How Former NFL player Jon Corto is Tackling Customer Service With ZippyAssist

Since his days as a NFL player on the Buffalo Bills working with the youth NFL Play 360 initiative, Jon Corto has been passionate about promoting health and wellness.  He took passion further and in 2011 launched Buffalo Strive Vending offering curated healthy refreshments through micro markets, office pantry, and vending.   From the locker room to the breakroom Jon knows all too well the rewards of hard work and dedication.  Since its inception Buffalo Strive Vending’s guiding principle is service, making sure their customers are happy. It is ingrained into every aspect of their business.  They are passionate about delivering excellence and responsiveness to ensure their customers feel heard, cared for, and valued.  He knows all too well that the primary differentiator for sectors of business like micro markets, vending, office break rooms and coffee is service.

Before ZippyAssist

When we first approached Jon he shared that he was inundated with customer service requests. These are the all too common requests that every vending operator has: refund request, equipment not working, product requests, credit card pre-authorizations, out of stock.  While the requests were not complicated, each request had to be researched, documented and processed. Jon shares that even a simple $2.00 refund took energy and effort from customer service, the service technician team, and accounting. 

Their Director of Customer Experience, Charece, explains that prior to ZippyAssist they did not have a system to keep track of all the refunds and service requests.  She would spend 4 ½ - 5 hours a day, 5 days a week managing all the customer service requests. The biggest part of the day was spent on the repetitive and tedious process of listening to voicemails, responding to emails, calling customers back, communicating with the service technician team, route drivers and accounting. 

It was chaos and as they continued to grow …their customer service needs continued to also grow. While providing a resolution to a customer took a day or two, it took days for the refund check to reach the customer. Then of course the customer has to deal with getting that physical check deposited. Jon shares “I know it's overwhelmingly a really positive experience now, the fact that you are able to give someone a refund within minutes”. 

Before ZippyAssist if there were machines that were not working, malfunctioning, or out of stock they would experience lost sales and upset customers until the next time the driver was out there or until the facilities manager called or emailed.

ZippyAssist’s Customer Care Platform

Customers are able to either text, call or scan a QR code to submit a request.  ZippyAssist then prompts the customer for their information and can process the request.  A refund can be processed via Paypal, Venmo, Zelle or a Market card in a couple of minutes. “I am very happy with the refund portion that has taken the lionshare of refunds off of our plate as a whole”, said Jon.

Charece absolutely loves that she is now only spending 1 ½ - 2 hr a day on customer service requests.  She is thrilled that she has been able to reduce her workload by at least 50%!  With ZippyAssist Charece now has everything organized and can quickly and easily work through help, refund and feedback requests.  The platform has allowed her to get out in the field and visit with customers and do events, something that was unimaginable before ZippyAssist.  “I am also able to approve refunds from my cell phone so I am not tethered to my computer”.    Machine problems are automatically routed to their service technician department with a VendSys integration. Product requests get to the appropriate route drivers.  ZippyAssist has created a new and improved workflow enhancing communication that touches several departments.  

An incredibly helpful feature of ZippyAssist is the ability for customers to attach a photo.  Both Jon and Charece share that they absolutely love this feature and to their surprise 90% of customers include a photo with their submission.  Both agree that the photos help the technicians to diagnose problems quicker and they can come prepared with parts to repair the machines, saving a lot of valuable time. The photos also help in determining if a route driver or technician needs to go out which assists with route planning.  With the photos Jon shares “you get a peek under the tent as to what the heck is going on with the machine. That saves you time and energy and you can be prepared”.

A Great Sales Tool

As part of Buffalo Strive’s implementation process they approached their current customers about this new innovative new technology that they had invested in to help streamline customer requests and benefit them. Now when pitching new accounts the team is definitely sharing about ZippyAssist. A common concern when meeting with potential new clients Jon often hears that service is really important to them and when customers ask about refunds they want to be addressed and when it is about product requests they want to be heard.  With ZippyAssist they are able to open up the communication and immediately build trust. This has been game-changing for Buffalo Strive Vending and a competitive advantage to winning new business.

Spillover Benefits

“I have been extremely happy with ZippyAssist’s refund process but also with all the spillover benefits that I had not even quantified.” 

Jon states he underestimated ZippyAssist’s ability to help other areas of his business -from sales, to customer service, accounting, service department, and dispatching. He reports that the information coming in from ZippyAssist includes insights they never had before which they use to run a more efficient business. Manual tracking of refunds was all done in Excel and was very rudimentary. Now the team is able to look at all the refund history for a particular piece of equipment or for a particular customer.

Another benefit is that ZippyAssist has helped deter fraudulent requests.  “If it's the same person with the same problem every time and it seems to be an issue and it's only that person well then you know that maybe there's something else going on there”.  ZippyAssist has helped dramatically reduce the amount of refund banks out in the field. Now everything is funneled through ZippyAssist keeping everything organized in one place while providing an audit trail.

ZippyAssist is also making an impact with facility managers, admins or staff that used to handle on-site refunds.  For example, at their school accounts students used to go to the front office to request refunds. The front office staff would be interrupted with these requests and they would have to take time to write down the information and give the student their refund.  Charece loves that now with ZippyAssist they are able to take the burden off of those contacts.

Additionally with ZippyAssist’s dashboard requests are categorized and you have all the equipment information and history at your fingertips. If you start to see a couple of requests for the same piece of equipment you can take action to fix it before it becomes a chronic problem affecting sales and customer satisfaction.

Pre-authorizations can cause customers a lot of confusion and frustration resulting in a high number of customer phone calls. Another advantage of ZippyAssist is the pre-authorization refunds workflow that helps the customer be reassured that their set-aside funds should be automatically released by their card issuer.  The results - a reduction in phone calls from customers.

For Jon it was an easy decision to jump onboard with ZippyAssist.  “ZippyAssist made sense because we want to get ahead of things before they become a problem. We want to make an unhappy customer happy and it is a good thing to do as a customer-forward-thinking company”.   Armed with ZippyAssist, Buffalo Strive is ready to tackle the market and win more market share.  With a team of over 75 dedicated employees, they continue to deliver exceptional service and healthy alternatives to their micro markets, vending, office coffee, water filtration, and catering accounts.  A win-win for their customers, their employees, and for their company.

Get Your Free 30 Free Trial – try out all of ZippyAssist's great features, and see first-hand how Zippy's great features could save you time and energy, while winning more new business, and improving sales.