Coterie Turns CX into a Revenue Engine with 65% AI Automation

Coterie isn't your typical baby brand. As a premium direct-to-consumer company specializing in "clean, high-performing diapering essentials," they've built their reputation on luxury, quality, and exceptional customer experience. But maintaining white-glove service while experiencing rapid growth presented a significant challenge.

For a brand committed to modern luxury in an emotionally charged category like baby care, scaling customer support without compromising quality required a thoughtful approach. They needed a solution that would handle routine inquiries while enabling their team to focus on delivering the high-touch service their premium clientele expected.

The challenge

When Paige took over customer experience at Coterie, she faced the dual challenge of building a solid foundation while preparing for significant growth. "My first year was spent building a solid foundation in terms of people and processes," she recalls. "But beyond that, I knew I didn't want to manage a massive CX team as we scaled."

The nature of customer support in the subscription-based diaper business presented particular challenges:

• High volume of predictable but essential customer inquiries.
• Emotionally taxing interactions requiring empathy and care.
• Manual workflow execution across multiple systems.
• Issues originating upstream that the CX team had to address.

"Not only do you have a large amount of manual work there, it's very emotionally taxing," Paige explains. "And issues you're dealing with don't even originate from your work—they're all upstream, either product or tech."

As a premium brand, Coterie couldn't compromise on customer experience, but their team couldn't sustainably handle growing volumes without automation.

"That led me to constantly think about automation," says Paige. "How could we streamline and remove a lot of these manual, taxing tasks so that our team could really focus on delivering a really high-touch human experience?"

The solution

Coterie approached AI implementation with the same rigor they apply to their premium products. They evaluated at least five different platforms using a structured framework across three key areas.

"When evaluating not just this CX AI platform, but honestly any tech platform, I always create a valuation framework," Paige explains. Their assessment focused on:

• CX capabilities: Which channels it could provide support on (email, SMS, and chat), as well as whether it used knowledge base content.
• Integration: They needed a seamless connectivity with Shopify, Prive (subscription management), and their CRM, Kustomer. The AI agent also had to perform actions and execute workflows to help with subscription management.
• Analytics: They also needed AI-driven insights to support voice-of-customer initiatives.

Thorough training and testing

As a premium brand, Coterie maintained exceptionally high standards for their AI implementation.

"We had a very high bar for AI and automation," notes Paige. "We pretty much did not release anything into the wild unless we had an extremely high confidence level with it."

This meant that the implementation process took a little longer at the beginning, when writing automations was cumbersome and the amount of testing that they could do took time.

Luckily, Siena has levelled up in both of these areas now with:

• Test Runs, a feature that generates training data at scale, so you can quickly assess the quality of the responses and adapt the instructions instantly.
• Automations Assistant, a feature that helps you build a complete automation by uploading some of your existing workflow documentation in seconds.

Building a relationship with a partner

While Coterie were early adopters of Siena, they could see a growing partnership from those first days.

"The biggest upside, especially when you're working with a newer company, is the Siena team was super eager to improve," Paige shares. "We got to collaborate with the team in shaping the roadmap and feature development. The Siena team actually listened and fixed things and changed things and made it easier for our team by the day."

Designing the right voice

Among Siena's features, the persona capabilities particularly impressed the Coterie team.

"Siena's ability to create multiple personas with guardrails was incredibly impressive," Paige notes. "I immediately saw how valuable that could be for our business."

This feature was crucial for a luxury brand where tone, voice, and communication style directly reflect brand values.

The ability to finely tune their AI's personality—eventually named "Chloe"—allowed Coterie to maintain their premium brand voice across all automated interactions. The sophisticated persona capabilities ensured that automated responses wouldn't just answer questions correctly, but would do so with the warmth, empathy, and premium touch that Coterie's customers expect from a luxury brand.

Realizing the transformative potential of Siena

For Paige, that “Aha” moment where she realized how Siena could impact their business became clear when she saw Siena executing complex workflows.

"The biggest unlock was when we integrated the workflows and Siena could immediately cancel an order in Shopify within the guardrails we set—60 minutes. Seeing that happen, I was just like, 'Holy crap.' That is going to be a huge unlock for our team and our business."

The results

Coterie's methodical approach to AI implementation delivered impressive results across multiple dimensions:

• 60-65% of email volume is now handled by Siena.
• CSAT scores that match or exceed human agents over six months.

Siena's ability to handle unstructured conversations particularly impressed the team.

"Her ability to respond to a customer who isn't offering some sort of question that we have an automation set up for is remarkable,” notes Taryn, Senior CX Manager at Coterie.

"She will actually respond to that in a very human way with no roadmap. Her ability to read between the lines and not necessarily have to operate off SOPs or automations exceeded expectations.”

Perhaps most importantly, automating routine tasks enabled the team to focus on more fulfilling work.

"For a CX team, the workload is very high, but we always aim to reduce the amount of repetitive workload because that can be a little much for a person," explains Taryn. "It allows us to open up our team to actually flex their service skills and work on more meaningful work, which obviously makes them feel better about the way that they're showing up every day."

Looking ahead

For Coterie, Siena helped them do more than manage incoming ticket volume—it gave them the opportunity to strategically reposition their customer experience function.

"At the end of last year, we did a lot of our 2025 strategic planning and roadmap setting," Paige shares. "We shifted a lot of our focus and priorities to things like white glove service, strategic retention, pre-purchase initiatives—how do you actually shift CX from being a cost center to a revenue or retention driver?"

This transformation has changed how they view the role of customer experience within their business. Rather than simply resolving issues, their team now contributes directly to revenue and retention goals through personalized service and strategic initiatives.

Paige's advice to peers considering similar implementations is straightforward: "Just do it now. AI is obviously scary and ever-evolving, and there's always going to be learnings and mistakes, but the longer you wait, the harder it is to adopt later, just like any technology. Help your future self out."

For a luxury brand committed to exceptional customer experience, Siena provided the perfect balance—maintaining their premium touch while enabling the scalability needed for continued growth.

Ready to partner with AI experts who understand your growth challenges? Let Siena's team help create your CX strategy for scale without sacrificing personal touch. Schedule a discovery call today.

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