IPSY uses Ada to unify CX across their beauty subscription brand

IPSY (formerly BFA Industries) comprises the world’s largest beauty subscription brands. They focus on delivering customers highly-personalized beauty experiences—using advanced product innovation and machine learning technology—that marry a data-driven approach to authentic self-expression.

BoxyCharm & Ada

IPSY was founded on the merger of two leading beauty subscription companies, IPSY and BoxyCharm. When the two came together in late 2020, they were using different AI support solutions to manage product, subscription, and delivery inquiries.

Prior to launching their conversational AI with Ada in June of 2020, BoxyCharm struggled to meet the growing popularity of their beauty subscription services with a comprehensive CX strategy that:

1. Provided customers real-time support and resolutions on easy-to-answer brand interactions
2. Created a seamless customer experience for their members and evolve their legacy service experience
3. Established an efficient handoff to a live agent support when needed

At launch, BoxyCharm was hyper-focused on giving their customers fast and effective answers to FAQs, WISMO (where is my order?) inquiries, and a smooth hand off to live agent support.

Now, as Ada continues to facilitate an exceptional digital experience between BoxyCharm and their customers, they’re leveraging automation to serve customers’ in-the-moment needs and enabling agents to do more impactful work with contextual handoffs from Boxybot.

Leveraging Ada for self-help/self-service brand interactions and capturing important details from customers before passing them to agents has both reduced the amount of interactions that get handed off and enabled agents to get customers the answers they need, faster.

Before Ada:

• Average First Response Time: ~29 hours
• Total Average Resolution Time: 53 hours
• CSAT: 58%

After Ada:

• Average First Response Time: <2 hours
• Total Average Resolution Time: 19 hours
• CSAT: 76%

As a result, BoxyCharm’s overall experience is stronger.

Knowing the benefits Ada has already brought to the BoxyCharm brand — and the future opportunities the platform can provide —BoxyCharm championed Ada as a superior solution. Through BoxyCharm, IPSY was able to see the difference between their current solution on the IPSY brand and what Ada could do for them, including:

More personalization and a scalable, omnichannel CX strategy: With Ada, IPSY’s automation-first strategy can grow alongside the platform, allowing agents to handle more complex brand interactions. Integrating Ada more deeply with their existing tech stack, IPSY can offer a more personalized approach and consistent brand presence across all brand interactions, with the opportunity to expand to social channels like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. 

Speedy launch and optimization: Using BoxyCharm as a reference point, IPSY would be able to quickly launch and optimize a second bot for the IPSY brand. BoxyCharm experienced the agility of Ada’s platform first hand, immediately updating proactive messaging in the bot’s greeting about a delivery, logistics, or a shipping issue. This was an important point of differentiation for BoxyCharm during delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic — Boxybot was able to update customers immediately on what’s happening, or when they can expect their packages to come in. 

Ada for IPSY

The IPSY team, inspired by BoxyCharm’s success with Ada and motivated to replicate their results, decided to replace their existing conversational AI solution with Ada. On May 26, they launched Glam Bot, integrating existing content from Kustomer to Ada and Kustomer ticketing on the IPSY Help Centre.

Prior to Ada, IPSY members would have to wait multiple hours for a response, but now, they’re delivering seamless, efficient experiences for members through Ada. And in conjunction, their agents are able to focus on more complex use cases and ensure their time is best utilized.

IPSY uses Ada to automate their top drivers for brand interactions that don’t require agent support. And the potential to extend the value of their conversational AI is definitely top of mind for Skidmore. “We are constantly looking for ways to optimize the experience we have created with Ada for our members. [Ada] is 100% aligned in our mission, culture, and we make a strong, powerful team which is evident in our results.”

A strong partnership commences

Using a shared platform allowed IPSY to establish a strong partnership between organizations. They have fully-enabled bot management resources to manage BoxyCharm’s Boxybot and IPSY’s Glam Bot in partnership with cross-functional stakeholders within the Care team and in the broader IPSY organization.

In 2021, IPSY was recognized for their quality of communications, professional competence, range of services, customer focus, and accessibility, ranking as one of the top companies in Newsweek and Statista’s America’s Best Customer Service awards.

The future of IPSY x Ada

IPSY is in the process of building out retention workflows to support their subscription models and drive growth. And soon, via Ada, they will be implementing a new system to authenticate conversations and provide order details and statuses for monthly subscriptions, an Instagram channel integration, and custom validation on tracking numbers. With Ada on their team, IPSY plans to continue to optimize their CX and deliver seamless, efficient, and personalized experiences to their members at scale.