“We don't want to feel like the largest driving school in the country… we want this sort of like ‘bakery feel’, right? They call their local bakery and they're talking to somebody who's down the street from them.”

Coastline Academy is the largest driving school in the U.S, offering online driver’s education and behind-the-wheel training. When it comes to something as critical as a new driver getting behind the wheel for the first time, customers benefit most from a local, small-business presence paired with the infrastructure of a large-scale operation.

Three years ago, Coastline only operated in four states. Now, it’s double that. As they have grown, Coastline Academy has worked hard to maintain their high NPS of 80 while still expanding the business’s revenue and geographic footprint.

We chatted with Charles Sustaita, the Director of Customer Support, to understand the strategies and tactics the team at Coastline uses to provide that small-business level of customer service on their growth journey.

Agent Specialization

The addition of new states means not only balancing the increased customer load, but also multiple new sets of regulations that agents need to know to serve customers. In addition to serving the typical customer profile, a new teen driver, Coastline also has B2B partners. These include charter schools, nonprofits, and fleet training services, their newest offering.

To scale and still deliver high quality customer service,
Sustaita turned to specializing the customer support agents. Each agent can focus on a smaller territory rather than trying to remember everything across the entire footprint.

As Coastline grows more within each state through acquisitions of other driving schools on top of its own organic growth, it’s well positioned to continue delivering the high quality service its customers know and love because its support team members are specialists, not generalists.

With Kustomer’s Skills-Based Routing, you can facilitate this easily. Set up different agent skills and route incoming conversations to the appropriate agent - whether it’s going to an agent fluent in a specific language or with the training required to handle certain scenarios.

Share Important Information Proactively

Sustaita notes that with the nature of the service offered, Coastline’s customers are parents who are entrusting their teenage children with Coastline’s instructors and vehicles. There’s a lot at stake, and Sustaita knows it. One way he has found to manage the volume of conversations is, “giving them the answers that they need up front before they actually call.”

So, the homepage of Coastline’s website clearly details some of the safety measures the company takes to help parents and students be at ease. Right up front, prospective clients can see that Coastline leverages background checks and drug screens for instructors, marked cars with a second brake, the mechanic certifications, and dashcams that record the driving lessons.

With proactive self-service resources like clear information on the website and in FAQs, that can reduce the volume of repetitive conversations coming in. It also helps prospective customers feel more confident before inquiring about deeper questions, or purchasing.

Looking to improve your brand’s customer self-service? Check out our guide here.

Scale with the Right Channels

When Sustaita first started with Coastline, the company offered live chat as a customer service channel. However, he found that channel was not the best fit to deliver the high quality level of service that customers need in the way they want to communicate. Sustaita found their teen customers, “want to quickly shoot off a text message between classes and say, ‘hey, can I book another lesson?’” so Coastline switched their efforts to SMS.

Going all-in on the right channel was much more efficient for Coastline.
Sustaita reports that Coastline has, “seen a reduction in the total amount of phone calls. We've seen an increase in the number of SMS messages that we've received. Now, I can take one person on the customer support team from having a synchronous conversation with three people to having an async conversation with 10 people at one time.”

Using Tools to Deliver A Great Customer Experience

Prior to using Kustomer to manage its customer support, Coastline Academy used an omnichannel CX platform, but it had a weak spot in SMS capabilities - which Sustaita knew customers wanted. With Kustomer, Coastline can not only use SMS, but pairs it with our Timeline feature.

Now, the team can support the customer relationship by continuing the communication after the sale via SMS. Coastline agents use the Kustomer Timeline feature to manage the touchpoints to proactively remind students of upcoming lessons.

AI Tools

AI-powered customer experience tools also show a lot of promise for Coastline’s customer support team. Sustaita says, “Especially in a non-technical environment like Coastline is, where we don't have complex products and services, where it's highly transactional, there's a significant potential for us to reduce our volume or to give customers those answers before they ever get to us.” Although his team migrated away from a traditional chatbot, he notes they may introduce an AI-powered chatbot that’s connected to Coastline’s API, which could mirror their booking flow and deflect at high rates.

However, Sustaita notes that he doesn’t see turning all of customer service over to AI:
“If we can use AI by way of AI bots or AI Agents to give people the answers that they need or to help position our value, then we'll do that. But we definitely don't want to sacrifice the human connectedness of that because you can train that to be warm and friendly and local, have that bakery feel, but it's not ever going to be. So there's always going to be a human component, at least what we're doing here.”

Finally, maximizing all of the team’s existing tools and resources is another key strategy to maintain delivering a stellar customer service. As Sustaita plans out the team’s 2025 initiatives, he’s considering the tools Coastline has, and how the team may be under-utilizing those tools so they can unlock new efficiencies with better utilization. It’s a helpful reminder that one way to make improvements on any area of the business is simply carving out time and being intentional about finding ways to leverage the resources you already have.

Key Takeaways

Balancing scaling a business while delivering high-quality service that still provides the feel of a local business is no small feat. Coastline Academy provides a great model of how to do it, centering around strategic thinking and being willing to try new methods to overcome challenges.

For Coastline, it comes down to agent specialization, robust self-service materials, leveraging the optimal communication channels, and maximizing the tools in its CX stack with Kustomer and AI.

Looking for a comprehensive, AI-native CX tech solution? Schedule a demo with Kustomer now.