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Based in Tokyo, Japan, the direct-to-consumer business unit at Sony Music is a group focused on connecting fans to artists. Successfully managing customer requests is critical for any business whether it’s purchasing music online or getting the latest news from an artist’s website. Sony understands that music fans are a devoted bunch and keeping them happy and satisfied are key to their artists’ success.

Facing Key Challenges

When Sony Music started selling to music fans internationally, they needed a hosted help desk software solution that their European support agents could start using immediately but they faced several key challenges:

• Multi-lingual customers
  
• Global fans beyond United States
• Distributed business unit and help desk teams

Customizing Made Easy

Arni Sigurdsson, vice president of program management at Sony Music, didn’t have a lot of time to conduct a search for hosted help desk software for his European help desk support agents but when he discovered Zendesk, he immediately found the free trial as an easy way to get started. In fact, Zendesk was so intuitive that Sigurdsson didn’t have to delegate the setup to another member on his team. He was able to dig in right away and customize it himself.

“The transparency of the system is great. I go into it from time to time to see if everything is going OK and find that everything is getting covered by the team,” commented Sigurdsson. ”Zendesk is a very open kind of technology that we are easily able to add things to and export things out of. It has all the right elements. Easy-to-use was the big thing.”

Tagging Tickets Helps To Automate Process and Build Reports

Zendesk’s ability to tag support tickets using any keyword were particularly helpful. The support agents created tags for different languages and countries and were then able to generate reports based on those classifications that gave Sigurdsson insight into problems that music fans outside of the U.S. were encountering.

Sony Music continues to add agents to its European support staff and Sigurdsson says Zendesk’s platform easily scales as their team grows.