remember this in the long-term.

Create A Solid, But Flexible, Macro for Your Customers

At the end of the day, everyone is human – especially the customers. They may seem like just another order or a small percentage of the total revenue, but no one wants to be viewed as a ticket number or a computer. It is important to view everyone as an individual and by making each message personal and different for each customer, it demonstrates exactly that. Rather than sending an email that simply says, “here is your refund”, make it unique by acknowledging that the customer is heard and felt. Therefore, while it is good to have a solid macro, it is also important to make it flexible for the team to adjust it.

This also applies to macros for negative experiences. Just as it is important to keep the customers happy, the CX team needs to be content as well. When employees are not valued, they become burnt out, exhausted, and contribute to a high turnover rate. They will not interact with the customers in the way that the company needs so having a macro that they can refer to, it allows for interactions to flow the way they are supposed to. Furthermore, it saves their mental health by letting them take a step back.

The Overall Lesson Of Human Support

Customer service is built on empathy and integrity. A long-term relationship with a client base is impossible if they are not treated properly, but it is also impossible if the customer service team does not get the proper support that they need.  Just as marketing needs a large budget for the brand to be successful, customer service needs one as well to thrive. Weiss has seen this experience first-hand and cannot emphasize enough how important it is to remember that everyone behind a computer screen is still a human being.

To speak to Weiss and hear about his enthusiasm for his customers and Gorgias, he can be reached via Twitter at @eliweisss.

BigCommerce Integration for Gorgias

Creating a Seamless Customer Experience with Gorgias & BigCommerce

By Billy McClennan
5 min read.
0 min read . By Billy McClennan

No matter what product or service you sell, customer support is always one of the highest priorities. If you don’t give your customers the best support and experience possible, a few things can happen:

  1. You can lose customers… fast
  2. Receive poor reviews
  3. Stress out your own internal team
  4. And much more.

The good news is, if you’re here you’re already thinking in the right way -- you want to enhance your support so that it’s seamless for both the customer, and your team. 

That’s why all BigCommerce store owners can now integrate with Gorgias to deliver an outstanding customer support experience to consumers. 

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Gorgias is all about the customer-first model and this aligned vision with BigCommerce stores can bring your business to the next level.

But Why Does It Matter?

We touched on that a little bit already, but let’s dive in more on why support actually matters. 

Countless business owners view the support side as a cost centre, but when you look at it as more than that, this is when you really start seeing success. By improving satisfaction overall, you’re able to maintain loyal customers, which is key to growing your store. On top of that, you can increase engagement on-site and also across social channels because when people have a good experience with a brand, they love to share the story.

Of course, at the end of the day, it also heavily contributes to sales. Using live chat and other means of customer support channels you can advise people quickly on what the best product for them is. When you create those loyal customers, word of mouth can be one of your strongest driving forces.

How To Actually Give Customers World-Class Experiences

Nowadays your audience and customers are everywhere. On top of that, they want the same experience across all channels which can sound very overwhelming. That being said, it is possible to make everything from social media to live chat, phone and beyond (we’ll talk about that in a little bit) work together seamlessly. By making all these channels easier to check on and respond on, it’ll help immensely with organization and responsiveness.

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We all know that the faster you respond the happier the customer will be. The issue is, countless stores have a low response time, and this offers a big opportunity for those who can do better. Not only does it lead to higher customer satisfaction, but it can lead to more sales too.. For instance, if someone is asking your support team about a particular product, there’s a good chance they have other stores open in other tabs, and if you can answer that customer first they may be more likely to go with your product over another.

Lastly, don’t forget that sounding robotic isn’t cool and customers can usually read right through it. By being human, you’re able to have a more personal relationship with customers as opposed to something strictly transactional. By personalizing answers, your customer will truly feel like you care and know them, making it far more likely that they’ll purchase from your store again.

How can Gorgias help BigCommerce brands?

Well, let’s start with a couple words from Iris Schiefer, Sr. Strategic Partnerships Manager, EMEA at BigCommerce. She knows what Gorgias can do to help shop owners out, saying that it “allowsBigCommerce merchants to offer an exceptional support experience and deepen relationships with customers.”

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This is fairly broad, and that’s because there’s lots of ways Gorgias can benefit your BigCommerce store. By using Gorgias, you can actually cut your customer support first response times and ticket resolution time without losing that precious human touch element. 

Gorgias allows BigCommerce merchants to offer an exceptional support experience and deepen relationships with their customers. We are strongly aligned in terms of both our values and dedication to providing best-of-breed solutions to our merchants - We couldn't be happier to have Gorgias on board as a BigCommerce partner.
- Iris Schiefer, Sr. Strategic Partnerships Manager, EMEA at BigCommerce

We understand, it sounds too good to be true, but it is possible. So, let’s dive into a few things you’ll be able to do if you integrate Gorgias into your BigCommerce store.

One place for customer support

You can connect BigCommerce along with all your communication channels including email, social media, phone, live chat and more to Gorgias. This centralizes everything into one platform so that it's all in one place. This allows you to not miss any requests, and handle responses much faster.

With Gorgias, you can view your customer’s order history easily from the BigCommerce backend. This way, you can ensure speed and accuracy in responses as opposed to switching between tabs or cutting and pasting.

Personalization becomes easy and far less time consuming as well. With Gorgias, you can integrate data provided by BigCommerce like first name, shipping address and much more. This gives you the opportunity to send automatic and accurate messages for a personalized customer experience.

Repetitive questions can get frustrating, but Gorgias also has a function to get to these quickly and easily. You can automate answers to common questions to save valuable time for your team, that way they can focus on new customers and those with more complicated requests.

When you integrate Gorgias, you’re also using advanced machine learning to detect the intent, along with sentiment of each and every message. This means that by learning about tracking updates, return policies and urgency, Gorgias helps set priorities and categorize tickets based on what they’re all about.

Just like every other area of your business, tracking customer support performance is essential. Using Gorgias you can track KPIs to ensure you and your team are on track to delivering incredible support.

How does the Gorgias + BigCommerce integration work?

By integrating Gorgias, you’ll be able to also integrate with some of the biggest Apps in the BigCommerce Marketplace including Klaviyo, Omnisend, Smile.io and many more. 

Now, how do you get started? It’s easier than you might think:

  1. Sign up for Gorgias (if you haven’t already).
  2. Go to your BigCommerce account and Install the Gorgias App.
  3. You’ll receive a request to access your store from Gorgias then click Confirm, then Connect.
  4. From there, you just add in your Gorgias authentication credentials, which is simply just your Gorgias helpdesk name.
  5. After hitting save, you can now sync your BigCommerce customers who haven’t placed an order by selecting “sync customers who haven’t placed an order.” Then select the order cut off and hit Save.
  6. Now, you’ll see an active green icon and this means you’re good to go! 

You can find a more detailed step by step guide here.

Are you building out your ecommerce tech stack and seeking more app recommendations for BigCommerce? Check out our lists of:

By the way, if you haven’t already signed up for Gorgias, you can start off by getting a free, 7-day trial to test it out on your BigCommerce store!

Boost Sales With Ecommerce Blog

How to Boost Sales with Blog Content for eCommerce Brands

By Ronald Dod
6 min read.
0 min read . By Ronald Dod

The fact is that content marketing can help an eCommerce brand immensely, given that content is a foundational element for visibility in the SERPs, social media engagement, the cultivation of thought leadership and industry authority, lead generation, customer self-service, and other vital business activities.

But the reality is that most blogs fail, and for a variety of different reasons. One of the most prevailing is that it doesn’t generate immediate results, ultimately discouraging future content creation.

However, there are various tactics that merchants can use to cultivate traffic to blogs and boost conversions as a result of those visits.

For merchants who want to take advantage of the benefits that content marketing has to offer, here are seven ways to boost conversions with eCommerce blog content.

Focus on User Intent

One of the best ways to gain more site visitors who turn into paying customers is to create content that targets the intent of the user.

Of course, “user intent” is the reason behind the individual’s Google search. It is the outcome they aim to achieve.

For instance, if a consumer searches "best Bluetooth headphones," the intent behind the user's search is to obtain information that will narrow down their purchase options to just a couple of products.

When looking at how people search, there are three main types of user intents, often referred to as “Do, Know, Go.” Those intents are:

  • Transactional (Do): Here, a consumer is aiming to make a purchase or some other form of transaction.
  • Informational (Know): With this type of search, people are looking to learn, as in the aforementioned headphones example.
  • Navigational (Go): When conducting such a search, users are trying to get to a specific website or location. These can often be branded searches.

When creating content for a blog, merchants will likely be targeting information queries. These types of searches will result in a consumer finding high-ranking materials that relate to their search for knowledge.

Alternatively, a transactional search will often lead shoppers directly to product pages.

However, this isn’t to say that sellers shouldn’t link to their item listings within information blogs, assuming that the product is relevant to the piece. This can actually be a great way to pull a shopper from the top of the funnel down to deeper stages. More on this momentarily.

The sales funnel model is something that marketers use to delineate the path to purchase that consumers take. While there are numerous iterations of this model, the basics are that:

  • Consumers become aware of a product
  • Prospects then begin to consider the product, research and compare their options
  • Consumers make a decision and purchase a product or service

The job of site owners is to get consumers to move through the entirety of the brand’s sales funnel. Since awareness and research are highly dependent on the content offerings available to shoppers, merchants must craft quality content that targets top-of-funnel prospects.

Optimizing top-of-funnel content relies on uncovering and integrating long-tail keywords into various pieces. Since long-tail phrases are highly-specific and generate less search volume (and more conversions) than broad-head keywords, these phrases are a must.

Fortunately, a variety of tools such as Answer the Public, Keyword Tool, Ubersuggest and many others are geared specifically towards this task.

While all of these tools are extremely useful, Answer the Public is a favorite as it provides long-tail keywords questions that consumers are searching, thereby cluing in retailers even further as to what precisely potential buyers want to know.

In addition to these tools, sellers can also mine incredibly useful information about consumer queries from sites like Quora, Reddit and similar boards.

Speaking of answering questions, we also recommend you host an FAQ page on your website to help customers. Check out our free FAQ template to get started.

Optimize for SEO

While this idea was touched upon slightly with targeting long-tail terms and phrases, there is a lot more to optimizing content for conversions than just plugging in a few keywords.

For retailers to get the visibility required to earn clicks and conversions, it is necessary to optimize blog posts according to Google’s SEO ranking factors. Some tactics that merchants will want to utilize include:

  • Optimizing for the targeted keyword
  • Employing keyword variations
  • Adding images and optimizing alt tags
  • Linking to authoritative, relevant external pages
  • Including related links to internal destinations
  • Ensuring content is readable/scannable
  • Creating a proper meta title

Additionally, while meta descriptions have no bearing on SEO performance, they do influence clicks, which does impact rankings. Therefore, crafting a concise, alluring and accurate meta description is also a necessity.

Link to a Relevant Product

Linking to a product within a piece of content is a simple yet effective tactic for driving clicks to product pages and earning conversions.

However, the key thing to remember here is that the item must be relevant to the content. If sellers create a blog centered on ways to remedy plantar fasciitis and then include a link to great running shoes, that link will generate very few clicks and even fewer sales.

Alternatively, if a seller talks about and links to shoes or inserts for plantar fasciitis, it is far more likely that the content will earn sales as a result of the internal link.

The point of the post is to solve the reader's problems. If merchants have a product that can achieve that goal, then it is vital to include a link to the item. That said, do not promote products that are not relevant to the piece just for the sake of promotion. Doing so could damage a store’s credibility in the consumer’s eyes.

Employ Social Proof

Social proof has become a necessity in the eCommerce industry. With all the shady dealings that are happening online, consumers want to know that what they are getting is the real deal.

Therefore, including social proof within content and on product pages is a powerful strategy for increasing conversions and encouraging that elusive second purchase.

Some excellent forms of social proof that can be deployed in content or on product pages include:

  • Testimonials
  • Reviews
  • User-generated content from social media

By providing the evidence that other customers love their purchase, others are more likely to follow the same path.

Utilize Visuals

Visuals are a critical element for content.

Including images throughout blogs dramatically increases the readability of the piece and helps consumers to retain more of the information contained therein. The fact is, nobody likes reading massive walls of text.

Therefore, several ways that merchants can increase the readability of a piece and keep it engaging include:

  • Using screenshots to demonstrate ideas, topics of discussion or uses of a product
  • Employ visual indicators like graphs or charts to highlight figures
  • Summarize blog posts using embeddable, easily shared infographics

There are a slew of tools out there for creating such visuals, including Canva, Pablo, Easil and many others.

If merchants are looking to create content that converts, visuals are a must.

Include a Clear Call-to-Action

No matter if merchants are looking to drive traffic to product pages, get readers to share a post or simply generate comments, including a clear, direct call-to-action is vital to meeting that goal.

The fact is that if a merchant wants to achieve something with their content, they often must make it explicit by letting consumers know what step they should take next.

By including a call-to-action at the end of a piece for visitors to check out a product page or other content, retailers are far more likely to generate conversions than if they were to leave consumers to their own devices.

Retarget Content

For retailers who employ tracking pixels, those who visit their site can be retargeted to on Google, through social media and other popular online destinations.

Retargeting is an essential tactic for earning more conversions as consumers have already shown interest in a brand’s offerings–be they content or products.

While some consider retargeting to be an off-putting practice, looking at the facts about retargeting shows that this strategy is extremely useful in reaching consumers, generating sales and optimizing conversion rates.

In today’s attention economy, merchants must remain top-of-mind. Retargeting adverts help them achieve that end.

Final Thoughts

Creating eCommerce content that drives conversions is critical for merchants to compete in the increasingly crowded online retail industry. Moreover, by targeting user intent with such pieces, sellers can reel in new readers and bolster their customer base while still catering to existing shoppers.

For other ways to grow your ecommerce store, check out our list of ecommerce growth tactics.

Utilize the strategies listed above to help ensure that your company’s content earns the visibility it needs to generate clicks and conversions from shoppers–new and old. Don't have enough time to start a blog? Check out our ecommerce customer service automation guide to see how you can save time by automating many of the repetitive tasks that go into running an online store.

Integration: Loop Returns

Loop X Gorgias: The Key To Reducing Return-Related Questions

By Billy McClennan
2 min read.
0 min read . By Billy McClennan

You might be assuming that there’s really nothing you can do to change this outside of overworking your team, or hiring more people.

This is completely normal, but there’s no need to panic. That’s because with Gorgias you can now integrate Loop in your ecommerce store. In case you’re wondering, Loop is an on-demand portal that allows customers to get the product they want, with less support touchpoints. 

Using Loop, there are many ways you can reduce one of the biggest and more time-consuming support-related requests… returns. Plus, they do this while still giving your customers a seamless experience. 

So, let’s dive in.

What’s the problem?

Did you know that 40% of support tickets are order related, with 5% being about returns? It might not seem like something worth looking into, or too problematic, but it is. 

Though these customers returning items do deserve a great level of customer care (everyone does), it’s not the most valuable way to actually use your support team’s skills. 

Why? Glad you asked.

There’s already a lack of resources

It’s always good to remember that your support team is juggling a lot more than you think because there’s so many different types of requests that come through. One of those requests that takes a lot of time is, you guessed it, return requests. While these are important, they don’t exactly require a human touch since they’re very straightforward and focus heavily on process. 

If your support team isn’t able to address other requests in a timely manner, that could mean losing new customers or returning ones because of those support tickets. 

Luckily, return-requests can be easily automated.

Customers want to control their returns

It may come as a surprise to hear that your customers don’t actually want a high touch support experience for returns from your team. They actually want to be the ones to choose where and when they want to engage with support teams. 

Since customers want a more on-demand experience when it comes to returns and something that happens fast, automation doesn’t hurt in these scenarios since it can be quick. 

What’s the solution? Enter Loop.

loopreturns.com

Bringing Loop and Gorgias together for a seamless customer experience that saves your team time is like a dream come true. 

But how exactly, can this address the issues we’ve been discussing?

First off, this partnership will allow your support team to use that extra time in valuable ways that make sense and benefit the business. For example, focusing more on new customers, shipping issues and more.

Secondly, it benefits your customers since it allows them to take control of their returns and do things on their own time. This makes it more seamless and makes them feel like the return process is easier than ever. 

Loop Returns widget in Gorgias helpdesk

Using both Loop and Gorgias together will create a better environment all around, decreasing stress both within your support team and customers so that your team can focus on conversions instead of returns.

Whether you’ve been looking for a way to reduce your support requests related to returns, or if it’s something new on your radar, it’s worth thinking about. Thankfully, you can sign up for a free 7-day trial with Gorgias and add in the Loop integration to see just how much time it can save.

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