MyDeal.com.au builds brand trust through personalized customer experiences

MyDeal.com.au has been connecting millions of Australian consumers to the best local home and lifestyle products since 2011, seeing massive growth in recent years. With its rise in popularity, MyDeal has become a curator of sorts, ensuring that only the best retailers are onboarded to the platform. “We have a stringent set of criteria for sellers, to ensure that our shoppers have access to only the best providers,” says John Barkle, head of brand and loyalty at MyDeal. The brand works hard to maintain its customers’ trust, from providing dedicated help desk assistance for opening a query all the way to ticket resolution.

Scaling up customer service

Due to the nature of its business, MyDeal serves two types of customers—shoppers and sellers. As an intermediary, MyDeal’s role includes stepping in whenever problems arise. “We used to be the go-between for customers and sellers,” says Caitlin Moore, customer service manager at MyDeal. “The customer’s complaint would come to us. We would create a service ticket, then contact the seller. They would come back, and we would go back to the customer with the response. It was really slow, and we were nervous about growth because our customer service model wouldn’t have worked for large volumes.”

Anticipating the problems of scale, MyDeal moved its customer service to Zendesk. The first action was to enable direct communication between buyers and sellers. “All tickets come into our Zendesk platform, then we allow our sellers and customers to talk to one another through an API integration,” Moore says. “We have more than 1,000 sellers on the website that now can communicate directly with customers. It’s really allowed us to build a solution that matches our company’s growth. That was a game-changer.”

Web forms have enabled even greater and faster scaling. “A lot of customers were clicking Help and raising tickets about information that wasn’t visible to them,” says Moore. “Now, if a customer is about to submit a tracking inquiry, for instance, the automated web form shows their tracking details, thus deflecting an unnecessary ticket.”

“The automation and triggers are a lifesaver,” Moore adds. “They really enable us to speed up the workflow.”

Creating better self-help

MyDeal has since taken a proactive stance when approaching queries. Its extensive FAQs on the website help users—particularly sellers—resolve issues on their own, in less time. “Our sellers need a lot of knowledge to get started,” Moore explains. “The Help Center provides information on the entire onboarding process, customer service protocols, even marketing and promotion.”

Timely updating based on data pulled from customer inquiries and service tickets makes the Help Center even more robust. “If we start seeing a lot of tickets coming in on a particular topic, we put up an article so customers see the information before contacting us. When we know we’ll have high volume because of a sale or promotion, we work closely with marketing to make sure those help articles go up before event day,” Moore says. “And the labels on the articles help customers find the info quickly.”

Providing a personal touch

To best support its large and varied customer base, MyDeal opened multiple contact points. “Every customer is different,” Barkle explains. “We need to provide as many channels as possible for them to get in touch with us in the most convenient way, at whatever time they want.”

One channel that’s a big differentiator for MyDeal is its phone helpline. “Phone support is massive for us. Phones provide a level of personalization to the customer that other companies don’t offer,” Moore says. “And now we have Zendesk tools that facilitate phone calls, like callback and voicemail. Customers can request a callback straight away, which can be faster than waiting on hold.”

Faster responses, greater trust

The pandemic created a boom in online shopping worldwide and an increase in ticket volumes and phone calls for MyDeal. Fortunately, Zendesk is helping the team cope with the growth. ”People want shorter hold times, less response time,” Moore says. “We’re about to launch live chat to meet that need. It’s really exciting.”

For Barkle, the switch to Zendesk came just in time. “Had we not had Zendesk implemented before 2020, there is no way that we would have been able to keep up with customer demand during the pandemic,” he says. “Because we’ve got a great foundation for customer service, we are now in a strong position to continue building a really exciting brand.”