Simba’s customer support team works across the UK and Canada. Live data gives them the shared awareness of a team sitting in the same room.
Graham Paddon is Head of Customer Experience at Simba, the sleep innovation brand on a mission to solve the world’s sleep crisis.
He leads a distributed team of around 65 to 75 people, with seven direct reports managing everything from review responses to frontline customer service.
Keeping that team connected means giving people more than a retrospective view of performance. They need to see when customers are waiting, where the team needs to respond, and who’s doing great work throughout the day.
Queues were building out of sight
Simba runs its customer service operation through Zendesk.
Zendesk Explore gives Graham and his management team a way to review performance and look closely at what’s happened. But it didn’t give Simba the shared live view it needed to run the team throughout the day.
“The problem we were having is customers queuing on a particular line, and there was no awareness or visibility.”
Without a live view, the team couldn’t always see when customers were beginning to queue or when one channel needed more attention.
Graham wanted problems to become visible while the team could still respond, whether that meant helping someone through live chat or picking up a call.
Putting live support data inside Zendesk
Simba uses Geckoboard to make its live Zendesk performance visible to agents and team leaders.
The dashboards show measures including the number of customers waiting, ticket status, and other indicators that help the team understand what’s happening at that moment.
Simba has embedded Geckoboard directly inside Zendesk, so agents can see the same live performance data wherever they’re working. Some keep the dashboard open on a second monitor throughout the day, making it easy to spot a growing queue and respond.
Everyone has access to the same picture of performance, even when they’re working across different countries and time zones.
Giving a remote team something to rally around
Live performance doesn’t only help Simba spot problems. It also gives the team a way to recognize and celebrate great work.
Graham uses leaderboards to create healthy competition around team performance. Because everyone can see what’s happening, team leaders can acknowledge strong work in the moment rather than waiting for a weekly or monthly review.
“A bit of healthy competition works wonders, but equally, it’s really nice for the team leads and the management team to pick people out and celebrate them.”
For a team split across countries and time zones, those shared moments matter. Someone can be recognized for a great day even if their manager or teammates aren’t working alongside them in person.
Individual performance becomes visible across the department, giving people a clear sense of how they’re contributing and creating more opportunities to celebrate success.
Daily standups start with what needs attention
The dashboards also help Graham and his management team decide where to focus.
Every morning at 9 a.m., they look at queue positions, staffing levels, where agents are placed, and which areas need attention.
“At nine every morning, myself and the management team look at queue position, who we’ve got in, how many agents, where they’re placed, and where the focus needs to be.”
They don’t have to spend the start of the meeting gathering updates or checking several reports. The team can see the current position together and move straight into deciding what to do.
That might mean reorganizing the team around a busy queue, responding to an emerging customer issue, or recognizing an opportunity to improve service.
Zendesk Explore and Geckoboard answer different questions
Simba uses Zendesk Explore to review past performance and investigate specific issues. Geckoboard gives agents and team leaders a shared view of what’s happening now.
That distinction matters when the team is managing live queues. Explore helps Graham understand what happened, while Geckoboard shows the team where customers need attention while they can still respond.
“Zendesk and Geckoboard go together perfectly. Like tea and a biscuit.”
Simba gets the depth of Zendesk’s customer service platform alongside the live, shared visibility the team needs throughout the day.
Keeping remote teams connected to performance
For Simba, live visibility has become part of how its distributed customer support team works.
Agents can see customers waiting and respond sooner. Managers can start each day with a shared view of priorities. Leaderboards give team members a little healthy competition and make great work easier to recognize.
The team might be spread across different countries, but everyone can see the same picture of performance and understand where they can make a difference.
Help your remote support team respond sooner
Geckoboard puts live Zendesk performance where agents and team leaders can see it, helping distributed teams respond to queues, stay aligned, and recognize great work.
