A New Look at Remote Services

If you like keeping busy, BlackLine’s Global Customer Services is one place that won’t disappoint. Charged with helping BlackLine customers make the most of their implementations, the team saw customer interactions go up by 75% from February to March.

The main reason is that customers have moved to working and closing remotely, and Global Customer Services can help them do this more effectively and efficiently.

But the increase in traffic hasn’t stopped Global Customer Services VP Lee Coogan from thinking and acting proactively.

The team recently released a remote auditor package to help smooth customer changeovers to remote operations. The package includes BlackLine Task Management to support checklists and PBC reporting, along with a number of customer reports.

An important note: BlackLine is offering Task Management and Reporting free of charge until October 15, 2020, for all BlackLine customers who are not already licensing these products.

Global Customer Services has launched other initiatives to provide more support.

Weekly “coffee break” webinars and videos delve into topics like task management, reporting, risk mitigation, and reconciliation imports. Another initiative offers by-appointment, one-on-one virtual meetings with BlackLine subject matter experts to help customers as they transition to distributed, remote operations.

Coogan points out that this is just the beginning. Her team is working on other ways to help customers overcome their remote accounting challenges.

“Global Customer Services upgraded our own remote operations and extended our digital reach to customers in 2018,” she says. “So we’re well equipped to get these and other new services off the ground pretty quickly.”

Customer response has been overwhelmingly positive, says Coogan.

“We’re getting lots of comments. Customers say they appreciate the fact that we’re here and are finding plenty of ways to make ourselves available. That we’re doing all we can to accommodate them during a difficult time.

“I’m an accountant myself, and I know it’s not easy for accountants to uproot themselves from their normal office environment. That’s why we’re pledged and prepared to do all we can to help.”

Read our latest issue of BlackLine Quarterly for more stories like this, including how to Navigate This New Reality with Our Virtual Close Resources Hub.