CUSTOMER SNAPSHOT
Unisport is one of Europe's leading football retailers, with a heavy focus on online. Kevin Ishøj, Head of Country Operations, runs an operation that grows more than 25% year over year in orders. The customer service team is small and cross-functional, juggling other responsibilities alongside support. By the time the World Cup hit, that setup had run out of room.
THE CHALLENGE
Unisport's team had come out of a brutal stretch. The World Cup drove a volume spike at the same time the company was moving warehouses, and customer service took the full weight of both. There were times they could not keep live chat open because they were overwhelmed.
The volume itself was not the real issue. The issue was what the volume was made of. A large share of the inbox was the same question repeated: where is my order. Ten agents answered ten identical emails instead of giving the personalised purchase advice that Unisport is known for.
The only solution Kevin could see, short of automating, was to hire more agents every time volume grew. That math does not work forever, and it particularly does not work when your audience is shifting younger and self-serving by default.
"We needed to do something and saw value in putting a chatbot as a defense for our customer service team, allowing them to do their other tasks as well." — Kevin Ishøj
THE SOLUTION
Unisport evaluated several vendors. Kevin's team weighted the selection heavily on build and maintenance cost. If a platform required hours of specialist work every week, it would cancel out the hours it was meant to save.
Kindly's interface made the calculation straightforward. Unisport chose Kindly because building inside the platform felt intuitive enough that the team could own it without turning into full-time AI builders. The platform carries the automation so the humans behind it do not have to carry the platform.
The AI Support Agent went live across the entire site. It absorbs the repetitive order-status questions, works across opening hours and sits between peak-period spikes and the support team.
THE RESULTS
The AI Support Agent now handles 52.2% of all incoming inquiries. Email volume is down 50%, a number Kevin calls the most important given how agent time is consumed.
The efficiency has held through growth. Unisport's orders are growing more than 25% year over year, and total customer contact has stayed flat. Contact per Order, a core metric for Kevin, has moved from 1 in 4, to 1 in 5, and sometimes better.
Peak periods are no longer the fire drill they used to be. During Black Friday, Unisport used to extend opening hours. Last time around, they shortened them because contact volume was down. Around 40% of AI Support Agent sessions happen outside opening hours, which means the backlog that used to build up overnight never forms in the first place. Fallback is under 5%.
For Kevin, the clearest measure is capacity to grow. Unisport has expanded into new markets without hiring more agents to match.
For a company growing 25% a year across Europe, this is what scaling customer support without scaling its headcount looks like.
