Headquartered in Windisch, Switzerland, coresystems ag is the leading supplier of standardized add-on solutions for SAP products aimed at small and medium-sized companies. The company is certified as an SAP GOLD (SSP) and Microsoft ISV Silver partner. With more than 5,000 customers and 55,000 users on multiple continents, coresystems must find innovative ways of providing attentive, round-the-clock support.

Cloud-based support system integrates easily with company’s workflow

For any global company, it’s a challenge to answer global customer inquiries 24×7. But coresystems must also field support requests for a diverse range of technology offerings while managing complex relationships in which some of its customers are also partners. The bottom line? coresystems’ support staff must be ready for just about anything.

coresystems decided to transition to a cloud-based support solution so that it could more easily scale to support the company’s rapid global growth. The system they selected needed to be robust enough to support coresystems’ three major customer groups, and also flexible enough to integrate with coresystems’ SAP time-tracking solution. Zendesk delivered.

“As the providers of a cloud-based solution, we decided it was time to walk our talk and use that technology as much as possible,” explains Adrian Meier, Head of Support, Corporate Management, coresystems. “Zendesk gives us all the functionality we were looking for in a SaaS solution, and it integrates with SAP and our own cloud product to dramatically streamline numerous business functions.”

Keyword tags drive personalized service

One of coresystems’ first priorities with Zendesk was to divide its customers into groups. Because some customer types pay for extra support while others receive a certain level of support free as part of a contract, coresystems agents must know which group each customer belongs to. Thanks to Zendesk’s keyword tags, which can be embeded to people, organizations or tickets, coresystems’ support agents can now recognize a customer’s group status immediately upon receiving a ticket.

“Zendesk’s tags help us handle our customers with much more personalized care,” says Meier. “Based on the customer’s group status, we immediately know what kind of information we’ll need to provide them.”

As a relatively small but fast-growing company, coresystems distributes its tickets among 35 employees, most of whom also perform other job duties. Zendesk helps ensure that support tickets will reach the right person – quickly. “We used to waste a lot of time passing support tickets around,” recalls Meier. “With Zendesk, the process is automatic – and we’re saving about 6 man-hours per day.”

As coresystems’ agents process tickets, Zendesk’s triggers, or automated workflows, ensure that notifications will be delivered automatically based on customer preferences. “Some customers want to be notified of all open tickets in their company, while others just need to know when each issue is resolved,” says Meier. “Zendesk’s triggers let us keep customers in the loop while also saving us a lot of time.”

Tapping into its own cloud system and Zendesk’s flexible architecture, coresystems synchronizes tickets in Zendesk with customer records in SAP. As a result, when a coresystems support agent enters information into a Zendesk ticket, employees on the business side can quickly determine whether the services provided are billable, and then issue an invoice if needed.

Flexible system deploys quickly in new markets

To further streamline ticket resolutions, coresystems feeds relevant FAQ content from its Zendesk forums directly to its agents, giving them a head start on recommending solutions. coresystems plans to put this functionality directly in the hands of its customers, enabling them to find their own solutions by typing simple keywords or phrases.

With a sizeable German-speaking customer group and a growing contingent of English-speaking customers in its new markets, coresystems implemented Zendesk in German and English. The company will add languages as needed – and will continue to lean on Zendesk’s flexibility as it enters new geographies.

“Our newest office is in Miami,” Meier explains. “To ensure that we can provide 12 hours of support per day, we’ve equipped our Miami agents with mobile phones and iPads so they can field calls and log onto Zendesk from anywhere. What other help desk solution offers this blend of power and flexibility?”