The weekend queue used to be the one nobody could read. Now a Saturday voice note in Dutch gets the same answer as a Tuesday email in English, and the care team starts Monday with nothing waiting.
Ines Barbosa
Director of Customer Care
The problem
Marlow & Finch sells clothing and home goods online in six countries, and most customers write on WhatsApp or web chat, often with a voice note or a receipt photo. The care team works in English, Portuguese and Spanish, so anything in another language joined a separate queue, and on weekends that queue sat until Monday.
A freelance translator cleared that queue on weekdays and did not work weekends. A translation tool helped with typed messages and could do nothing with a voice note.
What Canto did
The care team chose the agent’s sources and set its limits.
The order system in real time, down to what was packed in each parcel and where it was last scanned.
The help articles and each country’s returns policy, with a link to the source in every reply.
A goodwill credit limit for each order, set by the team leads, who approve anything more.
Web chat opened first, on the order tracking page, and WhatsApp once the team had read through the first 600 threads. Replies go back in the language each message arrived in, and a conversation that moves from chat to WhatsApp stays in one piece.
What still goes to a person
Courier claims for damaged parcels stay with the care team, along with any credit above the limit. Two unhappy messages in a row also hand the thread to the team, and whoever takes it starts from a short summary with the whole thread behind it.
What changed
The separate queue has gone. Threads reach the team summarized, and the weekend shift spends Saturdays on courier claims and exceptions rather than translation.
A customer in Utrecht sent a Saturday voice note in Dutch, with a photo of a gift receipt for a sweater one size too small. From the reference on the receipt the agent located the order, confirmed the Dutch exchange window was open and held a medium. That size was cheaper in the sale, so it added the difference as store credit, sent a return label and answered in Dutch with the policy linked.
Next
Email is the last channel still outside the agent, and it holds the longest threads, about late deliveries. Customers will keep writing in their own language, and the reply will come back in it.
