Agents
18
Ticket / Months
4,000
CSAT Improvement
12%
Improvement in SLA adherence
29%
Products Used
NearlyĀ 90 percentĀ of everything purchased around the globe is transported, in one way or another, by boat. Itās a mind-boggling statistic that underscores the size, complexity, and importance of the global freight and logistics industry.
At any moment, there are more than 20 million containers at sea, transporting everything from raw materials like oil, steel, and wood, to consumer products like TVs, toys, and textiles. TheĀ largest transport shipsĀ can carry up to 18,000 individual 20-foot containers. Thatās enough storage space for more than 36,000 carsāor nearly 850 million cans of baked beans.
These massive cargo ships are loaded and unloaded at dozens of ports around the world. The busiest ports can resemble small cities, processing tens of millions of shipping crates every year. Ports are complex ecosystems that require powerful tools to operate efficiently. Thatās why the freight and logistics industry turns to companies likeĀ 1-Stop Connections. The company provides supply chain software-as-a-service (SAAS) that keep ports moving like clockwork.
āWe help manage what we call the port community system,ā said Alex Wood, head of customer service at 1-Stop Connections. āItās an incredibly complex environment where itās critical that everyone is working together in harmonyāfrom the transport companies and terminals, to the cargo agencies, regulators, and even the accountants.ā
Building simplicity for complex customers
To bring order to this potentially chaotic environment, the company offers a range of highly specialized software solutions that help streamline operations, tracking, reporting, and security. This allows 1-Stop Connectionsā customers do everything from managing the schedule of individual truck-based freight pickups to issuing security cards to dock workers.
āEvery customer is totally unique and uses our solutions differently,ā Wood said. āA customer can mix and match dozens of different products, configured specifically for their organization, and set up hundreds, if not thousands, of different user roles, authorization levels, and administration ranges.ā
And to add even more complexity, while the companyās core business is operating in a business-to-business capacity, it also needs to cater to individuals who use the companyās solutions to obtain their own port access security cards.
One consolidated tool to rule them all
Given the specialised nature of its customersā businesses, and its blend of B2B and B2C interactions, providing incredible customer service is a priority for 1-Stop Connections. However, the company, which was founded in 2001 and has about 100 employees, found itself bumping into the limitations of its legacy customer service solutions, which included homegrown on-premise tools that the company has since outgrown.
āWe tried to build everything on our own to our detriment,ā Wood said. āIt wasnāt working because our internal systems were cumbersome and inconsistent. We basically had to do a hard reset and tear it all down.ā
That reset began with 1-Stop Connections adoptingĀ Zendesk SupportĀ in 2015 to consolidate its ticket management, and over time the company gradually added additional services includingĀ Talk,Ā Chat,Ā Guide, andĀ Explore.
Zendesk allowed the team to quickly and easily integrate with different parts of 1-Stop Connectionsā organization, from connecting to its user database and providing agents access to a customerās history, to using ZendeskāsĀ JIRA integrationĀ to streamline workflows for its product development teams. This move allowed the broader organization to learn directly from customer interactions, which are now used to influence everything from its sales team to its development schedule.
Steering toward growth with better visibility
āThe shift toward customer experiences has allowed us to significantly improve every single interaction we have across our business functions,ā Wood said. āLiterally everywhere from marketing, finance, sales, or anywhere else in the company, itās all becoming more and more in-line with those high standards, which we set in within the customer service function.ā
To track this progress, the company, which receives roughly 4,000 customer contacts a month, uses Zendesk Explore to closely monitor its KPIs and track efficiency. To date, the results have been impressive, including a nearly 30 percent increase in cases solved within first reply and resolution targets, a spike in CSAT scores from 83 to 93 percent, and reduction of the average case resolution time from nearly 24 hours to 4.5 hours.
1-Stop Connections has seen so much success with its new customer service and support model, it has invested in doubling the size of its support team in the last year alone. As a result, the team has added new capabilities while increasing efficiencyāand that better use of resources has helped the company grow the team only as much as required.
āIt was about right-sizing our team,ā Wood said. āWeāve reimagined our structure to improve our level of service by orders of magnitude. And while weāve grown the team, Zendesk helped us do even more with less. Without it we would have conservatively needed to add at least four additional team members to get these results.ā
As 1-Stop Connections grows and expands to new ports in new geographies, the company is continuing to find ways to simplify its workflows, deliver better customer experiences, and connect its internal teams with Zendesk. The team works closely with Zendekās customer success team to regularly review the services itās using, discuss suggestions to improve the customer experience, and reviewing customer data.
āWeāre very satisfied with the amount of engagement weāve had with Zendeskāit keeps getting better. Now weāre at the stage where weāre tryingĀ SellĀ for our sales operations,ā Wood said. āSince Zendesk is the home for all our customer interactions, weāre always trying to find more ways to have everything into that.ā
