Kaizen Gaming bets on fast omnichannel support + 360 degree views

Kaizen Gaming is one of the fastest growing GameTech companies in Europe, offering a sports betting platform and live casino games. Based in Athens, Greece, Kaizen operates in eight countries across Europe and South America under the brands Stoiximan and Betano. Recently, Kaizen won a 2021 eGaming Review (EGR) Award for Customer Services Operator of the Year. Known as the Oscars of the eGaming sector, the EGR awards reward B2C operators for setting the standard in numerous categories, including customer service.

Driving success through customer service

The prestigious industry award should come as no surprise for a company that has determined the best way to create a competitive advantage in eGaming is to focus on providing amazing customer experiences. Kaizen believes that the best retention strategy is cultivating a community of repeat customers built on providing excellent customer service.

“Our main approach is to create a good connection with our customers, making it really easy for them to get in touch with us through their preferred channels,” says Lefteris Klimentidis, head of customer service for Kaizen Gaming. “We want to create a connection beyond transactional communication. We want people to come back and use our services again because they have a relationship with us.”

Scaling customer service to meet fast growth

Kaizen Gaming has relied on the Zendesk platform since 2017. In that time, the company has grown from 100 employees to more than 1,000 full-time staff now serving more than 1.4 million customers globally.

“One of the most important things that Zendesk has helped us with is to scale fast and without any friction or difficulty,” says Klimentidis. “Despite having phenomenal growth, we didn’t encounter any issues using Zendesk. It was really easy to onboard new agents and get them up and running very quickly.”

Early adopter of social channels and messaging

One of the main reasons Kaizen chose Zendesk as its customer service platform in 2017 was the team’s interest in unifying across multiple channels. Currently, Kaizen enables customers to contact them across various social and messaging channels, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram.

“I think these channels represent the future of customer experience,” offers Klimentidis. “Our philosophy is always to be where the customer exists and where the customer feels comfortable connecting with us. If a customer is talking with family or friends over WhatsApp, we don’t want them to have to open a different channel to talk to us.”

360-degree view of the customer drives efficiencies

Kaizen has more than 350 customer service agents available 24/7 to assist its gaming customers. Zendesk provides a 360-degree view of the customer that has driven greater efficiency and significantly lowered the company’s handling time for customer requests.

“While a customer is in chat, our agent also has a view into whether the customer has other activity with us, such as a pending email,” explains Klimentidis. “This helps the agents better understand what the customer would like to talk about and allows them to solve both tickets with one communication.”

It is efficiencies such as these that have allowed Kaizen Gaming to achieve an impressive 95% resolution at first contact. But it is the company’s CSAT score which is the most watched metric at the company.

“Customer satisfaction is the metric that really sets the standard for us and drives the expectations for the type of service we provide to our customers in order to make them happy,” adds Klimentidis.

Agility in an ever-changing environment

The gaming and betting industry is highly regulated, so agility is paramount for Kaizen Gaming. With regulations changing in different markets frequently, Kaizen Gaming keeps up by making fast changes to its help center and macros without needing any development support. In fact, there have been instances where the company has only had a day or two to comply with new government regulations. “What’s great about Zendesk is the many out-of-the box integrations and applications. This has been incredibly important for us to be responsive and meet very fast changing needs,” says Klimentidis.

The world of sports betting also moves very quickly so customers expect a rapid response to their questions. They need a quick answer to help them make decisions on their next bet or whether to cash out. This has driven the adoption of live chat as an immediate, real-time support solution for Kaizen.

“Time efficiency is extremely critical to the customer experience in the gaming industry. With live chat we can provide a very accurate and quick resolution,” says Klimentidis.

Even more important, says Klimentidis, are the customization capabilities offered by Zendesk. When implementing live-chat, the team was able to easily customize it to meet the needs of the business–embedding chat in its own user flows and apps. “Zendesk is really great in that aspect, because it is an open software that you can work with to create specific, customized solutions to fit your needs at any given time.”

Award-winning team continues quest for excellence

Despite being recognized in their industry as a customer service leader, the Kaizen team is not resting on its laurels. Instead, the team is looking to the future and considering new technologies and additional automated workflows to provide an even better gaming experience. The company is currently evaluating Zendesk’s Sunshine Conversations to assist with proactive outreach to customers, looking to implement a virtual assistant, and planning upgrades to its help center.

“Going forward, our main focus will be based on our people and technologies like Zendesk that help provide the best possible experience to those that trust us with their entertainment choices,” concludes Klimentidis.