Case Study: IDEO U Increased CSAT by 34% With Crescendo

IDEO U is the online learning arm of IDEO, delivering human-centred courses that build creative leadership and design thinking skills.

Their support philosophy is simple: real people, authentic help, and a people-first experience so every learner feels backed by a responsive team.

The Challenges

Before Crescendo, IDEO U cycled through chat tools that created more friction than value. A Zendesk bot slowed their website and disrupted support flow.

With no sign of product improvement, the bot was turned off. Shopify Inbox required agents to be online during narrow windows before each course, about 4 hours per day for 8–10 days.

That pulled IDEO U team members away from their core focus, and the tool lived outside Zendesk with no integration. The team tracked conversations by hand, the Shopify Inbox interface was buggy, staffing was hard to predict, and ROI was unclear with the conglomerate of solutions.

In July 2024 the team became leaner. With the same pre-launch demand, IDEO U needed a support model that could scale without adding headcount and that fit inside existing Zendesk workflows.

IDEO U chose Crescendo because it met a tight set of requirements. They needed round-the-clock coverage so learners could get help when they needed it, which was difficult to support with the team’s unpredictable schedules.

They wanted everything to live inside Zendesk so conversations, history, and reporting stayed in one place. Cost had to match or beat prior tools while delivering a better learner experience. Just as important, the roll-out had to be low lift for their small team.

Crescendo led the implementation with their commitment to ongoing tuning, so quality would improve over time without daily oversight from IDEO U.

The IDEO U team also valued that it was a low-risk start that could be switched off if performance quality was below their standards.

After a diligent review, the always-on availability, native Zendesk workflow, equal or lower cost, minimal lift, continuous optimization, and seamless hand-off to human experts when needed made Crescendo the clear choice.

The Solution

Crescendo and IDEO U moved from kickoff to go live in 33 days. Week one focused on discovery and scoping, mapping the journeys that drive inbound volume around each course.

With access to Zendesk, Crescendo configured the CX Assistants inside the existing workspace, tuned knowledge sources, and grouped high-frequency topics into clearly defined request types:

• Refund Eligibility Checks
• Cohort Move Requests
• Account Access or Login Help
• Enrolment and Payment Questions
• Course Start Dates and Deadlines
• Certificate Or Proof-of-Completion Requests
• Invoice Or Receipt Requests

Confidence thresholds, clarifying prompts, and human hand-off rules were set so routine issues could be quickly resolved by AI, while edge cases reach Crescendo’s human experts without friction. Running natively in Zendesk kept context, transcripts, and reporting in one place.

A focused two-week iteration followed. IDEO U stress tested real scenarios while Crescendo reviewed conversations daily and tuned the AI.

This included tightening disambiguation prompts, clarifying refund and cohort transfer steps, and standardizing what to collect before hand-off: learner email, enrolment ID, order number, course name, and start date. Launch day was simple, with no new tools for the IDEO U team to learn.

Post launch, Crescendo provides fully managed ongoing care, including human- and AI-powered accuracy audits, content updates, and calendar-aligned reviews. As the IDEO U lead put it,

“They spun it up really quickly so we could start testing. We iterated for maybe two weeks, and then we went live. The Crescendo team continues to manage it and track it, so I don’t need to check it daily. I know the team is taking care of that, which is a huge win.”

The Results

Customer Impact

• Always-on chat coverage for course launches and beyond
• 85%+ questions answered instantly
• CSAT improvement of 34% for quicker, clearer resolutions
• Average interaction reduced from 4–5 touchpoints to 1–2

Business Impact

• 33 days from kickoff to go live
• Scaled support without staffing changes after a 50% team reduction
• Cost equal to or less than prior tools, with better performance

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Crescendo – View the Original Article

For more information about Crescendo - visit the Crescendo Website

Author: Crescendo
Reviewed by: Jo Robinson