Case Study: IMPLEMENTING Riley, an AI Chatbot, to Scale Customer Support at Gather
The Challenge:
At Gather, I was leading the CX and Insights team with only two employees, a limited budget, and a growing user base that demanded more support than ever. We needed a way to scale support without dramatically increasing costs, yet we weren’t ready to implement an AI chatbot.
Our challenge wasn’t just budgetary; it was foundational. Our customer feedback wasn’t well-tagged, making it hard to know which issues could be automated. Our help center was outdated, and we lacked the right support tools to integrate with AI. We had to start from scratch.
The Approach:
I initiated a year-long roadmap to prepare Gather’s CX program for AI. First, we moved to Zendesk, which gave us a more robust support platform. I brought on a content manager to rebuild our help center from the ground up, ensuring we had up-to-date articles, videos, and multilingual support.
Next, I developed a comprehensive experience taxonomy to start tagging every piece of customer feedback and support interaction. We focused on categorizing common issues by complexity and volume, identifying high-frequency, low-complexity problems that AI could easily handle. Armed with this data, I found a vendor, Forethought, and launched our branded AI chatbot, Riley.
The Results:
We ran pilot tests with Riley on select web pages, and it didn’t take long for the chatbot to show results. Initially, Riley achieved an 80% accuracy rate in resolving customer queries. After a few iterations and optimizations, we bumped that accuracy up to 85%.
When we fully launched Riley across our help center and marketing pages, it worked in multiple languages, 24/7. Riley absorbed nearly 30% of our incoming support volume, allowing our small team to handle the growing customer base without increasing headcount. Customer satisfaction improved, and we kept agent-supported volume flat.
Conclusion:
By the end of the year, Gather’s CX was stronger, smarter, and more scalable thanks to a comprehensive readiness strategy and the power of AI.
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