Date Published:: January 3, 2022
Categories:: Success Stories

Virtuo plan for multiple languages long-term with Surfboard

Written by:

Max Humberstone , Design

“Surfboard will help us to forecast the number of conversations per language for years to come”
— Thibault de Roulhac, Director of Customer Experience, Virtuo

Virtuo is a premium car rental company operating in France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. They offer rapid, comprehensive customer support: 24/7 coverage in four languages across phone, email, and live chat.

Virtuo’s challenges

Running a 24/7 customer service team across four countries and multiple languages is no small feat. Virtuo, a company at the forefront of this challenge, faced the intricate task of managing a global support operation efficiently.

Customer experience was essential- superior service over subpar service yields twice the revenue in the travel industry. One obstacle was the constant need for staffing adjustments to customers were met with optimal response times and omnichannel service.

How Surfboard helped Virtuo

Forecasting staffing requirements

Surfboard became an integral part of Virtuo’s strategy by offering hourly forecasts of tickets and determining the precise number of staff required to maintain the desired response time. This involved a meticulous breakdown of data, considering languages and channels.

Surfboard’s insights were able to give Virtuo a clear understanding of the staffing requirements at any given moment, preventing both overstaffing and under-staffing issues across diverse languages and channels.

Planning for the future

Virtuo also turned to Surfboard for assistance in estimate the staffing needs and budget setting for the upcoming year. Surfboard used a combination of Virtuo’s historical seasonality data and growth model to present a comprehensive plan for scaling the support team over a 12-month period.

This collaborative effort ensured that Virtuo could strategically allocate resources, anticipate demand fluctuations, and maintain a resilient customer service operation throughout the year. Surfboard’s contribution went beyond immediate problem-solving, providing Virtuo with tools for sustained success in their customer service endeavours.

“Surfboard gives us the granularity we want in order to assess the number of staff needed for each task by day and time of the week”
— Thibault de Roulhac, Director of Customer Experience, Virtuo