How Buffer cut their QA time by 50% switching to Zendesk QA

Buffer is a social media management platform used by the likes of Microsoft and Shopify. Buffer uses Zendesk QA to maintain their customer advocacy team’s high standards.

Buffer’s platform is about engagement and connection – values that bleed into their work culture, too. Buffer has a fully remote Customer Advocacy team of 25. Their Advocacy Team goes above and beyond to help customers succeed with the product. A blend of support and success, advocates are available for more than just fixing issues and are a vital limb of the company.

When they were looking for the right customer service QA tool, Zendesk QA (formerly Klaus) was a clear match for their needs.

Switching from spreadsheets to tools

When customer service teams realize they need a quality assurance program, conversation reviews tend to start on spreadsheets and shared documents.

This seems an easy solution for a short period: it is possible on free tools and requires no set-up time. However, as time goes on and the program and team scales, these benefits melt away.

If everything lives in a spreadsheet, QA is reliant on the owners and data insights are severely limited. Maintaining customer support quality as your team scales and/or product diversifies is not possible.

Debunking spreadsheet benefits

• Easy tools: While the simplicity of a basic tool appeals, when spreadsheets multiply as time goes on, upkeep becomes increasingly time-consuming and burdensome. Staff turnover further worsens the issue.

• Low set-up time: If quality assurance is tracked on a sheet instead of a tool, it requires an owner. Even if there are several managers governing the process, managerial change is inevitable at some point. Through expansion and structural change, handovers become complicated, and any QA benefits become lost.

• Low-cost: Where teams save money on software, they will have to spend it through time. Calculating the man-hours spent on maintaining QA data through insufficient tooling soon shows this method flawed. You will also lose the keen insights that a sophisticated tool is able to provide through AI analysis and data dashboards. This eventually leads to the incalculable cost of customers if customer satisfaction scores suffer due to poor service quality.

• Focusing on the conversations that matter: Reviewing conversations at random fails to help teams focus on the interactions that most need attention. It means that opportunities to identify patterns and address weaknesses are missed.

A tool like Zendesk QA can help streamline the process by intelligently selecting conversations based on various criteria, such as recurring issues, customer feedback, or performance metrics. This targeted approach ensures that the most relevant and impactful conversations are reviewed.

“With Zendesk QA, we have a system that lets us review tickets quickly to determine if it meets our quality standards. We’ve found it helpful to have a filter set up for each teammate and try to pick tickets from throughout the review period (generally a month’s worth of tickets). We tend to skip any tickets that contain a macro, auto-response, or a snippet so that we are reviewing unique work from each teammate,” says Darcy Peters.

How does Buffer define quality?

Buffer uses three rating categories, carefully selected to encompass their support goals:

Awareness

• Was the customer’s question answered?

• Did the advocate truly listen to the customer?

• Was the customer addressed with the correct name?

• Was the urgency of the question equally matched in the response?

Clarity

• Was proper grammar and spelling used?

• Did they avoid repetition, jargon, or ‘insider’ terminology?

• Were their instructions accurate & clear?

Empowerment

• Did the advocate use everything in their power to find a resolution (research, customer history, etc)?

• Was the ticket resolved in as few steps as possible?

• Was the ticket only escalated if absolutely necessary?

If you are astute, you will see that their aim is for every member to ACE each review.

Some customer service teams may struggle to define what their customer service goals are. To remove that barrier, teams should look first at company-wide objectives. Each department’s objective should fit into the larger goals, but this is especially true for the voice of the company; in Buffer’s case, their advocates.

“We review 5-10 conversations per advocate per month, with increasing or decreasing quantity depending on time at the company, any current performance concerns, and track record of high reviews,” says Ross Parmly.

The People Managers on the team currently conduct all their reviews, however, interaction is encouraged so that QA goals resonate throughout the team. Conversation reviews have a higher purpose when they spark conversation and learning. This is why the team plans to incorporate Peer Reviews in the near future.

Aiming for progression over perfection

Buffer has baseline standards for quality that advocates are expected to meet. However, scores aren’t everything: their ethos and practices are about consistently striving to do better.

This works on both a company and individual level. It’s not about perfection but progression. After all, there’s no upper limit when it comes to quality customer service.

“There may be times when a ticket gets full marks, and we still pass along guidance or advise the Advocate to think about something differently. When this happens, things are working as designed!” says Darcy Peters.

“Even if a ticket meets our minimum standards for Awareness, Clarity, and Empowerment, there still may be small improvements we can make (even if they don’t impact the Advocate’s quality score).”

Using a platform to speed up the quality process allows Buffer to both hit the baseline and push growth. Zendesk QA automates the admin of quality assurance, with data features that give a fast, instructive vantage point from which to gain ground. With less time spent maintaining their review program, managers are free for more analytical thinking.

Staying competitive as the product progresses

‘Awareness, clarity, and empowerment’ fits with Buffer’s internal ethos for employees and customers alike. Buffer’s due diligence to progress is impressive. So, how do they plan to keep up with customer expectations with AI constantly raising the standards of their product?

“We use a career framework at Buffer to help calibrate a teammate’s salary, seniority, and responsibility. As part of the career framework for an Advocate, there are quality standards they must achieve as a baseline as part of their work. We use QA reviews to ensure that teammates are keeping the quality of their work high even as they grow at the company and end up taking on more work,” says Ross Parmly.

They are continuously exploring better ways to serve their customers. At the moment, that means investing in proactive support, to give customers the agency to self-serve as much as possible. While the support team is always prepared to assist those who get in touch, Buffer is aware of the benefits to both customer and service team if a customer can find answers independently.

Overall, Zendesk QA has given both Ross and Darcy the freedom to make the most out of reviews.

“I no longer dread ticket reviews with the admin component out of the equation! I get to enjoy all of the great parts of them – celebrating awesome interactions, learning new things, observing trends,” says Darcy Peters.

“I feel like Zendesk QA has probably cut down my time spent per review by around half, when you factor in all of the manual work we did prior,” adds Ross Parmly.