The Challenge

Ineffective self-service resulted in a large ticket volume that overwhelmed Kombo’s lean team.

For travel platforms, excellent customer service experience is a critical competitive differentiator. Kombo’s goal has always been to lead customers through a stress-free travel experience from the beginning to the end of their trip. 

Before Stonly, Kombo relied on a third party to manage client requests, leading to an impersonal customer experience. The external support team could not internalize Kombo’s values, culture, and product knowledge, creating a frustrating and disjointed customer experience. The organization knew their relationship with the external service team needed to end. However, this posed a significant challenge. Without them, Kombo couldn’t offer 24/7 support. 

Since customers travel at various times, they shouldn’t have to wait until an agent is available during business hours to resolve issues with their trips. Kombo’s existing team simply could not offer 24/7 support without offering better self-service options, working long hours, or hiring more people. 

The only self-service available to customers was a lengthy FAQ section that was overwhelmingly difficult to navigate. Despite being a simple-to-use platform, customers had little choice but to contact Kombo’s agents. As a result, the organization’s lean service team had to deal with an overwhelming volume of repetitive tickets and unhappy customers. This drained agents of time they felt could be better spent handling more complex issues and process-related improvements.  

The team realized they needed a better, more impactful approach to offering around-the-clock customer service that resulted in fewer repetitive tickets and offered personalized guidance whenever and wherever customers experienced issues.

The Solution

A 24/7 proactive customer service experience that drives more self-serve resolutions and lowers ticket volume.

Kombo replaced their FAQ section with a Stonly-powered knowledge base that adapts to each customer’s location, language, and situation. With a custom Stonly knowledge base, customers are provided a personalized and targeted self-serve experience anywhere and at any time to manage their booking and resolve key ticket-driving issues without contacting live customer service.

With customers in France and Italy, Stonly guides enable Kombo to offer localized service with minimal configuration. Customers’ unique choices and data on local transportation providers further helped the organization tailor self-serve content. The knowledge base is faster and easier to navigate through four main sections based on the mode of transportation, with each section highlighting recommended guides for issues that customers commonly experience.

Instead of long, impersonal articles, the knowledge base contains interactive guides, which are more effective in driving self-serve resolutions because they break down complex information into easy-to-follow steps. Being able to offer guidance in various formats and with varying levels of detail ensures that Kombo can offer each customer the right type of guidance without relaying irrelevant information. Additionally, Stonly’s custom CSS allowed Kombo to incorporate branding elements such as emojis and icons and create a seamless on-brand experience across their platform. 

Furthermore, Stonly enables Kombo to share time-sensitive information throughout its platform easily. This feature became critical during the COVID-19 pandemic when constantly changing regulations and restrictions created customer uncertainty and confusion. Kombo used banners to relay these changes by location to ensure that travelers felt supported and had enough information to go on their trip safely.  

With Stonly’s platform, Kombo can deliver customers a branded, personalized customer experience 24/7, directly in-house, without hiring additional team members. The adaptive pathing tailors content to each customer’s unique situation and provides guidance immediately without having them rely on live agents. As more customers successfully self-serve issues, Kombo’s service team is empowered to tackle more complex issues while avoiding burnout.

The Results

Customers self-solve more often, leading to a 30% reduction in tickets and a more productive service team.

“Stonly’s multi-step form builds itself, requiring very little input from me. It’s an easy, efficient, and quick way to add new content to our knowledge base without requiring coding or configuration.” 

~Alexandra LaFarge, Customer Success Manager

Within days of deployment, Stonly helped Kombo reduce its incoming ticket volume by 30 percent. Previously, Kombo struggled to offer a cohesive customer service experience. Today, a highly personalized 24/7 self-serve experience delivers the exact right guidance when and where it’s needed. Customers are no longer frustrated by a generic FAQ page that forces them to contact agents. In complex situations when agent support is required, customers now speak to Kombo’s in-house experts instead of third-party agents who delivered impersonal and disconnected experiences. 

Agents no longer have to answer repetitive issues or handle tickets from red-eye travelers and can dedicate more time to providing incredible customer experiences for complex tickets. The team shared that they’re less overwhelmed and notice a significant shift in incoming ticket topics that are more challenging and unique. 

With regular content updates and time-sensitive prompts, the organization ensures that customers always receive up-to-date guidance. A simple-to-use guide editor has helped Kombo easily create, update, and offer relevant guidance to different customers. 

Now that Kombo customers are using Stonly-powered self-service more frequently, the Kombo team feels less pressured to hire additional team members to support their growing customer base. Instead, they focus on scaling sustainably without lowering their goals or service quality.

Working with Stonly

Kombo chose Stonly because of the platform's ease and efficiency, which they found other solutions lacked. With minimal training and no coding required, Stonly was easy to set up and became an instant hit with customers and agents. 

When questions came up during the setup, Kombo’s customer service teams were impressed with how quickly Stonly could answer them. Alexandra LaFarge, Customer Success Manager, shared, “Stonly was easy to work with because the tool is intuitive and simple to deploy. What further sets the platform apart from others is the speed and care with which all my questions were answered. The customer success team instantly responded to my questions, making the setup process smooth and uneventful.”