About 6Connex

When Covid-19 derailed event plans everywhere in 2020, event tech played a critical role in helping businesses substitute coveted live gatherings with the alternative: immersive gatherings online.

One of the leading providers in this burgeoning space is 6Connex. Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, 6Connex’s cloud-based event platform makes it easy to host virtual business events of any scale or format. Through the platform, marketers and event planners receive access to in-person event apps, pre-event registration and publicity tools, event reporting and analytics, and other solutions that help them promote, register, run, and measure events.

6Connex clients range from small firms all the way up to Fortune 500s, across a wide swath of industries. In order to ensure that those clients get the support they need for their high-stakes conferences, summits, conventions and more, 6Connex manages a Refined site housing documentation and technical support.

The face of customer success

6Connex launched its Customer Success Portal (CSP) powered by Jira Service Management (JSM) and Confluence in April 2021, adding Refined later that year. The CSP was conceived as a one-stop shop for new and existing customers who need help getting up and running in the platform, instructions as they build-out events, and technical assistance if they run into roadblocks along the way. The site is loaded with self-help documentation, and it includes a support portal so visitors can file requests if all else fails.

With access to the portal from inside the 6Connex platform, customers are never more than a few clicks away from help—an intentional move on the part of the customer success team, which often helps troubleshoot issues for customers while they’re hosting an event. Needless to say, speed is a priority. Luckily, users who submit a request for help are likely to get an answer within a matter of minutes, not hours or days. And 6Connex maintains an impressive 98% customer satisfaction rate, while hitting SLAs 99% of the time.

All told, since the site launched in 2021, 6Connex agents manning the CSP support portal have resolved more than 6,500 requests.

Delivering a single source of truth

The CSP began life as a native JSM portal, when a consultant working on the implementation introduced the team to Refined. “The contractor pointed out that there’s really only one tool that does customization well, which is Refined,” says 6Connex Customer Experience Manager Michael Chance.

Once all the tech capabilities were lined up—Jira Service Management for ticketing, Confluence for documentation, and Refined for the customer-facing site with 6Connex branding—the team brainstormed what they wanted the new site to solve.

The objective of the project was to improve the user experience and access to documentation. The team was focused on outcomes like quicker/easier onboarding, fewer support requests and higher levels of self-help activity. And, they wanted to improve the look of the CSP so that it reflected the 6Connex brand.

More than anything, they wanted a single source of truth that embodied their customer-centric ethos. One that could help anyone from any industry make full use of the 6Connex platform.

“[The site] is heavily focused on making sure our entire client base of all those different industries and use cases use the same methodology for building a successful experience,” says Chance. “We also have a pretty vast partner program, so re-sellers, partners all come in here to drink from the same well. We found that this is a really wonderful cornerstone for everyone to come to and utilize as a single point of truth.”

Outcomes beyond UI improvements

Immersive 6Connex branding

The native JSM interface provided the needed functionality, but “didn’t reflect us as a company,” says Chance. “We really wanted to make sure that the look and feel of our website branding transposed into Refined. And that was the key differentiator between this tool and any other tools available for Jira in the marketplace. Nobody else would allow us to upload our branding to the portal.”

Support requests down; self-help activity up

The goal was to make sure support requests were only filed for real technical issues versus help figuring out how to use the platform or build events. “We want tickets raised for the right reasons,” says Michael Spaits, 6Connex Senior Global Manager of Tech Support. “Things where a customer is not sure of how to do something or a problem that they can fix, those are the kinds of touches we want to eliminate.”

The CSP improved user access to documentation, so they’re now more likely to find the content they need to help themselves without filing a ticket. At the same time, Spaits can monitor whether new content is needed for recurring requests that should fall under the self-help umbrella.

Structural consistency

The 6Connex CSP team was very clear on what they wanted for site structure and applied it site-wide. “That structure of header, search, materials and learning, and then recommendations or next steps, that was our format for every page,” says Chance. With this consistent set-up, he explains, users are always able to search for knowledge base content and also get additional recommendations and follow-up information on every page.

Quick builds as the site grows

Thanks to the Refined site builder, it’s been easy for 6Connex to save time when creating new pages within the CSP. “I can upload and create, within a matter of less than a minute, a new page based off of a previous template. It’s very easy to go in and make adjustments. And, I’m building whole pages that are very complex within a matter of 10 minutes,” Chance explains.

New promotional capabilities

6Connex makes active use of the Refined Audience Features to help with promotional needs. They typically run between one to three different Announcement Banners at the top of the CSP. “Being able to promote our upcoming webinars, industry events, or product releases all within the CSP where the majority of our clients are has definitely increased our attendance and audiences for those features,” Chance says.

In the end, customers are the winners

By using Refined in concert with JSM and Confluence, 6Connex has created a customer-facing portal that confidently represents both their brand and their commitment to customer success.

Critically, Refined has helped 6Connex deliver class-leading support. Proof: Peer-to-peer business software review site G2 awarded 6Connex eight badges in 2022, including highest user adoption, high-performer, and best support for enterprise.

“The sentiment from upper management was that this was so successful that we are making this a staple of what we’re doing,” says Chance, “and we’re going to continue to grow it as our client-facing model.”