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Conversational Commerce Strategy
Conversational Commerce Strategy

AI in CX Webinar Recap: Building a Conversational Commerce Strategy that Converts

0 min read . By Gabrielle Policella

TL;DR:

  • Implement quickly and optimize continuously. Cornbread's rollout was three phases: audit knowledge base, launch, then refine. Stacy conducts biweekly audits and provides daily AI feedback to ensure responses are accurate and on-brand.
  • Simplify your knowledge base language. Before BFCM, Stacy rephrased all guidance documentation to be concise and straightforward so Shopping Assistant could deliver information quickly without confusion.
  • Use proactive suggested questions. Most of Cornbread's Shopping Assistant engagement comes from Suggested Product Questions that anticipate customer needs before they even ask.
  • Treat AI as another team member. Make sure the tone and language AI uses match what human agents would say to maintain consistent customer relationships.
  • Free up agents for high-value work. With AI handling straightforward inquiries, Cornbread's CX team expanded into social media support, launched a retail pop-up shop, and has more time for relationship-building phone calls.

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.

Top learnings from Cornbread's conversational commerce strategy

1. Customer education drives conversions in wellness

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.

2. Shopping Assistant provides education that never sleeps

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.

3. Implementation follows a clear three-phase approach

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:

  1. Preparation. Before launching, Cornbread conducted a comprehensive audit of their knowledge base to ensure accuracy and completeness. This groundwork is critical because your AI is only as good as the information it has access to.
  2. Launch and training. After going live, the team met weekly with their Gorgias representative for three to four weeks. They analyzed engagements, reviewed tickets, and provided extensive AI feedback to teach Shopping Assistant which responses were appropriate and how to pull from the knowledge base effectively.
  3. Ongoing optimization. Now, Stacy conducts audits biweekly and continuously updates the knowledge base with new products, promotions, and internal changes. She also provides daily AI feedback, ensuring responses stay accurate and on-brand.

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

4. Simple, concise language converts better

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

5. Black Friday results proved the strategy works under pressure

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: 

  • Shopping Assistant conversion rate jumped from a 20% baseline to 30% during BFCM
  • First response time dropped from over two minutes in 2024 to just 21 seconds in 2025
  • Attributed revenue grew by 75%
  • Tickets doubled, but AI handled 400% more tickets compared to the previous year
  • CSAT scores stayed exactly in line with the previous year, despite the massive volume increase

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.

6. Strategic work replaces reactive tasks

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.

7. Continuous optimization for January and beyond

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.

Build your conversational commerce strategy now

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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By Gabrielle Policella

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Featured articles

Conversational Commerce Metrics

Your Support Team Drives More Revenue Than You Think: Conversational Commerce Metrics

Your chat might be closing more sales than your checkout page. Here’s how to measure it.
By Tina Donati
0 min read . By Tina Donati

TL;DR:

  • Support chats can now be directly tied to revenue. Brands are measuring conversations by conversion rate, average order value (AOV), and GMV influenced.
  • AI resolution rate is only valuable if the answers are accurate and helpful. A high resolution rate doesn’t matter if it leads to poor recommendations — the best AI both deflects volume and drives confident purchases.
  • Chat conversion rates often outperform traditional channels. Brands like Arc’teryx saw a 75% lift in conversions (from 4% to 7%) when AI handled high-intent product questions.
  • Shoppers who chat often spend more. Conversations lead to higher AOVs by helping customers understand products, explore upgrades, and discover add-ons — not just through upselling, but smarter guidance.

Conversational commerce finally has a scoreboard.

For years, CX leaders knew support conversations mattered, they just couldn’t prove how much. Conversations lived in that gray area of ecommerce where shoppers got answers, agents did their best, and everyone agreed the channel was “important”… 

But tying those interactions back to actual revenue? Nearly impossible.

Fast forward to today, and everything has changed.

Real-time conversations — whether handled by a human agent or powered by AI — now leave a measurable footprint across the entire customer journey. You can see how many conversations directly influenced a purchase. 

In other words, conversational commerce is finally something CX teams can measure, optimize, and scale with confidence.

Why measuring conversational commerce matters now

If you want to prove the value of your CX strategy to your CFO, your marketing team, or your CEO, you need data, not anecdotes.

Leadership isn’t swayed by “We think conversations help shoppers.” They want to see the receipts. They want to know exactly how interactions influence revenue, which conversations drive conversion, and where AI meaningfully reduces workload without sacrificing quality.

That’s why conversational commerce metrics matter now more than ever. This gives CX leaders a way to:

  • Quantify the revenue influence of conversations
  • Understand where AI improves efficiency — and where humans add the most value
  • Make informed decisions on staffing, automation, and channel investment
  • Turn CX into a profit center instead of a cost center

These metrics let you track impact with clarity and confidence.

And once you can measure it, you can build a stronger case for deeper investment in conversational tools and strategy.

The 4 metric categories that define conversational commerce success

So, what exactly should CX teams be measuring?

While conversational commerce touches every part of the customer journey, the most meaningful insights fall into four core categories: 

  1. Automation performance
  2. Conversion & revenue impact
  3. Engagement quality
  4. Discounting behavior

Let’s dive into each.

Automation performance metrics

If you want to understand how well your conversational commerce strategy is working, automation performance is the first place to look. These metrics reveal how effectively AI is resolving shopper needs, reducing ticket volume, and stepping into revenue-driving conversations at scale.

The two most foundational metrics?

1. Resolution rate: Are AI-led conversations actually helpful?

Resolution rate measures how many conversations your AI handles from start to finish without needing a human to take over. On paper, high resolution rates sound like a guaranteed win. It suggests your AI is handling product questions, sizing concerns, shade matching, order guidance, and more — all without adding to your team’s workload.

But a high resolution rate doesn’t automatically mean your AI is performing well.

Yes, the ticket was “resolved,” but was the customer actually helped? Was the answer accurate? Did the shopper leave satisfied or frustrated?

This is where quality assurance becomes essential. Your AI should be resolving tickets accurately and helpfully, not simply checking boxes.

At its best, a strong resolution rate signals that your AI is:

  • Confidently answering product questions
  • Guiding shoppers to the right SKU, variant, shade, size, or style
  • Reducing cart abandonment caused by confusion
  • Helping pre-sale shoppers convert faster

When resolution rate quality goes up, so does revenue influence.

You can see this clearly with beauty brands, where accuracy matters enormously. bareMinerals, for example, used to receive a flood of shade-matching questions. Everything from “Which concealer matches my undertone?” to “This foundation shade was discontinued; what’s the closest match?” 

Before AI, these questions required well-trained agents and often created inconsistencies depending on who answered.

Once they introduced Shopping Assistant, resolution rate suddenly became more meaningful. AI wasn’t just closing tickets; it was giving smarter, more confident recommendations than many agents could deliver at scale, especially after hours. 

BareMinerals' AI Agent recommends a customer a foundation that matches their skin tone

That accuracy paid off. 

AI-influenced purchases at bareMinerals had zero returns in the first 30 days because customers were finally getting the right shade the first time.

That’s the difference between “resolved” and resolved well.

2. Zero-touch tickets: How many tickets never reach a human?

The zero-touch ticket rate measures something slightly different: the percentage of conversations AI manages entirely on its own, without ever being escalated to an agent.

This metric is a direct lens into:

  • Workload reduction
  • Team efficiency
  • Cost savings
  • AI’s ability to own high-volume question types

More importantly, deflection widens the funnel for more revenue-driven conversations.

When AI deflects more inbound questions, your support team can focus on conversations that truly require human expertise, including returns exceptions, escalations, VIP shoppers, and emotionally sensitive interactions.

Brands with strong deflection rates typically see:

  • Shorter wait times
  • Higher CSAT
  • Lower support costs
  • More AI-influenced revenue

Conversion and revenue impact metrics

If automation metrics tell you how well your AI is working, conversion and revenue metrics tell you how well it’s selling.

This category is where conversational commerce really proves its value because it shows the direct financial impact of every human- or AI-led interaction.

1. Chat Conversion Rate (CVR): How often do conversations turn into purchases?

Chat conversion rate measures the percentage of conversations that end in a purchase, and it’s one of the clearest indicators of whether your conversational strategy is influencing shopper decisions.

A strong CVR tells you that conversations are:

  • Building confidence
  • Removing hesitation
  • Guiding shoppers toward the right product

You see this clearly with brands selling technical or performance-driven products. 

Outdoor apparel shoppers, for example, don’t just need “a jacket” — they need to know which jacket will hold up in specific temperatures, conditions, or terrains. A well-trained AI can step into that moment and convert uncertainty into action.

Arc’teryx saw this firsthand. 

Arc'teryx uses Shopping Assistant to enable purchases directly from chat

Once Shopping Assistant started handling their high-intent pre-purchase questions, their chat conversion rate jumped dramatically — from 4% to 7%. A 75% lift. 

That’s what happens when shoppers finally get the expert guidance they’ve been searching for.

2. GMV influenced: The revenue ripple effect of conversations

Not every shopper buys the moment they finish a chat. Some take a few hours. Some need a day or two. Some want to compare specs or read reviews before committing.

GMV influenced captures this “tail effect” by tracking revenue within 1–3 days of a conversation.

It’s especially powerful for:

  • High-consideration purchases (like outdoor gear, home furniture, equipment)
  • Products with many options, specs, or configurations
  • Shoppers who need reassurance before buying

In Arc’teryx’s case, shoppers often take time to confirm they’re choosing the right technical gear.

Yet even with that natural pause in behavior, Shopping Assistant still influenced 3.7% of all revenue, not by forcing instant decisions, but by providing the clarity people needed to make the right one.

3. AOV from conversational commerce: Do conversations lead to bigger carts?

This metric looks at the average order value of shoppers who engage in a conversation versus those who don’t. 

If the conversational AOV is higher, it means your AI or agents are educating customers in ways that naturally expand the cart.

Examples of AOV-lifting conversations include:

  • Recommending complementary gear, tools, or accessories
  • Suggesting upgraded options based on needs
  • Helping shoppers understand the difference between product tiers
  • Explaining why a specific product is worth the investment

When conversations are done well, AOV increases not because shoppers are being upsold, but because they’re being guided. 

4. ROI of AI-powered conversations: The metric your leadership cares most about

ROI compares the revenue generated by conversational AI to the cost of the tool itself — in short, this is the number that turns heads in boardrooms.

Strong ROI shows that your AI:

  • Does the work of multiple agents
  • Drives new revenue, not just ticket deflection
  • Provides accurate answers consistently, at any time
  • Delivers a high-quality experience without expanding headcount

When ROI looks like that, AI stops being a “tool” and starts being an undeniable growth lever.

Related: The hidden power and ROI of automated customer support

Engagement metrics that indicate purchase intent

Not every metric in conversational commerce is a final outcome. Some are early signals that show whether shoppers are interested, paying attention, and moving closer to a purchase.

These engagement metrics are especially valuable because they reveal why conversations convert, not just whether they do. When engagement goes up, conversion usually follows.

1. Click-Through Rate (CTR): Are shoppers acting on the products your AI recommends?

CTR measures the percentage of shoppers who click the product links shared during a conversation. It’s one of the cleanest leading indicators of buyer intent because it reflects a moment where curiosity turns into action.

If CTR is high, it’s a sign that:

  • Your recommendations are relevant
  • The conversation is persuasive
  • The shopper trusts the guidance they’re getting
  • The AI is surfacing the right product at the right time

In other words, CTR tells you which conversations are influencing shopping behavior.

And the connection between CTR and revenue is often tighter than teams expect.

Just look at what happened with Caitlyn Minimalist. When they began comparing the results of human-led conversations versus AI-assisted ones over a 90-day period, CTR became one of the clearest predictors of success. Their Shopping Assistant consistently drove meaningful engagement with its recommendations — an 18% click-through rate on the products it suggested.

That level of engagement translated directly into better outcomes:

  • AI-driven conversations converted at 20%, compared to just 8% for human agents
  • Many of those clicks led to multi-item purchases
  • Overall, the brand experienced a 50% lift in sales from AI-assisted chats compared to human-only ones

When shoppers click, they’re moving deeper into the buying cycle. Strong CTR makes it easier to forecast conversion and understand how well your conversational flows are guiding shoppers toward the right products.

AI Agent recommends a customer with jewelry safe for sensitive skin

Discounting behavior metrics

Discounting can be one of the fastest ways to nudge a shopper toward checkout, but it’s also one of the fastest ways to erode margins. 

That’s why discount-related metrics matter so much in conversational commerce. 

They show not just whether AI is using discounts, but how effectively those discounts are driving conversions.

1. Discounts offered: Are incentives being used strategically or too often?

This metric tracks how many discount codes or promotional offers your AI is sharing during conversations. 

Ideally, discounts should be purposeful — timed to moments when a shopper hesitates or needs an extra nudge — not rolled out as a one-size-fits-all script. When you monitor “discounts offered,” you can ensure that incentives are being used as conversion tools, not crutches.

This visibility becomes particularly important at high-intent touchpoints, such as exit intent or cart recovery interactions, where a small incentive can meaningfully increase conversion if used correctly.

2. Discounts applied: Are those discounts actually influencing the purchase?

Offering a discount is one thing. Seeing whether customers use it is another.

A high “discounts applied” rate suggests:

  • The offer was compelling
  • The timing was right
  • The shopper truly needed that incentive to convert

A low usage rate tells a different story: Your team (or your AI) is discounting unnecessarily.

This metric alone often surprises brands. More often than not, CX teams discover they can discount less without hurting conversion, or that a non-discount incentive (like a relevant product recommendation) performs just as well.

Understanding this relationship helps teams tighten their promotional strategy, protect margins, and use discounts only where they actually drive incremental revenue.

How CX teams use these metrics to make better decisions

Once you know which metrics matter, the next step is building a system that brings them together in one place.

Think of your conversational commerce scorecard as a decision-making engine — something that helps you understand performance at a glance, spot bottlenecks, optimize AI, and guide shoppers more effectively.

In Gorgias, you can customize your analytics dashboard to watch the metrics that matter most to your brand. This becomes the single source of truth for understanding how conversations influence revenue.

Here’s what a powerful dashboard unlocks:

1. You learn where AI performs best (and where humans outperform)

Some parts of the customer journey are perfect for AI: repetitive questions, product education, sizing guidance, shade matching, order status checks. 

Others still benefit from human support, like emotional conversations, complex troubleshooting, multi-item styling, or high-value VIP concerns.

Metrics like resolution rate, zero-touch ticket rate, and chat conversion rate show you exactly which is which.

When you track these consistently, you can:

  • Identify conversation types AI should fully own
  • Spot where AI needs more training
  • Allocate human agents to higher-value conversations
  • Decide when humans should step in to drive stronger outcomes

For example, if AI handles 80% of sizing questions successfully but struggles with multi-item styling advice, that tells you where to invest in improving AI, and where human expertise should remain the default.

2. You uncover what shoppers actually need to convert

Metrics like CTR, CVR, and conversational AOV reveal the inner workings of shopper decision-making. They show which recommendations resonate, which don’t, and which messaging actually moves someone to purchase.

With these insights, CX teams can:

  • Refine product recommendations
  • Improve conversation flows that stall out
  • Adjust the tone or structure of AI messaging
  • Draft stronger scripts for human agents
  • Identify recurring questions that indicate missing PDP information

For instance, if shoppers repeatedly ask clarifying questions about a product’s material or fit, that’s a signal for merchandising or product teams. 

If recommendations with social proof get high engagement, marketing can integrate that insight into on-site messaging. 

Conversations reveal what customers really care about — often before analytics do.

3. You prove that conversations directly drive revenue

This is the moment when the scorecard stops being a CX tool and becomes a business tool.

A clear set of metrics shows how conversations tie to:

  • GMV influenced
  • AOV lift
  • Revenue generated by AI
  • ROI of conversational commerce tools

When a CX leader walks into a meeting and says, “Our AI Assistant influenced 5% of last month’s revenue” or “Conversational shoppers have a 20% higher AOV,” the perception of CX changes instantly.

You’re no longer a support cost. You’re a revenue channel.

And once you have numbers like ROI or revenue influence in hand, it becomes nearly impossible for anyone to argue against further investment in CX automation.

4. You identify where shoppers are dropping off or hesitating

A scorecard doesn’t just show what’s working, it surfaces what’s not.

Metrics make friction obvious:

Metric Signal

What It Means

Low CTR

Recommendations may be irrelevant or poorly timed.

Low CVR

Conversations aren’t persuasive enough to drive a purchase.

High deflection but low revenue

AI is resolving tickets, but not effectively selling.

High discount usage

Shoppers rely on incentives to convert.

Low discount usage

You may be offering discounts unnecessarily and losing margin.

Once you identify these patterns, you can run targeted experiments:

  • Test new scripts or flows
  • Adjust product recommendations
  • Add social proof or benefit framing
  • Reassess discounting strategies
  • Rework messaging on key PDPs

Compounded over time, these moments create major lifts in conversion and revenue.

5. You create a feedback loop across marketing, merchandising, and product

One of the biggest hidden values of conversational data is how it strengthens cross-functional decision-making.

A clear analytics dashboard gives teams visibility into:

  • Unclear or missing product information (from repeated questions)
  • Merchandising opportunities (from your most popular products)
  • Landing page or PDP improvements (from drop-off points)
  • Messaging that resonates with real customers (from AI messages)

Suddenly, CX isn’t just answering questions — it’s informing strategy across the business.

CX drives revenue when you measure what matters

With the right metrics in place, CX leaders can finally quantify the impact of every interaction, and use that data to shape smarter, more profitable customer journeys.

If you're ready to measure — and scale — the impact of your conversations, tools like Gorgias AI Agent and Shopping Assistant give CX teams the visibility, accuracy, and performance needed to turn every interaction into revenue.

Want to see it in action? Book a demo and discover what conversational commerce can do for your bottom line.

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min read.
AI Alignment

AI in CX Webinar Recap: Turning AI Implementation into Team Alignment

By Gabrielle Policella
0 min read . By Gabrielle Policella

TL;DR:

  • Implement quickly and iterate. Rhoback’s initial rollout process took two weeks, right before BFCM. Samantha moved quickly, starting with basic FAQs and then continuously optimizing.  
  • Train AI like a three-year-old. Although it is empathetic, an AI Agent does not inherently know what is right or wrong. Invest in writing clear Guidance, testing responses, and ensuring document accuracy. 
  • Approach your AI’s tone of voice like a character study. Your AI Agent is an extension of your brand, and its personality should reflect that. Rhoback conducted a complete analysis of its agent’s tone, age, energy, and vocabulary. 
  • Embrace AI as a tool to reveal inconsistencies. If your AI Agent is giving inaccurate information, it’s exposing gaps in your knowledge sources. Uses these early test responses to audit product pages, help center content, Guidance, and policies.
  • Check in regularly and keep humans in control. Introduce weekly reviews or QA rituals to refine AI’s accuracy, tone, and efficiency. Communicate AI insights cross-functionally to build trust and work towards shared goals.

When Rhoback introduced an AI Agent to its customer experience team, it did more than automate routine tickets. Implementation revealed an opportunity to improve documentation, collaborate cross-functionally, and establish a clear brand tone of voice. 

Samantha Gagliardi, Associate Director of Customer Experience at Rhoback, explains the entire process in the first episode of our AI in CX webinar series.

Top learnings from Rhoback’s AI rollout  

1. You can start before you “feel ready”

With any new tool, the pre-implementation phase can take some time. Creating proper documentation, training internal teams, and integrating with your tech stack are all important steps that happen before you go live. 

But sometimes it’s okay just to launch a tool and optimize as you go. 

Rhoback launched its AI agent two weeks before BFCM to automate routine tickets during the busy season. 

Why it worked:

  • Samantha had audited all of Rhoback’s SOPs, training materials, and FAQs a few months before implementation. 
  • They started by automating high-volume questions such as returns, exchanges, and order tracking.
  • They followed a structured AI implementation checklist. 

2. Audit your knowledge sources before you automate

Before turning on Rhoback’s AI Agent, Samantha’s team reviewed every FAQ, policy, and help article that human agents are trained on. This helped establish clear CX expectations that they could program into an AI Agent. 

Samantha also reviewed the most frequently asked questions and the ideal responses to each. Which ones needed an empathetic human touch and which ones required fast, accurate information?  

“AI tells you immediately when your data isn’t clean. If a product detail page says one thing and the help center says another, it shows up right away.” 

Rhoback’s pre-implementation audit checklist:

  • Review customer FAQs and the appropriate responses for each. 
  • Update outdated PDPs, Help Centre articles, policies, and other relevant documentation.
  • Establish workflows with Ecommerce and Product teams to align Macros, Guidance, and Help Center articles with product descriptions and website copy. 

Read more: How to Optimize Your Help Center for AI Agent

3. Train your AI Agent in small, clear steps

It’s often said that you should train your AI Agent like a brand-new employee. 

Samantha took it one step further and recommended treating AI like a toddler, with clear, patient, repetitive instructions. 

“The AI does not have a sense of good and bad. It’s going to say whatever you train it, so you need to break it down like you’re talking to a three-year-old that doesn’t know any different. Your directions should be so detailed that there is no room for error.”

Practical tips:

  • Use AI to build your AI Guidance, focusing on clear, detailed, simple instructions. 
  • Test each Guidance before adding new ones.
  • Treat the training process like an ongoing feedback loop, not a one-time upload.

Read more: How to Write Guidance with the “When, If, Then” Framework

4. Prioritize Tone of Voice to make AI feel natural

For Rhoback, an on-brand Tone of Voice was a non-negotiable. Samantha built a character study that shaped Rhoback’s AI Agent’s custom brand voice.

“I built out the character of Rhoback, how it talks, what age it feels like, what its personality is. If it does not sound like us, it is not worth implementing.”

Key questions to shape your AI Agent’s tone of voice:

  • How does the AI Agent speak? Friendly, funny, empathetic, etc…?
  • Does your AI Agent use emojis? How often?
  • Are there any terms or phrases the AI Agent should always or never say?

5. Use AI to surface knowledge gaps or inconsistencies

Once Samantha started testing the AI Agent, it quickly revealed misalignment between Rhoback’s teams. With such an extensive product catalog, AI showed that product details did not always match the Help Center or CX documentation. 

This made a case for stronger collaboration amongst the CX, Product, and Ecommerce teams to work towards their shared goal of prioritizing the customer. 

“It opened up conversations we were not having before. We all want the customer to be happy, from the moment they click on an ad to the moment they purchase to the moment they receive their order. AI Agent allowed us to see the areas we need to improve upon.” 

Tips to improve internal alignment:

  • Create regular syncs between CX, Product, Ecommerce, and Marketing teams.
  • Share AI summaries, QA insights, and trends to highlight recurring customer pain points.
  • Build a collaborative workflow for updating documents that gives each team visibility. 

6. Build trust (with your team and customers) through transparency 

Despite the benefits of AI for CX, there’s still trepidation. Agents are concerned that AI would replace them, while customers worry they won’t be able to reach a human. Both are valid concerns, but clearly communicating internally and externally can mitigate skepticism. 

At Rhoback, Samantha built internal trust by looping in key stakeholders throughout the testing process. “I showed my team that it is not replacing them. It’s meant to be a support that helps them be even more successful with what they’re already doing," Samantha explains.

On the customer side, Samantha trained their AI Agent to tell customers in the first message that it is an AI customer service assistant that will try to help them or pass them along to a human if it can’t. 

How Rhoback built AI confidence:

  • Positioned AI as a personal assistant for agents, not a replacement.
  • Let agents, other departments, and leadership test and shape the AI Agent experience early.
  • Told customers up front when automation was being used and made the path to a human clear and easy.

Read more: How CX Leaders are Actually Using AI: 6 Must-Know Lessons

Putting these into practice: Rhoback’s framework for an aligned AI implementation 

Here is Rhoback’s approach distilled into a simple framework you can apply.

  1. Audit your content: Ensure your FAQs, product data, policies, and all documentation are accurate.
  2. Start small: Automate one repetitive workflow, such as returns or tracking.
  3. Train iteratively: Add Guidance in small, testable batches.
  4. Prioritize tone: Make sure every AI reply sounds like your brand.
  5. Align teams: Use AI data to resolve cross-departmental inconsistencies and establish clearer communication lines.
  6. Be transparent: Tell both agents and customers how AI fits into the process.
  7. Refine regularly: Review, measure, and adjust on an ongoing basis.

Watch the full conversation with Samantha to learn how AI can act as a catalyst for better internal alignment. 

📌 Join us for episode 2 of AI in CX: Building a Conversational Commerce Strategy that Converts with Cornbread Hemp on December 16.

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min read.
Food & Beverage Self-Service

How Food & Beverage Brands Can Level Up Self-Service Before BFCM

Before the BFCM rush begins, we’re serving food & beverage CX teams seven easy self-serve upgrades to keep support tickets off their plate.
By Alexa Hertel
0 min read . By Alexa Hertel

TL;DR:

  • Most food & beverage support tickets during BFCM are predictable. Subscription cancellations, WISMO, and product questions make up the bulk—so prep answers ahead of time.
  • Proactive CX site updates can drastically cut down repetitive tickets. Add ingredient lists, cooking instructions, and clear refund policies to product pages and FAQs.
  • FAQ pages should go deep, not just broad. Answer hyper-specific questions like “Will this break my fast?” to help customers self-serve without hesitation.‍
  • Transparency about stock reduces confusion and cart abandonment. Show inventory levels, set up waitlists, and clearly state cancellation windows.

In 2024, Shopify merchants drove $11.5 billion in sales over Black Friday Cyber Monday. Now, BFCM is quickly approaching, with some brands and major retailers already hosting sales.

If you’re feeling late to prepare for the season or want to maximize the number of sales you’ll make, we’ll cover how food and beverage CX teams can serve up better self-serve resources for this year’s BFCM. 

Learn how to answer and deflect customers’ top questions before they’re escalated to your support team.

💡 Your guide to everything peak season → The Gorgias BFCM Hub

Handling BFCM as a food & beverage brand

During busy seasons like BFCM and beyond, staying on top of routine customer asks can be an extreme challenge. 

“Every founder thinks BFCM is the highest peak feeling of nervousness,” says Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder of supplement brand Obvi. 

“It’s a tough week. So anything that makes our team’s life easier instantly means we can focus more on things that need the time,” he continues. 

Anticipating contact reasons and preparing methods (like automated responses, macros, and enabling an AI Agent) is something that can help. Below, find the top contact reasons for food and beverage companies in 2025. 

Top contact reasons in the food & beverage industry 

According to Gorgias proprietary data, the top reason customers reach out to brands in the food and beverage industry is to cancel a subscription (13%) followed by order status questions (9.1%).

Contact Reason

% of Tickets

🍽️ Subscription cancellation

13%

🚚 Order status (WISMO)

9.1%

❌ Order cancellation

6.5%

🥫 Product details

5.7%

🧃 Product availability

4.1%

⭐ Positive feedback

3.9%

7 ways to improve your self-serve resources before BFCM

  1. Add informative blurbs on product pages 
  2. Craft additional help center and FAQ articles 
  3. Automate responses with AI or Macros 
  4. Get specific about product availability
  5. Provide order cancellation and refund policies upfront
  6. Add how-to information
  7. Build resources to help with buying decisions 

1) Add informative blurbs on product pages

Because product detail queries represent 5.7% of contact reasons for the food and beverage industry, the more information you provide on your product pages, the better. 

Include things like calorie content, nutritional information, and all ingredients.  

For example, ready-to-heat meal company The Dinner Ladies includes a dropdown menu on each product page for further reading. Categories include serving instructions, a full ingredient list, allergens, nutritional information, and even a handy “size guide” that shows how many people the meal serves. 

The Dinner Ladies product page showing parmesan biscuits with tapenade and mascarpone.
The Dinner Ladies includes a drop down menu full of key information on its product pages. The Dinner Ladies

2) Craft additional Help Center and FAQ articles

FAQ pages make up the information hub of your website. They exist to provide customers with a way to get their questions answered without reaching out to you.   

This includes information like how food should be stored, how long its shelf life is, delivery range, and serving instructions. FAQs can even direct customers toward finding out where their order is and what its status is. 

Graphic listing benefits of FAQ pages including saving time and improving SEO.

In the context of BFCM, FAQs are all about deflecting repetitive questions away from your team and assisting shoppers in finding what they need faster. 

That’s the strategy for German supplement brand mybacs. 

“Our focus is to improve automations to make it easier for customers to self-handle their requests. This goes hand in hand with making our FAQs more comprehensive to give customers all the information they need,” says Alexander Grassmann, its Co-Founder & COO.

As you contemplate what to add to your FAQ page, remember that more information is usually better. That’s the approach Everyday Dose takes, answering even hyper-specific questions like, “Will it break my fast?” or “Do I have to use milk?”

Everyday Dose FAQ page showing product, payments, and subscription question categories.
Everyday Dose has an extensive FAQ page that guides shoppers through top questions and answers. Everyday Dose

While the FAQs you choose to add will be specific to your products, peruse the top-notch food and bev FAQ pages below. 

Time for some FAQ inspo:

3) Automate responses with AI or macros

AI Agents and AI-powered Shopping Assistants are easy to set up and are extremely effective in handling customer interactions––especially during BFCM.  

“I told our team we were going to onboard Gorgias AI Agent for BFCM, so a good portion of tickets would be handled automatically,” says Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder at Obvi. “There was a huge sigh of relief knowing that customers were going to be taken care of.” 

And, they’re getting smarter. AI Agent’s CSAT is just 0.6 points shy of human agents’ average CSAT score. 

Obvi homepage promoting Black Friday sale with 50% off and chat support window open.
Obvi 

Here are the specific responses and use cases we recommend automating: 

  • WISMO (where is my order) inquiries 
  • Product related questions 
  • Returns 
  • Order issues
  • Cancellations 
  • Discounts, including BFCM related 
  • Customer feedback
  • Account management
  • Collaboration requests 
  • Rerouting complex queries

Get your checklist here: How to prep for peak season: BFCM automation checklist

4) Get specific about product availability

With high price reductions often comes faster-than-usual sell out times. By offering transparency around item quantities, you can avoid frustrated or upset customers. 

For example, you could show how many items are left under a certain threshold (e.g. “Only 10 items left”), or, like Rebel Cheese does, mention whether items have sold out in the past.  

Rebel Cheese product page for Thanksgiving Cheeseboard Classics featuring six vegan cheeses on wood board.
Rebel Cheese warns shoppers that its Thanksgiving cheese board has sold out 3x already. Rebel Cheese  

You could also set up presales, give people the option to add themselves to a waitlist, and provide early access to VIP shoppers. 

5) Provide order cancellation and refund policies upfront 

Give shoppers a heads up whether they’ll be able to cancel an order once placed, and what your refund policies are. 

For example, cookware brand Misen follows its order confirmation email with a “change or cancel within one hour” email that provides a handy link to do so. 

Misen order confirmation email with link to change or cancel within one hour of checkout.
Cookware brand Misen follows up its order confirmation email with the option to edit within one hour. Misen 

Your refund policies and order cancellations should live within an FAQ and in the footer of your website. 

6) Add how-to information 

Include how-to information on your website within your FAQs, on your blog, or as a standalone webpage. That might be sharing how to use a product, how to cook with it, or how to prepare it. This can prevent customers from asking questions like, “how do you use this?” or “how do I cook this?” or “what can I use this with?” etc. 

For example, Purity Coffee created a full brewing guide with illustrations:

Purity Coffee brewing guide showing home drip and commercial batch brewer illustrations.
Purity Coffee has an extensive brewing guide on its website. Purity Coffee

Similarly, for its unique preseasoned carbon steel pan, Misen lists out care instructions: 

Butter melting in a seasoned carbon steel pan on a gas stove.
Misen 

And for those who want to understand the level of prep and cooking time involved, The Dinner Ladies feature cooking instructions on each product page. 

The Dinner Ladies product page featuring duck sausage rolls with cherry and plum dipping sauce.
The Dinner Ladies feature a how to cook section on product pages. The Dinner Ladies 

7) Build resources to help with buying decisions 

Interactive quizzes, buying guides, and gift guides can help ensure shoppers choose the right items for them––without contacting you first. 

For example, Trade Coffee Co created a quiz to help first timers find their perfect coffee match: 

Trade Coffee Co offers an interactive quiz to lead shoppers to their perfect coffee match. Trade Coffee Co

Set your team up for BFCM success with Gorgias 

The more information you can share with customers upfront, the better. That will leave your team time to tackle the heady stuff. 

If you’re looking for an AI-assist this season, check out Gorgias’s suite of products like AI Agent and Shopping Assistant. 

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

Further reading

Black Friday Marketing Ideas

18 Proven Black Friday Marketing Ideas and Strategies

By Fadeke Adegbuyi
24 min read.
0 min read . By Fadeke Adegbuyi

For ecommerce store owners, Black Friday is an opportunity for record-breaking revenue, website traffic, and engagement. But relying on the same-old marketing tactics is a losing strategy. 

According to Shopify's 2023 commerce trends report, new laws and regulations around consumer privacy are posing challenges for online retailers. Specifically, paid ads are increasingly more expensive (and less effective). Since 2021, Facebook ad costs have increased by 89% and TikTok ad costs are up 92% — with worse performance than ever before.

In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of reimagining your Black Friday marketing strategy to be more affordable and effective. By embracing innovative promotion ideas — like influencer collaborations and chat commerce — you can stand out from the crowd and achieve your Black Friday — Cyber Monday revenue goals.

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Black Friday website preparation checklist

While innovation is the theme of Black Friday 2023, some things will never change. And one of those everlasting truths is that your website has to work. 

A poorly optimized website may result in slow loading times, crashes, or technical glitches that deter visitors from completing their purchases. To prevent these setbacks, and position your website for success, this section provides a Black Friday website preparation checklist. 

Address technical website issues

A smooth and responsive website is essential to provide a seamless shopping experience and maximize your conversion rates. Slow loading times, broken links, or checkout errors can frustrate and deter customers. Prioritizing technical website improvements ensures a glitch-free Black Friday.

  • Conduct a thorough website audit to identify and resolve performance issues
  • Optimize images and code by compressing image files and eliminating unnecessary scripts for faster website loading.
  • Test the website’s mobile responsiveness across different screen sizes and operating systems.
  • Implement caching mechanisms, upgrade hosting plans, and stress-test your website to handle increased traffic. 
  • Create straightforward navigation by categorizing products intuitively and incorporating user-friendly menu layouts.
  • Streamline the checkout process by minimizing steps, employing guest checkout options, and providing a variety of payment methods.
  • Prominently display a helpdesk chat widget or contact information for customer support. 

Focus on mobile performance

A significant portion of shoppers browse and purchase from their smartphones — as reported by Pew Research, 76% of U.S. adults indicate that they have made online purchases using a smartphone. As a result, a mobile-friendly website is paramount for ecommerce business owners. 

By focusing on mobile optimization, you’ll enhance user satisfaction, reduce bounce rates, and maximize conversions on Black Friday.

  • Ensure your website is responsive, loads quickly, and offers a seamless user experience across various mobile devices. 
  • Optimize images and code, implement mobile-specific design elements, and simplify navigation and checkout processes for smartphones and tablets. 
  • Test on different mobile devices, browsers, and screen sizes to find and fix any issues. 

Triple-check promotions, discounts, and prices 

Accurate promotions, discounts, and prices maintain customer trust and avoid legal issues. Ahead of Black Friday, be sure any active promotional materials and prices are up-to-date and accurate.

  • Review and update all promotional materials to ensure accurate pricing.
  • Test discount codes to verify their functionality. 
  • Prioritize quality checks across your online store, product listings, and checkout process to ensure consistency and accuracy. 
  • Provide clear terms and conditions for promotions and discounts.

Finetune your product descriptions

Craft compelling and persuasive product descriptions to help captivate shoppers and drive conversions. Thoughtful descriptions can tell a story about each product, highlighting key features and complementing your product photography and pricing. 

  • Check that your product descriptions are accurate, concise, and engaging. 
  • Incorporate persuasive language, emphasize unique selling points, and clearly communicate any Black Friday-specific offers or discounts. 
  • Complete an audit to address inconsistencies or errors, update outdated information, and ensure consistency across all product listings. 

Start your SEO strategy early

Prioritizing your ecommerce SEO strategy months ahead of Black Friday will ensure your website ranks prominently in search engine results and attracts organic traffic. SEO results aren’t immediate, but the long-term payoff is substantial. 

  • Research keywords to identify relevant Black Friday-related terms and incorporate them strategically into your content, meta tags, and product descriptions. 
  • Improve your website’s technical SEO by increasing website speed and mobile responsiveness to enhance user experience.
  • Leverage internal and external linking to boost visibility and authority. 
  • Optimize your site structure and URL hierarchy for better indexing. 

Update your product images

Product images help your brand make a strong visual impact and entice customers to make purchases — especially during Black Friday, when customers see endless feeds of products. High-quality images can significantly enhance the appeal of your products, differentiate your brand, and increase trust among potential buyers. 

  • Refresh your product images to represent your current offerings, showcase key features, and highlight any Black Friday-specific details or discounts. 
  • Invest in professional ecommerce product photography or consider using UGC lifestyle images that showcase products in real-world contexts. 
  • Optimize image sizes for fast loading speeds and to ensure mobile responsiveness. 

Optimize your product categorization

Great categorization improves the experience of navigating your website. Well-organized and intuitive product categories enable shoppers to find what they’re looking for quickly, reducing frustration and increasing the likelihood of conversions. 

  • Review your current ecommerce product categorization structure to ensure it aligns with the needs and preferences of your target audience. 
  • Streamline categories, eliminate duplicates, and create clear hierarchies. 
  • Incorporate relevant filters and sorting options to allow customers to refine their search results.

18 Black Friday marketing ideas (with examples) 

Diverse marketing tactics are key to unlocking unprecedented success for your online business this holiday season. Black Friday can be a make-or-break affair for brands. It’s tempting to stick with what’s tried and true. But without innovating on your marketing strategy, outsized growth remains a distant reality. 

Lean into the challenge, pay attention to Black Friday trends, experiment with strategies that might feel daunting, and seize the chance to redefine what’s possible for your brand this year. 

1) Embrace social commerce selling 

In 2022, Meta reported that Instagram Shop has a potential audience of over 187.6 million people. This statistic points to the rising importance of social commerce for ecommerce brands. 

Rather than relying solely on websites, businesses can expand their reach and sell products directly on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. From the simplicity of shoppable social posts to the interactive environment of live selling events, meet customers where they are on Black Friday. 

Tips for embracing social commerce selling:

  • Explore different social commerce platforms. While Instagram and TikTok are go-to social commerce for brands, branch out to platforms like Pinterest, Snapchat, and Twitch. 
  • Create engaging content. Go beyond hashtags and typical social media marketing. Leverage the content-driven nature of these platforms to develop engaging videos, images, and live streams.
  • Lean into omnichannel ecommerce. Provide a unified and consistent Black Friday shopping experience. Whether the customer is on your website or social media, they should feel a sense of continuity. 

2) Use SMS marketing to create urgency

SMS marketing is a unique opportunity for ecommerce companies to instill urgency and excitement in their Black Friday promotions. A 2023 survey of 1,400 consumers, business owners, and digital marketers found that 80.5% of consumers check their text notifications within five minutes of receiving a text. The immediacy of SMS allows for real-time notifications about flash sales or limited-time offers.

Jaxxon, a men’s jewelry brand, encourages website visitors to sign-up for SMS updates ahead of Black Friday, incentivizing sign-ups with the promise of upcoming deals and discounts. Their dedicated landing page for SMS sign-ups is also SEO-friendly, surfacing as a top search result for “Jaxxon Black Friday.” 

Jaxxon website with a Black Friday Sale sign-up banner

Tips for using SMS marketing to create urgency: 

  • Use promo codes and dedicated landing pages. Send unique promo codes or links to dedicated landing pages via SMS. This gives customers an easy, direct route to redeem their Black Friday — Cyber Monday offer.
  • Send pre-purchase and post-purchase real-time updates. Leverage the immediacy of SMS to provide customers with updates about your promotion and their purchases after the fact. That includes order confirmations, shipping updates, and delivery notifications.
  • Adhere to legal compliance and consent. Before launching your SMS campaign, ensure you have obtained proper consent from customers. Your strategy should comply with all applicable laws and regulations.

3) Partner with influencers and creators 

Influencer marketing is a powerful tool for ecommerce companies to leverage large existing audiences to find new customers. A survey of 500 millennial and Gen Z consumers found that 71% of shoppers are likely to purchase a product because of influencers.

Glossier, a cosmetics and skincare brand, partnered with the creator Pamyla Cummings on BlackFriday to share her Glossier holiday gift guide. They simultaneously pointed social media users to their 30% off sale, complementing her recommendations with their deal. 

Screenshot of a Glossier Instagram video featuring an influencer promoting a sale

Tips for partnering with influencers and creators:

  • Choose the right influencers. Ecommerce influencers with a household name may be too expensive for most brands. However, micro-influencers often have a loyal following and high engagement, offering affordable and effective partnerships for small businesses.
  • Trust the creator. Rather than being prescriptive, allow the creators you partner with to guide the development of promotional content. They know their audience best and will understand how to get them interested in your product or brand.
  • Track the partnership using promo codes and referral links. Monitor your sales, website traffic, and brand awareness during and after an influencer promotion. This will inform future influencer marketing strategies. 

4) Rethink your promotional email campaign 

An email marketing campaign is an important part of your overall Black Friday marketing strategy. A study conducted by Litmus found that email drives an ROI of $36 for every dollar spent. 

With direct access to inboxes, ecommerce companies can establish a direct link to customers with customer service email marketing. Aim to stand out in a sea of promotional emails during Black Friday. Find the delicate balance between intriguing subscribers with early promotion news and overwhelming their inboxes.

Magic Spoon, a brand creating high protein and no-sugar breakfast cereal, sent out three emails as part of their Black Friday email promotions: an early bird email on Wednesday, a 25% promotional offer on Black Friday, and a final reminder email on Sunday, ahead of Cyber Monday. They coupled their promotional discount with a gift, sharing all the details with their email subscribers and featuring a clear call to action. 

Magic Spoon email campaign with a discount code

Tips for planning a promotional email campaign: 

  • Craft a compelling email subject line. Make your subject line catchy, relevant, and intriguing enough to entice the reader to open it. Try A/B testing to discover what resonates. Review your analytics to see what headlines have performed well before. 
  • Segment your email list. Cater to individual needs by segmenting your email list based on customer behavior, preferences, and purchase history. This allows you to personalize messages, increasing engagement.
  • Optimize for cross-platform reading. Ensure emails are responsive and mobile-friendly. 

Use your support emails to drive Black Friday promotion

Your company sends more than just marketing emails. Your customer service emails — from issue resolution emails to product troubleshooting communication — are another opportunity to drive awareness of your upcoming Black Friday promotions. 

Use Gorgias’ PS Macros to drive sales at the bottom of your support emails. Build up your Macro library ahead of Black Friday, testing different email post-scripts and tracking their performance. 

5) Use chat campaigns to promote Black Friday offers

The old-school understanding of chat is reactive: You receive questions and respond with answers. You can also use your chat widget to proactively reach out to visitors with chat campaigns. 

For example, Gorgias Chat Campaigns send prospective customers information about exclusive sales, bundles, or reminders — in the flow of shopping. This Black Friday, set up a chat campaign offering discounts or coupon codes to website visitors, converting browsers into buyers. 

For example, bidet brand TUSHY programs a chat campaign on the homepage, which pops up to advertise their “Brown Friday” promotion. A similar campaign is set for each of their product collection pages, promoting the offer and boosting conversion. 

Gorgias chat campaign settings

Tips for using chat campaigns to promote Black Friday offers:

  • Set specific campaign parameters. When building a chat campaign, choose when and where a campaign on your site is trigged. For instance, your message can pop up after a visitor spends more than 30 seconds in their online shopping cart or when a visitor is about to exit a page. 
  • Capture interest with a deal. Grab attention with a compelling offer — a secret sale, a meaningful discount, or a free shipping reminder. 
  • Set business hours. Automated chat campaigns can fire 24/7, but you don’t have to offer live chat 24/7 (or at all). With Offline Mode, you can deactivate the live chat function of your widget, so customers won’t respond to the campaign and get confused when nobody responds.

6) Share behind-the-scenes preparation on TikTok

As of 2022, TikTok has over 1.4 billion users but remains underutilized by brands who feel more at home on Facebook and Instagram. This holiday shopping season, create vertical videos that spotlight your employees preparing for Black Friday, sharing behind-the-scenes preparations on TikTok. The casual feeling of the platform offers an excellent opportunity to humanize your brand by providing a candid view of your team in action. 

Kulani Kinis, a swimwear brand, leaned heavily into TikTok marketing for Black Friday 2022, creating nearly half a dozen videos to promote their sale. Amongst them was a video from their Ecommerce Coordinator, JJ, who provided details about discounts and showcased some of her favorite picks from their Fever Dream collection. 

Screenshot of Kulani Kinis

Tips for sharing behind-the-scenes preparation on TikTok:

  • Get candid and embrace authenticity. Opt for real, raw content instead of polished, highly-produced videos. This authenticity resonates with TikTok users and enhances engagement.
  • Pack orders on camera. Combine ASMR with personalized content by packing customer orders for TikTok content, giving viewers a glimpse into your ecommerce business. 
  • Leverage the platform’s potential. With TikTok’s lack of a social graph and emphasis on the “For You” page, TikTok’s algorithm and the platform’s high virality potential make it a fertile ground for reaching a wider audience. Lean into trends, using popular sounds or meme formats for your brand’s TikTok. 

7) Partner with a brand-aligned charity or non-profit organization

A 2022 research study found that 82% of shoppers prefer a consumer brand’s value to align with their own. Furthermore, 66% of shoppers are seeking out eco-friendly brands and products. Partner with an aligned charity and donate a portion of Black Friday and Cyber Monday profits to appeal to conscious consumers and highlight what your brand stands for.  

Poppy Barley, an ethically-made, sustainable footwear and accessories brand, set a donation goal of $20,000 and committed 100% of the proceeds from their 2023 Black Friday sale to KidSport. This amount went towards funding 100 girls in sports, helping them develop confidence and leadership skills for the future. 

Poppy Barley website with a Black Friday Fund hero image

Tips for partnering with a brand-aligned charity or non-profit organization:

  • Choose a relevant partner. Identify a charity or non-profit that aligns with your brand values and showcases your commitment to causes your customers care about.
  • Communicate your intentions. Promote your partnership and donation plans on your platform to increase awareness.
  • Share post-sale results. After Black Friday and Cyber Monday, share the impact of the donations. This transparency boosts your brand’s credibility and builds trust with your customers.

8) Provide customers with mobile app-exclusive deals

If you have a mobile app or plan on launching one this upcoming holiday sales season, consider integrating it into your Black Friday promotion. Offer an exclusive Black Friday discount code to app users, incentivizing app downloads. This also establishes a direct channel for sending in-app notifications about future products and sales.

Tips for providing customers with mobile app exclusive deals:

  • Promote exclusive app discounts widely. Use your website, social media, and email newsletters to advertise the exclusive Black Friday deal available only to app users. 
  • Offer a unique discount code. If you plan on also providing a discount to website users, ensure that your app discount is unique to allow for tracking and analyzing results.  
  • Maximize in-app notifications. Use your app as a direct communication channel. Send in-app notifications about the exclusive deal, and later about new products and sales, to engage users continually.

9) Use your chat widget to automatically answer pre-sales questions

Customers abandon carts if they can’t find information about shipping and returns. Use your chat widget’s automation to answer pre-sales support questions for holiday shoppers browsing your website on Black Friday. 

Take advantage of a tool like Gorgias to create Quick Response Flows that automatically provide answers to these frequently asked questions.

For example, Loop Earplugs proactively educates customers about the product with questions like, “Can I still have a conversation wearing Loops?” to instill buying confidence: 

Loop Earplugs

Consider FAQs that answer questions about your promotions this Black Friday, too: 

  • Do you offer Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals?
  • Can I return or exchange items bought during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale?
  • Do you offer free shipping for Black Friday/Cyber Monday?
  • Can I use my Black Friday/Cyber Monday discount code for purchasing gift cards?
  • Can I use Black Friday/Cyber Monday codes on sale items?

Tips for using your chat widget to automatically answer pre-sale questions: 

  • Make your chat widget visible and accessible. Ensure the chat widget is easily noticeable and accessible on every page of your website — especially if you’ve changed your website theme for Black Friday.
  • Constantly update and refine your FAQ. As your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales progress, keep updating your Quick Response Flows based on real-time feedback.
  • Train your team for the big day. Chat is a complement to your customer support on Black Friday, not a replacement. Make sure your team is equipped to handle more complex inquiries.

10) Offer free or discounted shipping

According to a 2023 commerce trends report from Shopify, people order about 2.5 items with free shipping, compared to less than 2 items with paid shipping. Additionally, people buy over $22 more on the median order with free shipping compared to paid shipping. Ecommerce companies can leverage this tactic on Black Friday to reduce purchase barriers, increase perceived value, and attract customers who make larger order sizes. 

Tips for offering free or discount shipping:

  • Market your shipping offer. Promote your free or discounted shipping on your website, email campaigns, and social media. Make it a central part of your Black Friday messaging to attract deal-seeking customers.
  • Set minimum order thresholds. Encourage larger order sizes by offering free shipping for orders above a certain amount to increase average order value.
  • Highlight the savings. Feature the discounted amount at checkout to ensure customers are aware of the savings they are making on shipping. 

11) Host a flash sale or hourly deals

Flash sales and hourly deals infuse a sense of urgency into your Black Friday marketing strategy, prompting customers to make quick purchase decisions. With each flash sale, showcase a carefully selected product or a curated collection, offering a significant discount or exclusive bundle. By limiting the availability of these deals to a short duration, you tap into customers’ fear of missing out, urging them to seize the opportunity before it expires.

Clothing brand Princess Polly used a broad discount alongside flash sales across Black Friday weekend, keeping website visitors informed about deals and creating urgency with a countdown timer. They also updated their homepage banner throughout the shopping weekend, having it read “FINAL HOURS!!” as the countdown neared the end of the sale. 

Princess Polly with a full-size Black Friday hero image stating

Tips for hosting a flash sale or hourly deals:

  • Set realistic discounts. Ensure that the discounts or promotions you offer during the event are attractive and meaningful to your customers while allowing your business to maintain profitability.
  • Use Countdown timers. Implement countdown timers on your site to underscore the time-sensitive nature of the deals and increase urgency.
  • Manage inventory Effectively. Prepare for the surge in demand by ensuring sufficient stock levels to prevent customer disappointment from sold-out items.

12) Delight buyers with a free gift per purchase

Include a gift with each purchase to enhance the customer experience during the Black Friday sales period. This marketing strategy distinguishes you from the competition while building brand loyalty and incentivizing larger purchases. 

A gifting gesture also creates a moment of delight that leaves a lasting impression, increasing the chances of repeat purchases and word-of-mouth recommendations. 

For Black Friday 2023, the skincare brand Topicals offered customers a free Faded Eye Deluxe sample on orders over $100. This promotional offer allowed customers to buy to buy their best-selling Faded cream, while also getting to try a newer complementary skin product offering for free. 

Topicals Instagram post promoting their Black Friday sales

Tips for sending off buyers with a gift per purchase:

  • Choose the right gifts. Ensure the complimentary gifts align with your brand and are likely to be appreciated by your customers. Small branded items (e.g. a tote) or samples of other products work well. Avoid large or delicate items that complicate your shipping.
  • Present the gift at checkout. Display the gift in the customer's cart at the point of checkout. This creates a positive surprise and reinforces the deal’s value to the customer.
  • Package to perfection. Pay attention to the presentation of the gift, using attractive and branded packaging that reflects the quality of your brand.

13) Release a brand-new product

While your business likely has more than enough happening during the busiest sales season of the year, unveiling a new product is a powerful magnet. The allure of discovering something new and exclusive, combined with the limited-time deals and discounts of the sales period, creates a compelling proposition for both new customers and loyal advocates. 

Tips for releasing a brand-new product:

  • Launch a hotly anticipated product. Opt for an offering that has been highly requested and validated by looking through customer requests. 
  • Incentivize first buyers. Offer limited-time incentives for the first set of customers who purchase the new product. This could be an extra discount, free shipping, or a complimentary item.
  • Use social media for showcasing your new product. Conduct a live unboxing or feature early customer testimonials to showcase what customers will receive. 

14) Offer product bundles and loot boxes

Product bundles and loot boxes offer customers a value-packed deal, combining multiple products or exclusive items at a discounted rate. The appeal of this Black Friday marketing strategy lies in the perceived value they receive. The bundled price is often lower than the individual prices of the included items. 

Bundles not only encourage customers to explore and try different products but also present an opportunity to showcase lesser-known items and drive sales for slower-moving inventory. 

Casper, a mattress company, bundled together and discounted a set of pillows and sheets for their Black Friday product special. Dubbed their “Comfy Bundle”, this offering also complements the mattresses and larger-ticket items that were on sale, too. 

Casper

Tips for offering product bundles and loot boxes:

  • Bundle complementary products. Combine products that naturally go together or enhance each other’s use, creating a complete solution. 
  • Offer surprise loot boxes. Build excitement by offering a loot box with mystery items. These boxes incentivize purchases by playing on the element of surprise.
  • Promote bundle savings. Communicate the savings customers gain from purchasing a bundle versus buying each product individually (e.g. “$50 value for $24.99”). 

15) Sell gift cards at a discount

Most ecommerce promotional offers explicitly exclude the purchase of gift cards. However, offering gift cards as an option on Black Friday extends a convenient solution for shoppers unsure about what to purchase or who may be purchasing presents for the holidays. 

Gift cards can lead to additional sales beyond the initial purchase amount, as recipients may spend more than the value of the gift card when redeeming it online or in-store. 

Tips for including gift cards as a product option:

  • Ensure prominent promotional placement. Ensure that gift cards are clearly displayed on your website, specifically highlighting them as a Black Friday offer. 
  • Offer e-gift cards and physical gift cards. Provide both options to accommodate customer preferences — e-gift cards for instant delivery and physical cards for a tangible gifting experience. 
  • Opt for attractive visuals. Create visually appealing graphics with custom imagery that showcase the gift cards. 

16) Use a tiered discount model

Implement a tiered discount model for your Black Friday promotions. This approach offers different levels of discounts based on the total order value, encouraging customers to spend more to unlock higher savings. Leverage this strategy to increase average order value and maximize sales during the Black Friday shopping frenzy.

Hive, a sustainable online grocery store, used a tiered discount model on Black Friday, advertising the offering prominently on their website. They offered customers 10%. 15%, or 20% off, depending on how much they spent. 

Hive website displaying varying discounts for different order totals

Tips for using a tiered discount model:

  • Set clear discount thresholds. Communicate the savings customers can unlock at each level to incentivize them to reach the next threshold.
  • Promote upgrades. Use banners, pop-ups, and email marketing to encourage customers to upgrade their carts and take advantage of higher discount tiers.
  • Offer limited-time incentives. Create a sense of urgency by making the tiered discounts time-limited. Encourage customers to complete their purchases within a specific timeframe to qualify for the higher discount tiers.

17) Create a product quiz to provide personalized product recommendations

Creating a product quiz to provide personalized product recommendations is a compelling way to drive sales (as well as upsells and cross-sells). This approach engages customers in a unique and interactive experience while helping them discover products that align with their needs. 

Additionally, it generates valuable data and insights on customer preferences, informing your future marketing efforts.

Dr. Squatch, an organic soap brand, offers a quiz year-round, including during Black Friday. The quiz is linked prominently in the top-bar navigation. And with just a few questions, the personalized quiz helps buyers choose the product with the best scent, exfoliation, and hair care for them.

Dr. Squatch

Tips for creating a personalized product quiz: 

  • Design relevant quiz questions. Tailor the quiz questions to align with the different product categories or segments you offer.
  • Link your quiz prominently. Brands like Dr. Squatch and Loop Earplugs understand the conversion power of personalized recommendations, and link quizzes in the top navigation.
  • Capture customer data. Require customers to provide their email address or other contact information to access the quiz results. This lets you gather valuable data for future marketing efforts, such as email campaigns or targeted promotions.

Add a quiz to your chat widget, too

You can make your quiz even more discoverable by using Quick Response Flows in Gorgias, which build your product quiz into your Chat Widget or Help Center. Dr. Squatch adapted their quiz into a Quick Response Flow — check it out below (or on their website).

Dr. Squatch website with a Gorgias chat widget displaying a

18) Keep the conversation going through to Cyber Monday (and beyond)

According to data from over 10,000 Gorgias merchants, repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time customers. 

While attracting new customers during Black Friday is undoubtedly valuable, retaining Black Friday customers for the long term holds even greater significance. Lean into strong customer service, strategic campaigns, personalized email marketing, and social media engagement to foster long-term customer relationships that build brand affinity and maximize sales.

Tips for keeping the conversation going through to Cyber Monday (and beyond):

  • Plan a Cyber Monday campaign. Design a dedicated Cyber Monday campaign with exclusive deals and promotions. Build anticipation by teasing these offers during Black Friday and encourage customers to return for more special discounts.
  • Leverage segmented email marketing. Use email marketing to reach out to different customer segments based on their Black Friday behavior. Tailor personalized emails offering recommendations and send out cart abandonment reminders. 
  • Double down on social media engagement. Encourage customers to share their Black Friday purchases, run a giveaway, and offer incentives to create a sense of community and excitement around your brand that extends beyond the sales event. 

Remember: the purchase isn’t the finish line

During the hustle and bustle of Black Friday marketing, it’s crucial to zoom out and remember your long-term goals beyond the sales frenzy. While driving immediate sales and capturing new customers is key, it’s equally important to focus on the customer experience that improves retention, reduces BFCM returns, garners reviews, and turns first-time buyers into loyal customers. 

Building strong relationships with your customers, and providing exceptional post-purchase experiences, will pave the way for long-term revenue growth for your ecommerce business. 

Encourage customer feedback, engage with reviews, and implement strategies to foster loyalty. By nurturing these aspects, you turn Black Friday shoppers into loyal advocates who return all year round.

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Black Friday—Cyber Monday (BFCM)
Ecommerce Growth
Ecommerce Retention Rate

What Is Ecommerce Retention Rate? (And How To Improve It)

By Ryan Baum
10 min read.
0 min read . By Ryan Baum

Ecommerce businesses pour time and money into attracting prospects and turning them into new customers. But as acquisition costs skyrocket due to increased competition and rising ad prices, attracting new customers isn’t enough — especially if you can’t keep them around.

Today, ecommerce brands must prioritize customer satisfaction and retaining existing customers. If you can’t retain customers, you’ll never get out from under high marketing costs and grow your brand in a sustainable way. Plus, if you can’t offer a customer experience that generates brand loyalty, poor word of mouth will chip away at your brand’s reputation and make it hard to get new customers at all.

Fortunately, more tools and resources than ever exist to help you develop a good customer retention strategy by improving the on-site experience, customer support, and all the other elements of a great customer experience.

Customer experience is important to retain customers across the entire customer journey.

Below, we'll cover the importance of customer retention, how to calculate your customer retention rate, and share ways to improve your customer retention rate and reduce customer churn.

What is ecommerce retention rate?

Customer retention rate is the percentage of existing customers that continue buying from your brand over a given period of time. 

If your organization sees many repeat customers and — if applicable — keeps customers subscribed, you’ll end up with a good customer retention rate. However, if your company seldom does business with a customer after the initial order, you have an opportunity to improve your retention rate.

Customer retention rate is the inverse of ecommerce churn rate. Check out our guide on churn if you want to learn more about that side of the coin.

An illustration of customer retention rate.

Retention rate for subscription-based businesses

Retention rate is most applicable to businesses that sell subscription-based products or services, like software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies or ecommerce brands that sell subscription boxes.

For these companies, measuring and understanding retention rate is straightforward. As long as a customer has an active subscription, they’re retained. The total number of customers who remain active subscribers each month (compared to the previous month’s number) is the brand’s retention rate.

Retention rate for non-subscription businesses

For customers that don’t sell subscription-based products, retention rate is a bit of a square peg in a round hole. Retention rate becomes more of a proxy to understand customer loyalty and the rate of returning customers, which are a little less concrete. It’s difficult to anticipate a customer’s future purchases because they don’t have a clear subscription status. 

Is a customer retained if they buy a product every week? Month? Quarter? What if they don’t buy from your store for half the year, then re-engage for Black Friday — were they retained, or won back? These questions are why retention rate isn’t a perfect metric for the typical ecommerce business.

For these types of companies, we recommend tracking repeat customer rate as well as other leading indicators for repeat shopping, like customer satisfaction (CSAT) and net promoter score (NPS) rather than customer retention metrics.

Why is customer retention rate an important metric?

Your customer retention rate is a valuable measure that gives you important insight into your ability to sustain customer relationships (and turn them into repeat business). It's easier and cheaper to keep a customer than it is to go out and find new customers. According to Hubspot, a mere 5% increase in customer retention can increase the company's revenue by a whopping 25%-95%.

According to Gorgias data, repeat customers make up only 21% of the average brand’s customer base but generate 44% of that brand’s revenue because they shop more often and place higher-value orders.

Repeat customers make up only 21% of the average brand’s customer base but generate 44% of that brand’s revenue

If your strategy over-relies on winning new customers, you’re missing out. Due to high customer acquisition cost and low returns from first-time shoppers, you’ll overspend on low-return customer relationships, taking your ROI. Of course, acquiring customers is important — but their value is only truly realized if you can keep them around. 

First time shoppers have high-acquisition costs but low LTV per customers. Repeat shoppers and loyal customers cost less and generate more revenue.

Customer retention rate calculation

There's a simple formula for calculating your customer retention rate. It contains three elements:

  • Number of customers at the beginning of a time period
  • Number of customers at the end of the same time period
  • New customers acquired during the given period

Customer retention rate = [(Number of customers at the end of time period - Number of customers acquired during time period) / Number of customers at the beginning of time period] x 100

Customer retention rate example

Company A had 100 customers at the beginning of the year and 80 customers at the end of the year. During the year, they acquired 45 new customers. The customer retention rate calculation for Company A would be as follows:

Customer retention rate = [(80 - 45) / 100] x 100

Customer retention rate = 35%

What is the average customer retention rate for ecommerce stores?

The widely accepted customer retention rate for the ecommerce industry is 31%, according to Omniconvert. Depending on how well they handle their customer base and their effort in building customer loyalty, some companies may enjoy a considerably higher customer retention rate. Those who only gear their resources toward finding and selling first-time customers may have a lower retention rate.

Of course, the most important thing is consistent improvement, regardless of your brand’s current customer retention metrics. Customer retention is an ongoing process, and there's always room to improve — which will benefit your customer service ROI and your bottom line.

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7 ways to improve ecommerce customer retention rate

Ecommerce brands should keep a razor-sharp eye on their ecommerce retention rate and churn rate, just like they need to look at customer lifetime value (CLV) and average order value. These benchmarks are metrics that help measure a business's health and identify opportunities to benefit the bottom line. You can put actions in place that help you keep current customers with you instead of your competition.

Let's dive into six tried-and-true customer retention strategies you can use to increase your ecommerce brand's customer retention rate.

1) Provide a fantastic customer experience

We can't say enough about the importance of a positive and pleasant user experience. According to a 2019 research study by Oracle and Jeanne Bliss, 43% of customers will stop doing business with a brand over a single bad experience. In addition, 59% of them will tell their friends and family about the negative experience.

Evaluate your customer service program with metrics like resolution time, net promoter score, and customer satisfaction, and work on improving essential elements of customer experience like:

Gorgias's omnichannel customer service platform unifies conversations across all channels, including live chat, social media, email, and more.

For more tips on the essential elements of a great customer service experience, check out our post on customer service best practices.

2) Introduce a clear post-purchase experience

One of the most important moments of the customer life cycle is immediately after their first purchase. Think of the post-purchase email campaign as your onboarding flow for repeat customers. You need to set customer expectations with clear, proactive communication or else they’ll be less likely to return to your store.

Here are some examples of the consequences of poor post-purchase experiences:

  • If a customer places an order and doesn’t get a follow-up email, they start to doubt whether their order went through
  • If a customer doesn’t get an order tracking number after a purchase, they may stress about the shipping time frame
  • If a customer doesn’t get set-up instructions, they may think the product doesn’t work and ask for a return

Pay special attention to the communication a customer receives after their first purchase. A lack of communication is fatal, and the right combination of confirmations and email marketing can quickly get customers interested in buying additional products. If you nail it, you give the customer a clear, easy path to long-term customer loyalty.

A great example of clear, post-purchase emails is Princess Polly, an apparel brand. They give customers simple but visually informative confirmation emails that communicate the status of the customer’s order at a glance:

An example of a post-purchase delivery confirmation email from Princess Polly.
Source: Princess Polly (via Klaviyo)

3) Build a rewarding customer loyalty program

Loyal customers come back to your brand over and over, making them a profitable addition to your business. According to a 2020 survey by Yotpo, 68% of customers will join a loyalty program if one is available. Cultivate your customers into raving fans and increase their purchase frequency by employing a customer rewards marketing strategy.

To create a successful rewards program, consider looking into tools like LoyaltyLion. They help you determine the rewards that repeat customers will get for important customer engagement behaviors like mentioning you on social media (which is great for word-of-mouth exposure), purchasing a new product, or generating referrals. Consider offering freebies, deep discounts, and early access to new product launches. 

Parade, an apparel ecommerce brand, offers its loyal customers (called Parade Friends) free, early-access items. This supports customer engagement and brand loyalty, and usually leads to a wave of user-generated content (UGC) on social media that promote the brand:

An example of a unique loyalty program from Parade.
Source: Parade

If you use Gorgias, you can also integrate with LoyaltyLion to see customer rewards within the helpdesk so you can see which customers are superfans, prioritize their tickets, and offer personalized service.

Learn more about the Gorgias and LoyaltyLion integration.

4) Offer customers discounts and deals

Everyone likes to feel special. Score some big points with your current customer base by offering them exclusive incentives. This could include letting loyalty program members order new products before the general public, offering them member-only discounts, offering free shipping, and sending a free gift with their purchase. These extra touches will increase your customer's satisfaction and keep them loyal to your brand.

Amazon is a great example of a company that uses deals and discounts to get people to shop on their site. When you sign up for Amazon Prime, you get free shipping, an enormous library of original movies and TV titles, and so many other perks to incentivize you to keep shopping at Amazon.

Of course, this strategy isn’t feasible for small stores running on Shopify, BigCommerce, and other ecommerce platforms. But, if it makes sense for your products, consider replicating the strategy with a Subscribe and Save option. By signing up for automatic repeat purchases, customers get a discount. This is great for customers because they save on the purchase and don’t have to remember to restock. It’s also great for your company: You retain more existing customers, driving revenue.

Here’s an example of how OLIPOP, a beverage brand, advertises their subscribe and save option on product pages:

Offer upsell offers (like Subscribe & Save) on product pages.
Source: OLIPOP

5) Conduct surveys and learn from customer data

Don't assume you know what your customers want — ask them! Retaining customers takes continuous communication, as their interests and preferences can change over time. It's necessary to periodically survey them to ensure you're hitting the mark with your retention efforts. Gather and review customer feedback, looking for trends to use to elevate your buyer's experience.

These surveys don't have to be long or time-consuming. A question or two during checkout or a marketing email asking for two minutes of their time is enough to give you valuable intel.

Learn more about gathering customer feedback with CSAT surveys or NPS surveys.

6) Improve your ecommerce store’s marketing with segmentation

Consistently improve and optimize your store to keep it functioning quickly and efficiently. Segment your customers for more personalized, impactful messaging. For ecommerce brands, the best tool around is Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you segment your customer base and send highly targeted SMS and email marketing campaigns.

Plus, if you use Gorgias, you can integrate with Klaviyo to bring you SMS marketing and support into one tool:

Klaviyo and Gorgias integrate for superior marketing and customer experience.

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On top of segmentation, continue making your website as seamless and low-effort as possible. Check your load times for your web pages, measure the success of your calls to action (CTAs), and cut down on the number of required clicks where you can. Remember, the best way to delight customers (and keep them coming back) is a low-effort experience.

7) Utilize cross-selling and upselling strategies

Upselling and cross-selling are the most effective strategies to maximize the lifetime values of repeat customers by driving higher order values. While you never want to be too pushy, you can employ retention marketing strategies to suggest new, exciting products to existing customers to bring them back to your store and spend more.

Check out our guide to ecommerce upselling strategies for:

  • A list of tools to support your upselling efforts
  • Tips to turn customer support interactions into upsell opportunities
  • Tips to proactively reach out to customers as an upsell strategy (which has been shown to lift revenue)
  • Tips to reduce returns and get more exchanges instead, which reduces lost revenue and still gives you a chance to wow customers

Alternatively, learn how Ohh Deer, a stationery brand, partnered with Gorgias to revamp their customer support and upselling strategy and lift quarterly revenue by $12,500.

Increase your ecommerce retention rate with Gorgias

By focusing on providing a wonderful customer experience at every touch, creating customer loyalty, and cross-selling at the right moments, you can increase your ecommerce company's retention rate and enjoy more profit from your existing customer base.

Ready to improve your customer service? Gorgias, the helpdesk built exclusively for ecommerce, helps ecommerce businesses enhance, automate, and increase the speed of their customer support, improving customer experience and, by extension, customer retention. Brands that switch to Gorgias see an average of 5% higher gross merchandise volume (GMV). 

We also help you monitor performance with features like our support performance dashboard and live statistics about agent performance. 

Book a demo today to learn how you can increase your customer retention rate with exemplary customer service.

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Customer Service Measurement
Ecommerce Growth
Customer Service Phrases

The Best and Worst Customer Service Phrases to Use (with Scripts)

By Gorgias Team
min read.
0 min read . By Gorgias Team

‍TL;DR:

  • Customer service phrases are ready-to-use language patterns that help support teams communicate with empathy, clarity, and consistency
  • The best phrases combine acknowledgment, ownership, and specific next steps to build trust
  • This article includes six to eight phrases to use, eight to avoid, and seven scenario-based scripts
  • Avoid sounding robotic by being specific and mirroring your customer's tone
  • Tools like Gorgias help teams scale personal service with Macros and our AI agent

Customer service phrases are the building blocks of great support conversations. The right words can de-escalate tension, build trust, and turn routine interactions into relationship-building moments. But the wrong phrases can sound dismissive, robotic, or insincere — even when your team genuinely wants to help. 

Most support teams struggle with consistency, especially when scaling across channels or onboarding new agents. 

This guide provides curated phrases to use and avoid, plus scenario-based scripts for common situations like de-escalation, delays, and handoffs. You'll learn how to apply these phrases authentically without sounding scripted.

Best customer service phrases to use

The following phrases work across phone, email, chat, and social media because they demonstrate empathy, ownership, and commitment to resolution. Each one serves a distinct purpose in building rapport and moving conversations forward.

"Thank you"

When to use it: Thank customers for their patience during delays, for bringing issues to your attention, or simply for choosing your brand. This phrase works in openings, closures, and anywhere you want to acknowledge effort. 

Example: "Thank you for reaching out to us today. I'm happy to help with your order."

"I can absolutely help you with that"

When to use it: This phrase works especially well early in conversations to set a positive tone and show ownership. Avoid vague language like "I'll try" or "I'll see what I can do," which creates uncertainty. 

Example: "I can absolutely help you track down that package. Let me pull up your order details right now."

"Great question — let me find out"

When to use it: When you don't know the answer, this phrase validates the customer while maintaining confidence. It shows you're committed to accuracy over speed. The key is following up with a specific timeframe or next step. 

Example: "Great question. Let me check with our warehouse team and get back to you within the hour."

"I understand how that feels"

When to use it: Empathy statements acknowledge customer emotions without over-apologizing. This phrase works well when customers express frustration, disappointment, or confusion. It demonstrates understanding while keeping the conversation solution-focused. 

Example: "I understand how frustrating it must be to wait this long for your order. Let's figure out exactly where it is and what we can do."

"I've reviewed your case history"

When to use it: This phrase shows preparation and prevents customers from repeating themselves. It's especially valuable for follow-up conversations or when taking over from another agent. Customers feel heard when you reference previous interactions. 

Example: "I've reviewed your case history and can see you contacted us last week about the damaged item. Let me make sure we get this resolved today."

"I appreciate you bringing this up"

When to use it: Frame customer feedback as valuable input rather than complaints. This phrase works well for bug reports, feature requests, and quality issues. It positions the customer as a partner in improving your service. 

Example: "I appreciate you bringing this to our attention. This affects other customers too, and we're grateful you caught it."

Magic words to build rapport

These short power words create a cumulative effect of warmth and professionalism throughout your conversations. Sprinkle them naturally into your responses:

  • Certainly
  • Absolutely
  • Happy to
  • Of course
  • My pleasure

Customer service phrases to avoid

Certain phrases undermine trust, create defensiveness, or sound insincere — even when you mean well. Here are eight common phrases that backfire and what to say instead.

"Your call is important to us"

Why to avoid: This phrase feels hollow, especially after long hold times. Customers hear it as corporate speak that contradicts their experience. It's often delivered by automated systems, which makes it even less credible.

Say this instead: "Thank you for your patience. I know wait times have been longer than usual today."

"I apologize for any inconvenience"

Why to avoid: This generic apology sounds robotic and non-specific. The word "any" suggests you're not sure what went wrong or that you're minimizing the issue. It fails to acknowledge the actual impact on the customer.

Say this instead: "I'm sorry your order arrived damaged. That's not the quality we stand for, and I want to make this right."

"Please hold"

Why to avoid: This abrupt phrase lacks context and doesn't ask permission. It treats the customer's time as less valuable than yours. It also creates anxiety because customers don't know how long they'll wait or why.

Say this instead: "May I put you on a brief hold while I check with our warehouse team? It should only take a minute."

"No / I can't do that"

Why to avoid: Blunt rejection closes down the conversation and positions you as an obstacle. It focuses on what you can't do rather than exploring alternatives. Customers feel dismissed and often escalate.

Say this instead: "While I can't process a refund past 30 days, I can offer you store credit or help you exchange it for something else."

"Calm down"

Why to avoid: This phrase is patronizing and almost always escalates the situation. It invalidates the customer's emotions and makes them feel judged. Frustrated customers become angry customers when they hear this.

Say this instead: "I can see why you're frustrated. Let's work together to resolve this right now."

"You're mistaken"

Why to avoid: Telling customers they're wrong creates defensiveness and damages trust. Even if they misunderstood something, this phrasing makes it confrontational. It shifts the conversation from problem-solving to proving who's right.

Say this instead: "Let me clarify what happened here. It looks like there may have been a misunderstanding about the shipping timeframe."

"Let me call you back"

Why to avoid: This phrase lacks commitment and raises concerns about follow-through. Customers worry they'll fall through the cracks or have to start over with someone new. It also creates additional effort on their end.

Say this instead: "I'll reach out to our billing team right now and call you back by 2pm today at this number. Does that work for you?"

"That's our policy"

Why to avoid: Hiding behind policy sounds dismissive and suggests you're unwilling to help. It positions rules as more important than the customer. Even when policies genuinely can't be bent, this phrasing feels bureaucratic.

Say this instead: "Our return window is 30 days to ensure product quality and manage inventory. I can't extend it, but let me see if we have other options like an exchange or store credit."

Scenario-based scripts and alternatives

Ready-to-use phrases work best when tailored to specific situations. These seven scenarios cover the most common customer touchpoints, with multiple phrase options for each.

Openings and rapport

The first few seconds set the tone for the entire conversation. Warm openings build trust and make customers feel valued rather than processed. Whether you're on phone, chat, or email, your greeting should balance professionalism with friendliness.

  • "Thanks for reaching out today, how can I help?"
  • "I'm happy to assist with your question today"
  • "It's nice to meet you, let's get this sorted out"
  • "I see you have a question about your order and I'm here to help"

Why this works: These openings acknowledge the customer immediately and signal readiness to help. They avoid transactional language and create space for conversation.

De-escalation and empathy

Angry or frustrated customers need validation before they can move toward solutions. These phrases acknowledge emotion without agreeing that your company is at fault. The goal is to shift from venting to problem-solving.

  • "I understand how frustrating this must be, and I'm here to help resolve it"
  • "I can see why you'd feel that way and would be frustrated, too"
  • "Thank you for your patience as I work to make this right"
  • "I hear you and want to see what I can do to help"

Why this works: Validation reduces defensiveness and shows you're listening. These phrases pair empathy with forward momentum toward resolution.

Delays and outage updates

When things go wrong, transparency builds trust. Customers want to know what's happening, why, and when it will be fixed. These phrases set clear expectations and demonstrate accountability.

  • "We're aware of the issue and expect a resolution within two hours"
  • "I'll keep you updated every 30 minutes until this is resolved."
  • "Your order is delayed due to weather, and we are working to expedite it"
  • "I know this isn't the timeline we promised, so let me check on offering expedited shipping or a discount"

Why this works: Specific timelines and proactive updates reduce anxiety. Customers can plan around delays when they have clear information.

When you don't know the answer

Admitting you don't know something maintains credibility when paired with commitment to find out. These phrases show ownership and accuracy matter more than speed. The key is setting clear expectations for follow-up.

  • "That's a great question, let me verify with my team to give you an accurate answer"
  • "I'm not certain about that detail, but I'll find out for you and follow up within the hour."
  • "Let me check our knowledge base to make sure I give you the right answer."
  • "I'll reach out to our product team who can answer that better than I can, and I'll email you by end of day."

Why this works: These phrases maintain trust by prioritizing accuracy. Customers respect honesty more than guessing.

Warm transfers and escalation

Handoffs are friction points where customers risk repeating themselves or feeling abandoned. These phrases maintain continuity and explain why the transfer adds value. Always share context with the next agent before transferring.

  • "I'm connecting you with Sarah, our billing specialist, who can help you faster"
  • "Let me bring in my manager to approve that request, I've already filled them in for you"
  • "I'm transferring you to our technical team for the setup and will stay on the line during the transition"
  • "I've shared all your case details with the next agent, including your order number and what we've tried so far."

Why this works: Explaining the reason for the handoff and confirming context has been shared reduces customer frustration. Warm transfers feel like escalations to help, not attempts to pass the buck.

Guiding to resolution

Walking customers through solutions requires clarity and collaboration. These phrases balance efficiency with thoroughness, making customers feel heard while moving toward closure. Break complex processes into steps.

  • "To resolve this, I can process a refund and send a prepaid return label now"
  • "Let's walk through troubleshooting, starting with checking if the power cable is fully connected"
  • "It looks like the discount code didn't apply, so let me manually adjust your order"
  • "We have two options: I can send a replacement or process a full refund, which would you prefer?"

Why this works: Clear next steps reduce confusion and give customers a sense of control. Offering choices empowers customers and increases satisfaction.

Conversation closures

Endings should confirm resolution, invite follow-up, and leave customers feeling positive about the interaction. These phrases check for completeness and maintain the relationship beyond this single transaction.

  • "Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
  • "Feel free to reach out with any other questions, we're here to help"
  • "Thank you for your patience, I'm glad we could get this sorted out for you"
  • "I've emailed you a summary of our discussion, please let me know if you need anything else"

Why this works: These closures confirm the issue is resolved while keeping the door open. They leave customers feeling valued and supported.

How to use phrases authentically

Scripts and templates are starting points, not rigid rules for positive scripting. The best customer service feels personal and responsive, not robotic. These principles help you adapt phrases to real conversations.

Be specific, own the issue, and set expectations

Vague language creates uncertainty and erodes trust. Specificity demonstrates preparation, ownership, and respect for the customer's time. Compare "I'll look into it" with "I'll check with our warehouse team and email you by 3pm today with tracking details." The second version tells the customer exactly what will happen and when.

Best practices:

  • Replace "soon" with actual timeframes
  • Use customer names and order numbers
  • Explain what you're doing and why
  • Commit to specific follow-up actions

Avoid robotic language and mirror tone with empathy

Over-scripting makes agents sound like chatbots. Pay attention to how your customer communicates and match their tone. A formal customer gets a professional response, while a casual customer gets friendlier language. The phrase "I understand how frustrating this is" lands differently depending on context and delivery.

Best practices:

  • Vary your phrasing to avoid repetition
  • Use natural transitions, not template markers
  • Match formality level to customer tone
  • Balance empathy with efficiency

Say the right thing every time with Gorgias

Delivering consistent, empathetic support becomes easier when your team has the right tools. Gorgias Macros lets you save these phrases as templates while personalizing them with customer data. 

And if you need these phrases at scale? AI Agent carries natural conversations while maintaining your brand voice, 24/7, no matter the situation.

Book a demo today to see how we help ecommerce brands scale personal service.

Customer Experience
NPS Survey Best Practices

NPS Survey Best Practices for the Best Response Rate

By Ryan Baum
12 min read.
0 min read . By Ryan Baum

Some hold up the net promoter score (NPS) as the holy grail of KPIs. While we won’t go so far as to declare it the most important metric of all, we will say that it is one of a few that is absolutely crucial to your brand and customer success.

That’s because you can learn a lot about customers when you dig into NPS feedback. What keeps customers happy, what upsets them, how you can boost retention, how to slow down churn — you name it, NPS can become a valuable feedback loop that reveals insights into all of these things and more.

That’s why we’ve created this guide. Read below to learn how to improve response rates to create a better, more accurate net promoter score.

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NPS formula and calculations

If you’re unfamiliar with net promoter scores, we have a detailed explainer on how to calculate NPS that will tell you everything you need to know. But for now, let’s have a quick refresher. 

It all starts with asking your customers a simple question: On a scale of 0-10, how likely are they to recommend your offerings to a friend?

From there, collect these numbers:

  • Promoters: People with scores of 9 and 10 who are likely to recommend you.
  • Passives: People who gave 7 and 8 scores — not necessarily unhappy, just not happy enough to actively promote for you.
  • Detractors: People who gave answers between 0 and 6. These people range from those unlikely to recommend you to those who will actively detract from you via word of mouth, bad reviews, or negative social media posts.

NPS Surveys: Detractors, Passives, and Promoters

Calculating your NPS is easy. Determine the percentage of promoters and detractors from the total number of responses. Then, subtract the detractor percentage from the promoter percentage for your score. So if you have 70% promoters minus 10% detractors, your NPS is 60.

NPS Formula.

11 best practices to improve response rates in NPS surveys

Before making business decisions based on your NPS, you need the best possible dataset to work with. That means improving response rates to NPS survey questions creates a larger sample size — and below, we’ll show you the best ways to do that.

1) Choose when to send surveys: Lifecycle-based, transaction-based, and pulse checks

There are three great cadences to send out your NPS surveys:

Lifecycle-based surveys

These should trigger at certain moments of the customer’s lifecycle. They’re a great way to get customer feedback at key points of the customer journey. 

This way, you can easily triangulate high-impact changes — for example, if NPS goes way up after customers receive an email with set-up instructions, consider making that information available earlier. 

Other examples include:

  • 30 days after signing up
  • A year after signing up
  • After a certain onboarding step 

Transactional NPS surveys

A transactional NPS survey gets triggered by set customer interactions. Much like the lifecycle surveys above, this helps you collect customer feedback and take a temperature check where it matters most. In this case, after key customer touchpoints:

  • In ecommerce, this will most likely be after a purchase or a subscription renewal 
  • In the SaaS world, it could trigger after a customer installs a new feature 

Pulse-check surveys

Pulse checks are a bit different in that they survey your whole customer base all at once. You can use NPS surveys to gauge customer sentiment following a company rebrand, after a push to get new customer referrals, and so on. 

Especially while conducting lots of customer research to ensure product-market fit, conduct pulse-check surveys with some level of regularity to maintain a healthy feedback look. Many companies do pulse checks twice yearly just to get a sense of customer sentiment across the entire customer base.

2) Only ask one question in NPS surveys (most of the time)

Where NPS surveys are concerned, less is more. The longer your survey, the lower the chances are that people will hang around to finish it. Sticking to one question can improve your response rate — and you want a great response rate because larger sample sizes will create a more accurate NPS.

So, what's a good survey response rate? There is no one clear answer because response rates can differ between channels (email surveys versus telephone or in-app surveys, for example) or based on how engaged your customers are with your brand.

However, good response rates can generally vary between 5% and 30%. If your response rate shoots up to 50% or more, you’re doing extremely well — and your customers are highly engaged.

While you want to keep your surveys brief, nothing says you can’t follow up with particular customers individually. In fact, you absolutely should follow up with customers who offer particularly interesting responses in your survey’s feedback section. Send out a more in-depth survey or schedule a 1:1 interview to discover the reasons behind their responses.

Here’s a great example of a one-question survey sent with NPS survey tool Delighted, plus a follow-up question made possible by Delighted’s integration with Gorgias:

NPS example: Single-question survey

When to use multi-question surveys

There are a couple of limited cases when you can send out multi-question surveys:

  • When you need deeper feedback on specific new products
  • To get in-depth feedback from loyal customers who are willing to spend more time answering questions

Use these longer surveys judiciously to collect highly targeted information — and strive to keep them as brief as possible.

3) Always, always, always A/B test your surveys

A/B testing is a common marketing technique that has users compare multiple pieces of content to determine which pieces perform best. You can — and absolutely should — use A/B tests for your surveys, too. Doing so will help you optimize surveys to get the best response rate.

When you’re designing an A/B test, consider testing for the following:

  • Email subject lines: (“Let us know what you think!” vs. “We want to hear from you!”)
  • Number of questions (single-question vs. multi-question surveys)
  • Delivery channel (email, in-app, after-purchase pop-up, etc.)
  • Best time of day (morning, end of day, etc.)
  • Best stage of the customer lifecycle (one day, week, or month after purchase)
  • Testing by customer segments (repeat customers vs. first-time shoppers)
  • Best time to test after an interaction (so the interaction still feels fresh)

Those tests will get you started, but feel free to add more as you spot areas to potentially improve.

4) Make your NPS surveys visual and brand-friendly

The first step to creating an attractive survey is to add visuals. Don’t rely on people typing in answers to questions. Use graphical buttons instead. Be sure to use your company’s logo in the design, and introduce your brand’s colors through borders and other elements.

Make it brand-friendly, too — whatever that means for your brand. If your brand gives off a sleek, posh vibe, then your net promoter score survey should do the same.

Rather than building these emails from scratch, consider using an NPS survey software with convenient templates. There are many great options, but we recommend Delighted — especially given its integration with Gorgias:

NPS Survey template
Delighted

Delighted does a great job of letting you brand the survey (using your logo and colors) without over-crowding the email and distracting the survey-taker from the main purpose of the email: Choosing an NPS score. 

5) Consider offering a reward for filling out NPS surveys

Free swag is an excellent motivator, and so are discounts. Offer a little something extra in exchange for NPS survey responses, and you’ll likely see your response rate shoot up dramatically.

What can you offer? The sky's the limit. Create swag bags to send out to respondents or offer a limited-time promotional item. You can also offer digital gift cards or discounts, too.

The only issue with offering rewards is that it may not be sustainable. One great way to work around this is to set up a drawing or raffle, so that survey respondents have a chance at winning something awesome. It’ll be more affordable for your brand — and an attractive enough offer that more customers will leave feedback in exchange for a chance at the prize.

6) Add a comment box for customers to explain their numerical answer

NPS survey best practices include always making sure there is a comment box below the numerical survey question. Some customers won’t leave a comment, but some will. Use these comments to understand why your happy customers are so delighted with your offerings and why unhappy customers are less than thrilled with the experience you’ve offered.

If you use an NPS tool like Delighted, you can opt in to include an optional “Tell us more” box:

NPS Survey example: comment box
Delighted

7) Look deeper into your NPS and customer data to get the most valuable insights

Your NPS score is a valuable tool, but it will only get you so far. It’s essentially a measurement of how “loud” your promoters are compared to the detractors. Focusing too much on the relative volume of each group can be misleading.

For example, you may be tempted to invest a lot of time into rescuing your detractors, but think about this: Maybe the problem isn’t that your detractors are unhappy. Maybe they were never the right target market in the first place.

That’s why you need to dig deeper into the data behind your NPS score. You might find interesting patterns, like nearly all of your detractors live abroad or a huge percentage of your promoters bought the same product. That suggests perhaps you need an audience from closer to home.

  • Dive into demographic patterns on Shopify or whatever ecommerce platform you use to learn about the characteristics that make up promoter, passive, and detractor groups.
  • Keep track of feedback from comment boxes. Do detractors routinely mention shipping delays? Now you know where to start on improvements.
  • Send out follow-ups to members of each group to see if you can learn more about the factors that drove their initial response.

8) Always send a follow-up message to thank customers who filled out the survey

Thank-yous are a fantastic way to build goodwill and customer loyalty. This step doesn’t have to be anything complicated, either. In fact, the CRM tools or survey templates you use to generate surveys should automate the thank-you process — either as a final screen of the survey or a separate email.

Ideally, your survey should pop up with a quick statement of thanks once the survey has been completed. Make sure to personalize the message — but keep it brief to ensure that it’s both seen and appreciated.

This is how a thank you message will appear if sent with Delighted:

NPS Survey Example: Thank You
Delighted

Less ideal — but still acceptable — is to send a follow-up email to say thank you. The problem with this method is that people aren’t always appreciative of inbox clutter — plus, there’s a chance customers may delete the email unread.

9) Just get started and aim for statistically significant sample sizes later on

Worried that your survey isn’t optimized to its fullest? Or that your customer base is too small to generate meaningful results? Set those fears aside and launch your NPS survey anyway.

The truth is, even small brands can get a lot out of comparatively few NPS responses. A/B testing your survey to optimize it is important — and it’s also something you can do to improve as you work through the process.

Now, if you’re a super small B2B brand with only a handful of customers, or a brand that is just starting, NPS scores may not be all that worthwhile. Instead, you may need to roll up your sleeves and dive in to ask for feedback the old-fashioned way: with phone calls or messages directly to your point of contact.

10) Test your survey before sending it to customers

We’ve talked about the importance of A/B testing — but what about regular beta testing? It’s an easy and crucial step that ensures an easy-to-use survey tool for your customers. 

Just have a handful of people at your company so they can click all the buttons and check various features. Request feedback on the design, and be sure to load the survey on mobile and desktop platforms, too.

Testing the technical aspects of your survey is especially important if you have any sort of automatic personalization. If you use a tool like Retently, for example, send a few test emails to different recipients to make sure the personalization is accurate:

NPS Survey: Personalized vs. Regular
Retently

💡Tip: If you use Retnetly, you can integrate with Gorgias to follow up with customers — like winning back unhappy customers or inviting happy customers to a referral or loyalty program. 

11) Think beyond the surface of the results

Up above, we mentioned that sometimes you learn important things about your target market based on your detractors — and that’s why you should always look beyond the NPS score itself. Do a deep dive on your detractors to really analyze what is happening. Examine demographic information and pay close attention to any comments they leave.

For example, do you have a large group of detractors who love your product but are unhappy with customer support or your website experience? This might indicate that your customer service team needs additional training or managerial support, which is a straightforward fix to raise your score. Or what if all of your detractors share certain characteristics, like age, income level, and geographical region? It could mean that this subset isn’t your product’s target market, and you’ll be better off re-targeting your product.

Find out how Gorgias helps ecommerce brands increase their KPIs

Ready to boost your NPS? Gorgias makes it easy. It’s customer support software specifically designed for ecommerce, built to integrate with the ecommerce tools (like NPS email software) you already use. 

On top of NPS, you can facilitate follow-up questions, automate thank-you emails, and get a real-time view of other statistics like customer satisfaction (CSAT), average response times, and resolution times.

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To learn more, sign up here and check out everything Gorgias offers.

Customer Service Measurement
Post-Purchase Behavior

Post-Purchase Behavior: Understand How Customers Think & Boost Loyalty

By Alexa Hertel
11 min read.
0 min read . By Alexa Hertel

When a shopper places an order, the second phase of customer acquisition begins: Turning new customers into repeat customers. Return customers generate 300% more revenue over first time buyers on average, according to data from 10,000 ecommerce brands. 

So, what kind of post-purchase behavior leads to long-term loyalty? Ideally, your customers follow up purchases with: 

  • Leaving positive reviews and CSAT scores
  • Signing up for a customer community or participating on social channels 
  • Introducing friends and social followers to your brand and products
  • Engaging with follow-up marketing email campaigns
  • Making repeat purchases with the help of product recommendations or a generous loyalty program

Below, learn more about the psychology of your shoppers once they place an order, and get tactics to improve your brand's post-purchase experience.

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What is post-purchase behavior?

Post-purchase behavior is the set of actions customers take after purchasing an item. Post-purchase behavior can be positive (repeat purchases, raving fans), negative (poor reviews, excessive returns), or neutral (transactional purchases, simply using the product).

Why is it important to understand post-purchase behavior?

Post-purchase behavior matters because making the first sale isn’t the finish line. It’s the beginning of a race to win long-term, loyal customers: people who repeatedly return to your store, have a high customer lifetime value, buy more from you (increasing cart size and transaction value), and send new customers your way.

Gorgias’s data shows that while repeat customers make up 21% of all customers, they bring in 44% of revenue. 

The value of repeat shoppers
Source: Gorgias

What is post purchase dissonance?

Post-purchase dissonance, or what’s also known as “buyer’s remorse,” is when an otherwise positive purchase experience creates cognitive dissonance in the form of discomfort or other negative feelings. 

Usually, customers experience post-purchase dissonance when you don’t give enough information about:

  • Order confirmation: “Did it go through?”
  • Shipping: “When it arrive on time?”
  • The product: “How do I set this up?”
  • Returns: “Am I stuck with it?”

This often, understandably, dampens positive post-purchase behavior. On the other hand, a great post-purchase experience and strong customer service and support can drive positive post-purchase behavior, including brand loyalty.

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13 ways to provide a pleasant post-purchase experience that leads to more sales

Happy customers tend to become repeat customers. Focusing on creating a positive post-checkout process can increase customer satisfaction, bolster your repeat customer rate, and build customer loyalty.

Here are 13 ways to anticipate what your customers may think after clicking “Confirm order” and how  steer your customer’s post-purchase behavior. 

1) Do some audience research before getting started 

Consider: What metrics are we optimizing for?

The first step in encouraging positive consumer behavior through a thoughtful post-purchase experience is understanding what you want your customers to do. Then, take a look at who they are, what they care about, and how they behave. The key is to fully understand your brand’s customer journey. This will help you craft a better experience for them that’s based on real learnings about your business. 

“The first question brands should ask is, what kind of post purchase activities do you want to drive differently,” Bri Christiano, Director of Support at Gorgias, says. “And, who are you really targeting? That's going to dictate what your main metric is, and it’ll determine where you focus.” 

After you have a top-level understanding of the kinds of results you want to see overall, you can drill down into the specific activities that will be effective, like timely email sends. 

2) Immediately send an order confirmation email

Customer sentiment: “Did my purchase go through?”

In order to ensure a stress-free purchase process for your online store, send shoppers a confirmation email so they can confirm that their transaction went through. 

Include details like their order number, the shipping destination address, payment method, product details (in case of an order mistake), and the total cost including any promotional discounts. 

Order confirmation email
Source: Printfresh

Caption: Gorgias customer Printfresh sends a thorough post-purchase email that includes all important order details.

💡Tip: Bri recommends sending timely emails that “catch customers when they're interacting with your brand. Don't send random emails at times when you’re likely not top of mind. Then, add personalization when you can for goals that they have, if your brand aligns with that.”

Even better if your order confirmation email links to a clear and helpful order management portal where customers can track their order, report issues, and modify the order.

Order management portal
Source: ALOHAS

3) Set up self-service order management

Customer sentiment: “Shoot, I messed up my order. I need to change it, fast!”

Sometimes a customer realizes that they didn’t make the right decision about an order, or legitimately made a mistake. 

Giving customers the opportunity to cancel an order themselves before it ships gives them peace of mind and allows them to correct their mistake in time without having to wait to send in a return. Using a helpdesk like Gorgias, customers can use self-service order management in chat or in the Help Center to cancel a recent order. 

Order management in chat

If you do require customers to write into support (or if customers bypass your self-service options), set up a ticket prioritization system to surface those urgent tickets before it’s too late. Ensure that your support reps can do a quick information search to find the order and change or cancel it quickly. 

Here’s an example of a Gorgias Rule that automatically tags tickets about order cancellation requests from orders within the last two days, so your agents can confirm the cancellation before the order is shipped:

Order cancellation automation

4) Be transparent about shipping times, carrier information, and customer service information

Customer sentiment: “When will it get here?”

Retail disruptions have reached 59% or higher over the past couple of years. With supply chain issues and shipping delays, giving people as much information as possible about how and when their purchase will reach them helps better meet customer expectations. 

Plus, questions about order status make up a large chunk of customer service requests. So, preemptively providing this information can help reduce the number of those repetitive tickets that don’t actually require a human touch. 

Offering real time order tracking information (ideally, without making customers jump through hopes) provides transparency, sets expectations, and allows customers to stay up to date with any order delays or changes without having to reach out to customer support.  

Order tracking

📚Recommended reading: Check out our post on how to offer real-time order tracking for more strategies.

5) Enhance the “unboxing” experience

Customer sentiment: “A package! I hope I love it.” 

Every moment, from the moment a shopper makes a purchase to when they unwrap your product for the first time, should build anticipation. Creating a fun and creative unboxing experience will help. 

Stationary brand Ohh Deer and its subscription program Papergang sends visually stunning packaging, especially for its monthly boxes. These fun, “keepable” boxes spark joy, can be reused or gifted, and create an overall positive experience that customers can look forward to. 

Packaging and unboxing
Source: Ohh Deer 

To get started, take a look at brands like Arka or Fantastapack, which provide custom options for enhancing your packaging.  

6) Have an honest and forgiving return/refund policy

Customer sentiment: “What if I don’t like it?”

When customers inevitably experience hiccups in the order process, the goal is that their behavior is constructive and positive, rather than angry and combative. To get that kind of post-purchase behavior, you need to offer easy paths to contact customer support and a smooth return or exchange process. 

Customers love the peace of mind of knowing that they can return something without hassle, even if they never have the need. Communicating that returns are easy (and free, if you can manage it) upfront can even encourage shoppers to convert. 

Still, solely-online retailers can be tricky for consumers. Many are hesitant to make a purchase decision on items that they can’t see in person first. To address that concern, share your returns process and policy in every order confirmation email and in FAQs and the Help Center on your website. 

Mattress company Casper created an easy and generous return policy that’s a gold standard for ecommerce: If you don’t like your mattress, tell them within 30 days, and they’ll cover shipping for a free return. With something as bulky as a mattress, free return shipping can eliminate any concerns about not liking such a big investment. 

Source: Casper

A returns tool like Loop can really help you optimize the product so customers don’t have to jump through hoops to return a product:

Returns management portal
Source: Loop portal on Jaxxon’s website

7) Encourage exchanges over refunds

Customer sentiment: “I don’t love it. Should I get my money back?”

Encouraging shoppers to make an exchange keeps them around as a customer and also allows you to keep the revenue from the sale, which will help with your bottom line. According to returns tool Loop, “Turning refunds into exchanges is 10x more impactful than reducing return costs.”

Loop incentivizes returns by offering customers slightly more in-store credit than they would get for a refund: 

Incentivize exchanges over returns
Source: Loop

Shopify stores that use Loop for their returns see a 15% reduction in returns on average.  If you use Shopify or Gorgias, it’s easy to integrate Loop as an impactful return/exchange tool. 

💡Learn how Loop integrates with Gorgias to improve the customer experience of your returns even further.

8) Provide detailed instructions on how to use the product or service

Customer sentiment: “It’s here! How do I set it up?”

Devices or tools that arrive with no or unclear instructions, DIY furniture assembly that seems nearly impossible, or even complex software tools with poor onboarding can cause a less than positive experience, even if the end product is great. 

Create a simple YouTube video, send clear step-by-step instructions with images, or share a live chat hotline customers can reach out to if they get stuck. These options make it easy for people to get all of the information they need to set up or use the product or service they just purchased successfully. 

For example, GEN3 e-bikes come with a paper manual for assembly, but they also send a QR code (using a QR code generator like Beaconstac) that takes shoppers to a short, high-quality how-to video that’s less than 5 minutes long.

9) Send a CSAT survey and request product reviews from high scorers

Customer sentiment: “This is seriously (un)cool.”

Brands usually send a customer satisfaction (CSAT) score after a customer has interacted with customer support. Consider only asking for product reviews from people who score 4 or 5 on CSAT and leave positive feedback about their interaction with support. 

If you use a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can likely send these kinds of CSAT surveys automatically after conversations, purchases, and other kinds of transactions:

Send CSAT surveys

📚Recommended reading: Our Director of Support’s guide to improving CSAT score and survey response rate

10) Include relevant product recommendations

Customer sentiment: “Loved it! What else do they have?”

The time when shoppers are still deciding on a purchase is a prime opportunity for your support team to cross-sell or upsell them on additional items. 

For example, a customer might have trouble finding an item on your website that they saw on social media. Or, they might ask for recommendations for what to purchase or for items that will go best with the item that they already bought from you.

Provide product recommendations
Source: Able

After a purchase is complete, consider surfacing additional product recommendations for customers via email. Even if these don’t result in an immediate second sale, you keep customers engaged and thinking about how that recommended item would improve their lives or enhance the use of the current item they have. 

11) Incentivize customers to show off their purchases on social media

Customer sentiment: “This product’s the best — everyone needs it.”

Providing discounts or other perks in exchange for social media shares and reviews brings more exposure to your brand and enhances the post-purchase experience for your fans. 

Underwear brand Parade runs a program like this called Parade Friends. Existing customers apply for the program, and once accepted, post pictures of themselves wearing Parade items on social media. Their followers can then use their Instagram handle as a discount code, incentivixzing future purchases (with a discount for customer delight). 

User-generated content
Source: Flowerpunk

That means that both parties benefit, which makes them happy, and you benefit by bringing in new customers and more revenue.

12) Build a community for your customers

Customer sentiment: “I love this brand! Where can I find more?”

For many brands, community drives customer perception of the brand — and drives future sales. Brands have leveraged Facebook groups, Reddit forums, Instagram Live, and more to encourage community among their customers and fans. 

For example, soap shop Dr. Squatch hosts its community on Discord, a community-based social and chat platform, so its customers can hang out with each other and chat about the brand.

Ecommerce customer communities
Source: Dr. Squatch

Creating a community can increase customer engagement and satisfaction, generate trustworthy, quality customer feedback about your products, and make more opportunities for cross selling and upselling. 

📚Recommended reading: What is Ecommerce Community Management and Why Does it Matter?

13) Follow up with special offers and marketing sequences

Customer sentiment: “Which brand was that again?”

Inevitably, your brand won’t always be top of mind for customers, even if they absolutely love it and your products. This is where a thoughtful marketing strategy comes in, and where email automation can be really effective. 

Set up automated flows that offer personalized product offerings, discount emails based on customer behavior, target returning customers, and ask for feedback. 

📚Recommended reading: 8 Ecommerce Email Automation Series for Online Stores

Encourage great post-purchase behavior with Gorgias

Turning first-time customers into repeat, loyal, raving-fan customers takes meticulous attention to the customer experience, especially in the post-purchase window. This is where Gorgias shines.

Ultimately, getting the ideal post-purchase behavior starts — and ends — with delivering a great customer experience, especially in the post-purchase evaluation phase. Gorgias delivers a powerful platform for your customer service helpdesk, tailored to the needs of ecommerce businesses who want to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Gorgias offers powerful features that drive ecommerce success, including:

See how Gorgias can transform your customer service efforts. Sign up now!

Customer Experience
Performance Based Compensation

Why We Don't Increase Salaries Each Year Based On Performance

By Adeline Bodemer
9 min read.
0 min read . By Adeline Bodemer

Did you know that 80% of companies base annual pay increases on performance? Doing so may seem like a no-brainer, especially since other studies like Lattice’s State of People Strategy show effective pay-for-performance strategies are indicators of individual and company performance.

But despite this evidence, we at Gorgias believe compensation shouldn't only be based on performance. The right combination of performance, behavior, and business needs will lead people to a promotion, but we don't provide individual salary raises (that aren’t tied to promotions) based only on performance.

You might be raising an eyebrow, but don’t click away. Removing performance-based compensation helps us reduce bias and focus on long-term growth.

Here’s our compensation plan in a nutshell:

  • We base compensation on benchmark data and rely on multiple databases to define our compensation grid. (Notice I don't say "compensation bands" because we don't believe in bands. It's one number, period).
  • We pay well. This part is extremely important because a company with low base salary and no variable pay will struggle to attract talent. You must pay well, especially if you want to eliminate merit increases.
  • Our compensation grid, aka "Salary calculator," is transparent and accessible to everyone at Gorgias, as well as externally. Check out our salary calculator to get a better sense of our compensation system.
  • We don't negotiate offers. I know, it's hard to believe. But it's true! We have our grid, we're confident in what we offer, and we stick to it.

Why compensation shouldn’t only be based on performance

First, let’s define what we mean by compensation here. In this post, I discuss the total package offered upon hiring and the so-called “merit cycle” which gives financial rewards to “top performers.”

I won’t open the topic of commissions, which is a slightly different pay structure. It’s also an interesting topic — maybe a future post?

Regardless, here are the main reasons we don’t believe in compensation models that reward individual performance.

Biases are lurking everywhere (yes, even if you're a great manager)

Startups move fast, and managers do too. Even managers who are aware of bias are still susceptible to them. And evaluations of employee performance are very hard to rid of bias.

Let me ask you this: Would all employees have the same salary today if they had different managers? At most organizations, the answer is no. When one manager decides yearly compensation of their direct reports, those direct reports end up with subjective, bias-ridden compensation. That’s no good.

You're probably well aware of biases, so let's skip the usual suspects like affinity bias (which makes you like more people who are similar to you) and focus on others.

Pressure bias

Pressure bias occurs when an employee constantly talks about money and puts pressure on you to give them more. A common response is to compromise, just to end the uncomfortable pressure: "Alright, I'll give them at least a 3% raise so they won't complain forever."

You might be thinking, "I'm experienced and wouldn't do that." That might be true. But a more junior manager might reward employees who apply this kind of pressure, and that's a problem.

Visibility bias

Visibility bias is the phenomenon of noticing (and rewarding) an employee just because of visibility. Perhaps they had a very visible project, or are vocal in meetings and on Slack. Or, perhaps they work in the same office as their manager and get more one-on-one time than remote teammates.

Just because you — or even the CEO — see more of one person or their projects doesn’t mean that person had the strongest impact. And it definitely doesn’t mean they deserve more compensation than teammates with less visibility.

Person's presence

Ah, my favorite topic. Let me illustrate with an example.

Imagine you have three employees. The first one has been here the whole year. The latter two have been absent for a few months due to illness and maternity leave. They've only been present for two or three quarters out of the four.

If you pay based on performance, you should reward the employee who had a greater impact by simply being present and shipping projects — right? But if this is the case, the employees would be punished simply for taking time off (which is a legal right).

Women are still paid 16% less than men in the US and 18% less in Europe. The same issue applies to people with disabilities. Compensation-based performance perpetuates these unfortunate statistics.

"But wait," you might argue, "performance should be assessed when the employee is here. If someone is absent for several months, you evaluate their performance and increase based on the period of presence."

This compensation strategy makes sense in theory but introduces room for interpretation and “gaming the system.” Now, employees have to strategically plan their absences around the annual performance appraisal to ensure they don't miss out.

What about a mother who is having her third pregnancy and is entitled to a one-year leave in many countries and companies? Would you truly base her performance increase on her performance from a year ago?

By penalizing employees for being away for a few months, you're creating unnecessary complexity and potential discrimination.

Performance is unlikely to remain stable over time

You may excel in one project, perform slightly below par in the next, and then shine again in another.

Let’s say your scope switches a bit and suddenly you’re not as great at keeping up with everything, you’re just good. However, your compensation is still higher — even if a colleague is now performing at a higher level.

It's the famous Peter Principle in action: People end up in positions where they perform at their worst because when they're great, they keep getting promoted.

By paying based on performance you apply the Peter Principle on compensation: You will ultimately pay employees more than the level of their performance.

For the same reason, we don’t believe compensation should be based on tenure. If you are rewarded for your tenure, over the years, you’ll become isolated at a very high level of compensation and misaligned with the market.

As the years pass, it will become extremely hard for you to find a job that pays what you expect and ultimately you can become unemployable. As a consequence, you’ll be very likely to stay but not for good reasons.

You might create tension within the team

"But if you don't pay based on performance,” you say. “How is it fair that a high performer makes the same as an average performer?"

My answer is simple: As a human resources leader or a Manager, you must work tirelessly to avoid having average team players. You don't want average; you want excellence. A+ players only, period.

"This is unrealistic," you say. "You'll definitely have average employees, even poor ones."

I agree. But not for long. If you set high expectations and transparently communicate this at a company level, there are no surprises. If someone misses their performance goals too many quarters in a row and becomes a low performer, we trigger a performance improvement plan (PIP).

At Gorgias, our ultimate goal is to have the absolute best versions of ourselves in every corner of the company. Pay-for-performance programs force people to constantly strive to be "better" than others, which directly contradicts our company's vision of fostering high talent density. We believe this model leads to better employee engagement and company culture.

And ultimately, pay-for-performance doesn't work for top performers. When someone sees themselves as a rockstar and expects a 20% increase, but only receives 5%, it creates a misalignment between their beliefs and reality. With performance-based compensation as an option, it’s hard to make top performers (or anyone, really) satisfied.

But what if a candidate wants more? Should we make performance-based pay exceptions to keep them?

Well, dear hiring manager, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but no.

We share our compensation package with candidates right at the beginning of the hiring process (they can even check our salary calculator). If they say they're good with it, they're good with it. No surprises at the end, we offer exactly what we've shared from the start.

Being absolutely inflexible on this matter has made my life (and the lives of everyone involved in the hiring process) so much easier. No need to negotiate with HR when sending an offer. No need to get finance involved to revalidate the budget. It's smooth sailing.

Will this scale (and is it right for everyone)?

I'm not saying that paying for performance is inherently bad. Obviously, if 80% of companies do it, there must be advantages like boosting retention of top talent.

I'm also aware that my vision may seem utopian. Maybe it's not entirely scalable, and perhaps we'll have to revisit our principles at some point.

But I've been told so many times that many things were not scalable and proved the opposite.

Not yielding is hard. Sticking to your principles is challenging. But adhering to your core principles is what creates wonderfully exciting machines like Stripe, Netflix, Apple, and Amazon.

You might think, "When people join a 20-person company, they know they're expected to work hard and strive for excellence. But when they join a 250-person company like Gorgias, they're not looking to work hard without direct compensation increases."

Maybe that’s true for some employees. As for me, I've worked just as hard in my previous 400,000-person company as I do in my current 250-person company.

And for those who desire something different, that’s okay. We just have to make our stance and policies clear and transparent in the interview process.

Yes, Gorgias is not for everyone. It's for people who thrive in a fast-paced environment, possess a growth mindset, and want to advance their careers. It's completely fine if it's not for you.

As long as we're aligned and embrace this statement, I sincerely believe we can continue scaling by paying people with the same job title and seniority level the same salary.

Gorgias Culture
Shopify vs Shopify Plus

Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Which Version is Right for You?

By Jordan Miller
11 min read.
0 min read . By Jordan Miller

Quick summary: 

  • Shopify Core plans are ideal for small and midsize businesses, while Shopify Plus caters to larger enterprises with around $1 million in gross merchandise value (GMV).
  • The primary difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus is pricing. Shopify Core plans range from $5–$399/month while Shopify Plus starts at $2,000/month.
  • Shopify Plus provides more storefront functionality, unlimited staff accounts, merchant support, lower transaction fees, B2B selling capabilities, and more overall features.

Choosing the right ecommerce platform to host your online store is no small decision, but sometimes it's hard to know which option is right for your business. Shopify and Shopify Plus are two platforms that get a lot of buzz within the ecommerce community, and many store owners give them rave reviews. 

What’s the difference between the two, and which plan is best for your ecommerce store? The main difference is that Shopify is for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), while Shopify Plus is for larger, or even enterprise-level businesses.

Below, we’ll discuss what each plan offers before diving into pricing structures and key differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus. Whether you’re considering upgrading to Shopify Plus from the regular Shopify plan or migrating from another ecommerce platform (like BigCommerce or Magento), read on to understand which option is right for you.

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What is Shopify?

Shopify logo

Shopify is an ecommerce platform that offers businesses a way to promote, sell, and ship their products. It’s widely recognized as being great for beginners, meaning that the learning curve for new ecommerce store owners is minimal, and provides a level of customization that most small businesses find attractive.

Key features of Shopify

  • Shopify point of sale (POS)
  • Online sales channels
  • Security features
  • Mobile functionality

What is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus logo

Shopify Plus is a Shopify upgrade designed for large enterprises making high-volume sales that total around $1 million in gross merchandise value (GMV). The higher price tag unlocks more storefront functionality, automations, support, and integrations than core Shopify plans.

Key features of Shopify Plus

  • Allows up to nine storefronts
  • Customizable checkout
  • Unlimited staff accounts
  • Access to a merchant support manager and 24/7 support
  • Lower transaction fees
  • Allows B2B selling

Pricing: Shopify vs. Shopify Plus

The main difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus lies in pricing, which is tailored to accommodate the unique needs and budgets of merchants.

Core Shopify plans cater to small to midsize businesses (SMBs) and has fixed pricing plans with the cheapest starting at $5/month. In comparison, Shopify Plus is made for larger enterprise businesses, starting at $2,000 per month and is customized to each merchant via quote.

Let’s take a closer look at the breakdown for each plan within Shopify and Shopify Plus.

Shopify pricing

Shopify has five plans depending on your online store requirements and the size of your team.

  • Starter: $5 per month
  • Basic: $39 per month
  • Retail: $89 per month
  • Shopify: $105 per month
  • Advanced: $399 per month

It’s important to note that all standard Shopify plans are subject to online and in-store transaction fees, as well as non-Shopify payment fees.

Standard Shopify pricing plans including Basic, Shopify, and Advanced
Core Shopify pricing plans

Related: Our comparison of Magento and Shopify for ecommerce merchants

Shopify Plus pricing

Shopify Plus pricing plans can only be determined via quote but start at $2,000 per month, plus a percentage of your store’s monthly sales volume. This enterprise-level commitment comes with additional transaction fees, online store development, site launch, third-party services, and add-ons.

Shopify Plus doesn’t provide flat pricing plans. Instead, you will need to contact a Shopify Plus sales representative to receive your quote.

9 key differences between Shopify & Shopify Plus 

Understanding the main differences in the two options is essential to make the best choice for your ecommerce store.

Below, we’ve identified nine ways Shopify and Shopify Plus differ from each other, and what these differences mean for your business.

1) Shopify Plus gives you access to merchant success managers

One of the benefits of Shopify Plus is that users have access to the merchant success program. This exclusive program lets Plus users connect with merchant success managers (MSMs) to optimize their Shopify Plus experience. 

Here are a handful of ways MSMs support merchants:

  • Assist you through the setup process, including domain setup, building product collections, redirects, and more
  • Suggest industry best practices and tools to streamline your operations
  • Quickly redirect technical issues to other Shopify teams
  • Provide ongoing support

Note: Plus users do not get a dedicated account manager, but they have direct access to a team of MSMs who are available to solve their business needs.

2) Shopify Plus unlocks access to Shopify Plus Academy

Shopify Academy is an educational resource hub full of advanced resources — like courses and webinars — that helps merchants improve their store’s design, marketing, operations, and more.

For merchants interested in self-guided education, the information on Shopify Academy’s information serves as a supplement to your merchant success manager to gain the knowledge you need to grow your store.

Here are a few titles you’ll find in Shopify Academy:

  • How to Drive Sales with your Customer Support Team with Gorgias: Explore strategies for enhancing conversion rates by using the ecommerce helpdesk Gorgias.
  • Sell in China with Social Media: Great for merchants pursuing internationalization
  • How to Optimize your Page and Site Speed: Great for merchants who want to improve load speeds through backend optimization
  • Shopify Tools to Accelerate Your Social Commerce: Great for merchants looking to drive sales and reduce shopping cart abandonment while selling on social media

Related: Our list of the best customer service courses and certifications

3) Shopify Plus gives you in-depth control over your checkout

Between Shopify and Shopify Plus, there is one major difference concerning checkout: The checkout page is customizable on Shopify Plus via checkout extensibility, while the checkout page on core Shopify plans are limited to their selected Shopify theme with no additional customization options.

Exclusive to Shopify Plus merchants, checkout extensibility is a code-free feature that allows checkout pages to have completely custom UI and content. This ability to personalize the checkout experience gives online businesses the power to greatly reduce cart abandonment and transform hesitant shoppers into customers.

On core Shopify plans except Shopify Starter, merchants can use Shopify apps to give their checkout page minor modifications to the backend logic and post-purchase experience.

Example of Shopify Plus checkout customization
Source: Shopify

Related: Our Shopify SEO guide to standing out amongst the competition

4) Shopify Plus offers unlimited staff accounts

Depending on which pricing option you choose, you can add between two and 15 users to your standard Shopify dashboard (in addition to your owner profile). Stores on the Starter plan are allowed two staff accounts.

Standard Shopify pricing plans and staff account limits
Shopify Core plans allow 2-15 staff accounts.

On the other hand, Shopify Plus offers unlimited staff accounts, allowing large teams access to their online store dashboard. This inclusivity allows effortless collaboration within the team when integrating order management and helpdesk tools like Gorgias. When teams combine Shopify Plus with Gorgias, they get:

  • Streamlined customer interactions: Gorgias helps Shopify Plus users enhance customer service by consolidating all support requests, order details, and customer data in one platform.
  • Improved order management: Shopify Plus users can efficiently find all relevant order information in the Customer Sidebar, automate responses with Macros, and speed up workflows with Rules. 
  • Scalability: Shopify Plus's unlimited user accounts combined with Gorgias's robust automation features make this combination ideal for rapidly growing businesses.

5) Shopify Plus allows more API integrations

The App Store is one of Shopify’s most enticing features. There are well over 8,000 paid and free Shopify apps in the new app store. Shopify itself is responsible for creating only 34 of them to date, but there are hundreds of other third-party app solutions from everything including marketing, order management, store design and customer support.

Notably, this enables easy integration with ecommerce apps like Gorgias, an excellent Shopify app for customer service and order management. You can elevate customer support with Macros, streamline order processes, and enhance the overall efficiency of your store on both a standard Shopify plan or a Shopify Plus plan.

However, Shopify Plus merchants have much more flexibility when it comes to API integrations. These users can integrate their ecommerce store with their existing ERP or CRM systems, which standard Shopify stores cannot.

A few examples of Shopify Plus API solutions include:

  • Gift Card: Create unique gift cards that work in the Shopify POS
  • Multipass: Unite customer logins for your forum, website, and online store
  • User: Retrieve information about staff permissions on Shopify

Related: The best 40+ Shopify apps to optimize your ecommerce store 

6) Shopify Plus has lower transaction fees

Shopify payments are straightforward. Transaction fees are laid out as percentages of the total order volume. The Shopify POS includes a free credit card reader, which conveniently integrates your online and offline sales, no matter which plan you are on. But, what are the differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus’ payment processing and transaction fees?

Standard Shopify Transaction Fees

For businesses using Shopify’s integrated payment system, Shopify Payments, there is no transaction fee as of May 2022. If your business uses an external payment gateway, transaction fees are as follows:

  • Shopify Starter: 2%
  • Shopify Basic: 2.9% + 30 cents
  • Shopify: 2.6% + 30 cents
  • Advanced Shopify: 2.4% + 30 cents
  • Shopify Retail: 2.7% + 30 cents

Shopify Plus Transaction Fees

Like core Shopify plans, transaction fees are waived if your business uses Shopify Payments. However, for external payment gateways, transaction fees are as follows:

  • Domestic: 2.15% + 30 cents
  • International/Amex: 3.15% + 30 cents

7) Shopify and Shopify Plus have different promotional discounts

Shopify is designed to set ecommerce merchants up for success. During the checkout process, your page needs to be optimized for high conversion rates. Luckily, promotional discounts can help you achieve just that. Want to run flash sales and seasonal price reductions? Here’s how your ecommerce business can make it happen with Shopify and Shopify Plus.

Standard Shopify Plans’ promotional discount options

There are probably hundreds of apps in Shopify’s add-on marketplace that can help you create discounts to entice your shoppers. Standard plans include the ability to easily create discounts from inside your dashboard. In addition, you can enable shoppers to redeem in-store discounts if you use Shopify’s integrated POS system.

What type of discounts can you create with a standard Shopify plan?

  • Fixed-Value: Enable customers to redeem coupons with purchases, such as $5 off an order of $25 or more.
  • Percentage: Provide shoppers with discount codes that give them a percentage off of their purchase.
  • Shipping: Offer free or reduced shipping on certain orders.
  • Buy X Get Y: Give a bonus or gift with specific purchases (available for online sales only).

After you run a promotional discount campaign, you can track its progress using the “Sales by Discount” report. Regular reports provide you with insights about which campaigns are working and which ones aren’t. Use real data to power your marketing campaigns.

Children’s vitamins brand, Hiya, takes advantage of the discount options available with Shopify by doubling-down. First, they offer 50% off first order then follow it up with free shipping. Both promotion types are executable via the discount portal.

Hiya offers a 50% off discount and free shipping on first orders
Hiya offers a 50% off + free shipping discount on for new customers on their homepage.

Shopify Plus’ advanced promotional discount options

Take your promotions a step further with Shopify Plus. You can increase your cart value with Launchpad, exclusive to the Plus platform. The system automates most aspects of promotional campaigns, discounts, flash sales, and product releases.

Planning and executing an online sale usually involves tedious manual processes. When running a campaign this way, it’s difficult to make real-time optimizations to your campaigns. The add-on makes it much easier, reducing the amount of time spent launching a campaign and the risk for human error.

Here’s what you can expect Launchpad to automate for you:

  • Schedule new products and omnichannel campaigns to launch across multiple sales channels
  • Generate predetermined discounts for specific products or entire collections
  • Stack multiple discounts
  • Create and update campaign themes
  • Return pricing to normal on campaign end dates

Simba runs percentage discount campaigns for their online store. From a customer perspective, their campaign execution is comparable to that of Hiya above. But, as a Shopify Plus user, you can wager that they use Launchpad to automate the process rather than manually perform the tedious work.

Simba homepage

Source: Simba

8) Shopify Plus offers more features for B2B selling

The regular Shopify plan comes with plenty of features that are sufficient for most small businesses and single-store organizations. But larger stores may find the following features and apps, which are only available for Shopify Plus subscribers, worth the higher price tag:

  • Shopify organization admin: Manage multiple stores under one organization from a single login
  • B2B on Shopify: Create a separate (but unified) Shopify storefront from wholesale customers
  • Overview: Get top-level analytics for all the stores under your organization
  • Users: Add additional users and manage login and editing permissions for your store
  • Launchpad: Schedule and roll out events like promotions, restocks, and product drops
  • Script Editor: Create personalized experiences with code that changes your store for certain customer segments
  • Bulk Account Inviter: Ask large groups of users to activate accounts on your store (great after migration)
  • Transporter app: Ingest customer, product, and other data into your store
  • Shopify POS Pro: Sync your POS with your brick-and-mortar store and other stores under your organization

If you’re a Shopify store interested in expanding to B2B selling, you will need to contact a Shopify sales representative to upgrade your Shopify account.

9) Shopify Plus allows you to build custom storefronts with headless commerce

Shopify Plus offers access to headless commerce features not found in Shopify Core plans. With headless commerce, online stores can separate the frontend customer touchpoints from the backend, allowing custom storefronts and immersive shopping experiences. "Going headless" is an excellent choice for enterprise-level businesses aiming to scale, especially with dedicated developers on the team.

Figs homepage
Figs uses Shopify Plus for headless commerce.

On the other hand, standard Shopify plans don't have access to headless commerce and rely on templates and themes for their online store designs. This limitation can be limiting for businesses in the midst of expansion as it restricts them from fully scaling their online presence.

Use Gorgias to grow your Shopify (Plus) store with great customer experience

Shopify and Shopify Plus both have tools to help you reach a bigger audience, scale your business, automate your processes, and stay competitive. If you're trying to decide which one will work best for you, think about the pricing structure that works best for your business, the customization and customer support you need, and the areas of the world you want to reach.

Regardless of your choice, consider how you’ll provide fast, helpful customer service to visitors of your store. Gorgias integrates with Shopify and Shopify Plus and is the only customer service platforms to receive the distinction of being a Shopify Plus Partner. 

Want to know more about Gorgias’s centralized, automation-powered, and revenue-generating customer service solution? Yes, book my demo.

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Shopify
Resolution Time

A Guide to Resolution Time: How to Measure and Lower It

By Bri Christiano
15 min read.
0 min read . By Bri Christiano

61% of consumers define an excellent customer support interaction as one with a quick resolution, according to a 2021 study. Your overall customer experience depends on how fast you can provide answers that fully solve a customer’s problem and lets them get on with their day—without too much effort.

Average resolution time is the metric businesses use to measure how quickly their customer support teams completely close an open customer issue. It’s not the only customer support metric that matters, and I don’t recommend holding it up as the holy grail of your team’s success. But it’s certainly worth measuring (and, usually, lowering) because it can make or break the customer experience — especially for urgent issues like lost packages, billing issues, or outages and bugs.

Learn all about average resolution time below, including what it is, how to measure and interpret your average resolution time, and how to lower your brand’s resolution time and make customers happy.

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What is resolution time?

Resolution time, also called time to resolution or mean time to resolution (MTTR), is the average amount of time a customer spends interacting with a business’s customer support, helpdesk, or customer service team before their issue is solved. 

The clock starts ticking the moment a customer writes or calls your support team. It includes the amount of time customers wait before getting a first response and any additional wait time between conversations. The clock stops ticking when the question is resolved and the support interaction is complete.

Average resolution time formula

Most brands don’t measure resolution time for individual tickets; they measure resolution time across all tickets — average resolution time. Apply a formula like this one to measure your business’s average resolution time:

Average resolution time formula: Total resolution time of all tickets in a period divided by the number of tickets in a period.

Average resolution time = Total resolution time in a defined period / Total number of customer interactions resolved in that period

If you conduct customer support directly on email and social media, you’ll have to calculate the total resolution time for all tickets by hand. This is tedious: You’ll have to subtract the difference between the timestamp of the last message in an interaction from the timestamp of the first message. 

However, if you use a helpdesk for customer service, you’ll likely have access to a dashboard that reports on your resolution times. Here’s what average resolution time looks like in Gorgias, which you can view by agent, channel, time frame, and more:

image

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Orange represents average resolution time, while red represents the resolution time of the 10% of tickets that took the longest to resolve.

What is a good average resolution time for ecommerce?

Ecommerce businesses work especially hard to reduce their average resolution time because of the high customer expectations: 63% of customers will leave a brand after a single bad customer service experience. The stakes for fast, helpful customer service are high.

But defining a good resolution time is difficult because of a variety of factors:

  • Each channel has its own resolution time frame: Customers expect an email conversation to take at least a few hours, but will rarely spend hours on your site’s live chat
  • Your product’s complexity: If you sell highly configurable or complex products, your inquiries will probably take more time to resolve — and that’s okay
  • Your customer service team’s maturity and tech stack will impact resolution time: A small team managing customer support on Gmail won’t achieve the same resolution time as a large team with a centralized and automated helpdesk 

But perhaps the most important “it depends” for resolution time is the type of ticket in question. At Gorgias, we encourage you to categorize every ticket into one of two categories: simple requests, which you can automate entirely, and complex requests, which will (and should) have higher resolution times.

Rather than trying to drive a variety of tickets to an arbitrary benchmark, you can clear your queue of repetitive, tedious tickets so you actually have time to handle and more efficiently resolve more complex ones.

Here’s what we mean:

Aim to automate empty-calorie customer service requests…

Questions like “Where is my order?” or “What’s your return policy?” or “Where do you ship?” might not take long to resolve individually, but they tend to take up a lot of time because customers ask them at such a high volume. We call them “empty calorie” tickets. You could try and resolve these tickets one by one, but it’s much faster (for both customers and agents) to provide helpful, automated answers.

Here’s how you can provide instant answers to these types of questions:

  • Create a list of your most frequently asked questions based on the last few months of tickets
  • Create Macros (or templated responses) to those questions, including variables like [customer name] or [tracking number of last order] to personalize the message
  • Set up automated Rules to instantly fire the personalized message (based on the ticket’s Intent)

This way, when customers ask these FAQs, they’ll immediately get a resolution-worthy response — assuming the templated response is helpful — without any agent effort.

Gorgias

Even better, you can set up self-service resources like FAQ pages, knowledge bases, or Quick Response Flows like the one pictured below:

Gorgias
Steve Madden

Again, the goal is to deflect empty-calorie tickets from your queue so agents don’t have to rush through complex, escalated, or high-impact questions. And don’t worry: Customers always have a clear path to a human agent if they need extra support.

Spend more time resolving complex and high-impact inquiries

Once you automate simple tickets, your helpdesk will have a higher ratio of questions that actually need human attention. This way, your customer service agents won’t have to rush through a mountain-high pile of tickets each day.

It may sound counterintuitive, but slowing down is often the best way to lower resolution time for these types of tickets. They need some extra research, personalization, problem-solving, and empathy to fully resolve. And taking a few extra minutes to resolve these issues won’t be an issue because you don’t have a queue overflowing with easy tickets waiting for an available agent. 

These types of questions include:

  • Angry customers threatening to leave a bad review
  • VIP customers asking for exceptions to policies
  • Pre-sales questions (like “Which color do you recommend to match bright red shoes?”)
  • Unique questions (like “I’m looking for the bike you posted on Instagram this morning, can you help me find it?”) 
  • Questions that require cross-functional support, like website issues that need engineering support

Now, we’re not saying resolution time doesn’t matter here. It does. But it’s a mistake to expect these tickets to match the resolution time of the first category, and lumping them all together in terms of metrics will paint an unclear picture of the problem.

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Ideal average resolution times by channel

Now that you’ve separated simple and complex tickets, consider each channel your customers use: email, DMs, live chat, and so on. Customers have expectations for each support channel, and I recommend building your service-level agreements (SLAs) for each channel’s resolution time around those expectations. 

Below, I recommend some rough benchmarks for major support channels. That said, the time frames listed below are ambitious, so aim for gradual improvements based on your current average resolution times rather than matching my suggestions exactly.

Email: Same-day resolution

Email isn’t an instant messaging channel, so customers don’t expect instant responses. Ideally, you should respond within the same day — within a few hours is even better. Email works well for complex issues, where customers may need to explain an issue in detail or send a picture of their purchase. 

SMS: 10-minute resolution

As a live messaging channel, SMS resolution time should ideally be less than 10 minutes. SMS texting usually involves shorter messages than email, so it’s best to funnel quick, simple interactions to SMS. That said, one benefit of SMS is that customers can start a conversation and text you throughout the day, so the channel’s resolution time might be a bit longer than other live channels like live chat.

Learn more about offering SMS customer service with Gorgias.

Live chat: <10-minute resolution

Live chat is the most immediate channel because customers are usually sitting by their computers for the entire conversation. With that in mind, aim for an average resolution time of under 10 minutes, too. 

Live chat is great for real-time conversations and can be combined with chatbots or other self-service features for automating the simplest queries. One downside is that impatient users may switch tabs and forget about the conversation, driving up your resolution time metrics. But Gorgias features like our in-message product cards are great at keeping customers engaged until a resolution:

Gorgias

Some brands are worried about high resolution times from live chat if messages come in outside of business hours. Check out our post on how Gorgias helps small teams manage live chat if you have this same concern.

Check out our post on live chat support for more information about this support channel.

Phone: One-call resolution

Phone calls are one of the quickest paths to a resolution since you can collect details, offer multiple tactics to solve the issue, and stay on the line until the customer is completely satisfied — no back and forth necessary. Gorgias customers improve ticket resolution by 34% by adding phone support.) 

Aim for resolution time under 10 minutes for the simple tickets, but also leave the door open for longer phone calls as a great strategy to handle complex issues. You don’t want to rush through a phone call with frustrated or VIP customers for the sake of hitting a resolution metric. 

Read more about the benefits of phone support for your brand.

Social media: Same-day resolution for comments, 10-minute resolution for DMs

Your customers will think of social messaging as nearly the same as live chat, so treat it the same: resolution time within minutes (certainly under 10 minutes). When they get what they want, customers love social because it feels like a shortcut compared to phone or email. But, like SMS and live chat, social media can be a difficult channel in which to solve complex issues.

Check out our guide to social media and customer service.

What is the best channel for solving customer issues efficiently?

Each channel has its strengths and weaknesses in terms of helping the customer solve their issue. Some are better for solving issues quickly, while others excel at solving them thoroughly.

There is no single best channel. The real goal should be solving the customer’s issue efficiently and completely. For that matter, ecommerce businesses can’t directly control which support channel customers will choose, so the best approach is to provide omnichannel communication that focuses on meeting the customer where they’re at and using a customer service platform that reduces platform-switching for customer service agents.

Resolution time vs. first-reply time: Which metric is more important?

One important distinction in this discussion is the difference between resolution time and first reply time (FRT).

First reply time measures how long a customer has to wait before getting a response from your support team. Obviously, a customer who's been on hold for an hour will be in a certain frame of mind when they finally get a hold of a team member — and it isn’t a good one.

Across all live channels (on-site live chat and SMS, for example), a reply time under two minutes is a good target. Email, on the other hand, can usually have a longer first reply time — up to a few hours is acceptable.

While keeping first reply time low is important, relying solely on this customer service metric is a mistake. For example, if your team’s only goal is to keep first reply time below two minutes, they may do a great job at making that initial contact — at the cost of actually solving people’s problems promptly. This scenario will also correlate to lower customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, even when your team hits its KPI for reply time.

In reality, both resolution time and first reply time are important, in nearly equal proportion. Placing more emphasis on one than the other can lead to problematic interactions with customers, so ecommerce companies should take a balanced approach.

Gorgias’ solution: Support performance score

Within Gorgias, users can see their unique support performance score. This powerful metric combines three customer support metrics (first reply time, resolution time, and CSAT score) into a single metric to give you a more well-rounded view of your support team’s performance.

Support performance score combines customer satisfaction (CSAT), first-response time (FRT), and resolution time

7 key strategies to reduce resolution time

Now that we’ve formed a framework for categorizing and thinking about support tickets, it’s time to work on reducing resolution time — intelligently and carefully, so you don’t run into the pitfalls we’ve mentioned.

Here are seven strategies.

1) Create a knowledge base or FAQ page

First up, the best support ticket is the one that never exists because the customer solved their own problem. The next-best? One that you can close out almost immediately by pointing the customer to an existing resource.

FAQ pages provide value to you and your customers:

  • Customers can get answers to questions without any wait time.
  • The customer support team can filter out or effortlessly resolve simple queries, leading to fewer “empty calories tickets” (tedious, repetitive, and brainless CS requests).

2) Automate processes wherever possible

Process automation can significantly reduce first response time using automated responses (macros and rules) and self-service automation. Getting through initial triage via automation frees up your customer support agents to do the harder work. Chatbots can even solve simple tickets on their own, and your human team will get to ticket resolution faster when they aren’t swamped with empty-calorie tickets.

3) Direct customers to faster resolution channels

If most of your customers contact you on slower channels (like email), consider reminding them about faster channels like live chat and SMS. Point out that live chat customers get an answer in three minutes on average, and users with simple questions may decide to hop over.

Berkey Filters, a Gorgias customer, did just that after launching an SMS support channel. They implemented several tactics like:

  • Putting a banner at the top of the website to announce the new channel
  • Announcing the new channel in all customer support emails
  • Mentioned the channel’s quick response times in all announcements

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Berkey Filters announced a faster support channel via email to reduce customer resolution time.
Berkey Filters

Check out Berkey Filters’ customer playbook to see how they lowered resolution time by funneling customers to SMS.

4) Prioritize customer service tickets and triage tickets

Your business should prioritize certain ticket types — the highest-value tickets might include VIP customers, customers about to make a purchase, and escalated customers. I recommend focusing on decreasing resolution times for these high-value tickets first and foremost, regardless of your overall metric. (Again, automating simple requests makes prioritizing these tickets even easier.)

Gorgias can use Shopify or BigCommerce data to tag customers who have spent over a certain amount as VIPs, pushing them to the front of the queue. Likewise, Gorgias’s sentiment detection can flag escalated customers. 

Learn more about triaging and prioritizing customer service tickets using Shopify data.

5) Tag customer types to route tickets to specialized teams

If your brand sells vastly different products — or sells to vastly different types of customers — one way to prioritize tickets is to create specialized teams. This way, you don’t need to waste any time playing hot potato with the customer query. You simply auto-assign tickets to the appropriate team.

For example, say you sell desks to individuals as well as offices. More than likely, someone buying a single desk for their house will have different needs and questions than someone buying 100 desks for the business’s office. Using Gorgias, you can auto-assign tickets to a specialized team based on channel, language, or a myriad of other qualities with the support of auto-tagging. 

Assign tickets to specialized teams in Gorgias to reduce resolution time.

6) Create an effective escalation strategy for technical issues

Technical issues can increase resolution time; sometimes, the answer lies elsewhere, outside your support team. Make sure you create clear escalation workflows so that, when these kinds of issues arrive, your team knows where to send them (and those other resources know the importance of responding promptly).

For example, if a customer had trouble with a missing package, they might need to speak directly to your fulfillment team. Likewise, if a customer has an issue with the functionality of your website, you may need to rope in your software engineers. Don’t wait until an issue arises to try and chase down these other teams — that’s a surefire path to a long resolution time.

7) Use the right tools such as templates and historical data

The more manual your processes and the less connected to what you already know about customers, the longer it takes to close tickets and the more frustration you’ll likely create with customers.

So use the tools you already have (like historical data and perhaps templates) and leverage new, powerful tools like Gorgias’ ticketing system to expand your capabilities.

Improve your company’s revenue by up to 2% by lowering the average resolution time to under 6 hours

In 2022, we studied the data from over 10,000 ecommerce brands and sat down with 25+ ecommerce brands to understand the connection between customer experience and growth. We found that when brands lower their average email response time to under six hours, they lift overall revenue by about 2%.

Ready to learn more? Check out our ultimate CX playbook for 18 tactics to boost revenue through CX.

Want to lower your resolution time? Gorgias can help. Gorgias is customer support and helpdesk software that can help ecommerce support teams become more efficient, improve customer experience, and drive revenue.

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