Snap Kitchen's Journey: Automating Customer Care and Saving Time

• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Middleware, SDKs & Libraries

• Buildings
• Food & Beverage

• Quality Assurance

• Retail Store Automation
• Supply Chain Visibility

• System Integration
• Testing & Certification

Snap Kitchen, a meal kit service company, was facing a significant challenge in managing customer feedback and care. Despite its success in the health food industry, the company had little technology in place to handle customer interactions efficiently. The company had grown from one store to over 30, and the CEO wanted to transition the company into a food-tech company. One of the first projects for the new Chief Technology Officer, Scott Brittain, was to manage feedback from their newly launched iOS app. Initially, they had a very hands-on model where feedback was sent to a specific customer care individual who would then address the problem. However, this approach was unscalable and time-consuming, leading to inefficiencies and a lack of automation.

Snap Kitchen is a meal kit service company that has been operational since 2010. The company aims to make healthy eating easier by doing all the prep work and cooking for meals. Customers simply have to buy the pre-prepared meal, microwave it, and enjoy. The company offers a menu that changes seasonally and supports special diets such as vegan and paleo diets. They source their ingredients sustainably and offer breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. With the introduction of their iOS app, ordering meals for pick up or delivery has been made even easier. Despite their success in the health food industry, the company aims to transition into a food-tech company.

To address this challenge, Snap Kitchen decided to automate their customer care process. They moved their customer care from emails to the customer support platform, Freshdesk. Instead of sending feedback emails to an individual, they integrated Freshdesk with Zapier, a tool that could automate the function. Feedback from the web and app would still be received via email, but Zapier's Email Parser would trigger when new feedback hit a specific mailbox and route the emails to Freshdesk as new tickets. Furthermore, they used Slack to add visibility to customer support. Scott designed a system that could notify channels and people immediately when a case was escalated or new feedback was received. If the feedback was a bug or an error message that couldn't be solved in a ticket, an escalations Zap was created. This cross-communication was managed by Zapier and routed into Slack where it could be observed.

• The automation of Snap Kitchen's customer care process has led to significant operational improvements. The company has been able to save dozens of hours every week that were previously spent on managing customer feedback. This has allowed the team to dedicate more time to building better features not just for the app, but for the entirety of Snap Kitchen. The use of tools like Zapier and Freshdesk has also improved the visibility of customer feedback, making it easier to address issues promptly and efficiently. The company has successfully transitioned into a food-tech company, with technology playing a key role in their operations.

• Saved dozens of hours every week by automating customer care

• Managed to scale up from one store to over 30

• Successfully launched an iOS app in November 2016 which continues to grow