Box Elder County’s IT Department Cuts Time to Resolution and Gains Reporting
As a team of three, the IT department for the county of Box Elder, Utah doesn’t have a lot of downtime. Their days are pretty packed handling the technology needs of government personnel spread across eight locations. Before becoming a Brightly client, they were using a different ticketing software to keep up with their steady stream of work, but it fell short of the capabilities they knew they really needed.
What they wanted was a solution that helped them gain greater control of their operations with better tracking and reporting capabilities so they could measure their efforts and provide better customer service.
When talking about what they were looking for in a solution, IT Director Keith Keller said, “If I had a product we liked, I would be able to more fully invest in our department and county as a whole, helping us build some baseline data and keep track of what we’re doing. We’d be able to serve people better and keep track of how many hours are spent on which departments and build a case for the fact that we’ve only got three guys and this is what we’re doing and what we’re spending time on.”
After implementing Brightly's Help Desk™ solution that allows tickets to be tied to assets, they began to get a clearer picture of their operations and what their customers needed thanks to more consistent and in-depth reporting.
“We quickly recognized some things we hadn’t seen before in the reporting – who was using the services, who was asking for support, what locations, that kind of thing – so that was awesome,” says Nathan Hammer, Senior Systems and Telecommunications Director for the county.
Now having that insight into the tickets being submitted and the work their team is completing is making a measurable difference in how they’re able to perform compared to the way they were operating using their previous ticketing system.
“We weren’t really keeping track,” says Keith. “That’s one of the things I really wanted all of us to use with Brightly. Before, we would fix a problem and it was done. Now I’m requiring everyone to put in how much time they spent and the cost if we had to buy anything. So, I would say problems are being taken care of much more quickly. I would say most tickets now are being resolved in an hour or less. We can take ownership of the tickets, so things don’t fall through the cracks as easily as they may have previously. Plus, communication has grown now that we’re able to see what each other has done.”
“Before we were requiring everyone to use a help desk system, we’d walk through the building or get a phone call telling us about a problem, but before we could get to it, there would be three other people telling us about another problem, so if only one person hears about them, the other two don’t know there are any issues. So before creating that channel for all issues to go through, we were looking at days to resolution instead of hours,” adds Nathan.
Getting to where they are now wasn’t completely seamless, though. Those they work with were used to sending them an email or catching them in the hall when they needed something, so enforcing ticket submissions was a bit of a culture change. Knowing there could be some resistance, they thought ahead and not only held an informative training session, but also put an instructional video for how to use the software online so people could refer to it as much as possible – saving the IT team time from answering questions so they could focus on answering tickets.
“The key was that we did a training session and filmed it for those who couldn’t attend. And we made a decision that now is when we’re going live and we’re requiring everyone to put in a ticket and they have instructions on how. Within weeks, people were on board. That also speaks to your UI as well. People are actually going into the UI and submitting now, which is great because we get more information,” says Nathan.
According to Keith, the results of using Help Desk™ were immediate, and the benefits continue to evolve.
Currently I think the benefit is that we’re tracking everything and hitting tickets much more quickly, and we’re starting to build that baseline data.
"I think down the road, the benefit is going to be seeing where we can improve and be able to show reporting to elected officials. I think we’ll see the benefit shift depending on which stage we’re at.”
Not only are they seeing benefits from the solution, Nathan says they’re pleased with their new level of customer service from Brightly’s support team as well. “I’ve talked to them quite a bit. They’re fantastic. The answers usually come quite quickly. Most everything I’ve dealt with where I’ve called support or did a chat session online, they’ve taken care of it same day or next day. How many times do you buy software and support is a nightmare – that’s something we’ve been through – so I’ve been very happy with your support.”
