Healthy IT- How Vital Health Foods makes use of IT
How do we deliver a healthy IT service experience at Vital Health Foods?
The problem
Since 2005 Space Age has been providing a fulltime onsite resource to Vital Health Foods (Vital) in order to fulfil their IT support demand. As Vital has over 160 computer users it made sense to have a fulltime onsite IT resource. The onsite technician took responsibility for the site, maintaining the physical IT infrastructure and doing user support, largely in isolation.
It became clear that we could optimise the user support provided to Vital.
A technician working in isolation raises some problems, these include:
- Space Age has a limited oversight regarding what the technician does on site
- Space Age has limited knowledge of the user support demands and challenges in the client environment
- Vital management has no high level oversight of the types of user requests being supported
- Detailed onsite site knowledge is largely limited to one technician
- Space Age’s service desk is not utilised for remote user support
Action
In April 2011 Space Age implemented the following measures to address these issues:
- Route email support request to the Space Age service desk system for processing
- Educate the users in the requirements for logging support requests
- Encourage the users to participate in a post service survey attached to each support request
From this we were able to get a clearer idea of the scope and type of user support work the onsite technician deals with on a daily basis. Vital also became the most prolific participant in post service surveys, allowing us to highlight the following areas where service had to be improved; these include faster service and improved communication (Vital also submits the highest monthly number of support requests for any single client).
In order to put a face to the remote support team, one of our service desk analysts spent most of the day onsite at Vital to meet some of the users in person. The submitted user support requests from Vital were also subjected to a refined request handling process by the service desk. This allowed us to accurately prioritise requests by gathering additional information where required, and improve communication through the initial response and follow up.
Outcome
Since April 2011 when the measures were implemented, Vital users have submitted 1042 IT support requests. Out of these, the number of requests resolved within SLA has improved from 30% in April, to 70% in November 2011.
Vital users have managed to complete 128 post service surveys between April and November 2011. The ratings were as follows (out of 14 surveys):
- 86% rated a 5 out of 5 for fast service
- 65% rated 5 out of 5 for quality
- 70% rated a 5 out of 5 for communication
- 80% said they would recommend Space Age’s services
These ratings percentages all meet, and some even exceed the support team’s set targets.
This data is of course ‘vital’ in that it allows us to spot potential problem areas, and improve our service to Vital as part of a Process of On-Going Improvement.
Hannes Fourie
Service Desk Manager
