Amplifon IT service transformation helps staff better serve retail customers

For Amplifon, IT service delivery underpins exceptional customer experiences
Amplifon is a global leader in hearing solutions and services, with retail sites across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. The global organisation’s retail stores and hearing centres form the heart of Amplifon’s business and are the primary point of interaction with customers. 

The company works hard to ensure that its 5,000 front-line hearing care staff at 3,800 retail sites and hearing centres are empowered with the systems to support 3 million customers around the world with their diverse hearing needs.

IT services help Amplifon personnel deliver the level of service that customers expect. IT support is delivered by Amplifon’s corporate IT team, local country IT staff, and outsourced service providers, under the direction of Corporate IT Director of Operations Raffaello Infantino. However, Amplifon’s existing service desk tool was not allowing the business to effectively support its retail operation and the wider business. 

“Our service desk tool simply wasn’t a strategic fit for our global, multi-site business, and was failing to support to our staff with high-quality IT service,” explains Raffaello. “Our employees couldn’t readily interact with IT specialists and there was limited ability for outsourced partners to use the tool.”

Amplifon consolidates IT service management onto a single, global platform with ServiceNow
To address the issue, Amplifon implemented ServiceNow at its headquarters in Milan, Italy, as part of a strategic cloud transformation programme. “Our objective was to create just one global instance for IT service management, but with the flexibility and localisation to suit every country’s needs,” says Raffaello. “That’s exactly what ServiceNow delivered.”

Adopting a platform-as-a-service model was essential to align the IT service approach with the company’s cloud transformation programme. It allowed Amplifon to quickly roll out the Now Platform to other countries in Europe, including the UK, France, Belgium, and Germany. 

Further expansion across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific is under way, with ServiceNow expected to go live in the United States, New Zealand, and additional European countries within months.

The Now Platform supports localised service delivery, creating a better employee experience
The flexibility of the Now Platform allows Amplifon to optimise its approach to IT service delivery at a corporate level, while providing the technical capabilities for local IT teams to carry out country-specific functions and develop tailored services as required. 

“As a global business, we have many local nuances that we must deliver against as an IT function—for example, data privacy rules in Australia,” explains Raffaello. “Using ServiceNow, every member of staff can interact with our IT teams through the same platform to raise a query or issue, yet receive highly localised service, in the language they choose, connecting with a local expert.” 

Due to the company’s reliance on outsourcing, the ability to allow external suppliers to access and use the platform was also important. It permits multiple partners to interact with employees, IT teams, and the wider business within their contracted areas.

ServiceNow helps Amplifon retail staff focus on creating positive in-store experiences to customers
The transformation of IT service delivery has been focused on the most important part of Amplifon’s business—its retail sites and hearing centres, where customers interact with Amplifon staff on a daily basis. 

“It’s absolutely critical that our front-office IT systems support our customer-facing staff,” says Raffaello. “Using ServiceNow, we can deliver IT services directly to our retail and hearing centre sites as soon as it’s required, so our employees can focus on engaging with customers and creating a positive in-store experience.” 

Through a central IT services portal, retail staff can access and search a comprehensive knowledge base to find answers to their queries or raise a ticket with their local IT support team.  

ServiceNow delivers employee self-service and process automation that reduces ticket volume
The knowledge base has significantly reduced the number of tickets raised by Amplifon’s retail staff. Employees are empowered to find information themselves and resolve their own issues, freeing up the IT team to focus on requests that require their input and intervention. 

In addition, as the self-service portal and automated processes create efficient and effective workflows to manage issues, email will be completely removed from the IT service delivery process within six months of a country going live with the Now Platform.

Amplifon plans to unify all business processes through a single service platform with ServiceNow
Following the success of the Now Platform for IT service management, Amplifon is looking to expand the platform into other areas of IT delivery and the wider business. 

These include introducing ServiceNow Project Portfolio Management to allow the corporate IT team to understand, monitor, and manage the full breadth of projects being carried out across the organisation. Centralisation of demand management means that resources can be easily aligned to priority activities, helping to ensure that projects are delivered on time and in line with business requirements. 

ServiceNow Customer Service Management is another solution that will bring real-time collaboration, self-service, and automation into the customer service process for minimum resolution times and maximum customer satisfaction. 

“Using ServiceNow, we completely changed our traditional way of working,” says Raffaello. “We’re moving quickly to expand the platform across the entire global organisation, but the real success will be extending ServiceNow to other areas of the business. With ServiceNow, we have the opportunity for every employee to interact with any business process through the same platform.” 

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