How a virtual agent paved the way for Papier’s US expansion

24/7 self-service support helped fast-growing stationery startup Papier scale successfully across continents.
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24/7 chat support
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Seamless Zendesk integration
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40% automation rate
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Unique headless approach

How Papier expanded stateside

Papier at a glance

TheCustomer-Papier

The customer

In a digitalized world, Papier is passionate about paper. They offer personalized greeting cards and stylish stationery.

TheMarket-Papier

The market

This London-based startup serves customers in the UK, Australia, and the United States.

TheSupportTeam-Papier

The support team

Their support team is located in the UK, with 10-15 agents on the frontline of support — depending on the season.

TheChannels-Papier

The channels

Papier provide support to customers via email, chat, and WhatsApp messaging.

TheSituation-Papier

The situation

With their sights set across the pond, Papier needed to extend their support to US-based customers.

TheSolution-Papier

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.

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“Working with our virtual agent has helped us identify our most common issues and really helped us understand how our customers talk to us.”

Suzanne Duffy
Head of Customer Service, Papier

CRM integration Zendesk-Papier
Chat support 24/7
Automation rate 40%
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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.
Start scaling your support
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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.
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The success story

Seamless-Papier

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.

Connection-Papier

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.

Support-Papier

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.

Satisfaction-Papier

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.”
Suzanne Duffy, Head of Customer Service, Papier

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