How Bokksu automates over 60% of customer support queries with Siena

1. ^60% of CS ticket responses automated
2. ^80% reduction in resolution time

We learned really quickly how helpful Siena could be in terms of first response time and scaling, which had been the biggest hurdle with any other company we worked with. We’ve never regretted onboarding with Siena. – Kelan Bonislawski, Senior CX Manager at Bokksu

About

Bokksu bridges cultures by shipping authentic Asian snacks, tea, lifestyle items and more shipped to foodies all around the world. Since 2016, Bokksu has grown rapidly, expanding from a subscription snack box to an online on-demand boutique and even a market that helps people worldwide access everyday Asian grocery essentials. 

Challenge

Generic CX tools require too much lift for fast-growing ecomm teams

Over the last four years, Bokksu’s customer experience team has grown exponentially, from two agents up to 15. With that rapid headcount growth came a natural desire to try new AI tools to streamline processes that were otherwise time-consuming, bulky, or difficult to scale as the workload ramped up.

More specifically, they were searching for a solution that would answer simple, often-asked customer questions, freeing CX agents up to work on more complex tickets. But, though the CX team tried, there was one hiccup Senior CX Manager Kelan Bonislawski kept running into again and again: all the AI tools on the market were too rule-defined.

The “if this, then that” approach didn’t work well for the Bokksu CX team; they didn’t have the bandwidth to be constantly working with AI partners to give them answers for the thousands of possible questions customers could ask. That’s why Siena’s intelligent AI solution appealed to him.

Once we started working with Siena, it was an overnight improvement in the quality of answers once we started seeing our ratings from customers.– Kelan Bonislawski, Senior CX Manager at Bokksu

Solution

Siena answers common customer questions – while applying nuance that standard AI tools can’t deliver

Since onboarding with Siena, the Bokksu team has seen benefits in two key areas. 

Benefit #1: Siena can apply nuance to customer responses

A common scenario for the Bokksu CX team is dealing with subscription-related questions. The CX agents know from experience that there are many scenarios within that cancel topic, but the AI solutions Kelan and his team attempted to implement before Siena weren’t able to think that far ahead.

A lot of AI solutions would just deactivate the subscription when a customer asked to cancel. But if a customer just renewed or has a multi-month subscription, what are they really asking? Siena is a lot better at sussing out those differences.– Kelan Bonislawski, Senior CX Manager at Bokksu

For example, Siena can read past conversations with customers, look into any prepayments they may have read, and see the duration of their subscription and take all of that into account when tabulating when their subscription boxes will actually stop being sent. That alone makes Siena an invaluable partner to the Bokksu CX team.

Benefit #2: Reviews say it all – customers love Siena

On the customer-facing end, Siena was the AI-based solution the Bokksu team had been looking for – the quality and personalization was “an instant improvement,” according to Kelan. And it wasn’t just Kelan singing Siena’s praises; customer reviews were overwhelmingly positive.

I could show the metrics to leadership all day, but we all know that fast response times don’t always correlate with great customer experience. But the reviews were instantly improving. – Kelan Bonislawski, Senior CX Manager at Bokksu

After speaking with Siena, customers wrote glowing reviews with excerpts like:

• “I’m so glad I have someone to chat with now.”
• “I would talk to Siena even if I don’t have an order issue.”

Kelan said this is indicative of a successful implementation – not only are response time and CSAT scores going down, but customer satisfaction is up. Plus, if Siena can’t fully resolve a customer question or concern, it passes tickets onto an agent for further review, which only bolsters the customer experience.

Siena goes into our customer accounts, reads past tickets and replies intelligently to their questions. Customers are always wowed by that, which is great. – Kelan Bonislawski, Senior CX Manager at Bokksu

Results

Thanks to Siena, Bokksu’s customer service team is scaling effectively 

Like Bokksu customers, Kelan and his team are incredibly satisfied with the scale at which Siena can support their ongoing operations. Here are some key metrics:

1. ^60% of ticket responses automated
2. ^{Days to mins} Response times reduced from days to minutes
3. ^{5h to >1h} Resolution time reduced from 5 hours to >1 hour

As the holiday shopping season approaches, Kelan anticipates that Siena will remain Bokksu’s valuable CX partner – both for responding to customer queries and for automating product recommendations and other personalization options. 

With the other AI tools where we have to define all the rules, we can’t scale with that. But Siena learns from our answers and comes up with automations and analytics from there. We’re really excited about that. – Kelan Bonislawski, Senior CX Manager at Bokksu