Improving customer service at the ARL MSRC

Abstract

The ARL MSRC has conducted a major overhaul of its customer service process in order to better support our customer community. Users were asked what changes they would like to see and an outside consultant was brought in to take a fresh look at our customer service approach. A new methodology for providing customer service was designed to overcome known deficiencies in the previous system as well as incorporate the inputs from our users and the consultant. We purchased new hardware (a Sun Fire V100) and software (Remedy 5.1 Help Desk) to implement our new customer service methodology. Our consultant advised us on how to configure and use Remedy to our best advantage. We configured Remedy with many features to allow the staff to take direct ownership of a user problem report, track recurring questions, and follow the tickets through until an acceptable solution has been found. One major change is that now the majority of the staff is using Remedy instead of just the front-line help desk. The consultant motivated the staff on the importance of providing quality customer service. This new approach to customer service became operational in May 2003. Since then we have collected various statistics on the types of problem users are encountering so we can improve our center. We use this information, along with customer and staff feedback, to continue improving the system to meet our customer's requirements.