Lillie's Q is dedicated to serving up authentic Southern barbeque through their line of sauces and rubs.

Chef Charlie McKenna opened the doors of Lillie's Q restaurant back in July 2010 — founded in honor of Chef Charlie's beloved grandmother, Lillie. His grandmother taught him the art of Southern cooking, something he holds dear to his heart.

As Charlie traveled the barbeque competition circuit from Memphis to Alabama and Carolina, he started creating unique sauces that evoked the regions he traveled through during these competitions.

In 2007, Chef Charlie got his first win on the barbeque circuit competition. He started creating unique sauces that evoked the regions he traveled through during these competitions.

Having a mission to bring people to the table to experience authentically crafted Southern barbeque flavor, Lillie's Q distributes its products nationally and internationally.

Lillie's Q Past Challenges

Nicole Mann, the Marketing Director of Lillie's Q, kindly allocated her time to the Gorgias team and shared Lillie's Q journey. Nicole mentioned that their customers reached them through their phone number and email address. Although speaking directly with a customer was great, tracking and documenting the calls for future needs were challenging.

The general email and phone number could have been answered by anyone in their company, making it hard to document which team member responded to the call and what follow up was taken.

They also received a lot of questions and comments through their social channels — managed by a separate team member. These questions and comment had to be cut, pasted, and sent to another team member in charge of customer inquiries. Overall the customer service process was very disjointed before partnering with Gorgias.

"We received comments and questions from Instagram and Facebook, organic and paid. Our digital content manager was passing a lot of these questions and comments on to our customer service team before we were with Gorgias." - Nicole Mann, Marketing Director

Integration of Gorgias

At a certain point, a marketing consultant working with Lillie's Q realized that the support team was underwater with customer questions, which were up to 700 - 800 a month. They suggested Gorgias as a potential solution for a better customer experience.

Management picked up the issue and integrated Gorgias into the company's communication system, providing some structure to the support process for the first time. The dashboard was quickly grasped by the entire team, and the results became apparent shortly after.

Gorgias organized each customer's information in a single place, ensuring no one got lost in the shuffle.

This centralization also allowed different customer support staff to respond to inquiries without the danger of redundancy, and every step of the support journey was tracked alongside the tickets.

"Gorgias has helped streamline all of our customer service into one platform, improving our customers' as well as our employees' experience." - Nicole Mann, Marketing Director

That ultimately meant that inquiries would move faster within the pipeline. As customer questions were answered and issues were resolved, the company saw a positive sales and client retention trend. The total sales from overall support has increased by 166%.

"Gorgias' chat allows us to respond to our customers in real-time. We can answer customers' questions about a product and how to place an order without them leaving the site or abandoning their cart. We have seen 75% increase in direct sales as a result of this quick communication." - Nicole Mann, Marketing Director

Simplifying Communications

One of the essential improvements from integrating Gorgias to Lillie's Q communications is it enables specialization that empowers the company. Different teams deal with queries that they have the most expertise in. In the past, inquiries had to be referred from one person to another, which wasted a lot of time.

Another benefit of integrating Gorgias was reducing Lillie's Q's response time down to 13 hours, with a resolution time below 24 hours. It is worth pointing out that most customers love working with service or product providers who respond within a short time. Quick responses leave their customers feeling more satisfied, and trust carries over the brand.

Keeping track of customer data is also key to improving the general marketing strategy for any company. Lillie's Q can understand what customers love and determine top priorities from the compiled data. The company takes note of frequent complaints and works to correct any underlying issues causing that dissatisfaction.

The ability to integrate Shopify with Gorgias also allows customer support to view the product in question alongside the query made. This integration eliminates the need for customer support to carry out time-consuming searches or extra open tabs for reference.

The addition of automations has also allowed Lillie's Q to auto-respond tickets. Frequently questions are already answered, and all the customer has to do is enter specific keywords into the chat and get an immediate response.

The improvements and wins came from simply implementing Gorgias in Lillie's Q communication system. Customers and employees all enjoy better interactions, and ultimately that experience helps the team to sell more sauce.

"We see strong growth for our company in the future. This growth includes expanding our product distribution and building out our team. Gorgias will help connect the growing team with our expanding consumer base." - Nicole Mann, Marketing Director