How JIRA Service Desk Saved Customer Service at The Trade Desk

Q&A with Cprime VP Swati Jain

Cprime’s Swati Jain just returned from Barcelona, where she presented at Atlassian Summit on our JIRA Service Desk implementation for The Trade Desk, the Los Angeles-based Ad-Tech (advertising technology) firm. Swati presented at Summit with Drew West, Senior Director of Global Support at The Trade Desk.

You can watch a video of their presentation here or a recording of our recent webinar on The Trade Desk implementation here.

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Question

First, how was Barcelona?

Answer

Loved it! I think Barcelona is my new favorite European city. Not just a touristy place, it’s a city that has a technology base and a good professional presence.

Question

So, Trade Desk. How were we engaged? Did they say, “We’re in trouble, please solve our issues for us so we can move forward?”

Answer

Yes. The organization had classic scaling challenges. They knew they were going through hypergrowth, and that operationally they were not ready to scale. Their scaling issues spanned across how they serviced external clients and internal users.

They initially brought us in to help with their B-to-C challenge: how could they use JIRA Service Desk for Client Services, their customer service operations? They were using email to manage customer requests, and losing them or not resolving issues in a timely manner.

So we did a fast 120-day deployment of JIRA Service Desk, adding efficiency and collaboration to their customer service processes. Once we successfully implemented that, and it was evident in the numbers that the tool had served its value, JIRA Service Desk started selling itself internally.

Then we moved on to help with the B-to-B processes: Human Resources and onboarding/offboarding of employees, and access management. Today the JIRA Service Desk solution is touching every single employee in the organization, as well as every single department. It’s touching their Client Services operations, it’s touching their end users.

Question

Is this a long-term relationship?

A: Yes! Drew West is our internal champion. Our team that did the first implementation – for Client Services – was led by Vinesha D’Mello, who left such a good impression of Cprime that they reached back out to us the second time.

In fact, The Trade Desk made it very clear when they brought us in the second time that they’re investing in a platform for the long term, and were looking to bring in a strategic partner for long-term support. It’s been a great journey to see their team collaboration process evolve alongside the evolution of the platform. We’re there and we’ll continue to be there to continue to support their evolving needs and processes.

Question

Drew mentioned at Summit that their rockstar Client Services people couldn’t keep up with demand.

Answer

This was the B-to-C impact of hypergrowth – customers did not feel they were getting their requests processed at a rate they needed to. There’s always a difference between what the team can do, and what they’re enabled to do. So this is where, in spite of having a rockstar team, they were not equipped with the tools needed to support the organization in a manner that was most efficient.

The solution now encompasses their entire Client Services operations, all managed in JIRA Service Desk. This means their partners, their customers, their customer representatives, the account managers, the client service managers, as well as the internal fulfillment teams, are all using JIRA Service Desk. And the product management team that builds and supports the customer-facing platform, are all collaborating in the same tool.

Question

How did we help them in HR Ops?

Answer

To put it into perspective, when we started working with them there were 400 employees – they’re looking to have around 700 for their next company offsite. Clearly the need for a more streamlined onboarding process was necessary to support the fast pace of onboarding requests and HR needs.

There are a lot of touchpoints with the onboarding solution, which literally touches every single person in the company. If you think of it globally, any time an employee joins any team across the organization, they go through the onboarding process. It’s touching the HR team that’s using this system, and then it touches each of their department heads, including the IT Operations teams involved in giving access to the necessary tools and applications to each person being onboarded.

Question

Did we automate these functions using JIRA Service Desk?

Answer

Yes, we did. When we are doing any kind of process implementation, we look for Number 1: is there is a standard repeatable process or activity? And Number 2: is there anything in this process that is rules-driven?

Then we automate those things!

For Number 1, in Human Resources if we know an onboarding operation will always lead to creating a request for three different applications, we automatically create those requests as part of intaking and onboarding. Because we know those are repeatable, standard processes. Nobody has to add those requests manually.

And for Number 2, if we see that something is rules-driven, if we know a request can only go from step one to step two, like a request for access to a folder or an application that requires one or two approvals, we build that validation into the process. The workflow can move forward only when those rules have been successfully met to ensure process governance. So no manager has to necessarily audit every single request to make sure these rules were followed.

Question

How do we know this is working?

Answer

The Trade Desk diligently tracks their customer satisfaction metrics – prior to our initiative they were tracking at 60%. This means that on a 5-star scale, they were tracking at 3 stars. Pretty low for an organization that prides itself on being the leaders in their space! After we delivered JIRA Service Desk, customer satisfaction jumped to 99%, which it has maintained consistently.