Running a direct-to-consumer brand means a constant stream of small operational tasks: where-is-my-order questions, return requests, address changes, review replies, and catalog tweaks. None of them is hard. Together they consume a founder's evening or a lean ops team's entire day.
The back office is the bottleneck
Growth makes this worse, not better. More orders mean more shipping questions, more returns, more reviews to answer. Hiring for it is expensive and slow; ignoring it costs you repeat customers.
What an agent handles for DTC
- Order and shipping questions: looks up the order and answers with real status, or fixes the address before it ships.
- Returns and refunds: processes the routine ones and flags the exceptions for you.
- Review and message replies: responds on-brand across your store and channels.
- Catalog upkeep: updates product details and inventory flags as things change.
The work that keeps customers happy should not depend on you staying up late.
On your store, under your rules
An agent works inside the store and help desk you already use. You decide what it can do on its own: answer and update freely, but gate refunds over a threshold or anything irreversible for your approval. Every action lands in an append-only audit log.
What you get back
Faster responses, fewer abandoned carts from unanswered questions, and time back to work on product and growth. Because afka bills for work done rather than per seat, the back office scales with order volume, the holiday spike does not require a holiday hire.