Country Attire updates customer service management

Heritage and luxury brand online retailer prepares for further growth with customer service and support ticket software

Country Attire recently chose Zendesk to ensure its customer services tools could cope with its rapid growth.

Mike Marshall, customer services manager at Country Attire, said: "Increasing the quality of care our customers expect is the aim of most things we do around here. Using Zendesk was really a no brainer.”

Country Attire previously managed customer interaction manually, using Microsoft Outlook mailboxes. But the company's dramatic growth meant this needed to change and it went live with Zendesk at the end of April.

Marshall continued: “We had viewed a vast array of alternative systems, but Zendesk stood out.”

E-commerce platform integration

Country Attire chose Zendesk for its ease of use, its customer, rather than sales, focus; integration with their e-commerce platform, Magento, and essentially, the local customer support that Zendesk provides. "The Zendesk UK office is very important to us as we like to talk with our suppliers and develop proper relationships," he added.

Country Attire prides itself on its multi-skilled workforce, and is keen to keep it that way, Marshall added: “We all do a bit of everything and, with Zendesk, it's much easier to allocate tasks and manage who’s doing what, while making customer response times much faster.”

Marshall added that Country Attire receives over 1,200 tickets per month. "We have lots of interaction with our customers because they’re assured we’ll respond," he said. "Tickets cover order changes, cancellations, shipping and tracking queries, product information requests - they are wide ranging.

"We’ve been responding faster since day one with Zendesk; now over 30% of customers receive a first response within the hour; a further 30% within eight hours and, of course, we’ll be reducing response times even further as we familiarise ourselves with the system."

Improved reporting supports growth

As Country Attire forecasts continued growth, Marshall and the team wants to improve the quality of its reporting. "Going forward we expect Zendesk to make the much higher volume of growth-associated tasks much more efficient, and we’re ready for much-improved reporting, which Zendesk will help us achieve. This will also assist with flexible working, as some of our people work from home, or outside UK office hours servicing our international customer base,” Marshall said.

He added: "The retail sector doesn't seem to be using Zendesk very much, and you have to ask why not? Rather than solutions that focus on sales management, Zendesk offers an easy way of setting out what needs doing, getting organised and delivering the very best in customer service. We simply wouldn't pay for Zendesk if it wasn't efficient, practical and represent excellent value. Top quality service costs, but it's a crucial necessity and we decided to spend and found it well worth the price."

Country Attire is working through several big systems changes and is looking forward to using Zendesk much more as the demanding Autumn build-up takes effect. "It’ll be exciting - social media integration, Amazon, eBay - everything via Zendesk, plus reporting and numerical future improvements to look forward to," he concluded.