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    E-commerce / Custom Manufacturing

    Every shipping quote took half an hour. Dozens of times a day.

    A custom AI-powered operations layer that closed the gaps the e-commerce platform couldn't, supporting a custom cabinetry business built on high-value orders.

    Custom ReactMagento APIsZoho CRMAI/OCRPallet packing algorithmRetell

    Broken

    Half an hour to build one shipping quote — dozens of times a day, often wrong.

    Built

    An operations layer over the store and the CRM: instant freight, one customer screen, OCR on invoices.

    Now

    25 minutes returned per quote, and 18+ inbound routes resolve without escalation.

    01 // Before and after

    shipping quote · generated

    Elapsed · 00:00:41

    Pallets2 · 48×40×62
    Freight class125
    Estimate$684.00
    Ready to send ✓
    shipping quote · manual

    Elapsed · 00:24:18

    · Measure each carton by hand

    · Guess pallet configuration

    · Look up freight class

    · Call the carrier

    · Re-quote — dimensions were off

    Before · 25 minutesAfter · Seconds

    The same quote, two different days of work.

    02 // The challenge

    The challenge.

    Bridge the gaps the platform left open — accuracy, speed, and customer service capacity on high-value custom orders.

    • 01Shipping quotes for bulky custom orders took 20–30 minutes each and were often inaccurate
    • 02The platform couldn't swap colors on a configured build without manually re-adding every SKU
    • 03Reps had to dig across disconnected CRM objects to get a full picture of one customer
    • 04Manual invoice review before manufacturer handoff was error-prone and expensive when missed

    Why off-the-shelf wouldn't work

    This is a high-AOV custom-build business with a customer service team running parallel to a designer team, on top of an e-commerce platform and a CRM that were never built to meet in the middle. No off-the-shelf tool sits in that gap.

    03 // What we built

    01

    Instant shipping quotes

    Carton dimensions go in, a pallet-packing algorithm works out the configuration, and a freight estimate comes back before the customer has finished the sentence.

    freight estimator

    Order

    |

    Pallets

    2 · 48×40×62

    Weight

    1,240 lb

    Freight class

    125

    Estimate

    $684.00

    Quoted ✓

    02

    Cart automation

    A finish change used to mean removing and re-adding every SKU on a configured build. Now one swap remaps the whole cart without touching a line item.

    cart · color swap
    FinishNatural Oak→Slate
    BASE-24-Lqueued
    WALL-30-Uqueued
    TALL-84-Pqueued
    TRIM-96-Squeued
    PANEL-END-Rqueued
    Cart rebuilt · 0 re-entry ✓

    03

    One-screen customer view

    A phone number, email, or order ID assembles orders, chat history, designer notes, and invoices into a single panel, pulled in parallel from systems that never spoke.

    customer view · one screen
    (555) 014-2280

    Orders

    3 open · 11 lifetime

    Designer notes

    Slate finish approved 04/12

    Chats

    2 threads · last 6 days ago

    Invoices

    1 pending manufacturer PO

    One screen replaced six tabs and a guess.

    04Invoice OCRIncoming invoices compared to manufacturer purchase orders, discrepancies flagged before handoff.
    0518-route intake systemAssembly help, designer scheduling, returns and damages, sales — handled without escalation.
    06After-hours chatFirst-layer triage covering the hours the team is offline.

    Live · production

    Inbound resolving without escalation.

    intake routes · live

    Live
    19:42Assembly help · route 06Resolved
    20:04Designer scheduling · route 02Booked
    20:19Damage claim · route 11Logged
    20:33Shipping estimate · route 04Quoted
    20:47Order status · route 01Resolved

    04 // Impact

    Annualized impact

    0

    Minutes returned per shipping quote, dozens of times a day

    Time to build a shipping estimate

    Manual, frequently inaccurate25min
    Instant, generated by the system1min

    Repeated dozens of times daily

    05 // Technical implementation

    Architecture overview.

    A custom React tooling layer wrapping the e-commerce platform and CRM through their APIs, with parallel API orchestration behind the unified customer view and AI/OCR behind invoice review. A pallet-packing algorithm produces freight estimates in seconds. The intake system and chat run on the same data layer, so customer-facing and internal AI share one source of truth.

    technical-highlights.md

    • → Pallet packing algorithm for instant freight estimation
    • → Platform API orchestration for live cart manipulation
    • → Parallel API requests across CRM objects for the unified view
    • → OCR-based invoice comparison against purchase orders
    • → Intake system with 18+ conversational routes
    • → After-hours chat triage into the same records

    06 // Field notes

    The platform wasn't wrong. It just stopped where the business kept going.

    One screen replaced six tabs and a guess.

    Let's talk about what you're trying to fix.

    Thirty minutes. No pitch deck.