DPG Media keeps employees and audiences happy with Zendesk

DPG Media is the biggest media company in Belgium and part of the DPG Media Group which is also active in the Netherlands and Denmark. The company holds tens of media brands among which VTM, HLN.be, Qmusic, Tweakers.net and also mobile operator Mobile Vikings, which inform, entertain and connect millions of people.

To ensure a smooth customer experience both for DPG Media’s employees and its media consumers, the company works with Zendesk. This doesn’t only help DPG Media to keep its employees and audiences happy, but also enables innovation in its customer service operation.

Stijn Van den Acker is Team Leader of Facility at DPG Media. Only 6 years ago his department mostly relied on email inboxes with coloured flags to organize and handle questions from colleagues. “Each support agent would be responsible for a certain colour. However, with this way of working, you can’t make sure all questions are answered in a timely manner and there is no steering because of a lack of reporting. Therefore we started looking for a solution that could help us set up flawless communication flows, professionalize customer service and in the end improve the customer experience.”

DPG Media chose Zendesk. “The biggest advantage we saw right away was that the Zendesk platform can be very easily adjusted to our wants and needs. There is no need to hire expensive consultants that need weeks to get the system working the way you want to”, Van den Acker said. “Furthermore we see that Zendesk has a strong focus on innovation as new functionality and apps are regularly being added to the platform. This enables us to continuously optimize our customer service operation.”

Proactively suggesting improvements

Another important factor that helps DPG Media getting the most out of Zendesk is the cooperation with Premium Plus, a Zendesk partner. Van den Acker: “An employee of Premium Plus is our facility coordinator. He has in-depth knowledge of all the new Zendesk features and knows how our processes are organized. The great thing is that this enables him to proactively suggest improvements that help us leverage the software in the smartest way possible. Often without the need for any new investments.”

To have their employees to help themselves, DPG Media created a help center that on average gets 4000 views per month and is used by 1600 employees on a daily basis.
“People know our help center is a valuable information source. The typical FAQ like ‘where are the meeting rooms, what is the WiFi-code and can I park my car here during my holiday’, are all taken care of in our help center. This enables our agents to focus on the more complex questions.”

Innovation in customer service operation

Together with Premium Plus DPG Media hasn’t only improved the customer experience and managed to realize a CSAT of 92%, but also pushes innovation in its customer service operation. “The reports have provided us with some interesting insights and made us aware of opportunities for further improvement. Our warehouse for instance also receives a lot of private packages for employees. These packages all are scanned and the employees get an alert that their package has arrived. The report in Zendesk showed us that one of our warehouse employees spent half his workday scanning packages from his colleagues. Therefore we’ve introduced a ‘Bring me box’ that automates this process. This is a more cost-efficient solution for us and our employees are not dependent on our warehouse anymore to get their package. A typical win-win situation”, Van den Acker said.

Premium Plus also created a smart workflow with Zendesk and the project management tool DPG Media uses. Van den Acker: “If for instance, a colleague reports a broken door handle, Zendesk enables us to assign this chore to our maintenance colleague. It’s planned automatically in his calendar. Afterwards, we can see how long it took to get it fixed and since time registration is also connected to the workflow, the right cost center is easily assigned. Also the colleague who reported the broken door handle automatically gets an update that it’s fixed. This is a smart way to automate a process that would entail numerous manually tasks.”

Making a difference in customer experience

“We’re enthusiastic about the ways Zendesk has helped improve the customer experience: really simple things like being able to report that the coffee machine is out of beans by scanning a QR-code, makes all the difference in the customer experience of our colleagues. They can directly see if someone else already reported this and if we’re working on this. Which is essential as everyone knows how important coffee is in a workplace, Van den Acker smiles.”

Not only the facility operation at DPG Media benefits from Zendesk and the knowledge of Premium Plus. Also the finance department uses the software to organize the flow of outgoing and incoming invoices and a great number of media brands leverage it to optimize external customer service. Vivi Van den Kerkhof is responsible for the customer service for 12 media brands of DPG Media. She works at the company for 20 years already and has experienced customer service when it was still only handling letters and phone calls.

“We’ve come a long way since then”, Van den Kerkhof stated. “Not only in the expansion of communication channels but also in the number of brands DPG Media has. This makes a system to structure especially e-mail communication indispensable. Merely monitoring in Outlook no longer cuts it. On a monthly basis, we solve 2000 tickets. Using Zendesk we can easily assign tickets to the right person so they can be solved quickly by the right person.”

Easily roll out workflow for GDPR

“The great thing about working with Zendesk is also that the functionality is extremely easy to scale and personalize. Every brand has its own look and feel that can be set up in Zendesk. If a consumer sends an email about a VTM show to our central address, they automatically get an answer with the VTM-branding. Also when the GDPR needed to be implemented we needed to set up a right workflow just once and were able to roll this out to all the brands. From this perspective, Zendesk delivers great value for money.”

“We invest a lot in adding the right content to the help center as I believe this is crucial in optimizing the customer experience. At the end of the day the work of our team contributes directly to the reputation of our brands. Having the support of Premium Plus and a tool that facilitates professional and fast communication, makes all the difference in what customer experience we can deliver. This is also why I believe we are still at the beginning of our optimization journey. The best is yet to come”, Van den Kerkhof concludes.