Star21 innovates faster with Zendesk App Builder

Star21 is an Australian-owned technology and telecommunications solutions provider delivering enterprise mobility, Cloud & Modern Workplace solutions, security and managed ICT services across Australia. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Melbourne, Star21 is today one of Telstra’s largest and long-standing Platinum partners. As the business grew, Star21’s teams began handling up to 12,000 support tickets each month. Those tickets can include multiple tasks, meaning the team manages as many as 50,000 tasks monthly.

“Those tasks could be anything from wiping a device to setting up a Microsoft account for a new employee,” says Roman Surkis, Head of Products and Services at Star21. “It could also be reporting on service-level agreements.”

Completing a single request often meant moving between Zendesk, Telstra systems, security platforms and expense-management tools.

“We are swivel-chairing at different levels,” Surkis says. “And our key focus is to make sure that customers experience good service and are not waiting for us.”

Bringing disconnected systems together

A Zendesk customer since 2015, Star21 has made the platform its primary customer service system.

“Zendesk is the lifeblood, the heartbeat of this organization,” Surkis says. “All the tickets—and all of our work—go through the platform.”

But the disconnected systems that agents had to navigate outside of Zendesk created extra work and increased the risk of information being missed or entered incorrectly. They also made it harder to provide customers with fast, transparent updates.

With Zendesk App Builder, Star21 began creating custom applications that bring customer context and external workflows into Zendesk. By describing their requirements in plain-language prompts powered by generative AI, the team were able to rapidly build and refine apps inside the agent workspace.

“The Zendesk App Builder has allowed us to do that,” Surkis says. “It’s one of the key innovations that has allowed us to innovate rapidly and continue to change quickly around multiple platforms and processes within this business.”

Connecting workflows with custom Zendesk apps

The first major example was an integration with BillView, Star21’s expense-management platform. Approximately 50 of Star21’s largest customers use the service.

“Through a sidebar app in Zendesk, agents can now submit requests directly to BillView from the relevant ticket,” Surkis says. “Because the process is integrated into Zendesk, our team no longer has to create a new ticket or escalate the request to a separate expense-management team.”

The result is a faster, more consistent process. Agents can complete requests in the original ticket, while customers receive updates without unnecessary handoffs.

“We estimate it saves one to three minutes per ticket,” Surkis says. “The customers using the service are among our largest, so it’s a significant time saving. The turnaround is quick because everything is completed instantly.”

Star21 is also using App Builder to create tools for its internal teams. The custom call-status app gives the 16-person customer service team a single view of colleagues’ availability in Zendesk Talk. Agents can see who is online, away or on a call, receive alerts when someone becomes available and save frequently contacted colleagues as favorites.

“The app gives team leaders and managers an at-a-glance view of where the team is and what agents are doing,” says Lucas Mirtsios, Technical Staging Lead at Star21. “It also alerts us when phone coverage is low and gives agents daily metrics on their tickets and calls.”

Star21’s agents can earn bronze, silver or gold rankings based on their call streaks. Gamification and rewards make the experience more engaging while encouraging agents to answer more calls.

“We thought gamification would be a cool way to motivate them,” Mirtsios says.

Innovating quickly, with governance built in

Star21 has built three custom apps with App Builder within three months, two of which are already in production. The team is developing additional integrations, including a logistics app for Australia Post and a tool for merging duplicate contacts.

The ability to develop and test these applications within Zendesk gives Star21 a more practical way to respond to changing business needs.

“We’ve built applications ourselves that have taken months—if not years—and required multiple developers to build, test and secure,” Surkis says. “App Builder allows us to innovate quickly, refine our ideas and keep changing rapidly.”

The apps also help Star21 keep work secure and contained within Zendesk. Authentication happens automatically, actions are logged to individual agents and access to external portals can be limited.

“That simplifies what agents need to do, makes us more secure and automates a lot of touch points,” Mirtsios says.

Keeping customer experience at the center

For Star21, efficiency matters because it helps the team serve customers faster. The company’s initial response SLA agreement is two hours, but its goal is to respond sooner and clear its queues by the end of each day.

The company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) typically ranges from 89 to 92, so the team focuses on improving efficiency while maintaining strong customer loyalty.

“We’re not in the business of getting customers off the phone or closing tickets as quickly as possible,” Surkis says. “But if we can save 30 seconds or a minute on average handling time while maintaining a strong NPS, we can get to more tickets more quickly.”

That customer-first approach shapes the company’s plans for the future. Star21 is exploring integrations with customers’ workforce-management and ticketing systems to make service delivery more transparent.

“If an external system has an API, it means we can save time and integrate,” Surkis says. “Everything we do comes back to providing a better level of service and better transparency for our customers.”

For Star21, Zendesk is more than a customer service platform. It is the foundation for a connected operation that helps the company improve its service while continuing to innovate.

“We see Zendesk not just as software, but as a business partnership,” Surkis says.