SpendCare scales support for seniors with Desk365

About SpendCare

SpendCare was created to serve and empower senior care providers. Supporting seniors and their caregivers with flexible, safe spending tools is at the core of SpendCare’s vision to make aging at home more affordable and accessible to those in need. The company sits at the intersection of finance, insurance, and senior care.

Finance and insurance for senior living

Industry

6

Agents

Customer support

Use case

The Challenge

For SpendCare, customer support is closely tied to something people care deeply about: their money. The company partners with health insurance providers to offer benefit cards for seniors. These cards help members pay for everyday essentials such as groceries, transportation, and utility bills. Every month, funds are loaded onto the cards, and members rely on them for their day-to-day needs.

A lot of the customer support questions they receive are around card balances, declined transactions, account activity, etc., all of which require quick and accurate responses.

"People are very attuned to whether or not they got their money on time and if the card's working. There's a very low tolerance for responsiveness when issues come up."

Perry Halman-Peguillan, CEO, SpendCare.

In the early days, SpendCare managed through a shared inbox. That worked when the company served only a handful of organizations. As the company grew and doubled in cardholders, that approach became difficult to maintain.

The company needed a way to centralize support requests, assign ownership, create visibility across the team, and build a repeatable process for handling customer issues. At the same time, they wanted to provide self-service resources that could help answer common questions before they reached the support team.

The challenge was finding a helpdesk that was powerful enough to support growth without requiring weeks of setup and training.

Chosen over: Zendesk and Zoho

SpendCare evaluated several alternatives, including Zendesk and Zoho. While these platforms offered extensive functionality, they also introduced complexity that did not fit the needs of a fast-growing startup.

"We needed something where everyone could see the tickets coming in, assign them to different people, and get value from it quickly. Some of the other platforms were just too complicated."

Perry Halman-Peguillan, CEO, SpendCare.

The Solution

SpendCare implemented Desk365 as its central customer support platform. Today, support requests enter Desk365 through multiple channels.

Customer organizations can email the support team directly, automatically generating tickets inside the platform. SpendCare also works with an external call center, and every call handled by that team is converted into a ticket for visibility and follow-up.

One of the most unique aspects of SpendCare’s support operation is its use of text messaging. Because many cardholders are seniors, SpendCare encourages members to communicate through text rather than logging into a customer portal. Members receive balance updates, transaction notifications, and other account information through text messages.

When a customer replies, those interactions become tickets inside Desk365, allowing the team to manage them alongside all other support requests.

The company also supports customers across multiple languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese. Having all communication centralized inside a single platform gives the team a much clearer view of customer interactions regardless of channel or language.

Alongside ticket management, SpendCare built a growing knowledge base inside Desk365. This serves both external users and internal support staff, helping the team provide faster and more consistent responses while reducing repetitive work.

The Desk365 difference

1. Simple enough to implement in a day

One of the biggest reasons SpendCare chose Desk365 was the speed at which they could get started.

The team wanted a platform that could be configured quickly and improved over time without requiring dedicated administrators or lengthy implementation projects.

"I needed something so easy that we could set it up in a day, refine it as we go, and not have to learn some huge complicated system."

Perry Halman-Peguillan.

For a growing startup, simplicity was not a nice-to-have. It was a requirement.

2. The right balance between simplicity and sophistication

Many helpdesk platforms force companies to choose between basic functionality and enterprise complexity.

SpendCare found a different experience with Desk365.

The team was able to start with core ticket management and a knowledge base while gradually introducing automations, routing rules, Microsoft Teams integrations, and ticket categorization as their needs evolved.

According to Perry Halman-Peguillan, CEO of SpendCare, Desk365 struck the perfect balance between ease of use and advanced capabilities.

"It's the perfect sweet spot of simple and sophisticated."

Perry Halman-Peguillan, CEO, SpendCare.

3. Built to grow alongside the business

Since implementing Desk365, SpendCare has approximately doubled its cardholder base.

As the business grew, support volume grew alongside it.

Rather than rebuilding processes or migrating platforms, the team expanded their use of Desk365 to accommodate new workflows, support channels, and team members.

The flexibility to start simple while adding more sophistication over time was a major factor in SpendCare’s decision.

"Knowing we could keep making it more sophisticated without losing that simplicity was a huge factor in my decision making."

Perry Halman-Peguillan, CEO, SpendCare.

4. A knowledge base that benefits customers and agents

The knowledge base quickly became one of the most valuable parts of the platform.

SpendCare uses it to create step-by-step guides, training materials, and support documentation for both customers and internal teams.

When common questions arise, support agents can direct customers to articles and video walkthroughs instead of manually answering the same requests repeatedly.

This has helped reduce repetitive support work while improving the customer experience.

The results

Six months after implementing Desk365, SpendCare has transformed the way support is managed across the organization. The team now has complete visibility into incoming requests, regardless of whether they originate from email, text messages, or the external call center. New team members can be onboarded quickly because conversations, notes, knowledge articles, and processes are centralized in one place.

Most importantly, the support team can focus on helping customers rather than managing inboxes.

"It's become so much easier for everyone to see what's going on. It's become much easier to get new people ramped up, and even just being able to direct customers to the help center has helped us focus on the important stuff."

Perry Halman-Peguillan, CEO, SpendCare.

Today, SpendCare continues to grow its support operation while maintaining the same philosophy that drove its initial platform selection: keep things simple, move quickly, and build processes that scale alongside the business.