Challenge

Rising complexity. Budget constraints. A team of one.

Because their products are both highly technical and seasonal, traditional customer support strategies fell short for Rachio. They needed a scalable solution that could provide high- quality IoT support, handle complex inquiries and troubleshooting, and help them stay lean, even during the springtime surge.

Anthony Tedesco, Head of Customer Support Operations at Rachio, put it bluntly: “Budget has always kind of been a concern. We weren’t wildly out of line with industry standards, but it was out of line for my standards.”

Rachio’s support tickets often required deep technical understanding: WiFi issues, device resets, and highly customizable sprinkler schedules. These weren’t your average retail questions. And with unpredictable tariffs and cutbacks looming, the pressure to do more with less intensified.

“We knew that taking a hatchet to our CS operation without a fallback plan would lower our level of service — which is something we’ve historically been unwilling to compromise on.” With the busy season just around the corner, they needed a unicorn solution, fast.

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Solution

Augmented AI, continuously refined by human expertise to perform under pressure.

Rachio partnered with Crescendo to overhaul their support infrastructure using Crescendo’s hybrid AI+human approach. Powered by Rachio’s knowledge base and Crescendo’s managed service team, the CX Assistant quickly began resolving nuanced questions with up to 99.8% accuracy.

“Coming from a fully staffed support center with human agents, I expected the transition to AI to be bumpy. But our customers barely noticed. The experience has been surprisingly seamless."

Crescendo scaled quickly. Within two weeks of user-acceptance testing (UAT), it was already resolving complex chat-support issues, and over the following months it expanded across voice and email, offering full omnichannel support. With humans in the loop, Crescendo’s AI gathered context, honed its responses, and resolved inquiries ever more quickly, delighting customers and minimizing escalations.

“The longer the conversation goes, the more accurate the AI gets. It’s like it’s painting a picture of the problem.” Best of all, the ramp-up was fast: kickoff to high-quality, AI-driven resolutions took only weeks, not months, and support quality continued to skyrocket. “We went from 20% accuracy to the high 90s within weeks. We were in a time crunch and Crescendo moved fast… and the improvement was exponential.”

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Impact

Faster resolutions. Happier customers. Lower cost.

With Crescendo, Rachio automated repetitive support flows and freed up their CS leader to focus on complex or sensitive issues. This lifted morale, cleared backlogs, and allowed them to deliver exceptional support during a period of aggressive cost-cutting.

“If the customer says ‘that didn’t work,’ typically there’s another path — and that’s where the AI really shines.” Crescendo’s ability to understand technical requests in real time, across any language, meant Rachio could provide 24/7 support with just one full-time CS leader. The end result? Satisfied customers and a resilient, cost-efficient business.

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Takeaway

Peak-season pressure didn’t break Rachio’s support team — it shaped them.

With Crescendo, they turned a seasonal stress point into a streamlined, high-performance operation. One CS leader. One million customers. Zero compromise.