Connect2Field makes it easy for service businesses to manage customers, track jobs, dispatch and schedule work to field workers via email and SMS. Its web-based application is designed to help service businesses work smarter, not harder. Headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Connect2Field is growing its customer base quickly – and needs its customer support staff to keep up.

SaaS help desk solution is an ideal fit for a fast-growing software company

Any company that uses field technicians needs help streamlining the scheduling and deployment process. That’s why Connect2Field developed a web-based application that facilitates communication with field staff. A few years ago, in the midst of rapid growth, Connect2Field began looking for an help desk software that could help the company respond to service tickets for its increasingly popular products.

“Although Zendesk was a brand-new company at the time, it already had a competitive price tag and a whole bunch of really useful features,” recalls Steve Orenstein, CEO, Connect2Field.

Most important to Connect2Field was Zendesk’s ability to capture customer inquiries in one location so that any support agent could respond to them quickly.

“With a lean customer support staff of only three people, we need to do more with less,” Orenstein explains. “Zendesk makes that possible.”

Forums help customers find their own answers

Connect2Field uses Zendesk primarily for external customer support, but also tracks internal feature requests through the system. With a support operation that runs 18 hours per day, five days per week, Connect2Field’s support staff relies on Zendesk’s customizable ticket views to sort and track 30 tickets per day.

“Our goal is to respond to customer inquiries within one hour – even if the solution is going to be complex,” says Orenstein. “Zendesk ticket views help us prioritize tickets quickly and speed issues to resolution.”

In the process, Zendesk’s notifications let Connect2Field provide customers with personalized status updates. Notifications also help Connect2Field establish an immediate rapport with potential customers who download a free trial.

“Our solution is quite complex, so when people download a free trial, there’s a lot for them to learn,” Orenstein remarks. “We use Zendesk notifications to explain how to use the solution and what benefits they can expect to achieve. Their responses and questions go right into Zendesk so that we can keep them moving forward in the sales cycle.”

Zendesk forums also help Connect2Field keep in touch with customers. Each time the company updates its product, it places a release notice on its Zendesk-powered knowledge base to explain what the new release contains. Customers can simply click the version number of the product to go directly to the notice.

In addition, through the ScreenSteps Live integration, Connect2Field’s support agents can use Zendesk to direct people to detailed product documentation. “Screen Steps Live and Zendesk help our customers find more of their own answers – which frees up our support staff,” says Orenstein.

Unique features help company rate overall customer satisfaction

When Connect2Field’s agents and other personnel are traveling, the Zendesk iPhone app lets them open, answer, and resolve support requests from anywhere. “It’s handy to be able to keep an eye on issues while I’m on the road – and customers can’t tell whether I’m answering from the Zendesk web version or the iPhone app,” says Orenstein.

With Zendesk, Connect2Field can also monitor the overall customer experience it is providing. Connect2Field customers automatically receive emails after their request has been solved, prompting them to rate their satisfaction on the quality of support received. The company tracks its customer satisfaction metrics – as well as its open tickets and resolution times – through Zendesk’s reports and analytics. Connect2Field also integrates Pingdom metrics into Zendesk to monitor its website uptime and performance.

For Connect2Field’s fast-growing organization, using a flexible, scalable SaaS help desk solution was the right call – both for today and for the future.

“We wouldn’t be able to handle the volume of inquiries we get without Zendesk,” says Orenstein. “It would be an absolute nightmare. As we continue to grow, Zendesk will allow us to scale up our support staff conservatively while we keep a finger on the pulse of what our customers really want.”