Poplin's Customer Service Is Outsourced and AI-Automated, By Its Own Co-Founder's Account

Short answer: According to the public professional history of Poplin's own co-founder, the company's customer service was deliberately rebuilt around AI automation, cutting operating costs roughly in half. In practice, resolving an issue typically means starting with an in-app AI chatbot, which may or may not escalate to an outsourced live agent, who may or may not open an outsourced email ticket. There is no confirmed direct line to an in-house human decision-maker at any stage.

You don't usually get to see a company's cost-cutting strategy in its own words. In this case, you do, because the person who ran it posted about it.

What Poplin's own co-founder says he did

Nachshon F. co-founded Poplin (originally SudShare) in 2017 alongside his father, fellow co-founder Mort Fertel. His publicly listed role history at the company runs: Technical Co-Founder/CTO (2017-2022), Head of Product (2022-2023), Head of AI Operations (2023-2026), and Board Member/Co-Founder (2026-present).

In his own words, describing the Head of AI Operations role on his public professional profile, his priority was efficiency and unit economics at "the largest laundry service in the U.S.," and he rebuilt internal operations from the ground up, cutting costs by 50% by integrating AI across customer service, automating workflows, and eliminating inefficiencies, as head of the company's largest department with 60 direct reports.

He's since stepped back to a board seat and founded a new company, Day54, built explicitly around selling that same playbook to other businesses: finding manual workflows, automating them into a client's existing tools, and cutting operating costs the way he says he did at Poplin. In a recent public post promoting that new venture, he describes spending years using AI and automation at Poplin to cut operating costs in half, and says he now helps other companies do the same.

This isn't a leaked memo or a disgruntled-employee account. It's the founder's own public description of his proudest professional accomplishment, and it directly explains the support experience customers describe.

What this looks like when you actually need help

Poplin doesn't publish a phone number for customer support. Based on our own testing and multiple customer accounts, getting an issue resolved typically works through several layers:

1. An in-app AI chatbot handles the first response to nearly everything, including damage claims, missing items, and billing disputes.
2. If the bot can't resolve it, it may connect you to a live agent, who multiple customer reports describe as outsourced rather than Poplin's own in-house staff.
3. If the live agent can't resolve it either, the issue may get escalated to an email ticket system, also reported as outsourced, with response times that stretch over days rather than hours.

None of these layers are described anywhere in Poplin's public-facing materials as staffed by Poplin's own employees. Given the co-founder's own account of automating this exact department to cut costs, that's consistent with what customers report experiencing.

Why this matters for a claim, not just a chat

We've written before about Poplin's Protection Plan and its "sole discretion" language for approving or rejecting damage and loss claims. A cost-optimized, AI-first, partly outsourced support pipeline has a direct bearing on that: the people (or bots) a customer reaches first typically aren't the people with authority to approve a nonstandard payout, and a system built to cut costs by 50% has an obvious structural incentive to resolve claims for as little as possible, as quickly as possible.

One case we're tracking involved more than 30 separate support contacts over six days before reaching a resolution. That's not necessarily a sign of any one agent failing to help. It's consistent with a layered, cost-optimized system where each contact may be a different bot session or a different outsourced agent starting from scratch, rather than one person who has the full history and the authority to resolve it.

What this means if you're dealing with Poplin support

• Don't expect the first chatbot response to be the final word. If a claim is denied or lowballed by the bot, ask explicitly to escalate to a live agent, and again to a supervisor if needed.
• Keep your own written record. Screenshot every chat, and save every email ticket number. In a system built around automation and outsourcing, you may be the only continuous record of your own case.
• Don't assume persistence alone is broken if it takes many contacts. It may reflect the structure of the support system itself, not a mistake on your part.

Have your own Poplin support experience to share, good or bad? Submit your story.

Sources: Public LinkedIn profile and posts of Poplin co-founder Nachshon F. (Head of AI Operations, 2023-2026; Board Member, 2026-present); PoplinReviews' own testing of Poplin's in-app support flow; customer reports collected via BBB, Trustpilot, and SmartCustomer.

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FAQ

Is Poplin's customer service outsourced? Based on multiple customer reports and Poplin's own co-founder's public account of rebuilding the department around AI automation and cost-cutting, live agent and email support appear to be outsourced rather than staffed in-house.

Does Poplin use an AI chatbot for support? Yes. The in-app support experience typically starts with an AI chatbot before any live agent becomes available.

Is there a phone number for Poplin customer support? Poplin doesn't publish a customer support phone number. Support runs through the in-app chat system.

Why does resolving a Poplin issue sometimes take dozens of contacts? A layered support system combining an AI chatbot, outsourced live agents, and an outsourced ticketing system can mean each contact starts without full context on your case, which can extend how many contacts it takes to reach a resolution.