Three people at Tern answer 1,900 subscription emails a month

Before

Tern roasts in a former cannery on the Astoria waterfront and ships to 6,200 subscribers. Joaquín and two part-time staff answered email between roasts. Failed-payment emails and skip requests sat in the same inbox as wholesale orders from cafes, and the wholesale ones got lost.

The setup

Tern connected Stripe on the first day. A message from a subscriber whose last payment failed is tagged Billing and shows the failed charge beside the email. Messages from the 38 cafe accounts go to a Wholesale queue that only Joaquín owns, with a 1-hour reply-by time.

The team does not work evenings. After 5 pm Pacific, Mailslot sends one reply that says the roastery opens at 7 am and that the message is first in line.

What changed

In September 2026 Tern received 1,912 messages. The median first reply during roasting hours was 14 minutes. No wholesale message waited more than an hour, down from a median of nine hours before.