Automatic routing in Zendesk Support eliminated hours of work

Based in San Francisco, CA, Scribd is the largest social publishing and reading site in the world. They make it easy for anyone to share and discover informative, entertaining, and original written content on the web and mobile devices.

Scribd’s vision is to liberate the written word, and to connect people and organizations with the information and ideas that matter most to them. From teachers and students to aspiring authors and major publishing companies, everyone seems to use Scribd. As a result, Scribd’s community support department has its hands full.

“At first, we used Gmail filters and canned responses to streamline our work,” said Jason Bentley, Director of Community Support. “But threads started getting lost, and we had no way to track tickets or associate them with each other. Our support department was going to fall apart if we didn’t put a customer support platform in place.”

As Scribd began its search for a support solution, Bentley had clear requirements. At his previous company, they used a traditional on-premise application for support. “Every change to the application required three database administrators and a conference call to India,” explained Bentley. “I made it very clear that this time, I want to go with an easy to use, web-based customer service platform.”

Bentley began asking peers for recommendations on cloud-based support solutions. Across the board, they told him to check out Zendesk Support.

“My friend at Twitter told me, ‘We just rolled out Zendesk Support and it’s rocking our world,'” said Bentley. “Twitter’s support manager gave me a full tour of their solution, and explained exactly how Zendesk Support could relieve our pain points. I was incredibly impressed with the intuitive API and overall ease of use.”

Scribd implemented Support within a day and a half and gave the system the same look and feel as the Scribd website. Today, Scribd handles up to 600 support tickets per day—on everything from lost passwords to copyright notices—through Support.

Thanks to Support’s automations, Scribd’s incoming tickets are automatically reviewed by keyword and routed to the appropriate support technician for immediate attention. This efficiency enables Scribd to resolve about 95 percent of its support tickets within one day. The company also uses more than 100 macros to cover all basic form responses and to add tags to classify tickets.

“Zendesk Support’s automatic routing is a lifesaver that’s eliminating countless hours of work,” said Bentley. “It ensures that each ticket will be handled by the most qualified technician, which means we can deliver better, faster service.”

Because Support is an easily-accessible, hosted solution, Scribd’s support staff can access tickets from anywhere. This helps them deliver timely, attentive service—one of the company’s hallmarks.

“Our technicians have all used Zendesk Support at home, remotely, or even on an iPad, and it looks and performs great,” said Bentley. “If a publisher calls us, upset that their copyrighted book somehow appeared on Scribd, I can immediately log onto Zendesk Support from anywhere and process a removal request—and just like that, it’s done.”

“Zendesk staff are fantastic and incredibly professional,” Bentley added. “They understand that our success is their success.”