How Dryrobe® Cut Combined Sizing Returns by 36% with Alhena

Dryrobe® created the changing robe. The product is deliberately cut oversized because customers get changed inside it. That is exactly where shoppers can get caught out.

Customers see something that looks like a coat and want to size it like a coat, but that is not what the product is designed for.

The result was a systematic sizing mismatch. A customer who is a UK 16 and five foot four may need a small, a counterintuitive answer that shoppers are unlikely to reach on their own. They order their usual coat size, the robe arrives too big, and it goes back. “Too big” became Dryrobe®’s largest single return reason, while returns were the biggest drag on revenue.

The existing tooling did not close the gap. Dryrobe® was running a chatbot bundled with its help desk that needed constant manual work to learn. At the same time, shoppers in the growing US and EU markets were sending questions to a UK-based team outside working hours and waiting.

Key challenges included:

• Sizing guidance that customers could not reason out from a static size guide or PDF
• “Too big” returns eating into margin as the single largest return reason
• A chatbot that required manual training to keep pace with a growing catalogue
• No support coverage for US and EU customers outside UK operating hours

Dryrobe® deployed Alhena as a sizing and support layer that learns the catalogue itself and speaks in the brand’s own voice.

• Learns out of the box: Alhena crawls the site and learns the product range without manual configuration, keeping guidance current as the catalogue changes.
• Trained on the team’s own language: Dryrobe® worked directly with its customer service team, using their natural phrasing so answers read as if a Dryrobe® employee wrote them.
• Embedded where the decision happens: Beyond the standard chat widget, Dryrobe® added an Alhena link inside the size guide on the product page so guidance appears at the exact moment a customer is working out their size.
• Human handoff: Order queries, returns, and anything requiring empathy or judgement route to the customer service team.

That placement matters commercially. Most of the measured value came from guidance presented inside the shopping journey, not from waiting for a customer to open a generic chat box.