Coda Payments + Zendesk: Handling global queries with local expertise

The online gaming and entertainment industries are experiencing rapid growth, thanks to tech-savvy users across the globe. This growth, though, comes at a price—today’s digital consumers want access to the latest content in the shortest possible time, location notwithstanding. These same global consumers expect culturally responsive, localized customer support.

“Making a global business effective at the local level has been one of our priorities,” says Bharati Amarnani, global customer support director at Coda Payments. “When I joined the company, we were using three different tools and reporting and tracking was a nightmare. It was tough to do any process improvements as we didn’t have visibility of what was really happening. The user experience for both customers and our agents was not user-friendly.”

“Our employees weren’t happy as they had to constantly switch between tools. We were also operating many processes manually,” notes Shan Sebastian, process improvement manager at Coda Payments. “We had to manually assign support tickets to the right country, tickets which needed to be resolved by local agents because customers want to speak the local language. All these extra steps were affecting our response to customers.”

After considering the options, Amarnani and her team made the decision to switch exclusively to Zendesk, leaving other legacy solutions behind. With a centralized command center, the Zendesk platform streamlines administration, enhances agent workflows, and centralizes data. At the same time, it enables support teams to localize the customer service experience effectively. “With Zendesk, we knew that we could effectively take care of more than 300 games with just one tool,” says Amarnani.

Managing global teams effectively

The implementation meant more efficient use of time and data at work. Sebastian notes, “Because processes were automated, Zendesk instantly helped reduce our workload and the need for extra manpower. We had planned to onboard hundreds more agents but with Zendesk, we no longer needed to. Automatic ticket routing sends tickets directly to local agents to be resolved.”

Sebastian adds that Zendesk’s built-in features such as triggers, APIs, and webhooks have been very useful in helping support teams to customize processes flexibly. “With all the basic tools we need, we can play around, building our own customized processes and help center. We also have access to a community forum where everyone shares their knowledge, maximizing our use of Zendesk which is very helpful.” Thanks to the platform, the company’s self-service ratio—the number of help center views to tickets raised—soared over 600 percent to 9:1 over the course of 12 months. In that same time, Amarnani’s team was able to drastically improve first reply times by 70 percent and full resolution times by 60 percent. Today, agents manage an average first reply time of around 49 minutes and a full-resolution time of just 4.68 hours.

In terms of handling queries, Coda Payments is now able to manage customer interactions more effectively. “Email, Facebook Messenger, and live chat are our three main channels of communication. With one unified platform on Zendesk, we can respond across multiple channels in one place, which is especially helpful when customers repeat a query on different channels,” Amarnani shares. “We also integrated additional channels such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and LINE based on feedback from our local teams about what customers prefer in their countries. Ultimately, we want to be there as a brand to support our users. Our customers appreciate the ability to reach us via these different channels.”

Coda Payments’ AI agent also provides customers with the choice of interaction style that suits their personal preferences and type of query, whether that is having a complex issue resolved by speaking to a real-life agent or getting instant assistance to simpler queries from an AI agent. Agents are benefitting too: with fewer spam tickets and a decreased workload, they can spend more time providing quality service to customers. “Before, about 60 percent of our tickets used to be blank or spam,” says Amarnani. “Now, that number has been reduced to 20 percent because the AI agent can help solve basic queries and filter out blank tickets before directing customers to a human agent.” 71.3 percent of tickets are now one-touch.

Driving better service with data

For Coda Payments, allocating manpower has today become more data-driven. “Before Zendesk, staffing decisions were made randomly as we had no visibility to how many tickets agents were resolving. Now, with customized dashboards, we can see how many tickets are being processed in any country, for individual agents and in aggregate. It’s given us deep insights into how many agents we need and the peaks and troughs of queries in each country. The platform has really impacted how we use metrics to inform decisions made in our operations,” Amarnani emphasizes.

For Hendy Samosir, Customer Support Manager at Coda Payments, reporting and analytics with Explore has been key to improving daily operations. “We used to extract reports manually from multiple systems, but Zendesk provides very rich data automatically,” Samosir shares. “As a result, we have access to information that helps us better monitor our overall health status, third-party products, and partner communication. Zendesk also helps me, as a Global Customer Support Manager, to better understand what is happening on the floor. With an advanced data filter and customized tagging, we have more detailed information on issues that we face daily. That means we can work towards an improvement in a heartbeat.”

Samosir and his team also use Explore to investigate customers’ top questions and complaints each month, sharing their insights with the wider organization to drive a more holistic appreciation of customers’ wants and needs. “Understanding our customers’ needs is really important. It allows us to create a product based on our customers’ demands and which meets their satisfaction.”

Improving employee and customer experience

Coda Payments continues to improve its agent experience at work, ensuring high levels of employee satisfaction and loyalty. Amarnani shares, “Our customer service team in Codashop has an employee net promoter score (eNPS) of 85, which is almost unheard of in the customer service industry. Because of the reduction in tickets and the unified interface, our agents are happier with their workflow.”

Customers are benefitting too. Since making the switch to using Zendesk exclusively, the company has dramatically increased its customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, which used to hover around 60 percent. “Now, we’re trending at 90 percent and we aim to reach 95 percent,” says Amarnani.

“Zendesk allows us to have an omnichannel experience for our customers and agents while having access to data and real-time dashboards at a click of a button,” Amarnani sums up. “The platform provides a simple but powerful user interface that empowers our agents to deliver a great customer experience. It’s a beautifully intuitive system that has helped us enhance the customer experience and reduce costs by automating and deflecting tickets. Our customer success manager works closely with us, giving us feedback and helping us when we see no light at the end of the tunnel. Amazing customer success team.”

Coda Payments operates Codashop, which has become a trusted source of games and in-game currencies for millions of players worldwide. For Amarnani, Zendesk is a big part of the company’s present and future. “I’m a big fan of Zendesk,” she enthuses. “I no longer have to worry about our CS team keeping up with our expansion plans. It’s a great comprehensive tool for any company that needs to offer effective multi-language support at scale. We wanted to give a delightful experience to our customers where they could contact us at their convenience and at the same time keep the cost low. Moving to the Zendesk omnichannel tool has helped us scale and provide a more user-friendly experience.”