Case Study
How Cinema Hero Is Using NetZen to Build a Smarter AI Powered Service Desk
NetZen AI
Updated
Cinema Hero Solutions at a Glance
- Industry
- Cinema and hospitality IT (managed service provider)
- Company
- Cinema Hero Solutions
- Footprint
- Small and mid sized cinema and hospitality operators across several U.S. states
- Ticket volume
- About 500 tickets per month
- Communication shift
- The customer describes moving support conversations into Teams while keeping them connected to the ticket.
- Solution
- NetZen, an AI platform for IT support, endpoint monitoring, and automations used by the Tech Support team
- Key outcome
- Customer-reported improvements in triage, diagnostic context and ticket quality
About Cinema Hero Solutions and Their Service Desk
Cinema Hero Solutions supports small and mid sized cinema and hospitality businesses across several U.S. states, handling around 500 tickets a month across desktop support, infrastructure management, cybersecurity, Microsoft 365, cloud services and specialized point of sale support. The company also works alongside customers on long term technology strategy.
That relationship matters most when something breaks. Theatre managers are usually juggling employees and guests at the same time, and they do not have time for a lengthy back and forth before troubleshooting even starts.
“We try to act more as an extension of a company's IT team rather than just a service provider.”
The Challenge: Incomplete Tickets and Manual Back and Forth
Cinema Hero had been cautious about adopting AI. Most tools on the market were siloed, each handling one narrow task and each requiring its own subscription. Matt Kerekes, the company's CEO, estimated that covering every function his team needed with separate AI products would run about $200 a month per person. As the technology matured, though, waiting stopped looking like the safe option, and customers were asking for more automation without a bigger team.
Why Vague Tickets Slowed Resolution
The service desk was the clearest opportunity. Tickets often arrived with descriptions as thin as “this isn't working,” and technicians had to spend real time just figuring out what was going on before they could start fixing it.
“We had agents spending their time going back and forth, waiting for responses and trying to understand what wasn't working.”
Looking Beyond a Chatbot for MSP Support
Cinema Hero was not looking for a chatbot. It wanted something that could understand a ticket, ask the right follow up questions, gather diagnostic information and fit inside the existing service desk workflow.
Why Cinema Hero Chose NetZen AI Service Desk
Cinema Hero found NetZen while evaluating ticketing platforms. Other systems offered some AI features, but the intelligence sat off to the side. Customers could get answers from a bot, but nothing happened on the actual machines or inside the actual ticket. NetZen was different because its AI was built into the support workflow itself, able to triage requests, gather context and help with diagnosis before a technician ever picked up the ticket.
“What impressed me was the ability to integrate the AI into the ticketing, have it triage the request and help diagnose the machines. It seemed like exactly what we were looking for.”
Built to Make Technicians Faster, Not Replace Them
For Vik Joshi, speaking in the Cinema Hero Solutions customer interview, the appeal was that NetZen understood the context of a ticket instead of returning a cookie cutter response, and that it was designed to make technicians faster rather than replace them.
“NetZen seems much more aligned with where support operations are heading rather than just adding an AI integration onto an older model.”
How NetZen Fits Into Cinema Hero Daily Operations
AI Triage and Diagnostics Before a Technician Starts
NetZen functions as an AI business analyst at the front end of Cinema Hero's service desk. When a customer submits a request, the AI responds immediately, asks the questions needed to understand the issue and gathers supporting details like logs while the problem is still top of mind. By the time a technician picks up the ticket, the groundwork is already done.
“It hands the ticket to us and says, here are the details, here are the logs, now you can dive into it, rather than spending 30 minutes to an hour trying to find out what is actually happening.”
Microsoft Teams Conversations Connected to the Ticket
NetZen also connects customer conversations in Microsoft Teams directly to the underlying ticket. Previously, nearly all communication ran through email, with separate Teams conversations happening on the side and making everything harder to track. That has changed.
The customer reports that more requests now arrive through Teams
Email tickets can continue in Teams, with every message captured in the original ticket
Agents respond inside the ticket and the customer sees it in the same Teams chat, so communication has consolidated onto a single channel instead of splitting across two.
A Collaborative NetZen Implementation for MSPs
Cinema Hero also credits the relationship itself. The team found NetZen responsive to feedback, quick to fix issues and willing to build features that helped Cinema Hero and other MSPs on the platform, rather than sticking to a fixed roadmap.
“Ever since we started, NetZen has been very open to our suggestions and feedback. They have been collaborative, added features and fixed any bugs we encountered very quickly.”
“Any time your help desk support manager gets off a call in a very good mood after talking to a vendor, things are going well. I don't think NetZen knows the word no.”
Customer-Reported Results: Triage and Ticket Quality
Cinema Hero describes improvements in triage and ticket quality across a service desk handling roughly 500 tickets a month. The team reports that collecting details at intake gives technicians a clearer starting point and reduces the need to ask customers for basic information before investigating.
“They’re seeing speed and consistency in the responses. Their tickets are being handled more efficiently.”
“We're getting more of the details we need for a ticket. We're able to strategically ask the questions required to get that information at the beginning.”
How to read these results
These are observations from the customer interview, not a controlled before-and-after study. This case study does not establish a measured reduction in triage time, resolution time or technician handling time. The reported monthly ticket volume describes the service desk, not a measured study sample. Results will depend on ticket mix, enabled integrations, endpoint availability and approval policies.
Freeing Technicians for Higher Value Work
The team describes spending less effort gathering basic ticket information, giving technicians more room for complex problems, strategic projects and infrastructure improvements. The interview does not quantify hours saved.
What Comes Next for MSPs Using AI Service Desks
MSPs are being asked to provide faster support, manage more complex environments and deliver greater strategic value, often without a matching increase in resources.
Cinema Hero’s experience shows that AI can do more than generate responses. When integrated directly into the service desk, it can help gather better information, improve ticket quality, accelerate troubleshooting and free technicians to focus on work requiring human expertise.
NetZen helps MSPs move beyond disconnected AI tools by bringing communication, triage, diagnostics and automation into one support workflow.
See how NetZen can become the AI business analyst inside your service desk and help your MSP deliver more with the team you already have. Try NetZen AI free.