Engagement summary
The support team ran 24/7 omnichannel customer support for an anonymized direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce brand.
- Delivery model
- Managed operations team
- Client Segment
- Global Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Brands & Retail Platforms
- Core Systems Intersected
- Zendesk, Shopify, Gorgias, Klaus QA
- Scope delivered
- Customer support across email, live chat, SMS and social channels
The challenge: 24/7 omnichannel demand on a growing DTC brand
The ecommerce brand saw intense order volume spikes during peak shopping seasons. Repetitive "Where is my order?" (WISMO) tickets, product eligibility returns and payment queries overloaded its domestic customer service team. Customers faced multi-hour delays. Cart abandonment rose, and negative social reviews followed.
Workflow and monthly volume
The support team managed front-line, tier-1 and tier-2 engagement across all contact channels from a delivery team in Bulgaria.
Process volume
The team handled these monthly volumes:
- Omnichannel inbound: 65,000+ support interactions (email, live chat, SMS and Instagram DMs) monthly.
- Refund and exchange actions: 4,800+ complex logistical overrides processed monthly.
Team
- Dedicated delivery team: 2 cross-shift operations managers, 3 real-time quality assurance (QA) monitors and 35 omnichannel customer experience associates.
Workflow
The team covered three workflow areas:
- Order management: Transactional changes, shipping address updates, tracking number routing and refunds inside Shopify.
- Technical troubleshooting: Guidance for users on account verification, payment errors and promo code applications.
- Escalation management: Tagging, prioritizing and routing high-value B2B vendor inquiries to internal staff.
Quality assurance model
The QA monitors used the delivery quality scorecard with the client's QA framework. The team recorded and graded a random 10% sample of closed text interactions. It also graded every case that involved refunds or discount codes. The daily review covered empathy, brand voice, solution accuracy and data security.
Tools
- Client stack: Zendesk, Shopify, Loop Returns, Slack.
- Proprietary workflow tools: Actigy BPO CoPilot (a generative macro assistant that drafts personalized responses from brand documentation).
What stayed with the client
The client kept final authority over corporate policies, platform-wide discount limits, vendor contracts and master system admin privileges. The support team operated strictly under predefined financial rules. The team flagged any refund or chargeback request over $150 and automatically transferred it to the client's internal operations team for final approval.
Results
The figures below describe this anonymized engagement, not a forecast for another scope. The first-response row compares email with chat/SMS, not the same channel before and after. CSAT is a satisfaction measure, not a measured retention rate.
| Operational Metric | Legacy Client State | Engagement outcome | Performance Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Response Time (FRT) | 14.2 Hours (Email) | 88 Seconds (Chat/SMS) | Different channels; not a like-for-like gain |
| Average Handle Time (AHT) | 11.4 Minutes | 2.8 Minutes | 75.4% Efficiency Gain |
| Customer Satisfaction | 72.1% CSAT | 94.2% CSAT | 22.1 percentage-point CSAT increase; not a retention measure |
Additional before-and-after key performance indicators (KPIs) (Actigy BPO-reported):
- First contact resolution (FCR): The support team raised FCR from 48% to 81.5% through knowledge-base optimization.
- Ticket concurrency: The team raised live chat concurrency from 1.5 to 4.0 simultaneous chats per agent without quality loss.
- Spike readiness: The support team held response times under 2 minutes during an unexpected 250% holiday volume spike.
How the pilot worked
The pilot team ran a scoped test on live queues and scaled coverage only after CSAT and handle-time targets held.
Timeline to pilot
- 6 days: The team completed brand voice alignment, loaded the knowledge base into Actigy BPO CoPilot and launched the pilot with live-chat routing.
Timeline to scale
- 18 days: The team built 24/7 support coverage across multiple time zones for this client.
Services used
This engagement used customer support outsourcing across email, live chat, SMS and social channels. The Shopify customer service scope explains merchant policies and permitted store actions. Its order-change and return/refund record work also informs the boundary of desk-based order processing, not a warehouse or ERP implementation service.