How Cheeky Zebra Saved 1.5 Hours per Day & Improved Customer Service

Cheeky Zebra Company Profile

• Selling on: Cheeky Zebra Website (Shopify), eBay, Amazon, Etsy
• Annual sales: £240K
• Previous helpdesk: None
• Messages per month: Seasonal, up to as many as 250
• Support team: 3 – 5

What would an extra hour-and-a-half per day mean to you as an eCommerce seller? Specifically, what might it mean for your business and you personally if you could save that much time on your customer service efforts? 

For a sole proprietor like Cheeky Zebra founder and company owner, Sasha Gupta, saving time on customer support is critical. Operating an increasingly busy and popular greeting card business out of her home, Gupta is responsible for managing every aspect of her company, from sales to product creation to branding to fulfillment. But she also has an ever-growing customer base who needs attention.

So how, then, did Gupta reduce her manual efforts by 1.5 hours per day while improving Cheeky Zebra’s customer service? We recently got the chance to interview her and find out. Keep reading to discover the fascinating and inspiring story of Cheeky Zebra… 

From the Courtroom to Card Stock: Cheeky Zebra’s Beginnings

Cheeky Zebra Founder / Owner Sasha Gupta & Her In-Home Workspace

If you read the impossibly hilarious and delightfully irreverent “greeting cards for real life” on the Cheeky Zebra website (a Shopify store), you’ll likely have one thought: “How does the team come up with all of these?” 

In actuality, that “team” is one Sasha Gupta (along with a few family members, whom we’ll have more on later). We still can’t wrap our heads around how she comes up with so many clever, insanely relatable quips for her cards. But just as we’ve learned from interviewing other sellers over time, most eCommerce pros have an interesting and unique “how I got started selling online” story. And this is certainly true in the case of Sasha Gupta and how she began Cheeky Zebra.

As Gupta put it: 

“I worked in law up until about 3 years ago. But I had seen that someone else was doing funny cards, and I remember thinking, ‘I can do better than that.’”
– Sasha Gupta, Cheeky Zebra Founder / Owner

So, Gupta began creating and selling funny cards on the side. But after a short time, around 2.5 years ago in 2019, Cheeky Zebra had grown to the point where she was able to leave her career in law behind and focus on her eCommerce business full-time. 

Cheeky Zebra: A Family Effort

As we mentioned before, Sasha Gupta is the sole proprietor of Cheeky Zebra. However, the company is truly a family business. Gupta related to us that various relatives help out with different aspects of running the company when and where they can.

For instance, Gupta’s grandmother, referred to as “Nan” by Gupta and Cheeky Zebra’s social media followers, assists with order packing. In fact, there have been a few hilarious developments on the company’s Instagram in which avid fans of Nan campaigned (successfully) for her to win the coveted Cheeky Zebra award for Employee of the Month.

You see, as a sort of running joke, Gupta awards herself Employee of the Month every month (for good reason, as she’s technically the only employee of the company and works like crazy to keep up with orders and customer inquiries). However, the very vocal Cheeky Zebra social media fanbase has absolutely fallen in love with Nan over time. 

So, Gupta challenged these @nanforemployeeofthemonth fans to get Nan to 200 followers by Mother’s Day of this year. And they did it! As a result, a (humorously) chagrined Gupta came through on her promise and named Nan March Employee of the Month. However, as you can see from the above pictures, Gupta was back in the reigning spot as of April. 

Cheeky Zebra’s Customer Service Challenges

But of course, it’s not all fun and games. In fact, Gupta takes the running of her business and the satisfaction of her customers very seriously. And as the brand continued to grow and became overrun by customer inquiries, she knew she needed to look into a helpdesk solution that could help centralize her support efforts.

When expounding on Cheeky Zebra’s biggest challenges as a company, Gupta explained, “In addition to Shopify, we also sell on Etsy, eBay and Amazon. So one of the biggest challenges has been streamlining that process, because each channel comes with its own specifications and its own headache.”

Replyco: Feature-Rich, Affordable & Easy Onboarding

While searching for the right helpdesk software to consolidate customer messaging, Gupta quickly decided on Replyco helpdesk software for eCommerce. And when asked why she chose Replyco over any other provider, her answer was simple:

“Replyco had all the tools and features I needed, but was shockingly more affordable than the other options.”
– Sasha Gupta, Cheeky Zebra Founder / Owner

So how was the onboarding process? According to Gupta, this was something she was very worried about, as she joined Replyco right around Valentine’s Day and needed the software to be working immediately.

This was apparently no problem thanks to the Replyco customer support team. In fact, Gupta told us a funny story about how she thought our director of customer satisfaction, Alex, was a bot because he was online helping her get onboarded at 10pm one night. Alex, however, assured her he was a living human and helped her through every step to get up and running. In the end, Cheeky Zebra’s customer service didn’t miss a beat and Gupta says she was “blown away” by the level of support at Replyco.

Saving Time & Delighting Customers

Now that Cheeky Zebra is using Replyco to stay on top of customer messaging, Gupta says she has saved loads of time while keeping shoppers happy.

On some of her favorite aspects of Replyco, Gupta started by saying:

“One of the things that was really helpful about Replyco was that it gave us a central hub to be able to respond to inquiries coming at us from every channel. Because we were just getting inundated. So [Replyco] took out loads of the stress and complexity.”
– Sasha Gupta, Cheeky Zebra Founder / Owner

Gupta also explained that inquiries from her customers are very time-sensitive. For example, if a customer wants to know if they’ll receive their card by Father’s Day, they need an answer to their question quickly. Companies like Gupta’s are very holiday / event-based, therefore, having a way to read and respond to customer queries expediently, often in real-time, is imperative.

That’s why features such as a centralized inbox, sorting for inquiries from various selling channels and instant messaging capabilities for responding to customers during critical moments of the buying process are crucial. 

And perhaps most importantly, Gupta says Replyco’s features have saved her team tons of time. In fact, Gupta estimated that:

“In a busy period, Cheeky Zebra has easily saved 1.5 hours per day on customer messaging by using Replyco.”
– Sasha Gupta, Cheeky Zebra Founder / Owner

For a seller like Gupta, that’s a huge deal. The company can go from receiving just a handful of inquiries a day during off-times, to being flooded by hundreds of weekly messages during holidays and events. So, being able to use custom tags for templated messages, auto-responders for after-hours times, Amazon’s “No Response Needed” button for notifications that don’t require a reply and much more, Gupta and her team have improved efficiency while making sure customers are fully satisfied and never fall through the cracks. 

And finally, Gupta’s team has also saved time (while ensuring customer happiness) with Replyco’s clickable customer details and order / tracking numbers. Gupta stated, “One of the major benefits with Replyco, specifically with the Shopify integration for us (as that’s where we make most of our sales), is being able to look up order and customer information really quickly. Before Replyco, we were spending hours going to the order, copying and pasting, etc. So that’s just made us much more efficient.”

How to Get Control of Your Customer Service

When asked if she would recommend Replyco to other eCommerce sellers, Cheeky Zebra owner and founder Sasha Gupta gave a resounding, “Yes!” 

From time-saving templates to affordable pricing to excellent customer support to a robust set of features all aimed at improving the customer experience, Replyco is a dream come true for busy online sellers. 

Want to learn more about how we can help you save time and reduce manual efforts while boosting your customer service? Take a tour of our features or start your no-risk, no-credit-card-required, free trial today. 

Ready to browse some of the funniest, most relatable greeting cards on the market today? Check out Cheeky Zebra’s cards for (almost literally) any occasion.

Finally, don’t forget to tune into Cheeky Zebra’s Instagram to see who wins Employee of the Month this month. We’re remaining neutral here. But with the company’s delightful cards and excellent customer service, we believe the Cheeky Zebra shoppers are the real winners.