Alice's Customer Service Transformation with Freshdesk

Alice, headquartered in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, is a leading travel tech start-up and Israel’s largest online travel agency. Founded in 2014, Alice commenced its operations in April 2016 and has since become one of the largest tourist sites in Israel. Unlike traditional online travel agencies that focus only on price to attract customers, Alice focuses on customer experience and customer service to differentiate itself in a cluttered market, along with attractive prices. Alice's vision is centered on superior customer experience, and it aims to deliver on this promise through efficient and effective customer service.

Alice, a leading travel tech start-up and Israel’s largest online travel agency, was facing significant challenges in managing its customer service requests. Prior to implementing Freshdesk, Alice used a shared mailbox for all agents to handle customer service requests. This system lacked a logical ticket-tracking mechanism, leading to inefficiencies and difficulties in monitoring and following up on tickets. As Alice continued to grow, this mechanism proved inadequate. There were no set service level agreements for ticket resolution, no escalation process for high-priority tickets, and no automations or rules in place to improve efficiency. The lack of these features resulted in agents spending unnecessary time choosing which tickets to address, and a lack of visibility into the overall customer support process.

Alice chose Freshdesk to manage their increasing customer requests. Freshdesk provided an easy and effective mechanism to manage customer tickets, giving Alice visibility into its overall customer support process and its agents a smarter way of managing the ticket-load. With Freshdesk’s round-robin ticket assignment system, Alice could automatically assign tickets to an agent the moment they came in, reducing the time spent in assigning tickets and improving response and resolution times. Alice also used Freshdesk’s built-in automations and rules to automatically close tickets that were pending at the customer’s end for a specified duration, allowing agents to focus on open/priority tickets. Using Dispatch’r, Freshdesk’s automated categorization and prioritization module, and built-in reporting capabilities, Alice was able to effectively determine agent loads and optimization opportunities.

• Within a month of implementing Freshdesk, Alice saw a significant improvement in its customer service operations. The first response rate improved markedly, aligning with Alice’s overall vision of superior customer experience. The implementation of Freshdesk eliminated the need for agents to choose the tickets they would work on, thereby improving efficiency. The use of Freshdesk’s built-in automations and rules also helped agents focus on open/priority tickets, further enhancing productivity. The automated categorization and prioritization module, Dispatch’r, and built-in reporting capabilities allowed Alice to effectively determine agent loads and identify optimization opportunities. Alice plans to further enhance its customer service ecosystem by integrating Freshchat, a modern messaging software, to provide customers with a self-service mechanism using FAQs customized based on the page the user is on.

• Agent productivity increased by 40%

• Open tickets reduced by 70%

• Number of agents: 20