August Home cut call handle times by 2.5 minutes

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August Home’s journey

Aufdermauer and her team began using Zingtree in 2017 with two primary goals in mind: Boost customer experience and decrease agent handle times. They began building decision trees that would serve as dynamic call scripts for their team – guiding agents through every conversation, step-by-step – and then embedded others in their help center so customers could self-serve. 

Their agents – both first and second-tier support – grew particularly fond of Zingtree. “Our agents love being able to click right through a tree while they’re on a call,” Aufdermauer says. “They have to think less on tickets and can concentrate on the interaction with the customer instead.” 

But at the end of 2020, August Home made a financial decision not to renew with Zingtree, deciding it made more sense to let their chatbot handle a greater share of the burden instead of paying for both platforms. 

Within a few months, however, August Home decided to rejoin Zingtree, buoyed by bottoms-up enthusiasm from their customer success team. While the chatbot helped with some self-serve questions, the back-end didn’t meet the needs of the actual support agents. 

“Updating workflows is so much easier with Zingtree,” Aufdermauer explains. “My team really missed being able to update our information and processes without third-party help. When we lost Zingtree, we would have to email the dev team every time and have them take action just to make a simple change.”

Now, frontline agents can once again follow dynamic scripts, second-line agents can easily manage processes, and all agents can view everything from a single-screen, thanks to Zingtree’s integration with Kustomer. And there’s less burden on IT in the meantime. 

Clients, meanwhile, get the best of all worlds, with the ability to choose between August Home’s chatbot, helpful phone support, and an interactive knowledge base. ‍

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The results

In addition to making the Customer Experience team happier, Zingtree has also helped August Home improve hard metrics. 

In terms of efficiency, August Home managed to reduce agent handle times by 2.5 minutes, down to about 10 minutes total. Those gains appear all the more considerable given that Aufdermauer’s team handles roughly 25,000 tickets a month – about half of which come via phone support alone. For calls specifically, then, that equates to 31,250 fewer minutes per month, or 375,000 minutes (6,250 hours) saved per year. That means the team can handle greater capacity with the same headcount. 

In addition to cutting handle times, August Home was also able to speed up new agent onboarding by a full week. Because Zingtree simplifies information and choices for agents, new hires can grasp the process more easily without having to master the complexities right away – and thus start delivering value faster. 

“Zingtree lets agents walk-through and take the next step based on the interaction with the customer, so we don’t have to teach people all the little-bitty parts of the job every time,” states Aufdermauer.

Overall, Aufdermauer and her team are both pleased with the way Zingtree empowers August Home to deliver higher-quality service. “It makes it easier for your agents to do their job,” she concludes. “If you have the budget to get Zingtree, totally do it.”

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About August Home: 

August Home’s mission is to make customers’ lives simpler and more secure by offering unprecedented visibility and control over their front door – delivering smarter home access that keeps the bad guys out and lets the good guys in.

About Zingtree: 

Zingtree is a no-code, interactive decision tree tool that helps your employees and customers navigate complex, consequential, and changing processes so they can take the next right action.