Life before kim.cc
TRIP was founded in 2019 by Olivia Ferdi and Daniel Khoury. They left careers in law and finance after Daniel experienced the benefits of CBD while recovering from a knee injury and decided to build something around it.
The idea was simple: help people find calm in everyday life.
- TRIP is the UK's number one CBD drinks brand.
- They're available in Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Holland & Barrett, Target, and Whole Foods.
- They're the top-selling drink on TikTok in the UK.
- The brand generates more than 50 million social impressions every month.
Their customers are loyal, vocal, and paying attention. When something feels off, they notice.
So when the team dynamic shifted internally, the impact was immediate. Response times stretched. The backlog started building. Customers who expected quick, warm replies started waiting longer than they should have.
"After our team dynamic changed, response times increased dramatically. We knew we needed to act quickly before it started affecting the experience we'd worked hard to build."
— Rhi Henry, Operations Manager, TRIP Drinks
What they were looking for
TRIP wasn't building something from scratch. They already had processes, a tone, and a customer base with real expectations.
What they needed was support that could walk straight into that setup and keep things running without missing a beat.
- Speed of onboarding. Every day the backlog grew was another day customers were left waiting. They needed something up and effective within days, not weeks.
- A brand voice that carried through. TRIP's customers notice when something feels off. Generic or cold replies would have felt like they came from a different brand entirely.
- No management overhead. The internal team was already stretched. They needed a solution that could run without creating another layer of supervision.
- Room to scale. TRIP was still growing. Whatever came in had to handle more volume over time, not just cover what was already there.
How kim.cc helped
kim.cc's AI got to work inside TRIP's existing Gorgias setup straight away. No new tools, no migration, and no slow ramp-up while someone found their feet.
Speed mattered here more than anything else.
The AI was resolving real tickets within days. There was no long settling-in period while the backlog kept growing.
- It had the right information from day one. TRIP's full product range, including CBD drinks, magnesium drinks, gummies, oils, and powders, was centralised alongside subscription queries, delivery issues, and ingredient questions. Every answer stayed consistent and accurate from the start.
- Sentinels caught what the AI couldn't handle on its own. Complex queries, sensitive conversations, and customers who needed more than a standard reply were flagged and picked up by a real person.
- Sentinels kept the AI honest in the background. They monitored every interaction, validated tone and accuracy, and retrained the AI whenever it needed sharpening.
- Repetitive tickets kept moving quickly. Customers received complete answers without feeling like they were talking to a machine, and without the AI ever being left unchecked.
The result was a support experience that felt like it had always been there.
"What surprised us was how quickly the support felt like our own. It understood the brand, it understood our customers, and the quality of the responses was exactly what we'd want from someone in-house."
— Barnaby Whicher, Head of Ecommerce, TRIP Drinks
In under six months, kim.cc handled more than 40,000 tickets on TRIP's behalf. The backlog cleared. Response times came down. And TRIP's internal team had the space to focus on what they were actually there to do.
The impact
The backlog cleared, customers received answers faster, and TRIP's internal team got back the space it needed to focus on growing the brand.
|
50%
Faster First Response
First response time improved by 50%, helping customers get answers sooner. |
50%
Faster Resolution
Ticket resolution time improved by 50%, reducing delays and clearing the backlog faster. |
|
4.68 / 5
CSAT Score
TRIP maintained a 4.68 out of 5 customer satisfaction score while support volume continued to grow. |
40,000+
Tickets Handled
kim.cc handled more than 40,000 customer support tickets in under six months. |
"We were worried about maintaining the warmth and tone our customers expect from us. That worry went away pretty fast. It just got it."
— Rhi Henry, Operations Manager, TRIP Drinks
For a brand built around helping people feel calmer, every support interaction is either proof of that promise or a contradiction of it.
Getting this right wasn't just about clearing a backlog. It was about making sure nothing changed for the customer, even when everything was changing behind the scenes.
