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Zuora, Inc, Foster City CA

How to EnterCompany: Zuora, Inc, Foster City CA
Company Description: It all began with a vision in a tiny office in Mountain View, California. In 2007, after several years at WebEx & salesforce.com, K.V. Rao, Cheng Zou and Tien Tzuo began to evangelize a fundamentally new business model. One in which companies of all sizes would offer broad libraries of services via subscriptions. And one that challenges the 20th century manufacturing economy.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Awards Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year – Computer Software - 100 or More Employees

Nomination Title: Zuora, Inc.

Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since the beginning of July 2012 (up to 525 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Zuora is out to change the perception of customer support as a cost center. Our goal is not to have fewer tickets. We want to hear from our customers—both positive and negative feedback. We want them to engage with us and ask questions. We promote positive engagement via various support channels and offer our customers the flexibility to communicate how they want. Since July 2012, we have enhanced our Global Support program and have the following accomplishments:

Harsh from ServiceChannel. "First of all I want to say that I love Zuora support. You guys really do a great job. Thank you."

Beth Day from Infomart: "Hi I really appreciate the help I had from Matt. He walked me though the issue I had."

Lee Daub from Dollar Shave Club: "Very helpful, proactive, and she made the effort to research our settings and these customer histories before suggesting a fix. Quite satisfied."

Key Statistics
1. An Average CSAT of 96% for the entire team (benchmark 86%). We send surveys to all customers upon case closure and the average response rate is 20%. For every 100 survey feedbacks we get, 96 are positive and 4 of them are negative
2. Average First Response in hours 4: (Benchmark 21). On average all incoming cases will be answered in four calendar hours
3. 40% tickets solved in one-touch: 40% of all cases are resolved in one email.
4. Average TTL: 3.3 calendar day: On average it takes 3 days and 6 hours to resolve a case.
5. 24X5 coverage for all time zones and 24X7 support for production incidents. We provide 24 x 5 support for customers in all time zones and urgent-high impact issues will be worked on 24X7.
6. Zero support agent attrition

Communication Channels
1. Added 24X5 live Chat support. Customers can have live chat with support 24X5 in all time zone
2. Added new local phone number for Netherlands and Australia

Career Development
1. Rising Star Award program
This is to recognize the good performers in the team each quarter. All team members will vote and a selection committee will select the winner.
2. International Employee Rotation Program: Support engineer from one location spends 4 months at the other location.

Tool Development
1. Zendesk-Jira integration. This is a new integration with allows smooth information sharing between our support ticketing and engineering feature/defect applications.
2. Zendesk-Salesforce integration. This allows us to better utilize customer information resides in Saleforce.
3. Pager-Duty. This is an application that allows us to create on-call schedules to alert the appropriate team member for different types of incidents to achieve the shortest response /resolution time and on-call accountability over weekends.

Process Enhancements
1. Dis-satisfaction post mortem process. We follow-up directly with every dis-satisfied customers and define action plan on remediation and improvement.
2. Handoff Process. Tickets are handed off between two teams(California and Beijing) so to provide best turnaround time, meeting customers’ expectation as well as utilizing the available resources.
3. Escalation Management Process. All escalated cases will be reviewed by management to define the appropriate action plan as needed.
4. Provided Platinum Support Tier. Customers with Platinum entitlement can get the service the purchased – response time SLA guarantee, prioritized queue, expedited case handling from senior engineers

 

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated customer service organization:

Marlene Summers is a brilliant technical leader with over 15 years of experience in enterprise software and application development at key Silicon Valley companies. As a software engineer at IBM, she focused on database application development. After filing three patents relating to database multidimensional design and serving as an engineering team lead, she transitioned into project management and software delivery. As a certified PMP, she successfully delivered dozens of products and services. Her passion for customer advocacy led to director-level management positions in customer facing organizations. For the past 6 years, she has worked specifically on Software-As-A-Service offerings. Customer success is the most critical aspect to any SaaS company and Marlene brings proven direction and experience to the table.