Ann Arbor, a Freshdesk customer since 2012 achieves average response time of less than a minute

The Company

The Ann Arbor T-Shirt Company is a garment printing business based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 2008, owners Jerry Kozak and Ricky Winoweicki established a custom printing operation to service organizations, universities and the military. Soon after, they complimented these services with online shops that stocked ready-to-order apparel for the community at large. The online operations included fan stores for musicians, theater groups and local businesses.

The company initially provided custom apparel exclusively for the local community but quickly expanded into online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.

They take pride in dependable service and timely deliveries, while staying true to local community values. Business has been growing rapidly, as they continue to deliver on those three promises. Their employees love getting to know their clients as neighbors and not just as people they need to keep happy just to pay the bills.

The Problem

When Ann Arbor Tees expanded their offerings to marketplaces, they were dealing with thousands of orders every month. After a strong holiday season in 2011, support questions were pouring in, but it was challenging to organize and track communication from customers with just Gmail.

The sheer volume of tickets made it difficult for managers to assign incoming requests to certain team members, and therefore, they themselves ended up handling most of the support requests during busy times. This meant customers were getting responses slower than ever before, and managers were spending time disproportionately on customer support. Not to mention, a clear lack of contact management capabilities in Gmail resulted in valuable information about their customers getting lost.

The Solution

Ann Arbor Tees started using Freshdesk to view, manage and delegate customer needs and communication from the 2012 holiday season. While they initially only leveraged basic functionality with a few prioritization rules, over the following year, they learnt to use automation features as they scaled their help desk.

The Benefits

Ann Arbor was able to easily customize their Freshdesk Contacts page with the help of Freshplugs, so that the agents have access to the order history of clients along with their past tickets. With the help of this information, agents are able to make their interactions personal, no matter how many customers they deal with everyday. Customers often come back to them saying they’re thrilled to be dealing with a real person.

“As a supervisor, I appreciate Freshdesk’s manageability.” says Chantal Laurens, Retail Customer Service Manager. By looking at Freshdesk’s reports, she’s able to quickly see if priority tickets are being attended to and later, escalate issues when they need her attention.