How Automating the Busywork Helped Tommy John’s CX Team Drive $106K in Sales in Two Months

Challenge: As a premium brand committed to maintaining high-touch service while embracing the potential of AI, Tommy John needed a unified, AI-focused platform to scale support without increasing operational costs. After many years with Zendesk, they began searching for a more flexible, integrated solution that could boost efficiency, grow with their team, and elevate the experience for both agents and customers.

Solution: Tommy John migrated to Gorgias for its deep ecommerce integrations, intuitive AI tools, and centralized channel management. The switch gave agents full visibility into every customer interaction, eliminated time-consuming manual tasks, and allowed them to spend the reclaimed time with high-intent customers to generate over $100K in sales within two months. 

About Tommy John 

Tommy John is a dual-gender underwear, loungewear, and apparel company built around the 3Fs: fit, fabric, and function, with innovation at its core.

Launching in 2008, Tommy John initially worked to redefine men’s underwear and undershirts with premium, thoughtfully designed products. In 2018, the brand expanded its mission to include women’s underwear and apparel, bringing the same focus on comfort, quality, and innovation to all.

Over the past 15+ years, Tommy John has experienced significant growth in the ecommerce space, while also expanding into brick-and-mortar retail and establishing strong partnerships with major retailers through their wholesale business.

The challenge: Finding a platform that was truly AI-centric and aligned with its goals

Tommy John felt that its previous provider, Zendesk, lacked the level of Shopify integration and automation needed to scale effectively. 

Because agents communicate with customers across multiple channels — including SMS, phone, email, and live chat — Tommy John was looking for a solution that could seamlessly integrate phone conversations with other touchpoints. While Zendesk does offer a solution, Tommy John preferred the volume-based model provided by Gorgias over a user-based pricing model, as it allows for greater staffing flexibility.

Now, agents can access call transcripts, AI-generated summaries, and move between calls and emails all within a single ticket. This unified view improves visibility and boosts efficiency across the team.

“I can’t tell you how many times there’s been confusion—both for our team and customers—because an agent couldn’t see the customer’s call history. The customer either had to wait on hold while we manually searched for the information internally or had to re-explain their situation over the phone—both a poor customer experience.” 

—Max Wallace, Director of Customer Experience at Tommy John

Zendesk lacked the automation Tommy John needed to cut costs and handle repetitive tickets 24/7, without the need for hiring and training new agents. When comparing Gorgias and Zendesk, Tommy John was drawn to how Gorgias made AI and automation core to its platform, rather than treating them as add-on features, as Zendesk does. This focus on innovation and efficiency was a key differentiator for them.

Tommy John also didn’t receive the level of support it needed from Zendesk as a rapidly growing, multi-million-dollar ecommerce brand. 

“We knew we had to seriously explore other options when we were assigned yet another Customer Success Manager on Zendesk after having gone through several in a short span. It felt like we were starting from scratch every time, which made it difficult to truly elevate our CX alongside such a critical partner.” 

—Max Wallace, Director of Customer Experience at Tommy John

As frustrations peaked, Tommy John began evaluating new platforms that could deliver top-tier service throughout the entire journey, from implementation to optimization. The helpdesk also had to offer seamless integrations across communication channels and include automation features to boost productivity.

The solution: A unified, AI-powered platform built for ecommerce

Tommy John's vision was straightforward: an all-in-one tool that combined an omnichannel inbox (including phone) with automation that saved significant time for the team. 

Gorgias offered seamless integration across all channels, AI capabilities, and a Shopify-compatible infrastructure that Zendesk and other alternatives lacked.

‍‍“Gorgias will help us achieve our goal of making selling and CX much more integrated. We do want to reward our team for their efforts in driving sales, and we can track conversion rates per agent in Gorgias.”

—Max Wallace, Director of Customer Experience at Tommy John

How Gorgias delivered “a flawless migration experience” 

After exploring several platforms, Tommy John chose to migrate to Gorgias. Max and the team evaluated two other alternatives, which both failed to check all the boxes:

• One provider created silos between the CX team by only allowing agents to see the tickets they were actively working on. The CX team couldn’t grasp the full volume of incoming tickets or reference their peers’ conversations. 
• Another option felt less intuitive than Gorgias, offering a weaker Shopify integration and an unfavorable cost and pricing structure. 

Tommy John was initially concerned about losing data during the migration process from Zendesk to Gorgias. However, working with their implementation manager made the process seamless. As Max puts it, “Alyssa, our implementation manager, eased all of my anxiety. She was full of knowledge, and it was a flawless implementation from start to finish.” 

Data wasn’t the only thing that was easy to get up and running. The team was thrilled about the switch.

“The number one thing that validates that we made the right decision is that our agents truly love Gorgias.”

—Max Wallace, Director of Customer Experience at Tommy John

An intuitive, usage-based pricing model that scales well

Tommy John was also drawn to Gorgias’s simple, scalable pricing model. Unlike competitors that charge per seat and complicate growth, Gorgias’s volume-based pricing allows their team to add agents at any time without incurring extra costs. This flexibility lets them scale support as needed, without worrying about budget constraints or restrictive contracts.

Beyond the support team, Tommy John’s marketing and product teams also benefit from Gorgias. With individual accounts, they can easily access the platform to review customer feedback and analytics. This cross-functional access helps teams outside of CX stay connected to the voice of the customer and make data-informed decisions for the wider business.

Easy-to-use AI and automation that drives real results

Tommy John has embraced AI Agent and automation features to resolve repetitive customer inquiries instantly. 

With Gorgias, training your AI Agent is as easy as onboarding a new teammate with Guidance. These are custom instructions that you write in natural language to instruct AI Agent on how to handle certain situations–like an SOP. It’s easy to update AI Guidance, allowing the team to continuously make adjustments, monitor performance, and make improvements as needed. 

For example, here is a sample Guidance, tailored to Tommy John’s policies, instructing AI Agent how to respond when a customer asks to cancel or edit an order: 

Check out how AI Agent seamlessly handles this address modification request: 

Once customers receive their order, AI Agent seamlessly handles return requests by providing a link to the Loops Returns portal. Without the customer even mentioning the product’s name, AI Agent confirms they want to return the Women’s Air Brief (3-pack) and sends the return link: 

Even with minimal Guidance, Tommy John is impressed with AI Agent’s accuracy and empathy. “Even in preview mode, AI Agent’s answers to sample questions are shockingly accurate,” Max shares. “The testing environment is great for anyone who is still skeptical about AI because you can see exactly how AI Agent will respond before pushing it live.” 

Looking ahead, Tommy John anticipates that AI will be a key driver in enabling the CX team to dedicate more time to Voice of Customer analysis. While AI Agent handles incoming, repetitive tickets, agents can share insights throughout the organization to advocate for customer needs. 

Voice support, seamlessly connected to every touchpoint

Understanding the entire customer journey in a matter of seconds is a hallmark of excellent customer support, and Gorgias made that a reality for Tommy John. 

With Gorgias Voice, agents can instantly view the full customer timeline, including past conversations across Voice, Chat, SMS, email, and social media. Instead of wasting time on context, they can focus on upselling, recovering abandoned carts, and turning excellent service into sales.

“Having all of our call recordings and tickets in one place is amazing. Agents can look back in customer timelines, listen to the call, read the transcript, or check the AI summary to understand the situation.”

—Max Wallace, Director of Customer Experience at Tommy John

If a customer calls in to ask about a missing shipment, the agent can see their order history in real-time, along with shipping updates. The agent can then follow up via email, all within the same ticket: 

Using a single unified platform also enables Tommy John to track conversions and support-generated revenue more effectively. Gorgias’s dynamic statistics dashboards allow Tommy John to filter to specific channels and time periods to measure revenue generated from support. 

Within the past two months, 20% of phone calls converted to a sale, contributing to $106K+ in sales from support. 

“Most upselling and cross-selling happens over the phone. Being able to tie revenue back to the channel, or even the specific phone call, has been so powerful.”

—Max Wallace, Director of Customer Experience at Tommy John

The results: $106K in support-driven sales and 100% agent satisfaction

Since switching from Zendesk to Gorgias, Tommy John has seen improvements across the board in terms of support speed, agent productivity, and revenue impact. 

Gorgias’s unified platform helped Tommy John be more efficient with results like: 

• 34.3% improvement in average phone wait time (from 35 to 23 seconds)
• 3% improvement in average CSAT score (from 4.62 to 4.74/5)
• 12.75% one-touch ticket rate, meaning customers and agents never have to follow up 

Tommy John also didn’t need to staff up for Father’s Day, a busy sales period that they typically hire additional agents for. The team anticipates a 25% reduction in seasonal hire costs during Q4, thanks to AI Agent. 

Gorgias is more than a support tool, though—it also unlocked financial gains such as:

• $106K+ total sales from support in two months 
• 15% conversion ratio (tickets created vs. tickets converted) 

On top of the quantitative benefits, Gorgias improved the quality of work for Tommy John’s CX team. Two weeks after migrating to Gorgias, they ran a survey asking agents: “Do you feel you will be more efficient working in Gorgias than Zendesk?”

The results were a unanimous yes. 

Next steps: Doubling down on CX as a revenue channel with Shopping Assistant  

After laying the groundwork with AI Agent, Tommy John is excited to start using Gorgias’s AI-powered Shopping Assistant to enhance pre-sales interactions and drive revenue 24/7. 

“On top of AI Agent, I’m most excited about Shopping Assistant. It will completely level up things by helping us reach a wider audience with smart responses and AI-powered recommendations.”

—Max Wallace, Director of Customer Experience at Tommy John

By instantly handling product-related questions and offering tailored suggestions, Shopping Assistant will empower Tommy John to convert more visitors into customers, especially during high-traffic seasons like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

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