The power of And — Gladly's vision for the future of customer experience

A decade ago, we founded Gladly on the belief that customer service software had lost its way.

Legacy platforms treated customers like tickets and cases, breaking conversations apart by channel and focusing on workflow efficiency over human connection. It was a production-line approach to service—fragmented and impersonal. But no one wants to be treated like a ticket. We all want to be treated like a person—like a customer.

So we set out to change that.

We built a customer-centered service platform where support heroes (our name for customer support agents) instantly see the most important details about a customer—their lifetime value, recent purchases, preferences, and more. They engage through a messaging platform designed for a single, lifelong conversation that flows naturally across voice, chat, SMS, email, and social messaging. And we made everything simply powerful. The idea was to show customers that companies had their best interests at heart—turning agents into heroes and transforming CX from a cost center into a revenue and loyalty center.

Now, hundreds of the world's most customer-centric brands like Hoka (part of Deckers Brands), Ulta Beauty, Tumi, Tecovas, and Rothy’s use Gladly to power their customer experience. One of our earliest customers, Crate & Barrel, had a goal to elevate customer experience across every touchpoint—and the results have been remarkable. Customer love has soared. Their care team has become one of their top revenue producers. And today, their contact center is not just a support function—it’s a revenue-generating channel that drives loyalty and growth. It’s a clear example of what happens when you rethink customer experience from the ground up.

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Meet Gladly Sidekick

Meet the AI agent designed for personalized conversations that deliver results

AI changed everything

On November 30, 2022, everything changed.

That’s the day ChatGPT entered the public conversation—and since then, over 400 million weekly users have been utilizing generative AI tools to create content, automate tasks, and accelerate research. Solutions like Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot have only added to the momentum. AI has quickly become one of the most powerful enablers of productivity we’ve ever seen.

Naturally, CX leaders are asking: How do we harness AI for customer experience?

That question feels even more urgent today because of the economic pressure so many companies are under. Teams are being asked to do more with less. Costs are rising. Loyalty is fragile. So it makes sense that businesses are turning to AI with the promise of cutting costs and scaling service faster.

But here’s the problem: Not all AI is created equal.

Generative AI is powerful, but only when with the right intelligence. Without a deep understanding of your customers, brand, and products, it’s artificial but not intelligent—it just makes bad service faster. And because most platforms are bolting AI onto systems never built for great service, the result is the same: faster bad experiences.

We believe there’s a better way. One that starts by rejecting the false choice between efficiency and personalization.

Introducing Gladly Customer AI — the power of And

Today, we're announcing Gladly Customer AI—the strategic intelligence layer that powers the Gladly platform. It starts with a rich understanding of all the key elements that define a customer—lifetime value, purchase history, preferences, loyalty status, and more—and unifies that with their conversations across voice, email, SMS, chat, and social messaging. This allows brands to use AI to respond with speed, empathy, and context, while continuously learning to make every interaction smarter and more human.

Designed to solve one of modern CX’s biggest challenges—the need to deliver both radically efficient and radically personal service—Customer AI scales effortlessly across all channels without compromise.

Its main principles build on the foundation we laid 10 years ago.

Customer at the center — Customer AI knows the customer's lifetime value, purchase history, preferences, and even their favorite products. This intelligence enables personalized experiences.

Brand and product knowledge — Customer AI understands your company's brand voice and product catalog, allowing it to recommend items and engage with customers in ways that align with your brand identity.

Fluency across channels — Customer AI seamlessly operates across voice, chat, SMS, and email, moving between them just as consumers do. It even supports multiple languages.

Simply powerful — Customer AI is easy to use without requiring a computer science degree. This is achieved through a capability called Guides, a resource that allows you to train the AI to interact and take action using plain English.

Extending Customer AI across the journey

Alongside Customer AI, we're introducing the next version of Sidekick—Gladly’s AI agent that puts that intelligence to work in real time. Sidekick handles conversations, assists agents, and resolves customer requests across channels.

These new capabilities expand how Customer AI supports more teams, touchpoints, and moments throughout the customer journey:

Sidekick Voice — Announced in March and now available to all customers, Sidekick Voice enables AI-powered conversations over voice to assist with order status, answer questions, and more.

Sidekick Sales — Build your entire product catalog into Sidekick so it can help customers find the right products through real-time, personalized recommendations.

Sidekick Email — Brings Customer AI to the inbox with fast, on-brand replies that reflect each customer’s full history.

Guides — Use plain English to teach Sidekick how to deliver your customer experience—from brand voice and policies to automating tasks like order status updates, product replacements, and more.

Journeys — Provides performance insights that show where Sidekick is working well and where to improve, helping teams focus their Guide efforts and optimize over time.

Sidekick for Zendesk + Salesforce — Extends Sidekick’s capabilities into legacy systems so brands can benefit from Gladly without needing a full rip-and-replace.

Tangible results — efficiency, revenue, and loyalty

Customer AI is already delivering measurable outcomes for Gladly customers:

Crate & Barrel — Over 30% of damaged item replacements are resolved automatically with high satisfaction. They also now drive more than $10 million in annual revenue through chat-based payments.

KÜHL — Resolves 59% of order status emails automatically and sees a 120% boost in revenue per call.

Breeze Airways — 37% of digital conversations are resolved with no human intervention, contributing to an NPS score of 59—among the highest in the airline industry.

These brands prove one thing: You no longer have to choose between operational efficiency and exceptional service.

Welcome to the era of And

We believe you can—and should—have both radical efficiency and radical personalization at the same time. Anything less is a compromise.

Because the either/or dichotomy was always a false choice.

Every conversation can drive down costs and build long-term loyalty. It can be instantly responsive and emotionally intelligent. Deeply personal and effortlessly scalable.

This is the power of Gladly—a true "and" solution for businesses that refuse to compromise.

Explore how you can deliver the experience your customers—and your business—truly deserve at gladly.ai/get-started.

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