Case Study: Spartan Race achieves dramatically faster response times and increased sales with Zendesk Messaging

Spartan Race + Zendesk Better, faster support that pays off

Spartan Race began as a single endurance event in Vermont and grew into a global lifestyle brand with races in 30+ countries, its own gym, TV specials and a retail line. That rapid expansion overwhelmed a basic shared‑inbox ticketing system: by 2016 the customer service team had grown from one person to 15 handling hundreds of thousands of contacts annually and lacked the reporting and scalability needed to manage registration, logistics and retail inquiries effectively.

Spartan Race implemented Zendesk Support, Chat and Guide with a Shopify integration to centralize data, set SLAs and improve workflows. The results: faster response times (social tickets dropping from a 4‑hour SLA to about 20 minutes), chat helped stop email volume growth, U.S. teams handled ~230,000 tickets in 2016 with a 93% customer satisfaction rating, Shopify integration boosted agent efficiency 15%, and live chat increased retail sales 27% with 97% chat satisfaction.

Spartan Race

Aja Varney

Director of Customer Service