Inside Gorgias Partner Services: How Open Late Collective Scales AI Automation Past 40%

TL;DR

• Open Late Collective (OLC), a CX and retention agency founded by Jess Cervellon, draws a hard line: an implementation stalls a brand at 10% to 20% automation, a managed practice takes it to 40% to 70% and keeps climbing.
• One of OLC's managed merchants went from struggling in a shared email inbox to 30% to 40% AI automation in 30 days. AI Agent was handling the work of two full-time agents in four months. 
• The difference is not the tool. It is a dedicated owner doing daily QA and weekly refinement, so automation compounds instead of decaying.
• Jess is a user-first, partner second. She ran Gorgias at Feastables and churned off it, then came back once the AI Agent plus real enablement from Gorgias Partner Success proved the model.
• The loop is what scales. Gorgias enables OLC, OLC enables the merchant, the merchant expands. That is the managed CX practice the Partner Services program is built for.

About the partner

Open Late Collective (OLC) is a CX and retention marketing agency for ecommerce brands. Unlike other agencies that simply build support teams, OLC runs customer experience as an ongoing practice. They help clients scale AI automation, monitor key metrics, and refine the configuration week over week across a book of merchants under management.

The founder, Jess Cervellon, knows what matters to CX leaders as she once was one herself. Before creating Open Late Collective, Jess was VP of CX at Feastables and used Gorgias herself. However, she eventually churned off it because she never got the training to pull real value out of the platform. 

The challenge: Brands think the purchase is the finish line

By working with dozens of ecommerce brands, Jess has noticed a pattern: they buy the CX platform, set it up, reach a default 10-20% automation rate, and move on. The tickets keep coming, the AI agent stops improving, and support teams end up with more work than they started with. 

Most agencies deliver a clean implementation project, hit go-live, and walk away. That leaves the brand with a tool that nobody owns. Without constant refinement, automation plateaus and decays. 

The difference between 10-20% and 40%-70% is a dedicated partner that helps you get there. 

"You can't just layer AI and automations onto your agents and CX managers. You have to have somebody dedicated to it, day in and day out."

— Jess Cervellon, Founder & CEO, Open Late Collective

The solution: Building a managed CX practice into your automation strategy 

1. The automation ladder and how to exceed default automation rates

Jess thinks of automation as a ladder: 10%, then 20%, then 30%, then 40% and up. In-house teams tend to stall on the bottom rungs, and it is rarely because the tooling is weak. It is because nobody owns the climb. 

Reaching the next rung takes daily QA of what the AI Agent got right and wrong, weekly adjustments to flows and configuration, and someone accountable for the number moving. 

This is where a managed CX practice is invaluable. OLC assigns a dedicated owner to every merchant and treats optimization as a standing cadence, not a one-time implementation project. The result is compounding automation. 

"My philosophy: I don't think you need to hire hundreds of agents. I care about automating and implementing AI as much as possible."

— Jess Cervellon, Founder & CEO, Open Late Collective

2. OLC’s playbook: Inside a 30-day rollout

One of OLC's managed clients, a fast-scaling ecommerce brand, had outgrown its support setup. Volume had exploded, and the team was struggling to keep up in a disorganized, shared email inbox. 

OLC implemented Gorgias, turned on the AI Agent, and then did the part most agencies skip: managed it.

"Within 30 days, we got our AI Agent to 30 to 40% automation. In less than six months, it was doing the work of two agents and earning CSAT scores as high or higher than human agents."

— Jess Cervellon, Founder & CEO, Open Late Collective

That kind of hands-on management shows up across OLC's book of business. Their clients average 4.7/5 CSAT or higher, with first response times under five minutes when the AI Agent has the information it needs.

3. How partnering with Gorgias creates an enablement loop

A managed practice only scales if the agency behind it is supported too. OLC can take on more merchants and push each one further because Gorgias Partner Services gives the agency the infrastructure to operate.

Two things make it work:

1. A platform simple enough to move fast on: Gorgias is built for ecommerce, so OLC can stand up a new merchant and start tuning automation in days, not months. That speed is what lets OLC run a real book of merchants under management instead of a handful of high-touch projects.
2. Real partner enablement: The bigger unlock is the Partner Success relationship. OLC works with a dedicated Partner Success Manager who is in the account with them, sharing what is coming on the roadmap and helping tune AI configuration.

"I actually really feel enabled. We're constantly in the know, not just handed a newsletter about some new feature. I need you to partner with me like a homie."

— Jess Cervellon, Founder & CEO, Open Late Collective

Underneath that relationship is the program's tooling, and each piece maps to a job OLC does every day:

• A dedicated Partner Success Manager in a shared workspace, so questions get answered by someone who knows the account
• Metabase reporting for portfolio-level visibility into automation rate, CSAT, and FRT across every merchant OLC manages, so patterns and regressions surface early
• Gaia for continuous AI optimization, drafting and shipping fixes to the AI Agent so automation keeps climbing between reviews
• Partner Academy certification, so the expertise is documented and repeatable across OLC's team

That is the loop. Gorgias enables OLC, OLC enables the merchant, and the merchant's results improve enough that they expand scope. Better outcomes keep merchants under management longer, which turns one-time implementation fees into predictable recurring revenue for the agency. The practice compounds, and so does the book.

Next steps: Empowering more merchants through Partner Services 

Jess's advice to other agencies weighing this model is to start at the business layer, not the tech layer. Sell the outcome, own the account, and let the automation number do the talking. The tool is the easy part. The practice is the product.

The Gorgias Partner Services program exists to give agencies that infrastructure: a dedicated partner relationship, optimization tooling, and portfolio-level visibility, so a managed CX practice is something you can actually run at scale.

Interested in working with Open Late Collective? Book some time today.