Company Overview
Les Affaires, a leading business publication based in Canada serving decision-makers, entrepreneurs, and investors across Québec for over 95 years, relies on Pelcro for subscription management and AI Customer Service. This includes customer management and acquisition as well as billing, renewals, and customer support.
The Challenge
Pelcro had long managed customer support for Les Affaires as a fully handled service, with support specialists resolving every reader request end-to-end: cancellation requests, renewal questions, and account updates. Pelcro saw an opportunity to improve the metrics publishers care about most: faster first response times, shorter resolution windows, and stronger Service Level Agreement consistency during high-volume periods.
The challenge was consistently maintaining a strong SLA without increasing the number of human agents and related costs. Every ticket required the same sequence: opening the reader's account, verifying subscription status, reviewing billing history, understanding the request, and then drafting a response. Much of that process was repetitive research and retrieval, repeated across nearly every case, regardless of the issue.
Pelcro began looking for a way to remove that operational friction without sacrificing the care and accuracy readers expected. The goal was clear: dramatically reduce response and resolution times for publisher customers without increasing support costs or compromising the reader experience.
The Solution
In November 2025, Pelcro deployed its AI Customer Service Agent for Les Affaires to handle the most repetitive parts of the support process before a specialist ever touched the ticket. The goal wasn't to replace or add to the support team; it was to remove the manual research and drafting work that slowed response times and made SLA consistency harder to maintain during volume spikes.
When a reader emails the Les Affaires support address (the same address they've always used), the AI Agent reads the message, classifies the request, and pulls the reader's full account context from Pelcro: subscription status, billing history, plan details, expiration date, and past interactions. It evaluates the request against that information, maps out the likely resolution steps, and prepares a complete package for the support specialist: including a drafted email response already personalized to the reader's account.
This changed the role of the support specialist from researcher to reviewer. Instead of spending time looking up accounts, verifying subscriptions, and writing the first reply, specialists step in after the heavy lifting is already done. They review the recommendation, make adjustments where needed, approve the response, and send.
Lookup, evaluation, and first-draft composition are the three most time-consuming parts of the ticket lifecycle. All three now happen automatically before a ticket is even seen by the human support agent, allowing Pelcro to improve speed without compromising the quality of support readers expect.
“Publishers shouldn't have to choose between fast response times and accurate, thoughtful replies. The AI Agent lets us deliver both. Readers of Les Affaires are now hearing back in minutes instead of hours, and every response is still reviewed by a specialist who knows the publisher's business. That's the standard we want to set for every publisher we support.”
The Results
Faster first response and resolution times
Over a five-month period, Pelcro significantly reduced how long it took Les Affaires readers to receive both an initial response and a full resolution to their support requests.
The initial improvement came in first response time. This was not a generic automatic response, but an actual first response to the ticket. Before the AI Agent, specialists had to manually open the account, verify subscription status, review billing history, and understand the request before writing a reply. With that research and drafting work handled automatically upfront, average per-ticket first response time improved by 97%.
Full resolution time followed the same pattern. Instead of spending time on repetitive account lookups and first-draft composition, specialists started with a recommended action plan and a drafted response already prepared. This allowed them to move directly into review, judgment, and final approval. Over the same five-month period, average full resolution time improved by 95%.
More consistent and accurate support during volume spikes
Speed alone was not the goal. Consistency mattered just as much. By standardizing the lookup, evaluation, and drafting process, the AI Agent removed much of the operational inconsistency that happens when specialists have to manually repeat the same research steps hundreds of times. Every ticket began with the same full account context: subscription status, billing history, expiration dates, and past interactions already surfaced before review.
This gave specialists a stronger starting point for every response, helping maintain SLA consistency across volume spikes while reducing the risk of missed details or delayed follow-up. The result was faster support without sacrificing the accuracy and care readers expected.
Higher efficiency without increasing customer cost
The most important outcome was that the improvement in speed did not come at the expense of either customer satisfaction or cost.
Les Affaires did not need to increase support headcount, change its reader-facing workflow, or introduce a new channel for customer service. Readers continued using the same support inbox they had always used, and specialists remained responsible for reviewing and approving every response before it was sent.
Customer satisfaction remained stable, and the cost of service did not increase. Pelcro was able to deliver dramatically faster response and resolution times while maintaining the same standard of support and the same cost structure for the publisher.
The result was not just a faster support operation, but a more scalable one, built on the same team, the same process, and a stronger operational foundation.
“Pelcro's AI Agent has helped us significantly improve the speed and efficiency of our email customer support while maintaining the quality of service our readers expect. Over a five-month period, email support resolution times decreased by 95%, enabling faster responses without increasing costs. This allows our customer service team to spend more time on complex requests where human expertise adds the greatest value.”
What's next
The long-term goal is to move from assisted resolution to autonomous AI resolution for the highest-volume, lowest-risk ticket categories. Routine cancellations, renewals, and account updates can be resolved faster and more consistently by automation, while Pelcro's support specialists focus their time on the complex, high-value conversations where human judgment and a real voice matter most.