improving customer support with service management integration

Service management is evolving. Modern online tools are giving people across the organization direct visibility into their service provider’s service management tools to raise tickets and synchronize change management, for example.

No longer just a one-way street, customers are increasingly integrating their service management platform with their service provider’s. This integration of internal and outsourced resources is helping ensure a better and more responsive customer support experience. This transformation is being driven by the increasing use of cloud-based service management platform ServiceNow in both enterprises and service providers.

“Integrating our service management solution, Customized Infrastructure Care,  with the customer’s service management environment enables us to provide services such as incident management and change management in a seamless manner and from end-to-end,”  explains Sue Berry, Customer Journey & Solutions, International Marketing Communications, Orange Business. “This allows us to work much more closely with the customer, both centrally and with their local IT teams.”

leading factor in service provider selection

According to research company Current Analysis, more that 75% of enterprises said that customer support was a leading factor in service provider selection. Further, over 80% of them said they would terminate their relationship with their incumbent provider if their customer support experience was poor.

Incident management is a crucial part of this support. The research from Current Analysis found that the most important elements of the trouble ticketing process are repair time, communications regarding incident status, and response. “This highlights the importance of timeliness and communications to busy IT managers,” says the analyst.

Berry agrees and says that one of the key reasons customers choose to integrate their service management platform is to have better visibility into the status of their infrastructure, including performance, any incidents under review and changes being implemented. This is especially important for local teams in global companies, because it means they no longer need to go through central IT to gain support from Orange.

“They want their local IT teams to be informed of any issues with their  infrastructure in advance of any failure,” explains Berry. With the integration they can simply log into their own service management platform to see the status of the Orange network and any incidents under investigation.

Change management is another area that can benefit from service management integration. By synchronizing the configuration management database, the customer can have a common platform and visibility into the infrastructure to understand the implications of any configuration changes. “There is a big link between change management and incident management,” explains Berry. “For example, a solution to a recurring problem with a device is often a change to its configuration.”

Ultimately service management integration helps build a partnership between service provider and customer, driving increased efficiency and improved incident resolution.  This ability to closely monitor their infrastructure gives the customer peace of mind when managing their digital transformation.

Five reasons to choose service management integration

  1. Faster incident resolution meaning less downtime
  2. Better and more timely communication about incidents
  3. Accurate data on incidents and device configuration
  4. Summary information view that is common to both sides
  5. Closer partnership between supplier and customer, thereby enabling the customer’s digital transformation

Click here to find out more about the Orange Customized Infrastructure Care (CIC) service management solution, which can include service management integration.