Merlin Information Systems provides world class Customer Support, IT Service Desk and Infrastructure Support services to some of the largest companies in the world. Operational centres in the Philippines, Hungary and the UK enable the company to deliver low cost, multi-lingual, 24×7 support.

Forward-looking approach

With more than 20 years in business, Merlin Information Systems understands how innovative technology solutions can help organizations maintain its competitive edge. The company, which supports a wide range of global enterprises from airlines to software providers, draws on such solutions to improve customer experience, efficiency and quality and, at the same time, drive down costs.

“We have always been very forward-looking in terms of the technology we use to support our clients and their customers,” comments Aaron Dutch, Group Head of Technology at Merlin. “Zendesk immediately stood out as an application that could help our business.”

When Dutch was looking for a new ticket management solution for the company in 2011, he was drawn to Zendesk’s web-based SaaS solution. He signed up for a free trial and liked it so much that he did not consider any other solutions.

“We wanted to future-proof our internal help desk and customer support systems and integrate our ticket management with our social media platforms. Zendesk appealed to us because it would let us do this – plus, it was easy to configure and quick to deploy,” says Dutch.

In fact, once Merlin signed up for Zendesk, it took less than a week for all the relevant teams to get up-to-speed with the product and only a day to integrate it across the company’s systems.

Building a powerful online community

Merlin has found the forums and social media features that Zendesk supports particularly useful as they enable it to offer a broad knowledge base and grow a powerful online community for customers and employees. The company has also integrated Zendesk with its internal social networking platform, Yammer.

“Our customer support issues and requirements vary considerably from client to client. By supporting multiple channels, Zendesk has helped us to improve the way we interact with our customers via self-service options, such as forums and Twitter, for example,” explains Dutch.

“Social media is having a big impact on customer service expectations. Many customers simply don’t want to pick up the phone or send an email to get support any more. Now, they expect to be able to speak to us and their peers via our website and our social media channels,” adds Dutch. “Zendesk lets us do just that and, if a customer still needs our support after that initial contact, it also helps us to ensure that their enquiry is handled by the right person.”

Impact on performance

Merlin uses Zendesk’s comprehensive reporting and analytics tools to determine support trends across the company and plan staffing needs.

“Zendesk has had a clear impact on our business. More customers are logging tickets themselves on our portal and we’ve also improved the way our support teams interact with people on a ticket,” explains Dutch.

The figures speak for themselves. Merlin has seen a 30% reduction in the number of tickets logged via email – many customers are turning to the Zendesk Web forms instead. Customer satisfaction levels have also gone up, with a 25% increase in the number of users rating Merlin’s support as ‘Very Good’ or ‘Excellent’.

Dutch comments, “Seeing customer satisfaction levels increase so much is a testament to the strength of the Zendesk solution. It took only a matter of days to deploy and it is now an integral part of the support services we offer around the world.”