How Smalls is scaling CX without losing its personal touch

Smalls is a direct-to-consumer pet nutrition brand that brings fresh, species-appropriate meals to cats across the U.S. Its mission is simple but demanding: help pet parents feel confident they’re giving their cats the very best. As subscriptions surged, so did customer expectations.

Over the past six years, Smalls has relied on Kustomer as a key partner in that mission—using the platform not just to serve customers, but to continuously refine how support scales, adapts, and delivers a more personal experience.

For Sarah Inbar, Director of Customer Support, that long-term collaboration has been a cornerstone of Smalls’ success.

“Kustomer has been with us through every stage of our growth. As our business evolved, we’ve been able to mold the platform right alongside it—to fit new processes, integrate new tools, and meet our customers where they are."

As Smalls grew, so did the complexity of its customer experience. Subscription and order data flowed through multiple systems, making it hard for agents to see the full picture of each customer’s journey. Without a unified view, personalization took extra effort, and manual triage slowed response times.

These challenges weren’t new—but with growth came opportunity. The Smalls team saw a chance to deepen how they used Kustomer: connecting more data sources, tightening reporting, and building workflows that enabled swift, thorough and personalized resolutions for customers.

Smalls’ CX model balances operational efficiency with empathy, personalization and brand connection.. A BPO partner handles Tier 1 and most Tier 2 inquiries, keeping volume manageable, while Smalls’ in-house team focuses on high-sensitivity conversations—illness reports, legal concerns, VIPs, and brand reputation moments. The in-house team also owns outbound phone support and social media engagement, ensuring Smalls’ most visible and high-stakes channels are always staffed by its own specialists.

Through the years, Smalls has fine-tuned this balance using Kustomer as its foundation. The team layers in automation thoughtfully—using AI from Forethought to handle repetitive questions—so human agents can focus on the moments that matter most.

Kustomer’s strength lies in visibility and flexibility. With a single customer timeline uniting subscription, order, and communication history, agents always have the full context. Custom attributes, tags, and powerful search give the team clarity not just on individual issues, but on larger trends shaping CX and business outcomes.

Smalls makes extensive use of custom attributes to capture the full context of each issue. If a customer reports damaged packs, for example, agents log not just the issue but also the specific SKUs and quantities. That detail is then passed back to operations to address problems at the fulfillment center. Search functionality adds another layer of visibility, allowing agents to quickly pull up conversations tied to a particular issue or product. This empowers them to act faster while equipping managers with accurate data on emerging trends.

Kustomer sits at the center of Smalls’ support stack. Outbound phone calls run through Aircall, handled exclusively by the in-house team. Forethought provides scoped automation for high-volume, repetitive inquiries. Social media management is split between Kustomer for direct messages and Agorapulse for public comments. Shopify and Recharge feed in order and subscription data, while Stripe and shipping platforms add payment and delivery details—all visible on the Kustomer timeline.

Over the years, Kustomer has transformed both the speed and the intelligence of Smalls’ support operations as it evolved and grew. Response times have dropped as conversations route directly to the right agents. Productivity has improved as agents rely on macros, workflows, and unified data instead of juggling multiple tabs. Visibility has expanded dramatically: managers use tags and insights to identify operational issues, while agents get real-time feedback that builds accountability and confidence.

For pet parents, this means faster resolutions and more personal support. For Smalls, it means a customer support organization that is empowered to act with both speed and insight.