Customer Service Excellence Leads To Cost Savings
Reduction in average resolution times
Increase in customer satisfaction score
Reduction in costs by consolidating three tools to one
Disparate tools impact morale and customer service
In the fast-paced world of sports and racing, success means giving customers the best possible service. Just as the odds of a specific outcome in a sporting event can change in the blink of an eye, the ability to quickly identify and resolve issues is critical for delivering amazing customer experiences.
BetMakers Technology Group is a leading global provider of advanced technology and service solutions to the racing industry.
With operations in Australia, the US, Europe, and Asia, it offers solutions that monetize racing for all stakeholders, including bookmakers, pari-mutuel wagering operators, and racing bodies, at every stage of the racing lifecycle.
Over the years, BetMakers inherited multiple customer service management tools through mergers and acquisitions of other businesses. With a growing network of over 2,000 betting terminals across 36 countries, BetMakers wanted to ensure a timely response to customer issues to improve their experience.
“Customer expectations are becoming higher than ever,” explains Isi Kioa, Head of Support and Customer Experience at BetMakers Technology Group. “As we scaled our businesses globally, we ended up with different teams involved in resolving issues throughout the escalation process. It was a nightmare to understand which team was required to support which customer, resulting in an inconsistent customer experience.”
The global racing industry is also subject to strict regulation. Some of BetMakers’ tier-one customers require specific reporting against system changes, incidents, and platform availability. With information siloed across multiple tools, the resulting confusion created challenges for Isi and his team to produce reports for regulators.
“Any inefficient internal processes came with the risk of employee disengagement and burnout, which in turn had a direct impact on employee morale, their output, and therefore the overall customer experience,” Isi says.
Driving consistent customer experience
BetMakers previously used three service management tools, Zendesk, Jira, and Freshdesk, to manage requests from B2B and B2C customers across the globe.
However, the business had no insight into which teams were working on a given customer issue. The costs of running multiple systems were also high.
By consolidating three tools into ServiceNow Customer Service Management, global support teams now have greater insight into customer profiles, who they are, and any issues that might arise. For example, agents can see where the customer is located, when their renewal date is, and how they interact with the business.
This single source of truth empowers the support teams to easily track customer issues and cut resolution times by 72% on average.
BetMakers has also reduced its IT costs by 24% with a consolidated customer service management platform.
Customers have also benefited from the new self-service portal. They now have access to historical tickets and reporting on their service history, something that wasn’t possible with previous tools. This allows customers to quickly find answers to their questions via a single platform, increasing self-service resolution by 100%.
“ServiceNow empowers us to be more proactive than reactive with our customers,” explains Isi. “Having our global support teams use ServiceNow Customer Service Management was a no-brainer. We have ensured that our customer journey is consistent, no matter which part of the business they are coming through.
“It’s not just the cost saving. Our Customer Satisfaction Score has also increased by 32% since we went live with ServiceNow Customer Service Management.”
With fewer people involved in incident management processes, support staff can now focus on prioritizing cases and delivering better service. The streamlined processes enabled via ServiceNow have also had an immediate impact on employee morale and customer satisfaction.
“Despite an increase of over 400% in the size of the global support team in the last six months, our employee retention rate has been maintained at 100% since our ServiceNow deployment,” says Isi.
Simplifying asset management and field operations
A major part of BetMakers’ operations is the support and provisioning of physical betting terminals for its customers in the US. It is critical for Isi and his team to keep accurate records on terminals and their spare parts to improve response times for support services.
With ServiceNow Core Asset Management, BetMakers now has visibility into the inventory of assets and consumables, via one dashboard. Support teams can simply pull specific information from the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) whenever there is a case logged against a particular terminal.
As part of its operations, BetMakers experienced a high demand for technicians to service betting terminals at racetracks in the US and Europe. Technicians are either physically present at customers’ sites, such as racetracks, or are dispatched by managers on an ad hoc basis to fix defective terminals. However, there was no visibility into work carried out by technicians, such as time to complete a job, removal or addition of parts, and work completed.
“We will be rolling out the ServiceNow Field Service Management module in phases across the US,” says Isi. “Once we have launched this module, we expect to be able to track time on jobs as well as specific terminal performance metrics in order to calculate return on investment and other important metrics over time.”
ServiceNow Field Service Management will also enable BetMakers to better plan resources for field operations based on service history, including time of last service, a digital log of all work performed, and data on which technician serviced the terminal.
Over the next three months, BetMakers will roll out ServiceNow Field Service Management in New Jersey; deployments in other states as well as Central and South America will follow quickly. One of its suppliers, which manufactures the terminals and handles their warranties, is also looking to increase stocks of spare parts and completed terminals. BetMakers is now considering ServiceNow Procurement Service Management to improve visibility into stock replenishment.
The ServiceNow platform empowers us to be more proactive with customers,
ISI KIOA
ensuring a consistent customer experience.
HEAD OF SUPPORT AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Improving efficiency in IT service management
After adopting ServiceNow Customer Service Management, BetMakers also implemented ServiceNow IT Service Management in Australia and Sri Lanka to streamline the internal processes for incident management, change management, and problem management, improving customer experience.
Through the integration of ServiceNow IT Service Management with Opsgenie, BetMakers has automated the process to alert incident response teams and increase employee accountability. The ability to report on SLAs and incidents and root-cause analysis in problem management enables BetMakers to reduce the number of incidents and resolve issues faster.
“By using ServiceNow to reduce manual processes for customer service and IT service management by 60%, we can focus on servicing larger clients with confidence,”
explains Isi.
With support from ServiceNow partner TCloud, BetMakers has configured the integration of ServiceNow Customer Service Management and IT Service Management with Zoom Phone, Jira, and Slack, so support teams can instantly receive new case notifications while they are using the applications.
“Thanks to the expertise and best practice recommendation from TCloud, we were able to get the most out of the ServiceNow platform,” says Isi.
Service and operational foundations laid for DX
A key factor in BetMakers’ success has been its laser-like focus on improving customer service. Isi concludes that having all internal workflows go through one platform with ServiceNow helps to promote visibility and efficiency, and also boosts the employee experience; this then translates directly into an improved customer experience.
These improvements are set to continue as the company embarks on the next service operations stage of its digital transformation (DX) journey.
“The possibilities are endless within the ServiceNow platform,” says Isi. “If you’re a company on the verge of scaling out with multiple different product offerings, verticals, and operations teams, ServiceNow is a must.”
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