How Eléonore, Care Team Lead at Pennylane, Uses Dust

Pennylane, an innovative company in the Fintech space, gained a reputation for its amazing customer service. 

However, the company’s rapid growth came with a significant challenge: how could Pennylane scale its customer support operations to match increasing demand without compromising on the quality of service?

The need to balance between expansion and maintaining high service standards led Éléonore, the Care Team Lead, to search for a solution that could boost efficiency while keeping customer satisfaction at the heart of the company’s operations.

📌 Pennylane offers a SaaS platform that centralizes invoices, tax returns, and financial statements to facilitate collaboration between accountants and businesses. This approach improves accounting services by allowing accountants to deliver faster and more efficient services to their clients​​​​.

Maintaining a Personal Touch in the Face of Rapid Growth

The time-consuming search for information   

As Pennylane grew so did the volume of customer inquiries, turning the once-manageable task of customer support into a daily challenge. The team faced significant hurdles in managing the growing workload, particularly in locating information across tools like Notion and Slack. 

The search for information needed to respond to client queries was time-consuming, and it became increasingly clear that traditional methods wouldn't suffice in keeping up with the company's growth.

The need for a user-friendly and efficient solution

The growing number of customer support tickets led Éléonore on the hunt for a solution that could ease the scaling pressures Pennylane was facing. Éléonore needed a tool that could easily adapt as the company grew and customer needs evolved.

“My main priorities are how to save time, and how to respond to customer inquiries more effectively”.

Éléonore

Recognizing her team's mixed technical skills, Éléonore knew the solution had to be user-friendly and efficient, while also alleviating concerns about automation replacing their roles. This led her to a tool that was capable of simplifying the care team’s workflow and matching Pennylane's rapid pace of innovation.

Enhancing Customer Care with AI Assistants

Seamlessly integrated virtual assistants

Introduced as a transformative tool for Pennylane's customer care team, Dust simplifies the retrieval of information across a variety of platforms. 

Using large language models, Dust creates virtual assistants that seamlessly integrate with a company’s existing data systems. This allows companies to automate time-consuming data retrieval and optimize workflow processes.

Recognizing the challenge of efficiently accessing data, Éléonore harnessed the capabilities of Dust to develop virtual assistants tailored for platforms like Notion, Google Drive, and Slack. 

“Just like in human relationships, where asking complex questions to multiple people yields more information and perspectives, we use Dust's assistants, each with its specialty, to gather diverse insights and synthesize the best possible answer”

Éléonore

Designed to operate collaboratively, these assistants work in tandem across different platforms to quickly identify and present information. 

The addition of Dust’s assistants significantly improved the Care team's ability to respond to customer inquiries, and employees who used Dust were able to close tickets more quickly than those who did not.

"The main use of Dust by our Care team is when they encounter a customer question they can't answer or need to search for information; they rework the query and rely on Dust's response to provide accurate answers to our customers.”

Éléonore

Dust analyzed the company's client data to provide customized insights and response suggestions, helping the Care Team streamline their customer interactions.

This level of support was particularly beneficial for newcomers to the team, who were able to use Dust to retrieve client information directly rather than waste time looking for it.

Expanding Beyond Customer Inquiries

Integrating Dust into Pennylane's operations led to a notable change in the Care Team’s approach to workflow management.

Dust was used as a debugging tool that could transform complex error messages into understandable language, allowing the care to provide detailed information for issues that needed to be escalated to the technical team. Dust was also used to create summaries and reports, helping the team to identify trends in client conversations.

“Dust is capable of translating error messages that are not understandable to me otherwise.”

Éléonore

Additionally, Dust provided insights into trending topics within customer conversations, enabling the team to anticipate customer needs and tailor their strategies accordingly. 

This broadened toolkit elevated Dust from a simple query-handling tool to an asset for strategic planning, trend analysis, and improving the overall strategy of the Care team.

“Dust is like an additional colleague who is always available and who will always provide an answer.”

Éléonore

The Key to Successful AI Interaction

Effective communication with Dust emerged as a key factor in leveraging its full potential. Éléonore emphasized the need for the team to familiarize themselves with Dust, and compared the process to nurturing a friendship. 

“Dust is like a friend; once you get to know it, you learn how to interact with it. I learned that I could have a dialogue with Dust, that it could bounce back from the previous question, and that, as a result, we could delve a little deeper into the questions and responses.

Éléonore

This meant understanding how to utilize the tool effectively and learning the nuances of interacting with it to maximize its capabilities. This approach ensured that Dust's contributions were fully integrated into the team's operations, enhancing both efficiency and the quality of service provided.

Setting a New Standard

Éléonore's strategic implementation of Dust within Pennylane's customer care team demonstrates AI’s ability to help businesses overcome scalability challenges. 

Streamlining both daily operations and non-routine tasks, Dust significantly enhanced information retrieval and interaction quality. Its utility also extended to debugging, language translation, and strategic planning, proving its value well outside the confines of everyday customer support queries.

As Pennylane continues to evolve, the use of AI tools like Dust will be crucial in maintaining a balance between efficiency and personalized care. 

This partnership between technology and human expertise offers a blueprint for other companies facing similar challenges, proving that with the right approach, AI can be a game-changer for rapidly growing businesses.

In a company where everything moves fast and project requirements change quickly, Dust helps us keep the pace. 

Éléonore