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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

How to Add a Live Chat to Shopify

How to Add a Live Chat to Your Shopify Store?

By Lavender Nguyen
5 min read.
0 min read . By Lavender Nguyen

But before going into details, let’s learn why you should add a chat button to your online store. 

Why does your Shopify store need a live chat?

If you’re running an ecommerce business, you know how difficult it is to turn every visitor into a customer and then a repeat one. With a live chat, you can deliver personal touches that help make your job much easier. 

Here are the benefits of adding a live chat to your online store:

  • Catch potential customers as they’re contemplating a purchase. When a website visitor is in the midst of their decision-making process, you can send a proactive message letting them know you’re available to chat immediately. 
  • Increase conversion rate. According to Forrester’s research, customers who engage in a live chat conversation with a business are 2.8 times more likely to complete a purchase.
  • Improve customer engagement. A live chat is a 1:1 conversation, which is a great way to engage potential customers on a personal level and make them feel more connected to you. 

Sounds great, right? 

You might be excited to have one! So, let’s move on to discover the best live chat app for your Shopify store.

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Gorgias live chat: The best Shopify live chat app

Gorgias gives you a powerful live chat widget that you can add to your Shopify store or other ecommerce stores like Magento and BigCommerce. It’s one of the best Shopify live chat apps, with over 400 reviews on the Shopify App Store. 

Gorgias live chat features:

  • Trigger personalized live chat conversation with shoppers on product pages to boost sales
  • Answer visitors customer support requests in real-time to remove any sales objections or doubts
  • Know on which pages customers are
  • Get all previous customer purchase information and conversation history (regardless of the channel) close to the conversation thread to provide personalized advice and support
  • Install live chat, SMS, and other messaging apps for multiple stores and centralize all conversation in one place
  • Respond in one click using pre-made templates 
  • Perform actions like rewarding loyalty points without leaving the chat
  • Display data from third-party ecommerce tools like Smile.io, Yotpo, Klayvio, etc., in your live chat backend and insert them in any message in one click
  • Respond in one click using pre-made templates 
  • Set up automated responses and bot for common tickets like “Where’s my order?”
  • Classify, assign and prioritize tickets depending on the content, but also on the sentiment and intent detected by AI

About pricing, Gorgias offers you a 7-day free trial with full access to premium features. Its pricing plans are reasonable and affordable than Zendesk Chat, Tidio Chat, and other live chat software. 

Bonus: Gorgias is also an ecommerce ticketing system! It offers omnichannel communication, i.e., email, live chat, phone, SMS messaging, and social media.

Use Shopify Inbox? Learn why Gorgias is the #1 Shopify Inbox alternative.

Steps to integrate Gorgias with your Shopify store 

To follow along in this tutorial, you’ll need a Gorgias chat account. If you haven’t had it, click here to sign up for an account and enjoy a 14-day free trial with full access to all advanced features. 

After that, take these steps to install Gorgias on your Shopify store:

Step 1: Log in to your Gorgias helpdesk.

Then, from the right sidebar, click Connect Shopify to enter the Shopify integration page.

image

Step 2: In the Shopify integration page, click the Add Shopify button at the top-right corner. 

image

Here’s what you’ll see:

image

Type your store name in the Store name box. Then, click Add integration, and your Shopify store will be integrated into Gorgias in a second:

image

Done! You’ve just integrated your Shopify store with Gorgias successfully. Move on to learn how to create your first Gorgias live chat. 

Steps to create a live chat widget

Do as follows:

Step 1: Click the Connect live chat option on the right menu of the Tickets view. 

image

You’ll be directed to the Chat integration page as below. 

image

Step 2: Click Add chat to open the New chat integration page. 

image

On this page, you can add a chat title, edit introduction text during and outside business hours, change colors and language of the chat window.

When you’re done with customization, click Add new chat.

image

At this point, you already have a real-time chat box. Now you need to add it to your Shopify store. 

Steps to add a live chat to your Shopify store

To add a live chat to your Shopify store, just switch the button on the right side of your Shopify store name from OFF to ON.

image

Then, go to your Shopify store to see how Gorgias live chat appears:

image

To further customize your live chat widget, check out these tutorials:

Note: If your store isn’t on Shopify, you can copy the JavaScript code and paste it on your website above the </body> tag. No plugin required. 

Start talking with your Shopify customers in real-time!

Create a Gorgias account right now and follow this guide to add a live chat to your Shopify store. Your customers are waiting to talk with you.

In case you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact our fantastic customer support team. We’re more than happy to help you. 

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Live Chat
Shopify
Simplr Contact Center

The rise of the NOW customer: how to capitalize on revenue opportunities with exceptional CX

By Blake Grubbs
3 min read.
0 min read . By Blake Grubbs

This week, Gorgias and Simplr announced a partnership to help provide ecommerce brands with a customer service stack that is built to turn contact centers into revenue drivers via 24/7 rapid-response digital customer engagement.

And, with consumers operating on a “NOW” schedule, we’re pretty excited about how this partnership will enable ecommerce brands to engage more customers in valuable CX moments. 

If you put on your consumer hat for a minute, think back to even two or three years ago- a time when we had to wait just a little bit longer for a meal delivery, for the arrival of an online order, or for a customer service email response. Today, everyone’s tolerance for waiting is lower than ever, thanks to the sky-high standards set by world-class companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify. These are the brands that are setting the tone for every other experience your customer is having. Your business is not only competing with others in your industry, you’re competing with the best brands in the world. ‍

Elevated customer expectations in our instant gratification culture have created a new kind of consumer that CX professionals haven’t been forced to deal with before. ‍

We call this consumer the NOW customer.  ‍

For ecommerce brands in particular, the NOW customer, who is always “on” and expects immediacy in every experience they have, both online and offline, is looking for exceptional CX from the brands they shop and engage with -- they won’t (and shouldn’t have to?) settle for anything less.

In the new Simplr Consumer Online Shopping and Customer Service Study, published in December 2020, Simplr found that NOW-centric, exceptional customer service is a must (unless you like losing customers): 

  • One-third of consumers say they’ve felt ignored or neglected by brands they shop with
  • 47% of consumers have decided not to buy from a brand due to poor customer service
  • 41% of consumers have stopped shopping with brand altogether due to poor customer service

NOW customers are quicker than ever to leave you and shop with someone else if they aren’t getting the service they expect. So how does the NOW Customer define “exceptional” service? 

From the same study, we found that: 

  • 61% of consumers base their expectations for exceptional service off the best retailers they shop with
  • 59% of consumers say that fast response times to service questions contributes to making customer service “exceptional”
  • 41% say that providing 24/7 service makes for exceptional customer service
  • 37% say that being able to communicate with a brand over any channel they want provides exceptional customer service

All this boils down to providing fast, always-on service, on the customer’s terms, over any channel they want, 24/7. That’s all. Oh, and if you can’t deliver this type of experience, your customers and would-be fans will leave, and your brand ends up missing out on revenue. No big deal. 

Tongue-in-cheek-ness aside, providing this type of experience has historically been extremely hard, and few brands have actually been able to crack the NOW customer code. 

The fact of the matter is, the traditional contact center model is not able to scale and flex to meet these new expectations.  The fixed and rigid nature forces you to make compromises and tradeoffs that are ultimately trade-downs for your customers- resulting in limited hours and channels, deflection, and slow response times- all because the model you’re using today is so fixed and rigid, along with the costs that go with it. 

Now, brands don’t have to be held back by a contact center model that can’t scale. CX professionals can access a new model and approach the rise of the NOW customer as an opportunity to set themselves apart from the rest of the pack. By taking a “NOW” approach to CX and providing a level of service that boosts your reputation with buyers, you’ll be in a position to take advantage of every revenue opportunity in the moment.

To provide the NOW customer with the service they expect and deserve, and to capitalize on every revenue opportunity, brands should break free from their traditional contact center model and embrace a newer model that was designed to deliver for the NOW customer. This model needs to scale easily, enable you to always be ready and responsive for customers, and engage them whenever and wherever they want.

The NOW customer can’t be ignored. And the brands that will rise in the NOW era will be the ones that have this realization and make the necessary adjustments, well, now.

Find out more about how the Simplr + Gorgias partnership can help you rise to meet the NOW customer and capture revenue opportunities in every moment.

‍

Apps and Integrations
Integration: Okendo

Create a 5-Star Customer Experience with Reviews & UGC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reduce the risk of returns 

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

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

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

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

Improve products and procedures 

Your products are the crux of your business. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Provide personalized and efficient customer support 

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

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

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

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

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

Use reviews to carve a better customer experience 

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

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

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

Apps and Integrations
Why We Raised Our Series B

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gorgias Virtual Summit Q4 2020

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

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

Growth of support requests through Gorgias


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

What’s our goal with this round?

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

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

How can we help merchants more in 2021

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

The top 10 customer support questions

How are we going to do this? 

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

You can learn more about our next quarter roadmap here. 

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

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

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

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

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

Alex & Romain

Gorgias Team
Ecommerce Business Expansion Plan

Ecommerce Business Plan: Complete Guide and Template

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

TL;DR:

  • An ecommerce business plan maps your online store's strategy, operations, and financial goals to guide growth and secure funding
  • Core sections include executive summary, company overview, market analysis, products and pricing, marketing plan, operations, and financial projections
  • Unlike traditional retail plans, ecommerce business plans prioritize digital acquisition, logistics partnerships, and technology infrastructure
  • A solid plan helps you secure funding, make data-driven decisions, and scale profitably — startups with business plans grow 30% faster
  • Use a structured template to ensure you cover all essential components without getting overwhelmed by the process

An ecommerce business plan is your roadmap to build and scale a profitable online store. It outlines your target market, strategy, and financial projections to give you clarity as you grow.

A well-crafted plan keeps you focused on acquiring customers and driving revenue. Unlike traditional retail, ecommerce plans prioritize digital marketing, logistics, and technology infrastructure — the pillars of online commerce. According to research from Wiley, startups with a business plan grow 30% faster. A Harvard Business Review study also found they are 16% more likely to succeed.

This guide walks through every component of an ecommerce business plan. We provide actionable insights and expert tips to help you create a plan that works.

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What is an ecommerce business plan?

An ecommerce business plan is a strategic document that outlines your online store's objectives, target market, competitive positioning, operational approach, and financial projections. It serves as both a roadmap for growth and a tool for securing funding from investors or lenders. This document translates your business idea into a concrete strategy. It identifies potential challenges and shows stakeholders where your business is headed.

Unlike traditional retail business plans, ecommerce plans prioritize digital customer acquisition, logistics partnerships, and technology infrastructure. Your plan should address how you'll drive traffic to your store, fulfill orders efficiently, and leverage data to optimize the customer experience. The business world can be harsh — about 45% of businesses fail in the first five years. A comprehensive ecommerce business plan helps you avoid becoming part of that statistic.

Every ecommerce business benefits from a plan — whether you're launching a new store, seeking venture capital, or scaling an existing operation. Create your initial plan before launch, then revisit it quarterly to adjust for market changes, new product lines, or shifts in customer behavior. Here's who needs an ecommerce business plan:

  • New store founders validating their business idea and go-to-market strategy
  • Entrepreneurs seeking funding from investors or lenders
  • Established merchants planning expansion or new product lines
Source: toptotal.com

Core components of an ecommerce business plan

A comprehensive ecommerce business plan includes seven essential sections. Each component serves a specific purpose — from defining your market to projecting your finances. Together, they create a complete picture of your business strategy, operational approach, and growth projections. Below, we break down what goes into each section so you can craft a plan that's both thorough and actionable.

Executive summary

The executive summary is a one-page overview of your entire business plan. It highlights your business concept, target market, competitive advantage, financial needs, and projected outcomes. Think of it as your elevator pitch in written form — concise, compelling, and complete. Even though it appears first, you should write it last. This allows you to distill the most important points after completing all other sections.

Your executive summary should answer these questions: What problem does your store solve? Who are your customers? What makes you different from competitors? How much funding do you need, and what will you use it for? This section needs to grab your reader's attention and convince them it's worth their time to read the entire document. Keep it under 300 words and focus on the most compelling aspects of your business model and unit economics.

Use clear, confident language that reflects your brand voice. Avoid jargon and focus on demonstrating what makes your business unique.

  • Business concept and value proposition
  • Target market and customer personas
  • Competitive advantage and differentiation
  • Financial highlights and funding needs
  • Key milestones and growth projections

Company overview

Your company overview describes the fundamentals of your business: your name, legal structure, mission, and team. This section gives readers context on who you are and how you're organized to execute your plan. It typically appears second and provides vital details about your ecommerce business, including the size of your company, your location, and what you want to achieve.

Specify your legal structure — LLC, S-corp, sole proprietorship, or partnership — and explain why you chose it. Include your business name, domain, physical address (if applicable), and founding date. If you have a unique founder-market fit story that demonstrates your expertise in the space, share it here. This helps build credibility and shows you understand the market you're entering.

Your mission statement explains why your business exists. In a few sentences, it should describe what you strive to accomplish.

Introduce key team members, highlighting relevant experience and roles. Make sure you paint a picture of your team that showcases their professionalism and finest skills. If you're a solo founder, explain how you'll handle operations and growth as you scale. Consider outlining these team roles:

  • Founder/CEO
  • Operations manager
  • Marketing lead
  • Customer service lead
Source: https://www.thebalancesmb.com

Market analysis

Market analysis is where you prove there's demand for your products. This section should demonstrate both your expertise and provide a thorough analysis of your current market. If you plan on tapping into a new market, you should also analyze it. Start by defining your target market — the specific group of customers most likely to buy from you. You must understand your target market. Never assume that everyone will want to buy your products. Create detailed buyer personas that include demographics, psychographics, pain points, and shopping behaviors.

Calculate your total addressable market (TAM), serviceable addressable market (SAM), and serviceable obtainable market (SOM). TAM represents the entire market for your product category. SAM narrows it to the segment you can realistically serve based on your business model and resources. SOM is the portion you can capture in the near term, considering competition and market dynamics. The industry market size is often a huge factor for investors that will read your business plan. You should also note if the market is declining or growing.

Identify your direct and indirect competitors. You want to know who is thriving in your niche, and why. Analyze their strengths, weaknesses, pricing, and customer reviews. This could be everything from their weaknesses to their web traffic, to their product and pricing strategy. Use a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis to map your position relative to the competition. The more you know about your competition, the better you will be able to position yourself to stand out.

  • Direct competitors: Same products, same target market
  • Indirect competitors: Different products, same customer need

Highlight relevant trends that support your business case — shifts in consumer behavior, emerging technologies, or regulatory changes. Show investors you understand the market dynamics that will influence your success. This demonstrates your command of the competitive landscape and validates your business opportunity.

Products and pricing strategy

Describe what you sell, including SKU count, product categories, and any proprietary features. Explain your unique selling proposition—what makes your products different or better than alternatives. Describe all of your products, explaining their key benefits and features. They need to address a need that customers have or opportunities in the market. Show how your products differ from competitors. Highlight why customers will choose your product over other options. If you plan to expand your product line, outline your roadmap for the weeks, months, and years to come.

Detail your pricing strategy: cost-plus (markup on COGS), value-based (pricing tied to customer perceived value), or competitive (matching or undercutting competitors). A monetization strategy is a detailed plan about how to generate revenue for your products. Justify your pricing with data on production costs, competitor pricing benchmarks, and customer willingness to pay. Consider these pricing factors:

  • Production and fulfillment costs
  • Competitor pricing benchmarks
  • Target profit margins
  • Customer perceived value

If you have patents, trademarks, or proprietary technology, mention them here. Intellectual property can be a significant competitive moat. Even without formal IP, explain how your branding, customer experience, or supply chain creates defensibility. This helps investors understand what makes your business sustainable in the long term.

Marketing and sales plan

Your marketing plan outlines how you'll attract and convert customers. This segment of your business expansion plan is where you share your comprehensive marketing plan, identifying how you plan to promote your products, attract leads, and retain customers. Start with brand positioning—how you want customers to perceive your store relative to competitors. Define your brand voice, key messaging, and value proposition. Your marketing strategy will determine your growth.

List your primary acquisition channels: organic search (SEO), paid ads (Google, Meta), social media, email marketing, influencer partnerships, or affiliate programs. For each channel, estimate customer acquisition cost (CAC) and expected conversion rates. Here are the primary channels to consider:

  • Organic search (SEO and content marketing)
  • Paid advertising (Google Ads, Meta Ads)
  • Social media (Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest)
  • Email marketing and SMS campaigns
  • Influencer partnerships and affiliate programs
  • Referral programs and word-of-mouth

Calculate your customer lifetime value (LTV)—the total revenue you expect from a customer over their relationship with your brand. Your CAC should be significantly lower than LTV (ideally a 3:1 ratio or better). Map the customer's path from awareness to purchase. Identify key conversion points and drop-off risks.

Explain how you'll retain customers through lifecycle marketing: welcome campaigns, post-purchase follow-ups, loyalty programs, and win-back campaigns. To retain customers, consider rewarding them through a loyalty program. Retention is often more profitable than acquisition, so plan for it from the start.

Gymshark example: This go-to-market (GTM) strategy turned Gymshark into a category leader in athletic apparel, demonstrating the power of a well-executed marketing plan.

Source: https://www.sender.net

Operations & logistics

Operations and logistics cover how you'll source, store, and ship products. This section accounts for the day-to-day operations of your ecommerce store. Describe your supply chain: Will you manufacture in-house, work with wholesalers, or dropship? Identify key suppliers, lead times, and minimum order quantities (MOQ). Production is a very important component of success, so be very detailed.

Choose your fulfillment model: in-house (you handle storage and shipping), third-party logistics (3PL), or dropshipping. Each has trade-offs in cost, control, and scalability. Define your service level agreements (SLAs) for shipping speed and accuracy. Consider whether you will sell your products to international customers, how long it will take to package and ship them, and whether a third party shipment company will be necessary.

List the technology you'll use to manage operations: ecommerce platform (Shopify, BigCommerce), warehouse management system (WMS), inventory tracking tools, and shipping integrations. Explain how you'll monitor inventory turns and avoid stockouts or overstock. Here, you should include how much inventory you have at any given time and plan for how you will store, handle, and track product lines. Key operational metrics to track include:

  • Inventory turnover rate
  • Order fulfillment time
  • Shipping accuracy and on-time delivery
  • Supplier lead times

Transformer Table example: Transformer Table scaled globally by partnering with reliable 3PL providers and optimizing their shipping strategy. Their business plan included detailed logistics planning, allowing them to fulfill orders efficiently across multiple countries while maintaining high customer satisfaction. This operational excellence became a key competitive advantage.

Financial plan

Your financial plan proves that your ecommerce store can be successful. Start with your revenue model: How do you make money? Detail your pricing, sales volume projections, and expected growth rate. Create a three-to-five-year P&L (profit and loss) statement showing projected revenue, COGS, operating expenses, and net income. You will have the opportunity to demonstrate profitability by translating all the components of your business into numbers.

List your startup costs: inventory, platform fees, marketing, legal fees, and initial payroll. Undoubtedly, equipment will be required for your business to operate — list out what you have on hand, what you will need before you launch, and what you might need as your business grows. Build a cash flow forecast showing monthly inflows and outflows for your first year. Cash flow statements show the cash that comes in and goes out each month. Identify your break-even point — the moment when revenue covers all expenses.

Startup Costs: Inventory, Platform fees, Legal & licensing, Initial marketing

Operating Costs: Marketing, Payroll, Shipping, Platform fees

Calculate your unit economics: gross margin per product, CAC, LTV, and CAC:LTV ratio. These metrics show whether your business model is sustainable. If you're seeking funding from investors, specify how much you need, what you'll use it for, and when you expect to reach profitability.

Runway is how long you can operate before running out of cash. Build in contingency plans for slower-than-expected growth or unexpected expenses. Forecasting cash flow is very important, even if it is an imprecise practice. It allows you to prepare for a variety of different circumstances, such as a quiet season, and demonstrate how you will adapt your ecommerce business strategy accordingly. Investors want to see that you've thought through downside scenarios.

Source: https://bench.co/

Platform & tech stack for your ecommerce business

Your ecommerce platform is the foundation of your online store. Popular options include Shopify (easy setup, extensive app ecosystem), BigCommerce (scalability and built-in features), and WooCommerce (flexibility for WordPress users). Choose based on your technical skills, budget, and growth plans. The platform you select will influence everything from your site's performance to your ability to integrate essential tools.

Beyond your platform, you'll need a payment gateway (Stripe, PayPal), CRM for customer service (Gorgias), email service provider (Klaviyo, Mailchimp), and analytics tools (Google Analytics, Shopify Analytics). Each tool should integrate seamlessly with your platform to create a unified tech stack. Your business plan should list the software, hardware, and machinery critical to the success of your operations. Here are the must-have tools:

  • Ecommerce platform
  • Payment gateway
  • CRM and helpdesk
  • Email service provider
  • Shipping and fulfillment software
  • Analytics and reporting tools
  • Marketing automation platform

Customer service is revenue-critical for ecommerce. A helpdesk like Gorgias centralizes support across email, chat, social media, and voice — integrating with Shopify to provide agents full customer context. AI Agent can automate repetitive inquiries, freeing your team to focus on high-value interactions. Gorgias integrates with Shopify and over 100 ecommerce tools. This helps you streamline customer service and drive revenue with personalized support. Planning for customer support infrastructure from the start ensures you can scale efficiently while maintaining customer satisfaction.

Template & examples

We've created a structured approach to help you build your ecommerce business plan efficiently. A template includes all seven core sections with prompts and guidance to help you cover every essential component. Starting with a clear framework ensures you don't miss critical elements and helps you organize your thoughts systematically.

You now have the resources and tools to write a comprehensive business plan.

Traditional business plans are comprehensive (20-30 pages) and ideal for seeking funding. Lean business plans are shorter (1-2 pages) and focus on key metrics — perfect for internal planning or quick iterations. Choose the format that matches your immediate goals:

Traditional business plan:

  • Comprehensive detail (20-30 pages)
  • Includes appendices and supporting documents
  • Best for investor presentations and funding applications

Lean business plan:

  • Concise overview (1-2 pages)
  • Focuses on key metrics and assumptions
  • Best for internal planning and rapid iteration

Expert tips for writing your ecommerce business plan

A strong business plan is built on solid research. Before writing, gather data on your market, competitors, and customers. Use tools like Google Trends, SEMrush, and industry reports to validate your assumptions. The more evidence you provide, the more credible your plan. This research phase is critical — it's the foundation that supports every claim you'll make about your business opportunity.

Avoid jargon and buzzwords. Write in plain language that anyone — investors, partners, or team members — can understand. Use short sentences and paragraphs to improve readability. Bold key terms like SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) and use bullet lists to break up dense information. Your goal is to communicate clearly, not to impress with complex terminology.

Your business plan isn't static. Revisit it quarterly to adjust for market changes, new product launches, or shifts in customer behavior. Treat it as a living document that evolves with your business. Your business plan helps you attract investors. It also helps you overcome common obstacles that ecommerce businesses face. By planning ahead, you increase your chances of success and help to ensure that your business will enjoy a continued fruitful future.

Get support for your ecommerce business

Customer service is a critical component of your ecommerce business plan — it directly impacts retention, revenue, and brand reputation. Planning for customer support infrastructure early ensures you can scale efficiently while maintaining high satisfaction. When you map out your operations and technology stack, include how you'll handle customer inquiries, resolve issues, and turn support interactions into revenue opportunities.

Gorgias is built specifically for ecommerce businesses, integrating seamlessly with Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and 100+ other tools in your tech stack. Our AI Agent automates up to 60% of repetitive customer inquiries — like order tracking, returns, and product questions — freeing your team to focus on complex issues and personalized service. With full customer context at your agents' fingertips, you can deliver the kind of support that drives loyalty and repeat purchases.

Your business plan should account for customer service as a growth driver, not just a cost center. Gorgias helps you:

  • Automate workflows and AI-powered responses to reduce response times
  • Drive revenue through personalized support and upselling
  • Scale efficiently without proportionally growing your support team
  • Use insights from customer conversations to improve products and operations

See how Gorgias can support your ecommerce growth — book a demo today.

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Ecommerce Growth
Integration: Klaus

Boost the quality of your customer service with conversation reviews

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

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

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

The good news?‍

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

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

Let’s dive in.

It’s A Time Saver

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

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

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

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

It’s Efficient

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

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

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

Chris Lavoie, Tech Partner Manager
It’s Personalized

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gorgias for extraordinary e-commerce experiences

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

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

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

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

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

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

Klaus for consistent customer care quality

image
Klaus interface

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gorgias + Klaus join forces

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

image
Tickets rated in Klaus

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apps and Integrations
Olipop SMS

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

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

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

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

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

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

‍Leverage Your Customers as A Marketing Channel

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

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

Create A Solid, But Flexible, Macro for Your Customers

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

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

The Overall Lesson Of Human Support

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

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

Expert Insights
BigCommerce Integration for Gorgias

Creating a Seamless Customer Experience with Gorgias & BigCommerce

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

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

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

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

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

image

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

But Why Does It Matter?

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

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

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

How To Actually Give Customers World-Class Experiences

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

image

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

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

How can Gorgias help BigCommerce brands?

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

image

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

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

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

One place for customer support

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

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

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

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

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

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

How does the Gorgias + BigCommerce integration work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

BigCommerce
Conversational AI
Gorgias Culture
Pricing
Expert Insights
llke Akcasoy
Magento
Voice
Social Media
SMS
Live Chat
Gorgias Team
Gorgias Product
Gorgias Engineering
Fulfillment and Returns
Email
Ecommerce Conversion
Ecommerce Growth
Ecommerce Customer Support
Customer Service Team Management
Customer Service Measurement
Customer Experience
BigCommerce
Automation and Self-Service
Customer Service Channels
Black Friday—Cyber Monday (BFCM)
Apps and Integrations
Shopify

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