Esusu moves to Zendesk for faster, AI-driven experiences

Renters may encounter all kinds of barriers to housing, including social, economic, and financial hardships. New York startup Esusu is on a mission to change that by offering rent relief to residents who are struggling to make payments and by helping property managers and building owners report on-time rental payments to the credit bureaus to improve renter’s credit scores.

Qualified residents can apply for a 0 percent interest rent relief loan through Esusu’s partnership with the Stable Home Fund, allowing them to stay in their homes without fear of being evicted. To date, Esusu has helped more than 107,000 renters establish first-time credit scores, and unlocked $21.9 billion in new credit opportunities for mortgages, student loans, and car loans.

Empathetic, mission-driven support

Jessica Hannes was drawn to Esusu’s people-centric mission and embraced the opportunity to build the support organization from the ground up in 2023. As the Director of Support, Hannes oversees two teams, one that helps residents with Esusu’s Rent Reporting program and one that handles Rent Relief loan program applications and questions.

Esusu’s support model is 100 percent remote, with all agents based outside the United States and support interactions conducted in English and Spanish. There are 20 customer service reps in the Philippines, while a new support manager and four agents were just added in Colombia to expand Spanish-speaking support.

Hannes knows that empathetic and nimble support agents can help create a smoother onboarding process and provide higher quality of service. So, she focuses on hiring a talented and experienced workforce, especially those who have worked at large financial companies in a BPO environment.

“In CX, it’s really important that our interactions are professional, empathetic, quick, responsive, and to the point,” Hannes says. “We usually get requests from residents seeking immediate answers, and having a tool like Zendesk helps us navigate those challenges.”

Efficiency rises with consolidated CX

Hannes leveraged premier Zendesk consulting and implementation partner Envoy to assist with the implementation of the Zendesk Suite Professional in February 2023 and the company went live three months later.

“We chose Zendesk based on the ease of implementation, as well as the ease of oversight and administration,” explains Hannes. “There are other great tools out there, but they take a lot of resources to leverage and customize as opposed to configure. There wasn’t a large cost to implement and maintain the Zendesk platform, which was a huge driver.”

Esusu’s previous CX tech stack included Intercom for help center and FAQs, Front for ticketing, and Aircall for phone support. “We were using Intercom, which didn’t allow us to create the brand experience we wanted,” Hannes says.

Consolidating all support tools and channels into Zendesk’s omnichannel platform paved the way for greater efficiencies. After replacing Aircall with Zendesk Talk, the team saw a whopping 90 percent increase in answer rate and now answers around 95 percent of calls received. That’s a big deal considering half of Esusu’s support tickets come through voice, with the other half arriving via email.

Faster, integrated support

When teams were using multiple support tools, the data wasn’t connected and it was difficult to take a holistic approach. Now, Hannes loves using Zendesk Explore to develop reports and create dashboards that executives can view. Esusu also built an integration using the team’s admin console, which interfaces directly with Zendesk to provide a better view of customer profiles and personas.

Zendesk’s extensibility is vital for connecting Salesforce and other tools. Support agents currently use the Jira integration to create tickets for the data operations team, which manages the process of reporting rent payments to the credit bureaus. Next, Esusu will be evaluating integrations with MaestroQA and Zendesk QA (formerly Klaus), along with Zendesk WFM (formerly Tymeshift) and other workforce management solutions.

“Prior to Zendesk, we did not have very good oversight into our interactions with engineering, data operations, or other groups helping with ticket resolution,” Hannes says. “Using the Slack integration and Side Conversations was a huge game-changer for us, and it totally sped up response times.”

In fact, Esusu’s first reply time dropped 64 percent, while the team’s full resolution time decreased by 34 percent across an average of 10,000 monthly tickets. Additionally, the support team is delivering an impressive one-touch response rate of 80 percent.

Advanced AI for a next-level experience

Esusu added Zendesk Advanced AI to further enhance the customer experience. “We need the automation of macros and the benefits of all the existing functionality that Zendesk offers. The AI piece blends those things together and takes it to another level, by giving us better insights into trends and better product feedback,” remarks Hannes.

She values how “Zendesk AI simplifies and eases the workflow on our agent side. The summarization feature has been a huge help, especially for onboarding new reps. It saves us the time and energy of looking through an entire thread, so we can work more efficiently.”

Hannes predicts that AI will never replace human interaction, but it will have an enormous impact on customer service over the next five years. “AI is going to further automate interactions, allowing agents to work on more complex situations. It will also give us better ways to drill into data, get insights, and present information to agents, instead of going to different sites,” she says.

Seamless communication between agents and end users is a win for everyone involved. “AI will make the agent’s world and their job easier. And, it will get answers for customers and send them on their way as fast as possible,” adds Hannes.

Poised for growth with AI

Just four years after launching, fast growing Esusu has already reached $1 billion in valuation and has been recognized on the TIME100 Next, LinkedIn Top Startups, and Forbes Fintech50 lists. During that growth period, Esusu onboarded many large clients and saw support volume soar.

Using Zendesk with Advanced AI has enabled the company to scale support operations while maintaining a strong customer-centric approach. “The biggest improvement so far is in our ability to get agent responses out quicker using AI. We’re able to handle more inquiries and support business growth without adding significant headcount.”

Onward to messaging and AI agents

A major highlight on Esusu’s path to self-service was building an external knowledge base in Zendesk. “Getting the help center set up was a foundational piece to enable the future AI agent and messaging experience. I couldn’t have one without the other,” comments Hannes. The next step will be moving all of the internal knowledge so agents can use it within their tickets.

Around 40 percent of Esusu support tickets come in through mobile phones, so Hannes sees even more value promised by artificial intelligence. “I’m really excited about AI in messaging and chat. There’s a huge opportunity for us to tap into that AI agent experience where we can have generative AI responses, guide residents through questions, and even get their questions answered by integrations with our internal tools.”