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National Restaurant Chain Leverages ServiceNow CSM to Redefine the Employee and Customer Experience

Dotted across North America, this restaurant chain boasts over 2,000 retail locations. The company prides itself on offering more than a quick meal and has entrenched itself in the communities in which it operates, offering scholarship programs and fighting hunger and homelessness with multiple charitable campaigns. The company also carries a leading customer satisfaction score in the industry, a clear result of its renowned customer service model.

As a whole, the restaurant industry is no stranger to digital transformation. Yet customer loyalty programs, mobile apps, and order ahead options that have steadily grown in popularity over the past few years were thrown into overdrive following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The surge in demand for delivery services and contactless pickup was seized upon by companies agile enough to pivot quickly, while others struggled to keep up with shifting industry business models.

In fact, a 2020 study by Nation’s Restaurant News found that already having a robust digital infrastructure helped top-performing restaurants successfully weather the changes brought on by the pandemic by allowing them to seamlessly pivot to new models of service to better meet the needs of their customers. In a year where more than 110,000 restaurants were forced to close their doors, digital transformation has become a necessity not just for success, but for survival.

Looking to stay ahead of their enterprise-wide digital transformation goals, this retailer engaged Acorio to upgrade their CSM approach and enrich the lives of their employees, thereby enabling their team members to better serve customers.

Redefining Support with ServiceNow

Facing these new and growing demands head-on, the national restaurant chain set out to radically improve their customer experience by redefining support for their store operators. By streamlining support for their store operators and enabling self-service, the company knew they could reduce the burden on both employees and agents so that each could instead focus on providing stellar customer service.

The company’s existing customer service management (CSM) solution left them wanting more, so they partnered with the Acorio team to devise a new solution. Based on the client’s needs, we devised a solution that would serve each of the two separate groups – the organization responsible for fielding requests from store operators, and store operators themselves. The company’s most important objective was to improve CSAT for both of these groups, with the ultimate goal of making them more satisfied and effective to help customers.

Looking to set the foundation for future growth, leadership identified ServiceNow as the platform that would serve as their enterprise service management backbone. The company was already familiar with ServiceNow, using its IT Service Management (ITSM) suite. However, their existing ServiceNow environment was customized and came with a wealth of technical debt that was bound to continue growing if left unchecked.

As one of the first steps to dramatically improve their CSAT and simplify agent and employee work, the restaurant chain sought to implement a CSM solution that more closely aligned with ITIL best practices. They understood that avoiding customization and staying OOB would allow them to take advantage of upgrades to the Now platform.

Empowering Visibility and Upholding Best Practice

The restaurant chain needed a better way for store operators to report issues and communicate effectively. Their existing environment left employees and store operators in the dark as to the status of their requests – meaning a store operator waiting on a repair to a POS system would not know if their wait would last two hours or two days without following up directly with an agent.

Leadership craved the functionality that ServiceNow CSM offered to manage cases and provide visibility. In addition to shortening the time to resolution, unlocking visibility for their employees would keep them up to date as to the status of their requests and better enable them to do their jobs effectively.

For this ServiceNow CSM implementation, the restaurant chain’s objectives were:

  • Improving the customer experience for store operators by expedited case resolution and transparency of case progress and status.
  • Improving the experience for agents supporting store operators through simplification of processes and streamlining case routing to the resources needed for resolution.
  • Implementing a foundational CSM application that will be used to support future expansion with minimal maintenance
  • Moving customer service interactions from existing ITSM applications to the CSM application to streamline and consolidate business processes
  • Preserving the value and content of existing knowledge while also aligning with baseline platform capabilities

A Seamless Experience Enabled by ServiceNow CSM

Acorio partnered with this client to revamp their approach to Customer Service Management. As a result, our solution lays a new foundation for CSM, including Request Management, Customer Portal, and multiple integrations. It provides visibility into request statuses to store operators, routes them to the correct resources, and defines clear steps as to how the issue will be resolved. We’re happy to report that the solution enables employees to provide the best possible services, and ensures employees are no longer left in the dark as to the status of their requests.

 Acorio effectively established a Customer Service Portal for this client to drive CSM support inquiries through a seamless experience for store operators, with ServiceNow CSM configured to provide back-end agents the ability to better support those customers with case and knowledge management processes.

The First Step in a Long ServiceNow Journey

As a result of the project, the restaurant chain successfully migrated all core customer service processes to CSM from ITSM and is enjoying the added functionality and capabilities that their new CSM instance offers. They are eager to expand the solution beyond the two groups currently using it and are actively redesigning their processes and operational structure in order to bring additional groups onto the platform.

This organization has shown what can be achieved when you set out on your ServiceNow journey laser-focused on the resulting customer experience. They are now upholding ITIL best practices with a totally OOB CSM instance that is ready to take advantage of future ServiceNow upgrades and enables employees to do their best work.

What’s next on the horizon for them? A major expansion of the ServiceNow platform with special attention on field service management and solutions for enabling their loyalty rewards program.