MasterCard WorldWide
Company: MasterCard WorldWide, O'Fallon, MO
Company Division/Group: Customer Operations Services
Company Description: MasterCard is a technology company and payments industry leader. For more than four decades, we have been a driving force at the heart of commerce, making the global economy safer, more efficient, more inclusive and more transparent for all.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year
Nomination Title: MasterCard Worldwide's Commercial Products Support Team
Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved since the beginning of July 2011 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
The Smart Data Helpdesk (SDHD) solved many challenges in the past year.
Growing demand for the service, and the myriad customization options available within the Smart Data suite created some inconsistencies in its performance and stability. As MasterCard worked to improve all aspects of the tool, SMHD joined a cross-functional effort to improve development and support for the product.
The team scrutinized all operational processes around the product and implemented a new approach to both training and issue resolution management.
The team:
•Implemented a new help desk specific training program
•Brought second-level resources into the front line team
•Created a global footprint with teams in Singapore and Dublin
•Authored detailed definitions of service level commitments
•Clarified personal objectives for each member of the team
These efforts resulted in a 9 percent increase in the number of issues that were handled in one day and a 6 percent increase in the number of issues that were resolved within seven days, along with a 24 percent increase in volume. The average speed of resolution was reduced from 1.3 days to .2 days.
Because the majority of the team had supported the product for less than a year, the team focused heavily on training and improving communication with customers . The team worked diligently with the product trainers and business owners to understand the intricacies of the application and better understand how each user type would use the product.
To increase their proficiency with troubleshooting reported issues with the application or file delivery system, the team initiated regular meetings with development teams to gain hands-on knowledge of back-end databases.
The team reviewed the process to request changes and file delivery setups and rewrote the process to include redundancy steps intended to increase accuracy and eliminate any potential risk of mistakes. In addition, they began logging additional details to provide more data for the analytics platform that provided data-driven decisions about customer training sessions, bug fixes, and product enhancements.
The team defined new Service Level Objectives that focused on response timeframes based on issuer severity level. Also, new logging functionality was designed for the team within the MasterCard issue-tracking software, allowing the team to track and report on the team’s responsiveness to customers.
The improved processes allowed the team to expand their research and database management skills. Building these skills allowed the team to set up systems faster, which led to increased customer satisfaction.
Focusing heavily on our most active customers, the team offered a designated support specialist and a weekly report and conference call to review all open issues and inquiries. This effort helped to build trust with customers, and it helped the team to efficiently track open tickets and reinforce the operating commitments from our internal partners.
The efforts of this team have created improved support processes that have been replicated by other teams at MasterCard. It has become the ideal model for new product support, and customers are excited about selling an improved Smart Data product!
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated team:
The Smart Data Helpdesk (SDHD) supports the MasterCard Commercial Products platform, which includes the Smart Data suite of card-issuer commercial software. The MasterCard Smart Data suite delivers global, web-based reporting to help corporate clients manage rich financial data.
MasterCard Smart Data customers are issuers that co-brand the Smart Data products to sell directly to corporate clients. To assist their corporate clients with Smart Data tools, these issuers have their own helpdesks; however, those helpdesks rely on the SDHD to serve as the central point of contact for second-level support, and to drive issues through analysis and resolution.