Company: Accela
Company Description: Accela provides a unified suite of cloud solutions trusted by governments across the globe to accelerate their digital transformation, deliver vital services, and build stronger communities. The company offers agile, purpose-built solutions and the power of a platform that provides users with a consumer-like experience, shares data across departments, and ensures world-class security.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Use of Technology in Customer Service - Computer Industries
 Nomination Title: How Accela Scaled Customer Support and Self-Service Outcomes with SearchUnify
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the nominated achievement since July 1, 2021, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- Outline the nominated achievement since July 1 2021 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 248 words used.
Enter SearchUnify, a unified cognitive search platform.
- Its out-of-the-box support for 60+ enterprise platforms helped Accela index all its disparate content repositories and integrate them seamlessly with its customer community. This created a unified discovery experience for their customers within the online community. As a result, when customers searched for help, the engine scoured all of Accela's documented knowledge to find and return every relevant answer. Support reps received the same experience in their agent console. This completely eliminated the need to switch tabs or login to separate systems to access the right content.
- SearchUnify's ML-fueled algorithms significantly improved search relevance in the online customer community. It factored in customer data such as their activity across all touchpoints and engagement patterns. This ensured every customer only saw content relevant to their profile.
- Its insights engine empowered knowledge teams to immediately identify and close content gaps, which further helped improve customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores while reducing the load on customer support teams.
- Furthermore, SearchUnify’s platform bridged the gap between multiple systems to provide a real-time, end-to-end view of the customer's self-help journey. Accela teams could now follow individual customer paths starting with search terms, to search results, content clicks, and answers read to cases submitted. This provided powerful and actionable insights that allowed Accela to dramatically improve their customers’ experiences.
- In addition, the organization refined the digital experience with smart faceting that automatically selects the best content repositories for narrowing down the search and displaying the most relevant results.
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 9 words used.
Attached Detailed Deck with Impact Numbers and Customer Testimonial.
- Briefly describe the nominated organization: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 194 words used.
Accela provides market-leading cloud-based solutions that enable governments to build thriving communities, grow businesses, and protect citizens. With over 600 jurisdictions worldwide, Accela’s products manage critical tasks efficiently and effectively.
Accela implemented a Salesforce-powered community where members sought fast, relevant information. However, there were some challenges.
- Customers and support reps had to juggle between multiple content repositories to find all available information. At times, they ended up with irrelevant or missing results due to the many content silos.
- The team knew there were gaps in their published knowledge repositories but had no way to identify all of them or understand which ones were having the biggest impact on their customers.
- The team was unable to provide a unified view of all their knowledge content and a single way to search it. Vital case-resolving content was just too hard to find.
Consequently, their support team was flooded with customer support requests. The management team wanted to reduce the load by improving the self-service experience.
All things considered, Accela was looking for an overarching solution that could not only enable users to self-serve but also provide access to all documented information from a single search point.
- Explain why the achievement you have highlighted is unique or significant. If possible compare the achievement to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the organization's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 239 words used.
With the revamped customer community, Accela witnessed:
- Nearly 63% self-service resolution, indicating that the searches yielded more valuable information to the users.
- 17% reduction in case volume with self-help automation.
- Increase in knowledge creation efforts by a massive 44%.
- 3X Jump in perfect Customer Effort Scores (CES) as compared to the previous year (2022).
- 24% reduction in complaints about self-service and documentation.
These achievements are significant and Accela’s support leaders aren’t done yet. These exceptional outcomes have allowed Accela to shift from reacting to issues to proactively addressing them. With SearchUnify’s help, Accela is well into testing a Large Language Model (LLM) based on their knowledge content and designed to further augment self-help with advanced AI capabilities. All these improvements also resulted in dramatic savings in time for each support agent. Accela used these savings to launch an enhanced training program for their support agents. The training was developed as an internal pilot program and included a series of self-paced, role-based learning paths delivered through the online community. This was highly successful, and Accela later launched this same learning environment to its customers. Customers and employees now have a library of guided training content they can take at their own pace, whenever and wherever they want. Customers will find relevant training using the same SearchUnify platform that provides access to all knowledge content. This has increased the number of customers taking training by 71% and modules completed jumped 340%.
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