iPostal1 scales by centralizing on one AI-powered platform

Streamlining business operations is a central part of Justin Levitz’s DNA. As the business process and growth manager of iPostal1, Levitz creates systems and processes that build the foundation for companies to scale with the ultimate goal of “zero defects.”

“I’m a master process maker,” he says.

So when iPostal1 was growing from thousands to hundreds of thousands and then more than 1 million mailboxes in an increasingly virtual world, Levitz saw the answer to supporting scale in Freshworks’s AI-powered solutions. 

“When I came to iPostal1, we were growing fast,” says Levitz. “We needed solutions that worked out of the box, were easy to customize and which I could build quality processes on. I saw this in Freshworks products.”

Freshsales became the primary CRM for all mailbox partners, such as Staples, which provide the physical address and receive mail for end users. Freshdesk’s modern ticketing system displaced shared mailboxes and spreadsheets, and Freddy AI features such as Summarizer, Auto Triage, and Canned Responses helped relieve agents who were typing as fast as they could as email and chat queries mounted. 

To make IT delivery more efficient as the company grew, Freshservice was implemented first in IT, and then legal, product management, operations, and HR, where employee onboarding instantly became a smoother process. 

All of these solutions integrated easily with other software the company was using, particularly with the help of Freshworks’ premium support offering, making implementation easy and natural. Capacity expanded such that chatbots now handle more than 30,000 conversations per month, resolving 53% of queries, and more than 20,000 tickets are created in Freshdesk. 

“We all want simplicity in our world,” Levitz says. “Freshworks is easy to understand and makes sense to agents. And the ability to centralize information and processes gives people an experience of unity.”

The company

iPostal1 provides virtual mailboxes through 3,000+ locations for more than 1 million end users who want a physical address and a place to receive mail.

The challenge

When Levitz joined iPostal1 in 2021, he saw that customer service agents were overwhelmed by phone calls and emails. The company had a few seats on Freshdesk, but most agents managed customer service requests with spreadsheets and other ad-hoc tools. Because of the volume, ticket responses were delayed. iPostal1 had a few chat-focused agents using Freshchat, but chat didn’t have proper structure and processes in place to handle the huge volume of incoming queries.

A surge in customers during and after the pandemic exacerbated these issues and set the stage for unhappy customers and employees.

Levitz saw the root cause as a lack of a single source of truth about the company’s customers and partners. With each new inquiry, agents were starting from scratch rather than working from a clear view of a customer’s or partner’s status and history. From this hub of information about customers and partners, Levitz aimed to build out processes and select tools that would automate many of the IT and support tasks necessary to keep customers and employees happy.

The solution

To create this CRM at the core of the business, Levitz customized Freshsales, calling on Freshworks’ technical team whenever he hit snags. Key information stored in this CRM would include basic information like hours of operation and number of customers at each location, and most importantly, a history of interactions such as how many tickets they had submitted and on what topics.

With Freshsales and then the addition of Freshservice, onboarding became easier: New mail centers can sign up for required training through Calendly, which is integrated with Freshservice and Google Calendar. This activity then syncs with Freshsales as the single source of truth on that account.

Freddy AI stepped in to make agents’ lives easier. Canned Responses, created from common replies, save agents time in typing the same responses repeatedly. Auto Triage is getting the right tickets to the agents with the most knowledge or history with the customer or partner. And Summarizer, which captures the details of each customer interaction, is making hand-offs to other agents more efficient. With a modern ticketing system in Freshdesk and AI-powered tools, agents have better tools for quality interactions that save time and solve problems.

iPostal1 was realizing success and finding value in their Freshworks’ solutions, prompting Levitz to take the case to the executive team for further investment. To emphasize his point, one slide in his pitch simply read “centralize.” The fact that Freshworks easily integrates with existing software made it an even easier sell. Today, Freshworks AI-powered solutions have been rolled out further to the legal, operations, and HR teams. 

“Centralizing information has downstream benefits,” says Levitz. “It gets into prioritization. And, once things are centralized and prioritized, I can actually hold someone accountable because their priorities are set, clear, and known.”

Impact

Centralizing on Freshworks, built on Neo Platform and powered by AWS, has made it easier for agents to support customers and IT to deliver software and technical solutions when it’s needed for employees and customers. Capacity has expanded such that chatbots now handle more than 360,000 conversations on average per year, resolving 54% of queries, and more than 240,000 tickets are created yearly in Freshdesk. 

Levitz also sees a general improvement in the mood of employees.

“Success is in the temperature and in the willingness to onboard more processes,” he says. 

“We have deep buy-in with IT and operations so far, and HR is seeing improvements in onboarding and offboarding, as well as employee change requests.”

This is classic Levitz “master process maker” problem-solving at work.