Building Connections at Scale: How FÜM Enhanced Customer Support with Siena

When a daughter in Canada breaks her father's cigars in sixth grade after learning about lung cancer, she's not just being a rebellious middle child. She's fighting for his life.

Years later, that same daughter becomes her father's supplier – not of cigarettes, but of FÜM, a flavored air alternative that helped him finally break his smoking habit.

"I used to break my dad's Cuban cigars. He would get so mad at me," recalls one customer. "Now I'm the person who takes FÜM to him. The mint flavor is always in my bag. This product means so much to me."

Stories like this fuel FÜM's mission: helping people accelerate their breakup with destructive habits by offering healthier alternatives to smoking and vaping.

"While a lot of businesses think of themselves as innovative, FÜM truly is," explains Will Goodrich, Head of Customer Experience at FÜM. "We're at the forefront of creating the flavored air category – a genuine alternative to help people break destructive habits."

The Challenge: Scaling Support While Maintaining Personal Connection

When you're helping someone through one of life's most difficult journeys – quitting smoking or vaping – every support interaction matters. For FÜM, customer experience isn't just a department; it's core to their mission.

As FÜM experienced rapid growth, they faced a critical challenge: how to scale customer support while preserving the authentic, empathetic approach essential for customers going through sometimes difficult habit-breaking journeys.

"We're a big fan of real, authentic support that doesn't feel like you're talking to a faceless corporation," says Will. "We have people use their names. We're happy to joke around and really connect with customers because they're trying to do one of the most difficult things – quit smoking or vaping. It's our duty to give them someone to reach out to and provide support in a real sense."

Adding complexity: FÜM was pioneering a new product category without historical context for AI to reference. "We didn't have a lot of historical data available," notes Will. "We needed something highly customizable."

The Solution: A Support Partner That Embodies Their Values

After evaluating potential partners, FÜM chose Siena – not just for its technology, but for the people behind it.

"AI is AI, but the people behind the platform really matter," Will emphasizes.

Rather than viewing AI as a replacement for human support, FÜM saw Siena as an extension of their team – a way to be more present for customers at critical moments in their journey.

Creating Authentic Connections with Jenn

FÜM personalized Siena as "Jenn," crafting a support persona aligned with their brand values of authenticity and personal connection.

"We put time into customizing the persona because out of the box it's just going to answer questions factually," explains Will. "Making sure the persona matches your company values and how you want CSRs to speak is crucial."

This customization created interactions so natural that customers often couldn't tell whether they were communicating with Jenn or a human agent – what mattered was getting the support they needed when they needed it.

Supporting the Support Team

For the FÜM team, the reception was surprisingly positive. "I thought there would be slightly more pushback, but people were happy to have the help," Will recalls.

Implementing Jenn didn't change the team's role – it enhanced it, allowing them to focus on more complex customer needs while ensuring no one was left waiting during busy periods.

Seamless Integration with FÜM's Systems

A critical feature for FÜM was Siena's ability to integrate directly with their business systems.

"Siena was able to build out an integration with our platform so we could make edits to orders or cancel subscriptions. That was really impressive," says Will. "It feels like Siena was not just built generally, it's actually taking the things that we are working on and helping us with that."

This integration meant Jenn could:

• Make direct changes to customer orders
• Cancel or modify subscriptions
• Respond with full access to order history
• Process returns and refunds autonomously

The Results: From Hours to Minutes

The impact was both immediate and sustained:

• Response time transformation: 99.75% improvement! From 24-30 hrs down to less than 4 minutes -- "We used to measure it by hours and now we measure it by minutes," Will shares.
• Comprehensive support: Jenn now handles approximately 50% of initial customer contacts and completely resolves 150% more weekly tickets end-to-end (from initial days).
• Human-quality interactions: Jenn's customer satisfaction scores match or exceed those of human agents.

Most importantly, FÜM maintained their authentic, personal support approach while scaling – ensuring every customer working to break a destructive habit receives timely, compassionate assistance.

The Future: Deeper Insights into Customer Journeys

Looking ahead, FÜM is excited about gaining deeper insights into why customers reach out and what they need most during their journey.

"I'm excited for a way to get more info about intent and specific drivers of interactions," notes Will.

These insights will help FÜM continue improving both their support experience and product offerings – further advancing their mission to help people transition to healthier habits.

The Human Element Behind Technology

For FÜM, effective support isn't about technology replacing humans – it's about creating more opportunities for meaningful human connection at scale.

"Once they make the purchase, the support doesn't stop there," Will explains. "We have our Facebook group where people can go in and support each other. We have someone dedicated to being there to answer questions."

Jenn's role isn't to replace this human element – it's to enhance it, ensuring no customer feels alone in their journey to break a destructive habit.

As Will puts it: "AI is AI, but the people behind the platform really matter. And that's both on Siena's end and on our end. You get what you put into it."

Looking for a way to scale customer support while maintaining authentic connections? Our team can show you how intelligent automation can transform your CX while preserving the human touch your customers value.

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