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A comprehensive lifecycle approach to ransomware defense
Ransomware continues to be a costly and growing problem. According to Infosecurity Magazine, the number of ransomware attacks grew 288% between the first and second quarters of 2021. Cybersecurity Ventures estimated a ransomware attack occurs every 11 seconds, Cybercrime Magazine reports.The resulting price tag from ransomware is truly staggering. Cybersecurity Ventures further ransomware damages could cost victims approximately $20 billion globally in 2021, and that ransomware costs would increase to $265 billion by 2031.Why ransomware defense efforts failYour technical and business managers may recognize the threat and high cost of this cybercrime, but ransomware defense strategies are too often haphazard.Many organizations continue to treat ransomware as a technology or IT matter alone, or as a business continuity or cyber compliance controls issue—instead of developing a comprehensive ransomware defense program.Ransomware is often thought of in the context of threat detection and response, but this viewpoint also comes with a host of problems. For example, security operations are often stymied by too many tools, manual processes, and limited security staff and skills.This results in a perfect environment for ransomware adversaries to circumvent controls, encrypt data, extort victims, and demand ransom payments.Countering ransomware: A 4-phase approachTo defend against ransomware, organizations like yours need to change their defense approach. The best way to ensure end-to-end cybersecurity is with a strategic, four-phase lifecycle program:
Planning: Organizations need a specific plan focused on ransomware defense. This plan must be supported at all levels and across all departments—security, IT, compliance, risk, and business management.
Prevention: Although no action will guarantee ransomware immunity, organizations can take pragmatic steps to make ransomware attacks less likely and more costly for cyber adversaries to conduct.
Incident response: You need an incident response plan that’s been tested and fine-tuned.
Continuous improvement: Once a ransomware attack is fully under control, organizations should strive for continuous improvement by taking steps, such as assessing all aspects of a ransomware event, conducting an impact analysis, and identifying an improvement plan.
Integrate security, risk, and IT technologiesRansomware defense should be managed as a closed-loop lifecycle program with each phase influenced by its predecessor and impacting its successor. Because this demands tight coordination across security, risk, and IT technologies, LIKE.TG offers a complete portfolio of IT, security, and risk management tools that spans all four phases of ransomware defense.Learn more in the Enterprise Strategy Group white paper, A prudent approach to ransomware defense.
Setting up ESG success: Experts weigh in
Organizations across the globe are recognizing the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives and what they mean for moving business forward. Many leaders have taken bold steps to advance ESG goals. Others are just beginning to dive into ESG and are considering ways to embed it into the company’s overall strategy.I spoke with business leaders on the Innovation Today podcast to get the lay of the land on why and how organizations should incorporate ESG into their overall strategy and operations to set themselves up for ESG success.Understanding where you areFar beyond meeting compliance, businesses are discovering that the effects they have on the environment, society, and risk management are good for business. According to Trish Beltran, manager of ESG advisory services at RSM, the benefits include better:
Long-term financial performance
Risk management
Employee attraction and retention
Reputation
Investment appeal
Yet ESG is complex, and companies are looking for solutions that can help achieve ESG goals. “Really, the first step is understanding where you are,” Beltran says. “That way, you have a better pulse on what is feasible for your company to do. You probably have current initiatives already, so you just need help bucketing those into the ESG categories.”
Setting actionable goalsThe key is to start in some small way by setting actionable goals. The first question companies need to ask is, “What are our current ESG priorities?” Secondly, “What strategies are we using to achieve our ESG goals?”Although some target dates are in the distant future—2030, 2035, 2040, and later—it doesn’t pay for companies to wait until the last minute to meet compliance standards, according to Carey Blunt, global head of LIKE.TG solutions at Fujitsu.“Some of these targets are quite far off,” he says. “It will be very easy to kick the can down the road and sort of forget about those things for a while because they seem like they're too far away in the future. In order to hit a goal sometime in the future, it's important to have incremental goals and targets on that journey.”He recommends companies start by setting SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Then they need to think about the data surrounding those initiatives: Is it available, and how often do they need to collect it?Achieving ESG goals starts by gathering data, according to Alexey Klimenko, CEO and co-founder of Emission Box. But the path from data to ESG action is crucial. “Having data alone doesn’t matter,” he says, “but doing something about that data is what matters. You need the right tool to see all the data in one place so you can focus on actions.”Software systems can collect data, predict outcomes, and direct efforts to help companies reach goals.Tracking progress and measuring resultsBreaking down overall ESG goals into measurable milestones allows companies to track progress through systems that collect data on a regular basis. That data provides a visual understanding of where programs and projects stand in relation to goals. As companies meet one target, they move to the next, entrenching ESG into the culture.“If they do that for one goal or two goals and start to measure the data, they iterate and then add more and more over time,” Blunt explains.No matter which ESG segment companies concentrate on, setting a firm foundation for technology solutions is critical in terms of reaching goals. Reassessing and updating digital solutions is vital for companies to measure targets and provide timely ESG updates to stakeholders.
Saurabh Dubey, managing director at Deloitte Consulting, says it’s important to get started because this is a journey. Companies should think about the goals they care about and that will help them be successful—and how they’ll track results.“The what is what they should be doing, and the how is how they enable it using a technology landscape,” Dubey says, “because what we're talking about is not a one-time transformational project you can do and be done with.”A core set of ESG values applies to every company, he explains. The E focuses on environment, maybe conserving water or carbon neutrality. The S concerns social equity, inclusion, and diversity. The G, governance, is largely focused on cybersecurity—protecting privacy and information.“Start by tracking those and automating how you track those so that you can then start focusing on things that are relevant to your business,” Dubey says. “You use your resources the right way by enabling the technology to take care of things that you already have.”Taking a proactive approachSome companies find tracking and achieving ESG goals challenging in the current macro environment. Leaders concerned with belt-tightening and budget stagnation or cuts may place ESG planning on the back burner. But investing in ESG strategies can help differentiate companies from their competition.James Patten, managing director at KPMG, believes it’s the opportune time to focus on putting processes in place to execute ESG targets. Staying in front of value preservation and creation, brand reputation and, ultimately, customer loyalty is critical to creating a competitive edge.Achieving ESG-related goals “is not going to happen overnight,” Patten says. “Prioritizing this now, even through uncertain economic times, versus pushing or delaying to later is going to help meet that stakeholder demand as well as set companies up for what we hope to be accelerated growth when the economy strengthens. So plant those seeds now to be able to accelerate when the economy does strengthen.”Find out more in our ESG partner ebook. It includes perspectives from LIKE.TG thought leaders Edua Dickerson and Maria Hart, and from our visionary partner ecosystem: Deloitte, Emission Box, Fujitsu, KPMG, RSM, and many more.
A 6-step operational excellence strategy
Digital technology investments to spur innovation continue to be a chief goal for organizations. Yet 53% of respondents in the 2023 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Survey named improving operational excellence as their top objective over the last two years. Forward-thinking business leaders understand that even in times of uncertainty, a sound operational excellence strategy is critical to maintaining competitive advantage.Operational excellence has traditionally focused on managing process and production issues to control things such as defects and downtime—from keeping factory assembly lines in operation to ensuring employees follow proper safety protocols. Today, executive decision-makers recognize the value of looking at operational excellence from a higher level, encompassing end-to-end, enterprisewide operations—everything from planning and executing IT initiatives to boosting employee productivity and satisfaction.It’s not simply about saving money. Achieving operational excellence means transforming the way organizations conduct business so they can deliver on technology investments and provide greater shareholder value, agility, and organizational resilience.It may be challenging to determine where to get started. Here are six steps toward an effective strategy.1. Create fusion teams for better agilityThe pursuit of operational excellence may require rethinking core assumptions about business models and organizational structures. Sometimes it requires dismantling once-sacred silos so IT and business teams can join forces and create new approaches to risks and opportunities.“Overdependence on IT staff for digital delivery reflects a traditional mindset, which can impede agility,” says Daniel Sanchez-Reina, an analyst and vice president at Gartner. “CIOs must embrace democratized digital delivery by design to accelerate time to value. Equipping and empowering those outside of IT—especially business technologists—to build digitalized capabilities, assets, and channels can help achieve business goals faster.”2. Unite your teams through a common languageThe reality is that business and IT don’t always speak the same language. Yet it’s powerful when an organization can bring the two together so that everyone has a shared understanding of how processes and technology align across the enterprise.One way to achieve this goal is to adopt a single, powerful platform with one data model, one architecture, and one technology and business framework to ground the organization in a common language and understanding.
3. Focus on mission-critical enterprise functionsIt's unrealistic to expect to overhaul every aspect of the enterprise to achieve operational excellence. Organizations can start by connecting and automating mission-critical enterprise functions, including:
Managing risk
Boosting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) engagement
Delivering strategic initiatives to improve performance and gain agility
4. Increase visibility into riskDespite the operational challenges all organizations faced during the pandemic, relatively few companies have workable business continuity or disaster recovery plans in place today. It’s essential to be able to manage high levels of existing risk—not to mention those on the horizon. Embedding risk management and compliance into digital workflows can provide new insights for better decision-making, support, and navigating change and external disruptions.5. Ramp up ESGA 2022 Deloitte survey found that more companies are moving from committing to ESG to taking action. In fact, 57% of executives reported they’d implemented a cross-functional ESG working group Why? Because progress on environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals also helps businesses operate more efficiently.Embedding ESG reporting, programs, and practices into core business processes across the enterprise allows IT leaders to eliminate silos and create efficiencies to help mitigate risk, control costs, and innovate.6. Connect investments to strategic outcomesIf leaders lack visibility into investments or what employees are working on, how can they know if their strategies are effective?When these things are visible, it’s possible to see how they align with strategy—and can provide confidence in the data. This enables the organization to pivot quickly in response to change. Using a single platform, with a centralized view, for an entire organization lets IT leaders see and track how strategies are performing across different methodologies.Improving operational excellence depends on business and IT speaking a common language so they can work together to pursue new opportunities. It also means connecting and automating mission-critical enterprise functions to manage risk effectively, ramp up ESG, and connect strategies to business outcomes. Organizations that take these steps will be ahead of competitors that don’t.Find out more in our Operational Excellence Handbook.Gartner Press Release, Gartner Survey of Over 2,000 CIOs Reveals the Need to Accelerate Time to Value from Digital Investments, Oct. 18, 2022GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
How data anonymization can strengthen data privacy
Data Privacy Day is an international event observed on Jan. 28 in the United States, Canada, Nigeria, Israel, and 47 European countries. It’s a time to raise awareness about data protection best practices.At LIKE.TG, one day is not enough to focus on data privacy. We prioritize protecting personally identifiable information (PII) for organizations and individuals every day of the year. One of the best ways to do that is through data anonymization.Assessing the data privacy landscapeAny compromise or breach of sensitive information can have a significant negative impact on an organization—including revenue loss, reputation damage, intellectual property loss, and large fines.PII-related data breaches are on the rise. According to the 2021 Data Breach Report, the most frequently compromised data is people’s names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and home addresses.IBM research found the global average cost of a data breach reached an all-time high of $4.35 million in 2022. Data breaches involving PII are the most common and the most expensive, costing $150,000 more than the average data breach, the research adds.Growing data breaches and privacy concerns have led governments worldwide to adopt privacy regulations, such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL).According to Gartner®, “By year-end 2024, 75% of the world’s population will have its personal data covered under modern privacy regulations.”1 Failure to comply with these privacy laws could result in steep fines, potentially costing a company up to 4% of its global revenue, according to a CNBC article.Ways to anonymize dataData anonymization offers a reliable way to protect PII. LIKE.TG Data Anonymization, introduced in the Now Platform Tokyo release, helps protect sensitive data through different preserving techniques for production and subproduction instances. It also helps organizations with regulatory compliance.Prior to anonymization, data should be classified according to its sensitivity. After that, PII can be anonymized in two ways.1. PII associated with a specific userAdministrators can choose to anonymize either all or part of the PII associated with a particular user using techniques such as selective replace (format preserving) or replace with a string. These techniques preserve other PII such as business phone or city, and data for other users is not affected.
2. Data class/columnA column containing sensitive information can be anonymized before using the data for testing or before sharing it with any third-party entity. Anonymizing a column can be scheduled as part of the clone process of a data anonymization policy. This eliminates the need to make manual changes or run a separate script in the subproduction environment.For example, all records under a credit card column can be anonymized using a customized technique that keeps the first digit and last four digits of the credit card number intact for processing requirements
Once anonymized, user data is no longer considered regulated private information, as it can’t be associated with an individual.Advancing data securityLIKE.TG Data Anonymization is a key component of LIKE.TG Vault, a set of advanced security and privacy controls that help organizations protect data, increase compliance, and boost their security posture.Privacy regulations will continue to emerge and evolve. Having and enforcing robust data privacy policies and practices can help avoid data breaches, potential lawsuits, government-imposed fines, and regulatory investigations.Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps organizations protect PII and stay compliant.1 Gartner Press Release, Gartner Identifies Top Five Trends in Privacy Through 2024, May 2022GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Prevent long IT security workdays through collaboration
From surprise zero-day vulnerabilities to new exploits surfacing in the wild, few things ruin an IT security analyst’s after-hours or vacation plans faster than having to work overtime because of a cyberattack.Here’s a glimpse into how the story usually goes at most companies:A horribly bad cybersecurity dayThe first cup of morning coffee or tea is on your desk. Your fingers are crossed that no critical, urgent incident will surface toward the end of your workday so you can make it to your spouse’s birthday dinner at 6 pm.All of a sudden at 4 pm, you get a notification about a vulnerability in software that you know is running somewhere on your network. First, you realize it has to be patched right away. Software as a service (SaaS) vulnerabilities account for 43% of all cybersecurity incidents, according to The Hacker News. A patch or configuration change could probably help you avoid most security breaches.Second, you grasp that your day is about to go haywire because your company has multiple, disconnected systems. It also lacks a way to track its device and software inventory. With an average of 40% of IT spending going to shadow IT, according to Jamf, there’s a decent chance a rogue app wouldn’t show up on any official list anyway.Because you can’t remediate what you can’t find—and you don’t know how the threat is affecting your users or critical systems—you have to pull in teams from other areas, such as risk management, IT asset management (ITAM), and IT operations management (ITOM). You’ll need their help to sift through siloed systems and track down where the application is installed.Better call your spouse. It looks like an hourslong, cross-functional firefighting event is about to get underway—and you might be late for dinner.
Could modern IT security solutions help?If this situation sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Few security teams consistently collaborate on risk reporting. Could all this chaos be avoided with better coordination? Is there a way for these separate teams to work together as one, in real time?There definitely is. Moving to modern, integrated, and automated IT security solutions housed on a single platform can bring together multiple IT workflows. That can give teams comprehensive visibility to identify, react to, and resolve issues fast, within the workday—without disrupting their evening plans.Automation to the rescueWith dashboards for automating security management, ITAM, ITOM, and other business-critical services on one platform, you can seamlessly shift your cyberthreat response from obfuscated to orchestrated. In addition to centralizing communications for all your event conversations in an instant messenger such as Microsoft Teams, imagine that you can:
See your entire IT estate: A robust configuration management database means you can search which devices are running which software, even down to the patch version.
Find software anywhere in your organization: A combination of agent-based and agentless discovery can help you monitor your network from the cloud or an endpoint device.
View devices and software together: Discovered software and purchasing data are combined and updated as assets.
Monitor for changes continuously: An AI-driven risk assessment tool constantly monitors for modifications.
Rank vulnerabilities by impact: A security operations tool collects and prioritizes vulnerability data based on potential consequences.
Manage software without intervention: Automated workflows detect, track, and trigger software patching actions for devices that connect to the network, and update asset data for their related software lifecycles.
Track risk levels in real time: With just a few mouse clicks, you can prioritize emerging threats as they evolve.
Keep key players updated: Risk analysts can stay apprised of changes and remediations on their tailored dashboards.
Leave a digital trail: The platform captures a history of every action to show data and verify the issues were managed properly for compliance audits.
Orchestrated vulnerability responseModern, connected solutions give this story a happy ending. Instead of chaotic, manual, and time-consuming processes, IT teams get an integrated, automated, single-platform approach that makes problems manageable within the workday.When risk management, ITAM, IT security, and ITOM are natively integrated and orchestrated, organizations benefit from visibility, cyberthreat remediation, and governance to reduce risk. More efficient work means less firefighting—and more time for after-hours celebrations.Find out more about managing vulnerabilities on a single platform in our ebook, Same cyberthreat, different story.
Moving the Needle on ESG Reporting
The world of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is all about moving from intent to impact while creating long-term value for businesses. Many companies are struggling to keep up with the overwhelming demands of ESG reporting, implementation, and initiatives.I recently had the pleasure of attending and speaking at two ESG-focused events: Hannover Messe and ESG Europe. Of the many topics and issues discussed, one thing was clear across the board: The highly fragmented reporting landscape in Europe and around the world is hindering progress in the ESG space.Assessing the current environmentThis shifting landscape puts pressure on the already-overtaxed small teams responsible for operationalizing ESG at scale. The European Union’s (EU’s) Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and growing recognition that ESG considerations offer both risk mitigation and value creation opportunities to companies that take it seriously over the long term are good examples.Many factors are at play: lack of a unified global standard, confusion around mandatory versus voluntary disclosure, and varying requirements at the local, national, and global levels. For multinational corporations, this becomes an even greater challenge as they struggle to meet changing requirements across borders.The introduction of the EU CSRD, on top of other confusing regulatory frameworks, is burdensome—and we haven’t even seen how localization will affect the regions.According to future-facing law firm CMS, “The reporting standards comprise 82 disclosures with phasing-in periods for several areas. There are 1,144 data points that may need to be reported on, dependent on how material they are assessed to be.”
Embracing technology for ESG efficiencyWhen ESG teams spend all their time reporting and telling the story of the past, it’s hard for even the most dedicated teams to write the future. And there’s never been a more important time to prioritize ESG. Strong ESG propositions have been linked to cost reduction, regulatory and legal interventions, productivity enhancement, investment and asset optimization, and value creation across top-line growth.Now more than ever, as we wait for harmony in the regulatory space, we need a more efficient way to showcase progress in ESG. That’s where technology comes in. Technology-enabled solutions, such as LIKE.TG ESG Management, can help ESG teams manage and measure risk and master the challenge of reporting. Tech can help overtaxed teams keep pace with the ever-changing regulatory landscape.Beyond regulations, technology can enable companies to create real solutions to climate change. It has the power to address climate change goals, carbon sequestration, and net-new energy sources—and enable just corporate transition.It also holds the power to remove friction and create greater efficiencies in these programs and reporting. Technology can help teams move from reporting on the past to achieving their missions for the future.I was struck by something Markus Müller, chief investment officer at Deutsche Bank, said: “This entire thing is about resources—environment, society, labor, policy, governance. These are indicators we need to transform our society. We have limited resources, and we'd be naive to say we are not dependent on the things we are embedded in."Everything in our world is dependent on the planet we inhabit—and we’re breaking the machine that sustains us. The first step toward creating positive change and a better future is embracing tech-enabled solutions to ease the strain of reporting and inspire others with stories about the endless possibilities.Find out how LIKE.TG helps organizations manage ESG to create value.
Australian cyber resilience: How to keep your customers from leaving
The increasing frequency and cost of hacks across industries in Australia has made cyber resilience a top priority for businesses and governments. It’s also made consumers more aware of risks to their data: The 2022 LIKE.TG customer experience (CX) survey found 64% of respondents trust organizations less than they did a year ago to keep their data secure.Cybersecurity can directly affect your bottom line. Australia’s telecommunications sector is a good example. After one of Australia’s largest firms was hacked, 10% of its customers walked away, according to news.com.au. Another 56% indicated they were considering leaving.Similarly, the LIKE.TG CX survey found 59% of Australians will stop doing business with a company if it gets hacked and loses their data. Nearly half (47%) of survey respondents view organizations keeping their personal information safe as a critical factor in good customer service.Organizations must maintain a strong security posture to keep all their digital assets and IT systems protected. Those that don’t will likely see customers take their business elsewhere.The changing cybersecurity landscapeHacks are on the rise for many reasons. The threat surface—the number of potential entry points or vulnerabilities that can be targeted—has increased as new technologies and digital business models have become more widespread. The rise of remote working, cloud computing, and the internet of things (IoT) means security measures must extend far beyond office walls.The IBM Security Cost of a Data Breach Report 2022 found a cyberattack costs an Australian business on average AU$4.29 million, with the largest expense associated with detection and escalation.1 It took 70 days on average to resolve a hack.Meanwhile, a 2022 cybersecurity study from ThoughtLab, co-sponsored by LIKE.TG, found more than 40% of businesses fear their cybersecurity efforts aren’t keeping pace with digital transformation. Remote work has only increased the risks.
3 ways leaders can prioritize cybersecurityCustomer service is uniquely vulnerable to a data breach, as it’s where most customer data flows into a business. Every employee, regardless of their role, should think about security, but good cybersecurity practices need to be a leadership priority. CX leaders should be especially alert.Here are three ways organizations can help ensure their leadership prioritizes cybersecurity:1. Create a steering committee for cybercrime, gathering stakeholders from different parts of the organization. The members of the committee can include the chief operating officer, chief information officer, general counsel, and division leaders, as well as board members.This committee should conduct planning exercises and bring together cross-functional teams to map business functions and the threat landscape.2. Think like an attacker. Make plans around likely incidents that are relevant to your sector and business. Look at what assets or teams would be most affected and how much your business, staff, and customers would be damaged if the worst happens.3. Plan your response to a hack. If it takes 70 days to resolve an attack, that’s 70 days your business won’t function properly and customers won’t be served. Practice your action plan and rehearse restoring your systems and data from backups.The customer reward from secure systemsThe recent Australian hacks have put cybersecurity front and center. They’ve also led to a mindset shift for customers. Investing in cyber resilience preserves future revenue by helping to ensure customers don’t walk if a breach happens.Breaches will become more common. Concepts such as privacy by design that build security into every stage of your products and services can be competitive differentiators.Find out how LIKE.TG helps organizations improve cyber resilience and vulnerability management while speeding response times.1 IBM Security, Cost of a Data Breach Report 2022, July 2022
Prioritizing ESG across the enterprise
The last three years have cemented environmental, social, and governance (ESG) as a business imperative. According to a LIKE.TG and ThoughtLab survey of 1,000 international business leaders, 57% report ESG is a top strategic priority for their C-suite and board. As organizations battle the many external challenges they face, prioritizing ESG efforts is a must.Simply put, ESG management helps operationalize and govern your goals across the enterprise. It’s the solution to effectively balance purpose and profit. Let’s explore four ways businesses can improve their ESG stance.A proactive approachThis macro environment is filled with risk, from climate change to supply chain issues to reputational forces that may impact a business’s license to operate. Implementing a proactive risk management strategy can help you be prepared for problems that may arise. Embedding ESG into your risk and resilience plans is crucial to stay ahead of coming challenges.Watch our ESG and climate risks and resilience webinar to get tips on turning your ESG goals into action. Jessica Pransky, principal analyst for ESG and sustainability at research firm Verdantix, sheds light on developing an effective ESG strategy.ESG and risk management integrationAt LIKE.TG, we say governance is our superpower. The best way to manage ESG risks and operationalize solutions is through integration. Organizations are under pressure from stakeholders to create a solid system of action to address the world’s most pressing challenges. Combining ESG management and risk management can help you increase transparency and build resilience without putting too much strain on your business.LIKE.TG integrated risk management (IRM) can help you stay in control of ESG and climate risks. Learn more in Gain control of your climate and ESG risks.E-waste eliminationAn often-overlooked area of ESG that’s a major problem worldwide is e-waste. Sustainability should extend to electronic assets. Organizations have a responsibility to ensure the consumption of their assets is optimized and that they’re properly disposed of.A single system of record can help you track your assets and see how your ESG initiatives in this and other areas provide long-term value. Find out more in Drive ESG outcomes with ITAM.ESG progressIncorporating ESG on a wide scale is essential for modernizing and future-proofing your organization. Since ESG spans a breadth of topics and people, addressing it through a siloed approach will not give you the results you want or need.Watch Understanding the ESG Maturity Model to find out where your organization stands in ESG maturity. You’ll also learn more about how to create a unified and integrated approach to ESG.
Mitigate cyberthreats automatically with AIOps
The majority (83%) of employees across industries want their jobs to remain hybrid, Accenture reports. Yet nearly 50% of CIOs feel their cybersecurity initiatives aren’t keeping pace with their digital transformation efforts, according to research by LIKE.TG and ThoughtLab. Neither are their cybersecurity budgets.Combining artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for IT operations (AIOps) can help.Smart automation can head off threatsWith 3.4 million unfilled security jobs worldwide, according to Fortune, perpetually understaffed IT teams are having to pick up the slack. Hybrid work and new business opportunities are increasing the demand for technology services. This leaves IT stuck trying to deliver and secure new groundbreaking applications while using the same old manual, disconnected tools and techniques.To overcome these challenges and mitigate cyberthreats, IT and security operations teams need to join efforts and apply a common, automated approach to connect workflows across the enterprise. That's what AIOps offers.AI-based automation empowers 24/7 unstaffed monitoring, real-time alerts, and actions based on defined policies and risk tolerance. Moving from manual processes to AIOps enables security and operations teams to:
Take a predictable, proactive approach to incident response
Automate responses to reduce threat vulnerability
Promote collaboration to respond to problems fast
A unified automation platform makes it possible to share data and workspaces across otherwise fragmented teams and integrate and enrich data and analytics from different tool sets. This can help improve findings, actions, and outcomes.Strategic automation can speed response timesAmong IT departments that have adopted automation to improve their operations, 47% use it to escalate security incidents, and 37% rely on it to create and route tickets, according to IDC.Strategic automation builds confidence among IT teams: 47% believe it increases efficiency across the organization, and 32% say it increases compliance, IDC adds. AIOps is a game changer for security teams, IT teams, and the entire business.Using AIOps to create end-to-end, proactive workflows across operations, security, and service management can accelerate response times by:
Automating and orchestrating processes
Assigning ownership
Tracking incident status in real time
Centralizing data and reporting
Enabling shared data and operational excellence
Helping IT come to terms with hybrid workHybrid work is here to stay. Your IT teams shouldn’t be put in the position of pitting corporate security against employee and customer satisfaction—or dreading having to support your increasingly digital business because they don’t have the tools and platform to do it efficiently.Connecting traditionally siloed IT and security operations teams and workflows across the enterprise makes it easier to thwart threats, even with fewer staff. With AIOps, you can automatically reduce risk while keeping hybrid workers happy—and IT headaches away.Find out more in our ebook: Thwart cyberthreats fast with security operations.
3 key ingredients for operational excellence
The definition of operational excellence is undergoing profound change. Instead of an enterprise consisting of multiple islands of expertise and efficiency, operational excellence now means breaking down the operational barriers to improve collaboration across departmental lines.This more holistic approach unites the complementary expertise of different teams to create a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. It delivers fresh thinking and creative solutions to many of the long-standing challenges that have kept businesses from operating at their best.In the current business climate, enterprises face challenges that span multiple teams and departments. To manage risk effectively, organizations must identify vulnerabilities, be proactive, and coordinate efforts and resources. Previously disparate teams must work together to keep the business running. Every business function must identify its contribution to customer success and its interdependencies with other teams.In other words, operational excellence now means a lot more than simply cutting costs. It requires three key ingredients:1. Achieving strategic outcomesIn an ideal world, projects and programs seamlessly align with organizational goals. But decision-makers don’t always have visibility into budgets and resources to properly gauge their impact and verify their strategic value.By increasing visibility and transparency and improving access to project data, companies can better prioritize, plan, and execute the work that best supports overall goals. Organizations can see where people are working—and how that work contributes to strategic direction. They can also gain flexibility to pivot quickly when strategy evolves.
2. Driving efficienciesGlobal business services (GBS) organizations don’t have unlimited budgets—but the demand for services keeps growing. Business leaders want the digital foundation that will help them standardize and automate service processes while keeping costs in check.By streamlining processes that cross organization boundaries, companies can deliver simpler and more consistent employee experiences, improve visibility into service budgets, and scale service delivery.3. Managing risk and resilience in real timeEvery day, the scope and severity of risk seems to grow. New technologies and business models open the door to business transformation—but they also introduce the unknown. Virtually every business on the planet witnessed the disruption that a black swan event such as a pandemic can cause.In this more volatile and unpredictable climate, business continuity and disaster recovery plans are table stakes. Today’s risk teams need wider and more accurate visibility into risk to stay on top of a quickly evolving competitive landscape.Businesses must embed risk management and compliance into their digital workflows and provide familiar user experiences that deliver efficient performance, promote resilience, and reduce third-party vendor and supply chain risk.Discover the advantages of a single, holistic platform to drive operational excellence in our Book Of Knowledge: Operating Excellence.
Survey says ESG technology drives results
Organizations worldwide are taking bold and transformative steps to achieve environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. A global LIKE.TG and ThoughtLab survey of 1,000 C-suite executives found that the vast majority (95%) of self-proclaimed ESG leaders are implementing ESG technology to drive results.“Digital technology gives companies the tools to understand their impact and help them achieve their ESG goals,” explains Edua Dickerson, LIKE.TG vice president for ESG and finance strategy, and guest editor of the Spring 2023 issue of Workflow Quarterly. “To be sure, technology isn’t enough. Success also requires strategic acumen and committed and passionate people.”
Adapting to advance ESG goalsBusiness leaders recognize that a holistic approach to ESG that includes operational and cultural objectives, as well as financial targets, offers advantages. Among those surveyed, 48% say ESG programs are a top priority with the C-suite and board. Four out of 10 leaders are working to hire and retain employees who can help them achieve ESG goals.Organizations are adapting their business models across individual areas and operations to align with those goals. The report shows that 53% are incorporating ESG into their digital transformation plans and 56% are using advanced technology to reach their targets.Short-term profits vs. long-term objectivesWhile 48% of respondents agree ESG drives better financial results in the long term, more than one-third (35%) say the current economic environment hinders their efforts. Concerns include rising interest rates and energy costs, as well as supply chain problems and geopolitical tensions.Some executive teams, feeling pressure to produce profits, are placing their ESG goals on the back burner. Nearly one-quarter (24%) report that it’s difficult to achieve both advanced ESG initiatives and shareholder expectations in the current macro environment.However, our research shows that this is a false choice. “It’s never been clearer that the right ESG strategy can help a company boost productivity, control costs, and manage risk,” Dickerson says. “In today’s unsettled economic environment, ESG champions are positioned to come out on top.”Digital technology drives ESG outcomesOne way they’re doing that is by embracing technology. While 63% of executives currently use the cloud as a tool for ESG initiatives, 74% plan to do so in the next two years. Companies are also adopting AI, advanced data management, cybersecurity technology, the internet of things (IoT), robotic process automation (RPA), and workflow automation to support their ESG efforts.
In addition to enabling transparency and reducing costs, adopting digital technology can help organizations reduce pollution, increase governance, and improve social sustainability.Technology also improves visibility. Leaders understand they can’t know where they’re going unless they know where they’ve been. Data collection to track ESG progress and results determines how initiatives and outcomes affect operations. Tracking enables decision-makers to assess effectiveness, manage risk, and inform employees and stakeholders.The leaders in our survey expect progress in ESG to yield financial, operational, and strategic benefits over the next few years. Although numerous challenges remain, ESG technology allows companies to advance their ESG commitments, linking profits and purpose.Gain more insights in the Workflow Quarterly Spring 2023 issue.
Survey: Risk-readiness leads to organizational resilience
Organizations worldwide face growing risks from rapidly changing technology, sustainability pressures, macroeconomic turmoil, and geopolitical disruptions. Risk-ready, resilient organizations can detect and respond to all these pressures more quickly, according to a global survey of 1,000 C-suite executives conducted by LIKE.TG and ThoughtLab.“In recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that building resilience against risk is a strategic investment that can help companies outperform,” says Ben De Bont, chief information security officer for LIKE.TG and guest editor of the Summer 2023 issue of Workflow Quarterly.Organizational resilience mitigates riskWith a rise in the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks, many survey respondents don’t believe they have effective systems in place to detect and respond to cyberthreats. Just under half (49%) of risk-ready organizations—those that feel prepared to address technical, operational, and strategic risks—feel secure. And only 14% of other respondents say they can detect a cyberattack.Although digital transformation can create new risks, it's also a key tool for risk mitigation. As evidence, 76% of respondents believe digital technology drives resilience. Additionally, 65% of risk-ready organizations say digitization will improve their detection of threats, as well as their ability to track risk across the enterprise.
Resilience yields rewardsIntegrating risk management offers numerous benefits, including fewer breaches and faster resolution times. That translates to positive financial results across the business.Organizations that haven’t prioritized risk-readiness take a more pessimistic view, with 27% struggling to find a balance between innovation and risk management.According to risk-ready organizations, the top three results of improved risk management are:
Greater customer satisfaction
Reduced costs
Higher profitability
Other key benefits include market share, improved employee engagement, and increased sales.The road to risk-readinessCompanies are harnessing cloud computing, AI, data management, cybersecurity technology, and the internet of things, among other technologies, to manage risk. As tech and market conditions evolve, so does risk.
Our research shows that risk-ready organizations tend to build risk-aware cultures. In fact, 59% of all CEO survey respondents agree that breaking down silos within the organization is essential to managing risk and fostering resilience, and 73% of CEOs believe technology is a key driver of resilience.Those percentages are higher for other C-suite executives, especially chief information officers and chief risk officers, who play key roles in managing organizational risk. Additionally, 76% of leaders in the survey expect to hire outside consultants and risk experts in the next two years to assess risk and optimize organizational resilience.Looking ahead, it's crucial for leaders to understand their unique business risks and put processes in place to ensure their organization’s future security.Gain more insights in the Workflow Quarterly Summer 2023 issue.
The financial upside of investing in great customer service
With today’s customers wielding more and more power, businesses need to transform their customer experience and invest in technologies that improve and speed the journey. Customer service is a critical point of contact where dollars and loyalty can be easily won or lost. Organizations today must retool customer support to resolve complex customer issues end-to-end, intelligently fix problems before customers know about them, and instantly take care of common customer requests.Providing an exceptional experience is not just a way to win the hearts and minds of customers, it’s an economic imperative critical to a company’s financial success. Standardizing on a customer service management solution can help dramatically speed issue resolution time, improve agent productivity, and ultimately impact the bottom line through repeat business and customer loyalty.Register now for a LIKE.TG webinar on June 12th, featuring a guest from Forrester, and hear details from the Total Economic Impact™ commissioned study* covering how LIKE.TG customers doubled agent productivity, achieved $7.8M in Net Present Value, realized a 12-point increase in Net Promoter Score, and more, after implementing LIKE.TG Customer Service Management solution.Check out key take-aways from the study:
* Business Value of LIKE.TG Customer Service Management, Total Economic Impact Study – Commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of LIKE.TG, April 2019.
How to Turn Raging Customers into Raving Fans
Think about the last time you contacted a company—were you calling to offer a compliment or thank the company for their excellent service? Chances are that wasn’t your motivation. More likely you called customer service to complain about something that was wrong.Customers typically pick up the phone when they need to resolve an issue. And frequently, that’s after they’ve tried to find the answer on their own with no success. Depending on how long they have spent searching, you can imagine patience may be running low by the time they call, making that engagement especially challenging.In fact, two-thirds of customers who encounter customer service problems experience feelings of rage, according to a 2017 survey by Customer Care Measurement and Consulting. Rage seems to be on the rise in other ways: Some customers will even go to “rage rooms” where they can blow off steam by demolishing breakable items, electronics, or objects of their choice.While no one can break or throw anything on a negative customer-service call, the outcome of a bad experience can be far more detrimental than broken glass. It can do serious damage to customer loyalty and brand perception if customers tell others about their experience.Staying ahead of the game with a proactive strategy for combating customer rage will help you turn customers into raving fans. Here are a few useful rules of thumb:
Be proactive. The best problem to have is one that’s already solved. Improve your customer experience by addressing issues before your customers are even aware of them. Monitor the health of customers’ products and services. Act on trend data, or real-time data from connected devices, to better anticipate needs or spot problems as they’re happening. If you find an issue and fix it before your customer even knows they have it, they’ll never need to pick up the phone.Another strategy is to take steps to anticipate customer needs so when they do reach out, you’re already a step ahead. If you sell or manufacture consumer products, you can also take stock of your onboarding content for first-time users. Is it complete? Is it easy to find on the web? Can you push it to them proactively when they buy? Proper planning ensures customers can find exactly what they need, when they need it. And that makes everyone happy.
Improve self-service outcomes. Customers prefer self-service, but only when it works. To improve outcomes, offer connected experiences to your website that manage processes end to end. Simplify routine inquiries with automation, machine learning, and virtual agents. If customers can’t find the answers they’re looking for, reduce their frustration by letting them escalate to a live agent with a simple click or tap.Intelligent workflow technology can also work in the background to open a new case, route the question to the person with the right skill set to solve the problem, create additional workflow tasks as needed, and manage tasks to completion. You can also make sure the customer feels like they’re in complete control by letting them view and respond to open cases, check service notices, or get updates on product or service status anytime, anywhere, on any device. Giving customers control positively impacts their perception of your company and brand.
Personalize, personalize, personalize. When stress is high and time is short, customers have zero patience for slogging through irrelevant information to answer questions or resolve issues. Personalized self-serve portals are a great way to make sure your customers keep their cool.Start by making it easy for them to view and track their orders, products or subscriptions, history, or account details online. Shortcut their search for answers by proactively recommending articles based on the products or services they own, how recently they were purchased, or whether those products currently have service issues. Up your game by highlighting recent community postings related to their products or areas of interest.The faster your customers find the answers they’re looking for, the happier they will be. The happier they are, the more likely they are to share that with others. In fact 72% of customers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people.
Solve the problem. Unsolved problems are one of the key reasons for customer dissatisfaction. In the same Customer Care Measurement and Consulting study, only 17 percent of the customers who experienced rage were satisfied with the actions taken to solve their most serious problems. Bouncing from one agent to another and being asked to re-explain things was a key stressor. Lack of issue resolution was the other.Modern technology can help you reduce this type of frustration dramatically by intelligently routing and categorizing cases and then tracking them to completion. You can also automate the prioritization and assignment of incoming customer service requests to quickly connect customers with the right agent to solve their problem. When further work is needed to resolve the issue, experts are engaged from across the whole organization, ensuring a positive outcome.
By applying modern customer service technology, companies can eliminate customer rage and turn every customer experience instead into one that builds raving fans. By providing end-to-end service, delivering quick and easy answers for routine issues, personalizing the delivery of timely, relevant information to your customers, and connecting them more quickly to the right agents and answers, you can ensure a seamless experience for customers that genuinely turns them into raving fans.To learn more, download The Road to Transforming the Customer Service Experience ebook, which details how to remove roadblocks and transform the customer journey into an exceptional customer experience.
Expert viewpoint: Prioritizing business continuity
Every business decision holds risk, but are companies prepared? With accelerated digitalization in the wake of the pandemic, companies must plan for a range of risk management scenarios, from operations and strategic risk to business continuity, brand, and security.To stay on top of the fast-changing risk management landscape, businesses must proactively invest in the right tools, infrastructure, and workflows to swiftly act in the course of an event. They must also educate and empower their teams to take control and make smart decisions.My colleagues explored all of this and more with risk experts on the Innovation Today podcast. Here are some ways risk management professionals are driving change for their companies and clients.Focusing on resilienceAs companies embrace modern strategies for risk and resilience, there’s been a noted change in the overall risk management discussion. Risk has become something more than one initiative or function; forward-thinking companies increasingly refer to it as “operational resilience.” It’s about encouraging people to do the right thing and to make intelligent, informed decisions—not about control, rules, and punishment.It’s also high stakes. “There’s a lot of pressure for the Institutions to make sure that they have adequate controls in place, not only for business as usual, but also [to confront] regulatory challenges,” says Dan Prior, partner at the EY consulting practice. This has produced “an environment that is very cumbersome from a control and technical debt perspective.”These sweeping changes in approach to risk must start at the top—with the CEO. The CEO has the authority and the vision to encourage a culture by which silos are broken down and collaboration and accountability across the company are encouraged.Setting a foundation for strong risk managementMelissa Cohoe, global director of security, risk, and resiliency at NewRocket, a business advisory firm and a LIKE.TG partner, has seen risk management evolve over the last decade to encompass more consistent and holistic strategies. “The organizations that are most successful are the ones that realize the results they want to achieve,” she explains.Although companies of different sizes and stages may vary in their maturity and approach to risk, one area she says every company must think about is the end result. Cohoe recommends companies ask themselves questions such as:
What is our board or senior executive team asking us to accomplish?
What results do we need to solve for?
What business problems are we specifically addressing?
Once you determine your goal, she adds, it’s important to empower your teams with the why. The more knowledgeable they are about controls and the deeper reasoning behind any new risk management protocols, the more likely the organization is to succeed. To execute, she recommends working with an experienced partner that can guide you in the right solution.Hunter Freeman, senior manager at Edgile, a cyber risk and regulatory compliance company, points to getting the company aligned as a way to begin.“It starts with having a consistent definition of risks,” he says. “We should have a good idea of what are the common risks facing the business, the assets, and then take it from there.” This requires having the discipline for consistency—to compare risks in an apples-to-apples manner, across the enterprise. “We need to be consistent about what risks we apply to what items.”Understanding risk is a journey“Risk is a journey,” Cohoe adds. “You're going to mature over time. Your potential attack surface is going to change over time...You need to be prepared to constantly examine your risk management program: How successful is it? What has changed? What's emerging that you now need to respond to?”The idea is to approach risk with a sense of malleability. Simply put, avoid strict structures and rules. Instead, lean into being flexible and open to changes as your program evolves.Every organization will have its own priorities and challenges, but one must-have, Cohoe says, is response planning. “Make sure you’re prepared so that you’ve got plans in place for business continuity and disaster recovery. Make sure you’ve got your playbooks for security incident response.”Moving fast to implement software is key to avoiding “analysis paralysis,” she adds. Change requires preparation, planning, and cultural change—the faster you can implement, the easier overcoming these hurdles will be.Investing in modern tools and frameworksResilient companies know spreadsheets no longer cut it. They place too much burden on humans to manually keep data up to date, including the tedious effort of pulling metrics and forming reports for senior leaders and boards.Like Cohoe and NewRocket, EY is seeing a transition to a more holistic approach. “A lot of what we’re seeing in our clients is this focus on not only automation and the risk and compliance space to get out of doing things on paper or spreadsheets, but a transition to technology as well as thinking about what we call a unified experience,” says Chris Lucado, a partner at EY.“We’re also seeing a lot of clients who enabled governance, risk, and compliance technology years and years ago,” adds Angie Leggett, managing director of cybersecurity services at KPMG. “These tools are very old in nature and have a lot of inaccurate and stale data. We’re seeing the need for a shift in identifying modern-day technologies that can improve productivity, reduce overall costs, and bring stakeholders together.”These modern tools and approaches include:
Humans in the loop, with care: Companies must be aware of when to expose (or not expose) humans to potential risks. Exposures may lead to a faulty sense of judgment, bias, or indecision. In parallel, technologies must “speak up” and flag risks so that the right people can jump in and address them.
Integrated risk management: “Integrated risk management is bringing together the worlds of risk and compliance,” Freeman notes. “I think in many organizations these are separate-but-related functions, but historically they've been a little more siloed. We're operating in email, we're operating in spreadsheets, and all of that kind of hinders the free flow of information between those two functions.” When those are integrated together, businesses can expand their risk conversations to broader compliance objectives, he adds.
Third-party risk management: An IBM report found that 17% of critical infrastructure breaches were due to a business partner. Third-party risk management is a must-have in every strategy. Companies must constantly ask themselves, “Who has my most sensitive information?”
AI: AI is proving beneficial in aggregating data and identifying trends and issues. It sets the foundation for fast reporting, eliminating rote, manual tasks.
Automation: Streamlining processes will be essential for companies that want to stay ahead of changing regulations. This requires tools and systems that can address regulations quickly and remediate issues as they arise.
Advanced reporting: Traditionally, risk has been reported quarterly. Yet today, leaders expect an always-on approach, with a continuous audit of data. Agility will determine the winners with new compliance and regulations. A common set of controls will also be critical in supporting risk management frameworks across the organization.
A common solution for successFor integrated risk management programs to truly take off, access to data is critical. “Where we see clients being successful is when we can get these programs operating on a common solution like LIKE.TG so that we can leverage and have all that data in one place,” Freeman notes.“The name of the game is data,” Lucado agrees. “[Companies] need to not only figure out how to harness their own risk data, but also connect that to other types of data within the organization...It’s about a breadth of capabilities,” he explains.It goes beyond the data. It’s also the ability for your team to have controls, reporting, and continuous monitoring, all in real time. This means clear insights into real-time risk vulnerabilities and the capability to update the risk rating immediately, view trends, and get proactive—before it leads to a breach.“That's really what's unique about LIKE.TG and how we're working with LIKE.TG with our clients,” Lucado continues. “It provides the risk capabilities as well as the broader platform capabilities to provide that unified experience...as well as workflow across functions.”Find out more about how LIKE.TG helps with modern approaches to integrated risk management.
Customer Workflows: Q&A with Farrell Hough
Meet the future of customer serviceManaging a large customer service operation is a complex undertaking for any company. It’s even more challenging when that effort requires juggling multiple CRM platforms. Most platforms can’t share information effectively, making it that much harder for customer service agents to provide great experiences.We asked Farrell Hough, Senior Vice president of Customer Workflow Products, to explain how the Now platform manages that complexity—and helps agents use fewer resources to provide better and faster customer experiences.There have been enterprise CRM solutions on the market for 20 years now. What’s different about LIKE.TG?The CRM market is made up of four segments: sales, commerce, marketing and service. LIKE.TG sits squarely in the service component, the fastest growing component of CRM overall. But 60% of that market is still filled with homegrown solutions. Another 20% are legacy solutions, and the remainder come from our peers in the marketplace.The large proportion of homegrown solutions means there's a lot of customer pain to solve and a lot of room for LIKE.TG customer service management to address that pain.In the service space, most CRM vendors are really only able to provide case-logging capabilities. I call that reaction management. By contrast, we bring together core capabilities like omnichannel and case management, combined with operational capabilities like service management and service operations.This creates an end-to-end experience that gets to root causes and solves customer problems.How would you describe LIKE.TG’s vision for customer service management?We tie in the operational excellence of the rest of the organization. We provide end-to-end, proactive self-service, connecting the customer service agent with the back-end operations team or the engineering team that built the product.Those teams can help the agent identify the issue and get to the root cause so we can ultimately fix the issue. Customers today have an advantage using Service Now CSM in that they can fix issues once and for all.How does the Now Platform help deliver great customer experiences?The Now Platform is unique because users get a platform with a single data model rather than having to integrate myriad data models from different platforms into their customer service workflow. That means they can take full advantage of our core capabilities: machine learning, native mobile experiences, a service catalog that drives self-service requests, a native knowledge base, and the capability to create a self-service portal.I’ll add that the Now Platform has long been known in the industry for bringing operational excellence to the IT organizations of worldwide enterprises. Customers get to leverage investments they’ve already made for additional use cases, like customer service. So, the customer is not adding another platform or point solution. Instead, this is about extending their investment to create new value through another channel.LIKE.TG is part of a broader ecosystem of IT infrastructure platforms and tools. How do we fit into that ecosystem?We tend to be one of the four or five major platforms that enterprises are investing in to support the entire organization. These platforms are built to grow and evolve alongside the enterprise.We can also add in third-party capabilities or integrate different data sources that allow customers to meet the unique requirements of their business. Our New York release has a virtual data source capability that will allow customer service agents to access external information, such as account records, that aren't native in other customer service management tools.Additionally, the integration hub in our core platform makes it easy to extend integrations to other third parties, building workflows around them with our Flow Designer application. Those platform capabilities allow us to reach out into the ecosystem and build broader solutions that work well for any of the enterprises that we support.Everyone in our industry talks about digital transformation. What’s a concrete example of a customer that has used LIKE.TG to transform customer workflows?My favorite example is Nice Software, a leading analytics software company based in Israel. Nice is part of our ecosystem and they have the same vision that we do for improving customer experiences, but they do it with telephony.Nice was handling about 70,000 customer cases a year, with 1,000 cases coming in every month that needed individual attention. They weren’t able to assign cases based on agent skills. As a result, cases would often get assigned to the wrong people.When the case finally reached an engineer with the proper skills, that engineer often hadn’t encountered the issue before and lacked access to a knowledge base to help with resolution. Consequently, it took an average of 24 days to resolve a case.Implementing LIKE.TG CSM allowed Nice to automate and accelerate case management. Within a week of implementing Service Now CSM, Nice reduced the volume of assignments by using skills-based routing. Now, required skills are identified during case creation. LIKE.TG automatically routes cases to people with the right skills and availability. By combining intuitive processes and a more engaging user interface, NICE reduced back-end case volume by 72%, saving $450,000 a year. That’s the power of the Now Platform.
How eBay built a lean, mean InfoSec machine with LIKE.TG
When you run an enterprise that serves more than 190 markets worldwide, information security (InfoSec) is of utmost importance. That’s why online marketplace eBay embarked on a multiyear journey to transform and strengthen how it manages InfoSec.eBay's transformation focused on three key areas: security incident response, vulnerability management, and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC).Reduced security incident response timesFaced with an increasingly hostile cybersecurity environment, eBay needed a way to quickly respond to and resolve a rising volume of security incidents—without radically increasing headcount. The company wanted to automate the response process and consolidate information from multiple security tools to create an efficient, unified view for its security engineers.After evaluating its options, eBay chose LIKE.TG Security Incident Response for its advanced workflow capabilities and integrations with security tools and other systems. LIKE.TG also provided the flexibility and extensibility eBay needed to address its unique security requirements.Security Incident Response automatically collects information from multiple security tools and native logs, giving security engineers a single dashboard for managing security alerts. When an engineer spots an issue with an employee account, for example, they can automatically disable the account with the click of a button rather than wasting precious time on long phone calls trying to get it disabled.The combination of unified visibility and automated remediation has reduced response times by nearly 80%, and 50% of security alerts are resolved automatically without any human intervention.
Took control of vulnerabilitiesBuoyed by its success with security incident response, eBay turned its attention to vulnerability management. As an established tech company with a track record of innovation, eBay has an extremely diverse set of technology stacks. This results in a broad range of vulnerabilities that need to be managed.eBay’s vulnerability management team had to engage in extensive email interactions with multiple infrastructure teams, including following up repeatedly to ensure vulnerabilities were addressed within rigorous service-level agreement periods. eBay saw the opportunity to streamline this process using LIKE.TG Vulnerability Response.The product automatically gathers information from eBay’s vulnerability scanners and configuration management database (CMDB) to enrich the vulnerabilities with information such as infrastructure owners.After that, Vulnerability Response groups the vulnerabilities into tasks for owners using grouping rules eBay set up. Once a vulnerability management engineer has checked a task, the product automatically raises a ticket for the owner.Since eBay uses JIRA, an application available out of the box in LIKE.TG Integration Hub, Vulnerability Response automatically creates a corresponding JIRA ticket. This gives owners a familiar mechanism to address vulnerabilities.The product then detects when the vulnerability has been remediated using data from subsequent vulnerability scans, automatically updating and closing the ticket. This automated approach has allowed eBay to scale its vulnerability management program.Collected evidence automaticallyWith a handle on security incident response and vulnerability management, eBay launched the third leg of its InfoSec journey: GRC. Faced with increasing GRC requirements due to evolving regulations and the launch of a new payment system, eBay needed a way to extend the reach of its InfoSec GRC team while reducing the burden on control owners.
The company created a user-friendly LIKE.TG portal to give end users one-click access to a comprehensive range of LIKE.TG Integrated Risk Management capabilities. These include policy management, requesting and tracking exceptions, risks, controls, and attestations.eBay quickly realized one of the key bottlenecks in its GRC processes was gathering evidence of control compliance. This caused significant work for control owners and resulted in back-and-forth communications between owners and the GRC team.To address this issue, eBay decided to automate evidence collection wherever possible, including collecting evidence within the LIKE.TG platform and from external tools such as Splunk and Qualys. Now, Integrated Risk Management automatically gathers this evidence, presenting control owners with easily digestible information they can review and attest to with a single click.To date, eBay has automated nearly 50% of its evidence collection tasks, saving significant time for control owners and ensuring the right evidence is provided to the GRC team.Continued momentumeBay continues to grow the value of its LIKE.TG InfoSec solution, working with process owners and end users to deliver enhanced capabilities that increase both security and efficiency. By bringing together Security Incident Response, Vulnerability Response, and Integrated Risk Management on a single platform, eBay benefits from synergies that span these three areas and produce results that are greater than the sum of the individual parts.The company has achieved these outcomes with a core team of just two employees and two consultants, delivering advantages that far outweigh the investment.Find out more about how LIKE.TG can help your organization boost cybersecurity resilience with security, risk, and IT working together.
LIKE.TG is a Leader in governance, risk, and compliance platforms
I’m excited to announce that LIKE.TG has been named a Leader in the Forrester Wave™: Governance, Risk, and Compliance Platforms, Q4 2023. We’re especially pleased that we were recognized with the highest rating in the strategy category of all vendors evaluated.We believe this recognition reflects our strong customer focus on delivering solutions that exceed expectations, make work easier, and help businesses innovate with confidence. This acknowledgment would not be possible without our customers, and we thank them for their continued support.Improving the user experienceAccording to the report, LIKE.TG “delivers automated GRC backed by broad AI innovation plans.” We’ve helped customers rapidly digitally transform operations to work faster, smarter, and easier. Tailored workspaces provide a role-based interface to help meet the unique needs of risk and compliance teams, while GRC activities embedded in the Employee Center simplify engagement for everyone.Based on our position in the Forrester report, LIKE.TG is a leader among top GRC vendors. The report states that LIKE.TG features “…automated metrics, intuitive dashboards, and extensive use of AI to enhance user experience and productivity.”Recent enhancements to LIKE.TG® Governance, Risk and Compliance improve users’ abilities to perform targeted risk assessments, manage policies and compliance cases, and audit engagements with integrations to Office 365. The focus is on how to use AI to improve the user experience further.Our innovation continues as our customers’ needs evolve. As noted in the report, LIKE.TG’s “superior roadmap and innovation strategies are forward looking, targeting enhancements to digital experience across all lines of business, risk process automation at scale, and AI-led operations and insights throughout the risk management lifecycle.”True enterprisewide risk and complianceOur long-term mission for GRC is to seamlessly embed risk, compliance, resilience, and sustainability into enterprisewide workflows and digital experiences to make the world work better for everyone. We’re pleased that the importance of enterprise-class solutions is gaining recognition.The Forrester report states, “LIKE.TG GRC is well known for its platform strength in workflow, automation, and integrations—affording maximum configuration and control to users to scale their GRC program. The product features strong risk monitoring and communication tools.”LIKE.TG GRC provides the breadth and depth of capabilities to address organizations’ most pressing challenges. We use the power of the LIKE.TG platform to break down organizational silos and enable:
Horizontal integration across risk and compliance teams
Deep integration into operational workflows
Engagement at all levels of the organization with familiar user experiences
Holistic integration with the organization's ecosystem to drive business performance and success
Continuous monitoring for optimal performanceThis holistic approach to risk and compliance management extends across all domains of risk at an organization, regardless of industry. LIKE.TG GRC natively integrates with other LIKE.TG products that help manage ESG, privacy, legal, business continuity, security, IT services, assets, third parties, HR, and more.The data managed in these applications and through third-party integrations is used as real-time evidence for risk protection, control effectiveness, and compliance confirmation. The connected nature of the platform provides the foundation to continuously monitor for risk and control performance across the enterprise—and events that would trigger reassessment or remediation.GRC provides the essential framework for enterprises to swiftly assess the impact on existing compliance obligations and overall risk posture as they contend with a rapidly changing and uncertain AI-led future.See for yourself what Forrester has to say about LIKE.TG GRC in the complimentary Forrester Wave™ for Governance, Risk, and Compliance 2023 report. It’s an invaluable tool for those seeking an unbiased, third‑party evaluation of vendors as risk, compliance, resilience, and sustainability become essential for business.
4 ways Australians can use AI to protect data
In the time it takes to read this blog post, one Australian individual or organization will have reported a cybercrime.The Australian Cyber Security Centre received more than 76,000 reports of crime between July 2021 and June 2022, or one every seven minutes. The average loss per report was $64,000 AUD ($42,387 USD).Globally, nearly half (46%) of chief information officers and 41% of their C-level peers are concerned their cybersecurity isn’t keeping pace with their digital transformation efforts to protect data, according to research by LIKE.TG and ThoughtLab.EY estimates those numbers are higher in Australia, noting that most companies are struggling to keep up with new security compliance obligations while digitizing their employee and customer experiences.“Leaders need to change strategically in response,” says Rohit Rao, Asia-Pacific financial services cybersecurity leader at EY. “It’s about building a cybersecurity mindset into the culture—starting in the boardroom and extending throughout the whole business.”EY’s cyber experts say AI is increasingly seen as an essential tool in organizations’ defensive arsenals. Let’s explore four ways AI can help leaders address security challenges.1. Use AI to map and minimize riskDigital transformation has scattered data across departments, legacy systems, and cloud and on-premises infrastructure. Across industries, reliance on outsourced third-party providers has increased dramatically, but accountability still rests with your organization. If you don't have visibility into your data, how can you detect an attack?
“It's not possible for large enterprises to have a 100% airtight environment 100% of the time,” Rao says. “So, the context must be: How swiftly can we identify a breach? How effective are our continuous detection and management processes?”Automating discovery and assessment of new technologies and vulnerabilities can help you maintain an accurate profile of devices and software that make up your company’s threat surface. Use consistent risk scoring to evaluate diverse systems and prioritize what to respond to.Include recommended fixes and details in communications between security and outsourced partners who implement updates. Replace uncertainty and delays with precision and continuous improvement.2. Use AI top build a single viewSiloed organizational structures often mean different departments have no understanding of what other teams are doing—delaying action and increasing risk.“We’ve entered a new era, where security requires organizational ownership,” Rao says. “It’s no longer the sole responsibility of the cyber folks. Companies that recover quickly view cyber response capabilities as whole-of-business crisis planning—not technical incident management.”Every case differs, but cross-functional understanding of information flows is key. Identify how and when to engage the board, inform employees, and reach out to customers. Organizations need to assume a breach has occurred and be ready to respond, regardless of severity.AI can help you share data and tools across teams to improve collaboration and reduce silos. Integrate and enrich data from different systems to improve the quality and relevance of each department’s decisions and actions. Automation makes it easy to gather timely and defensible evidence to satisfy C-level leaders and board governance committee members.3. Use AI to do more with lessIncreased cybersecurity spending can be a tough sell because it’s inherently a future cost-saving measure, not a revenue-increasing one. As security ownership expands across the organization, cyber teams need to partner with business owners to understand how data is being used and where duplication exists. Then they can work together to quantify risk and manage budgets holistically.
“Across industries, we see similar behavior,” Rao says. “Security hygiene factors are frequently ignored in favor of more exciting new tech, so there’s catch-up to do there. At the same time, leaders need to reset the way they view security costs. Security teams must engage with the broader business and bring them into the tent.”Employing AI can slash workloads by eliminating manual steps. Less grunt work for human analysts frees them to focus on more strategic tasks. Stretch limited resources with automation wherever possible.Heighten vigilance against threats with continuous monitoring to reveal and reduce the most critical gaps. Automation tools can collect, analyze, and present risks, progress, and trends over time to demonstrate the positive impact of investments.4. Use AI to do the legworkWith more regulations on the horizon, organizations should be thinking beyond key performance indicators and check boxes. Gathering the right data, synthesizing it, and reporting on it is a complex task. Leaders can't afford to keep growing their reporting or technology teams—or adding more tools.Rao is encouraged by an increased appetite from leaders to dig into what different obligations mean for all stakeholders. “Delivering a better digital experience inherently brings more risk to the organization,” he says. “But we’re seeing more leaders asking the right questions around protecting the interests of the general public, not just meeting the regulator’s checklist.”Powered by AI, regulatory change management systems can update frameworks used in compliance monitoring and reporting. Automated monitoring collects and reports compliance data with less effort and fewer spreadsheets.It’s inevitable that every organization will eventually fall victim to an attack or suffer a data breach. AI offers executives the ability to be proactive, improving response times, reducing recovery costs, and maintaining customer—and employee—trust.Find out how Australian firms are using AI.
Shifting customer service into high gear
When a customer contacts customer service, whatever channel they use or problem they have, they want fast answers. Most expect “now” service within 5 minutes of making contact online and say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good customer service.Companies struggle to balance providing rapid answers with the need to ensure their customer service agents are as productive as possible. While agents are at work, it is critical to maximize their time and skill sets, so they can deliver optimal service to as many customers as possible, as fast as possible. Sounds easy, right?Not so fast. Great customer service means arming agents with the right technology and ensuring they have access to the right information to help them help your customers…as quickly as possible.So how do you make your agents faster and more efficient? Let’s take a look at three opportunities to help increase the speed and efficiency of your customer service operations.Improve the equipmentFirst, take a hard look at the technology that agents use on a day to day basis. It starts with some basics. How many systems or screens is an agent required to use? If they have to refer to gt1 system or multiple screens to get to the information they need to solve a typical customer issue at hand, this is not good. Especially when customers expect the agent to be equipped with complete information, including their contact and product data to service information and history.
LIKE.TG is a Leader in third-party risk management (TPRM) platforms
I’m excited to announce that LIKE.TG has been named a Leader in the The Forrester Wave™: Third-Party Risk Management Platforms, Q1 2024.In the competitive third-party risk management (TPRM) market, technology vendors must continue to deliver innovative solutions that meet customers where they are in their maturity journey. Global regulations such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), Germany’s Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chains, and the NIS2 Directive are driving the need for an integrated risk management approach to increase operational resilience and enhance risk visibility.Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) mandates are heightening the awareness of Scope 3 emissions reporting challenges across company networks. It's no longer just the company itself that needs to be considered, but also upstream and downstream suppliers, vendors, partners, and others.Third-party risk is an integral component of a robust enterprisewide risk program to meet these growing challenges in a dynamic world. In the last few years, LIKE.TG has proven our strong commitment to helping organizations grow their TPRM programs through continual enhancements to our Third-Party Risk Management product.Connecting stakeholders across the organizationThe report by Forrester states that LIKE.TG’s “strategy builds on the success of its vast suite of products to weave third-party risk management into business priorities and connect key stakeholders across the organization around the TPRM lifecycle.”The report also notes that “LIKE.TG takes a broad view of third-party risk that encompasses all external entities, including customers.” We purposely built our product to address the unique needs of these third parties, as well as the needs of internal stakeholders across an organization.We provide a customer-branded portal with multilingual support, a robust chat feature, and other capabilities that help foster communication with third parties. We also offer workflows and internal approval processes that help drive internal collaboration.Extending workflows to drive resultsLIKE.TG received the highest possible score in the Workflow criterion in the Forrester report. To further enhance these capabilities, we recently extended the workflows in our Third-Party Risk Management product to help ensure end-to-end support across the entire TPRM lifecycle.These enhancements enable quick onboarding, due diligence assessments, renewals, and off-boarding of all types of third parties.Building a strong customer and partner ecosystemThe Forrester Wave™ report says LIKE.TG’s “strong vision is supported by an expansive partner ecosystem that has built a library of certified applications, content, and integrations available for purchase in the LIKE.TG Store and a highly engaged customer community.”We’re proud of the deep relationships we’ve developed with our customers and partners and thank them for helping us achieve this milestone for TPRM.Improving the user experienceThe report provides several key market insights. One of those is the critical aspect of user experience in any TPRM platform. “According to reference customers, ease of use influences TPRM buying decisions more than breadth of capabilities, executive support, or price,” the report states.To this end, we continue to make enhancements to Employee Center, recently enabling business users to:
Request due diligence for a new or existing third-party engagement
Respond to inherent risk assessments assigned to them
Request status updates on due diligence requests
Innovating to meet evolving needsBased on our position in the Forrester report, LIKE.TG is a leader among top TPRM vendors. But this doesn’t lessen our drive to deliver new enhancements to our Third-Party Risk Management offering. We’ll continue to innovate as organizations’ needs evolve.Read the complete complimentary Forrester report.
Customer service 2020—Are you ready?
Everywhere you look, digital transformation initiatives are taking hold across the enterprise. Customer service is no exception. Today, new digital technology options mean customers expect choice, flexibility, speed, transparency, and personalization from the companies they do business with—expectations that are only increasing.While these digital developments don’t necessarily require completely replacing customer service solutions that work, it may be a good time to reconsider your options since customer service is evolving from single-channel or nonintegrated multichannel into a dynamic platform for customer experience delivery.The upshot? Channels don’t matter. The focus is customer service effectiveness instead of efficiency.
But, what’s driving this customer service evolution? And, is your business ready?ThinkJar’s Esteban Kolsky recently spoke to customer service practitioners as part of his annual research project about the state of customer service. Read this four-part blog series to highlight trends and how you can apply valuable insights to fuel your customer service transformation.Featured in the Customer Service is Digitally Transforming – Series:Part 1 - Customer service is digitally transforming—Are you ready? (this blog post)Part 2 - Six trends driving customer servicePart 3 - The new customer-centric customer service modelPart 4 - How to translate CSM trends to business value
Customer service from A to Z: A LIKE.TG glossary for success
Expectations for customer service are changing fast—and so is the language around customer service.A growing list of acronyms and jargon has sprung up due to new technologies and the dynamic nature of customer service software. Keeping track of the new terminology can be tough. And when stakeholders don’t speak the same language, confusion and frustration follows.As a leader in digital transformation, we’ve had a firsthand look at how customer service terms and technology has evolved. Use this glossary to establish a shared language for your organization’s customer service transformation. Because when we’re all on the same page, we can have more productive conversations—and make better-informed choices throughout the buying process.Artificial intelligence (AI): AI can simulate human intelligence and do mundane or data-intensive tasks without boredom or burnout. With today’s abundance of data (and increasing customer expectations), AI is needed to achieve dramatic efficiency gains and improve customer and agent experiences.Automation: The process of converting high-touch and largely manual business processes into faster and smoother low-touch digital workflows. If you’ve handed over control of certain processes to your customer service system, you’ve already stepped into the world of automation. For customer service, examples in LIKE.TG Customer Service Management include providing a customer self-service option in a service catalog without contacting an agent, routing a customer to the agent best able to help them, and creating tasks for other departments necessary for solving the customer’s problem.Case deflection: The ability for customers to find answers to questions without contacting support. Case deflection is a key component of self-service. You can improve your case deflection rate by providing your customers with a strong knowledge base and community, along with a virtual agent (chatbot) and service catalog to automate common requests. LIKE.TG Knowledge Management provides an out‑of‑the‑box knowledgebase.Communities: The place where customers come together to connect, learn, and engage with content, experts, and one another. This is an essential feature of a self-service strategy. Specific to LIKE.TG, Communities refers to the application that facilitates customer collaboration with peers, experts, and customer service agents.Configuration management database (CMDB): The ability to build logical representations of customers’ assets, devices, infrastructure, or services, and the relationships between them. These details help to pinpoint specific issues for a customer, especially when those assets are being operationally monitored. This information can also be tied to service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure assets are being maintained or services delivered as defined.Continual improvement management (CIM): The ability to initiate and track improvements across the enterprise by aligning people, processes, and data. Enablement of the CIM application allows a company to set up roles, groups, and integration properties. Next, the company can track improvement initiatives that contain goals to measure success, along with phases with specific tasks and actions to complete the improvement.Customer service operations: The team responsible for helping a company’s customer service team be more productive, work more effectively, and deliver better service to customers through the use of new technologies. For example, in a telecommunications company, customer service operations might both identify new technologies such as AI or chatbots to reduce agent load while serving customers faster as well as monitor customers’ products and services to avoid outages.Digital workflows: Using software and other technology tools to automate underlying tasks, processes, and manual workflows. This allows humans to augment their capabilities with smart machines and shift their focus away from menial, repetitive tasks toward more creative and analytical work. Digital workflows are increasingly being adopted for automation to streamline processes across the enterprise. LIKE.TG Workflow automates multistep processes across the platform consisting of a sequence of activities within a drag-and-drop interface.Dynamic scheduling: The process of assigning tasks to field service technicians and optimizing agent schedules to accommodate new work and shifting priorities. Use it in tandem with LIKE.TG Field Service Management to manage your end-to-end activities.Gamification: Encourage customers to participate, contribute, and engage with community content by providing incentives (e.g., points, achievement levels, badges) through a system of defined rules.Geolocation: The ability for field service to track technicians, plan efficient routes between locations, and calculate accurate travel times. Learn more by exploring our Field Service Management application.Internet of things (IoT): The connection of devices to the internet and to each other for automated sending, receiving, and processing of data. As an example, a medical technology company can monitor equipment at hospitals via the internet. If service is required, notifications or alerts are sent to customer service agents, field service technicians, or operations to be addressed. The company can then send a service technician to perform maintenance before the equipment fails. With Customer Service Management, you can take advantage of IoT and Operational Intelligence (IT Operations Management) to provide real-time visibility into the operational health of customers’ products and services.Knowledge management: The ability to quickly and easily share support information in knowledge bases for agents and customers. The LIKE.TG Knowledge Management solution includes workflow and publishing tools along with service portal integration for an out-of-the-box knowledge experience for customers and agents.Machine learning: A type of AI that allows systems to learn from experience and be trained on large volumes of data to perform specific tasks. LIKE.TG Predictive Intelligence provides a layer of artificial intelligence that learns from patterns in historical data. Cases can be categorized, prioritized, and routed to the best agents to improve efficiency and increase customer satisfaction. Predictive Intelligence can also be used in an agent workspace (unified desktop for an agent) to help agents find related knowledge and community content, similar cases, or major cases reporting critical issues. This greatly shortens the time to resolution for customers.Major issue management (major case management): The ability to efficiently identify and manage critical issues and tie individual (yet related) cases to a parent major case that, when resolved, will solve child cases. The Major Issue Management feature also identifies customers who have not yet reported the issue and proactively creates cases on their behalf, helping to manage internal and customer communications until the issue is resolved.Natural language understanding (NLU): A branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that uses computer software to understand input made in the form of sentences in text or speech format. Model builders and inference services enable the system to learn and respond to human-expressed intent, understanding word meanings and contexts to infer user or system actions. LIKE.TG has added NLU to Virtual Agent functionality in its New York release.Net Promoter Score® (NPS): A measure of customer experience that predicts business growth. The gold standard for evaluating client loyalty, your measurement of NPS should be simple, customer-focused, and easy to configure and track. LIKE.TG Performance Analytics simplifies NPS trend monitoring with common KPIs.Omnichannel: A cross-channel strategy that organizations use to improve their customer experience. It provides a single source of truth for customer conversations by managing all interactions within one system, eliminating the need for agents to pivot between systems and making it easier for them to service customers. This is a step above multichannel systems, where the involved channels are typically disconnected, e.g. telephone calls are recorded in one silo, while chat transcriptions are saved in a different system.Proactive service: The ability to identify and solve a customer’s problem before they know they have one. Proactive Customer Service Operations is specifically designed to track your customers’ digital services, alerting you to service disruptions and allowing you to notify affected customers up front. Analytics can also help pinpoint trends indicating issues.Problem management: The ability to handle the full lifecycle of all problems, including information about problems, workarounds, and resolutions. Problem Management tracks problems across cases to provide valuable information, particularly for RD or engineering organizations. Using the metric of percentage of new critical problems helps reduce the number and impact of issues over time.Robotic process automation (RPA): An emerging form of business process automation technology that automates rules-based business practices by automating actions within the user interface to streamline operations and reduce costs. Although AI and robotic process automation are being used in tandem across enterprises, RPA has limitations versus using a single-agent workspace with support from digital workflows.Self-service: Allowing customers to solve their own issues through access to online information about their products and services and automating frequently made requests and tasks. LIKE.TG enables your customers to log into a Customer Service Portal, efficiently access existing information in Communities and Knowledge Management, and use automation to perform common tasks via the Service Catalog and Virtual Agent.Skill-based routing: The ability to auto-assign and route tasks to the most qualified agent based on the skills required to perform a task. As an example of a skill-based work assignment, you can configure the routing of cases from a particular country to agents who speak that country’s language.Unified desktop: A single interface that consolidates and integrates customer service applications for agents. The LIKE.TG Agent Workspace is a configurable user interface that gives agents a fully integrated, intuitive user experience.Virtual agent: Also referred to as “chatbot” or “virtual assistant,” virtual agents interface with the customer to quickly get them what they need. The LIKE.TG Virtual Agent allows organizations to design and build automated conversations to help customers quickly access information, run applications such as performance diagnostics, or process transactions such as creating or looking up a case.Visual Task Board (VTB): An interactive graphic interface that simplifies the navigation of multiple task records, lists, and forms. The LIKE.TG Visual Task Board provides a graphic-rich experience that enables the management and assignment of tasks across the enterprise and provides visibility into the status of those tasks.A common vocabulary equips customer success leaders with language for customer service transformation and gives teams with the right knowledge to navigate buying decisions.Reference this glossary when educating stakeholders and exploring ways to optimize your organization’s customer service function, and learn more about LIKE.TG® Customer Service Management from real-world success stories.Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.
Proactive customer service – How to anticipate and solve issues
Think about the people in your life that can tell what you are thinking without you saying a word, or know what you are going to do, even before you do. Those are the people that ‘get’ you. They are the ones you can rely on and turn to, time and time again.Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have connections like that with a company? I’m not saying a company is going to start finishing your sentences, but it could start anticipating your needs and taking care of issues with the products or services you are using before you even encounter them. That’s what proactive service enables. And it can change everything for customers, increasing their overall satisfaction, preference, and loyalty.What does it take to establish proactive customer service? In the webinar: “Top 5 Practices: Proactive Customer Service for Digital Services” John Ragsdale, distinguished VP of technology research for the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA), discusses what proactive customer service could mean and look like for a company.While the vision of anticipating and then delivering on a customer’s needs has always been a goal of companies everywhere, what’s been called proactive customer service for the past couple of decades was really not.It’s hard to argue companies were being proactive, when it was the customer that typically initiated the interaction and reported a problem to trigger an investigation. Once started, the speed and effectiveness of the investigation was often limited by the technology customer service agents or field service technicians had at their disposal to try to figure out what was going on. Slow, clunky connections (e.g. Telnet) to a customer’s on-premises equipment was usually all they had to run basic tests; if those tests failed, they would be forced to pull and manually analyze the customer’s log files to look for clues.When the problem was finally understood and fixed, information on the resolution remained largely in the silo of that customer’s case. If another customer called with the same problem, rather than applying the same fix, the process would start all over again. The reality is companies were being responsive, not proactive.What’s changed with the digital economyNow, John notes, the ability of companies to deliver a truly proactive customer experience is finally possible, thanks to the technology advancements that are powering the digital economy. Today, the promise of truly proactive customer service that can transform customer experiences and outcomes can finally be realized.Why? Because there is a lot more information easily accessible that can be used to understand the customer’s environment, particularly as more and more organizations move to the cloud. However, more data in and of itself doesn’t make a difference, if there is no way to make sense of it. Advances in new artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies are paving the way for real-time analysis and insights that can help organizations make connections between customer issues and identify and even predict where problems may arise.A glimpse at what proactive customer service looks likeAccording to John, these new technologies have enabled some organizations to get a jump on issues and start to anticipate what customers are going to need. These companies are monitoring customer usage of their products and services, identifying conditions that could cause an error or failure. Once detected, the company is then either auto-scheduling a repair or auto-restarting a system to apply a fix and resolve the issue. All of this is done before a customer even knows they have a problem-that’s proactive!And the benefits of this level of customer service are easy to understand. If a customer feels the company is making the ongoing operations of their product or service a priority, they are going to be more satisfied. Plus, it’s good for the business too. Uninterrupted service and operations not only keep customers happy, but also reduces unnecessary work in customer service. Taking preventative steps is generally much more cost effective than having to triage and recover from an actual problem.What’s slowed the adoption of proactive customer?Despite all the potential benefits, only 24% of support teams have a proactive support or intelligent diagnostics solution in place, according to the 2019 TSIA Support Services Tech Stack Survey. The 2019 TSIA Support Services Benchmark found that only 3% of new incidents are created automatically using embedded diagnostics.Why so low? John explains it has been extremely tough to get technologies to enable proactive customer service. Typically, organizations had to piecemeal something together, which required committing resources to build, manage, and maintain a homegrown solution. The few solutions traditionally available on the market tended to stem from technology developed for internal IT use, not remote customer use—so they too required a lot of tuning and customization.As we know, when organizations have to develop solutions that are not core to their business, they can fall by the wayside or end up not being as robust or effective as they could be.
Times are changing“Out-of-the-box” capabilities are now readily available in LIKE.TG® Customer Service Management to enable organizations to deliver more proactive customer support.As a result, support services, field services, and managed services are starting to budget and adopt these innovative technologies, as part of their efforts to transform their customer experiences.But achieving proactive customer service isn’t as easy as making a purchase and flipping a switch. There are things you need to consider and systems you need to deploy and link to be able to achieve the benefits of proactive customer service.
Great Customer Service Can Come with Great Cost Savings
Insights from the Forrester Total Economic ImpactTM Study on the Business Benefits of LIKE.TG Customer Service Management Customer service holds the key to business success. Great customer service leads to greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, which research shows leads to revenue gains and profitability increases.LIKE.TG can help companies achieve the great customer service they need to move the needle. To prove that point, LIKE.TG commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study on the potential return on investment (ROI) an enterprise may realize by standardizing on LIKE.TG Customer Service Management.To find out how companies are saving millions with LIKE.TG and creating great customer experiences, check out guest speaker Sean Owens, Principal Consultant, Total Economic Impact Practice, Forrester Consulting, who presents the study’s key findings here.Here’s a recap of some of the questions webinar listeners had for Owens:The study found $1.8 million in cost savings could be achieved by using more efficient support channels. How do you optimize value in a mixed service environment of phone, email, and web? First, you need to look at all the support channels in place at your organization and determine what each one costs. Next, you need to identify which are the most efficient for your business and which are the simplest and most convenient for your customers. Ideally, they will be one and the same. Then, you need to employ strategies that help move usage away from the most expensive channels, which is usually phone, to the ones that are the simplest to use and maintain, which is usually web.We saw the use of phones drop to 10% when customers were given alternatives they preferred; web contacts grew to 90% and email was eliminated. Contacts that migrated from phone or email to the web portal represented a savings of $2 to $5 per contact (the difference in the cost per contact between phone/email and web).While you may not have email in the mix, you might have chat and social media channels. Any changes—including a new customer service management solution that can now manage all your support channels—should help you divert traffic to more efficient channels and drive down costs per contact for each channel.Organizations can realize significant savings by standardizing on LIKE.TG Customer Service Management, but are there opportunities to save for existing customers? Even if you’re not replacing a legacy system and are a current LIKE.TG customer, there may be opportunities to achieve additional cost savings with your deployment. For example, take a look at your overall management costs. How are you tracking support? If you are using a homegrown database or other more manual processes that require staff or IT resource time, those costs may represent a potential savings opportunity.How exactly do you measure success with Net Present Value (NPV) and Return on Investment (ROI)?The short answer is that any NPV over $0 usually indicates a good (successful) investment and any ROI over 0% a positive return. The explanation of why requires a little more detail:
NPV —this takes a series of cash flow values over time and summarizes them in a single number that reflects “today’s dollars.” It assumes a dollar you earn today is worth more to you than a dollar earned in a year, because you can spend or invest it now. Similarly, a dollar spent today is more costly than a dollar you spend next year, because you can use or invest that money for an extra year.The NPV equation uses a discount rate, as a percentage, to account for how much more today’s dollar is worth than next year’s dollar. Forrester Consulting TEI projects use a 10% rate. Ultimate, an NPV of more than $0 is a positive investment. Note, any decisions on whether or not to invest in a project with a lower or higher NPV is subjective. You may need to consider additional factors, such as the size of the project, your business, and other strategic or unquantified benefits.
ROI—this is the ratio of net benefits and total costs. So, anything over 0% reflects a positive return on your investment, and higher ROIs indicate a project that will likely be more successful. There is no exact ROI value to decide whether or not to invest in a project or not — it depends on a variety of factors including the project scope, your industry, and your organization’s appetite for risk. But any ROI with three digits should be a strong contender.To learn more about how enterprises were able to reduce support costs, improve customer satisfaction and retention, and even drive support contract revenue with LIKE.TG, check out the full study or webinar.
