Boll & Branch uses AI to maintain ‘unreasonable hospitality’

Founded in 2014, Boll & Branch is a luxury home and bedding brand. Best known for prioritizing organic cotton made free from toxins, the retailer’s products are crafted from the finest materials and traceable through its Origin Track platform–guaranteeing a softer, more luxurious product. Founded by Scott and Missy Tannen in 2014, the company was built on a mission to improve the lives of everyone who touches its products—from farmers to factory workers to customers.

Today, Boll & Branch is a leading brand with a loyal customer base that values quality, transparency, and exceptional service. In addition to its online business, the company also has 15 brick-and mortar locations in the U.S. and has plans to continue its retail expansion in 2026. Boll & Branch products can also be found at major retailers like Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, and Amazon, as well as registries like The Knot, Zola, and Over the Moon.

Growing pains challenge CX

For nearly a decade, Boll & Branch has relied on Zendesk to evolve its customer support strategy and deliver high-touch service at scale.

But the success of the consumer brand was providing the company’s CX team with new challenges. Specifically, Boll & Branch was facing rising expectations for highly personalized service from its discerning customer demographic, in parallel with fast growth.

As a result, the CX team was grappling with:

• Maintaining a personal touch at scale while meeting efficiency goals

• Turning negative experiences into positive ones before they escalated

• Equipping agents with the right tools to deliver empathy, speed, and consistency

It was up to Boll & Branch’s Anna Esrov, the VP of Customer Experience & Loyalty, to determine the best path forward for the CX team.

The mission: unreasonable hospitality

From the beginning, Boll & Branch’s founders, Scott & Missy Tannen aimed to deliver an “unquestionably better” product, grounded in a philosophy of “unreasonable hospitality” – exceeding expectations at every customer touchpoint.

“One of our non-negotiables is staying personal and connecting 1:1 with our customer,” explains Esrov. “We have a very clear brand voice, a firm stance on what unreasonable hospitality means to us. It’s in our DNA.”

The full list of customer service non-negotiables for Boll & Branch includes:

• Keeping an in-house CX team based in Summit, New Jersey

• Providing direct phone support

• No virtual agents

• Building 1:1 relationships with customers

At the time, there was a lot of chatter and hype around AI and Esrov wondered how AI could possibly square with unreasonable hospitality. But she was determined to find a way to make it work.

Seeking a customer-first AI solution

Boll & Branch turned to the Zendesk team to see how AI could support its customer-first philosophy, while boosting efficiency across channels.

“We pride ourselves on going above and beyond for our customers,” explains Sherry Delia, Senior Customer Experience Manager at Boll & Branch. “AI had to fit in a way that enriched—not replaced—those human moments.”

As work progressed, several AI-driven initiatives were identified to help transform CX at Boll & Branch.

“One of the first things we used Zendesk AI for was sentiment analysis and prioritization,” recalls Delia. “We loved seeing it come through our emails and set up negative sentiment views so agents could turn those around quickly.”

Zendesk AI automatically tags incoming tickets with sentiment, creating dedicated views for “negative” or “super angry” customers. This allows those tickets to be prioritized to the best-equipped agents for faster responses and greater empathy.

“Since implementing sentiment analysis, we’ve seen a notable decrease in escalations,” notes Esrov. “As I like to say, an angry customer is just a loyal customer in disguise.”

Voice transcriptions change the game

With nearly 50 percent of Boll & Branch’s customer tickets coming through the voice channel, AI-powered transcriptions have been another transformative feature for the CX team. Agents can scan previous conversations instantly, ensuring seamless continuity across touchpoints.

“AI transcriptions have been a game changer for us,” says Esrov. “Customers are pleasantly surprised that we ‘remember’ details they shared—even sensitive ones. It threads critical information together.”

Delia echoes that sentiment. “AI for Boll & Branch has really been about efficiency and speed, but also enriching our customer experience beyond anything we could have imagined.”

Copilot & QA delivering agent confidence

Zendesk AI also assists Boll & Branch CX agents in crafting empathetic responses and provides automated QA to monitor quality and coaching opportunities.

“Zendesk copilot has been super helpful for our team to work faster and feel more confident in their responses, while still protecting our brand voice,” says Delia.

Overall, the AI tools have reduced repetitive work, empowered agents to deliver empathy at scale, and increased team morale.

“Zendesk AI has made my team happier, their jobs easier, and allowed them to really connect with customers in such a large way,” highlights Delia.

AI operational efficiency and cost savings

By automating routine tasks like address changes, Zendesk AI saves Boll & Branch agents 5 to 10 minutes per ticket and reduces costly returns.

The team is also leveraging AI to analyze order cancellations, currently developing a business case for possible warehouse process changes.

A large amount of order cancellation requests are received by Boll & Branch within two hours of the initial order. Esrov says that by implementing a 2-hour delay on orders before they are sent to the warehouse could deliver major cost savings for the company.

It would be a massive win for reducing overall tickets, elevating customer experience, and improving the overall bottom line by reducing return expenses.”

Remaining a deeply human brand

Despite the major benefits that AI is delivering to Boll & Branch, perhaps the most rewarding is using AI’s ability to surface critical insights from post-purchase feedback.

Boll & Branch routes those survey responses directly into Zendesk, creating tickets for follow-up. Oftentimes, the intel gained from customer feedback enables treasured moments of “unreasonable hospitality.”

For example, in one post purchase survey a customer mentioned how much his wife loved a certain comforter and he wanted to buy it in her memory as she had recently passed away. In response, the CX team completely refunded his order and sent him flowers.

By blending deeply human empathy with AI efficiency, the brand has elevated its service from reactive support to proactive, relationship-driven customer experiences.

“Our philosophy is clear: AI handles efficiency, humans handle connection,” concludes Esrov. “That’s how we will continue to deliver unreasonable hospitality at scale.”