MPB isn’t just an online store. It's the largest global platform to buy, sell, and trade used photography and videography kit. That means they serve both buyers and sellers – each with distinct needs: buyers want reassurance, and sellers want speed.

Customer experience is core to MPB’s business. “Customer experience is truly at the heart of everything we do at MPB. Over the last 14 years, we’ve focused on delivering a consistently great experience for our customers," said Chris Beattie, Head of Global Customer Experience at MPB. "Our CEO is really passionate about this, and it’s always been about putting the customer first.”

As MPB scaled, they needed to adapt their support model to account for changing customer needs and unpredictable spikes in contact volume. MPB’s busiest periods aren’t driven by typical retail seasonality, but by logistics. If too much gear arrives too quickly, operations teams may struggle to process it within the published timeframes. And these delays can trigger large inbound contact volumes, as people chase updates on the items they are selling, payment, or order confirmation. In peak months, that can push volume as high as 40,000 conversations.

“When our Circular Commerce Centres experience a backlog, we can experience a large uptick in volume. Understandably, customers just want to know what's happening, but dealing with this often unforecasted surge in contact volume can put real pressure on the support team,” says Gideon Knight, Customer Operations Manager at MPB.

With MPB continuing to scale across new and existing markets, it was clear that the support strategy had to evolve at pace.  “As MPB continues to grow in new and existing markets, we realized that our support strategy needed to keep up. We knew we had to adapt the way we work,” says Chris. “Our goal was to scale without simply adding more people to the team - by embracing AI and thinking about support in a new way, all while keeping customer satisfaction a top priority.”

MPB had already been using Intercom to power their support experience, including rule-based automation. It helped them streamline common queries, but maintaining that setup required ongoing effort, and it couldn’t always handle the nuance or complexity of MPB’s unique customer journeys. So when Intercom released Fin AI Agent, the team saw an opportunity to evolve their self-service proposition. Fin brought a new level of scale – capable of following MPB’s support policies, adapting to their content, and maximizing the value of human support when required.

Fin was introduced as the first point of contact in live chat, handling every inbound conversation. From the beginning, the team knew that AI would only be as good as the content it could draw from, so they restructured their Help Center to be clear, consistent, and easy for Fin to process. They also introduced new roles to support this shift, including a team of Knowledge Development Specialists led by a dedicated Content Strategist to manage their knowledge base, as well as a Customer Operations Manager to oversee Fin’s setup, training, and ongoing performance. “We didn’t just switch it on and hope for the best,” says Gideon. “We invested in the content, the structure, and the training Fin needed to actually be useful.”

A big part of that training is coming through Fin Guidance – a set of configurable rules that determine how Fin handles conversations. For MPB, this level of control is essential. Their inventory is constantly changing, with thousands of one-of-a-kind products going live and selling out every week. That complexity means Fin can’t rely on static answers. It needs to be taught how to navigate uncertainty, follow policy, and guide customers with clarity.

Here are some of the rules MPB set for Fin:

• For sellers looking to price their gear, Fin was trained to avoid providing estimates and instead guide customers to MPB’s quoting tool, ensuring answers are always based on live data.

• If someone asked about the status of a sale and their gear had already arrived at MPB, Fin was trained to confirm the timeline and explain when it would be checked, when they’d hear back, and when to expect the payment.

• During a recent operational backlog, when processing was delayed, the team quickly trained Fin to manage the surge in “where’s my gear?” questions. Fin responded with clear timeframes and outlined the next steps customers could expect – helping reduce repeat contacts and ease pressure on the team.

• MPB also trained Fin to reflect the tone and care their team is known for. Responses were kept short, clear, and on-brand. If a customer seemed frustrated or the message felt urgent, Fin was guided to show empathy and hand it off to a human.

From there, Fin became a reliable first line of support – resolving thousands of queries quickly and accurately, while giving the team more time to focus on the personalized, high-touch conversations that drive value at MPB.

After reshaping how their Customer Experience team works day to day, MPB is now turning its focus to what’s next – using AI to better understand the full customer journey. With AI-powered insights and CX Score, they’re moving beyond snapshots of satisfaction and toward a more complete, real-time view of what customers experience and why.

 “It’s really going to revolutionize the way we look at customer satisfaction and find insights on what our customers are talking about and where they’re getting stuck,” shares Gideon. “We feel that AI and LLMs are now providing us with the insights we need to fully understand the voice of the customer and be able to turn all their valuable insights into tangible actions to keep pace with customers' increasing expectations,” Chris adds. 

Alongside deeper visibility, MPB is exploring new layers of automation. The team is working on connecting Fin directly with their internal systems to support complex transactional queries. By giving Fin access to live transactional data, they’ll be able to offer faster, more personalized answers and take action directly – from checking order status to cancelling orders or issuing refunds. It’s not just about scale. It’s about raising the standard of customer service across the entire customer journey.