How The Diamond Store Turned Live Chat Into an £885K Sales Channel

The Challenge: Selling a once-in-a-lifetime purchase through a chat window

The Diamond Store's most valuable conversations are not simple "where's my order" tickets. They are questions about whether a ring will hold up to daily wear, whether a customer can afford the piece they want, or whether an engagement ring can arrive in time for a proposal. Average order values run around £880, well above what a typical shopper spends browsing alone.

"Our customers are shopping for really happy moments, but there’s also a lot of pressure to find the perfect gift and get it right."
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— Chelsey Taylor, Head of Sales and Customer Service at The Diamond Store

Before Gorgias, that pressure collided with a disconnected support stack: a separate live-chat tool and an inbox where customers rarely used subject lines or included order numbers, so tickets were read, tagged, and re-routed by hand before the right team ever saw them.

"Agents were double, triple-handling tickets. Without rules or routing, high-intent inquiries had to be manually identified and moved before the right team could respond."
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— Chelsey Taylor, Head of Sales and Customer Service at The Diamond Store

For the sales team, manual routing created revenue risks. Sales inquiries had to wait for customer service to pass over the right tickets to the sales inbox. These were high-intent shoppers asking the questions that determine whether they feel confident enough to buy. If a customer had to wait for an answer about sizing, delivery, financing, or product details, hesitation could quickly lead to cart abandonment or a lost sale.

During peak periods like January and post-Christmas returns, that workflow was impossible to scale.

The Solution: One workspace for the full customer journey

The Diamond Store uses Gorgias as the central workspace for its customer journey: conversations, Shopify order data, returns information, and customer context all live in one place.

Chelsey said the team used to joke about “who’s got the most tabs open for the day.” With Gorgias, agents can edit orders, process refunds, send invoices, and see Shopify and return information without switching between tools.

That same live Shopify connection is what later lets Shopping Assistant recommend rings with confidence, it's the same real-time inventory feed, just handed to the AI instead of an agent.

That foundation matters because The Diamond Store is not just managing tickets. It is guiding customers through emotional, high-value purchases.

Shopping Assistant turns live chat into a guided sales channel

The Diamond Store uses Shopping Assistant to make online browsing feel closer to walking into a high-street jewelry store: help is visible, timely, and tied to the product a shopper is already considering.

On product pages, AI FAQs proactively appear where shoppers get stuck, to assist with conversations about financing options, aftercare, sizing, and product details. Today, they account for roughly a third of all Shopping Assistant conversations. By predicting what the shopper needs help with, AI FAQs get the shopper the answers they need before they can bounce.

“Everybody associates live chat as customer service support rather than a sales tool when you’re shopping. Proactively engaging customers changes that.”

— Chelsey Taylor, Head of Sales and Customer Service at The Diamond Store

One example is the 0% finance prompt on engagement ring pages. Instead of waiting for customers to ask about payment options, The Diamond Store uses Shopping Assistant to help shoppers understand how they can consider a higher-value ring without paying extra interest. As Chelsey explains, that can help a shopper consider a ring that costs “an extra 500 pounds” through a finance plan, without “actually paying any extra” in interest.

For a high-consideration purchase, that kind of in-context guidance turns chat from a reactive support channel into part of the sales journey.

Every conversation comes with the customer's full history

Alongside order and returns data, every ticket also carries the shopper's Shopify history: past purchases and loyalty status, visible without leaving the conversation.

For a brand where a customer often comes back for a wedding band after an engagement ring, and an eternity ring after that, knowing what someone already bought changes how an agent handles the next conversation.

"We've been able to reach out to loyal customers with new collections that are tailored to what they've purchased prior."

— Chelsey Taylor, Head of Sales and Customer Service at The Diamond Store

Live Shopify inventory gives AI the confidence to recommend

For big-ticket items like engagement rings, customers need fast, accurate assistance. A shopper asking about a ring does not just need general advice; they need to know what is available, what variants are in stock, and what they can actually buy.

With live Shopify inventory connected to Gorgias, Shopping Assistant can recommend products based on real-time availability instead of handling those questions over to a human agent. That matters in a category where one inaccurate recommendation can break trust at the exact moment a customer is ready to buy.

Before live inventory access, Shopping Assistant handed off roughly 540 conversations in one month because it couldn’t confidently answer inventory-related shopping questions. Since enabling live Shopify inventory, The Diamond Store is seeing more conversations resolved end-to-end by AI.