Is phone support dead for Millennials? Gametime doesnt think so

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Gametime is a last-minute sports and entertainment ticket marketplace, available in US and Canada, in over 50 big cities in the US alone.

The company has focused on making tickets as easy as possible to buy and use with a smartphone. After transactions are complete, the Gametime app displays the digital tickets and their barcodes for admission into the venue. Tickets can also be easily transferred to friends via text message and email.

But entering a crowded industry with several well-established players may be risky. Gametime had to differentiate itself from its competitors. To do so, the company focused on the mobile experience and an awesome, carefully crafted, customer support as a strategy to appeal to millennials, their target audience.

Who said Millennials don’t use phone support?

In such a competitive space, support is crucial to a company focused on real-time, fast interactions with clients. Although email communications are important, phone interaction is the backbone of Gametime’s customer support.

The company’s internal organization proves it: Gametime’s support team is a call center, located in the main offices – the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.

As a call center, all the team members are ready to answer calls within seconds and accelerate problem solving by quickly escalating any bug fixes within the app to the engineering and the product team.

The support team works closely with other departments of the company since they are the eyes and ears of the company towards the customer experience.

Without a doubt, Gametime succeeds with a “customer-first” attitude.

We had a chat wit Zach Moore, Fan Happiness Manager, who told us more about the company’s support strategy.

“We want the support team to have open communication to all other aspects of the company to make sure that everything is getting escalated properly and all potential issues are handled.”

Gametime’s customer happiness strategy

In order to keep fans and customers happy, Gametime uses both Aircall and Zendesk (and Slack, you’ll see below), and our Zendesk integration comes in handy.

Aircall

Gametime uses Aircall for their support communications, every time a customer is trying to purchase a ticket, whether they have questions or can not do so successfully.

If someone is having difficulties scanning into an event, due to a technical or maybe a connectivity issue the company makes sure customers are able to reach them really quickly by providing Aircall phone numbers.

Zendesk

Gametime uses Zendesk to track all of the customer interactions, be it phone call or email.

“This way we have a reference point to go back to for any customer”, Zach emphasises.

Zendesk helps the support team understand the customer’s previous experiences with Gametime which helps tailor the reply in order to get the situation handled appropriately.

The Aircall – Zendesk integration

The Aircall-Zendesk allows Gametime’s support team to have a panoramic view of all the customer interactions.
The integration allows them to link phone and email communication. Since support holds such an important role tracking the communications across both channels is key.

As Zach sais:

“The Aircall widget within Zendesk allows us to tie email addresses to phone numbers so we can see & have the customer history and interaction on an individual basis”

Managing the company’s communications

In addition to the Zendesk integration, Gametime also uses our Slack integration in order to keep up to date on the incoming calls and who’s answering them.

As Zach told us:

“The main channels that we are using right now are Zendesk for our customer communications and Slack for our company communications and we use the Aircall integration for both of those”

The Aircall – Slack integration

The Aircall – Slack integration allows the team to see who’s calling as they are calling in. Information pops up which helps the team understand of what customers have already experienced, or tickets they had already purchased for, before even answering the phone. This feature is key for fast resolution as the team can start working on the customer’s situation even before speaking with them.

What is your customer support strategy? Let us know in the comments below. In the meantime,

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Published on April 20, 2016.