Elcia shapes its customer service in its own image with Zendesk

A market-leading group

Today, ProDevis is still a core solution of the company’s business, but it has evolved a great deal since it was first launched. “Today, its greatest added value is our industry-specific configurator, which contains the prices of the leading French and European industrial suppliers of doors and windows, blinds and shutters”, explains Aurélie Gaspar, Customer Service Director at Elcia. “Our teams update all the prices regularly, so our customers get the rates directly and can produce their quotes even faster”.

Since its creation, Elcia has also expanded its offering with new features and solutions to cover every need of the joinery industry, such as sales management, scheduling, business analysis, production and much more. Now the leader in its market, Elcia has 200 employees across its Brignais and Tarbes sites in France and will exceed €20 million in revenue in 2021. With a few international customers already, the company is also looking to expand abroad.

A much-needed new tool

With 5,500 customers in total and 20,000 users on its main solution, ProDevis, alone, Elcia takes particular care in supporting them, especially in using its software. This commitment to service quality has been part of the company’s DNA from day one. “We receive about 1,000 requests a week, which are handled by the 20 people on our technical support team”, says Aurélie Gaspar. Until recently, Elcia’s teams relied on a tool developed in-house 15 years ago to handle them. Its only function: logging incidents.

“It had become outdated, given the volume of requests we were receiving, but also given our customers’ new expectations in terms of customer service. They expect interaction, added value and genuine service quality from us. Our old tool, which simply recorded requests, couldn’t deliver that. On top of that, it no longer fit our internal processes or our agents’ expectations at all!”, explains Aurélie Gaspar.

Choosing Zendesk

Elcia therefore wanted to move to a more modern tool and turned to Zendesk. “We had a good impression of the solution and were particularly won over by the demo. Its smooth, simple interface convinced the teams and suggested it would be quick and easy to learn”, recalls Aurélie Gaspar.

Elcia also wanted its data to be hosted in Europe and to get support in French, which Zendesk offers. On the vendor’s advice, the company brought in an expert in the solution: Synolia. “We wanted to work with a partner that had real synergies with the vendor, and that is what we felt with the Zendesk-Synolia duo”, adds Aurélie Gaspar.

High-quality support

More efficient ticket management

Implementing Zendesk also allowed Elcia to centralize all its channels in one single solution. Customers can contact support through three channels: phone calls, which go directly to Tier 1 agents, email, or a request through the customer portal, the last two arriving directly in Zendesk as tickets. “More than 80% of requests come in by phone. Zendesk has really helped us become more efficient on that front”, acknowledges Aurélie Gaspar.

And having all tickets in one place undoubtedly makes agents more productive and effective. Especially since part of the team is dedicated to handling calls and another part to handling emails (direct ones and those from the customer portal). So each agent knows immediately, based on their role, what they need to handle.

“Everyone can move from one team to another depending on request volume, without wasting time and while staying responsive. That way, we keep customer wait times to a minimum. That kind of flexibility is only possible with Zendesk!”, says Aurélie Gaspar.

Rigorously categorized tickets

In-depth request analysis

This categorization also lets Elcia analyze its requests with Zendesk Explore to determine which ones come up most often and what actions are needed to reduce their number, for greater customer satisfaction. “If a request comes up regularly, we can, for example, set up improvement meetings or any other resource needed to better support customers and reduce the number of requests”, adds Aurélie Gaspar. These analyses also help Elcia improve its online help content for customers.

With Zendesk Explore, Elcia also analyzes its support performance with metrics such as resolution time or the number of tickets created and solved per team and per agent. “This shows us request volumes by period, so we can identify potential peaks in activity and react to keep our service quality high”, adds Aurélie Gaspar.

Fully tailored answers

Always aiming to answer its customers’ requests as well as possible, Elcia relies on Zendesk to be as relevant as possible. First, its teams use macros, ready-to-use response templates that can be sent directly from the tool, to enrich their answers.

“For example, if a customer calls us with a specific question, we explain the solution to their problem over the phone, then follow up by sending them a macro with the explanation. That way, they keep a high-quality answer they can share with their colleagues or check again if in doubt. It’s real added value for customer satisfaction”, explains Aurélie Gaspar.

To be as relevant as possible in their answers, Elcia’s support agents also use Zendesk Guide, Zendesk’s knowledge base. All technical procedures are stored there and can be consulted internally to resolve incidents. Technicians can refer to it for every request and respond faster.

“They access it through Zendesk’s search feature, which is very easy to use. And on top of helping agents every day, it’s a great way to onboard new agents faster”, notes Aurélie Gaspar. To keep this knowledge base relevant at all times, a Tier 3 agent is responsible for expanding and updating it.

Synchronized data

To get the most out of Zendesk, Elcia set up a two-way sync of part of its data between its support tool and its CRM. That way, whenever data is created or modified in one, it is automatically updated in the other.

“We pooled organizations/customers and contacts/users so the database is richer, of higher quality and fully up to date for our agents”, explains Aurélie Gaspar. And when a customer submits a request by email or through their portal, it is added directly to their Zendesk account.

With this sync, agents also have a recorded history and can look up past requests and responses. The result is greater relevance. “It’s the little things that make all the difference!”, says Aurélie Gaspar.

What about the other teams?

Zendesk has completely transformed the daily work of Elcia’s support agents, but the tool is also a great help for other teams, who have read-only access. For example, sales reps can view customer requests to put their conversations in context. They can also follow a ticket to get email updates on its progress and on any new related action. Very useful for staying up to date at all times, especially in a crisis. Elcia’s training teams also use Zendesk to prepare their sessions, gauge the relationship with a given customer and check their history.

The Catalog team, which manages the price databases, also uses Zendesk to collect customer requests to add missing product references. Finally, the front desk checks Zendesk to transfer calls and, when relevant, route customers to the agent they already spoke with on the phone. All these little extras strengthen the entire customer experience!

Internal and external benefits

This is thanks in part to Synolia’s support: “Their teams immediately grasped the specifics of our business and our expectations regarding ticket organization and tracking. They adapted perfectly to our pace and gave us all the advice and best practices we expected from them. They were available and attentive to the issues we encountered. The project was delivered on budget and on time, and that’s a real plus”, concludes Aurélie Gaspar.