Digidentity delivers secure, scalable support with Zendesk AI—achieving 67% automation

If you’ve ever filed corporate taxes, accessed a government service online, or signed a legally binding contract digitally, you know how critical digital trust can be. Digidentity, a digital identity and trust services provider, enables those secure interactions for organizations around the world.

“If the trust is gone, our role as a qualified trust service provider doesn’t mean anything,” says Max Geelen, Client Service Manager at Digidentity. “Trust is really the only product that we have.”

Headquartered in the Netherlands, Digidentity provides identity verification, secure authentication, and qualified trust services—including electronic signatures and digital certificates—trusted by governments and organizations worldwide. Its portfolio includes widely used services such as eHerkenning for business authentication, along with qualified trust services aligned with the EU’s eIDAS framework.

As demand for secure digital identity grows, so does the complexity of supporting customers. Digidentity needed to scale its support operation without increasing headcount at the same pace—while keeping guidance consistent across languages and channels.

Scaling customer support in a trust-driven environment

Digidentity’s customers rely on its products to access government services, verify identities, or sign legally binding documents online—interactions that require strong security and trust. Many are understandably cautious when sharing sensitive personal information online.

“Protecting that information is critical,” Geelen says. “As a trust services provider, we operate under strict regulatory requirements and are regularly audited by independent certification bodies and government authorities.”

That responsibility is deeply embedded in how Digidentity operates. It shapes not only how Digidentity protects data, but also how it supports customers at scale. Every process must meet rigorous standards—even when demand surges and response times are under pressure.

In the Netherlands, that pressure rises predictably at certain moments during the year. For example, around tax filing deadlines Digidentity often sees ticket volumes increase by roughly 10 to 20 percent as customers work to complete registrations, access government services, or finalize time-sensitive transactions.

“As the business grows, the volume of support requests grows with it,” says Geelen. “But scaling support capacity at the same rate isn’t always practical.”

Digidentity’s support organization includes about 30 professionals across a Dutch Service Desk and Customer Success team, supported by an international team serving customers globally. Together they provide support in Dutch and English via email, chat, phone, and a structured Help Center.

From ticket resolution to strategic service management

Digidentity has used Zendesk for more than a decade, but as the company’s portfolio of digital identity and trust services expanded, its support needs evolved.

“The challenge wasn’t replacing a system—it was evolving our support operation to match the growing regulatory and operational complexity of our services,” says Geelen. “The key inflection point wasn’t adopting Zendesk, but maturing how we used it.”

Digidentity implemented Zendesk AI to deliver consistent, policy-aligned guidance at scale—without compromising oversight. That shift required a fundamental rethink of how support operated.

“The moment we realized Zendesk’s full potential was when automation, reporting, and AI insights came together in a single operational view,” Geelen says. “Once we could see everything in one place, Zendesk evolved from a support tool into a strategic management platform.”

AI agents that scale without losing the human touch

Zendesk AI agents allow Digidentity to automate high-volume, repeatable requests while allowing human agents to focus on more complex or situation-specific customer needs. The result is faster response times and a more strategic use of human expertise.

“We moved from simply resolving tickets to proactively managing service performance,” Geelen says. “Our biggest achievement has been implementing automation at scale within a complex digital identity and trust services environment.”

Today, Digidentity achieves a 67 percent automated resolution rate, with only 19 percent of AI-led interactions escalating to a human agent. AI intent recognition stands at 86 percent—an important benchmark in a digital identity environment where accuracy and clarity are critical.

“That demonstrates to me that AI and governance can successfully coexist,” says Geelen. “We’ve also been able to absorb growth in a sustainable way.”

Implementing this technology initially came with understandable hesitation. Before adopting AI-powered agents, the Digidentity support team carefully evaluated how the system would perform in a high-assurance environment.

“Initially, we approached AI with caution,” Geelen says. “As a trust services provider, we conducted thorough due diligence to understand how the system processes data and what safeguards are in place. Once we confirmed that it met our strict requirements, we moved forward with the deployment.”

The AI agents also operate continuously.

“It’s available during evenings and weekends,” says Geelen. “That reliability takes a significant amount of pressure off the service desk by handling many repetitive requests automatically.”

As a result, the cases that reach human agents are typically more complex or come from customers who prefer direct human support.

“It’s very motivating for our agents,” Geelen explains. “They’re no longer spending most of their time sending the same responses repeatedly. Instead, they can focus on cases where human judgment and expertise are genuinely needed.”

In practical terms, the operational impact is substantial.

“In terms of capacity, it effectively handles the workload of three to four agents,” Geelen says.

Knowledge that matches how customers search

As Digidentity’s support team worked with the latest Zendesk capabilities, they uncovered an important insight: some Help Center content could be further refined to better match how customers actually search for answers.

“For years, much of our FAQ content was written from the company’s perspective,” Geelen explains. “I’ve worked here for seven years, so for me everything is very logical. But for our customers, our portfolio of products can still be complex to navigate.”

That realization triggered a broader knowledge optimization effort. Geelen reorganized the Help Center and refined many articles so the AI could surface clearer and more consistent answers.

“That’s been extremely valuable,” says Geelen. “You not only improve support, but you also improve the overall customer experience by understanding how customers navigate your products, how they think about them, and the kinds of questions they ask.”

Digidentity also began rolling out Zendesk’s generative search experience in the Help Center to adapt to evolving user behavior.

“Users increasingly expect direct answers rather than navigating through multiple pages,” Geelen says. “Generative responses help surface the right information much more quickly.”

Privacy by design—built into support

As a provider of digital identity and trust services, Digidentity is acutely aware that customers may sometimes share sensitive information during support interactions, including identity details or documentation.

“Our primary goals were data minimization, security risk reduction, and regulatory compliance,” Geelen explains. “Protecting personal information is fundamental to our mission, and we want our support infrastructure to reflect that same commitment.”

To support these objectives, Digidentity implemented Zendesk’s Advanced Data Privacy and Protection (ADPP) capabilities. This replaced manual cleanups, reducing operational risk while allowing the team to focus on higher-value work.

The team also configured automated deletion schedules using Advanced Data Retention Policies, removing tickets and end-user records once they were no longer operationally required.

“The biggest benefit has been our ability to automate and consistently enforce data minimization within our support environment,” says Geelen. “It ensures our Zendesk environment only contains data that is genuinely relevant for ongoing support activities.”

The rollout was coordinated between Customer Support and Digidentity’s Security and Compliance team, ensuring retention policies aligned with the company’s broader privacy-by-design framework.

“Customers can be confident that personal data shared during support interactions is not retained longer than necessary,” Geelen says. “ADPP allows data protection to happen automatically in the background, while our agents remain focused on helping customers.”

What’s next: proactive guidance and smarter automation

Digidentity isn’t stopping at chat automation. The team is already exploring additional AI capabilities, including expanded automation for email, deeper reporting insights, and stronger feedback loops between customer support and product development.

“The focus is controlled scale,” says Geelen. “Increasing efficiency without compromising trust.”

That focus becomes increasingly important as digital identity continues to play a larger role in everyday business.

“For us, the real differentiator is the quality of the support experience we provide,” Geelen says. “Customer experience isn’t just part of the product—it’s a critical part of how we build digital trust.”