Gawker Media is the publisher of some of the best loved titles on the web including the eponymous Gawker and gadget sensation Gizmodo. Founded in 2002 by Nick Denton, the influential media group now produces eight original brands with a collective audience of 20 million US readers. Attracting fans and critics alike for their inimitable delivery of news, scandal, and entertainment, the Gawker Media properties are heralded as everything from ‘deliciously wicked’ to ‘the biggest blog in the world.’

Security incident requires prompt communication

On December 11, 2010, Gawker Media faced what every online business hopes will never happen: a data security breach. The company posted notices on its sites and emailed all of its users, but naturally their readers had questions. Not accustomed to handling thousands of reader emails that required a personalized response, the company needed a system to help them manage this influx of email.

“Since we don’t process financial transactions, we didn’t have an extensive customer support setup,” says Greg Takayama, Product Lead at Gawker Media. “We suddenly had a large influx of questions and therefore needed a robust platform to help us handle this increased level of communication.”

Gawker’s previous approach had been to answer its relatively rare customer support requests via email, and to have conversations with its user community over GetSatisfaction, a customer support message board. But given the sensitive nature of the data breach, Gawker required a secure support ticketing system.

Automated messages reassure customers

Immediately following the breach, Takayama quickly set up a free trial of Zendesk and brought 20 staff members onto the system. Although none of them had used Zendesk before, they managed to process 4,000 support requests within four days. Takayama credits Zendesk’s automated responses, known as macros, and intuitive interface for his team’s efficiency.

“Most of the employees would have required extensive training,” says Takayama. “Zendesk took the pressure off by allowing them to send automated responses to the most common issues. Within a short time on Zendesk, our new users became power users.”

Also, when Gawker Media readers requested technical support, Zendesk automatically routed technical tickets to engineers via fully customizable business rules.

“Zendesk was the key to keeping our readers informed after the security breach,” says Takayama. “We used the system’s automated workflows and notifications to communicate quickly and minimize the time to satisfactory resolutions.”

Focusing on what matters the most

Once the initial wave of customer inquiries subsided, Gawker Media settled on a rotating team of three to four customer support agents. Thanks to Zendesk’s intuitive web interface, Gawker Media employees can easily step in and provide excellent service.

“Our employees have already figured out a very efficient system for handling customer requests,” says Takayama. “Now we can focus on our core mission of providing high-quality web content.”

“Zendesk saves us a tremendous amount of time by allowing us to respond to thousands of readers in a personalized manner,” says Takayama. “We want to keep our support team small and efficient – but if we ever need to ramp it up again, we know Zendesk will make the transition as easy as possible.”