The Challenge

A recreational vehicle (RV) company and its iconic product has long been a household name, so much so that 80% of every RV ever made is still in service. “They become such a part of the family that people actually name them,” says the Head of Digital Experiences who built their expertise leading cutting-edge customer experiences for three decades at hallmark brands.

During a normal year, demand for the RV products can be highly cyclical, since families don’t tend to repeat the large purchase often. But when the Head of Digital Experiences joined the company in 2021, the team was grappling with challenges entirely beyond seasonality.

Many had bought the RV company’s little luxury houses on wheels as the pandemic initially surged in 2020, and remote work characterized most professionals’ lives. As companies went back to the office in 2021, new RV owners were learning for the first time how to manage a home on wheels while at their permanent homes.

“We knew we needed to be more personalized to keep newer customers from selling their vehicles and reverting to Airbnb. We needed to give customers great experiences based on what they’d done in the past to turn them into long-term RV-ers.”

But nurturing customers in the RV customer community is way easier said than done.

“We had a bunch of customer data across interactions online and on the road, and smart vehicles were just starting to become a thing. It was a really juicy and technical challenge to figure out how to provide great experiences to vacationers and our RV owners, using all the information in our app.”

The Opportunity

But the idea of really answering questions while RV-ers were on campsites, the beach, and at home rallied the Head of Digital Experience’s smart & connected team. The web team rallied around the idea of orchestrating shopping experiences that didn’t just acquire new RV-ers – but also converted second sales.

“Getting that second sale is now a bit of a Mecca for our team.”

Finding An Expert Thought Partner & CX Agency

The Head of Digital Experiences sought Envoy’s strategic expertise to orchestrate the RV customer journey. Envoy had been a partner for the RV company for a year already, as well as a long-time premier Zendesk partner before that. At the time, the RV company used Zendesk as its customer service ticketing engine, and Envoy had just designed the RV company’s Zendesk-powered Guide help center for their support site.

“I didn’t know the pages had been mocked up by Envoy, and I said, ‘these are beautiful.’ When I found out that the whole front end was going to be that guide, I said, ‘you need to tell me more about Envoy. I never would have considered doing it this way.’”

Ever since, the RV company team has explored new ways to push the envelope with Envoy and Zendesk, which it attributes to Envoy’s deep expertise. For example, self-service is tied to the RV company’s ticketing system through its support page, so RV owners exploring the self-service content can also be quickly routed to the appropriate owner relations team member when they want to talk to someone.

“Thanks to Envoy, we’ve done things I never would have thought about using Zendesk for,” says the Head of Digital Experiences, citing the fact that the RV company now uses Zendesk for its entire customer and dealer-facing experiences.

“I’ve liked working with agencies for a long time,” says the Head of Digital Experiences. “It’s a great way to keep ahead of the curve, especially in CX because there’s so much innovation. Zendesk is such a big application, and there’s no way a team can understand all of the possibilities. You need expert partners. Having that third party is a great way of rapidly broadening your team’s own concentric circles of knowledge.