CHALLENGES
Merge needed a unified support platform that could handle multi-region operations while moving away from their fragmented existing setup.
As Merge successfully scaled to serve increasingly sophisticated enterprise customers—including frontier LLMs like OpenAI and Fortune 500 organizations—their support operations needed to evolve to match their rapid growth. Successfully winning massive enterprise accounts across multiple global regions brought exciting new opportunities, but also created exponentially higher expectations for service quality and responsiveness. The team was managing support through their existing platform, but recognized they needed advanced capabilities to deliver the enterprise-grade, white-glove service that would exceed their largest customers' expectations across different time zones and complex use cases.
The primary challenge was the lack of native Slack integration in their current system, which forced Merge to operate across disconnected platforms. With their team working primarily in Slack for internal collaboration, this disconnect created operational inefficiencies and made it difficult to provide seamless customer support. Additionally, their existing platform's restrictive pricing prevented engineers and other team members from accessing customer conversations when needed.
Merge also required advanced capabilities that their existing setup couldn't provide: a comprehensive knowledge base system, intelligent routing for multi-region support, and the ability to consolidate customer data from Salesforce and other tools into a unified view.
The team needed an enterprise-grade platform that could unify their support operations while providing the scalability and regional flexibility required for their growing global customer base.
"The primary thing was the Slack integration. No one in the market had solved that without a bug-free experience, and when we tried Pylon, customers really liked it."
Pritak Patel, Head of Services and Partnerships
SOLUTIONS
Merge chose Pylon for its superior Slack integration, comprehensive platform capabilities, and partnership approach over alternatives like Plain and Thena.
Merge conducted a thorough evaluation of support platforms, including Plain, Thena, and others, before selecting Pylon. The decision came down to Pylon's focused approach to B2B support and the team's product velocity.
"What really stood out was Pylon's focus on B2B from the beginning. The white glove service and hands-on approach made all the difference as we were evaluating platforms."
Shensi Ding, Co-founder
Pylon's key differentiators became apparent during the evaluation process. While competitors like Plain had slower development cycles and required significant technical resources for initial setup, Pylon offered immediate value with intuitive configuration. Plain's Slack integration launched several months after Merge's evaluation timeline, while Thena focused primarily on Slack connectivity without the broader platform capabilities Merge required. Pylon delivered the comprehensive platform approach with native integrations, knowledge base functionality, and AI capabilities that aligned with Merge's operational requirements.
The implementation strategy was designed for minimal disruption through a hybrid transition period. New tickets flowed through Pylon while legacy tickets from their previous system were gradually closed out, allowing for a seamless transition period before full migration in 2024.
Pylon's native integrations immediately addressed Merge's operational needs. The platform connected seamlessly with Salesforce, providing consolidated customer data that eliminated the need for additional CRM seats while reducing context switching across platforms. The knowledge base system enabled collaborative content creation across support, solutions, and customer success teams.
Most importantly, Pylon's multi-region support capabilities enabled sophisticated routing based on time zones, automatically directing tickets to the appropriate regional team members while maintaining round-robin distribution within each region.
"You guys have been through the journey with us as we've looked for additional feature sets. The AI tools, the triggers, knowledge base, all the integrations - you kept building stuff that we were looking for in the market."
Pritak Patel, Head of Services and Partnerships
RESULTS
Merge achieved seamless global support operations with significant efficiency gains and enhanced cross-functional collaboration.
Merge's migration to Pylon delivered immediate operational improvements across their multi-region support structure. The platform now supports their team of six dedicated support agents across three regions (East coast, West coast, Europe), while enabling their entire post-sales organization to access customer information efficiently.
Global Operations Success:
- 3 regional support hubs with automated time zone-based routing (East coast, West coast, Europe)
- 80%+ of tickets handled through Slack integration
- ~30% reduction in context switching between platforms
- Zero manual routing required for multi-region ticket assignment
Pylon’s AI capabilities transformed routine operations from manual processes to automated workflows. Ticket categorization and prioritization now happen automatically with high accuracy rates, while AI-powered handoff notes eliminate the time-consuming process of manual ticket transfers between regions.
Specific improvements include:
- ~30% time savings in ticket categorization and routing
- 20%+ time savings in knowledge base article creation
- AI-generated handoff notes eliminating manual transfer documentation
- Automated SLA assignment based on AI-powered priority classification
- One-day setup for ticket prioritization system vs. weeks of manual work on previous platform
"The AI feature really does save a lot of time. I can have Pylon draft a response for me first, improve responses I draft, or literally type a few keywords and have Pylon expand the response based on ticket context. The AI features are everywhere, saving time everywhere, but combined together it's significant."
Chaner Peng, Manager, Technical Support Engineering
Pylon also improved how Merge's entire post-sales organization collaborates around customer issues. Solutions architects, sales engineers, and customer success managers now access comprehensive customer context directly through Pylon, eliminating the need for additional Salesforce seats and reducing information silos.
The platform enables seamless information sharing through Pylon links embedded in project management tools, while internal Slack comments automatically sync with ticket context. This unified approach has streamlined handoffs to sales teams and improved customer upgrade conversations.
"The configuration and setup is incredibly intuitive on Pylon. When we have new post-sales folks joining, the setup is so easy - we just invite them, add them to the team, and they're good to go because the routing is all set up. The scaling setup cost is minimal to none."
Chaner Peng, Manager, Technical Support Engineering
Merge's successful implementation demonstrates how the right platform can transform global support operations from fragmented regional silos to unified, AI-powered workflows. With their foundation built on Pylon's enterprise capabilities, Merge continues to scale efficiently across regions while maintaining the operational excellence that enterprise customers expect.