One hundred direct stores in Italy, seventeen in Spain, and a single inbox to handle every support request by hand. On top of that, external vendors managed all IT tasks.
This was the starting point for Dan John. Partnering with power2Cloud, the menswear brand built a tailored Zendesk ticketing system shared across stores, Technical Services, and IT.
By bringing IT in-house, Dan John clearly defined responsibilities between departments and united them on one platform. Guided request forms, priority codes alerting technicians on weekends, and a searchable knowledge base transformed their workflow.
Today, opening a ticket only takes 30 seconds, and teams address emergencies within three minutes.
Dan John is an Italian menswear brand with over 250 stores worldwide. They operate a vertical business model, handling everything from garment design to direct retail sales.
When Support Requests Arrived via Email and Manual Sorting
Store teams used to email head office whenever an issue popped up.
If a till froze on a busy Saturday afternoon, queues quickly built up. Staff had to leave the counter, write an email describing the problem, and return to waiting customers without knowing when help would arrive.
“Keeping up with all requests and tracking them via email was our biggest challenge,” recalls Veronica Pescosolido from Dan John’s Technical Office. “We received a huge volume of requests covering every possible issue, including IT.”
Sorting maintenance from IT faults, forwarding emails to external vendors, tracking wait times, and sharing manuals was entirely manual. This constant admin wasted valuable time that staff could have spent on actual repairs.
To make matters harder, Dan John did not have an internal IT department at the time.
“When I joined, the company asked me to build the IT department from scratch because external providers handled everything,” explains Vincenzo Oreste, IT Manager at Dan John. “Tracking tickets was difficult, and external management meant vendors often made decisions independently. We needed central control.”
Three Daily Bottlenecks Facing Stores
This setup created three major drawbacks:
- Lack of structure: The email channel lacked clear rules and automation.
- Zero visibility: With IT fully outsourced, nobody could tell how many tickets were open or how much repairs actually cost.
- Delayed weekend response: Handling support on weekends and holidays, during peak sales periods, was nearly impossible.
“For a retail business like ours, fast intervention is strategic”, Oreste notes.
An In-House IT Team and One Retail Ticketing Platform
Defining boundaries between IT and Technical Office was the crucial first step.
“At one point, we stepped back and realised we needed a unified system to group all requests while working together,” says Veronica Pescosolido.
Technical Services took charge of store maintenance, fittings, equipment, and new store openings. Meanwhile, IT handled data transmission, till setup, and technical launches for new branches.
Together with power2Cloud, Dan John adopted Zendesk. They mapped out the essential details needed to resolve each type of issue, creating an efficient support architecture built around real operational needs.
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Thirty Seconds to Submit a Ticket with Zendesk
A complex portal would have been ignored.
“Store teams don’t have time to sit at a computer. Their job is to sell, so our job is to make their life easier,” Veronica adds. “We wanted an intuitive solution where anyone could submit a request in 30 seconds”.
This led to custom, guided request forms for each department.
Staff simply select the issue type, fill in only the required fields, and track their request status in real time.
For maintenance requests, staff must complete two mandatory steps:
- Upload photos: “Receiving photos is essential, so we made them compulsory”, explains Veronica Pescosolido.
- Attach work reports: “No ticket can be closed or resolved without attaching a service report”.
“Photos eliminate back-and-forth questions and help teams assign priority accurately without exploratory site visits. Work reports convert every repair into archived data, making it easy to track recurring issues months later” Veronica Pescosolido explains.
Dynamic urgency fields route ticket notifications based on need. “We don’t always check emails on weekends,” Veronica notes. “Now, if an urgent issue arises, setting high priority routes the alert directly to the contractor, ensuring weekend interventions.”
Priority Codes and Emergency Response
“Zendesk helped centralise all requests, especially those coming in after 6 PM,” confirms Ivan Spaccatrosi from the IT team.
While the head office operates from 9 AM to 6 PM, some stores stay open until 10 PM.
“Before rolling this out to stores, we set clear rules,” explains Vincenzo Oreste. “We created priority codes that alert us based on severity.”
The biggest priority? “If a store cannot process sales, that's an emergency. We respond within three minutes.”
A Knowledge Base to Prevent Unnecessary Tickets
Dan John also published a self-service knowledge base on Zendesk featuring operating procedures and dedicated user guides.
“We still email these materials for every new store opening,” Veronica explains. “Uploading them to Zendesk makes information instantly accessible. It empowers staff to handle minor issues themselves, freeing us up for complex tasks”.
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From Skepticism to a Tailor-Made Solution
The project launched in Italy first. Once workflows proved solid, it rolled out to Spanish stores.
“A poorly designed platform damages efficiency”, highlights Ivan Spaccatrosi, noting how data accuracy won over store teams.
“Zendesk was new to us,” adds Veronica Pescosolido. “Working with power2Cloud, we customised every feature to fit our needs. Once the solution fitted perfectly, we launched it across all other stores, including Spain.”
Training was seamless because the new portal proved far more intuitive than the old setup.
The Results for Stores, Technical Services, and IT
For store employees, the difference is immediate.
Thirty seconds is all it takes to log a full request. Staff now log minor issues they previously ignored due to lack of time.
Every store can view its own ticket history, eliminating the need to chase head office.
Technical Services receives tickets with photos and required details attached, drastically cutting initial clarification steps. Weekend emergencies go straight to vendors without waiting for head office to open emails.
For IT, response times for critical red-alert issues dropped to three minutes, backed by automated alerts instead of frantic phone searches. Evening requests no longer sit in personal inboxes, flowing smoothly through clear, shared rules.
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Looking Ahead: The Next Phase
Dan John currently tracks incoming and resolved tickets.
The next step involves granular tagging to group requests into macro-categories. This shift will help move resources from reactive repairs to proactive prevention, as recurring faults become visible only when measured.
Expansion to other departments is also underway. “I hope logistics and sales adopt the portal soon because it truly centralises information”, Veronica concludes.
Built to support over 100 stores, two departments, and a vendor network, this scalable architecture can easily welcome new functions without a rebuild.
Four Key Ticketing Takeaways for Retailers
Before configuring the platform, Dan John made four strategic decisions that any retail chain can learn from:
- Define operational boundaries before choosing tools: Setting clear responsibilities between IT and Technical Services prevented past confusion. A ticketing system highlights requests, but it cannot assign ownership;
- Respect store staff time: Keeping ticket creation under 30 seconds overcame user resistance and eliminated informal phone calls. Anything longer leads staff to bypass system workflows;
- Set rules before emergencies happen: Priority codes succeed because critical scenarios, like till outages during peak hours, were mapped out in advance;
- Start with a solid pilot project: Testing in Italy allowed Dan John to refine every detail, ensuring a smooth, frictionless rollout in Spain.
