How Aldo Group scales four-brand social care into one unified, data-driven operation

Four brands, one customer-care voice

Aldo Group is one of the most recognized names in global footwear and accessories, with a portfolio spanning Aldo, Call It Spring, Sperry and GH Bass. Each label has its own personality, from Aldo’s polished sophistication to Call It Spring’s playful energy, and customers expect that voice to carry through every interaction, whether they’re asking about sizing, escalating a return or praising a new campaign.

For Aldo Group’s social customer care team, social is often the first and most visible touchpoint a customer has with any of the four brands. Every interaction has to balance empathy, speed and brand tone, across multiple channels, at scale, every day.

That pressure is growing as customer expectations around responsiveness continue to rise. Emplifi’s 2026 consumer research found that 84% of consumers say quick response time is critical to authentic customer service, reinforcing how closely speed and trust are now connected.

For a retailer fielding tens of thousands of comments, DMs and tags every month, meeting those expectations required more than faster replies. It meant rebuilding the workflow underneath the experience itself.

A growing volume of conversations, fragmented tools

Before Emplifi, Aldo Group’s social care team worked entirely through native platform tools. Facebook and Instagram conversations were managed in Meta Business Suite, while X was handled directly through the X platform. Each brand had to be opened and worked separately, creating a repetitive workflow that became harder to manage as Sperry and GH Bass were added to the queue.

Community managers reviewed comments and DMs one by one without a centralized view of workload or urgency. Giveaway tags, spam, and low-priority interactions sat beside genuine customer issues, making prioritization difficult.

Reporting added another layer of complexity. Customer information was copied into spreadsheets, while escalated cases lived separately inside the contact center CRM. Managers lacked visibility into the metrics that mattered most: when interaction spikes occurred, why customers were reaching out, and how care agents were performing.

Turning four disconnected queues into one shared workflow

Aldo Group consolidated onto Emplifi’s social media customer care software to bring every brand, channel and customer interaction into one connected workspace.

Aldo, Call It Spring, Sperry and GH Bass now operate side by side inside Emplifi Care, allowing agents to move across brands without constantly switching platforms. Cases remain segmented by brand, helping the team preserve each label’s voice while working from one centralized environment.

The team introduced SLA tracking and keyword prioritization to surface urgent interactions faster, while bulk filtering removed giveaway entries, spam, and low-priority messages from the queue.

Internal collaboration also became faster. Agents can tag teammates or managers directly inside a customer conversation, allowing coaching and escalations to happen in the same thread instead of across disconnected tools.

Fuel AI added another layer of support by helping agents refine tone and consistency while keeping the human voice intact. Agents remain fully in control of replies, while AI assists with maintaining empathy and brand alignment during high-volume periods.

That balance matters. Emplifi’s 2026 consumer research found that 81% of consumers say a human tone matters in customer service interactions, even as brands adopt more AI-assisted workflows.

Coaching, staffing, and visibility driven by real-time data

Where reporting once meant comparing Monday-morning totals to Friday-evening totals, Aldo Group now has real-time visibility across every brand and channel.

Emplifi’s social media analytics tools help the team understand when interaction volume peaks, why customers are reaching out, and how agents are performing against SLA targets. The data consistently shows interaction spikes around 2 p.m., allowing managers to adjust staffing based on actual patterns instead of assumptions.

Bi-weekly coaching sessions now focus on measurable performance indicators like response time, handle time, and case mix rather than subjective feedback.

Response speed improved alongside that visibility. Across the last two months tracked, Aldo Group maintained a 20-hour average response time across all four brands, well under the team’s 24-hour SLA, despite operating with a Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 staffing model.

The same reporting now gives social care stronger visibility across the wider business through QBRs and executive reviews, helping the team demonstrate its operational and customer experience impact.

From customer support to brand-defining moments

The biggest transformation wasn’t just operational efficiency. It was the kind of customer experience the team could now deliver.

One Call It Spring customer reached out on social with detailed questions about a pair of boots. Instead of bouncing between disconnected systems, the associate handling the case tagged a teammate directly inside Emplifi.

That teammate visited a Montreal store, photographed the boots, and answered every question within the same conversation thread. The customer later described it as the best brand experience they had ever received.

At Aldo Group, these are known as “hero moments,” proof that when operational friction is removed, social care teams can spend less time managing systems and more time building trust through memorable customer experiences.

A smaller team doing more meaningful work

Three people manage social customer care across four global retail brands and more than 49,000 customer actions in a single quarter.

Centralization is what makes that scale sustainable. Interactions are prioritized by SLA, organized by brand, and stripped of much of the repetitive manual work that once consumed large parts of the day.

The impact has been operational, but also personal. Less time spent on repetitive administrative work means more time spent solving customer problems and delivering stronger brand experiences.

Keeping the human voice at the center of AI-assisted care

Aldo Group’s customer care roadmap on Emplifi continues to evolve, with the team exploring additional Fuel AI capabilities that help support faster responses while preserving each brand’s tone and authenticity.

Google reviews and post-interaction customer satisfaction surveys are also next on the consolidation roadmap, bringing more customer signals into the same operational environment.

The strategy remains consistent across every initiative: preserve the distinct personality of each brand, maintain a lean and efficient team structure, and deliver faster, more empathetic support no matter where the conversation begins.