CHALLENGES

• Old-school ticketing systems
• Lack of customer happiness
• Lack of multi-channel support

The Company Founded in 1931, Bridgestone is the world’s largest tire production and distribution company. Implementation and monitoring of their operational and financial strategies happen at the back office solution business unit situated in France and Benelux. Innovative tire technology led their company to become the primary supplier of native equipment to all major car manufacturers. The problem With over 150,000 employees, Bridgestone operates 180 production plants in 26 countries. Bridgestone’s tires cater to a wide market ranging from passenger cars, trucks and buses to agricultural trucks, motor sports and aircrafts. The company’s customer support team for solution business unit is managed by 15 agents who are based in France. Technology at Bridgestone is driven to make life safer for people across various demographics. On an average day, the customer support agents at Bridgestone receive around 95-100 tickets. The topics of the questions range from financial and administrative functions to commercial and information systems. The customer support agents handled their incoming tickets through Outlook and phone channels. The outdated system made it very difficult for them to integrate these channels under one domain. Testing out other SaaS tools failed to work to their benefit considering the limited resources the tools offered. They faced constant dissatisfaction of the customers who waited forever for a follow up. "We adopted Freshdesk because it is a highly adaptable solution with a lot of metrics that allows us to track and follow up on our customers and agents efficiently." - Christophe Tomborski, Back Office Manager, Bridgestone The Solution The company wanted to turn things around and have a solid customer support system that not only provided spectacular multiple channel support but was also simple and effective. They were introduced to Freshdesk by the French authorized reseller, Cirruseo, while they were trying out another product. During their evaluation phase, they tested the full functionality of Freshdesk by testing a web portal. The fully customizable portal arrested their attention immediately. Multiple channel support, ease of use and the SLAs helped them escalate their decision to finalize Freshdesk as their customer support helpdesk. The Benefits For Bridgestone’s agents, the shift to Freshdesk helped them realize their goal of having a single point tool to handle support across all channels. The multiple channel support assists the agents to get back to their customers across all departments with timely responses, which was not feasible previously. Service level agreements (SLAs) deployed using Freshdesk eased their work and increased the productivity. They were 95% successful in scaling up their customer support ladder by responding to tickets faster with the aid of these SLAs. Freshdesk helps Bridgestone’s agents integrate satisfaction surveys into their customer support conversation, allowing them to measure the happiness of their customers. Gamification is another feature which is very popular with the team and motivates everyone to work efficiently. Crisp reports and gamification features of Freshdesk helps the agents keep track of their helpdesk activity and also monitor the efficiency of the entire system.

About TeleResult TeleResult is a telecoms consulting agency which assists large corporate and government organisations in achieving value through the appropriate use of telecommunications technology. The company specialises in independent technology and telecommunications consulting, including data, voice, mobiles, image, and video services. Formerly known as Housley Consulting, TeleResult has been working with Australian businesses for over 44 years, and continues to grow its 2000+ client base by providing excellent customer service. Exploration of Their Journey to Purchase Freshdesk Exceptional customer service is a key contributor to the success of TeleResult. Providing services to over 2000 clients on a daily basis, TeleResult has a constant influx of enquiries which need to be dealt with efficiently, whilst ensuring standards are kept high and customers are kept happy. With clients including the NSW Government, TeleResult service representatives are often required to deal with numerous executives from one entity, and so the company needed a solution that could capture and track all the service data, on one platform. Although TeleResult had an inhouse solution which strived to capture the journey of its customers, it didn’t collate information the way the company needed it to. Speaking to industry executives about service management software, TeleResult discovered Freshdesk. Before committing to a new solution, Alex Nadeau, a Senior Client Manager at TeleResult, tested a range of solutions to distinguish which service would work best for TeleResult’s needs. Alex says Freshdesk stood out head and shoulders above the other solutions as it met and exceeded all of the company’s requirements for customer support management, and also offered a competitive pricing plan. How Freshdesk is Used TeleResult relies on Freshdesk’s software for its customer relationship management. With thousands of emails coming through on a monthly basis, the TeleResult team use Freshdesk to process requests from clients, ensuring no ball is dropped and all queries are responded to in a timely manner. Raising service tickets on the Freshdesk platform, the team at TeleResult can log each client issue and capture the full service spectrum through to resolution. Whether the client wishes to request a new phone, or is having issues with their current one, TeleResult staff ensure each and every request is managed through Freshdesk. Providing an intermediary service, TeleResult also needs to account for issues raised between its clients and large telecommunications carriers. TeleResult also uses Freshdesk to capture the journey with each telecoms carrier, when undertaking dispute management. "Freshdesk makes it easier for us to manage customer information and service requests. It also presents customer data in an appealing manner, helping us distinguish improvements in service time, and any pain points in performance", - Alex Nadeau, Senior Client Manager Challenges Freshdesk Solved Providing monthly service reports for clients has historically been a time consuming exercise for the TeleResult service team. Capturing the journey of each customer, Freshdesk’s solution removes the burden of manual report building, integrating with TeleResult’s own software product, Telecontrol, which manages expenses. For Alex Nadeau, TeleResult’s Senior Client Manager, this integration is a lifesaver when it comes to team productivity. “Freshdesk makes it easier for us to manage customer information and service requests. It also presents customer data in an appealing manner, helping us distinguish improvements in service time, and any pain points in performance”, Alex says. Customer satisfaction is a key success factor for TeleResult, and response time plays a big part in meeting this goal. Using Freshdesk to gain a complete overview of customer requests, and the response time to such requests, their management is able to set performance improvement benchmarks for their teams, on a regular basis. “Follow throughs on customer requests have been much easier since bringing on board Freshdesk. We’ve added a customised “rule” feature to our Freshdesk service, which actively monitors ticket time response. If a customer or third party doesn’t come back to us in five days, the ticket automatically re-opens and prompts our service team to follow up, instead of waiting what can sometimes be a few months to receive an answer”, Alex says. Having previously used an inhouse solution to manage customer support requests, Alex found that another benefit of using Freshdesk software is the constant updates and additional features being added to the platform, “just today I received an email from Freshdesk Australia’s country manager, Sree Pillai, who let us know of an upcoming new feature, which we’ve volunteered to trial. Freshdesk is always proactively growing its offering. When we come to Freshdesk with a business requirement, the team will do their best to meet and satisfy it.” TeleResult’s Support Strategy TeleResult’s support strategy works on response time. Each client has a service level agreement with TeleResult, which is integrated into the Freshdesk system using the priority feature. This ensures each request is responded to within an agreed timeframe. Meeting the service level agreement is essentially the key performance indicator for the TeleResult team. TeleResult also uses Freshdesk’s customer satisfaction system to give clients the opportunity to provide feedback on services, and ultimately ensure that the service is always improving. As a service provider, customer happiness and experience is vital to the success of TeleResult.