Redesigning for operational excellence: Custom Ink optimizes efficiency by 20% by consolidating communications on Dialpad

Custom Ink, a leader in custom apparel and accessories, is renowned for helping individuals, teams, and businesses create custom apparel, promo products, and accessories through an intuitive online platform. With a diverse customer base spanning both B2B and B2C sectors, the company handles tens of thousands of interactions each month across various sales and customer care teams.

But as the business grew and their workforce became more mobile, especially during the shift to remote work, Custom Ink found themselves grappling with an increasingly fragmented communication system.

Their existing platform was no longer meeting their evolving needs. With two separate chat tools and a manual call-grading process in Google Docs, the team was spending far too much time on inefficient, disconnected tasks. These inefficiencies were especially problematic for their highly mobile sales and customer support teams, as they tethered them to desks.

Recognizing the need for a consolidated and remote-friendly solution, Custom Ink turned to Dialpad’s Sell and Support products. We sat down with Christen Miller, Store Operations Manager, DJ Allen, National Sales Manager, and Arielle Nathan, Director of Product Management at Custom Ink to hear about their experience.

Transforming sales and support operations at scale

Dialpad Sell and Dialpad Support offered Custom Ink a comprehensive business communications solution tailored to the specific needs of both their sales and support teams. It allowed them to consolidate their communication tools, improve their call grading and coaching processes, and unlock mobile capabilities for their workforce.

Before Dialpad, the company relied on a patchwork of tools: multiple chat applications, manual processes for grading calls, and a phone system that wasn’t built for modern, mobile workflows. While they haven’t yet consolidated web chat into Dialpad, Custom Ink has already streamlined many of their key communication processes, including voice and video calls, into one seamless platform, setting the stage for further integration in the future.

For the sales team, the ability to access all customer interactions from anywhere via mobile has improved their engagement capabilities. For the support team, managing customer calls and interactions in one place has made their processes more efficient, allowing them to better handle high call volumes and maintain service quality.

A valuable feature of Dialpad for the Local Sales team, particularly in showrooms, is the ability to view missed calls—even when customers don’t leave a voicemail. This enables prompt follow-up, whether the call occurs after hours or when a team member is assisting another customer. Capturing these missed opportunities enhances the team’s ability to meet customer needs, which is especially important for locations with smaller teams.

Ai Recaps have also been particularly impactful. Instead of manually summarizing calls, agents now receive automated, concise recaps, allowing them to focus on the conversation at hand as well as save time that would otherwise be spent on post-call work.

Real-time transcriptions have also streamlined operations. Previously, the team had no way to capture conversations in real time, leading to missed details. With Dialpad’s live transcriptions, agents instantly reference conversations, ensuring no information is lost and customers don’t need to repeat themselves. This has enhanced efficiency and empowers Inkers to deliver better customer outcomes.

Faster and more accurate call grading with Ai

One of the most profound transformations for Custom Ink’s local market sales team has been in their call grading process. Prior to Dialpad, they relied on Google Docs to manually score calls, selecting them either randomly or based on call length. This inefficient system allowed for fewer than two calls to be graded per month, per rep.

Now, with Dialpad’s Ai-powered tools, the local market sales team has been able to revolutionize their QA and call coaching. Using features like Ai Scorecards and sentiment analysis within Dialpad Support, they can automatically grade calls and provide timely, targeted feedback, significantly increasing coaching effectiveness.

“Now we’re grading roughly two calls a week per rep, if not more,” DJ notes.

While the inbound sales and customer care teams are not yet leveraging Dialpad for QA and coaching, the success seen with the local market sales team highlights the potential for broader implementation across Custom Ink’s other teams in the future.

In addition to making the call scoring process faster and more effective, Dialpad’s sentiment analysis also enables the team to be more selective about which calls they grade. DJ explains, “I can quickly read a transcript and decide if I need to grade it or not. I also use the assist feature to filter calls by sentiment or vulgar language.”

The impact of this shift has been substantial. The local sales team can now grade 4x as many calls, while Custom Ink estimates an additional 20% efficiency gain across both management and frontline teams, driven by enhanced collaboration, reduced AHT, immediate transcript access, Ai-generated call recaps, and automated insights, all contributing continuous improvement over time—not limited to QA, but benefiting the entire operational workflow. Dialpad’s robust feature set and capabilities have delivered exceptional value compared to competitors, setting the foundation for even greater efficiency and performance improvements across their customer-facing teams over time.

Seamless Salesforce integration for improved workflows

Custom Ink’s sales team has also benefited from Dialpad’s integration with Salesforce, particularly its High Velocity Sales feature, which enables sales reps to automatically categorize and log calls within the Salesforce platform:

This streamlined workflow eliminates the need for reps to toggle between multiple applications, allowing them to stay focused on customer interactions rather than administrative tasks.

Mobile flexibility and better customer engagement

Another area where Dialpad has had a significant impact is enabling mobile flexibility for Custom Ink’s employees, particularly those working in retail environments or on the go. With the Dialpad mobile app, team members can now make and receive calls, send texts, and chat with customers no matter where they are. This mobility has been a game changer for Custom Ink, especially for their remote and hybrid teams.

In addition to voice and video capabilities, Dialpad also offers SMS and chat features, which allow Custom Ink to directly engage with customers via text. This was a significant upgrade from their previous system, which did not support texting. DJ highlights, “The ability to text and chat with customers has been a convenient way to meet customers’ needs.”

Real-time coaching saves 1.5 to 2 hours per week

With real-time coaching features like barge, whisper, and Ai-powered voice transcription, Custom Ink’s leadership team can now monitor calls and provide immediate feedback. The Ai transcription tool allows managers to focus on the content of calls without needing to take extensive notes, freeing them to be more present during live conversations and coaching sessions.

“In our previous system, we had very limited visibility into calls,” Arielle recalls. “Accessing a call required running separate internal reports, making collaboration challenging, especially during escalations when multiple leaders needed to review the same call. Now, with Dialpad, everyone can easily access calls, leave notes, and collaborate in real-time. It’s been a game changer for us.”

When asked how much time this has saved their team per week, DJ’s answer was “approximately 1.5 to 2 hours.”

These transcripts and Ai Recaps have not only improved team performance, but the customer experience as well. Arielle explains, “It’s frustrating for customers to repeat themselves to multiple agents, but now, every agent has full visibility into prior interactions. This has allowed us to provide a more seamless and satisfying customer experience.”

Additionally, by offering skill-based routing, real-time coaching, and enhanced analytics, Dialpad has given Custom Ink’s leadership team a holistic view of performance across all channels, allowing them to make informed decisions and optimize their customer experience strategy.

“It's all built into Dialpad, which removes extra steps and makes it easier for managers to monitor their teams. They can focus on the customers and helping their teams improve rather than administrative tasks like pulling data, running reports, and compiling workbooks,” explains Arielle.

Dialpad: Measurable outcomes and long-term value

With the consolidation of multiple tools into Dialpad’s unified platform, Custom Ink has significantly improved efficiency across both their sales and support teams. Ai-powered features like sentiment analysis,Ai Scorecards, and Ai Recaps have been game-changers for the team, automating critical processes and enhancing their ability to capture customer needs accurately.

Arielle highlights the value of this transformation: “With Dialpad, we’re getting significantly more value for our investment. The platform’s robust feature set—including Ai-powered insights, seamless mobile capabilities, and real-time coaching—offers far greater functionality than our previous provider. In addition to streamlining our communications, Dialpad’s potential for consolidating tools and supporting future growth ensures that we’re not just saving time and resources today, but also positioning ourselves for scalable success as our business evolves.”

This forward-looking approach allows Custom Ink to not only address current inefficiencies but also build a scalable solution that supports the company’s long-term growth. Whether for sales reps needing mobile capabilities or support teams managing high call volumes, Dialpad’s tailored solutions have provided measurable, long-term value for Custom Ink, ensuring their teams are equipped with the right tools for the future.