How Fortnum & Mason uses Zendesk AI to elevate service

Founded in 1707 in London’s Piccadilly, Fortnum & Mason has delighted customers for more than three centuries with its unique gifts, extraordinary food—and commitment to exceptional service. Whether customers are shopping for one of its iconic goodie-filled hampers for £1000 or a tin of biscuits for £6.95, Fortnum & Mason blends tradition with modern accessibility.

“Our brand focuses on offering joy-giving moments,” says Rhonda Floyd, Head of Customer Success at Fortnum & Mason. “The look on someone’s face when they’re opening up a wicker hamper filled with ​​teas, biscuits, and chocolates for the first time—it’s truly a magical experience.”

Streamlining service with Zendesk Messaging and agentic AI

Fortnum & Mason’s approach to customer service has continuously evolved to meet its buyers where they are. While long serving customers through email and phone support, Fortnum & Mason implemented Zendesk Messaging in 2024, allowing the company to extend its CX channels to include social media, web chat, Apple Business Chat, and WhatsApp.

“Messaging has fast become a preferred channel for our customers,” says Rhonda. “And the integration was pretty seamless—it didn’t take us more than six weeks to completely switch to the new platform.”

Along with the move to Messaging, the company also revamped its existing internal and external help centers. Those actions positioned Fortnum & Mason to gain even greater CX efficiencies with the adoption of Zendesk AI.

“Zendesk has helped to elevate how we work,” Rhonda says. “We have FAQs for self-serving customers, help for our support team when they’re on calls with customers, and we also leverage social media for engagement and updates.”

Fortnum & Mason is now leveraging Zendesk’s agentic AI agents, which help solve customer requests with limited direct human supervision.

“I love that the AI really understands the tone and context of customer inquiries,” says Rhonda. “It knows when to escalate a ticket to a live agent—that way, our agents can really focus on customers with more complex interactions. Of course, it hasn’t been perfect from day one; it takes a vigilant team to spot anomalies and fine-tune the process so we can keep perfecting these journeys.”

These AI agents interact with users in a natural, human-like way, engaging in small talk and working through complex issues by identifying next steps and asking follow-up questions.

“The AI agents are incredibly intelligent,” says Alex Fabriek, Senior Customer Success Manager and Technology Lead at Fortnum & Mason. “It speaks our language—it doesn’t go rogue, it stays on form, and it’s very easy to work with.”

And agentic AI has saved the Fortnum & Mason support team countless hours.

“We’ve reduced the live-messaging process time from five minutes to just 30 seconds,” Rhonda says. “That gives every agent four and a half minutes back per chat.”

And where end-to-end handle time used to stretch beyond an hour, it now averages about 15 minutes—an impressive 75 percent decrease.

“Having everything in a single pane of view with easy access to macros and customer history has really boosted both customer experience and agent productivity,” notes Alex.

Now, Fortnum & Mason’s support agents have time to spend on the things that actually matter to customers.

“They can work on coordinating an emergency birthday order that needs to be delivered overnight,” Rhonda explains. “The AI handles simple questions—and escalates when necessary.”

Delivering good cheer at Christmas scale

With their vast selection of imminently giftable goods, it’s no surprise that upwards of 70 percent of Fortnum & Mason’s business takes place during the busy holiday season.

“Our year-round, London-based team is made up of highly experienced customer service agents—many with backgrounds in luxury retail,” Rhonda explains. “And during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, we ramp up the number of agents significantly.”

With the rapid onboarding of temporary help for their peak period, Fortnum & Mason needs to make sure that its CX team—whether with the company for years or weeks—consistently offer the same level of exceptional service.

“Because we onboard such a huge number of people over peak, it’s a challenge,” Rhonda says. “We have a very short road to competency—and we expect our agents to get up to speed quickly. With Zendesk, we’re able to onboard people much faster.”

New hires are trained in Zendesk Sandbox, which is a test version of a live customer support environment. It safely lets newly onboarded agents experiment with workflows, automations, settings, and integrations—without affecting real customers or data.

“It’s reassuring to know that our new agents are feeling confident and competent before they interact with live customers,” says Rhonda. “It keeps things humming along during a very busy time.”

Looking ahead to an AI-driven future

Fortnum & Mason plans to enhance upon its investment in Zendesk AI, building on early successes that has already seen the platform responding to 41 percent of all inbound contact and closing half of this contact without the need for human agent intervention.

“We want our CX team to be even more proactive, more personalized, and more AI-driven,” says Rhonda. “And with a further integration of Zendesk into our CRM and website, we could potentially see automation reach as high as 80 percent containment.”

To reach that goal, Fortnum & Mason have plans to integrate Copilot, Zendesk’s agent-assist AI tool. This will help seasonal hires and new agents ramp up even faster—and improve response quality across complex inquiries.

“Zendesk is where it is today because of our team supporting it,” says Alex. “Now, we have an excited, happy team and a much better customer journey.”

And the support team is working towards the goal of providing an omniview for agents across all channels.

“We’re not there yet,” Rhonda says. “But I do believe that Zendesk is the partner that can help us to achieve that.”

Going forward, Fortnum & Mason sees Zendesk as a trusted and collaborative partner, working to create bespoke solutions befitting a legendary British retailer.

“We bring ideas and they run with us—putting aces in their places and helping us move the brand forward,” says Rhonda. “We push them, and they push us—and it’s only going to make us bigger, better, and stronger.”