How Supermove Scaled Excellent CX Without Growing Headcount

Highlights

• Improved deflection rate from 30% to 58-65% across all support channels, more than doubling their self-service success
• Reduced monthly article views on their legacy Zendesk system from 500 to approximately 60, an 88% decrease as customers found answers through Brainfish
• Avoided hiring 1-2 additional support agents despite nearly tripling their customer base since Nick joined
• Successfully maintained service level agreements while keeping the support team intentionally lean, even as customer volume grew substantially
• Used Brainfish's analytics "themes" feature to inform their monthly customer education series for the past three consecutive months

When growing means choosing between technology and headcount

Nick Miller, Head of Support at Supermove, believes in running lean support operations. "I run my team very very lean on purpose," he explains. His philosophy stems from past experiences at startups where rapid hiring often led to painful layoffs caused by market turbulence. "I've always hated having to do layoffs," Nick shares. "I think they can mostly be avoided with proper management, planning, and forecasting."

But Supermove was growing rapidly – they had nearly tripled their customer base since Nick joined. This success created a support challenge: maintain high-quality service without continuously expanding the team. When Nick reached the point of considering a fourth or fifth support agent, he faced a crucial decision: invest in more people or find a technological solution that could genuinely improve customer experience while managing volume.

The limitations of current support systems

Supermove had initially implemented Zendesk's AI solution, but after three to four months, limitations became apparent. "So much of Zendesk's AI was focused around serving articles. Nothing really conversational-based. It didn't do a good job actually handling back and forth related to a question." Nick explains.

The result was a frustrating cycle for customers: "Ask a question, get served articles, and probably an 80% chance you still have an additional question afterwards, so you're going to come to us either way."

This was contributing to a less-than-ideal experience for customers who needed answers, not article links. And with Supermove's growth trajectory, the problem was only going to intensify.

Investing in AI support tooling

As Nick weighed adding more staff against investing in better technology, Supermove connected with Brainfish. The difference was immediately apparent: "From the beginning, just how conversational-based Brainfish's AI tool was – the ability to ask a question and not just get served article links but actually chat through the steps you could follow, include article links for additional backup... it was night and day."

A crucial advantage was Brainfish's integration flexibility. "Brainfish was able to come in and say 'Nope, we can layer in on top of Zendesk and you can use it, you don't need to change systems,'" Nick explained. "That was huge for us at the time because I didn't have the bandwidth or budget to completely switch systems."

The decision came down to a strategic investment question: "It was really that decision of: do we want to invest in AI and do we see this as something that'll work and will help deflect, or do we need to hire more agents on the team?"

Supermove chose to invest in Brainfish, implementing help center integration and adding widgets to both their "Office App" and "Co-pilot" products. The implementation went smoothly, with outstanding support from the Brainfish team.

Results: Better customer experience, stronger support team

The investment paid immediate dividends for both customers and the support team:

For customers…

Supermove saw their deflection rate more than double – from around 30% with Zendesk to between 58% and 65% with Brainfish, even when measuring conservatively across all support channels. Customers were getting faster, more accurate answers through natural conversations rather than article links.

Monthly article views on their legacy system plummeted from 500 to roughly 60 over just three months – not because customers needed less help, but because they were finding better assistance through Brainfish.

For Supermove's customers, this meant getting immediate, conversational help rather than just links to articles, resulting in faster resolution times and a dramatically improved support experience that felt more like talking to a knowledgeable colleague than fighting with a generic support chatbot.

For the support team…

"Bringing on Brainfish has actually helped us likely avoid having to hire one to two more people on my team," Nick explained. "Because the AI tool is just deflecting that volume and handling it for us."

This allowed the existing team to focus on more complex, high-value support cases while maintaining service level agreements despite rapidly growing customer volume.

Perhaps most valuable was how Brainfish's analytics transformed their ability to understand and proactively address customer needs. Supermove found particular value in Brainfish's "themes" feature: "Brainfish's analytics are very self-serve. 'Here's the value you're going to find, just click here.'"

This insight has enhanced Supermove's customer education efforts: "We host once a month what's called a Support Education Series. All our customers are invited, it's an open hour-long meeting... using that themes page has actually been able to provide us with our theme for the past three months in a row just based on the number one theme or inquiry we're seeing in the help center."

Empowering the support team with partnership, not just technology

While the technological improvements were significant, Nick emphasized that Brainfish's support team played a crucial role in their success. "Working with DK and Emily has been awesome. It's been super smooth. Emily is available whenever we have questions or anything pops up."

The relationship has been particularly valuable when addressing inevitable challenges. "We definitely had some speed bumps post implementation," Nick admitted. Since Supermove maintains Zendesk as their source of truth and syncs everything to Brainfish, the process occasionally flagged issues. But the responsive support from Brainfish made all the difference.

"The team's super responsive, quick to get on top of it. And to me, as someone in support, that's what I care about," Nick explained. "Problems are going to come up. Bugs are called bugs for a reason – they're inevitable to a degree. I more so care, ‘how does the team handle them once the bug is flagged?’ And Brainfish is always on top of it."

Looking ahead: Adding customer context to make support seamless

Supermove plans to deepen their investment in support excellence through enhanced integration with Brainfish. Their next project is upgrading the API connection between Zendesk and Brainfish to enable pulling in customer-specific data like email addresses and account information.

Nick is particularly excited about utilizing more of the ambient agent, which he described as "a huge feature I am very excited about".

As Supermove continues to grow, their investment in Brainfish has positioned their support team to scale efficiently while maintaining the high-quality service their customers expect. Rather than simply adding headcount as volume increases, they've created a foundation for support excellence that benefits both customers and team members.

For Nick, this represents the ideal balance between lean operations and exceptional service by investing in tools that truly enhance the human support experience.