- 35% of inbound customer calls are now fully automated (up from approximately 20%)
- 6,000+ retail locations supported by a customer experience that extends beyond the store
- Routine inquiries—including order status, product availability, and account questions—are resolved without agent intervention
- Agents are freed to focus on high-value, complex customer conversations instead of repetitive support requests
Some brands sell products. GNC sells progress.
Founded in 1935 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, GNC was built on a simple conviction: people deserve better access to what their bodies need. David Shakarian opened the first store, made thirty-five dollars on his first day, and never stopped. Ninety years later, that founding fortitude has compounded into a global health and wellness operation anchored by one idea: Live Well.
There’s no single version of a GNC customer. Just different starting points, different goals, and a lot of people trying to move forward. GNC’s job is to meet every one of them where they are, whether that’s an elite athlete dialing in a recovery stack or a first-time customer at the beginning of a new chapter.
That commitment doesn’t stop at the door of any of GNC’s 6,000+ locations – and it doesn’t stop at the edge of their eCommerce experience either.
It extends all the way to the phone.
MEETING THE CUSTOMER WHERE THEY’RE AT
Before Flip, getting routed to the right person at GNC required patience.
The culprit was a legacy IVR – a phone tree built on the assumption that callers already knew where they were going. Often, they didn’t. They pressed buttons, landed in the wrong place, and started over.
That’s when GNC found Flip.
The question wasn’t how to rebuild from scratch. It was how to make the existing system work better, without losing what already made it effective.
At the center of that challenge is John Galla.
With over 25 years of experience in the retail industry, Galla has a foundational understanding of what a good customer interaction felt like long before he took on the role of managing customer service operations at GNC. That background gave him a useful frame: the phone isn’t just a support channel, it’s part of the brand.
“We’ve got to listen to our customers,” he said. “Being able to listen to the consumer better equips GNC to provide solutions, regardless of where the consumer is on their health and wellness journey- that’s a key part of our mission.”
As Senior Manager of Customer Service Operations, Galla isn’t focused on any single call. He’s watching the patterns behind all of them – what’s coming in, what’s routine, and where things begin to break down.
Some calls can be resolved quickly. Others require time, judgement, or a solution that doesn’t exist in any script.
“It’s top of mind that we need to position ourselves for what’s in front of us,” Galla said. “While past experiences are a foundation to build on, it’s the ability to adapt to what’s ahead that will define success for GNC and our consumer.”
THE EARLY SIGNALS
GNC didn’t try to automate everything at once. They started with what was clear.
Order status. Product availability. Basic account questions. The contacts that were eating agent time without requiring agent judgment. Get those right first, and build from there.
By the time Galla joined the team, Flip was already part of the operation. His role wasn’t to evaluate it, but to push it further.
“You’re gonna get out of it as much as you put into it,” he said.
For Galla, that meant living inside the data. He tracks how intents perform week over week, compares two-week windows to spot emerging patterns, and cross-references Flip’s read on customer contacts against GNC’s other operational sources, looking for variance.
“Actionable insights are derived when we see multiple data sources telling us the same thing,” he says. “When I see differences, that’s when I get a lot more curious. The availability of detail I can get from Flip helps me weed through that.”
That kind of rigor was matched on the Flip side. Regular performance reviews, shared analysis, and a willingness to go wherever the business needed, no matter what it required.
Galla points to a moment when call analysis came to a halt due to the existing format. Flip was able to look at the same data, structure it differently, and found a way to surface it so the vendor could actually use it more effectively.
“Even though it wasn’t their responsibility,” Galla said, “they found a way to make it work for us.”
Early value, it turned out, wasn’t just automation rates. It was having a partner who treated GNC’s problems as their own.
SUCCESS ROOTED IN PARTNERSHIP
At its core, the partnership between GNC and Flip is built around a simple operating principle: constant calibration.
Flip’s Stephen Kelly joins regular calls with Galla to review performance, pressure-test how individual intents are holding up, and surface anything that isn’t pulling its weight.
For Galla, that access is a part of the product.
“The team is super flexible, always there when we call, really looking for solutions for us regardless of whether or not it’s in their wheelhouse,” he says.
As GNC’s operation grew more complex, so did the role Flip played in managing the full complexity of a hybrid retail operation at scale.
GNC’s ship-from-store fulfillment model means a single customer order can ship from multiple locations, generate multiple tracking numbers, and trigger multiple email notifications – each one a potential source of confusion that lands, eventually, on the phone.
“We’re not as linear as a lot of retailers,” Galla says. “Depending on the complexity of what the customer’s order is, fulfillment could happen in a multitude of ways – a lot of split shipments, multiple tracking numbers. Each one of those triggers its own kind of email journey for the customer.”
Flip learned the difference between the calls it can resolve cleanly and the ones that need a human to step in. For straightforward contacts, such as shipping status, product questions, and account lookups, Flip handles the call completely. The agent never touches it. For the more complex ones, it routes intelligently, preserving the space for a real person to provide the kind of reassurance that no automated response can replicate.
“The capacity is there to take it all the way,” Galla says. “Anything we want automated, we can automate from a customer experience point of view, but there are certain types of contacts where we want customers to talk to an agent.”
Subscription cancellations, for instance, go straight to an agent every time. Not because Flip couldn’t process them, but because GNC wants to have a real conversation first. “We want to give ourselves a chance to understand what the customer is experiencing and how we can accommodate to drive ongoing value to the consumer,” Galla says.
The results of that discipline are measurable. What started at roughly 20% of inbound volume handled by Flip has grown to approximately 35% – a number that has compounded steadily as the system has been refined through the kind of incremental calibration that Galla describes as the real work of the partnership.
“Flip doesn’t eliminate the work,” he says. “It just allows us to spend time on things that need the time spent on.”
Today, over a third of inbound calls are handled automatically. Agents are freed to focus on the contacts that actually need them, and the phone experience finally reflects the brand behind it.
THE SEASON THAT TESTS EVERYTHING
While the rest of retail exhales after the holiday surge, GNC’s most demanding season is just beginning.
Resolution season.
As millions of people commit to new health routines, volume spikes – more orders, more questions, more first-time customers.
New supplement regimens get started. First-time subscribers sign up. Protein orders spike. Customers who have never called before have questions, and they want answers while the motivation is still fresh.
“We see volume change,” Galla says. “The more orders being placed, the more shipping and package tracking we get involved with.”
That consistency is the point. Flip doesn’t do anything different in January – it does the same things at higher volume, with the same reliability. The agents who are available for complex contacts in quieter months remain available when it matters most. The experience doesn’t degrade at exactly the moment GNC is trying to earn new long-term customers.
In a business where a January commitment can become a decade-long routine, that steadiness is worth more than any single metric.
PROGRESSING TOGETHER
Galla thinks in long windows, and when he looks at where GNC’s customer service operation is headed, it’s a fundamentally different function.
Agents who are no longer fielding routine tracking questions are agents who will ultimately have more time and bandwidth to actually engage with the person on the other end of the line.
Listen first. Then, guide.
For a brand whose identity is built around meeting customers at every stage of their health journey, it represents the fullest expression of what customer service was always supposed to be.
“Our customers’ needs change. Our needs change.” Galla says. “The ability to collectively adapt within this environment is crucial to making meaningful connections with our consumer – that’s huge.”
While being a part of people’s daily routines for nearly ninety years, what hasn’t changed is the mission. Now, Flip is helping ensure the experience keeps up with it. Because at GNC, it’s never just about the product.
It’s about progress.
