Chupi is a multi-award winning luxury jewelry brand inspired by the beauty and magic of Ireland. Based in Dublin, their designs are adored by fans in over 67 countries across the world, with each piece made to last a lifetime.
We talked to Christine Murphy, Customer Care Specialist at Chupi, about how she uses Teamwork Desk to provide personalized support — and why that’s so crucial to their business.
When the team at Chupi started using Teamwork Desk, they were looking for a way to consolidate their customer communications. “We wanted to streamline everything and keep all of our customer care in one place,” Christine told us.
Without helpdesk software, it was harder to keep track of queries and ensure timely responses. “One member of the team would get emails, and then those emails would have to be forwarded to somebody else to be actioned, and it would end up getting pinged around to lots of different people,” Christine said. “But it’s so easy for details to get lost in the thread, or for people not to read their emails in time, and it can cause problems with orders.”
And it’s not just not having a helpdesk tool that can cause issues — having the wrong one can be just as detrimental.
Christine has worked in the customer care industry since 2006, and she’s all too familiar with frustrating, clunky helpdesk tools.
“In over 10 years, I’ve worked with some janky systems,” she told us. “Some have been absolutely abysmal. They’d break your heart and stress out any team.”
Whether due to a poor helpdesk system or no system at all, the result is that support teams get slowed down. And that has real consequences for the business: “The longer a customer has to wait to get an answer, the less likely they are to go ahead with an order or purchase,” Christine said.
For Chupi, Teamwork Desk answered their need for a centralized, efficient inbox — but it’s enabled them to do much more besides.
That’s because with Teamwork Desk taking care of the logistics and giving them full visibility over every interaction, Christine and the team are freed to spend their time adding personalized touches and delighting their customers instead of managing their inboxes.
For starters, Customer History allows agents to quickly see all previous communications, so they can reply with context every time. “I can look at the older messages so I know how to tailor my response,” Christine explained, “and I can personalize the exchange based on their history.”
Not only does this allow for more productive exchanges, but it also helps the agent to understand the customer’s personal tastes — like whether they prefer silver or gold jewelry — so they can make more educated recommendations.
Then for the customers with the longest histories — i.e. the ones that Christine talks to the most — she uses Tags to mark them as “BFFs”. This VIP list is super useful for identifying when tickets from high-priority customers come in, or when she wants to do a little extra to show appreciation.
“It’s great for when we have events coming up, or if we have a few of our limited edition prints left that I can send out to people,” she told us, “or if someone has chosen us for their wedding ring, for example, we can make a note in the ticket to send out a ‘Congratulations’ card closer to the date.”
No matter what, Christine wants every message from Chupi to have a personal touch. And perhaps surprisingly, she’s found that the automation possibilities in Teamwork Desk have helped her to make her communications more — not less — human.
“I’m the sort of person that doesn’t like bots or too much automation,” she said. “I think it can take away a little bit of the care element if it feels like it’s just somebody hitting a button, and you can lose the opportunity to build a real relationship.”
Instead, Christine writes her own templates — or as she calls them, “a lovely list of kind responses” — and saves them for future use as time-saving Canned Responses. Then, she makes sure to add a little bit of personalized spark to each and every one (inspired by their Customer History) to make sure they all feel unique.
She’s also been able to use the reporting features to get visibility over the team’s performance and ensure that every customer is getting the high-level of support that they deserve.
“We’re always trying to improve our response times for customers, so I like checking at the end of every day to see how many queries we had and how quickly they were answered,” Christine said.
"It’s great to be able to keep track of the metrics, and it means we can pull that data together quickly to make more informed decisions."
“Teamwork Desk is what every customer service person wants,” Christine said. “It’s clean, simple, easy to use, and the features let us do everything we need.”
For Chupi, it’s also helped them to make smarter business decisions. With the insights they’ve gleaned, they’ve been able to spot when they need more people in customer care, for example. “It gives us a really good idea of what we need business-wise to be able to grow the company,” Christine said. “A lot of stores wouldn’t think to use a system like Teamwork Desk to keep track of everything, but for us, it’s been invaluable.”
But having a centralized inbox hasn’t just enabled them to respond rapidly and optimize their resources — it’s allowed them to turn contacting customer support into an additional part of the luxury experience.
That kind of concierge support is what elevates a special purchase into a magic moment — and keeps people coming back.
“We rely on the stories and experiences of our customers to grow the business, so being able to prioritize the personal connection is really important to us,” Christine explained.
For Christine, it’s why she does what she does. “Being able to build relationships with our customers is amazing,” she said. “To have them become lifelong Chupi fans, marking their moments with Chupi products, is really important to us. And getting to be a part of those moments is phenomenal.”
"That’s what means the most to us here, so having a system like Teamwork Desk that support us and enables us to do it even better is brilliant."