2024-01-30 08:53:32 +01:00
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For over 20 years, GUT contact has been offering premium customer support,
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outbound sales and other German-language services. The company achieves top
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performance by putting employees in a productive and motivating environment.
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Company leadership makes mindful choices about the tools employees use to get
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their work done, and has successfully scaled the team to over 1000 agents.
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Agents at GUT contact use Zulip every day to communicate with their team leads.
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“Most of our agents are in their 60s or 70s, so the software must be as simple
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as possible. That’s why we love Zulip,” says [Erik
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Dittert](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/), who’s been
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leading GUT contact’s IT team for the past 20 years.
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> “The software must be as simple as possible. That’s why we love Zulip.”
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>
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> — Erik Dittert, [Head of
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> IT](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/) at [GUT
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> contact](https://gutcontact.de/)
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## “Our agents don’t need email accounts”
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GUT contact relies on team chat for written communication within the company.
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“Our agents don’t need email accounts,” says Erik Dittert, GUT Contact’s Head of
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IT. “If someone has an email, they’ll get spam.” Instead, under Erik’s
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leadership, GUT contact has been self-hosting open-source team chat applications
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for years, upgrading as technology has evolved.
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The company started with IRC, used an XMPP chat client for a while, and in 2019
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moved to Rocket.Chat. “Rocket.Chat was a little bit better than our XMPP
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server,” Erik says. However, when Erik learned about Zulip, he was excited to
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check it out. “I installed Zulip, and the IT team played with the app. We loved
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it. The UI was just cleaner, easier,” Erik says.
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Zulip’s topic-based threading model was transformative. With other chat apps,
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“the first person has a question about something, the next person has a question
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about something else. You answer the first person, and the second person is
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confused,” Erik explains. This doesn’t happen with Zulip’s topics.
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> “Topic-based communication is a big big big feature we love in Zulip.”
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>
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> — Erik Dittert, [Head of
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> IT](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/) at [GUT
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> contact](https://gutcontact.de/)
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## Smooth transition to Zulip
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Erik showed Zulip to his boss and others at the company, and in October 2022,
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GUT contact made the switch.
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“Zulip was quite easy to set up, and worked instantly. 1000 people — no
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problem,” Erik recalls. “I hooked up the Zulip server to LDAP, and our agents
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loved not having to remember a separate username and password.” Erik considered
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importing data from Rocket.Chat into Zulip, but in the end it was decided that
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the messy conversation history was not worth preserving.
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Erik put training videos on the company’s intranet to explain the switching
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process, and to give an overview of key new features. Employees were encouraged
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to play around with Zulip, create streams, and chat with each other. After a
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month of running Zulip in parallel with Rocket.Chat, the old system was turned
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off.
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> “Zulip was quite easy to set up, and worked instantly. 1000 people — no
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> problem.”
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>
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> — Erik Dittert, [Head of
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> IT](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/) at [GUT
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> contact](https://gutcontact.de/)
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## Easy for anyone to use
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GUT contact offers employees the flexibility to work from one of 10 offices
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across 3 countries, or from their home office. This makes Zulip a critical
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communication tool across all job functions. There is a stream for each
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department (IT, human resources, etc.), as well as a dedicated stream for each
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customer, where team leaders post daily updates.
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For agents, may of whom are not fully comfortable with modern software, Zulip
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being easy to use is invaluable. "We checked out Microsoft Teams and Mattermost,
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and most of our users didn’t like these programs, because they didn’t know how
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to work with them,” Erik says. “In Zulip, agents love the “All messages” view,”
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which combines direct messages and stream messages into a single feed. “Unlike
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other chat apps, you don’t have to click on each channel separately to see
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unreads,” Erik explains.
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## Functionality for the most technical users
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Members of the IT team use Zulip to collaborate from around the world. “We share
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code all the time, and the formatting and syntax highlighting is great,” Erik
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says. When they need to jump on a call, “The Jitsi integration is perfect. We
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don’t have to deal with emailing a calendar invite.”
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Outside of office hours, Erik uses the mobile app to check on his message inbox.
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It’s easy to skim the list of topics to check if anything requires timely
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attention. “I love the clean mobile app and the push notifications,” Erik says.
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“The app is extremely fast — you click, and messages show up instantly.”
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Erik meets up regularly with other technologists to “have a beer and talk about
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cool software.” In this 50-person group, “Zulip is quite a big theme right now,”
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Erik says.
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> “I love Zulip. I use it every day, every night.”
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>
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> — Erik Dittert, [Head of
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> IT](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/) at [GUT
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> contact](https://gutcontact.de/)
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---
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Check out our guide on [using Zulip for business](/for/business/). You can also
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learn how Zulip is being used at the [iDrift AS](/case-studies/idrift/) company,
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the [End Point Dev](/case-studies/end-point/) software consultancy, and the
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2024-02-21 22:01:33 +01:00
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startups [Semsee](/case-studies/semsee/) and [Atolio](/case-studies/atolio/).
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