Customer Experience Strategy Consulting
Agree what service is for.
Then decide where AI fits.
We help executive teams put service, Zendesk and AI into one plan, with a phased roadmap your team can run.
- Built with your leadership team
- Zendesk Premier Partner in APAC
- AI use cases ranked by value and risk
Who we work with
Trusted by 300+ organisations across ANZ
The record
- 1,000+Zendesk solutions delivered across ANZ
- Since 2014Supporting ANZ service teams
- PremierZendesk Premier Partner in APAC
- 30%Fewer tickets at Timely
Customer stories
Four teams that planned before they built
Timely
3.75:1
→
11:1
Help centre visits per ticket raised, after three years of planning and tuning.
“The tangible story that data tells is phenomenal. Our exec team now sees the reports created by SuccessCX as the go-to for tracking progress.”
Lisa Kerr · Head of Global Support
Eftsure
20%
Fewer monthly tickets, and AI agents now resolve 68% of support chats.
“From day one, SuccessCX has taken the time to really listen to what we want to achieve and then build the way through that to get us where we want to be, every single time.”
Sewraj Boodhooa · Head of Customer Support
Retail Zoo
Four brands share one service standard. Executive dashboards show customer contact hour by hour.
Kepler Analytics
“Solutions partners who establish a relationship that forms trust and evolves into a real partnership.”
Cameron Crowell · Chief Operating Officer
Where to start
Strategy work starts
with a pressure you can name.
Pick the one you’re feeling most.
If it’s all three, we’ll help you sort the order.
The board wants an AI plan
Someone’s asked what AI is doing for service, and the honest answer is a pilot that never reached customers.
AI agent consultingWhat we do first
- Map where demand goes today
- Find the AI ideas worth testing
- List what Zendesk needs before AI goes live
Cost to serve keeps rising
Volume grows, headcount follows, and budget talks with finance go round in circles.
CX consultingWhat we do first
- Trace repeat contact back to its cause
- Choose the few measures leadership will read
- Rank the fixes
Support, IT and product want different things
Support wants fewer tickets, IT fewer tools, product better feedback. Zendesk has picked up workarounds for all three.
CX best practicesWhat we do first
- Put every team’s goals on one page
- Check Zendesk against how service should run
- Turn it into one roadmap, with an owner per step
Who we help
Three seats at the table,
one plan.
01
CX leaders and support managers
You need a plan your executives will fund.
- AI requests with no business case
- Reports that only count tickets
- Every fix competes with the queue
02
IT and operations leaders
The work lands on your platform, so you want a say.
- AI bought before anyone checked the data
- Governance and security added last
- Zendesk built around old processes
03
Executive and business leaders
Service costs more each year, and nobody can say why.
- No clear cost per contact
- AI spend with no link to results
- A different service plan in every team
What makes us different
We start on the
support floor,
then take it
to the boardroom.
Your agents and your queue show us how service runs day to day, so the plan still works when someone has to build it.
Our team · Melbourne
What we ask first
01
What does the business need from service?
02
Which part of your cost to serve earns loyalty?
03
Which customer moments still need a person?
04
What has to change before AI meets a customer?
Why SuccessCX
Most strategy work ends
as a slide deck.
Lots of firms can tell you where service should go. Fewer can open your Zendesk and fix what’s in the way.
Our methodology
The SuccessCX Method.
Plan, build, then keep reviewing.
Discover
Strategy session
We review your setup and benchmark your customer journeys against the ANZ market. Then your leadership team agrees what service has to deliver.
What you get
One shared view of where service stands.
Design
Transformation Roadmap
We choose which AI use cases come first and set out the Zendesk work each one needs. It’s phased, so improvements land early.
What you get
A roadmap your executives sign off and your team can run.
Deploy and optimise
Ongoing Partnership
We build with your team, foundations first, then add AI one use case at a time. Progress is reported against the measures agreed at the start.
What you get
Regular reviews, with numbers to back them.
The people
Strategy and build
sit with one team.
If a step won’t work in your Zendesk, you’ll hear about it in the workshop.
- Paul Bichsel Founder and CEO Focused on the human elements of customer experience, and on saying the unpopular thing early. LinkedIn
- Alver Tuazon Director of Operations Two decades in senior CX leadership, running and fixing customer operations. LinkedIn
- Hamish Lang Service Delivery Manager Keeps projects moving and checks that each Zendesk change does what the client paid for. LinkedIn
- Ash Williamson CX Solutions Specialist Turns ideas into working service design, built around the people who use it. LinkedIn
- Annalise Wright Project Coordinator Keeps every project on track and every person clear on what happens next. LinkedIn
Start here
Bring a baseline
to the first meeting.
The CX Health Check gives you one: a score for platform, data, knowledge, operations and people. It’s free, and you keep the report.
- 01 Give it five minutes Plain questions about your service operation and the tools behind it.
- 02 See your score by pillar It shows where the roadmap should begin.
- 03 Share the report Download it and put it in front of your leadership team before anyone talks budget.
- 04 Start the strategy work Bring it to a strategy call and we’ll build the roadmap from what it found.
Ready when you are
Agree the plan before
you buy the next tool.
Talk it through with us.
Tell us where service is stuck, and we’ll show you the first move.
If the basics need fixing before AI, we’ll say so.
What we’ll cover
01
How service and Zendesk run today.
02
Your timing, budget and approvals.
CX strategy, explained
What a customer experience strategy covers
A customer experience strategy is a plan that sets out what service has to do for the business, which customer moments still need a person, where automation and AI fit, and what your platform must change to support it. SuccessCX, a Melbourne-based Zendesk Premier Partner in APAC, builds that plan with leadership teams and turns it into a phased roadmap that the same team then delivers.
Customer experience strategy vs customer service strategy
A customer experience strategy covers every point where a customer deals with you: buying, onboarding, billing, getting help and renewing. A customer service strategy is the part of that plan that deals with support. It decides which channels you offer, how work gets routed, what agents can resolve on their own and what you report on.
Most mid-market and enterprise teams need both, but they rarely need to start with both. If the loudest complaints come from support, the service strategy is usually the quicker win, and it gives the wider plan real data to work from. If the friction sits across sales, product and billing as well, start wider. Our CX consulting work takes that broader journey view.
What to bring to CX strategy consulting
Strategy work moves faster when the first workshops run on evidence rather than opinion. Before the first session, it helps to pull together:
- a few months of ticket data, broken down by channel and contact reason
- the tools your support, IT and sales teams use, and how they connect
- who owns each part of service today, including the parts nobody owns
- any customer survey results or cost figures finance already tracks
None of this needs to be tidy. Gaps in the data are findings in their own right. The stakeholder list can run longer than people expect: at Linkly, seven support and IT teams now work on one platform, and a plan at that scale needs each of them in the room early.
Where AI fits in a customer service strategy
In a customer service strategy, AI is a set of specific jobs, each with its own business case. Good first candidates are high-volume questions that already have a clear, correct answer written down somewhere. Poor candidates are complaints, billing disputes and anything where a wrong answer costs you the customer.
Before any AI agent talks to a customer, three things usually need work: the help centre content it will learn from, the ticket fields and tags it will read, and the hand-off to a person when it gets stuck. Skip that groundwork and the AI agent repeats whatever gaps already sit in your content and data. Our guide to an AI readiness assessment for customer service lists what to check.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a CX strategy engagement take?
It depends on how many teams, brands and channels the plan has to cover, how much usable data you already have, and how quickly your leadership team can meet to make decisions. A single support function with good reporting moves faster than several business units with separate tools. We scope the timing with you on the first call, once we know what is in play.
How much of our team's time will strategy work need?
Expect to give time from three groups. Your leadership team joins the workshops where priorities get agreed. Frontline agents and team leads spend time showing us how the queue really runs. Someone with access to your reporting and platform admin helps pull data. The exact hours depend on scope, and we plan sessions around your peak periods so support doesn't suffer.
Do we need to use Zendesk to work with SuccessCX on strategy?
No. The strategy starts with what service needs to do for the business, and the platform choice follows from that. Most of our build work is in Zendesk, alongside tools such as HubSpot, Aircall and Plecto. If the plan says your current platform is holding you back, the people who wrote the plan can also carry out the change, so the recommendation and the build stay consistent.
Can you work with a CX strategy we already have?
Yes, and we would rather build on it than start again. We test your existing plan against how service runs day to day and against what your platform can do now. Parts that hold up stay in. Parts that have drifted, or that depend on tools you no longer use, get reworked. You end up with one roadmap instead of two competing documents.
Should we set a customer service strategy before buying AI tools?
Yes. Without one, it is hard to say which AI use cases are worth paying for or how you would know they worked. A strategy names the contact types worth automating, the measures leadership will judge it on, and the platform work that has to happen first. That way every AI purchase has a measure attached before the money is spent.
What does CX strategy consulting cost?
The cost depends on scope: how many teams and brands are involved, how much discovery work your data needs, and whether you want us to deliver the roadmap afterwards. We don't publish fixed prices because two engagements rarely look alike. A strategy call is the quickest way to get a scoped estimate for your situation.