Zendesk delivers seamless internal support with 98% ESAT

Behind every successful organization is a powerful engine of internal service and support. At Zendesk, that means using its own SaaS product to keep internal support running smoothly. Since 2007, Zendesk has been redefining excellence in both customer and employee service experiences, powering billions of conversations between global brands and the people they serve via email, live chat, phone, and social media. Today Zendesk’s award-winning software is trusted by more than 160,000 customers in 160 countries.

Headquartered in San Francisco, the Zendesk workforce currently extends across 22 offices and remote locations worldwide. For a scaling company with more than 6,000 employees, providing an outstanding employee experience (EX) is a mammoth task. That’s why the People & Places Operations Team counts on the Zendesk Suite to provide seamless internal human resources support to team members.

“We support employees through some of the most sensitive and exciting life experiences. Whether they are inquiring about updating personal information because of a marriage, moving into a new home, going on parental leave, finding out they have a serious illness, or have a family member pass away, we handle those questions and administration,” says Cassie Sanoy, Lead, Employee Services Operations, at Zendesk.

“These experiences can be very stressful or exciting for employees, so we want to give them the quick, seamless support they need,” Sanoy adds. “That’s why we care about what we do and want to create a positive, efficient self-service experience using Zendesk.”

People & Places is realizing that vision and handling 9,900 support tickets per month. By leveraging the Zendesk Suite, agents have improved efficiency and access to self self-service content, while achieving an impressive 98% ESAT and beating 93% of SLAs.

Centers of Excellence enable specialized support

“Day in and day out, our mission is to establish operational excellence across People & Places and continually strive to enhance the employee experience,” comments Dani Doroff, head of Global Employee Services Operations at Zendesk.

To provide high quality service on such a large scale, all 300 internal support agents are assigned to specialized People & Places teams, including workplace experience, global operations, Diversity Equity & Inclusion, and benefits.

Tier 1 and 2 agents belong to the People Services Team, with around 60 agents serving as the first line of contact for employees and handling around 80 percent of Zendesk’s internal support volume. A triage team operates 24/7 to ensure that any tickets not deflected by automations or triggers are quickly reviewed and routed to the correct team members.

Tier 3 agents make up the Centers of Excellence, including payroll, benefits, compensation, and talent acquisition. These team members focus more on project-based work rather than fielding support tickets, however they collaborate closely with People Services to keep the People & Places organization on track. Heading into busy seasons, the teams work cross-functionally to develop FAQ documents and make sure agents are prepared to handle a higher volume in support tickets from employees and managers.

Creating smart EX solutions with Workday + Zendesk

As admin for the People & Places Zendesk accounts, Sanoy understands the importance of streamlining tickets. “Responding efficiently to employees across different support channels and getting their ticket into the right hands as quickly as possible was challenging for us,” Sanoy says. Previously, the teams relied on siloed systems, which made it difficult to track and manage requests that employees submitted through Workday.

Then the solution-oriented team found a way to consolidate their workload into one centralized inbox. “Using Zendesk, we’re able to funnel employee requests from Workday into a single email address, where we can manage tickets effectively in one place,” adds Sanoy. “That helps kick off our business processes, create more efficient workflows internally, and provide more transparency for leaders.”

This solution also ensures the task history and any related conversations in Workday are stored in the Zendesk ticket for reference, making report generation a breeze.

A modern system that drives collaboration is “a game changer”

Keeping the entire support organization–and company–connected is a big job. “We focus on creating a great experience for our employees and for the People & Places team as a whole,” says Doroff. “The Zendesk platform has made things more scalable, and created more transparency for users on both ends.”

Team members take advantage of the Zendesk ticket sharing feature when they need to manage agreements with procurement, legal, and IT. If an employee wants to pursue an outside opportunity, such as working on a board of directors or taking a second job that might overlap with their Zendesk role, they must submit a request. People & Places receives that ticket and facilitates the approval process with the legal team, adding internal notes to the Zendesk ticket to capture and review details.

Seeing improvements in collaboration, visibility, and routing has made Sanoy a loyal Zendesk user. “I never want to work on an HR team that is not using Zendesk. It’s been a game changer for me,” adds Sanoy. “Zendesk offers a modern experience and it’s really transformed the way that we work internally.”

The ultimate help center with automation and personalized content

Creating a more efficient help center experience is one of the team’s top priorities. “We focus on self-service in everything we do,” Sanoy shares. “Our goal is to enable employees to find resources without creating a bottleneck, so we’ve been optimizing our help center with better knowledge capture and automation.”

Zendesk makes it easy for agents to link employees to help center articles. Creating great content is important, but it’s also critical that employees are aware that the content exists. This is where the People Ops team leans on the Zendesk AI agent. The AI agent responds to all incoming requests by suggesting relevant content from the help center which drives more employees to self-solve common issues.

Zendesk AI-powered features have also helped the team improve the company’s internal knowledge base. “We’ve started using Content Cues and other automations that allow us to be proactive, which is really exciting,” says Sanoy. “Now we can see what information employees are searching for and add it to the help center.”

Doroff and Sanoy have been putting together a governance process for updating articles, which involves building a strong partnership with the Centers of Excellence to create content and efficient workflows. “Deflecting tickets is the biggest priority,” adds Doroff. “It feels like really low hanging fruit that we can go after and close knowledge gaps.”

The team has even leveraged Zendesk to customize the visibility of self-serve content and create a more localized experience. “By segmenting employees based on their work location in Workday, we can make the content on our help center country-specific to each user,” says Sanoy. “They no longer have to filter through a ton of articles to find relevant ones.”

‘Champions of customer service’ invest in the employee experience

Ultimately, Sanoy sees the People & Places team as a reflection of Zendesk’s software and service motto. “Our goal is to be the ‘Champions of customer service’ for our employees internally.” With that in mind, the team will continue adding key initiatives to their EX roadmap. Investing in the right solutions today will enable Zendesk’s People Services team to reach their goals tomorrow–and well into the future.