Vape Superstore is a UK retailer of e-cigarettes, vape juice and accessories. Based in London, UK, they were founded in 2015 with a mission to create a healthier, smoke-free future for the UK. Since its establishment, Vape Superstore has grown to have one of the most comprehensive ranges of vaping supplies in the UK and is now regarded as one of the leaders in the industry.

Due to working within a regulated and highly competitive industry, there are many challenges this business faces. In particular, due to the nature of the product they sell, they are unable to do any form of online advertising (Google PPC, Social Ads, etc.), therefore relying heavily on organic traffic, email and repeat custom.

With bricks and mortar shops being forced to close during the COVID pandemic, in-store customers across the UK shifted to shopping online. Thanks to the online presence of Vape Superstore, this led to a 300% increase in traffic and in turn a sales uplift of 400%.

People looking to purchase vape supplies are each at a different stage of their journey. Some may be trying to quit smoking and have never tried vaping before. With this many customers need advice on what product is best suited to their requirements and before the pandemic, many would have preferred to visit their local vape store and speak to a staff member.

With the shift to online shopping, customers had to receive advice either via email, telephone or live chat. Couriers and the UK's postal service were also under increased pressure having to deliver almost double the number of parcels each day with a reduced workforce, resulting in many parcels being delayed.

Increasing Volume of Customer Queries

With increased demand and delivery time affected, Vape Superstore went from receiving 40 support tickets to over 200 each day during the height of lockdown. At the time Vape Superstore were using Zendesk, which unfortunately for them was not cutting the mustard. With a cumbersome and complex interface, it made life harder than it needed to be for Vape Superstore's support team. Their customer service team of 2 was having to log in and out of various systems to gather the information to answer a ticket, which caused an increase in response time. Heavily relying on repeat custom, Vape Superstore needed to find a solution to reduce response times and most importantly keep their customer happy.

Switching to Gorgias and Using Gorgias Tagging to Better Manage Customer Queries

Following a timely LinkedIn message from an Account Executive (Arnaud Vanmeenen) at Gorgias to the MD of Vape Superstore, they began looking into the Gorgias platform. With direct integration to their CMS platform; Shopify alongside other systems including Smile Rewards, Tidio Live Chat, and all Social Platforms they were able to quickly see the benefits of switching and decided to do so.

"After making the switch from Zendesk we haven't looked back. Our Customer Success Manager guided us through the whole migration process and assisted us in setting up the basic tagging and automation processes to make the transition seamless. It was a pleasure dealing with the Gorgias team! We would highly recommend this solution for any Shopify store." - Dan Judd, Head of Digital

Integrating Gorgias with their Shopify store, the Vape Superstore team is now able to see all customer order history, notes, and tracking details right within the support ticket. Massively reducing the time switching between their Shopify Dashboard, Courier sites and Gorgias.

Reducing Response Time by 70% and Increasing Customer Satisfaction

With the help of Gorgias tagging, they can easily categorize and prioritize each support ticket by query, from cancellation requests, delivery tracking, and product questions. Setting up various macros they no longer have to type out all individuals responses and can issue a response with the click of a button.

"Response time has reduced from over 24 hours to an average of 7 hours (with offices closed over the weekend) and are fully resolving tickets within 15 hours." - Dan Judd, Head of Digital

With a simple to use and intuitive user-face, a reduction of response times, and an increase in customer satisfaction, Vape Superstore's parent company has decided to use Gorgias to service customers from their sister website; E-Liquid Superstore, all from the same dashboard. Still using Tidio for live chat, following the migration of E-Liquid Superstore, they will be looking to make the switch to Gorgias chat so it's all under one roof.

"All customer service representatives are highly satisfied with using Gorgias, and much prefer using it than Zendesk. We would highly recommend other ecommerce stores to use Gorgias, in particular Shopify stores." - Dan Judd, Head of Digital