How Vertical Spice’s AI Sales Agent Converts 21% of Shoppers

Vertical Spice has never sold a simple “click, buy, done” product.

The Minnesota-based brand manufactures made-in-America spice racks and storage organization drawers for kitchens, bathrooms, garages, and anywhere else customers need to bring order to the tiny chaos hiding behind cabinet doors. 

The products are practical, durable, and highly customizable, with 113 SKUs spanning multiple depths, heights, materials, and sizes.

That variety is what makes Vertical Spice so valuable to customers. It’s also what can make the buying journey more complex.

The challenge

Shoppers often arrive with the same starting point: I need to get organized, but I’m not totally sure what I need.

They may know they want a spice rack. But they might not know which depth fits their cabinet, which size matches their containers, or what complementary products could help organize the rest of the space. 

… And before REP AI, answering those questions depended on whether Vertical Spice’s small team was available.

“Before REP, we had a phone number posted on our website, email, contact, and a little chat box,” said Scott Miedtke, owner of Vertical Spice. “That really relied on us being in the office, only when we were in the office, 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM Central Standard Time.”

Outside of those hours, customers either waited or moved on. Scott would sometimes check in on weekends, but there was no true 24/7 coverage. And when shoppers did reach out after hours, the inbox started to stack up.

“Sometimes we’d get impatient customers wondering, ‘Is anybody there?’” Scott said. “Customers like instant recognition and instant answers.”

That’s where Arny Pollack, founder of Gen7 Consulting (Vertical Spice’s agency partner), saw an opportunity:

The brand didn’t just need a faster way to answer support questions. It needed a way to guide shoppers through a purchase decision that required education, product knowledge, and context.

REP AI became that guide.

The strategy

Working together, Vertical Spice and Gen7 focused on using REP AI not just to cover support outside business hours, but to guide shoppers toward the right purchase.

REP AI stood out because it could:

• Answer detailed product questions
• Recommend products based on what shoppers were trying to organize
• Suggest complementary add-ons
• Help shoppers find the right size, depth, or use case
• Escalate unknown questions into a missing information workflow
• Give the brand and agency insight into customer confusion, objections, and buying intent

This meant REP AI could support both sides of the customer journey: helping shoppers get answers while also helping Vertical Spice generate more revenue from existing website traffic.

From “is anybody there?” to 24/7 product guidance

“One of the things we were trying to do was create a system that could actually answer questions for people that were not clear,” Arny explained.

That’s what stood out about REP AI: it could understand Vertical Spice’s product catalog deeply enough to guide shoppers with the kind of practical, contextual help they would expect from a knowledgeable in-store associate.

“When people have questions like, ‘Hey, I don’t know which size I should buy,’ REP AI was trained on the entire specs of each item,” Arny said. “It was actually able to answer those questions, which turned customer service support into sales.”

That dual role — support and sales — became the foundation of Vertical Spice’s results.

Instead of waiting for a human to respond, shoppers could ask questions in the moment. REP AI could recommend products, explain sizing, suggest bestsellers, and point customers toward complementary items based on what they were trying to organize.

“It’s the initial recommendation, and it also helps the add-ons,” Scott said. “It’s not in your face. REP AI is just there, kind of like the salesman following you around and pointing you to the other shelf that you didn’t notice before.”

Vertical Spice didn’t want a pushy sales experience. The goal was to help shoppers make better decisions, not overwhelm them with popups or pressure.

REP AI gave the brand and its agency partner control over that experience.

“We want to be more helpful than pushy. And then the sales come naturally when you’re not causing that much friction and annoyance.”
- Arny Pollack, founder of Gen7 Consulting

How customer questions became CRO insight

As customers asked questions, Scott and Arny started seeing patterns through REP AI’s Insights platform. Shoppers were revealing where they were confused, what information they needed, and which parts of the site could do a better job guiding them.

Scott used those insights to add more information to product pages and improve website content.

One of the clearest examples came from Vertical Spice’s bestsellers page.

Through REP AI, the team saw that shoppers needed more guidance around product depths. The products were listed, but customers still needed clearer jump-off points, along with helpful information like how to measure, how to install, and which size might be right for them.

“We ended up making that change and the conversion rate on that particular page went up,” Arny said.

That page became one of Vertical Spice’s highest-converting pages, converting at 16.61%, up from 13.87% in their current test.

“If you’re in the world of CRO, or if you’re in the world of ecommerce, a tool like this is not just simply a chatbot that lives in your browser and answers questions. It’s actually way more than that.”
- Arny Pollack, founder of Gen7 Consulting

Results

Since implementing REP AI, Vertical Spice has turned AI chat into a measurable revenue channel.

REP AI helped the brand generate:

The support results were just as strong.

• 95.2% of shoppers who interacted with the Sales Agent did not require human assistance
• 98.61% of questions were successfully answered by AI
• 99.43% of shoppers who interacted with REP AI gave feedback or followed an AI product recommendation

For Vertical Spice, that means shoppers can get accurate answers and product guidance at any time, without adding more work to the team.

A stronger ecommerce service offering for agencies

For Arny, REP AI has also become a valuable platform to bring into ecommerce client work.

The product helps brands improve support, drive sales, and uncover CRO insights. But REP AI’s partner experience also made it easier for Arny to support Vertical Spice effectively.

Arny worked with REP AI through a dedicated Slack channel, where the team helped answer questions, explain features, share ideas, and troubleshoot quickly.

“They would reach out and genuinely try to help solve problems or educate,” Arny said. “If I ever had any questions or any kind of support that was needed, they really got on it.”

That support included calls, screen shares, and Loom videos walking through specific features or fixes.

“From a support side, it’s been amazing,” Arny said. “They are there for you, and anytime I have a question, it gets answered fast.”

The lesson

That’s the bigger opportunity for ecommerce brands and agencies alike.

REP AI doesn’t just make support more efficient. It turns customer experience into a sales channel, a research tool, and a smarter way to guide shoppers from confusion to conversion.

And for Vertical Spice, that shift is already showing up in the numbers.