Desk

Ever planned an event? Whether it’s a raging happy hour, a seminar with speakers or a smaller gathering, there are a million details event planners have to manage to pull off a successful activity. The one thing they want to set-and-forget is the invitation.

Enter TicketLeap, a self-service online ticketing platform for event organizers to manage the ticketing process. Since launching in 2003, their goal has been to give event planners an easy-to-use, do-it-yourself ticketing system that also makes it a breeze for event attendees to get their tickets. “We want to make ticketing the best possible experience for buyers and patrons and fans to get into the event versus being looked at as the barrier of entry,” says Tim Raybould, president & COO of TicketLeap.

Keeping Customer Support DIY

Last year TicketLeap did $52 million gross ticket sales, which means they powered a lot of events. One way they’ve helped users stay DIY is with the TicketLeap Support Center, powered by Desk.com. The support center is updated on a regular basis and kept current with useful articles.

Before Ticketleap added the Support Center with Desk.com agents spent 80% of their day on the phone helping one customer at a time. “We selected Desk.com specifically for its ability to easily build a knowledge base,” says former TicketLeap CTO Keith Fitzgerald. Today agents spend 20% of their time on the phone with complicated cases and 80% on email leveraging articles from the knowledge base.

Tips for Creating a Top-Notch Support Center

So how did TicketLeap turn the support center into such a useful and powerful tool? “Our knowledge base is regularly updated every two to three weeks,” says Allison Berger, TicketLeap community manager. Along with tweeting and updating the TicketLeap social channels, Allison manages the “help” content. The articles she creates are immediately available for agents and customers searching the support center.

Product “sprints” or updates and fixes are a regular occurrence for web products like TicketLeap. Customers access it on iOS, Android and browsers, so it’s crucial to keep help articles current as the product evolves. “Knowledge base makes it very easy to keep our help articles updated,” says Allison. Her tips for keeping the knowledge base in shape:

• After each product update, check related articles to ensure content is still relevant.
• If a customer asks a question and a topic doesn’t exist yet, create it. “I click ‘new article’ and I start typing,” she says.
• Break content into sections. TicketLeap has a section for ticket buyers, sellers, as well as for iOS and the platform.
• Add images and use the html code — “Make things look pretty,” she advises.

“As a community manager, I honestly can’t imagine working for a company that doesn’t use Desk.com,” says Allison. “It really is a great way to organize all the questions that come in — it makes it easy to really help people.”

Check out the video below with TicketLeap to see how they use Desk.com and Salesforce together to grow their business and provide an even better experience for customers. Read an in-depth story about their use of Salesforce and Desk.com here.