“Zendesk has definitely given us the competitive edge. We’re keeping customers happy by responding quicker and we’re understanding them in greater detail. Zendesk has also helped us capture information in the sales process that provides us with a database in one system.”
Anthony Plummer
Group Chief Technology Officer at Ligentia
“Zendesk has played an important role in helping us and customers make smarter decisions in real time, on a daily basis.”
Paradzai Chibanguza
Product Marketing Manager at Ligentia
Number of employees
1300+
Customer since
2020
83.2%
Requester improvement time
54.4%
Full resolve time improvement
10%
Yearly agent output improvement
Ligentia is more responsive to customer needs, thanks to Zendesk
It was neither ideal nor convenient.
“Our initial solution was email, so it wasn’t really a solution,” begins Anthony Plummer, Group Chief Technology Officer at Ligentia.
“The pain point was uncontrolled emails going to everyone, everywhere and having the whole world copied in the chain,” he explains further.
Ligentia, a leading provider of global supply chain solutions, was aware that it needed a customer support solution that would set it apart from its competitors and improve the operational efficiencies of its customer experience teams.
And in 2020, it was time for change. What it needed was a solution that served the needs of its customers and streamlined the workflow of its support and CX teams.
Enter Zendesk.
Ligentia’s dedicated global team of over 1,300 employees coordinates end-to-end supply chain management for its customers across retail, fashion, healthcare, and other sectors, with headquarters in Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania.
“We wanted to make sure our colleagues were productive and happy and not just drowning in emails. We knew we weren’t serving our customers well enough; some questions were being missed and we had inadequate insights into what our customers needed or were asking for,” Anthony adds.
Ligentia took on board Zendesk’s full suite of service offerings including Support, Live Chat, Guide, Explore, and AI.
The Differentiator
Ligentia currently has about 200 customer service agents across the world in destination markets such as the UK, Northern Europe, China, US and Australia, with plans to scale to 300 people and in more markets.
For Anthony, using Zendesk has enabled the company to set itself apart from its competitors which still use email as a customer support function.
“Zendesk has definitely given us the competitive edge. We’re keeping customers happy by responding quicker and we’re understanding them in greater detail. Zendesk has also helped us capture information in the sales process that provides us with a database in one system,” he says.
Ligentia uses the platform mainly to manage issue resolution as well as answering customer questions.
Anthony explains, “A customer can ask, ‘Where is my shipment?’ and it could be stuck at a port; or the question could be around general invoicing but now we have a better understanding of which subject matter expert should handle it in order to get back to the customer more fully and quicker than before.”
CX is Key
Ligentia prides itself on having established long-term customer relationships–driven largely by its focus on customer experience and service.
With over 28 years’ experience in creating more sustainable and agile supply chains, Ligentia solves complex problems and provides world-class sector and regional expertise, backed by smart technology.
According to Paradzai Chibanguza, Product Marketing Manager at Ligentia, “Zendesk has played an important role in helping us and customers make smarter decisions in real time, on a daily basis.”
Anthony agrees, adding, “Having Zendesk really empowered our CX and CS teams to have information at their fingertips because being able to have this information has enabled them to provide a better level of service.”
This level of insight and functionality has helped make agents more profitable. They are increasing output and productivity per active licence by 10 per cent year on year. Additionally, when comparing the past 12 months with the first year of Zendesk usage, Ligentia has seen a 22.7 per cent SLA improvement.
The company also has its own proprietary visibility tool, Ligentix, which helps its customers access a cost-effective, efficient ‘big picture view’ of their supply chain be it at SKU-level, deep data analytics, or useful industry insights.
“We’re always pushing and innovating,” Anthony notes.
He adds, “Previously we couldn’t spot trends across the customer base, but now we find that customers are asking questions around certain topics and now we understand that a lot quicker and can go out with a customer advisory on the issue multiple customers are asking about. It has also helped us get stats that enable us to be proactive about reporting, even on an individual level.”
This approach in turn helps funnel that information into Ligentia’s product roadmap and its customer communications.
Going Global
Ligentia is planning on expanding and rolling out the use of Zendesk to more of its teams globally.
The company prides itself on going beyond boundaries to take the complexity out of its customers managing the global supply chain. Backed by smart technology and flexible infrastructure, Ligentia is dedicated to making sure customer goods get exactly where they need to be, whether by air, ocean, freight, rail, or road. Anthony says moving forward, the plan is to roll-out the use of Zendesk to Poland, Holland and Vietnam.
The company is getting better all the time at responding to customers. There has been an 83.2 per cent improvement in requester wait time, meaning Ligentia customers are waiting far less time for a response now than in years gone by. Additionally, full resolve time in the last 12 months is 54.4 per cent better than Ligentia’s first 12 months of Zendesk usage. In short, the company is handling more customer interactions in less time with fewer people.
“Speeding up our response times and the resolution of issues is important to us–it is our key focus. What Zendesk has also offered us is a standardised level of excellence in operations and standardised communication and performance management,” Anthony says.
The company is also integrating Ligentix into Zendesk to ensure a singular view of information across systems.
Anthony concludes, “Zendesk has been good as a partner. We’ve had regular reviews, which also helps me sell it internally by showing stats that our teams have become more productive and proactive. Our latest contract renewal is a testament of our good working relationship and how we can push the product usage around the world and develop a good model for doing that.”
