The YMCA helps its members thrive with intuitive, responsive customer service

The YMCA of the North is dedicated to helping its members and participants thrive

The YMCA of the North believes that everyone deserves a chance to succeed, no matter what their background or income. It brings together people of all ages, incomes, and backgrounds, helping its members and participants to thrive at every stage of their lives.

Responsive, intuitive customer service is a core part of this commitment to the community, with the YMCA offering a wide range of programs and services. These include health and wellness, childcare, sports, summer camps, social groups, and more. It backs up these offerings with outstanding customer service that’s powered by ServiceNow Customer Service Management.

The YMCA didn’t have the customer service platform it needed to deliver a great customer experience

Darren Alick, senior director of customer experience at the YMCA of the North, explains, “We had a legacy service desk tool, but it couldn’t track our member and participant interactions. When you have more than half a million contacts every year, that’s a serious problem. We were slow to respond and things slipped through the cracks in some instances. Our members were frustrated. For example, if they sent us an email and followed up by phone, we had to collect their information all over again. And, because we had no consolidated interaction history, we had no way of knowing what we were doing well and what we needed to improve.”

Information intake was another major issue. Darren says, “We wanted to make it easy for members and participants to submit information online— for instance, providing a health certificate when they sign their child up for summer camp. However, we couldn’t create the dynamic forms we needed to collect this information. Everything was manual and cumbersome.”

The YMCA responds faster, works more efficiently, and delivers an intuitive, secure customer experience

According to Darren, “We knew we had to replace our legacy tool, and ServiceNow ticked all the boxes—it delivers a fantastic customer experience, lets us track all our interactions across multiple channels, and it’s HIPAA and PCI compliant. Online information intake is a perfect example. Members and participants simply choose the category and subcategory they want, and ServiceNow automatically displays the right dynamic form. Once the member submits the form, it’s instantly routed to the appropriate team, so we avoid triage delays. Agents can see the member’s or participant’s entire interaction history, so they don’t waste time hunting down information. And ServiceNow gives us the data and reporting tools we need to measure and improve our performance.”

Darren continues, “Not only are our members happier, but it’s made us more resilient. For example, we saw a 20% increase in member requests at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic due to membership suspensions and service cancellations. Without these efficiency gains, we couldn’t have coped. In fact, we even used ServiceNow to automatically route membership suspension requests to a special billing team, which offloaded customer service even further.”

The YMCA is using ServiceNow to enable seamless collaboration across customer service and IT

Darren also talks about the advantages of having a common platform across customer service and IT. “Our IT team was already using ServiceNow, so that made it an even better choice. Obviously having the in-house experience reduced risk and gave us a lot of confidence, but it was more than that. Having customer service and IT on the same platform allows us to collaborate. For example, if a member has a problem with their account, we can easily route that to IT for resolution. And, since we also offer member services to our employees—for example, discounted programs—so having IT and customer service on the same platform gives them one place to go for everything. HR is also onboard so we’re creating a true one-stop shop of employee services.”

The YMCA continues to expand its use of ServiceNow Customer Service Management

While the YMCA of the North has achieved impressive results to date, this is only the start of its customer service transformation journey. The organization is now planning to use ServiceNow to automate backend service fulfillment processes, such as collecting credit card information, doctors’ certificates, parental permissions, and other required documentation once a member or participant registers for a service. Further enhancements to the member and agent experience are also on the near-term horizon, including deploying ServiceNow® Virtual Agent and integrating ServiceNow with the YMCA’s CRM system.

When asked to sum up the benefits of ServiceNow, Darren says, “ServiceNow is a platform for customer service innovation. It’s driven a cultural shift—we now think about possibilities instead of limitations.”

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