Aquila Heywood’s service desk provides support for both external customers and its own employees, and receives an average of 18,000 requests every year, (70% from external customers and 30% from internal staff). Significant spikes in activity occur, such as around HMRC and end of tax year deadlines, and twice a year when the company rolls out new software to customers.
By using Sunrise, Aquila Heywood benefits from a flexible, ITIL-centric platform that can deliver detailed, business-focused reporting to managers, as well as providing customers with an easy to use, knowledge-based self-service portal. The majority of requests now come through this portal, where customers can raise requests, see outstanding actions and access relevant knowledge that can help them solve problems themselves.
Sunrise’s in-built ITIL support means it is now straightforward for the service desk to differentiate between different levels of urgency in incoming requests, and to therefore deal with them in a timely manner. This directly feeds into business service level agreements (SLAs), with internal and external customers, supporting business objectives and customer retention. Sunrise’s capabilities make management reporting flexible and straightforward, further embedding service management within the organisation.
“In our world, failing to solve a customer issue could mean tens of thousands of people not receiving their pension – which would be catastrophic for everyone involved,” said Steve Haslam, Head of Service Operations, Aquila Heywood. “Thanks to Sunrise and ITIL we’re confident that we can deliver the service our customers require and better understand and respond to their changing needs, in a more digitally-driven world.”
Moving forward, Sunrise ITSM is enabling service management to become more proactive, helping Aquila Heywood to differentiate itself in the market.
Geoff Rees, Director of Business Services and Sales at Sunrise Software, comments: “Aquila Heywood’s software is business-critical to its customers – and the pensioners they pay. By adopting an ITIL-based approach it has been able to transform service management, integrating closely with business KPIs and therefore helping the company to successfully innovate as a result.”