Clear Creek Independent School District

Saving time and streamlining district activities with one tool

Before TOPdesk, Clear Creek ISD‘s service desk lacked vital data, hindering stakeholders from making informed decisions. By the spring of 2019, Doug Vallot, Assistant Director of Network and Technical Services, found himself feeling overloaded – and knew a change needed to be made. The turning point arose during a conference encounter. After an extensive evaluation of multiple vendors, TOPdesk emerged as the front-runner. Vallot emphasized, “TOPdesk consistently [came] out on the top with regards to both feature set and cost.”

Utilizing Data for Decision-Making

Clear Creek’s legacy tool did not support the kind of reporting and analysis the school district needed to improve processes and efficiency. TOPdesk empowered Vallot and his team to pinpoint hotspot zones or campuses, concentrating efforts, support, and training. This enabled the leadership team to tackle recurring issues with a long-term approach.

In addition to using native reporting capabilities, they are leveraging Automated Actions in TOPdesk to save time and costs and streamline their day-to-day processes. APIs query all incoming tickets and route them to the correct technician group. This helps reduce the number of manual tasks required to resolve incidents.

Clear Creek recently began connecting PowerBI via an OData feed through TOPdesk to visualize data for their executive dashboards. This has provided them with additional insights into things like busy periods for campuses, traffic patterns for their 1:1 student triage helpdesk, and average resolution time trends.  This results in a better understanding of where and when to place support personnel and where to focus training.

By detecting trends in incident frequency, location, and types, technicians assumed greater responsibility for their campuses. Some even go as far as creating video presentations for their community to empower teachers and staff to self-solve.

Empowering users with self-service

Clear Creek aimed to reduce ticket volumes by equipping users to find their own solutions. Vallot ensured that the initial end-user experience closely mirrored their previous tool, significantly aiding in the smooth adoption of TOPdesk among employees. Slowly, they began shifting towards a model in which the self-service portal (SSP) provided the user with information rather than it being a place to only submit tickets. Vallot remarked, “the happiest customer is going to be one that gets their answer without having to go through a lot of options or people to get that answer”.

With the rise of technology in classrooms, technicians face increasing workloads, which would normally impact morale. However, Vallot expressed, “… we’ve seen a greater respect for those operators on the campuses because now they’re part of the team rather than just somebody that shows up when there’s a problem and fixes it.” With this new attitude, operators are gaining deeper insights into campus issues and fostering stronger connections among colleagues.

Personalized responses helped connect end users who are reporting the incidents to the individual technician working on the ticket. These tailored responses now include specific ticket context, significantly aiding secretaries, some of whom manage 20 to 30 tickets daily.

Encouraging cross-departmental usage

When first implemented, TOPdesk was solely used within Clear Creek’s technology department. After witnessing the IT team’s success with the tool, other departments are expressing interest in its adoption. For instance, Child Nutrition Services and the Office of Public Information have now integrated with TOPdesk.

The advantage for end users is evident. Previously, if a user submitted a ticket for the wrong department in their SSP, handing the issue over to the right team was a tedious process. Now, if an incident lands in the wrong team’s queue, operators can swiftly reroute it to the appropriate destination. Vallot shared, “… our end users [having] one place to go to submit all their ticketing needs has been a benefit for the end user.”

Encouraging other departments to adopt TOPdesk shouldn’t involve pressure. Rather, it’s crucial for these teams to recognize the value TOPdesk offers the IT team and in turn seek its implementation. TOPdesk’s support in uniting departments under the shared objective of shifting left has effectively dismantled departmental barriers.

Growing with TOPdesk

Implementing a new service desk tool can be a significant journey in its own right. In addition to continually improving user experience and reducing ticket volume, Vallot has knowledge management and automated actions in his sights. Employing knowledge management, whenever feasible, directly aligns with their goal of fostering self-service.

Furthermore, automated actions create opportunities to integrate various systems beyond TOPdesk. For instance, assignment and distribution for laptops at the beginning of the school year is a recurring issue they are looking to solve with automated actions.

TOPdesk’s support team has played a continuous and collaborative role in enhancing these features. “Every time I’ve engaged with TOPdesk support, I’ve received very detailed responses that answer my question, solve my issue, and give me a better understanding of that product and why it works that way,” said Vallot.