The Opportunity
HBS IT prides itself on delivering service that generates high community satisfaction. To achieve this, the team continually takes in feedback to ensure our offerings are aligned to our customers’ evolving needs.
Over the past several years, a few areas for improvement emerged for Technology Support Services (TSS) in particular, stemming from causes such as staffing levels, lack of shared knowledge, and outdated technology. These issues were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, spurring action from the team. Though TSS is a team of well-trained and knowledgeable professionals, they lacked some of the resources necessary to perform at the caliber expected by the HBS community. Service tickets were going unanswered, users’ laptops were old and breaking down, TSS techs weren’t always easy to reach, and, due to knowledge not being democratized, techs didn’t have equitable know-how or a place to find the knowledge they needed to help customers.
The Solution
By launching the Service Delivery Improvement Plan initiative, TSS, in partnership with the IT Service Delivery Team (ITSD), began to generate solutions that would greatly improve overall service delivery and customer satisfaction.
Among the solutions and improvements put into place are:
An enterprise knowledge base, where important information can be documented and maintained in perpetuity. It is now visible to all faculty, staff, and MBA students and is a cornerstone of enabling rapid self-service IT support going forward.
Onboarded a managed service provider to staff round-the-clock, front line IT support for MBA students, Executive Education participants, and HBS Alumni. Depending on patterns of business activity, Anthology addresses between 10% and 20% of user support requests per month that would otherwise have gone to TSS staff. This ensures greater availability of support resources for all members of the HBS community.
Replaced over 2,000 aged PCs that were delayed due to hardware funding cuts.
Renovated the Shad IT service lobby to include space for TSS to collaborate with customers, and to feature a fully automated Amazon-style locker system to enable round-the-clock touchless equipment pick-up and drop-off service.
Implemented a Microsoft Bookings calendar for appointment scheduling. This eliminates time-consuming back-and-forth exchanges between TSS agents and customers to look for a mutually agreeable time and centralizes the appointments on one unified calendar.
Implemented automated workflows for PC loaner requests.
Migrated many support processes and legacy tools to high quality, cloud-based alternatives that reduce manual inputs and increase consistency, efficiency, and transparency.
The Impact/Outcomes
These efforts, and a host of other steps, have resulted in significant efficiency gains in TSS’s support workflows and increased satisfaction from customers. In FY24, TSS recorded four consecutive months of 100% satisfaction when surveying the community. John Owen, Senior Director of TSS said, “This initiative has resulted in our customers receiving faster, more efficient service from IT, and a more consistent, stable, modern experience using HBS-provided computers.”
The work performed in this initiative has given TSS the tools and resources necessary to excel and has given them the space to continue to improve and assist HBS IT in further innovations, such as automation and self-service workflows to continue enhancing IT’s value to our customers.
Strategic Plan Reference: 1.05 Service Delivery Improvement Plan