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+For over 20 years, GUT contact has been offering premium customer support,
+outbound sales and other German-language services. The company achieves top
+performance by putting employees in a productive and motivating environment.
+Company leadership makes mindful choices about the tools employees use to get
+their work done, and has successfully scaled the team to over 1000 agents.
+
+Agents at GUT contact use Zulip every day to communicate with their team leads.
+“Most of our agents are in their 60s or 70s, so the software must be as simple
+as possible. That’s why we love Zulip,” says [Erik
+Dittert](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/), who’s been
+leading GUT contact’s IT team for the past 20 years.
+
+> The software must be as simple as possible. That’s why we love Zulip.
+>
+> — Erik Dittert, [Head of
+> IT](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/) at [GUT
+> contact](https://gutcontact.de/)
+
+
+## “Our agents don’t need email accounts”
+
+GUT contact relies on team chat for written communication within the company.
+“Our agents don’t need email accounts,” says Erik Dittert, GUT Contact’s Head of
+IT. “If someone has an email, they’ll get spam.” Instead, under Erik’s
+leadership, GUT contact has been self-hosting open-source team chat applications
+for years, upgrading as technology has evolved.
+
+The company started with IRC, used an XMPP chat client for a while, and in 2019
+moved to Rocket.Chat. “Rocket.Chat was a little bit better than our XMPP
+server,” Erik says. However, when Erik learned about Zulip, he was excited to
+check it out. “I installed Zulip, and the IT team played with the app. We loved
+it. The UI was just cleaner, easier,” Erik says.
+
+Zulip’s topic-based threading model was transformative. With other chat apps,
+“the first person has a question about something, the next person has a question
+about something else. You answer the first person, and the second person is
+confused,” Erik explains. This doesn’t happen with Zulip’s topics.
+
+> Topic-based communication is a big big big feature we love in Zulip.
+>
+> — Erik Dittert, [Head of
+> IT](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/) at [GUT
+> contact](https://gutcontact.de/)
+
+
+## Smooth transition to Zulip
+
+Erik showed Zulip to his boss and others at the company, and in October 2022,
+GUT contact made the switch.
+
+“Zulip was quite easy to set up, and worked instantly. 1000 people — no
+problem,” Erik recalls. “I hooked up the Zulip server to LDAP, and our agents
+loved not having to remember a separate username and password.” Erik considered
+importing data from Rocket.Chat into Zulip, but in the end it was decided that
+the messy conversation history was not worth preserving.
+
+Erik put training videos on the company’s intranet to explain the switching
+process, and to give an overview of key new features. Employees were encouraged
+to play around with Zulip, create channels, and chat with each other. After a
+month of running Zulip in parallel with Rocket.Chat, the old system was turned
+off.
+
+> Zulip was quite easy to set up, and worked instantly. 1000 people — no
+> problem.
+>
+> — Erik Dittert, [Head of
+> IT](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/) at [GUT
+> contact](https://gutcontact.de/)
+
+
+## Easy for anyone to use
+
+GUT contact offers employees the flexibility to work from one of 10 offices
+across 3 countries, or from their home office. This makes Zulip a critical
+communication tool across all job functions. There is a channel for each
+department (IT, human resources, etc.), as well as a dedicated channel for each
+customer, where team leaders post daily updates.
+
+For agents, many of whom are not fully comfortable with modern software, Zulip
+being easy to use is invaluable. "We checked out Microsoft Teams and Mattermost,
+and most of our users didn’t like these programs, because they didn’t know how
+to work with them,” Erik says. “In Zulip, agents love the “All messages” view,”
+which combines direct messages and channel messages into a single feed. “Unlike
+other chat apps, you don’t have to click on each channel separately to see
+unreads,” Erik explains.
+
+## Functionality for the most technical users
+
+Members of the IT team use Zulip to collaborate from around the world. “We share
+code all the time, and the formatting and syntax highlighting is great,” Erik
+says. When they need to jump on a call, “The Jitsi integration is perfect. We
+don’t have to deal with emailing a calendar invite.”
+
+Outside of office hours, Erik uses the mobile app to check on his message inbox.
+It’s easy to skim the list of topics to check if anything requires timely
+attention. “I love the clean mobile app and the push notifications,” Erik says.
+“The app is extremely fast — you click, and messages show up instantly.”
+
+Erik meets up regularly with other technologists to “have a beer and talk about
+cool software.” In this 50-person group, “Zulip is quite a big theme right now,”
+Erik says.
+
+> I love Zulip. I use it every day, every night.
+>
+> — Erik Dittert, [Head of
+> IT](https://gutcontact.de/unternehmen/team/erik-dittert/) at [GUT
+> contact](https://gutcontact.de/)
+
+---
+
+Check out our guide on [using Zulip for business](/for/business/). You can also
+learn how Zulip is being used at the [iDrift AS](/case-studies/idrift/) company,
+the [End Point Dev](/case-studies/end-point/) software consultancy, and the
+startups [Semsee](/case-studies/semsee/) and [Atolio](/case-studies/atolio/).