INTRODUCTION
During 2020 and Covid lockdowns #1 and #2, FutureLearn has experienced a surge in users who were furloughed and had their online training/professional development sponsored by their organisations. Those learners had a need for a VAT invoice in order to get the cost of the course reimbursed by their employers.
At the time, FutureLearn platform didn't have an option for learners to download an invoice via their account. The only way to get a VAT invoice was by emailing the customer support. What used to be once a week task, became 5 x a day task for each support agent.
SITUATION
The process involved 2 departments, multiple sets of hands and a lot of back-and-forths. With the lockdown-induced surge in online learning and people being furloughed, the number of invoice requests has increased drastically and the process could take up to an hour or two of customer support agent's time every week. There were a lot of complaints, on both ends, as agents sometimes had to deprioritise such requests in order to deal with more urgent ones, and customers would then complain about not having an invoice (and some of them threatening legal action).
BEFORE
TASK
I had to come up with a short-term solution as the long-term one would mean a complete overhaul of the platform, and that was not feasible during the sudden scaling. I have set up a meeting with the stakeholders (community and Finance teams) and got the process below approved by the Tax Manager and Head of Community team.
ACTION
I've created an invoice request form for customers to fill out, which will send their details directly to the Finance department and bypass the involvement of the customer support team, therefore removing the need to act as an intermediary.
AFTER
All the submissions would be stored in the Responses sheet from where the Finance team would get the information to generate and send the invoices
RESULT
Reduced amount of time customer support agents need to spend dealing with invoice requests and higher satisfaction rate of customers who were receiving invoices quicker, as well as being able to ask the Finance team questions directly.
