The world is changing rapidly, and so is the way we all do business. During the pandemic, support tickets surged, and customer expectations stayed sky high. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, the shift to online support has pushed requests to all-time highs for small and mid-sized businesses: average weekly support requests increased 25 percent since the beginning of 2020.
Innovative solutions are no longer just for big-time corporations, they’re for mom and pop shops and small businesses, too. You need an easy-to-use and fast-to-implement support tool that brings it all together. Read on to learn how Zendesk can help you hit the ground running.
Personalized customer support
Great service can give your company a competitive edge. Our research shows 76 percent of customers now expect some kind personalization, like being able to connect on the channel they choose and recommendations based on purchase history. To deliver the experiences your customers want, you need to connect all of your data for your team.
Missouri Star Quilt Company has always valued deep, personal connections to its fans. What began with founder Jenny Doan’s YouTube quilt tutorials grew to the world’s largest retailer of fabrics and quilting supplies. The company now handles more than 22,000 service tickets a month, and many of those are live chat or phone calls for quilting advice. Missouri Star Quilts set up skills-based routing for the phone system, so that experienced quilters talk through the how-tos on quilting techniques. Since adopting Zendesk solutions, the company has seen its answer rate for customer service calls improve by 30 percent to 95 percent, and its CSAT rating regularly hits 97 percent.
Creating personal connections in a virtual world
When the world started sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, people looked for new ways to connect with each other. Discord is an app that lets people create invite-only servers to talk and hang out with friends. Its video tech lets users share screens directly with others, which makes it appealing for gamers who want to play together. It’s also a place for lots of other niche communities – yoga classes, study groups, and digital conventions all began using Discord to gather virtually.
The daily number of people talking on Discord tripled in locations that had shutdowns like France and Italy. Soon, the number of unique visitors doubled, and page views increased by 70 percent as a flood of new users started using Discord. The company was able to keep up with customer service inquiries thanks to an early decision to make big investments in automation and AI. These tools helped Discord get customers the answers they need as quickly as possible, while still maintaining a human touch.
Zendesk makes it easier to track, prioritize, and respond to customers with one unified agent workspace. And with complete customer context — including 1,000 pre-built integrations — agents can provide better, more personalized support.
Bring all your data together for better CX
Having one unified platform creates better experiences for agents and increases their overall productivity. Beyond that, having one unified system also benefits admins by providing them end-to-end reporting so they can get a comprehensive view of what channels are doing great for them.
Olala Homes is an upstart European business specializing in vacation rentals in Spain, Greece, and Romania. At first, Olala Homes had no customer engagement system of its own and worked directly with a variety of rental companies. But nothing was integrated, so the business was getting lots of customer enquiries, and had no way of tracking whether or not an agent had responded. Since using Zendesk, the team’s realized a 350 percent increase in solved tickets – up from 2,000 to more than 9,000 within just a few months – and a CSAT of 93 percent.
Versatility for the long run
Spartan Race started in Vermont with a single race, and has grown into a world-renowned lifestyle brand. As the company expanded into 30 countries, it needed a support system that could scale with its rapidly growing and diverse customer base. By adding live chat to their online store as an additional channel, Spartan Race saw a 27 percent increase in retail sales and a 97 percent customer satisfaction rating for live chat contacts. Spartan Race Customer Service Director Aja Varney, said, “We’re getting through tickets faster, and customers are happier because we’re able to respond more quickly.” Live chat enables agents to help several customers at the same time, which can drive down time to resolution and can increase efficiency for your support time, leaving room to strengthen the customer relationship and increase sales.
Creating great CX takes the right tools
Great support means more than simply meeting customers on their preferred channels. It means equipping your support team with the tools they need to do their jobs well, no matter when or where a customer reaches out. Delivering exceptional experiences can translate into a healthier bottom line — a whopping 75 percent of customers will spend more to buy from a company with good CX. Not only that, but reducing friction and repetitive tasks for your agents can boost productivity, which lets them spend more time focusing on your customers.
