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Customer support is no longer just a cost center. A wave of retailers has remade CX so it helps sell, retain and predict problems. Their moves show how strategy, not just software, turns service into a growth engine.
How Pact rewired website chat into a revenue driver
Pact, the sustainable apparel brand, rebuilt its customer experience team from the ground up. The new CX leader prioritized answer quality and launched an AI chat system just before the busiest season.
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That setup let the bot resolve roughly half of incoming conversations during peak months. As the team tuned scripts and guidance, the resolution rate climbed into the high fifties. The secret, the team says, was careful preparation before launch.
Instead of treating chat like a firewall, Pact made it a marketing tool. The CX and e-commerce teams meet weekly to spot trends in returns and inventory. When a particular product shows high returns, chat pops up on that product page.
- Agents and AI offer personalized sizing tips.
- Chat suggests styling and pairing ideas.
- Conversations steer customers away from discounts.
Smart placement mattered. Chat was not deployed site-wide. It appeared on targeted pages, like gift cards during holidays, to create memorable interactions without overwhelming shoppers. The program produced a conversion rate near 17% on those chat-driven journeys. Pact treats AI chat as cross-functional — both a support and a sales channel.
MaryRuth’s: from scattered systems to a revenue-producing CX
MaryRuth’s, a fast-growing DTC wellness brand, faced a practical problem: four separate platforms for email, phone, chat and SMS. Conversations were split across tools, creating delays and missed context.
Leadership consolidated those channels onto a single platform. The result was immediate: the 48-hour email backlog vanished, and the CX team regained time.
- Within two months, efficiency improved by about 35%.
- Staff had bandwidth for quality assurance and analytics.
- Training focused on the brand’s actual voice.
The team also introduced an AI assistant called WREN. It launched on email with a 30% resolution rate in week one. Continuous QA, customer feedback and human edits raised its success over time to roughly 44.5%.
That automation freed agents to handle higher-value work. The CX team began saving one in five cancellation conversations and generated three times more revenue per contact. Rather than fighting to retain customers, the team now diagnoses problems and redirects buyers to the right products or cadence.
Ollie: building the analytics to prove CX affects growth
Ollie sells fresh, subscription pet food where the relationship with customers is personal and churn is costly. The company set out to test whether CX could be a growth lever rather than an expense.
Leadership asked for proof. So the team ran a cohort analysis comparing customers who received CX onboarding to those acquired through other channels. The results were clear: CX-onboarded subscribers had better retention and higher lifetime value.
Ollie layered in automation, too. Their AI assistant, nicknamed Astro, handles the bulk of inbound messages. It resolves about 60% of conversations and performs the work of several full-time staffers.
Operational improvements extended into data engineering. Conversation signals were connected to order attribution through secure clean rooms. The product team now checks a dashboard daily to trace complaints back to fulfillment centers.
- Staffing scaled from 20 to 50 while contact efficiency rose 30%.
- Platform costs dropped by 15%.
- CX became a measurable growth channel, not just a cost to defend.
Common patterns that changed the way CX works
Across these brands, technology helped — but it wasn’t the starting point. Leaders reframed what CX should deliver. They made support cross-functional, accountable for revenue and rigorously measured.
- Measure impact: Use cohort analysis and attribution to tie conversations to revenue.
- Centralize channels: One thread per customer unlocks time for improvement and coaching.
- Tune AI with care: Invest in quality answers before going live.
- Align teams: Regular data-sharing between CX, product and e-commerce spots problems early.
These shifts turned CX from a defensive line into an active contributor to sales, retention and product quality.
What industry leaders will share at Gladly Connect Live
At the upcoming Gladly Connect Live event in Atlanta, these CX leaders will outline their playbooks. They will discuss vendor evaluation, cohort methods, and practical consolidation tactics.
- Details on the vendor selection and executive buy-in that supported Pact’s AI strategy.
- A breakdown of Ollie’s cohort analysis and the steps needed to win leadership support.
- A step-by-step account of MaryRuth’s consolidation and how they shortened implementation timelines.
The practical question for CX teams: what should your function be measured against?
