Alex and Ani
Using a centralized customer support platform to empower agents and better serve customers
Challenge
Growth in staffing and volume led to the need for a singular customer support platform.
Solution
Centralied all support operations into one holistic view and utilized enhanced reporting to drill into data.
Success
Improved agent efficiency and resolution of customer issues.
Company
Alex and Ani
www.alexandani.com
Industry
Switched from
Key Outcomes
Improved Customer Experience
Improved agent productivity
The Challenge
ALEX AND ANI designs and manufactures all types of jewelry. The Rhode Island-based company has grown in staffing and volume, and over the years, they put a lot of processes in place to scale. Those processes helped, but the piece still missing from the puzzle was a singular customer support system.
The Results
- Centralized all support operations into one holistic view
- Enhanced reporting capabilities enable the team to drill down into data
- Improved efficiency and resolution of customer issues
“A new system can’t fix everything, but for our business, Kustomer has given my team benefits we hadn’t even imagined.”
Kathryn Syzmanzki
Sr. Manager of Customer Experience
“We requested demos from various platforms, but Kustomer stood out because it was everything I had envisioned in a customer engagement tool.”
The Story
ALEX AND ANI is a jewelry maker and retailer with an ethos of creating meaningful, eco-conscious jewelry and accessories to positively empower and connect humanity. Their distribution center and corporate headquarters are in Rhode Island, and their retail stores span the eastern U.S., Puerto Rico, L.A., Las Vegas, and Hawaii. The company has a core customer service team of 11 that can grow to around 30 during the holiday gift-giving season.
The team had difficulty supporting high volumes because they ran on multiple systems. They had separate platforms for calls, emails, reporting, and softphones. Nothing was connected, so they couldn’t create a single customer profile to note or sync customer interactions. When a customer called, they didn’t know if the customer had contacted the company before—and if they had, there was no way to tell where that interaction took place or what was said.
The team created many workarounds (Excel files, Google Docs, group chats) to establish a record of customer interactions. Despite their best efforts, it was easy for staff to miss details, especially during the busy season. It was also a headache to explain the various workarounds to new staff members, which made training tedious.
Kathryn Syzmanski, Senior Manager of Customer Experience at ALEX AND ANI, had always wanted to explore a purpose-built customer service CRM, but other issues took precedence. That is, until December 2020, when the company’s e-commerce volume skyrocketed. Supporting those sales without the right tools was a wake-up call for management, and finding the right solution became top priority in early 2021.
"We requested demos from various platforms, but Kustomer stood out because it was everything I had envisioned in a customer engagement tool", Syzmanski said.
It had singular customer profiles and reporting capabilities, and the team could view their collective customer interactions in one visually-appealing platform. Its straightforward, user-friendly experience would make it easy to adopt, onboard new staff members, and increase efficiency.
Now that the team can see all customer communication in Kustomer, they expect to resolve customer issues faster. Features like a single customer profile and tagging orders make agents’ lives easier, and they can also identify unusual behavior patterns, making it simpler to get to the root cause faster and better serve the customer.
Kustomer’s out-of-the-box reporting capabilities enable ALEX AND ANI’s small management team to obtain any and all information they need, the moment they need it. This access to information will help everyone move faster during the holidays, when everyone has less time to spare.
What’s Next
Kathyrn’s team has begun leveraging call recording, helping both support staff and management learn from calls and adjust if necessary. “We expect being more proactive will result in happier customers and happier agents who are more empowered to serve our customers,” Syzmanski said.
As they look ahead to their next hiring cycle, they know they have a solid foundation to onboard people and handle increased volume quickly and efficiently.
