Route Deflects Up to 40% of New Tickets During Busy Holiday Season with Forethought Solve

Customers get the information they need faster with strategic and high quality automation.

About

Who is Route?

Have you ever purchased a few items from different companies only to have about six different packages you now need to keep track of? 

Don’t lie; we’ve all gone on a shopping-craze during the holidays.

But Route, an innovative software company, wants to make your experience better. Their app, available for both iOS and Android, brings tracking to life. You can view the live tracking of all your packages in one place and use their app to resolve lost or stolen items — all in one simple click!

Challenges

Route’s Challenges

As you can imagine, people buy a lot of stuff online nowadays. A lot.

And no matter how many packages you have or where they are, Route thrives on a great post-purchase experience for everyone who uses their app or visits their website. 

When Black Friday 2020 and the subsequent holiday shopping season loomed around the corner, Route felt the pressure of maintaining that white-glove service. 

Anticipating their ticket volume to increase 3x from November to December, they thought the only way to handle the uptick was to hire around 25 more agents. 

On top of that, they wanted to intercept as many tickets as possible and resolve them before they hit their help desk. Why? At this point, each agent was manually clicking into relevant Zendesk macros and plugging in customer information – a task that could take up to an hour per ticket. With 3x the amount headed their way, a wave of stress was sure to follow for their team of 30. 

And there’s more.

Route wanted to make sure that these tickets were automatically answered with high accuracy — a pretty nerve-racking situation. 

They wondered who they could possibly trust to work out the details that needed to be automated. But they found a great solution.

Solutions

Route’s Solution

Route’s support team is always evaluating and improving their workflow and they wanted to optimize their processes leading up to the holiday season and beyond.

So, Route sought out a partner to help. Route ultimately chose Forethought because of its robust capabilities, speed of implementation, and ability to customize. 

A fundamental component of Forethough’s AI also stood out to Route’s customer support leader: the ability to dynamically retrieve information from different systems and databases. That includes everything from knowledge base articles and help desk templates to homegrown solutions.

Forethought’s ability to do this instantly didn’t hurt either!

However, during discussions, Route’s team worried if Forethought’s AI would work with Snowflake, their database that housed the bulk of the customer information that would help customers get what they needed regarding shipping, faster. 

Deal over? Not a chance! Forethought wanted to ensure they solved their challenge, so the team decided to build the integration with Snowflake, the icing on the cake of an already powerful AI support tool. 

Instead of forcing Route into a preset workflow or turning Route away, the Forethought team worked to customize a solution. 

Forethought built the Solve and Snowflake connection by embedding a pop-up widget on Route’s website that allows customers to enter an order number and email. The solution then digs into Snowflake, pulls that information, and surfaces it right to the customer. Customers previously had to submit a full ticket and wait minutes or hours to hear from an agent. 

Now, customers get answers in mere seconds. Forethought Solve is helping customers get what they need by self-servicing on Route’s site between 35-45% of the time.

But that’s not all. This solution was built in just eight days.

“We’re a nimble team. A lot of issues that inhibit other AI solutions don’t scare us. At Forethought, we’re able to quickly address issues and adapt to new and complex workflows and needs, and that’s exactly what we strived to do in our partnership with Route.”

– Deon Nicholas, Forethought CEO and co-founder

Results

Route’s Results

Forethought’s fast implementation helped Route respond to their incoming ticket numbers that came with the rush of Black Friday and the holiday season.

Because Forethought was accurately deflecting the countless “Where is my order?” issues coming from anxious shoppers, Route’s customer support agents could focus their time on more complicated issues, like assisting users with the app itself and answering billing questions for Route merchants.  

Customers also benefit from getting accurate answers about their orders and claims in seconds, rather than having to wait. In fact, in most situations, Route users don’t have to interact with anyone (unless they want to or the situation calls for it). They simply choose from a list: 1) cancel my order, 2) file a new claim, 3) what is my claim status, 4) where is my order, or 5) other and can go about their day. 

What else did Forethought do for Route?

Route did not need to hire new agents to take on their influx of tickets, which they had expected to have to do. Their investment in Forethought ended up saving them all the costs associated with onboarding, salaries, training, and more. Forethought also empowered their existing team of agents with the ability to focus on more strategic support instead of the redundant work.

On average, Forethought successfully deflects 43% of questions coming through to Route’s site each week. That means, 43% of the requests coming through to Route via the website were answered immediately by Forethought and required no agent intervention. 

Forethought deflected more than 50% of questions coming in only 7 days after implementation, helping to put more time back in an agent’s day faster.

Future

What’s Next For Route?

While Route continues to get results using our Solve product, they’re thinking about adding Forethought into the merchant-facing portion of their business to help their own customers with questions surrounding billing, installation, claim status, and using the app itself — down the road. 

After that, they hope to explore Forethought Triage to automatically triage tickets in the future and give clear feedback to product teams so they can continue to grow their business!