ZeroFox: New CX solutions to support hypergrowth

One of the biggest tech challenges that companies face today is cybersecurity. Phishing attacks, impersonations, malicious domains, and data breaches are more common than ever and often constitute a time-sensitive emergency.

Enter ZeroFox: a leader in external cybersecurity with a cutting-edge AI-powered platform that enables organizations to identify and disrupt digital attacks on brands, domains, executives, locations, and attack surface infrastructure. Since 2013, the B2B company has entrusted Zendesk to power its global CX team while serving enterprise customers worldwide.

ZeroFox has continued to expand its global customer base with organic growth and two recent acquisitions, which created the need for more robust support tools that could scale with the business. Upgrading to the new Zendesk Suite helped increase CX functionality and agent efficiency during the company’s rapid expansion.

Growth calls for an agile platform

As vice president of customer operations, Caitlin Wood has been a key player in leveraging new support tools in the past four years at ZeroFox. She had prior experience with Salesforce Support Cloud, but found Zendesk easier to use and more agile for a growing organization experiencing constant change.

Wood oversees eight different teams at ZeroFox, with roughly 300 agents based out of offices and remote workspaces all over the world.

“With Zendesk Suite, we can securely provide near real-time support for customers across our platform and all of our service channels, integrating multiple teams. Being able to quickly and efficiently share data across teams in a secure way is paramount,” adds Wood.

Seamless support drives business value and growth

In 2021, Zerofox handled 32,000 customer tickets for operational requests and support, with a majority coming in via email and webforms. Between acquisitions and organic growth, the team needed to manage a higher volume of incoming service tickets more efficiently.

Several teams at ZeroFox rely on Zendesk tools, from technical customer support to professional services and internal support functions. Each support ticket can be fairly complex and include multiple, urgent requests to address real-time security incidents—this calls for sophisticated, streamlined workflows. Agent Workspace in Zendesk Suite was the best way to pull it all together.

Wood explains, “Having multiple teams integrated on Zendesk helps create a seamless CX experience. All our support channels and customer data are centralized, so agents can find information quickly and provide faster service across channels.”

ZeroFox support teams are responsible for guiding customers through high pressure scenarios like a breach response or phishing attack. They count on Zendesk to help deliver value through exceptional service. “We talk to customers on their worst days, so it’s critical that they have positive experiences with the entire team. With Zendesk, every agent is using the same tool, seeing the same data, and creating strong relationships, which drives growth and retention.”

Proactive outreach and peace of mind

Notifications are a central way that ZeroFox delivers consistent value to customers. The team leverages Zendesk channels to send proactive messages to customers facing security incidents, like phishing scams. Agents use Zendesk macros to provide templated language for a consistent customer experience, along with followup ticket tracking and auto-routing to the correct team.

“The workflows we built in Zendesk Suite allowed us to achieve or exceed customer expectations in handling urgent issues. ZeroFox has been able to maintain a first reply time under 1 hour, and a first resolution time of 3 to 4 hours, all during a major growth period,” Wood says.

The team also started using Zendesk side conversations internally for email, Slack, and child tickets. Since Zendesk support channels are integrated with other tools, support agents can connect customers to other ZeroFox teams very quickly, day or night.

Wood adds, “Zendesk ultimately provides peace of mind. We can trust that the right people will be notified and the right actions will be taken based on our process, because it’s built into the tool.”

Meeting one-touch resolution goals with greater insights

One of the team’s biggest milestones in 2022 was the launch of its first universal internal knowledge base, supported by Zendesk Suite. The upgrades began in 2021, when Wood was tasked with training two new support teams. She created workflows using Zendesk triggers and automations to help the process go smoothly.

She notes, “We were able to successfully onboard a new 24/7 support team in a different geographic location within 60 days, using the ticket flows, knowledge capture, and macro responses built into Zendesk.”

In addition, monitoring one-touch tickets in Zendesk has provided insight into where agents need more training and which kind of tickets require help center updates. The team has already met its goal of 80 percent for one-touch ticket handling, a major win given the number of new agents and team growth.

“Growing out Zendesk functionality has given our customers and agents a knowledge base at their fingertips, helped us tackle ticket deflection, and enabled reporting on that data,” she adds.

Recently, the team completed the migration of the entire user guide into Zendesk. That will create even more opportunities to use asynchronous chat and the Zendesk bot features to increase self-service. An exciting next step is leveraging Zendesk AI tools.

Personalized customer experiences on a roadmap for success

Yet another major ZeroFox goal for 2022 will be integrating Salesforce data into Zendesk to improve customer segmentation and create more personalized customer experiences. Adding more B2B channels is on the wish list, too.

“Zendesk was so nimble that when we first started leveraging the platform in 2013, it enabled our small team to set up a basic structure that could scale over time. Now we see growth opportunities across the board, and we’ve added dedicated Zendesk administrators as the tool has grown with our business,” explains Wood.

Participating in the Zendesk Mindshare community has also inspired the team to learn about new CX trends and connect with other users. Wood says, “Every time we ask for support or feedback, we discover new ways to improve our customer experience and our operations within the Zendesk functionality. That partnership and potential has helped us grow.”