For more than 160 years, Orvis has been one of America's most trusted names in fly fishing, wing shooting, and the outdoor lifestyle. Built on a legacy of conservation, craftsmanship, and exceptional customer relationships, the company knows every service interaction is an extension of its brand.
Fragmented CX, Limited Visibility & Agility
For years, Orvis's customer support ran on a platform that promised a unified suite but, in practice, kept voice and digital channels separate. That fragmentation shaped Orvis's entire support model: teams were organized by channel, agents were trained in silos, and performance was measured through narrow efficiency metrics rather than the quality of the customer relationship.
"The system was built to manage volume rather than deliver continuity. If a customer called after sending an email, the agent on the phone had no visibility into the email interaction, forcing customers to repeat themselves and creating disconnected experiences."
Robert Ball
Customer Service Supervisor at Orvis
Operational agility was equally challenging. Even routine workflow changes required service tickets and weeks of waiting, limiting leadership’s ability to experiment with new processes, or respond to changing customer expectations in real time.
Preparing for a broader company-wide digital transformation which included a move to Shopify, Orvis recognized the need to evolve CX alongside the rest of the business.
"We weren't just looking to replace our existing helpdesk, we wanted to modernize how we delivered customer service," said Robert. "We needed a solution that could bring together every customer interaction, fit into our evolving technology ecosystem, and give our team the flexibility to keep improving the experience without depending on outside resources."
After evaluating a number of different solutions, Orvis ultimately chose to move forward with Kustomer.
“We went with Kustomer for its broad integration capabilities, customer-centric data model, and powerful workflow engine. And, looking back now, we absolutely made the right decision.”
Deborah Dudley
Customer Service Center Manager at Orvis
An Agile, Highly Experienced, Cross-Trained Team
Kustomer allowed Orvis to eliminate channel-specific teams in favor of a cross-trained support organization. Rather than maintaining separate phone and digital queues, every agent now works from the same customer record and can support customers across all channels. The result is a more experienced team that spends less time navigating systems and more time delivering high-quality service.
“Today, we’re operating with a smaller, more experienced team that doesn't need to be micromanaged. They can focus entirely on the quality of their customer interactions instead of feeling pressured to just get people off the phone as quickly as possible,” explained Deborah.
This operational shift allowed Orvis to transition from a peak high-volume team of 100+ siloed agents to a lean, highly specialized team of 30 cross-trained experts.
"We're literally building our customer service experience going forward, technology-wise, around Kustomer — it's the main linchpin."
Robert Ball
Customer Service Supervisor at Orvis
Order and Shipment Visibility Built into the Workspace
Orvis also leverages Kustomer's integration with Narvar which pulls shipment and return status directly into the Kustomer Insights panel. Agents are now able to see the same shipment information the customer received without leaving the conversation to chase down tracking numbers in a separate system.
"With the Narvar integration, our agents can see order and return activity, the communications a customer has received, and whether they've opened them. That context allows them to proactively address a delayed shipment or pending return before the customer even asks. We're not just responding to the immediate issue; we're getting ahead of what they may need next."
Deborah Dudley
Customer Service Center Manager at Orvis
AI Embedded Directly in the Agent Workflow
Before Kustomer, Orvis leveraged a handful of different vendors to bring AI into the agent workflow. Since implementation, the team now centralizes those use cases under Envoy, Kustomer's native AI copilot, which surfaces conversation summaries, suggested responses and relevant knowledge directly in the agent's workflow.
“Envoy’s been great for agent efficiency. Instead of digging around for context, our agents just have everything they need right there, so they can spend their time actually solving the problem instead of piecing it together. A couple minutes here and there doesn't sound like much, but multiply that across hundreds of conversations a day and it adds up to real capacity back."
Robert Ball
Customer Service Supervisor at Orvis
Handling a +327% Surge Without Dropping SLAs
The true test of Orvis's new infrastructure arrived unexpectedly during a viral social media advocacy campaign, which urged thousands of followers to contact outdoor brands simultaneously. Over four days, inbound volume spiked by +327% across all channels.
"If we had still been using our previous help desk, we would have had to shut down," Amy said. "We couldn't have handled it."
Instead, within minutes, Orvis used Kustomer's routing, workflow automation, and channel segmentation capabilities to quickly stand up automated triage for campaign-related inquiries while protecting capacity for customer service needs. With this fix in place, all support channels remained operational and within SLAs.
"It was only a few minutes from when we realized what was happening to when we had a solution in place. Our competitors had to shut down both their chat and email channels that day, but thanks to Kustomer, we were able to stay live."
Amy Williamson
VoC and Customer Analytics at Orvis
Such flexibility extends to everyday operations. "The ability to test a configuration change, see if it works, and keep or revert it, without filing a service ticket or waiting weeks for an answer, has been huge for us," explained Deborah. "All of those things would have been literally weeks or months of effort and frustration prior to where we are now."
The Future: Built to Scale
By putting the customer timeline at the center of its tech stack, Orvis has built a flexible, future-proof CX foundation that scales seamlessly with its digital growth.
"Before Kustomer, our team structure reflected the limitations of our technology — voice, email, and chat operated as separate silos. With Kustomer, we’ve flipped that model, putting our customer at the center of everything we do."
Robert Ball
Customer Service Supervisor at Orvis
As Orvis continues to invest in its broader digital transformation, it sees Kustomer not simply as a customer service platform, but as the foundation for delivering the personalized, high-quality experiences its customers have come to expect.
"As much as Kustomer's doing for us now, we see that expanding even more. I see it just becoming more and more integrated and central to what we're doing. Kustomer is the future of support at Orvis.”
Deborah Dudley
Customer Service Center Manager at Orvis
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