How Using Los Angeles Services Now Optimizes the User and Customer Experience
Beyond its role in responding to the city’s pandemic, the main driver of Los Angeles ’ServiceNow deployment is the need for better service management and for an easy-to-use platform.
“We were able to configure ServiceNow to make it easy for us to get in and get started, but also to make it easy for our customers,” said Joyce Edson, executive officer and deputy CIO of the city.
A result of ServiceNow’s frequent updates-scheduled twice a year-is an opportunity to more closely tailor services to customer needs.
“We’ve had at least six versions since the first installation,” Edson said. “I mean, when someone says, ‘It doesn’t meet our needs,’ we can quickly change that for them. The ability to address people’s concerns very quickly has helped alleviate much of the anxiety over major changes. “
The platform’s Service Catalog, a repository of organizational knowledge, provides valuable continuity, Ross said.
“Half of our department was eligible for retirement when we started implementing ServiceNow,” he said.
“In the government, the transfer of knowledge is a big problem. This system is easy to find, documents error codes with solutions, and has all the content that makes life easier for us today and for the next generation of IT workers, ”Ross added.
ServiceNow monitors IT services and asks for customer feedback, Ross said. “It allows us to be a thinking, learning organization. It improves the customer experience, increases the amount of feedback we receive and gives us better insights.”
DIVE DEEPER: A look at IT modernization priorities in state and local government.
How Did ServiceNow Change Tennessee DHS?
In 2017, the Tennessee Department of Human Services is seeking an ITSM platform to help measure and reduce personal and telephone wait times at its service centers, said Pamela Fusting, TDHS director of operations for customer experience. The main search criteria are scalability, ease of automation and workflow management, and the launch of customer-facing interfaces, he says.
“We started small with a pilot of ServiceNow’s customer service management tools, but we’ve added a lot to it since then,” Fusting said. “Having the platform in place has given us the tools to see what it can do and the ability to scale quickly. We want to build momentum along with stakeholder engagement.”
Results came quickly from the initial deployment of ServiceNow, Fusting said. The time to assign customer questions for resolution dropped from 36 hours to eight minutes when the workflow became automated. The time for solving the questions dropped by 30 percent.
Later, DHS used ServiceNow tools to create self-service kiosks statewide, leading to an 85 percent reduction in wait times, on average, for customers. By the time the pandemic required the agency to add new programs by 2020, TDHS expanded its ServiceNow deployment and was able to stand new tools on the customer portal within 72 hours, Fusting said.
The success of the ServiceNow deployment has created a deluge of projects, Fusting said. “When people start to see the benefits, they start to immediately see additional areas where technology can benefit the department. We’re moving at a very fast pace as we automate and incorporate more streams of work. “
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ServiceNow Supports Raleigh’s Technology Integration Efforts
Prior to its deployment of ServiceNow in 2016, the management of IT services for the city of Raleigh, NC, was hampered by a legacy ticketing system that was difficult to configure and did not meet the needs of all IT divisions. , said Beth Stagner, the city’s enterprise director. applications and data.
“We’re already an ITIL shop but haven’t fully embraced the framework, and we want to be all-in,” he said. “ServiceNow was built for those ITIL processes.”
The initial deployment of ServiceNow began with change management, followed by incident reporting and request fulfillment, and then quickly added the ITIL processes already established in Raleigh, as well as a self- service portal for users.
ServiceNow replaced six separate solutions for IT service management and project management scattered across city departments, freeing up nine full-time employees to be assigned to citizen services.
“We take small successes and great processes and build from there. At the same time, we also generate buy-in from users and from decision makers,” Stagner said. “We’re pushing ServiceNow into more and more processes, and it gives us, among other benefits, consistency in the end-user experience and in the data we pull from it.”