Saretec + Zendesk: Exceptional internal and external support experiences

Leading French consultancy Saretec is committed to offering outstanding service to both the companies and mutuelles (mutual insurance funds) that hire it to appraise damages or compensation as well as the customers of its customers: the insured. Extensive efforts are taken to handle their complex cases and requests with responsiveness and kindness.

Saretec believes in offering the same level of support to its 1,500 employees, which is why the company evaluates the head of support’s efficacy by measuring the performance of external and internal support teams.

Reaching new heights with Zendesk

Saretec’s IT team rolled out Zendesk in 2018 for ticketing, self-service, and reporting. “Previously, we used a fleet management tool with ‘service desk’ functions. But we weren’t satisfied with it. The workflows were no longer suitable for our organization. Additionally, making updates was an arduous and complicated process,” said Laurent Bourdeau, support and logistics manager at Saretec. “Zendesk seemed like the right replacement.”

Saretec’s IT team implemented the platform without any technical support from Zendesk. It heavily relies on Zendesk’s help center solution, Guide. “This self-service tool allows us to build our documentation,” said Bourdeau. “It houses IT-only content and articles that people at the rest of the company can access as well.”

Having so much functionality in one place allows Saretec’s IT team to be efficient. “We use free extensions available through Zendesk’s app marketplace to synchronize and streamline data,” Bourdeau said. “We integrated a chatbot using Zendesk’s API. It automatically answers users’ questions about their IT problems and also redirects them to Zendesk Guide for more information.”

Three more departments join

Months after Saretec’s IT team implemented Zendesk, the company started using Zendesk for customer service. Its 25 agents manage hundreds of requests a day from both insurance companies and their policyholders.

“This team uses Zendesk Support to handle all complaints and requests, Zendesk Explore to quickly access and analyze metrics, and Side Conversations to consult experts who don’t use Zendesk, while maintaining the history of these interactions in Zendesk,” said Bourdeau, who adds that the next departments to join were human resources and general services. “We are sharing Zendesk’s many advantages with the rest of the company: simplicity, user-friendliness, better handled requests, improved workflows, etc.”

A data-driven customer service strategy

Saretec uses metrics and data from Zendesk to make improvements across instances and the roughly 250 tickets a day it handles. “With Zendesk, we can measure what we were unable to measure before—ticket volume, response times, and satisfaction,” Bourdeau said. “We can therefore improve and implement corrective actions by knowing precisely what is wrong.”

That effort is making a difference. “Since switching to Zendesk, we’ve halved our average first response time while handling twice as many tickets,” Bourdeau said. “The result? Our average internal and external CSAT jumped from 91.2% to 97% in less than two years.”

Maximizing the platform’s benefits

Saretec intends to go further. It aims to keep improving the customer experience by rolling out asynchronous channels like chat and social media.

“Zendesk’s teams keep us informed about new features and updates. We are currently only taking advantage of maybe 50 percent of its potential,” Bourdeau said. “We want to maximize its use, including its wide range of features and integrations, in order to optimize our business processes.”