The Challenge: Keeping up with demand of a growing brand

Dr. Bronners was expanding rapidly, and the need for a more robust customer service infrastructure was becoming increasingly clear.

We were spending a lot of time and money on development. The customizable platform was just too taxing on our team.

Emily McEnany, Senior CX Manager at Dr. Bronners

Over time, Emily built a team of 5 full-time agents, collaborating with departments like quality assurance and PR to create a more cohesive customer service operation. However, as Dr. Bronners grew, so did their customer inquiries, pushing the team to seek a more efficient system.

When the time came to evaluate their tools, Emily and her team decided to switch from Salesforce to Gorgias. Although Salesforce had served them well in the early days, it became clear that it wasnt built with CX in mind, and they relied heavily on external developers to maintain workflows.

Initially, there was some hesitation about the aggressive goal of automating 45%+ of customer interactions within 30 days using Gorgias. However, the hands-on support provided by Gorgias during the transition made the process smooth and manageable.

The Solution: A tool for CX, made by CX

The key to the efficiency Emily sought for her team was a tool built around the day-to-day tasks of her team: answering product and policy FAQs, updating orders, managing return requests, and keeping everything synced across the brands tool stack.

Customer education is at the heart of Dr. Bronners mission. Their customers often ask detailed questions about product ingredients, packaging, and certifications. With Gorgias, Emily and her team were able to build a robust Help Center that helped to proactively give this information.

On Salesforce, building (and maintatining) this kind of resource would have taken countless requests to developers, and endless waiting for support.

[A screenshot of Dr. Bronner's Help Center, created with Gorgias.]

We wanted our customers to feel empowered by having access to the same information we use internally, Emily says.

The Help Center doesn't just provide information. The integration of interactive Flows, Order Management, and a Contact Form automation allowed Dr. Bronners to handle routine inquiriessuch as order statusesquickly and efficiently. These kinds of interactive elements are all possible out-of-the-box, no ITsupport needed.

This freed up time for the CX team to up-level their website, and spend the team's time focusing on more meaningful customer interactions.

Automating repetitive questions with AI Agent

Once Dr. Bronner's foundational systems were in place, they partnered with Gorgias for 30-in-30, a hands-on onboarding program aiming to resolve 30% of their support volume with automation, within 30 days.

At first, the Dr. Bronners team was unsure if AI could maintain the personal touch their customers expected. But AI Agent quickly proved its worth, efficiently handling both transactional and personalized inquiries with the same care as a human agent.

Weve had customers respond to the AI thinking they were speaking to a real person. Thats how elevated the response was from AI.

Emily McEnany, Senior CX Manager at Dr. Bronners

The AI provided quick, efficient responses, particularly for transactional queries, and seamlessly handed off more complex issues to human agents when needed. Customers responded positively to the interactions, praising the accuracy and personalization of the AI.

Heres an example of AI Agent helping match a customer to the right product, based on their unique goals and lifestyle:

[A screenshot of a response from AI Agent helping match a customer to the right product, based on their unique goals and lifestyle.]

And heres an example of AI Agent explaining how one of Dr. Bronners products works on color-treated hair, including step-by-step instructions:

[A screenshot of a response from AI Agent explaining how one of Dr. Bronners products works on color-treated hair, including step-by-step instructions. ]

The positive impact of automation on the CX team

The introduction of automation had a transformative effect on the CX team. With tasks like order status updates and common inquiries automated, agents now had more time to engage in meaningful conversations with customers, focusing on building loyalty and addressing more complex issues.

Our agents can now focus on backend operations, process improvements, and engaging in deeper conversations with our customers.

Emily McEnany, Senior CX Manager at Dr. Bronners

This shift not only improved the customer experience but also increased job satisfaction for the CX team, giving them more opportunities to work on projects that contribute to the businesss long-term goals.

Realizing cost-savings and evaluating impact on the business

The switch from Salesforce to Gorgias resulted in a substantial cost savings of $100,000 in the first year in licensing fees and developer costs alone.

Then, by automating 45%+ of the support volume, the teams savings grew even more impressive, thanks to the cost-efficiency of automation compared to the cost of staff answering every question no matter how repetitive.

In the past month, Dr. Bronners has saved $5,248 (the equivalent of 4 days worth of work for their team) by automating 48% of inquiries.

[A screenshot of Dr. Bronner's Gorgias dashboard showing a 48.03% Automation rate and 1,001 automated interactions. ]

Beyond the financial savings, the time saved through automation allowed Dr. Bronners to expand into new services, such as SMS and subscription offerings. By automating routine tasks, the team could focus on supporting these ecommerce initiatives, driving additional growth and customer engagement.

A connected tech stack with robust integrations

One of the key differences between Salesforce and Gorgias was the ease of integration with Shopify and other tools.

"We used to use Salesforce but Gorgias integrates much better with Shopify and other ecommerce tools. While Salesforce needed heavy development, Gorgias connected to our entire stack with just a few clicks. Our team can now manage workflows without needing custom development we save $100k/year by switching."

Emily McEnany, Senior CX Manager at Dr. Bronners

In addition to Shopify, Dr. Bronners integrated tools like Loop Returns for returns and exchanges automation. Integrations are a game-changer because the team can access all the data they need in Gorgias and push updates directly from there further streamlining the customer experience, allowing the team to handle complex processes like returns with ease.

No more shuffling between Gorgias, Aircall, Shopify, and Loop everythings in one tab, making the team more efficient and allowing them to focus on personalized service.

Dr. Bronners also implemented Aircall for voice communication, which integrated smoothly with Gorgias. The team is excited about the potential for future voice automation through Gorgias Voice, which will further enhance their ability to manage high call volumes.