Customer-ops triage
Inbound across email, chat and social classified, answered or routed with full order context attached.
Industry
Retail
Customer ops, returns and store-floor workflows with AI.
The sector reality
How the sector operates today.
Retail is fragmented by design. Stores, e-commerce, marketplaces, marketing channels and back-office systems each generate their own data and their own workflows. The customer sees one brand; the operation sees twelve.
Customer ops is the daily storm. Returns, refunds, exchanges, shipping complaints, sizing questions — peaking on launches and holidays, when the team is most stretched and the brand is most exposed.
The store floor depends on whoever is there. A new associate works through the same questions a veteran would have answered in seconds. Training, playbooks and policy updates land slowly, unevenly, sometimes never.
Suppliers, marketplaces and 3PLs each have their own rules. Reconciling stock, invoices and returns across them is its own back-office function — and a slow one when volume spikes.
Where Sommatic fits
A cognitive layer that shapes itself to your operation.
Sommatic gives retail one operational layer over many channels. Customer requests get classified, answered or routed in seconds — with the order, the policy and the brand tone already attached.
Store associates work with the same answers, the same policies and the same context as HQ. New hires reach productive faster because the operation answers for them while they learn.
Returns and exchanges stop being a black hole. The layer handles the routine — eligibility, label, refund — and escalates the cases that need a human, with everything the human needs already attached.
Reconciliation across marketplaces and 3PLs happens in the background. Exceptions surface; the rest stays out of the inbox.
Common workflows
The first things the cognitive layer starts operating.
Returns & exchanges
Eligibility, labels and refunds handled under your policy. Edge cases escalated with everything already attached.
Store-floor playbook
Associates get answers, policy updates and product context in the same place — consistent across every store.
Supplier intake
Purchase orders, ASNs and invoices reconciled across vendors and 3PLs. Exceptions surfaced for buyers.
Marketplace reconciliation
Orders, fees and returns from each marketplace reconciled with the source of truth. Disputes opened automatically.
What you will see change
Three things your team will notice first.
Customer queues stop ballooning
Launch days and holidays absorb without doubling headcount. The brand stops being the bottleneck.
Every store sounds like the brand
Tone, policy and product knowledge stay consistent across stores, channels and seasons.
Margins stop leaking
Reconciliation catches what would have slipped — supplier discrepancies, marketplace fees, return abuse.
Where you start
Your recommended entry point.
Start with customer-ops triage and returns. Add store-floor workflows and supplier intake once HQ has the playbook running.