IPSY's Transformation of Customer Experience with Ada

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Transportation

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation
Procurement

Use Cases

Last Mile Delivery
Time Sensitive Networking

Services

System Integration

The Challenge

IPSY, the world's largest beauty subscription brand, was founded on the merger of two leading beauty subscription companies, IPSY and BoxyCharm. However, the two companies were using different AI support solutions to manage product, subscription, and delivery inquiries. BoxyCharm, in particular, was struggling to meet the growing popularity of their beauty subscription services with a comprehensive customer experience (CX) strategy. They needed a solution that could provide customers with real-time support and resolutions on easy-to-answer brand interactions, create a seamless customer experience, and establish an efficient handoff to a live agent support when needed. Prior to implementing Ada, BoxyCharm's average first response time was around 29 hours, the total average resolution time was 53 hours, and the customer satisfaction (CSAT) score was 58%.

About The Customer

IPSY, formerly known as BFA Industries, is the world's largest beauty subscription brand. The company focuses on delivering highly personalized beauty experiences to its customers, using advanced product innovation and machine learning technology. IPSY was founded on the merger of two leading beauty subscription companies, IPSY and BoxyCharm. The company is known for its data-driven approach to authentic self-expression. In 2021, IPSY was recognized for their quality of communications, professional competence, range of services, customer focus, and accessibility, ranking as one of the top companies in Newsweek and Statista’s America’s Best Customer Service awards.

The Solution

BoxyCharm launched their conversational AI with Ada in June of 2020, focusing on providing fast and effective answers to FAQs, order inquiries, and a smooth handoff to live agent support. Ada's automation capabilities served customers' in-the-moment needs and enabled agents to do more impactful work with contextual handoffs from Boxybot. Ada also helped in capturing important details from customers before passing them to agents, reducing the amount of interactions that get handed off and enabling agents to get customers the answers they need, faster. Inspired by BoxyCharm's success with Ada, IPSY decided to replace their existing conversational AI solution with Ada. They launched Glam Bot, integrating existing content from Kustomer to Ada and Kustomer ticketing on the IPSY Help Centre. IPSY uses Ada to automate their top drivers for brand interactions that don’t require agent support.

Operational Impact

The implementation of Ada has significantly improved IPSY's customer experience. The average first response time has been reduced to less than 2 hours, and the total average resolution time has been reduced to 19 hours. The customer satisfaction score has also increased to 76%. The use of Ada has allowed IPSY to provide a more personalized and scalable, omnichannel customer experience strategy. The platform has also enabled IPSY to quickly launch and optimize a second bot for the IPSY brand. The company is now in the process of building out retention workflows to support their subscription models and drive growth. They are also planning to implement a new system to authenticate conversations and provide order details and statuses for monthly subscriptions, an Instagram channel integration, and custom validation on tracking numbers.

Quantitative Benefit