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About Rush Order
Founded in 1989, Rush Order delivers flexible and scalable fulfillment solutions for the world’s fastest-growing consumer and enterprise brands. Its services span B2C fulfillment, retailer logistics, end-user customer support, accounts receivable, and turnkey back-office operations.
Dana Madlem, CEO of Rush Order, leads a 200+ employee organization that partners with hardware brands to manage warehousing, order fulfillment, and reverse logistics. Currently, the business has facilities across California, New York, Canada, Europe and the Asia Pacific.
Rush Order was missing critical customer requests
Rush Order’s customer communication revolved around email and phone calls, supplemented occasionally by Slack or other client-preferred tools. While this mix kept conversations moving, it came with significant challenges:
- Slow response times: Account managers juggled dozens of conversations daily and sometimes that led to slower than ideal responses.
- Missed communication: There wasn’t a dedicated space to manage all customer conversations. Because of this, some customer requests were overlooked for longer than they should have.
- Insufficient performance visibility: Managers had very limited ways to measure response time or track accountability. This made it difficult to spot bottlenecks or coach the team.
- Extra follow-ups: Because of occasional delays, customers had to chase answers at times, which increased frustration and further contributed to the volume of incoming requests.
“Responding to customers in a fast, accurate way is mission-critical for us. Before Hiver, things occasionally fell through the cracks, and we needed tools to help account managers reply faster and more reliably.” – Dana Madlem, CEO, Rush Order
Rush Order realized it needed a centralized system to speed up responses, ensure accountability, and prevent missed communication.
Adopting Hiver to streamline customer communication
Knowing that industry peers like Flexport were using Hiver to manage customer conversations gave Rush Order’s CEO Dana confidence that the platform could work for them too.
“We wanted a solution to speed up our responses, ensure no query was missed, and give account managers tools to stay accountable. Hiver checked all those boxes for us.” – Dana Madlem, CEO, Rush Order
It was Rush Order’s account management team that first set up Hiver. The rollout included setting up Shared Inboxes (like @support or @info), 100+ Automation rules, and Tags to triage customer conversations. Within weeks, account managers actively used Hiver to collaborate, track conversations, and stay on top of SLAs.
The system behind faster, smarter responses
- Full visibility across teams on who’s working on what
With Hiver, Rush Order created Shared Inboxes for each account management team, segmented by customer groups. This gave every account manager working with a client complete visibility into conversations.
Team members also leave private notes beside a query thread, enabling internal collaboration and helping them resolve queries faster.
- Faster and smarter routing with automation
Rush Order has set up over 100 Automation rules in Hiver to make sure customer requests always reach the right account manager. This setup means clients consistently hear from their dedicated point of contact. When someone is away, messages are automatically re-routed to the next available teammate so nothing slips through.
- Clearer and actionable insights
Every customer conversation is automatically categorized based on the organization it belongs to. This serves a dual purpose: it helps route messages to the right account manager and generates reporting that gives leadership insight into how each customer account is performing.
- Eliminating duplicate replies
With multiple people, including account managers, their managers, and sometimes department heads reviewing the same conversation, there was always a risk of duplicate or conflicting responses. Hiver’s Collision Alerts solve this by showing when someone else is already drafting a reply in real time. This feature runs in the background daily, ensuring smoother collaboration and consistency in client communication.
- Driving accountability through tracking metrics and SLA
Rush Order uses Hiver to track key metrics like first response time, all-response time, and resolution time. When an SLA is close to being breached, Hiver automatically alerts Dana Madlem and the head of account management, so they can step in and support the team. These SLA metrics are then rolled into quarterly business reviews (QBRs), giving clients clear, data-backed visibility into Rush Order’s responsiveness.
“Hiver gave our account managers the structure they needed—Shared Inboxes, Automation, Collision Alerts, and SLA tracking all work together to keep communication organized, consistent, and scalable.” – Dana Madlem, CEO, Rush Order
- Preparing for the future with AI and multi-channel support
Rush Order has started exploring Hiver AI Copilot’s AI Suggested Responses, which help account managers draft responses more quickly. As teams grow more comfortable with AI features, Dana sees opportunities for deeper adoption to improve quality and speed further. The company also plans to embed Hiver’s Live Chat into its client-facing dashboard so customers can connect instantly while viewing inventory and order data.
“Hiver’s AI Copilot is helping our team respond faster without sacrificing tone or quality. It’s a great starting point that we can build on as we scale.”
Dana Madlem
CEO
Proven results: faster responses, happier customers
- 20% faster response times
Within weeks of implementing Hiver, Rush Order improved its speed of response by 20%. With no messages slipping through the cracks and account managers motivated by SLA tracking, clients began receiving answers more quickly and consistently. - 10% reduction in ticket volume
Before Hiver, Rush Order’s account managers handled hundreds of customer conversations daily, often requiring follow-ups from clients. After implementation, ticket volume dropped by 10%—from about 1,000 to 900 conversations a day—as faster responses eliminated the need for repeat queries. - Higher customer satisfaction scores
Client satisfaction with account manager communication rose from 3.5/5 to 4.5/5. This jump was driven by faster responses and better internal collaboration, which helped account managers deliver updates that were both timely and accurate. - Greater accountability through SLA tracking
SLA tracking introduced measurable accountability to Rush Order’s workflows. Account managers treat their SLA performance as a badge of honor, and leadership can quickly step in if targets are at risk.
“In just weeks, we saw 20% faster responses, 10% fewer tickets, and higher customer satisfaction. Our customers noticed the difference immediately.” – Dana Madlem, CEO, Rush Order
Looking forward
As Rush Order’s account management team grows, speed and consistency will remain a top priority for the business. To support this, Dana plans to extend Hiver’s use beyond account management. He plans to roll out Hiver to internal-facing teams so that the entire organization can collaborate faster and more consistently.
“Even some of our departments that are strictly internal-facing could use Hiver to improve their speed of response and make our organization run better as a whole.” – Dana Madlem, CEO, Rush Order
The company is also considering a Slack integration, since many customers already use Slack to communicate. Pulling those conversations into Hiver would give the team a single, unified place to track all client interactions.
Together, these next steps build on the foundation Rush Order has created with Hiver, ensuring that as the company scales, its communication stays organized and dependable.
Conclusion
With Hiver, Rush Order moved from a fragmented, email-and-phone-heavy workflow to a more organized and accountable system. Hiver’s Shared Inboxes, Automation, SLA tracking, and Collision Alerts keep account managers aligned and responsive, while AI and Live Chat set the stage for future growth.
Dana Madlem sums it up best:
“Hiver has helped us respond faster, stay more accountable, and build stronger relationships with our customers. It’s become an essential part of how we communicate and scale as a business.”
