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Clinton Cards
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Background
Clinton Cards is the largest specialist retailer of greetings cards,
plush merchandise (soft toys) and related products in the UK.
From its modest beginning in 1968, the company is now publicly
traded and has grown to over 1000 shops.
Providing quality IT
and operational support is a key goal for Clinton Cards. With
operations spread throughout the UK, a centralized support system is
essential to communicate and keep operations running efficiently.
Situation
Managing over one-thousand stores with more than 3000 point of sale
registers, Clinton Cards utilized a support application to log all
problems and queries, however the existing software did not meet
their growing needs. With only basic functionality, it did not
monitor helpdesk agent performance to identify which stores were
having major problems. It was very hard to find out whether someone
has edited a ticket as it did not give a clear date and time stamp
as to when the ticket was amended. The limited reporting did not
determine trends or whether certain problems kept occurring, and
because it was constantly freezing up, it was keeping the store
managers on the phone longer than necessary.
Strategy
Clinton Cards clearly needed to look for another application with
stronger features to manage their internal support. As a
growing company, they needed a support program that could not only
meet present needs, but future needs as well. In addition to
highly customizable administrator features, powerful reporting was
needed to improve operations. After looking at several help
desk solutions, Clinton Cards selected the Novo Help Desk
Enterprise.
Results
Novo’s web based platform allowed for a speedy
implementation, as opposed to the former software that was located
on each pc. Flexible administrator settings allow Clinton
Cards to setup an alert service which has resulted in major problems
being identified quickly. Using the reports generated from Novo
application, the company helpdesk now has monthly reviews which have
improved helpdesk agent performance. This has resulted in a
reduction of the total numbers of open tickets.
Clinton Cards states that the best feature of the Novo software is
the ‘custom rule’ function. They have used this to implement
service level agreements to the stores, allowing them to be aware of
major problems as they occur. In addition, the use of ‘user
defined fields’ has helped Clinton Cards design form templates to
the specific needs of their users and departments.
The Clinton Cards helpdesk performance has improved substantially
since the introduction of Novo. Call times have reduced, and issues
have been resolved more quickly. It has been so successful that
they are expanding it internally to allow more departments to track
their own requests, such as purchasing requests, HR requests, etc.
“The Novo enterprise helpdesk has helped us improve the way the
department operates and with their excellent support we have
developed a system that matches our needs. I would certainly
recommend Novo to everyone.”
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