Growing a Customer Base With a Lean Support Staff

Support Solutions was founded in 2001 in response to a critical need. When Integrity Software announced it would no longer support Legerdemain distribution software, Legerdemain dealers throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom needed an alternative. Alan Conroy and Betty McGivern formed Support Solutions to service these dealers. The company now maintains systems for some of Ireland’s largest office products dealers, and has formed key partnerships with BlueSky System Solutions and Net Junction.

Closing Support Tickets Faster

When Support Solutions began providing support, training and implementation services to Ireland’s office supply companies in 2001, the company handled 95 percent of trouble tickets by phone. Customers appreciated the ability to talk through technical challenges with an agent.

“We liked being able to help our customers over the phone but closing a support ticket often required several days,” recalls Alan Conroy, Owner, Support Solutions. “We couldn’t consider a request closed until we had a discussion with the customer, and it sometimes took multiple phone calls just to reach the customer to tell him that we had resolved his issue.”

Support Solutions aimed to close support tickets faster without compromising its personalized service but its outdated help desk software couldn’t support highly efficient online communication.

Increasing Responsiveness

Everything changed when Conroy saw an online ad for Zendesk help desk software. He signed up for a free 30-day trial and quickly became a believer.

“We planned to try Zendesk alongside our help desk software for 30 days,” says Conroy. “After one week, the improvement in efficiency was so great that we just shut down our help desk and moved all our tickets to Zendesk.”

Moving customers from phone to Zendesk ticket support was relatively easy for Support Solutions. When a call comes in with a support issue, the support agent would send the resolution by email using Zendesk.

Today, when a customer emails a support request, they receive an immediate confirmation and an email with the name of the customer support agent who is working on the case. With Zendesk’s customer service software, Support Solutions has dramatically increased its responsiveness without losing its personal touch.

Growing Cost-Effectively

Support Solutions’ four agents now handle 70 percent of support tickets via Zendesk’s web-based help desk software and close 95 percent within one business day. Zendesk’s standard responses, or macros, enable the support team to create and apply automated replies to commonly asked customer support questions. This efficiency has helped Support Solutions to grow its business cost-effectively.

“Zendesk has completely changed the way we run our business,” says Conroy. “Although our customer base has doubled over the past two years, we haven’t had to hire any additional support agents.”

Leveraging Remote Support

Hoping to further enhance efficiency, Support Solutions implemented Zendesk’s LogMeIn Rescue integration —allowing agents to engage in remote support sessions with their customers. Now, support agents can see what their customers see during support calls, therefore significantly diminishing ticket resolution time.

“We often receive an email alert early in the morning, address the problem on a customer’s server, and send a notification back to the customer through Zendesk — all before the customer has even come into the office in the morning,” says Conroy. “That’s just one more way Zendesk helps us to be an outstanding business partner for our clients.”