Support infrastructure and ticket routing from disconnected platforms
The challenge they faced
As a nonprofit storytelling organisation, the team was managing customer service and email communications across multiple platforms that no longer met their needs. Their existing systems for tracking support tickets and sending transactional emails had become fragmented, with documentation gaps and undefined processes that made it difficult to maintain consistency. When their primary support platform contract approached expiration, they recognised that migrating to a unified system would require expert guidance to succeed.
The team faced a significant budget constraint, with an internal funding gap that threatened to derail the project entirely. They needed not just a technical migration partner, but also flexible payment terms that could align with their nonprofit budget cycles to make the investment feasible.
The strategy we mapped
We started by establishing a unified support infrastructure as the foundation for everything else. The Zendesk contract was expiring and the team needed a centralised, single-source-of-truth platform to manage tickets alongside the rest of their donor and participant data. We prioritised getting the Help Desk operational with a custom intake form and inbox setup, then sequenced the data imports and integrations to follow. The tight budget required flexible engagement: we structured the work in phases so funding could align with the nonprofit's internal cycles, and we focused on what would have the most immediate impact for the support team.
Throughout the project, we worked closely with the team to refine how HubSpot would fit into their actual workflows. Early on, we uncovered gaps in their segment logic and discovered that the Zoom integration had limitations they hadn't anticipated. Rather than guess, we validated each piece with them, documented what we learned, and adjusted the approach. We also handled a complex migration from their legacy support and email systems, dealing with data quirks from MailChimp and Zendesk, and we set up integrations with their scheduling tool and feedback systems so all customer activity would flow into a single timeline.
The solutions we executed
Support ticketing and intake: We built a custom support form with branching logic to gather all essential information upfront, embedded it on the website, and configured the Help Desk to centralise tickets from email, the form, and Acuity bookings. The team now works from a single queue, with a customised sidebar that mirrors their familiar layout and clear pipeline stages that manage workload and SLAs. A playbook guides staff through the steps for appointment-related tickets, and templates and snippets let them respond consistently without retyping.
Email operations and sender: We migrated transactional email templates from their previous platform and recreated them in HubSpot, converting them to use the new API sender and standardising tokens so they render correctly. We built saved sections for reusable headers and footers and set up an approval workflow so all marketing sends stay on brand. A feedback survey now triggers automatically after tickets close, letting the team track satisfaction and flag detractors for follow-up.
Data integration and cleanup: We imported contact records from MailChimp, resolving import errors caused by incompatible data types and age guesses that HubSpot could not parse. We brought in custom properties needed for reporting, set up segment logic that correctly captures empty and unknown states, and created a standardised state property with consistent values for analytics. Zendesk tickets were migrated, and a Zapier workflow now syncs Acuity bookings so appointments automatically create tickets and link to the right contact.
SMS setup and workflow integration: We configured HubSpot's SMS messaging feature and walked the team through how to send one-way SMS reminders via workflow, include links to forms or paperwork, and monitor delivery and failure events. While two-way ticket conversations via SMS are not yet available in HubSpot, we designed workflows to handle reminders, confirmations, and failure notifications for key moments like appointment scheduling.
What changed after the engagement.
The team now has a unified support infrastructure where all customer interactions–emails, support forms, and appointment bookings–flow into a single Help Desk queue, with customised intake forms, ticket routing, standardised response templates, and integrated feedback surveys. Customer data is clean and consolidated from legacy systems, ticket assignments are automated by issue type, transactional emails render reliably through the new API sender, and support staff can track satisfaction and follow up on detractors without manual steps. SMS reminders and confirmations now trigger automatically for key moments like appointment scheduling, and all customer activity flows into a single contact timeline so reps have full context before replying.
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