Traditional helpdesks serve as ticketing platforms. But the customer experience calls for them to be more.
Now, when customers reach out to support teams, they expect those teams to know who they are, the products they’ve purchased and browsed, and what they might need next—without having to explicitly state those things during support interactions.
Customers also reach out across multiple channels, 24/7, and they expect fast attention. According to Klaviyo’s 2025 future of consumer marketing report:
– 22% of consumers expect a response within one hour after reaching out about a negative experience.
– 25% of consumers would give a brand a second chance after a negative experience if they received an exceptional follow-up or customer service interaction.
– 26% of consumers would give a brand a second chance after a negative experience based on strong brand reputation or others’ history of positive experiences with the brand.
In ecommerce, every support interaction is part of a larger customer relationship that has the potential to build or break brand loyalty. Here’s how AI-powered, integrated helpdesks for ecommerce are transforming the customer experience.
1. Proactive support with real-time customer data
According to our future of consumer marketing report, after having a negative experience with a brand, 81% of consumers expect a response from customer service within 24 hours. 38% expect a response within 4 hours.
When speed is the name of the game, you need quick access to full context about the customer and their order, or you’ll risk damaging the relationship.
With an AI-powered helpdesk that’s connected to your CRM, your support agents can quickly see that the customer’s order is delayed, they’ve purchased twice before, they’ve recently browsed new arrivals, and they prefer communicating via text message.
With this kind of deep context, support teams can be proactive and resolve issues faster. Access to this level of information can turn an agent into a shopping consultant who’s drawing on data points such as:
- Abandoned carts
- Recently viewed products
- Order history with status updates
- Shipping status
- Loyalty status
- Lifetime value (LTV)
- Purchase frequency
- Location
- Preferred communication channels
The result of this level of visibility is a smoother post-purchase experience that can even lead to more sales if the support interaction is going well. Your people spend less time digging for information, and your customers don’t have to repeat themselves.
Plus, when your support agents are serving customers with marketing, order, and other behavioral data in their back pocket, they can also suggest complementary products and help customers redeem points they may have been waiting to spend.
2. Omnichannel conversations in one place
Your customers don’t organize their questions by channel. They reach out wherever it’s most convenient. They might DM you on Instagram while browsing your profile, text about shipping after ordering, email about returns, and ask more detailed product questions via web chat.
Klaviyo’s 2025 online shopping report shows that 77% of omnichannel consumers shop across 3–4 channels, with 20% using 5 or more. And Bazaarvoice research found that 88% of shoppers want seamless experiences across online, in-store, and mobile channels.
Many brands currently manage these conversations in separate tools, which means:
- Agents have to toggle between multiple platforms to respond.
- There’s no single view of a customer’s conversation history.
- Customers repeat themselves when switching channels.
- Response times slow down because messages get missed.
- Context gets lost when a conversation moves from one channel to another.
A connected helpdesk brings all customer interactions into one unified workspace, where email, live chat, text messaging, WhatsApp, and social media DMs can happen in a single conversation thread.
In practice, this may look like a customer asking about sizing on Instagram, adding an item to their cart during a web chat with an AI agent, texting to confirm their order shipped, and emailing support to modify delivery. On the back end, you see all these messages in one place.
Omnichannel support is especially important for ecommerce because customer journeys often start in one place and end in another. AI-powered helpdesks that pull customer data from all available channels help untangle the fragmented nature of the modern customer journey for support teams.
3. More effective support triage and routing with AI
Not all customer questions require the same level of attention. A first-time buyer asking about sizing needs a different level of care than a VIP customer who’s waiting on a luxury item. A simple “Where’s my order?” answer also isn’t the same as a concierge experience.
An AI-powered ecommerce helpdesk uses intelligent routing to either provide instant responses via an AI agent, or send them to the right human for help. Considerations include customer value and history, issue complexity, and the potential value of the interaction itself.
For example, you wouldn’t want to prioritize a simple question like, “When will you release the winter scent collection this year?” over a customer whose $500 order arrived damaged.
Smart routing helps ecommerce businesses maintain strong relationships with customers because:
- Urgent issues get immediate attention.
- Complex questions reach people who can actually help.
- Customers aren’t stuck in a queue behind simple questions.
- High-value customers get the white-glove treatment they expect.
- AI handles repetitive questions so humans can focus on meaningful conversations.
- Workload is distributed based on complexity and priority.
- At-risk customers get retention-focused attention.
Smart routing that addresses the nuances of customer service is the result of AI-powered triage that’s informed by customer data from several platforms. Loyalty status, for example, is a leading indicator of VIP status. This is why it’s important that your helpdesk is connected to a B2C CRM that houses all your customer data.
4. Always-on personalized customer assistance
Your customers shop at all hours. But as a small business, your support team may not be around at every moment.
In the past, the gap between your team’s availability and shopping hours could cost you sales. Today, AI agents can help fill those gaps.
According to Klaviyo’s 2025 AI shopping index, 81% of consumers have used AI for shopping or product research in the past 3 months, and 68% prefer AI for instant answers over waiting for humans.
AI customer agents can learn your product catalog, personalize simple responses to customer questions, and handle straightforward post-purchase tasks. And when they’re integrated with your helpdesk, they can also escalate conversations to a human with complete context.
AI is useful, and it should work in tandem with your human agents. Here are some examples to show where each one excels:
| AI agent | Human agent |
| – “What’s the difference between the day cream and night cream?” → provides detailed product comparison – “Is this product vegan?” → references ingredients and certifications“ – Will this fit a queen bed?” → provides sizing specifications – “When will my order arrive?” → pulls real-time tracking information – “What’s your return policy?” → explains policy with timelines | – “I’m really frustrated, this is the second time my order has been wrong.” → requires empathy and problem solving – “Can I get this custom plaque engraved with a logo?” → needs pricing and feasibility discussion – “I want to place a wholesale order for my store.” → requires human negotiation – “This product didn’t work for me, what else would you recommend?” → benefits from a nuanced understanding |
For home fragrance brand Happy Wax, using an AI customer agent frees up bandwidth for their human support team. In just 90 days, over 50% of conversations handled by their AI agent were fully resolved without any service team involvement. Customers got instant answers that fully resolved their issues, leaving their team more time to focus on solving complex issues.
5. Alignment between support and marketing teams
According to Klaviyo’s 2025 state of B2C marketing report, brands with fully or highly aligned marketing and customer service teams are 14% more likely to report customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores over 70%.
For marketing and customer support teams that aren’t aligned, here’s what often happens:
- A customer has a negative experience and contacts support.
- Your team resolves the issue, closes the ticket, and moves on.
- Meanwhile, your marketing automation kept running while the ticket was open, sending that same customer promotional emails, product recommendations, and review requests.
When support interactions are disconnected from the rest of the customer journey, it creates a disjointed experience from the customer’s perspective.
According to our future of consumer marketing report, 50% of consumers would give a brand a second chance after a negative experience if the brand offered compensation, and 27% would if the brand asked for feedback on how to improve a product or service.
This is only possible if your systems are connected so you can coordinate follow up. This marketing-service feedback loop has the potential to improve the customer experience, drive revenue, and help your business improve messaging and even your products.
Connect support and marketing via your helpdesk by:
- Following up with re-engagement flows after tickets are resolved, like reaching out with a personalized discount after a negative service interaction.
- Pausing promotional messages during open support tickets.
- Creating new customer segments after support interactions, so marketing teams are treating happy customers and not-so-happy customers differently.
Consider your helpdesk a connector hub that serves both your customer support and marketing teams. It’s a place that generates valuable customer data. Your marketing team should be able to make full use of what you learn there.
Improve your CX with a helpdesk built for modern ecommerce brands
For ecommerce businesses, support tickets are meaningful interactions with customers. These interactions can lead to higher brand retention and loyalty.
Klaviyo Helpdesk is designed to help ecommerce businesses become beloved brands for their customers by:
- Supporting customers across web chat, text message, email, WhatsApp, and social
- Triggering retention flows based on real customer support interactions
- Centralizing AI and human support conversations
- Assigning, tagging, and resolving tickets with automation, smart routing, and macros that keep your team fast and consistent
- Turning support into purchase opportunities
| Improve customer support with an AI-powered helpdesk for BFCM Learn how ecommerce brands can use Klaviyo Helpdesk to deliver better BFCM customer service and drive repeat revenue. [Read more] | Keep up with the AI-first shopping journey Find out how AI-assisted shopping is shaping new consumer expectations. [Get the report] | How to improve your customer experience for higher CLV A better customer experience should lead to more lifetime value. [Learn how] |