How Flip Helped Tommy John Automate Customer Calls and Reduce Escalations
- ~20% of total inbound call volume automated with WISMO alone
- Live in under 4 weeks, launching one week before Black Friday with no issues through peak season
- Agents redirected to upselling, product recommendations, proactive outreach, and NPS follow-ups
There’s a napkin sketch somewhere in Tommy John‘s origin story. Two founders, a deceptively simple insight about fit and fabric, and the conviction that comfort is intentional.
In 2008, Tom Patterson couldn’t find an undershirt that stayed tucked, didn’t yellow, and actually fit. So he made one himself.
What began as a fix for one frustrating wardrobe problem became one of the most recognized names in American apparel: a $100M+ brand now carried by Nordstrom, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and many more.
The insight was simple. Comfort does not happen by accident. It has to be designed from the foundation up.
That philosophy also shaped how Tommy John built its customer experience operation.
For Senior Director of Customer Experience Max Wallace and Customer Experience Manager Kara Randle, support is not about pushing customers through a queue as quickly as possible. It is about helping customers find what actually works for them.
Kara puts it simply: Tommy John is in the business of “getting people into their perfect fit.”
The customer support team calls itself a Comfort Concierge, and the name fits. Agents are empowered to use judgment, solve problems, and treat each interaction like a chance to make the customer feel taken care of.
“We really want to mimic an in-store experience on the phone,” Max explained. “You’re talking with someone who’s very knowledgeable on everything we have to offer.”
For most of the year, that standard worked. But every winter, as temperatures dropped and holiday shopping volume climbed, the phone channel tested it.
The Peak Phone Problem
Phone support is Tommy John’s second-highest-volume channel, and that reflects the customers they serve. These are people who truly care about what they’re buying: first-time shoppers who want to talk through a question, and shoppers who simply prefer a voice on the other end of the line.
During peak season, that same channel became one of the team’s hardest variables to control.
“There’s a lot of volume that’s outside of our control,” Max said. “You can plan everything as best you can, and one issue can still cause a tremendous amount of volume.”
Kara prepared for it every year without fail. “Around the holidays, phones are ringing off the hook. Emails are piling up. Phones have definitely been a struggle point.”
One year, it reached a breaking point. They turned off the phones entirely.
“We had to start making things a bit more fair,” Max said. “If you have an email sitting there, but someone’s calling in, they’re getting ahead of the email.” Many of those calls were WISMO (Where Is My Order?) calls: passing along tracking information, letting customers know an order was delayed, or answering a question that could be resolved faster in writing.
It happened once, but left a mark, and continued to be a concern each year. Max would find himself thinking the same quiet prayer heading into peak: “I hope we’re good this year, and we don’t have to turn off the phones again.”
The Decision To Flip
Tommy John found Flip through the Director of Customer Experience at Caraway Home, Nancy Gurd, who spoke highly of the platform. Max and Kara spent the next several months in careful evaluation before going live in November, one week before Black Friday.
“We were down to the wire,” Kara said. “We knew we were cutting it close.”
From the outside, the timing seemed bold.
Max’s framing for it was more practical. “At the end of the day, if there were any issues, we knew we could turn it off,” he explained. “But that was not the case.”
They started with WISMO only. The logic was to automate the highest-volume call type, prove the technology was effective, then expand. The pattern was simple: earn the next step before taking it.
WISMO automation alone accounted for roughly 20% of their total call volume almost immediately. Kara felt the relief in real time. “Those calls can easily clog up the phones,” she said. “There’s a lot of effort that goes into them. It definitely lightened the load.”
After that first peak season, Max reflected, “This made all the difference in taking the edge off of our team as a whole. If we had any more calls that we were handling ourselves and not being automated by Flip, we could be buried right now. It has continued to be amazing in that regard.”
From there, the scope grew steadily. In the past six months, Flip has turned what began as WISMO relief into steady coverage for the phone channel. From return and exchange requests, address changes and cancellations, all the way to discount code verification, Flip does it all for Tommy John’s customers.
“The automation rate has just exceeded our expectations by a ton,” Max said. “I never really thought it would translate as well for us, and it really just has delivered.”
After seeing Flip work on the phone channel, the team became more comfortable adopting AI elsewhere in the CX stack, including Gorgias.
“Our first use of AI was Flip,” Max shared. “It truly kickstarted us, and gave us a lot of confidence in adopting other AI tools down the road.”
The Ripple Effect
The question Max and Kara watched most carefully was the one that mattered most: how would customers react?
“Honestly, some people really like it,” Kara said. “They’re excited to get their answer quickly and move on with their day.”
One interaction stuck with Max. A customer called in, got what she needed, and later complimented Tommy John on the technology itself: a tool that let customers help themselves without waiting on an agent. “That one we were really happy with,” he said.
One of Flip’s most useful features is the ability to move a call to text when the issue needs a better channel. If a customer needs to send photos or continue a back-and-forth, Flip can hand the conversation off without making them start over. “There’s a lot of back and forth on some of these issues,” Max said. “Being able to hand that off to text or email – we really do like that feature a lot.”
Kara describes what changed for her agents directly: “Flip freed them up to work on proactive outreach, NPS follow-ups, reviews, professional development, which are things we always wanted to prioritize but couldn’t find the time for.”
The calls that do reach human agents now are the ones where a person can add the most value. “The calls we’re handling are truly the ones where it’s great to have a human,” Max said. “Order placement, product recommendations, really talking through what we have to offer. Upselling, cross-selling.”
Kara sees the same shift. Flip has moved the phone channel toward higher-value conversations: more delicate situations, cross-sell and upsell opportunities, and the calls that truly benefit from human intervention.
A Partnership That Keeps Expanding
Max and Kara will tell you that the product works. They’ll also tell you the partnership has been just as important.
“We love how available they are,” Kara said. “During implementation when we had questions, and even now, if something comes up you send a message and get an answer right away.”
Recently, Max was visiting Tommy John’s call center when a configuration question came up. He messaged the “outstanding” Jeff Robie on Slack.
Jeff replied in 45 seconds.
“He’s been exceptional,” Max said. “Full of knowledge, always keeping us posted. Flip is truly a pleasure to work with.”
Kara explained that openness has been just as valuable. The Flip team listens to what Tommy John wants, where the team wants to go next, and what is still missing. “Truly great partners overall,” Max shared.
On the roadmap: more advanced conversational AI, discount code automation, deeper intent handling. Max recently got a preview of what’s coming and left the conversation energized. It felt less like a roadmap review and more like two teams building the next version of the phone channel together.
The Foundation Holds
When asked what would happen if Flip suddenly wasn’t there, Max answered the hypothetical without hesitation.
Tommy John would have to staff up to absorb the volume that is no longer being automated. Emails would back up. Chat could be pulled into the pressure. The impact would move through the operation quickly.
“It has a ripple effect,” Max said. “It would really affect everything. It would be costly.”
Every fall, Max used to look at the staffing numbers, run the projections, and account for the variables he couldn’t control. He’d finish the exercise with the same quiet hope of being able to stay ahead of the phones.
That thought doesn’t come anymore. Not because the holidays got easier, but because the phone channel finally had the same foundation as the rest of the customer experience.
Tom Patterson started with a napkin sketch and a simple conviction: if what’s underneath is not right, nothing else will be either. Max Wallace arrived at the same principle through a different route: a peak season that revealed how much pressure the phone channel was carrying, a careful bet placed one week before Black Friday, and a platform that held through the busiest week in eCommerce without a single thing to report.
But the principle is the same one Tommy John has always been built on.
Get the foundation right, and everything else follows.
Key Takeaways
What are the top alternatives to a traditional call center?
Voice AI platforms are the most scalable alternative for ecommerce and retail brands managing high inbound call volume. Instead of staffing agents to answer every call, platforms like Flip automate routine call types: order status, returns, exchanges, address changes, cancellations, and route only calls that genuinely need a human. Tommy John replaced roughly 20% of their inbound call volume through Flip’s automation without reducing service quality.
How do companies handle high call volume without overstaffing?
The most effective approach is automating the highest-frequency, lowest-complexity call type first. For most ecommerce brands, that is WISMO, order status and tracking calls. Tommy John deployed Flip on WISMO alone and immediately absorbed 20% of total inbound call volume. That reduction protected agent capacity, reduced email and chat spillover, and eliminated the need to turn off the phones during peak season.
What voice AI platforms integrate with Shopify and Gorgias?
Flip integrates with both Shopify and Gorgias, making it a direct fit for eCommerce brands already running their operations on those platforms. Tommy John uses Flip alongside Gorgias to automate order-related calls and route complex issues to agents with full context intact.
What are the pros and cons of AI voice agents versus human agents in customer service?
AI voice agents handle high-volume, repetitive call types: WISMO, returns, cancellations, at scale, with no hold times and no capacity ceiling. The tradeoff is that nuanced, high-judgment, or sensitive calls benefit from a human. Tommy John’s model reflects this directly: Flip handles routine volume automatically, while agents focus on product recommendations, upselling, and situations that require expertise and empathy. “The calls we’re handling are truly the ones where it’s great to have a human,” said Max Wallace, Senior Director of Customer Experience.
How quickly can a voice AI platform be implemented?
Implementation timelines vary by platform and use case complexity. Tommy John went live with Flip in under four weeks, launching one week before Black Friday, and the platform held through the full peak season without issues. Starting with a single automated call type, rather than trying to automate everything at once, is the approach that allows for fast, stable deployment.
