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The Gorgias & Shopify Integration: 8 Features Your Support Team Will Love

See how Gorgias’s Shopify integration makes customer support easier—fewer tabs, faster replies, happier customers, and more revenue.
By Holly Stanley
0 min read . By Holly Stanley

Managing customer support as a Shopify store owner can feel like juggling too many tools at once.

Constantly switching tabs to look up orders, update customer information, or track returns wastes valuable time. Plus, it prevents your team from focusing on what really matters––delivering quick, personalized customer service

Gorgias’s Shopify integration solves this. It keeps all your Shopify data in one place, so your team spends less time toggling tabs and more time helping customers. The result? Faster responses, better service, and more revenue.

Below, we break down the eight key capabilities of this integration, each paired with practical use cases to showcase its real-world value.

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1. View Shopify data in tickets

What it does: Shopify order data is displayed directly within support tickets, allowing agents to view essential details like order status, customer information, and transaction history without leaving the helpdesk.

Use case: An agent handling a “Where’s my order?” request can instantly check tracking information and update the customer.

The fashion retailer Princess Polly improved their customer experience team’s efficiency by using Gorgias's deep integration with Shopify. Agents can view and update customer and order data directly within Gorgias, eliminating the need to switch between multiple tabs.

Taking a streamlined approach led to a 40% increase in efficiency, an 80% decrease in resolution time, and a 95% decrease in first response time

Screenshot of Shopify order data within Gorgias ticket
Customer order data, including their shipping address and product details, can be found directly in the ticket.

2. Perform Shopify Actions

What it does: Agents can update Shopify order and customer data with Shopify Actions right in Gorgias.

Key features:

  • Create a new order: Add existing products or custom items, apply discounts, modify quantities, add notes and tags, and choose to charge taxes. Then set the order as Paid or Pending and email the invoice to the customer.
  • Duplicate an order: Replicate an existing order and make adjustments as needed.
  • Cancel/refund an order: Cancel or refund orders by setting quantities to refund, specifying shipping amounts to refund, providing reasons for cancellation, restocking items, and notifying the customer.
  • Edit shipping address: Update the shipping address for an order.
  • Insert product links: Add product links or product cards from tickets so customers can add the product to their cart quickly.
  • Display the customer’s cart: View the exact items the customer has in their cart at the moment they reach out via Chat.

Use case: Agents can perform Shopify actions directly from Gorgias, such as adding products, applying discounts, updating quantities, or issuing refunds.

Screenshot of duplicate order Shopify action in Gorgias ticket.
Agents can perform Shopify Actions like duplicate an order directly from Gorgias.

3. Embed customer-specific Shopify data in Macros

What it does: Create templated responses called Macros with dynamic Shopify variables to automatically incorporate customer-specific information. 

Key features:

  • Dynamic variables: Macros can include variables that pull real-time data from Shopify, such as order status, tracking numbers, and customer details.
  • Automated actions: Beyond inserting dynamic content, Macros can perform actions like tagging tickets, setting statuses, or assigning conversations to specific agents. The automation streamlines workflows and ensures consistent handling of similar inquiries.

Use case: A customer inquires about their order. With one click, the agent uses a Macro that pulls in the order status and expected delivery date, creating a faster and more personalized response.

Take Try The World, a gourmet subscription service, needed a robust Shopify integration to handle an increasing volume of customer inquiries. By switching to Gorgias, they gained the ability to unify conversations and embed Shopify data directly into Macros. Now, agents could quickly generate personalized responses that included order details, tracking links, and customer-specific information. 

Try the World’s support team’s efficiency skyrocketed, enabling them to handle 120 tickets per day, up from 80, and reduce response times to just one business day. 

Screenshot of templated response with Shopify data in Gorgias ticket.
Shopify data lets agents create Macros, templated responses with personalized data.

4. Provide product information with Macros

What it does: Macros with embedded Shopify data let agents quickly and accurately share pre-sale information like product links, stock availability, and discount codes, helping to convert prospective customers into buyers.

Key features:

  • Dynamic Shopify variables in Macros: Agents can use dynamic variables to pull real-time product information.
  • Pre-built responses for common questions: Macros can include templated responses tailored for pre-sale inquiries, such as providing direct links to products or applying discount codes.

Use case: A customer asks if a specific product is available in their size and color. The agent can apply a Macro that automatically pulls the product's inventory details and includes a discount code, sending a response like this:

“Hi {{ticket.customer.firstname}},
Great news! The product {{ticket.customer.integrations.shopify.products[0].title}} is currently in stock in the size and color you’re looking for. You can check it out here: [Product Link]. Use the code WELCOME10 at checkout for 10% off your first order! Let me know if you have any other questions!”

How it helps:

  • Eliminates manual search and typing for agents.
  • Ensures accurate, real-time product information for customers.
  • Improves the likelihood of converting inquiries into sales.

5. Enable self-serve order management in Chat 

What it does: Using Gorgias’s chat widget, customers can track orders or manage their purchases on their own with no agent assistance needed.

Key feature:

  • Order management automation: Customers can access real-time order information, including status updates and tracking details, through the chat interface. This automation reduces the volume of live chat inquiries by up to 30%.

Use case: A customer wants to check the status of their recent purchase. By accessing the Chat widget on your website, they can enter their email and order number and receive instant updates on their order's progress, including shipping and delivery information, without waiting for an agent's response.

How it helps:

  • Automates routine inquiries and frees up your support team to handle more complex issues.
  • Enhances customer satisfaction thanks to immediate responses.
  • Reduces the need for multiple communication channels, consolidating support interactions in one place.

6. Use Shopify variables in Rules


What it does: Rules paired with Shopify variables can automate various support tasks, such as identifying specific customer segments or tagging tickets, to boost efficiency and consistency.

Key features:

  • Automated tagging: Rules can automatically tag tickets based on specific Shopify data. For instance, you can set up a Rule to tag tickets from customers with high order counts or significant total spending as "VIP."
  • Prioritization of tickets: Rules can prioritize tickets that meet certain criteria, such as high-value orders or repeat customers.

Use case: A customer with a history of substantial purchases contacts support. A rule detects that the customer's total spending exceeds a predefined threshold and automatically tags the ticket as "VIP." 

This tag can then trigger other workflows, such as assigning the ticket to a senior support agent or escalating its priority.

How it helps:

  • Improves customer experience by prioritizing high-value customers.
  • Maintains consistent service quality.
Rule setup for auto tagging VIP customers
Rules let you identify VIP customers using Shopify variables.

7. Track revenue with reporting

What it does: Gorgias offers comprehensive reporting that allows you to measure how your support interactions influence sales.

Key features:

  • Tickets converted: Tracks the number of support tickets that led to a sale within five days of the ticket's creation.
  • Conversion rate: Calculates the percentage of created tickets that resulted in sales, helping you assess the effectiveness of your support team's interactions.
  • Total sales from support: Sums the revenue generated from orders associated with converted tickets, accounting for refunds and order adjustments to provide accurate figures.

These metrics are accessible under Statistics → Support Performance → Revenue in your Gorgias dashboard. You can filter the data by integration, ticket channel, tags, or specific time periods to gain detailed insights.

Use case: By analyzing Revenue Statistics, you can identify which support channels or agents are most effective in driving sales. For example, if live chat interactions have a higher conversion rate, you might allocate more resources to that channel. 

Additionally, recognizing top-performing agents can inform training programs to elevate overall team performance.

For example, One Block Down, a Milan-based streetwear brand, struggled to manage a growing volume of customer inquiries across multiple platforms. By integrating Gorgias with Shopify, they centralized all customer interactions into a single platform, giving agents instant access to crucial information like order history and returns directly within tickets.

The setup allowed the team to measure the direct impact of their support efforts on revenue. 

The result? An impressive 1,000% increase in support-generated revenue and a 1-hour average first response time. By connecting the dots between customer service and sales performance, One Block Down demonstrated how proactive, data-driven support can directly influence the bottom line.

How it helps:

  • Quantifies the revenue generated from support interactions.
  • Faster team optimization with data-driven insights.
  • Understanding the correlation between support interactions and sales can help refine customer service strategies.

Screenshot of Revenue Statistics dashboard in Gorgias.
Revenue Statistics highlight which support channels and agents are best at generating sales.

8. AI Agent integration

What it does: AI Agent automates Shopify actions like canceling orders, editing order details, and reshipping items.

Key features:

  • Cancel Shopify order: AI Agent can automatically cancel unfulfilled orders upon customer request, restocking the items and issuing a full refund. A confirmation email is sent to the customer once the cancellation is complete.
  • Edit order shipping address: When a customer needs to update their shipping address, AI Agent verifies if the order is unfulfilled, confirms the new address with the customer, and updates it in Shopify accordingly.
  • Replace order item: AI Agent facilitates item replacements in orders by confirming the item to be removed and the new item to be added, checking stock availability, adjusting payments if necessary, and sending an updated order confirmation to the customer.
  • Reship order for free: In cases where an order is lost in transit or arrives damaged, AI Agent can duplicate and resend the order at no additional charge.
  • Remove order item: If a customer decides to remove an item from their order, AI Agent can handle the removal, restock the item in Shopify, process the refund for the removed item, and notify the customer of the updated order details.

Use case: A customer realizes they've entered an incorrect shipping address shortly after placing an order. They contact support, and AI Agent promptly verifies that the order is unfulfilled, confirms the correct address with the customer, updates the shipping information in Shopify, and sends a confirmation email—all without human intervention.

How it helps:

  • Automating routine order management tasks reduces the workload on human agents.
  • Quick and accurate responses to order modification requests lead to a better customer experience.
  • Automated processes ensure consistency and accuracy in handling order changes, reducing the likelihood of human error.
Screenshot of AI Agent Actions.
Using Gorgias’s AI Agent you can customize multiple Shopify actions with Gorgias.

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min read.

Introducing Conversational AI: The Smartest Way to Handle Chat, Actions, QA, and Insights

Gorgias is entering a new era of conversational AI. Watch out for these new and exciting features in 2025.
By Gorgias Team
0 min read . By Gorgias Team

Today, we’re announcing our deeper investment in conversational AI for ecommerce. 

"Since day one, Gorgias has been dedicated to helping ecommerce brands deliver exceptional customer experiences. We started with a helpdesk to centralize support, then introduced AI Agent to instantly resolve support questions,” says Romain Lapeyre, CEO of Gorgias.

“Now, we're taking the next leap forward with an AI Agent that powers the entire customer journey—anticipating buyer needs, boosting sales, and automating high-quality support. Today, I'm happy to announce Gorgias as the Conversational AI platform for ecommerce.”

Gorgias’s Conversational AI platform will let teams provide fast, scalable, and cost-effective support while helping them drive revenue growth. From automatic order changes and refunds to product recommendations and cross-sells, brands will be able to flawlessly combine their support and sales efforts.

The end result is an AI-powered customer journey where every customer interaction feels complete, personal, and connected, both before and after purchase.

Questions in Chat, resolved in seconds

Last year, we introduced AI Agent for email. 

Some brands call their AI Agent Lisa, some call it Wally, and most treat it like a real member of the team. But this reliable support sidekick was only available to answer customers on email—until now.

Get ready for instant responses that tackle support inquiries of all sizes. Now, your customers can enjoy fast responses that keep their shopping experience as smooth as possible.

On top of improving first response times, AI Agent can play an even more critical role in unblocking sales, suggesting products, and driving upsells and cross-sells.

With responses sent in 15 seconds or less, brands can delight customers with near-instant resolutions.

AI Agent responding in chat and email
AI Agent can autonomously respond to customers on email and chat.

Let your AI Agent take action

Actions let AI Agent perform customer requests on behalf of your support team. This includes changing shipping addresses, fetching fulfillment status, canceling orders, adding discounts, and more. 

You can use a library of pre-configured Actions for popular apps like Shopify, Rebuy, Loop, and more. And you don’t need any technical skills to set them up.

With almost half of queries requiring some kind of update, Actions is your go-to for complete resolutions so you can get more accomplished.

AI Agent actions are connected to ecommerce apps
AI Agent can perform actions on ecommerce apps, right from the Gorgias platform.

Quality built into every support ticket

Quality checks have traditionally been manual, time-consuming, and inconsistent. Our brand new Auto QA feature changes that by automatically scoring 100% of conversations on resolution completeness and communication quality—whether from a human or AI agent.

With Auto QA, team leads can:

  • Scale quality consistently and easily. Both human and AI agents follow the same quality standards, allowing for consistent, high-quality customer experiences.
  • Coach smarter. Use real-time QA ratings in tickets to give agents targeted feedback.
  • Track team performance. The dashboard highlights metrics by agent, showing what’s working and where to improve.
The Auto QA Score includes resolution, accuracy, efficiency, communication and text field for feedback
Receive automatic QA checks on all customer conversations with Auto QA.

Gain clarity on your AI Agent’s impact

Support teams should be in complete control of their AI. That’s why the AI Agent Report and AI Agent Insights were created—to help you know exactly how your AI Agent is performing and contributing to your customer service operations.

The AI Agent Report provides full visibility into AI Agent’s performance, covering metrics like First Response Time, CSAT, and one-touch ticket resolutions. Fully integrated into your Support Performance Statistics dashboard, the report includes:

  • The percentage of tickets automated by AI Agent
  • The number of tickets closed by AI Agent
  • Success rates for one-touch resolutions
  • How satisfied customers are with AI Agent’s responses
AI Agent performance displays metrics like automation rate and customer satisfaction
Monitor AI Agent’s performance with a glimpse into metrics like automation rate, closed tickets, and customer satisfaction.

AI Agent Insights takes it a step further. It analyzes AI Agent’s performance data and provides you with a dashboard of recommendations, including potential automation opportunities, popular ticket intents to optimize, and knowledge base improvements.

AI Insights show automation metrics and top intents
Find out which areas of your support workflow could benefit from automation with AI Insights.

Meet your new AI sales assistant

Soon, we’ll be expanding our AI capabilities with the launch of AI Agent for Sales, a tool designed to assist customers on their shopping journey.

AI Agent for Sales helps brands boost their sales capabilities through smart product recommendations, on-page checkout assistance, and personalized conversations. Now it's easier to reduce cart abandonment, suggest complementary products to boost average order value, and overcome pre-sale objections.

This new tool will bridge the gap between marketing and CX, ensuring brands can scale personalized interactions 24/7 without increasing headcount.

Coming soon: AI Agent for Sales
AI Agent for Sales is coming to chat soon.

Looking ahead with conversational AI

As we continue to innovate with conversational AI, our focus remains on helping you succeed.

By combining smarter tools with valuable insights, we’re creating opportunities for you to put your customers first and build deeper connections at every touchpoint.

Join us as we pave a new way for the future of ecommerce.

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min read.

AI Quality Assurance: The New Standard for Customer Support QA

Help your CX team deliver better service with AI quality assurance for fair feedback and consistent customer support.
By Christelle Agustin
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TL;DR:

  • The landscape of QA is moving from manual to AI-powered, where AI can analyze every customer interaction, uncover patterns, and suggest data-driven changes at scale.
  • Automating QA allows ticket reviews to be routine. This means customers will always receive high-quality support.
  • Every customer interaction is reviewed with AI QA — not just a sample. This gives support leaders full visibility into performance and service quality.
  • AI QA saves time and improves agent and AI Agent feedback. By automating ticket reviews, agents receive instant, unbiased feedback, and leaders can focus on big-picture CX improvements.

This year, 71% of customer experience (CX) leaders are using AI and automation to handle the holiday shopping season. These tools, including AI agents and email autoresponders, speed up tasks like responding to customers and updating orders.

But answering tickets isn't enough. Responses must also be high-quality, whether from humans or AI. And while customer satisfaction (CSAT) is the standard measure of how successful these interactions are, they have major limits.

CSAT scores don’t tell the full story about whether agents were helpful or if they used on-brand language. These gray areas in quality lead to missed sales, higher return rates, and frustrated customers during peak periods.

AI quality assurance (QA) is changing that. In this article, we’ll see what QA looks like today, how AI can simplify the process, and how CX teams can use tools like Auto QA to improve quality across all conversations.

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Traditional customer support QA is falling by the wayside

Today, QA in customer support is a largely manual responsibility. Customer conversations are reviewed by CX team leads to ensure customer satisfaction and identify areas for agent coaching. Team leads evaluate agent responses against a checklist of best practices, including the proper use of language, product knowledge, consistency, and helpfulness.

However, reviewing tickets takes a long time.

QA is important, but it's hard to prioritize when customers are actively waiting for help with refunds, urgent order edits, or negative reviews. And when CX teams are under-resourced and short-staffed, it’s easy to put QA on the back burner. 

What’s more, as AI plays a bigger role in responding to customers, quality assurance must evolve to ensure the quality of AI-generated responses, not just human responses. 

Over time, the lack of QA in CX can hold back support teams for three reasons:

  1. Delayed feedback makes it harder for agents and AI tools to improve.
  2. Leaders have less time to train agents and refine workflows.
  3. Inconsistent service risks losing customer trust and loyalty.

What is AI-powered QA in CX?

AI-powered quality assurance (QA) uses AI to automate the process of reviewing customer interactions for resolution completeness, communication, language proficiency, and more. 

Instead of team leads spending hours manually sifting through tickets, AI takes over and evaluates how well tickets were resolved by agents.

Shifting this traditionally manual work to an automated process pulls teams out of the weeds and into more beneficial work like speaking to customers and upselling.

Manual vs. AI-powered QA
Manual QA is prone to inconsistent checks and fewer tickets reviewed compared to AI-powered QA.

With AI QA, routine ticket reviews are not just an optional part of your customer service strategy, they become a permanent part of it. The road to greater customer trust, resolution times, and stronger product knowledge becomes easier.

Read more: Why your strategy needs customer service quality assurance

Why choose AI-powered QA over manual QA? 

Manual QA is like trying to review a handful of tickets during a flood of new customer requests. Team leads can only focus on a small sample, leaving most interactions unchecked. Without complete visibility, creating a standard across all interactions is challenging.

Now, switch over to AI QA. You don’t have to choose between QA duty or answering tickets — QA checks are automatically done. You’ll still need to monitor AI’s performance, but now there’s more time to focus on creating strategies that improve the customer experience.

Here’s how AI QA and manual QA measure up to each other:

Feature

AI QA

Manual QA

Number of Tickets Reviewed

All tickets are reviewed automatically.

Only a small sample of tickets can be reviewed.

Speed of Reviews

Reviews are completed instantly after responses.

Reviews are time-consuming and delayed.

Consistency

Feedback is consistent and unbiased across all tickets.

Feedback varies depending on the reviewer.

Scalability

Scales, regardless of ticket volume.

Struggles to keep up with high ticket volumes.

Agent Feedback

Provides instant, actionable feedback for every resolved ticket.

Feedback is delayed and limited to a few cases.

Leader Advantage

Frees up leaders to train the team and improve workflows.

Disadvantageous, as leaders spend most time manually reviewing tickets.

7 benefits of using AI quality assurance in CX

AI quality assurance helps CX leaders move beyond manual reviews by offering fast, thorough insights into performance and customer needs. Here are seven key benefits it brings to your team.

1. Improved visibility into customer interactions

AI QA reviews every ticket, giving CX leaders a complete view of agent performance and customer trends. Nothing slips through the cracks, so you can act on real data each and every single time.

What the team wins: Key areas to focus on to improve the customer experience.

What the customer wins: A consistent support experience where their concerns are fully addressed.

2. Instantly identify major customer pain points

Only a third of customers highly trust businesses, and without QA checks in place, that trust only deteriorates.

AI QA feedback can highlight confusing policies or common product issues that lead to unhappy customers. With instant feedback, teams can quickly make changes and create better, consistent customer experiences.

What the team wins: Faster fixes for recurring issues.

What the customer wins: A smoother, frustration-free experience.

3. Faster identification of process gaps

Agents can receive feedback that instantly highlights gaps in workflows or unclear escalation steps. This is an efficient way to resolve issues within the wider team before they become more significant problems.

What the team wins: Process issues are solved quickly.

What the customer wins: Faster resolutions with little to no delays.

4. Standardized scoring for AI and human agents

AI QA evaluates both AI Agent and human agent interactions using the same criteria. This creates a level playing field and ensures all customer interactions meet the same quality standards.

What the team wins: Fair evaluations for both AI and human responses.

What the customer wins: High-quality support, no matter who handles the ticket.

5. More time for coaching and training

With less time spent on manual reviews, leaders can dedicate more energy to team development. Training sessions guided by AI insights help agents improve quickly and ensure the team delivers support that aligns with protocols.

What the team wins: More focused skill-building based on data.

What the customer wins: Clearer and more accurate support.

6. Drives continuous knowledge for the entire team

AI QA is helpful for showing agents which areas they need more training on, whether it's being better about using brand voice or polishing up on product knowledge. This leads to better support processes and stronger product understanding across the team.

What the team wins: Better support tactics and product expertise.

What the customer wins: Faster resolutions due to knowledgeable agents.

7. Enhanced customer experience through consistently high-quality support

Since all tickets are reviewed, teams can feel confident they’re delivering high-quality support on a regular basis. Customers get clear, helpful answers, while agents gain insights from every ticket with AI feedback.

What the team wins: Consistent support performance.

What the customer wins: Reliable support they can trust.

How accurate is AI QA?

AI QA analyzes tickets using predefined categories to evaluate how complete and helpful agent responses are. Let’s take a closer look at how it maintains accurate ticket reviews with an AI QA tool like Gorgias’s Auto QA.

It measures multiple metrics

Auto QA evaluates tickets based on three key areas: Resolution Completeness, Communication, and Language Proficiency.

For Resolution Completeness, it checks if all customer concerns were fully addressed. For example, if an agent resolves only one of two issues raised, the ticket is marked incomplete. Tickets where customers resolve issues on their own or don’t respond to follow-ups can still be graded as complete if handled appropriately.

Communication quality is scored on a scale of 1 to 5, assessing clarity, professionalism, and tone. Agents earn higher scores when they provide clear solutions and remain positive throughout the interaction.

Finally, Language Proficiency evaluates whether an agent displayed high proficiency in the language of the conversation. The score considers how well spelling, grammar, and syntax were employed.

Auto QA in action
Gorgias’s Auto QA scores agent responses based on communication and completeness.

Teams can improve AI with their own feedback

Auto QA isn’t set in stone. Team leads can expand on AI-generated feedback by adding their comments. For example, if a resolution is graded as ‘Incomplete,’ a team lead can explain why and provide additional context. This helps clarify the evaluation for the agent and also helps the AI model improve over time.

How to get started with AI quality assurance using Auto QA

Ready to bring the benefits of AI QA to your team? Here’s how to get started with Auto QA:

  1. Audit your current QA process to identify gaps. How do you currently review tickets? Pinpoint areas where manual QA falls short, such as inconsistent feedback or missed interactions.
  2. Pilot Auto QA with a small team. Introduce Auto QA to a small group of agents to test its impact. This allows you to find out how the new QA process fits into your workflow and how it affects agent performance.
  3. Use AI insights to refine processes. Analyze the feedback Auto QA provides to identify process gaps or recurring issues. Use these insights to update your workflow, improve training, and address root causes of customer pain points.
  4. Gradually scale adoption across the team. Once the pilot is successful, roll out Auto QA to more agents. Make sure everyone is trained on how to use its insights and integrate the tool into daily operations.
  5. Monitor and provide feedback to improve AI accuracy. Review Auto QA’s evaluations to ensure accuracy. Add manual feedback as needed to fine-tune its scoring on future tickets.
  6. Measure the impact on performance and satisfaction. Track key metrics like ticket close rates, resolution times, and customer satisfaction scores. Use this data to understand how Auto QA transforms your QA process and drives better results.

Make high-quality responses a standard with Auto QA

AI QA isn’t just about automating ticket reviews — it empowers CX leaders to focus on what truly matters: training and improving processes.

Leave spot-checking and inconsistent application of policies and brand voice in the past. As a built-in feature of Gorgias Automate, Auto QA makes high-quality customer interactions your brand’s standard. 

Book a demo now.

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min read.
Create powerful self-service resources
Capture support-generated revenue
Automate repetitive tasks
Create powerful self-service resources
Capture support-generated revenue
Automate repetitive tasks

Further reading

New Data Shows 4 Ways Automation Impacts Customer Service

By Christelle Agustin
8 min read.
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

Since ChatGPT was introduced in November 2022, customer service automation has stormed its way into almost every industry, including ecommerce. This leap in technology has paved the way for companies to increase their support efficiency dramatically, as demonstrated by the buy-now-pay-later service Klarna, which recently resolved two-thirds of customer service chats with AI

The business gains arising from automation are evident. Faster and smarter tools mean less time handling mundane tasks and more time improving the customer journey with meaningful conversations, personalized experiences, and seamless upselling opportunities.

At Gorgias, our mission is to elevate customer experiences with automated solutions. To determine the impact, we analyzed data from over 14,000 merchants who use automation compared to those who do not.

Our data revealed a 36% increase in repeat purchases, a 37% reduction in first response time, a 52% reduction in resolution time, a 27% decrease in the ticket-to-order ratio, and a 1% increase in CSAT when automation is used.

These compelling results assert our belief in automation as the next, inevitable step for scaling support teams.

“AI is going to help us transform ourselves into deeper thinkers by taking over simple, standardized functions” —Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder at Obvi 

The shift in customer service: doing more with less

Before automation, customer service teams scrambled to hire more agents as their customer bases grew. When Black Friday and other peak seasons arrived, hiring more agents was the Band-Aid fix. Today, companies are opting for leaner support teams as automation allows them to do more with less. The benefit? Teams can scale and improve the quality of service without temporarily bringing on new staff.

Automation works like a junior support agent but at a higher efficiency. It can handle frequently asked questions like where is my order? and customize responses according to brand voice. So, as repetitive tasks are handled in the background, agents can focus on more complex tickets, such as product-specific questions or technical issues that require troubleshooting.

“Before, agents had to handle it all. Now, they rarely take a ticket about frequently asked questions. They’re only handling escalations, special product-related questions, and things like that.” —Caela Castillo, Director of Customer Experience, Jaxxon

Automation is redefining customer experiences

The flexibility of automation makes it the ideal tool for personalized customer service. Aside from being a keyboard shortcut or macro, automation can be a hands-off assistant that can engage customers and influence as much as 25% of revenue.

At Gorgias, automation is at the core of our products, powering almost every feature in Helpdesk, Automate, and Convert. It allows merchants to deliver delightful and personalized customer interactions across various channels and touchpoints in the customer journey.

While automation is only one of many factors, we’ve found it to positively impact support performance metrics. Based on our data, merchants who used automation saw clear improvements in repeat purchase rates, response times, resolution times, tickets per order, and CSAT scores.

Automation led to 36% more repeat purchases

Retaining customer loyalty is challenging even when brands launch loyalty programs, as customers are discouraged by the effort required to receive rewards. However, Gorgias data shows that simply using automation can increase repeat purchase rates. Within 28 days, merchants who automated up to 20% of tickets increased their repeat purchase rate by 8 points.

‎Yoga apparel brand Manduka used Gorgias Convert's on-site campaigns to influence customers to purchase multiple products. The campaign convinced shoppers to hit a $100 order total for free shipping by recommending small additional items they may be interested in. Their campaign brought in nearly $12,000, proving that automation can directly affect revenue.

“We want to be able to target our repeat customers who have purchased a lot, and say, ‘Welcome back! Here's a new product that would go wonderfully with the item you bought last time.’ It would be a wonderful translation of the in-person retail experience where staff know what you like, so they can assist you better.” —Jessica Botello, Customer Service Manager at Manduka

Automation accelerated first response time by 37%

First response time cut down by 37% after automating

‎Automated responses resolve tickets in zero seconds and result in faster first response times. On average, merchants using automation respond 37% faster than ones who don’t automate customer service.

Responding to customers as quickly as possible is especially important during busy seasons like Black Friday and Cyber Monday so that revenue-generating questions don’t get pushed to the backlog. The customer experience team at health supplement brand Obvi was able to drive 3x more purchases from support conversations compared to previous years.

Faster response times also mean agents are able to make stronger connections with customers. For Obvi’s CX team, it translated to more time to engage with their vibrant Facebook community:

“Instantly, our CX team had time to prioritize important matters, like being active in our community of 75,000 women instead of sitting answering emails.” —Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder at Obvi

Customer issues are resolved 52% faster with automation

When customer tickets are automated, resolution times improve dramatically. Merchants using automation resolved tickets 52% faster than those without.

Automation is especially helpful in answering pre-sales questions. High-end luggage retailer July deflected 450 tickets a month immediately after activating Quick Responses, one-click FAQs that live in Chat. Their Head of Operations and CX, Alex Naoumidis, notes that setup was “so easy, with a huge payoff.”

This significant efficiency gain ensures customers are well-educated about their products, leaving agents time to personalize the rest of the customer journey.

Automation decreased ticket-to-order ratio by 27%

As automated responses provide quick solutions to customer issues, customers need to contact support less. Based on our data, brands that automate 10% or more of their tickets see a decrease in billable tickets per order. Brands with little to no automation do not see a significant improvement in the ticket-to-order ratio.

For apparel brand Shinesty, automating more than 10% of tickets greatly decreased the number of tickets per order by 27%. Self-serve tools like interactive conversations called Flows and Article Recommendations enabled customers to solve issues relating to discounts, subscription policies, and returns on their own.

“Automate would be useful for any ecommerce company that needs to lower their ticket counts, or wants to provide a more consistent experience.” —Molly Kerrigan, Senior Director of Retention at Shinesty

30 days of automation allow brands to scale faster

‎Thirty days after setting up automation in Gorgias, brands enjoyed a 1% increase in CSAT score, a 4.51 score compared to 4.46 for non-automating brands. Even though satisfaction only nudged an inch, the positive effects reached support teams, improving agent morale and team alignment.

Molly Kerrigan, Senior Director of Retention at Shinesty, emphasizes the importance of preserving quality customer interactions during growth, "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." 

Since Gorgias provides in-depth conversation analytics, CX teams are finally able to see their impact.

“Tracking 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. We use the KPI tracking data for internal monthly meetings to review performance and see where we can improve,” says Deja Jefferson, Customer Experience Manager at Topicals.

Clearly, balancing automation with personalization significantly improves the customer journey. Given that customers with positive customer experiences are 2.7 times more likely to do repeat business, the value of automation is unmistakable.

In the future, agents will be AI coaches

AI progress has advanced in a short amount of time. But to remind you, this is only the beginning of what automation and AI can do in customer service. We envision AI as a constant work in progress, meant to intake information until it is capable enough to handle more complex tasks. This means agents will spend more time building strong customer connections and finding ways the business can grow.

Gorgias is at the forefront of this evolution, developing automation and AI-driven solutions like an AI-generated Help Center, an AI Agent, a generative AI assistant that autonomously answers customer questions, and an Interaction Quality Score to measure and report on AI-customer interactions. Gorgias aims to transform how support teams and customers interact with AI, paving the way for more impactful customer experiences on a human scale.

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Boost Your Help Center's Visibility: Proven Strategies to Increase Article Views

By Christelle Agustin
7 min read.
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TL;DR:

  • A Help Center is an article database for customers to get the answers they need without contacting a support team
  • Create relevant Help Center articles by monitoring statistics like customer contact reasons, ticket intents, and CSAT scores
  • Leverage SEO by including relevant keywords and internal links in articles
  • Gorgias Automate can help promote your Help Center articles via on-site article recommendations

The Help Center is more than a database to make the lives of your agents and customers easier. It's also an ingenious way of creating brand awareness. By enhancing your Help Center's visibility, you carve new pathways for shoppers to discover your brand while solidifying your brand's reliability with loyal followers.

This guide delves into practical methods for increasing your article views and turning your Help Center into a dynamic hub with Gorgias. We’ll look at the basics of a Help Center, how to structure it based on statistics and SEO, and how to share it across multiple channels.

What is a Help Center? 

A Help Center is a knowledge database of articles addressing common questions about your products, services, and brand. It empowers customers to find solutions on their own without needing to contact your customer service team. 

A Help Center can include how-to articles, policies, answers to frequently asked questions, and more. Each article can also be supplemented with images, GIFs, and videos to better guide customers toward solutions. 

BrüMate Help Center
BrüMate’s Help Center is made with Gorgias.
         

Two strategies to make your Help Center stand out

Boosting your Help Center's visibility involves two key elements: understanding customer concerns to create relevant content and using SEO to increase article views.

Focusing on your customers' specific needs and questions allows you to provide articles that directly address their concerns. 

Let’s delve into the two strategies you can use with Gorgias.

Strategy 1: Understand customer concerns to create relevant articles

The first step to creating Help Center articles is understanding your customers’ problems. Identifying their concerns ensures your content aligns with what questions need clarification.

Here are five ways to uncover customer concerns with Gorgias Statistics:

1) Monitor Ticket Tags

Tags are labels for categorizing tickets by topic or customer intent. Regularly reviewing tags helps identify common customer inquiries. Generally, the more a tag is used, the greater the need for clarity on that topic. 

On Gorgias, navigate to Statistics -> Ticket Insights -> Tags to see tag usage frequency. This view gives you an overview of popular tags. You can also adjust the view by filtering by app integration, channel, and date range. 

💡 Pro Tip: The most frequently used tags can help inform what articles you should include in your Help Center. Based on the screenshot below, it would be smart to create articles about FAQs and a Price Match policy. 

Tag Statistics
You can view individual Tag statistics on Gorgias.
         

2) View Intent Statistics

Intent Statistics provide valuable insights into why customers contact support. By analyzing these statistics, you can understand the primary reasons behind customer queries. 

On Gorgias, go to Statistics -> Ticket Insights -> Intents to review the usage frequency of different customer intents.

This feature provides a clear bar graph view of customer concerns that are frequently mentioned in messages. You can also change the view using filters such as channel and date range.

Intent Statistics graph
In this example, no replies (cyan) and refund requests (bright red) were the top customer concerns.
         

3) Look into Contact Reasons

Another way to learn about your customers’ concerns is by looking at contact reasons. On Gorgias, Contact Reason is an AI-powered feature that identifies a ticket's contact reason from its message content. Reasons could range from cancellations and refunds to shipment issues and feedback. 

The Contact Reason is conveniently located at the top of each ticket, as shown in the image below.

Contact Reason view on Gorgias

         

4) Analyze low satisfaction scores and read negative feedback

While positive CSAT scores are gratifying, it's the negative feedback that truly helps improve your customer support.

To view Satisfaction scores on Gorgias, navigate to Statistics -> Support Performance -> Satisfaction. This section provides details on surveys sent, response rates, average ratings, and response distribution over three months. 

💡 Pro Tip: For deeper insights into CSAT scores, filter for scores of 3 stars or below. Analyzing lower ratings and their accompanying comments will help you pinpoint the exact topics your Help Center articles should address.

Satisfaction Statistics on Gorgias
Gorgias’s Satisfaction Statistics allows you to filter survey responses by score, channel, tags, and more.
         

5) Create related articles from top-performing articles


         

Checking the performance of your articles can be the key to adding relevant articles to your Help Center while avoiding unnecessary topics.

On Gorgias, you can find individual article performance by going to Statistics -> Help Center -> Performance by articles. Articles are sorted from most viewed to least.

Here’s how to use article performance data to write relevant articles:

  • 📈 Most viewed articles: These articles indicate the topics customers are most concerned about. Consider creating related articles that branch out from these top articles in order to increase information about a certain topic.
  • 📉 Least viewed articles: These articles may be irrelevant to your general customer base, which means you can hold off on writing similar articles. On the other hand, these articles may also not be highly visible on your Help Center. Ensure customers can easily find them.

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Strategy 2: Utilize SEO to increase article views

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) isn't solely for your primary webpages. It's equally crucial for Help Center articles. Using SEO tactics in Help Center articles boosts their online visibility, but most importantly, they allow you to turn visitors into customers.

Here are some effective SEO strategies to apply:

1) Incorporate relevant keywords into articles

Using relevant and related keywords in an article can boost search visibility. Customers won’t always use the same search query, so anticipating their word usage will help capture all types of customers looking for your content.

On Gorgias, you can find out what keywords customers are searching for under Statistics -> Help Center -> Help Center searches

Gorgias Help Center search term statistics
You can view which search terms customers use to find your Help Center articles.
         

Here’s how to leverage search result data:

  • Search terms with results: Use the most popular search terms as a guide for which keywords to include in existing articles.
  • Articles clicked: Sometimes search terms will have zero articles clicked. This may mean users weren’t able to find exactly what they were looking for. Pinpoint the search terms with zero clicks and create articles accordingly.
  • No search results: This is a list of keywords customers search for but don't find relevant articles for. Make sure to use these keywords in existing articles or create new articles for them.

💡 Pro Tip: Don’t forget to incorporate relevant keywords into your article titles, subheadings, and excerpts. There are two benefits to this: they make it easier for customers to quickly scan your content and enhance your brand's discoverability in search engines.

Customize an article
On Gorgias, you can quickly summarize articles in the Excerpt field. Be sure to include relevant keywords here as well.
         

2) Update articles based on article performance

Again, data plays a crucial role in making your support and Help Center the ultimate resources. On Gorgias, the "Performance by articles" section allows you to track how well each article performs. Articles are sorted by view count, ratings, and the dates they were last updated.

Gorgias Help Center article performance statistics
View how well your Help Center articles are performing in Help Center Statistics.
         

Here’s how you can leverage the following types of articles:

  • 📈 Most viewed articles: Feature your top-performing articles front and center in your Help Center to make them visible to customers looking for answers.
  • 👎 Unhelpful articles: Update these articles thumbed down by customers as they may lack detailed and up-to-date information, internal links, and SEO. 
  • ⌛️ Old articles: There may be a relation between poorly performing and outdated articles. Refresh your old articles accordingly.

3) Use internal links

Internal links are hyperlinks that point to other articles in your Help Center, creating a network of related content. This tactic helps to proactively address questions customers might not have considered, effectively reducing the load on your support team. 

Spread the word: share your Help Center articles across multiple platforms

To effectively increase the visibility of your Help Center articles, consider leveraging a variety of communication channels:

  • Customer communications. Embed article links in customer interactions, such as order confirmations or support responses, to provide extra assistance.
  • Email newsletters. Feature links to key articles in your marketing emails and newsletters to notify existing customers about your additional resources.
  • Social media. Share your articles on social media to reach a broader audience and showcase your brand's expertise. You can also share them on forums and online groups to engage with potential customers.

Enhance Help Center performance with Gorgias Automate

Remember, a well-optimized Help Center is a powerful tool in building brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Do more with an AI-powered Help Center with the power of Gorgias Automate. Discover how our advanced tools can streamline your support processes and improve customer satisfaction. Book a demo today.

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We Made Our People Resources Public

By Gorgias People Team
3 min read.
0 min read . By Gorgias People Team

TL;DR:

  • Gorgias is committed to transparency and has made its People Resources public
  • Sharing internal resources sets new industry standards for workplace satisfaction and culture
  • Gorgias's People Resources include manager handbooks, training sessions, salary processes, and more
  • Founders, HR leaders, prospective employees, and job seekers can benefit from Gorgias's People Resources

At Gorgias, we're avid believers in transparency. You'll find us documenting processes diligently, asking for feedback frequently, and addressing concerns openly. This may be surprising and even unconventional to most, but after witnessing its long-term benefits on employee satisfaction and engagement, our team is set on continuing the practice.

As a natural next step in our commitment to openness, we decided to make our People Resources available to everyone. These resources include documents and processes that outline how we operate at Gorgias, including how we approach the compensation process, performance reviews, and more. 

We invite you to delve into our resources, whether you’re a founder or a job seeker.

Why we're sharing our People Resources

Our decision to share our People Resources is driven by a vision that sets new standards for transparency in evolving corporate practices.

How Gorgias benefits

By opening up our resources to the public, Gorgias positions itself as an innovator and thought leader in the industry. Allowing our processes to be read and critiqued by others outside of the company gives way to perspectives we may not have considered.

We view our People Resources as living documents and as we drive discussions about transparent work culture, the opinions and critiques of others will be a constant source of value for us to continue improving our processes.

How other organizations benefit

For other organizations, accessing Gorgias' People Resources serves as a blueprint for building a positive and engaging workplace. By publicizing our processes, we hope to guide companies to create safer and more honest work environments, which in turn will improve employee satisfaction globally.

What's inside Gorgias’s People Resources

Our People Resources encompass a wide range of materials, including documents, processes, and additional resources. Here's what you'll find:

  • Manager handbooks: Comprehensive guides about what a manager is at Gorgias and how they can lead teams with confidence and empathy.
  • Training sessions: Detailed modules for leaders that combine theory and practice with roleplay.
  • Career growth tracks: Clear pathways for personal and professional development within the company.
  • Salary and compensation process: A transparent outline of how we recognize and reward our team members.
  • Team well-being: Resources dedicated to maintaining a healthy and supportive work environment.

Read more: Why we don't increase salaries each year based on performance

Who can benefit from our People Resources?

Our People Resources are designed with a wide audience in mind, ensuring that anyone interested in building a positive team environment can find value. Here's who can benefit:

  • Founders: Learn strategies for building a strong foundation for your team.
  • HR leaders: Gain insights into effective team management, development processes, and how to cultivate a thriving workplace culture.
  • Prospective employees: Meet the team and get a sneak peek into what working with Gorgias is like.
  • Job seekers: Whether you're considering a role with us or elsewhere, our resources can help you understand what to look for in a company's culture and philosophies.

Where to access our People Resources

You can find our public People Resources on Notion.

If you're inspired by what you see and want to join our growing team, we invite you to check out our current job openings.

We look forward to welcoming you to Gorgias, where we will continue building a transparent and innovative workplace.

How To Leverage Automation For More Personalized Customer Interactions

By Christelle Agustin
6 min read.
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TL;DR:

  • Automation can be customized to fit the language, tone, and voice of your brand.
  • Combine automation with ecommerce app integrations to personalize messages at scale.
  • Use a customer helpdesk trained on AI to automate personalized customer service.
  • Disclose when automated messages are used to maintain customer trust.

While there’s a common concern that automation might alienate customers with responses that miss the mark, it turns out that 73% of customers have higher expectations for personalized experiences when advanced tech is involved.

Not only do customers expect automation and AI in customer service, but they also believe that brands should make the most out of them.

Luckily, helpdesk tools like Gorgias have found the right balance between automation, personalization, and human touch. The only thing left for CX agents to do is to use automation strategically.

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Automation is not AI & other automation myths debunked

Automation and AI are distinct, just like live chat versus chatbots. AI, such as ChatGPT, evolves in real-time from interacting with and learning from input data, while automation follows set rules for routine tasks without understanding natural language.

Automation is highly customizable — it won’t spew out an inappropriate sentence unless you tell it to. If you’re still hesitant about automating your support, here are four automation myths debunked below.

Myth 1: Automation produces robotic language

The tone and style of your automated messages are entirely within your control, thanks to the customizable nature of automation. This flexibility ensures that your brand's unique voice shines through, allowing for a tailored approach that aligns with your ecommerce strategy.

If we’re talking about AI, we’ve also come a long way from generic chatbot responses. In fact, a 2019 Stanford University report found that AI computational power doubled every 3.4 months. The result? Humans are only correct 60% of the time when guessing if they’re talking to AI or a real person.

Myth 2: Automation can’t be personalized

In reality, automation is highly adaptable and can incorporate customer data, brand voice, and plenty of dynamic variables to create powerful communications for personalized customer service.

Learn more: How Manduka used personalized, on-site campaigns and earned $70k

Myth 3: Automation can replace human agents

While automation enhances efficiency, it works best in tandem with human insight rather than as a complete replacement for human agents. Customer service thrives when there is a route back to human support.

Myth 4: Customers prefer human agents

Yes, customers appreciate the ease of connecting to a fellow human, but they also value speed — something automation excels at compared to humans.

Learn more: How Luksusbaby boosted 66% first response time with 45% automation

The balancing act of using automation effectively without sacrificing personalization

A customer-centric helpdesk trained on AI is the most effective way to have rapid and authentic customer interactions. A tool like Gorgias enables you to scale your customer service operations by connecting your ecommerce store. Gorgias learns customer conversations and data and automates simple processes like responding to repetitive tickets and refunding orders.

How to use automation the right way to support your customers

To effectively implement customer service automation, always remember to add a human touch to make customers feel comfortable. More importantly, not all customer interactions are suitable for automated responses so automate strategically.

Here are five ways to implement personalized automation with Gorgias, from automating responses to using website chat and creating a help center.

1) Create auto-responses to answer FAQs

Skip the mental work of reading a frequently asked question and thinking of a response. Auto-responses will do both for you in the background while you complete other high-priority tasks.

How to implement:

  • Set up a rule to auto-respond to where is my order? (WISMO) tickets

Note: Manually follow up on complaints or technical issues. Using auto-responses on these sensitive issues may escalate them and cause more customer frustration.

Overview of Gorgias Autoresponders
There are autoresponders for auto-tagging VIP customers, auto-sending tracking emails, article recommendations, and more in Gorgias.
         

2) Route customers to live chat agents or help center articles

AI is excellent at answering simple inquiries, but sometimes customers will ask questions that need a human’s problem-solving skills. Include a route to a live agent to address this. Allowing AI and agents to work in tandem is an effective way to improve customer satisfaction.

How to implement: 

  • Enable live chat support alongside automated, offline chat 
  • Include disclaimers and instructions in your automated responses about how customers can speak to a live agent
  • Include an option to talk to an agent in your interactive voice response (IVR) system

Note: Don’t trick customers into thinking they’re speaking to an agent when they’re speaking to AI. Customers are more likely to trust you when you set clear expectations from the start.

Shinesty uses Gorgias Chat
Shinesty provides live chat alongside automated Quick Responses.
         

3) Use enriched customer data to deliver personalized messages

Make personalization a part of the customer journey to create friendly experiences on a large scale. Without tailored communications, you’ll likely frustrate 76% of your customers due to irrelevant recommendations and marketing campaigns.

How to implement:

  • Include customers’ names in emails, SMS, chat, social media direct messages, and other notifications with a Shopify integration
  • Mention past purchases when providing customers with new recommendations
  • Adjust language in automated emails and email marketing based on customer demographic
Gorgias Chat supports 15 languages.
Gorgias Chat supports 15 languages, including English, French, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Czech, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and Finnish.
         

4) Prioritize VIP customers with automated rules

According to a survey of 3,000 consumers, 56% would repurchase from a retailer that provides personalization. For this reason, create an automated action, also known as a rule, that labels tickets from VIP customers. Prioritizing VIP needs will allow your team to strengthen loyalty and drive repeat purchases.

How to implement: 

  • Identify VIP customers by setting a minimum purchase total or total # of orders
  • Create a rule that identifies tickets from VIP customers based on their customer profile
Gorgias integrates with Yotpo
Quickly find out if your customer is a VIP customer with integrations to Yotpo, Shopify, Big Commerce, and WooCommerce.
         

5) Build a help center to provide article recommendations

The responsiveness of AI depends on the knowledge you feed it. To accelerate automation’s efficiency, provide it with resources from your knowledge base or help center. In 2020, organizations reported a reduction of up to 70% in call, chat, and email inquiries after implementing a chatbot or virtual customer assistant. 

How to implement:

  • Compile a list of customers’ most frequently asked questions using an AI tool or help center statistics
  • Create articles answering each question and upload them into a help center
BrüMate’s Help Center is made with Gorgias
BrüMate’s Help Center is organized into categories so users can easily find answers.
         

Read more: 9 types of customer self-service

Balance automation and the human touch with Gorgias Automate

Setting up automation without the right tools can detract from personalization efforts. Gorgias Automate remedies this by equipping CX teams with features like Autoresponders, self-service Order Management,  Quick Responses in Chat, and Article Recommendations. Elevate customer experiences and grow your customer relationships by booking a demo with Gorgias today.

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The Expert Tips We Learned from the CX All-Star: Episode 1 Webinar

By Christelle Agustin
4 min read.
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

Last September, Gorgias hosted CX-All Star: Episode 1, a webinar presented by a superstar panel of customer experience leaders in the DTC industry. From the health and wellness space to the tech sphere, experts Eli Weiss, Amanda Kwasniewicz, Deja Jefferson, and Ren Fuller-Wasserman gathered years of experience and wasted no time sharing their top strategies, tips, and a-ha moments with fellow attendees.

One hour wasn't long enough to reveal all their expert tricks, but it was definitely enough to help fellow CXers rethink their strategy. If you weren't able to attend the event, these were the top four lessons we learned from CX All-Star: Episode 1.

1) Make CX the core of your business if it isn't already

Amanda Kwasniewicz, the VP of Customer Experience at ‎Love Wellness, emphasizes how CX should be the core of any business. "[CX] has a finger on the pulse of everything we do, whether we're just on the receiving end or whether we're executing it."

To emphasize CX's far-reaching impact, Amanda introduced a company-wide policy where every new employee spends six weeks working directly with support tickets and customers. This immersive approach to CX was so successful that non-CX team members, from marketing to finance, were able to help the CX team during a hectic inbox day when Love Wellness migrated platforms.

‎Read more: Why customer service is important, according to a VP of CX

"I think CX is often viewed as a call center, a revenue driver—and we're missing the core part that it's a feedback machine. It's like a feedback treasure trove. So, if you can think about it as all three of those things, that's what it is. It really is about the experience."
—Amanda Kwasniewicz, VP of Customer Experience at Love Wellness

2) The best CX hires are empathetic and eager to learn

"Brands are either notoriously anti-having a big CX team, or they're very straightforward. Either one of those extremes is dangerous," says Eli Weiss, VP of Retention Advocacy at Yotpo. The balance lies in building a team of passionate learners willing to grow.

Our experts agree that product knowledge can be taught through training, but soft skills like empathy, creativity, and passion are intrinsic. Eli notes that asking questions like "Why CX?" helps determine if a candidate will stick around. Amanda notes these team members often become superstar hires for other departments because of the breadth of their knowledge and skills.

Related: Hiring for customer service

“[LinkedIn] is how I've gotten a lot of people early on. I just looked at brands that crush it and said, 'Stay exactly where you are. I just need 2 hours.' Those 2 hours will usually give you what you as a founder can do in six, because somebody that's doing it all day is probably really good at figuring out how to put a move on it.”
—Eli Weiss, VP of Retention Advocacy at Yotpo

3) Acknowledge different learning styles in your onboarding process

"If people can understand and learn the product they're selling and they can educate the customer, I think that's really valuable," says Deja Jefferson, Manager of Customer Insights at skincare brand Topicals. That's why she takes a diverse approach to product knowledge onboarding.

At Topicals, new hires don't only have to pore over lengthy documents to learn about skincare products. They get their hands dirty by speaking to experts in the product team, reading cheat sheets, and talking to customers about personal skin concerns. This multifaceted strategy is inclusive to all types of learners and leads to agents becoming true experts.

Read more: Customer service training: what to cover + how to do it

"People who are passionate about what they're doing and about helping customers [will] figure out the rest."
—Deja Jefferson, Customer Insights Manager at Topicals

4) When necessary, break the script to create mensch moments

Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Head of Customer Experience at bidet brand TUSHY, empowers her team to go above standard protocols to create memorable or, as her team calls it, mensch (Yiddish for a person of integrity) moments. These are exceptional CX moments that can't be found in the onboarding manual, things like sending handwritten notes, personalized texts, and replacing items without question.

However, as with all things, it's also valuable to understand that mistakes happen. Ren likens the trial-and-error nature of customer experience to building a plane as it's being flown — it won't be perfect. She notes that protocols are important guidelines, but it's also worthwhile to allow your team to be mensch and decide, where do I need to follow the protocols here?

"There are incredible opportunities to make moments that matter, but only if your team has the agency to do so."
—Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Head of Customer Experience at TUSHY

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Chatbot vs Live Chat

Chatbot vs. Live Chat Software: What's the Right Solution?

By Lauren Strapagiel
13 min read.
0 min read . By Lauren Strapagiel

Imagine leaving your angriest customers to spar with an automated script in your website’s chat window. Now picture your support team reading “Where is my order?” for the hundredth time and glancing at the clock, only to find six hours left in the workday. 

Who do you think is more frustrated?

Luckily, you won’t have to answer that, because these are completely avoidable problems. Once you learn the important distinctions between chatbot software and live chat software, you’ll understand how to use them both more effectively and lower blood pressures across the board.

Chatbots rely completely on automation and artificial intelligence (AI) while live chat software connects customers with human agents via a real-time chatbox. A third option, self-service chat, is an appealing alternative.

To determine which solution(s) is best for your business, let’s compare chatbots and live chat software and go through the top use cases for each.

What is live chat software?

Live chat support connects customers with human support agents who can answer their questions and assist them with any issues. When a customer opens the chat box on a live chat support solution, they are connected with a real person from the company's customer support department. 

Support agents then use live chat messaging to address customer inquiries and walk customers through the solution to their problem. 

Interested in getting live chat software? Check out one of these lists for tailored recommendations:

Pros and cons of live chat

Pros:

  • Live agents have the knowledge base to answer complex queries and customer issues 
  • 73% of customers state that live chat is the most satisfactory form of customer communication with a company
  • Enables multitasking for support agents so they can assist multiple customers at the same time
  • The personalized touch of a real human can go a long way toward improving your customer satisfaction
  • Support agents can find opportunities to convert visitors or turn support interactions into additional sales 

Cons:

  • Not available after-hours when your customer team is off the clock
  • More expensive to employ agents to respond to chats
  • Responses will be slowed down by high volume which impacts resolution times
  • Much of your agents’ time will be spent answering the same simple questions over and over

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What is the difference between chatbots vs. live chat?

Unlike live chat software, chatbot software doesn’t connect customers with human agents. Instead, chatbot software connects customers with a chatbot that utilizes AI and machine learning to provide natural language answers to common questions. 

Automation assists customers with less complex issues and provides quick answers. Chatbot technology enables companies to reduce their average response time, and frees up support agents to focus on more complex queries.  

Pros and cons of chat bots

Pros:

  • The ability to answer questions 24/7 without paying for agents to work around the clock. According to a survey by Drift, 64% of customers say that 24/7 service is the best feature of chatbots. 
  • Chatbots offer instant responses to common questions like pricing inquiries, improving customer experience with quick resolutions to common issues
  • Chatbot solutions are a highly cost-effective option, as they allow companies to resolve more customer issues without having to hire new customer support reps
  • By answering commonly asked questions and resolving simple issues, chatbot solutions can free up support agents to focus on more complex questions

Cons:

  • Chatbots can’t handle complex inquiries requiring human intervention
  • Automated responses are a colder, less human form of communication, which can impact customer satisfaction
  • No opportunity for agents to elevate an inquiry into an exemplary customer experience, such as offering personalized live chat offers
  • Customers will become frustrated if the chatbot can’t properly answer their questions or solve an issue

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Live chat vs. chatbots: Evaluating their strengths to help you choose the right one (or both)

When comparing chatbots with live chat solutions, it's important to recognize that each category offers its own unique advantages. Many companies choose to employ both live chat and chatbot apps on their ecommerce websites. 

With that in mind, let's explore the strengths of each solution.

Response times and customer expectations 

One of the biggest advantages of chatbot solutions is the fact that they allow for immediate responses to customer inquiries. Live chat solutions can also help companies reduce their wait times, though not to the same degree. 

Chatbot advantage: Answers are immediate

According to data from HubSpot, 90% of customers rate an "immediate" response as important or very important when contacting customer service, with 60% of customers defining "immediate" as 10 minutes or less. 

With a chatbot app, offering immediate response times to customer queries is a much more attainable goal. Best of all, these immediate response times are a 24/7 offering for customers, whereas live chat agents may not always be on the clock. 

Live chat advantage: Solve complex issues

The problem with relying solely on chatbots to reduce customer wait times is the fact that even the best and most intelligent chatbots are often unable to resolve complex issues. Chatbots are excellent at pulling information from internal databases to answer common questions, such as providing the status of a customer's order or editing it.

But for uncommon questions or complex issues, a chatbot alone may not be sufficient. Because they can only handle one thing at a time, it can take forever before you get all of your questions resolved.

Solution: Use both chatbots and live chat

Many companies use chatbots alongside live chat support. This allows businesses to offer both immediate responses, as well as more in-depth support for complex issues. 

For example, a customer may first be connected with a chatbot that provides instant responses to their query and assists with gathering initial information. If the chatbot determines the customer's question or issue is too complex to resolve, the customer is then connected to a support agent via live chat. 

This combination is an ideal solution for many companies, allowing them to quickly resolve common issues without the need for a live chat agent. At the same time, customers have the option to speak with a real person in cases where assistance from a chatbot alone isn’t sufficient. 

Human touch and personalization needs 

While chatbot apps can help reduce customer service wait times and the number of customer service reps needed, many customers prefer speaking with a person. 

Live chat advantage: The human touch

A CGS study found that 86% of customers would rather interact with a human agent than a chatbot. Further, 71% of customers say that they would be less likely to purchase from a brand that did not have real customer service representatives available. 

Chatbot advantage: AI learning

Chatbots have come a long way toward replicating natural language and determining customer intent for better customer engagement. Today, the best chatbot applications can come quite close to sounding like actual human beings. 

Chatbots leverage AI and machine learning to deliver personalized responses, as opposed to only “canned” responses, and can better serve your customers. 

Solution: Use both chatbots and live chat

Even the most advanced chatbots still fall short of a live representative when it comes to delivering a personalized, human touch. They’re also lacking when it comes to handling more complex questions or customer issues. 

Once again, a combination of automation and live chat support is typically the best approach. 

Live chat conversion and sales.

       

Consistency and accuracy

Chatbots and live chat applications have unique advantages when it comes to delivering consistent and accurate responses to customer queries. 

Chatbot advantage: Consistency

Chatbots are excellent at delivering consistent, on-brand messaging. They can be programmed to systematically follow templates or scripts to provide a consistent customer service experience. 

When working with human customer support agents, this high degree of consistency can be a little more difficult to achieve. 

Live chat advantage: Accuracy

While live chat support may not offer the same consistency as chatbots, human support agents do tend to be more accurate when determining the intent of the customer they are assisting. 

For example, a simple spelling error can sometimes confuse chatbots, whereas a human customer support agent would be much more likely to look past the error and correctly figure out what the customer needs. 

A human agent is also much more likely than a chatbot to accurately interpret questions that are worded strangely. 

Solution: Use both chatbots and live chat

For companies that are choosing between chatbots and live chat support, it’s a question of whether they’d like to prioritize consistency or accuracy. This is yet another reason why a combination of chatbots and live chat support is often the best solution.

More chat features to provide self-service support without the bots

Many of the issues your website visitors have with bad chatbots involve their mimicry of support from real people. It’s easy to tell when you’re chatting with a robot, but it’s not always made clear to you by the chat widget.

But there’s a third chat option that you should consider in addition to live chat and chatbot software.

Self-service chat options make it clear to your customers that they are receiving automated help. By presenting menus instead of imitating a human conversation, self-service customer support empowers customers to find the answers they need on their own.

It’s a win-win, because the customers get the answers they need in real time, at any hour. And your team can focus on support tickets that are more important to the business.

Here are a few ways self-service chat options can work.

Self-service order management

Up to 30% of incoming customer service tickets are shipping status requests. With self-service order management in the chat widget, customers are empowered to make these queries on their own — providing fast answers and reducing your support tickets.

These automated options are easy to add with Gorgias. This self-service adds buttons to the chat widget to automatically:

  • Track an order
  • Return an order
  • Cancel an order

Quick service with chat automation provides quick, responsive customer service, which means better customer experience and a positive impact on revenue.

Barcelona-based shoe brand ALOHAS added self-service order management flows with Gorgias after experiencing a high chat volume. This allowed customers to find information on their own without a human needing to respond.

Here’s how a “track order” request looks in action:

Order management in live chat.
ALOHAS
         

Quick answer flows

When using a chat widget, you’ll notice the same questions come up again and again. You can satisfy those FAQs by adding quick answer flows into the chat widget.

These automations can be set up in the widget for questions like:

  • What is your shipping policy?
  • Are there any discounts available?
  • Do you have any new products?
  • What materials do you use?

These automations can be customized for whatever FAQs are most relevant to your ecommerce store.

Here’s how it looks, for example, when an ALOHAS customer wants to find out more about the brand’s shipping policy.

Quick Response Flows in chat widget.

         

Luxury jewelry brand Jaxxon has used these self-service quick responses with great success. The customer service team found themselves overwhelmed with customer questions and unable to respond as quickly as desired.

Jaxxon upgraded their live chat widget with Gorgias Automate with Quick Responses for customers. The result, combined with using Gorgias’ helpdesk, reduced live chat volume by 17% and lifted the on-site conversion rate by 6%.

Self-service in chat.
Jaxxon
         

Autoresponders

Even when a customer chooses to type out a question, automation can be used to provide quick, customized service through the chat widget.

Gorgias can detect questions that come in through chat and provide automatic answers using Rules and Macros.

Here’s how the flow works:

  1. Intact detection scans the incoming message.
  2. Rules is triggered when a relevant message is found (such as some asking about where their order us) is responds to the customer.
  3. Macros is where you create the templated response sent to the customer. The Macro can be set up to pull in a customer’s unique information like order number, their name, and their tracking code.

The best part is this can not only be used for chat, but for responses to tickets coming in through other communication channels like email, social media, and SMS.

Keep customer service running 24/7

With Gorgias, you can make sure your chat widget isn’t missing a single ticket, even if your customer support team is offline.

First, you can set up your business hours to correspond with when you have live chat available. This will show up on your site’s chat widget by either showing the current status as online or offline.

From there, you can create automated responses for whether you’re offline or online. During business hours, this message can tell customers you’ve received their request and give a time by which they can expect a response.

After business hours, the responder can tell customers that although you’re offline, they can expect a response during the next day’s business hours via email.

Offline mode in live chat for follow-ups.
Absolute Collagen
         

You can also use a contact form which turns a chat into an emailed ticket. This is great to use after-hours and to make sure chat requests don’t get lost overnight. 

Combine automation and human interaction for the strongest customer experience

The use of automation within customer service is multifaceted. As we discussed earlier, a human touch is critical for many customers, and speaking with an automated chatbot can be a turn-off. However, automation certainly has its place in the customer service process.

On the customer’s side, starting with self-service chat helps them receive quicker customer support at scale — a more satisfying experience. On your team’s side, automation allows for sorting, segmenting, and prioritizing tickets.

When self-service chat can’t solve an issue, someone from your support team can easily step into the conversation. You can use Macros — scripts that automatically bring in the customer’s information — to scale the human touch on your support team.

So in reality, it’s not automation vs human support. These are two complementary tools that work better together. And the result is a stronger and faster customer experience for your website visitors, which can increase your conversion rate by as much as 12%.

Still not convinced? In 2021, brands using the Gorgias chat widget generated an average of $38,702 from conversations involving chat. We have a whole post on live chat statistics that can help illustrate the impact our chat widget can have on your business.

Gorgias brings intuitive live chat to your ecommerce business, alongside your other channels

If you’re an ecommerce business looking for an all-in-one customer support solution that includes live chat support and AI-powered chatbots, Gorgias is your one-stop shop. 

Our algorithms are trained on hundreds of millions of ecommerce tickets, so you can be sure your customers are getting the right responses every time. 

Plus, you can manage both live chat and chatbot conversations in the same dashboard that you use for all your other channels, including phone, email and major social media platforms. Bring in chat from other channels, including Facebook Messenger. We’ll even be supporting Whatsapp in early 2023.

Our customer support platform is available for Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce users.

Read more about our chat offerings by clicking here.

First Contact Resolution Rate: Your Guide to Understanding the Metric

By Halee Sommer
8 min read.
0 min read . By Halee Sommer

TL;DR:

  • First contact resolution rate is the percentage of support tickets resolved in one interaction
  • How to calculate FCR: # of tickets resolved on first contact / total # of tickets * 100
  • FCR doesn’t distinguish between successful and unsuccessful resolutions, nor does it tell you the reasons for a low or high rate
  • You can increase FCR by automating responses, offering self-service resources, and automatic ticket triage

You know what customers love? When their problems are solved on the first try. 

Being able to resolve issues right away is a clear sign that your support team is on the right track to provide great customer experiences. 

To maintain that level of excellence and efficiency, you’ll need to understand first contact resolution (FCR) rate. 

In this article, we’ll deep dive into first contact resolution rate. You’ll learn how to calculate and monitor FCR, how to increase your FCR for better customer experiences, and look at what other metrics to monitor alongside FCR.

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What is first contact resolution?

First contact resolution rate is a metric that measures the percentage of customer support tickets that your agents resolve on the first interaction. 

Generally, this measurement is used in call centers, but it’s also considered one of the most essential customer support metrics in ecommerce.

Like a lot of customer support metrics, FCR also goes by a few names, like: 

  • First call resolution rate
  • First interaction rate
  • Single reply resolution rate

Whichever name you prefer, the goal of the measurement is the same: understand how efficient your team is at resolving customer issues.  

The impact of first contact resolution on a support program

Time-consuming interactions erode trust over time and drive customers to shop with the competition.

According to The Effortless Experience, 96% of shoppers with a high-effort experience feel disloyal to brands afterward. 

By aiming to solve customer issues from the very first interaction, you can combat the escalation of poor customer experiences and use positive interactions to improve loyalty and satisfaction, gain repeat customers, and boost revenue to meet your bottom line. 

A guide to calculating first contact resolution

Let’s walk through the formula to figure out your FCR and look at an example. Then, we’ll unpack some challenges behind the FCR metric to make it as useful for your support agents as possible.

FCR formula

FCR formula

         

The formula to calculate first contact resolution rate is: 

(Number of support tickets resolved on first contact / total number of resolved support tickets) x 100 = FCR rate %

The goal is to have an FCR percentage that’s as close to 100% as possible. A higher FCR indicates how successful you are at solving tickets at the first interaction without follow-up questions from customers.

Example FCR calculation

Here’s what calculating FCR looks like using real numbers: 

(15,000 tickets solved on first contact / 20,000 total resolved tickets) x 100 = 75% FCR 

That means, on average, your team can solve 75% of support tickets on the first try.

The challenges of measuring FCR 

First contact resolution is a fantastic starting point to improve your support team’s resolution time. But, like most customer support metrics, FCR has some limitations. 

FCR doesn’t provide you the reason for a high or low rate

Simply knowing your first contact resolution rate doesn’t give you the whole story. 

A low FCR means you aren’t solving most problems on the first try but it doesn’t explain the root causes.

You’ll need to track other metrics that look into customer interactions more qualitatively, like customer satisfaction (CSAT).

FCR doesn’t distinguish ticket quality

Second, a high FCR isn’t an automatic indicator of a successful support strategy. The challenge lies in accurately categorizing tickets resolved in one interaction. This process can be complicated by instances where automated responses may be quick but unhelpful.

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4 tactics to increase first contact resolution rate

Here are four tactics you can use now to improve FCR performance and your customer experiences.

1. Provide support agents with customer service scripts

Your agents are your front line, and it’s important they’re armed with customer service scripts to resolve common issues efficiently. Scripts are pre-written responses that agents can use to avoid typing the same answers over and over again.

At Gorgias, we call scripts Macros. Gorgias allows you to personalize each Macro with customer information pulled from your integrated ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce.

Deja Jefferson, CX and Consumer Insights Manager at skincare brand Topicals uses Macros “to help maintain brand voice while handling a high volume of customer service tickets.” As a result of this automation tactic, her team influenced 72% more revenue.

💡 Pro Tip: Exceptional customer experience depends on a robust customer service training program. Keep agent knowledge fresh with a knowledge base or Help Center of scripts. This way, agents can continuously upskill or grab information whenever they need it.

2. Automate responses to frequently asked questions

At Gorgias, we’ve found that automation increases both FCR and sales. 

An automation tool like Gorgias Automate can help resolve up to 30% of incoming tickets. With features like Quick Responses and Article Recommendations, customers can get answers to their questions without waiting to speak to an agent.

Article Recommendations at work
Gorgias Article Recommendations is an AI-powered tool that helps customers choose the right products on their own.
         

For example, luxury shoe and garment care retailer Kirby Allison used Gorgias Automate to deflect 30% of incoming tickets and boosted revenue from support by 46%. 

Kirby Allison reached a 30% automation rate in one month

3. Offer self-service options to resolve simple customer inquiries

Chances are, a bulk of your tickets can be answered by customers themselves. In fact, 88% of U.S. customers expect a customer self-service portal according to a 2022 Statista survey.

On Gorgias, we solve this issue by giving merchants the ability to create a Help Center.

A Help Center is an article database that includes information commonly sought by shoppers, like product information, policies (like shipping, returns, or order cancellations), and billing and payment information.

Self-service options
         

Below, Loop Earplugs makes the customer experience seamless by linking to their FAQs in the top navigation bar of their website.

Loop Earplugs has FAQs on their menu
Keeping FAQs prominent makes it easy for shoppers to quickly find policies and other information about their brand and products.
         

4. Categorize tickets automatically and route them to the most suitable agent

Resolving your low-priority tickets quickly is a surefire way to improve your FCR. It would be a full-time job if you had to manually prioritize and categorize your tickets. 

With a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can automatically categorize incoming tickets into low-, medium-, and high-priority based on customizable parameters called Rules. Better yet, Gorgias can take care of routing high-priority tickets to your most experienced agents to maintain customer retention. 

Autotagging in Gorgias
         

For example, snack brand Chomps created a Rule that tagged customer tickets with an “Urgent” tag if their message included phrases like “cancel order,” “wrong,” or “update my address.”  

Chomps created a Rule that auto-tags tickets with an "Urgent" tag
Auto-tagging helps Chomps become more efficient with resolutions. It also allows their agents to update incorrect customer orders before they are fulfilled and shipped from their warehouse.
         

How FCR works with other important customer success metrics 

To give deeper context to your customers’ shopping experiences, it’s important to use FCR alongside other customer success metrics and KPIs.

Let’s look at how FCR works with key customer support metrics, like Customer Contact Rate, Average Response Time, Average Resolution Time, and Unresolved Ticket Rate.

Customer contact rate

Customer contact rate (CCR) looks at the percentage of customers who ask for help over a given time. It's an important metric that gives you a snapshot of your company's overall health.

Calculating CCR in combination with FCR will help you see how many people need support versus how effective your team is at deflecting lower-priority tickets.

Average response time

Average response time (AVT) or average reply time measures how long your support team takes to respond to a customer message.

90% of shoppers agree that an immediate response is important when they have a support request, so it’s crucial that you have as low an AVT as possible. 

The longer your response time, the longer it’ll take to get to a resolution. That’s why it’s useful to calculate AVT with FCR together. It’ll help show you the time it takes for an agent to respond, getting you even closer to a lightning-fast solution. 

Average resolution time

Average resolution time (ART) is similar to FCR in that it looks at your support team’s ability to resolve customer issues.

The difference with ART is that the metric looks at your team’s average ability to resolve issues, not just the first time.

A benefit of calculating ART is that you can understand how efficiently your team resolves higher-priority issues, like complicated returns, customer retention rates, or problems with loyal shoppers

Unresolved ticket rate

Unresolved ticket rate (UTR) lets you track and measure abandoned conversations and tickets that could not be solved. 

It’s critical to calculate UTR because unresolved tickets are a key indicator of unhappy customers — and unhappy customers can negatively impact your bottom line.

Calculating UTR can help you find gaps in your support strategy by locating tickets where a resolution is difficult and working to build a resolution for similar problems in the future.

Measure, track, and improve first contact resolution with Gorgias

If you’re stuck manually calculating first contact resolution, you’ll never have time to improve your strategy. 

That’s where Gorgias comes in. Gorgias Helpdesk automatically tracks and measures data like FCR so that you can focus on optimizing your strategy to provide a more positive customer experience. 

Sign up for Gorgias or book a demo to track and improve your first contact resolution rate today!

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Customer experience insights 2023

Ecommerce Customer Experience in 2023: Insights & What’s Next in 2024

By Christelle Agustin
8 min read.
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TL;DR: 

  • Shipping status, refunds, and damaged orders were the top customer concerns of 2023
  • The average first response time was 7.6 hours, a resolution time of 18.6 hours, and a CSAT score of 4.5/5
  • On average, 15% of interactions were resolved with automation
  • Experts predict that 2024 will focus on strategic planning, optimized AI use, more real-time communication, and amplifying the voice of CX within companies

This year, we witnessed customer service teams from 16,140 brands support over 77 million shoppers and millions of tickets with Gorgias. 

As we turn to a new chapter, we want to spotlight how six of the top-performing industries delivered customer service in 2023. 

From food to fashion, we’ll see how quickly agents answered questions, then discover what customers were asking, and learn from experts about what customer experience trends to expect in the new year.

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Support teams resolved tickets in 2.5 business days

Step into the ecommerce world, where you’ll find a vibrant population of merchants, each with their own niche and groups of loyal customers. Together, they generated $1.45 billion in revenue in 2023. 

Of course, this would not have been possible without the grit of customer service teams and their dedication to customer satisfaction. 

Support teams across 20 industries answered customer inquiries within one business day and solved them in two and a half, resulting in very satisfied shoppers. Impressively, 15% of interactions were fully automated and resolved on average.

Here are the average industry support stats:

  • First response time: 7.6 hours
  • Resolution time: 18.6 hours
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Average support performance across 20 industries in 2023
 

From food to fashion: a cross-industry glance at support statistics

The most popular ecommerce industries — Apparel and Fashion, Health, Wellness, and Fitness, Cosmetics, Food and Beverage, Consumer Goods, and Luxury Goods and Jewelry — were the top performers. 

Using exclusive Gorgias data, we’ll look at how support teams from these industries handled tickets. Then, we’ll gain expert insight into the ecommerce experience in 2023, and how experts predict it will change in the coming year.

Apparel and Fashion strutted with a 4.5/5 CSAT score

Our first stop is the bustling market of Apparel and Fashion. We’re all familiar with how tricky online clothes shopping can be. Most likely due to issues with sizing and style, support teams mainly dealt with inquiries about:

  • Shipping status
  • Returns
  • Refunds

Yet, despite receiving the highest number of customer tickets among the six industries, Apparel and Fashion brands kept customers happy. They responded within one business day and resolved issues within two, with 15% of interactions being resolved with automation.

Here are their stats compared to the overall industry average:

  • First response time: 8 hours (+0.4 hours)
  • Resolution time: 17 hours (-1.6 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Apparel & Fashion response and resolution times
According to Loop, over 50% of their merchants now charge for certain returns, including fees for exchanges and returns for store credit. This change aligns with consumer preferences, as their report shows 70% of shoppers are willing to pay for premium, convenient experiences, a trend already embraced by half of these customers.

Cancellations and returns were Health, Wellness, and Fitness’ biggest hurdles

The next stop on our tour is the thriving Health, Wellness, and Fitness industry.

Unfortunately, brands in this sector had a challenging year keeping up with unpleasant tickets about:

  • Shipping status
  • Subscription cancellations
  • Refunds

Perhaps support teams could have automated more than 15% of interactions to handle these repetitive tickets better. But despite their slower-than-average first response time, customers were still pleased with the support experience:

  • First response time: 9 hours (+1.4 hours)
  • Resolution time: 18.3 hours (-0.3 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Health, Wellness & Fitness response and resolution times

Expert Insights: Amanda Kwasniewicz, the VP of Customer Experience at women’s wellness brand Love Wellness, highlights that personalized customer service has been a key trend of 2023. She’s observed that customers now expect to receive personal recommendations during their shopping journeys.

Cosmetics enhanced support with 18% automation

Now, take a peek at the fast-growing Cosmetics industry, and you’ll see how eager customers were to check out the hype around both small businesses and celebrity brands.

Given the boom of influencer marketing for these highly personal products, customers often inquired about:

  • Shipping status
  • Feedback
  • Damaged orders

To solve these tickets, support teams automated 18% of interactions and attained faster times than average:

  • First response time: 7 hours (-0.6 hours)
  • Resolution time: 15.8 hours (-2.8 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Cosmetics response and resolution times

Food and Beverage served it fresh with a 5-hour first response time

Getting hungry? This year, the growing appetite for Food and Beverage in the ecommerce world was unmistakable. Beef jerky or freshly squeezed fruit juice, customers savored their snacks. But it also didn’t stop them from being tough critics. 

The main issues raised to Food and Beverage support teams revolved around: 

  • Shipping status
  • Feedback
  • Damaged products

Luckily, they cut down their first response time by automating 15% of interactions — nearly three hours faster than average:

  • First response time: 5 hours (-2.6 hours)
  • Resolution time: 17.2 hours (-1.4 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5

Expert insights: Zoe Kahn, former Manager of CX & Retention at Chomps and now Owner of Inevitable Agency, saw inventory issues as a major challenge of 2023. The complexity of inventory logistics is difficult for consumers to understand, leading to higher outreach from customers wondering when items would be back in stock. "Quieting those concerns is really difficult," Zoe notes. However, after witnessing inventory issues over the last few years, Zoe realized that "it's inevitable that inventory problems will happen because of how challenging the logistics of selling a product are."

Food & Beverage response and resolution times

Consumer Goods has CSAT down pat with a 4.6/5

There’s a lot to explore in the all-encompassing Consumer Goods industry. You’ll find brands that sell everything from sustainable water bottles and furniture to everything else in between, like dog toys and mystery subscription boxes.

While Consumer Goods brands only automated 14% of interactions, their resolution time was two hours faster than the industry average, resulting in the happiest customers among the six industries:

  • First response time: 8 hours (+0.4 hours)
  • Resolution time: 16.4 hours (-2.2 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.6/5 (+0.6)
Consumer Goods response and resolution times

The top tickets Consumer Goods brands received were about:

  • Shipping status
  • Damaged orders
  • Customer feedback

Expert Insights: Ren Fuller-Wasserman, the Director of Experience at TUSHY, notes that the impact of the macroeconomic climate was among the top challenges faced in 2023. “As there's talk of recession and inflation, people are really looking for products that provide added value,” she says.

Our partner Okendo, a growth marketing platform that has worked with well-known brands like SKIMS and Rhode, notes that tech stack consolidation has been the top priority in 2023. They saw that merchants who used a multifaceted product with app integrations resulted in a 15x return on investment

Luxury Goods and Jewelry polished interactions with 28% automation

Our final stop is at the small gem of an industry, Luxury Goods and Jewelry. Making sure their pricey wares arrived to customers safely was the top priority. That’s why the top questions support teams received were in regard to:

  • Shipping status
  • Discount requests
  • Damaged orders

Out of all the industries, Luxury Goods and Jewelry brands automated the most interactions at 28%, which certainly helped to shorten response and resolution times:

  • First response time: 6 hours (-1.6 hours)
  • Resolution time: 17.1 hours (-1.5 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.4/5 (-0.1)
Luxury Goods & Jewelry response and resolution times

Expert Insights: Caela Castillo, Director of CX at Jaxxon, advises preparing early for BFCM but being flexible to change. She notes, “Sometimes you need a different perspective,” acknowledging that agents are valuable resources to gain customer insights, especially when it comes to planning new customer service strategies.

How to prepare for ecommerce in 2024 (according to experts)

It’s been a fruitful year of expediting the traditionally slow support process. However, with greater strides made in AI technology, ecommerce has only scratched the surface of providing accelerated service. 

We interviewed ecommerce experts who saw the rise and fall of trends in 2023 and are ready to use their learnings to make the new year better. 

Here are the top four actions ecommerce companies should take in 2024. 

1) Identify business goals to adapt to new tech

We’re constantly fed an endless stream of new technology, which can be a distraction to business goals. That’s why the CTO of ecommerce agency Novatize, Pierre-Olivier Brassard, highly recommends planning a robust strategy first. Clear business goals will help teams pick the best tools — not the other way around.

2) Maximize the use of AI to streamline support

Customer service management platform TalentPop saw AI as the top CX trend of 2023. They foresee late adopters using AI next year, while early adopters will focus on optimization. To get ahead of the game, TalentPop recommends that support teams research all AI options since CX will only become more saturated with AI tools.

Brandon Amoroso, Founder & President at Electriq and Co-founder at SCALIS observed similar trends. In 2023, many CX teams implemented more self-service options for customers. Going into 2024, Brandon notes that a “continual integration of AI into the entire customer experience” is likely.

3) Offer real-time communication options

As social shopping gains traction, marketing platform Yotpo predicts customers are going to look for more real-time communication with brands. In fact, HubSpot reports a 45% year-over-year surge in using social media DMs for customer service. Therefore, using tools that enable interactions through DMs or text, like Yotpo SMS, will be a crucial strategy in the upcoming year.

4) Amplify the voice of the customer

Amanda Kwasniewicz, VP of Customer Experience at Love Wellness, advises CX leaders to ensure their contributions are recognized. Kwasniewicz notes that support teams often know the business better than any other department. "Beat the CX drum loudly. If you're not in the room, find a way in the room," she stresses.

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