How an Online Bakery Uses AeroChat to Handle Peak-Season Customer Chats
Introduction
Running an online store means answering the same customer questions again and again, and the volume jumps during sales and festive seasons. When replies fall behind, customers wait, get frustrated and sometimes buy elsewhere.
This post walks through how one online bakery merchant uses AeroChat to handle that load. We have kept the merchant anonymous.
Who is the merchant?
The merchant is an online bakery that sells through its own web store and takes orders and questions over chat. Like most growing stores, it found that customer questions grew faster than its team.
The Customer Service Challenge
As the business grew, the team found it harder to keep up with customer messages, especially around festive peaks when order volume rises sharply.
The main problems were:
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Slow replies at busy times: During peaks, customers waited longer for an answer than they wanted to.
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Repetitive questions: Customers kept asking the same things about order status, product availability and delivery.
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A stretched team: Staff spent their time on routine questions and had less time for the cases that needed a person.
The merchant needed routine questions answered quickly without adding headcount for every peak.
How the Merchant Uses AeroChat
Running customer service workflows in chat
AeroChat is chat infrastructure that runs customer service and sales workflows. The merchant describes the workflow it wants, and AeroChat runs it, connected to the store’s own systems. The bakery set it up on its website, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to handle questions about:
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Order tracking
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Product availability
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Delivery details
Because AeroChat connects to the store’s data, it checks the actual order or product before it replies. Anything outside the limits the merchant set goes to a person on the team with the conversation attached.
Product Recommendations
AeroChat also helps on the sales side. When a customer asks what to order for an occasion, it suggests products from the store’s catalogue based on what the customer has said they need.
That gives customers a quick answer at the moment they are deciding, including outside opening hours.
The Result
For one bakery merchant, 87 to 94% of conversations were handled with no person, through festive peaks. The team now spends its time on the conversations that need a person, such as custom orders and complaints.
Want to run your own customer service workflows in chat?
If your team answers the same order, stock and delivery questions every day, you can describe that workflow to AeroChat and have it run on the channels your customers already use.
Start your 7-day free trial. No credit card needed. Install AeroChat from the Shopify App Store. Not on Shopify? Sign up here.
