How TransferGo balances speed and empathy using Zendesk AI agents

Money is always a sensitive issue. It often results in deep-rooted emotions and anxieties – never mind when you are far away from your family in a country you don’t call home. TransferGo was founded 10 years ago by four migrant friends who met at university in the UK and understood the challenges faced by expats living away from their home countries. Justinas, Daumantas, Edvinas and Arnas wanted to make international transfers fairer and cheaper for the hard-working people who often simply just wanted to send cash abroad quickly to support their families.

Building trust

“We’re working with a very sensitive topic,” said Povilas Ciuplys, who joined the business four years ago as Customer Support Director before being promoted to Chief Customer Officer in August 2021. “Our customers send money for various reasons, leading to us processing thousands upon thousands of transfers every month. And every transfer has a unique story.”

“People feel they can trust us,” said Ciuplys who looks after around 100 agents across call centers in London, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Ukraine. “We have to remember there’s a human being at the other end of the email or chat. So when we promise the money will be transferred in 30 minutes, we have to give them information fast, updating what is happening and making sure we’re there to pick up the phone or answer the chat.”

Ciuplys described how Ukraine has become a big part of its business since the Russian invasion in 2022. “From day one, there were very sensitive cases as the banking infrastructure was crumbling. I was very happy that we had people who cared and worked fast to support them, whilst remaining empathetic and human. The same happened after the Turkish/Syrian earthquake tragedy, families abroad wanted to support their loved ones quickly.”

360-degree view of the customer

TransferGo first implemented the Zendesk Suite in 2017 and when Ciuplys joined the company four years ago the business was beginning to scale at speed. As the face of customer service, Ciuplys was focused on solving challenges related to ticket routing, automation, and solidifying the organization’s people function.

“Zendesk is intuitive to use, it’s a really nice interface, simple – it’s not rocket science!”

“The 360-degree view of the customer helps us understand whether this is the first time communicating with a customer. If it’s the second time, well, something probably didn’t go well during the first interaction. This knowledge helps set expectations and personalize the customer experience,” said Ciuplys who pointed to the vast choice of API integrations Zendesk offers as “critical” to business success after seamlessly plugging the cloud-based Lokalise translation management system into the Zendesk Suite using Sunshine Conversations, which is clearly integral to an international company.

Ciuplys describes how his agents can quickly change their approach to service using the Zendesk Suite: “We can change the tone of the automated response if that doesn’t seem to be working, or if a customer doesn’t reply to us by, for example, midday, it’s easy to experiment and find the best time to reach our customers.”

AI Automation and messaging: Meeting customers where they are

Ciuplys is a firm believer that empathetic customer service is not just about the end consumer, but also about supporting TransferGo employees. “Employee experience drives customer experience,” he said, pointing to how automation has helped ease the employee workload to help agents concentrate on serving more complicated customer queries that may require a sympathetic conversation. “A good employee experience is one where you challenge your staff in just the right way – rather than making them deal with tedious and repetitive tasks.”

TransferGo staff were able to take ownership of their AI tool from the start: Zendesk AI agents entirely no-code, making them easy to build and eliminating any barriers for non-technical staff to get started with it immediately.


As Iveta Liaudanskaite, Senior Customer Support Specialist at TransferGo, explained it, “The whole platform is incredibly user-friendly. It’s easy to understand what each tab means and how it provides value for us. It’s also easy for new joiners to learn how to use the multilingual tool.” 


As a result, TransferGo was successfully automating over half of customer intents within the first three months of launching their first AI agent. And because Zendesk is SOC 2 certified, TransferGo’s customers could rest assured their sensitive data would be handled securely.

Moreover, Ciuplys says the company didn’t roll out the technology to save money: “Efficiency is a side effect. It was implemented to make sure customers didn’t need to wait for questions that could be answered with a straight-forward ‘yes’ or ‘no’. That’s our philosophy, we want to be fast, but have agents that actually care and empathize with our customer at the other end of the phone.”

“We’ve made further investment into Zendesk AI, which we expect to have a good impact on productivity, customer experience, and employee experience. For now, we’re looking at our one-touch ticket data to further increase written communication automation.“

Next on TransferGo’s Journey

The next phase for TransferGo is to set up asynchronous messaging where the customer and agent can start, stop, and resume a conversation on their own terms – just like speaking with a friend or family member via WhatsApp.

“We’ve reached the point where messaging is the most natural way to talk outside of the business landscape. More often than not nowadays, people would rather record voice notes than have a call, so this social interaction feels very natural and I see this as the future for our business. Asynchronous messaging will likely become a global trend; aiding in efficiency and improving the agent experience, as you have the conversation history right in front of you”.