After weeks of waiting, your dream sofa has finally arrived at your home, but you missed the delivery window. There is no update on when the sofa will arrive, and customer service says they don’t know where their large and expensive purchase is or when it will be redelivered.
This frustrating customer experience is what direct-to-consumer furniture brand Sundays is trying to prevent with the help of AI. Product delivery is at the heart of Sunday’s business. Mo Samian Jr., co-founder of the company, told Business Insider that the company offers free, personalized service on all large package orders.
He added that furniture logistics has a lot of moving parts and “can easily consume a team’s time and attention, and as a company grows, the margin for error only shrinks.”
Independent supply chain and logistics consultant Nishit Nisdan said e-commerce companies with 24-hour delivery, free shipping and quick return processes are raising the bar for customer expectations, and furniture companies are working to keep up.
“They could either compete to survive and thrive, or they could disappear like many other traditional organizations,” Nisdan said.
To better manage these challenges and reduce claims, delays, and delivery escalations, Sundays partnered with Cartage AI, a freight coordination software company, to deploy an autonomous AI logistics coordination tool called Wilson.
Samian said Wilson has enabled Sundays to automate real-time processes such as quoting, booking and tracking shipments, coordinating carriers and handling delivery exceptions.
Improving customer experience
Abdul Basharat, CEO and co-founder of Cartage AI, said that while logistics coordination has traditionally been a manual process handled by teams via phone calls, emails and spreadsheets, AI is changing that process by automating such tasks.
Traditionally, logistics coordinators have had to log into three or four different portals for each order to check truck availability and rates, get quotes, and decide who to book, but AI tools like Wilson can do all of this at the same time while answering customer calls and identifying any delays or issues that occur, Basharat told Business Insider.
Like all human team members, Wilson has his own email address and phone number and can answer customer and internal questions about shipments, just like any member of the logistics team. Basharat said If there’s a problem with an order or a question Wilson can’t answer, the software flags it and escalates a call or email to a member of the logistics team.
Previously, Sunday customer service representatives would comb through spreadsheets for order status information and navigate multiple customer portals to find available trucks and compare prices, Basharat said.
In Wilson’s case, the software stores all customer data from phone calls and emails, as well as historical information about trucking companies, allowing Sundays to autonomously answer customer questions and book vendors based on real-time data.
“The moment we see that a sales order is complete, Wilson’s job basically starts from there,” Basharat said, adding that the tool can source, reserve and schedule trucks, and notify agents at pick-up and delivery points of expected arrival times.
Samian said Wilson also helps coordinate Sunday logistics, as AI tools provide visibility into the middle and final miles of deliveries. He added that achieving true visibility in furniture logistics is particularly difficult. This is because shipments frequently occur between multiple vendors, and each vendor typically operates within a different system.
“Wilson helped us bring all our information together into one source of truth. By connecting data across these disparate systems, our team has real-time visibility into where an order is at any point in its delivery,” Samian said. He added that connected systems have improved the team’s ability to proactively manage exceptions, respond to customer inquiries, and provide an overall better customer experience.
Basharat said AI-enabled coordination tools like Wilson also make it easier to proactively anticipate delays and escalations regarding customer complaints such as damaged shipments, increase on-time pickups, and track the status of shipments at every point in their journey.
“Now I just call Wilson like I would call anyone,” he said. “Wilson responds quickly and responds quickly. It’s a really good customer experience.”
Freedom for more strategic work
Nisdan said many warehouse and transportation management software companies are now deploying AI to “increase the efficiency of warehouse and transportation utilization, optimize available space, learn from historical data to improve efficiency, improve productivity and reduce costs over time.”
Samian said Wilson is now responsible for tracking and monitoring Sunday deliveries after they leave the facility, saving the team hundreds of hours a month.
Before Wilson, this was a manual process that required the Sunday team to individually search each order, check its status mid-shipment, and manually flag potential delays.
“It was time consuming, and with our workload, the team was often unable to track all packages in this way, so coverage was inconsistent despite the time invested,” Samian said.
Now, Wilson automatically tracks and flags all shipments, which saves the team hundreds of hours each month, he said.
Samian told Business Insider that this time savings will allow Sunday employees to spend more time designing products, growing the catalog and engaging with customers. Additionally, logistics teams can focus on more strategic tasks, such as consolidating orders across the supply chain and managing them without getting lost in the complex mess of furniture delivery, he said.