Alabaster

Alabaster Co., a company known for selling beautiful biblical products, was growing fast. To better reach their audience and expand their presence, they turned to TikTok—a key platform for engaging customers and showcasing their religious content and products in a unique, creative way. However, as their sales on TikTok took off, they faced some significant operational challenges that needed to be addressed.

About Alabaster

Alabaster Co. creates beautifully designed Bibles that blend faith and art, offering a fresh approach to scripture. Each Bible is carefully crafted with stunning photography, modern layouts, and high-quality materials, making it an inspirational experience to engage with God’s Word. Alabaster Co. believes in the intersection of beauty and spirituality, helping readers connect with the Bible in a deeper, more meaningful way.

Industry

Ecommerce

Integrations

Operational Growing Pains

Alabaster’s quick success on TikTok came with growing pains. As orders surged, their ability to handle the volume efficiently started to break down. Here’s what they were facing:

Order Overload: Orders were flowing in faster than their system could handle, and they couldn’t keep their inventory updated in real time.

Financial Discrepancies: While they managed to integrate TikTok with NetSuite via Shopify, the financial data still wasn’t syncing properly. Key information like order cancellations, returns, and refunds were missing from the integration, leaving their financial reports incomplete and inaccurate.

Manual Processes: Their team had to manually handle returns, exchanges, and refunds, which caused delays and a poor customer experience. This was not sustainable as their business continued to grow.

The Real Impact on Alabaster

For Alabaster, these challenges weren’t just an operational headache—they were directly impacting their ability to grow. Without up-to-date financial reports, the company couldn’t make informed decisions. Worse, inventory inaccuracies meant that customers were experiencing fulfillment delays and stockouts, leading to dissatisfaction and frustration.

The team at Alabaster was working hard to keep things running, but the manual processes were slowing them down, especially when it came to returns and refunds. Customers who had high expectations from their TikTok purchases weren’t getting the seamless experience they deserved.

Why Ignoring the Problem Could Hurt Growth

If these issues weren’t addressed, Alabaster risked facing:

Increased Operational Costs: Manual handling of orders, returns, and refunds was costly and time-consuming.

Customer Dissatisfaction: Delayed or inaccurate order fulfillment and poor communication about order status could result in frustrated customers and lost business.

Missed Growth Opportunities: Without reliable financial data and an efficient system, scaling the business further would be difficult, potentially limiting their growth on TikTok and other platforms.

The Solution: Hairball’s Celigo TikTok to NetSuite Integration

Alabaster partnered with Hairball to implement a solution that would seamlessly integrate TikTok with NetSuite, solving their operational challenges. Using a pre-built integration template, we set up a system to automate key processes and ensure real-time communication between TikTok and NetSuite.

Our integration covered:

  1. Order Sync: Orders from TikTok, both seller-fulfilled and TikTok-fulfilled, were synced directly with NetSuite.
  2. Automated Invoicing: Orders were automatically invoiced in NetSuite, reducing manual processing time.
  3. Real-Time Updates: NetSuite shipments were synced back to TikTok, and TikTok order status updates were reflected in real time.
  4. Order Cancellations, Returns, and Refunds: These were now fully automated, reducing manual errors and improving the customer experience.
  5. Inventory and Product Sync: Inventory levels and product details were synced between TikTok and NetSuite, ensuring accurate stock levels and pricing.

This solution gave Alabaster clear financial visibility, automated time-consuming processes, and significantly improved the overall customer experience.

 

We truly appreciated the Hairball team throughout our integration process. We've consistently chosen them for every integration whether that was via sales channels or Shopify custom builds, because we trust their expertise. The team is knowledgeable, organized, and a pleasure to work with.

Without the help of the Hairball team, we wouldn’t have been able to successfully integrate our new channel, TikTok, which has streamlined our business operations and made them significantly more efficient.

We are extremely happy to have worked with Hairball and would highly recommend their team to anyone looking for seamless and professional integration services."

- Emaly Tweitmann

Head of Operations and Customer Experience
Alabaster Co.

The Results: Efficiency and Growth

With the new integration in place, Alabaster saw immediate improvements:

Automated Processes: The automation of returns, refunds, and cancellations drastically reduced their operational costs and saved valuable time.

Improved Customer Experience: Customers now received timely order updates, accurate inventory availability, and faster refunds or exchanges, resulting in higher satisfaction.

Real-Time Financial Visibility: With up-to-date financial data, Alabaster was able to make more informed decisions and confidently scale their operations.

Conclusion

Alabaster’s partnership with Hairball allowed them to overcome the operational challenges brought on by their rapid growth on TikTok. By implementing a seamless TikTok-to-NetSuite integration, they not only improved efficiency but also enhanced their customer experience, positioning themselves for continued success.

Thinking about improving your own processes? We’d love to chat about how we can help!

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