La Room, a women’s apparel retailer, is using an AI-powered customer service platform for faster customer service. It’s not only saving time and money but also allows the 10-year-old brand to focus more on the customer.
As La Room, an online South Korean women’s apparel brand, grew its customer base over the past decade it was facing a growing challenge with customer service.
Its internal customer service team was handling 350 to 500 daily customer inquiries, on a wide range of topics, especially when it came to predicted delivery time on an ordered item. It was getting harder to answer all the questions in a fast, rewarding approach.
That is no longer the scenario for La Room, an $18 million retail brand, after deploying Channel Talk’s ALF, an AI-powered chatbot this year.
The technology is perfect for answering simple repeat inquiries, such as shipping questions, according to Woora Ko, La Room co-founder and CEO.
The apparel brand specializes in a “simple cool” style, Ko said in an email interview. She founded the brand with her sister as they both loved clothes.
“We wanted to introduce simple but stylish fashion to the world,” she said.
Just as important is providing repeat customers, and potential new customers, with great customer service, she said.
The ALF chatbot is allowing La Room to meet its customers where they want to be met in the customer service realm as most customers are now more comfortable with text than phone.
Why Channel Talk
That realization led La Room to look for a platform to support text and chat customer interaction.
“We chose Channel Talk because of the clean UX and the customizability. We can change the logo, colors, and design support bots,” said Ko.
When ALF can’t provide the answer to a customer, the customer then interacts with a customer service agent.
“Ultimately our goal with AI was not to avoid talking to customers but to prioritize the conversations that needed more attention,” Ko added.
The ROI
Following ALF deployment, La Room saw a 30% drop in overall inquiries to its internal customer service agents and it also saw the number of order cancellations decrease. The 30% drop means a big savings in time and resources. In addition, the technology allows the customer service team to focus on more important customer conversations.
“The reduction in inquiry volume helped us greatly in reducing costs. With this reduction, we were able to focus on our regular customers. Before Channel Talk, our response time for our regulars was an hour and that changed to under five minutes. This significantly expanded the amount of time available to answer higher level questions from customers who shop from us frequently,” Ko said.
The ability to spend more time with customers on those ‘higher level’ questions ties into a better customer experience and building a strong relationship via an e-commerce. That capability is critical, said Ko.
“I started La Room first as an offline store because I really enjoyed meeting and talking to people. And offline, you have that space to take care of your customers and answer all their questions. This helps ensure that your customers have a good experience, and when they do, they become more likely to come back,” she added.
“So, it’s really important for us to ensure that the online experience can be just as good as the offline. Utilizing AI has helped us create strong relationships with our customers, which has been a big benefit.”
Tips, advice
Ko offered several tips of advice to other retailers looking to deploy AI technology in customer service.
First, she said, AI is a necessity.
“It can be scary to work with tools you aren’t familiar with, but AI is here to stay, and it should be. It can make your life so much easier when dealing with mundane tasks, and that only leaves time to focus on bigger and better things,” she said.
Second, retailers and brands should take the time to explore and try out AI solutions, she said.
Third, let your customers know about AI and how it can benefit them.
“Initially, we only offered phone support so when we switched to chat, our customers complained. But I was determined to increase customer service efficiency and reduce stress on my customer service team so we wrote a pop-up message informing our customers that they would receive a faster response through chat which made the transition easier,” Ko said.
Beyond the curtain
Channel Talk is focused on providing clients with the ability to service customers better and more seamlessly in real-time, according to Josh Kim, co-founder and CEO.
“Our AI-powered platform helps solve the biggest pain points plaguing e-commerce businesses today: Consolidating fragmented communication channels into a unified platform,” he said in an email interview. “With Channel Talk, businesses can consolidate communication channels, streamlining the management of customer inquiries and support across various platforms.”
The platform turns inefficiencies into effective and timely customer support. It enhances customer support processes, ensures timely responses, minimizes missed messages and provides centralized communication management for improved efficiency, said Kim.
“Channel Talk enables businesses to deliver personalized communication to customers, ensuring each interaction is tailored to individual needs and preferences, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty,” said Kim.