Why Working With a Zendesk Consulting Team Beats Hiring a Single FTE

When companies invest in Zendesk, they often assume the next step is hiring a single full-time employee to manage it. While that can work in some cases, it often leaves teams stuck with limited expertise, reactive fixes, and a support system that never quite reaches its potential.

Working with a specialized Zendesk consulting team like SupportPie offers a different , and often more effective , approach. Here are three key benefits of choosing a team over a single FTE.

1. Built on Industry Best Practices (Not Trial and Error)

A single Zendesk admin usually learns on the job. Their setup is shaped by what they’ve seen before, what they can Google, and how much time they have to experiment.

A consulting team brings proven, industry-tested best practices from day one.

At SupportPie, we’ve seen hundreds of Zendesk instances across different industries and team sizes. That means your support operations are designed intentionally , not pieced together over time. We help you:

Design scalable ticket workflows
Implement smart automations and triggers
Build reporting that actually reflects business goals
Align Zendesk with ITIL, CX, and operational best practices

Instead of asking, “Is this good enough?” you start with a system that’s already aligned with how high-performing support teams operate.

2. More Than One SME = Better Solutions for Your Unique Problems

No two Zendesk instances are exactly alike. Custom workflows, legacy decisions, business constraints, and integrations all add complexity.

With a single FTE, you’re limited to one perspective and one skill set.

With a team like SupportPie, you get access to multiple Zendesk subject matter experts who collaborate to find the best solution , not just the most obvious one. That means:

Faster problem solving
Better architectural decisions
Fewer “band-aid” fixes
Creative solutions tailored to your business

When one consultant hits a wall, another brings a different lens. The result is a smarter, more resilient Zendesk environment.

3. Developer Access for What Zendesk Can’t Do Natively

Zendesk is powerful, but it isn’t limitless. Many teams eventually hit a point where native settings alone can’t solve the problem.

This is where most internal admins get stuck.

SupportPie gives you direct access to a developer, so when Zendesk’s out-of-the-box functionality falls short, we can:

Build custom apps or integrations
Extend Zendesk with APIs and webhooks
Automate complex workflows across systems
Create solutions tailored exactly to your needs

Instead of redesigning your processes to fit Zendesk’s limits, we help Zendesk fit your processes.

The Bottom Line

Hiring a single FTE means betting everything on one person’s experience, bandwidth, and knowledge. Partnering with a Zendesk consulting team means gaining: