Improving Efficiency with SHIFT LEFT

Brad Hachez, Senior Director, IT Service Desk at Southern New Hampshire University

Brad Hachez, Senior Director, IT Service Desk at Southern New Hampshire University

An exceptional student experience is at the core of the culture at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). Our students and the totality of their learning outcomes are at the heart of our decisions.As an institution innovating in various delivery models, SNHU provides an IT Service Desk to remove the technical barriers to success that too often face our students.That foundation was expanded in 2020 with the advent of a formalized “shift left” process.Based on LEAN principles, “shift left” identifies opportunities where work can be accomplished by the front-line support team, thoroughly documents that work, and providestraining and transitional hypercare support.Work that is shifted through this process is optimized to reduce unnecessary steps and to leverage the 24/7/365 availability of the support team.“Shiftingleft” allows the IT Service Desk to execute the work for significant benefit to the student experience.

3 Key Benefits to an Effective “Shift Left” Process

1. Increasing student satisfaction with first contact resolution.

The tech industry has long measured the efficiency of service desks to resolve tickets without the need to escalate to engineers.The impact to a student can be measured in time to resolution, as there is no need to wait for an engineer andthis positive benefit can be seen in Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT) data. “Shift left” amplifies this effort by analyzing most often escalated work and ensuring the service desk can be enabled to resolve without escalation.The IT Service Desk has been empowered by the Information Securityteam to handle end-to-end phishing attempts and suspected malware incidents. Further, an in-house scripting engine allows for many first-tier resolutions.In these examples, the technical barriers are far less problematic for our students as the solution is only oneinteraction away.
2. Increasing capacity of other teams with first-tier resolution.

When organizations empower the front line to serve their customers better, this frees up capacity at different levels of the organization.In truth, this secret formula does not need to be limited to IT departments. At SNHU, providing capacity across the Universityindirectly enablesmore excellent student service opportunities for those departments.The IT Service Desk has partnered for the past year with the Wellness Center to process student vaccination cards for those attending an in-person experience.The time-consuming new responsibilities wereunexpected for a small, dedicated team of health professionals.With the appropriate training and two-way communication established, how freeing it has been to that team for the IT Service Desk to perform this work effort!
3. Increasing service desk technician retention -- thereby advancing knowledge and experience –and improving student service outcomes.

The “shift left” process provides increasingly more empowerment to service desk technicians from training and experience to an ability to solve the problems presented by our students.Service desk organizations can measure the effectiveness of this benefit as the retention rate of technicians who now have great involvement, knowledge, and capability in each support interaction.As front-line, entry-level roles, advancement to other positions is often sought, leading to regular training classes and new technician onboardings.The “shift left” process allows for specialized development to occur within the service desk organization. The IT Service Desk has seen this with specializations aligned to asset management, knowledge enablement, and salesforceadministration – all of which deepens the technician’s commitment to the organization and its student service mission.

"Based on LEAN principles, “shift left” identifies opportunities where work can be accomplished by the front-line support team, thoroughly documents that work, and provides training and transitional hypercare support."

Across these benefits, driven by the “shift left” process, the IT Service Desk has seen increased organization, metrics performance, and alignment across IT and wider University teams.Developing, implementing, and refining the process has paid dividends internally and to the student experience.While the process itself is real, hard work, the changes it has made possible have only furthered my belief that modern service desks, particularly those in a university setting, should add this tool for their toolbelt.