How Clean Canvas Used AI to Deflect 9% of Support Tickets in 1 Month
As one of the world's leading Shopify theme development agencies, Clean Canvas receives a high volume of support inquiries through their contact form. Looking to improve the customer experience while reducing the burden on their support team, they turned to kapa's Conversation API to intelligently answer user questions before they submit the form as a first line of defense.
The Build: A Two-Step Contact Form Enhanced with AI
To implement this, Clean Canvas split their contact form flow into two parts:
- The first part gathers the product/theme, subject, and message - the key info needed for the Conversation API.
- Upon clicking to proceed, the API generates a reply to the question which is displayed to the user. Here's an example of calling the API with a user's question:
curl -X GET \
'<KAPA_API_ENDPOINT>/query/v1?query=How+do+I+change+my+favicon?' \
-H 'X-API-TOKEN: <KAPA_API_TOKEN>'
- The user can then exit if their question was answered, or continue to submit the form.
This allows the AI to provide assistance in context, right where the customer's focus already is, allowing them to get an immediate answer without having to wait for a support rep.
The Results: A 9% Drop in Ticket Volume
In the 28 days following the deployment of the AI-enhanced contact form, Clean Canvas observed a significant reduction in form submissions. The page-hit/submit ratio decreased from a previous range of 52-56% to just 44%.
This 9% reduction in submissions, with approximately 2,000 visitors interacting with the contact form during that month, equates to an estimated 174 support tickets deflected. This means about 44 fewer tickets per week that the support staff needed to address.
Next Steps: UX Polish and Smarter Prompts
After this successful initial trial, Clean Canvas now plans to further refine the UX and polish the design of the AI-enhanced form. They're also exploring improvements to the AI prompts to make the responses even more helpful.
By intelligently utilizing AI to assist customers at key touchpoints, Clean Canvas was able to significantly reduce their support volume while still providing timely help to their users. Tools like kapa's Conversation API make it easier than ever to reap the benefits of AI for support and beyond.