How Dr. Bronner's Saved $100K/Year by Switching From Salesforce, Then Automated 45% of Interactions with Gorgias

The Challenge: Keeping up with demand of a growing brand

Dr. Bronner’s was expanding rapidly, and the need for a more robust customer service infrastructure was becoming increasingly clear.

“We were spending a lot of time and money on development. The customizable platform was just too taxing on our team.”

—Emily McEnany, Director of Customer Experience at Dr. Bronner’s

Getting anything built meant waiting. As Emily put it when she sat down for Behind the Inbox: "We had to rely on two different sets of developers and two different teams in order to get one system up and running over the course of six months."

Over time, Emily built a team of 5 full-time agents, collaborating with departments like quality assurance and PR to create a more cohesive customer service operation. However, as Dr. Bronner’s grew, so did their customer inquiries, pushing the team to seek a more efficient system.

When the time came to evaluate their tools, Emily and her team decided to switch from Salesforce to Gorgias. Although Salesforce had served them well in the early days, it became clear that it wasn’t built with CX in mind, and they relied heavily on external developers to maintain workflows. 

Initially, there was some hesitation about the aggressive goal of automating 45%+ of customer interactions within 30 days using Gorgias. However, the hands-on support provided by Gorgias during the transition made the process smooth and manageable.

The Solution: A tool for CX, made by CX 

The key to the efficiency Emily sought for her team was a tool built around the day-to-day tasks of her team: answering product and policy FAQs, updating orders, managing return requests, and keeping everything synced across the brand’s tool stack.

Building foundational systems

Customer education is at the heart of Dr. Bronner’s mission. Their customers often ask detailed questions about product ingredients, packaging, and certifications. With Gorgias, Emily and her team were able to build a robust Help Center that helped to By providing readily available information on their website, customers could educate themselves without having to wait for a human response.

“We wanted our customers to feel empowered by having access to the same information we use internally,” Emily says. Flows, Order Management, and Contact Form automation handled routine inquiries like order status without IT support. 

For a brand whose customers audit its ingredients, self-service is part of the promise. "Our team is so passionate about delivering that accurate, transparent information to customers," Emily shared, "because then they can go to other companies and say, well, Dr. Bronner's is telling me about this and they showed up in this way. How are you showing up?"

Automating repetitive questions with AI Agent

Upon migration, Dr. Bronner’s partnered with Gorgias for 30-in-30, a hands-on onboarding program targeting 30% automation within 30 days. They hit 30% in the first month and 45% after two. Two years later, the rate has held steady: AI Agent, Flows, and self-service together automate nearly half of all conversations, and the team has since extended AI Agent from email to chat. 

“We started from the ground up. We rolled out Gorgias a couple of years ago and jumped into automations headfirst, and we've never looked back."

—Emily McEnany, Director of Customer Experience at Dr. Bronner’s

At first, the Dr. Bronner’s team was unsure if AI could maintain the personal touch their customers expected. But AI Agent quickly proved its worth, efficiently handling both transactional and personalized inquiries with the same care as a human agent.

“We’ve had customers respond to the AI thinking they were speaking to a real person. That’s how elevated the response was from AI,” Emily shares.

The AI provided quick, efficient responses, particularly for transactional queries, and seamlessly handed off more complex issues to human agents when needed. Customers responded positively to the interactions, praising the AI's accuracy and personalization.

Here’s an example of AI Agent helping match a customer to the right product, based on their unique goals and lifestyle:

Since the customer flags health concerns, AI Agent appropriately suggests a few product recommendations and then hands the conversation over to a live agent to help with the more sensitive case. 

And here’s an example of AI Agent explaining how one of Dr. Bronner’s products works, including specific answers to follow-up questions and similar product recommendations:

The positive impact of automation on the CX team

The introduction of automation had a transformative effect on the CX team. With tasks like order status updates and common inquiries automated, agents now had more time to engage in meaningful conversations with customers, focusing on building loyalty and addressing more complex issues.

“Our agents can now focus on backend operations, process improvements, and engaging in deeper conversations with our customers,” Emily explains. 

Automation also eliminated the seasonal hiring spikes and layoffs. Since migrating, the team has held steady at five people. "We don't have to do that crazy swing of hiring in July and letting them go in February," Emily explains.. Ticket volume is up about a third from a year ago, and headcount has not moved.

This shift not only improved the customer experience but also increased job satisfaction for the CX team, giving them more opportunities to work on projects that contribute to the business’s long-term goals.

“If you aren't implementing automations and your reps are having to answer call and inquiry after call and inquiry, they’ll burn out. Automations have created space for people to actually have a healthy energy exchange."

—Emily McEnany, Director of Customer Experience at Dr. Bronner’s

Realizing cost savings and evaluating impact on the business 

The switch from Salesforce to Gorgias resulted in a substantial cost savings of $100,000 in the first year. 

Then, by automating 45%+ of the support volume over the past two years, the team’s savings grew even more impressive.  This is thanks to automation's cost efficiency compared to having staff answer every question, no matter how repetitive.

In the past six months, Dr. Bronner’s has saved $13,585 (the equivalent of nearly twenty days' worth of work for their team) by automating 45% of inquiries.

Beyond the financial savings, the time saved through automation allowed Dr. Bronner’s to expand into new services, such as SMS and subscription offerings. By automating routine tasks, the team could focus on supporting these ecommerce initiatives, driving additional growth and customer engagement.

A connected tech stack with robust integrations 

One of the key differences between Salesforce and Gorgias was the ease of integration with Shopify and other tools. While Salesforce required extensive development work, Gorgias integrated in just a few clicks with Dr. Bronner’s existing tech stack, particularly Shopify. This eliminated the need for external developers, empowering the CX team to manage and optimize workflows independently.

In addition to Shopify, Dr. Bronner’s integrated tools like Loop Returns for returns and exchanges automation. Integrations are a game-changer because the team can access all the data they need in Gorgias and push updates directly from there,  further streamlining the customer experience, allowing the team to handle complex processes like returns with ease. 

No more shuffling between Gorgias, Shopify, and Loop; everything’s in one tab, making the team more efficient and allowing them to focus on personalized service.

Dr. Bronner’s also switched from Aircall to Gorgias Voice in 2026 for voice communication, so call and ticket metrics live in one place. SMS came into the same inbox in 2025.