Marsh & McLennan tell us their favourite part of the SDI awards process and their exciting plans for the future, ahead of the IT Service and Support Awards 2018!
What made you decide to enter the awards?
The Service Desk Institute is a globally recognised organisation, advocating the highest levels of performance and service within our industry. The MGTI Service Desk takes pride in providing an exceptional level of support to our business colleagues and, naturally, we are eager to share our knowledge, achievements and excellent team performance with the wider SDI community.
Our use of a multi-lingual translated Live Chat enables our diverse and talented team of IT professionals to support our global business, which is one of the reasons we believe the MGTI Service Desk is an outstanding example of a large service desk and the reason we decided to enter this year’s SDI Awards.
What part of the awards process did you enjoy the most?
We have thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, particularly the chance to come to Birmingham to present in front of the SDI judges. Not only was it an excellent opportunity to showcase what we do on the MGTI Service Desk, but also a pleasure to meet and network with some of the SDI team, introduce members of our team, and meet with the other organisations represented at this year’s awards.
It was challenging to tell you as much about us as we wanted to in a 20-minute presentation! Now that we’ve made it past the judges visit, we can’t wait for the conference and the opportunity for more networking, sharing and learning about industry trends at the event!
In the last 12 months, what has been the most successful initiative your team has implemented to help your business improve its performance?
In the last year, our most successful initiative was the implementation of our multi-lingual translated Live Chat service. We offer Live Chat support in six languages: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English. Since its implementation in 2012, Live Chat has grown to nearly 40% of all contact volume presented to the service desk, officially superseding phone as the preferred method of service desk support in 2017!
The implementation of multi-lingual translated Live Chat allows us to provide 24x7x365 service desk tier 1 support to colleagues whose native languages are French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Prior to this initiative, these colleagues could only receive support in their native language during local business hours by on-site technology teams. With this single initiative, we have increased the level of support to thousands of colleagues and continued our tradition of embracing cutting-edge technology to service Marsh and McLennan Companies at the highest level.
What are your top 3 tips to make a service desk successful?
1. Our people are our greatest asset! We believe our team members are the most important part of the Service Desk. We always focus on actively training, developing, and investing in our talent.
2. We look at the bigger picture and always put our customer experience first! We are constantly evaluating how we can deliver more value to the business. This includes empowering our customers by promoting self-service tools.
3. We use technology to its fullest! From multi-lingual translated Live Chat, to customer-facing knowledge portals, to self-help guides and FAQs, we always try to provide our colleagues with the most appropriate tools and options to find what they need saving them valuable time.
What one thing do you think really makes you stand out as a service organisation?
We are a diverse, global team of more than 100 analysts, providing support to approximately 65,000 colleagues across one hundred countries. We operate as a single team, sharing the same objectives, processes and high standards of service. A colleague calling from anywhere in the world can speak to any of our service desk analysts, no matter where the analyst is based and can expect the same support and great service. For the last four years, we have consistently achieved a 98% customer satisfaction rate, which we are extremely proud of! What better way to say how we stand out than to let our business colleagues do the talking for us…
“All of the staff at MGTI I have worked with are incredibly patient and professional and I am very happy to have them as a resource.” – Edward, New York, USA
“All of the people who have helped me at MGTI are fantastic and today was no exception. They are terrific.” – Fernando, Sao Paolo, Brazil
“Whoever is recruiting and training our service desk team, congratulations. You have a great team.” – Monique, Paris, France
“MGTI Service Desk Live Chat is very helpful in solving requests / issues at a very fast pace, which is excellent. I always prefer to go for Live Chat as it helps in resolving the issue instantly. It’s a great tool and ensures that no extra time is being wasted in solving technology issues.” – Analisa, London, UK
“The assistance that I received, at 5 a.m. was consistent with the level of service that I customarily get when I call during our normal business hours…absolutely excellent!!! The analyst expertly guided me along, providing clear instructions on what I needed to do to successfully get into the system and from the point in time at which she assumed Remote access and control of my computer system, she provided me with useful information on how I could ‘troubleshoot’ in the event that I lost connectivity later in the day. I was totally satisfied with her assistance and her manner…thank you, thank you and thank you for consistently providing THE BEST technical assistance & support service that I have ever received…have a terrific day!” – Lucy, Raleigh, USA
How are you preparing to evolve your service desk over the next few years? Please share your most exciting plan with us!
We have a strategic three-year plan to innovate and drive increased support and responsiveness using robotics and AI automation. The service desk team will focus on shifting to a “me-level support” model where colleagues will have tools and information necessary to support themselves. As part of this initiative, we are developing the next generation support portal for our colleagues, which will be a user friendly, intuitive, one-stop shop approach to technology support. We are planning the launch of our new portal in February!
Centralising our self-service portal provides a convenient and easy-to-use tool to streamline support and to increase the speed of resolution to our colleagues via a dynamic front-end portal. A knowledge base for common questions and issues will be searchable and provide step-by-step instructions, including videos and screen shots. Colleagues will also have links to live chat and other methods of contacting the MGTI Service Desk if they have trouble solving the problem themselves.
The portal will also incorporate other aspects of our technology strategy; we are looking into many additional features including artificial intelligence, offering a proactive live chat functionality where we can initiate assistance to colleagues based on dynamic rules that monitor their activities on the site.
If you could choose any celebrity to work on your service desk, who would it be?
We thought long and hard about this question. The Dalai Lama is a strong contender as he once said, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others”. This statement couldn’t be more in line with our mission statement!
We also wouldn’t mind having Tom Cruise come and work with us, as no mission would be impossible for him!
What does it mean to your team to be a finalist in the ‘Best Large Service Desk’ category?
To be a finalist in the SDI awards is a fantastic recognition of our hard work and a huge credit to our fantastic, global team! Our service desk has continued to develop and mature year-over-year and our commitment to service improvement continues to strengthen us, both as a team and as a world-class service desk. We are delighted to be recognized by a globally renowned organization like the Service Desk Institute, advocating and recognizing the highest levels of performance and service within our industry.
What advice would you give to anyone entering the awards next year?
1. Enjoy the process and have fun! Take advantage of the opportunities to network with other teams and the wider service desk community.
2. Believe in your abilities and share your success stories, no matter how small or large!
3. Involve the whole team – what could be better for boosting team morale than the recognition and exposure of the work done by your whole team!
What would you do to celebrate if your team won ‘Best Large Service Desk’?
Throughout the process we have already celebrated each SDI milestone with the analysts and this has injected a sense of pride, excitement and achievement into the team!
If we won the Best Large Service Desk award, we would take every opportunity to share this great success with our colleagues across the company, via our internal social media site, through service review meetings and company-wide communications. We would share this prestigious recognition by thanking our business colleagues for the feedback and support they constantly provide which helps us to be a premier service desk.
We would celebrate with a myriad of service desk events including analysts’ favourite activities, competitions with prize incentives, dress down days, pizza lunches and more to really make sure that every single team member can share THEIR achievement
The 2019 IT Service & Support Awards will take place on Tuesday 26 March at the Birmingham Hilton Metropole. Entries are now open – start working on your submission today for your chance to be recognised as one of the shining stars of the IT support industry.
