Qobee, a procurement software company, replaced a 15-year-old in-house support tool with Zendesk, set up by Premium Plus. A software release that once meant around 80 ticket replies now takes 1. Zendesk chases waiting customers automatically, and the time customers get to respond fell from 60 days to 14. The team started with five seats and now has eight, plus Copilot.
80 → 1
Replies needed per software release. Across four releases a year, that’s around 320 replies down to 4.
60 → 14 days
The window customers get to respond is 77% shorter, so tickets stop sitting open for weeks.
Automatic reminders
A daily manual report-and-chase routine for tickets waiting on customers, now handled by Zendesk.
5 → 8 seats, plus Copilot
The team grew its Zendesk setup within months of going live.
Qobee is a software company with offices in Breda (the Netherlands) and Mechelen (Belgium). It helps organisations manage purchase requests, orders, and invoice processing in one platform for purchasing and finance. Its customers are businesses, and they rely on Qobee’s support team to keep that platform running smoothly.
Qobee’s support ran on a custom-built program that was 10 to 15 years old. It wasn’t modern, and the team had to do a lot of work by hand. Customers noticed too, with many complaining about the look and feel of the portal and about what they could do in it themselves.
“We made a step in a better way with Zendesk,” says Ruud Pessers, Team Unit Manager at Qobee.
The goal wasn’t to copy the old way of working into Zendesk. It was to design a better one. Bernard Moriau, the Premium Plus project manager, built the setup around a request form with the right questions up front. A structured form uses the customer’s answers to send each ticket straight to the right team. Tickets are sorted across Qobee’s product areas and split into incidents, usage questions, consultancy and change requests.
“The cool thing here is that tools work with processes, but processes should sometimes adjust themselves to the advantages of the tool. That is something we worked on, and it ended up working very well.”
Bernard Moriau, Project Manager, Premium Plus
Bernard also challenged some long-standing habits. Qobee gave customers 60 days to respond to an open request, and he asked why not just four. The team didn’t go that far, but they cut the window to 14 days.
“Bernard brought a lot of knowledge and experience. He told us things we thought you couldn’t do with customers, and he said it’s totally normal.”
Ruud Pessers, Team Unit Manager, Qobee
One reply instead of 80. Qobee releases new software four times a year, and each release triggers a burst of customer communication. Answering one ticket now covers every customer, and they all get the same information at the same moment.
“In the past we had to answer about 80 tickets. Now we only have to answer one.”
No more manual chasing. The team used to run a report, find tickets waiting more than 14 days for the customer, and send each reminder by hand. Zendesk sends them automatically, so nobody has to do that check every day.
A 77% shorter response window. Moving from 60 days to 14 means open requests get resolved or closed faster, and the team spends less time keeping old tickets alive.
Time back for real work. “We have more time to handle the tickets instead of all the things around it,” Ruud says. “That’s a lot of work that Zendesk is taking away from us.”
Advice that avoided wasted effort. Zendesk can do a lot, but Qobee’s team is clear on what made the difference.
“It was not only a software thing, it was also advice. Without Bernard’s experience, we would have rebuilt our old situation one-to-one in Zendesk, and it wouldn’t have improved anything.”
Ruud Pessers, Team Unit Manager, Qobee
Confidence to grow. Qobee started with five seats during the project, because nobody knew yet how much Zendesk could automate. The team now has eight, and has added Zendesk Copilot.
Good projects run on more than a contract.
“The collaboration was not solely based on the contract. Mutual respect, interest, curiosity and fun made this a cool project with a very professional end result.”
Bernard Moriau, Project Manager, Premium Plus
Phase two is about evaluating what phase one built and improving it. The team will also add reporting, so they can see how many tickets come in, how many are solved, and how many are taking too long.