Malaysia’s Largest Public Pension Fund Improves the Customer Experience, Cuts Response Times in Half

When Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP) was established in 2007 under Malaysia’s Retirement Fund Act, it took over management of the country’s largest public services pension fund. The organisation’s goal? Maximize returns on investment for the people of Malaysia. That objective is a highly important one, and it’s put some big responsibilities on the shoulders of KWAP employees. In addition to paying pensions, teams are charged with managing contributions from the federal government, statutory bodies, local authorities and other agencies—and with investing in equity, fixed income securities, money market instruments and other forms of investments allowed by law.

With so many obligations and stakeholders to juggle, it’s easy to see why KWAP was in need of a robust customer experience (CX) solution.

The Challenge / Our Solution / The Results

At first, KWAP relied heavily on spreadsheets and internal systems. It didn’t take long, however, for staff to realize they had outgrown these solutions. With work occurring across multiple systems, there was no way to centralize or coordinate efforts into one cohesive workflow.

The lack of a streamlined system made progress particularly difficult when it came to case management: Employees lacked the visibility needed to track cases, and faced numerous difficulties when working to resolve issues. As the number of complaint cases continued to increase, it became clear that a new solution was needed.

So KWAP set out to find a CX solution that would encompass the full range of responsibilities that come with providing financial services and customer support to the people of Malaysia, from automating manual processes to coordinating customer support efforts. Most importantly, the agency needed to find a platform that would be easy to scale alongside future updates and changes. 

“We were in need of a robust system that encompasses all activities,” said Project Manager Muzaffar Mohammed.

The Challenge / Our Solution / The Results

When KWAP discovered SugarCRM, the team knew its search had ended. Designed with the financial services industry in mind, Sugar’s robust CX platform offered a full range of tools to streamline efforts across departments and deliver world-class customer support. Together with Elite Partner iZeno, KWAP set out to configure Sugar according to the agency’s unique goals and needs.

Specifically, KWAP uses the CX platform to: 

• Streamline the case management process. The new system has proved to be much more secure and efficient than previous methods, allowing designated team members to quickly take action when needed and ensure transactions are protected.
• Understand the customer journey. KWAP teams are now empowered with robust case management and online feedback systems. These advanced processes empower employees to deal with queries quicker, resolve problems faster and store data longer. “Multiple systems have been united into one single [system], resulting in an improved customer experience that increased the brand’s credibility and made it more popular with its customers,” said Mohammed.
• Centralize activities. Reporting has become exponentially easier with Sugar, which allowed the team to build an online portal for real-time feedback. By using a round-robin process to assign incoming cases, calls are answered and addressed quickly and expertly. This feature has “helped create closer ties between the back-end teams and user interface,” Mohammed explained. “Query teams can come to the rescue if additional info is needed…significantly improving overall efficiency.” 

In addition, important financial services such as payments and deductions are far more reliable, thanks to live dashboards and hourly data synchronizations that make it easier to profile pensioners.

The Challenge / Our Solution / The Results

When asked about the difference Sugar has made at KWAP, the team is quick to name numerous benefits.

For starters, task escalation was reduced by an astounding 74%, from nine days down to 2.34 days. What’s more, employees are able to address issues far faster. Before Sugar, it took up to 26 days to handle complaints. Complaint management now takes less than half that time, spanning an average of just 12 days.

There are many advantages in other areas, as well. For example, the nature of work at KWAP involves a lot of documentation spanning multiple departments, from files submitted at the counter to documents handled through registration. Prior to Sugar, KWAP was unable to track documents submitted at the counter. Now staff can easily track and categorize these documents accordingly. 

Even more exciting: Moving to Sugar meant KWAP was able to establish a customer service department. With features to empower frontline employees with the insights they need to fulfill and exceed customer needs, the results have been extraordinary.

“Without the query function, frontliners had no way of tracking or gaining a full understanding to help pensioners when documents were missing or not submitted,” said Mohammed. “With Sugar, particulars of the queries are available to frontline employees for visibility.” 

Sugar has become an essential tool at KWAP, and will play an increasingly important role in the months and years to come. From developing a knowledge hub to simplifying processes, the agency is continually fine-tuning and coming up with new ways to create extraordinary customer experiences for the people of Malaysia.