The Brand

Industry: HR & Workforce Management
Headquarters: London, UK
Users: ~40,000 active monthly
Team: 150 employees
Ticketing System: Zendesk software
Channels: Email, in-app chat, calls
Support Hours Needed: 09:00–22:00 CET
Daily Ticket Volume: 120–180 tickets/day

The Situation before

The internal support team consisted of 3 agents + 1 team lead.
They were overloaded as user growth outpaced hiring.

Their main problems:

• Backlog growing daily (up to 1,300+ tickets)

• Slow response times during peak hours

• High escalations from unclear macro usage

• No playbooks, no QA, no consistent tone

• Internal team stuck doing Tier 1 instead of product work

Why They Came to Talnificant

They wanted:

• predictable SLAs

• stable quality

• backlog cleared fast

• a Tier 1 team they didn’t need to manage

• cheaper than hiring 3–4 UK agents

What Talnificant Implemented

A. 7-Day Go-Live

What we delivered in the first week:

1. Playbook Setup

• A Tier 1 playbook using 20–50 real past tickets

• Identified the top 6 ticket categories

• Documented tone, do/don’t rules, and escalation triggers

2. System Setup

• Cleaned up categories & tags

• Set basic escalation logic (Tier 1 → internal → engineering)

• Created 10–15 essential macros for:

  • password resets

  • billing questions

  • basic troubleshooting

  • cancellations/refunds (under rules)

3. Agent Training

• Product basics

• Ticket patterns

• Tone

• Macro usage

• Escalation decision-making

4. Daily Sync

• 10-minute daily alignment with internal team

• Real-time corrections → accuracy improved each day

Outcome after 7 days:
Agents ready for soft launch with correct tone, correct categorisation, and reliable escalation behaviour.

B. 4-Week Operational Model

What we deployed:

• 2 Tier 1 seats + shared team lead

• Full Tier 1 ownership during agreed hours

• Daily QA during Week 1–2

• Weekly operations review (trends, issues, improvements)

• Macro updates every week

• Volume monitoring to protect SLAs

Operations we handled:

• Ticket accuracy

• Escalations

• Tone control

• Macro maintenance

• Daily reporting

• Weekly insights

C. Backlog Recovery Program

Client came in with:
642 open tickets, a mix of old bugs, billing questions, and “stuck” users.

Our recovery plan:

• Quick categorisation cleanup

• Set simple SLA structure (P1/P2/P3)

• Created 5–10 “fast-resolution” macros

• Daily 20–30 min backlog sprint

• Team lead handled prioritisation & edge cases

Outcome:
Backlog significantly reduced within 10–14 days,
with normal queue volume restored by end of Week 3.

D. Results After 30 Days

Before Talnificant:

• First Response Time (FRT): 12–18 hours

• Resolution Time: 2–3 days

• CSAT: 76%

• Backlog: 642 tickets

After 30 days:

• FRT: 1–2 hours

• Resolution Time: same day

• CSAT: 92%

• Backlog: cleared in 2 weeks

• Tier 1 escalations reduced by 40%

• Internal team saved 25–35 hours/week

Business impact:

For the Support Manager

• No more managing schedules, coverage or performance

• Weekly reports instead of daily firefighting

• Escalations became predictable and clean

• Better data → better product insights

For the Company

• Higher retention

• Fewer complaints

• Less pressure on engineering

• Lower cost (50–60% cheaper than in-house)

• No more managing schedules, coverage or performance

• Weekly reports instead of daily firefighting

• Escalations became predictable and clean

• Better data → better product insights