Rentman nurtures customer experience culture with Zendesk

Rentman started from an unmet customer need. When CEO and founder Roy van den Broek couldn’t find efficient management software for his audiovisual (AV) rental company, he developed a platform that met his expectations. “The idea behind Rentman was to build a significantly better product than what already existed by hearing out our users,” says Axel Keicher, customer integration lead at Rentman. “That’s why we understand the importance of feedback so well.”

Putting customers in charge

Since then, a small odd-job project has evolved into a range of scalable solutions that streamline event organization for more than 50,000 AV and event professionals. “Companies use our platform to create outstanding events. With Rentman, they can create and schedule projects, book crews, plan logistics and deliveries, and get a full overview of each event from the concept stage to the final invoice,” explains Markus Foale, customer experience manager at Rentman.

One of the key success factors behind Rentman’s exponential growth was its emphasis on high-touch, empathetic customer support. “Customer-centricity is steeped in our philosophy,” says Foale. “Rentman was developed together with customers and based on customer feedback. So the feedback that goes through our support and reaches the development team is crucial in evolving the software.”

Aligning growth with customer focus

Throughout more than a decade of Rentman’s existence, Zendesk has aided its front-line agents in handling requests from various channels. “We’ve used Zendesk’s ticketing system almost from day one as the foundational element not only for customer support, but to a great extent also for customer success,” Foale explains.

However, experiencing pronounced growth made maintaining a strong customer focus more challenging. “After a while, especially as a company grows, it is easy to lose touch with customers, instead relying on your own judgment,” says Keicher.

Many of the support team members also struggled to feel valued and appreciated. “Customer support teams can often feel as an add-on instead of what they really are—a crucial component to the motor driving a company forward,” adds Foale.

Challenges with agent motivation led to high support team turnover, potentially harming customer service quality in the long run. “Losing agents with experience and knowledge and training new hires was distracting us from customers, our focal point,” Foale says. “Our agents are extremely knowledgeable, but solely relying on high-performance individuals was not sustainable. Maintaining quality, in the long run, requires getting everyone involved in customer success equally.”

Making every agent heard, seen, and valued

Rentman needed a consolidated way to track internal quality on the business, team, and agent levels to make its support teams feel appreciated. To that end, the company has implemented Zendesk QA , a 360-degree QA platform. Zendesk QA pulls in all customer tickets, chats, calls, and emails gathered from various sources to show the full picture of customer conversations and agent performance.

A scalable quality management platform for customer service, Zendesk QA helps agents grow professionally by providing instant and effective performance feedback through efficient, visual dashboards. “With 360-degree feedback, you can coach agents in specific areas, such as teaching them how to offer better support or educating them about the product,” says Keicher. “The feedback is peer-based and everyone is involved in the process, which helps agents become more engaged. So, by reviewing a peer conversation, I can help my colleague and at the same time learn something to enhance my performance.”

Improving quality with an internal feedback loop

Systematic feedback empowers agents to understand problem areas, improve their skills, track progress, and quickly address customer issues, questions, and concerns. Transparent, consistent communication also helps disseminate product knowledge among all employees and teams for a better customer experience.

“Members of all departments periodically review support tickets through Zendesk QA, which enhances their understanding of the product and customer needs,” says Foale. “Whether they work in development, product, marketing, or sales, they learn about our product first-hand, which helps boost their performance when interacting with customers.”

The combined powers of Zendesk and Zendesk QA are also a crucial part of new employee onboarding for any role. “Everybody who joins Rentman will go through a few weeks of actual support work, so they fully grasp the system and how it works,” says Foale. “Such an approach improves customer understanding and strengthens community across teams, while preventing knowledge loss when a support agent leaves or gets promoted.”

Staying aligned with customer needs

Through Zendesk QA’s neat, comprehensive dashboards, Rentman gets a full picture of customer sentiments and interactions. “I know instantly how many issues I have assigned, how many I still need to answer, and where to take action,” explains Keicher. “At the same time, I can check how everyone else is doing, which is great because it gives me instant insights into the team’s performance.”

Improved communication flow and insights into each agent’s performance allows Rentman to maintain high customer satisfaction, despite the ever-growing client base. “Our customers’ satisfaction with support has consistently been above 93 percent over the last 12 months, reaching 96 percent periodically,” confirms Foale. “And our support team averages an initial response time of about 60 to 70 minutes on new issues during business hours. This is only possible with a seamless feedback loop.”

The company continues incorporating internal and external feedback into its culture, aligning teams around customer expectations to help people worldwide enjoy Rentman’s service. Ensuring seamless communication flow is critical in pursuing that goal. “You can’t rest on your laurels if you want to be successful,” closes Foale. “Constantly talking to your customers while being receptive to your teams’ feedback helps you stay grounded and responsive to customer needs.”