And personalisation is part of providing that great customer experience: Klaviyo’s 2025 future of consumer marketing report found that 74% of consumers now expect more personalisation from brands.
That means people want brands to remember their preferences across marketing and customer support. They also want more personalised assistance throughout their shopping journey.
But when your CRM and helpdesk aren’t integrated, personalisation across marketing and service is impossible. You’re operating without context because your helpdesk isn’t drawing on customer data to inform your agents.
Without this context, both AI and human agents may move forward without the information they need to offer the kind of experience that leads to more purchases, resulting in:
– Frustrated customers: When customers who are already upset have to repeat themselves because agents don’t have full historical context, it can create even more friction.
– Missed revenue opportunities: When support teams can’t see past engagement data or shopping history, they can’t make relevant product suggestions or trigger automated follow-ups after service interactions.
– Slower response times: When systems are disconnected, agents have to toggle between multiple systems to get the information they need, increasing response and resolution times.
Klaviyo’s 2025 state of B2C marketing report found that only 29% of marketing and customer service teams are fully aligned and integrated. Translation: there’s still a big opportunity for brands who are operating with integrated customer data to stand out.
To offer the type of 1:1 support today’s consumers crave, you need not only a CRM that can capture customer data from every interaction and store it in a unified profile your whole cross-functional team can access. You also need an AI-powered helpdesk that’s embedded in the same CRM that houses your customer data.
Here’s how it can improve your customer experience and drive revenue when your CRM and helpdesk work together as one.
1. Connect marketing and service for full visibility and alignment
Marketing and customer service are tightly connected as part of the greater customer experience. According to our state of B2C marketing report, when marketing and service teams are fully or highly aligned, they’re 156% more likely to significantly exceed marketing goals.
And when marketing efforts lead to a sale, that’s not when the customer relationship ends. It’s when it really begins.
Customer journeys aren’t linear. They’re constantly evolving with customers as their needs and preferences change. Every time customers interact with your brand, you have a chance to learn something new and use that information to improve the customer’s next experience.
A helpdesk that’s embedded in your CRM can help your teams make full use of this customer data across the entire buyer’s journey, from pre- to post-purchase.
When your marketing and support teams are working with the same data from your CRM and helpdesk, they can work together to improve the customer experience by:
- Personalising customer interactions: Agents can provide personalised responses based on known customer data, like referencing a size from a previous order or mentioning an upcoming birthday.
- Tailoring service for VIPs: If a customer complains about a shipping delay, for example, agents can see in the helpdesk that the customer has a high LTV and loyalty points to redeem, and offer expedited shipping or a discount on their next purchase.
- Pausing marketing campaigns during active service issues: If a customer is actively dealing with a complaint, a helpdesk interaction can trigger a pause on promotional messages until the issue is resolved.
- Creating better FAQs: If multiple customers are asking similar questions within a short period of time, helpdesk tags can help marketing teams identify necessary improvements to FAQs and product descriptions.
2. Centralise conversations from every channel
According to our state of B2C marketing report, 75% of marketers say customer service makes up more than 10% of their role.
In other words, the lines between marketing and service have blurred, and customers look for help across channels and teams.
They may reach out via email, web chat, text message, or social media DMs. When they do, they’re looking for someone who already knows their history with your brand.
When your helpdesk is embedded in your CRM, it allows teams to respond across channels with full customer context. This is because an embedded, AI-powered helpdesk centralises omnichannel conversations in the same place that’s also pulling from customer data to inform agents.
When your CRM and helpdesk systems are integrated, your marketing and service teams can:
- Continue conversations across multiple channels. A customer may ask about sizing via Instagram, then want to inquire about shipping timelines in a web chat. With an integrated helpdesk, your agent sees the whole conversation in a single inbox and continues it without making the customer repeat themself.
- Decrease resolution times. When customer agents can handle email, chat, text message, social, and WhatsApp conversations in one workspace that also contains profile data, they can respond more quickly because they’re not constantly switching tabs or waiting on information from others.
- Escalate AI customer support interactions to human agents. If a customer starts talking to an AI agent but it’s clear that resolution requires human intervention, an AI-powered helpdesk can smoothly escalate the conversation to the right person.
3. Resolve issues faster with AI and helpdesk automation
When shoppers reach out to customer service, they want answers fast: our future of consumer marketing report found that 81% of consumers expect a response within 24 hours after reaching out about a negative experience, and 38% expect a response within just 4 hours.
The same report found that, after a negative experience, consumers are most likely to contact customer service.
To avoid losing revenue and to keep customers happy, set up CRM data-informed AI customer agents and helpdesk automations that can serve customers faster, across channels, and more personally.
Here are just a few ways you can use AI and automation across your CRM and helpdesk to make customer service more efficient:
- Assign tickets based on customer priority, such as issue complexity or revenue potential.
- Use macros to pull in customer information or pre-written responses.
- Train your AI agent on your product catalogue and storefront so it can instantly respond to questions about sizing, shipping, order status, and more.
- Train your AI agent on your customer database so it can recommend products based on customer preferences and browsing or purchasing history.
- Use an AI agent to handle post-purchase tasks like returns or subscription updates.
Folk Clothing was working with a basic email inbox and phone line for support, which slowed down their support team. When the London-based fashion brand moved to an integrated customer hub, helpdesk, and AI agent, all embedded in their CRM, they were able to move faster and scale customer support operations.
Within 30 days, they saw a 75% period-over-period reduction in average ticket resolution time with their helpdesk.
4. Re-engage customers after resolving tickets
According to our future of consumer marketing report, 50% of consumers would give a business a second chance after a negative experience if they were offered a refund, discount, or replacement. Meanwhile, 25% would give that second chance after an exceptional follow-up experience or customer service interaction.
Here’s where an integrated CRM and helpdesk can really move the needle. Rather than closing out a customer service ticket and moving on, use data from support interactions to re-engage customers and create growth opportunities.
Use marketing automation to keep customers engaged after support interactions by:
- Sending complementary product suggestions after a ticket closes
- Sending a post-interaction survey
- Setting up a win-back flow with a discount for customers who had order issues
- Sending a referral request after a positive interaction
- Sending an internal notification that asks for a response from a manager after someone leaves a negative review
- Sending detailed sizing guides and fit testimonials to customers who had sizing questions
Flame-free home fragrance brand Happy Wax, for example, has a sophisticated review follow-up flow in the event that a customer leaves a review with less than 3 stars. The flow pings the internal customer service team to reach out and offer a new scent, free of charge. “It’s a bit above and beyond,” says Rachel Fagan, VP of marketing at Happy Wax.
Unlock more profitable customer experiences with Klaviyo
The brands winning today treat service as an extension of marketing, not as a separate function. Modern CRM and helpdesk platforms work out of the box and don’t require enterprise budgets or engineering teams.
With Klaviyo Helpdesk, embedded in Klaviyo B2C CRM, lean teams can:
- Empower agents to deliver better support with full customer context.
- Resolve customer issues faster, across channels, with centralised support.
- Move fast with built-in automation, like assigning, tagging, and escalating tickets.
- Drive growth through service by re-engaging customers after support interactions.
Reimagine support and improve your customer experience by bringing service and marketing together onto one platform, where resolutions fuel real relationships and real revenue.
| 5 CRM with marketing automation features that engage B2C customers Learn more about modern B2C CRM platforms and how they support marketing automation. [Read more] | How to build exceptional customer experiences The ultimate benefit of a CRM is the customer experiences you can create. [Find out how] | How to improve your customer experience for higher CLV A better customer experience should equate to more lifetime value. [Learn more] |