“I knew we only had one chance at launching a new service desk. If the rollout created a negative impression we knew we would lose them.”
– Jennifer Miller, Performance Excellence Manager
When you serve 113,000 students and 18,000 employees and take 4,000 tickets per month, who do you turn to for support? Cypress Fairbanks ISD deployed educational help desk software from iSupport.
After using a product from another well-established vendor for many years, the school district felt they needed to find another help desk solution. The product they used was very cumbersome to manage, create reports, and make changes to. Simply altering or adding a process required the entire system to be brought down, which was a big service disruption. Being that their new CIO was very results-oriented, they wanted a product that they could use to quickly map out new processes and clearly measure the results. Another important factor was being able to meet their service level agreements. “If a teacher has a problem with a computer of course they want it fixed, but any time they spend working on a technical issue is time taken away from focusing on serving their students,” said Jennifer Miller, Technology Services Help Desk Manager. “We also know if they don’t have a good experience they might not bother in the future, which means they might be living with a situation that pulls down their productivity.” Trying to accommodate a new process wasn’t easy in their prior product. Often times to make what should be a simple change meant costly downtime or potential consulting. The user base wasn’t left with very high expectations in the support of their ever-changing environment.
Being able to build reports and quickly distribute information has been a key in the success of the project. One of the unexpected benefits has been the ability to quickly capture new information. “If you want to start a new process, it’s as simple as adding a new category, creating the appropriate custom fields on the form, and setting your rules. Depending on the process you can require as much or as little information as you need, all on the fly, without bringing everything down. You can create a simple check box or a dynamic set of pick lists with very little effort,” said Jennifer.
Accuracy of the issues being collected has dramatically improved. Clear communication between the help desk and CIO has given them the tools to proactively address issues as they analyze the data. “We have a renewed sense of faith in the service desk among our district.
“Buying a big expensive software package is a tough sell to the tax payers in our district. Every penny spent on IT resources is a penny that doesn’t go toward educational resources”.
“Everyone from our account manager to the technical team were wonderful. Our account manager was very patient with us when we had to go through the lengthy bid process. He was clear, really helped with everything from start to finish, and was very patient with our processes. The technical team was extremely helpful with setting up so we were comfortable with understanding what we were buying. I just can’t say enough about Joshua Gordon and Lisa Kienle.
“We were actually a little concerned with that when we were going through the sales process. Everyone was so helpful on the sales side we found ourselves wondering how things would be after everything closed. After working with your team the last several months we have our answer. Your team has been wonderful to work with and always makes time to walk us through things even if they are clearly written in the manual,” said Jennifer.
iSupport is certainly on a roll in Texas. Recently Steve Young, the CTO for Judson Independent School District, wrote about his experience looking for new educational help desk software. Read about his search and eventual iSupport solution on his CTO blog – The best purchase we have made in recent years – iSupport. Taking help desks to another level.
To find out how iSupport Software can take your educational help desk or service desk to a new level visit our web site, start an instant evaluation or watch out YouTube video below.
