

TL;DR:
Your AI sounds like a robot, and your customers can tell.
Sure, the answer is right, but something feels off. The tone of voice is stiff. The phrases are predictable and generic. At most, it sounds copy-pasted. This may not be a big deal from your side of support. In reality, it’s costing you more than you think.
Recent data shows that 45% of U.S. adults find customer service chatbots unfavorable, up from 43% in 2022. As awareness of chatbots has increased, so have negative opinions of them. Only 19% of people say chatbots are helpful or beneficial in addressing their queries. The gap isn't just about capability. It's about trust. When AI sounds impersonal, customers disengage or leave frustrated.
Luckily, you don't need to choose between automation and the human touch.
In this guide, we'll show you six practical ways to train your AI to sound natural, build trust, and deliver the kind of support your customers actually like.
The fastest way to make your AI sound more human is to teach it to sound like you. AI is only as good as the input you give it, so the more detailed your brand voice training, the more natural and on-brand your responses will be.
Start by building a brand voice guide. It doesn't need to be complicated, but it should clearly define how your brand communicates with customers. At minimum, include:
Think of your AI as a character. Samantha Gagliardi, Associate Director of Customer Experience at Rhoback, described their approach as building an AI persona:
"I kind of treat it like breaking down an actor. I used to sing and perform for a living — how would I break down the character of Rhoback? How does Rhoback speak? What age are they? What makes the most sense?"
✅ Create a brand voice guide with tone, style, formality, and example phrases.
Humans associate short pauses with thinking, so when your AI responds too quickly, it instantly feels unnatural.
Adding small delays helps your AI feel more like a real teammate.
Where to add response delays:
Even a one- to two-second pause can make a big difference in a robotic or human-sounding AI.
✅ Add instructions in your AI’s knowledge base to include short response delays during key moments.
Generic phrases make your AI sound like... well, AI. Customers can spot a copy-pasted response immediately — especially when it's overly formal.
That doesn't mean you need to be extremely casual. It means being true to your brand. Whether your voice is professional or conversational, the goal is the same: sound like a real person on your team.
Here's how to replace robotic phrasing with more brand-aligned responses:
|
Generic Phrase |
More Natural Alternative |
|---|---|
|
“We apologize for the inconvenience.” |
“Sorry about that, we’re working on it now.” (friendly) |
|
“Your satisfaction is our top priority.” |
“We want to make sure this works for you.” (friendly) |
|
“Please be advised…” |
“Just a quick heads up…” (friendly) |
|
“Your request has been received.” |
“Got it. Thanks for reaching out.” (friendly) |
|
“I will now review your request.” |
“Let me take a quick look.” (friendly) |
✅ Identify your five most common inquiries and give your AI a rewritten example response for each.
One of the biggest tells that a response is AI-generated? It ignores what's already happened.
When your AI doesn't reference order history or past conversations, customers are forced to repeat themselves. Repetition can lead to frustration and can quickly turn a good customer experience into a bad one.
Great AI uses context to craft replies that feel personalized and genuinely helpful.
Here's what good context looks like in AI responses:
Tools like Gorgias AI Agent automatically pull in customer and order data, so replies feel human and contextual without sacrificing speed.
✅ Add instructions that prompt your AI to reference order details and/or past conversations in its replies, so customers feel acknowledged.
Customers just want help. They don't care whether it comes from a human or AI, as long as it's the right help. But if you try to trick them, it backfires fast. AI that pretend to be human often give customers the runaround, especially when the issue is complex or emotional.
A better approach is to be transparent. Solve what you can, and hand off anything else to an agent as needed.
When to disclose that the customer is talking to AI:
For more on this topic, check out our article: Should You Tell Customers They're Talking to AI?
✅ Set clear rules for when your AI should escalate to a human and include handoff messaging that sets expectations and preserves context.
We're giving you permission to break the rules a little bit. The most human-sounding AI doesn't follow perfect grammar or structure. It reflects the messiness of real dialogue.
People don't speak in flawless sentences every time. We pause, rephrase, cut ourselves off, and throw in the occasional emoji or "uh." When AI has an unpredictable cadence, it feels more relatable and, in turn, more human.
What an imperfect AI could look like:
These imperfections give your AI a more believable voice.
✅ Add instructions for your AI that permit variation in grammar, tone, and sentence structure to mimic real human speech.
Human-sounding AI doesn’t require complex prompts or endless fine-tuning. With the right voice guidelines, small tone adjustments, and a few smart instructions, your AI can sound like a real part of your team.
Book a demo of Gorgias AI Agent and see for yourself.
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TL;DR:
You’ve chosen your AI tool and turned it on, hoping you won’t have to answer another WISMO question. But now you’re here. Why is AI going in circles? Why isn’t it answering simple questions? Why does it hand off every conversation to a human agent?
Conversational AI and chatbots thrive on proper training and data. Like any other team member on your customer support team, AI needs guidance. This includes knowledge documents, policies, brand voice guidelines, and escalation rules. So, if your AI has gone rogue, you may have skipped a step.
In this article, we’ll show you the top seven AI issues, why they happen, how to fix them, and the best practices for AI setup.
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AI can only be as accurate as the information you feed it. If your AI is confidently giving customers incorrect answers, it likely has a gap in its knowledge or a lack of guardrails.
Insufficient knowledge can cause AI to pull context from similar topics to create an answer, while the lack of guardrails gives it the green light to compose an answer, correct or not.
How to fix it:
This is one of the most frustrating customer service issues out there. Left unfixed, you risk losing 29% of customers.
If your AI is putting customers through a never-ending loop, it’s time to review your knowledge docs and escalation rules.
How to fix it:
It can be frustrating when AI can’t do the bare minimum, like automate WISMO tickets. This issue is likely due to missing knowledge or overly broad escalation rules.
How to fix it:
One in two customers still prefer talking to a human to an AI, according to Katana. Limiting them to AI-only support could risk a sale or their relationship.
The top live chat apps clearly display options to speak with AI or a human agent. If your tool doesn’t have this, refine your AI-to-human escalation rules.
How to fix it:
If your agents are asking customers to repeat themselves, you’ve already lost momentum. One of the fastest ways to break trust is by making someone explain their issue twice. This happens when AI escalates without passing the conversation history, customer profile, or even a summary of what’s already been attempted.
How to fix it:
Sure, conversational AI has near-perfect grammar, but if its tone is entirely different from your agents’, customers can be put off.
This mismatch usually comes from not settling on an official customer support tone of voice. AI might be pulling from marketing copy. Agents might be winging it. Either way, inconsistency breaks the flow.
How to fix it:
When AI is underperforming, the problem isn’t always the tool. Many teams launch AI without ever mapping out what it's actually supposed to do. So it tries to do everything (and fails), or it does nothing at all.
It’s important to remember that support automation isn’t “set it and forget it.” It needs to know its playing field and boundaries.
How to fix it:
AI should handle |
AI should escalate to a human |
|---|---|
Order tracking (“Where’s my package?”) |
Upset, frustrated, or emotional customers |
Return and refund policy questions |
Billing problems or refund exceptions |
Store hours, shipping rates, and FAQs |
Technical product or troubleshooting issues |
Simple product questions |
Complex or edge‑case product questions |
Password resets |
Multi‑part or multi‑issue requests |
Pre‑sale questions with clear, binary answers |
Anything where a wrong answer risks churn |
Once you’ve addressed the obvious issues, it’s important to build a setup that works reliably. These best practices will help your AI deliver consistently helpful support.
Start by deciding what AI should and shouldn’t handle. Let it take care of repetitive tasks like order tracking, return policies, and product questions. Anything complex or emotionally sensitive should go straight to your team.
Use examples from actual tickets and messages your team handles every day. Help center articles are a good start, but real interactions are what help AI learn how customers actually ask questions.
Create rules that tell your AI when to escalate. These might include customer frustration, low confidence in the answer, or specific phrases like “talk to a person.” The goal is to avoid infinite loops and to hand things off before the experience breaks down.
When a handoff happens, your agents should see everything the AI did. That includes the full conversation, relevant customer data, and any actions it has already attempted. This helps your team respond quickly and avoid repeating what the customer just went through.
An easy way to keep order history, customer data, and conversation history in one place is by using a conversational commerce tool like Gorgias.
A jarring shift in tone between AI and agent makes the experience feel disconnected. Align aspects such as formality, punctuation, and language style so the transition from AI to human feels natural.
Look at recent escalations each week. Identify where the AI struggled or handed off too early or too late. Use those insights to improve training, adjust boundaries, and strengthen your automation flows.
If your AI chatbot isn’t working the way you expected, it’s probably not because the technology is broken. It’s because it hasn’t been given the right rules.
When you set AI up with clear responsibilities, it becomes a powerful extension of your team.
Want to see what it looks like when AI is set up the right way?
Try Gorgias AI Agent. It’s conversational AI built with smart automation, clean escalations, and ecommerce data in its core — so your customers get faster answers and your agents stay focused.
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TL;DR:
Customer education has become a critical factor in converting browsers into buyers. For wellness brands like Cornbread Hemp, where customers need to understand ingredients, dosages, and benefits before making a purchase, education has a direct impact on sales. The challenge is scaling personalized education when support teams are stretched thin, especially during peak sales periods.
Katherine Goodman, Senior Director of Customer Experience, and Stacy Williams, Senior Customer Experience Manager, explain how implementing Gorgias's AI Shopping Assistant transformed their customer education strategy into a conversion powerhouse.
In our second AI in CX episode, we dive into how Cornbread achieved a 30% conversion rate during BFCM, saving their CX team over four days of manual work.
Before diving into tactics, understanding why education matters in the wellness space helps contextualize this approach.
Katherine, Senior Director of Customer Experience at Cornbread Hemp, explains:
"Wellness is a very saturated market right now. Getting to the nitty-gritty and getting to the bottom of what our product actually does for people, making sure they're educated on the differences between products to feel comfortable with what they're putting in their body."
The most common pre-purchase questions Cornbread receives center around three areas: ingredients, dosages, and specific benefits. Customers want to know which product will help with their particular symptoms. They need reassurance that they're making the right choice.
What makes this challenging: These questions require nuanced, personalized responses that consider the customer's specific needs and concerns. Traditionally, this meant every customer had to speak with a human agent, creating a bottleneck that slowed conversions and overwhelmed support teams during peak periods.
Stacy, Senior Customer Experience Manager at Cornbread, identified the game-changing impact of Shopping Assistant:
"It's had a major impact, especially during non-operating hours. Shopping Assistant is able to answer questions when our CX agents aren't available, so it continues the customer order process."
A customer lands on your site at 11 PM, has questions about dosage or ingredients, and instead of abandoning their cart or waiting until morning for a response, they get immediate, accurate answers that move them toward purchase.
The real impact happens in how the tool anticipates customer needs. Cornbread uses suggested product questions that pop up as customers browse product pages. Stacy notes:
"Most of our Shopping Assistant engagement comes from those suggested product features. It almost anticipates what the customer is asking or needing to know."
Actionable takeaway: Don't wait for customers to ask questions. Surface the most common concerns proactively. When you anticipate hesitation and address it immediately, you remove friction from the buying journey.
One of the biggest myths about AI is that implementation is complicated. Stacy explains how Cornbread’s rollout was a straightforward three-step process: audit your knowledge base, flip the switch, then optimize.
"It was literally the flip of a switch and just making sure that our data and information in Gorgias was up to date and accurate."
Here's Cornbread’s three-phase approach:
Actionable takeaway: Block out time for that initial knowledge base audit. Then commit to regular check-ins because your business evolves, and your AI should evolve with it.
Read more: AI in CX Webinar Recap: Turning AI Implementation into Team Alignment
Here's something most brands miss: the way you write your knowledge base articles directly impacts conversion rates.
Before BFCM, Stacy reviewed all of Cornbread's Guidance and rephrased the language to make it easier for AI Agent to understand.
"The language in the Guidance had to be simple, concise, very straightforward so that Shopping Assistant could deliver that information without being confused or getting too complicated," Stacy explains. When your AI can quickly parse and deliver information, customers get faster, more accurate answers. And faster answers mean more conversions.
Katherine adds another crucial element: tone consistency.
"We treat AI as another team member. Making sure that the tone and the language that AI used were very similar to the tone and the language that our human agents use was crucial in creating and maintaining a customer relationship."
As a result, customers often don't realize they're talking to AI. Some even leave reviews saying they loved chatting with "Ally" (Cornbread's AI agent name), not realizing Ally isn't human.
Actionable takeaway: Review your knowledge base with fresh eyes. Can you simplify without losing meaning? Does it sound like your brand? Would a customer be satisfied with this interaction? If not, time for a rewrite.
Read more: How to Write Guidance with the “When, If, Then” Framework
The real test of any CX strategy is how it performs under pressure. For Cornbread, Black Friday Cyber Monday 2025 proved that their conversational commerce strategy wasn't just working, it was thriving.
Over the peak season, Cornbread saw:
Katherine breaks down what made the difference:
"Shopping Assistant popping up, answering those questions with the correct promo information helps customers get from point A to point B before the deal ends."
During high-stakes sales events, customers are in a hurry. They're comparing options, checking out competitors, and making quick decisions. If you can't answer their questions immediately, they're gone. Shopping Assistant kept customers engaged and moving toward purchase, even when human agents were swamped.
Actionable takeaway: Peak periods require a fail-safe CX strategy. The brands that win are the ones that prepare their AI tools in advance.
One of the most transformative impacts of conversational commerce goes beyond conversion rates. What your team can do with their newfound bandwidth matters just as much.
With AI handling straightforward inquiries, Cornbread's CX team has evolved into a strategic problem-solving team. They've expanded into social media support, provided real-time service during a retail pop-up, and have time for the high-value interactions that actually build customer relationships.
Katherine describes phone calls as their highest value touchpoint, where agents can build genuine relationships with customers. “We have an older demographic, especially with CBD. We received a lot of customer calls requesting orders and asking questions. And sometimes we end up just yapping,” Katherine shares. “I was yapping with a customer last week, and we'd been on the call for about 15 minutes. This really helps build those long-term relationships that keep customers coming back."
That's the kind of experience that builds loyalty, and becomes possible only when your team isn't stuck answering repetitive tickets.
Stacy adds that agents now focus on "higher-level tickets or customer issues that they need to resolve. AI handles straightforward things, and our agents now really are more engaged in more complicated, higher-level resolutions."
Actionable takeaway: Stop thinking about AI only as a cost-cutting tool and start seeing it as an impact multiplier. The goal is to free your team to work on conversations that actually move the needle on customer lifetime value.
Cornbread isn't resting on their BFCM success. They're already optimizing for January, traditionally the biggest month for wellness brands as customers commit to New Year's resolutions.
Their focus areas include optimizing their product quiz to provide better data to both AI and human agents, educating customers on realistic expectations with CBD use, and using Shopping Assistant to spotlight new products launching in Q1.
The brands winning at conversational commerce aren't the ones with the biggest budgets or the largest teams. They're the ones who understand that customer education drives conversions, and they've built systems to deliver that education at scale.
Cornbread Hemp's success comes down to three core principles: investing time upfront to train AI properly, maintaining consistent optimization, and treating AI as a team member that deserves the same attention to tone and quality as human agents.
As Katherine puts it:
"The more time that you put into training and optimizing AI, the less time you're going to have to babysit it later. Then, it's actually going to give your customers that really amazing experience."
Watch the replay of the whole conversation with Katherine and Stacy to learn how Gorgias’s Shopping Assistant helps them turn browsers into buyers.
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TL;DR:
Rising customer expectations, shoppers willing to pay a premium for convenience, and a growing lack of trust in social media channels to make purchase decisions are making it more challenging to turn a profit.
In this emerging era, AI’s role is becoming not only more pronounced, but a necessity for brands who want to stay ahead. Tools like Gorgias Shopping Assistant can help drive measurable revenue while reducing support costs.
For example, a brand that specializes in premium outdoor apparel implemented Shopping Assistant and saw a 2.25% uplift in GMV and 29% uplift in average order volume (AOV).
But how, among competing priorities and expenses, do you convince leadership to implement it? We’ll show you.
Shoppers want on-demand help in real time that’s personalized across devices.
Shopping Assistant recalls a shopper’s browsing history, like what they have clicked, viewed, and added to their cart. This allows it to make more relevant suggestions that feel personal to each customer.
The AI ecommerce tools market was valued at $7.25 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $21.55 billion by 2030.
Your competitors are using conversational AI to support, sell, and retain. Shopping Assistant satisfies that need, providing upsells and recommendations rooted in real shopper behavior.
Conversational AI has real revenue implications, impacting customer retention, average order value (AOV), conversion rates, and gross market value (GMV).
For example, a leading nutrition brand saw a GMV uplift of over 1%, an increase in AOV of over 16%, and a chat conversion rate of over 15% after implementing Shopping Assistant.
Overall, Shopping Assistant drives higher engagement and more revenue per visitor, sometimes surpassing 50% and 20%, respectively.

Shopping Assistant engages, personalizes, recommends, and converts. It provides proactive recommendations, smart upsells, dynamic discounts, and is highly personalized, all helping to guide shoppers to checkout.
After implementing Shopping Assistant, leading ecommerce brands saw real results:
Industry |
Primary Use Case |
GMV Uplift (%) |
AOV Uplift (%) |
Chat CVR (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Home & interior decor 🖼️ |
Help shoppers coordinate furniture with existing pieces and color schemes. |
+1.17 |
+97.15 |
10.30 |
Outdoor apparel 🎿 |
In-depth explanations of technical features and confidence when purchasing premium, performance-driven products. |
+2.25 |
+29.41 |
6.88 |
Nutrition 🍎 |
Personalized guidance on supplement selection based on age, goals, and optimal timing. |
+1.09 |
+16.40 |
15.15 |
Health & wellness 💊 |
Comparing similar products and understanding functional differences to choose the best option. |
+1.08 |
+11.27 |
8.55 |
Home furnishings 🛋️ |
Help choose furniture sizes and styles appropriate for children and safety needs. |
+12.26 |
+10.19 |
1.12 |
Stuffed toys 🧸 |
Clear care instructions and support finding replacements after accidental product damage. |
+4.43 |
+9.87 |
3.62 |
Face & body care 💆♀️ |
Assistance finding the correct shade online, especially when previously purchased products are no longer available. |
+6.55 |
+1.02 |
5.29 |
Shopping Assistant drives uplift in chat conversion rate and makes successful upsell recommendations.
“It’s been awesome to see Shopping Assistant guide customers through our technical product range without any human input. It’s a much smoother journey for the shopper,” says Nathan Larner, Customer Experience Advisor for Arc’teryx.
For Arc’teryx, that smoother customer journey translated into sales. The brand saw a 75% increase in conversion rate (from 4% to 7%) and 3.7% of overall revenue influenced by Shopping Assistant.

Because it follows shoppers’ live journey during each session on your website, Shopping Assistant catches shoppers in the moment. It answers questions or concerns that might normally halt a purchase, gets strategic with discounting (based on rules you set), and upsells.
The overall ROI can be significant. For example, bareMinerals saw an 8.83x return on investment.
"The real-time Shopify integration was essential as we needed to ensure that product recommendations were relevant and displayed accurate inventory,” says Katia Komar, Sr. Manager of Ecommerce and Customer Service Operations, UK at bareMinerals.
“Avoiding customer frustration from out-of-stock recommendations was non-negotiable, especially in beauty, where shade availability is crucial to customer trust and satisfaction. This approach has led to increased CSAT on AI converted tickets."

Shopping Assistant can impact CSAT scores, response times, resolution rates, AOV, and GMV.
For Caitlyn Minimalist, those metrics were an 11.3% uplift in AOV, an 18% click through rate for product recommendations, and a 50% sales lift versus human-only chats.
"Shopping Assistant has become an intuitive extension of our team, offering product guidance that feels personal and intentional,” says Anthony Ponce, its Head of Customer Experience.

Support agents have limited time to assist customers as it is, so taking advantage of sales opportunities can be difficult. Shopping Assistant takes over that role, removing obstacles for purchase or clearing up the right choice among a stacked product catalog.
With a product that’s not yet mainstream in the US, TUSHY leverages Shopping Assistant for product education and clarification.
"Shopping Assistant has been a game-changer for our team, especially with the launch of our latest bidet models,” says Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Sr. Director of Customer Experience at TUSHY.
“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.”
The bidet brand saw 13x return on investment after implementation, a 15% increase in chat conversion rate, and a 2x higher conversion rate for AI conversations versus human ones.

Customer support metrics include:
Revenue metrics to track include:
Shopping Assistant connects to your ecommerce platform (like Shopify), and streamlines information between your helpdesk and order data. It’s also trained on your catalog and support history.
Allow your agents to focus on support and sell more by tackling questions that are getting in the way of sales.
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TL;DR:
While most ecommerce brands debate whether to implement AI support, customers already rate AI assistance nearly as highly as human support. The future isn't coming. It's being built in real-time by brands paying attention.
As a conversational commerce platform processing millions of support tickets across thousands of brands, we see what's working before it becomes common knowledge. Three major shifts are converging faster than most founders realize, and this article breaks down what's already happening rather than what might happen someday.
By the end of 2026, we predict that the performance gap between ecommerce brands won't be determined by who adopted AI first. It will be determined by who built the content foundation that makes AI actually work.
Right now, we're watching this split happen in real time. AI can only be as good as the knowledge base it draws from. When we analyze why AI escalates tickets to human agents, the pattern is unmistakable.
The five topics triggering the most AI escalations are:
These aren’t complicated questions — they're routine questions every ecommerce brand faces daily. Yet some brands automate these at 60%+ rates while others plateau at 20%. The difference isn't better AI. It's better documentation.
Take SuitShop, a formalwear brand that reached 30% automation with a lean CX team. Their Director of Customer Experience, Katy Eriks, treats AI like a team member who needs coaching, not a plug-and-play tool.
When Katy first turned on AI in August 2023, the results were underwhelming. So she paused during their slow season and rebuilt their Help Center from the ground up. "I went back to the tickets I had to answer myself, checked what people were searching in the Help Center, and filled in the gaps," she explained.
The brands achieving high automation rates share Katie's approach:
AI echoes whatever foundation you provide. Clear documentation becomes instant, accurate support. Vague policies become confused AI that defaults to human escalation.
Read more: Coach AI Agent in one hour a week: SuitShop’s guide
Two distinct groups will emerge next year. Brands that invest in documentation quality now will deliver consistently better experiences at lower costs. Those who try to deploy AI on top of messy operations will hit automation plateaus and rising support costs. Every brand will eventually have access to similar AI technology. The competitive advantage will belong to those who did the unexciting work first.
Something shifted in July 2025. Gorgias’s AI accuracy jumped significantly after the GPT-5 release. For the first time, CX teams stopped second-guessing every AI response. We watched brand confidence in AI-generated responses rise from 57% to 85% in just a few months.
What this means in practice is that AI now outperforms human agents:
For the first time, AI isn't just faster than humans. It's more consistent, more accurate, and even more empathetic at scale.
This isn't about replacing humans. It's about what becomes possible when you free your team from repetitive work. Customer expectations are being reset by whoever responds fastest and most completely, and the brands crossing this threshold first are creating a competitive moat.
At Gorgias, the most telling signal was AI CSAT on chat improved 40% faster than on email this year. In other words, customers are beginning to prefer AI for certain interactions because it's immediate and complete.
Within the next year, we expect the satisfaction gap to hit zero for transactional support. The question isn't whether AI can match humans. It's what you'll do with your human agents once it does.
The brands that have always known support should drive revenue will finally have the infrastructure to make it happen on a bigger scale. AI removes the constraint that's held this strategy back: human bandwidth.
Most ecommerce leaders already understand that support conversations are sales opportunities. Product questions, sizing concerns, and “just browsing” chats are all chances to recommend, upsell, and convert. The problem wasn't awareness but execution at volume.
We analyzed revenue impact across brands using AI-powered product recommendations in support conversations. The results speak for themselves:
It's clear that conversations that weave in product recommendations convert at higher rates and result in larger order values. It’s time to treat support conversations as active buying conversations.
If you're already training support teams on product knowledge and tracking revenue per conversation, keep doing exactly what you're doing. You've been ahead of the curve. Now AI gives you the infrastructure to scale those same practices without the cost increase.
If you've been treating support purely as a cost center, start measuring revenue influence now. Track which conversations lead to purchases, which agents naturally upsell, and where customers ask for product guidance.
We are now past the point where response time is a brand's key differentiator. It is now the use of conversational commerce or systems that share details and context across every touchpoint.
Today, a typical customer journey looks something like this: see product on Instagram, ask a question via DM, complete purchase on mobile, track order via email. At each step, customers expect you to remember everything from the last interaction.
The most successful ecommerce tech stacks treat the helpdesk as the foundation that connects everything else. When your support platform connects to your ecommerce platform, shipping providers, returns portal, and every customer communication channel, context flows automatically.
A modern integration approach looks like this. Your ecommerce platform (like Shopify) feeds order data into a helpdesk like Gorgias, which becomes the hub for all customer conversations across email, chat, SMS, and social DMs. From there, connections branch out to payment providers, shipping carriers, and marketing automation tools.
As Dr. Bronner’s Senior CX Manager noted, “While Salesforce needed heavy development, Gorgias connected to our entire stack with just a few clicks. Our team can now manage workflows without needing custom development — we save $100k/year by switching."
As new channels emerge, brands with flexible tech stacks will adapt quickly while those with static systems will need months of development work to support new touchpoints. The winners will be brands that invest in their tools before adding new channels, not after customer complaints force their hand.
Start auditing your current integrations now. Where does customer data get stuck? Which systems don’t connect to each other? These gaps are costing you more than you realize, and in the future, they'll be the key to scaling or staying stagnant.
Post-purchase support quality will be a stronger predictor of customer lifetime value than any email campaign. Brands that treat support as a retention investment rather than a cost center will outperform in repeat purchase rates.
Returns and exchanges are make-or-break moments for customer lifetime value. How you handle problems, delays, and disappointments determines whether customers come back or shop elsewhere next time. According to Narvar, 96% of customers say they won’t repurchase from a brand after a poor return experience.
What customers expect reflects this reality. They want proactive shipping updates without having to ask, one-click returns with instant label generation, and notifications about problems before they have to reach out. When something goes wrong, they expect you to tell them first, not make them track you down for answers.
The quality of your response when things go wrong matters more than getting everything right the first time. Exchange suggestions during the return flow can keep the sale alive, turning a potential loss into loyalty.
Brands that treat post-purchase as a retention strategy rather than a task to cross off will see much higher repeat purchase rates. Those still relying purely on email marketing for retention will wonder why their customer lifetime value plateaus.
Start measuring post-return CSAT scores and repeat purchase rates by support interaction quality. These metrics will tell you whether your post-purchase experience is building loyalty or quietly eroding it.
After absorbing these predictions about AI accuracy, content infrastructure, revenue-centric support, context, and post-purchase tactics, here's your roadmap for the next 24 months.
Now (in 90 days):
Next (in 6-12 months):
Watch (in 12-24 months):
The patterns we've shared, from AI crossing the accuracy threshold to documentation quality, are happening right now across thousands of brands. Over the next 24 months, teams will be separated by operational maturity.
Book a demo to see how leading brands are already there.
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TL;DR:
Ecommerce brands are under pressure to convert more shoppers, but relying only on AI or human agents can lead to missed sales opportunities. While 34% feel that the use of AI improved their customer experience, according to Statista, 27% feel it hasn’t made a difference — suggesting that AI alone isn’t always the answer.
It’s true that AI speeds up responses and personalizes interactions at scale, while human agents build trust and close complex deals. But the solution isn't to choose one over the other.
This article will evaluate the strengths of both AI and human agents, offering insights to help you optimize and scale your pre-sale strategies using a hybrid AI-human intelligence approach.
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Using AI and human support agents together in a hybrid approach will directly impact your success as a brand. It allows you to:
Reducing customer effort is one of the key ways to spark delight and satisfaction from customer interactions. The more stress-free and simple you can make navigating the shopping experience, the better.
AI comes in handy here in many ways, like:
All of these traits combined make a much easier experience for customers and an efficient, streamlined process for the brand. When agents aren’t bogged down with questions like these, they can focus on high-touch situations.
Pre-sales support moves the needle by answering crucial customer questions that might be blocking a purchase. Tools like Shopping Assistant make a world of difference on your store’s website. A part of AI Agent, Shopping Assistant has a 75% higher conversion rate than human agents, on average.
Here’s an example of what it looks like from bidet company TUSHY:

AI understands a shopper’s journey by tracking key behavioral signals: products and pages viewed, purchase history, and cart data.
The floating query bar transforms product search into a seamless conversation, eliminating the need for clicks, filters, or endless navigation. It allows customers to find what they're looking for through natural conversation with the Shopping Assistant—wherever they are on your site.
Because AI tracks this information, it can personalize interactions based on the signals above. It does this by asking clarifying questions and remembering previous interactions in the same session.
This type of proactive support actually leads to more sales: it garnered almost 10k in revenue for jewelry shop Caitlyn Minimalist.
”Customers interact with the Shopping Assistant like they would a customer service rep—it’s a two-way conversation where they answer questions and get personalized product recommendations,” says Gabi, Customer Service Lead at Caitlyn Minimalist.
That success was similar for beauty shop Glamnetic.
“An instant response builds confidence,” says Mia Chapa, its Sr. Director of Customer Experience.
“We live in a world with short attention spans, so customers appreciate how quickly we can respond to their inquiries.”

Quality assurance in CX is the process of ensuring that each customer interaction fits a specified list of criteria (communication, resolution completeness, attitude, etc.).
While this process has largely been a manual and time-consuming one, AI changes that for support teams.
AI-powered QA can actually review all tickets, is a scalable solution, is more consistent in its review process, saves time, and even provides instant agent feedback.
Manual QA, on the other hand, is a time-consuming and slow process, and often means feedback is delayed until leaders have the chance to review tickets. Even once they get to QA, there's a limit to how many tickets they can review in a given time frame.
Feature spotlight: Meet Auto QA: Quality checks are here to stay
AI can even make product recommendations for shoppers. These recommendations are based on browsing actions like if they repeatedly view the same pages and check return and shipping policies. It also tracks their entire behavior across your store: products and pages viewed, purchase history, cart data, and cart abandonment data.
Caitlyn Minimalist achieved incredible outcomes by leveraging AI for personalized recommendations:
“We've always based our customer service on a patient, empathetic point of view because a lot of people purchase for important moments in their lives—weddings, deaths, graduations. People are gifting in response to big life moments, so we need the Shopping Assistant to really listen to our customer’s situation and support them,” says Michael Holcombe, Co-owner and Director of Operations at Caitlyn Minimalist.
Shopping Assistant can also handle objections and offer discounts, if price is what’s stopping customers from completing a purchase.

We’re not talking about reducing headcount. AI just supports agents in being able to handle their core responsibilities better. For example, mybacs was able to double the number of tickets they resolved without adding a single person to the team.
“This isn’t a matter of eliminating jobs, but giving our employees their primary jobs back," says Luke Wronski, CEO of RiG’d Supply. “Our hope is to have AI give us the time back to have a conversation with you about the stuff that keeps us stoked to do what we do.”
Aside from saving money on hiring additional human agents, AI helps your support team reduce costs in other ways.
For Dr. Bronners, that meant 4 days per month in team time-savings by handling routine inquiries efficiently, and $100,000 saved per year by switching from Salesforce to Gorgias.
Gorgias is hands down the best AI tool—not just for CX, but also for teams like web, ecommerce, and marketing. And our customers couldn’t agree more.
“We were hesitant at first, but AI Agent has really picked up on our brand’s voice. We’ve had feedback from customers who didn’t even realize they were talking to an AI,” says Lynsay Schrader, Lab and Customer Service Senior Manager at Jonas Paul Eyewear.
Here’s a complete rundown of how Gorgias AI Agent bridges gaps in customer experience:
|
Pain Point |
AI Agent |
|---|---|
|
Limited working hours |
Operates 24/7 so customers don’t have to wait for a response. |
|
Juggling multiple conversations at once |
Can chat with as many customers as needed, and even remembers details within the same conversation. |
|
Answering repetitive questions |
Resolves frequently asked questions in seconds, freeing agents to focus on more complex requests. |
|
Limited time/lack of opportunity to provide proactive support |
Suggests solutions before customers encounter problems, uses advanced analytics to assess shopper intent, and adjusts strategies to nudge customers toward the checkout. |
|
Engaging customers with personalized messages |
Uses AI-powered intent scoring that evaluates user behavior, engagement, and responses in real-time to tailor responses, and sales strategy, and predict purchase likelihood. |
|
Using on-brand language across the team |
Consistently speaks in your brand’s tone of voice using Guidance and internal documents. |
|
Not enough time to focus on sales |
Engages customers with conversation starters, overcomes sales objections with recommendations, and guides users to purchase decisions with context-aware communication. |
A hybrid human and AI Agent approach is the best way to level up your customer support operations and sales strategy.
Book a demo with us to see the power of AI Agent.
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TL;DR:
As a CX manager, your reporting is your strategic advantage. It's how you prove your team's value, identify emerging trends, and determine exactly what decisions to make.
But when creating those reports becomes time-consuming? That's when insights get buried.
With Gorgias Dashboards, you can build CX reports rooted in your business goals. Unlike standard reports, these customizable dashboards allow you to mix and match over 70 metrics and KPIs, so you can track progress on efforts like reducing your ticket backlog, boosting automation rate, and more.
In this post, we’ll tell you why CX reporting matters, how to set up Dashboards in Gorgias, and show you seven different ways to customize them based on your business needs.
With 70+ charts and metrics to choose from, there are endless ways to style your dashboard. To make it easier for you, we’ve put together seven dashboards for specific use cases.
Let’s start with the basics. This is an all-in-one dashboard for a high-level overview of support and agent performance.
Recommended metrics to track:

Trying to bump up your CSAT score? This dashboard will help you improve customer satisfaction by keeping metrics related to response time and customer sentiment in your line of sight.
Recommended metrics to track:
Make sure to add a filter for customer satisfaction scores of 1-2 stars to dig into the reasons for low scores. Go to Add Filter > Satisfaction score > check 1 and 2 stars, as shown below:

What to look out for:

Peak seasons are the ultimate test of how robust your customer support organizational structure is, and nowhere is it more obvious than in your chat tickets. Without well-trained agents and proper automations in place, it’s easy to drown. Here’s a dashboard to keep up with chat inquiries.
Recommended metrics to track:
Don’t forget to toggle the filter for the chat channel by clicking Add Filter > Channel > Chat.

What to look out for:
Maybe you’re in this rut: You’ve established your SLAs (service level agreements), but your team is struggling to meet them. What now?
Go back to the data. With this SLA compliance dashboard, you can look at exactly how many tickets have breached or achieved SLAs while monitoring agent performance. This dashboard is ideal for brands that provide warranties and/or limited-time return windows.
Recommended metrics to track:
You may find that breached SLAs are caused by certain topics (like refunds) or channels (like social media). Dive deeper by adding a filter for contact reason and channel. Click Add Filter > Contact Reason / Channel.

What to look out for:
Constant returns and refund requests are issues you want to address immediately. Looking at return reasons per customer is inefficient. Instead, get the bigger picture with a dashboard that highlights customer sentiment and product data.
Recommended metrics to track:
Pro Tip: This dashboard works best if you have a Ticket Field for Contact Reason and Return as a Contact Reason. Then you can add a filter for return-related tickets by clicking Add Filter > Contact Reasons > Return.

What to look out for:
Related: 12 ways to upgrade your data and trend analysis with Ticket Fields
From food and beverage to skincare brands, product quality is central to your success. Use this dashboard to keep an eye on how customers feel about your products, then use the data to implement changes customers actually want.
Recommended metrics to track:
You can analyze specific customer sentiments (like tickets that only say “too salty”) by applying a filter. For example, you would click Add Filter > Ticket Field Filters > Flavor > Too Salty.

What to look out for:
More and more customers are using social media apps to shop — in fact, the global social commerce market is projected to grow by 31.6% each year through 2030. The best way to give browsers a good first impression of your brand is by prioritizing social media support.
Recommended metrics to track:
Don’t forget to apply a filter for your social media platforms by clicking Add Filter > Channel > Facebook / Instagram / TikTok Shop.

What to look out for:
You can create up to 10 dashboards. Here’s how to create a new dashboard:
Try it for yourself with our interactive tutorial:
With Gorgias Dashboards, CX managers have full control over their reporting.
By tracking the right KPIs and customizing dashboards based on goals, your team can set the standard for flawless customer support.
Find out the power of custom dashboards in Gorgias. Book a demo now.
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TL;DR:
AI is everywhere in customer service—powering live chats, drafting responses, and handling inquiries faster than ever.
But as AI takes on more of the customer experience, one question keeps coming up: Should brands tell customers when they’re talking to AI?
Legally, the answer depends on where you operate. Ethically? That’s where things get interesting. Some argue that transparency builds trust. Others worry it might undermine confidence in support interactions.
So, what’s the right move?
This guide breaks down the debate and gives CX leaders a framework to decide when (and how) to disclose AI—so you can strike the right balance between innovation and trust.
Depending on where your business operates, disclosure laws may be strict, vague, or nonexistent. Some laws, such as the California Bolstering Online Transparency Act, prohibit misleading consumers about the use of automated artificial identities.
For maximum legal protection, it’s best to proactively disclose AI use—even when not explicitly required.
A simple disclaimer can go a long way in avoiding legal headaches down the line. Here’s how to disclose AI use in customer interactions:
Truthfully, AI laws are evolving fast. That’s why we recommend consulting legal counsel to ensure your disclosure practices align with the latest requirements in your region.
But beyond avoiding legal trouble, transparency around AI usage can reinforce customer trust. If customers feel deceived, they may question the reliability of your brand, even if the AI delivers great service.
Related reading: How AI Agent works & gathers data
Research shows that 85% of consumers want companies to share AI assurance practices before bringing AI-driven products and experiences to market.
But what does “transparency” actually mean in this context? An article in Forbes broke it down, explaining that customers expect three key things:
How you disclose AI matters just as much as whether you disclose it. At the end of the day, AI isn’t inherently good or bad—it’s all about how it’s implemented and trained.
The way a brand approaches AI disclosure can impact trust, satisfaction, and even conversion rates—making it a decision that goes beyond simple legal requirements.
While some customers appreciate honesty, others may hesitate if they prefer human support. Brands must weigh the pros and cons to determine the best approach for their audience.
Let’s be honest: AI in customer service still carries baggage. While some consumers embrace AI-driven support, others hear "AI" and immediately picture frustrating, robotic chatbots that can’t understand their questions.
This is one of the biggest risks of transparency: customers who’ve had bad AI experiences in the past may assume the worst and disengage the moment they realize they’re not speaking to a human.
For brands that thrive on personal connection and high-touch service, openly stating that AI is involved could create skepticism or drop-off rates before customers even give it a chance.
Another challenge? The perception gap.
Even if AI is handling inquiries smoothly, some customers may assume it lacks the empathy, nuance, or problem-solving skills of a live agent. Certain industries may find that transparency about AI use leads to more escalations, not fewer, simply because customers expect a human touch.
Despite the risks, transparency about AI can actually be a trust-building strategy when handled correctly.
Customers who value openness and ethical business practices tend to appreciate brands that don’t try to disguise AI as a human.
Being upfront also manages expectations. If a customer knows they’re speaking to AI, they’re less likely to feel misled or frustrated if they encounter a limitation. Instead of feeling like they were "tricked" into thinking they were talking to a human, they enter the conversation with the right mindset—often leading to higher satisfaction rates.
And then there’s the long-term brand impact.
If customers eventually realize (through phrasing, tone, or inconsistencies) that they weren’t speaking with a human when they thought they were, it can erode trust.
Deception—whether intentional or not—can backfire. Proactively disclosing AI use prevents backlash and reinforces credibility, especially as AI becomes a bigger part of the customer experience.
Arcade Belts, known for its high-quality belts, wanted to improve efficiency without compromising customer experience. By implementing Gorgias Automate, they reduced their reliance on manual support, creating self-service flows to handle common inquiries.

Initially, automation helped manage routine questions, such as product recommendations and shipping policies. But when they integrated Gorgias AI Agent, they cut their ticket volume in half.
The transition was so seamless that customers often couldn’t tell they were interacting with AI. “Getting tickets down to just a handful a day has been awesome,” shares Grant, Ecommerce Coordinator at Arcade Belts. ”A lot of times, I'll receive the response, ‘Wow, I didn't know that was AI.”
You can read more about how they’re using AI Agent here.
We mentioned it earlier, but deciding whether or not to disclose your use of AI in customer support depends on compliance, customer expectations, and business goals. That said, this four-part framework helps CX leaders evaluate the right approach for their brand:
Before making any decisions, ensure your brand is compliant with AI transparency regulations.
AI transparency should align with your brand’s values and customer experience strategy.
Rather than making assumptions, run controlled tests to see how AI disclosure affects customer satisfaction.
AI strategies shouldn’t be static. As customer preferences and AI capabilities evolve, brands should refine their approach accordingly.
If you decide to be transparent about AI in customer interactions, how you communicate it is just as important as the disclosure itself. Let’s talk about how to get it right and make AI work with your customer experience, not against it.
AI doesn’t have to sound like a corporate FAQ page. Giving it a personality that aligns with your brand makes interactions feel natural and engaging. Whether it’s playful, professional, or ultra-efficient, the way AI speaks should feel like a natural extension of your team, not an out-of-place add-on.
Instead of:
"I am an automated assistant. How may I assist you?"
Try something on-brand:
"Hey there! I’m your AI assistant, here to help—ask me anything!"
A small tweak in tone can make AI feel more human while still keeping transparency front and center.

Read more: AI tone of voice: Tips for on-brand customer communication
One of the biggest mistakes brands make? Leaving customers guessing whether they’re speaking to AI or a human. That uncertainty leads to frustration and distrust.
Instead, be clear about what AI can and can’t do. If it’s handling routine questions, product recommendations, or order tracking, say so. If complex issues will be escalated to a human agent, let customers know upfront.
Framing matters. Instead of making AI sound like a replacement, position it as a helpful extension of your support team—one that speeds up resolutions, but hands off conversations when needed.
Even the best AI has limits—and customers know it. Nothing is more frustrating than a bot endlessly looping through scripted responses when a customer just needs a real person to step in.
AI should be the first line of defense, but human agents should always be an option, especially for high-stakes or emotionally charged interactions.
A smooth handoff can sound like:
"Looks like this one needs a human touch! Connecting you with a support expert now."
AI disclosure doesn’t have to feel like an apology. Instead of focusing on limitations, highlight the benefits AI brings to the experience:
It’s the difference between:
"This is an AI agent. A human will follow up later."
vs.
"I’m your AI assistant! I can answer most questions instantly—but if you need extra help, I’ll connect you with a team member ASAP."
The right framing makes AI feel like an advantage, not a compromise.
AI perception isn’t static. Regularly analyzing sentiment data and customer feedback can help refine AI messaging over time—whether that means adjusting tone, improving explanations, or updating how AI is introduced.
When you follow these best practices, AI can be a real gamechanger for your customer support. Just take it from Jonas Paul…
Jonas Paul Eyewear, a direct-to-consumer brand specializing in kids' eyewear, needed a way to manage high volumes of tickets during the back-to-school season without overwhelming their customer care team.

To streamline these conversations, Jonas Paul implemented AI Agent to provide instant responses to FAQs. This allowed human agents to focus on more complex cases that required personalized attention.
“Being able to automate responses for things like prescription details and return policies has allowed us to focus more on the nuanced questions that require more time and care. It’s been a game changer for our team,” said Lynsay Schrader, Lab and Customer Service Senior Manager and Jonas Paul.
Jonas Paul saw a 96% decrease in First Response Time and a 2x ROI on Gorgias AI Agent with influenced revenue. You can dive in more here.
Whether or not your brand chooses to disclose AI in customer interactions, the key is to ensure AI enhances the customer experience without compromising transparency, accuracy, or brand identity.
So how can you get started? Gorgias AI Agent was built with both effectiveness and transparency in mind.
For every interaction, AI Agent provides an internal note detailing:
Excited to see how AI Agent can transform your brand? Book a demo.
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TL;DR:
The AI revolution in ecommerce customer support is already here. 77% of service teams are already using AI, and 92% say it improves time to resolution.
Brands that embrace AI can improve efficiency, scale faster, and deliver better customer experiences.
But what does that look like in practice?
In a recent Grow Your Business in 2025 with Conversational AI webinar, Kevin Gould, co-founder of Glamnetic, and Zoe Kahn, owner of Inevitable Agency & former VP of Retention and CX at Audien Hearing, shared how their teams use Gorgias AI Agent to streamline support, reduce workloads, and convert more shoppers into customers.
For them, AI isn’t just hype, it’s delivering real results—and Kevin and Zoe have seen it firsthand.
Ahead, we’ll break down Kevin and Zoe’s firsthand experiences, covering:
Watch the full webinar replay here:
As ecommerce brands grow, so does the demand for fast, high-quality customer support. But hiring and training more agents isn’t always scalable—especially when a significant portion of support tickets are repetitive, like “Where’s my order?” or “How long does shipping take?”
That’s where AI comes in. Instead of bogging down human agents with routine questions, AI-powered support can handle high ticket volumes instantly, freeing up CX teams to focus on complex issues, relationship-building, and revenue-generating conversations.
Both Glamnetic and Audien Hearing have seen firsthand how AI can transform CX. Glamnetic reduced manual responses by 15,000–16,000 tickets, while Audien Hearing saw AI outperform some human agents in both response speed and upselling.
Related reading: How to build an effective AI-driven customer support strategy
As Glamnetic scaled, so did its customer support workload. Managing tens of thousands of tickets while maintaining fast, high-quality support became a challenge. Many of the inquiries Glamnetic receives are repetitive––think order updates, shipping questions, and product details.
The brand needed a way to streamline responses without losing the personal touch.
Here’s what made the difference: Glamnetic used AI Agent to automate responses for thousands of tickets, allowing human agents to focus on higher-value interactions that drive customer loyalty and sales.
Kevin Gould, co-founder of Glamnetic, was excited about infusing AI across the entire business. “CX felt like the first natural extension. A big part of that was [Gorgias] pushing us into it pretty quickly. We saw early on that AI could be a force multiplier for the business."

The results speak for themselves:
Read more: How Glamnetic uses AI Agent to handle 40% of Support Volume with "mind-blowing" results
"What’s really interesting is that AI handled 24% of tickets across the entire year…Now, we’ve gotten much smarter about how we deploy AI for revenue generation, and it’s been highly impactful. It’s well worth your time to deploy this across your company." —Kevin Gould, Co-founder, Glamnetic
Scaling customer support while keeping costs in check is a challenge for any fast-growing ecommerce brand—especially one focused on retention and long-term customer relationships.
For Audien Hearing, this meant managing a team of over 80 support agents while ensuring that every interaction added value to the customer experience.
Rather than endlessly hiring more agents, Audien Hearing turned to AI to optimize. AI Agent helped them handle high ticket volumes faster, without sacrificing quality. With AI handling routine inquiries, their team was able to focus on higher-value conversations that drove long-term growth.
Zoe Kahn, former VP of Retention & CX, notes the importance of efficiency when managing large teams, “Once you reach that scale, you have to figure out how to be efficient and adapt to the right tools. AI helped us a lot. That said, it’s not a magic button. It takes training and adjustment. Adopting AI with Gorgias has allowed our team to focus on the tasks that truly need a human touch."
The impact was undeniable:

Read more: How Audien Hearing increased efficiency for 75 agents and reduced product returns by 5%
"[AI Agent] ended up being one of our fastest agents—answering the most tickets and driving the most revenue. 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." —Zoe Kahn, former VP of Retention & CX, Audien Hearing
AI in customer support still raises eyebrows. Some brands worry about losing the human touch, while others fear AI will replace agents rather than support them.
Even Zoe Kahn was initially skeptical about AI’s role in customer experience:
"I wasn't fully convinced at first—I wanted humans talking to my customers. But as soon as I saw it working well, and just as great as some of my agents, if not even better because of faster responses, and we're having agents train it... it's much easier now with a bunch of wins.”
What changed? Seeing AI in action—handling repetitive, time-consuming tasks like order tracking and FAQs, while human agents focused on complex cases, upselling, and retention.
For Kevin Gould, AI wasn’t brought in to cut costs but to help the CX team work smarter, not harder:
“We try to think a lot about how to work smarter, not harder. On one end of the spectrum, there's a lot of tedious, repetitive emails that can be automated right off the jump. Then as you move up the stack, from servicing up to generating revenue, it starts to get really interesting. If our ultimate goal is to provide customers with the best experience possible, then why not free up our agents from tedious tasks and double down on the things that push us towards that goal?”
The key takeaway? AI isn’t automation just for the sake of automation. It’s for scaling smarter and freeing up CX teams to have the right conversations at the right time.
Related reading: How to automate half of your CX tasks
AI in ecommerce customer support started as a cost-saving tool and is now proving to be a revenue driver. Looking ahead to 2025, AI’s role in personalization, proactive selling, and marketing integration will only grow.
For Zoe Kahn, the future of AI involves building stronger customer relationships:
"Take time to create community with your customers. Have the ability to think not only about revenue driving but also customer retention. Every time you have an opportunity to talk to a customer, take it. If teams don't have that time that could be freed up from training an AI agent, we see them rushing through replies that could really ruin their relationships with customers."
This shift toward AI-powered personalization is something Kevin Gould is already seeing in action. He predicts AI will become a key player in conversational selling, guiding customers to the right products at the right time:
"Eventually, we'll get to a place where AI is going to become a great recommendation engine. If we sell press-on nails, and a consumer has bought a few different styles in the past, AI can quickly pivot into conversational selling."
Beyond support, Kevin also believes that AI is blurring the lines between CX and marketing. As brands gain deeper insights into customer behavior, AI-powered support will help fuel marketing campaigns, drive retention, and create highly personalized experiences:
"If I asked [my support agent] how she sees her job, she’d say it started four years ago as customer service, then evolved into customer experience. Over time, different layers of customer experience emerged to the point where it's now an integrated marketing role.
She's collaborating closely with marketing specialists—growth marketing, brand marketing, and more. At this point, this role is almost like an extension of the marketing team...It requires a balanced mindset that blends marketing expertise with a deep understanding of customer experience to be successful."
Related reading: 6 ways to increase conversions by 6%+ with onsite campaigns
In 2025, AI will go beyond responding to customers. It will anticipate their needs, personalize their journey, and turn support into a revenue-generating powerhouse.
As Kevin Gould and Zoe Kahn shared, brands that embrace AI free up their teams to focus on high-impact conversations that build loyalty and boost sales.
From Glamnetic reducing 15,000+ manual responses to Audien Hearing’s AI-powered revenue wins, the results speak for themselves. AI helps brands personalize support, engage customers in real-time, and even drive conversational selling.
Ready to see how many routine tickets you could automate? Book a demo to see AI Agent in action.
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TL;DR:
Customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) have long been the go-to metric for measuring support quality, with 53% of customer experience leads relying on them. However, CSAT only tells you part of the story.
When customers rate their experience 3 out of 5, what does it really mean? Did they rate the agent’s actions or the company’s policies? Was an agent helpful or inefficient? Did they take unnecessary steps to get to the answer?
Quality assurance checks can fill these gaps, but manual QA is a heavy lift. Team leads often struggle to review more than a small sample of conversations, leaving many issues unchecked.
Auto QA redefines quality assurance for today’s support teams. It transforms QA from a manual task into an automated feedback engine that helps your team deliver excellent support, every single time.
Let's dive into how Auto QA works, how accurate its scoring is, and how you can add it to your support workflow to start improving customer conversations today.
Gorgias Auto QA upgrades the customer service QA process by automatically evaluating 100% of private text conversations, whether handled by a human or AI Agent.
Each message is scored on metrics like Resolution Completeness, Brand Voice, and Accuracy, helping teams fix and address areas of improvement.
With an automated QA process, brands can:
Let's explore a real-life scenario: A customer reaches out about a product issue, seeking troubleshooting help. Here’s how the interaction unfolds:
Customer: "Hi, my device broke, and I bought it less than a month ago. -Kelly"
Support Agent: "Hi Kelly, please send us a photo or a video so we can determine the issue with your device. -Michael"
The ticket is eventually closed, but the customer doesn't leave a CSAT score.
In this case, Auto QA would provide the following insights:

Auto QA uses a comprehensive scoring system that evaluates conversations on communication proficiency and knowledge accuracy.
To ensure accuracy, Auto QA only scores interactions with at least 250 characters and messages from both agents and customers. It's also smart enough to filter out automated responses, spam, and bot messages.
Auto QA automatically scores three main aspects:
For deeper feedback, certain criteria require manual scoring from team leads:

Whether you're just starting with quality checks or transitioning from manual QA, Auto QA can seamlessly fit into your existing processes. Here's how to get started.
What does “good” look like for your team? Review Auto QA's scoring system and decide which metrics matter most for your brand, from Resolution Completeness to Brand Voice. This will help you set realistic targets for your team to work toward.
Tip: Start by prioritizing a couple of areas. This could look like prioritizing a 5/5 Resolution Completeness score while deprioritizing Brand Voice. As your team gets comfortable with Auto QA, you can ramp up to improving Brand Voice.
Since some criteria—Accuracy, Efficiency, Internal Compliance, and Brand Voice—require manual scoring, it’s best to agree on how your team will use the scoring scale.
For example, each score from 1 to 5 receives a distinct piece of feedback. Here’s what that would look for the Efficiency criteria:
Start rolling out Auto QA through individual meetings with agents rather than overwhelming your team with a general training session. One-on-one conversations allow you to better address each agent's specific questions and concerns. Make sure to cover the following:
If regular one-on-one meetings aren't part of your routine, consider introducing Auto QA during your weekly team meetings or through a dedicated training session. Just remember to leave plenty of time for questions and walk through multiple examples to ensure everyone is comfortable with the system.
To solidify QA checks, create a simple routine for reviewing Auto QA insights with the Auto QA Report (navigate to Statistics > Auto QA).

Once you’ve collected a substantial amount of Auto QA data, there are a few follow-up actions you can take to continue having high-quality conversations:
Remember, Auto QA works alongside your existing processes—it doesn't replace them. Start small, focus on the metrics that matter most to your team, and scale up as you get comfortable with Auto QA.
We invited leading ecommerce brands to beta test Auto QA, and their feedback highlights how it's transforming quality assurance across support teams of all sizes.
amika's support team values the complete visibility beyond CSAT: "Auto QA dramatically widens the volume of tickets we can review," they share. "A 5-point scale only tells you so much, and relying on consumers providing feedback limits what you're able to learn from."
Peachybbies' CX team enjoys real-time improvement: "Being able to give real-time feedback is pivotal, especially during peak times," their team explains. "Auto QA catches pretty much everything I'd want a human QA agent to catch."
OSEA Malibu's managers discovered operational insights: "It helps managers understand when a macro or process is leading to incomplete conversations versus when an agent made a mistake," their support lead shares.
By prioritizing QA, your team can identify potential problems early, reduce errors, and improve overall performance, leading to a smoother, more reliable experience for customers––and your CX team.
In the long run, brands focusing on QA can gain a competitive edge. Book a demo now to see what Auto QA can do for you.
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There are tons of CX metrics you could be tracking. But where you spend your time is crucial as a customer experience leader.
According to recent data, these are the top five CX metrics for you to prioritize and improve on in 2025.
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Not tracking CX metrics is like putting a loaf of bread in the oven but leaving baking time to chance. Without a set timer, you could end up with an underbaked bowl of dough or a burnt mess. Unless you have a sixth sense, it’s going to be really challenging to end up with something good.
In the same vein, metrics provide clear parameters for success. Meet or exceed them and your team is doing well; fall short and you’ll be better equipped to identify pain points and solve them.
Here are a few additional reasons why setting customer support metrics is key to success.
Tip : AI and automation can be valuable sidekicks as you look to optimize and improve on metrics. That’s especially true for busy periods: in 2024, 70% of CX leaders relied on AI and automation during peak seasons.

Customers are done with being patient. One study found that two thirds of respondents valued speed to reply just as much as product price.
A recent survey we ran found the same thing.
In our 2024 customer expectations survey, we asked CX leads and agents which metric they used to track success. Here’s what they said:
Resolution time is going to be a key differentiator for your team this year. It should be your primary focus when it comes to optimizing different facets of your customer service strategy.

Resolution time is the average time it takes to resolve a customer request from start to finish.
To calculate resolution time, you’ll take the total resolution time within a set period and divide it by the total number of customer interactions your team tackled within that same time frame.
Average resolution time = Total resolution time in a defined period / Total number of customer interactions resolved in that period
According to a 2023 study from Statista, 70% of support leaders noted that the customer support metrics that AI had the greatest positive effect on was resolution time.
You can use automation features to send Macros to answer common questions, or leverage AI to interact as an agent via email or chat. The instant nature of these tools means that customers won’t have to wait in a queue for your team to get to them.
For example, Wildride implemented Gorgias AI Agent to manage an influx of 1,000 tickets per week. After AI Agent took over 33% of email inquiries, the team saw a 24% decrease in resolution time. That allowed the team to focus on more complex issues, streamline their support process, and make their customers happier.
First response time is the length of time it takes for a customer service team to send the initial reply to a customer inquiry.
To calculate average first response time, take the total amount of time it took for your team to respond to initial customer requests and divide by the total number of tickets within a set time frame.
Your team is busy––when they’re not tackling repetitive questions, they’re helping customers with complicated or high-effort requests. All of that work is going to bog down your FRT, especially during more buzzy periods like sales, new releases, or over the holidays.
By using AI to jump in to handle those more routine requests, you can significantly reduce your FRT and give your team time back to tackle more heavy-lift needs.
For example, AI Agent helped Glamnetic achieve a 91% improvement in first response time during Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2024. They got FRT down from their pre-AI Agent time of eight minutes to 40 seconds.
Here’s what that looked like in practice:

CSAT scores show how satisfied customers are with a product, service, or interaction, typically gathered through surveys.
CSAT is calculated via a five-point rating scale survey sent to customers after a support interaction, where one is the worst experience and five is the best. While it can be calculated in different ways, at Gorgias the average of all survey responses is your CSAT score.
When customers reach out for support, they’re expecting a fast response––regardless if they have an issue or are contemplating their next purchase.
That’s why using automation or AI tools to provide that lightning quick response, even if it directs shoppers to a self-service resource, can be extremely effective in raising CSAT scores. These responses could be sent by an AI agent that responds like a human agent would or an automated Macro built to fire off pre-crafted templates to common questions.
In luxury golf brand VESSEL’s case, customers felt that the AI responses were helpful and seemed on-par with the level of support they’d expect from a human agent.
“Our customers expect almost immediate responses, and so being able to automate that, even if it's not necessarily the exact answer that they're looking for, but being able to send over information to give them the reassurance that we're looking into it or trying to find an answer, whatever it may be, that's been a huge help to our team,” says Lauren Reams, the Customer Experience Manager at VESSEL.
The direct or indirect effect of customer service or business activities on generating sales or revenue.
There are different ways to calculate revenue generated and the sales impact of customer support, and quantifying the indirect impact can be difficult. But generally, the formula looks like this:
ROI = [ (Money earned - Money spent) / Money spent ] x 100
Resource: How to measure & improve customer service ROI
Leveraging AI and automation can provide significant cost savings because it acts as an additional agent who can tackle repetitive questions, translating to money saved on the time it would take for human agents to manually answer those questions.
The results are tangible: by automating 48% of inquiries, Dr. Bronner's saved $5,248 in the first month, and $100K in the first year.
Jonas Paul Eyewear saw revenue influenced by AI Agent as well: the team tracked $600 of sales revenue directly to the tool after it effectively answered pre-sales support questions from shoppers.

Ticket volume is the total number of customer service inquiries that a team receives over a specific period of time.
The customer support tool you use will be able to calculate ticket volume for you, as it’s the total number of tickets that have come in within a set amount of time. If you don’t use a CX platform yet and are still using something like Gmail or Excel, you’ll perform this count manually.
Set rules to trigger automated responses to common questions, or ask an AI agent to completely take them off your team’s plate.
Arcade Belts, for example, saw a 50% reduction in ticket volume by using Gorgias AI Agent.
Tracking CX metrics is valuable for more than just gauging your program's effectiveness. The more you improve upon your CX metrics, the more you can leverage them to prove your support function’s value within your company.
How to use metrics to evaluate AI performanceIf you want to transform customer experience for the long term, the AI tools you use should never be “set it and forget it” solutions. Just as you do with your human agents, you can use metrics to evaluate your AI agent to make sure it’s performing well. If you use Gorgias, you’ll find these metrics under the AI Agent dashboard.
To review AI Agent’s performance:


It’s also easy to retrain your AI's performance by adjusting settings like Guidance, refining the internal documents it draws from, setting up brand voice, or creating a Handover topic list to escalate certain types of tickets to human agents.
Whether you’re new to being a CX leader or you’re a seasoned pro, tracking and improving on your CX metrics will help your team stand out among the rest. A key way to improve them is to leverage AI and Automation tools, and Gorgias is here to help you do it.
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TL;DR:
It’s clear that shoppers want answers fast—chat accounts for 20% of all customer support tickets.
The appeal is obvious: Chat is an easy-to-access customer service channel for quick questions and a convenient and subtle way to cross-sell complementary products.
But without the right chat tool, brands risk losing these valuable opportunities.
Introducing AI Agent on Chat, a conversational AI assistant that can automate up to 50% of chat conversations. This new feature upgrades chat by combining agent knowledge with superhuman efficiency and response times.
Now, customers can guarantee personalized interactions at any point of the shopping journey—whether they’re looking for a quick answer or a tailored recommendation.
With AI powering every interaction, one-to-one conversations become a seamless part of every customer experience.
Before AI Agent, customers reaching out through chat outside business hours had two options: following pre-set Flows (automated FAQ conversations) or browsing through suggested Help Center articles.
These features are great for quick answers to basic questions, but AI Agent takes support to the next level by handling more complex needs like modifying orders or offering personalized product recommendations.
With AI Agent in Chat, customers enjoy dynamic, real-time conversations available on multiple channels. AI Agent generates personalized responses that match exactly what customers ask for, automating 50% of chat interactions so agents get time back to upsell, create stronger relationships, and craft better experiences.
Related: How to optimize your Help Center for AI Agent
Upgrade your chat support from a basic Q&A tool into an intelligent assistant that handles customer inquiries 24/7. Here's how AI Agent makes that possible:
AI Agent responds within 15 seconds or less, offering fast responses that result in frictionless conversations. Unlike traditional chatbots, AI Agent also adapts to your brand’s unique tone of voice to enhance the customer experience and assure shoppers their questions will be taken care of.

Today’s shoppers expect instant responses regardless of time zone or business hours. AI Agent on Chat means customers get the help they need, when they need it. This availability leads to higher customer satisfaction and fewer abandoned carts.
AI Agent understands context and customer intent. Whether a shopper needs help finding the right product size or changes their mind and wants to compare features, AI Agent customizes its recommendations for each person.
Some conversations, like technical issues or complaints, need a human touch. AI Agent recognizes these situations and smoothly transfers them to the right agent.
Using Handover topics, you can choose which types of inquiries should go straight to human agents. Then, if AI Agent lacks the confidence to provide an answer or can’t locate relevant knowledge in its database, it automatically escalates the conversation.
Read more: Handover rules
Based on Hiver’s 2024 study, 62% of customers prefer live chat to other support channels. With AI Agent in Chat, agents can cut down average response times while customers get the answers they need in one conversation with zero wait times or follow-ups.
AI Agent on Chat is ready to use in a few clicks. Simply connect your Shopify store and Chat widget to AI Agent, and you’re ready to resolve questions asked by visitors and loyal customers faster than you ever have.
Chat is often a customer’s first touchpoint with your brand, whether they’ve just discovered your brand or are on their third order. Meet customer expectations by being available with AI Agent on Chat. The faster you can ease their concerns, the faster they can head to checkout.
AI Agent makes scaling support effortless, especially during peak seasons like Black Friday. While it handles repetitive support tickets like order status and shipping questions, your team can focus on high-priority tasks like requests from VIP customers.

Drawing from knowledge sources like your Help Center and policy pages means AI Agent can often resolve inquiries within one conversation. No more unnecessary back-and-forths. Quick resolutions = happier and more loyal customers.
Ready to get started? Here’s how to activate AI Agent on Chat:
Already use AI Agent for email? No need to set up Guidance and Handover topics all over again—AI Agent will behave the same way in Chat.
Get the most out of AI Agent on Chat by following these best practices.
The Help Center is AI Agent’s brain. This customer knowledge database is the key to AI Agent’s accurate and on-brand responses. To ensure your AI Agent is as trained as your human agents, include important topics in your Help Center like shipping, returns, cancellations, and account management.
No articles yet? No problem! Gorgias has 20+ article templates for you to use and modify. Or, even better, check out the AI Library for AI-generated articles based on your customer tickets.

AI tools perform best when you set limitations. A Guidance is the main way to control AI Agent’s behavior. It is a set of written instructions that outline how AI Agent should interact with customers, handle certain requests, and more.
We recommend publishing a Guidance on the top five questions you receive from customers.
Tip: AI Agent prioritizes Guidance above Help Center articles. Unlike Help Center articles, the content in your Guidance will not be customer-facing.

The beauty of AI Agent is its ability to speak like one of your agents. Select from Friendly, Professional, or Sophisticated presets—or create a custom tone that aligns with your brand.

Need help finding your brand voice? Here are seven brand voice examples.
Use test scenarios to see how AI Agent responds to common customer questions, such as order status, shipping questions, and return policies. To cover all your bases, test AI Agent as both a new and returning customer to make sure it delivers accurate responses no matter the customer's need.

AI Agent becomes smarter as it learns from you. Like a human agent, give your AI Agent feedback on its responses, from how it speaks, which topics it escalates, and what actions it takes in certain scenarios.
There are multiple ways to give AI Agent feedback on a ticket:

AI Agent can also perform actions like accessing Shopify order details and executing third-party app actions, such as updating shipping addresses and order cancellations, directly in Chat.
Excited to deliver an elevated chat experience? Book a demo now to experience the power of AI Agent on Chat.
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TL;DR:
Managing customer support as a Shopify store owner can feel like juggling too many tools at once.
Constantly switching tabs to look up orders, update customer information, or track returns wastes valuable time. Plus, it prevents your team from focusing on what really matters––delivering quick, personalized customer service.
Gorgias’s Shopify integration solves this. It keeps all your Shopify data in one place, so your team spends less time toggling tabs and more time helping customers. The result? Faster responses, better service, and more revenue.
Below, we break down the eight key capabilities of this integration, each paired with practical use cases to showcase its real-world value.
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What it does: Shopify order data is displayed directly within support tickets, allowing agents to view essential details like order status, customer information, and transaction history without leaving the helpdesk.
Use case: An agent handling a “Where’s my order?” request can instantly check tracking information and update the customer.
The fashion retailer Princess Polly improved their customer experience team’s efficiency by using Gorgias's deep integration with Shopify. Agents can view and update customer and order data directly within Gorgias, eliminating the need to switch between multiple tabs.
Taking a streamlined approach led to a 40% increase in efficiency, an 80% decrease in resolution time, and a 95% decrease in first response time.

What it does: Agents can update Shopify order and customer data with Shopify Actions right in Gorgias.
Key features:
Use case: Agents can perform Shopify actions directly from Gorgias, such as adding products, applying discounts, updating quantities, or issuing refunds.

What it does: Create templated responses called Macros with dynamic Shopify variables to automatically incorporate customer-specific information.
Key features:
Use case: A customer inquires about their order. With one click, the agent uses a Macro that pulls in the order status and expected delivery date, creating a faster and more personalized response.
Take Try The World, a gourmet subscription service, needed a robust Shopify integration to handle an increasing volume of customer inquiries. By switching to Gorgias, they gained the ability to unify conversations and embed Shopify data directly into Macros. Now, agents can quickly generate personalized responses that includes order details, tracking links, and customer-specific information.
Try the World’s support team’s efficiency skyrocketed, enabling them to handle 120 tickets per day, up from 80, and reduce response times to just one business day.

What it does: Macros with embedded Shopify data let agents quickly and accurately share pre-sale information like product links, stock availability, and discount codes, helping to convert prospective customers into buyers.
Key features:
Use case: A customer asks if a specific product is available in their size and color. The agent can apply a Macro that automatically pulls the product's inventory details and includes a discount code, sending a response like this:
“Hi [customer name Macro],
Great news! The product [Shopify product information Macro] is currently in stock in the size and color you’re looking for. You can check it out here: [Product Link]. Use the code WELCOME10 at checkout for 10% off your first order! Let me know if you have any other questions!”
How it helps:
What it does: Using Gorgias Chat, customers can track orders or manage their purchases on their own with no agent assistance needed.
Key feature:
Use case: A customer wants to check the status of their recent purchase. By accessing Chat on your website, they can enter their email and order number and receive instant updates on their order's progress, including shipping and delivery information, without waiting for an agent's response.
How it helps:
What it does: Rules paired with Shopify variables can automate various support tasks, such as identifying specific customer segments or tagging tickets, to boost efficiency and consistency.
Key features:
Use case: A customer with a history of substantial purchases contacts support. A rule detects that the customer's total spending exceeds a predefined threshold and automatically tags the ticket as "VIP."
This tag can then trigger other workflows, such as assigning the ticket to a senior support agent or escalating its priority.
How it helps:

What it does: Gorgias offers comprehensive reporting that allows you to measure how your support interactions influence sales.
Key features:
These metrics are accessible under Statistics → Support Performance → Revenue in your Gorgias dashboard. You can filter the data by integration, ticket channel, tags, or specific time periods to gain detailed insights.
Use case: By analyzing Revenue Statistics, you can identify which support channels or agents are most effective in driving sales. For example, if live chat interactions have a higher conversion rate, you might allocate more resources to that channel.
Additionally, recognizing top-performing agents can inform training programs to elevate overall team performance.
For example, One Block Down, a Milan-based streetwear brand, struggled to manage a growing volume of customer inquiries across multiple platforms. By integrating Gorgias with Shopify, they centralized all customer interactions into a single platform, giving agents instant access to crucial information like order history and returns directly within tickets.
The setup allowed the team to measure the direct impact of their support efforts on revenue.
The result? An impressive 1,000% increase in support-generated revenue and a 1-hour average first response time. By connecting the dots between customer service and sales performance, One Block Down demonstrated how proactive, data-driven support can directly influence the bottom line.
How it helps:

What it does: AI Agent automates Shopify actions like canceling orders, editing order details, and reshipping items.
Key features:
Use case: A customer realizes they've entered an incorrect shipping address shortly after placing an order. They contact support, and AI Agent promptly verifies that the order is unfulfilled, confirms the correct address with the customer, updates the shipping information in Shopify, and sends a confirmation email—all without human intervention.
How it helps:

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