Preparing for expansion without compromising customer experience
A leading tax technology and solutions company anticipated significant global expansion, aiming to extend its robust software platforms and tax expertise to new markets worldwide. This also meant anticipating the needs of an expanding customer base. The company identified a pivotal opportunity to enhance its global support services organization, hoping to deliver outstanding customer experience that is both strategic and adaptable. The envisioned solution must not only scale with growth but also deliver swift, effective responses, ensuring a seamless, high-quality user experience. Equally important to the user experience is consistency across the suite of technology solutions offered and geographical boundaries.
CAI was invited to bid on this opportunity and quickly differentiated itself from the competition by demonstrating a strong understanding of their challenge. With experience in both the applications and support services space, CAI provided a clear vision for a new approach that would enable the company to meet their global support goals and improve service delivery. From that point on, both companies aligned and quickly developed a professional rapport. Their “one team” approach ensured both organizations would be successful.
Keeping up with complexity and growth
While experiencing growth and the complexity of customer issues expanding, the tax company’s service desk faced escalating demands and rising delivery costs. These issues threatened the achievement of their customer support objectives. The sophistication of their offerings necessitated a deep well of knowledge and expertise, leading to a reliance on higher-tier analysts for issue resolution. This reliance contributed to a dip in first-call resolution rates and an uptick in the average time required to settle issues, as numerous tickets escalated beyond first-level support. In response to these complexities, the service desk's staffing model became increasingly personnel intensive. This required an increase in headcount to keep up with active tickets and manage the growing number of escalations. This model could no longer sustain their growth, and they began to look for new ways to keep up.
A collaborative approach to sustainable growth
The company chose to work with CAI because, according to one to one of the employees, “it was clear from the start that you understood our challenges.” The CAI team articulated a vision for fundamental change, and they had expertise in both applications support and service desk best practices to improve the customer support experience. To develop the solution, true collaboration took place. The customer relied on CAI to take the lead on support methodology, and CAI depended on the customer to advise and educate them on their tax solutions, as well as the nuances and needs of their customer base. This collaborative partnership was largely responsible for the project’s success.
At the heart of the solution was the application of a shift left methodology, which is designed to drive incident and service request resolution closer to the customer. The CAI Shift Left Index calculates 5 key data points—first level resolution (FLR), knowledge creation, self-service catalog items, contact volume, and customer satisfaction—to determine the maturity and productivity of a service desk. The shift left process improves customer experience by providing quicker resolutions and lowers support costs by reducing escalation to higher cost resources. This solution was focused on problem elimination through root cause analysis, improved customer service processes, enhanced customer representative training, and better product knowledge management and documentation. The continued partnership involves continuous improvement initiatives to drive self-service and/or identifying tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) to drive efficiencies.
The entire solution development process and ongoing partnership has been fortified by the professional and collaborative way both companies operate.
Measurable results; delighted customers
The global support services solution designed with this tax solutions client has delivered immediate benefits and established a platform for customer satisfaction, growth, and maturity. The CAI team has stabilized the support organization, delivering a consistent, reliable experience for its customers. For example, the customer asked CAI to achieve a goal of increasing the FLR by 20%. While that initially seemed like a lofty goal, CAI was able to accomplish this during the first month of providing live support by applying sound service desk principles, moving higher-skilled resources directly to the customers, and vastly improving the knowledge base. Where FLR was previously 35%, the CAI team elevated it to over 60%.
The first year of data shows dramatic results. The client achieved higher customer satisfaction scores, a 25% increase in FLR, and a lower cost of providing services.
The stabilization of the support environment has freed leaders from day-to-day support to focus on more strategic client initiatives. CAI has also been elevated to provide level 2 support, enabling the client to reduce their reliance on other contractors. This has also elevated their associates to focus on delivering premium services for high profile clients.
The value of a trusted partner
There are proven advantages to utilizing the principles and methodologies of an IT service desk for product-based customer service support. From ticket tracking and shift left techniques to automation tools and streamlined customer service processes, the success of a product support organization can be a key differentiator in the growth of your company. CAI provides a collaborative, flexible approach to helping clients solve complex challenges and meet their goals.
