Suzanne Duffy
Head of Customer Service, Papier
How Papier expanded stateside
Papier at a glance
The customer
In a digitalized world, Papier is passionate about paper. They offer personalized greeting cards and stylish stationery.
The market
This London-based startup serves customers in the UK, Australia, and the United States.
The support team
Their support team is located in the UK, with 10-15 agents on the frontline of support — depending on the season.
The channels
Papier provide support to customers via email, chat, and WhatsApp messaging.
The situation
With their sights set across the pond, Papier needed to extend their support to US-based customers.
The solution
Automated self-service and 24/7 chat support across territories and time zones.
Getting started with Ultimate
When Papier approached Ultimate, they had big plans for a US expansion, but their support agents were still located in the UK. They needed to figure out how to serve customers in US time zones and how to handle increased support volumes that would result from going global.
Papier chose our advanced automation platform for 3 reasons: compatibility with their CRM and backend systems, our no-code dialogue builder, and the speedy turnaround from set-up to launch. After identifying their most common requests using the CS Automation Explorer, Papier was ready to build out conversation flows and let their virtual agent start handling chat requests.
AI use case spotlight: scaling across regions
- With their support team based in the UK and plans to expand stateside, Papier needed an intelligent automation strategy to serve customers wherever they are in the world.
- Self-service automation was the perfect solution to providing instant 24/7 support and resolving FAQs on the spot — without hiring local agents.
- The virtual agent's ability to immediately solve 40% of requests outside office hours also reduces backlogs, meaning agents can get back to customers more quickly once they log on.
AI use case spotlight: gathering info up-front to drive down AHT
- After surveying customers to find out what was important to them in terms of support, Papier discovered speed was an absolute priority.
- Their virtual agent helps meet this need for speed by gathering details up-front, like order number or requesting a photo upload, meaning agents can solve these queries faster.
- “Something I found useful about the virtual agent that I didn’t necessarily expect was the information-gathering aspect,” recalls Suzanne Duffy, Head of Customer Service at Papier.
The success story
Seamless CRM integration
Ultimate sits within the Zendesk environment: making it easy for the virtual agent to tag issues automatically, with no disruption to existing workflows.
Powerful backend connectivity
A custom backend integration with Sorted, Papier’s delivery platform, allows the bot to fetch information like tracking number or shipping status and pass it on to customers.
24/7 customer service
Having a virtual agent on board meant Papier could easily scale across continents and provide round-the-clock support, without having to grow their team.
Higher agent satisfaction
With their bot taking care of FAQs and repetitive requests, Papier's support team can focus on more rewarding, high-value tasks that require their skills.
“Even if the virtual agent isn't resolving queries, it frees up agent time to work on the more complex issues. It will collect order IDs, ask for a picture upload if something is faulty, and it’ll do all of that legwork upfront.”