The running vest generates a returns call. The rowing machine generates a delivery-and-access call before anyone buys it. Sabato's agent handles both, and treats them as the different jobs they are.
WHAT THE CALLER JUST ASKED
“Is the rower going to fit through a standard door, and who carries it upstairs?”
Example call. Illustrative interface, not a customer recording.
Why this category phones
Sports retail is really two businesses sharing a phone number. Apparel and consumables behave like fashion — the calls arrive after the parcel, about size exchanges and late deliveries. Heavy equipment behaves like furniture: nobody spends four figures on a treadmill without asking about the doorway and the delivery.
Treating them as one queue is why the line feels unmanageable. They need different answers from different systems, which is exactly what a workflow split is for.
Ordered by how often we hear them in this category. We do not publish a call-mix distribution we have not measured — replace this with your own tagged call log before you act on it.
The first two come from the apparel half of the catalogue and the last three from the equipment half. Same line, different data behind them.
“Where is my order?”
Which half of the catalogue it came from decides the answer: a parcel carrier event, or a two-person delivery slot that has to be rebooked.
product.delivery_type · carrier.events“These trainers come up narrow — can I swap the size?”
Fitting width on the model as well as the size, plus live availability in the wide option — narrow is often a fitting problem, not a size one.
variant.fitting_width · returns.window“Will the rower fit through a standard doorway?”
Packed dimensions and weight, plus whether it folds — the three facts that decide a heavy-equipment order.
product.packed_dims · attr.folds“Do you bring it to the room, or leave it at the door?”
Delivery service level for that product: kerbside, threshold, or room of choice with assembly.
product.delivery_type · service.assembly“The console on my treadmill has failed — is it covered?”
Warranty term by component and the parts availability for that model year.
attr.warranty_by_part · spares.by_modelIf a row here could be copied onto another industry page unchanged, it does not belong on this page.
Recognise your own call log?
We’ll run these questions against your catalogue on the intro call.
The apparel half of the catalogue. High volume, low complexity.
02Size exchanges on footwear and apparel, offered before refunds.
03The equipment half. Dimensions, access and delivery on a four-figure order.
04Sizes and season lines, called back rather than emailed.
I’m looking at the rower, but it’s going in a spare room upstairs and I want to know if it’ll get up there.
Packed, it’s 218 by 56 by 40 centimetres and 44 kilos, in one box. That goes through a standard doorway, but 44 kilos up a flight of stairs is a two-person job.
That’s what I was worried about.
Then take the room-of-choice delivery rather than the standard one. Two people, they carry it to the room you want and take the packaging away. It’s twenty-nine pounds on this item.
And does it need assembling?
Minimal — the seat rail and the console, about twenty minutes. Assembly on the same visit is another twenty pounds if you’d rather not.
Do the delivery and the assembly.
Both added. Next available in your postcode is Thursday week, with a two-hour window texted the night before.
Illustrative transcript built from the workflows above. Not a customer recording; no customer data is shown.
Hear this run against your own data.
Same call, your catalogue, on the intro call.
The split catalogue is the thing to get right. If equipment and apparel are treated as one product type, the agent will offer kerbside delivery on a treadmill and a two-person slot on a t-shirt.
THE HONEST PART
Bad source data produces confident wrong answers. If a field is stale, the agent will speak it fluently — and a wrong answer at speed is worse than a slow right one, because it converts into an order that fails. We audit the fields this page depends on before the pilot, and we cap the agent to hand over on anything unmapped.
For the apparel half, where volume is highest and complexity lowest.
So a size problem becomes an exchange rather than a refund.
For equipment. Weight matters as much as size once stairs are involved.
Kerbside, threshold or room-of-choice — set on the product, not assumed.
Equipment fails by part, and the warranty usually differs by part.
We start with your real call recordings and your real data. Four weeks, one workflow, a baseline measured before the agent goes live and again after. If the numbers don’t move, you stop — no annual lock-in, and no case study written before the result exists.
We baseline your current call volume, answer rate and missed-call hours first.
One workflow live in week one, on your own number, with a human fallback.
You see the transcripts of every call the agent takes, including the ones it hands over.
Two named customers, no logo wall — we won’t show you a client we don’t have.
Our catalogue is mostly clothing — is this worth it?
Then your case is the post-purchase queue: deliveries, exchanges, refunds. It is the same argument as fashion. If that queue is large or spikes hard around sale weeks, there is cost to remove; if it is small and steady, we will tell you so.
Can it handle the heavy equipment side properly?
That is what the packed dimensions, weight and delivery-service-level fields are for. It answers the doorway and stairs question, then books the right delivery type — which is where most equipment orders actually stall.
Does it know when to offer an exchange instead of a refund?
Yes, where availability is live. Offering the adjacent size while the customer is on the phone is the single cheapest retention move in this category.
What about sale weeks and product drops?
Concurrency. Every call is answered at once rather than queued, which is when abandoned calls spike — and the abandoned ones skew towards customers with a problem.
What does it need to go live?
Orders and carrier data, live variant availability, and for equipment: packed dimensions, weight and delivery service level per product.
Bring one apparel order and one equipment SKU to the intro call. They are different jobs and it shows.
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