Younited seamlessly transitions to Zendesk across all markets to uplevel its customer contact strategy
A centralised, omnichannel support solution is improving the experience for Younited’s customers across Europe and making it simpler for them to access its services. Its agents are happier too, thanks to a wealth of customisable tools.
“Zendesk’s technology enables simpler contact forms, more robust FAQs, automatic responses, categorisation and smart routing. All of this enhances our customer contact strategy, which was our primary objective from the beginning.”
Miguel Macedo Parente
Senior Product Manager at Younited
“Despite being live for just a few months across all markets, we've already noticed a reduction in response times for customers, along with an improvement in the quality of those responses”
Miguel Macedo Parente
Senior Product Manager at Younited
Zendesk customer since
2022
-22%
Full Resolution Time improvement YoY
-43%
First Response Time improvement YoY
+36%
Number of Help Centre Article Views YoY
+3.38%
Customer Satisfaction Score YoY
Younited
Europe's leading instant credit provider
Younited is the leading instant credit provider in Europe, offering consumer loans of up to 50,000 euros. Its continuous innovation, cutting-edge technology and exceptional user experience have allowed nearly a million customers to date to access instant, simple, transparent credit. People are using these funds to do everything from refurbishing their home or going on holiday, to buying a new smartphone or bringing a project to life.
The company was founded in 2009 in Paris and has expanded over the last 15 years to operate across five countries – France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany. It generates close to €2bn in yearly Gross Merchandise Value, while at the same time deploying a credit strategy that promotes transparency and inclusiveness.
Supporting the company’s mission
Younited’s goal from the beginning has been to support the financial wellbeing of its customers and to do that, it needed a robust customer service strategy that could effectively answer any and all queries that people might have around applying for a loan.
“After doing a thorough investigation of our tools and processes, we understood that we were lacking a centralised, omnichannel interface that our customer service agents could use to efficiently and effectively communicate with our customers,” explains Miguel Macedo Parente, Senior Product Manager at Younited. “After doing a couple of demos with Zendesk’s technology, we were impressed with the breadth of features it offered – from smart routing to conversation tracking and automation – together with the facility to leverage its tools across all our markets, as scalability is key for us.”
Getting the most out of the technology
Teams right across Younited are now using Zendesk and the data it generates, including customer service agents, analysts, the debt collection teams responsible for recovering overdue payments from individuals who have failed to pay their debts, and the compliance team that helps guard against fraud.
On the customer service side, Zendesk technology is currently supporting all written communications, including email, SMS, WhatsApp and social apps, so everything is centralised. Its Contact Forms and its Help Centre are also run through Zendesk. “The technology is extremely flexible, making it easy to monitor customer activity and iterate accordingly. For example, we can track the number of views for each article in our Help Centre, identify the most searched-for articles, and address any gaps in content promptly,” says Miguel.
There are plenty of advantages for Younited’s service agents too, including pre-sorting and directing tickets, so they get to the right person faster. Auto-completing forms with relevant data also saves agents time, as does the ability to automate responses to questions that come up again and again, so agents can focus on more complex or time sensitive issues. “Zendesk’s technology enables simpler contact forms, more robust FAQs, automatic responses, categorisation and smart routing,” says Miguel. “All of this enhances our customer contact strategy, which was our primary objective from the beginning. Despite being live for just a few months across all markets, we've already noticed a reduction in response times for customers, along with an improvement in the quality of those responses.”
Better reporting reaps benefits
Until now, Younited has been working to integrate Zendesk into its day-to-day operations but it’s now entering a new period of fine tuning and performance analysis. “Zendesk enables us to access a whole host of metrics that we can use to find the pain points for customers in the loan process, as well as new growth opportunities for us”, says Miguel. “We’re gathering learnings from the platform and sharing best practice across our different business units.”
Having one centralised platform also makes it easier for Younited’s operations team and managers to understand performance year-on-year. “The numbers are all showing positive trends,” says Miguel. “First contact resolution stands at 90%, with 97% of tickets resolved, and a CSAT score of 75%, aligning with market standards.”
Leveraging data and AI
After the smooth implementation of Zendesk’s technology, Younited has big plans for the year ahead. “We greatly appreciate the seamless configuration and ongoing support from Zendesk,” says Miguel.“ Deploying the technology across five countries with diverse teams, languages, and cultures could have been challenging, but it wasn't. In fact, an internal survey revealed that 90-100% of our agents were satisfied with the transition and recognised its benefits for our customers,” he adds.
Some initiatives that are already underway are connecting Zendesk’s software with Younited’s Customer Relationship Management and Customer Data Platform systems, so agents have even more consolidated information on the customers they speak to. Younited is also exploring Zendesk’s AI and automation capabilities.
“As a user-centric company, our focus is on continually enhancing the customer experience within our solutions,” explains Miguel. “At a C-suite level, there is a huge focus on the customer and it’s a key point of all decision-making processes, from top to bottom. Zendesk has helped us take a big step forward in this regard.”
