Efecte and InfoCare also collaborate in many ways across different customer bases and ecosystems. InfoCare's customers use Efecte for IT service management, or they use InfoCare as an end-user service provider and in addition, for example, Efecte's portal. Alternatively, InfoCare customers use one or the other system for IT service management but have implemented Efecte Chat for Service Management.
In 2019, the MSP (managed service provider) configuration was implemented for InfoCare. The previous service model no longer reflected to the service provided by InfoCare to its customers. Efecte’s MSP configuration increased transparency and gave InfoCare's customers direct access to Efecte's data. The change resulted in a clear improvement in customer satisfaction, which has ultimately led to a positive rush and increased collaboration.
Efecte Chat for Service Management is the first joint commercialized product between Efecte and InteliWISE, the AI technology company acquired by Efecte in 2022. Also, InfoCare customers became interested, as Efecte was now able to promise chat functionality directly from Efecte for the first time. Obviously, making all data available on the same platform and seamlessly linking service requests data.
InfoCare customers previously had other chat service connected to IT service management, but the functionality was separate. Chat was on its own platform and moving data from one platform to another was manual and time-consuming. Customers wanted to work with InfoCare to test the new Efecte chat service that would better serve their IT Service Management needs.
Now InfoCare's two large customers use Efecte Chat for Service Management as their end-user support contact channel. The new chat service has been in place for both customers since the beginning of 2023 and currently receives around 25-30 contacts per week. The total number of users of the Efecte Chat for Service Management is several thousand at InfoCare.
Efecte Chat for Service Management has enabled service requests to be tracked from the same IT service management platform, and response times for service requests have also been accelerated by several minutes.
As response times have improved, customer satisfaction has also improved. Customers have also been satisfied with the visuals of Efecte Chat for Service Management.
"Running the chat service from the IT Service Management platform has significantly accelerated our support service response time. Instead of the previous 4 minutes, we now respond in 1-2 minutes" says Teemu Mikkonen.
"The current chat solution is more visually appealing. Not just a text box where you write texts. Our agents have also been more satisfied, when before it was more difficult to handle chat messages from different platforms. Now, messages are immediately noticed on the same platform," Mikkonen continues.
The Efecte Chat for Service Management services piloted together with InfoCare were the first-ever implementations of Efecte's own chat service. They were implemented in collaboration between InfoCare, InfoCare's customers, and Efecte, where customer input was used in product development.
Customers were happy to be involved in developing a product that met their needs. Similarly, efectians gained experience in customizing the chat service.
"Very positive feelings about the collaboration. Many development ideas have been brought into the discussion and have been well taken into account," says Mikkonen.
During the implementation project, customers also came up with many good product development ideas, which are included in the current Efecte Chat for Service Management implementations. The collaboration allowed us to quickly gather feedback from customers and test the functionality of the service with them. For example, the automatic calculation of response times was introduced just a few days ago. The roll-out of the Chatbot and self-help tools is expected to follow.