Founded over 20 years ago as a British family business, Stewart Golf designs, engineers, and handbuilds premium electric golf trolleys, including the Q Follow, their flagship remote control and follow trolley, loved by hundreds of thousands of golfers worldwide.

The company expanded to the US in 2015 and now operates in Houston, Texas and their UK headquarters. They run two Shopify sites to sell on both sides of the Atlantic.

Stewart Golf customers might be five time zones apart, but before Crescendo, every support ticket ran through a stretched team working out of Britain. One Zendesk instance, UK hours. As a result, a golfer mid-round in Florida might have to wait two days for an answer that was sitting right in the company’s knowledge base. And during peak holiday season, the backlog could reach thousands. 

Always-On CX

Stewart Golf activated Crescendo's AI, publicly named “Stewie,” across chat and email, with weekday support managed by the Stewart Golf team and weekend coverage provided by Crescendo’s trained human agents.

Stewie now handles 75% of customer inquiries the moment they come in. A golfer mid-round who needs to figure out a trolley issue, track a delivery, or ask about their warranty gets an answer in minutes. Nuanced cases automatically escalate to a human.

For the internal team, Stewie means no more weekend scrambles, no overwhelming backlogs, and no spending the day answering questions AI can handle. They're free to focus on complex customer issues that need their attention.

Results at a Glance

• Within a month of going live, Stewie was handling 75% of customer inquiries globally across chat and email.
• First response time dropped from 24-72 hours to 1 minute.
• When escalation is needed, time from Stewie to human agent is 24 seconds
• Internal team freed up to focus on nuanced issues, not repeat questions.
• 24/7 coverage standard across UK and US.

"It's the first time since I've been in this role, six years now, that we scored 100% customer satisfaction four weeks in a row." _{- Nathan Hooper, Head of Customer Experience}

Golf doesn’t keep business hours

Stewart Golf's customers are serious golfers. They play three times a week, they spend thousands on their clubs, and when they invest in a trolley, they expect the experience to match the price tag. The product, the app, and the support. 

When something goes wrong, they're vocal about it. Nathan Hooper, Head of CX, had monitored reviews on Trustpilot and Google, damaging a brand built on precision and quality. Most of the issues could have been resolved quickly, but Stewart Golf's lean CX team worked UK hours, with no weekend coverage. The problem was timing: customers were hitting the links on exactly the days and hours support was off the clock.

Nathan had run the numbers. To handle peak volume, including Black Friday, start of the golf season, and bank holidays, plus weekend coverage, he would need to increase his full-time  CX employees by 50%.

Why Crescendo?

Nathan spent time in Zendesk's help center setting up a basic flow bot. It surfaced articles and routed customers through decision trees, but he was looking for a more sophisticated solution. 

The next logical step was Zendesk's native AI. Nathan had a demo. It could rewrite responses, suggest replies, and pull up articles, but it wasn’t conversational. Customers would get an article ping and immediately ask for a human.

Then Nathan saw Crescendo's demo. Crescendo had pulled articles from Stewart Golf's existing Zendesk help center and built a working AI Assistant in days. Customers could ask questions and get on-brand answers in seconds without any human interaction. And when AI couldn’t answer the question, it looped in a human automatically.

"We're the leading manufacturer of follow trolleys. We've got to be the leaders in customer care too.”
‍_{Nathan Hooper, Head of Customer Experience}

Support that plays every round

Nathan ran the rollout in stages. UK chat went first, tested in a sandbox environment so Stewie could be pressure-tested without touching real customer conversations. Nathan's internal team partnered with Crescendo’s AI Engineer to check responses, flag gaps, and make sure Stewie's answers matched what an experienced agent would say.

When Stewie couldn't answer, conversations routed to human agents in an average of 24 seconds. Agents worked inside Stewart Golf's own Zendesk instance, using the same views, macros, and article library as the internal team. US and UK tickets were separated with a simple tagging system Nathan built himself, so the right case always landed with the right person.

Crescendo stood up UK chat in two weeks, with US chat following shortly after. Once the team was happy with both, email launched across both markets simultaneously.

To keep Stewie sharp, the team implemented a continuous improvement loop. Crescendo’s Automatic QA feature scores every interaction, while Nathan’s team digs into the edge cases. Supporting content is created from those cases and incorporated into their knowledge base. The result is AI that gets better with every conversation it handles.

At Stewart Golf, support went from a single team stretched across time zones to a 24/7 operation ready for whatever a golfer could throw at it.

Five stars for Stewie

Within a month of going live, Nathan says KPIs were moving in the right direction. Stewie was handling 75% of customer inquiries globally, first response time had dropped from 24-72 hours to one minute, and TrustPilot scores were climbing, powered by five-star reviews for interactions no human ever touched.

A recent bank holiday told the story. Nathan’s team had two agents on vacation right as volume increased, a scenario that would have previously left the team five days behind. With Crescendo in place, they were caught up in less than 24 hours.

Nathan now uses Crescendo AI Insights to track contact drivers and handoff reasons. Instead of pulling reports manually, the system continuously surfaces where customers are getting stuck. When patterns point to gaps in the knowledge base, the team fills them. And behind the scenes, Crescendo's team runs manual QA on escalated conversations, reviewing edge cases, flagging gaps, and feeding improvements back into Stewie. Every interaction makes AI sharper than before.

At last check, Stewart Golf scored 100% customer satisfaction for four weeks running, a first in Nathan’s six years on the job. 

"If you look on our Trustpilot, we've got five-star reviews for Stewie. These are cases our team never even touched."
‍_{Nathan Hooper, Head of Customer Experience}

Stewart Golf's busiest periods used to mean their worst reviews. Not anymore.

With AI handling the majority of inquiries and human agents covering the gaps, a small UK-based team now serves two markets, around the clock, without adding headcount.

The service is so good, customers are leaving five-star Trustpilot reviews for interactions no human ever touched. And because Stewie handles the straightforward questions, the internal team has the time and space to give real attention to the customers who need it. 

Now, Stewart Golf can focus on growing both markets and protecting a brand reputation built over 20 years, without worrying that support will buckle every time Black Friday or the start of golf season rolls around. 

With support solved, the CX team is already thinking about what's next. They’re in the process of adding Crescendo’s AI Shopping Assistant, so Stewie can start turning the same conversation that resolves a question into a path to purchase. 

Stewart Golf’s front nine was great. Their back nine, powered by Crescendo, looks even better.