Part 3 Järfälla Municipality - Reasons and expectations for Zero Level support

In the previous two blogs about Järfälla Municipality, outside Stockholm, I have described its IT department's challenges and how they are currently using web-based self-service in their activities. For this blog, I interviewed IT Manager Hans Berkvall about why they are taking the next step and introducing Zero Level support as a stage before first line.

Hans Berkvall has worked as IT Manager at Järfälla Municipality since 2012. He is responsible for system operation and the infrastructure for the IT workplace, telephony and first-line support. The municipality outsources all services except support.

Why Zero Level support?

The IT department has been using web-based self-service as a support channel for seven years. Now they have also opted to introduce Zero Level support into their support strategy and process, as a stage before first line. The reason is that they want to use Zero Level support to mop up the frequent unqualified first line support cases to free up time for the qualified issues. This is not something mandated by the municipality, but a decision taken by IT Manager Hans Berkvall himself.

-  "The strategy is to provide support for the recurrent 'bread-and-butter' zero line questions, while our staff will answer qualified questions," he says.

Under consideration is the introduction of rules covering how users must first look for help themselves before contacting first line, to ensure the majority of unqualified issues are dealt with in Zero Level.

Goals and expectations

The IT department's goal is for more users to perceive support as straightforward and easy to understand. Hans Berkvall strongly believes they can increase the number of closed cases in Zero Level support.

-  "Today, we can already see that web-based self-service is helping us," he says.

First line received 68,000 cases in 2012, and 28,000 in 2013. Hans believes the reasons for the reduction are more stable products, and the introduction of a self-service portal for password issues and Zero Level support. Concrete goals for Zero Level support have not yet been determined. The aspiration is to achieve a better result this year.

-  "I am expecting us to be able to handle 40% of all incoming cases via Zero Level," says Hans Berkvall.

The next blog is about the IT department's measures and plans to increase the number of solved cases in Zero Level support.

@ThessanW, Therese Walve, Marketing Manager, ComAround, www.comaround.com