Cassis Paprika: a single platform to support a heterogeneous team and several brands
The women’s fashion label Cassis was founded in 1992 and has experienced steady growth ever since. Paprika, one of the brands set up by the company (which has since been rebranded as ‘Cassis Paprika’), quickly became more popular than its parent: today, it is available in five different countries. The brand’s popularity is partly due to its clear positioning: Paprika only designs plus-size clothing.
The challenge: one single point of contact for all social channels
Partly because of its clearly delineated target group, Paprika mainly sells its collection online, through various (social) channels, including its own website, Facebook and LinkedIn. “Of course we’re very happy with these strong online sales, but it does complicate matters somewhat,” Cassis Paprika Strategic Project Lead Charlotte Feryn explains: “Our sales, distribution and post-sales support rarely follow a single trajectory, which means follow-up and management can be a bit of a headache.”
The company’s customer support processes and infrastructure in particular were in need of a thorough update. “We get complaints and questions sent to us via different channels. Both our own support team and the external provider that backs up our team need access to those cases to be able to read through, solve and respond to them. A complex challenge, to say the least.”
The choice: Zendesk as multibrand
Cassis Paprika needed a solution that would allow this wide range of customer support cases – regardless of whether they were questions or complaints, and regardless of how they were submitted – to be handled by the aforementioned (extended) team, without customers having to exit the individual brand’s own platform.
A comparison of different suppliers suggested Zendesk would be the best choice. In fact, Zendesk’s Multibrand feature offered exactly what Cassis Paprika was looking for: a centralised environment that pools all administration and workflows, and that allows customer support agents to assist different brands’ customers with a single Zendesk account. On top of that, Zendesk Multibrand allows separate customer portals to be created for different brands, with a distinct look & feel and individual guidelines for each portal.
The implementation: swift and problem-free
It took just over two months from Zendesk and Cassis’ first meeting in October 2020 to the moment of go-live. “In late December, we got to live-test and tweak the environment until it met every single one of our expectations,” Charlotte Feryn recalls. “After that, we started using it for our flagship brand, Paprika. We deliberately opted for such a fast approach, because it matches the way we work: we prefer diving into the deep end and adjusting things as we go to waiting forever to go live.” The old system remained operational throughout the first implementation phase, to prevent any interruption of the company’s customer support. “Thanks to Premium Plus’ excellent support, implementation was swift and with no problems to speak of.”
Tickets in 45 days
Availability
Happy customers
Agents supported
The result: an environment tailored to all users
Cassis Paprika’s customer support is anything but a classic set-up. Multiple brands are supported by a single team, and that team consists of both in-house staff and an external contact centre. Meeting all these different requirements necessitated more than a standard Zendesk implementation, says Charlotte Feryn: “Because our external call centre’s notification procedures differed from our own team’s, the challenge was getting everyone aligned and using the same platform. Premium Plus’ input was crucial to achieving this, both while we learnt to navigate the platform and as we made adjustments to it. It actually needed quite a bit of creative thinking — luckily something that Premium Plus turned out to be adept at.”
The new environment was instantly able to meet Cassis’ demands. During the first month and a half, nearly 3,000 support tickets were submitted, which were handled by between 15 and 20 agents. Questions submitted via Facebook were easily fed into Zendesk’s system. “And the new spam filter has already proved to be very effective,” Charlotte adds with satisfaction.
Although Cassis is already very satisfied with Zendesk, it has yet to fully exploit it: “We’ll be scheduling follow-up meetings with Premium Plus every three to four weeks, to discuss any changes or additions we’d like to make to the platform,” Charlotte explains. “Zendesk offers so many different functions that it was impossible to start using all of them all at once, especially because we wanted to get things up and running so quickly. But if they can improve our customer support, I’m sure we’ll start using these functions as well at some point.”
Tools & Guidance
Guidance
- Activation of an integrated, online omni-channel platform to easily reach customers via any possible channel
- Integrating Zendesk Multibrand to support the different brands
- Adjusting the platform to the (internal + external) support team’s needs
Tools
- Zendesk Support Enterprise Multibrand
- Side conversations
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