Geographically dispersed Element Customer Care gets on the same page

Based in Durham, North Carolina, Element Customer Care serves the cable industry with billing services, tech support and customer service call center operations and management.

The company has nearly 250 employees and full-time contractors serving 400 cable franchises in 29 states. Since their business is truly based on providing superior support services, the company’s ability to respond quickly to support requests is of paramount importance.

At the end of 2008, Element Customer Care was using two different solutions for customer support — a homegrown and CRM solution. But neither offered the functionality they really desired.

The homegrown solution had two primary pain points. First, it was not easy to use from an administrative perspective. They had to manually add end users and administer their passwords and settings. Second, it was much harder for clients to use anything but basic functionality.

“We wanted a straight-forward help desk that had core ticketing functionality; one that was user friendly to our clients, said Matt Zemon, Element’s president. “It was important that our clients could create cases through email and then be able to easily view all of their requests.”

Element wanted a solution it could brand to its business, had reasonable reporting that allowed them to stay on top of cases, and wasn’t priced according to how many clients they had.

Keep it simple and fast, from ticketing to branding to implementation

After considering expanding their CRM solution, in the end, Element decided on Zendesk’s Plus+ Plan.

“None of our other options were as powerful as Zendesk,” Matt said. “The simplicity of the solution meant a small learning curve for both employees and clients. Zendesk is fast and easy and that’s what we love about it.”

The company setup its Zendesk and branded it within a few minutes along with a 30-minute introduction for employees. As for how to roll out their new help desk to clients, Element took a two-step approach. The team decided to launch new clients on Zendesk and then migrate existing clients afterward.

Matt remembers, “Setup was incredibly painless. We have employees across the US in small offices. Using a hosted solution like Zendesk makes sense for us because anyone can work on it from anywhere.”

As for the company’s interaction with the Zendesk support team? Matt admits, “Haven’t really needed to contact them. Everything works as it’s supposed to when it’s supposed to. Zendesk is extremely user friendly and easy to use.”

Visibility into all client requests to deliver outstanding customer support

By using Zendesk, Element was able to shift client email requests into their help desk. “Because our support is handled through our Zendesk ticketing system, we have eliminated requests that get lost in someone’s email inbox,” Matt explained.

“The transparency that Zendesk affords is fantastic,” he added. “A lot of our clients have dispersed leadership structures across the country. Zendesk is great for them because their leadership teams have access to all open tickets at any point in time. And as president I like that I have greater visibility into all of our client requests as opposed to just hearing about issues during meetings or escalations.”

Element said teamwork was essential to its help desk solution because often times a support request that at first glance appears to be an issue of one kind turns out to be another. Having the ability to move tickets around between different teams is a necessity.

“During the time when our team is scoping out an issue, the client has visibility into the status of the problem — which is great for transparency and satisfaction with our clients,” Matt said.