How BARK scales personalization with AI + Human Touch

Featuring Nari Sitaraman
Chief Technology Officer at BARK

Featuring Hernan Giraldo
Servant of the Pups & People at BARK

On this special episode of Radically Personal, Gladly CEO Joseph Ansanelli sits down with BARK’s former CTO, Nari Sitaraman, and “Servant of Pups and People,” Hernan Giraldo. Together they explore how IT and CX partnered to deliver personalization at scale — and how AI helped make it sustainable.

Ecommerce brands with passionate customers often face a midmarket challenge: how to scale fast without losing the personal touch that drives loyalty. BARK proves it’s possible — blending empowered people, empathetic experiences, and AI-powered tools to grow while keeping CX radically personal.

Personalization that scales

To create excellent CX, brands need to take a holistic approach — from hiring the right staff and providing them with comprehensive training to demonstrating expert leadership and equipping agents with the best technology. BARK is constantly benchmarking the company's performance, and these tactics have paid off with high customer satisfaction.

The Happy Team difference

BARK’s “Happy Team” isn’t just support staff — they’re empowered to create experiences dog parents will never forget, including:

• The “Pup Companion Experience,” grief support for dog parents who’ve lost a pup.

• Hand-drawn portraits of loyal customers’ dogs.

• A dog-moving concierge service to ease transitions for pets and families.

These personal touches replicate the passion of dog owners themselves.

From boutique brand feel to national scale

While these stories feel like something from a small boutique brand, BARK is a fast-growing company. Maintaining this level of personalization at scale meant finding technology that “just worked” — with no added strain on their lean team.

We've tried to find throughout our journey these opportunities to connect with customers, understand where they're at, but also where their dog is at. Our customer satisfaction scores on [our BarkBox] experience weekly hits 98-plus… We're getting information from them and guiding them through what the ideal experience might be for them.

Hernan Giraldo
Servant of the Pups & People, BARK

Benchmarking for CX excellence

BARK constantly measures satisfaction, training, and performance to keep their Happy Team at the top of their game — a practice any growing brand can replicate.

Leveraging AI for deeper connections

AI + People Match technology

With Gladly’s People Match, customers are automatically routed to the best “Happy Team” member — based on their profile, history, and channel — creating conversations that feel personal from the very first exchange.

A great example of leveraging technology, leveraging things like People Matching, is for Gladly to say: 'Hey, these dog parents, we know they have a lab, so we're going to understand who on our team has a lab and try to connect them together…' It’s such a great example of actually how you do that at scale.

Joseph Ansanelli
Gladly

Data that fuels every interaction

From ecommerce to subscription brands, support teams can maintain speed without losing context thanks to AI-powered quick responses, conversation summaries, and centralized data. Gladly equips agents with AI tools that streamline CX at every touchpoint:

• Quick response suggestions.

• AI-powered conversation summaries.

• Centralized data for context across all channels.

This means BARK can keep speed and context, while still delivering a personal experience.

IT and CX in partnership

Behind the scenes, BARK’s IT and CX teams worked hand-in-hand. With Gladly’s easy-to-implement, out-of-the-box technology, they could focus on higher-value work while ensuring personalization scaled seamlessly.

AI or technology should help [our support] team do a more effective job and get to the root of what they're trying to help the customer with...they shouldn't be spending time going across multiple different solutions, trying to figure out what the data is — that should not be what they spend their time on. And that was the intent behind moving to Gladly as well.

Nari Sitaraman
Former CTO, BARK

Results that smaller teams can replicate

BARK’s combination of empowered agents + AI-powered tools allowed them to:

• Preserve deep personalization at scale.

• Maintain high customer satisfaction.

• Free agents to focus on complex, high-value conversations.

• Grow without seasonal hiring or agent burnout.

BARK isn’t an outlier — any midmarket brand can achieve these results. Gladly’s tools make it easy for lean teams to deliver radically personal service at scale.
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