Drift (a Salesloft company)is a rapidly growing company that provides innovative conversational marketing and sales solutions, helping transform online businesses.

Key results with Surfboard

As well as transitioning from Assembled to Surfboard in one week, in just 8 months with Surfboard, Drift were able to:

• Increase utilisation by 8.8%

• Reduce overstaffing by 61.6%

• Save the equivalent of 18 days through automated scheduling

Drift’s challlenges

As the company expanded their customer support function, they recognised the need for an effective workforce management software to streamline their operations and enhance employee productivity, as well as support their omni-channel support and ethos of being customer first.

They had worked with another WFM provider for the last two years but weren’t able to get their full team using it due to lack of product simplicity and support from the provider. The team made the decision to switch to Surfboard because of three main reasons:

Lack of integration

With their previous WFM provider, Drift was unable to integrate Slack, their time-off (HRIS) system, and ticketing platform (Salesforce). The integration with Salesforce specifically, a critical component of Drift’s ticketing stack, wasn’t working as expected. 

This resulted in inaccurate data, leading to discrepancies in reporting and decision-making processes. This meant forecasts were wrong and couldn’t be used to power scheduling. With their previous WFM offering no connection with Drift’s HRIS system, multiple systems of record were created, complicating workflows and increasing frequency of manual errors. These errors increased churn rate and the risk of losing customers.

Interface difficulties

UX/UI of Drift’s previous WFM provider was complex and difficult to digest. A steep learning curve reduced efficiency. Team leads struggled to find a clear scheduling view and had difficulty understanding the many reporting modules.

Lack of dedicated support

Their onboarding experience and ongoing support with their previous WFM was non-existent. The team felt neglected and unable to maximise their use of the tool. Employees struggled to leverage the platform effectively, leading to suboptimal resource allocation and inefficient scheduling. The Drift team understandably wanted to move to a solution with a more involved onboarding and a dedicated CSM for their account.

How Surfboard helped Drift

Drift’s customer support team began using Surfboard in June 2023. Their issues with previous software immediately improved across a number of parameters:

Seamless integration 

Surfboard built a custom Salesforce integration to match how Drift had set up their ticketing. Connection into Salesforce, Ultipro and Slack means that Drift is able to experience the benefits associated with streamlined workforce planning; ensuring accurate shift assignments, capacity planning per channel and facilitating efficient time-off management.

The integration between Surfboard and Slack enhances communication and collaboration among team members. Real-time notifications within the Surfboard system are seamlessly shared in designated Slack channels, promoting transparency and reducing response time.

Intuitive interface

With Surfboard, everything from the terminology to the visuals make it easy for anyone to grasp. The clean and simple interface and integrated features allowed Drift’s CX team members to quickly grasp Surfboard’s functionalities, reducing the learning curve and accelerating their productivity.  With a clear view of their team’s schedule and availability, team leads can make informed decisions on resource allocation, avoiding understaffing or overstaffing scenarios.

Comprehensive support and onboarding training

Drift benefited from tailored onboarding and training sessions, allowing them to quickly pick up Surfboard’s features. Additionally, a custom slack channel to speak to the Surfboard team about anything and everything provided Drift ongoing support.

Comprehensive support ensured that team leads and agents were well-equipped to utilise the full range of Surfboard’s capabilities effectively. Read about some of their favourites below:

• Time zone picker
  The Drift customer support team is spread across 6 different time zones. Our timezone picker gives team leads the ability to quickly view the schedule in surfers native time zones, as well as the ability to quickly view the schedule at large in multiple time zones.

• Shift plans
  With two teams and different shift plans for each, Drift’s scheduling leads can schedule depending on the working patterns skills and labour laws of each team. Our shift plan capability allows the team to quickly build “set it and forget it” shift patterns for the respective teams with a few clicks.
  
  This feature is a favourite with the team leads at Drift, with one commenting:
  
  “I’m absolutely loving shift plans. With our old tool, I couldn’t designate shifts and I had to remember when everyone’s shifts took place. This new approach to scheduling really compliments the workflows of my team.”
  

• Intraday scheduling
  With more than twelve activities rotating on surfer daily schedules, it’s crucial for team leads at Drift to be able to capacity plan by channel, to figure out which activities to staff their team on and when. With intraday scheduling,  Surfboard offers a coverage bar so that team leads can have a clear view on where there are risks for coverage gaps throughout the day. Surfboard also automates the activity allocation based on who is available, who is skilled to work on each task, and what the required coverage is.

Book a demo today

If you’re an organisation like Drift and you’re looking to make a WFM transition, feel free to get in touch to see if we can help you get there. 

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