How Shoeby handles rising customer queries without expanding its team

Friendly, timely, and personalized service is what sets great e-commerce brands apart, but it often comes with high personnel costs. This is exactly the dilemma that Shoeby, a large fashion retailer, was trying to solve. We caught up with Pam van Nuland to find out how Neople Scotty is helping her team handle customer queries faster and more efficiently, without losing the personal touch that Shoeby is known for. 

Managing rising customer queries with a smaller support team 

Helping customers embrace their uniqueness and beauty has been at the heart of Shoeby, since the van Deursen family founded it in the 1980s. More than 40 years later, this family business has grown to 220 stores and remains committed to delivering exceptional experiences to its customers. 

As Lead Webcare Specialist, Pam van Nuland ensures this high standard of service is upheld across the customer journey—from the moment an order is placed to the moment it arrives at the customer’s home. But with just 3 team members and rising query volumes, Pam realized they needed to find a way to cope fast. 

Pam explains their dilemma: “We faced challenges as our online store grew, as more orders meant more customer inquiries. We reached a point where we had to decide whether we should hire additional staff, or whether we explore a more scalable and efficient long-term solution?”

So when Shoeby came across Neople, Pam decided it was worth exploring how AI could help them to answer queries faster and more effectively. 

Getting Scotty up and running within a day

Fast forward a short while, and Neople has become a valued member of Pam’s team, delivering personalized customer service at a fraction of the cost of hiring a new employee.

Pam decided to take a phased approach to onboarding Scotty, first tasking him with responding to common customer queries such as “Where Is My Order?”—or WISMO as its known in the industry. 

Scotty proved to be a fast-learner: “Since implementing automation, we've already seen a significant impact, particularly with delivery-related inquiries. Scotty can now access real-time order statuses, reducing our workload and improving the customer experience.”

Even better, Scotty learns with every interaction and fine-tuning from the Shoeby team, meaning his responses will keep getting better over time. Soon, he’ll be able to customers at every stage of their buying journey. 

As for the onboarding itself, the process was a lot quicker than Pam expected: “To our surprise, implementation was nearly instantaneous. We were live within a day! The demo, fast communication, and guidance throughout the onboarding process were invaluable.” 

Now that Scotty was up and running with automated responses to some queries, the next step was seeing just how much more he could do.

Cutting average response times by 66%

Like all fashion retailers, Shoeby’s customer support team experiences seasonal spikes—think Black Friday, Christmas, back-to-school, and Spring Sales. Without hiring extra seasonal staff, Shoeby’s response times were climbing to 5 days.  

Even outside of these busy periods, response times averaged 3 days so there was plenty of room for improvement. But since Scotty joined the team, response times have dropped down to within 1 business day—a 66% improvement—and often even faster when responses can be fully or partially automated. 

Pam shares Scotty’s impact: “Scotty now automatically responds to 16% of all incoming emails. This allows our live customer service agents to focus on more complex cases and provide proactive support.” 

Unlike human agents, Scotty is available 24/7 which helps keep responses moving even outside of office hours. And with 52% of customers admitting that they stop purchasing from brands who have slow response times, Shoeby can now rest assured it won’t lose customers for this reason. 

But it didn’t take long for Pam to realize Scotty could offer even more value than just automated responses—so she set out to explore his full potential.

Taking on new responsibilities, from proactive communication to executing tasks 

Pam was keen to strengthen Shoeby’s proactive customer communication, which is anticipating potential queries or issues and addressing them upfront.  

Take a sequin dress as an example. You can’t wash it the same way as your everyday cotton t-shirts, or you’ll destroy it. But with proactive communication, Shoeby can automatically send care instructions to customers who purchase delicate items, helping them protect and keep their garments looking great for many years to come. 

Scotty easily orchestrates workflows like this, but he’s also helping Pam and her team to inject Shoeby’s brand personality into customer service: “Scotty provides fresh and surprising responses, ensuring that customer service agents don’t get stuck in repetitive interactions.”

Soon Scotty will be responsible for performing actual tasks for customers, everything from cancelling orders to applying post-purchase discounts to adding store credit. 

Pam is excited for Scotty to step up: “This will free up even more time for our customer service team to focus on personalized support.”

Rolling out Scotty in 200+ stores across the Netherlands and Germany

Customers expect personalized, consistent experiences when they buy from a brand, whether that’s online or in-store. And that is certainly the case for Shoeby, who has gained a loyal following for its webshop and 200+ stores. 

With Scotty proving his value in the online service team, it was time to explore how he can help the in-store service team too. After all, queries need to be handled in the same friendly, personalized, and on-brand way regardless of where they’re received. 

Pam explains what’s next for Scotty: “Now, we are expanding Scotty to our in-store service team, where employees are actively providing feedback. The goal is to automate more store-related inquiries as well.”

So keep an eye out, Scotty will soon be coming to a Shoeby store near you! 

Scaling customer service as Shoeby grows, without adding headcount 

What started as a way to handle more queries, has turned into a fully-fledged customer support agent. Scotty is now an integral part of Shoeby’s customer support team, and is helping to:

• Automate responses to 16+% of customer queries
• Reduce response times from up to 5 days to within 1 business day 
• Strengthen brand consistency across all customer service interactions
• Free up time for customer support agents to focus on more complex cases 
• Improve customer experiences with fresh responses 

And this list is going to get much longer soon when Scotty takes on task execution and is rolled out across Shoeby’s in-store service teams. 

At Neople, we’re passionate about helping e-commerce businesses improve their support with AI co-workers. Curious about how a Neople can work alongside your existing team? Request a free demo, and in just 30 minutes, we’ll show you how Bob, Emily, or Max can improve your (international) support and boost employee happiness.

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