Wavy + Zendesk: Unifying the customer journey across Sales and Support

Augustin Charpentier co-founded Wavy with a specific idea in mind: create simple, flexible, and accessible software to help hair salon professionals manage their businesses. Though the software space for salon management was already crowded when Wavy appeared, Charpentier was convinced that Wavy’s robust, cloud-based, and modern solution could serve salons better, especially by saving time and money.

Wavy started small, but success came quickly: private investors believed in the idea, enabling the company to recruit work-study trainees, open permanent jobs, and raise funds. This has resulted in exponential growth–three years after its founding, Wavy is growing in the double-digits every month.

All about the customer experience

The growth has moved Wavy towards a new phase: improve existing processes to enhance user experiences. For example, Wavy has been adding features to its software that allow salon professionals to enjoy more seamless communication with customers, transaction management, and advertising. Offering impeccable customer service also at the heart of its strategy to continue to gain and retain customers.

“We are no longer growing to grow, we’re doing it in a clearer and more focused way.”
Augustin Charpentier, Wavy Co-Founder

Wavy’s support team evolved from one person who handled everything from back office operations, to customer onboarding, to a specialised technical support team. Each agent has a speciality–loyalty, support, programming, etc.– which helps them align to the right tools, vision, and departments.

“At Wavy, we thought of the customer experience from the start, because the hairdresser market is highly sensitive to it. It’s a good thing because it’s how we share our values and spread joy.”
Augustin Charpentier, Wavy Co-Founder

Charpentier has sought to gain customer loyalty by engaging with dissatisfied prospects happy to look for other solutions. For him, gaining loyalty came down to the quality of its product and how effective Wavy’s team could be at delivering impeccable customer experiences, not only in support but also throughout the sales process.

The power of integrated omnichannel support coupled with a flexible CRM

At first, Wavy tried using Salesforce as its customer relationship management system (CRM). After facing a lengthy and complex implementation, it decided that Salesforce was ill-suited for Wavy’s fast-growing business. It looked for a more intuitive and accessible platform that could be implemented quickly. Now Wavy uses Zendesk’s Support Suite for omnichannel support and Zendesk Sell. These tools have improved productivity, processes, and visibility across its sales and support teams.

“One of my priorities at the time was to group all of our channels in order to improve our processing methods and to improve our responsiveness. The Support Suite was able to address this challenge, and because of this decision, our response times have improved significantly,” Rodriguez said.

Wavy was careful to configure each channel and all the accompanying business rules so that, when it rolled over to Zendesk from Salesforce, customers could easily and securely reach out. After the Support Suite and Sell went live, agents immediately saw all customer communication in one place. They were relieved to no longer have to manage several different tools or trace back complex customer journeys.

The impact? Ticket first reply time dropped from 25 minutes to 5, a 400% improvement.

Wavy measures its success by looking at customer satisfaction, which is currently at 89%. Other notable metrics: agents are able to answer and complete 90% of the calls that come in and solve 90% of email tickets with a single response. In the future, Rodriguez plans to track and measure how much effort it takes for customers to receive help.

“Zendesk Support, Talk, and Chat have allowed us to better structure ourselves with support. In fact, this omnichannel tool has made us, in my opinion, much more mature in our management and handling of support,” added Rodriguez.

For their part, Wavy’s sales and account management teams, many of whom are in the field, started using Sell’s Map feature to easily prospect using the mobile app.

“Maps is a great prospecting feature for Sales. We’re also using Sell because there is an open API, it’s very easy to evolve and modify,” explains Rodriguez.

Having both its sales and support tools integrated on an open platform means that Wavy was able to connect it’s marketing automation as well. With all three in sync, Wavy has a complete view of its customers, from acquisition onwards.

Wavy’s teams have relied on Zendesk’s experts to understand how to optimise and manage customer operations globally. “They help us with the implementation, the improvement of the tool, and understanding customer touchpoints. Thanks to them, we’ve been able to better understand the demands of our customers,” Rodriguez said.

Zendesk’s own support team has especially played a significant role in Wavy’s success. “We want to say a big thank you to all of our Zendesk customer service representatives, who we speak to regularly over the phone. They are the ones who help us to fix the sticking points and to implement triggers and automations,” said Rodriguez.

Artificial intelligence and global expansion

Wavy wanted to take things even further by investing in a chatbot to help with prospecting and lead generation. Cyprien Gilbert, Wavy’s marketing director, and Christophe Chevalier, Botmind’s co-founder and CEO collaborated on making it happen. Botmind’s Zendesk integration made it easy to set up and is the reason why Wavy’s conversion rate is at +25%.

Find out more about the Botmind partner solution

Wavy’s ambition is to expand beyond France and Spain, and it is already using the translations feature in Chat to support customers in other languages. To maintain double-digit growth, stay agile, and stay competitive, the company plans to continue to invest in building customer loyalty, especially by providing outstanding customer experiences.

Wavy’s customers are so happy to be a part of the adventure, they’ve reached out to agents on social media to connect with Wavy’s agents. It’s that kind of customer loyalty that pave the way for Wavy’s future growth and expansion.

“Customer feedback is now at the heart of our Customer Experience strategy at Wavy, and thanks to Zendesk, we have been able to better respond to it, develop it, and enhance it.”
Romain Rodriguez, Head of Customer Support