How WebBeds efficiently manages 200,000 tickets per month with Freshworks

Quick overview

WebBeds, a global B2B marketplace serving the travel trade, faced challenges in streamlining its customer service operations as it expanded globally. With 200,000 tickets per month, keeping track of customer inquiries and efficiently resolving them became difficult. After evaluating various options, WebBeds chose Freshdesk as a cloud-based network that met their standards and offered a global solution. Using automation rules and Freshdesk Analytics, WebBeds improved response time, visibility, and overall service delivery. Additionally, adopting a unified support solution helped positively impact their finances and improve overall customer satisfaction rates.

About WebBeds

With a global presence and a team of over 1,500 people spread across 50+ countries, WebBeds (part of the Webjet Limited group) is a global digital marketplace for the travel trade that makes selling and buying hotel and ground travel services easier. WebBeds is committed to delivering fast and reliable customer service. 

However, with their growing presence came the need to streamline their customer service operations. We spoke to Istvan Kerekes, Global BI Transformation Manager – Customer Service, who walked us through WebBeds' incredible journey towards seamless customer service.

With growth comes challenges: WebBeds' need for consolidating customer service operations

As WebBeds continued to expand globally, the business faced challenges processing inbound calls and emails after acquiring companies with different systems, ranging from simple solutions like Outlook to more complex ticketing systems.

With 200,000 tickets per month, it took a lot of work for the customer service teams to keep track of customer inquiries and resolve them efficiently. Their agents needed help to transfer cases between each other and share information effortlessly. "Managing resources across different regions was a problem as we couldn't use teams in one region with a different system in another," added Istvan. The situation was taxing, and the goal was to combine everything and have one global customer service instance for telephony and email processing. 

After evaluating numerous options, Webbeds chose Freshdesk as a cloud-based network that met the latest security standards and offered a global solution. 

Global onboarding was a breeze

Moving to Freshdesk was a big step for WebBeds' teams that did not have ticketing systems. Still, the benefits it offered were huge, especially the global view and accessibility of information. When asked about the overall onboarding experience for global teams, Istvan replied, "The onboarding process was surprisingly easy and fast. A lot of the work was done by your support teams. Then we stepped in as admins on the systems, and it was so easy to use and understand." 

Bringing WebBeds' vision to life 

Supercharging productivity through automation 

WebBeds uses over 200 automation rules in Freshdesk and in-house automations to efficiently manage staff and provide exceptional customer support. These automation rules, triggered by ticket creation, updates, or time, have helped Istvan and the global teams deliver exceptional customer support with minimal effort. Here are some use cases where automation made a significant difference:

Ticket distribution based on client region: By linking specific ticket fields to their internal database, this automation allows management to assign tickets quickly to the right team based on the client's location.

Keyword-based ticket prioritization: Based on specific keywords like 'urgent' or 'important,' tickets can be assigned to a dedicated queue and handled promptly. 

Automated case chasing: Time-triggered automations allow WebBeds to follow up on cases without human intervention, ensuring timely communication with partners and hotels.

Tracking global support performance made easy with Freshdesk Analytics 

WebBeds uses Freshdesk Analytics in two significant ways to monitor their global teams. First, the regional supervisors and managers use the reports in Analytics to measure the team’s performance against SLAs. These insights help them to plan their workflows more effectively and optimize efficiently. Second, they use the data export option to seamlessly transfer data from Freshdesk Analytics to Power BI to create global reports.

The multi-fold impact of a unified support solution 

WebBeds' adoption of a unified support solution has improved resource allocation, contingency planning, and customer satisfaction rates while positively impacting the company's finances. By leveraging a global workforce and automation, Istvan said, "we can accomplish more work with the same amount of agents - that has a positive financial impact on our business."

How Freshworks transformed WebBeds' customer support

After implementing Freshworks, WebBeds observed significant improvements in three major areas:

 1. Improved response time through automations

2. Greater visibility into support operations, enabling management to identify areas for improvement and optimize workflows

3. Better overall service delivery, made possible by advanced monitoring tools that helped the team establish and improve Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

When asked why the team loves working with Freshworks, Istvan replied, "As an administrator, I appreciate the stability and reliability of Freshworks. It's a system that rarely experiences outages or bugs, which is a big plus. The management options are also impressive, allowing admins to do much for their teams." He added that quick and efficient support is another major factor that makes working with Freshworks a positive experience. 

In the future, WebBeds plans to widen its communication options by incorporating chatbots through Freshworks and Freshdesk.