With over A$70 billion in assets under management, AMP is one of Australia’s leading wealth management firms.

The challenge
AMP has achieved its success by adhering to a simple goal: Help people manage their financial well-being to enjoy the future they want. Serving over 2 million customers throughout Australia and New Zealand are 1,600 financial planners delivering advice and services. Providing mission-critical technical support to these planners falls to AMP’s help desk and on-site support staff. When the help desk team began taking complex support calls previously handled by the on-site support staff, the company turned to Citrix GoToAssist to improve efficiency through virtual on-site support.

The help desk team provides technical support for approximately 5,000 desktops and handles thousands of calls each month. “We help planners and their staff with installation, technical troubleshooting, functional support, and training,” explains Paul Jay, technical trainer and project manager for AMP. Recently, the help desk’s role grew even broader when it was tasked with receiving complex support calls previously handled in the field by the costly on-site support staff. In addition to reducing expenses, the transition was intended to give the on-site support staff more opportunity to consult rather than perform technical support. “It’s a lot more expensive to send someone on site than it is for us to take a call,” says Jay.

AMP needed to find a way to do more with the same resources. Now, through GoToAssist, the help desk team improves the effectiveness and quality of support by using Web-based screen sharing for complex calls. “We’re taking calls now that we could never take before,” says Jay. The AMP support staff can now troubleshoot issues in real time by taking permission-based control of the customer’s mouse and keyboard. GoToAssist has increased efficiency and produced a quick return on investment (ROI). “We can now take more calls with less staff,” boasts Jay. As a result, fewer calls are assigned to on-site staff members, giving them more time to perform higher-value consulting. “That’s a big win for the company.”

Boosts key metrics and customer satisfaction
Through GoToAssist, the company was able to improve several key metrics. “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of calls closed in one day,” says Jay. In addition, help desk representatives using GoToAssist can often avoid calling back the customer and, in some cases, completely avert a costly on-site visit. “There have been many calls and issues we couldn’t have handled without GoToAssist.” But GoToAssist provides more than a positive ROI and improved metrics, explains Jay. Because many support calls can be handled more efficiently the first time, customer satisfaction has increased dramatically. “Our planners love it.”

Provides seemless network integration and strong security
Before implementing GoToAssist, the company relied on a combination of technologies to provide remote support. But the growing complexity of networks made the solutions impractical: “The increase of routers, proxy servers and firewalls slowly made these solutions impossible to use,” Jay notes. Network complexity and firewalls simply weren’t an issue with GoToAssist because its technology is firewall friendly and works through virtually any network configuration. “GoToAssist installs by itself, saving us time and cost,” he says.

Because AMP is in the financial services industry, security is a primary concern for Jay and the IT department. “We are very sensitive to security issues,” he says. Financial planners expect protection for sensitive customer information, and they are confident that the 128-bit end-to-end Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) data encryption provided by GoToAssist protects private financial data.

Simple administration and reporting lowers TCO
The GoToAssist Management Centre provides advanced administrative, management and monitoring tools that help lower a support organisation’s total cost of ownership (TCO). For example, Jay utilises the real-time monitoring features of GoToAssist. “This is important to us,” he says. “We can ensure that we are getting the best use of the licences we have purchased.” Session logs and snapshot reports are also useful. “The reports in GoToAssist allow us to capture valuable data and give us a measure of the quality of our service.” Jay also takes advantage of an optional session recording feature for spotting training issues and documenting software issues for vendors. “Playback of session recordings is a most beneficial tool to us.”

GoToAssist complements AMP support efforts in several additional ways. “GoToAssist is now a key player in all our support initiatives,” says Jay. Most recently, the help desk team relied on GoToAssist during an email reconfiguration effort and an anti-virus software deployment to financial planners. “These would have been very costly exercises if we did not have GoToAssist,” he says. “GoToAssist more than meets our requirements,” he says. “We love it.”

For more information
Phone: 0800 42 4874
GoToAssist

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