Photobucket delivers 24/7 member support with messaging

Since 2003, more than 70 million users have trusted Photobucket with over 15 billion personal images. The image and video hosting service provides its members a simple, easy-to-use platform to store, share, and host digital images. The company’s number one core value is “Members First” and is the driving force behind its Member Engagement Team.

“The most important part of Photobucket is our members,” says Trishia Mercado, senior manager of the Member Engagement Team. “As a company, we are committed to delivering the best overall experience to our members.”

To better serve its members any time of day or night, Photobucket wanted a solution to offer customer service 24/7 in a way that could improve first response times while maintaining customer satisfaction scores.

Messaging delivers answers any time of day or night

A Zendesk customer since 2012, the Photobucket team thought Zendesk’s new messaging solution might be just what was needed to extend its customer service when agents were not available. In fact, Ruben Naour, the member engagement specialist and team lead for Photobucket, participated in the beta project for Zendesk Messaging.

“It was great to provide feedback and thoughts on features and the overall product that I thought would be valuable to customer experience teams like ours,” explains Naour. “When some of my ideas were implemented into the product, one of the senior product designers at Zendesk reached out to let me know and thank me for my contributions.”

The Zendesk AI agent in Zendesk’s messaging solution has been extremely helpful, according to Mercado. It is available 24/7 and uses AI to answer common questions and know when to bring in an agent.

“The Zendesk AI agent is perfect for our international users and night owls that need help when our agents are offline,” offers Mercado. “They can interact with the AI agent to get answers quickly. Instead of sending us an email and waiting until the next day to hear from us, they can easily get the answers to their questions right away.”

Streamlining agent processes and social responses

Naour is impressed with how the Zendesk AI agent helps streamline the ticket process for agents. “Once our members go through the AI agent flow, if they still want to talk to an agent, they provide us with a little bit of information such as their account information and what they might need assistance with. Once that chat comes into our agents, they’re able to see details right in the Agent Workspace and have context on what type of help is needed.”

With the self-service flow of the Zendesk AI agent, Photobucket is able to provide instant answers to approximately 94% of common questions and resolve nearly 10% of conversations without the need for agent assistance. As part of the messaging platform, Photobucket also implemented the Zendesk integration for both Facebook and Twitter. So when members send the team DM’s on either of those platforms, those are automatically converted into tickets and the agents are able to reply to those straight from the normal ticket queue.

“Our members enjoy this streamlined way to reach us through their social channels,” says Naour. “In the past, they could message us on Facebook but then they would have to go check their email for our response on how to fix the issue they were experiencing. Now it is a seamless workflow.“

A better customer experience by the numbers

Overall, since implementing the Zendesk messaging solution, Photobucket has experienced a 17 percent decrease in first resolution time, a 14 percent decrease in first reply time, and a 3 percent increase in CSAT.

“Our members are very appreciative of how easy it is to get in contact with us, be it through the Zendesk AI agent after hours, through social channels, through the ticket submission form on our FAQ page, or through email,” adds Naour.

Flexibility now and into the future

While Photobucket’s member users are pleased with the new support channels, both Mercado and Naour are happy with the flexibility that Zendesk provides in allowing them to set up the company’s customer support system.

“Zendesk offers us a ton of flexibility. With the additional options like messaging that Zendesk has added, it gives us even more flexibility and ability to set up our agent workspaces so that our agents have the best opportunity to help our members as quickly as possible,” says Naour.

“Zendesk has been really helpful to us. They’ve been a wonderful partner. If we need help with anything or just want to ask questions, we always get the answers and support we need,” adds Mercado.