New Look cuts FRT by 99.5% with Zendesk AI agents

New Look is one of the UK’s leading womenswear brands in the 18 to 44 demographic, operating in the clothing and footwear market, with a strong online presence and more than 300 stores in the UK.

New Look offers products and a shopping experience with a “feel-good” mission to make customers feel like their very best self. Additionally, the company is focused on uplifting its customers, colleagues, and suppliers while striving to make kinder choices for people and the planet through its strong sustainability credentials.

High volume challenges meet a smarter solution

New Look serves millions of style-conscious customers across digital and physical channels.

But with rising customer expectations and a weekly average of 9,500 customer support inquiries, the company’s CX team needed a solution that would scale fast without compromising quality.

“The challenge for us was sustaining service quality under this volume,” explains Sam Ashton, Senior Customer Care Manager at New Look. “We needed to ensure we could continue to meet customer expectations effectively.”
New Look found the answer to its dilemma with Zendesk AI agents.

AI-powered gains at scale

In late 2024, New Look launched Zendesk AI Agents across both email and live chat the day before Black Friday—just in time for the busy holiday season. The launch went smoothly, and within weeks, AI agents were automatically resolving tens of thousands of inquiries per month:

— 305,761 total contacts deflected across email and chat
— 88 percent higher average monthly solved tickets per agent

“Our AI agents currently operate without integrations, yet they already resolve an average of 42 percent of customer queries independently,” says Sam Ashton.

Productivity soars with AI Agent support + Copilot

With the addition of Zendesk Copilot and GenAI features like tone shifting, macro suggestions, and content expansion, the team saw immediate gains:

— 66 percent increase in agent productivity
— 99.5 percent faster first reply time–dropped from 16.5 hours to just 5 minutes.
— 30 percent reduction in full resolution time–now averaging just 30 minutes.

“We use tools like ‘expand’, ‘make more formal/friendly’, and suggested macros to drive efficiency and ensure consistency,” shares Sam Ashton. “We also embed our brand tone, so customers feel like they’re always speaking to New Look.”

Self-service help center outperforms the industry

Zendesk AI has also supercharged New Look’s self-service strategy. The company implemented GenAI-powered search across its Help Center, giving customers a frictionless way to find answers on their own. The results:

— 6X higher self-service ratio than industry average–18.7 compared to the industry average of 3.22.
— 88 percent of Help Center visitors find the answers they need without opening a ticket.

Customers save time and find what they need faster, and New Look agents are able to more quickly respond to higher-complexity inquiries.

“Customers can free-type their question instead of searching through articles—it’s a huge improvement in their journey,” offers Sam Ashton.

With Zendesk AI, the New Look CX team is definitely delivering “feel-good” customer experiences much faster while maintaining its focus on quality.