How This Director of CX Cut Operational Costs and Delivered 500% ROI

While the beauty industry as a whole took a hit at the start of the pandemic, it was the ecommerce sector of the beauty industry’s time to shine. Online beauty sales jumped 90% in the second quarter of 2020 - making up 70% of the market share. 

The increase in business paired with worldwide shipping delays created a perfect storm for customer service teams. So it is no surprise that the in-house agents for one of the fastest-growing beauty brands were hit with an unmanageable volume of incoming tickets. As if stress levels weren’t high enough, the pressure continued to build as the team faced all the obstacles that come with an unprecedented number of customer service queries…

Unable to keep up with the large quantities of customer service requests, the support team inevitably fell behind. As a result, response times hit an all-time high of 50+ hours, the ticket backlog continued to grow, and KPIs plummeted. This left both the agents and customers feeling frustrated. 

In an effort to manage ticket volumes, alleviate the pressure on their agents, and meet SLAs, the Director of CX and Global Support Manager partnered with a BPO. But it was still not enough to handle the influx of tickets and attain SLAs - it was also eating further into their budget. With the cost per contact over $8, the Director of CX and Global Support Manager faced yet another challenge; reducing operational spend. 

The Director of CX wasn’t too familiar with AI - he used a chatbot in the past but never a sophisticated AI Agent like Thankful’s. 

Unlike chatbots, Thankful uses best-in-class Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and advanced API integrations to better understand customers, fully resolve queries, and deliver service experiences that are indistinguishable from human interactions. 

Thankful’s AI Agent was deployed on email, the brand’s busiest communication channel, and swiftly resolved the influx of ticket volume, executed the full return process for customers, tracked orders, and eliminated the backlog. This transformed the service experience and empowered the support team to scale without any snags. 

Within Thankful’s AI Agent resolved 60% of email tickets and cleared 100% of the backlog two weeks after launch. Team KPIs also became more achievable while CSAT scores began to rise.

With Thankful fully resolving more than half of the ticket volume, the Director of CX  was able to cut operational spend with their BPO while improving KPIs and SLAs. At its peak, Thankful delivered an ROI of 623% and over 500% consistently YoY.

This empowered the Director of CX and Global Solutions Manager to resolve an influx of tickets at a fraction of the price and deliver timely and personalized support, while simultaneously retaining top talent with their in-house team. The brand is now able to launch new products without having to worry about the costs and pains of ramping up the team. 

Thankful keeps agents happy; minimizing stress and allowing them to focus on delivering great service - no matter what the world throws at them.

Schedule a 10-minute discovery call to learn how your brand can reduce operational spend with Thankful's ChatGPT-powered AI.