In May 2023, Answers entered private beta and quickly became an integral part of the Guru experience for over 2,200 companies. Despite only being available for a few months, customers can’t stop telling us how Answers has helped their teams and companies.
Two standout examples of organizations harnessing the power of Answers and enterprise search to enhance their efficiency are Branch and Thinkific. Although both companies operate in different industries, they share a common commitment to streamlining their operations and enabling their teams to focus on what truly matters — providing stellar customer service.
Branch: Revolutionizing the insurance industry
Branch is on a mission to innovate an industry that has lost its way. One of the core principles at Branch is “automate it,” encouraging employees to prioritize efficiency so they can spend more time on meaningful work. As such, Kendall Sipp-Paris, a Sales & Support Effectiveness Lead, is hyper-focused on uncovering ways to reduce the number of repetitive questions asked by the agents that support Branch’s members.
The challenge: Prevent repeat questions in Slack
“There’s a massive ripple effect when an agent can’t find an answer,” says Kendall. “Some of them feel comfortable coming to me and checking, but other times they are asking their leaders who need to focus on other responsibilities. Ultimately, they resort to our help desk Slack channel, inundating it with questions. Often, the resources exist but they just can’t find them.”
The outcome: 30% reduction in repeat questions in just 3 months
Since implementing Guru last August, Branch agents who use Guru have reduced their help desk channel inquiries by 50%, a big win for Kendall. The recent addition of Answers has improved the situation even more—after only three months of using Answers, Branch has seen an additional 30% reduction in the number of training questions asked. (Branch defines training questions as ones that could be answered by existing documentation). Eli Logan, Director of Sales & Member Support Effectiveness, remarks, “That tells me right there that people are finding answers more easily and not having to ask for help.” Thus far, Branch agents are using Answers multiple times every day to answer internal questions.
“For me, the biggest win with Answers is not just that it gives you a fast response, but that the information is more accessible,” says Kendall. “As a content creator, it’s challenging to predict the keywords people will use to search for information. Answers gives agents the flexibility to phrase a question in whatever way their brain works while still receiving a consistent and accurate answer.”
Excitement for the future of Answers
Eli added, “A lot of the time when an agent asks a question in Slack, we answer their question and then direct them to where they can self-serve that answer, and Guru is the place we point them every time.” With Answers now in Slack, Kendall and Eli are excited for the growing potential of enterprise search to improve their team's consistency and efficiency, ultimately elevating both their agents’ and members’ experience.
Thinkific: Elevating customer support
Thinkific, an all-in-one online education platform, prides itself on world-class customer service. Their support agents, fondly referred to as "customer champions," play a pivotal role in delivering an exceptional customer experience. Over the past few months, the Thinkific team has been exploring the AI features available across their existing tech stack to uncover any potential efficiency gains for their customer champions.
The challenge: Reduce the number of places the team has to search
Guru acts as the central repository for all of Thinkific's internal documentation, while Zendesk serves as their external-facing knowledge base. When Ariana discovered that Answers could generate responses from information across multiple sources, she was eager to test its capabilities. "It's inefficient for our champions to perform separate searches in Zendesk and Guru," Ariana said. "Answers is able to pull together information from different sources, create a response, and provide links to those sources, which is all super valuable.”
When Thinkific’s team got access to Answers, Ariana ran a test to see if it could help team members find information faster than before. She tasked a group of new hires with finding an answer to a question which is asked regularly by customers, but is difficult to find information on, due to the wide variety of ways the question can be phrased. “Typically, when this question comes up, team members struggle to find the right information and have to go hunting through different sources in search of an answer. They’ll often resort to sending a message to a colleague for help,” said Ariana.
The outcome: Significant reduction in time spent searching
For the test, the new hires first tried using Guru’s standard search and then tried using Answers. The results were eye-catching. The struggle of reading through multiple articles to find the correct source was completely removed when using Answers. They were able to find and relay an accurate answer within a few seconds. "Answers is great at targeting the correct source on the first try, so there is a significant reduction in time spent reading through information that may not be relevant.” said Ariana. Teams at Thinkific have used Answers to answer over 10,000 questions internally.
Faster answers, better outcomes
Answers has empowered companies like Branch and Thinkific to streamline efficiency in their team operations by enabling their teams to search fewer times and in the language that makes most sense to them. By reducing repetitive inquiries, providing quick and accurate responses, and streamlining information retrieval, Answers has become an invaluable tool for improving not only speed, but employee and customer experience.
In May 2023, Answers entered private beta and quickly became an integral part of the Guru experience for over 2,200 companies. Despite only being available for a few months, customers can’t stop telling us how Answers has helped their teams and companies.
Two standout examples of organizations harnessing the power of Answers and enterprise search to enhance their efficiency are Branch and Thinkific. Although both companies operate in different industries, they share a common commitment to streamlining their operations and enabling their teams to focus on what truly matters — providing stellar customer service.
Branch: Revolutionizing the insurance industry
Branch is on a mission to innovate an industry that has lost its way. One of the core principles at Branch is “automate it,” encouraging employees to prioritize efficiency so they can spend more time on meaningful work. As such, Kendall Sipp-Paris, a Sales & Support Effectiveness Lead, is hyper-focused on uncovering ways to reduce the number of repetitive questions asked by the agents that support Branch’s members.
The challenge: Prevent repeat questions in Slack
“There’s a massive ripple effect when an agent can’t find an answer,” says Kendall. “Some of them feel comfortable coming to me and checking, but other times they are asking their leaders who need to focus on other responsibilities. Ultimately, they resort to our help desk Slack channel, inundating it with questions. Often, the resources exist but they just can’t find them.”
The outcome: 30% reduction in repeat questions in just 3 months
Since implementing Guru last August, Branch agents who use Guru have reduced their help desk channel inquiries by 50%, a big win for Kendall. The recent addition of Answers has improved the situation even more—after only three months of using Answers, Branch has seen an additional 30% reduction in the number of training questions asked. (Branch defines training questions as ones that could be answered by existing documentation). Eli Logan, Director of Sales & Member Support Effectiveness, remarks, “That tells me right there that people are finding answers more easily and not having to ask for help.” Thus far, Branch agents are using Answers multiple times every day to answer internal questions.
“For me, the biggest win with Answers is not just that it gives you a fast response, but that the information is more accessible,” says Kendall. “As a content creator, it’s challenging to predict the keywords people will use to search for information. Answers gives agents the flexibility to phrase a question in whatever way their brain works while still receiving a consistent and accurate answer.”
Excitement for the future of Answers
Eli added, “A lot of the time when an agent asks a question in Slack, we answer their question and then direct them to where they can self-serve that answer, and Guru is the place we point them every time.” With Answers now in Slack, Kendall and Eli are excited for the growing potential of enterprise search to improve their team's consistency and efficiency, ultimately elevating both their agents’ and members’ experience.
Thinkific: Elevating customer support
Thinkific, an all-in-one online education platform, prides itself on world-class customer service. Their support agents, fondly referred to as "customer champions," play a pivotal role in delivering an exceptional customer experience. Over the past few months, the Thinkific team has been exploring the AI features available across their existing tech stack to uncover any potential efficiency gains for their customer champions.
The challenge: Reduce the number of places the team has to search
Guru acts as the central repository for all of Thinkific's internal documentation, while Zendesk serves as their external-facing knowledge base. When Ariana discovered that Answers could generate responses from information across multiple sources, she was eager to test its capabilities. "It's inefficient for our champions to perform separate searches in Zendesk and Guru," Ariana said. "Answers is able to pull together information from different sources, create a response, and provide links to those sources, which is all super valuable.”
When Thinkific’s team got access to Answers, Ariana ran a test to see if it could help team members find information faster than before. She tasked a group of new hires with finding an answer to a question which is asked regularly by customers, but is difficult to find information on, due to the wide variety of ways the question can be phrased. “Typically, when this question comes up, team members struggle to find the right information and have to go hunting through different sources in search of an answer. They’ll often resort to sending a message to a colleague for help,” said Ariana.
The outcome: Significant reduction in time spent searching
For the test, the new hires first tried using Guru’s standard search and then tried using Answers. The results were eye-catching. The struggle of reading through multiple articles to find the correct source was completely removed when using Answers. They were able to find and relay an accurate answer within a few seconds. "Answers is great at targeting the correct source on the first try, so there is a significant reduction in time spent reading through information that may not be relevant.” said Ariana. Teams at Thinkific have used Answers to answer over 10,000 questions internally.
Faster answers, better outcomes
Answers has empowered companies like Branch and Thinkific to streamline efficiency in their team operations by enabling their teams to search fewer times and in the language that makes most sense to them. By reducing repetitive inquiries, providing quick and accurate responses, and streamlining information retrieval, Answers has become an invaluable tool for improving not only speed, but employee and customer experience.
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