Datafirst: flawless customer service with Synolia and Zendesk

With about 250 tickets to handle every day, Datafirst needed a powerful, flexible solution that could adapt to the specific needs of its customer service team. After carefully reviewing the solutions on the market, the company chose the Zendesk-Synolia duo. Just over a year after an early go-live, how has it worked out?

Background

Previously, Datafirst used one single ERP across all of its departments.

“It was an ERP with very limited functionality for our business”, explains Nicolas Bugnon, Head of Support. For example, incoming emails were handled manually, which took up one full-time employee.

Off to a flying start

Early July 2017. While the rollout plan scheduled Zendesk’s implementation for a week later, the existing ERP started acting up, disrupting the teams as requests kept pouring in.

The teams decided to implement Zendesk ahead of schedule, and it went off without a hitch: “Even though we moved it up, our environment was ready”, says Nicolas Bugnon.

In fact, following the change management method recommended by Synolia, several small-group training sessions had been held beforehand to introduce Zendesk and familiarize the teams with their new tool.

“Our employees were eager, and relieved when the solution went live”, explains the Head of Support.

45 users and polished omnichannel support

Datafirst subscribed to 45 Zendesk Professional licenses. Most are used by the Support team’s agents, while the others are for executives and a few of the company’s consultants and developers.

The email channel was set up from day one. Now, every email received automatically creates a ticket in Zendesk. Each ticket can then be pre-qualified based on its information (name, address, reason, etc.) or the keywords it contains. In addition, a custom-built HTML form integrated into the website generates tickets that are automatically qualified and routed to the right department, and therefore to the right person.

As soon as the phone rings, agents can, in just a few clicks, open the record that centralizes all exchanges with the customer, or create a new one if it’s a first contact.

Thanks to an app available on the Zendesk Marketplace, the company can track the time each agent spends on each ticket. This view of “time spent” brings several benefits: 1) for reporting, since it shows, for example, how long a given ticket stayed in a given status, and 2) it helps ensure the support team is properly sized.

Datafirst’s Support team also uses SLAs (service level agreements), an advanced Zendesk feature that prioritizes tickets with color-coded badges and helps agents handle requests according to their urgency. Four priority levels are defined in total.

Record training times

Another big plus: training new employees on Zendesk takes 30 minutes, compared with half a day on the previous solution. A considerable time saver that confirms Nicolas Bugnon’s choice: “Ergonomically, the tool is perfect!”.

Real-time ratings

Committed to continuous improvement, Datafirst systematically asks its customers to rate the quality of its customer service. For every solved ticket, an email is automatically sent to the customer to rate the support they received. This gives the team satisfaction scores as well as individual scores per agent, all in real time.

This metric offers several notable benefits: it lets the manager 1) get a precise view of the quality of support provided by the team, and 2) quickly see where there is room for improvement. “So far, most of the feedback and comments have been very positive”, says Nicolas Bugnon. He adds: “Morale on a support team is hard to manage. Zendesk has lightened the mood within the team. We see better morale among our agents, who are less stressed and feel more effective.”

Synolia x Zendesk: a winning team

Nicolas Bugnon is very satisfied with Synolia’s support throughout the project: “Beyond the technical implementation of the solution, Synolia was able to answer all our questions about best practices”. He adds: “We appreciated Antoine’s availability and transparency. Every time we reached out, he made himself available right away.” And concludes: “My team and I all agree: we couldn’t do without Zendesk day to day, let alone go back to our old ERP”

What’s next? Helping customers help themselves

Following a presentation by Antoine Dupont on Zendesk Guide, Datafirst decided to help its customers find answers on their own. The goal: reduce the number of tickets and give customers more autonomy. The Support team is now building a help center in the form of an FAQ for customers on the site, who will be able to find answers to their questions without even contacting customer service. The team also wants to make its agents more self-sufficient and has started writing about a hundred “troubleshooting sheets” (an internal FAQ) that will be made available to them.