We know the right questions to ask because in the process of pushing ourselves to be better, this is what we needed to know (and do) in order to elevate the customer experience.
1. How do you track end user requests and reported issues?
Keeping track of what’s what is the first step to delivering quality service. Agio’s service delivery platform tracks and categorizes all of our client end user requests with a detailed time series to help you understand trends, such as recurring requests/issues, users who report the most issues, and the days and times-of-day when these requests arise. With this type of insight, we’re able to proactively strike at the root of an issue, creating an efficiency ripple effect across our client’s environment.
2. How do you prioritize these requests and ensure timely execution?
Identifying and adjusting priorities is a constant challenge our clients face before they come to Agio. Is your current provider focusing on what matters the most; are your most important users getting the service they expect; does your provider miss their commitments; do you have to ask for status updates on your requests? These are all too common complaints we hear. Agio does it differently, with our proprietary real-time case ranking algorithm that monitors and prioritizes cases using 25+ different characteristics (i.e. inputs), and automatically notifies our engineers as they near their time commitments on a case. This ensures nothing slips through the cracks and we’re communicating regularly until your case is resolved.
3. How do you escalate cases and get notified when things go south?
When cases are escalated it’s generally because someone had a bad experience and using traditional methods of escalation result in a reactive service, leaving the end user feeling angry and dissatisfied. Again, we do this differently. Agio employs machine learning and sentiment analysis technology that leverages natural language processing to identify patterns in client communication, which then automatically escalate the case when a negative or urgent sentiment is detected. This enables us to address situations even before they become a problem. In fact, on average we prevent 87% of cases that would’ve been escalated, which means we’re stopping 87% of the issues before they snowball into problems – keeping your end users satisfied and productive.
4. Do you know what your clients think of the service you provide, how do you get that feedback, and what do you do with it once you receive it?
Knowing what your users think of your service is critical, as well as knowing who on your staff delivers the best customer service and who is struggling so you can provide coaching. Agio’s case survey framework enables us to receive direct feedback from our client’s end users in near real-time. Specifically, when we close a case, users are given an option to provide feedback on their experience, and if the feedback is negative, it kicks off a communication process by which we contact that client to understand if it was a people, process or technology issue that caused the negative experience. We then fix it accordingly with a corrective action plan. It’s these frameworks and processes that help us truly understand how we’re doing with our clients, and where we can be better.
5. Do you know the work that your team has to do on a recurring cadence to ensure the health of your environment? Can you measure it? And more importantly, can you present it to your stakeholders?
Most will tell you IT is a thankless job. You fix things when they break, which means you’re always on your heels in a defensive position. We’ve changed that for our clients with Agio’s IT Governance Program. Our proprietary framework starts with a pre-scheduled and defined cadence of weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual activities. We then map our client’s laundry list of tasks to this cadence, based on their unique needs, and execute accordingly. Activities like renewing the certificate on your Citrix server, patching your end user computing, updating the list of your VIP users every month, and removing disabled users from Active Directory are all examples of actions we take care of on your behalf. Specifically, 100+ pre-configured activities come standard as a part of our framework, and clients receive a monthly governance report to ensure tasks are executed as planned. This report offers our clients a great visual to circulate internally to reflect the value and level of effort invested in keeping their environment healthy and up and running.