Bracknell Forest Council Boosts Self-Service Usage by 76% with Freshservice

Bracknell Forest Council is the local authority of Bracknell Forest in Berkshire, England. They serve local authorities across the region for a variety of services including public planning, council taxes, and recycling. Their customer base is varied, ranging from leisure centers to schools. Teams across the council were responsible for handling both IT and non-IT queries from their customer base. The council was looking for a solution that would enable them to serve their customers better and improve their operational efficiency.

Bracknell Forest Council, a local authority in Berkshire, England, was facing several challenges with their legacy ticketing system. The system was heavily reliant on traditional channels such as emails and phone calls, which limited the efficiency of the teams. The system required heavy customizations to meet the council's needs, making it difficult for non-IT teams to use. The council's IT environment was plagued with manual processes and the system was heavily siloed, restricting the flow of information among teams and resulting in longer resolution times. The council was in need of a modern, user-friendly IT service desk that would enable them to serve their customers better. They were looking for a solution that would provide self-service capabilities to reduce agent workload, visibility across teams for better collaboration, and an easy learning curve for non-technical teams.

After an extensive market search, Bracknell Forest Council found Freshservice to be the best fit for their requirements. They implemented Freshservice across the company, finding value in its use for both IT service management for IT teams and enterprise service management for marketing, HR, finance, and facilities. A total of 65 agents were onboarded and the support portal was customized and rebranded as 'Toto'. A specialized communications team was set up to create awareness about the rebranded IT support model through email campaigns and educational posters. Gradually, employees were encouraged to adopt the service portal instead of relying on traditional channels. The council also plans to expand the use of Freshservice in the future, including providing live chat as a channel with Freshchat, bringing other business and support functions into Freshservice, maintaining a central repository of contracts with the contract management module on Freshservice, and creating a unified help desk across all teams to improve visibility and track end-to-end processes.

• The implementation of Freshservice has significantly improved the operational efficiency of Bracknell Forest Council. The intuitive self-service portal has allowed employees to opt for their required services with ease, reducing the reliance on traditional channels such as phone calls. This has allowed the agents to focus on other areas of work. The ability to auto-assign incoming tickets to the right agent has reduced manual intervention and increased overall agent productivity. The IT team has also improved the way assets are discovered, tracked, and managed, allowing for easier identification of problematic assets and quicker repairs. The council is planning to further expand the use of Freshservice in the future.

• 76% of the tickets are now raised via the self-service portal, reducing the number of phone calls for raising requests.

• The council now meets 91% of SLAs with Freshservice.

• The ability to auto-assign incoming tickets to the right agent reduced manual intervention and increased overall agent productivity.