Maxnet is an Internet Service Provider that provides a range of services from connectivity to data center services. Founded 13 years ago, Maxnet has their own data centers in Auckland and Christchurch along with capacity in Wellington. In recent times Maxnet has established itself as a trusted cloud provider offering virtualized servers, wide area networks and solutions for larger businesses.

Maxnet has around 35 customer service agents using Zendesk and has found that it has allowed the company to differentiate itself in a busy marketplace, thanks in part to the quality of customer support it provides. Maxnet Service Operations Manager Simon Thornborrow appreciates that Zendesk has allowed them to automate parts of the service relationship. “Previously a lot of communications were done via unmonitored email communication” he explains, “the automation of actions upon the receipt of a customer email that was enabled by using Zendesk has improved communication and efficiency tenfold”

Maxnet also uses the Zendesk knowledge base for parts of its operation. With a small investment in time and effort, Maxnet has been able to greatly increase the levels of customer self-help and in turn reduce agent workload.

Zendesk Enterprise Multi-branding with multiple end-user portals

As an organization with a number of different sub-brands such as web hosting and home connectivity, Maxnet wanted to provide individual support solutions for each brand, but without the inefficiencies caused by having support agents working in silo’d solutions. Maxnet found the ideal solution for this problem with Zendesk Enterprise.

Maxnet is using separate branded versions of Zendesk for each of its different sub-brands. The ability to do this from one central hub is a feature of the new Zendesk Enterprise plan and has proven very valuable for Maxnet. “We’re using three individually branded Zendesk solutions and a central customer support hub” explains Thornborrow. “In this way we’ve managed to have our agents all working from a central help desk, but we provide individually branded front-ends to our customers, it’s really helped with differentiation across all of our sub-brands”.

New Users Get Up to Speed Rapidly

Running a growing business, Thornborrow was eager to ensure that new agents could get up to speed quickly and with minimal training. This was a real challenge given the complexity of the previously used system. Zendesk has changed this. As Thornborrow says, “Our agents find Zendesk intuitive to use, even when they’re new to the system. This ease of use minimizes the amount of training that new agents need.”

This ease of use has additional benefits for other, more complex parts of the support process. Thornborrow explains that “new agents can get used to the system working on the more simple aspects of support. The familiarity they build with the system in this time helps ease the training process for more advanced use of the support desk”.

Salesforce Integration Saves Time and Increases Efficiency

Maxnet is also taking advantage of the Zendesk integration with the Salesforce.com Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. The integration of their CRM and Zendesk will automate the process of provisioning new customers and remove any potential for errors. “The project will tie together the Salesforce data of a new customer with the provisioning operation” explains Thornborrow. “When a prospect becomes a customer within Salesforce, a series of provisioning tickets will be generated within Zendesk”.

By combining these systems Maxnet will improve the provisioning process but will also give the support staff an overview of the different Maxnet products a customer may have. “Giving agents visibility of the range of Maxnet products a customer may have helps with the support process” says Thornborrow “in our industry support issues are often compounded by product combinations, giving agents visibility over this will greatly improve the service process and outcomes”.