How Goedgemerkt handles a 240% ticket surge at peak season, without growing the team

Goedgemerkt is a Dutch e-commerce brand specialising in personalised, durable children's products. From name labels and clothing stickers to lunch boxes, t-shirts, custom cases and much more, every item is made to order and shipped directly to the customer.

Because every order is personalised and therefore unique, customer service plays a central role in the business. Questions about order status are among the most frequent enquiries the team receives. Getting the right information to the right customer, quickly and automatically, is essential.

Nowhere more so than during back-to-school season. Every year, from the end of June into September, the demand for Goedgemerkt’s personalised essentials rises sharply as parents prepare their children for the new school year. Last year, ticket volume increased by 240%, hitting 10.000 conversations at the busiest point, shifts doubled, and everyone stepped in to help handle the simplest enquiries. For a small customer service team, this is the moment that automation has to work.

Challenge

As order volumes grew, Goedgemerkt’s customer service team faced pressure from three directions at once.

A 240% spike in questions during peak season

Personalised orders take time to produce before they ship. That production window, combined with the excitement of back-to-school preparations, means customers follow up often. During a normal period, Goedgemerkt handles an average of around 2,500 conversations. During peak season, this rises to an average of approximately 8,500 conversations, an increase of 240%. At the busiest moments, volumes can reach up to 10,000 conversations. With a lean team that runs on single shifts for most of the year, that kind of spike creates real pressure.

“Last peak season, our ticket volume went up by 240%. That's the reality of what we're dealing with. But with the new AI setup in place, we're confident we can handle it.” — Désanne Valkenberg, Sales Director, Goedgemerkt

Amazon SLA Compliance

Goedgemerkt sells on Amazon alongside their own webshop. Amazon enforces a strict 24-hour response SLA for seller messaging. Missing that window carries real consequences: negative impact on seller metrics and potential listing suppression. The team needed an automated safeguard to ensure no Amazon message ever slipped past the deadline.

Scaling to New Markets

With plans to expand into additional countries, Goedgemerkt also needed to scale its team, including adding agent seats to support colleagues handling new languages and regions.

Solution

Working closely with Trengo, Goedgemerkt implemented a multi-layered automation strategy using Trengo’s Journey builder, now extended to cover both chat and email channels.

The team started with the single biggest pain point and expanded from there. As Désanne put it: 

“We looked at what questions came in the most and worked out what we wanted to resolve as quickly as possible. We started with ‘where is my order?’, but we now have a much broader setup.” — Désanne Valkenberg, Sales Director, Goedgemerkt

Automated order tracking (WISMO) 

Goedgemerkt set up Journey automations that handle incoming order-status enquiries end-to-end. When a customer asks about their order, the Journey triggers an action that pulls live order data directly from their Bigcommerce backend. The customer receives an accurate, personalised status update without any agent involvement.

This WISMO automation now runs reliably across both their direct webshop channel and their email channel.

Amazon Journey for 24-Hour SLA Compliance

To protect their Amazon seller metrics, Goedgemerkt built a dedicated Journey for Amazon Seller Messaging. The logic works as follows:

• When an Amazon message arrives, the journey begins tracking the clock.
• A 23-hour wait block runs in the background.
• At the 23-hour mark, the journey checks whether a human agent has already replied.
• If no reply has been sent, an automated message is dispatched, resetting the SLA window and ensuring compliance.

This approach gives agents the full working day to respond naturally, while the automation acts as a reliable safety net if a message is missed.

Journey automation on email

A significant recent milestone was the successful launch of Journey automation for the email channel. Previously reserved for other messaging channels, this extension means that Goedgemerkt’s automated flows,  including WISMO lookups and address verification, now cover inbound email as well, the highest-volume channel for many e-commerce brands.

Results

Building the setup wasn’t instant: it was a gradual process of learning, testing and expanding.

“In the beginning, it was a real learning curve. But the more I worked with it, the clearer it became. I now know which block to use for which situation, and if I got stuck, I could always reach out to our CSM or the support team.” — Naomi Sapulete, Digital Marketeer, Goedgemerkt

 That hands-on support made a genuine difference. When they run into edge cases or unexpected behaviour, they are helped to keep momentum and build confidence in the platform.

With their Journey setup now running across email and chat, Goedgemerkt is heading into their most important season in a stronger position than ever before.

• WISMO automation: Order status questions handled end-to-end, live data pulled from Bigcommerce, personalised reply sent. 
• Back-to-school readiness: 240% ticket increase expected; automation in place to absorb the majority of WISMO queries without adding headcount
• Email channel: Journey automation extended to email, the highest-volume inbound channel is now fully covered
• Team confidence: CSM sessions and responsive support helped the team build from a single use case to a full automation layer

Conclusion

Goedgemerkt needed a platform that could keep up with a fast-moving e-commerce operation, one that sells personalised products across multiple channels, marketplaces and countries. Trengo delivered on three fronts: automation, integration and support.

As the business expands into new countries, Trengo scales with it, in terms of features, agent seats, and the ongoing guidance from their CSM to keep automations running smoothly and growing in scope.

“Trengo actively collaborates with us and provides valuable advice, allowing us to set up this project step by step. The support team is always there when you get stuck, they respond quickly, think proactively, and are always helpful."  — Naomi Sapulete, Digital Marketeer, Goedgemerkt

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