New Case Study: Gemalto’s ServiceNow Customer Service Management Transformation
APRIL 24TH, 2017 ADAM MASON
Gemalto Transforms Support from a Cost to a Revenue Center
The Challenge: New CSM opens opportunities to improve satisfaction scores and increase revenues
When Gemalto, a global cyber security firm headquartered in France, acquired the U.S. security company SafeNet, the parent firm used the merger as an opportunity to review the U.S. company’s customer service management (CSM) platform. Thorough customer surveys provided feedback for meaningful improvement, including: making the service desk easier and more rewarding to use; modernizing the interface; and giving end users more direct access to the information and downloads they needed (e.g., drivers, manuals).
On the back-end, Gemalto’s support team had no easy way of accessing customer entitlement records, forcing them to give free support regardless of service status. Each product family had its own support site, creating inconsistent service experiences for end users. Worse, the old CSM had been custom built on top of Seibel; any change, no matter how small, required the attention of a web developer.
“We needed to improve the service experience for previous SafeNet customers,” says Steve Walsh, Gemalto’s Vice President of Client Services, “while welcoming new Gemalto customers onto our service platform.”
The Solution: Migrate to ServiceNow’s cloud-based CSM
After initial consideration of various CSM options, Gemalto realized that a cloud-based SaaS platform would provide greater long-term value. In particular, the company could benefit from routine upgrades that kept pace with emerging technology without having to reinvest in new rounds of coding.
Even with standardized upgrades, ServiceNow offered a flexible platform to support Gemalto’s growing needs and scale. Working with Acorio throughout the implementation, Gemalto was able to integrate their new CSM with a number of crucial on-premise applications:
By integrating with Oracle EBS, support staff got easy access to every customer’s licensing and entitlement agreements, eliminating costly free service giveaways to customers not paying for support, as well as opening the door for service upgrades. Equally important was the ability to replace a time-consuming manual return process with an automated workflow that dramatically reduced resolution times.
Integration with Gemalto’s file download system (FDS), leveraging a modern, self-service portal, allowed customers to navigate, and download the files they needed within the CSM online interface very quickly.
A newly-organized data model (encouraged by Acorio as a ServiceNow best practice), made knowledge-base articles, previously held in a separate Inquira system, available on the CSM site for simple self-help.
ServiceNow’s type-ahead functions were supplemented by Acorio’s approach to include categorization and graphic icons representing common search categories for faster navigation;
“Special handling” instructions enabled other departments to intuitively help support staff quickly identify and address special situations, enhancing the customer experience while reducing the internal spend cycle;
In just ten months from RFP to rollout, the implementation was complete, and customers seeking service were pleased to see a modern, Gemalto-branded portal for fast navigation and rapid insight into case progress.
The Results: Superior, consistent service, plus new opportunities to promote additional products
The new ServiceNow CSM platform went live in March, 2017. Within just one month, the platform processed 44,000 emails, 800+ customer registration requests – as well as opening 7,176 support cases opened via phone, web, and email.
In addition to fulfilling immediate CSM duties, ServiceNow’s ability to connect Support to other departments accelerates the communication loop, opening new opportunities. Integration with Jira allowed Gemalto to link support cases to the company’s internal products database, allowing them to better track potential defects. Further, the implementation exposed the entirety of SafeNet’s product database, opening easy access to 16 million asset records for more than 66,000 product models. As a result, Gemalto standardized both its service model and how the firm applies its support entitlements.
For Gemalto, bringing service management to customer support erased the boundaries between product families. Customers have an effortless engagement model, while Gemalto is able to resolve cases at lightspeed through integrations and automation of processes that were previously manual.
Leveraging the full power of the ServiceNow platform actually created opportunities to produce additional revenue – a boon Gemalto hadn’t originally foreseen. In addition to providing a modern, intuitive portal, the self-service portal allows customers to access answers and relevant information for themselves. Based on customers’ product searches, the portal also displays relevant knowledge articles and related products in parallel, encouraging customers to consider product upgrades and potential cross-sells. A few modest configuration changes by Acorio resulted in the new revenue drivers via relevant push notifications, knowledge-base articles (on upgrade benefits, for example) and promotional materials for Gemalto products.
Finally, Acorio’s data model reorganization made the Gemalto support team more self-sufficient. Internal ServiceNow administrators can now make changes to the support platform on their own, without requiring web developer assistance. “I have a small team of just three people,” Walsh notes. “But we no longer need to get in line with IT to wait for an available resource when we want to make changes—we can make most of these ourselves. We’re very pleased with the CSM’s ability to solve problems and excited about the future ServiceNow enhancements that will further improve the customer experience.”