How Javvy Coffee achieved 70% automation and slashed response time from 24 Hours to 12 Minutes, with Yuma AI

Introduction

Javvy Coffee started with a simple premise: great-tasting coffee at home, without the sugar, chemicals, or preservatives. Co-founded by Brandon Monaghan and Justin Kemperman, the brand has grown from flavored coffee into a full lineup of protein coffees, protein creamers, and naturally flavored syrups. The product resonates across fitness enthusiasts, weight-loss communities, and anyone who wants better coffee without compromise.

The company launched in the US, expanded into Canada, and recently started shipping to the UK and EU. That growth created an ecommerce customer service challenge: the team went from 12 agents in July 2024 to 45 today.

Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience, joined Javvy with a decade of experience scaling ecommerce support teams at early-stage startups. Her philosophy is simple: lead with empathy, put the customer first, and always look for ways to go the extra mile.

"Anytime we can interact with a customer and can make something better, I encourage my team to do it. Everybody has the autonomy to say, 'I know it's outside policy, but this person really needs some help, what can we do for them?'"— Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience at Javvy Coffee

That approach earned Javvy exceptional Trustpilot reviews. But as ticket volume climbed into the tens of thousands per month, the team faced a question: how do you maintain that human touch when you're drowning in repetitive requests?

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The Challenge

Javvy's CEO initially didn't want AI. He wanted to preserve the human touch that set the brand apart. So when ticket volume started climbing, the company chose the traditional path: hire more people.

Shannon led the effort. In three months, she sourced, hired, trained, and QA'd roughly 30 new agents, tripling the team's size.

"As someone who managed the sourcing, hiring, and training of 30 extra human agents... I can say that it's exhausting. When we were about to hit that next level and needed to scale again, that's when we were like, okay, we either add 30 more people, or we seriously look into AI."— Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience at Javvy Coffee

The problem wasn't just volume. It was the nature of the tickets. Subscription cancellations and subscription inquiries made up the largest share of customer requests, followed by returns, refunds, order cancellations, and shipping status questions. These are transactional interactions with little room for human agents to make a difference.

"They're essentially just grinding, answering the same questions over and over. That's not really an opportunity for them to use creative problem-solving skills."— Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience at Javvy Coffee

Javvy uses Gorgias as their help-desk and with 50,000 tickets hitting the inbox each month, the tension between speed and quality was constant. Response times suffered. At best, the team held a 24-hour window. During busy periods, that stretched to 36 or 48 hours. Consistency was another issue: agents had developed their own macros and their own way of phrasing things. Nothing was standardized.

The team had tried automation before. The AI features in their help-desk platform didn't perform up to the mark. Shannon describes it: "It was really, really rough." The QA process was a Google Sheet, and after an issue was flagged, there was no confidence anyone would actually fix it. Javvy needed a different approach to automated customer service.

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Why Yuma AI?

Javvy evaluated three platforms: Yuma, Siena, and Sierra. The conversations started around the same time, but the experiences diverged quickly.

One competitor required intensive self-guided training before you could start building. Another expected the CX team to learn the system, configure it themselves, and then teach their agents how to use it. For a team already stretched thin and staring down an inbox crisis, that wasn't realistic.

"When you're in the process of scaling your CX fast because your inbox is blowing up, you don't have the bandwidth to be fully learning an AI, building it, and then teaching it to your team. That's just not a realistic expectation."— Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience at Javvy Coffee

Yuma took a different approach. The team handled implementation directly, working alongside Javvy rather than handing over documentation and stepping back. Josh, Javvy's account manager, became a consistent partner throughout onboarding and beyond.

"Josh has held our hands through every step of implementation. He asks great questions and has great thoughts on how we can improve. On top of that, the Yuma team will take our wacky ideas and and turn them into features, which has been an absolute delight. The ability to customize things and the level of customer service is way above everybody else."— Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience at Javvy Coffee

That partnership extended to building custom features when needed. Javvy wanted to run A/B testing on a retention offer through their AI agent. Yuma had never done it before. Josh built it anyway, tested it with the team, and got it working.

The onboarding itself was uneventful, which is exactly what Shannon wanted. "I can't really think of any issues when we were onboarding," she said. "That kind of says it all. It was as easy as, I don't remember it being terrible."

Today, Javvy's AI chatbot for ecommerce (named Clara) handles the front line of customer support for ecommerce. A dedicated team member does QA on Clara's responses full-time, using Yuma's built-in reporting tools to flag issues and track improvements. When a human agent takes over an escalation, Clara's reasoning and context transfer with the ticket, so agents understand what happened and why.

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Outcomes

70% Automation Rate

Yuma now handles 70% of all customer queries. The top automated requests include subscription cancellations, subscription inquiries, returns, refunds, order cancellations, shipping status, payment issues, and product questions.

These are exactly the ticket types that were grinding agents down before: high volume, low complexity, minimal opportunity to add value. Clara (Yuma's conversational AI for ecommerce) handles them instantly, and agents only see escalations that require judgment or a human touch.

First Response Time: From 24+ Hours to 12 Minutes

Before Yuma, Javvy's first response time sat around 24 hours on a good day. During peak periods, it stretched to 36 or 48 hours. Once a backlog built up, digging out was painful.

Today, first response time holds steady at around 12 minutes. At certain points, the team has hit 4 minutes.

"Having our first response time and resolution time go down has been huge. We are staying steady at around 12 minutes. We can now make sure that our customers are consistently getting answers under just 15 minutes of asking a question."— Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience at Javvy Coffee

CSAT boost: From 3.5 to 4.2

Customer satisfaction scores climbed after Yuma went live. Before, Javvy hovered around 3.5  out of 5. Now, CSAT now sits close to 4.2.

The gains come from two directions: faster responses on simple requests, and more agent bandwidth for complex interactions where empathy and problem-solving matter.

4 Months of Time Saved

Yuma has saved Javvy the equivalent of 4 months of agent work time, with efficiency continuing to improve. That time isn't disappearing into a void. It's going back to agents who now have room to focus on customers who need real help.

100% Team Retention

Javvy retained every agent. No layoffs, no reduction in force. Instead, the team structure shifted. Human agents now handle escalations and complex tickets. A specializations team manages marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok Shop, plus ongoing training, knowledge base maintenance, and special projects from other departments.

"The relief that we felt after onboarding Yuma was because it took that repetitive nature out of the team’s day-to-day. Now the team can work on tickets that are way more engaging and thought-provoking. They are problem-solving, and getting to actually make a difference."— Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience at Javvy Coffee

Holiday Season Peace of Mind

The real test came during the holidays. Last year, peak season meant all hands on deck and constant anxiety about the inbox. This year, Shannon took time off.

"Going into this holiday season versus last year's - I had the peace of mind knowing that no matter what, the inbox was going to be fine. Because our humans weren't going to get overloaded, I was able to give them time off too. I was comfortable with the level of coverage that we had from Yuma."— Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience at Javvy Coffee

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Advice for CX Leaders Considering AI

Shannon offers two recommendations for teams evaluating AI solutions for ecommerce customer service:

First, don't wait. The sooner you onboard an AI, the sooner you see relief in the inbox. Waiting until the problem is out of control means backtracking, and that's harder than getting ahead of it. Her advice: do it before your busy season, before things get chaotic.

Second, evaluate the implementation experience, not just the product. If a vendor's approach is "here, learn it, figure it out, and make it happen," ask yourself whether you have the bandwidth for that. The answer is probably no. Look for a team that will actually get you through the process. You want to focus on your role and your team, not on learning how to configure an AI system from scratch.

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Conclusion

Javvy Coffee faced the same decision many growing DTC brands encounter: hire another round of agents or find a way to scale ecommerce support without adding headcount. They tried hiring first. It worked until it didn't.

With Yuma, Javvy found a third option. Automated customer service handles the repetitive work, the team stays intact, and human agents focus on the interactions that actually matter.

The numbers tell part of the story: 70% automation, 12-minute response times, rising CSAT. But for Shannon, the real shift is what her team can do now that they couldn't do before.

"Yuma has given us the freedom to really explore what else our CX team is capable of. It's been really freeing to think of our CX team outside of the inbox, outside of just answering emails. That has been a really exciting experience for us."— Shannon White, Head of Customer Experience at Javvy Coffee

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