Five ways tech keeps our people satisfied and supported

Nothing is too much trouble for our Global IT team—tech support is in our blood and we all love solving problems for our people across the company. But there comes a point when helping 500,000 people on an individual basis, quickly and efficiently, needs more than manpower. Of course, we still want to serve two needs—providing good quality, cost-effective technology support, and keeping employee satisfaction high at all times. But to deliver those dual demands on an enterprise scale for the long term, we realized we had to reduce the need for Service Desk support using proactive interventions, automation and self-service.

Today, our infrastructure offers streamlined, multi-channel, intuitive technology support. We have a single application technology platform, more than 95 percent of Accenture applications in the cloud, and a robust collaboration infrastructure. But getting to that point wasn’t all plain sailing. Over time, our Global IT organization has transitioned from providing traditional technician-based support, with local Service Desks in most locations, to a global support model based on proactive support, self-service and the automated resolution of issues.

Where our employees need to contact a Service Desk technician, a flexible choice of contact channels is available. A highly skilled “Level 2” team works using remote tools to resolve traditional “deskside” support issues, with only those issues needing a physical touch to the PC going to deskside support teams.

We’ve baked in a self-service culture. With a “shift left” strategy throughout the support model, issues are resolved early in the support chain—fewer than five percent of issues need deskside support. Satisfaction is consistently high across all channels reflecting the importance of focusing on the employee experience throughout the journey.

It’s a team effort, too. Our global IT organization collaborates with Accenture business stakeholders to set a cohesive employee technology support vision and strategy that underpins all initiatives. The focus is on providing one place to go for accessible, cost-effective and innovative end-to-end support services that minimize the impact of incidents on employee productivity.

Five support pillars

To make this happen, our global IT Technology Support organization focuses on five strategic areas:

1. Proactive support: Wherever possible, we prevent employees’ technology challenges, either by proactively managing and resolving issues or encouraging employees to learn more about their day-to-day tools. Our “Know How with CIO” virtual IT learning offers a range of ways to find out more about the tools and technology Accenture people use every day.
2. Digital self-enablement: A self-service portal built on ServiceNow, is a single entry point for solutions, training and support for Accenture technology, applications and collaboration tools. We’ve extended that support experience to a mobile Accenture Support app, also built on ServiceNow.
3. Automation at the global Service Desk: More than 200 support agents across eight global locations provide multi-language support 24x7x365, with industry-leading service level agreements (SLAs) across all channels. We also automate using chatbots, an e-mail advisor that converts text into tickets, LogMeIn remote control tool and a multilingual webchat tool.
4. Assisted support: Remote support capabilities can resolve issues anywhere, anytime, keeping Accenture people productive at client sites, in their homes, or in other locations, without the need for an in-person visit. Today, remote resolution solves 75 percent of the PC software issues that would previously have been resolved by onshore local teams.
5. Employee-centric: The employee experience is simple and intuitive and includes a choice of ways to interact with the support organization. Recognizing the surge in social media usage, Service Desk agents offer support via Accenture’s social media platform, the Stream, where employees can also help each other through crowdsourcing support.

People first

The technology support strategy is designed with Accenture people at its center, with the specific intent of making resolving an IT issue as simple as possible. Our approach means that Accenture people can work efficiently and collaboratively—without being interrupted by technology issues.

And we’ve seen the number of incidents per employee reduce which has also lowered our cost to serve. Cost-effectiveness has steadily improved as the Global IT team has implemented our strategy.

We won’t stop here—we’re always going to look at how we can reduce support incidents further, whether through active education, self-service channels or automation. In this way, we’re working “on our best day” every day, resolving tech issues and supporting Accenture people, simply and quickly.