Support
The D2C store drowning in WISMO
Situation. A US Shopify brand at ~2,500 tickets/month: founder answering emails at midnight, 40-hour first-response times, review score sliding.
Structure. Two dedicated agents in Gorgias with exchange-first return scripts and marketplace SLA tracking; 24/7 chat added in month two; Q4 peak pod planned in September.
Accountable metric. First-response under 4 hours (email) / 30 seconds (chat) and CSAT ≥ 4.6 — on a weekly scorecard the founder reads in two minutes.
Sales
The SaaS founder who was also the SDR
Situation. A $4k-ACV B2B tool at founder-led sales capacity: demos happened only in weeks the founder stopped building.
Structure. Starter pod (2 SDRs + data support): ICP workshop, 2,000-contact verified list, phone-led sequences with email/LinkedIn assists, meetings booked straight to the founder’s calendar.
Accountable metric. Held, qualified demos per month with a per-meeting cost cap — scale decision made on month-two arithmetic, in writing.
Data
The CRM nobody trusted
Situation. An agency’s 90k-contact HubSpot: three years of imports, duplicate rate unknown, campaign bounces embarrassing the client relationships.
Structure. Free 500-row sample → merge rules approved → sandbox clean of the full instance → diff sign-off → production apply; monthly hygiene retainer thereafter.
Accountable metric. Duplicate rate to <1%, bounce rate halved, and a before/after report the agency resold to its own client as proof of work.
Agency
The boutique that stopped declining retainers
Situation. A 6-person SEO shop turning away content-heavy retainers: founders writing at weekends, quality inconsistent across freelancers.
Structure. White-label content bench: tone-card onboarding, briefs approved by the agency, 24 articles/month in their template with AI-detection screening; PPC bench added quarter two.
Accountable metric. Zero-revision rate by month three and bench cost ≤ 40% of the retainer line it serviced — the margin math that funds their next hire.
Voice
COD confirmations that rescued margins
Situation. An India-Gulf COD retailer with 32% RTO: every failed delivery burning forward and return shipping.
Structure. Order-confirmation calling line inside the order-management flow: same-day verification, address correction, soft prepaid conversion offer.
Accountable metric. RTO percentage, weekly, against the pre-engagement baseline — the single number that decides the desk’s existence.
Bot + human
Deflection without the rage
Situation. A subscription app whose "AI support" pilot (elsewhere) had answered billing questions with fiction.
Structure. RAG assistant rebuilt on actual docs with citation-only answering; escalation with transcript context to our chat desk behind it; monthly retraining cadence.
Accountable metric. Containment rate and CSAT-after-bot, reported together — because deflection that craters satisfaction is just abandonment with a dashboard.