Facts

Founded

2016

Fleet

> 5,000 vehicles

Business

Campervan/ motorhome rental

Agents

20 agents

Headquarter

Munich, Germany

Markets

Europe, US

About roadsurfer

Founded in 2016 on a personal wish to simplify campervan rental for road trips, roadsurfer has become Europe's largest outdoor travel expert. The business has evolved and now includes campervan subscriptions, the sale of used vehicles, a booking platform for unique roadsurfer camping spots, and much more.

Within five years of sending its first 25 VW California buses out on the road, roadsurfer expanded into 12 European countries, opened more than 50 rental stations and grew its fleet to 5,000 campers. And in 2022, roadsurfer opened its first station in Los Angeles.

Not only has roadsurfer made renting a campervan simpler, but the company has also made it easier for campers to get going and start enjoying their holiday on the road. This is due to roadsurfer's dedication to providing an excellent customer experience from before the journey even begins. For instance, provide renters with complete vehicle briefings, tutorial videos and how-to guides.

Moreover, roadsurfer offers a 24-hour hotline that can answer questions from potential campers as well as renters who are already out surfing the roads

instagram_integration_for_Zendesk_screenshot1_helphouseio

"KPIs are easy. Daily outstanding service is not."

- Artam Künzner, Customer Experience Specialist, roadsurfer

Challenge

Getting the right set-up for sustainable scaling

Together with his team, Customer Experience Specialist at roadsurfer Artam Künzner has chosen the tools for the customer service team to provide the outstanding roadsurfer service. Among these essential tools is Zendesk, with useful third-party integrations – including for social media, WordPress, and telephony.

Initially set up by Artam, using available resources, the Zendesk instance was well-functioning and already helping agents fulfil their tasks. However, Artam knew they were not using Zendesk to its full potential and that it would be too time-consuming for him to further tweak and optimise the system without expert help.

Optimisation was needed to facilitate roadsurfer's continued growth and expansion. The objective was to ensure a sustainably scalable support organisation that did not require hiring a lot more support staff. Artam had heard about the Zendesk experts at helphouse.io, and following recommendations from his network, he reached out to us.

"I needed help to validate my decisions and to make our set-up more sustainable. At helphouse.io, I found the expertise I needed – at all levels. Their support is on point! "

– Artam Künzner, Customer Experience Specialist, roadsurfer

Analysis and process

"Always room for improvement"

Our thorough helphouse.io analysis uncovered some areas where optimisation could be carried out. Looking at agent performance, for instance, the use of macros, email templates, group structures and views, as well as ticket routing and priorities, could help the support agents at roadsurfer work more efficiently.

For this purpose, we also helped define and apply a service level agreement, providing roadsurfer with a valuable tool for solving strategic issues and consulting on current projects and topics.

We also identified enhancement potential in the Zendesk Answer Bot set-up and the Help Center with better article management and search engine optimisation. More effective utilisation of these tools could enable renters to find the answer they need more easily, saving both renters and agents time.

"I have learned a lot from working with helphouse.io and gained new perspectives. With a sustainable strategy and the right tool kit, the possibilities are virtually endless. And there is always room for improvement."

– Artam Künzner, Customer Experience Specialist, roadsurfer

Solutions

Access to tried and tested expertise

Following the analysis, we helped implement all the suggested improvements in an ongoing cooperation with Artam and the roadsurfer team. Consistent follow-up meetings have been held to obtain feedback and ensure the upgrades work as intended.

At the same time, and thanks to the service level agreement, roadsurfer has access to the specialist consultants at helphouse.io dedicated to roadsurfer. This way, roadsurfer can leverage the collective experience of our experts when new challenges arise. Our consultants offer top-level solutions for any common and out-of-the-box queries. These include Zendesk consultancy as well as development for API processes and apps.

The team at roadsurfer have done a great job building and optimising their Zendesk. From recent meetings, we have identified room for further improvement and are making our consultants available to help roadsurfer through each step of its continued growth. It is a very exciting road trip we are on together.

"I suddenly have a sparring partner with a lot of experience at hand, whose tried and tested expertise I have access to. This obviously has had a big impact on my work, as we have been able to optimise processes further and significantly improve our CX."

- Artam Künzner, Customer Experience Specialist, roadsurfer

Results

More happy campers

roadsurfer's dedicated staff strive to provide the best possible customer experience by offering excellent service at every customer touch point – online, on the phone and face to face when picking up and returning the campervan. The goal, of course, is to ensure the campers will return for their next adventure and hopefully recommend the roadsurfer experience to their friends.

To deliver its trademark personalised service, roadsurfer has defined which customer contacts have most value, and those require agent involvement. Agents should not need to be involved in lower value enquiries, and the customer service set-up and strategy is making this possible as Zendesk Help Center increases ticket deflection by providing self-help options to the customers.

With our help, the Zendesk set-up at roadsurfer has been optimally configured to help the customers most effectively. Whether the customer requires personal contact with a support agent or is looking for an answer to a general question or a specific document, which can be found on the roadsurfer website, Zendesk points the customer in the right direction.

Having the right set-up and the best tools available, the customer service organisation can work more efficiently, allowing support agents to prioritise and deal with more enquiries faster. Therefore, roadsurfer has been able to grow without needing to employ many more agents on its customer service team.

"More models, new countries and still no huge increase in our support team. In support, we are scalable and backed by the right and optimally configured tool kit. We were able to optimise our processes and had an improvement on all rating channels as a result. Furthermore, the availability of the experts at helphouse.io has helped promote the right mindset to take on the challenges ahead."

- Artam Künzner, Customer Experience Specialist, roadsurfer