The Black Tux eliminates "Tuxedo Hell" with Gladly

The challenge

The Black Tux was born from frustration. Co-founder Andrew Blackmon experienced firsthand what he called "tuxedo hell"—the chaos of renting formalwear for life's most important moments. He built The Black Tux to eliminate that experience entirely.

A decade later, that mission remains urgent. The company serves customers during weddings, galas, and milestone celebrations where even minor mishaps can feel catastrophic. A navy suit mistaken for black. Missing cufflinks discovered the morning of. Shoes that don't match. When someone's big day is on the line, there's no room for error.

But the tools the team relied on made that job harder than it needed to be.

Before Gladly, The Black Tux's 90-person customer care team operated across fragmented systems. Every interaction lived in isolation. When a customer called about an issue they'd mentioned in an email months prior, agents had to hunt across platforms, searching by email address, digging through disconnected tickets.

"Agents always figured things out before, but it could be painstaking—very detective-like."

Thomas Harden
Senior Director of Customer Care, The Black Tux

The team couldn't easily prioritize customers with events approaching in days versus weeks. They couldn't route specific issues to agents with specialized expertise. And they couldn't see the full picture of a customer's journey—the previous order that shipped late, the earlier question about sizing, the concern about color that was never fully resolved.

For a company built on relationships and trust, these blind spots created risk. "The Black Tux is in the relationship business," Thomas explains. "We understand perceptions and what they mean to people."

The solution

When Thomas attended Gladly Connect Live, he came with one goal: find the flaws. He approached everyone he could—customers, partners, staff—with the same question:

"I asked everyone, 'Tell me something bad about Gladly that's real.' No one had anything bad to say. I honestly thought they were paid actors."

Thomas Harden
Senior Director of Customer Care, The Black Tux

The one consistent complaint? Gladly couldn't build features fast enough because customers kept asking for more.

Beyond the product, Thomas was evaluating culture. "Gladly felt like a cultural fit. Are they who we are? Is it mutually beneficial? I felt that immediately."

When he asked about implementation timelines, expecting pushback on his aggressive seven-week target, the response surprised him: "They told me, 'Six weeks? Seven? Totally doable.' And they were right—we did it in seven weeks, start to finish."

One customer, one conversation

The transformation started with a fundamental shift: every customer interaction now lives in a single, continuous timeline. No more isolated tickets. No more detective work.

"We went from being siloed to everyone seeing everything," Thomas says. When a customer mentions a past issue, agents see it instantly. When someone requests a courtesy discount, the full history reveals whether it's a first-time ask or a recurring pattern. It sends the message that the team understands—and sees—the customer.

The Shopify integration amplifies this visibility. Agents now see product images and descriptions directly in the customer profile—no system-switching required. "The Shopify + Gladly integration is huge. We catch things instantly now—wrong colors, missing studs, shoes," Thomas says. A customer might think they ordered a black tuxedo when it's actually navy. They might not realize their shirt requires studs. These details, caught early, prevent last-minute disasters.

Segmented inboxes give agents clarity about priorities. Customers with events in two days get routed for immediate attention. Showrooms and warehouses have visibility into exactly what they need. "There's no noise," Thomas says.

AI that knows when to step back

The Black Tux approached AI carefully. With so much at stake in every customer interaction, they needed technology that enhanced rather than endangered the experience.

Working with Gladly's team, they built guardrails into their AI assistant. Any customer with an event within 10 days routes directly to a human. "We're not leaving anything to chance with someone's special day," Thomas explains.

The results have exceeded expectations. Gladly AI now resolves 68% of inquiries overall—73% on email and 45% on SMS—handling common questions about return timing, event deadlines, and order status while seamlessly handing off complex cases to human agents with full context preserved.

Perhaps most telling: agents aren't threatened by the technology. They're eager to use it.

"Agents aren't intimidated. They're experts. They're asking, 'When can I get trained to handle escalations?'" Instead of fearing replacement, the team welcomes the opportunity to focus on complex, interesting problems while AI handles routine inquiries.

The outcome

Seven weeks after launch, The Black Tux saw zero dip in performance metrics. Answer times held steady. Training time for new hires remained unchanged—even though they were learning both the legacy system and Gladly simultaneously.

Tool consolidation reduced spend by 23%. CSAT bar remains consistent, the high benchmark the team has maintained historically.

"Our reps are so tenured it's scary—in a good way. It's the best retention rate I've had in 25 years."

Thomas Harden
Senior Director of Customer Care, The Black Tux

The operational improvements extend beyond the contact center. When Thomas receives CSAT feedback now, he clicks directly into the relevant conversation. Previously, that required searching across multiple systems just to find the right ticket. Everything connects.

From order-takers to consultants

With the foundation in place, The Black Tux is expanding what's possible. The team plans to layer in additional Shopify metadata, giving Gladly AI even more context to resolve inquiries. They're exploring how to shift agents from order-takers to consultants who guide customers through their most important moments.

"I don't want agents who just take orders," Thomas says. "I want them to interact, recommend, and guide customers."

The efficiency gains from AI resolution are freeing up capacity for exactly that kind of high-touch service. As routine inquiries shift to Gladly AI, agents can focus on the nuanced, emotionally intelligent conversations that define the brand.

"If you don't take care of the customer from the start, you've already lost," Thomas emphasizes. "Customer service will always set you apart when the funnel tightens."

For The Black Tux, eliminating tuxedo hell isn't a one-time achievement—it's an ongoing commitment. With Gladly, they have a platform built for exactly that purpose: putting the customer at the center of every interaction, across every channel, at every moment that matters.

Ready to put your customers at the center? Learn how Gladly can transform your customer experience.