Teamworks delivers scalable white-glove service with 100% CSAT

In 2006, Teamworks created an innovative time- and cost-saving software solution that now powers more than 6,000 elite sports teams worldwide, including members of the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, Premier League and AFL. The collaboration and operations platform features apps for scheduling, communication, academics, nutrition and brand building – all designed to support athlete engagement for teams and managers. Athletic organisations count on Teamworks’ cutting-edge technology to streamline daily workflows, drive efficiency and create a more unified culture.

Kyle Bennett heads up the support team, which serves a diverse customer base, including athletes, their families, coaches and club owners. “Support agents handle tickets on a variety of issues, from answering basic login questions to helping teams configure the platform for league drafts”, says Bennett. That requires agility and coordination among team members around the globe – not to mention a flexible CX system to match.

Agile CX is “the coolest thing in the world”

Growing at an exciting pace, Teamworks knew their existing processes and workflows would need a boost to keep up. Bennett had experience both using different solutions and helping teams transition from Salesforce and Freshdesk onto Jira Service Desk, so he guided the search for new CX tools at Teamworks when he came aboard in 2021. The team was looking for a system that offered multiple levels of functionality, stability and scalability.

Whist Jira proved too limited, Salesforce rated at the opposite end of complexity and time to value. “With Salesforce, you’re not going to be able to do what you want to do quickly unless you invest in professional services”, explains Bennett. Intercom also didn’t make the cut as it’s not a native omnichannel solution.

Ultimately, all other solutions in the market were either too basic or too cumbersome to provide the agility, scalability and insights that Teamworks needed. Zendesk stood out and passed every test with flying colours, quickly earning approval once it was implemented.

“There’s so much value in being able to make strategic changes on the fly, which I wouldn’t be able to do in Salesforce”, Bennett points out. “With Zendesk, I can quickly create new views and data reports or open up a chat channel whenever I need.”

Ease of use and change management are huge advantages for Bennett, too. “When it comes to Zendesk, I own the setup, admin, sandbox, testing, queues, triage, workflows and any iterations on those elements”, he adds. “It’s the coolest thing in the world.”

Sky-high retention starts with elite service availability

Getting a robust solution in place was critical for Teamworks, which relies on 170 employees across 15 countries to serve its global customers. Despite being an SMB, Teamworks operates in a high-stakes Enterprise model, selling and supporting the world’s most elite athletic clubs. In this billion-dollar industry, every product and service is scrutinised – from software to customer support.

Strong relationships are also pivotal in professional and collegiate athletics. Elite customers enjoy having one person they can contact at any time of day, so Teamworks provides global support seven days a week, 365 days a year. Agents handle queries 21 hours a day Monday to Friday and 18 hours a day on weekends – all whilst striving to deliver the highest quality service.

Switching to Zendesk made the team’s job easier and improved the customer experience. Ticket triage and automations helped Teamworks implement prioritisations and service level agreements, leading to a jaw-dropping 100% CSAT.

A customer intelligence hub to drive product improvement

Leveraging analytics also transformed Teamworks support. “We’re able to pull tickets in Zendesk and calculate the amount spent on each agent, per minute”, Bennett reveals. That level of granularity makes it possible to measure cost per ticket, allowing Teamworks to explore cost-saving initiatives.

“The reporting functionality in Zendesk is unbelievably powerful”, adds Bennett. “We’ve made some great product decisions based on the data we’re getting.” For example, agents are driving product enhancements using Voice of Customer reporting.

Many Teamworks customers report feeling less stressed about getting their issue resolved when they know the team is working on it. Bennett therefore realised that first response time is more important than resolution time and pushed for further analysis. “We were able to hone in on first response times for chat versus other aggregate channels and create a Zendesk dashboard comparing month over month and year over year growth.”

“We saw a 93% YoY decrease in first response time”, adds Bennett. “A big part of that improvement is due to Zendesk providing great visibility into our strategy, workflows and standard operating procedures.”

Doing the impossible: scaling white-glove service

Since launching Zendesk omnichannel support, Teamworks has been able to scale white-glove service and collaborate seamlessly in real time, yielding even stronger CX. One of the team’s major achievements was increasing self service while reducing ticket volume. Bennett explains “there is a tonne of value coming from the help centre. Our help centre article views are going up and the number of tickets year over year is declining”.

The team also leverages chat and video support to deliver faster service. Agents have already clocked an impressive first reply time of under 30 seconds on chat. “Customers on the professional side need verbal communication”, stresses Bennett. “Using the Zoom integration for customer calls, instead of Talk, will be huge for us.”

Teamworks even found two ways to drive frictionless collaboration and add visibility across the company with marketplace APIs. The team uses deep Slack and Jira integrations to control the escalation process and ensure that ticket escalations are only initiated by support agents. “The integrations between Zendesk and Slack are just as critical as the Zendesk tool itself”, Bennett reveals. “We’ve had a lot of success doing asynchronous work in Slack.”

Different teams can also access 360-degree customer views thanks to Zendesk’s bidirectional integrations with Salesforce for sales and ClientSuccess for success management.

Future-proofed CX to keep up with a changing business

In Bennett’s mind, Teamworks is on the right track and progressing well. “We set out to build a platform with a shared calendar and communication tool, where everybody involved in supporting the athlete could communicate one to one or one to many, and technology could introduce efficiency gains in athletics the way it has in other industries. A place to upload files, game films and playbooks. Starting out by addressing that basic need has led us to create an entire operations platform that sits at the centre of collegiate and pro sports.”

“We have every intention of becoming the Google of elite athletics – the main platform through which all data flows and becomes actionable”, Bennett continues. “We want to power club operations, front and back offices, and the way elite athletes function from practice to practice, class to class, game day to game day.”

To that end, the team is focused on consolidation and communication. “We’re taking the products that we’ve built, acquiring new ones that are complementary and creating a data ecosystem in Teamworks that other companies can integrate with”, adds Bennett. Teamworks has already realised tremendous CX potential with Zendesk and Bennett is confident it will drive more improvements in the future. “What makes Zendesk special is its flexibility in combination with the limitless power of what you can do. What can’t you do?”