How Star21 uses SweetHawk apps to maximise productivity and streamline Zendesk workflows.
With a rapidly increasing volume of work, Star21 wanted a more efficient way to manage their workflows. Optimizing Zendesk with SweetHawk apps has allowed the company to improve processes, save time, and deliver higher quality outcomes to customers.
“SweetHawk has been an absolute godsend for us in terms of helping us manage our workflows”
Star21 is a Telstra dealer, managing mobile fleets, fixed and data connections, Telstra calling and Office 365 on behalf of Telstra customers. With customers ranging from government departments and large enterprises with mobile services of over 10k, to small stores with 1-2 mobiles on business accounts, Star 21 has experienced huge growth over the last five years.
Melanie Hobman, Managed Service Delivery Manager at Star21, oversees the onboarding of all new mobile managed service customers and has been the primary administrator of the Zendesk environment since it was introduced five years ago. We spoke with Melanie about Star21’s implementation of SweetHawk apps, and the resulting benefits to their workflows.
Before Zendesk and SweetHawk were introduced, Star21 collected and answered all requests from one shared inbox. Coordinating the management of an ever increasing volume of work was very difficult. According to Melanie, “the decision was made to implement a ticketing system into the business. Several of our workflows had limitations around how we could do them with Zendesk straight out of the box, so that’s where the SweetHawk apps came into play.”
One aim the company had was to extend the NPS reporting functionality of Zendesk. Melanie explains “Telstra have NPS on all their customers, and by implementing the Surveys app we were able to report our scoring in the same format that our customers and vendors are used to seeing.”
The Tasks application was utilized to create a more consistent workflow, while also reducing issues within it. With a number of variances in different customer contracts, agents were having trouble knowing what to do for certain requests. “Tasks puts a checklist against the ticket so the agent has guidance on the steps they need to follow - we now have over 100 lists that trigger based on certain conditions.”
“It’s about consistency of delivery, quality control, and making sure our customers get the service we promise them”
Apps used by Star21
Other SweetHawk apps were adopted to help both customer and technical pain points. Melanie notes “as we offer a proactive service to a lot of our customers, there’s a need to schedule Recurring Tickets. We also have certificate renewal in our technical environments, so on renewal they schedule a Future Ticket for 12 months ahead.”
SweetHawk apps enable entire processes to be completed much more easily. The contract cancellation process at Star21 is now completed using Future Tickets for the end of the term, which are then verified by account executives using checklists in Tasks. “The whole workflow is created around all of your apps, be it a future ticket or recurring. It’s all generating task lists that tell the agent what they need to do once those tickets are applied.”
For Melanie and the team, the return on investment of SweetHawk apps is evident in a number of ways. Far less time is spent troubleshooting integrations or finding workarounds to add information to tickets, and agents are no longer having to get information from different sources.
“From a quality control and customer complaint perspective, it’s had a huge impact as agents are doing the right thing first time round. There’s fewer mistakes, fewer complaints, and less rework of tickets as they have checklists in front of them with exactly what to do”
SweetHawk apps have had a huge impact on process efficiency and product development at Star21. Melanie explains “without SweetHawk we certainly wouldn’t have been able to produce the workflows we’ve created. It's also made our product easier to develop - we can change our service and customise things specifically for each of our customers.”
The support after implementation has also been a big plus for Star21. “Your support is incredible and I get very helpful responses very quickly. You take feedback on board and any issues have been resolved pretty much the same day. I always rate you guys 10!”
For businesses looking to implement SweetHawk apps and maximise the functionality of Zendesk, Melanie has this advice: “Zendesk is a great support tool, but it doesn’t allow you to do a lot of stuff natively out of the box. If you have workflows or you need deadlines met, or you want good NPS data then look at SweetHawk - the video on the website takes you through all the apps in 10 minutes. Think about what your use cases are and how these apps can assist you.”
“The quality of the apps is great and I can’t fault them. The thought that goes into developing them for use cases we’ve presented to you, but also making sure that they work for all your customers, is fantastic”
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