Savings.com has two-way relationship with customers

Sara Dunham had a problem: Her email-based support system was fast becoming unmanageable. And that was a good thing because it meant business for her fledgling company was enjoying strong growth. But it also meant upgrading the help desk infrastructure.

Sara manages Savings.com’s help desk. Her email-based help desk worked fine in the early days of the online coupon site, which opened its virtual doors in March 2007. Sara would field some emails herself and forward others to the appropriate folks on her team for resolution.

As traffic and volumes grew, however, things started to get unwieldy.

“It became difficult to track conversations and make sure issues got resolved,” Sara admitted. “The bigger our business got, the harder it became to keep up.”

Savings.com added Zendesk in April 2009. Product manager Pete Mauro noticed that Twitter uses Zendesk and wanted to try it.

“It then took Adam (Lane), our IT lead, less than a day to implement Zendesk,” Sara said. “Zendesk had great examples and documentation.”

Sara said the ability to assign tickets to the appropriate expert on her team – and then track all subsequent conversations and
contacts from start to finish of each case – is one of the main things she loves about Zendesk.

“Zendesk’s ticket resolution time-tracking feature is also very valuable. I use it to ensure tickets are responded to in a timely fashion,” Sara said.

“Tagging is also huge,” she added. “It’s very helpful to be able to click on a key word and then bring up all of the related
tickets. Tagging also enables me to see trends and identify new opportunities for our business — and much more. For example, we tag feedback from customers when appropriate and then route it to the proper teams internally, such as product management.”

Savings.com is not a mere coupons aggregator. The 55-person team works with top retailers and brands to provide the very best offers every day. These expert deal-hunters also scour the web to find top offers in every category from designer clothes and baby gear to big screen TVs and gourmet food.

Users of the site also contribute by voting and commenting on deals – many even add tips and great deals they come across. The top contributors are invited into the elite “Deal Expert” club, a group of super-users whose opinions carry significant influence among their peers.