Delighting the Customer

Support Services is one of the most customer-facing units within UITS, responding to over 150,000 requests for information technology support in FY21. This department interacts with a broad range of students, faculty, staff and researchers on main campus, online, at distance sites and in our global programs.

Its driving force? Helping the University community find solutions to their IT challenges and making technology more accessible to them. With a majority of the University community remote in FY21, it was critical that support continued to be available 24/7 via phone, chat and online, while in-person support continued at reduced hours. Top services supported included email, UAWiFi, passwords and two-factor authentication. The department also had a dedicated support group to assist staff as they transitioned to working remotely.

As the pandemic evolved, IT had to adapt how it operated, too. Support Services used and deployed technology solutions to create a better customer experience, regardless of where either customers or 24/7 Support Center staff were located.

• Team members began using Trellis’ real-time “chat” platform to assist multiple customers simultaneously and still maintain very high customer satisfaction.
• The call queue transitioned to Amazon Connect, giving the support technicians more flexibility.

As teaching and learning activities went fully remote in FY21, there was a dramatic increase in chat as a popular method of IT Support.

These platform changes meant that the 24/7 Support Center maintained its high level of performance and customer satisfaction during the change to remote work. Surveys are sent to customers by a third-party vendor after their interaction is complete. The 24/7 Support Center has consistently kept a 4.9 on a five-point scale throughout the pandemic, outscoring peers in higher education.

New Structure to Support More Services for Campus

UITS Workgroup and Network Consulting has traditionally provided units across campus with the personalized attention of a local IT support team. To better serve the 62 customer units, this year WNC evolved into two teams: Desktop Support and Managed Services. These more specialized units will help to scale up and update their services to better meet their customers’ increasing needs.

Both groups provide best-practice optimization and security to their customers. Now Desktop Support is working on endpoint management to better manage the workstation hardware and software that faculty and staff rely on. Managed Services now specializes in evaluating, implementing, and supporting the increasing number of cloud services that units use in their work.