Global bank automates and optimizes production support process

Client Profile

A global bank’s investment services client portal comprised of 11 sites, servicing 15+ business lines across Corporate Trust, Fund Services, and Wealth Management branches.

Business Situation

The client’s user base has grown rapidly from both organic and inorganic means. Historically, all production support inquiries initiated by employees, relationship managers, and account managers were communicated, backlogged, and actioned upon from a universal support email distribution mailbox. This distribution list was jointly owned by five product owners. This process posed multiple concerns:

On average, product owners spent 8 hours per week handling support items.
Due to leveraging an email inbox for backlog tracking, inquiry closures were often ambiguous.
Many inquiries were unresolved with limited end user / requestor responses.
Traffic metrics such as feature area(s) impacted, business lines, resolution types, and issue resolution times were not easily attained.

Our client engaged Grandview to define, establish, and roll out a formal production support process to build a more scalable platform and improve the overall client experience.

Grandview's Role - Phase I: Production Support Design & Deployment

The goal of Phase I was to identify the pain points and obtain success criteria from key stakeholders, perform cost-benefit analysis on viable solutions, and obtain consensus on a more scalable and robust solution.

Key milestones consisted of:

Reviewed and documented existing support processes and escalation channels.
Performed 15 stakeholder interviews with business line leaders, product teams members, engineering team members, and support channels to capture a 360-degree understanding of pain points and respective criteria for success.
Produced a scorecard and cost/benefit analysis on 3 support solutions with an emphasis on adhering to the bank’s compliance requirements and capital expenditures.
Produced a recommendation and roadmap and obtained stakeholder acceptance on framework design.
Performed proof of concept with 7 business line leaders on the custom build intake form paired with a ticketing system.
Automated metrics and reporting (weekly & monthly) by creating a daily, weekly, and monthly dashboard for support and product teams to leverage real-time support data.

Grandview's Role - Phase II: Action the Solution

The goal of Phase II was for Grandview’s Team to own the support queue by leveraging the solution, establishing a structured process to triage requests requiring product owners’ involvement, and enhancing feature-level documentation. Key milestones consisted of:

Closed 1,500 inquiries on the newly deployed solution.
Created a support SharePoint page, centralizing frequently asked questions, how-to guides, and business line-level procedures for relationship managers and support teams.
Established an escalation process for product owners of level two support items for defect management, enhancement request, and training opportunities.
Trained the client’s call center team to utilize the support solution and provide level-one support.

Grandview's Role - Phase III: Project extension to automate the ‘Support Story’

The goal of Phase III was to pair additional solutions such as end-user surveys and user site click traffic to the support solution to tell the ultimate support story. Key milestones consisted of:

Tracked product site and feature click traffic with Quantum Metrics & Adobe Analytics and leveraged Quantum Metric’s session replay functionality for support investigation.
Created an interactive Power BI dashboard showcasing trends and traffic from the Qualtrics end-user survey, consisting of customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, self-declared competitors, reasons for the CSAT score, and voiced enhancement opportunities.
Hosted a monthly meeting for product owners and business line leaders. Grandview’s team presented: (1) trends on CSAT Scores at a product site, business line, and client level; (2) site/feature level support traffic, (3) training opportunities, (4) recorded defects, and (5) enhancement requests.

Results

Reduced five product owners’ allocation towards support to an average of 20 minutes per week (down from 8 hours).
Delivered the production support intake form and live report monitoring tool within 4 months.
- Adhered to the bank’s compliance – ‘Need to Know Policy’
- Leveraged the bank’s enterprise tool of ServiceNow resulting in zero capital expenditures toward the solution
Sunset the support email distribution for production support requests.
Delivered real-time production support dashboards, exposing trends in traffic, training opportunities, defects, and enhancement requests.
Centralized and documented processes, procedures, and site/feature level frequently asked questions, reducing overall support traffic by roughly 30%.
Trained the client’s call center to act as the level-one support, mitigating Grandview’s key person(s) risk during phase II.
Established a feedback loop between support teams, product teams, and business line leaders.