How Jason at Lamar Advertising led the move from Zendesk to Hiver across 100+ team members and 285,000 tickets

Lamar Advertising is one of the largest outdoor advertising companies in the United States, with more than 300 locations across the country. Behind its billboard and digital advertising business are thousands of employees who rely on internal support teams for everything from IT issues and account access to billing, Salesforce, financial applications, and more.

For years, Lamar Advertising used Zendesk to manage support across these departments. But the platform had become increasingly difficult to use and manage.

When Lamar Advertising decided it was time for a change, Jason Blevins, Director of IT Support, led the search for a replacement. The company ultimately chose Hiver, bringing its support teams together on one platform.

The challenge: Why Lamar Advertising moved away from Zendesk

After years on Zendesk, several frustrations had built up:

• Working across teams was difficult. In Lamar’s setup, a ticket could be assigned to only one team at a time. Bringing in another department often meant forwarding emails or starting separate conversations, making requests harder to follow.
• Automations took too much work. Even basic workflows required significant technical effort. Over time, complex rules and nearly 14,000 tags had made the account increasingly difficult to manage.
• People avoided the interface. Many employees found Zendesk cumbersome and worked from notification emails instead.
• Getting support was a challenge. Lamar’s support tier didn’t include direct live chat. Requests went through email during business hours, and replies could take a day or two. Non-admin employees often had to ask Jason’s team to submit tickets through the admin portal.
• The cost was hard to justify. Lamar felt it was paying for capabilities it didn’t need, while additional support came at a much higher price.

Lamar needed a platform that could handle support across multiple departments, make collaboration easier, and provide responsive support when teams needed help.

Migrating from Zendesk to Hiver

Three of Lamar’s Sales Operations teams had already been using Hiver for years, giving the company confidence to expand it across departments.

Lamar moved approximately 100 support reps and 285,000 historical Zendesk tickets to Hiver, preserving past conversations for reference. Hiver worked closely with the company to set up what each team needed:

• A custom PagerDuty integration to create, link, and track incidents directly from Hiver.
• A custom Jira integration for the Finance Applications team’s workflows.
• Shared inboxes, automations, ticket views, and permissions configured for each team.

Hiver also helped with training and configuration. Looking back on the move from Zendesk to Hiver, Jason had this to say:

How Lamar’s teams use Hiver today

Lamar’s IT Help Desk handles 2,000+ requests a month, from account lockouts to hardware and software issues. Finance manages billing and payment questions, while Sales Operations helps employees with Salesforce and other business applications. Across these teams, Lamar manages internal support through 25+ shared inboxes in Hiver.

Those requests don’t always stay within one department. In Lamar’s Zendesk setup, a ticket could belong to only one team at a time. Now, different teams can work on the same conversation, each with its own assignee and status. They use internal notes and @mentions to share information and coordinate, without creating duplicate conversations.

For Jason, that has made a noticeable difference:

When a request needs help from networking or security, support reps can start a separate conversation linked to the original request. This gives them a place to troubleshoot internally, keeping those discussions out of the employee-facing thread without losing the context.

Organizing requests has become simpler, too. Lamar cut nearly 14,000 Zendesk tags down to a few hundred categories and now uses AI to classify incoming requests automatically. Automations move requests between departments, while shared views and templates help teams manage tickets and recurring tasks

For work that involves engineering, teams can create Jira issues and manage PagerDuty incidents directly from the Hiver conversation, keeping that work connected to the request that started it.

Improving support quality and coaching with AI QA

Lamar has also started using Hiver’s AI QA to review conversations for tone, grammar, clarity, competence, and personalization. For Jason, it’s a way to see where individual reps need coaching without relying entirely on manual ticket reviews.

Alongside AI QA, Lamar uses sentiment analysis, CSAT surveys, and reporting to understand how employees feel about support. Together, these give managers a clearer view of the experience employees receive and where the team can improve.

The results: Better collaboration, less complexity, faster support

Here’s what the move from Zendesk to Hiver has meant for Lamar’s support team:

• A full migration from Zendesk: Around 100 support reps now work across 25+ shared inboxes in Hiver, with 285,000 historical tickets preserved for reference.
• Easier collaboration: Teams can work on the same request without losing context as it moves between departments.
• Simpler administration: Visual automations, shared views, and AI tagging make workflows and incoming requests easier to manage.
• Clearer coaching priorities: AI QA, sentiment analysis, and CSAT reporting help managers understand support quality and identify where reps need guidance.
• Faster access to help: Lamar can reach Hiver support 24/7. Jason says his chats are typically picked up within seconds, with follow-up when an issue needs further investigation.