Leeds City Council helps staff to help themselves

Leeds City Council has improved its resolution rate for first time caller queries it its IT helpdesk to 78 per cent from 20 per cent

The council implemented a new helpdesk facility to support its 5,000 queries a month, reducing call abandon rates from 18 per cent to just two per cent.

The existing service desk had not kept pace with the growth and proliferation of technology across the council’s estate and was little more than a call and forward system according to Phil Bevan, senior project manager.

‘The silo-based approach meant that whenever a call was received it was simply forwarded to the agent deemed to be the next appropriate tier of support,’ said Bevan.

‘Calls were sometimes sent to the wrong departments for resolution while other very simple queries such as password support, ended up without tier three technical support teams,’ he said.

The new system incorporates an integrated service management environment across the council’s two sites including self-service, web-based support and online tracking with 20 per cent of all enquiries serviced through the web.

The service centre combines first and second level support with a technical development team available for problem management.

Council staff can contact the service desk using web or phone and must supply their staff payroll number with acts as their log-on identity. The helpdesk agent has immediate access with an overview of the staff member’s profile with the IT systems and applications in use.

The new helpdesk service enables the council to discover and monitor the IT environment, determine the relationships and impact of any changes on key services, deploy, track and enforce change processes and execute changes more quickly.

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