From survivor to solution: How The Balm Box transformed customer service while scaling their mission

Liz Benditt knows firsthand that when someone battles cancer, the last thing they need is another pink ribbon t-shirt. As a six-time cancer survivor, she recognized a gap between the heartfelt intentions of gift-givers and what patients actually find helpful during treatment. This personal insight sparked The Balm Box, a thriving ecommerce business that has deliveredover 10,000carefully curated care packages to cancer patients nationwide.

Five years after launching from her guest room, Benditt has built more than just a business. She's created a lifeline for families navigating cancer, where every order represents someone's attempt to provide comfort during an incredibly difficult time. But as the company grew into a commercial warehouse operation, managing customer service requests was consuming precious time her small team needed to fulfill their mission.

From personal experience to validated business model

Benditt's20 years of marketing experienceled her to survey over600 cancer patients and gift-giversduring the pandemic. The results revealed a clear disconnect: patients needed functional items like lip balm, lotion, and fleece blankets, while gift-givers defaulted to flowers and food.

“Cancer patients want things that are truly useful—lip balm, lotion, ice packs, fleece blankets. Things that make treatment more bearable.”

Within three years of launching, The Balm Box outgrew Benditt's guest room, then her garage, before moving into a commercial warehouse.

When every order carries extra emotional weight

Unlike typical ecommerce purchases, The Balm Box orders carry extra emotional weight. Customers are often ordering during stressful times, worried about their loved ones, and anxious to get meaningful support delivered quickly. When someone realizes they've entered the wrong address after placing an order for a cancer patient's care package, the stakes feel particularly high.

With justone full-time operations managerhandling everything from phone support to fulfillment oversight, even simple requests like address changes became significant disruptions. Each request required Mikayla, the operations manager, to:

• Stop her current task
• Answer the phone or email
• Log into the account
• Make the change
• Reassure the concerned customer
• Try to refocus on her interrupted work

"The most common customer phone call is, 'Oops, I need to change my shipping address,'" Benditt notes. For customers already dealing with the stress of a loved one's diagnosis, waiting hours for confirmation that their heartfelt gift would reach the right person only added to their anxiety.

Reclaiming precious time for strategic growth

When Jenny, Balm Box's Shopify account manager, suggested Cleverific, Benditt was initially just exploring options. What she discovered was a solution that would improve how her business operates.The implementation took just 5 minuteswith help from Laura at Cleverific, and the self-service Customer Portal required no coding.

The simple interface meant customers could now independently:

• Update shipping addresses
• Modify orders
• Handle other simple changes
• Get immediate confirmation

All without waiting for business hours or adding to the support queue.

“It saves her probably 30 minutes a day, which is not nothing. For a small team like ours, that time is invaluable—it’s the difference between just sustaining operations and actually growing.”

The impact was immediate. Whether a business has one operations manager or twenty, eliminating routine support tasks frees staff for more strategic work. For The Balm Box, this meant Mikayla could focus on complex customer needs while customers gained peace of mind knowing they could correct address errors immediately without waiting for a response.

From time saved to mission expanded

With customer service streamlined through Cleverific's self-service tools, The Balm Box is now focused on what matters most: expanding their reach to more families facing cancer. They've built out wholesale operations on Etsy, Walmart, and Amazon marketplaces, with plans to reach pharmacy chains and hospital gift shops in 2026.

The 30 minutes saved dailyon routine support tasks has been transformative for this mission-driven company. Instead of fielding address change calls, Benditt's team can focus on curating new products, building wholesale relationships, and ensuring every care package delivers genuine comfort when families need it most.

“Anything that helps us be more efficient, especially as such a small team, is always worth it. With Cleverific, customers get immediate confirmation that their issue is resolved, and we get our time back. It’s a win for everybody.”

For a business born from personal experience and built on empathy, Cleverific has become an essential partner. By eliminating friction during an already emotional purchase process, The Balm Box can stay true to its founding mission: ensuring that when someone wants to provide comfort to a cancer patient, that gesture of love arrives exactly where and when it's needed.

Small team, big mission? See how Balm Box reclaimed precious time for growth with Cleverific's self-service solution.

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