VESSEL is a company driven to provide premium sport and travel accessories. Started in 2012, VESSEL has established itself as the preferred PGA Tour golf bag and has also cultivated a growing presence in the lifestyle, travel and tennis bag markets.

‎The challenge: Creating an experience that matches customer expectations

VESSEL offers a high-end, luxury product, so it’s critical for their support to be immediate, effective, and provide a positive experience for customers. But this can be challenging as the brand continues to grow and customer inquiries grow alongside it.

With repetitive tasks and queries, the team at VESSEL were looking for ways to increase automation to provide quick answers and reassurance to customers, especially during peak times — all while maintaining brand voice and tone for a consistent customer experience.

“Our customers expect almost immediate responses, and so being able to automate that, even if it's not necessarily the exact answer that they're looking for, but being able to send over information to give them the reassurance that we're looking into it or trying to find an answer, whatever it may be, that's been a huge help to our team.” - Lauren Reams, Customer Experience Manager, VESSEL.

The solution: Automating repetitive tickets with AI Agent 

VESSEL began using AI Agent to automate responses for their most common inquiries, and within one month they saw their email automation rate increase to nearly 20%. Working alongside the implementation team at Gorgias, VESSEL customized their responses to ensure that they were not only aligned to VESSEL’s tone of voice, but used positive language, emojis and personalized messaging. 

Prior to implementation, the team was hesitant about the potential rigidness of using AI to respond to customers, but have been very happy to see how adaptable it is at learning their business and responding to the needs of their customers.

“I was a little bit hesitant about using AI Agent initially. We knew that we were interested in more automation because we have had more customers reaching out, but weren’t sure that it would be able to meet their growing needs. It’s been incredible to see how adaptable AI Agent is, and how it can quickly pick up on the small things — for example, if something is a hot topic for us, you can see AI Agent start talking about it, and knowing when it’s something that needs to be handed off to our team.” - Lauren Reams, Customer Experience Manager, VESSEL

“The Gorgias team worked very closely with our team to really make AI Agent work for us — not the other way around. Instead of rolling out every single Guidance or everything that we thought AI could answer, we rolled it out slowly so that the team was able to get comfortable with it. Doing this enabled us to fine tune our responses. That has really helped us to be able to go back in and ensure that each Guidance is set up the way that we wanted them to be, which has helped us to provide a better experience for our customers.” - Lauren Reams, Customer Experience Manager, VESSEL

The results: Improved CSAT, decreased response time and increased resolution time 

With the help of AI Agent, VESSEL has been able to improve their CSAT with automated responses that provide quick assurance to customers. To top it off, the team at VESSEL heard from customers that the AI responses were not only helpful, but also felt as though they were speaking to a human agent. 

By handling the repetitive tasks, AI Agent has enabled VESSEL to reduce first response time by providing immediate acknowledgement to customer inquiries which has helped them to meet their customer expectations for prompt service. 

“Now we’re able to get back to people so much faster than before. We can quickly collect information – avoiding the back and forth questions like what is your name, email or shipping address. Using AI to eliminate the back and forth has been great, and getting back to customers much faster than before has been the biggest win for our team.” - Lauren Reams, Customer Experience Manager, VESSEL

In addition to providing customers with prompt responses, AI Agent has also helped VESSEL to increase overall team efficiency. By automating routine tasks, the team could focus on more nuanced customer interactions, improving overall efficiency and job satisfaction.

Looking forward: Continuing to meet and exceed customer expectations

The team at VESSEL is excited about the future of AI Agent and the impacts on their business. Especially during busy seasons, such as BFCM, AI Agent will continue to play a critical role in enhancing the experience for their customers, while giving their team more time to spend on the tickets that require higher levels of support and personalization. 

“The anxiety for customers during BFCM is real, and so something that we tried to implement last year was to create as many help centers, as much communication on our website and social media, and as much automation as possible to help lower that anxiety. Our number one goal is to try and get ahead of as many possible questions and concerns our customers might have during that time. This year, we are planning on leveraging AI Agent to help us get ahead of the most common questions: shipping time, shipping turnaround, order status, return policy and gifting recommendations. Our goal is to lean on AI Agent to streamline these responses, and hopefully avoid hiring a third-party agent. AI Agent has been so seamless, so we’re confident that it will help us handle the busy season without needing to bring in additional agents.” - Lauren Reams, Customer Experience Manager, VESSEL