Cotopaxi is a B Corporation that makes adventure travel gear to empower people to see the world and make it better. Their Gear for GoodⓇ promise is to create products as ethically, sustainably, and durably as possible while having a positive social, environmental, and economic impact.
Cotopaxi has a best-in-class customer experience team. Their high standards for service are rooted in their values. For this reason, they were originally wary of AI, fearing it wouldn’t provide the same standard of care to customers.
But, the Cotopaxi team knew AI could provide the speed and personalized experience that customers were demanding at scale. So, they specifically looked for AI that would allow them to keep a tight rein on their AI agent, all while keeping headcount steady and maintaining their best-in-class CSAT.
Forethought allowed them to clearly define customer intent before the AI kicked in, so they could be sure someone asking for information on a return, for example, was given the correct information.
Once the team finished a Proof of Concept and understood how Forethought’s AI accurately summarized information in their knowledge base and deflected questions, they were excited about utilizing an AI agent like Forethought. They realized they can deflect high volume questions so their agents can spend their time on more complex issues that require a human’s touch.
So far, they’ve gotten the best of both worlds—over their first six months with Forethought, Cotopaxi’s live agents have maintained a CSAT score of 4.5 out of 5, while deflection rates rose 28% with a savings of $76,000.
Forethought exceeds Cotopaxi’s Non-negotiable Chatbot Requirements
“When implementing Forethought—going from our old chatbot to the new one—the biggest thing was the ability to route customer questions automatically through specific intents.” – Alexia Bench
When Cotopaxi set out to find an AI agent, they evaluated potential partners based on the likelihood they wouldn’t add additional work to their already busy agent’s plate. This meant choosing a solution that:
- Seamlessly integrates with their current tech stack
- Allows customization of AI usage levels
- Accurately summarizes knowledge base articles
- Offers in-depth reporting
It was important to the Cotopaxi team to dive deep into specific intent flows or even specific conversations with customers to keep a pulse on their content. They’ve found the “Chat” tab in Forethought Solve useful in allowing them to stay close to what their customers frequently ask automated agents.
They also set up integrations with Kustomer and Shopify, their primary CRM and sales platforms, so Solve had as much context as possible to succeed.
Forethought’s depth of reporting and customization capabilities allowed Cotopaxi to keep its headcount the same as the company grew—even through the holiday season. They were able to achieve this with Forethought insights that provide context around their key metrics, so they can make strategic decisions.
Cotopaxi’s automated agents easily answer frequently repeated questions about sales, promo codes, orders, and returns, while their agents focus on more complex requests, and accurately shows knowledge base articles to consumers.
– Bron Rasmussen, CX Operations Coordinator, Cotopaxi“Other vendors haven’t been as easy to work with. We send follow-up emails after follow-up emails, whereas we can Slack the Forethought team and have a meeting immediately. This is the first company I’ve seen where everyone I’ve met has been awesome.”
Cotopaxi keeps their knowledge base efficient with a small team
Cotopaxi’s team values their knowledge base—they know it’s a big part of achieving a good self-service rate. Even without advanced AI tools, a solid, well-organized knowledge base makes a huge difference in helping customers find answers on their own. But it’s not “set it and forget it.” Information changes, new FAQs pop up, and updates are needed. At Cotopaxi, managing the knowledge base is an ongoing effort—regularly reviewing, adding, and cleaning up articles to keep them useful for customers.
Cotopaxi uses Forethought Discover to automate its knowledge base. Discover’s Knowledge Gap tool finds ticket topics not covered in Cotopaxi’s knowledge base and generates ready-to-edit articles to close those gaps. During the holiday rush, this is especially handy. Cotopaxi uses it to make recommendations based on past holiday ticket data, and Discover gives them a head start by providing article templates. The team tweaks these drafts, activates them quickly, and gets them live quickly.
Because of Discover’s support, Cotopaxi can manage its knowledge base with one team member who takes the lead on audits and updates, especially during busy seasons. During slower months like March or April, the team takes advantage of the lull to assign small tasks, like reviewing a few articles at a time and flagging any needed updates.
Cotopaxi is looking forward to using Forethought Solve to further deflect conversations over email in 2025 and beyond.
At Forethought, we believe the future of customer experience is generative AI. Forethought is the most advanced generative AI agent for customer support, trained on proprietary data to automatically resolve more issues at a lower cost and elevate customer satisfaction with every interaction. Request a demo to see how we can improve the accuracy of your automated support.
