Customer Story: Basware + SupportLogic

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>> Next, so let's invite, Rnot, Rnot is coming to us from all the way from

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Amsterdam and so

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he told us he's a little jet lag, hopefully not to get lag.

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>> Thanks for being here.

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>> So Rnot, Basvah is probably a new brand name in the US.

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Tell us a little bit about the companies, companies history, what are you guys

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doing?

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>> Yeah, so Basvah is an accounts payable automation solution provider.

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Now, microphones working now I guess.

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So an accounts payable solution, automation solution provider.

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We also utilize AI and machine learning to provide touchless invoicing

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solutions to our

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customers.

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We have also many customers and a few of them are very well known brands like,

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for instance,

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Heineken or Sony Music, Mercedes Benz.

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And I've been with the company for 14 years in all those years.

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I've led multiple teams in, for instance, professional services but also in

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support.

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My current role, I'm heading the support organization for the North America

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region as

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well for the APA region and our partner teams.

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>> Okay.

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Rnot, so you became a customer of support logic, I believe a year now?

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>> A year, correct, yes, we have a life a year.

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>> So tell us about your journey with support logic and more importantly, what

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drove this

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initiative for having support logic in place?

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>> My understanding is that Basswood is owned by private equity.

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>> Correct, correct.

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They need to that point indeed.

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Two years ago, we were acquired by a private equity investor, AKKR.

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And since then, we've been one of the largest AKKR portfolio companies.

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One of the good things that AKR brought us to us was the focus on our customers

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And actually in that journey, also the support organization has massively

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changed.

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We have transformed our support organization for my relative classic tier, so

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first line

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second, third line support organization into a regionalized customer centric

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support organization.

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Mind you, that was quite a big, big change for us.

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Within support organization, almost 70% of our staff actually changed the solar

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light

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manager.

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So as you can imagine, that was quite a change for us.

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>> Was the Basswood all being obviously in a subscription business or was it a

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transition

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to subscription business?

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>> Correct.

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So a Bassway itself is actually quite an old finish-based company.

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So it originated from Finland.

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We are actually next year, we're going to celebrate our fourth year's

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anniversary.

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So it's a really old company if you like.

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And in detail, obviously over the old years, we've been there with a perpetual

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licensor

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based and over the last few years, we also made a change to the SARS business.

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>> Okay.

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>> So yes, it's been a journey as well.

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>> Did that have an impact on your support operations, the public?

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>> Correct.

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Correct.

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>> Yeah, that is inevitable.

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We obviously had to focus further on the customer experience.

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And indeed, that was also something that we realized when we made the

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organizational

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change, but that wasn't good enough.

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We also needed technology change.

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So that's obviously where we started to look into AI-based technology and

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decided to implement

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support logic to help us in that journey to become more customer-centred.

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>> So I looked at their results and I was astounded by what you accomplished.

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We've been touting escalation reduction in the range of at a low end, like 15

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percentage

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to 60 percentage was else for us.

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I was amazed to see that you've reduced escalation by 80 percentage.

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So can you walk us through your results?

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>> That's an I think definitely.

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Yeah, in detail, like the results show it's been a very good journey, the

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experience for

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us working with the support logic has been very, very pleasant.

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Actually I can even state that it's been instrumental in the success of the

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support organization.

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We went live almost a year ago and when we started to measure the customer

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sentiment,

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since then for our strategic customers, we've actually saw that 72% of the

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strategic customers

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actually have improved customer sentiment.

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And we also have a segment of VMP customers, which is actually a constituent of

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a million

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plus ARR.

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In that segment, we even have 93% of them have improved more importantly

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because that's

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for many of the support organizations and important ones, the escalations.

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Obviously, as we've mentioned today as well already, the escalations are

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relatively expensive.

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And in the U.S. region, so in other words, my responsibility, there we have

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seen a reduction

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of 80% of escalations.

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That was all due to, obviously with the help of support logic, we've been able

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to implement

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a good set of rules with some processes around it to catch those escalations

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early.

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And that has proven to be very worthwhile, as you can see.

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So we always say this, right?

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And veterans in the support industry will always say this.

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It's always people processing technology, it's not just technology, it's not

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just process,

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it's not just people.

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It's a combination working in unison.

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Can you tell us about, you were telling me offline about product centric

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support versus

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customer centric support?

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Can you tell us a little bit more about it?

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Because I thought that terminology was pretty interesting.

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Yeah, indeed, indeed.

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So, like you said, we were focused on products, especially around products.

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And in our, as I said, all the decades of support that we already had, we

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wanted to

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shift that to the customer experience, the support experience.

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And as I said, the combination of technology together with a better

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organization, that

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proved to be a very powerful combination.

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And obviously that lets you already lead to success.

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And mind you, we're still on the journey.

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We don't consider that we're already on the platform, we still have a long way

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to go,

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we still have other functionality to implement.

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Yes, and obviously we're definitely going to keep on going.

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Do you have any advice for folks who want to make an impact like this?

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What would you recommend?

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Yes, I would obviously focus on obviously making your organization ready for

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this.

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And being focusing on the right metrics.

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Immediately we had, you've done homework already to get a good set of metrics

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in place.

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So we knew which metrics we want to improve and want to work on.

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Then obviously try to actually use those metrics to showcase in your

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organization.

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So basically also, you use, for instance, if you want to.

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Exactly, exactly, exactly.

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So that's really been instrumental.

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That is obviously where we want to continue to focus on.

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I'm a big believer in planting metrics internally and show the metrics every

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time you're meeting.

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And this is where we stand.

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That makes a significant difference.

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Also the support stuff happier, is it like?

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I think that's really instrumental as well.

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That people feel that they're actually achieving something.

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That they are actually improving their customer experience.

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And for that matter also helping with churn and very important.

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Yeah, we're glad to have you or not.

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Thank you so much.

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Thanks for having me.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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(applause)