HiBob delivers flexible CX for a global roster of HR clients

Today’s HR leaders realize the need to embrace digital solutions that help them connect with a global workforce and become more agile in remote work environments. Since launching in 2015, HiBob has been helping companies around the world evolve the employee experience and strengthen the role that HR and HR tech play in their success.

Specifically, HiBob’s platform streamlines core HR processes and onboarding, provides 360-degree performance reviews, and manages the compensation process. It also includes tools for data reporting and analysis, employee feedback, time tracking, and community engagement. The ultimate goal is to help corporations make HR a profit center—not a cost center—driving employee productivity, collaboration, engagement, and retention.

Following its latest of round of funding in 2022, HiBob is currently valued at $2.45B with offices in Tel Aviv, London, New York, Amsterdam, and Sydney. More than 700 employees, known as ‘Bobbers,’ keep the business buzzing while supporting a portfolio that exceeds 2,700 corporate clients.

Meeting the challenges of the modern workplace

HiBob’s platform is designed to drive communication and keep employees connected, making it a valuable tool for companies with off-site team members. The increase in remote staff and changing work environments contributed to a period of high growth at HiBob that carried into 2021.

Seeking a scalable solution, HiBob decided to shift away from a chat-based support tool that had mainly functioned as a web widget on its platform to a more intuitive system that felt native. The company found great success by leveraging stronger integrations, ticket routing, and reporting capabilities in Zendesk Suite.

Solving key CX challenges with one robust platform

Ben Ellis, HiBob’s customer success operations manager, recognized the company’s need for a flexible CX solution. “We work with customers all over the world in many different industries, and each one has unique needs, policies, regulations, and processes. Having an incredibly customizable product is one of the biggest advantages,” says Ellis.

Zendesk proved to be a powerful CX solution for internal and external use cases at HiBob. “We launched Zendesk internally, primarily to handle requests to our IT and privacy departments.” Ellis adds, “We also have a great integration with Slack internally, which is straightforward and really easy to use.”

Today HiBob’s most widely used channels for external customer support are web form and email. Zendesk’s robust platform allows the team of 40 support agents to smoothly handle an average of 5K+ monthly tickets.

Streamlined ticketing + self-service drives efficiency

A major improvement from HiBob’s previous platform was the introduction of Zendesk ticket routing. The team is currently testing a more streamlined system based on agent skill, using different tiers to ensure that collective tickets are properly escalated. Ellis explains, “Once a ticket is submitted in Zendesk, HiBob agents know exactly what the challenge is, how to approach it, and that the ticket can be escalated to the right persona with a click of a button.”

Switching to Zendesk also gave HiBob the tools to create a well-rounded customer portal that could scale with the growing company. “Zendesk allowed us to build a help center that is easier for customers to understand and provides detailed information to different audiences,” Ellis says. “We also use the AI agent to dispatch quick wins or easy tickets, such as article recommendations.”

The power of a seamless transition

At first, the HiBob team expected that moving from a chat functionality to a ticket and web form functionality would affect its ability to quickly resolve tickets, fearing that the shift could impact customer experience. On the contrary, notes Ellis, “We’ve actually surpassed our SLA goals, even though we moved from a much higher hands-on approach.”

Leveraging Zendesk triggers and automations on its support channels has provided a boost to HiBob’s main KPIs, including better first response and resolution times, as well as an average 91 percent CSAT.

Ellis adds, “Our customers have been really happy with our service since we implemented Zendesk, because all the customizations help create a smooth experience. Having a fully integrated web widget gives users the feeling that they’re working within HiBob’s platform, not an external tool.”

Increasing customer satisfaction from rollout to retention

Quality service is integral to everything HiBob does, and Zendesk has helped agents put the customer first. “Better customer experience can help new customers roll out and launch faster, which ideally leads to higher NPS scores.” Ellis adds, “Customer experience also has a huge impact on client satisfaction, churn rates, and our ability to upsell. Our mission is to make sure that customers stay with us and have no reason to switch to a different platform.”

Great CX tools have brought HiBob employees together, too. “We’ve seen an improvement in collaboration between our customer experience, professional services, and account management teams, which helps us provide better service to our customers,” Ellis says.

When agents like using Zendesk, it benefits the entire team. “With Zendesk, it’s easier for agents to pinpoint the user’s issue in a shorter time and take a more collaborative approach to address the request,” explains Ellis. “Having a lot of triggers and automations in place also reduces the amount of manual work agents have to do, compared to the previous system.”

“For us, customer experience is really crucial,” adds Ellis. “Our HR platform actually serves every single user at a company–from the new employee to the CEO. Everyone can submit a ticket or contact us, so we want to make sure they get an excellent HR experience from their company.”

Closing the feedback loop to promote future success

Moving forward, Ellis sees potential for the company to use Zendesk for even greater impact. “One of our key areas of focus for improvement is closing the feedback loop for ticket escalations. Zendesk will help us connect the dots between all relevant team members, from the moment a customer submits a ticket through the whole escalation process.”

Ellis continues, “We are also using the Zendesk Sandbox environment to make sure that any big internal change can be checked before rolling it out to agents. Now CS agents have much more specific information needed to solve a ticket, because we set up the right integrations and triggers.” Other key projects for the CX augment include more reporting and data-driven insights, and stronger integrations between HiBob’s CRM and Tableau.

Along the way, HiBob will continue to increase time to value with Zendesk support. As Ellis says, “The fact that there’s an active community in Zendesk really gives you the assurance that you’re not alone and there’s a lot you can learn from others.”