Our AMS services stand out, but there’s always room for improvement
SuccessDay has customer experience tested externally
Application Managed Services (AMS) of HRIT systems at SuccessDay are the antithesis of black-box-ticketing due to its unique, personalized approach. The company is now taking an extra step by entering into eXperience Level Agreements (XLAs) for ‘after go-live’ support and having these externally reviewed. In this blog we explain how an optimal customer experience is always our guiding principle, how we monitor this with the help of NTTL, and how this can lead to an even better service.
SuccessDay has disrupted the HRIT services market since its inception, says Director of Operations Juul van Dongen. “And we intend to continue to do so. Our service is fundamentally different from other HRIT partners. We focus primarily on customer experience and satisfaction. We are taking this to an even higher level by having our already strong customer relationships challenged by an external party.”
The external party is called NTTL, an independent company that focuses on work around the IT contract lifecycles between customer and supplier. “After more than 20 years of experience in procurement and contract management—in both business and (semi) public organizations—I can say that managing the optimization of business processes and IT performance is a skill. Organizations that want to do this need vision and courage from management,” says Jelle Wenselaar, Managing Partner and founder of NTTL.
Not just SLAs but also XLAs
SuccessDay hires NTTL to set up Experience Management and the XLA measurements for all AMS customers, i.e. organizations that purchase the after go-live services for HCM systems. XLA is short for eXperience Level Agreement, which refers to agreements on the total customer experience of services. This is a powerful new addition to traditional Service Level Agreements (SLAs). It builds on this concept—where the focus is mainly on technical performance—by measuring human sentiment.
Bas Eggelaar, Managing Director of SuccessDay, states that traditional SLAs often miss their target. In the past, agreements were made that a medium priority ticket had to be resolved within 8 hours. Bas never understood this. “First of all, you don’t know how long it will take to resolve something. In addition, it leads to pressure on the relationship and quality. SuccessDay took a different approach from the start. A good analysis and agreement when something needs to be resolved is much more important than agreeing on a predefined time.”
AMS manager Steven Thangathurai emphasizes that an XLA is not a legal document with conditions. “Rather, it’s a commitment in which you set goals from the end-user’s perspective, focusing on customer satisfaction and user experience. That takes it a step further than the monthly call with customers that we already schedule to evaluate the service over the past few weeks.”
Being vulnerable
SuccessDay is having the XLAs tested by an independent company as the first global AMS party for HRIT systems. Van Dongen states that the decision is in line with SuccessDay’s working method: innovative, personal—open and honest. “Daring to make yourself vulnerable and wanting to continuously improve yourself by looking critically at your own services, that’s what it’s all about.”
NTTL and SuccessDay have mapped out the customer journey map, which will soon enable SuccessDay to manage customer promises around AMS services even better. As an independent party, NTTL periodically measures customer experience with digital surveys according to the XLA® methodology developed by Giarte. The methodology complies with the Dutch Technical Agreement (NTA) 8038 and will soon also comply with the Dutch NEN 8038 and the information security standard ISO 27001.
Everybody wins
The benefits of XLA and Experience Management are threefold:
- It enables SuccessDay to better respond to customer needs and continuously improve services
- It enables customers to give better guidance to the supplier based on quantified human experiences
- SuccessDay’s consultants get to have greater and direct impact on customer satisfaction, enjoy their work and become more motivated
According to Wenselaar, independent and reliable XLA measurements lead to structured and value-based evaluation reviews between service providers and customers. This increases the impact of services and improves collaboration. “And that’s what customers expect—where ‘exceeding expectations’ is not the starting point, by the way. If you always deliver on target in terms of SLA and XLA, and show that you are actively working on improvements, you will become your customer’s preferred supplier.”
This ties in nicely with SuccessDay’s key principle of long-term partnerships. “Satisfied customers are always the starting point for us and we do that with a personal approach. By providing better insight into the customer experience, we can raise our services to an even higher level”, expects Thangathurai. He is not afraid of the results, only curious. “We distinguish ourselves by thinking along with the customer and going the extra mile. That is something we want to see reflected in the results. If not, there is some serious work to be done!”
