How an AI agent paved the way for Papier’s US expansion
Papier has big plans for US expansion, but with their support agents in the UK, they turned to automation to serve their customers across the pond. An AI agent enabled 24/7 self-service support and helped them scale successfully across continents.
“Even if the AI Agent isn't resolving queries, it frees up agent time to work on the more complex issues. It will collect order IDs, ask for a picture upload if something is faulty, and it’ll do all of that legwork upfront.”
Suzanne Duffy
Head of Customer Service - Papier
Company Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
Industry
Ecommerce
Company Founded
2015
24/7
Support offered
40%
Automation rate
10-15
Support agents
When Papier approached Zendesk, they had big plans for a US expansion, but their support agents were still located in the UK. They needed to figure out how to serve customers in US time zones and how to handle increased support volumes that would result from going global.
Papier chose the Zendesk advanced automation platform for 3 reasons: compatibility with their backend systems, the no-code dialogue builder, and the speedy turnaround from set-up to launch. After identifying their most common requests using AI, Papier was ready to build out conversation flows and let their AI agent start handling chat requests.
AI use case spotlight #1: Scaling across regions
With their support team based in the UK and plans to expand stateside, Papier needed an intelligent automation strategy to serve customers wherever they are in the world.
Self-service automation was the perfect solution to providing instant 24/7 support and resolving FAQs on the spot — without hiring local agents.
The virtual agent’s ability to immediately solve 40% of requests outside office hours also reduces backlogs, meaning agents can get back to customers more quickly once they log on.
AI use case spotlight #2: Gathering info up-front to drive down AHT
After surveying customers to find out what was important to them in terms of support, Papier discovered speed was an absolute priority.
Their AI agent helps meet this need for speed by gathering details up-front, like order number or requesting a photo upload, meaning agents can solve these queries faster.
“Something I found useful about the AI agent that I didn’t necessarily expect was the information-gathering aspect,” recalls Suzanne Duffy, Head of Customer Service at Papier.
Papier’s success story
Papier’s AI agent has enhanced their customer service experience by providing 24/7 support across continents, without expanding their team. Their AI agent not only automatically tags issues, but also integrates with Sorted, Papier’s delivery platform, which enables the AI agent to fetch and relay information such as tracking numbers and shipping statuses to customers efficiently. And, with the bot handling FAQs and repetitive requests, Papier’s support team can now focus on more rewarding, high-value tasks that require a human touch.