Basware accelerates customer support from issue to resolution

Quality, efficient customer service is key to Basware’s customer satisfaction goals

Basware offers purchase-to-pay solutions, e-invoicing, and financing services for businesses, with a mission to help customers simplify their operations and spend smarter.

Basware operates the largest open commerce network in the world and growing its cloud revenue is a strategic priority. However, in switching from a primarily on-premises offering to a cloud-based delivery model, customer service has taken an even more prominent role to ensure customers see value in maintaining their ongoing subscription.

Basware VP Customer Services Matthias Lippert explains: “Back in 2016, Basware Support failed to achieve its KPI targets, with timely and professional support scoring particularly low in customer surveys. Increasing customer satisfaction and speeding up resolution time were critical as we moved our offering to the cloud.”

The organisation was operating many legacy systems that lacked integration, were difficult to monitor, and provided no single view. Customer support consultants were struggling with prioritisation of tickets, as well as the usability and performance of the numerous, disparate systems.

Basware delivers an integrated customer service engine and intuitive self-service portal, powered by ServiceNow
Basware embarked on a transformational customer service project with the primary objectives to boost the speed and quality of support offered to customers. Changing perceptions of the support department internally was also a priority.

A platform was required to drive Basware’s new “customer service engine”—with speed, usability, and performance being the key criteria. ServiceNow was the obvious choice, with the ability to deliver an intuitive self-service portal for users, with all support staff, data, and systems fully integrated on the same platform.

“The look and feel of the customer portal were very important to us and the Now Platform^® is extremely intuitive and easy to use,” explains Matthias. “With ServiceNow there is no legacy. The platform is a cloud solution that is built to underpin and integrate all the workflows in our customer service operation.”

After kicking off the project with Fujitsu Symfoni, the new customer service engine went live in less than six months. Matthias’ project team created an internal launch campaign in the run up to the go-live date around the Race of Le Mans theme.

“We were building a high-performing engine; our own ‘race car,’ and our platform go-live date coincided with the start of the Race of Le Mans. The fact we met this deadline had a very positive impact on the perception of our team internally and the campaign made employees feel part of the success story,” explains Matthias.

ServiceNow provides complete visibility for informed decision making and a high-quality service experience
Basware is now delivering a consistent, high-quality support experience to all customers, powered by a customer service portal, an integrated knowledge base and intelligent incident management workflows. 

Average support response time has reduced from four hours to 55 minutes, with the customer satisfaction score increasing by 11% in just four months. Complete transparency and visibility of customer interactions is driving satisfaction for consultants and facilitating informed business decision making.

“Support consultants have complete visibility of cases and incidents as separate tickets and this total transparency means they are able to prioritise. They can also see which cases are approaching a resolution deadline as set out by our SLAs,” explains Matthias.

“Visibility is key for our managers too. They have access to real-time data right across the customer support journey and can share metrics and progress against KPIs with all support consultants. Importantly, we can make informed business decisions based on complete data.”

Basware has generated tangible benefits across several levels of customer support. The customer portal has reduced the amount of emails received by 94%, almost completely eliminating manual email processing.

New digital workflows that integrate with the knowledge base have resulted in an overall 24% reduction in the volume of cases as customers adopt self-service, freeing up consultants’ time to better manage spikes or progress from first to second level of support.

“Speeding up resolution time was our key objective at the start of the project with ServiceNow. In just four months, we reduced the average response time from four hours to 55 minutes and cut the average resolution time from 40 to 28 hours,” adds Matthias.

New service portal makes support more personal, enabling closer customer interactions and building trust
The new support portal provides Basware’s customers with fast, high quality support through online logging of cases, improved overview of their case progress, and always-on access to the Basware knowledge base.

“The portal is an important milestone on our path to serving our customers even better. We now share support SLAs with our customers to show our commitment to exceptional levels of service, which we call the Basware Support Promise,” comments Matthias. “Our service desk’s CSAT score shot up from 4.8 to 5.2 (scale 1-6) just four months after the ServiceNow implementation.”

For Matthias and his team, it’s not just about KPIs though. The new approach to customer service has made support more personal, enabling closer interaction between the business and its customers that is fostering trust and loyalty.

“Customers have complete visibility of which consultant is looking at their case and when. Small touches like adding consultants’ profile pictures have also brought our consultants and customers closer together and made our relationship with our customers much more transparent and personal,” explains Matthias.

For support consultants, daily life at work has become much easier and more rewarding, with the team rating ServiceNow “much better” compared to the previous system, with 90% citing satisfaction with the new Customer Service Platform.

“The experience of our support team at work has dramatically improved because of ServiceNow. They are using a platform that offers high performance and a complete overview of cases and their priorities, which is empowering them to serve customers as effectively and efficiently as possible,” explains Matthias.

“We had to give consultants access to ServiceNow two months earlier than planned because they wanted to get it as soon as possible. We witnessed a real bottom-up, employee-driven movement to make this project happen.”

Flexibility of ServiceNow will support continued evolution of Basware’s service platform
The early success of the new customer service engine powered by the Now Platform has paved the way for further projects, including the introduction of 24/5 customer chat and the integration of urgent incidents into the support manager dashboard.

“The flexibility and agility of the ServiceNow platform is driving our innovation beyond support to other services related to customers, helping us realise our vision of creating customer value beyond expectations,” concludes Matthias.