TLDR: Beauty franchise Hello Sugar has strategically partnered with PolyAI and leveraged Zendesk’s hybrid AI solution to deploy advanced voice AI agents. This initiative aims to automate customer service, handling 100% of front-end calls for inquiries, appointment scheduling, and payments. The deployment has already yielded significant results, including 100% call answering in Arizona, a 56% containment rate, and 50% of clients booking appointments in under three minutes, leading to substantial cost savings and improved customer satisfaction.
Phoenix and New York – Hello Sugar, a rapidly expanding beauty franchise known for its tech-pioneering approach, has announced a significant leap in its customer service strategy by deploying sophisticated voice AI agents. This move is a result of strategic partnerships with PolyAI, a leading provider of enterprise conversational AI, and the utilization of Zendesk’s hybrid automation solution.
The primary objective of this deployment is to automate 100% of front-end service calls, addressing frequently asked questions, providing information on hours and locations, facilitating appointment creation and rescheduling, and processing payments. This initiative is crucial for Hello Sugar, which currently operates over 160 locations across the United States and aims to expand to 500 locations.
Before integrating PolyAI’s lifelike voice agents, Hello Sugar faced a considerable challenge in call management, answering only about 20% of the tens of thousands of calls received monthly, with the remainder directed to chat experiences. The new partnership with PolyAI has transformed this, enabling a turnkey franchise model where new locations can quickly offer always-on voice AI that answers every call.
The initial rollout has shown impressive results. Within just three weeks, PolyAI agents were deployed to dozens of Hello Sugar locations, achieving 100% call answering in the company’s home state of Arizona. The system boasts a 56% containment rate, meaning over half of all inquiries are resolved without human intervention, and a remarkable 50% of clients are successfully booking appointments through the AI agents in under three minutes.
Nikola Mrkšić, co-founder and CEO of PolyAI, emphasized the importance of matching Hello Sugar’s high service standards. “Hello Sugar has a well-deserved reputation for delighting customers from the moment they set foot in one of their spas. It was important for us to match their exceptional level of service with on-brand voice agents that can scale across all locations. In an industry where experience is everything, we’re proud to support Hello Sugar at the 5-star level their customers expect,” Mrkšić stated.
Austin Towers, CTO of Hello Sugar, highlighted the strategic alignment of this technology with their customer-centric philosophy. “At Hello Sugar, we’re all about creating an amazing experience for our clients — not just in the salon, but at every step of the journey. Whether they’re calling in, booking through the app, or chatting with a voice agent, it should always feel quick, easy, and personal,” Towers commented. He further added, “We picked PolyAI because their tech actually feels human and aligned with the level of care we aim to give every single client. It lets us scale without losing what makes Hello Sugar special.”
Beyond PolyAI, Hello Sugar has also leveraged Zendesk’s hybrid automation solution, which combines the precision of conversation design with the flexibility of generative AI. This approach has allowed them to automate common inquiries about salon services and pricing, and precisely handle appointment bookings through API integrations. This hybrid model has led to a 66% automation rate, resulting in monthly savings of $14,000 and 200 agent hours saved per month.
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Hello Sugar plans to continue expanding the use cases for AI, exploring further API integrations to reduce manual work for receptionists and auditing existing intents to maximize the benefits of generative AI across their operations.
