ServiceNow helps OVHcloud establish the service processes to support global growth

Process consistency to underpin global growth
In an ‘as-a-service’ world, operational efficiency is everything. OVHcloud wants to bring global scale and consistency to its customer service. The business wants the ability to create distinct SLAs for different market segments. It recognizes that enterprise customers will have very different requirements from tech start-ups.

Customer support aims to assist in an effective, efficient, and impactful manner to increase loyalty and accelerate OVHcloud transformation while securing profitability.

OVHcloud has more than 1.6 million customers, hosts six million websites, and operates 33 data centers globally. Already strong in Europe, its next challenge is to accelerate growth globally, and more specifically in Asia and North America.

Creating a service platform
ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) replaces the previous homegrown solution, establishing a new platform for OVHcloud’s service approach. It allows the business to begin to automate common requests and connect global service delivery teams.

The solution was designed and deployed with the assistance of Capgemini, a ServiceNow partner and OVHcloud’s global integration partner. Crucially, ServiceNow CSM is hosted on-premise, in line with OVHcloud’s strategy for a sovereign cloud managed and hosted in Europe. This supports the business strategy of having a local presence with a global process.

“Compliance is a decisive factor for us,” explains Boris Gougeon, Head of IT Support, OVHcloud.

Working closely with OVHcloud for years, Capgemini achieved a rich working knowledge of the environment with technical insight into the company’s business goals. This was critical in helping to set up a strategic project focused on creating a dedicated Center of Excellence (nicknamed “The Factory”) that would leverage the ServiceNow engagement. OVHcloud balances the right mix of out-of-the-box features with its bespoke tooling.

“Being on-premise with a CSM instance that has huge volume and activity, defining an internal team was key to being pro-active with technical challenges, and to be close to our everyday business challenges,” says Jessy Gancel, Platform Owner and Lead of ServiceNow Internal Competency Center, OVHcloud.

Progress is evident. Over one year, OVHcloud has seen a 75% reduction in case resolution times and an 83% reduction in the average speed of answer to reach a global increase of 25% in quality of service. There are now clear SLAs for different customer segments.

“ServiceNow quickly allowed us to have finer control of our service activity and to be more responsive,” says Stéphanie Jacquet, Head of Operational Excellence and Digital Customer Services at OVHcloud. “ServiceNow is one of the enablers making our vision come true.”

Refining the platform
CSM is currently being used by more than 500 agents in 11 contact centers worldwide, handling 18k cases a week across seven languages. With a solution developed to scale and support larger business goals, Capgemini helped OVHcloud in setting up a customer friendly portal for ServiceNow which includes knowledge bases. Next goals for implementation are an effective community management and virtual agent with live chat services.

“Working as a long-time partner has given us a clear sense of OVHcloud’s priorities,” says Habib Nouar, Projects and Consulting Lead at Capgemini. “With a focus on streamlining customer workflows, we could help them towards their goals and harness the full value of ServiceNow.”

“We’re already seeing big numbers on the platform, but we think there is more to do,” says Boris. “The exciting thing with ServiceNow is that new features are added every six months.”

OVHcloud is committed to developing the ServiceNow engagement further. The Factory currently comprises a team of ten ServiceNow experts and is managing most of the upgrades in-house with the intention of creating new integrations and becoming further refined. There is an expectation that virtual agents are coming, possibly in 2022. ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) is being explored, firstly on incident management and with problem and change management to come.

In tandem, CSM and ITSM will move OVHcloud closer to its goal of a unified support platform. The result will be a business with fewer silos, greater clarity around service delivery, and a consistent communications message. From a customer perspective, it will enable OVHcloud to articulate a clear service proposition for different segments, with distinct SLAs for enterprise and SME customers.

“We recognize this engagement is a process of continuous improvement,” says Jessy. “The expertise of ServiceNow will be invaluable in helping to anticipate what’s coming next. And it’s big!”

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