The Challenge
Subsplash builds the technology churches and ministries rely on, from mobile apps and websites to livestreamed services and online giving. More than 50 of the 100 largest churches in the US use it, alongside thousands of smaller organizations where a single staff member or volunteer may manage the entire digital experience. Many critical moments happen outside office hours, like a livestream failing during Sunday service or a giving page breaking during an event. When that happens, the person trying to get things back up and running may not have a technical background, so they need clear answers straight away.
“We needed to improve response times while keeping our team lean.”
Subsplash’s lean support team was handling a steadily growing queue. As the platform expanded, conversation volume climbed faster than the team could absorb, and first reply times started to suffer. Hiring more people was the obvious answer, but it would have tied support headcount directly to every increase in demand. “We needed to improve response times while keeping our team lean,” says Arthur Van Dyke, Senior Director of Client Services at Subsplash.
Subsplash wanted a more scalable way to run support. They needed an AI agent that could handle the front line and hand conversations to the team with full context when a person was needed. Just as importantly, they wanted to be able to tune and refine it themselves, without needing technical resources for every change.
The Solution
They started by connecting Fin, an AI Customer Agent, directly to their existing Salesforce setup, with no change to how the team worked. The first step was content: training Fin on their help center so it could handle high-volume, repetitive requests. Then they went further, using Fin API to pull in course material from Subsplash Academy and feature requests logged in Canny, so Fin could answer questions about new feature releases and implementation steps that the articles didn’t cover.
From the start, Subsplash was deliberate about how they implemented Fin and which conversations it could handle. The team built a set of plain-language rules that shape how Fin answers and when it escalates. They intentionally kept some conversations with the team, including any opened by a rep on a client’s behalf or from their highest-touch accounts.
As their confidence in Fin’s accuracy and response quality grew, they chose to bring their helpdesk onto Intercom so Fin and their team could work side by side in the same workspace. They also expanded Fin beyond simple FAQs into more complex, multi-step procedures. Fin can now guide a customer through a technical issue, identifying the affected app, asking targeted diagnostic questions, and checking the relevant status. And when human expertise is needed, it hands off to a support agent in the same chat, with the full investigation history.
The Results
Less than a year after going live, Fin now resolves 90% of the support conversations it’s involved in, end to end. That adds up to around 12,400 conversations every month. “Fin has been incredible,” says Tanner Ramey, Senior Platform Support Manager at Subsplash. “It’s leveled up our efficiency. I was talking to someone on my team recently, and she said that in the last week alone, four different clients had told her that our AI is so good.”
“As our volume went up, our first reply times plummeted. We now offer 24/7 responses with Fin, and our headcount stays the same.”
The bigger transformation is what happened as demand kept rising. Total monthly conversation volume grew 60% year over year, from around 12,800 to 20,500. “As these numbers keep growing, something would have to give if we didn’t have Fin,” says Tanner. “We’d either need to add headcount or see metrics like our reply times suffer.”
Instead, Fin removed that trade-off, allowing Subsplash to absorb the growth while improving the customer experience. “As our volume went up, our first reply times plummeted,” Arthur shares. “We now offer 24/7 responses with Fin, and our headcount stays the same.”
With Fin carrying the front line for existing clients, Subsplash is now turning it toward the start of the client journey. The team is building Fin for Success to guide new clients through onboarding, surfacing the next step and driving adoption before anyone has to ask.
They’re also expanding Fin from answering questions to taking action, such as handling billing and account changes or building a new website. A client asking for a site, for example, could one day have Fin gather the requirements and hand them directly to Subsplash’s website builder to generate it on the spot. Each step moves Subsplash toward a single AI-driven front line for every client interaction, from onboarding to day-to-day support.
