Powering up productivity with Ultius – From Email to Helpdesk

Despite countless chat apps and communication tools, Email still endures as one of the most used because it ensures the spontaneity of messaging without sacrificing permanence.  Inboxes are easy to maintain and emails can be archived and referred to even years later. Countless messaging apps have tried to replicate the feel, the success or even replace email as the primary communication tool and yet, when businesses start out, the quintessential Email Mailbox is what they choose first for supporting customers.

While the “Email” side does let you talk and respond to your customers’ queries instantly, the “Mailbox” side of it slows the machinery down when trying to set up an efficient and effective customer support team.

Why does Email slow the customer support machinery down? How does it impact customer support when email still reaches the customer instantly? Well, Boban Dedovic from Ultius has the answers.

 

Writing up a storm

7 years ago, a friend wanted their resume worked over by a writer so that they had a better chance while applying for jobs. Boban Dedovic, who was working in the software industry at the time, realized that there was a strong need for young professionals to connect with American writers for personal business documents (like resumes and cover letters). From this, a group of friends started Ultius and the company began to grow from this initial idea.

Thanks to customer referrals and word of mouth, Ultius and its support team soon found its inbox rapidly filling up and phone constantly ringing with requests from people wanting a professional writer to look over their documents. Soon, the company found that there was a lot of demand for professionals in the writing and editing space – be it for businesses wanting to make sure the content they put meets high standards or just individuals wanting a better class of resumes and documents.

As Ultius grew in popularity around the world, its focus shifted towards being a global technology company who purely connects consumers with American writers. This global expansion meant sticking with a core tenet of the company—providing quick and reliable email support for young professionals.

Almost immediately after Ultius hired its first 24×7 support team, they ran into problems. With their email mailbox-powered support, the support team found that what one support agent could accomplish in one week, it took two collaborating agents two weeks to finish the same task. The company found that it was impossible to organize a single Google mailbox amongst twelve full-time support agents. Some emails got lost entirely, some emails were not accounted for by any of the agents, and managers found it difficult to judge performance of the agents and the happiness of the customers.

Ultius was growing fast at this point, servicing requests for an enormous number of customers. But it also meant that an enormous number of people were mailing in queries – either business related or support-related. 100s of emails were coming in each day and the cascade was difficult to organize, categorize and allot them all to the support agents.

Email ensured that customers received responses instantly, sure. But agents couldn’t figure out which customer to email first.

Ultius believed that an excellent customer experience was a valuable asset to their business, but were finding it increasingly difficult to meet the high standards they set for themselves.

 

Building relationships across a helpdesk

Ultius needed a system which allowed them to collaborate on emails, without it devolving into lengthy chains. They wanted to keep track of, and follow up on customer requests without missing any. So Ultius chose Freshdesk.

With Freshdesk, Ultius was able to:

  • Manage Support Better: Emails coming into their support inbox were automatically categorized, and assigned to agents. No emails were left behind or lay forgotten deep in the inbox.
  • Collaborate Better: It was easier to collaborate between agents and the rest of the team.
  • Automate SLAs and Reminders: It was easier to follow up with customers, since the helpdesk set up SLAs and reminders automatically.
  • Analyze their Support: Managers were actually able to assess their support team performance and figure out the quality of support they were providing with the metrics from the helpdesk.

While email still powered their responses, switching to a helpdesk ensured that the time it took to resolve a customer’s problem reduced from over 24 hours to less than 4 hours.

Over 25 support agents are now able to collaborate easily on Freshdesk and connect over 2000 writers with thousands of customers.

Encouraged by the massive improvements that Freshdesk enabled when dealing with customers, Ultius also adopted Freshdesk for an internal helpdesk when dealing with the 2000+ freelancers on their roster of writers. This internal helpdesk has helped Ultius simplify their authentication process for new writers signing up, handling disputes, managing work assignments and more.

The company’s belief in offering a stellar customer experience on any platform, anywhere, has helped them grow massively over the years and having a helpdesk system like Freshdesk streamlining their communications and relationships with customers has allowed them to be fully in control of their growth.

With launching their first Android app recently and having brought in their social media pages like Facebook under the support banner, the leadership of Ultius is sure of the company’s ability to grow even further and overcome any communication challenges. This commitment extends to not only how Ultius serves its customers, but also its base of over 2,000 American freelance writers.

Do you find providing customer support to be overwhelming? Trying to switch from email to a helpdesk software? Try Freshdesk today!