How to Bridge the Sales Gap with AI and Human Intelligence
TL;DR:
- Combine AI and human agents for the best sales and support experience. Gorgias’s AI Agent handles repetitive tasks and pre-sales questions instantly 24/7, so human agents can focus on complex interactions.
- Proactively engage shoppers with AI to drive conversions. AI Agent tracks browsing behavior and cart data to offer recommendations and real-time assistance, leading to higher sales.
- Reduce drop-off rates with AI Agent’s floating query bar. Customers can ask questions in real time, while AI Agent understands the buying intent and adjusts its sales strategy to nudge them toward the checkout.
- Lower support costs with AI Agent. Brands using AI Agent see major time and cost savings while reducing response times, increasing revenue, and keeping support teams efficient.
Ecommerce brands are under pressure to convert more shoppers, but relying only on AI or human agents can lead to missed sales opportunities. While 34% feel that the use of AI improved their customer experience, according to Statista, 27% feel it hasn’t made a difference — suggesting that AI alone isn’t always the answer.
It’s true that AI speeds up responses and personalizes interactions at scale, while human agents build trust and close complex deals. But the solution isn't to choose one over the other.
This article will evaluate the strengths of both AI agents and human agents, offering insights to help you optimize and scale your pre-sale strategies using a hybrid AI-human intelligence approach.
How combining AI & human assistance improves the shopping experience
Using AI and human support agents together in a hybrid approach will directly impact your success as a brand. It allows you to:
- Minimize friction and navigation frustrations
- Instantly answer pre-sales questions to reduce drop-off
- Proactively engage with customers and offer help with a floating query bar
- Help with Quality Assurance
- Personalize product recommendations and upsells
- Reduce costs and increase return on investment
1) Minimize friction and navigation frustrations
Reducing customer effort is one of the key ways to spark delight and satisfaction from customer interactions. The more stress-free and simple you can make navigating the shopping experience, the better.
AI comes in handy here in many ways, like:
- Providing instant responses
- Giving shoppers an easy way to locate and interact with support
- Automating FAQs
- Automating order edits
- Personalizing product recommendations
- Performing upsells and cross-sells
All of these traits combined make a much easier experience for customers and an efficient, streamlined process for the brand. When agents aren’t bogged down with questions like these, they can focus on high-touch situations.
2) Instantly answer pre-sales questions to reduce drop-off
Pre-sales support moves the needle by answering crucial customer questions that might be blocking a purchase. Tools like Gorgias’s AI Agent for Sales make a world of difference on your store’s website. This tool has a 75% higher conversion rate than human agents, on average.
Here’s an example of what it looks like from bidet company TUSHY:
3) Proactively engage with customers and offer help with a floating query bar
AI understands a shopper’s journey by tracking key behavioral signals: products and pages viewed, purchase history, and cart data.
The floating query bar transforms product search into a seamless conversation, eliminating the need for clicks, filters, or endless navigation. It allows customers to find what they're looking for through natural conversation with the AI Agent — wherever they are on your site.
Because AI tracks this information, it can personalize interactions based on the signals above. It does this by asking clarifying questions and remembering previous interactions in the same session.
This type of proactive support actually leads to more sales: it garnered almost 10k in revenue for jewelry shop Caitlyn Minimalist.
”Customers interact with the AI Agent like they would a customer service rep—it’s a two-way conversation where they answer questions and get personalized product recommendations,” says Gabi, Customer Service Lead at Caitlyn Minimalist.
That success was similar for beauty shop Glamnetic.
“An instant response builds confidence,” says Mia Chapa, its Sr. Director of Customer Experience.
“We live in a world with short attention spans, so customers appreciate how quickly we can respond to their inquiries.”
4) Help with Quality Assurance
Quality assurance in CX is the process of ensuring that each customer interaction fits a specified list of criteria (communication, resolution completeness, attitude, etc.).
While this process has largely been a manual and time-consuming one, AI changes that for support teams.
AI-powered QA can actually review all tickets, is a scalable solution, is more consistent in its review process, saves time, and even provides instant agent feedback.
Manual QA, on the other hand, is a time-consuming and slow process, and often means feedback is delayed until leaders have the chance to review tickets. Even once they get to QA, there's a limit to how many tickets they can review in a given time frame.
Feature spotlight: Meet Auto QA: Quality checks are here to stay
5) Personalize product recommendations and upsells
AI can even make product recommendations for shoppers. These recommendations are based on browsing actions like if they repeatedly view the same pages and check return and shipping policies. It also tracks their entire behavior across your store: products and pages viewed, purchase history, cart data, and cart abandonment data.
Caitlyn Minimalist achieved incredible outcomes by leveraging AI for personalized recommendations:
- 59% reduction in customer response time
- 25% conversion rate
- $9,800 in direct revenue generated by AI Agent
“We've always based our customer service on a patient, empathetic point of view because a lot of people purchase for important moments in their lives—weddings, deaths, graduations. People are gifting in response to big life moments, so we need AI Agent to really listen to our customer’s situation and support them,” says Michael Holcombe, Co-owner and Director of Operations at Caitlyn Minimalist.
AI Agent can also handle objections and offer discounts, if price is what’s stopping customers from completing a purchase.
6) Reduce costs and increase return on investment
We’re not talking about reducing headcount. AI just supports agents in being able to handle their core responsibilities better. For example, mybacs was able to double the number of tickets they resolved without adding a single person to the team.
“This isn’t a matter of eliminating jobs, but giving our employees their primary jobs back," says Luke Wronski, CEO of RiG’d Supply. “Our hope is to have AI give us the time back to have a conversation with you about the stuff that keeps us stoked to do what we do.”
Aside from saving money on hiring additional human agents, AI helps your support team reduce costs in other ways.
For Dr. Bronners, that meant 4 days per month in team time-savings by handling routine inquiries efficiently, and $100,000 saved per year by switching from Salesforce to Gorgias.
Top AI tools for CX
Gorgias is hands down the best AI tool—not just for CX, but also for teams like web, ecommerce, and marketing. And our customers couldn’t agree more.
“We were hesitant at first, but AI Agent has really picked up on our brand’s voice. We’ve had feedback from customers who didn’t even realize they were talking to an AI,” says Lynsay Schrader, Lab and Customer Service Senior Manager at Jonas Paul Eyewear.
Here’s a complete rundown of how Gorgias’s AI Agent bridges gaps in customer experience:
Combine humans with AI for powerful results
A hybrid human and AI Agent approach is the best way to level up your customer support operations and sales strategy.
Book a demo with us to see the power of AI Agent.
TL;DR:
- AI is reshaping ecommerce, giving early adopters a competitive edge. From visual search to dynamic pricing, these tools meet rising customer expectations and drive growth.
- Conversational AI boosts support efficiency and customer satisfaction. Solutions like Gorgias's AI Agent automatically resolve up to 60% of tickets while personalizing responses across channels.
- Personalization now extends beyond product recommendations. AI is customizing everything from discounts to website layouts in real-time, creating unique experiences that convert.
- AI automation streamlines back-end operations for inventory and pricing. By predicting demand and adjusting prices dynamically, brands improve margins while reducing stock issues.
AI is no longer a futuristic concept associated with sci-fi movies and robots. It’s driving real change in ecommerce right now. Currently, 84% of ecommerce businesses list AI as their top priority. And it’s only getting bigger. By 2034, the ecommerce AI market is expected to hit $62.64 billion.
Brands that use AI to improve personalization, automate customer support, and refine pricing strategies will have a major competitive edge.
The good news? Most brands are still figuring it out, which means there’s huge potential for early adopters to stand out.
Let’s dive into the key AI trends shaping ecommerce in 2025, and how you can use them to future-proof your business.
1. Visual search
Instead of searching for keywords, shoppers can upload a photo and instantly find similar or matching products. Visual search eliminates the guesswork of finding the right words to describe an item and reduces friction in the search process.
In 2025, improvements in computer vision and machine learning will make visual search faster. AI will better recognize patterns, colors, and textures, delivering more precise results in real-time.
For customers, visual search simplifies product discovery while brands benefit from increased average order values. Visual search creates more opportunities to surface related products that customers might miss during manual searches, ultimately boosting conversion and revenue.
Pinterest is already doing it. With Pinterest Lens, users can take a picture on the spot to find similar products or ideas to help them with easier purchases or creative projects.
Pro Tip: Optimize product images and metadata (like color, size, and material) so your products appear accurately in visual search results. Clean, high-quality images and detailed tagging will make your catalog easier for AI to process and match.
2. Conversational AI
Conversational AI, like Gorgias’s AI Agent, already handles 60% of customer conversations. Brands that adopt it often see more than a 25% improvement in customer satisfaction, revenue, or cost reduction.
Soon, advanced natural language processing (NLP) will make it easier for customers to use text, voice, and images to find exactly what they’re looking for. These multimodal capabilities will elevate support conversations, resulting in fewer abandoned carts and support teams that can focus on more complex issues.
For example, Glamnetic uses AI Agent to manage customer inquiries across multiple channels, resolving 40% of requests automatically while maintaining a personalized touch. Their AI can automate responses to common questions, recommend products based on browsing history, and even track orders in real-time.
Pro Tip: Invest in AI chat tools that integrate with your customer support system and sync with real-time product and order data. Your responses will be accurate and timely, without losing the personal touch.
Read more: The Gorgias & Shopify integration: 8 features your support team will love
3. Product recommendations
According to McKinsey, omnichannel personalization strategies, including tailored product recommendations, have a 10-15% uplift potential in revenue and retention. But with only 1 in 10 retailers fully implementing personalization across channels, there’s a massive opportunity for brands to innovate.
In 2025, AI-driven product recommendations will become even more precise by analyzing customer behavior, preferences, and purchase history in real-time. Predictive AI will adjust recommendations on the fly, showing customers the right products at the right moment.
Take Kreyol Essence as an example. They use Gorgias Convert to track customer behavior and recommend products based on past purchases and browsing patterns. When a customer buys a hair mask, AI suggests complementary products like scalp oil or leave-in conditioner — increasing average order value without feeling pushy.
Personalization boosts sales by helping customers discover products they actually want. Plus, it creates a more tailored shopping experience, which encourages customers to return.
Pro Tip: Test different recommendation strategies, like “frequently bought together” or “you may also like,” to see which ones drive the most conversions.
Learn more: Reduce Customer Effort with AI: A Smarter Approach Than Surprise and Delight
4. Voice commerce
In 2025, more customers may use smart speakers and voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant to shop hands-free. AI will improve voice recognition and contextual understanding, so it’s easier for customers to find products they want.
Instead of fumbling with a keyboard, customers will be able to say, “Order more coffee pods,” and AI will not only recognize the request but also pull up the preferred brand and size based on past orders. Less friction will make the buying process more intuitive, especially for repeat purchases.
Voice commerce expands shopping accessibility and creates a more convenient experience for busy customers. It also opens the door for brands to surface product recommendations and upsell during the conversation.
Pro Tip: Optimize product descriptions and catalog structure for voice search. Clear, simple language and detailed product tags will help AI understand and surface the right products.
5. Dynamic pricing
A recent McKinsey report suggests that investing in real-time customer analytics will continue to be key to adjusting pricing and more effectively targeting customers.
In 2025, machine learning will allow ecommerce brands to adjust product prices instantly based on demand, competitor pricing, and customer behavior. If a competitor drops their price on a popular item, AI can respond immediately, so you stay competitive without sacrificing margins.
Machine learning will also refine pricing models over time, finding the sweet spot between profitability and customer conversion.
For example, AI might detect that customers are more likely to buy a product when it’s priced at $29.99 rather than $30, and adjust accordingly. More competitive pricing means higher revenue and better margins, but it also increases customer trust when prices are consistent with market trends.
Pro Tip: Test different pricing strategies and monitor how they affect sales and customer behavior.
6. Better customer insights
According to McKinsey, AI-driven personalization and customer insights can improve marketing efficiency by 10-30% and cut costs significantly.
In 2025, AI will analyze customer data like purchase history, browsing patterns, and feedback to generate smarter, more actionable next steps. Instead of guessing what customers want, brands will have the data to predict it.
For example, Gorgias’s AI Agent for Sales can identify a shopper’s interest level and purchase intent and then use it to adjust its conversational strategy. It analyzes shopper data like browsing behavior, cart activity, and purchase history.
Here’s how it would behave for different customers:
- A browsing customer: AI Agent will ask clarifying questions
- An interested customer: AI Agent provides tailored recommendations and handles objections
- A customer with an intent to buy: AI Agent assists with checkout, payment, and nudges purchase
7. Personalized shopping
AI-driven personalization leads to a 5-10% higher customer satisfaction and engagement. Yet, only 15% have fully implemented it across all channels — leaving a huge gap to fill.
In 2025, AI-driven personalization will go beyond product recommendations. Brands will be able to adjust website layouts based on customer preferences, highlight products that align with their style, and even customize customer service interactions.
A higher level of personalization will boost conversion rates and customer satisfaction. When customers feel like a brand “gets” them, they’re more likely to make a purchase and come back for more.
For example, AI Agent for Sales can adjust discounts and provide smart incentives to drive sales. When adjusting for discounts, AI Agent analyzes shopper behavior, including browsing activity, cart status, and conversation context, to offer a discount based on how engaged and ready the shopper is to buy.
Pro Tip: Use AI to test different personalization strategies and refine them based on performance data. Small adjustments, like changing product order or highlighting specific categories, can have a big impact on sales.
8. Automated inventory management
Keeping the right products in stock at the right time is about to get a whole lot easier. In 2025, AI will predict demand patterns and automate restocking decisions based on sales trends, seasonality, and customer behavior. Instead of manually tracking inventory, AI will handle it in real time to avoid stock issues.
For example, AI could notice a spike in orders for a specific product right before the holidays. It could then automatically increase stock levels to meet demand or scale back on items that aren’t moving as fast. Real-time tracking means fewer missed sales and less wasted inventory.
Efficient inventory management not only cuts costs but also improves the customer experience. When products are consistently available, customers are more likely to trust and stick with your brand.
Pro Tip: Implement AI-powered inventory management to sync data across all sales channels. This ensures accurate stock levels and seamless fulfillment, whether customers are shopping online or in-store.
Embrace AI trends in your ecommerce store in 2025
AI makes it easier for brands to deliver a personalized and efficient shopping experience. From helping customers find products faster with visual search to automating support with conversational AI, there are plenty of opportunities for personalization.
The brands that adopt and refine these strategies now will be better positioned to meet customer expectations and stay ahead of the competition. Start by implementing conversational AI and later test some other AI trends like personalized suggestions.
Ready to see how AI can upgrade your brand? Book a demo to see AI Agent in action.
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TL;DR:
- CX reports help you track performance, trends, and team impact. They show how support efforts drive business goals, but manual reporting often buries key insights.
- Gorgias Dashboards can be customized with 70+ metrics. You can mix and match KPIs like automation rate, resolution time, and CSAT to create reports that fit your needs.
- You can add filters to drill down into key insights. Filter reports by tags, channels, ticket fields, agents, integrations, and more to uncover trends and make data-driven decisions.
- You can create up to 10 dashboards in Gorgias. Each dashboard can include up to 20 charts, helping you track multiple CX priorities in one place.
As a CX manager, your reporting is your strategic advantage. It's how you prove your team's value, identify emerging trends, and determine exactly what decisions to make.
But when creating those reports becomes time-consuming? That's when insights get buried.
With Gorgias Dashboards, you can build CX reports rooted in your business goals. Unlike standard reports, these customizable dashboards allow you to mix and match over 70 metrics and KPIs, so you can track progress on efforts like reducing your ticket backlog, boosting automation rate, and more.
In this post, we’ll tell you why CX reporting matters, how to set up Dashboards in Gorgias, and show you seven different ways to customize them based on your business needs.
7 Dashboard examples based on your goals
With 70+ charts and metrics to choose from, there are endless ways to style your dashboard. To make it easier for you, we’ve put together seven dashboards for specific use cases.
Setup 1: The performance overview dashboard
Let’s start with the basics. This is an all-in-one dashboard for a high-level overview of support and agent performance.
Recommended metrics to track:
- Average CSAT over time – Tracks CSAT trends and helps identify when and why satisfaction fluctuates.
- Agent performance (Closed tickets, CSAT, FRT, Ticket Handle Time) – Provides a comparative view of agent efficiency and effectiveness.
- Automation rate – Measures the percentage of interactions resolved without an agent.
- Resolution completeness rate – Ensures agents are fully addressing customer inquiries before closing tickets.
- Busiest times – Identifies peak support hours for better staffing decisions.
- Created vs. closed tickets – Helps track whether ticket volume is increasing, decreasing, or stabilizing.
- Support-driven revenue – Shows how CX efforts contribute directly to revenue.
- Overall time saved by agents – Quantifies the operational efficiency of automation and support workflows.
Setup 2: Recover from low CSAT
Trying to bump up your CSAT score? This dashboard will help you improve customer satisfaction by keeping metrics related to response time and customer sentiment in your line of sight.
Recommended metrics to track:
- Average CSAT – Track overall customer sentiment.
- CSAT over time – Identify trends in satisfaction scores.
- Resolution time – Assess the average time tickets are resolved.
- First response time – Ensure customers are getting quick responses.
- Messages per ticket – Analyze whether customers need to follow up multiple times to get an issue resolved.
- Comment highlights – Identify recurring customer complaints and positive feedback.
Make sure to add a filter for customer satisfaction scores of 1-2 stars to dig into the reasons for low scores. Go to Add Filter > Satisfaction score > check 1 and 2 stars, as shown below:
What to look out for:
- If CSAT drops when resolution times increase, implement low-lift fixes like automating your most asked questions with Flows.
- If messages per ticket are high, train agents on clearer communication to resolve issues in fewer touches. Macros are an excellent way to let agents send complete and on-brand replies.
- Take note of recurring topics found in both positive and negative customer comments. Use these insights to finetune your CX.
Setup 3: Catch up on your Chat tickets
Peak seasons are the ultimate test of how robust your customer support organizational structure is, and nowhere is it more obvious than in your chat tickets. Without well-trained agents and proper automations in place, it’s easy to drown. Here’s a dashboard to keep up with chat inquiries.
Recommended metrics to track:
- Open tickets – Track the number of unresolved chat tickets.
- Created vs. closed tickets – See if new tickets are outpacing resolutions.
- First response time – Identify delays in initial responses.
- Resolution time – Track how long it takes to close tickets.
- Busiest times – Understand when ticket volume is highest.
- Agent performance – Compare workload distribution amongst agents.
Don’t forget to toggle the filter for the chat channel by clicking Add Filter > Channel > Chat.
What to look out for:
- More open tickets than closed? Adjust your agent schedule or use conversational AI like AI Agent to automate up to 60% of your inquiries.
- Slow first response time? The average CX team has a first response time of 10 hours. Reduce response time by using AI and automation to quickly resolve common questions.
- Take note of the busiest times of the week to schedule agents accordingly.
Setup 4: Improve SLA compliance
Maybe you’re in this rut: You’ve established your SLAs (service level agreements), but your team is struggling to meet them. What now?
Go back to the data. With this SLA compliance dashboard, you can look at exactly how many tickets have breached or achieved SLAs while monitoring agent performance. This dashboard is ideal for brands that provide warranties and/or limited-time return windows.
Recommended metrics to track:
- Tickets with breached SLAs – Track service requests that exceed the SLA timeframe.
- Achieved and breached tickets – Compare SLA compliance over time.
- Ticket handle time – Measure how long agents spend on service-related tickets.
- Agent performance (Closed tickets, CSAT, FRT, Handle Time) – Identify service efficiency gaps.
- Busiest times – Understand peak service request periods to optimize scheduling.
You may find that breached SLAs are caused by certain topics (like refunds) or channels (like social media). Dive deeper by adding a filter for contact reason and channel. Click Add Filter > Contact Reason / Channel.
What to look out for:
- If SLA breaches increase, improve agent scheduling and automate follow-ups with AI Agent, Flows, and Macros.
- If certain agents have longer handle times, review training and escalation procedures.
- If the busiest times overlap with SLA breaches, reallocate staffing to high-volume periods.
Setup 5: Reduce refund & return requests
Constant returns and refund requests are issues you want to address immediately. Looking at return reasons per customer is inefficient. Instead, get the bigger picture with a dashboard that highlights customer sentiment and product data.
Recommended metrics to track:
- Ticket Fields - Top Used Values – Track the most common reasons for returns (e.g., “wrong size,” “poor quality,” “damaged on arrival”).
- Comment highlights – Identify patterns in customer complaints about product issues.
- Reviewed tickets – Ensure all return-related issues are properly reviewed and categorized.
- Resolution time – Track how long it takes to resolve return/refund tickets.
- Support-driven revenue – Assess whether support teams are turning return requests into exchanges or alternative purchases.
Pro Tip: This dashboard works best if you have a Ticket Field for Contact Reason and Return as a Contact Reason. Then you can add a filter for return-related tickets by clicking Add Filter > Contact Reasons > Return.
What to look out for:
- Pay close attention to your top return reason. This can help you improve product quality, packaging, shipping logistics, and policies.
- If CSAT is low for return-related tickets, update your return policies or consider giving customers in-store credit, exchanges, or discounts.
Related: 12 ways to upgrade your data and trend analysis with Ticket Fields
Setup 6: Monitor customer sentiment on product quality
From food and beverage to skincare brands, product quality is central to your success. Use this dashboard to keep an eye on how customers feel about your products, then use the data to implement changes customers actually want.
Recommended metrics to track:
- Ticket Fields - Top Used Values – Track commonly used feedback labels (e.g., “too salty,” “bland,” “packaging issue”).
- Trend - Evolution of top 10 used values – Monitor changes in product sentiment over time.
- Comment highlights – Identify trends in positive and negative feedback.
- Reviewed tickets – With our AI-powered quality assurance feature, Auto QA, ensure return-related tickets follow your brand’s policies.
- Satisfaction score – Understand how product issues impact CSAT.
You can analyze specific customer sentiments (like tickets that only say “too salty”) by applying a filter. For example, you would click Add Filter > Ticket Field Filters > Flavor > Too Salty.
What to look out for:
- Take note of your top used ticket value, so you can adjust your product formulation, packaging, etc.
- If you’ve made recent changes to your product, analyzing the trend of your top 10 used values is a great way to understand how customers feel about those changes.
- Improve your satisfaction score based on customer reviews.
Setup 7: Optimize social media support
More and more customers are using social media apps to shop — in fact, the global social commerce market is projected to grow by 31.6% each year through 2030. The best way to give browsers a good first impression of your brand is by prioritizing social media support.
Recommended metrics to track:
- Channel performance – Compare social media ticket volume to email and chat.
- Tickets with breached SLAs – Ensure fast responses on high-priority platforms.
- First response time (by channel) – Ensure social media inquiries receive timely responses.
- Conversion rates from live chat/helpdesk – Measure how well support influences sales.
- Top performers – First response time – Highlight the agents excelling in social engagement.
Don’t forget to apply a filter for your social media platforms by clicking Add Filter > Channel > Facebook / Instagram / TikTok Shop.
What to look out for:
- If first response times are longer for social media than email or chat, assign dedicated agents to your social media channels or use automated replies.
- Monitor tickets with breached SLAs on a weekly basis, and aim to reduce it with AI Agent.
- If you have more created tickets vs. closed tickets, consider posting more product education content and updating your self-service resources.
How to create a dashboard in Gorgias
You can create up to 10 dashboards. Here’s how to create a new dashboard:
- Go to Statistics > Dashboards.
- Click + (plus sign) > Create a new dashboard.
- Click Add Charts. Choose from 70+ charts. You may add a maximum of 20 charts in a dashboard.
- Looking for a specific trend? Click + Add Filter to focus on key data.
- Need to save your dashboard data? Click Actions > Download Data to export the report as a CSV file.
Try it for yourself with our interactive tutorial:
Make data-driven CX your competitive advantage
With Gorgias Dashboards, CX managers have full control over their reporting.
By tracking the right KPIs and customizing dashboards based on goals, your team can set the standard for flawless customer support.
Find out the power of custom dashboards in Gorgias. Book a demo now.
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Featured articles
Stop Chargebacks Before They Start: The Power of Fast Customer Support
TL;DR:
- Most chargebacks occur due to poor merchant communication rather than fraud. Customers choose this path when they feel ignored or frustrated.
- 80% of customers report never being contacted by merchants after filing a chargeback. 23% file immediately after an issue and 38% file within 1-3 days if unresolved.
- The most common chargeback reason is "product not received" (35%). 79% of all chargebacks are actually "friendly fraud" filed for invalid claims.
- Prevention requires fast customer support and automated chargeback management. Combining Gorgias for AI-powered support with Chargeflow for automated dispute management provides a comprehensive solution with faster resolutions and higher win rates.
Chargebacks are more than a thorn in a merchant’s side — they’re a growing financial and operational threat. According to Ethoca, chargebacks are projected to more than double, from $7.2 billion in 2019 to $15.3 billion by 2026 in the U.S. alone. And while fraud plays a role, the primary reason customers file chargebacks is simpler: they feel ignored.
At Chargeflow, we recently published a comprehensive report analyzing why customers dispute chargebacks. The findings were eye-opening. While it’s true that fraud is a real concern, most chargebacks happen for a different reason: a lack of communication between merchants and customers.
Top stats from Chargeflow’s report:
- 23% of customers file a chargeback immediately after an issue.
- 38% file a chargeback within 1-3 days if unresolved.
- 80% report never being contacted by the merchant.
- 52% are likely to dispute if the response is too slow.
When customers feel ignored or frustrated, they often turn to their bank for a solution instead of reaching out to the merchant first. Understanding these behaviors is key to preventing disputes before they escalate and cause chaos.
So, what actually drives customers to dispute charges? Here’s what the data says.
Why customers file chargebacks
While chargebacks are often the cost of doing business, the truth is that many disputes are preventable — but only if merchants understand the root causes. We identified five key drivers behind chargebacks.
1. Customers take immediate action
According to our research, most customers file a dispute right away after encountering an issue, leaving no opportunity to resolve the problem. Another 38% file within one to three days if they don’t receive a timely response.
Why? Customers assume the fastest way to get their money back is by filing a chargeback, especially if they receive no response from the merchant.
2. Lack of communication leads to disputes
We found that 80% of customers never receive a follow-up after filing a chargeback. Additionally, 64% of customers state immediate communication is crucial, yet many businesses fail to reach out.
- 90% of customers tried to reach out to the merchant first.
- If they don’t receive a response, they quickly file a dispute.
Why? Customers expect businesses to be proactive. When they don’t hear back quickly, they assume the merchant won’t help, making a chargeback seem like the best option.
3. Chargebacks are too easy for customers
98% of customers report a neutral to highly satisfactory experience when filing chargebacks, and only 12% are denied.
Why? Many customers believe chargebacks are faster and easier than dealing with merchants directly, especially if return policies are unclear.
4. Transaction issues drive chargebacks
The most common reason for filing a chargeback is “product not received” (35% of the cases). Other common reasons included:
- Fraudulent transaction claims - 16%
- Product significantly not as described - 15%
- Unauthorized transaction - 15%
Why? When customers don’t receive clear shipping updates or experience delivery delays, they assume their order won’t arrive and file a chargeback rather than waiting.
5. Friendly fraud is a major problem
Friendly fraud occurs when a cardholder makes a legitimate purchase but later disputes the charge as fraudulent or unauthorized, leading their card issuer to reverse the payment.
Our research found that:
- 21% of customers admitted to not fully understanding the chargeback process.
- Another 20% aren’t even aware of what a chargeback is.
- 97% of consumers believe they’ve never filed a chargeback incorrectly, while only 3% admit they have.
According to our State of Chargebacks report, 79% of chargebacks are actually friendly fraud, meaning they were filed for invalid reasons.
Why? Many customers mistakenly believe that a chargeback is just another way to request a refund, rather than a process intended for fraud or merchant failure.
📌 The takeaway: Most chargebacks aren’t actual fraud, but rather a result of customer confusion, impatience, or poor communication from merchants.
The solution: how to stop chargebacks before they happen
Merchants who want to stop chargebacks before they happen need a two-part strategy:
- Fast, customer-focused support to resolve issues before customers dispute charges.
- Automated chargeback management to detect and fight disputes efficiently, so merchants don’t lose revenue to invalid claims.
Chargebacks result from slow response times, poor communication, and unresolved issues, not fraud. Adopting AI-driven customer support and chargeback automation allows businesses to significantly reduce disputes and retain more revenue.
How AI-powered support & chargeback automation work together
Instant responses prevent frustration-driven chargebacks
Many chargebacks happen because customers don’t receive a fast enough response. In fact, 52% say they will dispute a charge if the response time is too slow. AI-powered chatbots provide real-time support, resolving issues before they escalate.
Proactive communication reduces uncertainty
Customers expect updates regarding orders and refunds, but often don’t receive them. 80% of customers report never hearing from a merchant after filing a chargeback.
Automated order updates, refund confirmations, and proactive notifications keep customers informed, reducing unnecessary disputes.
24/7 availability ensures no issues go unanswered
Customers expect round-the-clock support, but most businesses can’t provide live assistance. AI-powered ticketing and automation ensure every customer receives help, regardless of the time zone or urgency.
The result? Fewer chargebacks, faster resolutions, and increased customer satisfaction.
Actionable strategies for improving response times
Prioritize long-term clients
It’s impossible to please every customer. On average, chargebacks take 50 days to resolve successfully. Focus your energy on retaining high-value, long-term customers.
Prioritize high-risk inquiries
Lost inquiries take on average 15 days to resolve, and lost chargebacks take 38 days. Prioritize cases based on impact.
Build efficient escalation systems
Advanced automated ticketing systems can route inquiries and prioritize urgent cases.
Use pre-approved resolution templates
Ensure customer service teams have quick-response templates to speed their resolutions.
Work closely with shipping carriers
“Product not received” was the most cited reason for delivery-related chargebacks. Work closely with carriers and third-party suppliers to improve fulfillment and reduce disputes.
Leverage chargeback management tools
Use automated tools for real-time analytics, enhanced communication, and proactive alerts, which will reduce response times.
Gorgias & Chargeflow: A fully automated chargeback prevention system
Successfully tackling chargebacks requires both proactive customer support and automated dispute management. That’s why Gorgias and Chargeflow work so well together to give merchants a comprehensive defense against disputes.
Post-purchase automation isn’t just about reducing customer support workload or quick replies. It's about finding the most effective ways to increase customer loyalty and prevent disputes.
Learn more about how AI-driven automation enhances post-purchase experiences here.
How Gorgias prevents chargebacks with conversational AI
- Automated real-time responses engage customers before they decide to dispute charges.
- Proactive customer communication ensures customers receive updates on their orders, refunds, and transactions.
- 24/7 availability ensures customers receive the support they need without increasing overhead.
How Chargeflow automates chargeback prevention & recovery
- Pre-dispute alerts notify merchants before a chargeback is finalized and provide proactive intervention.
- AI-powered chargeback responses to automate evidence collection and improve win rates.
- Smart analytics to help merchants understand why disputes happen and how they can prevent them.
Final thoughts: Stop chargebacks before they start
As you know, chargebacks are costly, frustrating, but most importantly, preventable. Our research shows that most chargebacks don’t stem from fraud, but from poor communication, slow response times, and customer uncertainty.
By prioritizing fast, AI-driven customer support and automated chargeback management, merchants can resolve issues before they escalate, improve customer experience, and protect their revenue.
With Gorgias handling proactive customer support and Chargeflow managing chargeback disputes, merchants get a powerful, end-to-end prevention system that ensures fewer chargebacks, higher dispute win rates, and, at the end of the day, happier customers.
Don’t let chargebacks drain your revenue. Take control today with faster, smarter automation.
Download Chargeflow’s full Psychology of Chargebacks Report to dive deeper into the data and start preventing disputes before they happen.
9 Ways to Use AI to Personalize the Customer Journey
TL;DR:
- Use AI across both support and sales. Ecommerce brands are using AI to drive revenue and efficiency by combining automation in chat, email, and customer data with personalized product guidance and upsells.
- Analyze post-purchase surveys with AI to uncover customer insights. AI quickly identifies themes, sentiment, and trends from open-ended feedback to inform product, shipping, and support decisions.
- Predict customer intent with AI before they take action. By analyzing behavior like cart activity or page views, AI can engage high-intent shoppers with personalized nudges in real time.
- Automate QA and proactive support with AI. AI reviews 100% of conversations, flags quality issues, and triggers outreach for known problems — all before customers even ask.
Shoppers aren’t just open to AI — they’re starting to expect it.
According to IBM, 3 in 5 consumers want to use AI as they shop. And a McKinsey study found that 71% expect personalized experiences from the brands they buy from. When they don’t get that? Two-thirds say they’re frustrated.
But while most brands associate AI with support automation, its real power lies in something bigger: scaling personalization across the entire customer journey.
We’ll show you how to do that in this article.
AI for customer data
Before AI can personalize emails, recommend products, or answer support tickets, it needs one thing: good data.
That’s why one of the best places to start using AI isn’t in sales or support — but in enriching your customer data. With a deeper understanding of who your customers are, what they want, and how they behave, AI becomes a personalization engine across your entire business.
Enriching surveys with AI
Post-purchase surveys are gold mines for understanding customers — but digging through the data manually? Not so fun.
AI can help by analyzing survey responses at scale, identifying trends, and categorizing open-ended customer feedback into clear, actionable insights. Instead of skimming thousands of answers to spot what customers are saying about your shipping times, AI can surface those insights instantly — along with sentiment and behavior signals you might’ve missed.
Try this prompt when doing this: "Analyze 500 open-ended post-purchase survey responses. Identify the top 5 recurring themes, categorize customer sentiment (positive, neutral, negative), and surface any trends related to product quality, delivery experience, or customer support."
Predicting customer intent before they even say a word
One of AI’s biggest strengths? Spotting intent.
By analyzing things like page views, cart activity, scroll behavior, and previous purchases, AI can identify which shoppers are ready to buy, which ones are likely to churn, and which just need a little nudge to move forward.
This doesn’t just apply to email and retargeting. It also works on live chat, in real time.
Take TUSHY, for example.
To eliminate friction in the buying journey, TUSHY introduced AI Agent for Sales — a virtual assistant designed to guide shoppers toward the right product before they drop off.
Instead of letting potential customers bounce with unanswered questions, the AI Agent steps in to offer:
- Personalized product recommendations based on shopper questions
- Compatibility guidance (especially for customers unsure which bidet works with their toilet)
- Real-time installation tips and links to helpful how-to articles
With a growing product catalog, TUSHY realized first-time buyers were overwhelmed with options — and needed help choosing what would work best for their home and hygiene preferences.
“What amazed us most is that the AI Agent doesn’t just help customers choose the perfect bidet for their booty — it also provides measurement and fit guidance, high-level installation support, and even recommends all the necessary spare parts for skirted toilet installations. It’s ushering in a new era of customer service — one that’s immediate, informative, and confidence-boosting as people rethink their bathroom habits.”
—Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Sr. Director of Customer Experience at TUSHY
Forecasting revenue by segment
AI also helps you see the road ahead.
Instead of looking at retention and loyalty metrics in isolation, AI can help you forecast what’s likely to happen next and where to focus your attention.
By segmenting customers based on behaviors like average order value, order frequency, and churn risk, AI can identify revenue opportunities and weak spots before they impact your bottom line.
All you need is the right prompt. Here’s an example you can run using your own data in any AI tool:
Prompt: “Analyze my customer data to forecast revenue by segment. Break customers into at least three groups based on behavior patterns like average order value, purchase frequency, and churn risk.
For each segment, provide:
- A projected revenue trend for the next quarter
- A key insight about their behavior
- One actionable recommendation to either grow or retain revenue from that segment.”
Here’s what a result might look like:
- VIPs (Top 5% by LTV): Predicted 15% growth next quarter based on repeat behavior
- One-time Buyers: 70% churn risk flagged—time to trigger a win-back campaign
- Discount-Only Shoppers: Revenue likely to dip unless incentive strategy changes
Instead of flying blind, you’re making decisions with clarity — and backing them with data that scales.
AI for sales
When used strategically, AI becomes a proactive sales agent that can identify opportunities in real-time: recommending the right product to the right shopper at the right moment.
Here’s how ecommerce brands are using AI to drive revenue across every part of the funnel.
Dynamic pricing that responds to the market (and the shopper)
Your prices shouldn’t be static — especially when your competitors, inventory, and customer behavior are anything but.
AI-powered pricing tools like AI Agent for Sales help brands automatically adjust pricing based on shopper behavior. The goal is to make the right offer to the right customer.
For example:
- Show a discount to a price-sensitive shopper who’s hesitating at checkout
- Recommend premium add-ons to high-LTV customers who are more likely to spend
With dynamic pricing, you can protect your margins and boost conversions — without relying on blanket sales.
Turning chat into a personal shopper (that never sleeps)
AI-powered chat is no longer just a glorified FAQ. Today, it can act as a real-time shopping assistant — guiding customers, boosting conversions, and helping your team reclaim time.
That’s exactly what Pepper did with “Penelope,” their AI Agent built on Gorgias.
With a rapidly growing product catalog (22 new SKUs in 2024 alone), Pepper knew shoppers needed help discovering the right products. Customers often had questions about styles, materials, or sizing, and if they didn’t get answers right away, they’d abandon carts and move on.
Instead of hiring more agents to keep up, Pepper deployed Penelope to live chat and email.
Her job?
- Instantly answer questions about fit, fabric, or product differences
- Guide shoppers toward the best option for their needs
- Recommend complementary products (like matching panties or bottoms)
- Free up agents to focus on higher-value 1:1 moments, like virtual fit sessions
“With AI Agent, we’re not just putting information in our customer’s hands; we’re putting bras in their hands... We’re turning customer support from a cost center to a revenue generator.”
—Gabrielle McWhirter, CX Operations Lead at Pepper
Let’s look at how Penelope performs on the floor:
Real-time recommendations
A shopper asked about the difference between two wire-free bras. Penelope broke down the styles, support level, and fabric in plain language — then followed up with personalized suggestions based on the shopper’s preferences.
Proactive engagement
Using Gorgias Convert chat campaigns, Pepper triggers targeted messages to shoppers based on behavior. If someone is browsing white bras? Penelope jumps in and offers assistance, often leading to faster decisions and fewer abandoned carts.
Intelligent upsells
If a customer adds a swimsuit top to their cart, Penelope suggests matching bottoms. No full-screen popups, no awkward sales scripts — just thoughtful, helpful guidance.
Support and sales in one
Penelope also handles WISMO tickets and return inquiries. If a shopper is dealing with a sizing issue, Penelope walks them through the return process and links to Pepper’s Fit Guide to make sure the next purchase is spot on.
By implementing AI into chat, Pepper saw a 19% conversion rate from AI-assisted chats, an 18% uplift in AOV, and a 92.1% decrease in resolution time.
With Penelope handling repetitive and revenue-driving tasks, Pepper’s team now has more time to offer truly personalized touches — like virtual fit sessions that have turned refunds into exchanges and even upsells.
Curating bundles with AI-powered sales data
Bundling is a proven tactic for increasing AOV — but most brands still rely on subjective judgment calls or static reports to decide which products to group.
AI can take this a step further.
Instead of just looking at what’s bought together in the same cart, AI can analyze purchase sequences. For example, what people tend to buy as a follow-up 30 days after their first order. This gives you powerful clues into natural buying behavior and bundling opportunities you might’ve missed.
If you’re looking to explore this at scale, you can use anonymized sales data and feed it into AI tools to surface patterns in:
- Frequently bundled items
- Follow-up purchases within a set time frame
- High-value product pairings with repeat potential
Try this prompt:
"Analyze this spreadsheet of order data and identify product bundle opportunities. Look for: (1) products frequently purchased together in the same order, (2) items commonly bought as a second purchase within 30 days of the first, and (3) patterns in high-value or high-frequency product pairings. Provide insights on the most promising bundles and why they might work well together."
Just make sure you’re keeping customer data anonymous — and always double-check the insights with your team.
Related: Ecommerce product categorization: How to organize your products
AI for support
AI isn’t just here to deflect tickets. From quality assurance to proactive outreach, AI can elevate the entire support experience — on both sides of the conversation.
Quality checks powered by AI
Manual QA is slow, selective, and often feels like it’s chasing the wrong tickets.
That’s where Auto QA comes in. Instead of reviewing just a handful of conversations each week, Auto QA evaluates 100% of private messages, whether they’re handled by a human or an AI agent.
Every message is scored on key metrics like:
- Resolution completeness
- Brand voice
- Empathy and tone
- Accuracy
It gives support leaders a full picture of how their team is performing, so they can coach with clarity, not just gut feeling.
Here’s what brands can do with automated QA:
- Save time by focusing only on the conversations that need attention
- Ensure consistency across agents and AI with a single scoring standard
- Improve agent performance with targeted coaching and feedback
- Deliver higher-quality support that customers actually notice
Let’s walk through a real example.
Customer: “Hi, my device broke, and I bought it less than a month ago.”
Agent: “Hi Kelly, please send us a photo or a video so we can determine the issue with your device.”
Auto QA flags this interaction with:
- Communication Score: 3/5 — The agent was clear, but could have shown more empathy in tone.
- Resolution Score: Complete — The issue was addressed effectively.
Proactive support that reaches out first
Reactive support is table stakes. AI takes it a step further by anticipating issues before they happen — and proactively helping customers.
Let’s say login errors spike after a product update. AI detects the surge and automatically triggers an email to affected customers with a simple fix. No need for them to dig through help docs or wait on chat — support meets them right where they are.
Proactive AI can also be used for:
- Order delay notifications with live tracking updates
- Subscription renewal reminders
- Back-in-stock alerts with support follow-up for next steps
This saves the time of your agents because the AI will spot problems before they turn into tickets.
Understanding sentiment at scale
Your customers are telling you what they think. AI just helps you hear it more clearly.
By analyzing reviews, support tickets, post-purchase surveys, and social comments, AI can spot sentiment trends that might otherwise fly under the radar.
For example:
- Multiple reviews mention “runs small”? AI flags it, so your team can update the product description or add a sizing chart.
- A sudden rise in “frustrated” language in support tickets? Time to check if something’s off with your shipping or product quality.
Related: 12 ways to upgrade your data and trend analysis with Ticket Fields
Personalization at scale starts with the right AI stack
Whether you’re enriching customer data, making smarter product recommendations, triggering dynamic pricing, or proactively resolving support issues, AI gives your team the power to scale personalization without sacrificing quality.
With Gorgias, you can bring many of these use cases to life — from AI-powered chat that drives conversions to automated support that still feels human.
And with our app store, you can tap into additional AI tools for data enrichment, direct mail, bundling insights, and more.
Personalized ecommerce doesn’t have to mean more work. With the right AI tools in your corner, it means smarter work — and better results.
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Should Brands Disclose AI in Customer Interactions? A Guide for CX Leaders
TL;DR:
AI is everywhere in customer service—powering live chats, drafting responses, and handling inquiries faster than ever.
But as AI takes on more of the customer experience, one question keeps coming up: Should brands tell customers when they’re talking to AI?
Legally, the answer depends on where you operate. Ethically? That’s where things get interesting. Some argue that transparency builds trust. Others worry it might undermine confidence in support interactions.
So, what’s the right move?
This guide breaks down the debate and gives CX leaders a framework to decide when (and how) to disclose AI—so you can strike the right balance between innovation and trust.
The legal landscape: What are the disclosure requirements?
Depending on where your business operates, disclosure laws may be strict, vague, or nonexistent. Some laws, such as the California Bolstering Online Transparency Act, prohibit misleading consumers about the use of automated artificial identities.
For maximum legal protection, it’s best to proactively disclose AI use—even when not explicitly required.
A simple disclaimer can go a long way in avoiding legal headaches down the line. Here’s how to disclose AI use in customer interactions:
- In email: Use your email signature to indicate that AI has assisted in generating the response.
- In chat: Update your Privacy Policy to clarify when AI is involved in customer interactions.
Truthfully, AI laws are evolving fast. That’s why we recommend consulting legal counsel to ensure your disclosure practices align with the latest requirements in your region.
But beyond avoiding legal trouble, transparency around AI usage can reinforce customer trust. If customers feel deceived, they may question the reliability of your brand, even if the AI delivers great service.
Related reading: How AI Agent works & gathers data
How does disclosure impact trust and satisfaction?
Research shows that 85% of consumers want companies to share AI assurance practices before bringing AI-driven products and experiences to market.
But what does “transparency” actually mean in this context? An article in Forbes broke it down, explaining that customers expect three key things:
- Clear disclosure: They want to know when AI is (and isn’t) used in customer interactions.
- Simple, non-technical language: AI disclosures shouldn’t feel like reading a terms-of-service agreement. Keep it digestible.
- Easy-to-find information: AI disclosures should be visible—not buried in fine print. A chatbot notification, a banner on your site, or a brief message before an AI-powered chat begins can make a big difference.
How you disclose AI matters just as much as whether you disclose it. At the end of the day, AI isn’t inherently good or bad—it’s all about how it’s implemented and trained.
The business perspective: Risks and benefits of AI transparency
The way a brand approaches AI disclosure can impact trust, satisfaction, and even conversion rates—making it a decision that goes beyond simple legal requirements.
While some customers appreciate honesty, others may hesitate if they prefer human support. Brands must weigh the pros and cons to determine the best approach for their audience.
Risks of disclosure
Let’s be honest: AI in customer service still carries baggage. While some consumers embrace AI-driven support, others hear "AI" and immediately picture frustrating, robotic chatbots that can’t understand their questions.
This is one of the biggest risks of transparency: customers who’ve had bad AI experiences in the past may assume the worst and disengage the moment they realize they’re not speaking to a human.
For brands that thrive on personal connection and high-touch service, openly stating that AI is involved could create skepticism or drop-off rates before customers even give it a chance.
Another challenge? The perception gap.
Even if AI is handling inquiries smoothly, some customers may assume it lacks the empathy, nuance, or problem-solving skills of a live agent. Certain industries may find that transparency about AI use leads to more escalations, not fewer, simply because customers expect a human touch.
Benefits of disclosure
Despite the risks, transparency about AI can actually be a trust-building strategy when handled correctly.
Customers who value openness and ethical business practices tend to appreciate brands that don’t try to disguise AI as a human.
Being upfront also manages expectations. If a customer knows they’re speaking to AI, they’re less likely to feel misled or frustrated if they encounter a limitation. Instead of feeling like they were "tricked" into thinking they were talking to a human, they enter the conversation with the right mindset—often leading to higher satisfaction rates.
And then there’s the long-term brand impact.
If customers eventually realize (through phrasing, tone, or inconsistencies) that they weren’t speaking with a human when they thought they were, it can erode trust.
Deception—whether intentional or not—can backfire. Proactively disclosing AI use prevents backlash and reinforces credibility, especially as AI becomes a bigger part of the customer experience.
Example: How Arcade Belts used AI transparency without losing the human touch
Arcade Belts, known for its high-quality belts, wanted to improve efficiency without compromising customer experience. By implementing Gorgias Automate, they reduced their reliance on manual support, creating self-service flows to handle common inquiries.
Initially, automation helped manage routine questions, such as product recommendations and shipping policies. But when they integrated AI Agent, they cut their ticket volume in half.
The transition was so seamless that customers often couldn’t tell they were interacting with AI. “Getting tickets down to just a handful a day has been awesome,” shares Grant, Ecommerce Coordinator at Arcade Belts. ”A lot of times, I'll receive the response, ‘Wow, I didn't know that was AI.”
You can read more about how they’re using AI Agent here.
Decision-making framework: Should you disclose AI?
We mentioned it earlier, but deciding whether or not to disclose your use of AI in customer support depends on compliance, customer expectations, and business goals. That said, this four-part framework helps CX leaders evaluate the right approach for their brand:
Step 1: Assess legal requirements
Before making any decisions, ensure your brand is compliant with AI transparency regulations.
- Research regional laws governing AI disclosure, as requirements vary by jurisdiction.
- Consult legal counsel to confirm whether your AI usage falls under any mandated disclosure policies.
- Stay informed on evolving AI governance frameworks that could introduce new compliance obligations.
Step 2: Review customer expectations and brand positioning
AI transparency should align with your brand’s values and customer experience strategy.
- Consider whether transparency supports your brand’s messaging—does your audience expect openness, or do they prioritize seamless interactions?
- Analyze customer sentiment through surveys and engagement data to determine if they prefer knowing when they’re speaking with AI.
- Review past AI interactions to identify patterns in customer reactions and adjust your approach accordingly.
Step 3: Test both approaches and measure the impact on CSAT
Rather than making assumptions, run controlled tests to see how AI disclosure affects customer satisfaction.
- Conduct A/B tests comparing interactions with and without AI disclosure.
- Track key support metrics like response time, CSAT scores, and AI resolution rates to measure effectiveness.
- Experiment with different positioning strategies—does framing AI as a helpful assistant improve customer perception?
Step 4: Adjust based on customer feedback and industry trends
AI strategies shouldn’t be static. As customer preferences and AI capabilities evolve, brands should refine their approach accordingly.
- Regularly collect customer feedback to understand how AI disclosure impacts their experience.
- Monitor industry trends to see how competitors and market leaders are handling AI transparency.
- Stay flexible—if sentiment shifts, be ready to adjust your disclosure strategy to maintain trust and efficiency.
Best practices for AI disclosure (if you choose to disclose)
If you decide to be transparent about AI in customer interactions, how you communicate it is just as important as the disclosure itself. Let’s talk about how to get it right and make AI work with your customer experience, not against it.
First, make AI part of your brand voice
AI doesn’t have to sound like a corporate FAQ page. Giving it a personality that aligns with your brand makes interactions feel natural and engaging. Whether it’s playful, professional, or ultra-efficient, the way AI speaks should feel like a natural extension of your team, not an out-of-place add-on.
Instead of:
"I am an automated assistant. How may I assist you?"
Try something on-brand:
"Hey there! I’m your AI assistant, here to help—ask me anything!"
A small tweak in tone can make AI feel more human while still keeping transparency front and center.
Read more: AI tone of voice: Tips for on-brand customer communication
Clarify the AI’s role
One of the biggest mistakes brands make? Leaving customers guessing whether they’re speaking to AI or a human. That uncertainty leads to frustration and distrust.
Instead, be clear about what AI can and can’t do. If it’s handling routine questions, product recommendations, or order tracking, say so. If complex issues will be escalated to a human agent, let customers know upfront.
Framing matters. Instead of making AI sound like a replacement, position it as a helpful extension of your support team—one that speeds up resolutions, but hands off conversations when needed.
Blend human and AI seamlessly
Even the best AI has limits—and customers know it. Nothing is more frustrating than a bot endlessly looping through scripted responses when a customer just needs a real person to step in.
AI should be the first line of defense, but human agents should always be an option, especially for high-stakes or emotionally charged interactions.
A smooth handoff can sound like:
"Looks like this one needs a human touch! Connecting you with a support expert now."
Frame AI messaging positively
AI disclosure doesn’t have to feel like an apology. Instead of focusing on limitations, highlight the benefits AI brings to the experience:
- Faster responses
- 24/7 availability
- Instant answers to common questions
It’s the difference between:
"This is an AI agent. A human will follow up later."
vs.
"I’m your AI assistant! I can answer most questions instantly—but if you need extra help, I’ll connect you with a team member ASAP."
The right framing makes AI feel like an advantage, not a compromise.
Monitor customer feedback and adjust messaging
AI perception isn’t static. Regularly analyzing sentiment data and customer feedback can help refine AI messaging over time—whether that means adjusting tone, improving explanations, or updating how AI is introduced.
When you follow these best practices, AI can be a real gamechanger for your customer support. Just take it from Jonas Paul…
When AI is done right: Jonas Paul’s success story
Jonas Paul Eyewear, a direct-to-consumer brand specializing in kids' eyewear, needed a way to manage high volumes of tickets during the back-to-school season without overwhelming their customer care team.
To streamline these conversations, Jonas Paul implemented AI Agent to provide instant responses to FAQs. This allowed human agents to focus on more complex cases that required personalized attention.
“Being able to automate responses for things like prescription details and return policies has allowed us to focus more on the nuanced questions that require more time and care. It’s been a game changer for our team,” said Lynsay Schrader, Lab and Customer Service Senior Manager and Jonas Paul.
Jonas Paul saw a 96% decrease in First Response Time and a 2x ROI on Gorgias’s AI Agent with influenced revenue. You can dive in more here.
Make AI transparency work for you with AI Agent
Whether or not your brand chooses to disclose AI in customer interactions, the key is to ensure AI enhances the customer experience without compromising transparency, accuracy, or brand identity.
So how can you get started? Gorgias AI Agent was built with both effectiveness and transparency in mind.
For every interaction, AI Agent provides an internal note detailing:
- The Guidance, Articles, or Macros it referenced
- The source of any account information it used
- A prompt for your feedback to continually refine and improve responses
Excited to see how AI Agent can transform your brand? Book a demo.
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Further reading
7 new apps that integrate with Gorgias
Gorgias connects to over 70 leading ecommerce applications, giving you the power to centralize customer data in your helpdesk, perform support actions from a single place, and streamline your store’s toolkit.
This month, we launched 7 new integrations:
- LoyaltyLion
- Twitter (No longer supported in 2023)
- Call Hippo
- Shipup
- Tolstoy
- Autopilot
- Sentisum
- Yotpo (updates to our existing integration)
Read on to learn how you can use these tools to help manage your store, and visit the Gorgias App Store to activate them today!
1. LoyaltyLion
LoyaltyLion is a digital loyalty framework that gives ecommerce stores innovative ways to engage and retain customers. If you're using LoyaltyLion for your loyalty program, you can connect it to Gorgias to display information next to support tickets, and reward loyalty points using Macros.
2. Twitter
Note: Gorgias no longer supports Twitter. You can still use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp in Gorgias.
Give your support team the power to provide customer service to shoppers on Twitter, without having to log into another platform or share credentials with your social media manager. View past Twitter conversations, gain cross-channel message context, and customize your replies to provide exceptional customer support.
Note: This integration is currently only available for Enterprise plans. View pricing here.
3. Call Hippo
CallHippo allows startups and businesses to buy instant local support numbers from over 50+ countries around the world. With this integration, you can create tickets in Gorgias for phone calls and SMS conversations via Call Hippo.
4. ShipUp
Shipup follows your packages in real-time to create a seamless, transparent, and branded delivery experience. With the Gorgias integration, you can easily share shipping information with your support team, immediately notify them with a ticket in Gorgias when an incident occurs, and find customer information right next to conversations.
5. Tolstoy
Tolstoy is an interactive video platform, helping users create meaningful and personal conversations at scale. With this integration, Gorgias users can sync their Tolstoy videos and monitor every viewer interaction as a ticket, empowering support agents to engage without ever leaving the help desk.
6. Autopilot
Autopilot is a data and customer journey marketing platform designed for businesses who sell online. With this integration, you can now combine your Shopify and Gorgias data together seamlessly in Autopilot. You’ll not only have a single view of your customer, but you’ll be able to deliver a more personalized marketing experience and get glowing reviews from satisfied customers.
7. SentiSum
SentiSum is an automated ticket tagging engine powered by natural language processing technology. With this integration, SentiSum tags can auto-fill form fields directly in Gorgias. From there, you can implement additional automation that saves agent time and improves customer outcomes.
8. Yotpo
You can now receive Yotpo product reviews right in Gorgias and reply to them as tickets! This gives your agents visibility into how shoppers feel about your product and allows them to address concerns without ever leaving the helpdesk. Each ticket will include the review details (like score and product) and allow you to either reply publicly or privately, so you can customize the support experience.
To add these integrations and discover more, go to the Gorgias App Store.
Top 10 Integrations Used by Gorgias Ecommerce Merchants
Have you ever wondered how other leading ecommerce stores manage customer support, especially when they are using Gorgias? We love identifying these trends and wanted to see what integrations have been the most useful in our customers' ecommerce tech stacks so far.
In order to help you bring all your customer data in one place and offer truly exceptional, personalized support, here are the top 10 integrations being used by Gorgias customers:
- Email, specifically Gmail
- Gorgias Chat
- Facebook and Instagram
- SMS apps
- Klaviyo
- Recharge
- Phone, either our native solution or Aircall
- Yotpo
- Smile
- ChannelReply
1. Email, specifically Gmail
If you've been worried that email is becoming obsolete in the age of chat boxes and SMS support, don't be. Email is the leading support channel on Gorgias, used by 67% of customers.
This make sense. While faster, more instantaneous methods of communications are becoming common, email is still the primary channel to answer complicated support questions and send transactional messages like shipping updates, return logistics, and order/cancellation confirmations.
Of email integrations, Gmail is the leading provider with 59% of Gorgias customers having it active.
To learn more about our Gmail integration, click here.
2. Gorgias chat
Chat support is the second most common channel we see our merchants using, in order to offer real-time communication in addition to traditional emails or tickets. And thanks to our native chat integrations, it's easier than ever to launch a chat widget on your website.
57% of Gorgias merchants use our native chat integrations to offer real-time support.
This allows your shoppers to talk to an agent faster, but also presents a great opportunity to implement self-service options so they can help themselves. (Our Self-Service Chat Portal can help with that!)
3. Facebook and Instagram
Managing inquiries on social media and gaining insights into the conversations happening in those communities is te next priority for our merchants.
Over 50% of Gorgias brands are integrated with Facebook and/or Instagram.
Our Facebook integrations (which also includes Instagram) allows you to manage messages, comments, ad comments, and mentions as tickets in Gorgias. This gives your agents visibility into every conversation no matter where it happens, and empowers them to reply directly to shoppers without having to log into separate platforms or coordinate with your brand's social media team.
"The Gorgias-Facebook-Shopify integration is amazing. We've stopped hunting and matching Facebook users to customer accounts on Shopify. The information we need is surfaced so we can respond better and faster. Gorgias allows us to operate both ecommerce and social commerce business seamlessly." - Guita Gopalan, Chief Revenue Officer at Ellana
Nervous about the quantity of tickets that would be created from integrating social channels with Gorgias? Don't be. You can use Rules to filter out comments your team doesn't need to worry about (like comments that only consist of emojis), or even auto-assign tickets to specify agents/teams so no one has to triage the requests.
4. SMS apps
Text message marketing has become an incredible revenue generator for ecommerce brands, but it also opens another new communication channel with your customers: SMS.
In order to make the most of SMS as a marketing tool, you also need to be ready to support it when customers reply back with questions. That's where Gorgias comes in; we integrate with SMS apps to help you connect your agents with shoppers sooner and collect all customer conversations in one place.
Over 23% of Gorgias customers are integrated with an SMS tool.
The top SMS apps connected to Gorgias are:
- Attentive, used by 10% of merchants
- Postscript, used by 8% of merchants
- SMS Bump, used by 5% of merchants
"Working with Postscript and Gorgias gave us the leverage to keep customers close to deliver the best possible customer experience. It is super helpful to have a full view of the customer, all in one-spot." -Eli Weiss, Director of CX at OLIPOP
5. Klaviyo
The next app on our list will help you collaborate with your marketing team to create a best-in-class shopper experience, whether they are interacting with the support team or receiving the latest promotion.
Klaviyo is an email and SMS marketing app for businesses that sell online. Our integration connects the two platforms, allowing you to use the data to create better campaigns.
17% of Gorgias merchants are integrated with Klaviyo.
With this integration, you can push Gorgias events into Klaviyo for advances and customer-centric email segmenting.
For example, here are some of the ways we've seen customers use the two tools together:
- Promoting sales or new products to customers who had positive support experiences to drive upsell and revenue generation from support.
- Excluding customers with open support tickets from promotional messaging campaigns.
- Sending target coupons or discounts to win back customers who reported poor support experiences.
You can learn more about our Klaviyo integration or activate it here.
6. Recharge
The most common integration will help with subscription management, which is probably no surprise: Even with a great payment platform, subscription questions and transactions tend to result in a lot of support requests.
Recharge us a subscription and recurring payment platform for ecommerce sites, and helps you turn transactions into relationships.
15% of Gorgias merchants are integrated with Recharge.
Connect Gorgias and ReCharge for a simple way to manage customer subscriptions and customer service from one convenient location.
When you integrate Gorgias and Recharge, you can:
- Display ReCharge subscriptions next to support tickets in Gorgias, to gather full customer context before replying to questions.
- Cancel subscriptions, re-activate subscriptions, or refund a charge (either partially or totally) right from the Gorgias helpdesk.
- Embed ReCharge data in your Macro replies to automate the most common support questions.
Click here to learn more about our Recharge integration.
7. Phone, either our native solution or Aircall
It's clear that digital support is the first priority for most of our merchants, as seen by email, chat, and social media being the top three integrations on our list.
Sometimes it's nice to have a real conversation with your customers, however, which is why phone integrations are next.
12% of merchants offer phone support.
Many use our Aircall integration, which is great if you need the advanced feature a dedicated tool like Aircall provides. If you're just adding phones for the first time, we released a native phone integration this year that's helping merchants begin to offer voice support.
8. Yotpo
Beyond answering customer questions, your support team may want to engage with reviews from shoppers in order to address issues, win back unhappy customers, and interact with your biggest fans!
Yotpo, a platform for ecommerce marketing and reviews, is great for this.
Over 8% of Gorgias merchants have activated our Yotpo integration.
The integration allows you to:
- Display customer's Yotpo data un Gorgias customer Activity Sidebar such as loyalty points, provided ratings, latest reviews, etc.
- Manage customer loyalty plans (change point balance, assign VIP tier, honor redemptions, and send rewards) from the Gorgias sidebar.
- Respond to a question with an answer either publicly or privately as new tickets.
- Moderate customer reviews (product and site) and questions from within Gorgias as new tickets.
- Request reviews from a customer.
Click here to learn more about our Yotpo integration and activate it.
9. Smile
No one knows your shoppers quite like your support team, which makes an integration with a loyalty app a natural fit! Smile.io is a favorite of Gorgias merchants, which helps you manage a reward program and build strong relationships with your newest and most loyal customers.
6% of Gorgias merchants integrate with Smile.io.
With this integration, you'll be able to see customer loyalty information right next to tickets in Gorgias, so every agent knows when they are talking to a new customer or one of your VIPs! You can also use this information to help triage tickets or separate ticket views by loyalty status (which is great for managing different levels of support SLAs).
To learn more about our integration with Smile.io and activate it for your account, click here.
10. ChannelReply
If your shop sells on public marketplaces beyond your own Shopify store, the final app on our list is a must. ChannelReply helps you manage messages from Amazon, eBay, and Walmart.
With our integration, you can then manage all those messages right from your helpdesk, eliminating the need for your agents to open different browser tabs for each platform.
Over 5% of Gorgias merchants use the ChannelReply integrations.
To learn more about ChannelReply and activate the integration for your account, click here.
And there you have it: The top 10 integrations with Gorgias in 2021! We hope this helps inspire you how you can use your helpdesk to offer exceptional, conceptual support and how to streamline the tools your store uses everyday to grow your business.
To get more ecommerce tool suggestions, check out our list of 150+ great tools. And to view all integrations with our platform, visit the Gorgias App Store.
12 New Apps That Integrates With Gorgias
Gorgias connects to over 65 leading ecommerce applications, giving you the power to centralize customer data in your helpdesk, perform support actions from a single place, and streamline your store’s toolkit.
This month, we launched 12 new integrations:
- SMS Live
- Checkout Champ
- CallHippo
- Konnektive
- TXTFi
- Shopney
- ReturnLogic
- Stateset
- Gatsby
- Trustpilot
- ShipBob
- AfterShip
Read on to learn how you can use these tools to help manage your store, and visit the Gorgias App Store to activate them today!
1. SMS Live
SMS Live is an SMS texting app for Shopify and Shopify Plus. When you add this integration, you’ll see customer information from SMS Live in the Gorgias sidebar, so your agents don’t have to switch between the two applications. You’ll also be able to respond to SMS messages within the Gorgias helpdesk or switch those conversations to a different channel, such as email or phone.
2. Checkout Champ
Checkout Champ simplifies the checkout process and makes it easy to charge for subscription services or one-click upsells. With the Gorgias integration, you can manage all of your customer interactions to include refunds, fulfillment tracking, purchase alterations, and all messaging and tickets.
3. Konnektive
Konnektive is a cloud-based CRM and order management solution that helps optimize, centralize, and automate ecommerce business processes. With this integration, you can display order information right next to tickets in Gorgias and update customer information between the two platforms. It automatically comes with 10 pre-built Macros, to help you get started right away!
4. TXTFi
TXTFi allows brands to leverage purchasing through SMS and ensures side-by-side customer support to communicate with customers in real time. With this integration, you can manage SMS conversations from TXTFi as tickets in Gorgias in order to quickly connect your shoppers with a live agent.
5. Shopney
Shopney is a mobile app builder for Shopify and Shopify Plus that lets you build an app for your store in just one day. With this integration, the conversations that happen through Shopney’s in-app live chat can be managed in the Gorgias helpdesk for a streamlined experience for your agents.
6. ReturnLogic
ReturnLogic helps D2C brands give their customers an easy returns process while automating workflows for their customer service and warehouse teams. With the Gorgias integration, you can embed the Gorgias Chat Box right on the ReturnLogic portal, giving shoppers another opportunity to make their return, exchange, or warranty process as smooth as possible. You can also manage these chat conversations in Gorgias and populate ReturnLogic data into Gorgias tickets.
7. Stateset
Stateset is your single source of truth for managing your online business and automating your commerce operations. The Stateset AI Responder app uses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and robotic process automation to quickly and accurately build data-driven responses ready for your customer service team to approve. When you connect the Gorgias integration, you can start generating intelligent and dynamic responses directly from Gorgias or from within Shopify.
8. Gatsby
See Instagram insights when responding to tickets, track Instagram mentions and engagement for your brand, and automate valuable influencer workflows all in Gorgias.
With the Gorgias and Gatsby integration, you can now identify when influential customers are reaching out for support and take that into account when prioritizing tickets, asking them to share positive support experiences and more.
9. Trustpilot Reviews
Trustpilot Reviews is a customer review platform. With the Gorgias integration, you can streamline review responses with machine learning and AI. Trustpilot Review data is displayed in the Gorgias Customer Sidebar, ready to be leveraged by agents to reward happy customers and help recover customers at risk of churn.
10. ShipBob
ShipBob is an ecommerce fulfillment solution for online brands. With the Gorgias integration, you can sync customer and order information associated with a specific ShipBob account into the corresponding Gorgias account. You can also display data from ShipBob in the Customer Sidebar, and use that data in Gorgias Macros to automate responses to common claims.
11. AfterShip
AfterShip is an automated shipment tracking platform for e-commerce businesses. With the Gorgias integration, you can sync and display all customer shipment tracking data in the Customer Sidebar, allowing your agents to quickly answer questions without switching applications.
To add these integrations and discover more, go to the Gorgias App Store.
10 Rules to Help You Efficiently Manage Instagram Interactions on Gorgias
Instagram is really the perfect social channel for Ecommerce brands. You can show off your products, share user-generated content, and engage with your community to build brand loyalty.
All that engagement is great, except it adds a task to your plate that quickly multiplies as your brand grows: You have to interact back. Or at least you should, if you want to capitalize on all that engagement!
Sometimes your marketing team or social media manager will handle Instagram replies, but sooner or later you’ll start to get the “Where is my order?” (or “WISMO”) question from shoppers, regardless of the content being shared. This can result in an inefficient workflow between social and support teams to communicate the question, track down an order status, and get a reply back to the customer.
That’s why Gorgias integrates directly with Instagram (and other social media platforms), to streamline the management and interaction with top-level comments, ad comments, private messages, and replies. Instead of going back and forth between your Ecommerce platform, the social team, and the support team, you can empower your agents to reply quickly and accurately to any question that comes in, thanks to over 50+ integrations with the leading Ecommerce apps. (So all the context they need will be in one single browser tab!)
You could even have your marketing team or social media manager help create Macros, so your support agents can use templated (and on brand) messages that speed up their replies. Getting everything centralized in a single place is the first step to providing excellent social support for your store. The next is to start automating replies to common engagements, so you can free up your agents to focus on more important conversations instead of saying “Thanks for the mention!” for the hundredth time.
To help your store start managing Instagram support more efficiently, I’ve collected a list of Rules that Gorgias customers are using to engage with their shoppers, resolve questions faster, and keep their agents focused on the most important conversations.
Here are 10 Rule ideas for more efficient Instagram support:
- Auto-close tickets from giveaway posts
- Auto-close all Instagram tickets
- Auto-tag all Instagram interactions
- Auto-tag likely buyers & create a specialized view
- Auto-tag interactions from influencers for VIP support
- Auto-tag public comments vs private messages
- Auto-tag Instagram tickets with questions
- Auto-close Instagram tickets the don’t mention support or order status
- Auto-tag negative comments
- Auto-assign Instagram tickets to an agent or team
1. Auto-close tickets from giveaway posts
Giveaway posts are great for brand awareness, but can also result in a large increase in tickets in your help desk. To stop this from ever becoming a problem, you can set up a Rule to auto-close tickets generated from giveaway posts, based on the message content.
In this example, we’re auto-closing tickets without the words “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” and “how,” in order to avoid accidentally closing an actual question that your team might want to respond to. You could also customize this to close tickets that include a specific word or phrase, based on the criteria of the giveaway. I recommend working closely with your social media manager whenever a new promotion starts, to make sure your helpdesk is set up to triage tickets accordingly.
2. Auto-close all Instagram tickets
If you want to see Instagram engagements in a contact’s message history, but not necessarily respond to them from Gorgias yet, you can auto-close any ticket generated from Instagram, that way it doesn’t fill up the open queue.
By doing this, your agents will have the full cross-channel message history when interacting with a shopper, so they can customize the conversation and know exactly what they’ve asked in the past.
3. Auto-tag all Instagram interactions
Tagging tickets in Gorgias is a great way to measure channel statistics and create customized Views. While your agents will always have the option to manually add tags, you can create a Rule to do the tagging automatically, that way it’s one less step in their workflow.
Then when you go to Statistics > Tags, you’ll be able to see how many tickets are generated from Instagram during a given period, and what percentage that is of all the tickets you receive.
Pro-tip: If you haven’t started managing Instagram tickets in Gorgias yet because you’re not sure what exactly the ticket volume would be, you can Auto-tag and Auto-close tickets in order to see the stats without conversations counting toward your plan’s ticket count yet.
4. Auto-tag potential shoppers & create a specialized view
Prioritize the messages and comments from those most likely to purchase. By detecting message sentiment and filtering by common phrases, you can automatically tag tickets with a high purchase intent, allowing your agents to answer questions quickly or send along a discount code to speed up the purchase.
Once you’ve set up the Rule, you can create a View to filter tickets that only contain this tag, that way your agents can easily see right in the left-hand sidebar whenever there’s a ticket from Instagram from a likely lead!
5. Auto-tag interactions from influencers for VIP support
If you work with influencers, it’s critical to reply to them right away to maximize the impact of their community. To make sure your team never misses an opportunity, you can auto-tag tickets created from the partners you’re working with based on their email address.
Once the Rule is auto-tagging these tickets, you can also create a view to segment these messages from the others. Depending on how many partners and influencers your brand manages at a time, it may be helpful to set up one View per influencer (in which case you’d want to use separate tags), or group them all together in an “Influencers” section.
6. Auto-tag public comments vs private messages
Whenever you reply to a ticket in Gorgias, you’ll see a small icon next to the customer’s name that signals what channel you’re replying on. If you want some extra assurance that your reps are only replying with personal details in private channels however (such as Instagram messages) you can automatically add tags to designate “public” vs “private,” so everyone can see right at the top of the ticket which type of communication it is.
7. Auto-tag Instagram tickets with questions
Prioritize interactions that are asking your brand something, instead of just commenting with emojis. If your brand receives a lot of engagement, this can help you filter out what needs to be addressed and what can likely just be closed out (or handled by the social team).
8. Auto-close Instagram tickets the don’t mention support or order status
If your support team is only interested in responding to the Instagram tickets that specifically mention customer service, you can auto-close everything else (and assume the brand team will take care of it). To do this, create a rule that closes tickets that do not include phrases like “order” “status” “support” or “customer service.”
9. Auto-tag negative interactions
Escalate the tickets that have negative intent to get them a response faster. You can add keywords (or emojis) and use our sentiment detection to auto-tag negative comments, so your agents see right away what kind of ticket they’re opening.
10. Auto-assign Instagram tickets to an agent or team
If you have a specific person who handles social media, whether that’s an agent or the social media manager, you can automatically assign tickets created via that channel to them, so those tickets never get routed to the rest of your team.
I hope these 10 Rules help you engage with your shoppers, resolve questions faster, and keep your agents focused on the most important conversations. If you haven’t connected your Gorgias account to Instagram yet, follow this guide to get started.
Alternatively, keep reading about social media for customer service, or check out our list of the best social media integrations for your Shopify store.
New integration: Manage Instagram messages from Gorgias
If your store leverages Instagram to drive sales, you know it’s important to engage with every member of your community whether they’re commenting on your posts, engaging with your Story, or sending you a message.
Over 4,000 teams on Gorgias have been using our Instagram integration to respond to (or automate responses to) mentions, comments, and ad comments. Earlier this summer, some customers were able to also start receiving and responding to Instagram messages (but it was limited to accounts with between 1,000-100,000 followers).
Today, we’re excited to share that there’s no longer a follower requirement to use Instagram messaging!
Every Gorgias customer (with a non-legacy plan) can manage Instagram messages (including Story mentions) directly from your helpdesk, allowing you to engage with your shoppers quickly and efficiently so you never miss a conversation.
Plus you’ll also be able to reply to comments with a message, giving your team the option to turn a public conversation into a 1-1 chat.
Customers who were able to start using this feature early have already replied to over 300,000 messages and Story mentions. In fact, about 2% of tickets in Gorgias are Instagram messages!
It’s clear our customers love using Instagram to engage with their communities and drive sales, which is why we’re so excited to open this channel up for all of our merchants regardless of their follower count.
Related: Our list of the best social media apps for Shopify.
To get started, you’ll need to make sure you have the "Allow Access to Messages" setting active in Instagram.
You can do this In Instagram Business Messenger by going to Settings → Privacy → Messages and setting the toggle to active.
Once that’s done, go to the Integrations tab in your Gorgias helpdesk and select “Facebook, Messenger & Instagram.”
Click the green “Reconnect” button to refresh your settings, and then you’ll be able to enable “Instagram Direct Messages” in the checkboxes.
This will connect Messages and Story mentions to Gorgias, allowing you to reply directly from the helpdesk and see previous conversation history (so your agents have all the information they need right in one place).
The following video will show you how to get started, along with some common troubleshooting tips.
If you’re managing a lot of customer support conversations on Instagram, it may be helpful to set up views for each type of interaction. For example, you could have a view for Instagram comments, another for Instagram Messages, and a third for Instagram ad comments.
You can also use Rules and Macros in Gorgias to reply even faster (or automate conversations entirely!) in order to free up your agents to focus on more important conversations.
Here are a few ideas to get you started!
1. Create a Macro sending a message to say “Thanks for the mention!”
If you have customers that love to tag your brand or products in their own posts, an easy way to continue building brand loyalty is to send a quick “thank you.” To save your agents time, you can create a Macro they can re-use anytime you get a Message that you’ve been mentioned in someone’s story or post.
2. Adding tags to track Instagram Story mentions
If you want to track how often your brand is mentioned in Instagram Stories, you can tag tickets that come in from the Messages channel with “Mentioned you” in the message body.
By creating a Rule to do this, you can automate this process so it doesn’t add any extra time or steps into your agents workflow, but gives you powerful insights.
3. Creating a Rule to auto-reply to Instagram messages outside of business hours
If you don’t want to reply to messages 24/7, it may be helpful to create an auto-response to set some expectations outside of your business hours.
You can easily do this with a Rule, and even encourage your followers to go somewhere else in the meantime, such as your website, a specific landing page, or even a partner account!
Hopefully this gives you some inspiration on how you can start using Gorgias to engage with your Instagram community without increasing the workload on your support agents. And if you're interested in messaging customers directly, check out our social media and SMS features. With social media for customer service, you can interact with customers on platforms like Instagram or Facebook. And with SMS for customer service, you can enable texting for your most on-the-go customers.
Related: Lean how Gorgias customer Berkey Filters launched SMS and drove incredible customer adoption to this new, faster channel.
To start simplifying management of your messages, comments, and mentions, get started with Gorgias and add the Instagram integration today!
It’s Official: Gorgias is Now SOC 2 Type II Certified
When you use Gorgias, we know that you’re putting your trust in us. That’s why we hold our commitment to your security as our highest priority and safeguard your data with full transparency. Our security policy contains penetration testing, incident response plan, data lifecycle, comprehensive system status live report, and more.
We're thrilled to share that Gorgias is Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 compliant for Type 2. This achievement follows our numerous investments in platform security over the years as part of our goals to secure customer data.
An independent auditor conducted a thorough audit of our servers, systems, and products over six months. They verified that our information security practices, policies, procedures, and operations meet the thorough SOC 2 standards for security.
2022 update: We're happy to share that we renewed our SOC 2 Type 2 certification to continue protecting our customer data.
This industry-wide recognition serves as our reassurance that your data is managed in a controlled and audited environment.
What is SOC 2 Type II Compliance?
Developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), SOC 2 defines criteria for evaluating how well a company manages customer data and ensuring a set of security controls are in place. A SOC 2 report is unique to each organization because it’s in line with specific business practices.
There are two types of SOC 2 reports: Type I and Type II. Type I checks if a system can handle issues like data breaches. Meanwhile, Type II examines how the system works and how effective it is to protect data against security threats.
What Does Our SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance Mean for You?
Our completion of the SOC 2 Type II audit is our testament to the fact that we always prioritize your data security and privacy. We appreciate your trust in us and strive to strengthen this trust in the long term.
You can be sure that:
- The data you share with Gorgias meets the AICPA standards for security. That goes for your personal information, ticket inquiries, customer data, and the like.
- Your data is protected with procedures and controls to assess, minimize, and eliminate risks and vulnerabilities.
- We always conduct ongoing monitoring of features and processes across our platform to maintain security.
What’s Next?
We hope our successful SOC 2 Type 2 helps you rest easy knowing that your data in Gorgias is secure. But this update is only the latest milestone in delivering our commitment. We’re continuing to improve our security control and data privacy practices for all merchants. To learn more about our security policies, visit our security page or contact us at support@gorgias.com.
Increase Retention and Reward Your Super Fans with Yotpo + Gorgias
With visibility into product reviews right in the Yotpo widget in Gorgias, your support agents will know right away if they're talking to someone who didn't love their last product, or someone who is a big fan of your brand. This knowledge will help you customize the conversation for the best experience possible.
"At OLIPOP, we’re always looking to have a holistic view of the customer to be able to offer the best possible experience. Having the ability to see their most recent reviews within the Gorgias platform is a total game-changer. " - OLIPOP, Director of Customer Experience, Eli Weiss
How to make the most of this integration
You can use Gorgias macros to quickly respond to customers that leave 5-star reviews to build brand loyalty. You can also create macros for customers who leave negative reviews to ensure their concerns are properly addressed, and send them a discount code to help rebuild trust!
By looking at the shopper's review history, your support agents can also quickly shift from just offering customer service to acting as members of the sales team. They can recommend products that are either similar to something the customer previously loved, or different than something they had a bad experience with.
"Gorgias clearly understands the needs of customer service agents, and with this new feature is working towards making all the day-to-day tools accessible from one tab, making work even more agile and with less distractions. We're particularly excited about the ability to understand customer sentiment from the get go, and how we can better approach our users based on the feelings they have shared about their past TUSHY purchases. If we see they are a super fan, we can go heavy on the butt puns, but if they've had a less than stellar experience we will aim to make up for it in our subsequent conversations, and even address things they don't directly mention! We're excited to see how this feature will help us deepen our genuine human connections. " - TUSHY, Director of Customer Experience, Ren Fuller-Wasserman
How to Write the Perfect Answer to Social Comments
So, how can you write the perfect answer to social media comments?
An answer that addresses the customer’s issue while upholding your brand?
Ecommerce companies are tasked with maintaining this balance every day. (Particularly companies that spend a lot on social media ads.) These brands are inundated with comments on their promoted content from happy customers, unhappy customers, prospective customers, and social media trolls.
In this post, we explore the depths of using social media for customer service.
Read on for tips and plenty of examples.
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Spending a lot on Facebook ads? (You need great social media customer service)
If you spend a lot of money on Facebook and Instagram ads, you’ll undoubtedly get dozens of comments per day. You can’t afford to ignore them.
Why your responses to comments matter
Responding to social media comments on your ecommerce posts and ads is critical.
74% of consumers rely on social media to help them make purchasing decisions. 71% are more likely to make a purchase based on a social media referral.
While the design and copy of your posts and ads are important, the comment section has equal swaying power.
Potential customers scope out the comments in an ad from an ecommerce company. They’ll read the positive comments, the negative comments, and how your company replies to both.
An amazing customer endorsement can fall flat if your brand didn’t comment with a grateful reply and simply ignored your raving fan.
Meanwhile, a customer complaint can have a less disastrous impact on a shopper’s purchasing decision if you reply and seek resolution with the customer.
How to excel at social commerce
Social commerce is a booming trend. TikTok is building out Shopify shopping capabilities in the app. Meanwhile, Facebook is also adding a Shopify pay button, and the social media platform already allows small ecommerce businesses to run a shop directly from their business page.
These social commerce developments are designed to keep consumers in the social media app, to the benefit of both parties (the social platform and the ecommerce business).
Consumers can be converted to paying customers without having to leave the app. This reduces the required steps to making a purchase, and increases conversions.
By responding to social media comments like a pro, your ecommerce company can also capture this social commerce trend. You’ll reduce the need for customers to go and read reviews elsewhere. They can get answers to their questions right in the social media channel. They can read the answers that your team has already written to other commenters.
By reducing the review-hunting step, you can increase conversions. Customers that have read comment threads can feel comfortable making a purchase immediately.
Related: Our list of the best social media integrations for Shopify.
Top ways that customers engage with your posts and ads
31% of consumers say that they use social media like Twitter and Instagram primarily to browse products. Consumers are accustomed to being shown products through organic posts and paid media.
They feel comfortable giving their opinion and speaking directly with a brand.
The top ways that customers engage with posts and ads are product endorsements, negative reviews, customer support complaints, and product questions.
Here’s an example of a customer commenting on a social media ad with a favorable opinion of the product:
These sorts of comments can have a huge impact on your conversions. While it’s hard to measure the exact impact, you might find that ads with a lot of positive comments perform better than new ads or ads with fewer comments.
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Why customers reach out through social media platforms
Today, social media is one of the most important customer service channels.
But some ecommerce companies are hesitant to spend too much time providing social media customer service. The management of the company might feel frustrated by the expectation to respond there, rather than through their customer support software.
If someone at your company is advocating against allocating support time to social media comments, ask them to consider customers’ needs.
Ultimately, the most successful ecommerce businesses get as close to their customers as possible. They listen to feedback and open up lines of communication on customers’ terms.
Customers leave important comments on your social media posts and ads because:
- It fits with their user flow - Consumers don’t want to have to leave their favorite social media app to find where else to communicate with you.
- They have come to expect a response - Because so many ecommerce brands excel at social media customer service, consumers expect all brands to respond to their comments.
- They want to feel like they have direct access to your brand - This goes beyond just getting a response. Customers want to feel heard and seen by your brand. They want to know that you offer true customer care, not just basic service.
If after empathizing with customers, someone at your company still doesn’t see the need to invest in customer service on social media channels, the following statistic might help...
A whopping 83% of global consumers expect a response time of 24 hours or sooner.
That stat alone could be the ammunition you need to get your company on board with allocating time towards social media responses.
Related: Our guide to offering great customer service via Facebook Messenger.
Social media customer service strategy
What’s the strategy behind social media customer service?
It comes down to two key things:
- Increasing customer satisfaction
- Converting new customers
Let’s take a look at how to excel at both:
How to increase customer satisfaction
The comments section of your social media posts and ads offers an amazing opportunity to strengthen customer retention.
You might be able to discover:
- Ways to improve your products
- Ways to bundle your products, update your pricing model, offer subscriptions, etc.
- Potential brand ambassadors
- Potential user generated content creators
- Widespread product issues warranting refunds or recalls
- Copy or design ideas to attract more customers with new ads
- Product testimonials to include in ads or landing pages
- Ways to increase clarity in your website pages regarding what’s included with a product, where to locate information, etc.
There are so many incredibly valuable things you can get out of reading and responding to your social media comments, so don’t think of this as just a burden.
For example, in this comment thread, a customer points out the difficulty of finding information for an art subscription box. The social media manager politely accepts the feedback and promises to talk to the team about fixing the issue.
The company not only assists the customer hunting for the information, but also proactively fixes the issue so that other customers don’t experience the same confusion.
You can also drive brand loyalty by engaging with your biggest fans. For example, if a customer often posts positive review comments on your ads, you might thank them with a free gift.
Use social media to drive deeper relationships with your existing customers. Listen to them, heed their guidance, and find ways to thank those who go out of their way to support your business.
How to drive new customers
Use social media comments to convert new customers? Yes, it really is possible.
Here are the key ways to grow your customer base through social media comments:
- Respond to customer issues helpfully - It’s important that you reply politely and helpfully to your current customers. Prospective customers will be paying attention to how you resolve issues. If you don’t respond or respond in a rude or unhelpful way, prospective customers might not purchase from you.
- Respond to prospective customers’ questions - You also need to quickly respond to prospective customers questions. They might ask for help with purchasing the right product or they might have questions about what’s included with the product.
- Uplift positive comments - You should also respond to very positive comments about your products or company. This shows potential customers that you care about your current customers and that you appreciate the time and effort they put into saying something kind about your brand. For example, you might write something like “Thanks so much for letting us know. We’re so happy you love it.”
Here’s an example of a smart way to convert commenters into customers. The commenter is asking for help choosing the right foundation color, and the social media manager responds with the link to take their quiz.
The company has wisely signed up for Bitly’s paid plan to offer easy-to-remember short links in their responses on social networks.
The comment got 31 likes. So, not only did the original commenter get access to the link, but many others saw the response as well. You can use social media customer support to drive traffic to your important website pages.
The Bitly link redirects to a quiz. After submitting all of the quiz answers, the user needs to offer up their email address to get their results.
IL Makiage is wisely using social media comments as a way to grow their email list and offer exact product recommendations.
The most common social comments (with example answers from ecommerce companies)
How should your team members respond to social media comments? Across all of your social profiles, and especially where you run ads, you might run into the following types of comments.
Read on for example comments and effective customer service responses.
Shopper concerns and questions
One of the most common types of social media customer care required is simply answering questions and concerns. Potential customers will ask questions in social media comments about products of yours that they haven’t tried yet.
In this example, a customer asks about whether a foundation will be so heavy that it will cover her characteristic freckles. The social media manager offers an excellent response by sharing that the coverage is buildable.
In this example, a social media manager assures the potential customer that the product won’t exacerbate acne.
Note that the response quells concerns by sharing specific product details (oil-free and water-based).
Similarly, the customer service team member or social media manager handles a question with the opposite concern. One commenter worries about how the product will affect dry skin. The response features specific product details to address the issue (hyaluronic acid and vitamin E).
Details are the best way to address customer concerns. Just take a look at this example with features a very thorough response about the number guards included in a beard trimmer.
Customer questions
Your paying customers might ask questions as well. This is your chance to drum up excitement with current customers, engage with them on an emotional level, and show that you’re here to provide excellent customer service, even on social media.
In this example, a customer asks about whether or not the ad is featuring the next month’s art subscription box.
By answering with an upbeat tone, the social media manager gets the customer and other people reading the comment excited to receive the subscription box.
Customer endorsements
You’ll also receive customer endorsements and positive reviews in the comments section of your social media ads.
If you get an enthusiastic comment, don’t let it go unnoticed. You should reply to all of the detailed comment reviews you receive from customers.
Check out this example. The social media manager makes it clear that they are ready to offer excellent customer service if needed.
When reading this response, prospective customers can see that the company cares about their results and is available to happy to provide customer service solutions.
This can increase potential customers’ likelihood of purchasing from you.
Customer complaints
Of course, you’re likely to receive customer complaints as well.
You might get negative reviews about the delivery date, the cost of returns, or even the product itself.
Check out this example response, which deftly handles a negative review.
When customer support shouldn’t respond
Social media monitoring is critical. But that doesn’t mean you have to respond to every comment written across your entire social media presence.
If you respond to certain comments, it could come off as creepy.
For example, social media users will often tag each other in the comments sections of ads they find intriguing or humorous. They might recommend one of your products to a friend.
In this case, they are not expecting the social media manager or customer support team to respond to them. They are expecting a response from their friend.
If someone from your company responds and says something like “You should buy them!” or “You would love them!” it will appear too pushy and salesy. Worse, the social media users might feel like you are infringing on their private conversation. Although these comments are public, to the users they are more like private messages.
If customers tag other users, not you, don’t respond unless there are serious service issues, such as product malfunctions or delivery delays mentioned in the comments.
You also don’t need to respond to very short positive comments like “love this!” You can simply like the comment if it’s something positive but lacks depth and detail.
Crafting the perfect social media customer service response
Customer service agents and social media managers can’t prepare for everything. Sometimes, comments will catch you off guard.
To offer amazing social media customer service, follow these steps every time.
1. Take time to fully understand the context
While responding quickly is important, you don’t want to respond too quickly. If you rush your response, you might miss out an important element.
For example, if someone asks about the nutritional value of a product, you might quickly offer a canned response. But if you consider the context of the ad, which talks about weight loss rather than speed of cooking like your other ads, this might help you highlight more relevant product details.
2. Craft your response, following these guidelines
When you’re sure you’ve got all the contextual information required to respond, you can go ahead and craft your response.
Make sure you hit these important points:
Product questions:
- Answer the question clearly
- Backup your answer with real, specific product details and information
Positive reviews:
- Thank the customer in a way that matches your brand voice
- If it fits your product, ask them to keep you posted of further results
- Let them know you’re here for them if they have any questions
Negative reviews:
- Empathize with the customer
- Accept their feedback in a mature way (as opposed to disagreeing with them or attempting to silence them)
- Share the potential resolution
- Divert the customer towards your helpdesk, knowledge base, or customer service team (as appropriate)
In all interactions, the customer service experience should match your brand’s personality.
3. For contentious issues, get approval before responding
Companies can get themselves in hot water when they’re too quick to respond to controversial comments. You might need to run your answer by your PR or communications team, especially if the topic is about sustainability, equity, diversity and inclusion, or the founders’ political beliefs or actions.
Here’s an example response to a question about plastic use reduction:
Sometimes, you might need to get a second opinion from the head of customer support for simple questions. Contentious responses don’t always have to be about political hot-button issues.
Here’s a great example response to a customer being shocked that there isn’t a customer support hotline.
You don’t need to get every response reviewed. But when in doubt, play it safe and get a second opinion from the head of social media management or communications.
4. Respond to the comment, and create a ticket if needed
When you’ve got the right response, go ahead and comment. Don’t forget to tag the person you’re responding to.
If the social media commenter brought up an important customer support issue, you should create a ticket for the comment thread in your customer service software.
This way, you can track the resolution.
5. Make sure customer support sees the issue through to resolution
With a ticket open in your helpdesk, you won’t have to worry about remembering to check if the person wrote back. Instead, you’ll be able to see that open ticket, and you can then click through to the post or ad with the comment thread.
If it’s an important issue (the customer wants a return or hasn’t received their product in the mail), you should do one follow up comment and tag them to make sure they saw your response.
Follow these guidelines to social media customer service, and you’ll gain new fans while deepening your connection with your current customers.
Gorgias helps ecommerce companies grow through exceptional customer service. Learn more about Gorgias' social media features.
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