leboncoin deals in exceptional customer experiences

leboncoin is a true success story. In 12 years, the online classified ads site has become the sixth most popular website in France, across all categories and audiences, according to 2018 results from Médiamétrie NetRatings. Its customer service relies on Zendesk Support, Guide, and Chat solutions to provide the best-possible support and information to super-independent users.

Just imagine: every month, as many as 28 million people visit leboncoin—almost half the French population. Visitors go there to develop a secondary income stream, carry out their work, find a job, or even to find a guitar, just as Iggy Pop did. And some even come across unexpectedly the love of their live while buying a refrigerator or a surfboard! This means that in terms of help, the expectations and needs of its users—buyers and sellers, professionals and consumers—are as pressing as they are diverse.

From lost passwords to connection issues, or trouble emailing a seller, leboncoin hoped that by adopting a new and integrated customer service solution, it could continue to actively respond to customer questions and keep up with the heavy volume. At the end of 2017, leboncoin implemented Zendesk Support, Guide, and Chat, replacing an open-source ticketing tool that was beginning to show its limitations.

“We wanted a single tool to manage interactions with our customers via multiple channels, along with chat, ticketing, and FAQs,” explained Sabrina Amiri, Head of Content and Customer Service at leboncoin. “The idea was to also gain access to very precise reporting, to get a better understanding of the customer journey throughout the site and the various channels. The Zendesk solution meets these needs. It helps us make the right decisions and improve the customer experience and the organisation of our department.”

Zendesk has since been adopted by other departments within leboncoin, including its legal team and telemarketing group, which use the system to collaborate with customer service. The corporate IT team is also using Zendesk to manage internal tickets. “Migration was progressively carried out throughout 2018 within our various teams. We received end-to-end support and advice from Zendesk, and the handover was carried out well. We got all the help we needed. It’s very convenient to integrate a complete, scalable solution without mobilising technical resources, and all for minimum investment,” Sabrina Amiri added.

The customer service team’s feedback has been very positive. “They feel like they’re saving time. Automation is helping them tremendously. They also find the layout very user-friendly,” Sabrina Amiri said.

With at least 35,000 visits a week, the FAQs hosted on Zendesk Guide reveal the self-service component’s added value, reflected in the overall customer satisfaction rating, which has reached 85 percent. Some users even send thank you messages for the quality of service provided.

“With Guide, users can get answers independently and faster, no matter what time they log in. It’s not dependent on the site’s opening hours,” Sabrina Amiri said. “Guide also allows our agents to improve the FAQs regularly with new articles and to continually improve its content, based on comments left by users.”

As leboncoin handles 800,000 new ads each day, the quality control is another key factor. There is a dedicated team for this task. “With Zendesk, we have developed a custom workflow that enables the leboncoin community to alert us to ads that seem non-compliant or unreliable. In this way, we can respond quickly to the person who raised the alert and we can improve the quality of service on our site,” Sabrina Amiri explained.

leboncoin intends to keep on optimising its customers’ experience and to keep making their lives easier with Zendesk. “In the long term, the idea is to build in chat bots,” said Sabrina Amiri. “These virtual agents can help our users anytime by searching in Guide for information, articles, and FAQs that match their expectations. Another goal is to keep on automating internal processes and workflow in order to improve productivity.” So many improvements behind the scenes, and leboncoin customers will be the first to benefit.