Aventon is an e-biking company based out of San Francisco. Aventon is dedicated to enabling its customers to get out there, to feel alive, and to feel good. They know that they are looking to live life to the fullest, and going for a ride creates an opportunity for their customers to change the way they experience the world.

The Aventon team wanted to scale its operations and connect with customers on the channels they prefer while also deflecting repeatable queries from live agents. During the pandemic, demand for Aventon’s innovative electric bikes took off. As demand grew, so did customer support requests, and the team was averaging 500 tickets per day. Aventon’s small team of agents quickly became overwhelmed with repetitive tasks, with email response times averaging 1.5 – 2 weeks. During peak season in June of 2021, they were forced to disable their chat capabilities and had a backlog of 2,400 tickets.

As firm believers in the power of technology and automation, and adhering to their “less talk, more do” philosophy, Aventon’s customer support team sought to leverage AI automation to deflect tickets from live agents and scale support across channels. The company wanted a solution that could easily integrate within its existing tech stack, comprising Zendesk (CRM), Shopify (order management), and Helpjuice (knowledge base).

In late 2021, Aventon introduced a Netomi AI-powered assistant, Bolt, on chat and email. With Netomi, Aventon’s support team was able to swiftly resolve repeatable queries spanning both pre-sale and post-sale, including questions such as “Can I get an estimated shipping date on my order?,” and “How and where do I install the reflector on my bike?”

Bolt quickly achieved 50% deflection over chat and 15% deflection over email.

With the ability to seamlessly offload repeatable issues to Bolt, agents can now be devoted to tackling complex and nuanced requests, offering 24/7 support. In the world of cycling, creating and maintaining these connections with customers – repartee between one cycling enthusiast and another – is key to customer experience success.