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Here at Gorgias, our aim is to provide the best customer support tools to our clients, whatever their specific needs. The more you grow, the more we work to develop our offer so that you can benefit from a tailor-made spectrum of integrations. As your business becomes more successful, you need to adapt your website to a fast-growing community of consumers, especially regarding the quality of your reviews and how they appear.

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This is why today we are proud to announce our new partnership with Okendo, a customer-marketing platform perfectly suited for high-performance Shopify businesses.

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Okendo helps Shopify’s fastest growing companies like oVertone, Paul Evans and Dormify build vibrant customer communities through product ratings & reviews, customer photos/videos and Q&A.

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Along with this, Okendo gives you the tools to leverage customer generated content across other marketing channels such as Google Search, Google Shopping, Facebook and Instagram.

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Since one of the key advantages of using Gorgias is to manage all your customer support in one dashboard, we decided to design a straight-to-the-point integration:

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If a customer leaves low rating review such as < 3 stars and/or with negative sentiment, Okendo can automatically create a ticket in Gorgias. This way, your staff can quickly engage in a conversation with them to understand what went wrong, and address the issue immediately.

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We believe this integration will take your customer support teams to the next level, as Okendo has already convinced some of our key clients.

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"One of our biggest assets is our unique customer community, so being able to maintain it as active and engaged as possible is key for our business. And making sure that we address any negative experience efficiently and in no time is just as important: this is exactly what the Okendo integration within Gorgias has enabled us to do, by automatically creating a ticket for these cases with the review displayed right next to it."

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Dan Appelstein, Founder & CEO at BeGummy

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"Aside from being excellent at building shopper trust, reviews enable us to identify customers who, for whatever reason, have had a less than stellar experience. The Okendo + Gorgias integration enables us to flag these instances and automatically assign a Gorgias ticket to a member of our Client Services Team, so that we can follow up and do our best to assist them with whatever issues they're encountering. This integration, along with Okendo’s consistent availability and unwavering support, have made the integration between these two platforms seamless and successful!"

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Jae Sutherland, Director of Client Service at oVertone

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If you're already a Gorgias customer, we can introduce you to Okendo to implement the integration directly from your Okendo account. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.

Recharge is the most popular subscription app in the Shopify app store and is the preferred solution for Shopify Plus stores. Over 10,000 Shopify merchants chose ReCharge to help sell products on a recurring basis, including stores like Dr. Axe, Hubble Contacts, and 5 Hour Energy.

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The challenge is, when a customer has an issue with their subscription, the support team needs to jump between their helpdesk, Shopify and the ReCharge platform to fix the problem. This negatively impacts response time. Agents end up wasting hours per week going to ReCharge to skip a box for a customer, edit a subscription, etc. One of the key advantages of using Gorgias is to manage all your customer support in one place. A few months ago, our customer Darn Good Yarn asked us to build an integration with ReCharge. They no longer wanted to switch between ReCharge, Shopify and their helpdesk. This was completely aligned with our vision, so we decided to build it.

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Today, we're excited to announce we've partnered with ReCharge to launch this integration.

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Here are the key benefits:

1. Display ReCharge subscriptions next to support tickets.
2. Edit ReCharge subscriptions in one click from your helpdesk: refund charges, skip monthly payments or cancel subscriptions from Gorgias
3. When a customer ask to edit their subscription, you can send them an auto-response with the link to manage the subscription.

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“Gorgias gives us a holistic view of our customers. This way we can provide them with fast and personalized help”

Nicole Snow, DarnGoodYarn

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Let’s take the example of Averill John. She wants to cancel her subscription to the Yummy Box and has just sent an email to your support.

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Here is how your helpdesk looks like:

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You can see that Astrid has been assigned to this ticket and that this ticket is tagged “Ambassador”. It means that Averill is one of your super loyal customers.

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On the right, you can see the ReCharge account data of Averill. Here, Averill has a monthly subscription to the Yummy Box and will be charged on the 15th of October.

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Astrid can skip the October charge in one-click on the “Skip charge on subscription” button. It will immediately set the action within ReCharge. Response time? Less than 1 minute!

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If you're already a Gorgias customer, head to your account and go to Integrations to connect ReCharge. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.

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Starting a new ecommerce business can be a whirlwind of responsibilities and decisions — like choosing which ecommerce apps you'll use to run your business. When your time and budget are limited, how do you determine which apps and plug-ins will: 

• Be easy to manage?
• Have the biggest impact on your business?
• Make sense for an new store’s priorities?

Some ecommerce apps are a must-have right out of the gate, while others can wait until you get more budget and staff. 

To help determine which apps are necessary for your new business, we share the most important criteria early-stage brands should look for in an app before covering nine ecommerce apps that every online business needs to download.

The best ecommerce apps for small-but-mighty brands

Now that we've covered the specific criteria that new ecommerce stores should look for in their apps, let's take a look at a few of the most essential ecommerce apps to set your business up for success.

1) Shopify: An ecommerce platform for building your online store

The first and most essential app for anyone starting a new ecommerce store is an ecommerce platform for building and hosting a shopping app or website. As the most popular ecommerce platform on the market today, Shopify makes it easy for new stores to offer online shopping essentials, like:

• Mobile optimization for shoppers on mobile devices
• Multiple payment options (like credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, and more)
• Simple checkout processes to limit cart abandonment

With Shopify, app development is easy-breezy: You can build a customized online store using simple drag-and-drop commands. Best of all, Shopify has an app store full of integrations with just about all popular ecommerce apps and tools, enabling you to expand on all of these features. For example, you can download a Shopify app to: 

• Sell your product on marketplaces like Amazon or Ebay 
• Search-engine optimize (SEO) your store
• Add pop-ups to reduce shopping cart abandonment

Take a look at how Shopify integrates with Gorgias to save time and provide personalized customer experiences. 

Key features

• Easy-to-use store creator
• Hundreds of customizable themes and templates
• Hundreds of apps and integrations available on the Shopify app store

Pros

• Intuitive and easy-to-use interface
• Affordable pricing
• Great customer support

Cons

• Not as customizable as more advanced ecommerce platforms such as Magento and BigCommerce
• Does not support email hosting

Pricing options

Shopify offers three pricing plans:

• Basic plan for $29 per month
• Shopify plan for $79 per month
• Advanced plan for $299 per month

While Shopify is a favorite choice for many, it’s not the only ecommerce platform. Popular alternatives include WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento. We recommend staying away from general website builders like WordPress and Wix, which offer limited support for ecommerce. 

2) Huboo: Order fulfillment and tracking

Huboo is an order fulfillment solution that enables effortless order tracking and much more. With Huboo, you can outsource all of your company's order fulfillment responsibilities, shipping your products in bulk to Huboo warehouses, where they are stored, picked, packed, and delivered on behalf of your brand. 

Customers demand the ability to track their orders. 90% of consumers who engage in online shopping actively track their packages, with 20% of consumers tracking their packages multiple times a day. If you want to keep your customers happy and avoid a flood of "where is my order?" tickets, you will need to provide order tracking.

Using your Huboo Dashboard, you can see sales and listings by channel, courier tracking, inventory, costs, and billing, making it easy to provide order updates to your customers. 

To learn more about Huboo, check out our Huboo partner page.

Key features

• Capable of integrating with all popular sales channels and marketplaces
• Huboo Dashboard for easily tracking orders along with important fulfillment metrics and KPIs
• Wide-ranging fulfillment network in the EU and UK capable of fulfilling orders all over the world

Pros

• Helps eliminate fulfillment errors with 99.9% picking accuracy
• Removes the burden of order fulfillment and warehouse management

Cons

• Per-item pricing adds to your company's shipping costs
• Does not accept bulky, chilled, or frozen goods

Pricing options

Huboo charges per-item rates for every package shipped, varying based on the package size and how quickly it is delivered. For a detailed breakdown of these rates, check out Huboo's pricing page.

3) ShipHero: Warehouse management and order fulfillment

Another excellent warehouse management and order fulfillment app, ShipHero offers two solutions to ecommerce stores: 

1. A warehouse management system for managing your own warehouses more efficiently
2. Completely outsourced fulfillment. 

With ShipHero’s fully outsourced fulfillment services, store owners can ship their products in bulk to ShipHero warehouses, where they are picked, packed, and delivered with 99%+ shipping accuracy. 

ShipHero’s warehouse management system lets you automatically process orders and returns, manage your inventory, and access insightful analytics and reporting.

Key features

• Fully outsourced warehouse management and order fulfillment
• Built-in reporting features covering everything from COGS to Picker/Packer Efficiency to Replenishment
• Automation rules, including smart warehouse routing, shipping method mapping, and address validation

Pros

• Provides the option to manage inventory and order fulfillment yourself using ShipHero’s warehouse management system or the option to outsource these responsibilities
• Includes excellent automation features for improving order fulfillment efficiency and accuracy
• Enables 30% faster shipping and a 35% reduction in warehouse costs

Cons

• Somewhat difficult to set up and navigate by some reports
• Higher shipping costs

Pricing options

ShipHero offers three pricing plans for its warehouse management system:

• Standard WMS for Brands plan starting at $1,850 per month
• WMS for 3PLs plan starting at $1,995 per month
• Enterprise WMS for Brands plan with custom pricing available upon request

However, pricing for their outsourced fulfillment services is only available upon request.

4) Gorgias: Helpdesk and live chat

89% of customers are more likely to make another purchase with a company following a positive customer service interaction. While most brands want to offer great customer experience, doing so as a small team can be difficult. 

Luckily, helpdesks like Gorgias make it easy to offer great customer support without all the hassle, thanks to automation and self-service features. 

Thankfully, Gorgias makes it easy for brands of all sizes to offer personalized customer support via an industry-leading customer support platform. This includes features such as:

• A centralized dashboard for managing tickets and customer messages across numerous support channels
• Automation of tedious customer support tasks
• Help Centers and other self-service support options
• A fast-loading live chat widget for offering live chat support
• And much more

Key features

• Macros and Rules to provide automatic, personalized responses to common customer questions
• Centralized customer support dashboard that pulls in and organizes tickets from live chat, email, social media, SMS, phone, and more
• Advanced automation features to automatically respond to up to 30% of support requests

Pros

• Detailed customer support data and analytics for further fine-tuning your support services
• Broad range of customer support tools and features in a single platform
• Revenue-generation focused so that you can turn customer support into profits

Cons

• Can take some time to master all of Gorgias' tools and features
• Revenue statistics are only available on upper-tier plans

Pricing options

Gorgias offers five pricing plans:

• Starter plan for $10 per month
• Basic plan for $60 per month
• Pro plan for $360 per month
• Advanced plan for $900 per month
• Enterprise plan with custom pricing available upon request

5) Klaviyo: SMS and email marketing

Klaviyo is an SMS and email marketing platform with unparalleled personalization possitbilitieis. With Klaviyo, you can: 

• Design attractive custom emails and text for your ecommerce website’s shoppers without any coding experience
• Manage and segment contact lists with built in customer relationship management (CRM) features
  Create and launch automated SMS and  email marketing campaigns
• Track the results of those campaigns with detailed reports

Email marketing remains one of the most effective of all digital marketing channels and is something that every ecommerce store should take advantage of. Plus, SMS marketing has been one of the most trending marketing channels for the past few years thanks to texting’s highly visible push notifications. 

Take a look at how Klaviyo and Gorgias integrate for even more powerful experiences. 

Key features

• A/B testing and segmentation features for honing your email marketing strategy
• Drag-and-drop email builder
• Advanced campaign automation

Pros

• Easy to set up and use
• Affordable pricing, including a forever free plan

Cons

• Limited SMS marketing features
• Support team is sometimes unresponsive

Pricing options

Klaviyo offers three pricing plans:

• Free plan for $0 per month that supports up to 500 monthly email sends
• Email plan with pricing based on how many contacts your business has
• Email and SMS plan with pricing based on how many contacts your business has

6) Canva: Design and content creation

Whether it's creating graphics for your emails, website, social media posts, or anything in between, creating and running an online store requires you to design a lot of content. Canva makes content design and creation easy regardless of your artistic experience. 

With Canva, you can use attractive design templates and user-friendly drag-and-drop commands to create all manner of designs, including logos, flyers, banners, and much more.

Key features

• Drag-and-drop content designer
• Premium content library with 100 million+ photos, graphics, video, audio, and fonts
• Time-saving design tools such as Magic Resize and Background Remover.

Pros

• Very easy to use regardless of your design experience
• Advanced functionality that rivals expensive competitors like Photoshop

Cons

• Can't move one design to another, requiring you to create each design completely from scratch
• Limited video editing tools

Pricing options

Canva offers three pricing plans:

• Free plan for $0 per month
• Pro plan starting at $12.99 per month
• Teams plan starting at $14.99 per month

7) Typeform: Customer feedback surveys

Customer feedback is an invaluable resource for ecommerce stores of all sizes, enabling you to take a data-based approach to optimizing your store's customer experience. 

With Typeform, you can start gathering more customer feedback by using templates to create customer feedback surveys. 

Along with these customer feedback survey templates, Typeform also offers signup forms, report forms, order forms, and a ton of other professional templates.

Key features

• Hundreds of high-quality survey and form templates
• Quiz maker for creating customer quizzes (such as product recommendation quizzes)
• Brand kit for creating a set of custom fonts, colors, and media that you can use on any form

Pros

• Supports a long list of integrations with other popular ecommerce tools
• Makes it easy to create high-quality customer feedback surveys regardless of your design experience

Cons

• Only for creating surveys and forms; you'll need integrations to actually send these forms out and gather responses
• Offers mobile app for iOS but not for Android

Pricing options

Typeform offers three pricing plans:

• Basic plan for $25 per month
• Plus plan for $50 per month
• Business plan for $83 per month

8) Triple Whale: Analytics and reporting

Triple Whale is a complete ecommerce hub for Shopify stores that lets you track the metrics that matter most to your brand in one easy-to-use dashboard. 

https://youtu.be/RIaCgvdr2mc

Triple Whale's attribution features allow you to track how much you spend on each marketing channel and your return on these investments. If you are looking for a single solution that gives your brand access to all of the data and insights it needs to grow and improve, you'll find a lot to like about Triple Whale.

Key features

• Six attribution models and journey mapping for unlocking key insights in real-time
• Creative analysis tools for measuring ad performance
• Mobile app for viewing your data on the go

Pros

• Real-time insights provide much more flexibility and proactivity than monthly reports
• Single source of truth for your ecommerce store

Cons

• Somewhat costly for the features that it provides
• Only available for Shopify stores

Pricing options

Triple Whale offers five pricing plans:

• Dashboard plan for $100 per month
• Attribution plan for $300 per month
• Full Whale plan for $450 per month
• Custom plan with custom pricing available upon request

9) Recharge: Subscription management

It might surprise you to learn that 54% of online shoppers are subscribed to at least one ecommerce subscription. Leveraging the subscription model is a good way to create a reliable, recurring revenue stream for your business. However, it's also a model that entails its own unique requirements and complexities.

The best way to create and manage a subscription service for your online store is to utilize a subscription management app, and Recharge is a great one to consider. Recharge lets you quickly set up a subscription program, packaging your products or services into monthly or annual subscription plans. 

The app processes recurring subscription payments and makes it easy to manage every aspect of your subscription programs, providing detailed analytics into the performance of your program. Recharge also allows you to create a customer-facing subscription management portal where customers can easily view, change, or cancel their subscriptions.

Learn how Recharge and Gorgias integrate for powerful subscription management. 

Key Features

• Developer Hub for quickly creating and setting up subscription offers
• Analytics suite that provides insights into revenue, customers, and subscriptions
• Subscription management via RechargeSMS or a customer portal

Pros

• Gives customers the option to skip or delay deliveries rather than canceling, helping reduce customer churn
• Makes it quick and easy to create subscription offers

Cons

• Limited customization options
• The only subscription management app on the market for Shopify stores

Pricing options

Recharge offers three pricing plans:

• Standard plan with no monthly fees and 1% + 10 cents per transaction
• Pro plan for $499/month and 1% + 19 cents per transaction
• Custom plan with tailored pricing available upon request

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Key ecommerce app features small businesses should look for

Most new ecommerce businesses don't have the budget or the sales volume to justify purchasing a broad range of ecommerce apps right away. So, you'll need to narrow down your selection to the apps with great bang for your buck. 

With that in mind, here are the most important features that small business owners should look for in ecommerce apps:

Provides flexible, affordable pricing

Some ecommerce solutions can cost thousands of dollars a month or more, putting them out of reach for most small businesses and early-stage brands. 

These high-priced apps are almost always geared toward larger organizations anyway, meaning that you aren't likely to need all of the features they offer until your business grows. 

The good news is that there’s also a wide range of affordable ecommerce apps designed to support smaller stores and brands — those are the ones we’ll focus on below.

Automates manual tasks and ecommerce processes

Starting a new business requires a lot of hard work. The more manual tasks and workflows you can automate, the more time you have to focus on important activities like developing new products and growing your audience.

Creating automated email marketing campaigns rather than sending out emails manually is one example of how apps that offer automation features can save you time. Using automation to provide canned responses to common customer questions is another example of the time-saving benefits that automation can provide.

Monitors ecommerce performance

Whatever function of your ecommerce business that an app is designed to facilitate (whether it's customer support, marketing, sales, or order fulfillment), it also needs to be able to track your store's performance in these key areas. 

This is especially important for small stores, who don’t have full time data analysts to pull insights from tools. Choosing apps that provide detailed analytics and reporting will give your business the data and insights it needs for continual optimization.

Integrates with other ecommerce tools

Integrating all your ecommerce apps can enable powerful new features and capabilities. For instance, integrating your customer support app with your order tracking and fulfillment app might allow you to easily provide tracking numbers and order updates when customers request them. 

Along with choosing apps that offer a broad range of possible integrations with other popular ecommerce tools, it's especially important to ensure that the apps you select are capable of integrating with whatever ecommerce platform you use.

Supports your most important ecommerce KPIs

When you don't have the budget to purchase every app you might want, it's important to focus on the apps that align most closely with your important KPIs. Business of all sizes, but especially small businesses, do well to focus on one area at a time. Are you looking to: 

• Increase customer satisfaction? 
• Boost conversion rate?
• Raise brand awareness? 
• Improve customer retention?

Identifying the KPIs most important to your business and choosing your ecommerce apps based on these KPIs will ensure that you purchase apps that will have the biggest impact on your store's success.

Offers "try it before you buy it" model

When budgets are tight, you need to ensure that the app you purchase will meet your business's needs before you break out your wallet. For this reason, small businesses should prioritize apps that offer a free trial, a free version, or, at the very least, a free demo.

Includes customer success or support

Ecommerce apps are often challenging to set up and use. And as a small business owner, you can't afford to spend all your time troubleshooting issues with your ecommerce apps. This makes it important to choose apps with high-quality customer support or customer success services.

Offers additional pricing plans

While it's great to find an app with free or affordable pricing, you also need solutions that can scale alongside your company. Choosing apps with multiple pricing plans allows you to upgrade your subscription as your company grows, without having to switch to a new app.

Learn why ecommerce stores of all sizes favor the Gorgias app

Choosing the right customer support platform is just one of the many vital decisions you will need to make as an ecommerce store owner. While you’ve got plenty of options, only one is exclusively built for ecommerce and offers features and plans that scale from small stores to large enterprises.

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If you want to get started enjoying the many benefits of the best ecommerce customer support platform on the market, sign up for Gorgias today!

Gorgias connects to over 65 leading ecommerce applications, giving you the power to centralize customer data in your helpdesk, perform support actions from a single place, and streamline your store’s toolkit. 

This month, we launched 12 new integrations: 

1. SMS Live
2. Checkout Champ
3. CallHippo
4. Konnektive
5. TXTFi
6. Shopney
7. ReturnLogic
8. Stateset
9. Gatsby
10. Trustpilot
11. ShipBob
12. AfterShip

Read on to learn how you can use these tools to help manage your store, and visit the Gorgias App Store to activate them today!

1. SMS Live

SMS Live is an SMS texting app for Shopify and Shopify Plus. When you add this integration, you’ll see customer information from SMS Live in the Gorgias sidebar, so your agents don’t have to switch between the two applications. You’ll also be able to respond to SMS messages within the Gorgias helpdesk or switch those conversations to a different channel, such as email or phone. 

2. Checkout Champ

Checkout Champ simplifies the checkout process and makes it easy to charge for subscription services or one-click upsells. With the Gorgias integration, you can manage all of your customer interactions to include refunds, fulfillment tracking, purchase alterations, and all messaging and tickets.

3. Konnektive

Konnektive is a cloud-based CRM and order management solution that helps optimize, centralize, and automate ecommerce business processes. With this integration, you can display order information right next to tickets in Gorgias and update customer information between the two platforms. It automatically comes with 10 pre-built Macros, to help you get started right away!

4. TXTFi

TXTFi allows brands to leverage purchasing through SMS and ensures side-by-side customer support to communicate with customers in real time. With this integration, you can manage SMS conversations from TXTFi as tickets in Gorgias in order to quickly connect your shoppers with a live agent. 

5. Shopney

Shopney is a mobile app builder for Shopify and Shopify Plus that lets you build an app for your store in just one day. With this integration, the conversations that happen through Shopney’s in-app live chat can be managed in the Gorgias helpdesk for a streamlined experience for your agents. 

6. ReturnLogic

ReturnLogic helps D2C brands give their customers an easy returns process while automating workflows for their customer service and warehouse teams. With the Gorgias integration, you can embed the Gorgias Chat Box right on the ReturnLogic portal, giving shoppers another opportunity to make their return, exchange, or warranty process as smooth as possible. You can also manage these chat conversations in Gorgias and populate ReturnLogic data into Gorgias tickets. 

7. Stateset

Stateset is your single source of truth for managing your online business and automating your commerce operations. The Stateset AI Responder app uses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and robotic process automation to quickly and accurately build data-driven responses ready for your customer service team to approve. When you connect the Gorgias integration, you can start generating intelligent and dynamic responses directly from Gorgias or from within Shopify. 

8. Gatsby

See Instagram insights when responding to tickets, track Instagram mentions and engagement for your brand, and automate valuable influencer workflows all in Gorgias. 

With the Gorgias and Gatsby integration, you can now identify when influential customers are reaching out for support and take that into account when prioritizing tickets, asking them to share positive support experiences and more.

9. Trustpilot Reviews

Trustpilot Reviews is a customer review platform. With the Gorgias integration, you can streamline review responses with machine learning and AI. Trustpilot Review data is displayed in the Gorgias Customer Sidebar, ready to be leveraged by agents to reward happy customers and help recover customers at risk of churn.

10. ShipBob

ShipBob is an ecommerce fulfillment solution for online brands. With the Gorgias integration, you can sync customer and order information associated with a specific ShipBob account into the corresponding Gorgias account. You can also display data from ShipBob in the Customer Sidebar, and use that data in Gorgias Macros to automate responses to common claims. 

11. AfterShip

AfterShip is an automated shipment tracking platform for e-commerce businesses. With the Gorgias integration, you can sync and display all customer shipment tracking data in the Customer Sidebar, allowing your agents to quickly answer questions without switching applications. 

To add these integrations and discover more, go to the Gorgias App Store.

Keeping pace with customer support tickets is a challenge for many ecommerce brands. Too often, support teams are constantly flooded with very simple, repetitive questions that customers instantly want answered (like WISMO, or “Where is my order?").

The sheer volume of these repetitive tickets leads to a few major problems:

• Customers need to wait for busy agents to get answers to simple questions — for these questions, instant information is much more valuable than a human conversation
• Agents are too overwhelmed with tickets to prioritize questions that need human attention (like escalated tickets, VIP customers, or complicated product/policy questions) 
• Brands lose sales because they can’t surface and respond to urgent pre-sales questions (like “I want to buy this, but will it arrive by Christmas?”)

To help brands manage repetitive tickets (and provide an even better experience to customers), we created the Automation Add-on. The goal behind the add-on is to deflect your most repetitive questions, provide order information, and turn pre-sales questions into enthusiastic purchases — all of which are more convenient for your customers.

What is Gorgias’s Automation Add-on?

The Gorgias Automation Add-on provides instant, automated answers to common questions via your email, Help Center, and chat widget. Your customers can get a quick response (and resolution) around the clock, even when a live agent isn’t available.

With automation, you’re conveniently answering questions that don’t require a conversation. Your agents can focus on more important conversations instead of copying and pasting order statuses all day long

The full Automation Add-on is available for Shopify stores, and some features (including returns autoresponders, auto-close spam emails, and quick responses) are also available of BigCommerce and Magento. 

Benefits of the Automation Add-on

But don’t customers prefer human interaction? Not always. According to Statista, 88% of consumers expect brands to have a self-service support portal. This is especially true when customers are looking for information doesn’t really need a “human touch” (and shouldn’t force them to wait for a human to respond).

By using customer service automation, you can give customers the instant information they need while also freeing up agents to focus on conversations that need a personal touch.

Ticket deflection

The Automation Add-on typically deflects up to 20% of tickets (up to 50% for power users). By deflects, we mean that the customer’s issue is resolved without any human interaction. 

Reducing repetitive tickets enables agents to answer and spend more time on high-impact tickets that automation can’t handle.

24/7 support

While customers shop online around the clock, your agents aren’t always available to answer questions. The Automation Add-on’s features can handle frequently-asked questions like “What’s your shipping policy?” “Do you have any promotions?” or “Where is my order?” at any time. You can provide 24/7 service for a large chunk of your incoming inquiries without the overhead cost of hiring additional agents.

“Knowing they can reach us 24/7 is a huge thing for our customers, especially international customers. Because they want to get answers no matter what time it is.”

— Caela Castillo, Director of Customer Experience, Jaxxon

Additional revenue

When customers ask pre-sales questions, they’re sending a strong indicator that they’re more likely to make a purchase. And these customers are even more likely to purchase if their pre-sales questions are answered instantly: questions about product sizing, return policies, international shipping, and so on. If they have to wait, they may lose interest. 

FAQs and product information in a chat can provide answers and promote your brand — leading to additional revenue. With the Automation Add-on, this information is front-and-center, leading to more chat engagement — a type of engagement that doesn’t require any waiting. 

For example, Gorgias customer RevAir saw a 120% increase in chat engagement since adopting the add-on — all while simultaneously lowering response and resolution times. (More on that below.)

📚 Recommended reading: Learn how Jaxxon boosted revenue by a whopping 46% with help from the Automation Add-on. 

Features included in the Automation Add-on

Any automation should build customer trust in the same way agent interactions would. Whether the customer contacts your company via chat, email, or your help center, the Gorgias Automation Add-on is designed to manage the replies.

Quick Response Flows in chat

The Automation Add-on doesn’t just provide automated answers to questions about customers’ orders. With Auick Response Flows, you can provide answers to common questions, like “What is your shipping policy?” This doesn’t just protect your agents from repetitive tickets, it gives customers answers they need to make a confident purchase while they’re actively shopping.

In your automation configuration, you’ll set up a Quick Response Flow section along with the automated responses. 

When the customer clicks on the button, the chat will provide an automated response. 

Once the automated response is provided, the chat will ask if the answer was helpful. If the customer clicks “No, I need more help” a ticket will be opened in Gorgias for you to answer with live chat (if an agent is available) or a contact form if nobody’s online. 

These Flows can also be interactive. Instead of one answer for each question, you can use multiple steps to collect customer inputs and provide a more personalized answer. For example, you can build a Quick Response Flow around the question, "Which product is right for me?" and then base the suggestion.

Take a look at Princess Polly's website for another example: When customers click "What is your return policy?" they get asked if they're in the US or UK. If they click yes, they get domestic shipping info. If they click no, they get international shipping info. Either way, they only see what's relevant to them.

Quick Response Flows in the Help Center

You can also add Quick Response Flows in your Help Center. This way, when customers land on your Help Center, they'll see common questions and helpful answers in easy, prominent buttons.

For example, BrüMate's Help Center has two Quick Response Flows: one to find the right product, and another to get information about returns.

When a customer clicks on "Fit My Drink," they're taken to an interactive automated Flow, where they answer a few questions to find the perfect product for them:

Order Management Flows

Since the main questions filling up most brands’ support inboxes are about order status, the Automation Add-on features a self-service solution. With Order Management Flows, customers can track, return, and cancel orders within the chat widget or Help Center themselves. 

Order Management in the chat widget

Order Management Flows add an order management portal int the chat widget, which lets customers log in and manage their orders without waiting for an agent. By opening the chat widget that’s already on your website, customers can:

• Track the status of an order
• Return an order, based on the conditions (order created vs. order delivered)
• Report issue with customizable options
• Cancel an order, based on eligibility (unfulfilled, processing, or pending delivery)

Your customers can also see order details, such as shipping, billing, and payment information.

Order Management Flows in the Help Center

Your Help Center isn't just a library of articles to answer questions about your products, shipping, and brand. You can embed Order Management Flows at the top of your Help Center to let customer manage their orders, just like in the live chat widget described above.

Customized Report Issue Flows

By using customized Report Issue Flows, a customer can notify your support team that something is wrong with their order. When customers report an issue, Gorgias will create a ticket for your team and, if you’d like, send the customer an automated message.

You can provide different issue options based on the order type or shipment statuses. For example:

• I forgot to apply my discount code
• I'd like to change my shipping address
• I'd like to change the delivery date
• My order has been stuck in transit
• I'm past my expected delivery date

You can even personalize the options each customer sees based on the status of their order in Shopify. This way, they’ll only see relevant options — a customer wouldn’t need “My item is damaged” if we know it hasn’t arrived yet.

Once the customer answers the questions prompted by your Report Issue Flows, a ticket will be opened for your agents in the Gorgias helpdesk. The flow collects the information needed for your agents to handle the issue (and provide an automated response if applicable).

AI Article Recommendation Flows

When customers ask questions in chat, Gorgias uses AI to scan the question and recommend relevant content from your Help Center. This deflects live chat questions, and serves customers detailed answers to a wide variety of questions. Here's an example of AI Article Recommendation Flows from Parade, which answers a common question with a detailed article. (Of course, the customer still gets an easy path to human support if they need more help.)

Autoresponders for common queries

Email has the highest volume for customer support, around 70% of total volume. Reducing email volume by even 5% can have a huge impact on support teams. 

Autoresponders can automatically answer routine questions — again, we’ll use “WISMO?” as an example.

The autoresponders use Intent Detection, powered by natural language processing, to detect if incoming emails are related to common topics like tracking or order status. 

If Gorgias receives a ticket with a relevant Intent, the Rule will trigger and send the customer the appropriate reply. In the case of “where is my order?” the autoresponder will provide shoppers with a tracking link, resolving the conversation before a ticket was ever created.

If you have the Automation Add-on, you don’t need to set up the autoresponders! Just click Create Rule in your Grogias account and select from the options under the ✨ Autoresponse section.

Autoreponders in the add-on are owned and updated by Gorgias. While you can create your own Rules from scratch, you also get automatic access to this library of automatic responses that Gorgias monitors and provides. 

Automation Add-on statistics

You can measure the impact of the Automation Add-on’s features in the Automation section of your Statistics. The report shows data such as the total number of automated interactions via chat. You can also see this as a percentage of total interactions.

You can further break this down and look at your quick replies, issues reported, returns, and other interactions. You’ll also be able to see how many tickets were handled by agents after automated interactions.

The Statistics Page offers a variety of valuable insights. For example, you can see if a particular product generates a lot of reported issues or return requests. You can also see how your automation usage changes over time, especially if you add additional Quick Response Flows

How Loop Earplugs used the Automation Add-on to increase revenue by 43%

Loop Earplugs understands the importance of quick responses for its customers. “Self-service allows our customers to solve their own issues at the click of a button,” said Milan Vanmarcke, Customer Service Manager at Loop Earplugs. “These frequent simple questions are solved instantly.”

Loop Earplugs cleverly used Google Analytics on its FAQs to determine which questions had the highest volume as a starting point, and answered those questions in Quick Response Flows. Loop Earplugs turned ¼ of all chat interactions into pre-sales flows, building customer trust along the way.

“When customers get a quick and honest answer, they often end up buying more than one product in a short span of time,” Vernmarcke noted. As a result of the pre-sales flows, the company has seen a 43% increase in revenue from customer support.

Read more about the impact of the Automation add-on on Loop Earplugs.

Swap low-impact interactions for high-impact results

Beyond meeting a customer’s expectations for instant answers, automation can boost your revenue, as Loop Earplugs found. You have opportunities to promote your merchandise, capture email addresses by offering a discount, or set rules to follow up with new customers. Plus, your human agents will be more free to answer pre-sales questions coming in on chat, or complex, VIP, and escalated tickets that were once buried under a mountain of WISMO requests.

Already a Gorgias customer? Sign up for an automation workshop to learn more about the add-on. Or, if you want the add-on today, log into Gorgias and go to Settings > Self-service (under Automation) > Your store > ✨Get Automation Features.

Not on Gorgias yet? Book a demo to learn more about the customer service platform built exclusively for ecommerce.

I recorded this episode of the Ecomm Swipe File with Eric Banholz, CEO and Co-Founder of Beardbrand, one item we talked about was their decision to move off of Amazon, and what the results were. With the news of Nike moving off of Amazon this week, I thought it would be interesting to share these results. Watch the full interview below, with Eric talking about moving off of Amazon at the 3:27 mark.

The Decision to Move off of Amazon

Eric and the Beardbrand team found that even though they were working with Amazon, they still had to compete. Rather than Amazon bringing them more customers, they were cannibalizing their own business.

The one area they could compete with Amazon was customer value adds. This mean product knowledge, style advice (as talked about in the first part of the video using SMS)

Everyone told Eric that moving off of Amazon would be the worst business decision they could make, and it was a risk that they knew they were taking. What happened next, couldn’t have been better for Beardbrand.

What happened after leaving Amazon?

• Beardbrand saw an increase in their average order value doubling from $25 on Amazon to $50 on Beardbrand.com
• Significant increase to the number of sales on the website
• Reduced costs by not having to manage multiple channels, and competing with blackhat Amazon sellers.

Why did this happen?

We will never know the exact product behaviour, but just as the theme of Klaviyo Boston was owning everything around your customer experience, you can’t own that customer experience on Amazon. On your website, or when someone talks to one of your customer service agents, it’s easy to suggest the products that you know go well together. For example, if you’ve bought a balm from Beardbrand, they may suggest one of their beard oils because they know the ingredients don’t impact one another, and the fragrances smell nice and work well with one another.

On Amazon, these recommendations are automatically generated - most likely based on what the data shows will sell best. Regardless if this is one of your products. In addition to losing out on revenue, this can impact your brand experience. If your purchase comes with a premium product like Beardbrand makes, and a low cost accessory, such as a beard oil made with alcohol that dries out your skin, it can have a negative impact on the overall Beardbrand experience.

Ultimately, Amazon is a very viable channel for many sellers and brands, but Eric and Beardbrand chose to be more in-control of their of their entire customer journey. From answering product questions nested in their instagram ad comments, to providing post purchase style advice.

The Full Conversation 

View a full transcript below. Please note, that this was generated, so we cannot gaurantee 100% accuracy in transcriptions.

Lucas Walker: Hey, what's up everyone? It's Lucas here. Another episode of the Ecommerce Swipe File. I'm in Llandudno Wales, and I just happened to see a barber shop I've been to before called Harry's. I noticed that they had a couple ring lights. I asked if I could pop in, film a bit of content, and he said, "Absolutely." They said, "What are you filming?" I said, "So I'm watching this vlog podcast featuring a lot of brands including Beardbrand. One of the lads who's actually just right over there, I don't know if you can hear the clippers, he's cutting hair right now, but it was Beardbrand that really inspired him and really taught him how to start cutting hair."

Lucas: In this episode I chat with Eric, who I've known for a few years now. He gave me some great advice. We talk about ways to make money online, what a great website looks like, what you should strive for, why he got off Amazon. That's actually a trend that we're seeing a lot of. There's a lot of brands looking to really own their marketing, own their customer relationships. The last thing we talked about is the power of brand, which as we see here, I'm from Toronto, Beardbrand's based out of Washington and Austin in the US. Here in the United Kingdom, he's inspired others to get into the male grooming industry. That's the power of a brand that goes so far beyond any sort of a financial or monetary gain and really going into the legacy. Enjoy.

Lucas: I'm with the Beardbrand founder, Eric Bandholz. If you're watching this video, you've probably seen Beardbrand either on Reddit on the internet, in the shop [inaudible 00:01:30] on Shark Tank, everywhere. I've been following Eric for a long time before I launched Treats Happen, Eric actually did a site review and gave me some great feedback, which I still take to heart today. What I share with a lot of people in that was would you buy from this website? Does this website look like something that you would purchase from?

Lucas: Also, we were trying to do little $1 add on products. You pretty much told me fuck that shit. You're working really, really hard to get people to your website and they'll put in their credit card to buy something with that's a dollar. They get five bucks or 10 bucks, you're not losing money on that. It's really just that add on item. You throw it in as a bonus if they come back later. They like it, especially when you're first starting out. Thanks so much for those tips. I have a whole bunch of questions. Let's start off with the typical blog format. What's sort of one thing that you'd done with your brand lately that really helped you out that any other merchant could kind of take and replicate with themselves?

Eric Bandholz: Yeah, I mean for us it's the most important thing that we do is focus on our brand and our core values and what we're trying to do and bringing it back to the mission. We're very mission oriented and by having that mission it allows us to focus on how we create emails, how we write blog posts, how we write social media tweets, and things like that and how we engage with our customers, improve customers.

Eric: Probably the most exciting thing that's going on right now is our SMS program. Customers who buy from us, they have the option to opt into text messaging. When they opt in, we'll send them a text message that says, "Hey, thanks for your order. We provide style consulting. Take a picture of a selfie. Send it to us and we'll tell you how to do your hair and beard."

Lucas: Oh, that's awesome.

Eric: Yeah, so we want to do more customer value add to our customers right now and really kind of create this moat around our customers.

Lucas: That's really fun. If you're thinking out loud, you could almost do that with anything. If you buy a poster, "Hey, send a picture of your living room and we'll show you the best place to hang it or whatever else."

Eric: Oh, yeah.

Lucas: That's really cool. The other thing that we've chatted a little bit about on Friday night was moving away from Amazon, which I've seen a lot of brands kind of trying to do under the radar. We used Amazon the most as our abandonment strategy. If people just want a single unit, but I mean if you can share what happened when you came off Amazon and really why you have that disdained for Amazon.

Eric: Yeah.

Lucas: Don't hold back.

Eric: Okay.

Lucas: You can swear. You can do whatever you want in the video.

Eric: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not too fond of Amazon. The strategy I just talked about, what we think about in house is a consumer is considering Amazon as a valid option and to really compete against Amazon, you have to figure out what can you do that Amazon can't do? One of those is customer value adds. Last year at the beginning last year we actually pulled off Amazon. Everyone told us that that's the worst decision. You just make so much money on Amazon. By not being on Amazon, you're a fool, but we actually saw an increase on their sales significantly on our website by pulling off Amazon. What I think was happening was people would shop on Beardbrand. They would go to Amazon and buy. Then on Amazon, Amazon would recommend generic brush or comb, so our AOV on Amazon is 25 bucks, whereas our AOV on our website's 50 bucks.

Lucas: You're not paying the 30% Amazon referral.

Eric: Yeah. Then we don't have to manage a different channel, manage listings, worry about black hat people, or fake reviews, and all that stuff.

Lucas: Yeah. Yeah.

Eric: Amazon is getting the data on your sales and if you're successful enough brand, they're eventually going to make their own product, AmazonBasics and rip off your product and push their product ahead of yours.

Lucas: Yeah.

Eric: There's a lot of risk as to building your business on somebody else's back. I've just always been a big fan of being in control of our destiny and our future. It's a lot harder. It's harder to drive traffic to Beardbrand.com, but once you start doing it, it makes it a lot more stable. I sleep really well at night.

Lucas: Yeah. My last question on that is, you are probably one of the first, if not the first, really making beard oil a common product that men like us need.

Eric: Yeah.

Lucas: How have you dealt with the increased competition of both just more supply out there for customers, but also lower quality driving down prices, so people might not want to pay 29 or $39 for your product when they see it for 14.99 elsewhere?

Eric: No matter what business you have, you're going to have competition. Even if you don't have competition, then your competition is typically ignorance towards your product.

Lucas: Yeah.

Eric: We always knew there was going to be competition and subsequently I can't control the compensation. I can't control what they do. All I can control is what we do.

Lucas: Yeah.

Eric: We just focus on our customer and how we can bring value to our customer's lives.

Lucas: I like that. Build trust.

Eric: Yeah. Yeah. We've got, in my opinion, the best product. With the best product, there's always room at the top.

Lucas: Even, like you were saying, the utility bar, I'm sure people look at and say, "Oh, it's just a bar of soap." They don't realize there's no palm oil. There's three years of research and development that went into that product.

Eric: Yeah. You don't have to worry about TSA and the liquid. Our utility bar, it works on your hair. It's a shampoo. It's a beard wash, body wash. You can use it as a shave soap as well, so you can keep tidy in all one product and just travel light. I mean we've tried to make products that aren't available on the marketplace and sand out. Maybe they don't want to appeal to everyone and that's okay. You know, we're not trying to be the next Proctor and Gamble. We're not trying to be L'Oreal. We're not trying to appeal to everyone. We're trying to appeal to our customers who are looking for these types of products.

Lucas: Well, on that note, I normally keep these at two, three minutes. We're over seven already, so I really appreciate it.

Eric: [crosstalk 00:06:55].

Lucas: My arms are getting sore, so I'm going to have to wrap this one up. Thanks so much for being a part of it and I'm glad that we could finally meet in person.

Eric: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Lucas: I actually mention the product in this vlog with Eric, the utility bar. I'm on the road all the time. I've been on the road sort of 36 of 58 days, almost two thirds of my time is travel. Love that the utility bar is great, hassle-free, can be used for a lot of different things. Actually, the best leather I've ever had in a soap, so I'm going to give away a three pack of those. To enter to win, leave a comment below where we were seeing this video. Maybe take a friend, or if you're listening to the podcast, take a screenshot of your review. Send it to me in an email, lucas@gorgeous.io. That's gorgeous, like the philosopher, not my gorgeous good looks. Enjoy

Quick summary:

A lack of proactive communication and resources from businesses largely causes WISMO. The best way to reduce WISMO is to provide self-service resources like a chat widget with automated responses and a shipping policy page allowing customers to track orders and find solutions.

WISMO (where is my order?) is the most common question in ecommerce, accounting for 18% of incoming requests on average, according to Gorgias data. 

While WISMO requests are common, too many of them signal an un-optimized customer experience and cause real consequences:

• Longer first response times for all requests, due to a cluttered inbox of WISMO requests
• Frustrated customers that don’t want to wait for an answer to this simple questions
• Overloaded customer service teams who don’t have energy for more important questions 

By developing a strategic plan to manage WISMO requests that includes automation and self-service resources, ecommerce businesses can cure overflowing inboxes and provide better customer experiences. 

Below, learn how to develop your own strategy to stop WISMO requests before they ever turn into support tickets.

What is WISMO?

WISMO is an acronym that stands for “Where is my order?” It’s a common question customers often ask after making a purchase. 

The answer to this question depends on the status of the customer’s order:

• Order received, not yet shipped
• Order shipped, in transit
• Order delivered
• Order lost

Common WISMO requests along the customer journey 

WISMO queries can look like…

• “Where is my package?”
• “Why hasn’t my order arrived?
• “When will you ship my order? I haven’t received it.”
• “What happened to my order?”
• “Give me updates about my order.”
• “Have you lost my order?”
• “I’m still waiting for my order.”
• “Please ship my order as quickly as possible.”
• “I need my order to arrive today.”

A customer may reach out to you with a WISMO inquiry via phone, email, SMS, live chat, chatbot, or social media (direct message or through post comments). However, customers tend to reach out only if: 

• You don’t provide a confirmation email with tracking information after purchases
• They don’t know the estimated delivery date
• They have issues with tracking their order using the code you’ve provided
• The shipping date has passed or their order never arrived (without an update)

{{lead-magnet-1}}

Why you should care about WISMO

The moment a new customer clicks “Submit” on a checkout page, they’ll start thinking (a lot) about their order. According to Forbes, the average customer checks the status of their order 4.6 times.

If a customer doesn’t hear anything about their order from you or has to wait too long for an update, they’ll likely get anxious and send you a WISMO request. 

Apart from that, there are additional reasons you should pay attention to WISMO calls: 

• 33% of consumers across all markets have made a complaint to a retailer about delivery. Approximately 69% say the ability to track orders is one of the top three considerations when buying a product online. (Metapack)
• 2 out of 5 US online customers say they are much more likely to buy when they have visibility into delivery dates in advance. As for delays, 70% of customers are less likely to shop with the retailer again if an item is delayed and the retailer fails to inform them about the delay. (Forrester and Bizrate Insights)
• 83% of customers said convenience is more important now than 5 years ago. They want convenience in finding and researching products, comparing prices, checking inventory and shipping methods, and more. (National Retail Federation)  
• 73% of customers will consider switching to a competitor after one negative customer service experience, adversely impacting customer loyalty and creating a ripple effect of challenges for a business. (The Northridge Group)

4 causes of WISMO

A surge in WISMO requests is a result of both internal and external factors, primarily rooted in a lack of communication and insufficient systems. Here are four internal and external causes to help you address and mitigate WISMO tickets.

Internal causes of WISMO

Addressing the internal causes of WISMO tickets is crucial if you're looking to enhance your order tracking and customer communication processes. Here are two key internal reasons for WISMO tickets:

1. Inadequate order management systems: Outdated or inefficient order management systems can lead to inaccuracies in order tracking. This leads to customers seeking reassurance about the status of their orders.
2. Poor cross-team communication: When there is a lack of effective communication between teams like logistics, customer service, and inventory management, it can cause delays in order processing and delivery. Since customers are unaware of these internal issues, they request for WISMO information.

External causes of WISMO

External factors are often beyond your business' direct control but can be managed through proactive measures. Here are some external reasons for WISMO tickets:

1. Lack of real-time tracking information: If your order tracking system lacks real-time updates, customers may be left in the dark about the exact location of their packages. As a result, they submit WISMO tickets to discover their order status.
2. Shipping carrier delays: External shipping carriers can encounter unexpected delays due to weather conditions, customs issues, or other unforeseen events. When customers experience shipping delays, they directly ask the merchants for clarity.

When you identify both the internal and external causes of WISMO inquiries, you can take proactive steps to decrease their occurrence and improve the overall customer experience.

What is the real cost of WISMO?

Most ecommerce merchants are aware of WISMO and the support costs associated with handling tickets, but not all of them understand the true cost of leaving all WISMO requests to a human. 

1) When a human agent responds to the WISMO request

When customers send WISMO requests to your human team, you’ll end up paying the most due to the cost of a human agent searching for the answer and responding manually. In this case, you’ll have to pay for the price of one ticket and customer support agent labor, which comes out to an estimated $12. 

Here’s the math:

• Price of one ticket: Between $0.18 and $0.40
• Customer support agent cost per hour: About $30
• Working hours per day: 8
• Average # tickets answered per day: 20
• The labor cost of one ticket: ($30*8)/20 = $14
• What a WISMO request costs you: From $12.18 ($0.18 + $12) to $12.40 ($0.40 + $12)

Imagine you have 1,000 orders per month and receive 150 WISMO requests. Each month, you’re paying $1,860 (150*$12.40) just to answer questions about order status.

Additionally, a queue full of WISMO tickets also means your team has less bandwidth and time to respond to frustrated customer emails and resolve priority tickets (like pre-sales questions or questions from VIP customers).

2) When you answer the ticket with automation

Let’s say you’ve created an automated response for WISMO in Gorgias using a Rule, or an automatic reply with a helpdesk like Gorgias. When a customer asks, “Where is my order?,” they’ll receive an automatic answer with personalized details about their order status without any human intervention. 

In this case, what WISMO request costs you is the price of one billable ticket in your Gorgias helpdesk, which is between $0.18 and $0.40, depending on your plan.

Most brands wince at the words “automated answer,” and for good reason. Some brands overuse automation, providing a frustrating customer experience. But customers would much rather have this information instantly available than wait for a “human touch.” And if your human agents spend all their time on these simple questions, they won’t have time or energy for tickets that actually need a human touch.

Jewelry brand Jaxxon has found success implementing automation into its customer support: 

“I was very apprehensive about using automation, but we're really liking it! I've tested it out myself as if I'm a customer, and it's really a smooth process.”

— Caela Castillo, Director of Customer Experience at Jaxxon

‎3) When the customer gets an answer via self-service 

This is the cheapest option for your business and the most convenient option for your customers.

When you’re able to deflect WISMO queries with self-service, your cost will be $0! If you can direct people to real-time order tracking in your chat widget, Help Center, or FAQ page, you ensure that customers get an answer before a ticket gets created and your support team can focus on the people with more complicated issues. 

Check out this video to learn how to provide order tracking (and more) in chat to customers with the Gorgias Automate product:

‎But wait, is automating responses good for CX?

When people ask for a status update on an order, they’re looking for a simple information exchange — not friendly conversation. Most likely they’re looking for an immediate answer without having to type up an email and wait for a response. 

If your agents are busy responding to simple WISMO tickets, they won’t be available to provide the human touch on tickets that actually need it. Plus, customers can always ask follow-up questions via email, chat, or phone if they really need more information.

4 ways to reduce WISMO requests

Most customers send in a WISMO inquiry because they’re concerned about their order. The best thing that customer service teams can do to reduce the number of these requests is to provide order status information proactively. 

1. Enable a self-service portal for order tracking 

In Gorgias, you can enable the self-service portal feature on your chat widget and Help Center to quickly resolve WISMO requests. This feature allows your customers to check their order status, package tracking number, and shipping details on their own. They can also request a cancellation or return, and report issues about their order — all without having to type up a message.

This strategy has proven effective for the Jaxxon team. “Chat used to be a support tool for repetitive questions and problem solving,” says Caela. “But now self-service takes care of that for us. Within a month of launching self-service, we’ve seen that our live chat (billable chat tickets) went down by 17%.”

Businesses can also provide this self-service order tracking via a help center. For example, shoe brand ALOHAS offers a “Manage your orders” section at the top of its help center with Gorgias.

Check out this tutorial to learn how to install this feature for your helpdesk. 

2. Automate shipping updates at each post-purchase stage

Just showing delivery estimates on your website isn’t enough. You should also keep customers posted on their order fulfillment status at each post-purchase stage to ensure a smooth delivery process and a positive delivery experience. You can automate delivery update emails within Shopify if you have a Shopify store.   

Start with these:

• Send an order confirmation email notification: Let a customer know you’ve received their order and will start processing it. 
• Provide a branded tracking page: Use third-party shipping and fulfillment apps like AfterShip to create a branded tracking page. Doing this is a great way to control the number of WISMO requests, create a better order tracking experience, and maintain your brand consistency. 
• Send packing and delivery notifications: Inform the customer when you complete the packaging and start shipping orders to increase their trust. 
• Send delay updates: If there is any delivery delay, tell your customer. Being proactive and giving an honest update will keep them satisfied with your post-purchase experience. 

📚 Read more about how to optimize your customer experience to deflect WISMO tickets and generate revenue.

3. How to use automated responses to handle WISMO requests

If customers do send you a message about the status of their order, they expect a quick response from you. To fulfill their expectation, you can accelerate your responsiveness by using customer service automation to deliver an immediate response.

In Gorgias, you can create automated responses for WISMO requests no matter if order tracking is available or not. Here’s how:  

1. When Tracking is Available

Step 1: Go to Settings > Rules > click Create a new rule that will send an automated response to your customer.  

Step 2: Do the following: 

• Select WHEN -> Ticket created as a trigger. 
• Click THEN, and select an IF statement. 
• Select message intents -> name -> contains all of -> shipping/status. 
• Click again on the IF button, and select AND. 
• Choose date of last order (Shopify variable) -> Less than -> 20 days ago.
• Click again on the IF button, and select AND. 
• Choose last order tracking number -> IS NOT EMPTY.

Step 3: 

• Click THEN, select Set Status as an action > closed to automatically close all tickets with this subject. 
• Click THEN again, select Add tags > type Order status/auto-reply.
• Click THEN again -> choose Reply to customer as an action -> type your message. Your answer can be like this:

Hey {{customer first name}},

Get excited! Your order {{number of last order}} is on its way to <address 1, address 2, Zip code, city, province>.

Here is the latest: {{ Tracking URL of last order }}

{{ Tracking number of last order }}

Let us know if you have any other questions. 

Step 4: Click Save rule and activate the rule. 

2. When Tracking isn’t Available

Sometimes, the delivery status for orders on the order status page hasn’t been updated. Reasons can be you haven’t shipped the order yet, or your courier doesn’t support real-time tracking.

In this case, you can create the following rule to send an automated answer to your customer’s WISMO request.

Step 1: Go to Settings > Rules > click Create a new rule that will send an automated response to your customer.  

Step 2: Do the following: 

• Select WHEN > Ticket created as a trigger. 
• Click THEN, and select an IF statement. 
• Select message intents -> Name -> Contains all of -> shipping/status. 
• Click again on the IF button > AND. 
• Choose last order fulfillment status -> IS NOT > fulfilled.
• Click again on the IF button > AND > message intents > DOES NOT CONTAIN ANY OF > type exchange/request and order/change.

Step 3: 

• Click THEN, select Set Status as an action > closed to automatically close all tickets with this subject. 
• Click THEN again, select Add tags > type Order status/auto-reply.

• Click on THEN again -> choose Reply to customer as an action -> type your message. 

Your answer can be like this:

Hey [customer first name],

Working hard to fulfill your order, please check here for now: .

Here’s your order number .

Keep an eye on a tracking email soon!

Step 4: Click Save rule and activate the rule. 

If you subscribe to the Automate product, you’ll get access to autoresponders managed by the Gorgias team, so you won’t have to set these Rules up yourself:

‎4. Be transparent and upfront about your shipping policy 

A clear shipping policy helps you proactively set the right customer expectations around shipping times and costs. It’s also useful to reduce support tickets because customers can find the answers to their shipping questions themselves. 

When you maintain an open dialogue with customers, you give them more confidence to buy from you. They’ll trust you, talk about you on social media, and keep coming back to your store. 

Your shipping policy should include information about order processing time, estimated delivery time, potential service interruptions, and disclaimer. You can display this policy on product detail pages, cart pages, FAQs page, or help center, for example: 

Since the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and supply chain issues, many online stores have set up a dedicated page for showing how they’re handling shipping. They also inform shoppers by displaying the information on a website announcement bar or popup. 

Here’s an excellent example from Go-To Skincare: 

You should also always link to an order tracking portal within all order confirmation emails so that customers can self-serve checking in on order status. 

And, as an alternative to sharing the order number front and center in the confirmation email, consider putting “track order” that links to your self-service order tracking portal. You should still share the order number, but provide an even more prominent call to action to track orders on your website rather than your carrier's (like FedEx or USPS). 

Automate WISMO to save time for higher-impact projects

Proactively solving for WISMO requests with automation and self-service can help you reduce customer service costs, increase customer satisfaction, and improve your support agents’ performance. That was the case for the ALOHAS team. 

“Since we started to fully leverage Automate, overall, 56% of chat tickets are handled by self-service.”
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— Annalisa Micalizzi, Manager of Global Customer Service at ALOHAS

Once agents are, they can start reaching out to live shoppers to unblock sales, proactively DM customers to bring social traffic to the website, or a myriad of other revenue-boosting CX activities.

Ready to outgrow WISMO with Gorgias? Claim your demo or start a free trial.

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Wondering if your team should add voice support to your ecommerce channels this year? You’re not alone. ‍

Over 15% of our customers currently have a phone integration added to their account, thanks to the Gorgias Voice integration and partners like Aircall and RingCentral. ‍

While voice support may feel like an “outdated” channel in the age of live chat and social media, this tells us that ecommerce support teams are increasingly finding value in offering it to their clients. ‍

Here are 4 benefits of adding voice support to your ecommerce store: 

• You can achieve faster first response times and faster resolution times. 
• It’s easier to express empathy with customers.
• Having a phone number builds trust and brand quality. 
• It makes your support more accessible. 

You can achieve faster first response times and faster resolution times. 

Phones are an immediate communication channel, so it’s not surprising that adding voice support can boost your first response time. What we weren’t expecting, however, was by how much: ‍

Our customers with phones have a first response time that’s 7x faster than merchants that don’t offer voice support. (30 minutes compared to 4 hours.) ‍

What’s even more important to note, however, is that adding voice support doesn’t decrease resolution time (like many support managers fear). In fact, it makes quite a positive impact: ‍

Our merchants using phones have an average resolution time that’s 34% faster than customers who don’t. 

So not only does this channel help you respond to customers faster, but it helps you resolve their issues faster. That means your team can work more efficiently and spend up to 66% less time resolving each ticket. (Imagine how that could help increase your store’s revenue!) 

It’s easier to express empathy with customers (which can lead to better Satisfaction scores).

Talking (literally) to shoppers and hearing their tone of voice is the best way your agents can adjust their responses to create a great customer experience. 

While you can do your best to read clues in email and chat, it’s always going to be easier to match the customer’s tone when actually listening to them on the phone. 

And when your agents can express empathy and solve the problem accordingly, you’ve got a better chance at getting that 5-star review and positive customer feedback. ‍

Our customers using phones have an average Satisfaction score of 4.56 out of 5. ‍

While that score also depends a lot on your support agents and their personal approach to customer service, there’s no denying that actually speaking to clients is helpful for both parties in those moments.

Having a phone number builds trust and brand quality. 

Especially if you sell high-end products or have VIP customers (like wholesalers buying in bulk), having a phone number adds a level of legitimacy to your business. 

Since most online stores don’t immediately add phones as a support channel, it will stand out to customers when your shop does offer voice support. 

Phones add a sense of maturity to your business (and especially if you’re using an integrated solution like Gorgias Voice), there’s not much cost involved to elevate the status of your store like this. 

It makes your support more accessible. 

While the internet has come a long way over the years in terms of accessibility, the truth remains that phone support may be an easier and more comfortable contact method for some of your customers than digital channels. 

Test your live chat experience with a screen reader, for example. What’s the experience like? (And how does it compare to dialing a phone number and talking verbally to someone?) 

If there’s a chance that voice support is more approachable for a part of your customer demographic, you’ll create a better shopping experience for them by adding a phone line. 

Now that you know the benefits of phone support, how do you actually add it? 

The first thing you’ll need to decide is who on your team will actually be answering the phones. ‍

A few options to explore: 

1. Having your existing support agents answer phones. This is best if your agents aren’t already too busy, or you have someone who’s particularly good at verbal communication. 
2. Hiring a new agent(s). This is the situation many support managers find themselves in -- they want to add phones, but don’t feel like they have the right staff yet to manage it. Hiring someone new can help, but we also recommend following these tips to keep resolution times fast and phone processes efficient. 
3. Outsourcing phone support. If you’re expecting a large amount of call volume and don’t feel you can internally staff the team to support it, outsourcing to a call agency is always an option. This can be expensive upfront, however, so it may be best to try one of the other options and consider this as a last resort. 

Next, you’ll need to choose a phone platform. 

If you’re adding our built-in voice channel to your Gorgias helpdesk, all you have to do to get started is log into your Gorgias helpdesk and create a new number (or forward or port an existing one, if you happen to have one already). 

Our phone integration is included in all Gorgias plans, and unlike other providers, there’s no annual contract fee and no minimum seat requirement. 

This makes it a great option for teams looking to add phones for the first time or who want to manage all communication channels in one place. 

Plus, our ecommerce integrations save your agents time by displaying callers’ shopping history right in the helpdesk, so they don’t have to go searching for the last order, for example. 

For more tips on how to create efficient phone processes and increase resolution time by 34%, check out this article. ‍

Finally, once you’ve set up your team and chosen your provider, all that’s left to do is make your number visible. 

If you’re offering voice support for all your customers, you might place it in the footer of your website or all transactional emails. 

If you’re piloting voice support or using it exclusively for a segment of shoppers, you might save it for smaller email segments or place it only on dedicated landing pages just for them. 

Wherever you decide to put your number, just make sure it's easily accessible and clearly visible so your shoppers can start calling, and your support team can start delivering even better customer experiences!