The Challenge
The Life Book is a nonprofit organization that distributes free Gospel-centered books to churches, youth groups, and ministry leaders across the United States and internationally. With millions of books shipped annually, their operations span order fulfillment, shipping logistics, and high-volume customer communication.
Despite their scale, the team managing customer support was remarkably small — just two people handling everything from shipping questions to order changes to eligibility verification.
Hundreds of Identical Replies. Staff spent hours copying, pasting, and customizing the same responses to common questions — order status, book versions, shipping timelines — over and over again.
Three Disconnected Tools. Customer inquiries came through UserVoice, email marketing lived in MailChimp, and the ordering system operated independently — with no shared data between them.
Critical Requests Getting Lost. Urgent order changes were mixed in with routine questions. Without enough context, staff had to go back and forth just to identify the issue.
No Way to Scale Without Hiring. With major campaigns driving tens of thousands of new orders, the team needed a force multiplier — not another hire.
What We Built
We designed and implemented an intelligent customer support system using Intercom as the unified platform — replacing UserVoice for ticketing, MailChimp for email campaigns, and adding AI-driven chat and SMS capabilities.
1. Knowledge Base & AI Training. Migrated all existing help articles, FAQs, and internal knowledge into Intercom's training system. Created custom guidance rules, snippets from real staff replies, and detailed attribute definitions.
2. Intelligent User Detection & Routing. Built attribute detection that identifies who the customer is and routes conversations to the right team member.
3. Information Gathering Before Escalation. When the bot can't resolve an issue on its own, it collects all required details before escalating to a person. Staff receive complete context and can act immediately.
4. Platform Consolidation & Email Migration. Consolidated multiple email addresses, moved drip campaigns from MailChimp into Intercom, and unified all customer touchpoints into a single inbox.
5. Continuous Learning Loop. Every staff reply becomes training data. When a team member responds to an escalated ticket, they create a snippet that teaches the bot to handle similar questions next time.
The Results
90% handled by AI. Of all customer inquiries picked up and handled by the AI bot — across both website chat and email channels. Customers get accurate, helpful answers in seconds.
~$700/month saved. By consolidating UserVoice + MailChimp into a single Intercom instance — from ~$1,000/mo down to ~$300/mo.
40+ ticket types fully resolved. By the AI bot with no human involvement — and growing as the system learns from every interaction.
Zero back-and-forth messages on escalated tickets. The bot gathers all required info before handing off to staff.