Army & Navy Stores has been outfitting walkers, anglers, cadets, gamekeepers and military buyers from the same Hereford warehouse for decades. The Shopify store carries thousands of SKUs across Berghaus, Helly Hansen, Highlander, Karrimor and a long tail of own-brand surplus kit.
Orders ship to thirty-plus countries, which means thirty-plus versions of the same two questions arrive on web chat all day. Where is my parcel? And how much is that in my currency?
A small team handles support. Until the chat agent went live, that team spent most of every Monday morning copy-pasting Royal Mail tracking links into a live chat window and dividing prices by the rate of the day.
Where is my order, answered in twelve seconds.
The shopper messages with their order number, post code or email. The agent hits Shopify for the order, 17track for the live carrier event stream, and renders the timeline back inside the chat. No tab-switch. No copy-paste. No let me check with our warehouse team.
Quoted in your currency, no calculator app.
The same agent quotes a Karrimor pack in pounds to a buyer in Leeds, euros to a buyer in Cork, US dollars to a buyer in Vermont, Canadian dollars to a buyer in Halifax and Australian dollars to a buyer in Perth. The rate is live, shipping is quoted alongside, and the basket is paid in the buyer's currency on Shopify checkout.
We used to lose North American buyers at the price line. They would ask for the cost in dollars, we would reply on Tuesday, and they had already bought from a US retailer. That gap is gone.
Brand-specific answers, before checkout.
A buyer reading the spec on a Berghaus Hillwalker can now ask whether to size up for a fleece layer and get a brand-specific answer in the same session. The agent knows Karrimor runs small in the hip. It knows Helly Hansen midlayers vary by generation. It knows a Highlander smock fits looser than the Berghaus equivalent.
Pre-purchase fit and sizing now resolves in chat 73% of the time, which has visibly moved the return rate on outerwear and meant the Monday morning warehouse crew no longer dread the post bag.
A Royal Mail tracking link and a currency conversion. Those two answers used to take us a full working day. The chat answers both before the buyer has put the kettle on.
The results.
Eight in ten where-is-my-order questions never reach a human.
The shipment tracker carries the bulk of the inbound. The buyer sees the stage, the carrier event and the expected delivery slot inside the chat. Tickets that used to swallow a Monday morning are quietly closed by the agent over the weekend.
Live FX rescued the international cart.
Carts that used to drop at the price line because the buyer was doing the currency conversion in another tab now hold. The agent quotes the price in the right currency the first time, with shipping added, and the buyer clicks through to the Shopify checkout already convinced.
Fit-and-sizing questions resolve before checkout.
Pre-purchase fit and sizing now resolves in chat 73% of the time across Berghaus, Karrimor, Helly Hansen and Highlander. The return rate on outerwear came down. The post-bag stopped being a Monday morning event.
£1.4M of pipeline influenced on web chat.
Across the last 90 days, the agent sat across £1.4M of basket value influenced on web chat. The mix is international, the conversion is faster, and the team no longer spends Monday morning learning new exchange rates.
An outdoor retailer that stops losing buyers to a faster reply.
Army & Navy Stores is not the only outdoor retailer with a Shopify catalogue and an international buyer base. It is one of the few that answers in twelve seconds, in the buyer's currency, with the right size advice for the brand on the page. The outcome is what the team would call a quiet Monday morning, and what the international cart would call a checkout that finally goes through.
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A 20-minute walkthrough on your Shopify catalogue, your carrier of choice and the currencies your buyers actually shop in. No slide deck.