Our Groundbreaking Customer Service Innovation: The Telephone
Posted posted on May 18, 2026
Fed up with chatbots, help centres and companies that seem desperate not to speak to you? Us too.
So at Schplendid, if you have a question about your sofa, you can ring us. Revolutionary, we know…
Every now and then, someone gets in touch offering to revolutionise our customer service with AI: a clever little chatbot, a helpful “agent”, a support journey, a ticketing system, or some other dazzling mechanism for avoiding a straightforward conversation.
Which is all very impressive, except for one small problem…Most people don’t want a customer journey, they want help.
So we’ve come up with a groundbreaking customer service innovation of our own. It’s called the telephone.
Buying a sofa is a serious decision
A sofa is not a toothbrush or a pair of socks; it’s big and personal and very much part of your daily life. It has to fit through the door, work in your room, feel right, look right and survive whatever your household throws at it.
So naturally, people have questions…
….Is the heavyweight linen very heavyweight? Is velvet a terrible idea if you have children, dogs or a reckless attitude to red wine? How much plumping does down need? Will the colour look different in your room? Can you use your own fabric? Is the sofa going to feel squishy, supportive, formal, floppy, or somewhere in the Schplendid zone?
These are not questions best answered by Sofabot 3000.
…So yes, we answer the phone
If you call Schplendid, you’ll get through to one of us – George, Lola or Ingrid – and you can talk to an actual person about the actual sofa you’re thinking of buying.
That might mean chatting through fabrics, measurements, delivery, swatches, cushion feel, returns, or whether a particular model is right for the way you actually live. It might also mean us saying, quite honestly, that one of our sofas is probably not the right one for you. We would much rather have that conversation before you order than after.
This matters because buying a sofa online requires trust. You can’t stroke the fabric through the screen, sit down before you buy, or peer beneath the upholstery to admire the 8-way hand-tied springs, coconut husk, wool, down and beechwood frame, however much we would encourage such behaviour in theory.
So the human bit is not an add-on. It’s part of the whole thing.
Simple and direct, and not at all mysterious
The Schplendid model is built around being lean and direct. We don’t have expensive showrooms all over the country. We don’t have pointy-shoed salespeople with aluminium briefcases. We don’t have fake seasonal discounts, or “from” prices that mysteriously swell the moment you choose the fabric you actually want.
We keep things simple so we can spend money where it matters: on the sofa.
That same thinking applies to the buying process. The price is the price. Delivery is free. Returns are free. And you get 50 days to sit, flop, lounge, nap and generally commune with your new sofa before deciding whether it is truly the one.
Obviously, we hope it will be. We make the things with eight-way hand-tied springs, proper natural materials and ethically sourced goose down, so we are not exactly sending them out into the world without confidence.
But sofas are personal, and if something isn’t right, we don’t want you trapped with a large upholstered regret.
We’re certainly not anti-technology, but what we don’t like is technology being used to put distance between a company and its customers. Somewhere along the way, lots of businesses seem to have decided that accessibility is a cost, rather than the whole point.
We think that’s back to front. So if you have a question about a Schplendid sofa, give us a ring. A real person will answer, and they will do their best to help.
Our Groundbreaking Customer Service Innovation: The Telephone
Fed up with chatbots, help centres and companies that seem desperate not to speak to you? Us too.
So at Schplendid, if you have a question about your sofa, you can ring us. Revolutionary, we know…
Every now and then, someone gets in touch offering to revolutionise our customer service with AI: a clever little chatbot, a helpful “agent”, a support journey, a ticketing system, or some other dazzling mechanism for avoiding a straightforward conversation.
Which is all very impressive, except for one small problem…Most people don’t want a customer journey, they want help.
So we’ve come up with a groundbreaking customer service innovation of our own. It’s called the telephone.
Buying a sofa is a serious decision
A sofa is not a toothbrush or a pair of socks; it’s big and personal and very much part of your daily life. It has to fit through the door, work in your room, feel right, look right and survive whatever your household throws at it.
So naturally, people have questions…
….Is the heavyweight linen very heavyweight? Is velvet a terrible idea if you have children, dogs or a reckless attitude to red wine? How much plumping does down need? Will the colour look different in your room? Can you use your own fabric? Is the sofa going to feel squishy, supportive, formal, floppy, or somewhere in the Schplendid zone?
These are not questions best answered by Sofabot 3000.
…So yes, we answer the phone
If you call Schplendid, you’ll get through to one of us – George, Lola or Ingrid – and you can talk to an actual person about the actual sofa you’re thinking of buying.
That might mean chatting through fabrics, measurements, delivery, swatches, cushion feel, returns, or whether a particular model is right for the way you actually live. It might also mean us saying, quite honestly, that one of our sofas is probably not the right one for you. We would much rather have that conversation before you order than after.
This matters because buying a sofa online requires trust. You can’t stroke the fabric through the screen, sit down before you buy, or peer beneath the upholstery to admire the 8-way hand-tied springs, coconut husk, wool, down and beechwood frame, however much we would encourage such behaviour in theory.
So the human bit is not an add-on. It’s part of the whole thing.
Simple and direct, and not at all mysterious
The Schplendid model is built around being lean and direct. We don’t have expensive showrooms all over the country. We don’t have pointy-shoed salespeople with aluminium briefcases. We don’t have fake seasonal discounts, or “from” prices that mysteriously swell the moment you choose the fabric you actually want.
We keep things simple so we can spend money where it matters: on the sofa.
That same thinking applies to the buying process. The price is the price. Delivery is free. Returns are free. And you get 50 days to sit, flop, lounge, nap and generally commune with your new sofa before deciding whether it is truly the one.
Obviously, we hope it will be. We make the things with eight-way hand-tied springs, proper natural materials and ethically sourced goose down, so we are not exactly sending them out into the world without confidence.
But sofas are personal, and if something isn’t right, we don’t want you trapped with a large upholstered regret.
We’re certainly not anti-technology, but what we don’t like is technology being used to put distance between a company and its customers. Somewhere along the way, lots of businesses seem to have decided that accessibility is a cost, rather than the whole point.
We think that’s back to front. So if you have a question about a Schplendid sofa, give us a ring. A real person will answer, and they will do their best to help.
Revolutionary or what?
See also:
10 Ways We’re (Nicely) Shaking Up the Sofa Industry
Will a Schplendid sofa fit into my house? (Almost definitely, yes.)