Quark—revolutionizing publishing and customer care for the next generation

A brand built on impressive innovation

Quark is a brand that has stood the test of time via continuous reinvention and innovation based on its customers’ evolving needs. In the 1980s, it was Quark that laid the foundation for modern publishing with QuarkXPress for desktop publishing. In the 1990s, the brand solidified its hold in the software industry as the world’s most widely-used professional page layout solution.

With the meteoric rise of digital media in the 2000 and 2010s, Quark has once again risen to the challenge of revolutionizing its software and its brand to serve a continuously changing global medium and an ever-expanding set of connected customers.

For Quark, development and growth are all part of its name. The brand takes its appellation from the subatomic particle that is the building block for all matter. For customer support, Quark has utilized that building block structure to finally arrive at a cohesive multichannel customer service solution, that now in place, doubled the brand’s Net Promoter Score in a little over a year.

Bringing it all together: the key to customer care

“You cannot underestimate the importance of support, especially for a software company,” says Quark VP of IT and Customer Support, Mark Lawler. “The customers we serve are very tech-savvy. They want to be able to access knowledgebases, and to submit a ticket, but some still prefer the phone. In addition, we have a lot of customers that want to use chat.”

”With our enterprise customers, the standards are even higher,” says Lawler, “and that means providing support around the clock, around the world, 24/7.”

Quark started with a homegrown support ticketing system with no formal tracking or reporting. They also had chat, but it was through a third-party that did not integrate with the other support systems.

The knowledgebase was also siloed, leaving many customers to complain about the lack of integration.

”We had a ticketing system. We had chat. We had our phone system. We had a knowledgebase,” notes Lawler, “but none of them were connected with one another.

Quark’s online support portal is now a one-stop, yet multichannel extension of the brand’s website and overall service offering featuring support ticketing, live chat, product documentation, feedback capabilities, and a highly-effective self-service anchor in the well-maintained, well-organized knowledgebase which provides answers to customers’ frequently-asked questions.

“A lot of people don’t want to go to assisted channels for support,” says Lawler. “They want to be able to look answers up themselves and solve the problem themselves.” With Microsoft providing the solution that allowed Quark support representatives to easily add, update, and organize content — as well as turn support ticket responses into knowledgebase articles — Quark turned one of its least used customer resources into one of its most successful. This improved availability of 24/7 answers and information online has changed customer behavior over the past few years, with more customers effectively using Quark’s support portal on its website and search to find the right answers, at their convenience 24/7, without having to engage a support representative.

Knowledgebase article views are now up more than ten times over what they were with Quark’s previous solution, and the quantity, quality, and availability of answers has reduced support ticket submission by approximately 80 percent and resulted in a 60 percent decrease in call volume with a related 50 percent cost savings for this channel.

The additional benefit is that through the deflection of repetitive, easy-answer questions via self-service, Quark customer support representatives (CSRs) are now able to spend more time on the assisted experiences of customers with unique, difficult, or urgent requests. This, and Quark’s ability to manage, track, respond to, and report on multiple customer service channels through a single service deck have added to the overall, impressive increase in Quark’s Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Going above and beyond with best practices

Beyond developing a better and more integrated multichannel service offering for customers, as well as the same for CSRs with a unified, cloud-based service desk on the administrative side all through Microsoft, Quark has also integrated Microsoft with its JIRA bug tracking software for IT support, Quark’s e-store and other key solutions to deliver an increasingly seamless customer experience. In addition, Quark has created unique, user-tailored experiences for both its enterprise and desktop customers and has made use of Microsoft service desk features such as Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and reporting to manage and respond to enterprise customer requests and issues even more efficiently and effectively.

“In summary, Microsoft enables Quark to provide 24/7 multi-channel support to our enterprise and SMB customers,” says Lawler. “Microsoft customizable customer service platform allows us to scale our customer-facing portal as necessary and gives our employees the chance to provide the best service to every customer, from small businesses to large enterprises.”

“Quark has taken what used to be a brand challenge in multichannel service and support and has turned it into a positive brand differentiator that we continue to develop and improve all the time,” says Lawler. “At Quark, we’re putting the customer first in everything we do.”