Customer Service Journey

The top of our customer journey was fragmented. After more than five years with little to no oversight, dozens of email addresses were scattered across the company, and shared inboxes weren’t properly synced among multiple users. This lack of organization led to inefficiencies, inconsistent customer communication, and significant delays in response times.

I was tasked with evaluating the top of the customer service funnel and implementing solutions to improve efficiency, consistency, and customer satisfaction.

“There is a duck in my back yard…what do I do?”

Problem

  • Lack of oversight and insight – There was no centralized system to track customer interactions, leading to duplicate or conflicting responses from different team members.
  • Frustrated customers left waiting – Without proper checks and balances, response times ranged from five days to never.
  • Repetitive questions increased workload – Conservation experts and communications teams were overwhelmed with simple, repetitive inquiries, pulling them away from high-priority research and development projects.

Process

  1. Conducted a comprehensive audit of all top-of-funnel digital communications across Marketing & Communications, Fundraising, Conservation, Education, Planned Giving, and HR.
  2. Led stakeholder interviews and created user journey maps to identify pain points and inefficiencies.
  3. Redesigned the top-of-funnel customer journey flow to streamline inquiries and improve response times.
  4. Partnered with IT to redirect email addresses and implement Help Scout as our centralized customer service tool.
  5. Collaborated with Marketing & Communications to develop a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) resource based on common inquiries.
  6. Trained current and incoming staff on Help Scout usage and best practices to ensure long-term success.

Outcomes

  • Improved response times – Average response time dropped from 7 days to 3 days.
  • Reduced repetitive inquiries – The FAQ implementation decreased commonly asked questions by 80%.
  • Increased workflow efficiency – By implementing automations and workflows, we reduced repetitive response tasks by 75%, freeing up time for high-value work.