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TL;DR:

• Revisit your data: Use data from historical support tickets and customer feedback to identify common concerns.
• Encourage real-time conversations: Use live chat support with specific CTAs to entice customers and provide personalized assistance.
• Optimize timely messaging: Deliver campaign messages at the right moment based on browsing patterns.
• Educate to reduce returns: Clear and thorough product information helps set accurate expectations, leading to fewer misunderstandings and returns.

In the competitive ecommerce landscape, turning browsers into buyers is like… trying to get a cat to take a bath (if you know, you know). You can activate various website campaigns until something sticks, but without relying on concrete data, you may never see the conversions you want.

This is where addressing pre-sales friction points comes into play. In other words, resolving concerns that customers face before making a purchase.

Once you’ve determined the problem areas, you can use Convert campaigns to lead customers to the checkout. These onsite campaigns have proven to enhance customer engagement, drive conversions, and significantly reduce return rates. 

Ready to gain new customers? Let’s deep dive into identifying pre-sales friction points and resolving them with Convert campaigns.

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How to identify pre-sales friction points

Creating campaigns that convert requires identifying your top pre-sales barriers. These are obstacles in the buying journey that prevent customers from proceeding with a purchase.

Some sale-preventing questions could be:

• How do I know which size will fit me best?
• What are the shipping costs and delivery times for my location?
• What is your return policy if the product doesn't meet my expectations?
• What are other customers saying about this product?

Proactively addressing these friction points can remove customers' hesitation when purchasing.

Take a look at three data sources to identify your brand’s specific friction points.

1. Historical Tickets: Review your past customer support tickets, especially those in the product or pre-sale categories, to find valuable insights into customer concerns. For instance, TUSHY, a leading bidet brand, discovered that many shoppers had questions about toilet compatibility. After they targeted this concern with a campaign, they reduced customer hesitation and boosted the conversion rate by 10%.
2. Customer Feedback: Surveys, reviews, and customer interactions are rich sources of data. Collecting and analyzing customer feedback can help identify recurring issues and areas where additional information or support is needed. 
3. Website Analytics: Use tools like Google Analytics to determine when visitors drop off or spend excessive time on certain pages. For example, if many visitors exit on the product detail page, they might need more information or reassurance before making a purchase.

3 solutions to reduce friction points using Convert

After you’ve identified the obstacles in customers’ buying journeys, the next step is to resolve them.

Targeted onsite campaigns with Convert are an excellent way to tackle these issues. 

Here are three effective strategies to address common pre-sales friction points and enhance the shopping experience for your customers.

Solution #1: Use real-time messaging on the cart page

As of 2024, 70% of customers worldwide end up abandoning their online shopping carts. Price, value, competitors — there are many reasons why customers choose not to checkout. The solution is to engage with customers in real time while deep in shopping mode.

Conversational campaigns are among the highest-performing Convert campaign strategies, allowing brands to address customer questions and provide personalized assistance instantly.

TUSHY enhances product education by launching an educational campaign for shoppers browsing their product pages. The campaign features a video demonstrating how easy it is to install their bidets, reassuring customers about the simplicity of using their products.

Tips for Effective Real-Time Engagement:

• Compelling Call to Action (CTA): A generic CTA like “Let us know if you have any questions” is good, but specificity can resonate more with shoppers. For example, if you sell linen pants, try a CTA such as: “Ask our team below if you have any questions on linen care instructions or how you can expect the fit to adjust after washing.”
• Bandwidth Management: If 24/7 live chat support isn’t feasible, consider implementing different versions of the campaign for business hours and off-hours. Offer options for future scheduling or provide offline resources like quizzes, guides, or FAQs to keep customers engaged and informed. Brands can also leverage AI Agent to handle email conversations.

Solution #2: Capture customer attention at the right time using historical data

Timing is a critical factor in the success of onsite campaigns. Messages should be delivered at the right moment to ensure visitor attention without interrupting their browsing experience.

Fortunately, with Convert, you can target an audience based on the time spent on a visit or specific page. 

Check out how cosmetics brand Glamnetic appeals to browsing customers who spend more than a minute on their page:

Strategies for Timely Messaging:

• Analyze Browsing Patterns: Study the typical browsing time on your target pages. Campaign messages should appear after the visitor has had enough time to process the content but before they move on to another page. This balance is essential to maximize engagement without causing frustration.
• A/B Testing: Experiment with different delay times and message formats to identify what works best for your audience. Continuous testing and optimization can refine your approach and improve overall campaign performance.

Solution #3: Proactively assist shoppers in the product page

Educating customers is about providing information and empowering them to make confident purchasing decisions.

If customers are hesitant to buy from you, consider creating educational campaigns for:

• Product installation
• Product use 
• Sizing/fitting guide
• Product comparison guide

Glamnetic runs focused educational campaigns to provide customers with helpful product info and tutorials, like how to apply lash extensions. These campaigns make shopping easier and answer customers' specific questions, helping them make better buying choices. 

The results? +27% higher conversation rate and +12% AOV. 

Convert campaigns success: compelling data

Numbers don’t lie, and these impressive data points highlight the impact of well-crafted educational campaigns:

• 6%+ Engagement Rate: Convert educational campaigns have an average engagement rate of 9.09%, compared to the 1-3% benchmark. This means customers are more engaged with relevant and informative content.
• 11%+ More Conversions: 31% of tickets in these campaigns are converted, far exceeding the industry benchmark of 5-20%. Educational content helps resolve customer queries and moves them closer to making a purchase.
• 3%+ Boost in Conversion Rate: Convert campaigns have an overall conversion rate of 12.52%, compared to the 3-9% benchmark. Educated customers are more likely to complete their purchases, boosting sales.

Experience the true meaning of conversions with Gorgias Convert

Making the leap from browser to buyer is no easy feat. By addressing the friction points in the buyer journey, brands can smooth the path for their customers. These strategies not only enhance the shopping experience but also build customer confidence and trust. 

The data speaks for itself: well-crafted educational campaigns drive higher engagement, better conversion rates, and significantly reduce returns. Remember, you're not just selling a product — you're providing a solution, building relationships, and fostering long-term success in your brand.

Let the campaigns do all the work, and book a demo with Gorgias if you’re not leveraging Convert campaigns already.

TL;DR:

• AI will handle repetitive customer questions without replacing human agents, allowing them to focus on more strategic and meaningful tasks.
• AI will enable CX teams to focus on revenue-generating duties like upselling and building better customer experiences.
• AI drives strategic insights by allowing your team to analyze trends and share actionable insights with product, marketing, and operations teams.

Your customer experience team is considering investing in AI and automation, but you might be wondering: What will happen to your team after? 

They aren’t going anywhere.

Instead, your team has more time to tackle high-priority work that often gets put on the back burner, like:

• Coaching AI to make it more efficient
• Handling complex issues
• Focusing on revenue opportunities like upselling or cross-selling
• Building better customer experiences
• Analyzing insights and impacting the whole business

We’ve found that automating just 30% of your incoming ticket load can take on the work of three support agents. Overall, AI is a tool that can streamline customer service work and make your agents' lives easier.

Just as a helpdesk unifies all customer messages and removes the part of the process where agents have to jump between inboxes, AI eliminates the grunt work of reading and resolving repetitive tickets and more.

Automating tickets opens a world of opportunity for your support agents. Let’s break down how your CX team will evolve once AI joins the party.

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AI frees your team from repetitive questions, turning them into AI coaches

One of the biggest benefits of incorporating AI within your ecommerce CX strategy is encouraging your team to become AI coaches. 

When you automate “traditional” CX tasks, like answering incoming tickets, your team gains back time to provide feedback to continuously improve your AI and create more effective processes.

‎Empowering your human agents to become AI coaches could happen in multiple scenarios, such as:

• Providing feedback on AI interactions to improve AI’s responses, align with your brand guidelines, and boost first contact resolution rates.
• Updating your Help Center and internal knowledge base so AI can learn from your content to provide on-brand customer experiences. Agents should continuously document workflows and relay instructions from customer interactions, such as product information and customer sentiment.
• Integrating third-party tools to let AI perform actions. AI shouldn’t only be a tool for communication, it should also resolve issues. Connect 100+ apps and integrate your entire ecommerce tech stack to let AI carry out actions like canceling orders, changing addresses, and sending unique discount codes.

How Psycho Bunny trains their AI

Psycho Bunny uses Gorgias’s conversational AI tool, AI Agent, to automate 26% of customer tickets, providing empathetic and personalized responses to customer questions rather than generic auto-replies.

An incoming customer inquiry may occasionally require an agent to refer to internal, non-public information. At Psycho Bunny, AI Agent uses Guidance to leverage internal information and prompts to properly resolve or escalate issues as needed.

“The Guidance feature is so important because we have a lot of processes that we definitely don't want described in a customer-facing article, but we want AI Agent to be able to access that information and manage tickets accordingly,” says Tosha Moyer, Senior Customer Experience Manager at Psycho Bunny. 

AI lets your team drive revenue

AI lets your team upsell and cross-sell 

AI can handle most of your incoming repetitive questions, like “Where’s my order?” or “What’s my size?” but where it falls short is tackling high-priority issues, like a question asked shortly after a purchase is made. 

When it comes to ticket prioritization, we recommend using AI to handle low-priority tickets to free up your team to solely take care of the most pressing customer issues. Low-priority tickets are not time-sensitive or tied to generating a sale, making them perfect candidates for automation.

With AI handling easy-to-resolve issues, your team can focus on high-priority and revenue-related requests. High-priority tickets include those tied to revenue, such as VIP or returning customer inquiries, escalated cases like potential bad reviews, and conversations needing immediate responses via SMS or live chat.

AI lets your team run revenue-generating tactics

Every conversation with a customer is an opportunity to drive a sale. 

Your support team is on the frontline of customer interactions. No one knows your brand's customers and their pain points better. 

When you allow AI to manage ticket loads, the nature of your team changes from simply managing grunt work to becoming more like sales associates. 

This is an opportunity for agents to think beyond answering tickets and to become cross-functional partners across the brand, providing more value to the business overall by:

• Generating unique discount codes: Create unique discount codes using Convert campaigns. This helps incentivize purchases and track the effectiveness of your campaigns. For example, supplement brand Obvi positions their CX team as sales associates and support agents, helping to triple sales while resolving issues.
• Proactively engage shoppers to lift revenue by 13%. Mimic the in-store shopping journey by letting AI engage with customers on chat as they shop. Chat is an efficient way to upsell without disrupting the shopping experience.
• Integrating more revenue-generating tools: Make the most of customer experiences by connecting app integrations specializing in customer loyalty like Loyoly, rewards like Toki, and personalized messaging like Yotpo.
• Monitoring revenue statistics: Utilize Gorgias's Revenue Statistics to keep track of customer behavior and sales trends. Your team can use these insights to identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.

How Manduka increased conversions

Manduka implemented Gorgias Convert, an ecommerce marketing tool designed to turn first-time shoppers into repeat customers. Using onsite campaigns, Convert leverages audience segmentation to provide proactive and personalized interactions to increase conversions and boost average order value.

For instance, when an online shopper looks likely to leave Manduka’s website and meets certain conditions, a discount code campaign is triggered if customers sign up for email or SMS marketing messages.

Between April and August 2023, Manduka’s on-site Convert campaign saw:

• Total campaign revenue: $32,349.46
• Impressions: 62,690
• Clicks conversion rate: 25.28%

“Gorgias Convert is amazing, we highly recommend it,” says Jessica Botello, Customer Service Manager at Manduka. “Gorgias Convert is almost a one-to-one translation of the in-person retail experience to the online retail experience where that wasn't available before.”

(For anyone considering implementing Convert, we also offer a Convert Bootcamp to get CX teams up and running in just a few weeks.)

AI allows your team to build new customer experiences

When AI can automatically handle the bulk of incoming customer inquiries, you can put your human team on channels that push conversations and higher lifetime value (LTV).

Here are some ways to enhance your customer experiences:

• Offer consultations through live chat: Encourage one-on-one support through personalized, conversational customer service. Real-time assistance helps build customer trust and increases product education and customer satisfaction.
• Expand support channels to Voice and SMS: According to Salesforce, 79% of customers expect consistent communication across different channels. Widen your reach by offering support on phone and SMS to provide immediate support, accessibility, and more sales.
• Develop interactive product quizzes: With Gorgias Automate's Flows feature, agents can create custom multi-step paths to answer shoppers' questions based on their preferences. Matching shoppers to your most suitable product helps them get familiar with your offerings and builds interest in purchasing.
• Improve product descriptions to reduce return rates: Meet customer expectations by crafting clear, detailed descriptions. Comprehensive descriptions help shoppers understand what product they’ll receive, leading to fewer returns and better customer satisfaction. See how Love Wellness optimizes their product pages here.

How JAXXON uses their extra time to create new customer relationships and sales

Caela Castillo, Director of CX at JAXXON, notes that automation is not a total replacement for agents but a tool that provides instant information to shoppers while allowing agents to focus on more critical, revenue-generating tickets.

While Automate automatically resolves 37% of their tickets, JAXXON agents have more time to attend to higher-impact conversations, such as escalations and particular product-related questions. In addition, they can spend more time in the back end of their helpdesk by creating engaging chat campaigns and improving their self-service resources.

AI lets your team provide strategic insights

AI makes agents' jobs more strategic. 

With a bulk of tickets automatically managed, your team can spend less time putting out small fires. Agents can identify trends in customer interactions and make better-informed decisions that affect more than the CX team.

The key is to share insights and collaborate with other teams to improve the business as a whole. 

Here are specific insights to share with certain teams: 

• Product Team: Report on which products are causing the most tickets to identify and address issues.
• Marketing Team: Analyze which campaigns may have been misleading by tracking customer complaints and dissatisfaction to improve future promotions.
• Operations Team: Identify big spikes in lost or delayed packages to streamline order fulfillment logistics and improve delivery processes.
• Sales Team: Provide insights on customer feedback related to pricing and product preferences to refine sales strategies.
• Customer Success Team: Share trends in customer satisfaction and common issues to improve your onboarding program.

How Topicals reduced returns using customer satisfaction insights

Topicals wanted to reduce the high number of returned products by providing more helpful information to shoppers before they went to the checkout, so they leveraged Gorgias Automate to handle 69% of incoming tickets. 

With Automate, Topicals’ return rate dropped significantly, and sales from customer support increased by 78%. Agents also gained free time to think more strategically about the customer experience overall. Thanks to improved pre-sales conversations, customer satisfaction scores are now at 4.8/5.

As a result, the Topicals team now better understands what types of customer experience generate more sales and higher satisfaction scores. Best of all, they can leverage these insights to continuously fine-tune the experience.

“Being able to track customer satisfaction scores in Gorgias is a really big help to us. Before, we didn't know if we were doing well or not, but now we can see people like the service we provide. And we use the KPI tracking data for internal monthly meetings to review performance and see where we can improve.”

— Deja Jefferson, Customer Experience Manager at Topicals

Empower the evolution from support agent to AI coach

There’s a lot of fear around AI. We get it — change is hard (and scary). 

It’s important to choose a tool you can trust. At Gorgias, AI and automation aren’t new trends. From Automate to AI Agent, Gorgias has led the revolution in AI-driven customer support solutions for 15,000 ecommerce brands.

Sign up for free to kickstart your journey in automating CX with the power of AI.

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TL;DR:

• No data is stored. AI Agent follows a zero data retention policy and complies with regulations like GDPR and CPRA.
• Learns from your store’s data to provide personalized support. AI Agent pulls from sources like Shopify, your Help Center, and internal documents to respond with relevant, on-brand answers. The use of internal knowledge rather than public databases helps to avoid generic answers.
• Constructs sentences using a mix of different large language models (LLMs). AI Agent uses OpenAI, Anthropic, and other models to form natural-sounding responses.
• Feedback helps improve AI Agent’s performance. Support teams can review AI Agent’s responses, while Gorgias also monitors feedback from thousands of brands to optimize back-end prompts.

AI Agent is an autonomous AI support assistant designed specifically for ecommerce brands. Trained on your store’s Shopify data, policies, and brand guidelines, AI Agent responds to customer interactions with personalized, high-quality answers.

But is it the good type of AI?

As AI emerges more and more as a necessity for CX teams, there are a few common concerns among leaders. Worries that it will steal customer data, use data to enhance OpenAI’s LLM, or leverage shopper data for things outside of its scope are just a few.

To quell those concerns, we’ll go into the specifics of how AI Agent actually collects and uses data.

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Jump to an answer: 

• How does AI Agent collect data?
• Does AI Agent store data?
• Is AI Agent trustworthy?
• How accurate are the support responses?
• Do you have to legally disclose that you’re using AI?

‎How does AI Agent collect data? 

Gorgias’s AI Agent uses merchants’ unique data, including orders, ticket information, product catalogs, and store content, and then uses a blend of state-of-the-art LLMs, including OpenAI and Anthropic, to help it construct natural, human-like responses.

AI Agent uses the following as data sources: 

• Custom Guidance
• Shopify order data
• Your Help Center
• Public webpages
• Macros
• Handover instructions and excluded topics

How AI Agent handles Shopify order data 

The information AI Agent has access to is approximately the same data as the one presented in the Shopify widget in the Gorgias helpdesk. We push this same information to AI Agent to compute the next step for the customer.

Some of the data permissions that AI Agent has when integrated with Shopify include access to all orders, all draft orders, order edits, fulfilments, products, customers, themes, discounts, scripts, and content.

How AI Agent chooses data between different data sources

AI Agent processes the information from the ticket to understand where to pull the relevant data from, such as correlating information from the account associated with the interaction as well as the intent of the message. Here’s how it works.

🎟️ Ticket analysis

AI Agent first analyzes the content of the ticket to identify the key information and intent behind the customer's inquiry.

📊 Data correlation

It correlates this information with the available data sources, such as Guidance your team sets up (which takes precedence over other knowledge sources), Help Center articles, Macros, and any other integrated knowledge bases.

🤔 Context understanding 

AI Agent understands the context of the message and retrieves relevant data. If there are multiple sources of information, it determines which source is most pertinent to the query.

💬 Clarifying questions

If the ticket has vague or insufficient information, AI Agent will ask clarifying questions to ensure it pulls the correct information.

✅ Internal QA process

Before sending the response, AI Agent undergoes an internal QA process where it verifies the information and creates an internal note for the merchant. This note includes information on what knowledge and Shopify data was used, and shows "reasoning" for the event if the QA failed.

🗣️ Feedback loop

Merchants or admins can provide feedback on whether the resolution was good or bad, and AI Agent uses this feedback to improve future responses.

Does AI Agent store data?

Gorgias and AI Agent do not store shopper or customer data. 

AI Agent operates under a zero data retention (ZDR) policy, meaning that once the request is processed, the data is not stored.

📚 Further reading: Our Master Service Agreement (MSA) and Data Processing Agreement (DPA) govern the use of all Gorgias services, including AI Agent. If you’d like to learn more, these terms detail the data we collect and how we use Artificial Intelligence.

AI Agent prioritizes data security

Data privacy and security are top priorities for us, and our systems are designed to handle data in a secure manner without retaining personal or sensitive information. 

AI Agent uses language models developed by OpenAI. OpenAI does not use customer data to train their models, and there is a zero data retention policy. Any data sent through the API is not stored beyond the duration needed to serve the request pulled.

Gorgias is SOC 2 Type II compliant and adheres to strict regulations and standards to ensure the privacy, security, and proper handling of sensitive data. 

AI Agent does not use shopper data to enhance its LLM

AI Agent and Gorgias comply with stringent data privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), ensuring that shopper data is handled securely and responsibly without being used for model enhancement.

This approach ensures that shopper data remains private and is not utilized beyond the scope of providing immediate customer support​​.

“We were initially nervous about using AI, but it has quickly proven its worth. Our community members have even mistaken the AI Agent for a real person, which speaks volumes about how well it aligns with our brand voice.”

—Zoe Cranney, Community Experience Expert, LSKD

Is AI Agent trustworthy?

Yes! AI Agent was built not only to provide instant and accurate responses, but also with transparency in mind. For every interaction that AI Agent has, it provides you with an internal note that covers:

• The Guidance/Articles/Macros it used
• The source of the account information it pulled
• A prompt for your feedback to improve future responses

How accurate are the support responses?

While no AI tool is capable of perfect accuracy 100% of the time, we put several safeguards in place to keep AI Agent from sending inaccurate information.

Trained on your knowledge — not generic information 

When AI Agent responds to a customer, it pulls from your team’s specific documents. Aside from the Guidance you set, which it prioritizes, AI Agent uses your Shopify order data, Macros, your brand’s webpages, as well as your Help Center.

Using AI Agent is unlike only relying on ChatGPT for answers, which uses broad information. AI Agent draws from your data only, making its responses highly accurate and personalized to your brand.

We use multiple LLMs for natural language processing

LLMs like OpenAI and Anthropic’s main role in AI Agent is to recognize and form natural-flowing responses. It can speak in different languages and tones to align with your brand voice. This, combined with your own internal knowledge sources, helps add that human touch that sets it apart from automated emails and bots.

Topics can be excluded or handed over

As another layer of control, we let you define topics that AI Agent should completely ignore and hand over to your team.

For example, some topics — such as medical questions or legal threats — are too sensitive to handle with AI. You can add these to your Exclusion or Handover topics to ensure AI Agent does not respond to them.

Teams can provide feedback on resolutions

You can improve AI Agent’s responses by providing feedback on how it handled tickets. You can either approve of its behavior or suggest adjustments to improve future interactions.

For example, when an influencer reached out to hip toddler carrier brand Wildride and said, “I really love you guys,” AI Agent replied, “Love you too ❤️❤️”. 

Amber van den Berg, Head of Customer Experience, found this really funny, as it was exactly the type of response the team would have given. But if that response wasn’t quite right, or wasn’t on brand, they could have given AI Agent that feedback.

Do you have to legally disclose that you’re using AI?

You have the choice of whether or not to disclose your use of AI in response generated by AI Agent.

However, for maximum legal protection, we recommend using your email signature to indicate that the message your customers receive has been created with AI. 

• In email: Use the Email Signature setting to disclose your use of AI.
• In chat: Use the Privacy Policy feature to disclose your use of AI.

Note: Some laws, such as the California Bolstering Online Transparency Act, prohibit misleading consumers about the use of automated artificial identities.

Give better support to your CX team & your customers 

"I saw how well AI Agent was replying to customers and really started to think about how we could optimize it to work for us even more,” said Amber van den Berg, Head of Customer Experience at Wildride.

“Within one month, AI Agent was answering 33% of emails, which is quite impressive." This was essential for Wildride’s CX team after viral social media content bumped 1000 tickets per month to 1000 tickets per week. 

Now, the team is freed up to focus on more complex issues, and AI Agent can fill in the rest.

Book a demo to see how AI Agent can work for you.

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TL;DR:

• By automating straightforward customer requests, Gorgias Automate saved time and reduced response times by up to 69%.
• Health and wellness brand Obvi handled 27% of tickets with only two support agents within two weeks of using Automate.
• Menswear brand Psycho Bunny resolved tickets 99.4% faster than human agents by leveraging the conversational AI tool included in Automate, AI Agent.
• Luxury shoe and garment care retailer Kirby Allison boosted conversions by 23% and sales by 46% by implementing Flows.
• Automate helped businesses develop a robust help center, automating 30% of support volume within 30 days and improving customer self-service.

Guess what? Automating your customer support doesn’t mean you don't care about every customer interaction—it’s quite the opposite. 

Think about it… if someone wants to cancel an order, they simply want it done without any attempts at a personalized upsell. This type of response usually doesn’t require any additional flair.

Automation allows you to meet customers' needs promptly for straightforward requests. At the same time, it gives your team the bandwidth to invest more time and energy into solving intricate problems and building stronger customer relationships.

Many brands using Gorgias Automate features are saving both time and money, reducing response times, and even increasing sales generated directly from support.

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First, who benefits from Gorgias Automate?

As a solopreneur, it’s pretty self-explanatory. You’re busy with all aspects of your business, so automating what you can is going to help you prioritize and focus on more important things. 

But what about those who have customer support teams? This might sound counterintuitive, but Automate isn’t geared toward any specific type of brand. 

It benefits everyone at every stage of growth, whether you’re a single founder who wears many hats or lead a large CS team at an enterprise business.

Take Obvi—this mid-market health and wellness brand has a lean CX team of only two support agents. Although surprising, given their size and stage of growth, they’ve been able to automate the tedious and repetitive parts of CX.

For example, during BFCM 2023, Obvi’s CEO Ron Shah decided to use Gorgias Automate to boost CX efficiency even further while still providing excellent customer support.

“I told our team we were going to onboard Automate for BFCM, so a good portion of tickets would be handled automatically. There was a huge sigh of relief knowing that customers were going to be taken care of.”

—Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder at Obvi

Obvi now handles 150+ tickets per day without adding any headcount, thanks to a 27% automation rate—which they achieved within two weeks of onboarding Automate. 

Even for enterprise brands with larger CX teams, Automate helps them deal with the huge influx of queries that don’t require a human response—things like, “Where’s my order?” or “Can you cancel my order?”

And it’s also more than the support teams who benefit. With more time given back to agents for strategic thinking, support teams can share helpful advice across the entire organization:

• For the product team: Report on which products are causing the most tickets to identify and address issues. When the product team can directly reference customer pain points, it becomes easier to improve product quality and reduce future support inquiries.
• For the marketing team: Analyze which campaigns may have been misleading by tracking customer complaints and dissatisfaction to improve future promotions. Customer insights can help refine messaging that resonates better with your audience.
• For the operations team: Identify big spikes in lost or delayed packages to streamline order fulfillment logistics and improve delivery processes.
• For the sales team: Provide insights on customer feedback related to pricing and product preferences to refine sales strategies.

This way, customer support becomes less about the speed of ticket resolution and more about providing high-quality customer service that returns the favor with higher CLTV. How? Let’s review a few stories from brands using Automate.

💡 Pro Tip: Deflect WISMO tickets and let customers track their order by activating Order Management in your Automate settings. Go to Automate > your store > Order Management and toggle Track Order on.

AI Agent resolves tickets 99.4% faster than human agents

Every brand eventually faces a common dilemma: how to scale efficiently while keeping customer experience high and costs low.

This was no different for Psycho Bunny, the vibrant menswear brand known for its edgy twist on classic styles and its iconic skull-and-crossbones rabbit logo. As the company grew, so did the challenge of maintaining top-notch customer support without skyrocketing overhead costs.

"As we continue to grow this multi-million dollar company, the most important thing is maintaining or improving our current KPIs and CSAT, but without raising our customer support overhead. And being able to maintain this for the next 5–10 years."

—Tosha Moyer, Senior Customer Experience Manager at Psycho Bunny

Recognizing the need for innovation, the team turned to AI for a solution, specifically through Gorgias. Quickly after setup, the team began trialing AI Agent and named it Lisa.

Gorgias’s conversational AI tool, AI Agent, is an extension of your team. Just like a new support agent, AI Agent can:

• Learn all your support processes and policies
• Answer tickets in your brand’s tone of voice
• Perform Actions in Shopify and other tools for full resolutions
• Escalate tickets it cannot confidently answer

For Psycho Bunny, AI Agent quickly became a vital member of the team, resolving 26% of customer tickets with lightning speed—99.4% faster than human agents. 

By handling repetitive questions like order status and returns, Lisa freed up human agents to tackle more complex and high-value customer interactions.

One of the standout features of AI Agent is its ability to respond with empathy and personalization, reflecting the specific information customers provide. 

"We love the empathy in AI Agent’s responses," said Mary Mundy, Technical Support Specialist at Psycho Bunny. "Replacing a generic automated reply with a response that identifies the issues and has empathy, while communicating the key information the customer needs, is awesome."

The impact was immediate and impressive. Lisa answered queries 10 times faster than the team average, typically resolving tickets in under 2 minutes compared to the 4+ hours it took human agents.

Within the first two months, AI Agent shot to the top of Psycho Bunny’s customer support leaderboard for first response and resolution times, all while generating higher CSAT scores (4.67) than the team average (4.6). 

💡 Pro Tip: Give your AI Agent some personality to match how your human agents speak. Go to Automate > your store > AI Agent > Configuration tab, and in the Tone of Voice dropdown menu, choose from Friendly, Professional, Sophisticated, or Custom tones.

Kirby Allison generated 46% more sales from answering pre-sales questions

Kirby Allison, the luxury shoe and garment care retailer, has been a staple for well-dressed customers since 2011. However, their growing success came with a hefty challenge: an overwhelming influx of customer support inquiries.

With just two dedicated team members handling a surge of repetitive questions and manual processes, Kirby Allison’s customer support team was stretched thin. 

The pressure was on Addison Debter, Head of Customer Service, who not only managed customer queries but also juggled inventory management, product information updates, and website development.

"We were inundated with simple, repetitive questions: 'Where is my order?' 'What kind of shoe polish do I need?' We had to keep repeating similar answers to similar questions. And we were doing the exchanges and returns manually, one by one. We were losing so much time. We couldn't follow up with customers as quickly as we wanted," Addison shared. 

The team wanted a better way to handle these tickets, so they switched from Zendesk to Gorgias, specifically for the automation features.

"Our favorite features are definitely Flows and Article Recommendations," Addison said. "They drive so much automation for us. Shoppers get answers to their questions by themselves: what's the right size hanger, where is my order, what shoe polish would you recommend, etc."

Flows allow you to display up to six commonly asked questions directly in your chat widget. If a customer clicks on one of those questions, they’re redirected to articles from your knowledge base where they get the answer quickly. It’s an entirely self-serve experience.

Auto responses have also been impactful for this team. These work by using Rules to automatically reply to emails and messages based on the context of the customer's message.

The results? Within just two months, Kirby Allison saw a 23% increase in conversions and a staggering 46% boost in sales from support. 

Automating responses to pre-sales questions freed up the team to engage in conversations that led to sales, improving both revenue and efficiency.

💡 Not sure which FAQs to include in your Chat? Check out our list of 50+ FAQ templates here.

Boost holiday efficiency with 69% faster resolution times

The holidays are always difficult for support teams. The stakes are high, and so is the influx of support tickets.

Thankfully, customers can get the answers and guidance they need faster and more easily via self-serve order management, Flows, and AI-driven Article Recommendations.

Shinesty, the brand that’s all about making the world take itself less seriously, started out selling wacky vintage suits. Nowadays, they’re best known for their men’s underwear range, including the signature Ball Hammocks, which promise booty bliss and scrotal serenity. 

Shinesty also offers a subscription service, delivering a fresh pair of underwear each month with exclusive prints and discounts.

As with many ecommerce brands, Shinesty’s peak sales period spans from Black Friday through Christmas. The year-round customer support team of three builds up to 20 agents during the holidays to handle this surge.

For the 2023 holiday season, Molly Kerrigan, Senior Director of Retention, aimed to boost efficiency through automation. The goal? Help the CX team work smarter, not harder, and maintain their stellar customer satisfaction without increasing headcount.

“We get a lot of praise from our customers, and they talk highly of our CX team after 1:1 interactions. We can’t lose that as we scale,” Molly emphasized.

The team was swamped with repetitive questions about order status, discounts, and account management—all important queries but ones that don’t necessarily build customer relationships. Self-service solutions seemed like the answer, but previous tools struggled with Shinesty’s subscription model complexities

“Other tools required a high level of customization to handle the subscription element. But Gorgias Automate has been straightforward,” said Molly. 

After seeing the impact early, Molly and her team doubled down on optimizing their use of Automate, specifically for

• One-step Flows offer customers instant answers to common questions. When customers ask questions in Chat, Automate checks Shinesty’s Help Center for relevant articles and shares them, often resolving the query without agent interaction. 
• Multi-step Flows guide shoppers through a more interactive experience for picking the right undies, managing their subscriptions, and applying discounts.
• Self-serve order tracking and management have become extremely popular. Customers can get instant updates on their orders and report issues through the Help Center or Chat.

These automations are accessible via Chat, the Help Center, or the Contact Form, giving customers fast answers without needing to speak to an agent.

📚 Read more: Offer more self-serve options with flows: 10 use cases & best practices

Shinesty’s Flows are so effective that many have an automation rate of over 90%, meaning they resolve customer inquiries 90% of the time without human intervention. 

Automate helped Shinesty significantly save on recruitment, training, and overtime costs. Shinesty’s first response time has dropped by 65% and resolution time by 69%. This has resulted in the fastest resolution times Shinesty has ever seen, with the smallest CX team they’ve ever had—just five agents for the 2023 peak season, compared to 20 in 2021 and 12 in 2022.

Why you need a knowledge base for automation

Today, shoppers expect a high-quality shopping experience, and we know that they love having the power to solve problems on their own, on their schedule. In fact, 84% say a company's customer experience is as important as its products and services.

While we’ve seen how Automate can help you meet those expectations, a core component to making all of the flows work effectively is a customer knowledge base. This is crucial for any effective customer support automation strategy. Why? 

A few reasons:

• Customers get the answers they need quickly and easily, leading to a better overall experience.
• By deflecting common queries to the knowledge base, your support team can focus on more complex issues, improving efficiency.
• Providing detailed product information helps customers make informed purchase decisions, leading to higher conversion rates.
• Educated customers are less likely to make returns, saving your business time and money.

A knowledge base is an interactive portal that connects your customers to both sales and customer service. That means making it easy for them to find answers before making a purchase and helping them troubleshoot any possible issues afterward.

Here’s a helpful example from BrüMate 

This brand’s Help Center shines with its customer-focused design. 

At the top of the page, it addresses common questions like returns policy and product compatibility, allowing customers to find answers quickly without scrolling. To enhance the shopping experience, BrüMate offers an interactive quiz that guides customers to the perfect product, saving them the hassle of extensive research. 

The Help Center also includes easily accessible links for package tracking and returning to the main site, with a chat bubble for immediate assistance. When the customer service team is offline, customers can still access helpful articles.

💡 Did you know? You can teach AI Agent information from specific URLs! Simply go to Automate > AI Agent > Configuration > Knowledge > Public URL sources.

“We’ve started pushing people towards resources that are in our Help Center. We're trying to help our customers self-solve.”

—Colin Waters, leading at The Feed & former Associate Director of Customer Experience at BrüMate

Automate 30% of support volume in 30 days

By integrating Automate into your customer support strategy, you can significantly reduce your team's workload. Gorgias Automate is proven to be able to handle 30% of inquiries autonomously within just 30 days. 

Curious about how Automate can benefit your business? Book a demo to learn about the advantages of Gorgias Automate and AI Agent and see firsthand how they can transform your customer support operations.

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TL;DR:

• Loyalty comes from ease, not delight. Simplifying customer support drives more loyalty than going above and beyond to surprise customers.
• High-effort interactions hurt loyalty. Long, complicated support experiences can push even satisfied customers to competitors.
• AI reduces customer effort. AI can automate simple tasks like FAQs, personalizing support, and order modifications, so your team can handle more complex tasks.
• AI enhances human support. AI works best when it complements your team by handling repetitive tasks.

For years, businesses have chased the idea that delighting customers is how to earn loyalty. The belief is simple: go above and beyond, exceed expectations, and customers will come back. 

However, research from The Effortless Experience, a best-selling customer service book by Matthew Dixon, shows that this approach might be wrong. Focusing on customer delight often makes the experience more complicated and less efficient. 

Most businesses aim to wow customers, but trying too hard leads to longer customer support interactions and higher costs. The real key to customer loyalty is making things easy.

Below, find out how AI is another string to your customer support bow, allowing you to increase speed and reduce effort while maintaining your brand's empathetic voice.

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Why doesn’t customer delight drive loyalty? 

When customers reach out with a problem they want a prompt solution –– ​​90% of customers say an “immediate” response is important.

Delight is a problem when it adds additional steps and doesn’t solve the problem upfront.

Customers don’t want a solution with all the bells and whistles. They simply want to solve the problem ASAP.

There’s a disconnect between satisfaction and loyalty 

It’s a common misconception that satisfied customers are loyal customers. But the numbers tell a different story. Research shows that satisfaction doesn’t always lead to loyalty.

In fact, 20% of customers who say they’re satisfied with a service still plan to switch to a competitor. Satisfaction alone isn’t enough to keep customers from exploring other options.

High-effort experiences put customers off 

High-effort experiences are a major driver of customer disloyalty. Studies show that 96% of customers who encounter high effort interactions become disloyal. 

When customers feel like they have to jump through hoops to get help, they’re more likely to take their business elsewhere.

Read more: Why you need to monitor customer effort score (& how to do it)

It’s easier to trigger disloyalty than loyalty 

Negative experiences are much more likely to leave a lasting impression. Even when customers feel satisfied with the products, high-effort experiences can negatively impact loyalty.

For example, a customer may contact customer service due to a minor issue, such as a shipping delay. However, they may have to wait a long time to get a response or repeat their issue to multiple agents. Even if the issue is eventually resolved, they will leave frustrated and less likely to return.

If you need to put in extra effort, even positive interactions will fall short.

Bonus track: High-effort experiences are expensive 

Trying to delight customers might sound like a winning strategy, but it often comes with a hefty price tag. Offering freebies, bending rules, and making special exceptions can increase your operational costs significantly. When these additional costs don’t contribute to customer satisfaction or loyalty, it’s important to evaluate if they’re worthwhile.

Read more: The hidden power and ROI of automated customer support

Simplify, don’t surprise: How can AI help reduce customer effort?

Several common issues make customer support a hassle. Some of the biggest culprits are multiple contacts to resolve a single issue, having to repeat information, and being transferred from one agent to another. 

You can solve these common customer complaints with AI. 

But won’t AI make my brand sound robotic and devoid of human touch? 

Our hot take is that AI actually frees up your team to focus on more valuable tasks.

For example, RiG’d Supply, a brand specializing in off-road vehicle accessories, is letting AI handle some of the repetitive work so they can do better customer service. As a small team, even the CEO occasionally jumps in to keep up with the repetitive daily requests.

“This isn’t a matter of eliminating jobs, but giving our employees their primary jobs back. We get more bandwidth back to be able to take phone calls and hear how we can help you have the best possible experience on your next ramble,” says Luke Wronski, CEO of RiG’d Supply. “Our hope is to have AI give us the time back to have a conversation with you about the stuff that keeps us stoked to do what we do.” 

Read more: Our AI approach: Onboard, automate, observe, and coach

5 AI strategies to minimize customer effort

Don’t get us wrong, AI can’t handle every moving piece of your customer support. So don’t assume you can replace your whole support team with AI. You still need high-quality human support for more complex tasks. 

But if you have a solid support team that provides top-quality customer experience, you already have the right foundation to benefit from AI.

1. Automate frequently asked questions

AI tools are excellent at resolving simple customer queries, such as “Where is my order?” or “How much is delivery?” on the first contact. 

Quick, accurate responses lead to a smooth experience and less effort from both sides. Customers no longer need to follow up multiple times for the same issue. Plus, you’ll save time that your support team can use for more complex issues.

Consider using an automated customer experience platform with an AI assistant. For example, Gorgias's AI Agent automatically responds to FAQs like “How much is shipping?” or “When will my order arrive?” in your brand’s voice. For more technical requests, it assigns them to the right agents.

Read more: What's the secret to reducing WISMO requests?

2. Personalize support

AI can analyze customer data to deliver personalized suggestions. For example, if a customer frequently orders the same product, AI might recommend a subscription service to save them time and effort. Or if a customer has ordered several cooking utensils from the same product line, AI might suggest matching pans to complete their set.

💡Pro Tip: Find a CX platform with AI that offers custom, human-like responses. You can program your AI Agent to respond in different tones — friendly, professional, playful, or empathetic — so it feels more like your brand and less like a robot. 

3. Provide guidance for next issue-avoidance

Imagine solving your customers' problems before they even know they have them — that’s next-issue avoidance. With AI, you can recall past interactions and customer habits to anticipate their needs.

If a customer has had issues with a product before, AI could suggest a protection plan upfront, saving them from future headaches. Your AI solution should help you stay one step ahead so customer support remains smooth and customers are happy.

Some AI assistants can even learn specific instructions or “Guidance” for handling certain topics. For example, you could create a Guidance instructing the AI to request photos if a customer reports a damaged product. If the AI detects that photos are already included, it automatically escalates the ticket to a human agent.

4. Automate order edits

AI’s capabilities shouldn’t end at answering FAQs. AI can also handle routine tasks like address changes or order modifications so your team can focus on issues that need more technical problem-solving.

Speedy resolutions keep customers happy, and as long as the issue is resolved efficiently, they care more about the result than who handled it.

For example, brands using Shopify can use Gorgias’s AI Agent to cancel orders and update shipping addresses without manual intervention from agents — so agents can dive into more complex requests that need their expertise, like upselling or resolving negative customer feedback.

5. Answer customer concerns with AI recommendations

Let’s face it — nobody wants to jump through hoops to get help. AI-powered helpdesks dig into customer interactions to find out where things get sticky and offer smart suggestions to improve the process. 

For instance, AI might notice that customers are often confused about how to download and print the shipping label to return items. With this insight, you could make it easier and faster for customers to find and print the correct label. 

Gorgias Automate goes a step further by detecting your customers' top concerns and allowing you to create knowledge base articles about them automatically. Brands can use this data to update their Help Center and FAQs, make key webpages more visible, and enhance product pages, ensuring customers find the answers they need quickly and easily.

Embrace effortless customer experience with AI

Customer loyalty isn’t won with flashy gestures. Instead, brands earn it by making things easy. AI is your best friend here, helping you streamline interactions, solve issues before they even arise, and keep customers in the loop without them having to chase down information. Remember, AI is there to enhance an already solid customer experience foundation and to help your team. 

It’s time to rethink how you approach customer support. With AI, you can craft a seamless, low-effort experience that satisfies customers and turns them into loyal fans.

Book a demo to see how Gorgias can eliminate customer effort.

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‎Jordan Brown, Founder of Omnie, recently hosted a workshop at CX Connect in Los Angeles on creating better customer support programs with AI. 

If you weren’t able to attend live, or you just want a refresh, we’ve put together a recap of the workshop.

We'll cover how to get started with building your AI customer support strategy and, once you're up and running, how to measure success and ensure AI is operating properly.

You can also watch Jordan’s full workshop below:

Common AI concerns 

First, Jordan did a bit of “myth busting” and went through everyone’s most top-of-mind concerns for implementing AI. Here’s what they were worried about: 

1) How to measure success quantitatively  

Concern: Unsure which customer service metrics to track and how often to monitor each AI response to ensure it's accurate. 

Jordan’s response: He recommends monitoring customer satisfaction, escalation rate, automation rate, and customer sentiment. 

2) AI will sound too robotic

Concern: How to make everything into your brand voice and not just sound robotic, but personalized.

Jordan’s response: Create brand guidelines and set them up as guidance for your AI chatbot. 

3) My team worries AI will take their jobs 

Concern: How to use AI as a member of my team without freaking out my team that it's going to take over their jobs. What kind of new tools are they talking about, and how will my team's roles evolve with AI?

Jordan’s response: Agents will naturally feel like they're being replaced by AI, but they'll just have a different focus — sales, monitoring AI, supporting it, and training it. Having that conversation with them is a good idea.

4) The time it takes to set up will affect our current requests 

Concern: We’re just a small team, and we’re worried about stopping to invest our time and energy into setting it up, which could potentially affect the service to customers who already reached out to us.

Jordan’s response: That's understandable. Implementing AI will save time in the end, but it's a huge change.

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How to get started with AI 

Here’s what Jordan recommends for weaving AI into your customer experience program: 

• Establish the foundation for your strategy
• Set up AI in phases
• Prioritize empathy & personalization 
• Measure and monitor success

Establish the foundation for your strategy

You've all probably experienced poorly built AI chatbots, especially with massive companies where it's impossible to find their phone number, and you're stuck in chatbot loops.

That situation really benefits the brand because they don't have to talk to customers, saving costs. But you want to benefit both the brand and the customer, so you need to implement AI properly. 

That means setting up AI with a personalized touch, and making sure it's successful so that both brands and customers enjoy the benefits.

Here’s what your top priorities should be: 

• Identify potential risks and best practices to mitigate risks 
• Understand AI's capabilities (since it's not going to find lost packages, pick up the phone, or fix damaged products) 
• Build in your brand tone and voice making the AI feel as human as possible

📚 Further reading: Why having a quality knowledge base is essential to using AI for CX

Set up AI in phases 

Advanced AI tools work off confidence scores. Each AI response has a confidence score, indicating how confident the AI is that its response is accurate. 

At Omnie, Jordan likes to set up AI in phases, where the AI only answers when it's 100% confident. Anything less goes to an agent to avoid risking the customer experience. 

You don't have to turn on AI for everything immediately — you can ramp up slowly. 

Automation and AI also don't need to handle a ticket fully from end to end. 

For example, if a customer wants to return something because they changed their mind, great. But if there’s an issue with the product, send it to someone on the retention team to try and salvage the sale. If it’s for particular reasons, automate the return.

📚 Related: Ecommerce returns: 10 best practices for taking your online store to the next level

Prioritize empathy & personalization 

Empathy and personalization are critical. At Omnie, Jordan and his team weren’t comfortable with automation a year ago because it felt robotic. But with new technology like ChatGPT, you can inject your brand tone and voice. 

You could be funny, concise, chatty — whatever fits your brand. 

They worked with Jason Momoa's water company, where the bot talks like him, making it a unique brand tone. 

When AI is implemented properly, the customer thinks they’re talking to a human, as seen with Frye, a shoe company that’s been around since 1863. Omnie is saving them 240 hours a month of support time, automating nearly 800 tickets, and customers think they’re interacting with a human named Caleb.

To get started, determine your brand tone and voice. If you don’t have a brand book, figure out how you want to talk to your customer so it’s consistent.

📚 Related: New data shows 4 ways automation impacts customer service

Measure and monitor success

As you ramp up, test in the playground before going live, especially for businesses with sensitive information. Monitor the metrics for success: customer satisfaction, escalation rate, automation rate, and customer sentiment. AI isn’t something you set up and walk away from — it requires constant maintenance.

Ramp up with Gorgias AI worry-free

Experience firsthand how Gorgias AI can transform your support strategy and save your team time by automating repetitive tasks and keeping your brand’s voice front and center. Book a demo now.

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TL;DR:

• AI Agent handles a variety of customer inquiries. These include order tracking, returns, cancellations, discounts, account management, feedback, collaboration requests, and complex topics.
• Use Guidance to train AI Agent to handle each type of inquiry. Guidance acts like a built-in training manual, helping AI Agent follow your brand’s guidelines in every interaction.
• Test and refine Guidance to keep responses accurate. Use Test Mode to ensure AI Agent follows instructions, reflects your brand’s tone, and escalates when needed.
• AI Agent can provide 24/7 support. Even when your agents are offline, AI Agent can respond to customers, reducing response times and keeping customers satisfied.

For support teams, sending the right answer at the right time, every time, is the ultimate goal. But with limited resources and operating hours, how can you be there for your customers 24/7? We’ve got an answer.

Designed specifically for ecommerce brands, AI Agent is an autonomous support assistant that steps in where human agents are stretched thin: handling repetitive tickets. AI Agent is trained on your brand’s policies, voice, and instructions, helping you resolve customer inquiries like your agents — but faster.

We’ll cover 10 types of inquiries AI Agent can resolve instantly, complete with template instructions (Guidance) and real-life examples. Plus, keep in mind five best practices to get the most out of your new AI teammate.

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10 AI Agent use cases, templates, and examples

Each use case comes with a template for Guidance instructions that acts like a built-in training manual for AI Agent. Then, see how AI Agent uses those templates to respond to real customer tickets.

Note: Guidance are special instructions that tell Gorgias’s AI Agent exactly how to handle customer questions, including when to hand them off to your human agents. This gives you control over AI Agent, so every AI interaction is always aligned with your brand’s protocols.

1. Where is my order? (WISMO) inquiries

90% of shoppers want to be able to track their orders, according to DispatchTrack. Easily fulfill those neverending WISMO requests with one comprehensive Guidance that detects a customer’s current order status to give them the best answer. 

Include these key elements in your where is my order? Guidance instructions:

• Detect if a tracking number is available: If the order has a tracking number, provide the link to the tracking page.
• Provide delivery time: Automatically calculate and share the expected delivery date based on the shipping method.
• Check order status: Inform the customer whether the order is processing, shipped, or delivered.
• Handle delivery delays: If the system detects a delay, apologize and offer an updated delivery estimate.
• Escalate complex issues: If the order is missing or has incorrect tracking info, escalate the ticket to a human agent for further review.

Here’s an example of a where is my order? Guidance setup, available as a template in Gorgias:

Here’s how AI Agent uses that Guidance to assist a customer with their order inquiry:

💡 Pro Tip: Can’t find AI Agent? Double-check that you have an active Gorgias Automate subscription and connect Shopify to Gorgias. To do this, go to Settings > My Apps > Shopify > Update app permissions. You must be an Admin to complete this task.

2. Product-related questions

Shoppers ask product questions to get the clarity they need before buying. These pre-sales questions can make or break their decision to buy your product. Close the gap from browsing to checkout by using AI Agent to deliver quick, accurate answers that help them make confident decisions.

Here’s an example of a product-focused Guidance setup:

Here’s how AI Agent uses that Guidance to assist a customer with their product inquiry:

💡 Pro Tip: AI Agent can also learn information from your web pages. Go to Automate > AI Agent > Public URL sources to sync key web pages like sizing guides, blog posts, and more.

3. Returns

Answering ecommerce return requests can be time-consuming. Requests can range from a simple what is your return policy? question to customers wanting to go through the return process. Regardless, return inquiries can easily be handled by AI and handed off to a human agent if necessary.

Include these key elements in your returns Guidance instructions:

• Determine return eligibility: Check if the order is within the return window based on your policy.
• Identify non-returnable items: Inform customers if their item is non-returnable due to your specific policies.
• Guide through the return process: Provide instructions on how to initiate a return, including steps like entering an order number or using a return portal link.
• Inform about processing times: Share estimated times for processing returns and refunds.
• Escalate complex cases: If the return involves exceptions, like damaged goods or international returns, escalate the ticket to a human agent.

Here’s an example of a returns inquiry Guidance setup, available as a template in Gorgias:

Now, look at how AI Agent uses this Guidance to assist a customer with their return request:

💡 Pro Tip: If you’re using Loop Returns, set up AI Agent to automatically send a returns portal link to customers. This Action fully resolves returns inquiries by directing shoppers straight to their orders.

4. Order issues

Order issue tickets often require back-and-forth. The customer states their problem, you ask for photo verification and check if the customer has tried all the different solutions — the list goes on. Let AI Agent cover the bases for you every time, and if needed, escalate the ticket to your team.

Include these key elements in your order issues Guidance instructions:

• Express empathy for any inconvenience caused: Show that your customer’s happiness and experience are priorities.
• Handle damaged products: Provide instructions for customers to submit photos of damaged goods, then process a replacement or refund based on your policy.
• Correct incorrect shipments: If the wrong item was sent, guide the customer through returning the incorrect item and arrange for the correct product to be shipped.
• Escalate the issue: Route the ticket to a human agent for further handling.

Here’s an example of a Guidance setup for handling order issues, available as a template in Gorgias:

Here’s how AI Agent follows this Guidance to resolve a customer’s order issue:

5. Cancellations

Canceling orders is pretty much a race against order fulfillment and your third-party logistics. The key is to catch these inquiries as soon they hit your inbox. The problem? Tickets can come late at night or outside of your business hours.  However, when you let AI Agent handle them, customers can rest assured that their request will be dealt with.

Include these key elements in your cancellation Guidance instructions:

• Check order status: Determine if the order is eligible for cancellation based on its shipping status.
• Process cancellation: If eligible, guide the customer through the cancellation process and confirm the order has been canceled.
• Handle shipped orders: If the order has already shipped, instruct the customer on how to return the item once received, or escalate the case to a human agent.
• Escalate exceptions: For complex or time-sensitive cancellations, escalate the ticket to a human agent.

Here’s an example of a cancellation Guidance setup, available as a template in Gorgias:

Here’s how AI Agent follows this Guidance to handle a customer’s cancellation request:

💡 Did you know? You can let AI Agent cancel an order when the customer and order meet certain conditions. For example, the Action will only be performed if the fulfillment status is still empty. Go to Automate > AI Agent > Actions > Browse All Actions > Cancel Order in Shopify.

6. Discounts (including BFCM)

Come holiday season, including Black Friday, you’ll be swamped with loads of discount inquiries. Whether it’s customers asking about discount codes not working or if you have any codes available, these repetitive inquiries are best resolved by AI.

Include these key elements in your discount Guidance instructions:

• Provide active discount codes: Provide customers with a list of current discount codes and their eligibility criteria.
• Assist with missed discount codes: Help customers who forgot to add a discount code by offering guidance on how to apply it retroactively or escalate to an agent.
• Troubleshoot code issues: Guide customers through common reasons why a discount code might not be working, like expiry dates, minimum purchase requirements, or product exclusions.
• Upsell by offering alternatives to discounts: If no active code is provided, offer alternative available promotions or direct them to sign up for the latest offers.

Here’s an example of a discount inquiry Guidance setup, available as a template in Gorgias:

Here’s how AI Agent follows this Guidance to handle a customer asking for coupons:

7. Customer feedback

Acknowledging feedback, good and bad, can make customers more willing to keep doing business with you. Maintain an honest rapport with customers by letting them know you’re always listening.

Include these key elements in your feedback Guidance instructions:

• Acknowledge positive feedback: Respond with a thoughtful, genuine thank-you message, reinforcing customer appreciation.
• Request a public-facing review: Encourage customers who leave positive feedback to share their experience further, such as writing a product review or sharing their thoughts on social media.
• Escalate negative feedback: For negative feedback, escalate the ticket to a human agent.

Here’s an example of a customer feedback Guidance setup:

Here’s how AI Agent uses this Guidance to respond to positive feedback:

💡 Pro Tip: Let AI Agent automatically tag feedback tickets for you by going to Automate > AI Agent > AI ticket tagging. This way, your agents can find all customer feedback organized in one place.

8. Account management

Account management tasks like updating details or managing subscriptions are tedious, time-consuming, and often things customers can do themselves. Let AI Agent handle these tasks to speed up resolutions.

Include these key elements in your account management Guidance instructions:

• Provide instructions: Provide clear instructions for updating account details like email, shipping address, or payment methods.
• Verify identity for security: Include steps to verify customer identity before making sensitive changes, like account or subscription modifications.
• Escalate complex issues: For issues like account access problems or billing disputes, escalate to a human agent.

Here’s an example of a Guidance setup for account management, available as a template in Gorgias:

Take a look at how AI Agent uses this Guidance to help a customer with managing their rewards:

💡 Pro Tip: Use Recharge Actions to automate subscription cancellations or skip shipments with AI Agent. Go to Automate > Automate > Actions > Browse All Actions > Cancel subscription in Recharge or Skip next subscription shipment in Recharge.

9. Collaboration requests

Influencer marketing is on the rise as customers look to social proof when deciding what products to buy. With the right Guidance, your AI Agent can easily manage collaboration and marketing partnership inquiries.

Include these key elements in your collaboration requests Guidance instructions:

• Gather social media profiles: Prompt customers to share their social media profiles and relevant platforms for review if they haven’t.
• Request collaboration details: Ask for specifics about the type of collaboration or partnership they’re interested in (e.g., influencer campaigns, sponsorships).
• Provide next steps: Let the customer know their request will be reviewed and what they can expect in terms of timing.
• Escalate complex or high-value inquiries: For more significant partnerships, escalate the request to your marketing or partnerships team.

Here’s an example of a collaboration request Guidance setup:

See how AI Agent uses this Guidance to respond to a collaboration request from a content creator:

10. Complex and sensitive topics

AI Agent isn’t designed to handle all tickets. For highly complex and sensitive topics, instruct AI Agent to reroute them to your human agents who are equipped to handle certain subjects with more caution and context than AI. 

For example, a makeup brand would disable AI Agent from taking on tickets about allergic reactions or health concerns so customers receive safe advice.

Here are other messages you should prevent AI Agent from answering:

• Messages that mention legal actions
• Messages that mention allergic reactions or health issues
• Messages where customers report negative reactions to products
• Messages that mention unsubscribing, stop messages, stop emails or stop texts

Take a look at how AI Agent escalates a ticket about a damaged product:

Note: AI Agent automatically escalates messages with angry language and sentiment to your support team — no Guidance needed.

Keep these 5 Guidance best practices in mind

While AI Agent answers most customer inquiries, you’ll still need to be there to provide it with the barriers to keep its answers on-brand and accurate.

Here are five best practices to keep in mind when creating Guidance instructions.

1. Include Guidance for your top 5 most FAQs

Prime AI Agent with essential brand information by creating Guidance for the top five most common customer questions:

• Order status and tracking
• Returns, exchanges, and refunds
• Order cancellations and edits
• Discounts and promos
• Subscription/account management

You can automate a significant portion of customer support and save time for your team just by letting AI Agent answer these tickets.

2. Use a descriptive Guidance name

Always use clear and descriptive names for your Guidance. AI Agent relies on this information to identify whether the Guidance is relevant to the customer’s question. 

For example, instead of naming it “Shipping,” use something like “Shipping policy – domestic & international” to help AI Agent choose the right response.

3. Include examples in your instructions

It’s important to include detailed examples to help AI Agent detect the intent behind your incoming tickets. Clear examples let AI Agent match customer inquiries with the correct response more reliably.

For instance, instead of just saying, “Answer shipping questions,” give it an example: “For domestic orders, say: ‘Shipping takes 5-7 days. For international orders, it takes 10-15 days.’” This helps AI Agent detect when a question is about shipping timelines and respond appropriately.

4. Review and update your Guidance

Customer needs and products change over time, so it’s important to check back on your Guidance to make sure it’s relevant. AI Agent’s responses should reflect any changes to your policies, products, or processes to provide customers with up-to-date information.

5. Test new and updated Guidance in Test Mode

Before going live with new or updated Guidance, use Test Mode to make sure AI Agent is responding as expected.

Here are key things to check in Test Mode:

• Help Center articles: Verify that AI Agent is pulling from the correct Help Center resources.
• Guidance instructions: Test your updated Guidance to make sure AI Agent follows the protocols you have laid out.
• Excluded topics: Ask AI Agent questions about excluded topics to make sure it escalates the inquiry as needed.
• Tone of voice: Check that AI Agent’s responses are in your brand’s tone.

Lead conversations to faster resolutions with AI Agent

Right out of the box, Gorgias includes Guidance templates to help AI Agent manage your FAQs, like returns inquiries, shipping questions, and more.

Equip your AI Agent with Guidance and watch your support team thrive with more time to nurture your customer relationships and handle complex tasks.

See how AI Agent can transform your support team within minutes by booking a demo today.

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TikTok Shop generated 68.1% of gross market value sales across all social media platforms in 2024 and $3.8 billion in sales in 2023. Clearly, it’s becoming a massive channel with abundant opportunities for sellers.  

To effectively harness TikTok Shop, however, brands with high-volume sales need to understand the specific challenges they will face when launching on the social platform. 

Many of these are operational, like maintaining an accurate inventory list between platforms, supporting customers efficiently, and fulfilling a large number of orders. 

When used together, AfterShip Feed and Gorgias can help you overcome these operational hurdles and start selling on TikTok Shop sooner. 

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Streamline order management & customer support on TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop is the commerce-enabled side of TikTok, where brands and creators can list their products for sale. Shoppers then make a purchase through shoppable (in-feed) videos, live shopping, or product showcases. The app aims to provide a “frictionless checkout experience,” enabling shoppers to engage with their favorite accounts and add-to-cart in a flash.   

While setting up a TikTok Shop is relatively simple, if you already run an ecommerce store that does a high volume of sales, adding TikTok Shop as an additional channel will be a little more complex. Thankfully, tools like AfterShip Feed and Gorgias can help you solve many operational issues and provide the same best-in-class customer experience on TikTok Shop as you do on your other channels.. 

Here’s a highlight reel on how you can implement both tools to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction, tackling issues like fulfillment or customer support inquiries from the same customers on different channels.

Centralize customer support with Gorgias 

800+ Gorgias customers currently use the TikTok Shop integration. It’s quick and easy to connect. With it, you can: 

• Manage all customer interactions in one place
• Automate ticket creation
• Enhance customers’ experience

Manage all customer interactions in one place

Coordinating customer support across different channels can be a pain. With Gorgias, however, you’ll be able to manage inquiries more efficiently and handle all shoppers’ messages by responding to TikTok Shop inquiries directly from Gorgias using text, images, and videos. 

Additionally, you can address order-related issues and manage cancellations, returns, and refunds from TikTok Shop in the same Gorgias dashboard you use for your existing channels. 

Automate ticket creation 

Leverage Gorgias’s automated ticket creation to reduce First Response Time (FRT) and ensure that you don’t miss a single customer inquiry from TikTok Shop. Save time by handling repetitive tasks (like order status updates) with automation. 

Enhance customers’ experience

Enabling the Gorgias TikTok Shop integration will allow you to maintain better control over communication and provide a consistent customer experience. Customers shopping via TikTok Shop will benefit from quicker responses, improving overall satisfaction and boosting brand loyalty.

Simplify operations with AfterShip Feed

AfterShip Feed is a reliable TikTok Shop management tool with 1,800 customers. It auto-syncs products, inventory, and orders between TikTok Shop and ecommerce platforms. 

Partner AfterShip Feed with TikTok Shop to: 

• List on TikTok Shop more efficiently
• Safeguard your revenue
• Streamline order management

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List on TikTok Shop more efficiently

AfterShip Feed makes listing high volumes of products on TikTok Shop easier through bulk uploads and editing, enabling you to update up to 10,000 SKUs at once. 

It uses AI to add key product details and keep your product listings accurate and consistent. Tools like category templates and product ID generation make it even easier to list your full catalog. 

Safeguard your revenue

AfterShip Feed has several features that will help you avoid lost revenue, especially during busy times like BFCM. 

Inventory threshold 

Inventory threshold helps you determine the minimum amount of inventory you need to have on hand to avoid selling out or buying too much. You can also set a fixed amount of inventory aside for TikTok Shop. 

Price rules 

Price rules help you set the ideal prices for each item you sell to protect your profit margins. 

Fulfillment hold 

A fulfillment hold stops an order at the fulfillment stage to ensure sufficient funds on the customer side, sufficient stock on yours—or to solve another issue behind the scenes. TikTok Shop has a standard 1-hour fulfillment hold, which can cause issues with inventory syncing on your main ecommerce platform. 

Streamline order management 

AfterShip Feed supports multiple fulfillment methods and integrates with many returns solutions. Sync orders from TikTok Shop with your existing fulfillment systems, ensuring timely and accurate deliveries. You can sync up to 24,000 orders to Shopify per hour.

Other features include order ID, shipping method, and product-SKU mapping. 

Which are the top-grossing TikTok Shop industries?

Two industries in particular see massive sales from TikTok Shop: beauty and personal care, and womenswear and underwear. According to a 2024 report from Statista, the beauty category saw over 370 million sales and women’s fashion 284 million sales in 2023. 

The beauty category alone has generated almost $2.5 billion in GMV, while the womenswear category has seen $1.39 billion.  

If your brand belongs to one of these categories, including Gorgias and AfterShip Feed in your TikTok Shop toolkit could be a great fit for you. 

Gorgias and AfterShip create better experiences 

Pairing Gorgias and AfterShip Feed will help you deliver a fantastic customer experience and grow your business on TikTok Shop. 

Get started →