Helix Sleep, an innovative eCommerce retailer of sleep and home goods brands, was founded in 2015 with the goal of bringing more personalization to mattresses and fixing the inconvenient process of buying a mattress online. The founders set out to streamline and revolutionize the industry by creating an online sleep quiz to best recommend the right mattress for each individual sleeper’s needs and working with established US-based mattress manufacturers.
Since 2015, the Helix family of DTC brands has expanded to include Birch, a sleep brand that offers natural and organic products, and Allform, a modular sofa brand featuring patented locking mechanisms.
In 2021, Helix merged with one of its manufacturing partners, Brooklyn Bedding, to form one of the largest vertically integrated mattress companies in the US, and in 2022, Bear Mattress was added to the growing portfolio of brands. Every Helix, Birch, and Allform product is assembled in the United States and shipped throughout the country and most of Canada.
The Challenge
Helix’s primary objective is to engage shoppers by providing the best user experience possible – from its website and Sleep Quiz all the way to a smooth delivery to the customer. But even as a tech-forward company, Helix lacked sufficient customer tracking to deliver on this objective and needed a straightforward way to track orders and communicate with customers.
Prior to implementing project44, customers looking to check their order status were required to navigate back to the Helix website to find their tracking info. Then the customer would have to input this information into the appropriate carrier website. This lack of visibility needlessly increased the amount of time the Helix team spent on customer support.
Helix knew it needed an improved process to keep customers up to date on order shipment and arrival times. They began their search for a solution that would allow Helix to provide proactive shipping information to their customers.
“project44 has been a source of truth for our customers and all shipment data, which has allowed Helix to solve logistical and operational issues for customers.”
The Solution
In 2019, Helix partnered with project44 and adopted their Last Mile Resolution and Consumer Visibility solutions to provide shipment and carrier visibility in one location, ultimately improving the customer experience. The project44 platform has improved overall operational efficiency and given Helix and their customers direct visibility into relevant shipment data. project44 provides the company with a single source of truth for all shipments in the Helix network.
With Last Mile Resolution by project44, Helix’s logistics and customer service teams can now see all shipments and carriers in one place. When team members log in, they have instant access to all the information they need about a specific order, even if it contains multiple shipments. Since almost every order has multiple products shipped from various locations, this overview is particularly important for the Customer Experience (CX) team.
“There are many situations where initial tracking was created by the manufacturer and then canceled so a new label could be created, but with project44, the team always had the new tracking information visible so they could provide it to customers in real-time and update the control center.”
By streamlining logistics management, the DTC retailer increased operational efficiency. With their previous process, it would have taken a team member nearly five times as long to investigate a wayward shipment. Now, it takes less than a minute to identify and reroute duplicate or incorrect addresses. With this time saved, Helix’s CX team can better focus on value-added activities and high-touch customer service, rather than just shipment tracking.
Consumer Visibility by project44 also enables alert tracking to automatically notify customers of their shipments. By using tracking pages for all three brands – Helix, Birch, and Allform – the retailer now has a view rate of 72.8%. With easier access to their shipments, customers are less likely to pick up the phone to check the status of their shipments.
Another key feature of Consumer Visibility is the ability to send alert notifications. Helix uses this feature to let customers know if there are issues, like a weather delay or simply if an order is in transit and how soon it will arrive on their doorstep. This additional self-service option, which sends emails with a 68% open rate, further reduced WISMO (where is my order) outreach.
Business growth was a surprise benefit for Helix following their implementation of project44. By creating a branded tracking experience, the company was able to drive additional traffic to their site. By building this tracking experience and segmenting email lists for each product, Helix increased the likelihood that happy customers would go on to purchase a complementary product from their family of brands. Cross-sell emails have resulted in abilities to drive traffic and revenue.
The Helix team shows that leveraging innovation and technology can be a catalyst for enhancing the customer experience and improving operations. Helix is looking to build on this success by further expanding their high-touch, white glove service for customers, which will ultimately increase the customer lifetime value as well as the value the company provides to its constituents.
The Results
- 85% decrease in time to investigate and solve for wayward shipments
- Additional revenue generated from building branded tracking experience
- Significant increase in customer engagement
- 72% view rate of alert notifications
- 68% open rate of email alert notifications
- 2x increase in SMS opt-ins