PicsArt hosted a webinar on increasing customer support efficiency. They discussed how they scaled their customer support team to handle increasing ticket volumes without adding staff by improving processes, prioritizing high-value issues, and leveraging software like Zendesk. Key strategies included understanding users, addressing frustration points, tracking trends, focusing on quality over quantity, and allowing automation to enhance rather than replace human support.

1. | PICSART 2020
"How to increase customer support efficiency"
webinar with AppFollow and Zendesk

2. | PICSART 2020
Key Points
1 2 3 4
Your Users Your Team Your Assets Your Plan

3. | PICSART 2020
PicsArt
is the world’s #1 creative platform and social editing app leading
the visual storytelling revolution. With more than 150 million
monthly active creators, the PicsArt community creates,
remixes and shares nearly 1 billion images every month. The
company has amassed one of the largest open-source collections
of content in the world, including free-to-edit photos, stickers and
more. PicsArt is available in 30 languages for free and as a
subscription on iOS, Android and Windows devices.
Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Yerevan, Armenia;
Moscow; Beijing; Tokyo; and Los Angeles, PicsArt is backed by
Sequoia Capital, DCM Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, and
Siguler Guff and Company.
You can also edit with PicsArt right now in your
browser: https://picsart.com/editing-tools

4. | PICSART 2020
Millions of
Users
Thousands of
customer support
requests daily
For multiple platforms
In any language
Through 10+ communication channels
May 2020 CSAT - 82% Satisfaction

5. | PICSART 2020
What we achieved due to
early software upgrade in 2019
The incoming requests in 2020:
Q1 - 100 000 tickets
Q2 - 170 000 tickets
+70% workload QoQ?
We covered it
- Without more team members
- Added up quality: more languages and more customized automatic replies and follow up
messages
- Along with improved, much more detailed data collection
More insights ahead!

6. | PICSART 2020
Understanding
The customer User
- Own your product. Think as a user.
- Foresee the frustrations and act
proactively.
- Go beyond the user’s feedback. Escalate
the core issue. Fill up the dev teams’
improvements backlog.
- Advocate.
- Advocate..
- Advocate...

7. | PICSART 2020
You can call the rest “Support”, and we will
talk about it, but the User Success at PicsArt is
ensured by a Team of 17 people with diffusive
obligations and focusing at end-to-end
resolutions.
We will see how this “ Suicide squad” handles
hundreds of tickets in the last slides.
The Team
There is no real customer service
beyond human-to-human interaction

8. | PICSART 2020
No help center or chatbots
will stop some users
from contacting support
And it should not be your goal,
when you want to listen to your Users!

9. | PICSART 2020
How do
you
scale up
CS?

10. | PICSART 2020
1.Scale The Quality
Ask the right questions
It’s not about how many users you can
support
It’s about how many users you can support
better, faster, in their native language.
For instance: dynamic canned responses in
the language of the requester.

11. | PICSART 2020
2.Decrease
frustration
Some things need to change
Identify the most common request reasons
and act within the company. Advocate
change!
A minor bug affecting 10s of thousands of
users - is critical !..

12. | PICSART 2020
3.Track the trends
Good CS is data driven
There are insights that can’t be identified
by single team members. Review and revise
the overall picture often.
There might be an issue which always
repeats on the first Tuesday of every month
and goes unnoticed.

13. | PICSART 2020
4.Mind your OPS
CS Operations is undervalued
- Allocate specific people for operational
goals only.
- The software must be administered, and
someone has to learn doing it, you can’t
do it on the go.
- Try with 1 operations person, see the
results, and guaranteed, you won’t stop
hiring.

14. | PICSART 2020
5. Correct Workflows
First do this, then do this...
- Irrespective of the team size, shift to Tiers
as soon as possible. Establish Seniority
and growth logic.
- Establish an Agile spirit and deliver CS
improvement projects incrementally
- Split into focus squads (general requests,
tech, sales, etc)

15. | PICSART 2020
6. Work-Life Balance
CS is stressful. Remember it.
Especially at times of Covid lockdown, the
CS teams are even more vulnerable to
stress and exhaustion. Don’t let the team
burnout. More work is not better work.

16. | PICSART 2020
7. Technical scope
Handover whatever you can
Downtimes, service degradations can be
tracked by system administrators too.
Focus on the troubleshooting scope which
is human identified only (UI, feature
quality, etc)

17. | PICSART 2020
8. Software Assets
Which is key to scaling
Finally reaching the purpose of the
webinar.

18. | PICSART 2020
Key CS Optimization
strategies via SaaS solutions
● Help Center (obviously...)
● Bots (obviously...)
● Developer hires (more people is not scaling...)
● AI-based integrations, widgets (!)
● Correct routing logic based on identified request
patterns, keywords (!)
● Cross-software data structure consistency(!)
● Expert Administration to use the assets at their full(!)
● Golden Rule: an automation should not detach you
from the User, but rather increase the CS quality

19. | PICSART 2020
Insights from
PicsArt User Success Team

20. ~2000
incoming
requests
per day
Incoming
~1100
requests
A Phishing
System
&
Zendesk
own spam
detection
A special tag
for priority
tickets
VIP Community and
Safety & Trust tickets are
assigned. ~1600 left
~1800
tickets
reached
Zendesk
Dummy emails
are handled
with auto-reply
~1000 left
Filled-in Web
Form tickets
are assigned
~900 left
New
subscription
related tickets
are handled with
an auto reply
User Success Team
Other Dedicated Teams
Returning Subscription
related tickets are assigned
~180 New
Store Reviews
~350 AND & ~80 iOS
~100 Unknown
Leftover Tickets
DONE
~50-80 most valuable
tech tickets
~750 tickets
Minor Issues Handled

21. | PICSART 2020
Plan your CS
This is a never ending journey
There is no exact guideline or
set of instructions for best
quality customer support
You can not learn it at a university.
You can not copycat a practice.
You can not finish improving at some point.
- Have a Roadmap, a backlog,
cherish it and let it grow.
- Align the company goals with
the Team goals, but most
importantly with the
individual growth
aspirations of the team
members.
- Follow the market. Experiment
and change priorities quickly.

22. | PICSART 2020
Thank you.
Delivered by Vahe Khumaryan
User Success Team Lead at PicsArt, August 2020
vahe.khumaryan@picsart.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/contactvahe

23. | PICSART 2020
Team Growth and Management
- Differentiate the Career Path levels (Junior > Mid > Senior > Associate > Lead >
etc) from the focus roles (Tier 2 Tech Specialist, Dedicated Tier 3 Web
Subscriptions Specialist, etc.). The second gradation should be flexible with
changes often to train a skillful team of universal specialists.
- Differentiate the workload, make it interesting and entertaining for the team,
allow inter-role changes upon individual commitment and performance.
- Plan educational path ahead. There is a lot to learn in CS.
include:

24. DONE
Spammers, advertisement,
out of support scope, etc...
Ticket is
created
Passes
through all
Zendesk
automations
First Agent
touch
~15h max
First Agent
touch within
~30 minutes
Usually,
the key
lifecycle
step
First Agent
touch
~max 1 day
No
Assignment
Assigned to
Agent
Possible
Reassign
Possible
Reassign
Standard
Flows,
Conversations
and
Escalation
Min ~1 hour
Avg ~ 2-3
days
Max ~ ∞
Assigned to
Group
Closed
New
Open
Pending
On-Hold
Solved
Closed
Ticket Status
Awaiting
user
response
The ticket is solved, but allowing user to
feedback on the same ticket so far
24 hours
reminder
Awaiting
user
response
48 hours
reminder
Awaiting
user
response
Survey!
???????
Solved
Solved
On-Hold
OR
Open
Open
PendingPendingPendingPending
Open
Open Open
Open
New
New
Trusted
Info
...
but ideally
a solution!
Archived
Forever
Solved > Closed
Pending
OR
Solved