From ticketing to transformation: how Jerome’s Furniture elevated CX with Kustomer

Jerome's Furniture has been a Southern California household name for more than 70 years. Family-owned and deeply rooted in the community, the company has built a reputation not only for quality furniture but also for the warmth and care it extends to its customers. This commitment to service is reflected in its people: across 600+ employees, the average tenure is an impressive 17 years. In the Consumer Experience department, the “newest” employee has been with the company for four years, while the average team member has served for over two decades.

At the heart of this operation is Marjorie Carlos, Senior Director of Consumer Experience, who has been with Jerome’s for 22 years. She oversees the entire post-sale customer journey — from delivery and service to warranty and issue resolution — across all non-store channels including phone, email, SMS, and social. Her mission is simple yet ambitious: ensure that every interaction, whether it’s solving a delivery hiccup or answering a quick question on Facebook, feels personal, effortless, and true to Jerome’s values.

“Our people stay because we care about our customers — and each other.” —
Majorie Carlos, Sr. Director of Consumer Experience

Jerome’s previous solution trapped the team in a rigid, ticket-based workflow that didn’t match how their customers wanted to communicate. The limitations were especially glaring after the pandemic, when customer behavior shifted dramatically.

Before COVID, nearly 70% of customer service interactions happened over the phone. But within months, that flipped. SMS became the preferred “instant gratification” channel for quick complaints or questions, and social media began generating significant engagement. Weekly call volume plummeted from 8,000–9,000 to just around 2,000, but the total number of interactions stayed high because digital channels surged.

The problem was that their tools hadn’t kept up, making managing high-volume, multichannel conversations cumbersome. Even worse, their POS system wasn’t integrated with the platform, meaning agents often had to jump between systems to find information, slowing down service and frustrating both customers and staff.

When Jerome’s Furniture partnered with Kustomer, they saw an opportunity to move beyond tickets entirely and adopt a conversation-driven platform that could unify every channel in one place. The vision was clear: give agents the tools they need to work faster, smarter, and with the full customer story in front of them. Kustomer was integrated across phone, SMS, social media, and email channels. This eliminated the need for agents to jump between systems and reduced response times.

To further improve agent efficiency, Jerome’s Furniture converted conversations to Tasks in Kustomer. This change alone moved over 8,000 interactions into a lower-cost, more streamlined workflow that freed agents from repetitive steps and cut per-contact expenses. Shifting conversations to Tasks also helped decrease duplicated customer inquiries from 42% to 8%.

Jerome’s Furniture found another unexpected, and highly valuable, use for Kustomer: Forms. While many customers use Kustomer Forms for customer-facing requests, Jerome’s adapted them for internal operational reporting in their reverse logistics department.

Shop technicians now use tablets to fill out short Kustomer Forms as they complete each job. These forms capture critical data, such as:

• What type of product they worked on
• How many items they handled
• How long each task took

Before this, Jerome’s Furniture had no way to capture this level of detail in a structured way. Shop technicians kept handwritten shop logs that would require a full-time admin to enter the data digitally in order to be able to report on it. The reporting capabilities with Kustomer Forms gives unprecedented visibility into technician productivity and workload patterns. With these insights, Jerome’s has been able to adjust workflows, allocate resources more effectively, and even rethink how certain services are scheduled — changes that have had a measurable impact on operational efficiency.

As Marjorie describes it:

“We’ve never had that reporting before, and it’s given us the opportunity to change how we do business.”

Jerome’s Furniture transformed their customer service operation into a faster, more cost-effective, and more adaptable team:

• Weekly call volume reduced by 75% without impacting service quality
• Over 8,000 conversations shifted to cost-saving Tasks
• New operational insights through Forms, enabling better workload management and process redesign
• Centralizing agent dashboard increased average touch per hour from 6-7 per hour to 12-15 per hour
• Average speed of answer changed from 32 minutes to under a minute

Today, Jerome’s Furniture’s customer experience team is more agile, cost-efficient, and customer-focused than ever before. The shift from ticketing to conversations, paired with the automation of Kustomer Forms and Tasks is setting the stage for a fully modern, proactive service model.

For Marjorie, this transformation isn’t just about technology — it’s about culture. By introducing new tools in a way that respects her team’s expertise and tenure, she’s been able to get buy-in for changes that once seemed daunting.

Her advice to other CX leaders? “Invest in tools your people will use — and make adoption part of the culture.”