Ensuring regulatory compliance by centralizing and scaling help desk capacity

A leading regulatory agency engaged Censeo to develop operational strategies, standard operating procedures, reporting capabilities, and a knowledge management infrastructure for an internal help desk team that helps financial institutions comply with regulations. Censeo’s work resulted in a centralized and scalable help desk model, improved collaboration across support groups within the agency, and increased data reporting functionality to support agency leadership with strategic planning and decision making.

Situation

As part of its mission, a leading regulatory agency annually collects and publishes data from financial institutions. Previously, when financial institutions submitted inquiries about the data reporting process to the agency, staff received and triaged inquiries in silos without formal processes or mechanisms to track and inspect inquiries to ensure timely processing and quality responses. General process and operations-related inquiries were being fielded by paralegals and lawyers, which was a highly inefficient use of staff resources.

Censeo was tasked to design, build, and implement a new help desk team to centrally manage all incoming inquiries in a timely and accurate manner, document and improve internal processes, and improve reporting capabilities.

Approach

Censeo designed and launched the help desk by developing a staffing strategy, standard operating procedures, and performance management standards. The team evaluated two staffing models for the help desk and provided a recommendation to adopt a hybrid model to allow more flexibility and key considerations to cover time zones, workflow, volume flow, and efficiency. Then, they documented standard operating procedures to

• support day-to-day operations,
• build a clear understanding of processes with all stakeholders,
• ensure consistency in service levels,
• and reduce ambiguity by defining roles and responsibilities.

Finally, they developed performance management standards to ensure high quality, consistent inquiry management.

After the team launched the help desk, additional strategies were put in place to ensure peak performance:

1. Developed a knowledge management and content development plan to ensure internal training for help desk staff and external educational content is available for key stakeholders.
   The team used Agile best practices to create a new 130+ page Onboarding Training curriculum to improve knowledge retention and work performance of help desk staff. In addition, the team drafted and reviewed public education materials the agency uses to communicate information about regulatory compliance and technical data-filing support to financial institutions that need to report data to the agency.
2. Created and delivered custom analytical reports to inform key stakeholders on inquiry topic trends and challenges and track help desk performance.
   The team identified stakeholder reporting needs, assessed current reporting capabilities, and created twenty custom reports and five Salesforce dashboards that summarize Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These dashboards were used to help inform high-level staff and other key stakeholders about anticipated staffing needs, trends in inquiry topics, and potential issues related to inquiry volumes. The team also developed internal reports to measure help desk performance and support operational management.
3. Led continuous business process standardization efforts to improve data filer experiences and help desk effectiveness and efficiency.
   The team identified and resolved root causes of specific performance gaps or failure points to improve process speed, quality, and costs. They also developed a quality assurance strategy to ensure quality management of tickets handled by the help desk and a process to conduct spot checking and uncover and document challenges with ticket management, reviewing 15% of cases monthly.