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/ Retail

Stop Trying To Fix Customer Service

Most retailers invest in customer service technology to improve customer experience. But customer service isn’t the problem—it’s where operational issues surface. Late deliveries, missing refunds, repeat contacts and rising enquiry volumes are often caused by disconnected systems, fragmented data and manual processes behind the scenes.

Lokulus connects the operation behind every customer interaction, giving teams the visibility and answers they need to resolve issues faster, reduce operational effort and deliver better customer experiences at scale.

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/ Retail Reality

Your customers aren't waiting. Your cost base can't keep growing.

Retail contact volumes keep rising — WISMO, returns, sizing, loyalty queries — but budgets don't. The brands pulling ahead are the ones automating the predictable so their people can handle what actually matters.

  • £890bn Annual UK returns value

    Every return generates 2-4 service contacts. Most can be resolved without an agent if the process is automated end to end.

  • 17% of all contacts are "Where is my order?"

    For a retailer handling 5 million interactions per year, that's 850,000 identical queries — each costing £2.59 when handled by an agent.

  • 62% of customers leave after bad service

    The risk isn't just cost — it's revenue. Customers who can't get a fast answer on a return or delivery don't come back.

What changes when Lokulus is running your service operation

  • 1

    Customers get answers, not queue positions

    WISMO, returns status, sizing and loyalty queries are resolved automatically through intelligent self-service — across web chat, IVR and social. Your agents only see the interactions that genuinely need a human.

    Evidence: 25% of all interactions automated for a major UK retailer

  • 2

    Handle Black Friday volumes without Black Friday headcount

    Seasonal spikes don't need to mean seasonal hiring. Automation absorbs the volume surge while intelligent routing ensures your existing team focuses on high-value and high-sentiment interactions first.

    Evidence: 20% peak headcount reduction — BVG Group / Thompson & Morgan

  • 3

    Resolve in one conversation, not four

    When an agent does pick up, they see the full picture — order data, contact history, sentiment score and suggested resolution — in one workspace. No switching between 11 different applications. First-contact resolution goes up, handling time comes down.

    Evidence: 27% reduction in average handling time across retail clients

  • 4

    See pressure building before your customers feel it

    Real-time dashboards show queue depth, sentiment trends and SLA risk by channel, topic and team — so you can reassign resource before a spike becomes a service failure. GPT-powered summarisation flags emerging issues automatically.

    Evidence: Real-time sentiment and SLA monitoring across all channels

Did you know?

89% of customers say they would stop buying from a brand following a bad returns experience.

The importance of omnichannel for the retail industry

Read now
/ The economic case

Every agent-handled interaction costs you £2.59. Most of them don't need an agent.

Based on a fully loaded UK agent cost of £37,500, a 6-minute average handling time, and 14,500 interactions per agent per year — the unit economics are clear. Automating just the predictable queries changes the shape of your cost base permanently.

For a retailer handling 5 million interactions per year, 25% automation delivers £3.2 million in annual cost avoidance — without reducing service quality. WISMO alone accounts for over £1 million of that.

  • £2.59

    Cost per agent-handled interaction

  • £3.2M

    Annual saving at 25% automation

  • £1M+

    WISMO cost alone (500K queries/year)

  • 4 wks

    Typical implementation timeline

Problems. Solved.

Problem

Without Lokulus

High volume of queries causing the requirement of diminishing CSAT and increased employee costs.

Solved

With Lokulus

Automate common and low value queries such as WISMO and Returns to deliver a great customer experience and lower your cost to serve.

/ Client stories

Retailers running their service operations on Lokulus

From garden retail to multi-brand e-commerce, Lokulus orchestrates customer service operations for retailers who need more than a help desk.

  • BVG Group

    Multi-brand customer service operation running email, social and IVR through one contact centre. Returned to Lokulus in 2021 after experiencing the limitations of a larger platform — and went live in four weeks.
    • 20% peak headcount reduction
    • 4-week go-live
    • Multi-brand, single team

  • Trueshopping

    21 websites, 42 marketplace accounts across 9 countries and 7 languages — all managed through Lokulus. Amazon, eBay and direct channels orchestrated into a single, coherent service operation.
    • 21 websites
    • 42 marketplace accounts
    • 9 countries, 7 languages

  • Capita

    Large-scale back-office processing operation handling hundreds of thousands of items weekly. Lokulus automates the workflow orchestration that keeps volume moving without manual triage.
    • 230K items/week
    • 75% automated
    • Back-office orchestration
/ Why

Enterprise Orchestration Without Complexity

Most customer service platforms focus on ticketing and deflection. Enterprise platforms focus on large-scale transformation. Lokulus fills the gap in between.

Built for retailers, Lokulus connects customer service, ecommerce, fulfilment, marketplaces and operational systems in one intelligent platform—delivering the orchestration, automation and visibility teams need to improve operations quickly, without the cost, complexity or implementation burden of traditional enterprise solutions.

Comparison matrix
/ Built for Shopify

Your Shopify store has 6 apps handling service. You need one operation behind them.

Shopify makes it easy to sell. But as order volume grows, customer service fragments — a chat widget here, a returns portal there, order tracking somewhere else, and your team copying and pasting between all of them.

Lokulus connects directly to your Shopify store and pulls order data, customer history and fulfilment status into a single workspace. WISMO and returns queries are automated at source. Everything else is routed to the right person with full context — no app switching, no manual lookups.

The result: your customers get instant answers on the queries that don't need a human, and your team spends their time on the interactions that actually drive loyalty and revenue.

  • App fragmentation

    6+ Shopify apps handling different parts of service, none talking to each other. Your agents are the integration layer.

  • WISMO at scale

    "Where is my order?" makes up 17% of all contacts. Each one costs £2.59 when an agent handles it manually.

  • Returns chaos

    Every return generates 2-4 contacts. Without automation, returns become your most expensive customer journey.

  • Peak overwhelm

    Black Friday and sale periods spike volumes 3-5x. Hiring temps takes weeks; automation absorbs it in seconds.
/ Why Lokulus

This isn't another help desk. It's operational orchestration.

Zendesk and Freshdesk are great ticketing systems. But retail service operations aren't a ticketing problem — they're a routing, automation and orchestration problem that spans front office to fulfilment.

  • Orchestration, not ticketing

    Lokulus routes work by urgency, customer value, sentiment and agent skill — not just "next in queue." Every interaction is directed to the right outcome, whether that's automation, an agent, or a back-office process.

  • One team. No third parties.

    Built, implemented and supported by the same team. No implementation partner. No separate support contract. The people who wrote the code are the people who answer the phone — and that's why we go live in weeks, not months.

  • Front office to back office

    Most platforms stop at the agent desktop. Lokulus connects customer-facing channels to fulfilment, returns, loyalty, and back-office processing — so work doesn't stall at a handoff point.
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/ Next

Let's work out what this could save you

We'll map your contact volumes, identify the queries that don't need an agent, and show you the cost avoidance in your first 90 days. No commitment, no generic demo — just your numbers.

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