JibJab uses Zendesk Support and ModSquad to meet SLAs even with a 10x volume increase

Christmas comes but once a year, and with it 60 percent of JibJab’s annual business.

Each holiday season, thousands of customers create and send funny eCards from JibJab. Judging by classics like the “Macareindeer” and “Santa’s Twerk Shop”, it’s clear that both JibJab and its customers have a great sense of humor. But, in 2013, no one was smiling when it came to JibJab’s customer support.

JibJab’s team was made up of two people scrambling to manage a large volume of email tickets and phone calls. The customer support duo was so overwhelmed by email that they began routing calls to voicemail, which sometimes took weeks to return. That was during a relatively slow period. Then in December, ticket volumed soared. Even with extra staffing there were major delays in response times. And when tickets about holiday cards were still being answered in February, JibJab knew it was time for a better strategy.

JibJab knew two things: they needed to quickly grow their team and they wanted to use Zendesk Support. Fortunately, a partnership with Modsquad offered the perfect solution.

Metaverse in action

“Metaverse ModSquad was the best fit for us in terms of flexibility, the amount that we could scale for the holidays, and how we could scale back when the holidays were over,” explained Alessandra Souers, Brand Director at JibJab. “Their expertise with Zendesk Support and the overall company felt like a really solid fit.”

ModSquad helps clients better connect with their customers by providing digital engagement services–including customer support. The company employs a global digital support team of Mods (hence the name “Mod Squad”) who are trained on providing empathetic and personalized customer support. They are also Zendesk pros. In fact, across all ModSquad clients, there are more than 100 instances of Support, used by more than 10,000 Mods. As Zendesk rolls out new features to the product, the Mods keep pace through refresher training courses.

To make sure the agent integration is seamless, ModSquad constantly trains Mods to be fluent in a customer’s brand personality and support philosophy. That way a customer gets the support they expect whether it’s via an in-house agent or a Mod. Support leads track metrics in Support across the Mods and in-house agents to ensure that support is cohesive across teams.

“Mods are the eyes and ears for our clients, and the voice of their customers,” explained Matt Ramsey, JibJab’s Project Manager at Metaverse ModSquad. “In JibJab’s case, the Mods provide customer support and give feedback about things that are working or not working.”

A JibJab employee in Los Angeles, CA

With ModSquad, JibJab has greater flexibility and less anxiety about scaling. During the slow part of the year, they supplement JibJab’s internal support team at a ratio of 1 Mod to 1 agent. During the holidays there may be as many as 10 Mods per agent. That kind of scaling and training would have been impossible to do internally.

With Support, JibJab tickets are being solved in record time, meeting their 24-hour SLA even during peak seasons. Between November and December of 2014, volume skyrocketed from the typical 8,000 tickets per month to nearly 80,000.

“During slow times, we’re responding to tickets within minutes,” said Souers. “But even at Christmas, our response time stayed under 10 hours. It’s been huge. It’s so encouraging to see tweets coming though mentioning JibJab and the great customer service experiences our customers are having. That’s a sure sign that things have really turned around.”

JibJab’s creative and colorful office

JibJab has improved both their first response time and their resolution time. With Support analytics, ModSuad discovered that unsubscribe requests were causing bad CSAT ratings. Once they were able to spot the trend, it was a relatively easy thing to fix. “For clients who want advanced reporting, Zendesk Support blows the competition out of the water. That goes a long way,” said Ramsey.

No longer buried under tickets, JibJab agents and their Mod counterparts have been able to carry the JibJab brand personality and tone into the support experience. For example, they use macros but personalize every response, even sometimes adding animated GIFs.

“I remember the Mods not knowing they had the freedom to do that,” said Souers, “and I was surprised, because of course they are! We encourage humor and spirited additions like that. In fact, my biggest wins with Zendesk are the help center with Zendesk Guide and the macro feature in Support. I love the customization options that are available in both of these areas.”

Ramsey added, “One of the really powerful tools in Zendesk Support that we use for tech support at JibJab is the markdown feature, so that we can easily add these images and screenshots to technical support instructions.”

The JibJab team

Not surprisingly, these changes have positively impacted customer satisfaction. As a subscription service, JibJab sees a lot of billing tickets, but they also get many time-sensitive questions surrounding cards intended for birthdays and other milestone life events. “It’s very important to us to solve a ticket with one reply,” said Ramsey. “We try to keep the one-touch solve rate above 90 percent.”

Now that JibJab’s customer service is in good hands, the company looks forward to the winter holidays as if they were…well, a gift.