Madison Reed was built around her.
“She’s not just calling because she wants to change her shipping cadence,” said Maureen Watson, Chief Product Officer at Madison Reed. “She’s calling because she wants to know what she’s going to look like, and whether she’s going to be happy with the result.”
At Madison Reed, hair color is personal. The moments that bring customers to the phone are often high-trust, high-stakes decisions tied to confidence, identity, and outcome.
Whether she’s coloring at home or sitting in a Hair Color Bar, the expectation is the same: access to expert guidance and a guarantee that Madison Reed will stand behind the outcome.
“We don’t stop until she’s satisfied,” Maureen said. “That’s table stakes for us.”
That philosophy shaped how Madison Reed thought about customer service long before automation entered the picture. Licensed colorists sat at the center of the experience.
“She calls when she’s driving. She calls because salons have always been voice-first,” she explained. “Sometimes she just wants to talk to someone. That behavior isn’t going away.”
As Madison Reed expanded across eCommerce and a growing network of Hair Color Bars, calls began crossing systems, services, and locations. Traditional IVR systems struggled to reflect how the business actually operated.
“The customer doesn’t think in menus,” Maureen said. “She just knows what she needs.”
And that’s why Madison Reed didn’t approach automation as a way to reduce calls.
“My wish is actually that more people would reach out to us.”
That belief—that a phone experience should be something you invite, not avoid—became the foundation for how Madison Reed rebuilt its phone channel across five core principles: protecting expertise, building durable infrastructure, unifying retail and eCommerce, anchoring automation to financial outcomes, and treating partnership as a force multiplier.
Pillar 1: Expertise Protection
Automation Didn’t Replace Expertise. It Protected It.
Madison Reed’s customer service organization is built around two very different types of work.
On one side are licensed, highly trained U.S.-based colorists, whose judgment can determine whether a customer feels confident or disappointed. On the other are account-level requests (subscriptions, orders, and appointments) that are necessary, but not judgment-based.
Before Flip, separating those two types of work was harder than it should have been. Keyword-based IVRs and static menus struggled to reliably identify intent. As a result, account questions were frequently routed to colorists, creating inefficiency, longer calls, and unnecessary transfers.
“We tried different approaches,” said Celeste Leon de la Barra, Director of Support Operations at Madison Reed. “But callers don’t always use the exact keywords to get where they need to go.”
Flip changed that by acting as a real-time traffic controller for the phone channel.
Using intent detection, Flip distinguishes between calls that require judgment and those that don’t, effectively routing color consultations directly to licensed colorists while directing account-level requests to the appropriate support team.
“What Flip allowed us to do was protect expert time,” Celeste said. “When someone truly needs a colorist, they get one. And when they don’t, we resolve the issue quickly without escalating.”
For Maureen, that distinction was non-negotiable.
“We’re not trying to replace judgment,” she said. “We’re trying to be more efficient about where human interaction is needed.”
The result wasn’t just better routing. It was a fundamentally more efficient operating model, where specialists can focus on high-trust moments, and customers reach the right help faster.
Pillar 2: Infrastructure
Designed To Adapt To Her
In salons, appointments aren’t interchangeable.
Each booking carries specific requirements, such as service type, time block, and location availability. A single incorrect booking can ripple through the operation, creating missed appointments, frustrated customers, and lost revenue.
Before Flip, phone systems could route calls, but they couldn’t take action. Booking an appointment still required a human intermediary, even when the request itself was straightforward.
Today, Flip handles appointment scheduling conversationally.
When a customer calls, Flip can reference a guest’s past booking history to guide the conversation. Flip then gathers the service they’re looking for, determines the required time in the chair, and surfaces real-time availability at the appropriate location through direct integrations with Madison Reed’s systems, such as Gladly. If a preferred location is unavailable, Flip can immediately suggest appointment times at nearby Hair Color Bars The booking is confirmed in the same call, without transferring to an agent.
“There’s something about the traditional salon experience where guests just want to call to book,” Celeste said. “But that’s not something you necessarily need to speak to a person to do.”
Building that experience required more than surface-level automation. It depended on deep API integrations and close collaboration between Madison Reed’s customer support, product, and engineering teams.
“We’ve gone through many iterations,” she explained. “But it’s been a great way for guests to have the experience they want, calling to book, while making it efficient for us.”
As Flip expanded into appointment booking, modification, cancellation, and related workflows, Madison Reed entrusted automation with revenue-critical interactions earlier than most companies are willing to do.
Today, a significant number of appointment-related calls are fully automated, allowing agents to focus on complex inquiries while ensuring bookings happen quickly, accurately, and consistently.
Infrastructure, in this case, wasn’t about removing humans from the experience. It was about building a system reliable enough to support them.
Pillar 3: Unified Hybrid Experience
One System, No Matter Where She Starts
Madison Reed’s customers don’t experience retail and eCommerce as separate businesses – even if they are shopping for different services.
There are approximately 100 local phone numbers for individual Hair Color Bars, as well as a main contact line for the direct business. Regardless of which number a customer calls, the goal is the same: a consistent experience that reflects her full relationship with the brand.
“We don’t want guests hunting down a whole bunch of phone numbers,” said Misako Mori, Education, Technology, and Operations Manager at Madison Reed. “It’s about meeting the customer where they are and getting them the best outcome in the simplest way.”
That means a customer can call a Hair Color Bar about an online order, or call the eCommerce line to book an in-store appointment, without being bounced between teams or asked to start over.
“You get the same support regardless of the phone number that you call,” Celeste noted. “We have a customer lookup where we can pull up your recent orders or your recent appointments, and based on your history with us, we can help from there.”
Flip enables this by operating as a centralized intelligence layer across Madison Reed’s phone ecosystem. Instead of treating each number as a separate channel, Flip interprets intent, retrieves relevant customer context, and supports the appropriate next action, whether that’s tracking an order, booking an appointment, or answering a service-related question.
The result is a phone experience that mirrors how Madison Reed actually operates: an omni-business where retail and eCommerce are deeply connected, and where customers don’t need to understand internal structures to get help.
The unification isn’t about consolidation at the surface level. It’s about coherence: one system working behind the scenes, no matter where the call begins.
Pillar 4: The Proof
Keeping the System Accountable
Flip’s value at Madison Reed is proven every day through real call volume, real automation rates, real customer satisfaction, and real cost outcomes.
Before Flip was deployed broadly, voice automation was approached as a pilot – one that had to perform under real conditions without degrading the experience.
“The minimum viable requirement was that performance had to be flat to the rest of the business before turning the whole system on,” Maureen explained.
As automation increased month-over-month, outsourced support scaled down alongside it. The relationship was intentional – and Flip earned it, call after call.
“Flip is so seamless at Madison Reed, it almost doesn’t get talked about,” she said. “It’s a non-squeaky wheel.”
In 2025, the results were unambiguous. Madison Reed reduced its call center spend, while Flip’s overall phone automation rate increased.
“If a Flip interaction is significantly less expensive than how we were solving it before, and at the same time, our customers are receiving a highly personalized service,” Maureen explained, “That allows us to take those savings and apply them to a different part of our business model.”
Flip wasn’t generating cost savings by cutting corners or creating noise. It was doing the work quietly, consistently, and at a scale large enough to reshape the economics of the phone channel.
This is the point where automation moved into the business model itself. The standard wasn’t just cost efficiency, but delivering consistently excellent service to every caller – with cost effectiveness as a result.
Pillar 5: Partnership As A Force Multiplier
Built To Grow Together
What makes Flip’s impact at Madison Reed durable isn’t just what the system can do – it’s how the two teams work together.
This wasn’t a one-time implementation or a static deployment. As Madison Reed expanded automation into more complex, revenue-critical workflows, Flip operated as an extension of the internal team.
That collaboration showed up in concrete ways:
- Regular operating cadences focused on outcomes, not status updates
- Direct API integrations built jointly with Madison Reed’s product and engineering teams
- Shared accountability for performance, reliability, and financial results
For Maureen, that depth of partnership set Flip apart.
“I feel like they are an extension of the Madison Reed team,” she said.
As Flip expanded into appointment booking, account management, and other core workflows, Madison Reed didn’t need to manage a brittle system or worry about ownership gaps. The partnership itself became part of the operating model – ensuring that automation stayed aligned with how the business actually ran.
The outcome was simple.
“It just works,” Maureen said.
In an environment where most vendors are evaluated on features or promises, Flip earns its place by showing up consistently, and adapting as the business evolves. For Madison Reed, this has made all the difference.
