In the crowded, ever-changing world of e-commerce, Thrasio stands out, stays relevant, and delivers every time. Ubiquity doesn’t begin to describe their presence — today, they reach households across the US with ~190 unique brands and 70,000 interactions per month. As for how they’re able to sustain this kind of high-quality experience at scale? Well, that’s where Gershwin Exeter, visionary VP of Global Services, comes in.
His team achieved the seemingly impossible: they achieved top 1% operational performance through the introduction of AI, advanced automations, and predictive insights, while reducing the total cost of ownership by 47%. And they did it all over 3 months.
The Thrasio team philosophy, as explained by Gershwin, says it all:
We can either rest on our achievements of being in the top 10% and maintain this great standard, or we can assess ourselves, find the improvement areas, do whatever is necessary, including changing what got us here, and become the revolution within the customer experience space.
Gershwin Exeter, Vice President of Global Services, Thrasio
This mentality would bring Gershwin and his team on Assembled’s doorstep (specifically: Assembled Assist), and nothing would ever be the same.
Wanted: A game-changing partner
The pressure was on for the team to find the right partner. The partner needed to have the right platform and the right strategic approach. Both parts were equally imperative. After evaluating over 21 different vendors, the Thrasio team found that Assembled could demonstrate a “YES” to every one of these critical technology-related questions:
- Can the product integrate with Zendesk right out of the box and be immediately operational without implementation complexity?
- Can the product handle the complexity related to the hundreds of brands and knowledge bases in Thrasio’s portfolio?
- Can the product give Thrasio control over all of its brands to ensure that all human and automated responses are empathetic and consistent?
The strategic thinking made Assembled stand out, but the Thrasio team also knew it needed spiritual alignment, too. Says Gershwin: “Sure, the technology is cool. But without the right partner managing it and working cooperatively with you, top 1% cannot be achieved.” So, with this in mind, they made sure Assembled also checked the following boxes:
- Will the vendor challenge us to rethink our success once we achieve it?
- Will the vendor deeply understand our business needs and proactively suggest ways forward?
- Will the vendor bring innovative ideas for us to pilot and co-develop?
The final piece that made Assembled the quintessential partner was its WFM platform, which Thrasio had been using for years. Thrasio was able to view volume, arrival times, and staffing requirements in Assembled WFM, then balance it against the confidence rating on the auto-replies in Assembled Assist. Practically speaking, this meant they could increase the amount of auto-replies by lowering the confidence rating and allowing a larger percent of potential lower quality replies; conversely, they could increase the confidence rating and tighten up the quality of the auto-replies.
Having the ability to adjust confidence ratings based on the bigger picture was huge for Thrasio — especially in peak seasons — and made it possible for the Thrasio team to move towards more auto-replies and reduce hiring of temporary staff. The same was true for other high stakes periods, such as product recalls or other sensitive situations: Thrasio could increase confidence levels for selected interactions. Assembled, through its blended WFM and Assist platform, allowed Thrasio to make these business decisions for a single platform.
Assembled was the only platform that blends these functions in a single platform. I can make a business decision – do I want to temporarily hire an extra 50 people for the 8 day prime day spike? Having Assembled (WFM and Assist) gives me so much more agility and means I don’t have to go through that headache.
Gershwin Exeter, Vice President of Global Services, Thrasio
A symphony of efficiency (and efficacy, too!)
With sky-high expectations ahead, the team was off to the races.
At 87%, was our CSAT good? Yes, but to me, it needed to be top percentile. And, I needed for the team to be operating at their best and with more support. It wasn’t a choice, it was obvious we had to solve both. And the solution had to be game-changing.
Gershwin Exeter, Vice President of Global Services, Thrasio
Gershwin knew that his answer lay in AI, but he also knew he needed to find the rare solution that would meet Thrasio’s needs. As he describes: "We were only interested in adopting an AI tool, and company, with ambitions as high as ours. We expected them to completely change the arc of our team’s performance.”
Assembled Assist enabled this quest by allowing Thrasio to:
- Leverage Assembled WFM’s integrations to get Assembled Assist operational within a day
- Push over 420,000 customer tickets to Assembled Assist’s machine and deep learning engine to process 6 months worth of interactions
- Develop 190 unique brand voices for each of Thrasio’s brands
Within weeks, Assembled Assist was auto-magically drafting customer replies before agents even viewed the ticket. Thrasio’s team set up the system to handle the intricacies of ~190 brands, each with unique rules, processes, and product details. Assembled Assist provided agents with brand-specific replies and related knowledge articles, making it easy for them to confirm and validate responses as needed.
It felt like the perfect symphony, where the Thrasio team and Assembled Assist were working in tandem to achieve the best outcomes.
Gershwin Exeter, Vice President of Global Services, Thrasio
And just as Gershwin had intended, the Thrasio support experience underwent a remarkable transformation due to the technology and strategic partnership with Assembled.
Gone were the days of hour-long response times; now, queries were resolved within a minute (literally, the current first reply time is 1 minute), thanks to Assembled Assist's lightning-fast capabilities. Employees, armed with tailored responses and boundless knowledge, became veritable champions of customer excellence.
Hey Assist, auto-draft an A+ reply
But the story didn’t end here. Seeing the bigger opportunity, Thrasio focused its team on continuous monitoring of Assembled Assist, utilizing Evaluation Workflows to increase the customer experience. How it worked: when the team identified inaccurate responses, they would determine if these were due to gaps in knowledge, using these insights to enrich the system with additional information and continuously refine Assist's accuracy. Every employee was empowered to provide this feedback to Assembled Assist, which simply made the AI smarter and more accurate. And the more accurate Assembled Assist became, the more confident they felt in investing more deeply in AI-enabled workflows.
Thanks to an interactive dashboard, the team was able to identify the “Thrasio-approved” responses that met their quality and brand bar. From there, they would automatically send high quality responses without any employees needing to chaperone the drafts. This led to Assembled Assist automating 53% of all customer interactions!
The results spoke for themselves: a staggering 97% CSAT, response times slashed to a minute, and full resolutions achieved within a mere 12 minutes. But beyond the numbers lay a deeper impact. Employees felt empowered. Employee satisfaction rose from 71% to 79%. Customers felt heard, and Thrasio's legacy of excellence grew ever stronger.
This is the 5-star review that I just left … I was able to access the warranty information by emailing the company, which responded, by the way, in less than 5 minutes with the necessary clarification. Very impressive!
Thrasio customer
Assembled Assist didn't just save Thrasio millions (over $1.8m to be exact) — it ushered in a new era of customer support. With every query answered, every smile earned, it reinforced Thrasio's commitment to excellence. And as Gershwin proudly attested, with Assembled by their side, the possibilities were limitless.
