"Without Sugester, there would be no customer support at InvoiceOcean. I can't imagine working separately on Gmail, separately on the phone, with the chat somewhere else. With the number of tickets we currently have. The tool is comprehensive and I have everything I need here." Piotr Wajszczuk Product Manager & Team Leader Customer Support at InvoiceOcean

In today's case study, we want to show you how one person at InvoiceOcean was able to handle up to 250,000 registered accounts using a single tool — Sugester. And how now, with the same tool, InvoiceOcean's 11-person support team serves its customers, with over 1 million registered accounts.

We talked about InvoiceOcean with Piotr Wajszczuk, who has been with InvoiceOcean almost from the very beginning — since 2014. He is a pillar of the company and knows the product inside out. He closely identifies with it, as InvoiceOcean evolved and became what it is today right before his eyes and with his enormous involvement. Piotr started at InvoiceOcean as a customer service specialist. He is currently responsible for product development and oversees the work of the helpdesk team.

InvoiceOcean is a simple online system for issuing invoices and managing warehouse operations. The first invoice for a customer was issued in November 2011. InvoiceOcean now has over one million registered accounts and is available in 6 foreign markets.

As an invoicing program, it is among the leading platforms in the Polish market, and demand for it continues to grow. And it's not just about intuitiveness and competitive prices. The system responds quickly to changes, which wins over customers.

For InvoiceOcean, from the very beginning, customers were important. The system was, and still is, easy to use, but InvoiceOcean was determined that every customer who needed help would receive it immediately. Initially, one person handled InvoiceOcean's customers; now there are 11.

A one-person customer service department and 250,000 registered accounts

"When I started, there were 65,000 registered customers. I remember being able to handle customers on my own when there were already 250,000 registered accounts. Sugester helped me do that."

From the very beginning of InvoiceOcean, there was also a customer service department. At first, the department consisted of one person. Piotr handled customers at InvoiceOcean. From the start, customer service at InvoiceOcean involved handling emails, forum tickets, and answering calls. Two years after Piotr took the position, chat was also added.

The challenge was handling all contact channels simultaneously, by one person, at the highest possible level.

One system with many possibilities

"Without Sugester, there would be no customer support at InvoiceOcean. I can't imagine working separately on Gmail, separately on the phone, with the chat somewhere else. With the number of tickets we currently have. The tool is comprehensive and I have everything I need here."

InvoiceOcean began to develop rapidly. Customers started arriving at a fast pace, and the number of inquiries and tickets grew day by day. A comprehensive tool was needed to allow multi-channel customer service without unnecessary switching between several programs. That is why InvoiceOcean started using Sugester from the very beginning, activating emails, tasks, forum, and shortly after, the chat and VOIP modules.

Sugester had solutions that allowed Piotr to independently and effectively handle up to 250,000 registered accounts via email, phone, chat, and forum.

Currently, InvoiceOcean's customer service department most frequently uses the following features:

• Shared inbox, which allows gathering all messages from InvoiceOcean's customers in one place. This way, the team doesn't waste time searching through different email boxes or communication platforms. All customer emails, forum tickets, and unhandled chats are visible in the inbox. Additionally, tasks that each member of InvoiceOcean's helpdesk team has to complete are also visible there.
• Customer card in CRM. Thanks to integration with the email, VOIP, and chat modules, helpdesk employees have a complete communication history with the customer, regardless of the contact channel. Often the information in CRM allows them to resolve difficult situations.
• Tasks. InvoiceOcean has been actively working with the task module in Sugester from the beginning. They most often use it to resolve bugs, but also to submit inquiries or product development ideas.
• Handling phone calls — during work with Sugester, the system was extended with a VOIP module, which InvoiceOcean immediately activated. Currently, InvoiceOcean's helpdesk team receives an average of 250–300 calls per day using Sugester. Each call is described in a note and tagged. This allows each consultant to quickly check what the last contact was about and how to conduct the conversation. InvoiceOcean also has a policy of adding every new customer they speak to on the phone to CRM. This helps them build their customer base and collect data needed for personalized customer service.
• Chat module. Sugester's chat was added to InvoiceOcean's website 2 years after Piotr took over customer service. Chat was a new trend that InvoiceOcean embraced. The only challenge after implementing chat, as Piotr recalls, was switching to a less formal tone of communication. It is a quick way to get basic information, which InvoiceOcean's customers use very frequently.
• Suggestion forum. InvoiceOcean relied heavily on submissions from Sugester's suggestion forum at the very beginning. Currently the forum is not as popular, but it is still supported by the helpdesk team. InvoiceOcean's customers still like to make suggestions, but also engage in discussions with other forum participants, advising each other on the best solutions.

Larger team, more possibilities, and more challenges

Over time, customers at InvoiceOcean grew rapidly, and Piotr began to expand the helpdesk team. Currently, the helpdesk department receives an average of over 250 calls and responds to approximately 150 emails per day.

With a larger team, new challenges arose that required introducing changes and applying additional features from Sugester. Above all, there was the question of team communication, delegating work, and monitoring department results. On top of that came onboarding new employees and mentoring.

Piotr mentions a few features that are particularly useful in his daily work:

• Activity overview on the account, especially when it comes to monitoring when someone starts and ends work, and what activities they perform. Piotr monitors all this data in the timesheet in Sugester.
• Ticket monitoring. Piotr regularly checks how many emails came in a given day, how many replies were sent, how many calls were received. To analyze this data, he uses the Tickets, Ticket Details, and User Activity Report in Sugester.
• Assigning emails to specific employees. In general, at InvoiceOcean, each employee picks up an email from the general "to assign" folder for themselves. However, if Piotr wants to reduce traffic, he can assign a batch of, for example, 10 emails to each person with a single click.

Since InvoiceOcean's helpdesk team is constantly growing, onboarding new employees has become an important element. We asked Michał Borkowski — InvoiceOcean's helpdesk coordinator, responsible for customer service and onboarding and training new employees — which of the available Sugester tools are most useful to him.

Michał values the fact that all modules in the system are integrated with each other.

"This is the place where we can immediately create a reply, an internal comment, a related task. This intuitively streamlines daily work at InvoiceOcean. We don't need to use a different tool for emails, a different one for creating tasks or notes."

Among Michał's favorite features that he frequently uses is the ability to postpone a reply to an email to a later date, or the Send and remind me option. Thanks to it, Michał can arrange a follow-up contact with a customer in a few days, and the system will remind him of it.

Since there are many people in the helpdesk team, InvoiceOcean has an active feature so that a reopened thread automatically goes to the person who last replied to the message. This way, says Michał, the customer doesn't get passed from consultant to consultant, is better taken care of, and builds trust in the brand.

An important part of Michał's work is training and mentoring new helpdesk employees. Michał uses internal comments to verify whether a reply to an email prepared by a new employee is correct. If the comment is fine, Michał — also in a comment — gives the green light to send the email. This way, he uses email comments to communicate with new employees. Michał also frequently checks how the team is working, who answers how many calls and replies to how many emails. He most often checks daily statistics in the User Activity Report.

Thanks to the integrated tool that Sugester is, and of course the professional approach and high qualifications of the team, the customer service department at InvoiceOcean is able to handle an average of 150 emails per day, 250–300 phone calls, and over 200 chat conversations. Piotr and Michał are able to oversee the team and new employees to maintain a high level of service.

InvoiceOcean about Sugester

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"Summarizing our collaboration over 10 years, I can confidently say that Sugester has been and remains a service sufficient for the daily essential activities in communication both with customers and with other departments within the company. Additionally, I have the impression that over the years Sugester has grown alongside our company's competences and new challenges and has proven to be an indispensable tool in many cases. Of course, there are still areas where the service needs to be developed in terms of customer support or internal company management, but looking at the collaboration so far, I believe these goals are achievable."

Piotr Wajszczuk Product Manager & Team Leader Customer Support at InvoiceOcean

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