From 4 days to 48 hours: How 1% for the Planet transformed customer service with Hiver

About 1% for the Planet

1% for the Planet is a global organization that connects businesses and individuals with environmental partners. The company encourages them to donate 1% of annual revenue to environmental causes. 

Founded in 2002 by Yvon Chouinard (Founder of Patagonia) and Craig Mathews (Founder of Blue Ribbon Flies), the network has directed over $800 million in funding to approved partners worldwide.

The organization’s membership team guides businesses through the annual certification process—a verification that confirms members have donated 1% of their yearly sales to vetted partners. They also provide resources and support to help members communicate their impact effectively. 

Kaylee Duncanson, Membership Manager, oversees a team of coordinators who rely on Hiver’s customer service platform to manage member requests, share certification resources, and collaborate seamlessly across time zones.

Challenge: Fragmented workflows led to missed queries

Before adopting Hiver, the membership team managed all incoming requests from their individual Gmail inboxes (eg: kaylee@xyz.com). This worked initially, but as the volume of requests went up, this setup made it difficult to maintain visibility or consistency in communication.

• Siloed communication created blind spots: Each coordinator handled requests independently, making it hard for Kaylee to oversee ongoing conversations or identify which requests still needed attention. Also, when a member reached out to the wrong coordinator, the request often sat unattended until someone manually forwarded it.
• Slow response times across regions: Kaylee’s team supports members worldwide. Without a centralized system, queries from different time zones went unanswered for days. This way, response times often stretched to 3–4 days, as volume of requests increased. 
• No backup during absences: When a particular coordinator was OOO, there was no way for the rest of the membership team to respond to requests this person receives. The lack of an effective handoff process meant that some requests got extremely delayed responses.
• Seasonal surges amplified inefficiencies: The company’s busiest season – where they do the most number of certifications – is from January to May. During this period, the volume of incoming requests is usually around 100/day. Without centralized visibility into these requests, the team struggled to prioritize and distribute work effectively.

The membership team needed a powerful yet easy-to-use customer service platform – one that could streamline and centralize member requests, and provide complete visibility into everyone’s workload.

Discovery and implementation: Why did 1% for the planet choose Hiver?

As member requests increased, the team quickly realized that managing everything through personal inboxes was no longer sustainable. They needed a unified system that could handle high volumes, improve visibility, and support a distributed team working across time zones.

Kaylee’s manager began evaluating several customer service platforms. They had three main requirements: ease of adoption, powerful collaboration features, and how well each tool could fit into their existing workflow. Most tools that they tried felt too complex or required lengthy onboarding, and it’s something the membership team couldn’t afford during their busiest months.

They then came across Hiver. 

Hiver stood out for its simplicity and ease of setup. It is a full-fledged customer service platform but one that didn’t require Kaylee’s team to learn new workflows or interfaces

Implementation took only a few days. The team moved from scattered inboxes to a centralized and transparent workflow which gave them real-time visibility into member conversations. 

How does 1% for the Planet use Hiver?

The membership team at 1% for the Planet now manages all member communication using Hiver. Here’s what that looks like today:

• Centralized visibility ensures no member request slips through

The team manages all member communication through a Shared Inbox (eg: membersupport@). Whether a business needs help with certification, renewal timelines, or donation guidelines, all messages flow into one place. This way the entire membership team gets complete visibility into what needs attention and who’s working on what.

Requests are routed based on time zone, topic, or workload, so that no member has to wait unnecessarily for a response. During certification season, when inquiries spike to nearly 100 a day, this visibility helps the team balance workload efficiently and maintain a 48-hour response goal.

Moving from isolated personal inboxes to this centralized view has eliminated blind spots, made collaboration effortless, and ensured every member receives timely, consistent communication.

• Standardizing responses for common inquiries

To maintain a unified tone and reduce repetitive work, the team uses 20–30 ready-to-send Templates for common scenarios. These include welcoming new members, explaining the annual certification process, guiding cancellations, and providing donation instructions.

During certification season, templates help the team save several hours and free up the coordinators to focus on more complex member requests. Templates also ensure every message, right from follow-ups to onboarding responses, is consistent with the brand’s tone. 

• Real-time collaboration enables faster resolutions

With Hiver, coordinators no longer have to switch between their inboxes and messaging apps to collaborate with teammates. They can now discuss and resolve queries right beside the conversation thread with Hiver’s Notes and @mention feature.

When a question needs additional input—say, clarification on a certification requirement—the coordinator can simply @mention a colleague and add a quick note beside the query. This makes it easy to share context, ask for feedback, or suggest next steps without leaving the conversation. These in-line discussions are visible only to the internal team, keeping collaboration private and organized. It also reduces the need to CC or forward queries to teammates.

The team also uses the internal notes section to document insights from recurring issues. This helps coordinators learn from past cases without extensive back and forth. As a result, turnaround times have improved significantly, especially for high-priority queries.

• In-depth insights help the team plan and prioritize better

Hiver’s Analytics dashboard gives the membership team actionable insights on response time, resolution time, and workload distribution. These insights become super important to track, especially during the certification season, when daily requests can double.

Armed with several data points, Kaylee is now able to set performance goals, monitor response times, and proactively reallocate work based on volume or urgency. The team can also compare data across seasons to identify recurring peaks and bottlenecks, which helps them plan staffing and training more accurately each year.

• Automation eliminates repetitive tasks 

The team relies on automated workflows for repetitive tasks. These Automations categorize incoming emails by topic, helping coordinators prioritize effectively and quickly identify emerging trends — such as spikes in donation or renewal questions during campaigns. 

These insights help the team understand the type of repetitive questions, enabling them to update their external knowledge base accordingly.

• AI-driven Triaging brings visibility to trends in real time

The team has started using Hiver AI to bring more efficiency at work. They use AI to auto-close non-actionable messages from the members. This helps them keep their customer service inbox clean and are now preparing to adopt AI Tagging. This will help the team automatically triage queries into buckets such as certification, donations, or resource requests.

It will make life easier for Kaylee as she gets to identify trends instantly. For example, if certification-related queries spike earlier than expected, Kaylee can proactively update resources and adjust staffing before volume peaks. 

• Making self-service consistent and simple

Using Hiver’s Knowledge Base feature, the team built a centralized library of resources that serves as a single, reliable source of information for both members and staff. Coordinators can quickly pull verified answers to guide members through certification or donation processes, which ensures every response is accurate and consistent.

Members can also access the Knowledge Base directly to find what they need without waiting for a response. The team has made it a point to regularly update their knowledge base whenever certification guidelines or policies change.

How has Hiver impacted 1% for the planet’s important KPIs?

Since adopting Hiver, 1% for the Planet’s membership team has scaled its operations to support thousands of businesses without compromising support quality. The results are clear across response times, efficiency, and overall satisfaction.

• Easily manage scale as query volume grows from 20 to 100 a day. The team now manages an average of 20–50 member conversations daily, and during peak season, it’s 100 per day. With Hiver’s Shared Inbox and automated assignments, every request is routed to the right coordinator and nothing gets missed.
  
• Response times cut by 50%. Requests that once took 3–4 days are now handled in 48 hours.
  
• Higher satisfaction across the network. Annual member surveys show a marked rise in satisfaction scores. Respondents consistently mention how much easier it is to reach the team and get timely responses.

• Efficiency gains worth thousands of dollars annually. Automations like auto-closing thank-you messages and triaging requests eliminate repetitive work. They also free up the coordinators to focus on high-impact tasks. 
• Templates that keep communication consistent. The team relies on multiple pre-built templates for recurring requests—like welcome messages, cancellations, and donation guidance. These templates maintain consistency across every interaction.
• Better workload visibility. With Hiver’s analytics, Kaylee can instantly see which coordinators are overburdened and rebalance workloads before delays occur. This data-driven approach has made busy months more predictable and less stressful for everyone.

And For Kaylee, the most significant change is not just in metrics but in confidence.

1% for the planet x Hiver: What does the future look like?

As 1% for the Planet’s network continues to grow, Kaylee and her team are starting to use Hiver’s advanced features. AI Tagging is next on their roadmap. This will enable automatic categorization of queries to reveal trends, such as spikes in certification or donation questions before they become pain points.

In the long term, they want to integrate Hiver with their CRM and internal systems to further streamline data sharing and create a unified view of member communication.