Cox Automotive supports a faster, more efficient employee service experience

Cox Automotive growth provides opportunity to improve HR service delivery
A leading provider of products and services for the automotive industry, Cox Automotive has grown quickly through acquisition of many industry-leading automotive brands, including Kelly Blue Book, Autotrader, and Manheim. A subsidiary of Cox Enterprise, Cox Automotive now operates in more than 200 countries globally.

When Cox Automotive acquired AutoTrader, it immediately saw the power of ServiceNow IT Service Management, which was already in place at AutoTrader. As a result, Cox Automotive rapidly expanded its use of ServiceNow service desk capabilities across other major brands—including Manheim—replacing several legacy help desk systems.

According to Donna Woodruff, Director of Team Member Experience and Service Management, “ServiceNow delivers a great user experience, and it’s incredibly easy to stand up new services from a back-end perspective. With everything in one place, we respond more effectively to incidents, and we can measure and improve our performance.”

Cox Automotive quickly realized that ServiceNow also had huge potential beyond IT. The company operates two employee service centers in the US, serving the human resources (HR) needs of its 25,000 employees.

With ServiceNow, automation and self-service deliver better response times and enable a tiered support model
Cox Automotive chose ServiceNow HR Service Delivery to transform the way its service centers serve employees. At the time, the two service centers were buried under calls and emails and struggled to respond effectively to employees’ needs. By creating an HR self-service portal, automating processes, and movingto a tiered support model, the company would increase responsiveness and free service center call agents to handle more complex employee HR inquiries in these areas.

Using ServiceNow HR Service Delivery, Cox Automotive rolled out a complete solution in just 60 days. Michael Greenfield, Senior Business Analyst, says that, “ServiceNow gave us what we needed out of the box. We could accomplish virtually everything we wanted just through configuration, and we didn’t need experienced technical staff to get things done. We did all the work in-house with just two resources.”

Now, employees use the ServiceNow HR self-service portal to instantly access widely used HR services–everything from updating personal information to finding out how to enroll for health or 401(k) benefits. Cases are automatically routed to the right HR expert, whether they are opened through self-service or by the service center.

“We’ve made these services much more responsive and efficient, freeing our time to help employees that have unique needs,” says Donna.

Michael emphasizes the benefits, saying that, “With ServiceNow, we’ve been able to put in place a true tiered support model. Our service center agents now spend time listening to employees, rather than cutting and pasting emails and figuring out where to send cases.”

With ServiceNow Cox drives continuous service improvement
Cox Automotive also has a comprehensive set of reports and metrics that show how its processes are performing. This extends beyond the service centers, since ServiceNow also automates back-end HR processes, such as managing the biweekly payroll corrections for employees or onboarding employees.

According to Donna, “We now have real data to drive decision-making, so we can continuously enhance and optimize the way we work.”

Cox Automotive plans to further tap ServiceNow for analytics, governance, and compliance
For Cox Automotive, HR is just the start. The company sees the enormous value of service automation throughout the business–and for customers. For example, the Manheim division is investigating using ServiceNow to provide car dealerships with a catalog of auction support and other support services. Cox Automotive also plans to expand ServiceNow further in HR and IT, integrating with its existing HR systems and leveraging advanced capabilities such as performance analytics, orchestration, and governance risk and compliance.

Donna sums it up this way: “ServiceNow is a massively capable platform, and the range of applications that are available deliver instant value. We proved that with our HR initiative, and the flexible configurability makes it easy to adapt to specific business needs. We see an enormous potential going forward.”

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