Challenge

Six years ago, charity: water began its mission to bring clean, safe drinking water to developing nations. Since then, they’ve completed over 6,000 projects and brought clean water to over 2.5 million people. As they’re a non-profit organization, charity: water’s supporters are their top priority. “charity: water wouldn’t be where it is today without our supporters, so our supporters matter most to us,” Supporter Experience Manager Kaitlyn Jankowski said. “We need to hear anything and everything they’re thinking about—whether it’s how much they like a video or if they wish something was different on our fundraising platform.”

Zendesk as a solution

charity: water is using Zendesk to deliver on their global mission. Specifically, they use the built-in tools in Zendesk, like macros, to engage with their supporters. For charity: water, macros are not simply pre-defined responses; they help in all the following ways:

• Onboard new support agents: On the Zendesk platform, any new hire can go in and read all of charity: water macros. All of the support information and responses are all in one place for them to learn and use. And because the Zendesk interface is intuitive, new employees can jump right in and start answering tickets right away.
• Know who you’re talking to: With visibility into the customer profile alongside the ticket, the support team always knows who they’re engaging with. Using customer tags, like VIP, the support agent can assign the ticket to the appropriate contact or use a special macro with a tailored message.
• Maintain a consistent yet personal voice: While macros help maintain the charity: water voice in all support communication, the support team still answers every ticket personally. “Macros give us a skeleton,” Jankowski said. “It gives us a structure where we can interject a few personal touches so we can communicate in a way to people that shows that we do really care about them.”
• Speed up support: charity: water has created over 150 macros, so they can search for a macro, hit enter, and have their response ready to go. And with keyboard shortcuts, the speed of solving tickets keeps going up.

Results

With Zendesk, charity: water has seen the following results:

• Customer satisfaction rating: 100%
• Time to resolution: All tickets solved within 45 hours
• First-touch resolution rate: 80%
• Forum views to ticket submission ratio: 9:1, well above industry average

“Customer service means everything to us,” Jankowski said. “Opening up a dialogue with our customers is the best part of my job. Customer support for us is key to the success of the organization, and having Zendesk help us do that is incredible.”