How OpenStore Positioned & Priced Its AI Customer Support Tool for Success

The Opportunity: Helping OpenDesk Stand Out in a Competitive Market

OpenStore came to us with a clear goal: help eCommerce brands deliver faster, more personal customer support while saving time and resources with AI-powered tools. They knew firsthand how much time merchants spend handling support inquiries, often at the expense of running their businesses. Their latest solution, OpenDesk, was designed to change that.

ECommerce business owners repeatedly shared the same frustrations with their existing customer support solutions: they simply don’t cater to the needs of small brands.

Merchants needed something more intuitive, flexible, and suited to their daily challenges. OpenDesk was created to bridge that gap, giving businesses a way to offer fast, high-quality support without adding extra overhead.

To ensure OpenDesk resonated with merchants, we needed to position it in a way that made its value instantly clear. We needed to showcase AI as a way to improve (not replace!) human interactions while also designing a pricing model that felt simple and fair for growing businesses.

The Challenge: Overcoming Behavioral Barriers to Adoption

OpenStore faced significant behavioral barriers in encouraging adoption and setting the right price for its AI-powered customer support tool, OpenDesk. These challenges stemmed from deep-rooted perceptions and preferences among eCommerce business owners:

AI aversion: Many small business owners were hesitant to trust AI with complex customer issues, fearing a lack of control and the potential for mistakes. This skepticism was especially pronounced for tasks like resolving shipping problems or drafting personalized responses.
Mental accounting: Business owners tend to allocate more budget to tools they see as revenue generators rather than cost-saving solutions. Customer support tools are often viewed as a necessary expense rather than an investment, making it harder to justify spending.
Status quo bias: Many merchants had already built workflows using other tools or manual processes. Switching to a new system felt like a risk, even if the benefits outweighed the effort.

To succeed, OpenDesk had to overcome these deeply ingrained biases and reframe its value as a tool that not only simplifies support but actively drives customer retention and revenue growth.

The Process: How We Positioned and Priced OpenDesk for Success

To tackle these challenges, we conducted in-depth research, applied behavioral science principles, and designed a strategy that positioned OpenDesk as an easy “yes” for eCommerce business owners.

Behavioral Diagnosis and Behaviorally-Informed Qualitative Interviews

First, we reviewed OpenDesk’s prototype and existing materials to assess its strengths and differentiation.

To understand the pricing context in the market, we then analyzed competitor pricing models to identify industry benchmarks and market gaps.

Next, we conducted behaviorally informed interviews with eCommerce business owners to understand their pain points, pricing expectations, and decision-making processes. As part of this, we used the OpenDesk prototype to create a product overview video to observe merchants’ real-time reactions to OpenDesk and uncover key barriers to adoption.

Landing Page Design and Pricing Strategy Creation

Following our behavioral diagnosis, we designed a landing page that framed OpenDesk’s value clearly, making the benefits instantly recognizable. We designed the page to maximize sign-ups by eliminating friction from the sign-up process.

Finally, we created three distinct pricing models tailored to how business owners think about cost and value. For each pricing model, we created pricing pages that emphasized transparency, fairness, and ease of decision-making.

Image 1: Summary of our approach to our work with OpenDesk

This graphic highlights the three core components of our approach: gathering qualitative research insights, designing a behaviorally informed landing page, and creating transparent, easy-to-understand pricing pages. Each piece was designed to address small business owners’ unique needs and hesitations.

The Solution: Using Behavioral Science to Drive Adoption

Pricing a new product before it has even launched is a balancing act. You want to maximize perceived value without making costs seem like a barrier. OpenDesk needed a pricing model that was not only competitive but also transparent and easy for small business owners to understand.

Designing a Smarter Pricing Strategy

We explored multiple pricing models and built behaviorally optimized pricing pages that helped business owners clearly see their options:

Hybrid pricing model: A mix of a monthly subscription fee and a per-ticket charge. To make costs easy to understand, we designed an interactive slider that let users see how their pricing scaled with usage.
Usage-based pricing model: A simple pay-per-ticket structure. To reduce friction, we included an interactive cost calculator so businesses could estimate their total cost before committing.
Per-seat pricing model: A flat fee per user per month, offering straightforward costs that made budgeting easier.

OpenDesk originally launched with a hybrid model but later shifted to a flat monthly fee that includes all features, plus unlimited tickets, users, and automations. This change highlights the importance of continuously testing and refining pricing strategies to align with customer behavior.

Positioning OpenDesk to Stand Out

Beyond pricing, OpenDesk needed to frame itself in a way that resonated with business owners. To ensure OpenDesk’s value was immediately clear, we applied behavioral science principles to its positioning and landing page design.

Reframing Support as a Revenue Driver

Many business owners see customer support tools as a cost, not an investment. We recommended positioning OpenDesk as a customer retention tool, not just a support platform to shift this perception. OpenDesk captured this shift perfectly in its messaging with the headline: “Smarter support that keeps customers coming back.”

Image 2: OpenDesk’s homepage design incorporating our recommendations on framing and minimizing friction

Designing a Landing Page That Drives Conversions

We helped design an overview of the tool that showed at a quick glance how OpenDesk works and why it’s valuable.

Image 3: OpenDesk’s homepage design incorporating our recommendations on building a clear mental model of features and benefits

This helped merchants immediately grasp how OpenDesk simplifies customer support. But we didn’t stop there. We also structured the landing page to make its value even clearer.

Instead of long feature descriptions, we used:

A storyboard format to quickly walk merchants through OpenDesk’s key benefits.
A live demo gif showing how the product worked (based on previous case studies which showed that interactive demos can increase conversion by between 4% and 20%).
A comparison table that contrasted the downsides of not having OpenDesk with the benefits of using it.

OpenDesk took this concept even further by adding smooth animations that brought the story to life, reinforcing how intuitive and powerful the tool is.

Reducing Friction and Building Trust

Switching customer support tools can feel like a considerable risk, especially for businesses with established processes. To overcome hesitation, we also designed strategies to reduce risk and build trust with business owners:

Lowering risk with a free trial: We recommended offering a free trial to encourage sign-ups with minimal commitment. OpenDesk implemented this by allowing business owners to sign up with just their email and website — no lengthy onboarding required

Image 4: OpenDesk’s homepage design incorporating our recommendations on minimizing sign-up friction

Building trust through social proof: We designed a landing page featuring testimonials from businesses of all sizes and industries to build credibility. OpenDesk successfully implemented our recommendation by including a real customer success story showcasing increased retention after switching to OpenDesk.

Image 5: OpenDesk’s homepage design incorporating our recommendations on social proof

By emphasizing transparency, reducing friction, and reframing customer support as a growth tool, we helped OpenDesk stand out in a crowded market and drive meaningful adoption.

Next Steps

Our partnership with OpenStore highlights how we can help companies use behavioral science to create market-leading AI tools. By combining strategic pricing with strong positioning, OpenDesk successfully launched as a compelling alternative in customer support.