Hotmart leverages Zendesk for customer and employee support

Hotmart started with a straightforward idea: help creators sell digital products by automating payments and delivery. In the beginning, support was just as simple. A small product, a small team, and customer questions handled over email.

Fast forward 15 years—and everything has changed.

The creator economy has exploded. Video is mainstream. Online courses scale by the thousands. And Hotmart has grown into a full ecosystem—combining payments, memberships, and marketing tools that help creators sell, engage, and grow audiences worldwide.

That growth went global, too. Based in Amsterdam, Hotmart expanded across Latin America, opened an office in Madrid, and acquired Teachable in the United States in 2020. With that expansion came a new reality: supporting a massive, always-on customer base with high expectations for speed and precision.

“Our challenge at Hotmart is to ensure that the customer experience infrastructure keeps pace with the ambition of our producers,” says Pedro Castro, CX Operations Manager at Hotmart. “With Zendesk, we’ve transformed CX into an engine of intelligence and value.”

Complexity meets real-time expectations

Today, Hotmart supports hundreds of thousands of producers, millions of affiliates, and millions of consumers across multiple countries. Its CX organization spans hundreds of people, from frontline agents to leadership and data specialists managing terabytes of information.

And the stakes are high.

Producers launch products on tight timelines. Affiliates track commissions in real time. Consumers expect instant access and quick answers. “Good support” is no longer measured in hours—it’s measured in moments.

Email alone couldn’t keep up. Ticket volumes fluctuate based on launches, campaigns, time of day, and seasonal peaks like Black November and year-end holidays. Queues could surge into the thousands, making manual planning unsustainable and raising the bar for operational resilience.

Hotmart needed a CX operation designed for volatility—and built to respond in real time.

+

Making AI useful, not theoretical

Hotmart has partnered with Zendesk for over a decade and consistently adopts new capabilities early. As AI matured, the company focused on turning innovation into everyday impact for both agents and customers.

Agents work across WhatsApp, chat, and email, where context is critical. They need to understand intent instantly, surface the right knowledge, and respond with confidence. Zendesk AI, embedded into Hotmart’s broader technology ecosystem, helps classify requests, anticipate needs, and accelerate responses—without sacrificing accuracy.

“With Zendesk, we’ve been able to scale our customer service operation and integrate cutting-edge artificial intelligence,” says Frederico Montezuma, Product Director at Hotmart. “And—most importantly—we’re able to deliver a faster, more efficient, and more personalized experience.”

That speed is anchored in discipline. Hotmart pairs AI with rigorous knowledge management, ensuring responses are consistent and grounded in high-quality information.

“Without intentionality, what goes into the AI is what it responds with,” Montezuma explains. “Good data management and feeding the AI with what is appropriate.”

Precision at scale with workforce management

As synchronous channels became the default, Hotmart needed tighter control over forecasting and staffing. Zendesk Workforce Management (WFM) became central to planning for demand shaped by launches, campaigns, and seasonal spikes.

What was once manual is now predictable. Hotmart improved shift planning, gained real-time visibility into queues, and confidently absorbed higher volumes through chat and WhatsApp. Today, 80 percent of creator contacts happen through synchronous channels.

That operational rigor delivers consistent results. Throughout 2025, Hotmart maintained a 90 percent first-response SLA across all channels. CSAT scores of four and five exceeded 85 percent overall—and rose above 90 percent on synchronous channels.

Quality as a continuous discipline

Quality at Hotmart isn’t a spot check—it’s an end-to-end practice. Using Zendesk Quality Assurance (QA), the team reviews 100 percent of human interactions and evaluates AI performance by contact reason to understand impact in detail.

“The intention is for humans to do the work of humans and for AI to catapult that work,” Montezuma says. “That way, we resolve tickets faster and more effectively.”

Those insights fuel the business. Hotmart shares CX data with product and sales teams, including ticket trends, CSAT and NPS signals, and user segmentation—turning real behavior into continuous improvement.

The same approach applies internally. With more than 1,600 employees, Hotmart uses Zendesk to power internal service workflows, helping teams resolve requests quickly and stay focused on what matters most.

Building what’s next, together

Hotmart sees AI expanding what creators can achieve—helping them reach audiences faster and personalize experiences at scale. AI will also support continued international growth, enabling consistent service across regions with different levels of maturity and demand.

For Hotmart, the future blends human judgment with machine speed. And with Zendesk as a long-term partner, the company is building a CX model designed to stay reliable, measurable, and ready for whatever the creator economy brings next.