GovCMS — an efficient, scalable service desk

Overview

GovCMS’ challenge

In 2018, the GovCMS platform was growing fast. As part of a new contract, the GovCMS/Finance team needed a dedicated and experienced team to offer full service desk support.

GovCMS’ transformation

The Salsa-run GovCMS Service Desk provides a dedicated helpdesk for GovCMS clients. Since Salsa took over the service desk in 2018, we’ve handled over 15,000 tickets and made many improvements. These changes include helping GovCMS clients self-serve and making the new support ticketing process more efficient.

The outcomes

• An efficient service desk that meets its service-level agreement (SLA) targets
• More self-serve options, which has led to a decrease in the number of support tickets per site
• More support tickets closed by level 1 service desk agents
• A stable and predictable cost for GovCMS/Finance to serve its clients
• A service desk that coordinates support resources and responses across 5 distinct, cross-functional teams spanning Finance, Salsa and amazee.io

Detailed case study

GovCMS’ challenge — a growing platform with support needs

In 2018, the GovCMS contract was coming to an end and Finance approached the market with a request for proposals. The GovCMS platform was growing fast and the GovCMS/Finance team needed to have a dedicated service desk as part of GovCMS2.0.

The GovCMS Service Desk team needed to be responsive and flexible, while maintaining the rigour and security required of a government platform.

GovCMS’ transformation — a Service Desk that scaled as the platform grew

The GovCMS Service Desk was tailored specifically for the new platform. Once a ticket/issue is raised via the online system, the ticket is triaged by a Salsa service desk agent and assigned to the best team/person. Some tickets need to be actioned by Dept of Finance/GovCMS, some by Salsa and some by our platform partner, amazee.io. GovCMS customers can easily monitor their ticket’s progress in the customer portal. They can also access self-serve help, with over 110 knowledge-base articles available.

As the platform has grown, efficiency and consistency have become even more important. Through weekly check-in meetings we’ve been able to improve the service desk’s efficiencies, and ultimately GovCMS’ ability to serve its clients.

When Salsa and GovCMS launched GovCMS 2.0 in November 2018, there were approximately 250 active sites (of which just over 100 were production sites). Today the GovCMS Service Desk supports 450+ agency websites across 100 government agencies.

The chart below shows that as the number of sites on the platform grows, tickets received and resolved also increases. The rising trend lines meet in Q2 of 2021, and then the Service Desk is resolving as many tickets as it’s receiving, regardless of the increased number of sites.

The number of active sites (from when GovCMS 2.0 was launched in November 2018 to February 2023) has increased by 56%, however ticket trends show the number of new tickets on the service desk has only increased by 31%. The total resolved tickets over the same period has increased 36%.

These numbers indicate that despite the increase in total active sites on the platform, the number of new tickets has not increased at the same rate. This is because of efficiencies introduced to the GovCMS Service Desk, in particular the proportion of tickets closed by Level 1 agents increasing at a higher rate.

The chart below shows that while the number of tickets closed by the GovCMS Service Desk rises, the proportion of tickets closed by Level 1 agents increased at a greater rate. Level 1 service desk agents have increased their knowledge and skill and have been able to resolve a wider range of tickets over time, preventing tickets from being escalated to L2 and L3 application support.

In February 2023, 37% of all service desk tickets were resolved by L1 GovCMS Service Desk.

Finally, the chart below shows that in most months, between 12% and 15% of customers respond to the service desk customer satisfaction survey. Overwhelmingly, GovCMS users are very satisfied with their interactions with the GovCMS Service Desk. On average, 94% of customers said they were either 'extremely satisfied' or 'satisfied'.

Restraining cost to serve while increasing agency support

Critical in restraining the cost to serve while increasing volume has been:

• Better knowledge bases
• Investment in operational documentation, training and education
• Tuning tools, processes and communications
• Continuous improvement

The chart below shows that costs to resolve tickets increases more slowly than the growth in tickets, indicating an efficiency of scale. Costs included in this data are directly related to the functioning of the GovCMS Service Desk.

The outcomes — improved efficiencies and reduced costs per service desk ticket

• A dedicated, customised service desk to meet GovCMS customer needs

• More self-serve options, which has led to a decrease in the number of support tickets raised per site

• A more efficient service desk with faster ticket resolution, with more support tickets closed by Level 1 service desk agents

• GovCMS/Finance has retained the cost to serve for GovCMS clients during considerable platform growth

• A service desk that coordinates support resources and responses across 5 distinct, cross-functional teams spanning Finance, Salsa and amazee.io — now dealing with 102 different government agencies as customers

About GovCMS

The Department of Finance (Finance) owns the GovCMS platform, a whole-of-government digital platform for use across all levels of government in Australia. GovCMS is built on Drupal, an award-winning, enterprise-grade CMS that’s easy to use, stable, highly secure and open source (no licence fees). 81% of agencies on GovCMS are commonwealth entities.

In April 2022, GovCMS welcomed the 100th agency to the platform, and the GovCMS Service Desk received the 15,000th ticket.