greytHR: From startup to leader with superior customer service

greytHR is on a mission to provide relevant and cost-effective software solutions for small and middle-sized businesses worldwide. Its crown jewel is greytHR, a fully integrated cloud human resources (HR) and payroll software. The product enables more than 15,000 companies and 1.8 million active employees across India and the UAE to automate and streamline HR processes—everything from employee information and training to compensation and leave management. “We help businesses by providing powerful cost-effective automation tools. We want to enable customers to process payroll reliably at the click of a button and generate meaningful reports,” explains Vijayendra Chaturvedi, general manager of product support at greytHR

“We started small, with our chief technical officer coding at the back of a small office. We began with enterprise software and an on-premises model, switching to a fully integrated cloud-based software in 2009,” says Chaturvedi. “Our organization was growing but we were doing things over the phone with no records, no visibility, and longer wait times. Most people relied on spreadsheets to do payrolls and our challenge was to help them switch to our software. To do this, we needed an efficient system to handle all their queries and facilitate the cultural shift from phone-intensive to the do-it-yourself type of support. We also needed to manage customer issues quickly, document and analyze tendencies, as well as gather feedback and send it to the product team. That is where Zendesk came into the picture.”

Off to a flying start

For the past 10 years, the greytHR team has been relying on Zendesk to handle customer issues. So when the time came to scale up, the software company knew who to turn to. The team at greytHR started by integrating its own chat function while relying on Zendesk to automate the ticket flow and aid agents with self-help features, such as a chatbot and help center. “The initial challenge was to understand how Zendesk works, and how we could move from a phone and email-based system to structured queue-based ticketing,” says Chaturvedi. “We also needed to get Zendesk to connect with our software. Eventually, we started exploring everything Zendesk had to offer such as automation and triggers.”

“It’s very simple to use for customers,” continues Chaturvedi. “They request help within our software and receive helpful articles from a chatbot. Alternatively, they can submit a ticket with a simple form. Once the issue is fixed, we inform the customers via email. We also have a mobile app they can use to log into their HR account. If they find it difficult to write everything down, we call them.”

Aiding agents and customers alike

By using automation and relying on self-help features, the customer support team now has a smoother workflow. The agents have all the information at their fingertips when a ticket comes in. Because tickets are assigned automatically based on agent expertise, the team members also have more confidence in the system. According to Chaturvedi, “Today we also have large enterprises as clients and we easily segregate customers via Zendesk to the respective teams, which has allowed us to manage our responses better.”

The Zendesk tools have enabled greytHR to optimize employees’ time in order to maximize their service capabilities. “People are often surprised to hear that a 45-member customer support team is catering to more than 15,000 customers. We do this by being lean, helping customers utilize self-help resources, and improving the product to reduce pain points—we know what to focus on in our improvements, thanks to Zendesk. We went from handling 2,000 to 20,000 tickets per month, which has been such a big growth—that’s how far we’ve come in terms of using this solution.”

But the ultimate winners of the digital change are the customers themselves, who have received consistently quick, excellent support. “Thanks to Zendesk, we have been able to track metrics and continue to grow,” says Chaturvedi. The average response time has been brought down to three hours. The team has managed to reduce the full ticket resolution time and leave 99 percent of customers satisfied even during peak months. “We know what they want and this is important for building a consistently pleasant experience,” Chaturvedi adds. “A lot of customers also request to talk to the same agent who was handling their issue before—so we integrated Round Robin into Zendesk, which enables us to send tickets back to the same agent. This goes a long way towards building rapport with the customers. They know we care.”

Reaping the benefits

The team’s hard work has paid off—the company is now set to grow while building prestige and raising USD$17 million in four funding rounds. “We have gone from a handful of agents to more than 160 people using the solution. Zendesk is the reason we have been able to scale. It frees us up to focus our time and energy on the product, customer needs, and experience,” adds Chaturvedi.

And the market has noticed these changes. G2, a software review site, ranked greytHR as one of the top software products in 2022. “We have successfully made excellent customer support as our key market differentiator. It has really been an amazing success story,” Chaturvedi shares with pride.

greytHR is determined to continue expanding globally and streamline its processes even further. “We’re trying to make the most of Zendesk’s potential. There are still a lot of things we can explore. Some customers are still used to the human touch, so we want to help them adopt new technology and features. That will enable us to scale faster and really understand what our customers are experiencing,” concludes Chaturvedi.