Customer Story: ArrowXL by JP Home

The challenge: A fixed team facing an unfixed peak

Before working with SugarAI, ArrowXL by JP Home relied on a legacy system that couldn’t keep pace with a flexible business. “If we had a new client with different requirements, or the market evolved and we needed a new kind of communication, none of those things were possible,” Rachel says.

With SugarAI in place, ArrowXL by JP Home gained the flexibility to build new SMS and email campaigns and add functionality as needed, including a case management process that gave clients the ability to raise a query and receive progress updates.

But the real catalyst for exploring agentic AI was peak trading. “We have a fixed amount of human beings, but the business has to cope with peak trading in November and December, where demand skyrockets and we don’t have the capacity to meet that demand. We also didn’t want to provide a lesser service or a lesser experience for our consumers.” Rachel explains.

The process most exposed to this pressure was ArrowXL by JP Home’s outbound dialling campaign, run before every delivery to confirm the consumer would be home. It took four to five full-time employees and could take all day, and even then, consumer engagement sat at around 55–60%, largely because people don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t recognise.

The solution: Proactive and reactive agentic AI

Working with Provident CRM, ArrowXL by JP Home built a proactive agentic AI solution to replace the outbound dialling process. Consumers are first sent an SMS and asked to click through and provide information about their delivery requirements. If they don’t respond after two attempts, the agentic AI calls them, rather than a human agent, and holds a conversation.

“With the agentic AI solution, we were able to automate and replicate that dialling campaign in about 87 minutes, first thing in the day, and get much better consumer engagement,” Rachel says.

“We found with agentic AI, engagement was more around 80–85%. It was dramatically better.”

– Rachel Hopkins, CIO, ArrowXL by JP Home

James Forde, CTO at Provident CRM, and his team helped implement the agentic AI system. SugarAI was already integrated with ArrowXL by JP Home’s order management system and NiCE’s unified communications platform, coordinating human outbound dialling for hundreds of thousands of orders a week. “When it came to adding in the proactive agent, we had the foundation in place. The project involved modifying the logic around queues and categorisations, so we were accommodating a wider set of categories like collections, upholstery deliveries, and pre-7am deliveries,” he says.

Provident CRM also built SugarAI reporting to generate CSVs feeding order information to the AI agent, and assisted with the REST API endpoint that let the agent write updates back into SugarAI as it actioned responses. “Between design, configuration, and UAT, we deployed within six weeks. It went very well, partly because ArrowXL by JP Home had provided a detailed scope for the project,” James says.

Building on that success, ArrowXL by JP Home is now rolling out a reactive agentic AI solution to intercept inbound phone calls, and in time, live chat to deal with FAQs. 

The results: Faster, higher engagement and fewer failed deliveries

The proactive agentic AI has delivered measurable gains for ArrowXL by JP Home, including:

✓ Faster outbound dialling campaigns that take just 87 minutes, down from a full day

✓ 80-85% consumer engagement, up from 55-60%

✓ Fewer unsuccessful collections and deliveries, thanks to faster feedback

Speed has a direct impact on ArrowXL by JP Home’s collections process, where drivers pick up items being returned. 

“We’re able to contact consumers in large volumes and gather information quickly in the morning about people who aren’t going to be at home,”

Rachel explains. “Then we can contact the driver and make them aware there’s no point going to that delivery.”

A partnership built to last

ArrowXL by JP Home selected SugarAI and Provident CRM through a thorough RFI and RFP tender process. 

“That process really helped us identify the partner we’d be able to work with, as well as the best solution for our requirements,” Rachel says. “During that time, we were already developing the partnership, so by the time we started working with Provident, it already existed.”

Continuity has also been key. “The people we’re working with, we’ve worked with right from the get-go, and they’re building up knowledge all the time,” she says.

Provident CRM has also worked well alongside ArrowXL by JP Home’s other technology vendors, and spent time with teams beyond IT, including the service centre. 

Advice for CIOs considering agentic AI

For fellow IT leaders eyeing up agentic AI, Rachel has clear advice.

Understand how agentic AI platforms are priced.

“How these solutions are monetised is quite complicated. It might be based on the number of interactions with the consumer, rather than a typical subscription or licensing approach.”

Choose a vendor with direct experience of your use case.

“The market is maturing, but it’s not mature, so solutions vary a lot. The advantage we had is that our vendors had already implemented very similar solutions for other clients. That really speeds things up, because they know what they’re trying to get to very quickly.”

Define your problem.

ArrowXL by JP Home started small with the proactive solution, before building the reactive one. This helped prove the value quickly. But they also had a motivated technology function alongside engaged service centre colleagues, and a hard deadline: the approaching peak season. “That created pace and momentum,” Rachel says. 

What’s next? Expanded use cases

With the reactive agentic AI now live, ArrowXL by JP Home plans to keep expanding its use cases. 

“Assuming the reactive AI is successful with the initial use cases, we’ll expand it,” Rachel says. “We’ll look at all the reasons consumers call in and improve it, which will involve getting more data out of Sugar. It’s a journey, and we’ll keep progressing it.”

About Provident CRM

Provident CRM is an independent digital consultancy and an Elite Partner of SugarAI, the highest partnership level awarded by Sugar. The company has also been recognised by the All-Ireland Business Foundation (AIBF) as Business All-Star CRM Provider of the Year for 2 years running, reflecting its proven expertise and commitment to delivering exceptional customer outcomes.

With experience supporting hundreds of organisations across Ireland, the UK, and Europe, Provident CRM helps teams successfully adopt, customise, and fully leverage SugarAI to simplify operations, improve visibility, and enhance customer engagement. Their approach focuses on aligning CRM technology with real business processes, ensuring solutions are practical, scalable, and widely adopted by users.

Provident CRM’s highly trained team holds advanced certifications across multiple business and technical disciplines, enabling them to deliver complex CRM implementations with confidence. From strategic advisory and system design to customisation and long-term optimisation, Provident CRM partners closely with customers to ensure their CRM investment delivers measurable, lasting value.