iNews: CIO/IST reorganization

IST Client Services

Helen Norris, IST–CS

The new Client Services department in IST provides support, interaction, and communication for IST's clients. As primary contact for current and potential clients of IST services, Client Services works with individual customers and departments to meet customer needs, providing expert assistance and service management. During the eighteen-month IST transition through 2007, the challenge, and goal, of the new Client Services department will be to improve both delivery and quality of IST services to all faculty, students, and staff on the Berkeley campus.

Formation

Client Services is composed of many of the customer-focused units from the old IST departments, for example, the ASD, CCS, and CNS help desks; many WSS units including the student labs, DOCS, and the Scholar's Workstation. In addition, Client Services includes internal IST services, such as financial services, including customer billing.

Client Services has been created to increase efficiency of problem resolution, improve high-level support of client projects, and help clarify where IST clients should seek assistance for specific needs.

Organization

Client Services is organized into five main areas in order to support current and future requirements:

• Service Desk. The new Service Desk will be the central point of contact for all departmental and individual clients seeking information or problem resolution for an existing IST service or product. The new Service Desk will act as the primary help desk for IST. It will be responsible for tracking and resolving incident reports, and will coordinate internal communication between IST departments to resolve incidents. As the IST transition progresses, the Service Desk will continue to evolve, and will provide the initial point of contact for a large number of services now provided by IST, among them CalMail, CalAgenda, and enterprise applications systems. During 2006–07, while IST staff and resources are reallocated and realigned into new working groups, all the latest and most accurate information about services will be available on the Service Desk web page.

• Technical Account Management (TAM). Technical Account Management is a new service that will be the central point of contact for IST clients who seek a new or unique service. The TAM will provide IST customers with assistance, guidance, and coordination to reach optimal solutions for emerging and newly defined IT needs on campus. This unit will primarily serve campus departments, providing customized packages of IT infrastructure services. For more about the TAM and a list of the services provided, visit the TAM web page. More information about the TAM is also available in the iNews article Technical Account Management (TAM): A new beginning.

• Technology Acquisition and Sales. Technology Acquisition and Sales is the source for IST customers to acquire off-the-shelf goods and services from IST, either at retail cost, or for free. This group consolidates the Scholar's Workstation, cellular and telephone sales, and the former Software Distribution now Software Central.

• Business Services. Business Services serves IST departments by providing those administrative services that are most efficiently delivered by a central unit. It serves the campus by providing billing for IST services.

• Departmental and Computing Lab Services. Departmental and Computing Lab Services provides departmental computing support service through Departmental On-site Computing Support (DOCS), in addition to management of campus computing laboratories.

Current and future directions

In order to provide clients with more streamlined access to IST's services, Client Services will be working to develop internal processes in IST to deliver services. For example:

• Client Services will be responsible for the IST Service Catalog and the IST Knowledge Base; it will assist clients with access to the information and resources these contain, and it will coordinate with providers of content in both.

• Client services will operate IST billing. One of the initial billing-related goals of Client Services is to create an integrated billing system for IST customers, providing more accurate, timely, understandable, and complete data. During our transition phase, Client Services will solicit opinions from and analyze experiences of customers as the new billing system is designed.

• Client Services will conduct a client survey in fall 2006 to create a baseline of satisfaction against which to measure future success.

What does this mean for the IST clients? The creation of the Client Services department demonstrates IST's commitment to excellent customer service, through the implementation of a single point of contact help desk and development of strategic partnerships with IST's clients, especially via the Technical Account Management group.

Though much remains to be accomplished, the reorganization is well underway, and IST continues to develop the services described here during this period of transition. Please note that no current client services will be eliminated during the transition. We are all looking forward to working with our colleagues on campus!

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