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We prioritize offering our services at a cost-effective price to meet the needs of our clients. To achieve this, we take a number of steps, such as reducing overhead expenses, increasing efficiency through automation and effective planning, offering flexible pricing options based on your specific needs, using technology to streamline processes, collaborating with industry partners, and employing specialized Execution Partners who are leaders in their fields. By implementing these strategies, we are able to provide high-quality services at a price that is accessible to our clients. If there is a specific request that falls outside of your budget, we will always provide alternative solutions that will still help you achieve your objectives.

We understand that it can be difficult for potential clients to explore a partnership with us without knowing the costs involved. That's why we strive to provide estimates as quickly as possible after a discovery call with our team. During this call, we'll learn more about your specific needs and goals, which will allow us to provide an accurate estimate of the costs of our services. Our main priority is helping you meet your objectives within your budget. We are committed to providing you with a range of options and will always do our best to find cost-effective solutions to meet your needs.

Absolutely, we offer free consultations as a way to learn more about your business challenges and determine if we are the right team to help you achieve your goals. This initial consultation is a valuable opportunity for us to get to the heart of your needs and explore how we can best support you. We look forward to discussing your objectives and learning more about how we can work together to drive success.

We typically bill our clients on a monthly retainer basis to make it easy for their employees to use our team and resources without worrying about hourly billing. Our goal is to help our clients grow and succeed, so we want to provide as much support as possible without the concern of unexpected costs. To start, the first month's retainer fee is paid upfront after the client signs our Statement of Execution, which outlines the goals and objectives of our work together. Three days before each billing cycle, we will provide a monthly invoice including details and data on our past month's achievements. Payment for the invoice is due within 10 days of the billing date. In some cases, we may also offer project-based or hourly billing for smaller projects or at the request of the client.

We offer a variety of payment methods, including ACH, wire transfer, and credit card. Please note that we are unable to accept payment by check at this time. During the onboarding process, we will ask you to choose your preferred payment method. You will receive an invoice three days before your billing date, along with instructions on how to make your payment using your designated method. If you need to change your payment method at any time, you can contact your Client Success Associate to make arrangements.

We understand that not all clients will need our services indefinitely. Hopefully, the separation isn't sudden but in any case, if you no longer require our team's assistance, please inform us prior to your next billing date. To ensure a smooth transition, we typically work with our clients to develop a transition plan for transferring any ongoing work to your team. This plan includes a detailed report of everything we have accomplished together and comprehensive process/workflow documents.

There are often two kinds of CX solution firms: Counselors and Takeovers. Counseling firms build their service offerings around “guidance” or “workshops”. Usually, they want to refrain from being responsible for results and instead, they provide you with a one-size-fits-all “proprietary” approach that you are expected to implement. You'll often find that these companies are monetarily motivated in packaging and selling their expertise. Takeover firms, on the other hand, are hired when an organization no longer wants to be responsible for the customer experience so they outsource the work to a BPO. The fallacy here is that the customer experience improves if the KPIs these firms heavily rely on improve. These firms prioritize metrics such as response time and customer satisfaction, but they’re often not connected to your company's goals and can become costly over time as they don't work to improve the user experience, collect the right data, coordinate with internal teams or streamline processes. At Smoothen, we pride ourselves on offering a truly unique experience for our clients. In addition to our proprietary tools, methodologies, and approaches, what sets us apart is our sincere dedication to improving the customer experience. We handle your customer support, gather necessary data, gain buy-in from internal teams, and assist in determining the right pivots in your customer journey to develop a product people love you for. We are motivated by impact. We know that impact is only made through listening and deep understanding of your customers.

Our approach to helping businesses achieve their objectives is to take a comprehensive and adaptable approach. We have assembled a team of experts and formed partnerships with industry leaders to enable us to address a wide range of challenges and opportunities. Usually, we are brought in to address a specific issue, but it is often problems in other areas of the customer experience that need to be addressed in order to achieve the desired outcomes. For example, when we were approached by an insurance company to improve their support experience within Zendesk, we not only addressed their support issues but also identified and addressed problems in their claims process. This resulted in Smoothen developing a system for rating claims based on quality, which helped to streamline the review process and reduce fraud for their organization. This ultimately enabled the our client to negotiate more favorable terms with its partners. Our strategy is to listen to the needs of our clients and take action to address the root causes of any problems or challenges they are facing. We believe in being proactive in finding solutions and helping our clients improve their CX operations. To begin working with you, we typically start by conducting an evidence-based evaluation of your customer experience to assess its current standing. This may include a variety of assessments, such as a needs assessment, organizational assessment, operational assessment, and individual assessment, depending on the services you require. These assessments help us to identify areas of strength and opportunity, and allow us to develop a customized approach to meeting your objectives.

The length of time of our partnership varies and is based on a number of factors including: • Business needs and challenges • Budget • Size of the organization or team • Scope of the consulting project • Needs for ongoing support The length of our engagements has varied from a few weeks for a quick training assessment to a few years for organizations in which they outsource their support workload to our team.

The frequency and format of our work reports may vary depending on the type of service you require. We prioritize transparency and strive to provide clear updates on our contributions and timelines. In order to demonstrate the impact of our work to our clients, we may set up data dashboards to track key performance indicators (KPI's) and measure progress. Additionally, our Statement of Execution outlines specific milestones that we aim to achieve. Your Execution Partner is to provide a report on these milestones on a biweekly basis.

At present, we are primarily focusing on providing remote work services throughout the United States. Our team is able to accommodate your business's operating hours. If you prefer to have an in-house team, this may be possible for certain time periods or shorter projects. It is recommended that you speak with your Client Success Associate to explore all of your options.

Yes, we are happy to sign a letter of confidentiality, also known as a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), upon request. It is common for our clients to request this and we understand the importance of protecting sensitive information. Please let us know if you have a specific NDA that you would like us to review and sign, or if you would like us to provide one for your review.

We occasionally work with international clients on projects in the United States. However, we do not work with domestic or international clients on projects outside of the United States.

The start time for our partnership will depend on your company's industry and service needs, but we will do our best to accommodate your timeline. In general, it may take a few days or weeks to begin working with your organization, depending on the specifics of your case.

As a client of Smoothen, you can expect to work with at least two members of our team: an Execution Partner and a Client Success Associate. Your Execution Partner will be the primary point of contact for your organization's needs and will lead the planning and execution of your objectives. Their job is to organize with our industry partners and internal teams to plan and execute your objectives. Your Client Success Associate will be available to address any concerns or questions you may have during our partnership, including billing, service information, data downloads, and permission settings. For larger projects involving multiple services, you may have more than one Execution Partner, with a lead Execution Partner coordinating the completion of all projects.

Once we have had initial discussions and have a general understanding of the scope and structure of a potential engagement, we are happy to provide client references. We believe that speaking with our past clients can be a helpful way to get a sense of the value and results that we have delivered in the past, and we are always willing to share this information with potential partners.

To set up a discovery call for us to learn about each other, please fill out the contact form on this page. Once we receive your request we’ll appropriately route it to the right team member and get back to you within a few hours. Sometimes minutes. You can also email us at info@smoothen.io.

If you're looking to optimize your customer relationships and streamline your operations, focusing on Zendesk as your CRM platform can be a game-changer. Our consulting agency has pivoted to specialize in Zendesk, recognizing its multifaceted capabilities and the exceptional benefits it offers when implemented correctly. Zendesk isn't just a CRM; it's a versatile tool that can revolutionize various departments within your organization, including sales, customer service, recruitment, marketing, and business development. By adopting Zendesk, you gain a powerful system that effortlessly manages external relationships, handles tasks like storing customer data, tracking service issues, identifying sales opportunities, and executing marketing campaigns with finesse. Moreover, Zendesk's intuitive interface grants easy access to critical data, fostering collaboration across different processes and boosting overall productivity. When you choose Zendesk for your CRM needs, you're investing in a platform that excels at enhancing customer relationships, improving efficiency, and driving profitability.

The implementation of Zendesk typically involves a swift setup process, often completed within a matter of days. However, crafting workflows that seamlessly manage your tickets may require a few weeks of focused effort. At our consulting agency, we prioritize customizing Zendesk to align with your unique support, marketing, and sales strategies. Understanding your specific business processes is crucial to the success of your CRM implementation. This initial phase may take some time, but it's a necessary step to ensure that Zendesk is tailored precisely to your needs. By investing the time upfront, we can effectively automate processes and track key insights, ultimately delivering a Zendesk solution that optimally serves your business objectives.

The success of a CRM implementation depends on the proficiency of all end users. Our team understands the critical role that user buy-in and training play in ensuring a successful implementation. We have experience providing thorough training to various types of users and have developed a training methodology specifically designed to facilitate adoption. We have also conducted train-the-trainer programs and consider ourselves "educational architects," customizing our training curriculum to meet the specific needs of each client. In addition, we offer ongoing support to ensure that users are able to effectively maximize your utilization of Zendesk long after the initial implementation is complete.

Absolutely. Comprehensive training for your team is included with all our Zendesk packages. Our goal is to transfer our skills and expertise to your team to ensure that you are able to effectively use Zendesk.

Demonstrating the return on investment for your Zendesk CRM strategy is crucial for sustaining ongoing funding. We specialize in helping you establish a robust ROI model customized to your organization's unique needs. Additionally, we can recommend KPIs that align perfectly with your business objectives. Our expertise lies in measuring success across various facets of your CRM implementation, including: 1. Increased Sales: We'll analyze the impact of Zendesk CRM on your sales figures, tracking how it contributes to revenue growth. 2. Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: We'll assess how Zendesk CRM improves customer interactions, leading to higher satisfaction levels and brand loyalty. 3. Accurate Forecasting: We'll work with you to refine your forecasting processes, ensuring that Zendesk CRM helps you make more precise predictions. 4. Reduced Time to Market: We'll measure the efficiency gains in product development and marketing, helping you reduce time-to-market and gain a competitive edge. Our goal is to provide you with concrete data and insights that demonstrate the tangible benefits of your Zendesk CRM implementation, ensuring your continued success and support for your CRM strategy.

Definition: A macro is a prepared response or action that an agent can manually apply when they are creating or updating tickets. Yes. If you already have a CRM and ongoing support, we prioritize learning your support workflows right away. This means doing a lot of your support tickets! Macros are important because they help to establish a consistent brand voice and internal policies, as well as effectively respond to repetitive customer support questions. To optimize your macros, we want to understand the challenges from the perspective of your agents. This may involve creating new macros for gaps in coverage or rewriting macros that have a low customer satisfaction rating. We also implement tracking mechanisms to easily identify the source of user difficulties and changes in ticket volume.

To tailor our training programs to meet the specific needs of your organization, we first assess where you are in your customer experience development journey. Based on this assessment, we develop a plan to implement procedures that will streamline your customer service, improve your bottom line, and increase customer loyalty. This may include training your team on how to effectively use your CRM and handle tickets, as well as providing product and engineering teams with valuable insights into CX workflows to break down departmental silos. In addition, we often like to incorporate your company's mission statement into our trainings to gain buy-in and commitment from employees.

To measure the effectiveness of our training programs, we use a combination of techniques, including agent surveys and tracking the adoption rates of CRM and procedures. By gathering feedback from the agents who have received the training, we can determine whether they found the training helpful and whether they feel more equipped to handle customer inquiries and requests. We also track the adoption rates of the CRM and procedures to see whether they are being used effectively and consistently by the team. This helps us identify any areas where additional training or support may be needed.

We stay up to date on the latest CX best practices and trends by being actively involved in the CX community. This includes hosting support conferences and participating in online forums where we can offer solutions to CX challenges. We also write knowledge articles on CX topics to ensure we are constantly learning and staying current. Additionally, we gain valuable insights and perspective through our work with clients, as we often develop best practices by reworking and solving various client issues and questions. By staying engaged and continuously learning, we are able to provide the most effective and up-to-date CX training and support to our clients.

To determine the appropriate level of training for each individual or group within an organization, we consider their level of involvement with CX and their specific needs and goals. We strive to be efficient and effective with our training, so we don't want to provide more or less training than is necessary. For some departments, we may engage with them through data findings and offer insights and questions to help them improve their CX processes. In other cases, a more in-depth, full-scale training may be necessary, particularly when we are working to rebuild ticket handling and support procedures. Ultimately, our goal is to provide the right amount and type of training to help each individual or group achieve their CX goals.

When you outline the journey of a customer, you can easily pinpoint all of the roadblocks in your touchpoints with a customer. For example, a customer's account may be paused by your systems for review. While these reviews are often necessary for fraud prevention you can improve this user experience by dissecting the customer journey: • Did the customer receive a specific timeline for when they can expect the review to be completed? • Are you feeding user account statuses between your CRM and admin system to raise the SLA’s on these support tickets to prevent churn and improve autoresponders? • If action needs to be taken by the user is that apparent within their account? • Do they receive significant notices of action required? • If action is required are you transparent and empathetic in your communication?

We think so, it's helpful to create a customer journey map in order to fully understand the requirements and experiences of the service users. This can aid in identifying areas that need improvement and allow for the creation of targeted solutions.

The time it takes to create a customer journey map can vary, but it is generally a process that takes 2-4 weeks to complete. However, it is important to note that they are constantly evolving and may require ongoing audits and assessments to identify areas for improvement especially after new implementations. Though you won't have to always rely on us to update your map, were more than able to train your team on effective strategies for updates to your customer journey.

Yes. To ensure that we can effectively improve your customer experience operations, we create a customer journey map for nearly all of our services. Without this map, we would be unable to fully understand and address the needs of your customers.

We offer two main options for handling disputes: we can either take charge of the dispute resolution process ourselves or train your in-house team on effective strategies for resolving disputes. In addition to resolution, our top priority is preventing disputes from occurring in the first place. To achieve this, we work closely with your fraud, compliance, and product teams to identify the root causes of customer confusion that can lead to chargebacks, and implement solutions such as updating the terms of service or adjusting marketing efforts to reduce confusion. Our goal is to minimize the number of chargebacks and ensure a smooth experience for your customers.

No, we cannot guarantee chargeback reversal(s). Our team can give you recommendations on how to best resolve a chargeback, including implementing fraud measures and standard operating procedures. In our experience, it is more effective to focus on preventing chargebacks through effective customer support interactions and onboarding rather than trying to resolve them after they have occurred. However, we will build and train your team on chargeback resolution strategies to help recover any funds that are possible to recover through the resolution process.

Whether we can help if your company has been placed on a bad merchant list depends on whether you are in the warning stages or have already been blacklisted by issuers. If you have received a warning from your payment processor due to a high dispute rate, we will need to act quickly to resolve the issue. This may involve conducting a thorough analysis of your product offering and making adjustments as needed. High dispute rates are often caused by a misunderstanding of the product by the consumer, and an educational campaign may be necessary to address this issue to prevent further reputational damage.

We have experience working with all major payment processors on chargeback resolutions, including Stripe, PayPal, Square, 2Checkout, Authorize.Net, Braintree, and ChargeBee. While the dispute resolution process may vary between payment processors, our approach to resolving disputes is effective regardless of the specific payment processor being used.

One of the reasons that delivering compliance can be a challenge for customer-centric experiences is that the underlying infrastructure needs improvement. Take for instance, telephone agents that are required to recite lengthy, unengaging compliance scripts or send physical documents that customers must sign and return. This disrupts and causes customers to abandon support experience and organizations all together. To provide a consistent customer experience across channels, our team can centralize customer data and eliminate redundant data entry. This not only helps organizations efficiently meet regulations such as Know Your Customer and Customer Due Diligence, but it also enables seamless, trustworthy customer journeys. By integrating core systems and channels, both agents and customers can access all account information in one place, resulting in faster approval processes, improved risk identification, and greater personalization to meet customer needs.

Transformation requires teamwork. When responsibility for customer journeys is spread across disconnected teams that are unfamiliar with working together, the customer experience will inevitably be fragmented. To bridge the gap between streamlined journeys and compliance, we bring together various functions to establish shared objectives. By taking a comprehensive view of how journeys are functioning, we can identify the goals of each jurisdiction and ensure that they are achieved without compromising the customer experience or other goals. This shared responsibility across your teams will help ensure compliance and a positive customer experience.

A recent study found that 86% of respondents believe transparency to be more important than ever, yet only 32% of global consumers trust that their primary financial services provider is transparent about fees and charges. To build trust with customers and avoid the perception that short-term profits are prioritized over their needs, we build workflows to proactively communicate with customers, addressing their questions and concerns before they arise. In the post-financial crisis era, regulators aim to ensure that markets are robust, efficient, and fair. Our team will work to center the user experience to enhance customer trust, which can lead to increased recommendations, customer retention, and purchases. By creating support language to explain your products and business practices, including your business ethics and governance, we can improve customers' perceptions and de-escalate pushback.

Our services are not meant to replace a compliance department. Instead, we work alongside your compliance team to efficiently incorporate required regulations into your CX processes.