Digitising & Automating 4Racing’s Customer Service with HubSpot Service Hub

4Racing approached MO Agency to digitally transform and relaunch the business that had fallen on bad times. The company owns six horse race courses, over 200 brick-and-mortar betting outlets, and several sports betting websites. 

The brief

4Racing approached MO Agency to digitally transform and relaunch the business that had fallen on bad times. The business owned six horse race courses, over 200 brick-and-mortar betting outlets, and a number of sports betting websites.

New internal processes were required; more specifically, their customer service team needed improvement. 

Troubled times meant buyout and a rebranding. 4Racings new owners provided a strong cash injection to modernise the business. The new ownership saved the jobs and livelihoods of over 1000 employees rather than closing down the business.

New internal processes were required, and more specifically a vast improvement from their customer service team. We migrated the betting websites to HubSpot CMS Hub Enterprise, the marketing function to Marketing Hub Enterprise, and customer service to HubSpot Service Hub Professional. This case study focuses on the customer service team and HubSpot Service Hub. 

New owners for the business were brought in. With a strong cash injection, they wanted to modernise the business. A long period of trouble before the acquisition meant marketing and service processes had been overlooked for some time. The new ownership saved the jobs and livelihood of well over 1000 employees rather than closing down the business. 

The challenge

4Racing had no unified customer service system in place. Outdated manual systems and processes provided no oversight or control. The company had no insight into their customers and how to engage/service them properly.

Organisation

Their outdated systems limited the 35 strong customer service team. Poor insights into customers and slow communication processes caused confusion and a lack of efficiency within the team. With almost no reporting metrics in place, it was impossible to analyse the performance of the website and the company.

Customer Experience

Outdated systems meant the business had no information on request/complaint types or resolution times. In general, this leads to poor customer service.

Digitalisation

The team was printing all received emails to delegate tasks to specific staff members. This caused delays in actioning requests and completing assignments within an acceptable timeframe. Internal communication was poor with the service staff not in the same office. At the time of writing, the service team completed 7000 tickets in a single month. Can you imagine the volume of paperwork with the legacy system!

Primary goals 

• Improve the efficiency of 4Racing's service with automation.
• Implement live reporting to track their performance.
• Integrate a service ticketing pipeline for all team members to monitor.
• Integrate customer account data into HubSpot Service Hub.
• Allow better team coordination with a unified inbox.
• Reduce time taken to close tickets.

The solution 

Setting up

We set up HubSpot Service Hub and commenced the onboarding of 31 customer service representatives as well as 4 customer service managers. 

Account data integration

As part of the larger project to provide personalised and dynamic content to 4Racing's betting customers, we integrated the betting system into HubSpot CRM. A live data stream into a custom property group with 83 custom properties called 'Betting Behaviour' was created. A customer service agent now had all the customer's information at their fingertips when working with a ticket. 

Information like 'High Roller' status, or the date of their 'Last bet', 'Deposit' or 'Withdrawl', makes the agent's jobs much easier. 

Automation

The next step was introducing automation to help the company move away from the legacy processes that limited them from achieving swift customer service. Automating the service department would ensure that the customer’s queries are sent to the correct team members and addressed in the fastest way possible.

Service workflows

HubSpot Workflows and sequences to help streamline their service department. We automated service pipelines to update the relevant team depending on the ticket status. This ensured each ticket was actioned quicker, and the overall workflow of the customer service team was faster and smoother.

Unified inbox

HubSpot’s conversational inbox unified each team’s email inboxes. This enabled lead rotation and the automatic ticket creation system, which simplified their processes. The unified inbox provides oversight of all communications with customers, helping to speed up the customer service process. It also allows smoother coordination between team members and departments.

Ticket management

With inboxes set up and tickets being created, we created custom live reporting dashboards. These allow the team to review and report on all of their service efforts. With all 4Racing teams now on HubSpot, each person can easily access the information they require rather than waiting for a printout.

Ticketing pipeline created

We created a ticketing pipeline that allows the team to see an overview of all of their tickets and the status of each one. The team can swiftly identify urgent tickets that require immediate action and assign them to specific team members if needed.

Improved ticket response rate

Live reporting and metrics of tickets provided the team with insights on how they manage tickets. This allows them to analyse their performance and make data-driven decisions in their continuous pursuit of improvement.

Other problems we solved

• We created and implemented their internal service processes among departments such as banking, customer care, and Tellybet. 
• Introduced auto-responders for client communications to improve customer service and communications.

The results

The customer service and the company's general operations have become much faster, smoother, and more efficient. The net result is a far better overall experience for both 4Racing’s staff and customers.

Service workflows allowed an excellent level of automation for the entire team. This increased the productivity rate of the team members and ensured that the workflow was streamlined and running smoothly.

The unified inbox gives the entire team oversight of their customer service communications. All team members can take on any ticket and pick up where the last team member left off.

The ticketing pipeline allows each team member to identify urgent tickets and act quickly.

The amount of time taken to respond and close tickets has tumbled. From February to May, the average ticket resolution time dropped from 4.3 days to 17.6 hours; and the 'average time to first response' from 16.5 hours to 9.7 hours.

Average 'time to close' improvement: 586%
Average 'time to respond' improvement: 170%

Those improvements are with 3000 more tickets solved!

Our Impact

HubSpot Service Hub has saved this customer service team from outdated manual processes that limited their true potential as a team. Introducing large-scale reporting metrics has helped them measure their performance and make data-driven decisions.

HubSpot Service Hub has saved this customer service team from outdated manual processes that limited their true potential as a team. Introducing large-scale reporting metrics has helped them measure their performance and make data-driven decisions.

Testimonial

"MO Agency did such a great job of guiding us through the setup and training of HubSpot Service Hub. We are now able to handle far more service requests than before. We also handle them faster."

- Belinda Armstrong, Head of Customer Service