Humi empowers both customers and agents with Zendesk AI
Humi’s rapid growth was putting pressure on its customer support team. To manage rising service demands and improve efficiency, the company integrated Zendesk AI. With features like generative replies for self-service and assist tools for agents, Humi now deflects 57 percent of tickets for its in-app messaging channel, decreased the average number of tickets per client by 17.5 percent, and reduced first-response times by 18 percent.
“The Zendesk AI efficiency increase is undeniable. Now agents are more focused on delivering solutions rather than searching for information. And being able to figure out what's missing from our knowledge base has been huge.”
Paul Morrow
Support Specialist at Humi
"Our customers’ issues are important to us. So if it’s a complex query, a specialized agent comes in to resolve it and elevate the experience.”
Samantha Leung
Client Support Manager at Humi
Company Headquarters
Toronto, Canada
Employees
140
Monthly Support Tickets
4,050
Company Founded
2016
57%
Ticket deflection rate for in-app messaging
17.5%
Decreased average # of tickets per client
18%
Decrease in first response time
19%
Decrease in full resolution time
Toronto-based Humi is the Canadian employment platform that helps Canadian businesses be better employers. With one unified platform for payroll, HR, benefits, time off, hiring, performance, and more, Humi helps employers manage every stage of the employee journey from hire to retire. Humi gives Canadian companies the tools they need to create great places to work, every day. Today, they’ve earned the trust of thousands of businesses, including Tim Hortons, Moxies, and Trillium College.
Big growth, more customer inquiries
Since Humi first launched Zendesk as its ticketing system in 2018, the number of Canadian employees on its platform has grown five-fold. With such rapid growth came the challenge of managing an increase in customer queries.
On average, client support agents were handling 4,050 tickets per month.
Humi’s platform isn’t just one product, but a comprehensive suite of Canadian employment solutions that covers the entire employee lifecycle, from hiring to retiring and everything in between. While the company has dedicated support teams for HR, payroll, and employee benefits, each agent needs to be knowledgeable across all these areas.
However, finding the right information in the company’s knowledge base was often challenging, and many customer queries were repetitive, leading to bottlenecks and longer response times. “Our growth was fantastic, but our support system couldn’t keep up,” explains Paul Morrow, Humi’s Support Specialist. “Managing the ticket volume was a constant battle.”
Humi had already been exploring AI agents as a potential solution when the company’s Zendesk account manager reached out about enrolling in the early access program (EAP) for Zendesk Advanced AI. For Morrow, the timing couldn’t have been better.
Advanced AI as a core solution
As a current Zendesk customer, Humi was excited to explore the Advanced AI functionality. The implementation process was quick and seamless, providing immediate value by allowing the Humi team to focus on solving its customer support challenges, instead of extensive customization and integrations.
“It was the ease of setup,” says Morrow about the decision. “We got it rolling quickly without much effort, and it worked great out of the box.”
The adoption of AI also allowed Humi to leverage its existing knowledge base in Zendesk. “We have a lot of support articles and training materials,” says Samantha Leung, Humi’s Client Support Manager. “So we avoided having another vendor integrate and build that AI learning.”
An AI agent with personality
Another reason why Humi chose Zendesk AI was to add an AI agent with generative replies to its primary support channel–messaging. Integrated with Humi’s app, the solution provides a seamless customer experience.
The AI agent pulls information from the company’s help center and automatically replies to frequently asked questions, sparing agents the repetitive work. It also handles queries from non-English speaking users. Using Zendesk AI agent personas, Humi even gave its AI agent a personality that aligns with its brand, adding a human touch.
“Having a generative reply is much better than just pointing customers to an article that they have to read,” adds Morrow.
If the AI agent can’t resolve an issue, it’s escalated to a human agent via a form. “Our customers’ issues are important to us,” says Leung. “So if it’s complex, a specialized agent comes in to resolve it and elevate the experience.”
An answer-packed knowledge base
Because generative replies are only as good as the source material, Humi combined its internal and external help centers. The company optimizes the content using Zendesk content cues, a feature that finds potential information gaps and missing content. For agents, better information increases the likelihood of one-touch ticket resolutions.
“Our product is multi-faceted,” says Morrow. “So the ability to surface intelligence in the context panel helps agents understand topics they might not be familiar with, and respond faster and more accurately.”
The new help center also accelerates the productivity of new agents. Leung shares proof: “We recently hired someone with no payroll background. By their second month they were solving 250 to 300 tickets, which is the average for all our agents. They’re doing a great job because it’s easier to learn about our product.”
Agents work smarter, not harder
Agents rely on a variety of Zendesk AI tools specifically designed to assist them in their day-to-day work.
For instance, suggested macros help them find the right macros to respond to the tickets they’re working on. Summarization capabilities automatically transcribe and summarize calls and conversations and then add the information to ticket logs.
The similar tickets feature lets agents see a list of how tickets with similar issues were addressed. And customer intents and sentiment analysis in the context panel help agents organize and prioritize responses.
“Our agents really take advantage of the context panel,” says Morrow. “It’s like self-service for them.”
Double-digit efficiencies
With AI-powered self-service, customers are finding their own answers. As a result, Humi now deflects 57 percent of its tickets for its in-app messaging.
When customers need humans to solve their issues, agents have the right tools and information at their fingertips. The changes have led to a 17.6 percent drop in first response times and a 19 percent decrease in full resolution times. The average number of tickets per client also dropped 17.5 percent.
“The efficiency increase is undeniable,” says Morrow. “Now agents are more focused on delivering solutions rather than searching for information. And being able to figure out what’s missing from our knowledge base has been huge.”
More AI to come
For Humi, the balance of AI automation combined with a human touch is a winning combination. Moving forward, the company is exploring the autonomous mode of Zendesk agent copilot, a set of AI features that surface insights about customers, suggest responses, and can even take action with agent approval.
“Being able to empower our agents and help them do their job more efficiently and accurately has been great,” concludes Morrow. “AI isn’t about replacing people. It’s about making our lives easier so we can focus on the important parts of our jobs.”