How eXceed helps orthodontists around the world with Freshdesk

Key numbers for Freshdesk:

• 3 years using Freshdesk
• 450 tickets per week
• 97% SLA level achieved

Industry: Healthcare supplies

Location: Witten, Germany

Previous solutions: e-mail, AmoCRM

Favorite features:

• Analytics
• Teamhuddle
• Ticket grouping

Other solutions considered: 

• Trello
• Pyrus
• Self-developed support system

About Star Smile and eXceed:

Star Smile is the pioneer of aligner development in Russia. The company also develops solutions for virtual treatment plans for specialists around the world and owns a dental prosthetic lab.

eXceed is an international subsidiary of Star Smile with headquarters in Witten, Germany. eXceed’s cloud solution calculates the optimal position of dental braces for each particular case and develops 3D models of treatment results. Afterwards, all that the client clinics have to do is to print mouth guards and aligners according to eXceed data.

eXceed software allows orthodontists to calculate the correct braces position on a 3D model of a patient in need of occlusion correction and other kinds of orthodontic treatment.

In-house 3D printers make it possible for the dental clinics to print mouth guard sets at the site, thus decreasing lab costs by up to 70%.

Who: Anastasia Valua, head of eXceed client support

Support department helps doctors with any of their questions regarding our solution. Most of our clients are from the US, Europe and Australia. We not only provide technical support, but also act as a medium between clinics and our company, gather feedback and provide consultations.

Prior to using Freshdesk, we faced a number of obstacles, which made us start the search for a new solution. Previously we used AmoCRM, but it’s not really a helpdesk system, so its capabilities were limited. We couldn’t manage and group tickets, set automation rules, create full analytical reports and customize the system to fit our needs.

Other functions lacking from AmoCRM were agent roles, joint email for tickets, ticket assignment, time tracking, SLA policies and advanced analytics.

Discovering Freshdesk:

We started by going online and compiling our own market research. The goal was to find a complex scalable solution; ideally, with a possibility of integrating a helpdesk, CRM system, online chat and call center all together in one system to have a 360 degree view of our clients. Finding something for long-term development and company growth was also a priority.

Why Freshdesk? Because it has:

• User-friendly interface
• All of our required modules and capabilities
• Compelling price plans with varying functionality for different teams
• A robust knowledge base

What changes did Freshdesk bring?

Currently we fully work in the helpdesk system and use SLA policies to control the support quality. We rely on Freshdesk analytics to measure  KPIs and subsequent bonuses and other motivation program points for our employees.

Our shift lasts from 8 am to 11 pm. Tickets are sent through email and Freshchat, and then get assigned to agents. We actively use canned responses to work faster and automate certain processes. We also created a client base to make it easier for the agents to identify clients.

Freshdesk allows us to manage SLA policies for 3 types of ticket priority: low, medium and high. As it is easy to monitor the agents’ performance, we have reached 98% of tickets resolved within SLA. If we encounter a ticket too complex for standard SLA, we can always change resolution time, allowing us to steer clear of situations when agents are unfairly punished for not adhering to SLA. This helps us boost the employees’ motivation.

Personally, my favorite functions are related to communication within the team and help us communicate within context. There are 2 main ones:

• Possibility of sharing emails with other teams outside of support. We do this when we need advice from other departments. It’s very convenient in Freshdesk, as the other team’s answer appears in the ticket as an internal comment shown only to employees. This feature allows us to communicate seamlessly and never lose track of any information related to the ticket.
• Internal chat by TeamHuddle – we use it for internal communication in the support team. You can customize notifications for your own convenience, and you also get email notifications when you are mentioned in a chat. This feature helps us get information as fast as possible and easily be ready to help.

As a manager, I also like these features for my day-to-day work:

• Analytics – it allows you to download advanced reports for any date, agent or other variables. I download reports and discuss them with the team weekly, which is an immense help to our productivity.
• Re-assignment of a ticket to another employee – when the original assignee was not qualified enough or had no time.
• Transparency – full ticket resolution journey is saved, so in case of any issue you can investigate the conversation and resolution steps.

The implementation process

Freshdesk was fast and easy to implement. We didn’t spend too much time training agents, as the system was intuitively understandable. Swedbyte was also an immense help during this process: company representatives were quick to answer all the questions and provide necessary information about implementation and usage of Freshdesk.

The only thing in the implementation we should have done differently would be employee training. We implemented the system first and taught employees ourselves how to work with Freshdesk, and only after that held a training session with Swedbyte experts. During the training we learnt about new features and shortcuts, which meant we later had to re-train our employees on some topics. So my personal advice would be not to skip expert training: while the system is quite intuitive, there is a lot of professional knowledge and practical advice that can only be provided by experienced users.

How Freshdesk changed our work process?

Tickets are resolved much faster, because Freshdesk changed the ticket sorting process. Previously, when we used email for both internal and external messages, everything was a mess, so some of the tickets were inevitably lost. Now there are different types of messages marked by different colors, which helps agents filter tickets and easily find needed information. Clients also notice that we have it all under control. Our resolution time has shortened and our precision, context and stored message history are helping us see the bigger picture.

As we didn’t use special helpdesk systems before, we never really tracked any statistics related to customer service, such as average response time, average handling time, SLA percentage, etc. Now we take full advantage of Freshdesk analytical reports to track efficiency and boost motivation.

We used Google Sheets for storing canned responses before, but it was inconvenient for the employees, who had to manually copy and paste these texts from tab to tab. Now canned responses, as well as full client profiles and their previous inquiries, are stored within Freshdesk, sparing our agents a lot of time and energy. 

Bonus points to Freshdesk for interface design – our agents love its green color scheme, calling it modern, relaxing and motivational.

Plans for the future

We plan to implement NPS and add a CSAT survey to every resolved ticket. We also plan to create a website form as a support channel.

We are going to return to other Freshworks products – Freshsales and Freshdesk Contact Center, because we only canceled our subscription because of the pandemic. Now we are ready to restart it and try what else Freshworks has to offer for our internal use.