Plum redefines insurance, serving customers at lightning speed with Zendesk

In 2019, Plum was born with a simple yet powerful goal: to insure 10 million people in India by 2025. As the country sped up with quick home deliveries and digital advancements, the health insurance sector lagged behind, often taking between 30 to 90 days for a simple claim reimbursement. “This is where Plum steps in, digitizing these processes for convenience and eliminating tedious claim forms,” explains Santhosh Vijayananda, customer success director at Plum.

Leading the way in this transformation is Plum’s customer success team. “The customer success team is on a mission to settle cashless claims in under 30 minutes and a reimbursement claim in under seven days,” continues Vijayananda. “We believe that it is our responsibility to guide customers through various stages and educate them on the insurance process, the functionalities, and what to expect next.”

A need for a consolidated solution

As Plum started to scale and onboard high-growth unicorn companies, the customer success team had to balance the workload. “We kept adding 10 to 15 people every two weeks,” recalls Santhosh. “It soon became clear that the return on investment (ROI) we sought through our previous software provider was quite off. It didn’t enable us to effectively manage different stages of an insurance journey.” The team started looking for a robust omnichannel solution where staff could seamlessly toggle between email, chat, and other communication channels.

Plum’s quest for a more mature and powerful omnichannel solution led them straight to Zendesk. “Our previous system felt like an enhanced Gmail, whereas Zendesk provides a more holistic view and direct approach. Our staff can go through each step without having to set filters manually to collect the relevant information,” says Santhosh. “Zendesk’s tailored views and configurations feel more aligned with our needs.”

“What really cemented the decision to exit our previous customer support software is the ROI we would get from Zendesk,” Santhosh added. “We saw what Zendesk could do. More importantly, we saw the difference with the account management team. Our Zendesk representatives were extremely helpful. They knew the product well and taught us how to get the most value out of the solution. Zendesk’s approach felt more human and personal.”

Merging communication channels

Within three weeks, Plum migrated customer data onto Zendesk and implemented the necessary workflows. “Zendesk partner DynaNet was actively involved in the beginning, ensuring a smooth migration,” recalls Santhosh. “After that, we took over, refining and customizing Zendesk to our preferences and giving the platform the look and feel that would work best for us, which was only a five-to-seven-day effort.”

After the implementation, all support channels—email, chat, phone, and website tickets—came together through Zendesk. “Before migrating, our chat and email teams operated separately because they used different systems, so we needed to deploy agents around the clock for both queues. This meant we needed to double the head count. Now, with Zendesk, they’re unified, making the process more streamlined,” notes Santhosh. Zendesk brings together all four departments of the customer success team as well as the engineers and product managers who need to stay on top of product issues. “Zendesk is where our product team starts to discover what’s working and what’s not. When a Zendesk ticket gets created, our engineers are among the first to be notified, and they can move the ticket to Jira, an issue-tracking software, to ensure that they resolve bugs quickly. The integration is seamless,” adds Santhosh.

Gaining visibility, agility, and efficiency

After making sure that agents could move between services easily and work through the inquiries one ticket at a time, Plum set out to optimize processes further. It began gathering insights on call volumes to determine how to deploy agents during peak periods. “We also used the Flow Builder, a drag-and-drop tool for creating conversational bots, to optimize some of our chat flows based on insights from Zendesk reports. This change resulted in a 50 percent reduction in chat volume,” shares Santhosh.

With a true omnichannel solution, the company has been able to grow sustainably. “When I started with Plum two years ago, we had about 100 customer organizations. Now, we serve 3,000 organizations with 50 unique offerings. We cater to up to 500,000 clients, and we have a much leaner, more flexible team,” shares Santhosh. “In the first month of the Zendesk launch, we reduced our headcount by about 50 percent. Our team has shrunk from 40 to 20 members even though our customer base has tripled since the migration. This was possible because our queues were consolidated. We no longer need a separate team for email and another for chat.”

A clear path ahead

With Zendesk setting a clear path for Plum’s team, the company is ready for all future expansions. “With triggers, views, and fields, our staff always knows what needs to be done on any given day. They have the visibility needed for keeping our promise to our customers,” concludes Vijayananda. “This is the biggest win for us. The future is ready.”