Adam Eric Junkroski & Jessica Veiga
The changes and challenges of these past few years have presented businesses with some serious hurdles. Growing global inflation has added new difficulties on top the Great Resignation, the pandemic and myriad other complexities dotting the landscape. For many of us, work doesn’t look anything like it did just a few short years ago: remote attendance, a dwindling talent pool, supply chain issues and more have forced an evolution (and some would say a revolution) in how business gets done. It's a complicated time for organizations to thrive.
Thriving, however, is often a matter of perspective — finding the opportunity in your challenges. Our partners' needs have evolved over these past few years, so it's vital for us to respond. The opportunity for Botkeeper was to do some self-examination and see where it is our clients need more from us. In a truly unprecedented time for business, we've taken steps to ensure we're responding to those changing needs with speed, precision, and meaning.
We aren't alone. Investing in the overall customer support model is something many organizations have been doing recently. But organizational and client habits often gum up the works, leaving Frankensteined, hybrid systems. McKinsey’s 2022 State of Customer Care Survey reported that 77 percent of respondents said their organizations have built digital support platforms — with only 10 percent reporting their platforms are fully scaled and universally in use by customers. Even more unsettling, only 12 percent of digital platforms are highly integrated. Something is getting missed.
In the end, it's a digital world. Customer care — that is, customer care done RIGHT — is an essential piece of the experience for every organization. This left our leadership asking, “How do we create a better, more personalized support experience?”
Reaching for a better overall experience
It's never fun to take a hard look at yourself, but that's what we've tried to do. From top to bottom, we've examined our client experience, the Botkeeper platform, and even our own operations. What we found left us with the conclusion that changes needed to be made if we wanted to keep our partners front and center. In response, we've executed some adjustments to help support our partners and make the Botkeeper experience even better than before.
support that's warm and fuzzy
We keep careful tabs on how we’re doing in supporting our partners. And even when we feel good about how our partners feel, we look for ways to improve. We never want to leave questions unanswered, so we’ve added support options to make it easier than ever to get them answered.
Our goal? 100% satisfaction and lightning-fast response from an array of support options suited to all tastes. We know answers need to be fast and helpful. More importantly, we know the importance of understanding where to go when you have a question.
support that looks good on you
Support isn’t one-size-fits-all — which is why Botkeeper offers various ways to engage with our support channels and resources.
Botkeeper users can access how-to guides, reference docs, and troubleshooting steps in Botkeeper's Knowledge Base. This searchable, interactive feature is packed with answers you can get to quickly, with no fuss. Users can also ask questions, find answers, and engage with our team members directly by sending an email, giving us a call (1-800-388-3323), or engaging in our SupportBot and LiveChat (coming soon) features. Or, if preferred, clients can send a support ticket. Our ticketing system is improved, streamlined, and faster than ever before. When an answer is elusive and clients prefer a direct approach, they'll find it better than ever. Plus, we’re dedicated to addressing tickets within 24 hours.
customer success, kicked up a level
We've made some fundamental changes to Botkeeper’s internal structure to maximize efficiency and simplify the Botkeeper experience. By consolidating some departments and reorganizing others, we’re aiming to decrease the number of contacts our clients work with, and create a better flow from their first day of onboarding through their active use of the Botkeeper platform:
For starters, our clients will now receive access to a dedicated Accounting Expert. Our model still has all of the power, speed, efficiency, and insight made possible by a tech-enabled human team, only now our clients also reap the benefits of a more streamlined and simplified communications workflow. The dedicated Accounting Experts will be able to draw on their intimate knowledge of and experience with our clients' specific use cases, becoming a true extension of the team. Clients will also enjoy the benefit of a dedicated Account Manager who will partner with them on strategy, coaching, quarterly reviews and more to keep things running smoothly and ensure their satisfaction.
We've also built out a Learning and Enablement team. Their focus will be on training for the platform, and offering resources to help drive firms' success. This results in far more opportunities for rich and innovative learning through hands-on, live-instructor-led experiences; the ability to opt for customized, private training; and regularly scheduled interactive group training sessions that open the door to peer learning and exchange.
This new structure delivers support that our partners have been asking for — providing more direct access to the people who help them learn, implement, and make the most of the Botkeeper platform.
An even better Botkeeper platform will make you the BOS
We've talked a lot about the Botkeeper Operating System (BOS), the next evolution of our industry-standard bookkeeping automation platform. Tested across thousands of hours, BOS is more streamlined, elegant, secure, and intuitive than ever. It's been a big success, but we saw some places it could be even better.
While most of our partners have already migrated to BOS, we’re especially proud of some enhancements that will really improve the experience overall:
AutoPush
No, we aren’t helping a dead Buick out of traffic. AutoPush is our newest technology. It automatically posts transactions from the Smart Connect bank feeds into QuickBooks Online. Using our Machine Learning models, we predict the payee and category for a transaction, employing confidence ratings that will surface low- or medium-confidence postings for review. This is a huge benefit for our partners, saving them time and improving consistency and accuracy.
Scoping Tool Enhancements
We’ve engineered a cure for the scoping blues.
The enhancements include a streamlined self-deployment interface, additional fields for managing the scope of entities, and a more robust Smart Connect which allows clients to see more details about financial institutions.
Automated Deployment Tasks
When deploying a new client on the platform, the system will now automatically request the necessary information. This gives firms' clients a faster uptime into Botkeeper, and further streamlines the deployment process.
Coming soon
There are other exciting updates to the platform coming later in 2022 or 2023, including Journal Entry Automation for loans and payroll, and native Xero integration. Botkeeper keeps getting better.
It can't all be work!
Botkeeper has always known how to have a good time, and we're bubbling up even more great content than ever before to enrich, entertain, and educate. There's always our blog — sometimes serious, sometimes irreverent, but always informative. You'll find a great selection of white papers and eBook guides in our resource library if you want more focused reading. And of course, if you don't want to read at all, we recently launched our Accounting Intelligence podcast, offering a rich variety of conversations with thought leaders, profession stalwarts and mover/shakers.
Looking ahead to 2023 and beyond
Continuous improvement is built into the Botkeeper DNA. We’re proud of the Botkeeper platform and we love what we do — but we never let success stand in the way of being even better. These changes represent just a glimpse into the evolution of the Botkeeper platform. We’ll never stop making it better, simpler, and even more functional for our partners.
We want to thank you — whether you’re a current partner of Botkeeper’s, or just here browsing — for your interest in Botkeeper, and all you do to push us to be better every day. We know the future ahead is bot.
Um —we mean bright. 😜