How Velobike implemented UseDesk and accelerated support by 6 times

Chapter 1. In which I rode a bike for half an hour, and then amazing things happened

This exciting story began in May. I took a bicycle at the city box office, drove from the 1905 metro to Arbatskaya, parked and went to work. And after 3 hours I received an SMS from the bank to write off 1000 rubles, as if I was riding not for half an hour, but three. Apparently, an error occurred at the time of parking, and the station did not see the bike. In support of Velobike, they explained to me that I had to wait for a text message about the end of the rental, and they refused to return the money. I was offended and conceived a cruel (as it seemed to me then) revenge.

I wrote about this case on our Usedesk customer service blog.In the article, I sorted out the mistakes of support: I cursed at formal answers, a bureaucratic approach, inflexible decisions and poor reporting of rental conditions. She shared an article on Facebook, mentioned @ Velobike and began to wait.

My team and I joked that we would be overtaken by the scandalous glory of the whistleblowers of poor service in the city bike rental, and what the hell is not joking - the bike will respond. But seriously did not count on any resonance.

A day after the publication of the article, Velobike unexpectedly added a reminder to the SMS that you need to wait for the SMS about the end of the rental.

And two days later, an iPhone rang.

- Hello, Katerina, my name is Gleb, I’m the general director of Velobike.

Fear desires, they tend to come true.

Chapter 2. In which we meet with the Velobike team and find out how everything works from the inside

I thought, now I’ll be pleased that a thousand have already flown back to the map. But the turn was steeper.

Gleb Narozhnykh, CEO of Moscow city rental Velobike: The

post was published on the Usedesk corporate blog and, in addition to the emotions of the author, contained fairly clear recommendations regarding client service. For our part, at that moment we were faced with a difficult choice of a system for working with client calls and, quite naturally, after studying the profile of Usedesk, we had a business proposal for them - to try Usedesk and its capabilities for Velobike. I scored Katerina.

A week later, we were already sitting with the guys in the office on Berezhkovskaya Embankment, drinking coffee and figuring out how to improve support processes.

How does the bike support work?

The call center receives calls and answers online questions from metropolitan cyclists about rental rates, debit cards, and even which side to park the bike on. Customers who do not like to talk on the phone write to info@velobike.ru or on social networks.

If the situation is controversial, as happened to me - then the call center sends the application to the operator department - they write a letter by regular mail. Operators check the details of the trip, compare the facts, agree with the financial department and issue a verdict - return the money or refuse. If the customer finds an orphaned broken bike, the operators report this to the dispatcher, and the dispatcher sends the driver to repair the bike.

The departments communicated with each other through mail, skype and even on paper. As a result, some applications were lost, there was a lot of manual labor and few statistics. It was necessary to streamline the work in order to respond to customers faster and spend less time on routine operations. You will soon learn more about problems and solutions found.

Chapter 3. We begin the introduction of Yuzdesk

To get started, I drew a large diagram of the work process - how letters arrive, how operators set statuses and assign categories to requests, to whom complaints are redirected, and how they respond to customers. Click on the picture to study closer. The next step was to transfer this theoretical scheme to Yuzdesk. To do this, we connected 2 Velobike mailboxes to Yuzdesk so that the letters arrived in the program. Created templates for answering frequently asked questions so as not to write manually each time. For future statistics on topics of requests added category tags:

account is blocked, free rental, thanks, refunded, triple card, consultation, bike found, payment failed, bike malfunction, item malfunction, bike stolen and 25 more tags.

It remains to train the operators. I showed where to poke, which buttons to press to change statuses and reassign questions to colleagues. At first, the guys resisted "what kind of new program is this, unusual, uncomfortable." But an hour later, one operator said to another, "Yes, this new system is just mail, skype and Excel in one." And that was the best definition of Yuzdesk I heard.

Now all letters fall into one feed. I opened the program - I saw how many letters, on what topic, who is responsible, which requires an immediate response.


List of inquiries in Yuzdesk

Chapter 4. From which it will become clear why it was necessary to implement something

From the conversation over coffee to the first inquiries, 3 weeks passed in the system. We came across a problem that greatly slowed down the speed of responses. 60% of the letters were received from the call center employees from the no-reply @ .ru address
in the standard format.


A letter from the call center

In order to reply to the client, it was first necessary to find his e-mail address in the bike database by the client ID. Then add an email to Yuzdesk and only after that answer. A long, uncomfortable nightmare. In two steps, we saved employees an extra 2 minutes for each letter: We

transferred clients with e-mails from the Velobike database to the Yuzdesk database. We created a rule that by ID inside the letter searches for the client in the database and substitutes the desired client with the address in the card.

"Oh, now 100 times faster!" - appreciated by the operators.

The pedals started spinning, and the work went faster)

Here's what else we managed to fix compared to the old process.

Problem 1. When clients wrote or called the call center several times, several employees took up the same problem at the same time. There were incidents. The persistent client, who did not agree with the charge for the rental, called the call center and, for the sake of faith, wrote in support twice. The customer was lucky - one of the operators decided in his favor and returned the money. But the guys spent time in which they could help two more clients.

How did it become. The same applications from the client are now combined. Thanks to this, the entire history of interactions is preserved.

The guys in support take into account all the details and check the client’s testimonies with the system before reaching a verdict. It happens that a client writes in a claim that he did not know anything about rental rates. But in fact, he called the call center and he was warned how much money will be debited if he does not park at the station, but binds the bike to the fence with a cable. Check it out is simple. What the client said, that different operators answered him - everything is before his eyes, and parts of the puzzle are not lost. So unscrupulous cyclists are taken to clean water. But the responsible and honest always go forward.

Problem 222% of requests are related to payment and returns. The final decision on the return of disputed charges is made by the head. Previously, operators submitted applications for approval to him ... on paper. Each application was printed out, leaflets were saved and put in a bundle on the table. Something was lost, customers could not wait for money for a long time and were rightly indignant.

Reached 120 printed applications per day, office urns were full of paper.


Paper application for a refund

How it became. Cycling saves trees and saves ink in the printer. No waste paper. The coordination takes place in Yuzdesk with the help of internal comments. The question is simply assigned to Sergey, and he sees the entire list of applications where a reaction is needed. All solution steps in one request.


Application for a refund in Yuzdesk

Problem 4.For statistics, the information for each letter was manually entered into the “Call Log”, the usual Excel file: date and time, subject of the call, client, responsible, status and term of the decision.


Excel Log Book

This routine was time consuming. Staying after the shift to fill out a file is a common thing. It used to be spent on this extra working day.

Where there is manual labor - there are errors: either the number was not added, then the time was incorrectly indicated - everything, the statistics are already lying. Therefore, it is useless.

How did it become.Excessive body movements are minimized - nothing needs to be done, the system remembers all the statuses and those responsible itself. Employees are focused on helping skiers and solving cycling problems. At the same time, managers see statistics for the reasons for requests, the speed of decisions and control the process in one system.

Chapter 5. Velobike decides how to use Yuzdesk for proactive support

Having established the Q & A process by mail, the Velobike support team went further. Next in line were sore problems, due to which customers and Velobike were losing money.

When the bike is not fully parked

The most common reason for extra charges is a mistake in the lock at the time of parking. A tired cyclist after riding does not fully insert the bicycle into the castle, and the rental remains open. And after a couple of hours, the client already receives an SMS from the bank, which is written off 450 rubles.

There were many claims, tears, and lost money. Therefore, in support of the bike, the process was modernized. Now, if an error occurs during parking, an SMS will be sent to the client, and then the operator will call: “I see that you can’t park. Let's help! ” Usually the client does not have time to go far from the parking lot, he is asked to return and make sure that the bike is correctly positioned.

Like customer letters, parking error messages come to operators in Yuzdesk, this often helps to respond before the customer dials the support number.


Parking error notification

When the rental is delayed for 6 hours

Another costly problem is rentals longer than 6 hours. It happens that a client decided to ride to a neighboring city and did not calculate the time and his strength. Maybe he was late for work and did not find free slots at the station. Or the beginner did not understand how the bike should be returned to the parking lot. In any case, if the rental lasts half a day, it means "something happened." Probably not good. As a result, a client may inadvertently lose 1,500 rubles, and a Velobike - a bicycle, which is much more expensive.

Previously, support did not receive any signals about long rentals. Operators manually monitored bicycles that did not return to the parking lot for longer than 24 hours. But finding a lost bike every other day was almost impossible.

Therefore, Velobike finalized the system and implemented alerts. Now, if the rental lasts more than 6 hours, the client is informed by SMS, and a notification is sent to operators in Yuzdesk. Operators easily find a customer, contact him, and find out what happened. If the client just left the bike somewhere, he will be asked to return to the nearest parking lot. Follow the advice of support and treat the rental bike responsibly, as it is your own - profitable. The bike will go to recount the cost of rent, given how much the client actually traveled. This is what I understand - it’s flexible and conscience-oriented.

Since the start of the 2016 bike season, every 4 missing bike has had a parking error.

After the introduction of alerts for bicycles that did not return on time, it became 2.5 times less. For 3 months of working with alerts, only 1 bike was lost, and only because the client refused to park it at another station. The remaining bicycles were found and returned "home".

Chapter 6. Where We Summarize

We pass from the lyrics to the numbers. What succeeded for the 2016 bike season.

	July-September 2015	July-September 2016
Work with doubled calls (when a client contacted several times through different communication channels)	17%	2%
Search for information on the client during the initial appeal (by login or client name, checking for the availability of appeals and viewing the history)	7 minutes	3 minutes
Time for technical preparation of the answer (using standard answers and rules)	4 minutes	1 minute → 4 times faster
Response time to the client taking into account the investigation of the situation	12 h 12 min	2 h 22 min →  6 times faster

Operators now contact customers and warn about the deadlines for solving the problem, as a result, customers are aware that they deal with their issue and rarely call again. Operators are not loaded with calls and respond to customers faster.

Sergey Tsygankov, deputy Head of the Client Directorate of Velobike:

As a person who worked in medium systems, I understood all the pros and cons. A sufficiently important argument for their implementation is that all moves are recorded and each employee is personally responsible. Not operator 1, 2, but personally, for example, Alexander Gromov, Sergey Tsygankov. Due to the fact that company management has everything in view and access, the use of Usedesk disciplines operators. The system reflects when the application hit the person, when he replied that he did for this, whether he answered correctly. I can come back at any time to see what is going on in Yuzdesk, what appeals are in work. This tool allows you to improve the quality of our work in all channels of interaction with the client.

What's next?

For the next bicycle season, VeloBike plans to continue expanding the bicycle rental zone for the third ring, and to support regular customers with new convenient features in the mobile application. And Yuzdesk plans to integrate with the mobile application and the database of Velobike’s customers and rentals to "investigate" disputed cases even faster. Together we will help Muscovites to move around the city in a fun and comfortable way.

It was an instructive and rewarding experience. Everything turned out, because the guys from Velobike turned out to be inconspicuous, partial and cool professionals. And for me, this story is not even about customer service. It's about how people come together to do a useful thing together.

I personally thank Gleb for the chance. Farid and Sergey - for patience and kindness. The whole Velobike - for making the city healthier, more mobile and happier. Thanks for letting UseDesk be part of this.

See you in April :)