noissue transitions seamlessly to scale globally

It is difficult enough to deliver sustainable, personalized packaging to the doors of over 80,000 customers all over the world. Doing so effectively and sustainably—with a fragmented local supply chain—seems nearly impossible. This is the challenge facing noissue, a global platform launched in 2017. It enables businesses of any size to design and order packaging, stamps, cards, bags, and other products on the web. As a sustainability-driven company, all items fit into noissue’s circular framework: they are either compostable, recycled and/or reusable.

The company’s dedication to sustainability also means that it relies on a local supply chain. “The less that package travels, the better,” explains Tim Instone, director of operations at noissue. “Plugging all those local suppliers into our platform is quite a complex process. When a customer places an order on our website, we need to route the order to the right supplier in the right location, for the right product.” The work involves converting customer designs into a printable format that’s compatible with the appropriate supplier. Orders often include multiple items which are shipped from different locations, making logistics more complex. “Behind the scenes, it’s very complicated. But we make it simple for the customer,” adds Instone.

Order fulfillment became even more challenging as the company added new suppliers. “The concern was how can we onboard suppliers without adding too much manual labor to the mix, and still provide the greatest customer experience possible?” muses Augie Gruar, co-founder and chief operating officer at noissue. To keep track of orders and customer service tickets, the team previously relied on a highly manual system. The process was not scalable and didn’t provide information in real-time–information that noissue needed to meet its customer service-level agreements (SLAs).

The technology behind the success

To untangle its increasingly complex supply chain and customer support processes, noissue adopted Zendesk. “We believe Zendesk allows you to accomplish as much as you want. It can simply be a ticketing platform or it can be a machine where you can build workflows and automations as you please,” notes Instone.

That’s exactly what Zendesk became for noissue’s team—a machine where all actions from other platforms are updated. “We built something called a supplier portal where our suppliers have real-time access to order status. We also have integrations directly into Zendesk for suppliers who have APIs,” notes Gruar. The team’s custom-built middleware platform, Willow, ensures smooth communication between platforms.

noissue also built its own Zendesk widget that enables internal teams to update stakeholders in real-time. “Zendesk became the source of truth for where the order is. Ultimately, that’s where the benefit comes in,” adds Gruar.

Acquiring context

Providing this information in one place is valuable to noissue’s customer service. “Having all of the context at our agents’ fingertips, in one spot, saves us a lot of resources. They can solve any problem a lot faster,” explains Instone. Agents can now respond to customer concerns more efficiently, reducing the first-reply time by a factor of five. Resolution times have also decreased dramatically.

“According to our customers, we became a lot more succinct, more streamlined in the way we deal with their issues,” remarks Instone. “There’s a lot of value from a customer perspective, but it also means that our team can operate more efficiently. Agents feel more comfortable, and they can answer more complex problems. Agent onboarding is also faster and simpler.” All of these improvements resulted in a CSAT score of 95% and repeat businesses grew by triple digits.

Playing the numbers game

While many of noissue’s customers are small businesses, there are also those that require larger quantities. For these customers, Zendesk’s Sell feature comes in as a handy prospecting tool. “It’s where we chat with customers that are on the larger side of things, for quantities beyond 5,000 pieces,” Instone explains. “Those customers come through as leads on Sell. Within that tool, we use the Deal function to customize our offer, like products, sizes, and quantities. Our partners and our marketing teams operate within Sell, too, running campaigns and other activities.”

noissue also takes advantage of its rich store of data and Zendesk’s analytics tools to optimize efficiency. “We want to understand exactly why customers are coming in and how long it’s taking to resolve their problem, and fix those issues. Analytics is really essential to us,” notes Instone.

Winning with customer obsession

“We are customer-obsessed,” confesses Instone. “We’re always wanting to understand exactly what’s going to have value for our customers. Then we build from that.”

Gruar agrees. “Zendesk has given us so much flexibility to roll out features quickly, often features built off the back of direct customer feedback. Being a high growth company, the needs of our customers are constantly changing, and our business is evolving at pace. Having the ability to be agile and responsive to change using Zendesk has been a huge win for us.”

So far, noissue has delivered on the company’s aim of serving its customers in an effective, sustainable way. “Our customers’ businesses have flourished,” Instone shares proudly. “We’ve been absolutely happy to be able to support those businesses and their sustainable goals. We’ve got a team from all over the world going through this together, but are fortunate enough to be working remotely and driving towards something incredibly big and impactful.”