Zendesk helps Konecta go the distance at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games
Zendesk puts on a world-beating performance at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games with Konecta. Rolled out in record time, it provided fast and seamless support for thousands of visitors and participants, meeting the high expectations surrounding this global event.
“Based on our experience with Zendesk, which we had already used for another client, we knew it was the perfect solution.”
Vianney Delgrange
Project Manager at Konecta
“The Premier Support plan allowed us to take on the Olympics feeling cool, calm and confident.”
Corinne Descombes
Project Director at Konecta
Employees
130 000
Revenue (euros)
2 billion
500 clients across various sectors
Telecommunications, energy, financial services, mobility and e-commerce
Present in
26 countries and 4 continents
< 30 min
Response time
2 min 23 secs
Average email handling time
43 000
Emails handled from the end of November 2023 to the end of September 2024
Going for customer experience gold
At the Olympic Games, many great performances also take place behind the scenes – especially when it comes to customer experience. Paris 2024 turned to Konecta, one of the leading global providers of Customer Management BPO, to create a powerful help centre. The aim was to provide responsive and comprehensive support for spectators, visitors, fans, athletes, communities and residents to make sure that every interaction set a new personal best regardless of the query – whether it was about accessibility, security, guidance, the event schedule, etc.
Konecta is the go-to partner for global events like the Olympic Games thanks to its in-depth expertise in optimising the customer experience and a proven ability to adapt to the unique demands of different sectors. With offices in 26 countries, more than 130,000 employees and 2 billion euros revenue, Konecta designs customised solutions for more than 500 clients from an array of different sectors, including telecommunications, energy, financial services, mobility, media and e-commerce. The Group specialises in multi-channel interactions and covers all customer business processes, whether it's customer service, sales, technical support or debt collection.
Creating a winning team with Zendesk
As part of this “showcase project”, Konecta implemented a multilingual and multichannel platform (phone, email, chatbot, social media, accessibility for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, FAQ) complete with a team of dedicated and passionate agents. In collaboration with Paris 2024, the company also created a knowledge base to support its internal teams.
When the project started, Konecta had initially chosen a different platform to Zendesk for email interactions. However, this solution wasn't able to keep up when the team needed to manage more complex workflows. “In January 2024, just a few months before the Olympics, we were looking for a new solution that we could implement quickly. We needed something that would work better with our business processes and offered more reporting capabilities; something that we could use to design custom workflows,” explains Vianney Delgrange, project manager at Konecta FSM. “Based on our experience with Zendesk, which we had already used for another client, we knew it was the perfect solution. We used connectors to integrate both phone calls and the knowledge base into the new email platform so that our agents could respond to queries effectively”. Zendesk managed to overcome this hurdle in just four weeks!
“SEIF, our Zendesk integration partner, was also incredibly responsive and professional. Targeted training for our teams and detailed reports on the project’s progress meant that we were able to hit important targets right on schedule. And we managed to do all that in a really fast-paced environment where the client’s demands were changing from one day to the next,” continues Vianney Delgrange. Looking for more than just technical expertise, Konecta took the strategic decision to become a Zendesk Premier Support customer. This plan provides preferential technical support and proved key to the project’s success.
“Our contract with the organiser of the Olympics included some very strict demands in terms of SLA and uptime, with severe penalties for non-compliance. So it was vital we had the right measures in place, especially given the ever-growing number of cyber threats. The Premier Support plan allowed us to take on the Olympics feeling cool, calm and confident,” reveals Corinne Descombes, Project Director at Konecta.
Shared satisfaction
Beyond implementing the solution incredibly fast, the results speak for themselves.
Integrating Zendesk enabled Konecta to overcome the initial challenges and significantly improve email management, with a response time of less than 30 minutes and an average handle time of just 2 minutes and 23 seconds. “Choosing Zendesk was an important step for us. It met all the demands of Paris 2024, even the ones we thought would be difficult to manage. We had no trouble in setting up fast and seamless processes in a constantly changing environment. What’s more, Zendesk was so reliable that we were able to work without worrying about anything or needing to ask for any help. Its intuitive design made it easy to set everything up quickly by ourselves. Automation and easy set-up are two major plus points of Zendesk,” explains Vianney Delgrange.
Corinne believes changing the solution was an important milestone for the project, as Zendesk had been endorsed by Paris 2024 from the outset. “They not only saw that we’re able to react and make decisions quickly, but also that we can find a partner who can get up and running fast. At the end of the Olympic Games, Paris 2024 was delighted they had chosen Konecta and its partners to support it.”
At Konecta, its internal Paris 2024 project team, 30 agents and their managers all really loved the solution. “Choosing Zendesk meant that we were able to give our agents an intuitive tool they could use to meet the handling times Konecta had committed to with Paris 2024. Our agents are essentially our first customers and they all bought-in immediately,” explains Corinne.
Zendesk’s side conversation feature also turned out to be worth its weight in gold. “Our teams were able to use this feature to communicate with Paris 2024 partners who didn’t have the solution. Even better, it saved all of their conversations in the system without affecting the main flow. This was vital because it meant agents had access to all the available information whenever they came back to a conversation,” points out Vianney. “The side conversations feature also helped us ensure compliance. All the staff at Paris 2024 in charge of validating information were able to monitor and check the content of emails in real time.”
Zendesk steps up to the plate
Following the success of this project, Zendesk is now a firm fixture in Konecta’s catalogue of solutions. “When and wherever it makes sense, we’ll be suggesting Zendesk. Even now, we’re still finding new things you can do with it… but it’s an amazingly intelligent and intuitive platform that outsourcers can benefit from hugely. Zendesk is super responsive and it allows us to be just as responsive with our own clients,” explains Vianney.
Konecta also added Zendesk to its offerings because of the level of security it guarantees.
“Offering Zendesk is a big draw because it handles data on European servers. This helps us meet an important demand from many of our customers to keep data secure. All in all, Zendesk is more than just a technical solution – it’s a comprehensive solution that covers data processing, support and management. In short, it’s a partner you can trust,” Corinne sums up.
