How tado° shut off phone support and shortened its overall first-response time by 92% with Intercom

Built for the modern world, tado° is an intelligent heating control app that’s changing the way we think about and consume energy. Having previously used Zendesk for customer support, the team saw a 92% decrease in first-response time and a 19% jump in SLA when they started using Intercom.

With 182 employees and more than $100 million in funding from investors such as E.ON, Amazon, and Siemens, tado°’s IoT product offering is revolutionizing the energy and utilities sector. Its smart thermostats and radiator valves are helping customers regulate their energy consumption, moving away from the ways of old and driving forward a new model of heating and cooling as a service. The team has been using Intercom since 2019 to support and engage customers at every stage of their journey.

Working towards a sustainable future

The residential sector accounted for more than a quarter of all energy consumed in the EU in 2018 – and the heating of homes alone constituted 64% of that energy consumption. tado° is on a mission to significantly reduce this impact, with Martin Mason, Head of Customer and Employee Experience at tado° saying, “We’re here to help people take more responsibility for their energy consumption.”

To ensure this new technology is widely accessible, tado° is leveraging Intercom’s proactive support capabilities to identify areas in its product where customers are at risk of running into difficulty and guide them through the process to ensure a smooth experience.

Providing personal support – at any scale

Prior to using Intercom for customer support, Martin’s team was using a phone support system and Zendesk for email. When deciding to make the switch to Intercom, the team switched off phone support entirely, redirecting the 45,700 calls they were receiving every year to the Intercom Messenger. Martin explains, “We felt that phone support was a very inefficient way of working, and we could get swamped with volume without knowing when it was coming, or what the topic may be.”

Since implementing Intercom just over a year ago, the support team has seen dramatic boosts in their results across the board. Despite having seen an increase in customer contact of over 100% since making the switch, their first-contact resolution rate has risen by an impressive 21%. The team has also seen a rise in overall CSAT, climbing from 79% to 87% overall, and maintaining a 90% chat satisfaction rate.

Championing the voice of the customer 

tado° leverages self-serve support in the form of Articles to power its help center and Resolution Bot to interact with and solve problems for customers. To ensure that customers are getting a consistent experience, its CX Content and Comms team is responsible for ensuring the tado° voice and tone is carried through all of their help center documentation, in macros within the Intercom Inbox, and in the answers Resolution Bot is serving up to customers.

Martin highlights Intercom’s focus on customer conversations and how that aligns with his own team’s values as a factor that drove their decision to move from Zendesk to Intercom, saying, “Something I really like about Intercom is that it sees the relationship with the customer as an ongoing conversation – not a stack of tickets.”

Having information to answer questions in context

With Intercom’s Custom Bots, the team can collect valuable information upfront from customers, helping them to provide a faster and more informed resolution to their problem.

Given the seasonal nature of the business in line with the weather conditions customers are experiencing, having a support system that can manage dramatic increases in scale is of the utmost importance. During its busiest periods, tado° typically experiences a rise in conversation volumes of anywhere up to 400%, seeing an average of 11,000 customer contacts per week, in contrast with the usual 10,000 they see per month outside of peak season. Intercom gives the tado° team peace of mind that customers won’t be left in a long ticket queue, or indefinitely on hold waiting to get through to the support team.

Driving innovation with conversational insights

The ability to assign tags to customer conversations within the Intercom Inbox has enabled the support team to analyze and derive insights from the conversations they’re having on a day-to-day basis.

Armed with these insights, the team can work closely with a dedicated team of energy systems engineers within tado°, whose primary focus is to improve the product by implementing customer feedback. Having this level of insight into customer pain points thanks to Intercom is empowering the team to drive innovation and product development forward as we continue to build towards a sustainable future.

End-to-end engagement

Outside of using Intercom to support its customers, tado° leverages campaigns and Outbound Messages to nurture and engage customers throughout their lifecycle. As an NPS-driven company, the team uses Intercom to measure customer sentiment and continuously improve their customers’ experience. This ability to build and maintain strong, personal relationships with its customers is one of the many reasons tado° trusts Intercom.