Part 2 – Web-based self service in the public sector

The municipality of Järfälla in Sweden has opted to introduce Zero Level support for its operations. In my first blog, I explained about the the IT department's organisation, targets, challenges and support methods. In this blog, I will be looking at how they use web-based self service at present before the introduction of Zero Level support.

The support team consists of five people. Support is responsible for providing user support on IT and telephony for some 9000 people within the operation. The operation is made of people in administration, schools, social services, assisted living and consultants.

The first line is the operators' first contact with support (SPOC, Single Point of Contact). Around 3000 cases a month are received on the telephone, online, by personal contact or by e-mail. A case management system (Easit), remote assistance (Microsoft) and web-based self service (ComAround) are used to support operations. The IT department also offers training for the operations in the form of instructor-led training courses and interactive guides which are largely based on ComAround's guides and e-training.

Why web-based self service?

The municipality of Järfälla introduced web-based self service around six years ago and decided to use ComAround's web-based self service solution, which the municipality of Järfälla calls Guide & Tips. The central IT unit at that time supported around 700 people.

"We had just launched our intranet, and the guides/quick references were spread about all over the place. ComAround enabled us to collect all guide/quick references together in a single location," says Ingela Karlsson, unit manager for support at the IT department.

"It also became a lot easier to manage cases by sending or printing out the guides from Guide & Tips," adds Carina Nyborg, account manager at the IT department.

Contents

The municipality of Järfälla uses around 80 business systems and around 150 programs – e.g. Platina, Personec, Raindance – and many of these are supported by support. Other programs include Windows 7, Office 2010 and Adobe Acrobat, and portable devices such as iPads and mobile phones. The IT department has a range of services which they have published in Guide & Tips, which indicates the products/services offered by the IT department. The municipality uses most of ComAround's guides and writes a lot of its own as well.

Content manager

Carina Nyborg is responsible for Guide & Tips. Together with a team of system administrators, she has compiled a form and structure so that the guides are all consistent in appearance.

"We update Guide & Tips for about an hour a week, but we would really need more time," reckons Carina Nyborg. "We also receive good support from Magnus Holmqvist, our contact at ComAround, several times a year."

Marketing

To get the most out of web-based self service, the service needs to be marketed and readily accessible to the operations.

"The service has not yet been marketed to a particularly great extent. When the IT environment last underwent a major change, Guide & Tips was marketed in a brochure together with other information," explains Carina Nyborg.

"Many people are aware of Guide & Tips, but unfortunately this information is not passed on to colleagues and business managers," says Ingela Karlsson.

Accessibility

The municipality's web-based self service solution is currently available only on the intranet and is sited in a location which is difficult to find and only has a small header. Carina and Ingela have battled for a decent location for a long time, but they reckon a lot of people have differing views on what aspects are most important to emphasise.

Survey/key figures

Support is currently monitoring statistics on which guides are being used and adding information where aspects are lacking. The alarm functions is enabled, so Carina receives an alarm message when someone has searched on a term or phrase and not found help in any guide.

In my next blog, I will be looking at why the municipality of Järfälla decided to start working with web-based self service and introduce Zero Level support, and what they are expecting of it.

How does your IT department work with Self Service at present? I would be interested to hear about your experiences.

Therese Walve, Marketing Manager, ComAround, www.comaround.se

Related links:

White paper - Seven steps for success with zero level support
Introducing zero level support
Blog article - Part 1 – A Helpful IT department in an operation facing major challenges
Blog article - zero level support – an introduction and guide