How Kojo Increased Ticket Deflection from 0% to 50% Using Pluno’s AI Support Agent
How Kojo's 5-person team went from drowning in 1,000+ monthly tickets to 50% deflection with Pluno AI on Zendesk.
Sarala Conlan
Sr. Customer Support Manager at Kojo
Core Challenges
- 5-person team overwhelmed by 1,000+ monthly tickets with no redundancy
- Engineering escalations piling up due to slow, manual Jira ticket creation
- No deflection — every ticket hit the queue, including repeat questions
- International agents struggling to write rich English responses at speed
- Sudden loss of an agent pushed an already stretched team to the edge
Solutions
- Deflection Agent catches repeat tickets before they reach agents
- Escalation Copilot auto-fills Jira tickets and syncs updates back to Zendesk
- AI Copilot suggests context-rich responses, helping agents stay on top of queues
- Language support accelerates new hires, cutting weeks off the onboarding curve
- AI capacity absorbed the missing agent’s workload immediately, no hiring delay
Key Results at a Glance
Before
0% Deflection
After
50%
Ticket Deflection Rate
Before
Days-Long Backlog
After
Same Day
Jira Escalation Time
Before
Weeks to Ramp
After
40% Faster
New Hire Onboarding
Before
Language Gaps
After
Solved
No More Language Barriers
High Volume, High Complexity, Zero Buffer
Kojo is a 6-year-old construction procurement platform serving contractors and commercial builders across materials management and supply chain operations. With around 200 employees, the company has grown from a startup to a significant player in construction tech, helping teams streamline procurement workflows in an industry known for complexity and tight deadlines. At the heart of their customer experience is a 5-person support team led by Sarala Conlan, managing well over 1,000 tickets per month for a complex, multi-feature product. Before Pluno, they were stretched to the breaking point. Kojo’s support team faces a unique combination of pressures. Their product spans multiple features and product areas, which means the team encounters a wide range of questions — some repetitive, many never seen before. They even use an internal AI tool connected to their GitHub codebase just to help agents navigate product knowledge. But product complexity was something they could manage. What they couldn’t manage were these compounding bottlenecks:
Overwhelmed team
5-person team overwhelmed by 1,000+ monthly tickets with no redundancy
Slow escalations
Engineering escalations piling up due to slow, manual Jira ticket creation
No deflection
No deflection — every ticket hit the queue, including repeat questions
Language barriers
International agents struggling to write rich English responses at speed
Lost capacity
Sudden loss of an agent pushed an already stretched team to the edge
“We unexpectedly had someone leave our team, we were down an agent and really needed extra hands.”
— Sarala Conlan, Sr. Customer Support Manager
An AI Layer That Sits on Top of Zendesk and Actually Works
Kojo needed help on multiple fronts: deflecting simple tickets, streamlining escalations to engineering, and supporting agents through complex troubleshooting and language barriers. They found that in Pluno — not as a replacement for their existing stack, but as an intelligent layer that integrates directly with it. Here’s how each piece of the solution works from the support team’s perspective:
“The way Pluno streamlines back-and-forth communication, I haven’t seen it in any other AI tools we’ve explored.”
— Sarala Conlan
What Pluno delivered
Deflection Agent catches repeat tickets before they reach agents
Since implementing Pluno’s Deflection AI in October 2024, hundreds of tickets each month never reach an agent’s queue.
Escalation Copilot auto-fills Jira tickets and syncs updates back to Zendesk
Instead of agents manually filling out multiple fields, Pluno does it automatically with two-way Zendesk–Jira integration.
AI Copilot suggests context-rich responses, helping agents stay on top of queues
New agents see suggested responses that are rich in context and properly formatted in English.
Language support accelerates new hires, cutting weeks off the onboarding curve
The AI Copilot serves as both a training tool and a writing assistant within Zendesk.
AI capacity absorbed the missing agent’s workload immediately, no hiring delay
For a team with no redundancy, AI deflection wasn’t a nice-to-have optimization; it was emergency capacity.
“For a team with no redundancy, AI deflection wasn’t optimization — it was emergency capacity.”
— Sarala Conlan
A Team That Can’t Imagine Going Back
The impact has been immediate and measurable.
0% Deflection
50%
Ticket Deflection Rate
Days-Long Backlog
Same Day
Jira Escalation Time
Weeks to Ramp
40% Faster
New Hire Onboarding
Language Gaps
Solved
No More Language Barriers
0% Deflection → 50% Ticket Deflection Rate
Before Pluno, there was zero deflection — every ticket hit the queue, including repeat questions. Sarala now reviews Pluno analytics weekly and sees the deflection agent consistently handling 30–50% of tickets, with peaks above 50%. For a 5-person team handling over 1,000 tickets monthly, that translates to hundreds of tickets that never reach an agent. The impact goes beyond operations: reduced workload helps prevent agent burnout on a busy, lean team.
Days-Long Backlog → Same Day Jira Escalation Time
Escalations that used to sit in backlogs for days — waiting for an agent to find time to manually fill out all the fields — are now created the same day. The engineering team notices the difference too: the Jira tickets Pluno creates are detailed, complete, and ready for developers to act on immediately.
Weeks to Ramp → 40% Faster New Hire Onboarding
The AI Copilot has compressed the learning curve, particularly for agents where English isn’t their first language. New team members can maintain response time standards within their first few weeks, supported by context-rich suggested responses — something that previously took much longer to develop.
Language Gaps → Solved No More Language Barriers
With all customers based in the U.S. but an international support team, language was a persistent hurdle. The AI Copilot’s suggested responses in fluent, context-rich English removed this barrier entirely, letting agents focus on solving problems rather than struggling with phrasing.
Still Stretched, But Not Drowning
Sarala is candid: the team is still busy. High ticket volume means the time savings don’t translate to agents having extra free time. But without Pluno, the team simply wouldn’t be managing. As Sarala puts it: they would “probably be absolutely drowning” without the extra help.
“Without Pluno, we’d probably be absolutely drowning.”
— Sarala Conlan
“Test It, You’ll See the Difference”
When asked what she’d tell another support leader considering AI, Sarala’s advice is practical. There are options everywhere — some let you write your own LLMs, some offer basic chatbot functionality. But what sets Pluno apart, in her view, is the depth of integration with existing tools like Zendesk and Jira: automatic ticket updates, precise follow-ups, and smoother collaboration between support and engineering. Her recommendation: take advantage of demos and trial periods. For Kojo, the proof was in the product. Once the team saw what Pluno could do, the decision was easy.
“My team is, like, a huge fan. They feel like they could not live without Pluno now.”
— Sarala Conlan
Stop settling for AI that needs constant babysitting
See how Pluno resolves 70% of tickets, including complex cases, while supercharging agent productivity.