How PBworks Quickly Expanded Its Customer Service Team

The world-class provider of hosted collaboration tools uses oDesk to deliver top-notch customer service on budget.

"oDesk helped expand my team of four customer service representatives to 12."

Rachel Pennig / Manager of Customer Support, PBworks

When PBworks started offering collaboration services in 2005, many customers were early adopters who didn't require much support. A few years later, the company was providing knowledge management, project management and other services to more than 40,000 businesses and educational institutions worldwide. With massive success came the need for a powerful customer support operation, and the company's four local customer support representatives weren't enough.

A year later, oDesk had let Rachel triple the department. Her 12-rep team includes providers in Indiana, Ohio, South Carolina, New York, Kentucky and the Philippines. Assembling a widely dispersed remote workteam makes it easy to provide better coverage. "Sunday night at 2:00am in California is a great shift for an Australian contractor," she says.

Getting Started on oDesk

In April '08, Rachel posted a single customer support job on oDesk.

"Posting the job was easy," she says. "Even today, I like that oDesk is easy. Some of my remote contractors aren't very computer savvy, but they figure out how to use oDesk with no problems."

When Rachel needs to hire new providers, she posts an oDesk opening asking applicants to take the PBworks certification test. She moves forward with those who score at least 80% — usually about a quarter of the applicants. Next, she gives candidates a questionnaire on subject matter, including wikis, blogs and social networks, to test their tech knowledge. She checks for accuracy, depth of knowledge, grammar and spelling. Finally, Rachel interviews the best candidates by phone. She looks for people who communicate well over both phone and email. She prioritizes patience and personality over technical skills, which can be taught. "We want our customers to feel like they're interacting with a real company, not a call center," Rachel says.

Rachel uses Salesforce's CRM solution to assign tickets to her team. In conjunction, she uses oDesk's tools, including the team room, work diary and work analyze reports, to keep track of her team. "I like to see whether my contractors are spending the majority of their time on PBworks," she says. "I also want to see if they're using their time valuably when their support queues are empty."

Rachel finds oDesk's management tools so valuable that she now uses oDesk with her local contractors so she can manage their payroll through the system.

The Payoff

The two most important metrics for Rachel's team are Initial Response Time and Customer Satisfaction Rates. PBworks commits to 24 hour turnaround on email response, but Rachel has set an internal goal of 20 minutes during business hours. At this point, her team's average response time is only eight minutes. Rachel is also proud that post-support surveys give her team a 99% satisfaction rate.