AMEX GBT simplifies access to information with unified portal

American Express Global Business Travel (AMEX GBT) has built its reputation by providing expert services, advice, and assistance to travelers. It is a reputation built interaction by interaction. When a traveler needs help, they can rely on AMEX GBT.

To deliver a high-quality service, the company needs to recruit, motivate, and retain expert staff. This starts by providing a superior employee experience.

It also means AMEX GBT counselors must have every scrap of relevant information at their fingertips. Information must be accessible and the experience should be personalized.

Simplifying access to data to power an improved service experience
AMEX GBT is a problem solver—thousands of problems, every day, all around the world.

Whether it is finding a business traveler an alternative to a missed flight connection out of Boston, or locating a unique meeting space in Bangkok, clients expect AMEX GBT to have a solution. The business offers local expertise in 140 countries, underpinned by a global knowledge base on the Now Platform.

“We want to make it as fast and easy as possible for our staff to find the information they need,” says Gregg Scholz, VP, HR Operations at AMEX GBT. “Any time spent searching for information is time spent away from our clients.”

This applies to client-focused information and employee-focused information. Where there is a distraction, complication, or confusion in finding the right information, AMEX GBT wants to eliminate it.

“Frustration leads to a drop in service quality,” says Scholz.

Eliminating confusion, creating a unified portal
AMEX GBT has history with ServiceNow. By streamlining its onboarding and IT service management on ServiceNow, AMEX GBT has realized $500,000 in cost savings and seen 18,000 hours in productivity gains.

“The next step was to create a unified portal, bringing together HR case management, HR onboarding, and IT. Rather than the confusion of having three places to find information, create one place,” says Patti Court, Director of Service Management at AMEX GBT.

The unified portal creates a consistent look across all three functions and houses an improved knowledge base. Rather than having three separate search functions, there is one.

AMEX GBT also introduced a chatbot function to act as the first line of support. Content was repurposed, where necessary, to ensure consistency.

Also, by recognizing different users and understanding context, the portal presents tailored content.

Blending short-term functionality with ongoing optimization
The new, unified ServiceNow Advanced Portal, known as SNAP, was built on the Now Platform. Scholz says the successful launch owes much to the expertise of the ServiceNow services team:

“We had a pretty robust roadmap in terms of how we wanted to develop the user experience, and we knew there was an opportunity to expand the engagement with ServiceNow.”

The project team ran workshops with user groups worldwide. ServiceNow was able to advise on compatibility with the future releases and upgrades, and coordinate the different requests from IT and HR teams. The same user groups will be consulted on future upgrades and new features.

“It meant we would stay as ‘out-of-the-box’ as possible, with less need to customize,” says Court. “ServiceNow made sure our immediate objectives were aligned with future functionality.”

Providing a natural home for news and knowledge
The new portal arrived at an opportune moment. The COVID-19 crisis meant AMEX GBT had to be proactive in informing staff of changes to work policy. The portal has proved a natural home for updates and guidance. Content can be tailored for different user groups, making the experience more personal.

“It has been really well received,” says Court. “The effectiveness of the global search function and having all information in one place has been great.”

Scholz says it will be some time before AMEX GBT can see a true picture of usage, but that adoption rates are ahead of expectations. The chatbot function, Snappy, was used more than 500 times on day one. Snappy uses the ServiceNow native Virtual Agent and out-of-the-box conversations to give users an easy way to find what they need and get issues resolved automatically.

Early feedback has been spectacular, as employees have stated, “Snappy is my favorite part of the portal” and “With Virtual Agent, I feel like we brought our company current. We can help employees get what they need and run their businesses more effectively and efficiently.” The portal represents the AMEX GBT desire to delight end users and provide a unified employee experience.

Future plans include a mobile version of the portal and using ServiceNow to offboard staff.

“We want to leverage the engagement with ServiceNow as much as possible,” says Scholz. “We’d like to replicate the success of onboarding with offboarding. In truth, there are many other transactional events that take place during an employee’s lifecycle that can benefit from ServiceNow.”

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