Award-winning hair tool RevAir has taken the haircare world by storm since its 2018 launch. RevAir uses reversed air to dry and straighten hair twice as fast as traditional tools, while helping keep hair healthy.

"We've always wanted to give the best customer service. We want to know what our customers need before they know they need it, and to be ready to provide that to them."

— Mika Hoecker, Customer Engagement Manager at RevAir

RevAir realized that slow response times were driving customers away and decided to invest in a customer service solution that provided instant answers to simple questions. This freed the team up to jump on urgent, pre-sales conversions much faster, dramatically increasing revenue earned by support.

The challenge: Slow response times led to missed sales opportunities

As RevAir's sales and popularity grew rapidly, so did the number of queries received from customers and potential buyers. RevAir used to manage these queries via Zendesk. But as the volume of tickets increased to around 3,000 per month, customers had to wait up to an hour for a response from the RevAir team — and a further 50 minutes on average to get their query resolved.

During this long wait time, many customers lost interest and abandoned the purchase, or went elsewhere and bought a competitor's product instead. RevAir was losing sales because of its slow response times — especially on live chat, when customers will rarely wait unanswered for more than a minute or two.

Many customer queries didn't even need a complex or unique answer. The RevAir team repeatedly fielded the same few simple questions on order status, shipping policy, and discounts codes. Still, because of sheer volume, they were slow to respond.

The sharp leap in customer queries during busy sales periods, such as Black Friday Cyber Monday, meant RevAir had to hire more agents to keep up. This helped avoid lost sales — but also meant higher overhead costs.

RevAir wanted a way to handle more queries, faster, without increasing head or sacrificing quality or personalized customer care.

The solution: Self-service chat options and automated responses to cut response times and increase sales

After several recommendations from other ecommerce businesses, RevAir switched to Gorgias to manage customer conversations across all channels. Two key features help RevAir address and resolve customer questions much faster: Self-Service Portals and Quick Response Flows, both part of the Automation add-on.

Self-Service Portal: Track and modify orders without contacting support

Gorgias's live chat widget includes a Self-Service Portal, which lets customers report issues and track or modify orders with just a few clicks — no need to contact support. Customers are happy they get the instant answers they want, and RevAir's support team can focus on more complex or high-impact conversations.

Even when we're closed, customers can use the self-service portal to track their orders, grab their tracking number, and figure out all those basic inquiries themselves. And they can do all that without having an account with us, which is amazing. Without Gorgias, we'd have to make customers create accounts, which isn't always the best customer experience."

— Mika Hoecker, Customer Engagement Manager at RevAir

RevAir's Self-Service Portal isn't just in chat: Customers can also manage orders within RevAir's Help Center, which is also powered by Gorgias. The Help Center is the self-service hub for the brand, where customers can reference important policies, troubleshoot product issues, and more — all of which used to turn into tickets for the support team.

Quick Response Flows: RevAir's "secret weapon"

RevAir also uses Quick Response Flows to answer commonly asked questions, which is especially helpful during busy sales periods. Like the self-service order management portal, Quick Response Flows add button to the live chat widget with common customer questions. Shoppers can click these buttons to get an instant, helpful response. Quick Response Flows have been so effective that Mika refers to them as "our secret weapon".

So when someone browsing RevAir's products wonders whether RevAir ships overseas — a key buying consideration for many customers — they don't have to type out the question and wait for a response. Instead, they can click a button and receive an answer. Making this information instantly available to customers has been a huge sales-enabler for RevAir. Plus, if the customer has a follow-up question not covered by Quick Response Flows, they can send a message and a customer service advisor will jump in to take over the chat.

Using Quick Response Flows to handle basic, repetitive questions allows RevAir to easily accommodate big spikes in customer queries during hectic sales periods, without compromising customer experience or hiring extra staff.

Between the Self-Service Portal and Quick Response Flows, RevAir has deflected over 50% of their customer support tickets.

(Note: Self-service order management and Quick Response Flows are only available to Automation Add-on subscribers.)

Chat campaigns: Proactively reach out to customers to increase upsells and improve customer satisfaction

Now that RevAir offers convenient self-service options, so shoppers have more avenues to resolve issues than just contacting support, the RevAir team has greater capacity for more high-value conversations. They use chat campaigns to proactively reach out to customers on the site, suggesting additional products they may be interested in or flagging up promotions.

For example, RevAir includes a general welcome visitors and ask if they need support. Also, they reach out to customers to suggest best-selling items and remind browsers of their generous return policy:

From the moment they saw a demo, RevAir were impressed with Gorgias's usability, flexibility, and visual appeal.

"Any company that's looking to increase their chat volume needs an aesthetically pleasing and personal-feeling chat. That was really hard to find when we were looking for a new platform — but Gorgias has it."

— Mika Hoecker, Customer Engagement Manager at RevAir

The results: Automating 53% of tickets means 93% faster response times and $76k revenue generated per quarter

Switching to Gorgias has utterly transformed RevAir's customer response times and increased sales. Automated responses take care of 53% of tickets, meaning the customer support team can respond to unique and high-impact tickets 93% faster than with Zendesk. First-response time has dropped from one hour to just four minutes and 15 seconds, and resolution time has halved.

Quick answers lead to happy customers, and happy customers lead to more sales. RevAir's CSAT has increased to an impressive 4.9/5, and chat engagement has increased 120% — thanks in part to live chat campaigns.

The best part? Since implementing these changes, RevAir increased revenue to $76k per quarter, an increase attributed solely to the support team. A big reason is that the customer support team is spending less time answering repetitive, automatable questions, and more time building relationships with customers who have unique questions:

"We see more conversions when we have more communication with customers. So Gorgias actually becomes a sales channel for us. It helps us as a brand to build trust with our customers before they buy. Because for customers who are looking to purchase our high-ticket $400+ product, it builds their confidence when they feel comfortable asking us questions before they buy."

— Mika Hoecker, Customer Engagement Manager at RevAir

Even when the volume of tickets skyrocketed by 50% in just two months when RevAir launched a new product and website, response and resolution times haven't faltered.

"Gorgias is so easy to use and super easy to scale. With Quick Response Flows, even we're expecting triple the normal volume of customer engagements and sales for BFCM, we know our three customer service advisors can handle it. We're not talking about hiring anybody else."
— Mika Hoecker, Customer Engagement Manager at RevAir

Next steps: Poised for triple-digit growth without needing to upgrade customer support platform

Customer support is the foundation RevAir has built its success on. And by using Gorgias, the company is primed to build a skyscraper on that foundation.

"We have big lofty goals for triple digit growth by 2026. And we feel very confident we can reach those goals without making any major changes to our customer engagement system, except for maybe adding an agent or two. And that's amazing."

— Mika Hoecker, Customer Engagement Manager at RevAir

The RevAir team is particularly excited for the upgrades Gorgias is planning to its phone system capabilities.

"Gorgias has exceeded our expectations with the roadmap for new features. They're well tested and it's extremely rare that we see any sort of glitches. And that's huge for a solution provider., because it means Gorgias is spending the money and building out its systems and listening to its clients. And we appreciate that."

— Mika Hoecker, Customer Engagement Manager at RevAir