CX innovation for a legacy Silicon Valley retail brand and manufacturer

This international multi-brand company designs and manufactures various music, gaming, streaming, video, and computing products. Founded at the dawn of the home computer revolution, this company created many “firsts” in Silicon Valley, fueling its growth to more than 8,000 employees worldwide with an annual revenue of $5.5 billion.

With over 40 brands under its umbrella, the company’s customer support needed to be agile, frictionless, and cost-effective. In reviewing its options, the company upgraded to Zendesk in early 2014 due to its flexibility, agility, and efficiency.

The pandemic demanded an increase in digital support services

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, countless consumers turned to online entertainment—downloading music, video games, and movies. And with an unprecedented number of people shopping from home, the company’s offerings were in demand like never before.

Sales zoomed up—and the company also noted a significant increase in returns, views of its help center, and calls to support. This scale of demand placed enormous pressure on the company’s support agents and its IT departments across the globe.

The company quickly realized that it had outgrown the scope of its original support platform. To address these challenges, the company ramped up its customer support services. Now, their help center averages 13 million views a month and is ultra-customized for each customer.

Personalization at the center of exceptional customer experience

With the help center featuring personalized data for each individual shopper, customers can quickly find things like product and warranty information on their own. Shoppers are now able to help themselves on many tasks, giving the support team extra time to focus on more challenging customer inquiries. Support agents also have access to customer data, making it easier to swiftly assist customers in facilitating returns or questions about previously purchased products.

The company also had the ability to control the management of the Zendesk CX software, making its own dashboards and adapting it to the company’s specific needs. That flexibility relieved pressure on the support team, allowing them to become more efficient.

The agility of the Zendesk platform also allowed the company to easily ramp down—or ramp up—the number of support agents during cyclical business changes.

Agents enabled and empowered for growth to the bottom line

In anticipation of holiday demand, the company launched a Black Friday bot in 2020. The company realized a 22 percent conversion rate for people who first visited support through the bot and later spoke with a trained sales representative. The new system enabled the sales organization to listen and interact with customers more efficiently. As a result, the company could scale and exceed targets during this time.

Additionally, agents were more efficient in helping customers globally. In-platform auto-translation of tickets in more than 30 languages enabled agents to respond in the customers’ preferred language, improving response time and workflow efficiency.

The company’s holiday sales in 2021 enjoyed a five percent increase in first call resolution, where agents can resolve a ticket in a single pass—one and done.

The support team could more effectively engage with customers, meeting them where they were and delivering an exceptional customer experience. During this time, the Net Promoter Score® increased from 18 to 31, improving by 13 points.

Along with its investment in the customer experience, the company also experienced a significant financial impact, with more than 75% year-over-year growth from 2019.

Investing in both proactive and reactive support

Support agents easily create, view, and track product returns, reducing the human engagement required to process returns using Zendesk Custom Objects to manage customers’ purchase dates and warranty coverage.

With Custom Objects, the company implemented Return Merchandise Authorizations (RMA). The RMA process not only alleviates the workload for agents, but also promotes a more efficient flow for customers.

In the first six months after implementing automated RMA processing, resolution times decreased by 87 percent. And customers loved the service—offering positive feedback stating how seamless and effortless their return process was.

“It was a flawless experience,” said one satisfied customer. “The replacement process was fast and easy,” said another. Automated returns mean that live support agents have more time to focus on more complex inquiries and invest their time in the customer.

Innovation and customer satisfaction remain at the heart of this company’s operations. As a trailblazer in rethinking the customer experience at scale, the company remains committed to its most important value—creating a memorable customer experience.