Service operations moves inside and upscale

Technology is a game changer for USI Insurance Services (USI). Not satisfied with the insurance industry status quo, USI built an analytics engine to create unique risk management and benefits recommendations for clients. The engine incorporates 150 years of experience with 500,000 clients and helps USI provide solutions that best fit each client’s industry, location, and unique needs.

Leveraging technology to solve problems is a way of life at USI. Its professionals across the United States use a myriad of digital devices and applications to deliver the highest standard of client care in a demanding industry. To keep those systems running and evolving, the IT service desk works around the clock to monitor key systems and respond to user needs.

Initially outsourced, the IT service desk moved inside USI in late 2021 for greater synergy with the rest of the IT organization to better support the growing USI business. With the shift, Service Desk Director Chris Arena and his team became USI employees fully focused on maintaining service continuity.

Already a long-time ServiceNow user, Arena worked with IT Manager — ServiceNow, Michael Cavallo, to fine tune the team’s work environment. Passionate about using ServiceNow to its fullest potential, Cavallo and his development team had been expanding usage over the past six years.

Together they chose Workforce Optimization to improve scheduling and performance management, and Service Operations Workspace to improve technician experience and productivity. Jose Marquez joined the effort, eagerly providing his perspective as a technician and showing so much technical aptitude that he would later be invited to join Cavallo’s team.

“The service desk needs to meet strict service levels to keep the business running smoothly around the clock,” says Arena. “To do that, we need great scheduling for every shift, easy reporting on key metrics, and a way for technicians to easily prioritize their work. ServiceNow checks all those boxes.”

Gaining efficiencies through integration and new workspace

As the first point of contact for any IT-related issue users encounter, the USI service desk team has a broad scope of responsibility. The team handles thousands of interactions monthly, originating from voice and service portal channels.

All interactions now come through the Service Operations Workspace as a single pane of glass, where technicians can view and prioritize their workload in real time. Each technician has a snapshot of their queue, highlighting tickets approaching their SLA deadline. Higher tier technicians can also keep an eye on other technician queues and reach out to them before tickets breach.

Incoming calls appear in the technician’s workspace, with caller details pre-populated into a ServiceNow template based on caller ID. This telephony integration saves time and reduces errors, improving productivity. Templates help technicians gather consistent and complete information and also provide troubleshooting steps, reducing the expertise and time required to resolve incidents. If escalated, incidents can be resolved faster because they are well documented.

“When I saw a real-time snapshot of all my work and SLAs in Service Operations Workspace, I fell in love,” says Marquez. “I could easily dive into problem solving, knowing I was prioritizing properly.”

Automation for common requests pays dividends

Cavallo and his team have automated many common requests in the service catalog like password resets, application access, and software upgrades. For example, if a caller needs a password reset, the technician creates a request that triggers an automation flow. Automations like this speed time to resolution, shorten call duration, and improve productivity of both the Service Desk and the user.

For services requests not yet automated, technicians can use agent assist to identify knowledge base articles. These articles can then be forwarded to the user to complete the request, cutting interaction time and speeding time to resolution by the user. The knowledge base is also available for user self-service through the service portal.

Advanced work assignment for self-reported incidents

Many users choose to submit incidents through the service portal. These incidents were historically sent to a special queue managed by two technicians to meet its one-hour KPI for ticket assignment.

With its advanced work assignment capabilities, ServiceNow automatically assigns incidents upon receipt using a round-robin method, saving as much as an hour in resolution time. Seeing the value, other IT teams beyond the service desk are considering advanced work assignment to manage their own tickets.

“Advanced work assignment with ServiceNow freed resources to take on other tasks, effectively adding two resources to the service desk staff without increasing the workforce,” says Arena.

Improved scheduling, demand forecasting, and reporting

Moving to a 24/7 schedule for more than 40 technicians in three tiers, Arena uses Workforce Optimization to manage shifts, on-call schedules, breaks, and time-off requests. Over time, Arena will be able to forecast demand based on historical trends to staff for peak periods. Good service desk schedules are essential for proper coverage and business continuity.

With built-in reporting and performance analytics, Arena can drill down into KPIs and performance targets to assess team and individual performance. Arena can see who is calling, which technician handles the interaction, call duration, and more.

“I started on the team in 2015 and every single day in every position I’ve held I’ve worked deeply in ServiceNow,” says Arena. “The manager workspace provides everything I need to see what’s going on within the environment and make quick adjustments to improve service delivery.”

Measuring service desk efficiency and value

With Workforce Optimization and Service Operations Workspace in place, Arena was confident that the service desk team would achieve significant improvements in service delivery. After the first two quarters, the data from ServiceNow proved him right.

First contact resolution rose 5 percentage points to an all-time high of 80%, showing that technicians were better able to resolve incidents in one touch. This KPI correlates to decreased operating costs, key in an industry facing pricing pressures.

Time to resolution for severity three incidents improved and automation helped reduce the time taken by these high volume, low impact incidents, enhancing productivity.

Reopened incidents fell by more than two-thirds to less than 1%. This KPI reflects quality and completeness of service. A low score indicates that users were satisfied with the resolution, and the incident did not recur due to an incorrect diagnosis. By keeping reopened incidents to a minimum, the team avoids extra work and the risk of exceeding SLAs.

Average handle time for voice calls fell by 28%, down three and a half minutes per call. With thousands of calls each month, this represents huge time savings that can go toward supporting the growing business. Arena attributes the improvement to the many automations and process efficiencies driven by ServiceNow and Cavallo’s team.

“Service Operations Workspace is absolutely the right tool for us to streamline processes, make work easier for our technicians, and give them what they need to do their jobs day in and day out,” says Cavallo.

Building on best practices

Arena and Cavallo are already working on the rollout of coaching assessments for technician productivity and satisfaction. Coaching is most effective when triggered by an interaction that is still fresh. The first trigger they set is for calls exceeding 30 minutes. Arena is also busy defining skills and skill levels for smarter routing automation.

For Cavallo, the decision to move to Service Operations Workspace first was a key driver of success for the service desk team. It put a priority on technician experience and efficiency ahead of management insight. This choice gave technicians confidence and made deploying Workforce Optimization much easier as a result.

“With Service Operations Workspace, the whole team works together to provide better experience for our users,” says Cavallo. “Workforce Optimization is a team effort, not just something that managers think about.”