Solo Stove Reduced its Digital Inquiry Workload by 32% by Combining Live Agents with Automation

Solo Stove is a manufacturer and retailer of smokeless fire pits and camping stoves tailored for the home and outdoors. Founded in 2010, Solo Stove’s mission is to bring people around a fire to enjoy the outdoors together. Throughout the years, the company has built a loyal fanbase and strives to provide its customers with the best customer experiences. 

Solo Stove uses Simplr’s EngageNow Suite, a managed service that combines Simplr’s chatbot and its Human Cloud Network, to deliver a customer experience that parallels its brand voice and high-quality services. Through the chatbot, the company automates and resolves 42% of its live chat inquiries without any human intervention. If an inquiry requires a human touch, Simplr’s agents on the Human Cloud Network act as a backup to provide a seamless support experience through live chat or email. Simplr’s platform ensures every customer interaction is consistent and abides by Solo Stove’s guidelines through in-context guidance given to each agent.

Simplr helped Solo Stove:

Reduce digital inquiry workload by 32%

Automate 42% of live chat inquiries

Achieve a 4.7/5 Customer Satisfaction Score

“Simplr makes it easy for us to deliver a great customer experience. The combination of a real support agent paired with a chatbot means our customers are getting the care they need at a faster rate and with the same quality support as our own agents. Best of all, our team has more time to focus on strategies to delight our customers because Simplr is helping us lower our ticket volume. It’s a win-win situation.”

John Thrailkill, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience

The problem

Solo Stove needed more high-quality agents and an efficient chatbot to shorten customer wait times. As the company’s popularity grew, so did the number of incoming support inquiries. Over time, the response queue lengthened and tarnished the customer experience. On top of that, Solo Stove’s first line of defense, a chatbot, was labor-intensive to maintain. 

Solo Stove needed to:

• Scale its support team quickly while minimizing the need to hire, train, and onboard new employees
• Deliver a high-quality customer support experience consistently
• Provide a new chatbot that doesn’t require a dedicated employee to train and maintain a bot 40 hours a week

“With our first chatbot, we needed a dedicated full-time employee to manage the bot. Not only was this time-consuming but there was also a learning curve. One of the big appeals for us with Simplr is that Simplr’s chatbot is part of a managed service. Simplr’s service gives us peace of mind and frees up the person who used to manage the bot to focus on more strategic CX initiatives.“

John Thrailkill, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience

The solution

24/7 live agent support backed by a fully managed chatbot.

Solo Stove partners with Simplr to deliver a customer experience that parallels its brand voice and high-quality services. Through the EngageNow Suite, Simplr’s fully managed solution that combines the Human Cloud Network and chatbot, the company automates and resolves 42% of its live chat inquiries without any human intervention. If an inquiry requires a human touch, Simplr’s agents on the Human Cloud Network act as a backup to provide a seamless support experience through live chat or email– an effective engagement strategy. Simplr’s platform ensures every customer interaction is consistent and abides by Solo Stove’s guidelines through in-context guidance given to each agent. 

Moreover, Solo Stove uses a fully-customized chatbot by Simplr that resolves frequently asked questions, such as order status, shipping updates, promotional information, and store policies. By automating FAQs to the chatbot, live agents can focus on sensitive inquiries that require a human touch.

“Being able to see how Simplr’s bot is elevating our customer’s experience is truly game-changing. We have peace of mind that Simplr’s bot will effortlessly handle customer questions and send them to an agent when necessary.” 

John Thrailkill, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience 

Simplr’s chatbot is a managed service that doesn’t require any tinkering or training from Solo Stove to operate. This was a game-changer for Solo Stove because it used to require a dedicated CX Manager to train and manage a single tool. Following the swap, their time is used to improve business efficiencies and elevate customer experiences. 

“What I love about the Simplr chatbot is that all I need to do is tell the Simplr team what initiatives we have running and they take care of the rest. The chatbot is extremely thorough with its responses and frequently resolves our customers’ inquiries in a single interaction thus improving our overall efficiency.“

Emily Ferrell, Customer Support Content Coordinator

Solo Stove’s partnership with Simplr has led to:

• Expanded digital customer support availability
• Significantly reduced need for new hires because Simplr’s platform makes it easy to update store policies, product knowledge for support services, and seasonal promotions
• A fully-customized chatbot, managed by Simplr, that can resolve frequently asked questions such as order status and shipping inquiries
• Faster resolutions for customers

The results

With 24/7 agent availability and a fully managed chatbot to automate FAQs and make seamless transfers to live agents, Solo Stove took its customer support experiences to new levels with the EngageNow Suite. Simplr’s ability to match the brand’s voice and high-quality support helped improve the company’s support quality to minimize repetitive contacts. 

From fortifying its support team with live agents to upgrading its chatbot experience, Solo Stove saw great results and has:

• 32% reduction in digital inquiry workload
• Automate 42% of live chat inquiries
• A 4.7/5 CSAT average across all channels (chatbot, live chat, email)

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Learn more about Solo Stove!

Meet Emily Ferrell, Customer Support Content Coordinator

Emily Ferrell is results-driven with experience in customer support automation and vendor management. As part of the Solo Stove team, she identifies opportunities to improve support efficiencies and ensures agents are providing accurate information to customers. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for leadership, she’s dedicated to driving growth for Solo Stove as she advances in her career.

Meet John Thrailkill, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience

John is an experienced executive who has led customer-first teams responsible for operations, technology, and marketing.  His varied leadership roles give him a unique perspective to bring to the ever-changing needs of the CX-focused team at Solo Stove. He is a passionate communicator who is relentless in creating and enhancing collaboration across teams to foster trust, mutual respect, and remove friction that slows progress.