“What's valuable isn't just that the AI answers, but how it prepares the ground. In peak season, customers arrive anxious. The AI serves them in seconds, looks up their order and hands us the context ready to go. That let us survive the peak without doubling payroll.”
For a retail giant like TEC, November and December are a trial by fire. Customer inquiries explode, going from an average of 230 a month to more than 4,600 in December.
With a centralized support team of just 5 people, the math didn't work. The risk wasn't just long wait times, but losing sales by not being able to answer simple questions like “do you have a size 10 at the Multiplaza store?” in real time.
AI as the “first responder” (triage)
TEC didn't roll out a simple chatbot. It deployed Zelty agents deeply integrated with its ERP (CIMO) and web platforms. The strategy was to use AI as a smart two-level filter:
Automatic resolution (L1)
Answer stock, opening hours and location questions with no human intervention.
“Copilot” handling (L2)
For complex cases, the AI gathers the information, verifies the customer and hands the chat to a human agent with all the context ready, drastically cutting handling time.
- Total coverage: of 4,688 chats in December, 3,785 were answered immediately by the AI (no more queues).
- 80.7%
- Copilot handling: the AI processed and prepared 3,191 complex cases so the human only had to close them.
- 68%
- Extra sales in December: the agent closed 25 direct sales in the chat, more than covering its monthly cost + LLM.
- US$2,058
Financial efficiency with GPT-4.1-mini
One of the keys to success was choosing the GPT-4.1-mini model. It kept latency ultra-low (instant answers) and the cost per conversation minimal.
The financial result is clear: the agent isn't an operating expense. With an average ticket of US$82, the sales generated in the chat paid the technology bill almost 3 times over (payback > 230%).
“The challenge wasn't answering chats, it was integrating a complex ecosystem. Connecting the agent to our ERP (CIMO) and online stores (WooCommerce/Shopify) in real time turned the bot into a true extension of our inventory.”