BlendJet uses AI to save 30% in productivity with Zendesk and TypeGenie

BlendJet created the original portable blender in 2017, and has quickly become the #1 most popular brand of blenders on social media and #1 in direct-to-consumer sales.

Prior to launching BlendJet, CEO Ryan Pamplin suffered a traumatic brain injury – he not only couldn’t work for almost a year, but he also couldn’t use a computer, look at a screen, or even read for many months. The experience made him focus on improving his health and well-being with daily smoothies and protein shakes at home with his former food editor wife, Kathryn O’Malley, who’s part of the founding team and VP of Customer Experience.

Fueled by his new-found passion for health, Pamplin also teamed up with friends John Zheng and Brian Zuk, to create a product that would help people live longer and healthier lives.

In 2017, they founded BlendJet, with the belief that they could create a device that would make the healthy choice, the most convenient choice. They viewed their competition as the McDonald’s drive-thru, not existing blenders. “Everyone wants to be healthy, but it’s not always easy, especially on the go. We’re on a mission to change that,” says Kathryn O’Malley, VP of Customer Experience.

BlendJet launched in June of 2018 and was an instant hit, with all 7,000 of its first-run units sold in the first 3 weeks. By the end of 2018, BlendJet had over 100,000 customers in 100 countries, over 1 million by the end of 2019, and now millions in nearly every country.

In late 2020, BlendJet launched the next-gen blender, the BlendJet 2. It’s 5x more powerful, holds 33% more, and packs the power of a kitchen blender on the go. BlendJet has also created popular accessories including JetPack Ready-to-Blend Smoothies, a smoothie recipe book, and an insulated sleeve and tote.

The team bootstrapped and reinvested every dollar into fueling their rocketship growth from concept to market leader. At launch, BlendJet had just three customer service representatives. The team has grown to over 30 Customer Experience Specialists and continues to expand. The efficiency boost from Zendesk and TypeGenie has enabled the existing team to respond to 30% more tickets, and cut down the response time during the busiest periods.

Creating A Better Customer Experience

To manage customer relationships, BlendJet chose Zendesk for its reliability, security, scalability and easy installation/use. Standing out as an industry standard, Zendesk can be integrated effectively and match the increasing growth and scale with the company. BlendJet used Zendesk’s free start-up plan for the first year, one of the advantages of the service. “That was very helpful for us in the beginning when we were just starting out,” said Kathryn.

“We try to treat our customers the way we would want to be treated,” adds Kathryn. “Not everything runs smoothly all the time, and it’s important to be there for them and resolve any issues as quickly as possible. Zendesk helps us to measure and maximise our response time and overall customer satisfaction.”

BlendJet uses the ticketing solution of Zendesk to manage tickets coming from emails, contact forms, phone and social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter). Customer requests are centralised in this unique CRM tool which enables agents to instantly access all the historic and detailed information from the people reaching out. The customer service team also uses Zendesk solutions for reporting and performance: dashboards, data regarding quality of service as well as customer email and contact forms can then be pulled to improve customer experience.

The customer service team’s KPI is simple: reply within 24 hours, striking a balance between speed and quality, and send a set amount of messages per agent per week. On average, the team may collectively respond to over 45k messages per month.

To measure customer satisfaction, BlendJet’s customer service team focuses on engaging with the users and answering reviews about the product and user’s experience. The company benefits from an enthusiastic community of users sending recipes and or photos of their products, which helps to measure engagement and user satisfaction levels. BlendJet also has a thriving Facebook community in which customers use the BlendJet Recipe Group to share recipes, photos and their own personal health journeys.

Empowering agents with TypeGenie and the TypeGenie solution

Shortly after the beginning of the pandemic, due to rapid growth of customer demand, the BlendJet team adopted TypeGenie: a smart AI autocomplete product that enables agents to automate their repetitive typing on email and chat, by suggesting words and sentences that can be completed by hitting “Tab.” It helps agents save a large share of their time while improving message quality. TypeGenie adjusts the tone of voice, reducing writing mistakes. This helps agents improve the customer experience almost effortlessly. “TypeGenie is very valuable for us; it helps us to improve our efficiency so we can maintain our response time, even as demand increases,” says Kathryn.

“Implementing TypeGenie into Zendesk is seamless, with a simple download and then it’s ready to go!” Kathryn O’Malley, VP, Customer Experience at BlendjetTypeGenie is one of the start-ups that Zendesk is incubating at the Station F, France’s largest start-up campus. It offers an application directly available to customers of Zendesk inside the Marketplace. As a result, integrating and using TypeGenie inside the Zendesk platform was simple and fast, and quickly provided results: it improved not only efficiency but also writing quality, reducing spelling and grammatical errors as well as fluency.

“I really love it. I spend less time on tickets. Depending on the issue with the ticket that I happen to be working on at the time, my wording is consistent. Sometimes I’m not sure what words I’m looking for, it has helped me think and respond faster,” says Diane, a BlendJet Customer Experience Specialist.

During a period of 30 days TypeGenie wrote 128 pages worth of replies for BlendJet agents that simply had to hit tab to tap the AI brain to complete their sentences, 13,618 times. This equates to significant time and cost savings of up to 30%, and better quality responses faster.

“Rolling out TypeGenie was incredible, it was a very smooth transition, our brand new people have found it incredibly helpful as they are getting to know it. The feedback has been incredibly positive about Zendesk and TypeGenie. It’s efficient and consistent,” says Glenna Smith, Customer Experience Manager at BlendJet.

BlendJet’s four founding team members have made it possible to create fuel to feel good, whether you’re at home or on the go. Their latest innovation, BlendJet 2, is five times more powerful than the original with multiple modes for blending and food processing and accessories designed to make traveling with your portable blender easier than ever. Together they continue to innovate new ways to make wellness easy and fun, even launching the first blender in space.

Zendesk and TypeGenie have proven to be advantageous to this rapidly expanding team, offering an optimal experience for the customer. These tools have become imperative to BlendJet as it grows exponentially, enabling agents to monitor key metrics, performance and quality of service. Customers expect a quick response time, even during peak times. Zendesk and TypeGenie ensure that the customer’s experience is positive and expectations are met, even when demand is high.