AFFINITY SPORTS + ZENDESK

Driving customer success with a New Support Channel.

Project

Affinity Sports, a fast-growing division of DICK’S Sporting Goods, was scaling quickly, but its support operations weren’t keeping pace. Onboarding and day-to-day support were almost entirely manual. We relied on a homegrown ticketing tool, phone support, and a lot of team knowledge.

Customers had no central place to find answers, so even simple questions funneled straight to the support team. Agents were overwhelmed with tickets, juggling phone calls, and repeating the same answers over and over.

We wanted to continue to offer high-touch onboarding experience but, once customers were live we needed a better way for them to help themselves.

We needed to build a scalable self-support solution that reduces ticket volume and helps customers find success faster.

Approach

When I joined Affinity, the team had already chosen Zendesk but didn’t have anyone to lead the rollout. I’d been with the company only a few days when leadership asked if I could take it on. I had never used Zendesk before, but I jumped in immediately.

We had a small window to get up and running ahead of our busy season.

Solution

I led the full implementation and continuous improvement of Zendesk Enterprise (Support + Guide), including:

Strategy & Planning: Working closely with our Zendesk consultant, to review current workflows, understand customer and agent needs, and build a clear plan with goals, metrics, and launch milestones.

Workflow & Automation Design: Streamlined and standardized ticket handling, implemented automations, reduced manual work, and built scalable processes that gave agents time back.

Policies & Procedures: Created clear, scalable policies and procedures that aligned the entire GTM team and supported smoother day-to-day operations.

Educational Content Development: Wrote and produced articles, guides, and videos so customers could find answers without waiting on support.

Help Centers: Built and launched 47+ Help Centers, including defining structure, content standards, and management processes that ensured content searchability, and ease of use for customers.

GTM Training: Delivered training and resources to ensure internal team readiness and product adoption.

Results

Launched Zendesk in just 6 weeks—right before our busiest season.

By shifting away from a clunky, manual system to a streamlined support platform, we:

Reduced support volume by 25% in the first year
Achieved a 96% CSAT rating
Freed agents to focus on complex questions, not repetitive ones
Delivered an easier, faster ticketing experience with automated follow-ups
Empowered customers with 47+ user-friendly Help Centers
Launched a brand-new digital support channel

With a simpler ticketing experience, quicker turnaround times and the launch of a new digital support channel we reduced support volume by 25% and achieved a 96% CSAT rating in the first year.

Affinity Sports was acquired by Stack Sports in August, 2019.